This essay explores pragmatic aspects of Carnaps and Quines philosophy. It begins with a (schematic) characterization of pragmatism, pointing to recurring themes in the writings of leading American pragmatists, such as fallibilism, the social dimension of language and knowledge, the relation between belief and action, and the critique of skepticism, essentialism, foundationalism, and the fact/value dichotomy. It then examines aspects of Carnaps and Quines thinking that appear to be related (conceptually rather than historically) to pragmatism. Carnaps Principle of Tolerance and Quines critique of the analytic–synthetic distinction are primary examples, but there are others, such as their positions on scientific method, truth, and realism. Despite the similarities between Carnap and Quine emerging from this examination, the paper also identifies significant differences between their ways of understanding pragmatism. These differences, I suggest, are related to the difference between the European and American traditions regarding the meaning and use of the term pragmatism

Bibliography, as defined by W. W. Greg in 1932, excluded meaning; it was to deal only with documentary inscriptions as physical things. This excluded the reader from the editorial equation. A recent series of essays by Hans Walter Gabler repeats the mistake but in a new language.

He proposes that text is based on the fundamental fact of textual variance, and that text is a function of documents. He thus rules out appeal to the biographical author’s intentions. Editorial discourse (emendation, commentary) arises instead, he contends, from the need to explain textual variation.

In contrast, the work model offered in the present book incorporates the reader into text considered as a dimension of experienced meaning. This step requires the meaning of ‘document’ to expand. The two are cast as being in a negative dialectic relationship, dependent on one another to secure their own identities. The embodied work emerges as a regulative concept that embraces the successive iterations of the dialectic over time, around which a new literary studies could be organised. It is argued that Gabler’s binary synchronic needs replacing with a diachronic semiotics such as C. S. Peirce’s.