Louis Menand lectures on pragmatism, a distinctly American philosophy based on experience and experiment rather than fixed principles.

Louis Menand, professor of English and American literature and language in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University and a member of the Harvard Graduate School of Education faculty, is the author of The Metaphysical Club (2001), an exploration of American pragmatism that examines the transformation of American intellectual thought from 1865 to 1919 and explores the development of the pragmatism philosophy.