104
PARTISAN R.EVIEW
CSP: [
must confess that [ belong to that class of scallawags who purpose,
with God's help, to look the truth in the face, whether doing so be con–
ducive to the interests of society or not. Moreover, if [ should ever attack
that excessively difficult problem, 'What is for the true interest of society?'
I should feel that [ stood in need of a great deal of help from the science
of legi timate inference ...
(8.143).
Against the doctrine that social stabili–
ty is the sole justification of scientific research ... [ have to object, first,
that it is historically false ... second, that it is bad ethics; and, third, that
its propagation would retard the progress of science
(8.135).
RR:
[There have been in our century] three conceptions of the aim of
philosophizing. They are the Husserlian (or 'scientistic') answer, the
Heideggerian (or 'poetic') answer, and the pragmatist (or 'political') answer
(EHO, p.9).
CSP:
[n my opinion, the present infantile condition of philosophy ... is
due to the fact that ... it has chie£1y been pursued by men who have not
... been animated by the true scientific
Eros;
but who have ... been
in£1amed wi th a desire to amend the lives of themselves and others
(1.620).
The two masters,
theory
and
practice,
you cannot serve
(1.642).
SH:
It seems to me that the two of you have radically different concep–
tions of what pragmatism is...
RR:
"Pragmatism" is a vague, ambiguous and overworked word (CP,
p.160) .
CSP:
Many writers, ... in spite of pragmatists' declarations, unanimous,
reiterated, and most explicit, still remain unable to "catch on" to what we
are driving at, and persist in twisting our purpose and purport all awry. ...
[Pragmatism] is merely a method of ascertaining the meanings of hard
words and of abstract concepts
(5.464).
RR:
The pragmatist .. . must struggle with the positivist for the position
of radical anti-Platonist.... At first glance he looks like just another vari-
ety of positivist.
(CI~
p.xvii).
CSP:
Pragmaticism is a species of prope-positivism
(5.423).
RR:
My first characterization of pragmatism is that it is simply anti-essen–
tialism applied to notions like "truth," "knowledge," "language,"
"morali ty," and similar objects of philosophical theorizing.... There is no
wholesale, epistemological way to direct, or criticize, or underwrite, the
course of inquiry (CP,
p.162).
IA]
second characterization of pragmatism
might go like this: there is no epistemological difference between truth
about what ought to be and truth about what is, nor any metaphysical dif-
