Statement of Purpose

Contemporary Pragmatism is an interdisciplinary, international journal for discussing pragmatism, broadly understood, and applying pragmatism to current topics. CP will consider articles about pragmatism written from the standpoint of any tradition and perspective. CP especially seeks original explorations, developments, and criticisms of pragmatism, and also of pragmatism’s relations with other intellectual traditions, both Western and Eastern. CP welcomes contributions dealing with any field of philosophical inquiry, from epistemology, philosophy of language, metaphysics and philosophy of science, and philosophy of mind and action, to areas of theoretical and applied ethics, aesthetics, social and political philosophy, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of the social sciences. CP encourages work having an interdisciplinary orientation, establishing bridges between pragmatic philosophy and, for example, literature, communication and media studies, pedagogy, psychology, sociology, theology, economics, medicine, political science, or international relations. Two issues each year will be published, in the summer and winter seasons. 

Manuscript Guidelines

CP publishes both invited papers and submitted papers. Submissions to CP should be prepared for blind peer review without self-identifying information. An abstract of 90 words should be placed at the start of the paper. Submission of a manuscript is understood to imply that the paper is original, it has not been published in whole or in substantial part elsewhere, and is not currently under consideration by any other journal. Only submissions by email attachment are considered. All submissions go to John Shook at jshook@pragmatism.org. Article lengths of 6,000 to 12,000 words are preferred; CP also publishes shorter discussion papers and criticism-response pairs of papers. CP publishes essay-length reviews (over 3,000 words), and book reviews (under 3,000 words), but before submitting a review, please contact John Shook. CP publishes sets of papers on a shared theme as a special section of an issue, or as an entire special issue. Inquiries about submission ideas and suggestions for themed issues may be directed to either co-editor. Those relating to European philosophy, social theory, ethical theory (broadly construed), and social and political philosophy are handled by Mitchell Aboulafia at maboulafia@juilliard.edu; and all other topics are handled by John Shook at jshook@pragmatism.org.

Style Guidelines

• All text, including notes and extracted material (quotations, formulae), must be double-spaced. All pages must be numbered and have margins of at least one inch on all sides.

• For references, authors may either use endnotes or text-embedded references, but not footnotes. Endnotes should be part of the text and double-spaced. Do not use your word processor's autoformatting function for endnotes; simply number your endnotes as regular text. For endnote style, use the Chicago Manual of Style system. For text-embedded references, use the Chicago Manual of Style system of author + date citation. An alphabetical list of Works Cited (or Bibliography) is placed at the end of the article and referred to in the text in parentheses: (Smith 1991b, 123-124).

• Here are examples of properly formatted endnotes. 

1. Dewey, “Philosophies of Freedom,” in The Later Works of John Dewey, v. 3, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984), p. 94.

2. Suzanne Rice, “Dewey on Virtue, Character, and Moral Education,” Review Journal of Philosophy and Social Science 26 (2000): 75-89.

3. Aleksandar Fatic, “Retribution in Democracy,” in Political Dialogue: Theories and Practices, ed. S. Esquith (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996), pp. 335-355.

4. Thomas Nagel, “Moral Luck,” in Nagel, Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 37.

5. Daniel Dennett, Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1984), pp. 89-94.

4. Nagel, “Moral Luck,” p. 38.

5. Ibid., pp. 39-40.

Authors whose work is accepted for publication will supply the final version of the article. This final version should begin with the article title and author name, spelled as the author wishes to see published. An abstract of between 60 and 80 words must be included, located between the author's name and the start of the text. A sentence or two of acknowledgements and thanks may be placed as a separate paragraph between the end of the text and the start of the Notes / Bibliography. The final version should have no headers, footers, or pagination. The final version should convert any autoformatted footnotes, endnotes, or bibliography into regular text and place all such matter in regular text at the conclusion of the article. The author will provide a full academic mailing address, placed at the end of the article. The author should alert the editor about any special characters, symbols, foreign language accent marks, etc. This final version must be supplied as an electronic text in an email attachment. The electronic format must be in  IBM/PC Microsoft Word or WordPerfect .rtf, .doc, or .wpd version.

