Thought in the Strenuous Mood: Pragmatism as a Philosophy of Feeling

One striking way that William James characterized pragmatism was in terms of “the strenuous mood,” a mood of energetic striving and willingness to endure difficulties and risks in the melioristic effort to improve experience. This paper explores the different ways that such mood (along with affect more generally) was central not only to James’s pragmatism but that of C. S. Peirce and John Dewey and also finds important expression in Richard Rorty’s neopragmatism. Examining the philosophical functions of mood and affect in the theories of these philosophers, this paper also articulates some of the differences between mood and other varieties of affect, while arguing that pragmatism can be usefully described as a prominently affective philosophy as well as a practical philosophy of action, where moods of energetic feeling provide the effective motor for meliorative action.