a subjective idealist philosophical doctrine. Pragmatism developed in the USA during the 1870’s and reached the peak of its popularity prior to World War II (1939–45), exerting a very powerful influence on the country’s entire culture. The basic ideas of pragmatism were expressed by C. Peirce. Later, the doctrine was elaborated by W. James, J. Dewey, and G. H. Mead. Pragmatism also had adherents in Great Britain (F. C. S. Schiller) and other countries.
According to the pragmatists, all previous philosophy, as well as the absolute idealism of F. Bradley and J. Royce, which prevailed in British and American universities at that time, was divorced from life, abstract, and passively contemplative. Having thus accused its predecessors, pragmatism presented a program for “reconstruction in philosophy.” Philosophy should be not speculation about first principles of being and knowledge, as it had been since Aristotle, but a general method for solving problems that confront people in various (“problematic”) life situations or in the course of their activities, which take place in an incessantly changing world. Adhering to the tradition of subjective idealist empiricism, pragmatism equates all of the reality surrounding man with “experience”, which is not reduced to sensory perceptions but is understood as “all that which is experienced” (Dewey)—that is, as any of the content of consciousness, as “the stream of consciousness” (James).
In its subjective idealist empiricism, pragmatism is related to Machism, and in its irrationalist tendency, to the teachings of the French philosopher H. Bergson. According to pragmatism, experience is never given to us initially as something definite. All objects of cognition are given form by our cognitive efforts to solve the problems of life. Making use of a one-sided interpretation of Darwin’s ideas, pragmatism regards thinking merely as a means by which the organism adapts to the environment, for the purpose of effective action. The function of thought does not consist in cognition as a reflection of objective reality or in a corresponding orientation for activity, but in overcoming doubt, which hinders action (Peirce), and in choosing the means necessary for attaining an aim (Janies) or solving a “problematic situation” (Dewey). Ideas, concepts, and theories are merely instruments or plans for action, and their significance is reduced to possible practical consequences by the basic doctrine of pragmatism (the “Peirce principle”). Accordingly, “truth is defined as utility” (J. Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy, Boston, 1957, p. 157), or as the workability of ideas. This definition of truth—the most characteristic and most odious doctrine of pragmatism—leads to an absolutization of the role of success and the transformation of success into not only the sole criterion of the truth of ideas but also the very content of the concept of truth.
James made direct use of the pragmatic theory of truth to justify religious faith: “If the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily, it is true” {Pragmatizm, St. Petersburg, 1910, p. 182).
V. I. Lenin wrote: “Pragmatism ridicules the metaphysics both of materialism and idealism, acclaims experience and only experience, recognizes practice as the only criterion, … and … successfully deduces from all this a God for practical purposes and only for practical purposes, without any metaphysics, and without transcending the bounds of experience” (Poln. sobr. soch., 5 ed., vol. 18, p. 363, note).
The sociopolitical applications of pragmatism have invariably served the apologetic aim of justifying political acts that help to reinforce the existing order.
In the late 1930’s the influence of pragmatism in American philosophy began to decline. With the immigration of a number of European philosophers, other philosophical trends gained popularity. However, although it is no longer the leading philosophical school, pragmatism has continued to exert an influence on the solution of many problems in methodology and logic (the work of W. Quine, C. I. Lewis, N. Goodman, and E. Nagel, for example). To a considerable degree, pragmatism dictates the style of political thinking in the USA. A pragmatic conception of practical experience is used by right-wing revisionists (especially those associated with the Yugoslav journal Praxis) to distort the Marxist understanding of practice and to struggle against the Leninist theory of reflection.
IU. K. MEL’VIL’