OSHER 130 - American Pragmatists: Peirce and James

Of the various schools of philosophical thought, pragmatism is the one native to America. It was birthed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by a circle that included Oliver Wendell Holmes, the Supreme Court justice, and William James, generally credited as the father of American psychology. Some of the earliest and most durable pragmatist writings appeared not in scholarly journals but in The Popular Science Monthly, originally published to disseminate scientific knowledge to the educated layman. This course will cover some of C.S. Peirce's and James' most accessible--and practical--papers, and through them logic, epistemology (theory of knowledge), religious faith, and free will. This course will be like the pragmatists themselves: accessible and engaging to all philosophically inclined learners, whether or not they have prior formal philosophical training or education.