Abstract

This paper begins by pointing out the commonality of phenomenology and pragmatism, particularly by referring to Husserl and Dewey, respectively, but it soon turns to fundamental differences. The common starting point is the acknowledgement of everyday experience as the basis of any scientific proposition as well as any non-scientific notion of the world. Phenomenology and pragmatism are allies in their rejection of scientism. However, while Husserl reflects on the structure of experience in order to establish a theoretical view that allows us to scrutinize ordinary and scientific experience from without, from some privileged standpoint, Dewey states that the process of experience, properly conceived and due to its entanglement with action in a contingent world, is always already self-reflective. Philosophy is thus conceived of as the practice of internal criticism that relies on the very form of contingent experience, not, as in Husserl’s work, as some transcendental foundation drawing upon an ideal of timeless reason. Husserl’s conception of philosophy is scientific, while anti-scientistic, whereas Dewey sees philosophy as structurally different from science while mediating between it and all other forms of experience.