Bernstein's aim is to describe how, over the past 150 years, major figures across the different philosophical traditions have significantly ‘explored and refined’ the projects of the American pragmatists, Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey (x). His purview, then, is dauntingly broad, encompassing – among others – Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, Quine, and Sellars, besides self-avowed pragmatists like Hilary Putnam and Robert Brandom. Along the way he attempts to defend pragmatism, both in its original form, and its offshoots, from various charges, of subjectivism and relativism, and the apparent incompatibility of pluralism with objectivity. But these latter discussions are minor forays. First and foremost, this book is an attempt to demonstrate how a significant number of emerging philosophical themes are developments of the ideas of the classical American pragmatists – it is an attempt to draw together his own and others' earlier works, to describe a sea-change in philosophy. So it is nothing if not ambitious.

The first task Bernstein sets himself is delineating specific ‘pragmatic’ themes. Yet ‘pragmatism’, perhaps more than any other ‘ism’, is notoriously difficult to define (we are reminded of Arthur Lovejoy's ironical thirteen different meanings of the term) (5). His approach, then, is to extrapolate its characteristic traits through discussion of specific themes, rather than attempting to define pragmatism anew. (11) This, roughly, is the agenda of the first three chapters. The first discusses Peirce's critique of Cartesianism (drawing unusually, but effectively, from Peirce's earlier papers). Chapters two and three focus respectively on James' pluralism (where it is sharply distinguished from any form of relativism), and Dewey's creative vision of democracy (where his divergence from ‘deliberative democracy’ is emphasized). These are, surely, characteristic of the pragmatic project, and – as Bernstein argues – they also describe attitudes that appear outside the classical American pragmatist tradition (Sellar's ‘myth of the given’, for example, coinciding with Peirce's critiques).

In addition to these themes, Bernstein includes the attempt to dissolve the subject/object distinction, and the attention to human culture, as characteristically ‘pragmatic’ – but, significantly, he views those attitudes as originating with Hegel rather than the American pragmatists. This provokes a niggling suspicion. Why should we take the revival of interest in Hegelian texts to be indicative of the influence of the classical pragmatists (as Bernstein proposes in chapter four)? What actually links the works of these writers? Aside from Dewey, the classical pragmatists were clearly dismissive of Hegel. Both Peirce and James were, in turn, ambivalent and highly critical of his take on logic, and his monistic idealism. (Indeed, James is widely credited with the suppression of American interest in Hegel's work.) In fact, Bernstein does not describe Hegelian attitudes as pragmatic because of their incorporation into the classical pragmatist's theories, but rather because – despite their criticisms – Hegel's approach is both compatible with, and illuminative of, their own. This is clearly true, evidenced by the championing of Hegel by Brandom and Rorty, among many other contemporary pragmatists.

A certain amount of confusion arises if, as suggested by Bernstein, we view his book as an attempt to map the influences of the classical pragmatists (x). He is not examining lines of direct influence – but rather, common worries that motivate these various, and separate enquiries. Indeed, ‘pragmatic’ theorists need not even have read the work of the classical pragmatists: ‘[P]hilosophers starting from the most diverse orientations and without being directly influenced by the classical pragmatists, have been articulating insights and developing theses that are not only congenial with a pragmatic orientation but also refine its philosophical import.’ (15) Thus, Heidegger can read to exemplify the ‘pragmatic turn’, despite no involvement with Peirce, James, Dewey, or Mead. This view, that pragmatic works should not be restricted to a standard canon, is shared by others, including Cheryl Misak, and Putnam (who describes Wittgenstein as, though not a ‘strict’ pragmatist', undeniably pragmatic in his critique of the Cartesianism of modern philosophy).

Insofar as this study draws together the shared worries and ‘felt difficulties’, with – for example – mind/body dualism, the spectator theory of knowledge, and the quest for certainty (and the themes already mentioned), it is insightful and worthwhile. It identifies trends, which are obscured by the analytic/continental divide and, when successful, it opens up opportunities for dialogue across the philosophical spectrum (discussed in the conclusion to chapter four, ‘Hegel and Pragmatism’). Yet, on first reading, it is not immediately clear why the American pragmatists are so central to the articulation of these issues, and why these various debates describe a specifically ‘pragmatic’ turn. And this, I feel, is an acute problem for Bernstein who, unlike Misak and Putnam, is working without a set definition of ‘pragmatism’ (e.g. the emphasis on the primacy of practice), and whose use of the term, therefore, primarily relates to its founders.

