The journal Contemporary Pragmatism, now entering its third decade of publishing, issues a call for Commentaries offering reflections and observations inspired by cp’s 2024 target article by Sami Pihlström. A commentary is usually between 2,000 and 4,000 words, although longer essays will be considered.
Submissions are uploaded via the journal’s editorial website: www.editorialmanager.com/cp
Author instructions can be viewed (and downloaded) here: https://brill.com/fileasset/downloads_products/Author_Instructions/COPR.pdf
The journal’s editorial office will contact authors to inform them of acceptance after the deadline of September 1, 2024.
Target article: PRAGMATISM AS A MEDIATOR – SEEKING AN ILLUSORY HARMONY?
Author: Sami Pihlström, Professor of Philosophy of Religion, Faculty of Theology, University of Helsinki, Finland sami.pihlstrom@helsinki.fi
https://doi.org/10.1163/18758185-bja10078
This paper examines the pragmatist claim to mediate between philosophical disputes. While recognizing the reconciliatory and harmonizing role that pragmatism plays in traditional debates between, e.g., realism and antirealism, naturalism and culturalism, or science and religion, it is argued that the pragmatist needs to acknowledge that there are situations in which no such mediation is reasonably possible, such as the conflict between racism and antiracism. The metaphilosophical question to be raised is how – in terms of pragmatism itself – we are able to distinguish between these different cases and what it means to apply the pragmatic method to resolving this meta-level issue. Pragmatism here emerges as a thoroughly fallible and antifoundationalist reflexive inquiry into what it means, and what it ought to mean, to view philosophical issues in terms of their conceivable practical consequences. The project of mediation must be subordinated to this more fundamental understanding of pragmatist methodology.
Contact: cp Editor John Shook johnshook16@gmail.com