Pragmatismus und Historismus

Abstract

This article explores the similarities between American pragmatism and (mostly German) historicism in the nineteenth century - similarities that were often ignored because of cultural differences between the U. S. and Germany and a different status of the natural sciences or the humanities in the two cultures. The main claim of this text is that American pragmatism developed ideas that allow us to overcome the dichotomy between objectivism and relativism in historiography. Joas identifies conceptual tools in the works of Josiah Royce, Mead, and Dewey that can account both for the intersubjective and the temporal nature of human experience and the processes of the formation of ideals. By bringing Ernst Troeltsch, the most sophisticated thinker from the historicist tradition, into the picture, Joas demonstrates that in the 1920s one could almost speak of the beginning of a process of convergence between Mead’s “temporalized pragmatism” and Troeltsch’s “existential historicism.” For contingent reasons this convergence never took place, but remains a challenge to which this paper responds.