A Temperamental Map of Philosophy
James opens Pragmatism not with a thesis but with a diagnosis. The most fundamental divide in the history of thought is not between idealism and materialism, or between theism and atheism, but between temperaments. The tender-minded philosopher goes by principles: rationalistic, intellectualistic, idealistic, religious, free-willist, monistic, dogmatical. The tough-minded goes by facts: empiricist, sensationalistic, materialistic, pessimistic, irreligious, fatalistic, pluralistic, sceptical. These are ideal types, not portraits — but they name something real in how human beings relate to the demands of thinking.
The Dilemma of Serious Inquiry
The problem is not merely academic. A person of genuinely philosophical conscience finds that neither extreme satisfies. Empiricism gives scientific respectability at the cost of religion and moral significance; rationalism preserves the warmth of religion at the cost of scientific honesty. What is wanted is a philosophy that combines rigorous fidelity to facts with the old confidence in human values — scientific loyalty and moral spontaneity at once.
You want a system that will combine both things, the scientific loyalty to facts and willingness to take account of them, the spirit of adaptation and accommodation, in short, but also the old confidence in human values and the resultant spontaneity, whether of the religious or of the romantic type.
Pragmatism as the Middle Path
Pragmatism enters as the philosophy that refuses the dilemma. It is tough in its insistence on facts and consequences, tender in its refusal to dismiss the religious and moral dimensions of experience. It does not force a choice between the laboratory and the chapel but insists that any genuine difference must show up somewhere in the stream of experience — and that if no difference appears, the dispute is merely verbal.
The tender/tough division appears in Lecture I of Pragmatism (1907). The terms entered general philosophical usage through James and remain an indispensable heuristic in philosophical self-diagnosis.
Related Concepts
