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 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PRAGMATISM AND AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY
COPYRIGHT © 2009 ASSOCIAZIONE PRAGMA
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PRAGMATISM
AND AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY
Vol. 7, Issue 2, 2015
Roma 2015
ISSN: 2036-4091
2015, VII, 2
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PRAGMATISM AND AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY
COPYRIGHT © 2009 ASSOCIAZIONE PRAGMA
European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy
Executive Editors
Rosa M. Calcaterra (Università Roma Tre)
Roberto Frega (CNRS-EHESS)
Giovanni Maddalena (Università del Molise)
Associate Editors
Mathias Girel (École Normale Supérieure – Paris)
David Hildebrand (University of Colorado, Denver)
Editorial Board
Guillaume Braunstein, Production Editor (EHESS-Paris)
Roberto Gronda, Submission Manager (Università di Pisa)
Sarin Marchetti, Assistant Editor (University College Dublin)
Chris Skowronski, Bookreview Editor (Opole University)
Scientific Board
Mats Bergman (Finnish Academy)
Vincent Colapietro (Penn State University)
Rossella Fabbrichesi (Università di Milano)
Susan Haack (University of Miami)
Larry Hickman (SIU University – The Center for Dewey Studies)
Christopher Hookway (Sheffield University)
Hans Joas (Universität Erfurt)
Sandra Laugier (Université de Paris 1 Sorbonne)
Joseph Margolis (Temple University)
Michele Marsonet (Università di Genova)
Annamaria Nieddu (Università di Cagliari)
Jaime Nubiola (Universidad de Navarra)
Carlo Sini (Università di Milano)
André de Tienne (Indiana and Purdue University at Indianapolis)
Fernando Zalamea (Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotà)
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COPYRIGHT © 2009 ASSOCIAZIONE PRAGMA
European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Symposia. John Dewey’s Lectures in Social and Political Philosophy (China)
Editors: Roberto Frega (CNRS-IMM, Paris), Roberto Gronda (Università di Pisa)
R. Frega, R. Gronda, Introduction................................................................................5
J. Dewey, Lectures in Social and Political Philosophy.................................................7
R. Gronda, What Does China Mean for Pragmatism?
A Philosophical Interpretation of Dewey’s Sojourn in China (1919-1921)........................45
Y. C. Chiang, Appropriating Dewey: Hu Shi and His Translation of Dewey’s “Social
and Philosophical Philosophy” Lectures Series in China................................................71
R. Frega, John Dewey’s Social Philosophy: A Restatement...........................................98
Essays
A. Mendenhall, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and the Darwinian Common Law
Paradigm..................................................................................................................129
P. Olen, The Realist Challenge to Conceptual Pragmatism.....................................152
P. Giladi, A Critique of Rorty’s Conception of Pragmatism.....................................168
R. M. Calcaterra, Chance and Regularities. Remarks on Richard Rorty’s
Contingentism ..........................................................................................................186
Let Me Tell You a Story: Heroes and Events of Pragmatism
Interview with Charlene Haddock Seigfried by M. Bella and M. Santarelli.............198
Interview with Larry Hickman by M. Bella and M. Santarelli..................................209
Book Reviews
A. Honnacker, Post-säkularer Liberalismus: Perspektiven auf Religion und
Öffentlichkeit im Amschluss an William James, Baden-Baden, Nomos, 2015
(reviewed by S. Pihlström) ...................................................................................... 221
J. S. Johnson, John Dewey’s Earlier Logical Theory, New York, SUNY Press,
2014 (reviewed by R. Gronda)..................................................................................225
T. Throntveit, Art and Morality: William James and the Quest for an Ethical
Republic, London & New York, Palgrave MacMillan, 2014 (reviewed by
S. Marchetti) ............................................................................................................ 232
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Symposia.
John Dewey’s Lectures in Social and Political
Philosophy (China)
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COPYRIGHT © 2009 ASSOCIAZIONE PRAGMA
Roberto Frega, Roberto Gronda*
Introduction
In this Issue of the European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy
we publish for the first time the text of the Lectures in Social and Political Philosophy
that John Dewey delivered in China in 1919. Dewey’s manuscript was considered lost
and the only existing publication of the Lectures1 is based on a transcription made in
Chinese while Dewey was delivering his lectures.
The critical edition of Dewey’s text is accompanied by three interpretative articles:
an essay of Roberto Gronda putting Dewey’s Chinese experience in the larger context
of his struggles to understand the function of theoretical reflection for social life,
an essay of the historian Yung-chen Chiang which provides a textual analysis of the
differences between the manuscript here published and the version that has been in
print till today, and by an essay of Roberto Frega discussing the relevance of this
manuscript for interpreting John Dewey’s social and political philosophy.
The typescript of Dewey’s “Social and Political Philosophy” lecture series has
been discovered by Prof. Yung-chen Chiang,2 and it is now deposited at the Hu
Shi Archives, Box Number: E87-001, Authors Unidentifiable; Institute of Modern
History, Chinese Academy of the Social Sciences, in Beijing. Dewey’s “Social and
Political Philosophy” lecture series consisted of sixteen lectures that he delivered
at Peking University once a week on Saturday afternoons from 4 P.M. to 6 P.M.,
beginning on September 20, 1919. The lecture notes survived and now collected in
the Hu Shi Archives consist of Lectures I, II, III, IV, VI, X, XI, XII, and XVI. They
were typed by Dewey himself using the typewriter that he brought with him to Japan
and China. With the only exception of Lecture VI, which is one page long, each
lecture is about twelve pages, the shortest being Lecture XVI, which is six pages
long. Dewey’s name never appears on any of these notes: the words “Social Pol Phil
Lecture I” appear on the first page of the first lecture, with the page number typed on
the top middle of the page for this lecture. The rest of the extant lecture notes have
“SPP” typed on the top left margin, followed by a Roman numeral indicating the
lecture number in the series and then by a dash and an Arabic number indicating the
page number of the lecture.
Transcription was generally unproblematic. The transcription reflects Dewey’s
final intended product: we have therefore incorporated Dewey’s subsequent revisions
in the text without annotation in all those cases in which the incorporation was
unproblematic or in those cases in which the revisions are accompanied by marking
to indicate the correct point of insertion. When the point of insertion is unclear, we
have enclosed the words within slashes //.
As for the policy of transcriptions, we have decided to minimize the interference
with the text. We have corrected all the typographical errors, and we have expanded
* CNRS-IMM, Paris [[email protected]], Università di Pisa [[email protected]].
1. John Dewey, Lectures in China, 1919-1920, edited and translated from the Chinese by Robert
W. Clopton and Tsuin-chen Ou, The University Press of Hawaii, Honolulu, 1973.
2. We are indebted to the Hu Shi Memorial in Nankang, Taipei, Taiwan, for providing us scanned
copies of these lecture notes, which we use to transcribe and publish in this special issue.
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Introduction
the abbreviations in all the uncontroversial cases. No record is provided of these sorts
of changes. Where a word is added, however, the annotation is provided.
For questionable words, a bracketed question mark [?] has been added. For
indeterminable words, [illeg.] is provided. When a sentence is not complete or is not
grammatically well-formed, we have enclosed it within curly brackets { }. In general,
punctuation has not been changed or added: we have only replaced commas with
semicolon and fullstops when strictly needed. In all instances, the underlined text has
been replaced with italics, which Dewey never used in the typescript. It is very likely
that most of the underlining was done by Hu Shi rather than by Dewey: indeed, some
of the underlining was done by using a Chinese writing brush, and it is highly unlikely
that Dewey was able to use it. Nonetheless, we have decided to leave them in the text
as part of the history of the typescript.
Page numbers are shown at the end of each page, within square brackets, to
indicate actual location of page break: i.e. [End page 2]. We have never modified
original line breaks. Similarly, we have never changed the structure of the paragraphs.
At the beginning of each lecture we have enclosed within square brackets the title
and the page number of the corresponding chapter in John Dewey. Lectures in China,
1919-1920, translated from the Chinese and edited by R. W. Clopton and Tsuin-Chen
Ou, Honululu, The University Press of Hawaii.
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Lectures in Social and Political Philosophy
Lecture I [Chapter The Function of Theory, pp. 45-53]
The direct use of language for definite purposes according to the needs of the
moment long preceded grammar, rhetoric and the dictionary. Breathing, eating,
digesting, seeing and hearing long preceded anatomy and physiology. We first act to
meet special needs and particular occasions. Only afterwards do we reflect upon what
we do and how and why we do it, and try to frame general principles, a philosophy
of the matter. So with social, collective action. Men built up customs and transmitted
traditions to their offspring for centuries before they tried to discover any rationale in
what they did. They made no attempts at explanation. If asked what for one they would
have said they had such and [such] customs because they liked them, or because their
ancestors told them so to act or because their gods had established them. To question
too closely was to be impious or disloyal, and might result as with Socrates in death.
[End Page 1]
Thinking is naturally hard and obnoxious. It is easier to follow instinct and custom
and the orders of others. Men think when forced to do so by trouble by something
the matter which makes it necessary to find some way out not provided by habit
and inclination. So men began to philosophize about their collective habits, their
established institutions only when these began to cease [to] function satisfactorily.
The difficulties might be internal strife or external contacts and conflicts or both. But
something threatening change or disintegration made men compare and inquire and
attempt to select and hold on to the really good. Disease and wounds of battle made
men study anatomy and the normal physiological processes. Otherwise men might
forever have taken for granted their natural processes without thinking of them never
directing attention to them. Social pathology had similar effect on social theorizing.
Ill from Greece, from China. After theory had once arisen life does not go on just
the same. Men do not breathe and eat because of their knowledge of anatomy and
physiology. These acts still depend upon deeper forces. But they may eat and breathe
somewhat differently, especially in emergencies, because of their knowledge.
