I for my part refuse to be
persuaded that we cannot look beyond the obvious pluralism of the
naturalist and the pragmatist to a logical unity in which they take
no interest."
How is such a conception of the pragmatism I am advocating possible,
after my first and second lectures? I have all along been offering
it expressly as a mediator between tough-mindedness and tender-
mindedness. If the notion of a world ante rem, whether taken
abstractly like the word winter, or concretely as the hypothesis of
an Absolute, can be shown to have any consequences whatever for our
life, it has a meaning. If the meaning works, it will have SOME
truth that ought to be held to through all possible reformulations,
for pragmatism.
The absolutistic hypothesis, that perfection is eternal, aboriginal,
and most real, has a perfectly definite meaning, and it works
religiously. To examine how, will be the subject of my next and
final lecture.
Lecture VIII
Pragmatism and Religion
At the close of the last lecture I reminded you of the first one, in
which I had opposed tough-mindedness to tender-mindedness and
recommended pragmatism as their mediator. Tough-mindedness
positively rejects tender-mindedness's hypothesis of an eternal
perfect edition of the universe coexisting with our finite
experience.
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