Między monizmem a pluralizmem: Studium genezy i podstaw filozofii Johna Deweya, and: Idee Peirce’owskiego pragmatyzmu i ich renesans w XX-wiecznej filozofii język (review)

Although it may not be commonly known, both East and Central Europe are now important points on the map of the global dissemination of pragmatist thought. To prove this, it suffices to indicate various instances of academic activity such as the biennial international conferences organized by Central European Pragmatist Forum,¹ as well as other events concerning American philosophy, the latest of which were two international conferences held in 2007 in Romania² and a special conference devoted to Peirce’s normative thought which took place the same year at the University of Opole in Poland. As far as Poland is concerned, during the last ten years there has been a real flurry of pragmatist activity which has included: translation of works of the contemporary as well as the classical pragmatist thinkers; organization of institutional structures (January 2007 saw the establishment of the Polish Division of Center for Dewey Studies, directed by Krystyna Wilkoszewska of Jagiellonian University), and last but not least publication of many Polish essays, collections and monographs devoted to pragmatism.³ In this review I would like to focus on two books by Polish scholars; the first by Piotr Gutowski, from the Catholic University of Lublin—Between Monism and Pluralism. A study of the Genesis and Foundations of John Dewey’s Philosophy, and the second by a representative of the younger generation of Polish pragmatist scholars, Agnieszka Hensoldt from the University of Opole—Concepts of Ch. S. Peirce’s Pragmatism and Their Revival in 20^th-Century Philosophy of Language.

If philosophy begins with wonder, then it should also be an appropriate beginning for a philosophical book, as it indeed happens in the case of Gutowski’s study. As he explicitly claims, the main inspiration for his work on Dewey was the puzzlement at the two following theses the late Richard Rorty put forward in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature: (a) that Dewey was alongside Heidegger and Wittgenstein the key figure in 20^th century philosophy and (b) that Dewey’s intellectual evolution can be described as the transition from foundationalism to a form of post-metaphysical thinking.⁴ The first point “drew [Gutowski’s] interest to Dewey who—at least in Poland—was not even regarded as the most important pragmatist . . . not to say a leading Western philosopher” (p.261). Furthermore, Rorty’s interpretation of the mature Dewey as largely breaking with metaphysical thought struck Gutowski as doubtful, since his initial impression of Dewey’s later philosophy was quite different.

The author of Między monizmem a pluralizmem, however, does not reject thesis (b) at the very beginning of his book, though he underlines that even if Rorty is right concerning this point, to fully understand a break with some traditional form of philosophizing, one first needs to adopt the perspective of this very tradition. Therefore, Gutowski proposes “to look at [Dewey’s] philosophy from the angle of the ‘battle’ between traditional metaphysical positions, particularly from the perspective of the debate between metaphysical monism and pluralism.” Given that the debate “embraces the majority of other philosophical problems,” reading Dewey through its prism “can be treated as a study of the foundations of his thought” (p.17–18). The main thesis of Gutowski’s book is that both in his early, as well as in mature period Dewey tried to find a via media between monism and pluralism. To be precise, he simultaneously struggled with the following two kinds of these stances: numerical (holism vs. atomism), and qualitative (in this case he oscillated between objective idealism...