Bernstein's deployment of Jamesian democratic pluralism

the pragmatic turn and the future of philosophy

Judith M. Green

pp. 78-97

in: Judith M. Green (ed), Richard J. Bernstein and the pragmatist turn in contemporary philosophy, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014

Abstract

James's pluralism shapes his understanding of the philosophical task. We can see this by highlighting his reflections on vision and temperament.... James tells us that "a man's vision is the great fact about him/" and that, "if we take the whole history of philosophy, the systems reduce themselves to a few main types which, under all the technical verbiage in which the ingen- ious intellect of man envelops them, are just so many visions, modes of feeling the whole push, and seeing the whole drift of life, forced on by one's total character and experience, and on the whole preferred — there is no other true word — as one's best working attitude."