105 PHI Week 3 Day 3 Assignment : CheckPoint
Pragmatism is known as the United States contribution to philosophy. In general terms
pragmatics rejected the idea that there is a fixed, absolute truth. What they believed was that
truth is relative to time and place and therefore is ever changing. At the same time that the United
States philosophers were looking at ideas such as truth and instrumentalism the European
philosophers were dealing with religious anti-idealism and existentialism.
One of the European ideas was existentialism, meaning philosophy must focus on the
individual and his or her confrontation with the world; the world is irrational; the world is
absurd; and that the human existence gives birth to dread, anxiety, self-doubt and despair. The
existentialists do not guarantee this that predicament can be solved, what they do say is
without honesty to confront these human problems life can only deteriorate and that the
individual will find no meaning or value in life. On the contrary in the United States John
Deweys idea of pragmatism is known as instrumentalism, according to which the forms of
human activity, including thoughts, are instruments used by people to solve practical problems.
In this view thinking is not a search for truth but an activity aimed at solving individual and
social problems. This view allows humans to strive to achieve a satisfactory, or happy,
relationship with their surroundings. While both theories pose positives and negatives I would
like to think that the United States pragmatism is a more enlightening and positive approach.