The unity of pragmatism*: Hookway's contribution to the tradition

‘Pragmatism’ or ‘pragmatisms’? What’s in the name of a school thought with no unifying creed? If for Peirce pragmatism was a method for making our ideas clear, for James a means of settling metaphysical disputes, and for Dewey a way of overcoming the problems of philosophy altogether, then I contend that in Hookway’s scholarship we find the grounds for a kind of unification of the pragmatist projects. While it is true that no central doctrine binds early pragmatists to one another nor later pragmatists to each other (or indeed to the former group), I contend that it is more than mere whim or loose orientation which makes them pragmatists, properly speaking. Indeed, a special attention to the formation of epistemic virtues that are appropriately responsive to fallibilism characterises the pragmatist outlook. Thus, drawing on Hookway’s work on epistemic virtues, I will argue in this chapter that a broadly responsibilist understanding of epistemic virtue and a special concern for what Hookway calls “the sentiments of rationality” are unifying features of pragmatist projects.