Abstract
It is commonly assumed that classical pragmatism has not developed an ethical outlook that deserves to be taken seriously despite the fact that John Dewey, in particular, has published several books on ethics. Major contemporary textbooks in ethics do not mention a possible pragmatist ethics. However, recently there have been various approaches in ethics and political philosophy that claim to base their normative accounts on pragmatist ideas (Philip Kitcher, Elizabeth Anderson). The article introduces these approaches and suggests that they adopt a methodological or proceduralist interpretation of pragmatism devoid of substantial ethical assumptions. It is then claimed that a purely methodological or procedural reading of pragmatism runs into problems that can only be solved if a closer look is taken at some of the more substantial ethical assumptions of pragmatism. Following a review of central elements of Dewey’s ethics, in particular his description of the role of the self in moral dilemmas, typical criticisms of these assumptions are discussed and partially rebutted. It is then suggested that one might conceptualise a pragmatist ethics as a “consequentialism of character”.
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