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Concerning passages below, there is nothing pragmatic in this first, late passage. He's a long way from his Harvard years. On the other hand, a faith that operates only by waiting for some kind of confirmation is not incompatible with pragmatism. Concerning the second, I think it's a case of logic taking us to an aporia that only faith can resolve. Kirsch needs to study Eliot a bit more. "I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing." That is the thought of a pragmatist? I would say there a stunning absence of any idea of the roll of faith in all this, as if logic alone is the determining factor. What a person thinks and what a person accepts on faith are different things.