[End page 2]
The question may arise however as to what difference ideas, theories, philosophies
really make. Do they make a difference in what men do or only in what they feel
about what they do. Is philosophizing practical like steam as a driving force in the
locomotive? Or is it more like the noise of the escaping steam in the whistle – a byproduct, an accompaniment, a symptom of what is going on? There are replies which
are highly exaggerated in both directions. Bookish people and philosophers are likely
to attach too much importance to abstract ideas, to regard them as the most important
moving causes. They seek ideological explanations for everything. They overlook
the extent to which men are still driven into action by primary instincts like hunger,
sex and love of power or comfort and glory, by the pressure of circumstances and
by the ease of paths of habit. They say for example that the last war was primarily
and essentially a conflict of philosophies, of systems of ideas. At the other extreme
we have the so-called materialistic explanations of institutions and social changes.
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Economic causes are said to be the only real or dynamic causes. Ideas are effects,
products
[End page 3]
only. Desires first for the primary necessities of life and then for power over
others and for enjoyment of the luxuries due to wealth are the only explaining causes.
Even art and religion and systems of morality as well as social customs and political
regulations are to be explained economically. The war was not a conflict of ideas and
ideals but a struggle for economic advantages and commercial supremacy. Ideals,
theories are but a mask to conceal the material struggle going on, fine phrases to
arouse the multitude that allows themselves to be beguiled by them. Philosophies
that pretend to do more than analyze and describe the play of economic forces are
only dreams or else devices by which the few powerful maintain their hold upon the
masses. We meet here the first great question concerning social philosophy – one
which can only be answered in the course of the entire discussion. But we shall at
the outset dogmatically anticipate the nature of the reply that will be developed in the
subsequent lectures. Ideas, theories are originally products, causes of non-intellectual
forces. Thinking arises so to speak only in the thin cracks of solid habits, and only
with great difficulty penetrates the resistant
[End page 4]
mass. Or it plays fitfully and like a phosphorescent gleam over the surface of vast
ocean of traditions, customs and special adaptations to circumstances. But nonetheless
it does have, had had, a really practical influence, and under certain conditions, to be
dealt with in the next lecture, may have a greater directive influence on affairs. Effects
after they are brought into being get intermingled in all living forms with the causes
that evolved them and modify the forces that produced them. German philosophy
[was] a product of German conditions, not a deliverance of pure reason. But after it
had become current [?] and infiltrated into the minds of men, conceptions of system,
order, efficiency, confirmed and substantiated causes that might otherwise have
passed away in time; it translated over into minds of men what otherwise might have
been passing events, it steadied, stabilized, perpetuated transient physical causes. No
need perhaps to argue in a country where Confucianism has been a force for two
thousands years that even admitting the concrete and practical origin of the system
that it organized solidified and focused and rendered persistent factors that without
the intellectual formulation might have proved temporary. Not ideas or theories by
effective. But human beings who
[End page 5]
are permeated by certain ideas engrained in them by education are different persons,
even different machines, than if they entertained no such ideas or if they entertained
different ones. This is true even when ideas are false. A man with an illusion acts
differently from one without it. And while perhaps the main effect of philosophic
systems has been to consolidate spread and perpetuate the force of conditions that
otherwise would have been local and transient, yet they have also an exciting and
driving force especially in times of crises. The materialist admits too much when it
says that theories, ideals are tools used hypocritically by controlling vested interests
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to sway masses. For the assertion admits that men are moved by ideals, and that they
can be stirred to act in masses and energetically against danger and odds only by
appealing to ideals, to general conceptions. “Kultur in danger,” on one hand, “liberty
in danger” on the other. If great numbers of men had not been made to believe this,
the war could not have been carried on. The most that is proved is that general ideas
are so efficacious, so powerful in times of crises, that the purely material economic
interests of the
[End page 6]
few can be executed only indirectly by acting upon the more idealistic desires and
beliefs of the many. Especially is this true under recent conditions of warfare where the
old direct motives of personal exploits and glory have lost efficacy – general motives,
patriotism, national feeling, justice, humanity, etc. have to be brought into play. No
conception is falser than that of men actuated by calculations of self interest. In many
respects the world might be better if there were more prudence, more enlightened
selfishness, more deliberate weighing of advantages and disadvantages. Action still
rests upon instincts and emotions rather than calculation but many instincts can be
brought into play collectively only by means of stimuli of an idealistic kind. And
systems of thought, philosophies, that are abstract for the few condense into such
simple and moving mottoes, war-cries, ideals for the many.
[End page 7]
The reason for giving much time to the discussion of the practical efficacy of
general ideas and theories is that it serves to bring out the alternative forces that
move men – customs, established authority, prejudice, vested interests, the ambitions
of powerful men leading them to utilize others as tools etc. The best evidence that
philosophy has some power is the fear of it expressed by the representatives and
guardians of these interests. Emerson stated the idea rather intensely when he said
Beware when God lets loose a thinker on the planet. All things then become fluid.
Thinking means the introduction of a novel and in so far incalculable factor – a
deviation or departure, and an invention. The hidebound conservative is justified in
the uneasiness which he shows at attempts to formulate and justify rationally even his
own beliefs. The appeal to reason that is implied is unsettling.
[End page 8]
We must discriminate however between the different ways in which theories have
practical influence. In general we may distinguish three types. First those which are
aware primarily of the defects in existing institutions and which criticize and condemn
them. They conceive of a different ideal state, so different as to be opposed in a
wholesale way and capable of realization only in some revolutionary way. They are
idealistic, if not romantic, utopian, in tone. They find the true standards and models of
life in something apart from and beyond existing affairs. They hold that the mind has
been corrupted by contact with things as they actually exist until it fails to perceive
the true condition and model. But if the confusion, darkness and error due to this
influence be removed, then inner illumination will enable men to see the truth and
bring about a radical change. It is thus sudden, abrupt in its conceptions, and appeals
to self-reliance, to inspiration from within, combined with contempt for the existing
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state of things and its corrupting influence. Under different conditions, something of
this type is
[End page 9]
reflected in Plato’s Republic, the social aspirations of the early (as distinct from
later) Christians, Shelley’s poetry, the attitude of Lao-Tze. It expects things now
despised to overthrow those now esteemed, the weak things to confound the mighty;
ideals to command the actual. It colors thought in times of great social change; French
Revolution, Russian, looks forward to a new heaven and hearth.
The second type is sober, prudent, conservative. It aims at justifying the spirit of
existing institutions. It finds the true patterns and standards within affairs. It looks
askance upon change, especially abrupt change, because evil is due to departure
from necessary meanings and fixed relationships embedded in things. Reform
is restoration, recovery of these true patterns. That is the attitude of such men as
Aristotle, Confucius, Hegel. While the first type is critical and pessimistic of things as
they are, this one is complacent or optimistic. Essentially if not incidentally things are
right and reasonable. Evil is rather in the mind that has departed from them. Instead
then of appealing to the mind itself to find within itself intuitively and innately ideals
for change, it holds that the mind must be
[End page 10]
instructed and rectified by careful study of the things forms and relations that are
external to it. Its temper is realistic not idealistic. It aims at reform of character and
mind to bring them into conformity with the true meanings of established institutions
and relationships, not at reform of institutions by appeal to the inner ideals of the
illuminated mind. It teaches self-distrust, distrust of enthusiasm, impulse, the
importance of patient study and instruction from without. It tends to subordinate the
individual self, as the radical type tends to exalt it.
Now both of these types of theory in spite of their profound antagonism to each
other agree in being wholesale – in taking a general attitude [of] either condemnation
or justification toward things as they are. Both of them then lack the kind of practical
power or efficacy most needed – power to project and direct the changes that are
required. The first expects some sudden and revolutionary change to bring in an ideal
condition; the second resists all change. But what humanity needs is ability to shape
and direct the changes that are bound to occur. The conservative [type] lacks leverage
for guiding change because it consecrates and justifies things as they es[End page 11]
sentially are. The radical and idealistic type lacks leverage with things as they are
because it opposes the inner ideal to the outer affair and institution in a wholesale
way. The net result is either negative and destructive action or else inaction, passivity,
waiting for the ideal to be realized by some miracle of change.
The following lectures will attempt then to state and apply the third type of social
and political thought, criticizing those historic philosophies which upon the whole
lean to one or other of the first two types mentioned. The next lecture in particular will
be devoted to an exposition of the chief traits of the third sort of theory.
[End page 12]
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Lecture II [Chapter Science and Social Philosophy, pp. 54-63]
The entire history of the 19th century in the West is marked by attempts to create [?]
sciences as distinct from philosophy of society. Political economy, political science,
science of government, of anthropology, languages, religions etc, sociology, [science]
of history, even of morals. These efforts express a reaction against the control of
human affairs by mere habit, by vested interests, by authority, by accident and belief
in miracle. [They] Mark a belief in reign of law, in uniformity of nature, in human and
collective affairs as well as in inanimate nature. They were the fruit of the advance
of natural science, and the mark of confidence in [the] ability of the human mind
to subjugate also the seeming wilderness and irregularity of human activities. When
the positivistic matter-of-fact spirit invaded the consideration of society and politics,
philosophy was condemned as speculative and pretentious, unverifiable. We cannot go
into the fortunes of these attempts at social science. But roughly speaking, it may be
said that so far they have fallen short of realizing their claims, and have in a certain
sense been more artificial than the philosophies they invoked [?] to replace. They
selected certain facts, characteristic of a particular
[End page 1]
epoch and state of affairs, and making generalizations that described the main
features of those particular epochs, laid them down as universal laws, as sweeping and
as necessary as the laws of physics or astronomy. The so-called science of political
economy for example arrived at generalizations concerning the activities of men in
the capitalistic competitive regime characterized by production in bulk for a distant
market with exchange governed by financial credit, by money, for money profit. It
was a theory of business. Then in order that the generalizations might have the rank of
a science, they assumed that these generalizations apply universally to the industrial
and economic activities of men. A knowledge of China or of past history is enough to
prove that we are not dealing with a science but with certain tendencies predominating
at a certain limited portion of time under peculiar historic conditions. The same may
be said of political science. It is in fact a description of certain forms of institutions
which have been developing in the West during the last few centuries and which
especially characterized the Europe of the 19th century, the nationalistic territorial
state with a constitutional and representative government based on a certain kind of
suffrage.
