CFP: Pragmatism as a Global Philosophy

CFP

“Pragmatism as a Global Philosophy”

Pragmatism Today, Summer Issue, 2025

Discussing “global philosophy” can seem determinate and even authoritative, yet pragmatism offers tools for creating and circulating transformative, transactional, and transnational practices and norms.  However, social progressive movements are not a new approach to global problems, yet humanitarian crisis, war, economic imbalances, global climate change, and other such challenges continue. As well, pragmatists have failed to eradicate moral problems, such as racist, sexist, gender discriminatory and class/economic injustices. While we can reflect on many successes in terms of humanitarian rights and technological advances, our project here is to inquire whether pragmatism is contemporarily viable as a philosophical, albeit practical, approach to global experiences, events, and problems.

Emil Visnovsky convincingly makes a generally applicable case for pragmatism as a global philosophy, as he quotes William James,

    everything that exists is influenced in some way by something else…, and in general, it may

    be said that all things cohere and adhere to each other somehow, and that the universe exists

    practically in reticulated or concatenated forms which make of it a continuous and

   “integrated” affair (James 1981, 68).

As we turn our focus to everyday experiences, one of pragmatism’s most meaningful and progressive tools is a pluralist approach to reality and our practical affairs. As a concept pluralism has a rich litany, from Immanuel Kant to Bernard Williams in terms of values and ethics, but also stretches the fields of ontology, epistemology, and logic. Considering varied philosophical approaches without resorting to relativism, while loosening dogma and deepening positivism, pluralism can be useful in terms of releasing our prejudiced norms, especially in terms of diversity becoming a liberating and unifying situation. As well, there are other pragmatic tools which are human resources to global challenges, such as meliorism, transvaluation, hermeneutics, and historic disclosure.

So, we can discern at least two overarching questions about pragmatism as a global philosophy; do pragmatic theories remain relevant, and do the tools still hold practical applications?

Pragmatism Today invites scholars from varied fields and approaches of classical, modern, and contemporary philosophy to submit papers on pragmatism as a global philosophy, for the Summer Issue, 2025. Can we succeed as being pragmatically oriented, as many united in our charge for bettering life and our environments? Or should we turn over such responsibilities to a post-humanist or trans-humanists’ position? We are not only interested in papers that draw on the resources classical and contemporary pragmatist scholars offer, but also on papers exploring the possibility of engaging in fruitful dialogue with other philosophical traditions and contemporary methodologies, in the fields of Logic, Critical Theory, Phenomenology, Feminism, and Post-Colonial studies. Pragmatism Today publishes not only original papers and essays in all genres of philosophical works, but also discussions and dialogues, interviews, conference and research reports, book reviews, invited symposia, and other material.