It is not that Peirce or Holmes or Nietzsche was a "Romantic" in a precise sense, if there is such a sense. It is that they wished to shift attention from a passive, contemplative relation between an observing subject and an objective reality, whether natural or social, to an active, creative relation between striving human beings and the problems that beset them and that they seek to overcome. For these thinkers, thought was an exertion of will instrumental to some human desire (and we see here the link between pragmatism and utilitarianism). Social institutions-whether science, law, or religion-were the product of shifting human desires rather than of a reality external to those desires. Human beings had not only eyes but hands as well.

DEFINE: Clarifies the pragmatic/utilitarian conception of thought as instrumental will rather than passive contemplation. XREF: Connects to the pragmatism-utilitarianism lineage explicitly named, relevant to American philosophy readers.

Richard A. Posner, Richard A. Posner - What Ha…, loc. 25