Page 19

lies in its fit within the pragmatist tradition. In this case, I am answerable not only to Rorty`s neo-

pragmatist community of discourse but also to the larger tradition of American pragmatism. As such, it is

not only permissible but in some senses incumbent upon me to make my case within this larger

framework. And, I want to suggest in what follows, there are resources from this larger tradition,

specifically the pragmaticism of Peirce, which enable us to do precisely what has been accomplished

above: to salvage what is valuable in Rorty`s neo-pragmatism for a pragmatic theology in our time.

III. A Pragmati(ci)st Highroad around the Contemporary Theological Impasse

The flowering of Rorty`s neo-pragmatist vision retrieves and build on only select trajectories of

the classical tradition of American pragmatism. Of the recognized fountainheads of classical

pragmatism--Peirce, James and Dewey--Rorty`s project rejects Peirce altogether, revisions James`

pragmatic theory of truth, and relies most heavily on (a strong and illegitimate misreading of, some

would insist) the humanistic rather than scientific side of Dewey.

The result is that some commentators

identify the two traditions of pragmatism: a methodological and realistic strand beginning with Peirce

and continuing through one side of Dewey to contemporary speculative and philosophically inclined

forms of pragmatism, and a humanistic strand stretching from the other side of Dewey through to Rorty`s

neo-pragmatism.

Because my own inclinations are with the Peircean trajectory, my intention in what

I do not intend to adjudicate the debate concerning Rorty`s relationship to Dewey. For the clearest

statement of how Rorty sees his own relationship to Dewey, see Dewey`s Metaphysics, in Consequences of
Pragmatism, 72-89. For details of the arguments for and against Rorty`s use of Dewey, see Nielsen, After the Demise
of Tradition, ch. 8; Hall, Richard Rorty, ch. 2; James Gouinlock, What is the Legacy of Instrumentalism? Rorty`s
Interpretation of Dewey, in Saatkamp, Jr., ed., Rorty and Pragmatism, 72-90; Giles Gunn, Pragmatism,
Democracy, and the Imagination: Rethinking the Deweyan Legacy, in Hollinger and Depew, eds., Pragmatism:
from Progressivism to Postmodernism, 298-313; and Ralph W. Sleeper, Rorty`s Pragmatism: Afloat in Neurath`s
Boat, But Why Adrift? Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 21 (1985): 9-20, and ibid., The Pragmatics of
Deconstruction and the End of Metaphysics, in John J. Stuhr, ed., Philosophy and the Reconstruction of Culture:
Pragmatic Essays after Dewey (Albany: SUNY Press, 1993), 241-56.

The most elaborate argument along these lines so far is H. O. Mounce, The Two Pragmatisms: From

Peirce to Rorty (London and New York: Routledge, 1997). Nicholas Rescher, Realistic Pragmatism: An
Introduction to Pragmatic Philosophy (Albany: SUNY Press, 2000), esp. 64-65 and 244-49, also distinguishes
between what he calls realistic and relativistic versions of pragmatism. Developments on the speculative side of
pragmatism can be found throughout the pages of the Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society. See also
Rescher, Methodological Pragmatism: A Systems-Theoretic Approach to the Theory of Knowledge (New York: New