tandfonline.com – Pragmatism at Cambridge, England before 1900

ABSTRACT

This paper responds to the new story about the history of pragmatism and early analytic philosophy presented in Cheryl Misak’s Cambridge Pragmatism. One of the new story’s key claims is that pragmatism was a home-grown American philosophy that entered the intellectual scene of 1920s England as an imported good. Taking up the long-neglected case of the English logician John Venn, the paper shows that pragmatism, as defined by Misak, existed in Cambridge, England several decades before the turn of the century. It concludes with the view that a more complex and richer perspective on the twin histories of pragmatism and early analytic philosophy, on both sides of the Atlantic, is needed.