Was Aristotle a Pragmatist?

Was Aristotle a pragmatist? Not as we understand pragmatism today, as a systematic method or philosophy of life—depending on whether you’re a Peircean or Jamesian pragmatist. 

In Topics, Aristotle explores the various ways one can make a rational argument, or question the logic of an opponent’s argument. In Book Three, which is devoted to methods for weighing alternatives, he writes in Chapter Two, “[W]hen two things are very like each other, and we cannot perceive any superiority of the one to the other, we must investigate from the consequences” and “we must take whichever consequence may be useful” (Trans. Octavius Owen).     

That whole idea of usefulness is what received Bertram Russell’s ire. He had no use for modern pragmatism. For Russell, we believed things because they were true, whether they were useful or not. This sounded too much like relativism for Russell. 

Russell neglected to notice the qualifier, when “we cannot perceive any superiority,” which for Aristotle, meant a rational reason to value one over the other.  If that rational reason existed, then what William James would go on to call the “pragmatic maxim” wouldn’t apply. True, Aristotle wasn’t above a little relativism. He goes on to write that he values “temperance over courage,” since temperance is useful all the time, and courage only some of the time. Even this bit or relativism points out one of the hallmarks of pragmatism, it tends to concern questions about abstracts in philosophy, and the as yet unknown in science, not the concrete or known. 

Peirce’s version of the pragmatic maxim is even more grounded in logic than Aristotle’s. Peirce writes "Consider what effects that might conceivably have practical bearing we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our concept of the object" ("How to Make Our Ideas Clear" 218)

James, as usual, is a little more whimsical: “Now, without pledging ourselves in any way to adopt this hypothesis, let us dally with it for a while to see to what consequences it might lead if it were true” (Pragmatism 302).

Ah, Russell would have a problem with that one. But, James would only apply this maxim to something that we were still uncertain of, not those things we were certain of.