The rhetorical turn of pragmatism's founders

The paper considers the place and significance of rhetoric for the development of the first stage of Anglo-American pragmatism at the beginning of the 20th century. It analyzes the place of rhetoric in Peirce's semiotics and his emphasis on the communicative nature of knowledge. C.S. Pierce introduces a new science, semiotics, which, like the medieval trivium, splits into three branches: analytics, critic and methodeutic, which is otherwise called speculative rhetoric. The latter turns out to be the most pragmatic section of semiotics, aimed at the establishing the effect that the sign causes. The paper also shows that another founder of pragmatism, J. Dewey, paid attention to the development of the concept of communication, which is also part of rhetorical knowledge. Defining special aspects of communication, Dewey comes to the concept of a rhetorical situation. In connection with the influence of the philosophy of F.C.S. Schiller, Dewey changes his attitude towards sophistry as the starting point of rhetoric. He compares the Sophists with humanists, believes that the individualistic interpretation of their program is erroneous, and believes that it indicates the value of culture and civilization in its opposition to barbarianism and the animal nature. Finally, the paper examines the mutual influence of the concepts of W. James and F.C.S. Schiller, their role in the evolution of the pragmatist conception of truth. Schiller argues that pragmatism is humanism, and it is a form of relativism, but it is not identical with skepticism and it is alien to objectivism. These arguments, along with Pierce's thesis of practical verification of truth, served as a conditional platform for James in his creation of the theory of pragmatist truth. The influence of Schiller and James turned out to be mutual and resulted in a relativistic line of pragmatism that accepts the concept of direct experience and the truth of the "phenomenon" as opposed to "real" truth. In addition, it is shown that pragmatism, abandoning the concepts of truth associated with fundamentalism, develops the concept of truth which is directly consistent with rhetorical principles. Pragmatism begins with the fact that truth is inseparable from persuasion, and thinking, being dialogical, gives rationalism a rhetorical character, and ends with the admission that truth is rooted in the immediate activity and practice of people, it has a humanistic character, i.e. takes into account the problems of human life and the experience of knowing the world a person is in direct contact with, and that logic can achieve truth if only it takes into account the context and effect produced by practical actions.

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