Introduction

Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking was first published in 1907, only three years before the end of James's life. It contains the text of a series of lectures that he had delivered in Boston in late 1906 and then at Columbia University in New York early the following year. The book represents James's attempt to give a general account of the “pragmatist movement”. Pragmatism, as we shall see, emerged more than thirty years earlier, but it had very little impact until shortly before James's lectures. When it “rather suddenly precipitated itself out of the air” it rapidly encountered controversy and even scorn. The book reflects James's sense that “much futile controversy might have been avoided … if our critics had been willing to wait until we got our message fairly out”. In an attempt to “get the message out” (P: 5), James promised to “unify the picture as it presents itself to my own eyes, dealing in broad strokes and avoiding minute controversy”. As this suggests, the book is lively and enthusiastic, with James's passionate commitment to his position making the lectures a delight to read. But the lack of rigour in formulating positions and defending them meant that controversy (futile or otherwise) increased rather than diminished. The lectures require a sympathetic reader, but, as is evidenced by the writings of G. E. Moore (1907–8) and Bertrand Russell (1908), it did not find one: they responded with impatient refutations of his positions and their interpretations helped to give currency to a crude caricature of what pragmatism is to which a more careful reading of the lectures gives the lie.