[End of page 2]
Claim to universality is absurd when the whole range of human affairs is taken
into account. Only a deification of local and possibly temporary circumstances. The
“sciences” may be called more artificial than the philosophies because the latter were
more or less frankly imaginative and speculative, telling what should be, while the
sciences claimed to give an account of things as they must be.
II. This does not mean the sciences are useless or negligible. Aside from
representing the feeling that (1) human affairs like physical [ones] can be investigated
and understood, aside from (2) bringing to light a great amount of valuable facts,
they introduce [a] factor which must profoundly modify the social philosophies of
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the future. (3) The scientific spirit, the scientific method in its larger sense as a way
of dealing with facts and plans is their contribution, and it is this contribution which
makes possible and necessary a third type of political theorizing, in distinction from
the two kinds considered at the last hour, a type which may possess the directive
power they lacked. There is (1) the importance attached to actual facts and the need of
basing theory upon them. There is (2) the need of abolition of injecting into accounts
partisan glorification and
[End page 3]
condemnation, distinguishing between phenomena and one’s wishes about what
they should be. (3) The reduction if not elimination of the dogmatic and authoritarian
habit of mind; (4) the willingness to take things in detail rather [than] in sweeping
generalities, retail rather than wholesale; (5) the willingness to treat alleged principles
and laws as only provisional hypotheses; (6) the creation of a demand for experimental
verification – all of these things are due to the influence of the spirit of science and
they persist when the sweeping claims to scientific laws of universal scope is dropped.
THUS THERE ARISES THE POSSIBILITY OF A THIRD TYPE OF SOCIAL
PHILOSOPHY DISTINGUISHED IN IMPORTANT REGARDS FROM THE TWO
CONSIDERED AT THE LAST TIME (Will condense the above in lecture).1
III. The union of the scientific spirit with the moral and practical aim of philosophy.
The great thing about the classic systems of philosophy is that they thought with a
purpose in view. They were not satisfied with mere description or observation. They
tried to educe principle for the directions of life, principles to be used in judging
the value of events and in projecting plans and purposes. Nothing less than this can
content man in social affairs. For we are not mere outside observers; we are sharers,
partners. Our own destiny and fortune is [at] stake in the course of events. We want
them to turn out one way rather than
[End page 4]
in another way, and we use our observations of what is in our order to make
decisions about [what] may and shall be. In the so-called pure sciences we take the
position of merely looking at things to note what is going on. We are outside of them.
Our own hopes, fears, desires and observations have nothing to do with the future
changes of the moon. The scene so far as we are concerned is a closed and finished one.
Our own activities do not enter into its making or remaking. It is only in the “applied”
science, like agriculture, medicine, engineering (civil, mechanical, electrical) that we
use our knowledge to enter as active partners into what is going on to make it different
from what it would be if we do not act and act upon our own knowledge.
In other words the social sciences are not pure; they are like applied sciences.
They are concerned with the intelligent reshaping or alteration of existing conditions.
It has been said that we know backwards; what has been done – a fact is something
done – dead, done with. We act forward; an act is something still doing to change
things. Bergson has pointed out that we cannot have the same kind of science of life
that we have of the inanimate. We are deal1. [In capital letters in the typescript.]
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[End page 5]
ing not with [the] finished and self-repeating, but with the unfinished, where the
new, the truly novel enters in, and where we are ourselves interested, concerned in
what is to happen and deliberately try to make it different in quality, to invent and
reconstruct and alter, and where our knowledge of what is and has been is inevitably
subordinated to our efforts to give future happenings one shape rather than other –
where our knowledge in short is practical like that of the physician who attempts
by acting upon what he knows to produce health in place of disease. It is absurd to
suppose that we can have a cold-blooded social science that eliminates desire and
preference and emotion and bias. But we can clarify and enlighten our desires. Our art
of medicine depends upon a bias in favor of life. We want to live, we insist upon it. We
use the cold theoretical knowledge of chemistry, of anatomy and physiology to direct
our want, our desire more effectively, to make our bias more adjusted to conditions,
less blind and at the mercy of accident. Hence the primary features of our third type.
IV. It is pragmatic, instrumental. That is, it aims to be an art, an applied science,
a form of social engineering. Politics is an art, but should not be a blind or routine or
magical art, not directed by intrigue or vested interest etc.
[End page 6]
It rests on the possibility of introducing more conscious regulation into the course
of events in behalf of the general or public interests. It believes that the art of politics
is now too much an art of special manipulation in behalf of particular and concealed
interests or ends. It may become an art like the art of engineering in quality, if not
in extent and quality. The building of railways and bridges, of canals and electric
dynamos recognizes the supremacy of human aims and desires. It uses factual
knowledge in behalf of collective human ends and purposes. But the use depends upon
positive sciences and hence is not blind, random, accidental, or merely traditional. It
can conceive and execute new things in an orderly way that turns the course of natural
phenomena in definite channels. In like fashion our social and political notions and
theories and systems must be used for social constructions, for social engineering and
must be subjected to the tests of such use.
V. Hence social philosophy must be specific, not universal. Nobody builds a
railway in general. We build a particular railway with reference to specific localities,
their geographical features, rivers, mountains, valleys, the position of
[End page 7]
towns, the distribution of the population, the raw materials, economic resources
occupations and products. In other words, the project is based upon a study of a
special concrete situation, the needs that have to be met, the resources at hand and
potential, the obstacles to be overcome, the definite aims in view, consequences to
accrue, political, industrial, financial etc. The problem is one of ends and means
in a particular situation. In contrast with this classic social philosophies have been
wholesale and absolute. They have laid claim to universal validity, good for all time
and places and circumstances. General radicalism or general conservatism, instead
of changing and conserving special factors according to the needs of the particular
situation in which men actually found themselves. Everybody knows the part played
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in historic philosophies by individualistic and universalistic theories respectively by
those which have emphasized the initiative and freedom of the individual and those
which have emphasized the state, law and order in general and the subordination of
the individual to them. What has not been a part of these philosophies is of necessity
– since there is a place for both elements in life, his[End page 8]
toric conditions may lead to the need of emphasis upon the factor at one time and
another factor in another – that neither philosophy is true universally and abstractly
speaking but both are applicable under specific conditions. Because men do not
build tunnels on a plain is no reason for formulating a theory that tunnels are always
objectionable and thereby retarding building of railways in mountainous districts. In
Europe in the seventeenth century there was a general break-up of institutions, a scene
of wars religious and civil. It was natural that in this threatening chaos and dissolution
of civilization men should have prized order, and looked to authority that had the
power of enforcing it. The conditions favored unification and centralization. But the
non-scientific absolutistic habit of mind took the need out of its context and made
a universal and necessary principle out of it. It has favored the formation of a new
evil, absolute and tyrannic government in process of correcting the existing ill, and
contributed to latter times the tradition of an authoritative state – such as influenced
Germany in the nineteenth and twentieth century. On the other hand, the later part of
the eighteenth century was a time in which the industrial changes due to [the] use of
steam in manufacturing had made obso[End page 9]
lete and harmful many laws, institutions and practices that had grown up in prior
conditions in which they had worked more or less well. But under the new conditions
they worked inequitably and in a hampering way. They needed to be swept away to
give freer play to the new enterprises made possible by the use of steam in production
and distribution. To be successful and to be able to make their contribution to the
public benefit, individuals needed to be emancipated so their own initiative should
have more scope. But unfortunately this relative and specific need was frozen into a
universal principle. All social regulation of industry and business were proclaimed
to be evil. No collective direction of economics by the organized deliberation and
decision of society was possible and desirable. The functions of the state must always
be limited to protecting individuals in the exercise of their freedom as long so did not
encroach on a similar freedom of others. Laissez-faire and the police theory of law
and government. In short a movement valid within certain limits, those of the historic
situation in which it arose and with reference to which it was remedial, was erected
into an absolute and universal truth. Later on the
[End page 10]
evils of this conception became apparent, and there was a corresponding reaction
in the direction of state socialism, of general state ownership and regulation of all
business undertakings, free individual activity and competition were declared
not simply to have led to evils under the particular conditions in which they were
conducted, but to [be] bad inherently. This oscillation from one extreme of theory to
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another is illustrative of what happens wherever the wholesale and absolute type of
theory prevails. What is needed is to see that every philosophy since it has a practical
aim is relative to the specific situation which requires rectification. We must think
within limits set by special ills and special resources at hand for correcting them.
Avoid large, general isms, and consider specific questions, using the isms simply for
what light they may throw on the special need at hand. It is especially the tragedy of
warm enthusiastic social idealisms that in the long run they play into the hands of
reactionaries by thinking and talking in impossibly wholesale terms, forgetting that
development is a matter of a very large number of specific changes that have to be
accomplished in detail one by one, and that to try to do everything in a general way is
likely to result in failure to do anything
[End page 11]
in particular except by chance.
VI. Hence the third type of philosophy substitutes discrimination of particular
consequences of good and bad, better and worse, for general criticism and justification.
It tries to find out how this and that arrangement, custom and institution works in
detail to promote happiness or misery. It aims at amelioration, at improvement of this
and that bad feature rather than at either universal condemnation and destruction or
consecration and conservatism. Progress is its watchword, while it also recognized
that progress must be in definite points where reorganization is needed, and not
all over at once. It recognizes that there must be found positively good things, to
use as tools and resources, as active agencies in correcting the things that require
improvement. It avoids the illusion (1) that things are essentially unchangeable
because human nature is always the same, and (2) the idea that any single sweeping
change of law or intuitions can be successfully accomplished all at once. Especially
it looks to education, to enlightenment and equipment of specific human beings, to
introduce improvements and to make them genuine and enduring, rather than to any
magic wand of enactment or legislation or outer administration.
