Pragmatism in Britain and Italy in the Early 20th Century

In this chapter, we focus on the early reception of pragmatism in Britain and Italy. We start by presenting the position of Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller and then direct our attention to the pragmatist school that flourished in Italy at the beginning of the 20th century with the works of Giovanni Vailati, Mario Calderoni, Giovanni Papini, and Giuseppe Prezzolini. We describe how these authors engaged in a productive dialogue with the classical American pragmatists. We argue that this dialogue raises questions about the conventional schema used to trace the development of pragmatism by sharply distinguishing between “two pragmatisms,” originating in Charles S. Peirce and William James, respectively.