Antipragmatism - v. 61;v. 589 Author:Albert Schinz Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II PRAGMATISM OF THE MIDDLE AGES AND MODERN SCHOLASTICISM I. Scholasticism was the pragmatism of the middle ages: phi losophy buttressed up theo... more »logy, and the latter sustained the church in its social task. The emancipation of philosophy by the method of Descartes, a natural method, soon made necessary the re-formation of a pragmatic philosophy; for the shock to the beliefs held by the people respecting religion and liberty was too dangerous. When democracy triumphed in the nineteenth century, and philosophical speculations became accessible to all, it was necessary to hark back to a systematic pragmatism; pragmatism is modern scholasticism. At first negative pragmatism: philosophers did not apply philosophic method to practical problems, or excused themselves from doing so (Descartes, Locke, Leibnitz). II. Then came three great precursors of modern pragmatism — (positive pragmatism): Pascal formulates the pragmatic paradox in his Pensees by denying the rights of reason; Rousseau opposes his pragmatism to the "sensualist" school of the eighteenth century; Kant, after having killed the practical reason by pure reason, kills pure reason by the practical reason, solely through his anxiety to safe-guard social morality. HI. Why the utilitarianism of the nineteenth century does not suffice: it is a purely persuasive ethical system (no one can force me to be benevolent toward others); the people need a morality based on authority, a sanctioned morality; they need the theological morality — which brings back pragmatism. IV. Superiority of the pragmatism of Kant to that of Messrs. James and Schiller, from the point of view of philosophy. V. Superiority of the scholastic systems to the modern prag- matist systems from the point of view of philosophy. Moder...« less