Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1993. [Vol. 1.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 21)

STUDIES - Zsolt Virágos: Some Observations on Myth and Practical' Pragmatism in American Culture

"coercive factors external to belief,"

7 thought of pragmatism as a theory of meaning, while James thought of it as a theory of both meaning and truth. We can rightly assume that there must have existed broader influential forces and currents in American culture at the time that appeared as a wider social context of unusual diversity and tensions and powerful divisions of interest. This means that in the Century of Progress, which made the magic words Progress, Growth, Unlimited Prosperity, and Science rule supreme, and in which, having the Puritan temper reconciled somehow with the instruments of progress, it was taken for granted that even God's plan was evolutionary, tensions arising from incompatible ethical trends began to erode the 19th-century paradise. Indeed, as H. S. Thayer contends, "American history is such a record of periodic disruption and mounting discord that one wonders how the notion of inevitable progress rooted itself so powerfully in the mind of laymen and visionaries".

8 Evidence was gradually mounting that Growth and Progress were no longer supposed to be synonymous and that within the nation powerful forces were working at cross purposes. The most spectacular conflict and threat of disunion, of course, came with the Civil War, which was basically a Constitutional crisis. The potential forces of disruption, however, had been there earlier: the slavery issue, the War of 1812, the Missouri Compromise, the threat in 1832 that South Carolina would secede from the Union, the Compromise of 1850, the events in Kansas, Harpers Ferry, etc. What is perhaps less spectacular, but more relevant to our discussion, is that much of the tension was generated by diverse methods of interpretation and that conditions of conflict were generated by particular approaches to meaning. From the very birth of the Republic, much friction and confusion were created by the meaning and acceptable modes of interpreting the role of the federal government and especially the Constitution generally. When, for instance, Alexander Hamilton introduced his bill for the purposes of establishing a national bank, the proposal ran into a hornet's nest. Jefferson 7 H. S. Thayer, "Pragmatism: A Reinterpretation of the Origins and Consequences," in: R. J. Mulvaney and P. M. Zeltner, eds., op. cit

, p. 4. . 8 Ibid., p. 9. 142