[End page 12]
Reverting to question of the practical efficacy of theory, it be said that traditional
types are of actual social effect accidentally rather than purposefully. They reinforce
customs that exist independently of them by rationalizing and justifying them. Or
they express strong emotional likes and dislikes and inspire men to attack. But they
are not purposefully useful. They are useful the way a tree happens to be for plowing
tho it was not intended for that use. But ideas that are framed from study of special
conditions will be valuable and valid just in the degree in which they help solve
problems. Moreover [they] are subjected to test by verification. [They are] Taken
out of the region of assertion and brute force and mere argument. Social philosophy
should be a bridge from the existent unsatisfactory situation to a better future state of
things based upon accurate knowledge of evils to be corrected and definite projects of
change at this point and that.
[End page 13]
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Lecture III [Chapter Social Conflict, pp. 64-71]
Theory began in disturbance, confusion, friction. It attempts to discover causes
and project plans of reorganization that bring about unity, harmony, freer movement.
To locate special difficulties and define particular problems we need some idea of the
sources and causes of social irregularities in general. Some conflict of forces. The
older type of theory set up a general conflict of order and progress, or authority and
freedom, law and rights, society and the individual, the personal and the institutional.
But we are after something less an opposition of abstract notions and more of concrete
social forces. It is not ideas that have to be reconciled primarily but facts, human
beings. And we want something more varied, more diversified than the few general
heads like individual and social into which every trouble has to be forced.
The significant conflicts are conflicts of groups, classes, factions, parties, peoples.
A group is a number of people associated together for some purposes, some common
activity that holds them.
[End page 1]
Human nature has a variety of interests to be served, a number of types of impulses
that have to be expressed, or instincts that form needs to be satisfied, and about each
one of the more fundamental of these some form of association, of living together or of
acting together continuously or repeatedly and regularly (as distinct from mere chance
and transient contacts). Above [?] the sexual need and the function of reproduction
there grows up the cohabitation of man and woman, and then the adhesion of children
– the family group or form of associated life. The need of support, of sustenance and
the need of regular activity, of impressing the energy of man upon nature, develop
association for industry and business. Again men associate for worship, for religious
ends and churches, monastic orders come into existence. Men’s interest in investigation
and discovery make them join together for educational ends, schools, learned societies,
etc. The need of regulating men’s conducts, their behavior to one another, protecting
public order etc., and the desire for power and authority give rise to gov[End page 2]
ernmental association, political society. Aside from the hundreds of special
associations for amusement, companionship, common feasts, which are more [or]
less temporary clubs, we have these fairly universal modes of union and association.
We can frame in imagination a picture in which there is an equal proportionate
development of all these forms of associated life, where they interact freely with one
another, and where the results of each one contribute to the richness and significance
of every other, where family relations assist equally the cooperation of men in science,
art, religion and public life, where association for production and sale of goods
enriches not merely materially but morally and intellectually all forms and modes of
human intercourse – where in short there is mutual stimulation and support and free
passage of significant results from one to another. Such an ideal picture is of use only
because it helps us paint by contrast the state of things which has actually brought
about social divisions and conflict. European history for example was marked for
[End page 3]
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centuries by such a predominance of association for religious purposes, by the
church, that other modes of life were more or less suppressed, choked, dwarfed, or
deflected into one-sided channels. Family life [was] affected because chastity was
supposed to involve abstinence from marriage, the celibate life [was supposed to
be] superior; industry [was affected] because wealth and material production was a
distraction from the spiritual life; science [was affected] because the results of free
inquiry might be dangerous to theological doctrines of the church; art [was affected
because it] might instill a love for the things of the eye and the flesh at the expense of
divine things. So these were allowed and cultivated only as they took a form subordinate
to the dominant religious interest; they had to be made to contribute in a one sided way
to the supremacy of the church – architecture, music, painting, philosophy etc. Then
again for some centuries history was marked by a struggle between the church and
the state, between human combination in the interest of religion, and in the interest
of organized secular public life – religious wars etc. [The] Struggle [has] not ended
[End page 4]
yet. Contemporary politics [in] France, Italy, and even the educational problems
of Great Britain cannot be understood without reference to it. During the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries the history of the progress of natural science is largely a
history of conflict of the interest in observation and inquiry with the better established
authority of the church.
These conflicts of institutions are so common that we take them for granted as
almost the very stuff of history itself. They are here referred to because they prove
so conclusively that men’s various interests do not march four abreast, evenly and
uniformly. Some interest with the form of association in which it is embodied gets
a particularly intense and widespread start; it then lords it over other interests and
associations and makes them tributary so far as may be to itself. It insists upon
dominating activity, monopolizing attention and interest. Free give and take, mutual
enrichment, reciprocal stimulation is prevented. Then the interest in
[End page 5]
question becomes isolated; it ceases to be fed by natural sources; it becomes rigid,
petrified, fossilized, and unless its pretensions are broken down and interaction and
balance restored, it decays, there is general relapse and stagnation, corruption. Some
force has to come in from outside to stir things up and bring about a vital interplay
of social activities. A mode of social life that is monopolistic of human energy and
attention, comparatively speaking, necessarily becomes itself one sided; it lacks the
contacts which will give it fullness and an all-around character. It becomes at once
harsh and relatively empty, barren.
We may take another example from present conditions. The last two or three
centuries has seen a great growth in the importance of the political organization
known as the state. After becoming emancipated in Europe from the control of the
church, it has tended to become an all-engrossing thing, as is evident in the doctrine of
the Sovereignty of the State. Two stages are obvious. At first, the state was identified
with the government, and the control of the governing group was so great
[End page 6]
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that it was looked upon as despotic and tyrannical, and constitutions and
representative government and general suffrage were brought into existence largely
to check arbitrary exactions on life and property. Civil freedom required checks on
governmental action. 1688 in England, 1789 in France. In the nineteenth century,
state became identified with the nation as an organized whole dealing as an entity
with other nations. The late war is a proof of the ascendency of the state interest; the
sacrifices and subordinations of life, property, freedom of industry, thought, science,
publication it is capable of exacting. The government as the universal carrier. Now
there is a reaction against the very idea of the state. Such as the doctrine of anarchy
or purely voluntary group associations. This doctrine flourishes only where and when
the state has become exaggerate and rigid, and other forms of association thrown out
of balance.
In general it must be noted that certain areas and times have tended to concentrate
upon certain forms. Greece upon civic life, the organized community, city-state;
Medieval, the church as noted;
[End page 7]
the East, the family principle; the contemporary West, especially America
industrial and economic groups cutting across the other forms of life, and tending to
subordinate them to its own unchecked aggrandizement. In dealing then on the basis
of theory with any particular social condition we need first to ask what pattern of
human association tends to be central and regulative; what are the one-sidednesses
and arrests, fixation [and] rigidities thereby produced; where are the suppressions
from which society is suffering in consequence; what are the points of conflict, strife,
antagonism of interest.
The point of view may perhaps [be] illustrated by a sketchy and superficial account
of the tendencies and problems created by when the family or blood-kin basis gets
exaggerated.
There are good reasons why the family principle should be expressed first
historically. The perpetuation of society depends upon the union of man and woman
and the care, physical and intellectual, of the offspring. The family is not merely the
family. It is also the household,
[End page 8]
which is the economic and industrial form of association. Aristotle’s conception
of economics, domestic, property, reproduction of life, property, slaves serfs, political
economy that of state, public finance and property etc. Arts perpetuated [?] in family –
apprenticeship, adoption into the family guild. But the authority of parents, especially
of male, exercised in the family and [in the] household group made family absorb
functions of political association. Patriarchal rule. Even after families were consolidated
into a civic community, the authority of the ruler was often that of the head patriarch, the
dominant family among a group of families. Primitive family [was] also the religious
and educational unit. The father the priest; the household alter, divinities; ancestral
worship, filial piety. The dominant pattern, others subordinated even when they split
off. Contribution of family idea to ethics. Intimacy, love, care protection, ties of blood
and kin, God the father, all men brothers. But [there were] certain evils. Summed up in
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subordination of women to men, women [being] passive means of reproduction, and of
inferiors to superiors fixed naturally, physically and unalterably. Aristotle – on position
of women; and some persons naturally slaves, tools.
[End page 9]
Certain classes in community not really parts, sharers in community life but external
means, must live, supply conditions to higher, leisure class that devotes itself to higher
things. All the more significant because Aristotle was not moved primarily by family
idea but civic; family only survived and projected itself. In politics generally, the state
began as the Es-tate, the dominion of the ruler. The dominion, that over which one
exercised rule, lordship, authority, was the same as property. Women a property. The
maxim of English law; husband and wife are one and for legal purposes the husband
is that one. The religious factor came in – early political societies theocratic – divine
right of kings. The king – the direct representative of God – perpetuated long after
the priestly function was obscured. The mystic value, mysterious and emotional, awe,
reverence. One of the chief obstacles to straight [?], sensible treatment of government.
Now [it is] obvious that all these things involve a one-sidedness and distortion
of human nature – suppression of growth in some direction, exaggeration in others.
Lordship, mastery, authority stimulated out of all properties
[End page 10]
in a few. The qualities that could be developed only by direct share in associations
for advance of intellectual life, art, industry, religion, inhibited. Even as these forms of
association grow up, they are not free to grow; they have to accommodate themselves
to habits carried over from a prior dominate association.
That the unequal and unbalanced development of forms of life is the source of
social difficulties in general and that the problem of theory is to detect these causes
in detail and provide plans for remedial action thus appears. We have to add however
one more source of conflict from this source. We have not mentioned the local, or
territorial source of combination in life. The neighborhood, acquaintance, familiarity,
as bond of union. Our village, district, province, nation, as distinct from outsiders,
instinctive attitude toward the strange, alien foreign in appearance and custom, habits,
clothes, one of suspicion, fear dislike. Our church, club, clique, circle, party, college,
class, those who have the same habits, who are familiar with one another and under[End page 11]
stand one another. Exclusiveness, prejudice, jealously, isolation, hostility – from
national wars to local jealousies. Who is my neighbor? Who was neighbor to the man
who fell among thieves? The idea the need and capacity to help, to be of use are bonds
of union irrespective of local contiguity and the familiarity that makes [them] possible
is one slow to appear and hard to realize. This principle of association cuts across all
the others, runs through them all. It adds new sources of social discord and ill, and
intensifies all the old ones.
{At the present time, the need for social philosophy [is] urgent because the
increased mobility of life has affected both the great principles of association. Old
forms of association are thrown out of gear, family, church political [party], school,
because of the rapid development of industrial changes. These also have brought local
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groups into closer contact with each other increased sources of friction in increasing
those for combined action and cooperation. Made common understanding more
important and organization to perpetuate it. Critical state of world}.
[End page 12]
Lecture IV [Chapter Social Reform, pp. 72-81]
The point of view presented at the last hour was that the practical difficulties
which lie back of theoretical social problems are due to the exaggerated development
of some one interest in a given type of society, the family, the religious, the economic,
the political, that of personal acquaintance or whatever. This exaggerated development
of some interest brings groups or classes of persons into conflict with one another;
it leads to friction, contention, strife and division, and to confusion, disorder and
uncertainty. For at some point the suppressed side of human interest, the instincts
that have not got expression and satisfaction come to consciousness, and they claim
the right to operate. And they are not abstract but are embodied in definite groups
of persons. There is no struggle between science and religion, between church and
state, but there is one between those concrete human beings who exercise, say, the
controlling power through the church and other men and women whose instincts to
investigate and discover or to promote secular welfare, or achieve political power, are
repressed and thwarted.
This however is not the usual way of stating the origin, the source and nature of the
social problems that form social theory. It is usually said that the conflict of society and
the individual is such as to lead to the need of harmonizing or adjusting the respective
claims of one to the other, and that social philosophy is the theory as to which [is]
to [be] supreme or how the claims of one are to be reconciled with the those of the
other – individual liberty with social control, freedom and authority rights and law etc.
Today we take up two questions. (1) How does it happen that social philosophy has
become so preoccupied with a wrong conception? And (2) what practical difference is
there between the two ways of stating and attacking social questions? Is the difference
anything more than an academic one, a speculative difference?
One set of persons represents and embodies
[End page 1]
the dominant, law-interpreting group and other persons the subdued, depressed,
comparatively dumb group. The former have the authority, the prestige of custom,
to back them. Just because they represent what is established, the customary and
instituted order, they appear to embody the claims, authority and majesty of society.
The persons who represent the relatively suppressed group will appear to behave
socially, to be actuated by social motives just as long as they accept the existing state
of things and conform to its traditions and prescriptions. When they revolt, and desire
to change things in order that some other social interest may have fuller expression,
they do not appear to be acting in behalf of any social purpose or good at all. They are
placed in the position of making claims on their own individualistic account because
they do not have the sanction of any social aim which has become acknowledged
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authoritatively. Thus it comes about that egoism, selfishness, which has become
established by custom, which has attained recognition and prestige, puts on the garb
of social sanc[End page 1 bis]
tion and moral standards, of law and order, while activities which in reality express
a wider and more just social arrangement are held to be lawless, manifesting the selfish
desires of a number of individuals to disturb society in behalf of their own egoistic
indulgences and ambitions. This struggle for the rectification of social inequalities
which affect large groups and interests and functions in their relation to one another
is the primary reason for the belief that the primary problem is the conflict of society
with individualism and that the chief problem of social theory is to determine which
has the superior claim and authority.
For example, in the conflict of secular interests, science, industry commerce, with
the religious embodied in the ecclesiastic institution, the latter occupied the place of
social advantage. The social benefits and organizations represented by freedom of
thought and belief, of worship and conscience, were in the future. They were, so to
speak, matters of
[End page 2]
faith.
The church was a social organization that exercised positive social functions
of instruction and control; its social quality was a matter of sight. Just because the
scientific interest had not been allowed to function freely its power as a source of
organization and direction, its place as a basis of human association and companionship,
could not be demonstrated. Hence the representatives most naturally asserted that
they represented the claims of individuality, irrespective of or even in opposition to
social organizations, the claims of individuality [against] a force which shackled and
tyrannized. On the other hands, the representatives of the church naturally conceived
of themselves as upholders of law and order as conservators of all the social values
that alone made life worth living and that restrained human nature from indulging in
unbridled excess. They claimed that the innovators, those who wanted freedom of
belief, worship and teaching, were actuated by anti-social purposes, that their claims
to spiritual and moral freedom were merely cloaks for
[End page 3]
sinister self-interest which wanted to subvert society so that there would be no
check on vicious egotism and self-seeking. In short one form of self-seeking, of
selfish aggrandizement had been [illeg.] so institutionalized, so wrapped up with all
forms of life, and so controlling, that it did not seem to express selfish ambition and
aggrandizement, sheer love of power at all. It was an expression essentially (even
though marred by inevitable human defects) of the principle of social authority and
illumination.
Perhaps a still better example is found in the state of things that happens when
society is primarily organized on the family pattern, when the family association, clan
or household, is the ruling one. In such a situation, the egotism of adults and of men, of
the male adults, is stimulated, but at the same time it gets a strong social sanction – it
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acquires the appearance of being actuated by high moral motives of preservation of
social peace and order, the conservation and perpetuation of the traditions and ideals
by which society lives and is made possible. Just in the degree in which the special
and one-side interests of the male adult become institutional[End page 4]
ized, and standardized, vested interests, and they become influential, that is to
say actually bound up with all forms of social intercourse and relationships, affecting
all ceremonies and the trend of thought and action, those interests take on social
justification, glory, prestige. An innate egotism is clothed and armed with socially
important purposes and supports. Any movement then for greater freedom on the
part of the young, freedom to select vocation, to choose their own mates, to make
their own political affiliations, to determine their own moral and religious beliefs is
presented not merely as a conflict of personal wills, of one set of individuals over
against another, but as an attack of licentious individualism upon the foundations
of society; as leading to lawless individualism, overthrowing all coherent social
authority, because undermining organization. On the other hand, the young, while
they may feel a strong faith that the accomplishing of their desire for greater freedom
would improve society and put human relationships on a secured basis, can not prove
it by pointing to an established order where this state is realized.
[End page 5]
It can only claim that certain natural, inherent and inalienable claims of individuality
are being suppressed by the exactions of convention and social institutions. The
social side of their aspiration may present itself only as a vague utopian idealism,
a passionate assertion of a new and redeemed society. Actually they claim the right
to assert individualism no matter what happens socially; they become rebels against
society while in truth [they are] only asking for social reorganization, which will make
the relation of the family group to scientific, literary, religious, industrial and political
groups more flexible, less frozen and rigid.
One of the most marked movements of the later nineteenth century and present
day is feminism – the movement for the rights of women, the emancipation of
woman. Rights to an education, to a place in industry or economic independence, to
engage in professions previously engrossed by men, to take part in making laws and
administering them. Now it is clear that that has not been generally thought of as a
struggle between social groups, or between sets of individuals. It has present[End page 6]
ed itself as [a] claim for greater liberty on the part of some individuals, as at
its best a protest against social abuses, tyrannies, oppressions. While those who
did not like it, whose comfort privileges, enjoyments and power were disturbed or
threatened, regarded it as an antisocial willful attack upon the very foundation of
social relationships on the part of a few aggressive, more or less ill-natured and
disappointed women. As a matter of fact it is an incident of general social changes,
of new action of social forces bringing about a re-construction of social groups and
of their adjustment to one another – not to be specific a destruction of the family, but
among other things an insuring that the humane and sympathetic interests and aims
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of the family which have been the especial charge of women shall not be confined
within the walls of the home, but shall have a chance to [be] carried into schools,
shops, factories, professions, politics etc., and that the more impersonal, abstract and
possessive interest of the male shall
[End page 7]
no longer so dominate action as to set up barriers against the free give and take of
social groups and the interests which they represent.
It is interesting to note that it is in the earlier stages of a movement when its
object is least evident, when it takes the most the form of a protest, that its so-called
individualistic character is most evident. We may indeed distinguish three stages. In
the first there is such an equilibrium that the suppressed group or class is not aware
of its suppression, or takes it as part of the established and necessary order of things.
There are not opportunities that suggest an idea of a different state of things, and hence
no idea of an effort to bring about change. When slavery is most complete, when
government is most successfully despotic there is no thought of slavery or despotism
as evils to be protested against. Only when conditions are such as to stimulate a
consciousness of powers which are not expressed and satisfied is there definite revolt
and effort at change. When industrial changes took away
[End page 8]
from women household activities that had belonged to them previously, there was
not only relative loss of activity, but also a leisure for other things. Better education
was given. This created a sense of powers that had no outlet and created restlessness
and uneasiness which didn’t exist as long as women had [been] more completely
absorbed in the household life.
The second stage is than that of restlessness, discontent, because social conditions
have changed enough to arouse a sense of powers which do not function, which have
no definite social channel provided for their utilization. This is the period of marked
“individualism” of revolt against authority and established institutions, a feeling
that they are [either] merely conventional, or else positively oppressive and to be
destroyed in the interests of individual freedom, which is negatively viewed [as]
absence of restraint doing as one pleases etc. (3) But as social organization proceeds
and the capacities of the submerged group are not merely stimulated and brought to
consciousness in an emotional way, but get some definite channel of exercise, the
demand ceases to be for individualistic expres[End page 9]
sion, and becomes a demand for a chance to perform a badly needed social
function. The claim shifts from a right to a neglected social duty.
There are similar stages in the growth of the scientific interest. (1) At first it is
merely submerged; there is conformity, acquiescence in whatever ideas are current.
The authority of custom is so general that it is not felt to be an external authority; it is
just part of the regular and unquestioned order. Whatever independence or originality
exists finds vent in framing fantastic tales, or myths and legends which do not conflict
with the recognized system of beliefs. Then as some event, generally contact with
people having different ideas and beliefs or with unusual natural phenomena through
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travel, arouses doubt and questioning. (2) Doubts and questions are however usually
resented by the existing social, ecclesiastic and political regime as involving an attack
upon its authority, as anti-social, subversive. Persecutions, strong or mild [take]
[End page 10]
place. Hence the new inquiries, which represent the rise out of its submergence,
are likely to identify the existing social order with society itself and to claim the right
of free inquiry and belief not as right to exercise a power socially needed, but as a
purely personal, private right, inherent in them as individuals, irrespective of all social
bearings
[End page 11]
The natural right to inquire and chose belief is said to be supreme even if it
involves social subversion. (3) In the third stage, the scientific movement has got
enough organization, it has grouped about itself a sufficient number of persons, so that
it has a social standing and repute; it has enough headway so that its social bearings
are apparent, and the claim of the right to exercise the scientific interest is made in
behalf of social need and welfare not in behalf of purely individualistic non-social
factors.
The same three stages may be detected in the history of the labor movement.
First slavery and serfdom acquiesced in on both side as matter of course. Second,
a social change that arouses a consciousness of wants and desires and a realization
of suppression of activities – a movement of revolt, of emancipation, of claims for
personal rights and enjoyments. Natural, inalienable rights to life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness residing in the individual irrespective of social consideration.
Thirdly it is seen that these are only mask for a social need and concern: the demand
that laborers
[End page 11a]
have the education, the resources, the cultivation and power so that society can
have its work done most effectively and happily.
II. What practical difference does it make whether we adopt this point of view or
the traditional one of conflict and adjustment of social and individual? The answer is
that the latter leads to the formation of opposed groups based on emotion, prejudice
and vested rights and wrongs, and stimulates resort to the method of dispute,
recrimination and even physical force. Men takes sides for the social in general, for
authority and control in general or for liberty and individualism in general. There is
assertion and counter-assertion, bitter quarreling, but no way of arriving at a common
conclusion by the use of intelligence in analyzing specific conditions, studying definite
problems of cause and effects. Blind adherence to conservatism and to change, under
conditions which makes the first despotic reactionary and the second destructive. If
the point of view here urged were generally ado[End page 11b]
pted, it would be recognized that institutions, conventions, modes of social control
that direct the thoughts and acts of the members of society are bound to grow up; they
are inevitable; it is impossible to get rid of them – to destroy one form is only to set up
another – as [it] may be seen in the rule of the Bolskeviki after destroying that of the
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Czars. It is not only inevitable, but also in some form indispensable, useful. The real
point is to discriminate among them, for customs, conventions, institutions are better
and worse, and the point is to keep the good and improve or do away with the worse.
This means an appeal to intelligence, not to bias and prejudice and vested interests, to
inquiry to trace causes and consequences, to see what produced this or that institution
or arrangement, the historic method, and also to trace consequences, to see how
the arrangement works, what effects it produces – and the same for any proposed
measure of reform, improvement. The practical difference is thus the substitution of
the scientific method for the method of opinion,
[End page 12]
dogmatic assertion, bitter recriminations and disparaging name calling, epithets
of abuse. Method of analysis, of taking things in details and discriminating, instead
of wholesale isms.
It thus smooths a path for orderly and continuous progress. The innovator has a
case to prove. He is the propounder of a hypothesis that the welfare of society would
be promoted by the adoption of a certain change, that if this harms a special class
for a time, this loss to the class is in the interests of the community of the whole, and
is the measure of justice to some other class now suffering from inadequate social
recognition. He does not present himself as a mere rebel, hostile to the authority as
such, willing to tear down recklessly in a blind hope something better may appear.
His claim that certain defects exist, and that they may be remedied by the adoption of
certain proposed measures of change are propositions to be examined in the light of
facts – first facts of history, existing facts and conditions, second new facts, facts to
be brought in.
[End page 13]
Lecture VI [Chapter Communication and Associated Living, pp. 90-98]
The supreme test of any social arrangement, custom, institution, law etc. is its
relationship to promoting living together, association, intercourse, communication
– exchange of feelings and ideas that makes experiences common (common,
communication, community). Does it further full, free all-around passage,
transmission of social values, material and ideal? Or does it like the caste system,
like classes stratification, build up walls, produce exclusiveness, aloofness, nonintercourse? Does it like the autocratic system in government and industry, like the
ancestral patriarchal family system, make the channels of communication one-sided,
going from superior to inferior, but checking and clogging any reflex action? Does it
keep the social arrangement flexible, capable of modification through interaction with
other arrangements, or does it harden and ossify into rigidity? A development of the
meaning of such questions, as social tests, criteria, is the subject of today.
1. True social or community life means inter-action, reciprocal influence, mutual
response to the needs and claims of the other parts of partners in the combination. The
import of this idea is best seen in its negation.
[End page 1]
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Lecture X [Chapter The State, pp. 125-132]
We now come to a discussion of the distinctively political aspect of social life.
It may be marked off by the nature of the problems with which it deals: These are
such questions as I) the nature and scope of the State, or the problem of political
authority; II) the nature and constitution of Government, or the agencies of exercise
of authority, the value of various forms of Government, as monarchy, empire,
aristocracy, democracy, pure versus representative democracy, the legitimate powers
of government, legislative, executive and judicial and the relation among them, etc.;
III) the nature and [the] scope of Law, its relation to Government on one hand [and]
to the citizen on the other; IV) The system of legal Rights and Duties or obligations
in which the system of law becomes concrete and operative. If we attempt to define
the conception of the political instead of enumerating the various problems included
in the discussion, we may get help by noting two things. First the conception of Law
runs through all the problems mentioned. Secondly, the conception that law has an
authority which is not simply moralistic – that is which does not depend merely
upon its recognition by the individual conscience but which is enforced even against
personal wish by some general agency. Whenever we begin to consider what any
particular individual may lawfully do, and what he can do only unlawfully, and what
agencies and means prescribe what is lawful and what not, and protect him within his
sphere of lawful activities, and limit him, restrain and penalize him in his unlawful
activities we are within the sphere of political discussion.
We begin the discussion with a consideration of the meaning of the State as a
supreme political authority. We must however note that law and authority are not
coextensive with the State as we now know the State, and that the present identification
of the problem of the nature of the state with the nature of political authority, the
power to make law and enforce laws of conduct is a product of historical development
which has not everywhere gone on to the same extent – that for example
[End page 1]
many of the present problems of China are closely connected with the fact that
she is face to face with peoples and countries who have carried the formation and
consolidation of [the] State as the centre of social regulation further than China has
done. As was noted earlier, the family and clan organization, based on blood tie real
or imputed, was doubtless the first organization to exercise control, to determine what
its members could and could not do, and to reward and punish them. It contributed the
paternalistic or even patriarchal conception to the State when the latter was formed,
and in connection with certain religious and moral creeds became the backbone of the
absolutistic state, the State which centres mystically in a single family or individual,
of a semi-divine or super-man character – an Emperor, Ceasar, Mikado. Even the most
extreme form of political anarchism – that which desires the abolition of the State –
must still recognize the existence of some social group, which as a group, exercises
some control and discipline over its members – unions, societies, corporations,
partnerships, schools collectively etc. It throws light upon the problems of politics to
note that every such organization has rules and regulations, either written or unwritten.
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While the anarchist may put the emphasis upon the right of any individual to enter
or leave any such organization at his own sweet will, yet he must admit that children
for example are not in any position to exercise such choice, and that entering any
continuing organization entails permanent obligations – that is, puts one under some
authority. Thus I knew an anarchist society in the US where every member pledged
himself never to vote or take office, to have as little to do with government and
officials as possible. The pledge to the organization was of the nature of acceptance
of political authority. In practice it will be found that anarchism, or the denial of the
value and validity of all political ideas and activities, centres in two things: distrust of
the State in the forms in which it now exists as a beneficial
[End page 2]
political agency – not so much a denial of politics as of a certain organ as the best
instrument of social regulation, and secondly, in the belief that all exercise of physical
force for coercion or repression is unjustifiable. The former point while important is
clearly secondary. Now this use of force is usually taken to mark off the region of the
legal and political from purely Moral. Hence this problem is central. What if any is
the justification for the use of force in connection with observance of law, of rules of
notion, and with penalization for departure from the rules which are inherent in every
continuing social organization? Shall individuals be left to be the sole judges? Shall
the sole penalty be social disapproval expressed in purely moral forms and without
regular means of expression – that is, an agreement on the part of all members of the
community to refuse to speak to anyone who did a certain thing, would certainly imply
political organization and might have physical consequences, sickness and death. Is it
wrong to use force or the threat of force to get things done which an individual does
not wish to do or to use it to restrict his liberty of action – taking property away from
him, putting him in prison or to death?
The following considerations may be borne in mind.
1. It is not possible to make a sharp absolutistic separation between the moral and
the physical. The issue is not between physical force on one side and moral force
on the other. It is between an intelligent and constructive use of physical force and
a negative, wasteful destructive one. Physical force must be used in any case. The
problem is to regulate its use to get the best results; the moral question has to do with
its use as measured or judged by consequences. Most physical force used even by a
despotic state operates through mental intermediaries – through threats of punishment.
It appeals to a motive, and thence a moral factor is introduced. The trouble is that the
motive is so largely a negative one, fear, timidity, desire to keep out of trouble,
[End page 3]
motives that depress and thwart human energy instead of evoking it for use, in
those upon when the threat of punitive force is exercised, while in those who exercise
it, it stimulates only the most rudimentary mental energies. Possession of force is
such an easy resource that it does not call out foresight, ingenuity or consideration
of complex factors. In evoking only the cruder human powers, it also encourages an
irregular uncoordinated use of them – what we call arbitrary action. Even where the
use of force upon the part of governing officials is itself regulated by law, it must be
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admitted that much force is employed stupidly – as for example in the ordinary jails
and prisons. Force is us used wisely when it is used to arouse attention, to make men
think, to reconsider their course of action, to form plans better adapted to maintain
order. It is used unwisely when it produces only emotional reactions, fear, resentment,
hatred, sullenness, or when it dulls and depresses power of observation and reflection,
circumscribes thought.
On the other hand, moral force without some physical expression is an
impossibility. Every act requires physical energy for execution and it changes the
environment in some way. The use of judgment, persuasion, reasoning, appeal to
conscience, statement of the case are distinctively moral, but they can be manifested
only through physical agencies. Sarcasm may be as painful as a lash of a whip, reproof
may be harder to bear than a slap. Moreover the use of speech may not be adequate
evidence of genuine belief or conviction. What a person is willing to do is a proof
whether there is anything more than speech. Talk is cheap. Is the person willing to
back up his talk by other actions? Readiness to act upon believe when involving risk
is the universal evidence that an idea is real. Ideas and ideals that persons do not care
to enforce, to use energy to carry out, are unreal.
If moral force cannot be separated from physical, what then is
[End page 4]
meant by it? Two elements in moral force; [it] assumes community of interest not
hostility. [It] Assumes that both parties have a like interest in reaching an understanding
and settlement, and that the other party is willing to cooperate in reaching a conclusion.
Much use of force even in behalf of justice and right assumes hostility, antagonism,
unwillingness on the part of the other side to come to a reasonable and right conclusion.
Hence friction and recriminations are excited. The other person assumes that he can
make his claim good only by resort to violence. The excitement of resentment and
ill-will produces more new wrongs than were settled. Use of persuasion, discussion,
assumes reasonableness and at least moderate friendliness on the part of another
party. Kindly treatment is sometimes disarming. Hence even when this method of
persuasion by argument cannot be used further because of the unwillingness of the
other party to engage, force should be used in such a way as to promote attention and
thoughtfulness rather than [as] an end in itself. The question is the kind and manner of
using force that will best develop the reasonable attitude. Passive or active resistance,
positive punishment or isolation, withdrawal of intercourse?
We may distinguish three grades of force. One power, energy in carrying out
ends, which is not only an evidence of good faith and sincerity of belief but also the
only way this moral ideas can be anything more than inner idle sentiments. Second
is such use of energy as disturbs others inflicts pain or suffering or loss upon others.
Now the fact that this is exercised by the state instead of by an individual doesn’t of
itself justify it. The question is whether it is used in such a way that the loss brings
the other party to a more reasonable frame of mind, and makes possible intercourse
on terms beneficial to both. Then in the third place, there is violence – force which
is destructive, harmful with no educative or restorative affect at all – or one quite
subordinate to the destructiveness wrought. It must be
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[End page 5]
admitted that much action by states, as well as by private individuals, and in
peace as well as in war, violence judged by this criterion and hence to be morally
condemned. But provision of schools is almost wholly a constructive work. Schools
require money. If a group of persons refuse to contribute, force may be used to bring
them to a better mind (to pay taxes) as well as to carry on the constructive work. Cases
of legitimate coercion, compulsion, coercion, fall in this class.
If we add another consideration, the theoretical justification for some use of force
by the state as an organization is completed. It was said that any social ideal must be
based upon the facts, the necessities of human nature and the world. Now the sense of
injustice, resentment and redress are very strong in human nature. If there is no public
agency of justice private persons will take correction and reprisals in their own hands.
In the end there will be more irregular wasteful destructive force, more invasion of the
freedom of others, than if there were a public reservoir of force. State action is a draft,
a diversion, of private action which is economically expedient. The case is seen in war
between nations. What is needed is some superior judge and administrator. Without
it, every individual nation arms and betakes itself to force when it thinks or fancies
it is wronged. So before the institution of public agencies armed with force, there
was more or less a feud, a private war, going on all the time. Moreover without any
bad intention persons run into each other and do harm in the course of each carrying
out his own plans. Some kind of impartial arbiter with power to enforce decision is
needed.
These arguments do not establish the fact that the State should be the umpire and
executor. They only point to the need of some outside party, beyond the individuals
immediately concerned. When, however, social relations become complicated, and a
wider and wider range
[End page 6]
of interests are affected, when the consequences of acts spread beyond the individual
to third parties, the agency called into operation must become increasingly permanent
and comprehensive in its action. The obvious objection for example to the anarchistic
theory of perfectly free relations in marriage, with no public supervision or control
at all, is that the marriage relation does not terminate with the two persons directly
concerned. The natural consequence of marriage is children, and their interests must
be conserved. If the intelligence and affection of parents doesn’t suffice, then there
must be an outside power, somebody authorized to act, with coercion and control if
necessary. Now the different parts of modern society grow more and more interlaced.
It is more and more impossible to say that the effect of any act is limited to the parties
directly engaged [?] in it. The effect upon the interest and happiness and positive
freedom of others is such that there must be an agency at least as extensive and
enduring as the interests concerned. Hence the development of the modern state. It is
fair to say that if the anarchistic experiment were tried with good faith and intelligence
under all [the] complex conditions of civilization and over any large territory, it would
soon develop an agency for regulation and for settlement of disputes and conflicts.
The people in relation to this agency might not be called a State, but it would be like
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the State. The most that could be said for it is that it would exercise the functions of
the present state in a more effective way with less accompanying abuses.
This discussion while centering about the objection to all use of coercion in law
and administration as immoral extends much further. In showing how force should
be used, the ends for which it should be used, we get a moral criterion for judging
the state, and also get light thrown upon the problems connected with the historic
evolution of the state. Historically it must be admitted that the state originated
[End page 7]
in violence and oppression, in conquest of one people by another usually and [in]
the desire of the victorious people to hold the conquered in such subjection that they
could exploit them. It must be admitted that the historic state has been conducted
largely in the interests of an exploiting governing few, a reigning house or dynasty, or
an economic class that could use political power to further its own interests. But it must
also be admitted that political struggles have been waged against these conditions, and
the political struggle for democratic government has been in the main an attempt to
see that the state functioned in behalf of the public interest – that it legislates and
administers in the interest of the people at large.
The other element in the criterion is that the operations of the state be as constructive
as possible – that in its effects upon human nature its work be fostering, cultivating,
rather than restrictive and choking, that it uses power to call out attention and thought
rather than mere blind emotion, and that it stimulates publicity, communication, spread
of ideas and enlightenment, instead of encouraging [illeg.], and the withholding of
knowledge and skill.
For the long time in early modern thought political controversy centred about the
worth of the state, being carried on by those who held that a limitation of the arbitrary
power of the state was the most essential thing in England, and upon the continent by
those who were impressed by the value of the state as a condition of social peace and
order – the partisans of the liberal and limited state on one hand and of the absolute
state on the other. While the former have been upon the whole successful in their
desire to develop a government which should be representative of the public interest
and responsible to the people, the latter have been largely successful in imposing
their view of the state itself as sovereign and supreme, having no authority above it
and owing no responsibility to anybody. In other words, the nationalist state has been
gaining in
[End page 8]
power and dignity, while the action of legislators and administrators has been
hedged about by more and more popular checks. Before considering the seeming
contradiction presented by a state that is absolute while its organs of action – the
government – are limited, we shall consider the two doctrines of the two schools of
political thought.
[End page 9]
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Lecture XI [Chapter The Government, pp. 133-140]
As was pointed out, the state is more than a people possessing a common territory;
more even than a people a society, with a country and a common language, history,
tradition and moral outlook. It implies a political organization also, an organization
of the people for the purpose of exercising authority within and without, that is with
respects to other peoples and countries, and also with respect to its own constituents.
The organ, agency, instrumentality for the exercise of this authority is Government.
The importance of the expression of the State through Government is so great that
there is tendency to confuse the two. There is this much justification for the confusion
that the problems of politics or the state become acute when they focus in problem of
Government. The difference is clearly seen in such a fact as this: the sovereignty of the
State is a commonplace of modern political thought; to restrict and define the powers
of Government has been the chief political struggle of the least two or three centuries.
Put briefly the fundamental problem is this. The Government should be an organ
of the general interest, an expression of the public will – that is, it should stand for and
enforce the widespread interest that the whole society has in the acts of special groups
or classes, because the consequences of these special acts ramify and affect others who
have no direct concern – examples from family life, business corporation, contracts.
Thus there is required an agency to formulate, express and execute the wider interest; to
keep the activities of the various factors of the whole balanced and proportionate. Now
this is a task of delicacy and complexity. For it deals with regulation of the indirect and
remote consequences of acts – the public interest is not so immediate and conspicuous
as the private. Is human wisdom equal to the task? But aside from this difficulty, the
Government is itself composed of human beings having their own private interests,
their own love of power and gain. Government is not an abstract idea,
[End page 1]
impersonal and transparent, but involves an aggregate of human beings with the
same appetites and passions as their fellows. Is it then safe to clothe with power?
Will not the fact that their power has a social and moral sanction only add to the ease
and thoroughness with which they can use it for their own ends, or make the task
of maintaining public order and security incidental to their own power, glory and
enjoyment? Put in a less extreme form we get the problem which has controlled both
the political theories and the political struggles of the Western world for three hundred
years: How shall Government be constituted so that it shall adequately perform its
legitimate function, that is [to] operate in the public interest, in behalf of the country
as a whole, and not encourage the possessors of authority to employ it for their own
special interests? How shall power enough be granted to fulfill the first task and yet
that power be limited in its concrete exercise?
The problem consisted of two factors. One was historic. There was in
existence Government by dynasties – that is, by families claiming superior birth
and rank, patrimonial possession of the country, reigning by divine or some other
unquestionable authority, and therefore not responsible to the people, responsible
only to God – the absolutistic state in theory whether so exercised in practice or not.
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This was the particular historic background. The other factor is the standing one – a
problem of human nature. Irresponsible power tends to arbitrary and selfish action.
