The Promise of Pragmatism: Modernism and the Crisis of Knowledge and Authority Book

	Acknowledgments
	Introduction	1
1	The Disenchantment of the World	22
	The Flowering of Intellect and the Decline of Knowledge	22
	Politics and Ethics	28
	The Cunning of Irony	35
	Science: Experimentation, Rationalization, or Acceleration?	40
	The "Thirst for the Deed," the Bolshevik Revolution, and "Romantic" Pragmatism	46
	History: Evolution or Alienation?	50
2	Who Bore the Failure of the Light: Henry Adams	55
	The Hand of the Father	55
	The Failure of Classical Ideals	60
	History and the Problem of Consciousness	67
	Science and the Fate of the Universe	81
	Four Problems of Modernism: Authority, Faith, Art, Love	90
3	The Pragmatic Affirmation: William James and the Will to Believe	108
	James and Adams's "Serial Law Fallacy"	108
	The "Murdered Self" and the Riddle of Consciousness	113
	Beyond Rationalism and Empiricism	122
	The Right to Choose One's Own Beliefs	127
	"Towards Action and Towards Power"	131
	Truth as Pleasure, Knowledge as the Disposition to Believe	139
	Pragmatism and Its Paradoxes	144
4	Doubt and Deliverance: Charles Sanders Peirce and the Authority of Science	158
	"Proud Man/His Glassy Essence"	158
	"Thought Is More Without Us Than Within": Peirce versus James	164
	Between Realism and Nominalism: Adams and Peirce	170
	Synechism, Tychism, and the Dialectic of Doubt and Belief	179
	The Objectivity Question	186
	Truth as Consensus	190
5	"The Flickering Candles of Consciousness": John Dewey and the Challenge of Uncertainty	205
	"Imagination in Action": Dewey in Love	205
	"An Inward Laceration": The Tension between Religion and Science	212
	The False Quest for Certainty	217
	Alienation and the Origins of Mind	222
	The Authority of Scientific Inquiry and the Problem of "Truth"	226
	Empirical Method and Moral Knowledge	238
6	Focusing on the Foreground: Dewey and the Problem of Historical Knowledge	250
	World War I and the Dewey-Bourne Debate	250
	The Appeal to the Future	259
	The Trotsky Inquiry and the Debate over Means and Ends	266
	World War II and the Double Irony of Philosophy and History	270
7	Pragmatism and the Problem of Power	280
	The Challenge of Fascism	280
	The Obscure Object of Power: Reinhold Niebuhr and Original Sin	283
	Dewey and the Classical Tradition	291
	The Great Community: Politics as Control	299
	The Child and the Curriculum: Education as Freedom	305
8	"The Acids of Modernity": Walter Lippmann and Oliver Wendell Holmes	322
	The Odyssey of a Political Moralist	322
	Science and the Legitimacy of Government	325
	From Pragmatism and "The Phantom Public" to Natural Law	331
	The Battle for America's Political Mind: Lippmann versus Dewey	339
	Holmes's Quarrel with the Pragmatists	342
	Legal Realism and Poststructuralism	348
9	Self and Society	360
	The Socialization of Authority and the Fate of the Individual	360
	Charles H. Cooley and George H. Mead	365
	Classical and Christian Morality and the Disappearance of the Self	371
	The Opposing Self: Lionel Trilling	376
10	The Decline and Revival of American Pragmatism	386
	"The Corruption of Liberalism"	386
	"The New Failure of Nerve": Sydney Hook's Response to Mortimer J. Adler and Allan Bloom	389
	Communism and the Vietnam War	396
	Epistemology Is Dead, Long Live Pragmatism: Richard Rorty's Quarrel with Philosophy as Theory	406
	In Defense of the Enlightenment: Jurgen Habermas and the Promise of "Communicative Action"	417
	The Case of the Progressive Historians	423
11	Conclusion: Poststructuralism and America's Intellectual Traditions	427
	Philosophy as "Prophylactic": The Lost Legacy of the American Founders	427
	Niebuhr and the Illusions of Poststructuralism	434
	The Limits of Communication: Habermas	443
	Rorty's Political Thought and the Deweyan Legacy	450
	Against Theory and the Limits of Redescription: Thorstein Veblen	462
	Emerson, Silence, and the Limits of Persuasion	472
	The Return to History and the Temptation of "Agreeable Tales"	478
	Index	495