Why pragmatism entails realism

Claudine Tiercelin (College de France)

Abstract: Pragmatism if often associated with nominalism. However, for his founder, C.S. Peirce, pragmatism implied realism, even a “scholastic realism of a somewhat extreme stripe”. After a brief survey of such a paradoxical alliance between pragmatism and realism, and of some common grounds among various pragmatists, I shall present the major features of such a realist pragmatism, along Peircian lines. In particular, I shall try to show how and why such a basically dispositional type of realism, which invoves strong metaphysical and ethical commitments, can provide meaningful insights for a better understanding of what metaphysical knowledge might consist in and a “genuine course between the soggy sands of relativism and the cold rocks of dogmatism”(S. Blackburn)