Philip Kitcher brings his own inclusive and liberatory purposes to bear in Preludes to Pragmatism: Toward a Reconstruction of Philosophy, including in several chapters in which he criticizes William James’s defense of religious belief in “The Will to Believe” and Varieties of Religious Experience, while affirming John Dewey’s emphasis on a “religious” orientation toward community and nature in A Common Faith. These chapters in Kitcher’swide-ranging and beautifully written book contain many insights and imaginative proposals for advancing a “post-religion”secular humanism that (...) he hopes may be able to stabilize the evolution and widen the effective reach of a deep and enduring human impulse toward altruism that he.. (shrink)

On April 26, 2013, Philip Kitcher met with a line-up of six critics at the New York Pragmatist Forum to learn what they thought about his latest large book, Preludes to Pragmatism: Toward a Reconstruction in Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2012). The following contributions, as well as Kitcher’s reply, originated in this meeting, with each author taking into account Kitcher’s initial responses while further developing his or her arguments.As S. Joshua Thomas notes below, our purpose as critics has been two-fold: (...) first, to offer fair criticisms that avoid the kind of “tribalist” response Philip Kitcher often receives as an internationally well-known philosopher moving between two philosophical traditions that.. (shrink)

This article focuses on the relationship between Barack Obama and pragmatism by reframing Barack Obama's deeply held values, carefully considered intellectual commitments, highly developed gifts, hypothetically framed transformative strategies, and their emerging outcomes in light of works by classical and contemporary philosophical pragmatists in order to help us clarify how we can advance pragmatism's meaning and relevance in the twenty-first century.