Pragmatism, Religion and Ethics: A Review Essay. H. Deuser et al, The Varieties of Transcendence: Pragmatism and the Theory of Religion, New York: Fordham University Press, 2016; N. Brunsveld, The Many Faces of Religious Truth: Hilary Putnam’s Pragmatic Pluralism on Religion, Leuven: Peeters, 2017; D.B. Heney, Toward a Pragmatist Metaethics, London: Routledge, 2016

his paper uses the stimuli of the three books listed above to introduce the reader to a socio-philosophical perspective rather not considered in the European debate, despite its importance for the development of American sociology (symbolic interactionism, the School of Chicago, R.K. Merton, among the others) and for a variety of European scholars. A second objective is to understand how the problems pragmatist philosophers encounter in analysing the religious phenomena could help understanding the need for a multifactorial and multilevel explanation of religion and ethics. Finally, in the discussion, the author critically enlightens the need to avoid collapsing morality into religion — as sometimes pragmatists do — and extends and reframes Hans Joas’ appropriation of Mead and Durkheim in his pragmatist approach to religion and morality.