Morton White’s philosophy of culture: Holistic pragmatism and interdisciplinary inquiry

• Authors: Sami Pihlström
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This paper explicates and defends Morton White’s holistic pragmatism, the view that descriptive and normative statements form a “seamless web” which must be tested as a “unified whole”. This position, originally formulated as a methodological and epistemic principle, can be extended into a more general philosophy of culture, as White himself has shown in his book, A Philosophy of Culture (2002). On the basis of holistic pragmatism, the paper also offers a pragmatist conception of metaphilosophy and defends the need for interdisciplinary inquiry.

Keywords

EN

pragmatism; holism; metaphilosophy; inquiry; interdisciplinarity; White; M

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Human Affairs
• Year: 2011
• Volume: 21
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 140-156

Dates

published

2011-06-01

online

2011-06-16

Contributors

author

Sami Pihlström

• Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies & University of Jyväskylä

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Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/s13374-011-0016-6