exclusively in its bearing upon the conduct of life; so that, since obviously nothing that might not result from experiment can have any direct bearing upon conduct, if one can define accurately all the conceivable experimental phenomena which the affirmation or denial of a concept could imply, one will have therein a complete definition of the concept, and there is absolutely nothing more in it. For this doctrine, he invented the name pragmatism."
After saying that some of his friends wished him to call the doctrine practicism or practicalism, he says that he had learned philosophy from Kant, and that to one "who still thought in Kantian terms most readily, praktisch and pragmatisch were as far apart as the two poles, the former belonging to a region of thought where no mind of the experimentalist type can ever make sure of solid ground under his feet, the latter expressing relation to some definite human purpose. Now quite the most striking feature of the new theory was its recognition of an inseparable connection between rational cognition and human purpose."[1]
From this brief statement, it will be noted that Peirce confined the significance of the term to the determination of the meaning of terms, or better, propositions; the theory was not, of itself, a theory of the test, or the truth, of propositions. Hence the title of his original article: How to Make Ideas Clear. In his later writing, after the term had been used as a theory of truth,—he proposed the more limited "pragmaticism" to designate his original specific meaning.[2] But even with respect to the meaning of propositions, there is a marked difference between his pragmaticism and the pragmatism of, say, James. Some of the critics (especially continental) of the latter would have saved themselves some futile beating of the air, if they had reacted to James's statements instead of to their own as-*
- ↑ Kant discriminates the laws of morality, which are a priori, from rules of skill, having to do with technique or art, and counsels of prudence, having to do with welfare. The latter he calls pragmatic; the a priori laws practical. See Metaphysics of Morals, Abbott's trans., pp. 33 and 34.
- ↑ See the article in the Monist already mentioned, and another one in the same volume, p. 481, "The Issues of Pragmaticism."
