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THE REAL NATURE OF PRAGMATISM AND CHICAGO SOCIOLOGY *
Author(s) -
RochbergHalton Eugene
Publication year - 1983
Publication title -
symbolic interaction
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.874
H-Index - 47
eISSN - 1533-8665
pISSN - 0195-6086
DOI - 10.1525/si.1983.6.1.139
Subject(s) - pragmatism , sociology , epistemology , social science , philosophy
It has been some time since pragmatism was examined systematically by sociologists, and in American Sociology and Pragmatism J.David Lewis and Richard L. Smith attempt not only to revise ideas that the philosophies of C.S.Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead form a continuous tradition, but also that Mead, currently the most well-known of these pragmatists among American sociologists, was in fact marginal to the Chicago school of sociology with whom he now is so closely associated. Two other notable sociological studies of pragmatism that come to mind are C. Wright Mills’ posthumously published dissertation, Sociology and Pragmatism, and Durkheim’s Pragmatisme et Sociologie. Mills was interested primarily in examining the social context of pragmatism in American intellectual life, not its influences on the development of Chicago sociology, and Durkheim gave a lecture course in 1913-14 later published from student notes in 1955 as Pragmatisme et Sociologie. In these lectures Durkheim concentrated on James, Dewey, and F.C.S. Schiller, and to a lesser extent Peirce, but Mead is not even mentioned in Durkheim’s text. Similarly Mills devoted whole chapters to Peirce, James, and Dewey, and Mead is mentioned only in a few passing references, although Mills regretted his scant attention to Mead in a postscript. Though Mead may have exerted much influence on colleagues and students at the University of Chicago, these omissions suggest that he was not regarded widely as one of the major pragmatists until after the publication of his writings and lectures as books in the 1930s. American Sociology and Pragmatism attempts to carry out two purposes: first, to show two “clearly separable” forms of pragmatism-a realist version characterized by Peirce and approximated by Mead, and a nominalist variety illustrated by James and Dewey; and second, to separate Mead from the mainstream of early Chicago sociology and from symbolic interactionism. The authors’ argument hangs by a single thread, illustrated by their methodological statement that: