“Pragmatism, Prejudice, and Presuppositionalism” by Greg L. Bahnsen
This essay cannot attempt to do justice to the multiple avenues traversed by twentieth-century philosophers; they constitute a maze of both overlapping and divergent lines of thought: idealism, realism, phenomenology, process philosophy, existentialism, positivism, pragmatism, and linguisticanalysis. Each has a claim on the Christian scholar’s attention. However, we must narrow the field. It is reasonably accurate to distinguish the emphasis on phenomenology and existentialism on the Continent from the dominance of pragmatism and analysis in England and America. Since the present study is being done in the context of Anglo-American scholarship, we shall focus our attention on the schools of pragmatism and linguistic analysis-all the while recognizing the affinities which can be seen between them and aspects of European thought. Three prominent philosophers in these traditions who have had distinctive proposals in the theory of knowledge are John Dewey, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and John L. Austin; as will be later exhibited; common elements in their approaches bind them together in various ways. …