Table of Contents

Contents
Table of Rawls’s published Works and Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
General Introduction
Part One: Rawls in the Struggle over the Legacy of Pragmatism
1. Pragmatism: Old Disagreements and the “Eclipse Narrative”
2. The Rorty Discussion
3. The Rorty Discussion, and Rawls
4. Rawls and Pragmatism: What Pragmatism?
Part Two: The Pragmatist Sources of Rawls’s Thinking
5. Induction and the Origin of Reflective Equilibrium
6. Rawls on Peirce, Putnam, and White
7. Rawls on Dewey before the “Dewey Lectures”
Part Three: What’s the Use of Calling Rawls a Pragmatist?
8. Rawlsian Suggestions on Rawls’s neglected Pragmatism
9. The Historical Use of Calling Rawls a Pragmatist
10. The Philosophical Use of Calling the “early” Rawls a Pragmatist
11. The Political Use of Calling Rawls a Pragmatist
Bibliography
About the Author
Index

About the Author

Daniele Botti is adjunct professor in the Department of Philosophy and Political Science at Quinnipiac University and in the Department of Philosophy at Fairfield University.

Reviews

Daniele Botti effectively upends the conventional view that Rawls’s introduction of political liberalism marked a “pragmatic turn.” Drawing on archival materials and on impressive philosophical learning, Botti locates deep pragmatist strains in Rawls’s thought from the late 1940’s onwards, predating Quine’s publications and compromised, if anything, by political liberalism’s step back from universalism. The result is a highly illuminating account not only of Rawls’s work as a whole but also of the great tradition of American pragmatism more generally.
*Henry S. Richardson, Professor of Philosophy, Georgetown University*