William James and Italian Pragmatism

In the preface to Pragmatism (1907) , William James suggests that the Pragmatist movement is an «unconcerted» collection of a number of classic philosophical tendencies that «have all at once become conscious of themselves collectively, and of their combined mission» (P, 5). Because of such a sudden wakening, these old ways of thinking had not yet been ‘concertized’ in a more organic view and this is exactly the effort that James was making at that time. The international vocation of pragmatism was immediately evident to James, so that at the end of the preface he is careful to suggest several European references for further reading about pragmatism. In this respect, we may notice that beside the British philosopher F.C.S. Schiller and the American colleague John Dewey, he quotes French thinkers such as G. Milhaud, Le Roy, Blondel, de Sailly as very close to pragmatism and, more interestingly, he announces that the Italian philosopher Giovanni Papini is going to publish very soon a book on Pragmatism in the French language. The relationship between James and Italian pragmatists helps to understand this consciousness of a “common project” that pragmatists from both sides of the Ocean shared.