Pragmatic Fashions

John J. Stuhr is Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and American Studies and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at Emory University. He is author of Pragmatism, Postmodernism, and the Future of Philosophy and editor of 100 Years of Pragmatism: William James's Revolutionary Philosophy (IUP, 2010).

"How might philosophers speak from and to experiences that are based on values and habits that are destructive for the ends they intend? Speak in ways that encourage and support constructive transformations of those obstructive ways of life? John J. Stuhr develops a head-on confrontation with many habitual types of Western philosophical thought as he wrestles with fundamental questions of language, philosophical method, communal life, and personal transformations."—Charles E. Scott, Vanderbilt University"A wide-ranging and impassioned text that argues for the ongoing relevance of pragmatism in contemporary life. John J. Stuhr reminds us that philosophy should be measured by the degree that it abandons the armchair and ventures outside of the narrow confines of the academy to inspire, motivate, and enact concrete change in oneself, others, and the wider world."—Megan Craig, author of Levinas and James: Toward a Pragmatic Phenomenology

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Expressivism and Pragmatism1. Chance Vistas and Sincerity in the Cosmic Labyrinth2. Philosophies as Fashions3. Does Philosophy Progress?: Criticism without Critique4. Convergence and Difference: Immanent Pluralism5. It's All Relative: Beyond Absolutism and Nihilism6. Expressions of Nature: Refashioning the Hudson River School7. Old Ideals Crumble: War and the Limits of Philosophy8. Democracy as Public Experiment: Beyond Mission Accomplished and Mission Impossible9. A Terrible Love of Hope: Toward Peace Before Death10. Absurd Pragmatism11. The Spring Collection: Intermedia Moralia; or, a Romance of Our IncoherenceNotesIndex