Authors are responsible for quickly correcting proofs. Corrections that deviate more than a few words from the text of the accepted manuscript can be tolerated only in exceptional cases. Authors will receive an offprint of their article as in Adobe Acrobat .pdf document, which when printed will appear exactly as published.

Contact Information   

General editorial or subscription inquiries should be sent to John Shook at jshook@pragmatism.org.

Subscription Information

Subscription rates for one year, containing two issues:

Online access through Ingenta is included in print subscriptions, at www.ingentaconnect.com/content/rodopi/cpm

TO SUBSCRIBE IN AMERICA:  800-225-3998
TO SUBSCRIBE IN CANADA:  212-265-6360
TO SUBSCRIBE IN EUROPE AND ELSEWHERE:  +31 20 - 611-4821

Credit cards are accepted.  Prepayment is not required, as Rodopi will gladly send an invoice with the first issue.
Full details on various ways to order a subscription by phone, e-mail, or fax from any country are available at www.rodopi.nl/oi.asp

Volume 1, Number 1
June 2004

Articles
Susan Haack, Pragmatism Old and New
Nicholas Rescher, Pragmatism and Practical Rationality
Floyd Merrell, Neither “True” nor “False” nor Meaningless: Meditation on the Pragmatics of Knowing Becoming
Elizabeth F. Cooke, Rorty on Conversation as an Achievement of Hope
Thomas Keith, Pragmatism, Race, and Inclusiveness
Linda Pacifici and Jim Garrison, Imagination, Emotion and Inquiry: The Teachable Moment
Tom Spector, Pragmatism for Architects

Essay Reviews
Brian Butler, Law’s Image of Pragmatism – Another Legal Fiction. Review of Michal Alberstein, Pragmatism and Law: From Philosophy to Dispute Resolution, and Denis J. Brion, Pragmatism and Judicial Choice
Kenneth L. Ketner, Our Addictions. Review of Bruce Wilshire, Wild Hunger: The Primal Roots of Modern Addiction

Book Reviews
D. Stephen Long, Review of Jeffrey Stout, Democracy and Tradition
Nancy Frankenberry, Review of Sheila Davaney, Pragmatic Historicism: A Theology for the Twenty-First Century
Sami Pihlström, Review of Ulf Zackariasson, Forces by Which We Live: Religion and Religious Experience from the Perspective of a Pragmatic Philosophical Anthropology
John Capps, Review of Larry Hickman, Philosophical Tools for Technological Culture

Volume 1, Number 2
December 2004

Symposium on Nicholas Rescher
Richard M. Gale, The Cognitive Pragmatism of Nicholas Rescher
Larry A. Hickman, What Sort of Pragmatist is Nicholas Rescher?
Michele Marsonet, Rescher’s Evolutionary Epistemology
Cheryl Misak, Rescher and Objective Pragmatism
Alexander R. Pruss, Ultimate Explanations
Nicholas Rescher, Replies to Symposium Participants

The Fun of American Philosophy
Mary Magada-Ward, Helping Thought and Keeping it Pragmatical, or, Why Experience Plays Practical Jokes
Jessica Wahman, “We Are All Mad Here”: Santayana and the Significance of Humor
Cynthia Gayman, Not so Funny: A Deweyan Response

Articles
Hugh P. McDonald, The Problem with “Brain”
Mitchell Aboulafia, From Folk Psychology to Deontology: Nancy Fraser on Redistribution and Recognition
Frank X. Ryan, Fathoming the Bottomless Lake of Consciousness: The Phenomenological Pragmatism of Robert E. Innis

Review Essay
Yusuf Oz, The Legacy of Wittgenstein: Pragmatism or Deconstruction

Book Reviews
Anthony Graybosch, Review of Richard Shusterman, Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art, 2nd edn
Colin Koopman, Review of John J. Stuhr, Pragmatism, Postmodernism, and the Future of Philosophy

