A philosophical bestiary

Joseph Margolis

University of South Carolina

in: Wittgenstein and pragmatism, European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 4 (2), 2012.

Abstract

The paper notices that different readings have been provided as for the connections between Wittgenstein and pragmatism, such as for example H. Putnam’s picture as opposed to R. Rorty’s description that packages Wittgenstein and Dewey together as ‘postmodern’ pragmatists. Joseph Margolis tries to broaden the discussion by including an examination of Wilfrid Sellars, Gottlob Frege, Robert Brandom, and Huw Price. His aim it to review the newer challenges of naturalism and deflationism, which, by their own instruction, should bring us to the decisive contest between the ‘pragmatism’ of the Investigations and that of Brandom’s Between Saying and Doing. The larger purpose of this exercise is to assess pragmatism’s best prospects currently, in meeting the gathering challenges of the day.

Cited authors

Frege Gottlob

Wittgenstein Ludwig

Putnam Hilary

Margolis Joseph

Sellars Wilfrid

Brandom Robert