A critical exposition of Bertrand Russell's criticisms of pragmatism

Abstract

The aim of this work is to present a critical a critical exposition on the text “Pragmatism” (1909) by Bertrand Russell, in which he directs severe criticisms of the philosophy of William James and Ferdinand C. S. Schiller. To achieve this objective, it seems important to contextualize Russell’s ideas in the period in which the aforementioned text was produced. Furthermore, it may be interesting to make a careful differentiation between the types of ideas proposed by Russell and the set of perspectives of the pragmatic authors that the English philosopher cites more often in his essay. Considering this, the article will be divided into three brief sections. The first will present basic information about the text and the state of the art about the relationship between Russell and pragmatism, in order to characterize very briefly Russell’s alleged “pragmatic turn”. The second will approach Russell’s ideas as expressed in the works produced between 1907 and 1911. The main objective of this incursion will be to try, albeit in an approximate and hypothetical way, to outline the way in which Russell, at the time he wrote “Pragmatism”, understood key notions such as “judgment”, “truth”, knowledge by “acquaintance” and knowledge by “description”. This will allow us to rescue some pragmatist concepts and to point out from the start the divergences between James’s brand of pragmatism and Russell’s philosophy. The third section, in turn, will seek to confront more directly and critically Russell’s article from 1909.