Note 169 — Chapter IV · PRAGMATISM AND HUMAN ACTIVITY

Professor Moore well points out (Pragmatism and its Critics, p. 13) that the “challenge” of the idea that our thinking has “two foundations: one, as the method of purposing—its ‘practical’ function; the other as merely the expression of the specific and independent instinct to know—its ‘intellectual’ function,” marks the “beginnings of the pragmatic movement.” The idea of two kinds of thought goes back to Aristotle and is one of the most famous distinctions of thought. It dominated the entire Middle Ages, and it is still at the root of the false idea that “culture” can be separated from work and service for the common good. I am glad, as I indicate in the text, a few lines further on, that the idealists are doing their share with the pragmatists in breaking it up. In America there is no practical distinction between culture and work. See my chapter on Pragmatism as Americanism.