Cheryl Misak presents a history of the great American philosophical tradition of pragmatism, from its inception in the Metaphysical Club of the 1870s to the present day. She identifies two dominant lines of thought in the tradition: the first begins with Charles S. Peirce and Chauncey Wright and continues through to Lewis, Quine, and Sellars; the other begins with William James and continues through to Dewey and Rorty. This ambitious new account identifies the connections between traditional American pragmatism and twentieth-century Anglo-American philosophy, and links pragmatism to major positions in the recent history of philosophy, such as logical empiricism. Misak argues that the most defensible version of pragmatism must be seen and recovered as an important part of the analytic tradition.

About the Author
Cheryl Misak is Professor of Philosophy, as well as Vice-President and Provost at the University of Toronto. She received a BA from the University of Lethbridge, an MA from Columbia University, and a DPhil from the University of Oxford. She works on American pragmatism, the theory of truth, moral and political philosophy, and the philosophy of medicine. She has published and edited books with Oxford University Press, Routledge, and Cambridge University Press, and has published over forty scholarly articles. In 2008, her 'Experience, Narrative, and Ethical Deliberation' was declared one of the ten best papers in philosophy by The Philosopher's Annual. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and has been a Humboldt Fellow at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, a Visiting Fellow of St. John's College Cambridge, and a Rhodes Scholar.

Reviews
In casting Peirce and Lewis as the heroes of American Pragmatism, with James and Dewey as the villains, Misak establishes an impressive continuity between pragmatism and both logical empiricism and contemporary analytic philosophy... Indeed, the main arc that Cheryl Misak traces - from Kant, through Peirce and Lewis, and then on to W. V. Quine and into wider philosophical orthodoxy - deserves to become widely known. * Tim Button, The Times Literary Supplement *
This book deserves to become a new standard for understanding the history of philosophical pragmatism; no other work covers such a diverse range of essential pragmatists together in such a short space, accurately and thoughtfully placing them in context with one another and with tradition as a whole ... Essential. * S.E. Forschler, CHOICE *



Book Information
ISBN 9780199231201
Author Cheryl Misak
Format Hardback
Page Count 304
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 1g
Dimensions(mm) 240mm * 162mm * 23mm