This paper considers the relative lack of positive reception of American pragmatism in Central Europe before the middle of the twentieth century and investigates what distinguishes those thinkers that did acknowledge it positively. The point here is to articulate an hypothesis that must be defended on another occasion. It is that those mainly Austrian thinkers expressed sympathies for American pragmatism did so because they themselves had on independent grounds reached conclusion that at least partly overlapped with those that characterize pragmatism.