A handbook of pragmatism, in German language, has just been published by Metzler (Springer-Verlag group). It shows, in an encyclopedic form, all aspects of the philosophy of pragmatism: its history, its classic thinkers, its theoretical assumptions, its critics, and its reception in various countries.
Skowroński, in colaboration with his Eastern European colleagues (prof. Alexander Kremer from Hungary; prof. Emil Visniovsky from Slovakia, and dr. Wojciech Małecki from Poland), has contributed to the entry devoted to the pragmatism in Eastern European countries in general, and, in particular, to the reception of pragmatism in Poland.
Although pragmatism was well known from the start by translations (at least since 1901; in 1911 Wm James’ Pragmatism translated into Polish), sessions (e.g. on Pragmatism at a meeting of the Polish Philosophical Society in Lvov, in 1907), papers in Polish journals (by Kozłowski, Znaniecki, Brzozowski), and later by books written by experts on American philosophy (Buczyńska-Garewicz), its presence, for example in Polish main academic handbooks for philosophy, was laconic and unsympathetic. American pragmatism was hardly distinguishable from utilitarianism, and the pragmatists themselves were accused of relativism and vagueness of the terms they used, ‘truth’ in the first instance.
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