The Developmento of Pragmatism According to Dewey

Abstract

This paper is a brief introduction to John Dewey’s “The Development of American Pragmatism”, the translation of which into Portuguese follows in this very number of COGNITIO-ESTUDOS. The article tries to make more explicit how Dewey himself approaches the history of pragmatism as a philosophical stream originally devised in the USA from the ideas of Peirce about the scientific method and conceptual meaning, passing through James’s reinterpretation of Peirce’s ideas that changed pragmatism from a method to a theory of action and truth. Dewey claims to be in a continuity line with such stream of thought, although not without some divergences. He argues that his instrumentalism is a consequence from James’s widening of pragmatism.