Volume 3, Number 1
June 2006

Articles
Joseph Margolis, Pragmatism’s New Options
Guy Axtell, The Present Dilemma in Philosophy
Sam Page, Unconditional Truth in Practice
Gregory L. Reece, Language Games, Forms of Life and Conceptual Schemes: Wittgenstein, Davidson, and Religious Belief
Lee A. McBride III, Collectivistic Individualism: Dewey and MacIntyre
Ronald A. Kuipers, Stout’s Democracy without Secularism: But is it a Tradition?
Maughn Gregory, Pragmatist Value Inquiry
James O. Pawelski, Teaching Pragmatism Pragmatically: A Promising Approach to the Cultivation of Character
Keiichi Takaya, Why Do Schools Fail? Dewey on Imagination
Joel W. Krueger, James on Experience and the Extended Mind

Book Reviews
Colin Koopman, Review of James Livingston, Pragmatism, Feminism, and Democracy: Rethinking the Politics of American History
Colin Koopman, Review of Robert B. Talisse, Democracy After Liberalism: Pragmatism and Deliberative Politics

Volume 3, Number 2
December 2006

Symposium on Hilary Putnam, Ethics without Ontology
Sami Pihlström, Putnam’s Conception of Ontology
Joseph Margolis, Hilary Putnam and the Promise of Pluralism
Mark Timmons, Ethical Objectivity Humanly Speaking: Reflections on Putnam’s Ethics without Ontology
David Copp, The Ontology of Putnam’s Ethics without Ontology
Claudine Tiercelin, Metaphysics without Ontology?
Hilary Putnam, Replies to Commentators

Articles
Scott R. Stroud, Constructing a Deweyan Theory of Moral Cultivation
Hugh G. McDonald, Creative Actualization: A Pluralist Theory of Value
Robert Lane, Synechistic Bioethics: A Peircean View of the Moral Status of Pre-Birth Humans

Book Reviews
David Vessey, Review of Paul Fairfield, Theorizing Praxis: Studies in Hermeneutical Pragmatism
Kevin W. Gray, Review of William Egginton and Mike Sandbothe, eds., The Pragmatic Turn in Philosophy: Contemporary Engagements between Analytic and Continental Thought

Volume 4, Number 1
June 2007

Special Issue on Cornel West
Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., On Cornel West and Pragmatism
Thomas McCarthy, The Natural Order of Things: Social Darwinism and White Supremacy
Eduardo Mendieta, Translating Democracy or Democratic Acts of Translation:  On Cornel West’s Democracy Matters
Jeffrey Stout, A Prophetic Church in a Post-Constantinian Age: The Implicit Theology of Cornel West
Jason A. Springs, The Priority of Democracy to Social Theory
Marc Lombardo, On the Frank Speech of Cornel West’s Prophetic Witness
Paul C. Taylor, Making Niagara a Cataract: Cornel West, Greatness, and the Music of Ideas

Volume 4, Number 2
December 2007

Symposium on Robert Westbrook’s Democratic Hope: Pragmatism and the Politics of Truth
Brendan Hogan, Guest Editor Introduction
Eric MacGilvray, Pragmatism and the Epistemic Defense of Democracy
Brendan Hogan, Democracy, Epistemology, Inquiry: Comments on Westbrook’s Democratic Hope 
Robert Talisse, Two Democratic Hopes
Robert B. Westbrook, Replies to Symposium Participants

Articles
Judith M. Green, On the Passing of Richard Rorty and the Future of American Philosophy
Colin Koopman, Rorty’s Moral Philosophy for Liberal Democratic Culture
Tom Spector, Dewey and Dancy and the Moral Authority of Rules 
Elizabeth Baeten, Embedded and Embodied Moral Life
Richard Werner, Pragmatism for Pacifists   

Book Reviews
Douglas McDermid, Review of Richard Rorty, Philosophy as Cultural Politics: Philosophical Papers, Volume 4
Gregory Fernando Pappas, Review of John R. Shook and Joseph Margolis, eds., A Companion to Pragmatism                           