This worry has been raised before, that extending the label ‘pragmatism’ to thinkers beyond the influence of the classical pragmatists is a form of cultural imperialism. And it is a tension that is not satisfactorily resolved here – Bernstein dismisses it brusquely (21) despite his acknowledgement that the project of the classical pragmatists is distinctively American (x, 11). And in this sense, ironically, his approach seems to reinforce the divides he is aiming to dissolve. Closer attention to the continental/analytic division would, I think, have helped here. Discussants in Bernstein's camp would argue that it was a form of cultural imperialism that fostered the current manifestation of that distinction, stemming from the association Russell et al drew between key ‘continental’ players (Nietsche, Hegel, Fichte and Rousseau) and fascism. This is significant, not least, because the American pragmatists – specifically Dewey and James – are included in Russell's (and Isaiah Berlin's) ancestry of fascism.Footnote ¹ If only in a negative context, they are presented – in a way that parallel's Bernstein's own analysis – as the philosophical successors of Hegel and Nietzsche; though for Russell, this is because the pragmatist's abandonment of objectivity leads necessarily to conflict, and war (Russell, ‘The Ancestry of Fascism’).

The view of pragmatism, as ‘doing away’ with objectivity, is the subject of chapter five, ‘Pragmatism, Objectivity and Truth’. There, Bernstein re-presents the arguments of contemporary pragmatists – Putnam, Misak, Brandom, and Bjorn Ramberg – to suggest the possibility of a pragmatic account of objectivity, that links objectivity to justificatory social practices, without identifying justification with truth, and avoiding bad relativism and conventionalism. In defending this approach, Bernstein noticeably positions himself against Richard Rorty, for whom this book is something of an elegy, and who viewed objectivity as a profoundly damaging idea, akin to authoritarian religion.

Bernstein's relationship with Rorty is a recurring topic in The Pragmatic Turn, and every divergence of their views is recorded (see also his discussion of Rorty and Dewey in chapter three, and their contrasting accounts of experience, in chapter six). The two were contemporaries at the University of Chicago, and remained close friends until Rorty's death in 2007. By his own admission, Rorty is perhaps the strongest philosophical influence on Bernstein (indeed, the title of this book draws it into immediate dialogue with Rorty's classic anthology ‘The Linguistic Turn’). It is for this reason, one supposes, that the analysis of Rorty's ‘deep humanism’ is the focus of the concluding chapter.

Throughout the book, Bernstein appeals to context and biographical details to shed light on the theories under discussion (as in chapter seven and eight, where he discusses, respectively, the philosophical maturation of Putnam and Habermas). This, obviously, is in keeping with what he considers to be the ‘pragmatic program’, and he deploys it in full force in his analysis of Rorty's humanism. From his initial fascination with Plato, to his renunciation of the analytic approach and his subsequent drift towards ‘cultural politics’, Rorty's life and work – Bernstein argues – had been shaped by a concern with self-reliance, the outlook that there is nothing we can depend on but ourselves and fellow human sufferers: ‘There is no outside authority to which we can appeal, whether we think of it as God, Truth, or Reality’ (211). This ‘deep humanism’ itself is not discussed in great depth – rather, this final chapter is intended to correct the misconceptions about a close colleague, to defend him (205), and to demonstrate how Rorty exhibited a key pragmatic trope, of an oeuvre informed by a single, unified viewpoint, how, as James put it, ‘a man's vision is the great fact about him’ (213).

I have not gone into the specifics of the various aspects of pragmatism discussed in the book, though they merit close attention, and a much longer and more vigorous review. Instead I have hinted at the methodological issues that Bernstein's approach encounters – the difficulties in construing the classical pragmatists as the epicentre of these multifarious ‘post-analytic’ concerns. We might add to this, that his method is limited in respect of defending pragmatism to its detractors. Constant appeal to context, biographical details, and lack of regard for the standard canons and nomenclature of traditions (‘analytic’, ‘continental’, etc) will find favour among those already sympathetic to the pragmatist's project – but ‘analytic’ philosophers will find this hard to engage with, and are likely to remain unpersuaded by claims on these grounds that they may be displaying distinctly ‘pragmatic’ qualities. Further, we may note that despite Bernstein's initial claims to be drawing together radically different philosophical positions no real attention is paid to Foucault, Deleuze, or Derrida, to say nothing of the extensive feminist literature that discusses issues raised by ‘pragmatic’ thought. But these criticisms should not overshadow the bold and interesting claims made in this book, and the argument sustained throughout, that a distinct – if not ‘pragmatic’ – set of themes is rising in prominence in the philosophical realm.