The book is a compilation of lectures on the philosophical school of thought called pragmatism, delivered by William James in early 20th century.
The book intends - though I'm not entirely sure that it succeeds - to provide an overview of this train of thought.
In any event, the core of pragmatism is that the most relevant questions in philosophy (or in human endeavours more generally) is not truth or accurate theorization of the natural world, but rather what practical effects people's conceptions have. In other words concepts/conceptions are (or are defined in terms of) the practical effects they have.
Undoubtedly there are more sublime and subtle views on pragmatism, but the above suffices for me.
Was it good?
Truth to be told, I quite disliked the book, and certainly had higher hopes about what I could learn from it.
This is perhaps because of the very obscure or inaccessible language used throughout - admittedly at least partly because the lectures were delivered about 100 years ago. In any event, throughout the book I struggled with deciphering sentences which, at first glance, could disclose something very profound, or be just empty jargon. This made the reading experience quite unrewarding.
Consequently, my overall impression of the book was that a pageful of a Wikipedia article could deliver to me more that this entire book.
The main take-away for me?
The core idea of pragmatism, as noted above, must be the main take-away from the book, because I largely failed to gather any other take-aways from it.
Who should read the book?
I would recommend the book only to those who - for a reason or another - are deeply interested in the person of William James, and want to study the original thinking of the man as delivered in the form of lectures.
The book on Amazon.com: Pragmatism
No comments:
Post a Comment