Volume 5, Number 1
June 2008

Articles
Catherine Legg, Argument-Forms Which Turn Invalid Over Infinite Domains: Physicalism as Supertask?
Joseph Margolis, Wittgenstein's Question and the Ubiquity of Cultural Space
Jay Schulkin, Cognitive Adaptation: Insights from a Pragmatist Perspective
Jay Schulkin, Cephalic Organization: Animacy and Agency
Lara Trout, C. S. Peirce, Antonio Damasio, and Embodied Cognition: A Contemporary Post-Darwinian Account of Feeling and Emotion in the 'Cognition Series'
Rita Risser, Industry and Quiescence in the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature
Lenart Skof, Pragmatism and Social Ethics: An Intercultural and Phenomenological Approach
Andrew Stables, Semiosis, Dewey and Difference: Implications for Pragmatic Philosophy of Education

Book Reviews
Scott R. Stroud, Review of Cheryl Misak, ed., New Pragmatists
Jacob Goodson, Review of Romand Coles and Stanley Hauerwas, Christianity, Democracy, and the Radical Ordinary: Conversations between a Radical Democrat and a Christian

Volume 5, Number 2
December 2008

Articles
Rosa Maria Mayorga, Rethinking Democratic Ideals in Light of Charles Peirce
Lara Trout, “Colorblindness” and Sincere Paper-Doubt: A Socio-political Application of C. S. Peirce's Critical Common-sensism
James R. Wible, The Economic Mind of Charles Sanders Peirce
James Ronald Stanfield and Michael C. Carroll, The Pragmatist Legacy in American Institutionalism
Mike O'Connor, The Limits of Liberalism: Pragmatism, Democracy and Capitalism
Dwayne Tunstall, Cornel West, John Dewey, and the Tragicomic Undercurrents of Deweyan Creative Democracy
Eric Thomas Weber, Religion, Public Reason, and Humanism: Paul Kurtz on Fallibilism and Ethics
Jerome Popp, John Dewey's Ethical Naturalism

Book Notes
on David Boersema, Pragmatism and Reference
on Robert Brandom, Between Saying and Doing: Towards an Analytic Pragmatism
on Larry A. Hickman, Pragmatism as Post-postmodernism: Lessons from John Dewey
on Mark Johnson, The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding

Volume 6, Number 1
June 2009

Articles
Sami  Pihlström, Pragmatism and Naturalized Transcendental Subjectivity
Carl Sachs, Natural Agents: A Transcendental Argument for Pragmatic Naturalism
Charles A. Hobbs, Naturalism, Death, and Functional Immortality
Andrew Wells Garnar, Must a Pragmatist Be a Historical Materialist?
Tina Sikka, A Pragmatist Critique of Derridian Politics
Phillip Deen, A Call for Inclusion in the Pragmatic Justification of Democracy
Naoko Saito and Paul Standish, What's the Problem with Problem-Solving? Language, Skepticism, and Pragmatism

Discussion
John Lachs, Rescher's Cognitive Pragmatism
Nicholas Rescher, Epistemic Pragmatism (A Reply)

Review Essay
Joseph Margolis, A “Pragmatist” among Disputed Pragmatists: Robert Brandom's Between Saying and Doing: Towards an Analytic Pragmatism

Volume 6, Number 2
December 2009

Articles
Lawrence Cahoone, Local Naturalism
Mark Dietrich Tschaepe, Pragmatics and Pragmatic Considerations in Explanation
Stephen S. Bush, Nothing Outside the Text: Derrida and Brandom on Language and World
Scott F. Aikin, Prospects for Peircean Epistemic Infinitism
Guy Axtell and Philip Olson, Three Independent Factors in Epistemology
Stephen M. Fishman and Lucille McCarthy, John Dewey on Happiness: Going Against the Grain of Contemporary Thought
Jay Schulkin, Life Experiences and Educational Sensibilities

Discussion
J. Caleb Clanton and Andrew T. Forcehimes, Can Peircean Epistemic Perfectionists Bid Farewell to Deweyan Democracy?
Robert B. Talisse, Reply to Clanton and Forcehimes

Volume 7, Number 1
June 2010