What’s a Meta for?

Abstract This essay differs from Philström’s by offering a tinkering, not a full-blown critique. The alternative depends on a terminological distinction between ¨first-wave¨ Pragmatism and subsequent renditions. The thesis defended: Philström’s challenge depends on accepting first-wave Pragmatism´s formulations. These continued to foster a key ¨Modern¨ (Cartesian) assumption: that there was a rational, logical approach that could harmonize incompatibles. Such an approach invented a realm in which philosophers qua philosophers privileged intellectual purity and expelled incompatibles. Pragmatism moves away from this realm. It does not seek method-related resolutions, but experiments with social transactions which mix and combine incompatibles. In this way Pragmatism rehabilitates metaphor which, eschewing purity, inevitably reveals and conceals.