As Lincoln put it “No man is wise or good enough to govern other men without
their consent.” Expanded somewhat, “No matter how wise and good at the outset,
wisdom and goodness deteriorate when combined with possession of irresponsible
power over others.” A Chinese scholar has acutely remarked that the European theory
of responsible Government is based upon a belief in the inherent badness of men, and
the consequent needs of checks even upon rulers. While the old Chinese theory was
based upon faith in the intrinsic
[End page 2]
goodness of human nature, the orderliness and loyalty of the subjects, the wisdom
and benevolence of rulers. Hence the Confucian political philosophy really assumed
the supremacy of moral forces, while the European philosophies – at least of the liberal
school – have assumed the need of physical backing in order to prevent the immoral
forces from becoming supreme. This raises a great problem, but it would be truer to
state that the European theory is based not upon belief in the inherent badness of human
nature, but that possession of unchecked power inevitably corrupts human nature – it
becomes evil and foolish under such conditions. Another remark that may be made is
that the increasing complexity and mobility of modern life has immensely increased
the range of questions and affairs in which there is a public interest. Big association
of labor and capital, growth of foreign and domestic commerce, selling goods at a
distance, travel, transportation, telegraphs, doing business at a distance, migration
and mobility of populations, has lessened the hold of local moral influences, those
that come from subjection of an individual to the stead inspection and judgment of his
own local and definite permanent group, while it has also increased the remoteness
[of] scope and indirectness of consequences. Hence more public or political action is
demanded than in a society that is continuing on old lines. The decay of customary
control means an increase of legislative and administrative control. The channels in
which moral forces operate change. Hence the absurdity of the plea sometimes heard
– at least from foreigners – that while new methods of industry, commerce, finance
etc. should be introduced into China, railways and factories etc., the old moral basis of
social organization and government should be left intact. This is impossible, so there is
no use of discussing its desirability. The mere effect of rapid and easy communication
in making a population mobile means inevitably a lessening of the old family and
neighborhood control and the
[End page 3]
need of new organs. The political problems of China today thus resemble in many
respects those of Europe in the period of [the] most active transition, the seventeenth
century – though complicated by an additional fact; the changes and experiments of
Europe in the seventeenth century could go on without danger of interference from
other nations which had already passed through the transitional stage of political
organization into an integrated state.
We return then to a consideration of the various theories which have been evolved
in Europe in connection with this problem of the development of a Government
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sufficiently powerful to maintain national security, peace and order remembering that
each theory corresponds to some strong practical act. The first type of theory was
generated in the disorder, strife and lawlessness attendant upon the break down of the
authority of the Roman Church and Holy Roman Empire – the rise of independent
states, development of trade, shifting from agricultural basis to industrial one. It said
in effect that the importance of a strong single central power is so great in order
to give men security of life and to enforce peace within and without, that no price
is too great to pay – not even the surrender of all powers to the rulers of the state.
Machiavelli, Hobbes and Spinoza on the theoretical side were the great names in this
line of solution. State morality is of a different kind from private. The officers of the
state when acting in behalf of the state are justified in acting upon a different moral
basis [than] an individual. Without the central authority society would fly to pieces –
would dissolve into anarchy and chaos, and no morality at all would be possible even
were it desired by private individuals. No powerful government no state, no state no
society, no society no stable human morals at all. So much is at stake therefore that
rulers are justified in defense of the unity and power of the state to resort to fraud and
violence to acts that are indefensible in private morality. This point was espec[End page 4]
ially [illeg.] by Machiavelli, who developed rules of statecraft – political maxims
based on the end justifies the means, and since the end is supreme it justifies in case of
emergency all and any means – expediency is the only rule. The Englishman Hobbes
worked out a detailed scheme. According to him individuals left to themselves are
forced into such conflict with one another that life becomes uncertain, property
insecure – the natural state [is] a war of all against all, from fear of attack by others,
from love of gain, and from desire for glory and honor – natural expressions of the
fundamental psychological law of self-love. But there is also a natural law, urging
men to self-preservation. This leads them to take the step which alone will make
their lives secure – they all agree to surrender all their power into the hands of some
authority. They divest themselves of all natural power and right. They agree to submit
to the regulations of the Supreme power, the sovereignty thus created, keeping nothing
back. Thus power because it is sovereign is responsible to nothing on earth, only to
conscience and God. It may be republican oligarchical or monarchical in form. But
its authority is unlimited by law or legal right. Expediency will tell the rulers not to
push their power to the extreme. Wisdom will tell them to use it for the happiness
of the whole people. But there can be no legal or political guarantees of such use of
power. For the Government is the source of all law and politics, and hence cannot be
under its own creatures. The only final check is moral practical – fear of revolution,
fear that the people will repudiate the original contract they made. Spinoza developed
under conditions of continental disorder and insecurity (similar to those in England
in the first half of the seventeenth century) the germinal ideas of Machiavelli and
Hobbes. It emphasized however more than either the moral necessity of the state as a
condition of sociable relations among men and also the necessity of social relations to
an individual for the development
[End page 5]
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of his own personality, rational and therefore moral. Under the influence of social
relations and intercourse alone, does the individual cease to be a creature of appetite
and impulse making the private pleasure the measure of good and evil, and becomes
a creature who has reason, that is a universal measure of good and evil. But only
through the recognition of law, which is a product of political authority, does man
emerge into the rational and moral estate. Spinoza, however, also held that while any
form of government is preferable to no government (and therefore revolution is never
justifiable) yet the republican form of Government is the ideal, and that in the degree
in which humanity should, under the influence of law, become rational, would be the
goal toward which the future evolutions of states would certainly tend. Meantime,
more arbitrary kinds of governments were at least a school master to restrain the reign
of appetite and passion in the masses and create the conditions for the education into
rationality. In that sense every state, even the worst, is an expression of divine reason.
The state rather than the church is the representative of God, the Absolute on earth.
There is but one necessary moral limit to state action. Since it exists to make possible
the evolution from a state of appetite to one of reason and law, it cannot encroach upon
liberty of thought [and] liberty of reason without contradicting itself.
In some form or other the theory of the necessity of political organization to
the existence of society, that is, of peaceful and orderly and mutual helpful human
intercourse, became an axiom of all continental thought. Hence the power of the state
is the foundation of morals, either actively or negatively a condition without which
individuals could not be truly moral. Its importance is such that it must be absolute
and irresponsible. France at the time of the revolution had been influenced by the
liberal theory of England still
[End page 6]
to be discussed, and threw it over. But it remained for Europe, especially for
German, modified by the form into which it was thrown by the German philosophers
who made a synthesis of Spinoza with the political philosophy of Plato and Aristotle,
according to which the state is the culmination of a manifestation of divine reason and
will on the earth. It is superindividual and superhuman – an objectification in the form
of time of the eternal purposes, meanings, Ideas, of God. The liberal philosophy, it was
claimed, had gone into bankruptcy, committed suicide, in the excesses of the French
Revolution, which had proclaimed the principle of individual liberty and rights. As
against that the German theory of the State asserted the supremacy of the value and
dignity of the state, which humanly speaking, could in essentials do nothing wrong in
respect to its subjects, while in its contests with other states, victory was a God given
sign of which had right on its side. As one state exhausts its mandate from Divine will,
as revealed in its defeat, spiritual and moral domination, as well as political passes to
another nation.
(See, German Philosophy and Politics) The political history of Europe cannot be
understood without knowledge of the extent to which this view of the State as the
foundation not only of secure material life but of secure moral life has influenced
men’s minds. Under the guise of idealistic philosophy and a progressive evolution of
absolute purposes, Hegel reestablishes in a modernized form the exploded doctrine of
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[the] divine right of kings, and the rulers of Prussia made these conceptions the basis
of an enlightened and in many ways benevolent despotism. The effect of the theory
was double. On the one hand, it supplied a philosophic basis for autocracy, supported
the practical demand for a strong army as the proper arm of the centralized state, and
thus promoted militarism, and also fostered a conviction among the Germans that
their Kultur was higher than that of other peoples, since they
[End page 7]
alone realized the ethical function and superhuman basis of the state. It gave a
mystic quality to state activities which protected [illeg.] examination and criticism
by the common citizen, and led to an identification of moral duty with submission
to the direction of the state. But since in effect, the state is administered through
a government, this mystic doctrine really maintained the supremacy of a certain
class. To the credit of the philosophy must be put its stimulation of the conception
of the state as a cultural agency, not simply [as] a tool of police order. According to
it, individuals in isolation are incapable of coping with ignorance, want, destitution,
poverty and misery. The state [through] government must foster art and science as
well as promote education. It must not only protect individuals in their property but
must make it possible for them to have and keep property. Hence a general system of
insurance against sickness accident old age, unemployment etc. These things might
be carried on by any modern state on the basis of some other political philosophy, but
there is no doubt that the conception of the state as higher and deeper than society
and the chief agency of moral existence made these activities easier of adoption and
execution, and that the states which have been most influenced by the liberalistic
philosophy – which we shall now discuss – were [illeg.] in their measures of social
welfare under political authority, and that so far voluntary means, philanthropy etc.,
have not made good the deficit.
[End page 8]
Lecture XII [Chapter Political Liberalism, pp. 141-146]
The problem under discussion is the nature of the exercise of power by the state.
How does power acquire moral validity, authority, how does it become right? The
answer of the school whose theory was discussed at the last hour is in effect that the
question is meaningless; that apart from the organization of social life which is termed
the state, there are no such things as right and wrong effective among men. The state
is the basis of the possibility of a genuine righteousness among men; without it men
will live the life of appetite and passion, that is of brutes, even if of refined brutes;
that the repressive and disciplinary side of the state, its political side, is incidental
and secondary to its higher value in making rational action and concord based upon it
possible. We come now to the theory which holds that the individuals live in society,
live morally prior to political authority and that the existence of a power which
restricts individual choice and action, that is liberty, is a real problem – that the state
requires justification, and that there is but one way of justifying it. Government is just
legitimate, has authority instead of brute power, only when it protects and secures
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rights that exist independently of it, in idea or even in time prior to its formation.
John Locke was the first great spokesman of this political philosophy of liberalism.
He wrote in effect to justify the political revolution of 1688 whereby the Stuart
dynasty was expelled and a new dynasty under constitutional restrictions brought in.
The so-called limited monarchy, or more correctly speaking, government which is
under definite responsibilities to the people in the exercise of its powers. Locke like
Hobbes believed that political society originated in a compact and derived its powers
from that compact. But unlike Hobbes he didn’t believe that man in the natural (prepolitical state) was wholly selfish and egoistic and non-moral. He believed that he was
a rational and social creature, recognizing his obligations to his fellows, and
[End page 1]
in the main inclined to act upon reasonably, rightly. But the state of nature had
some great inconveniences. There was no one authorized to declare and promulgate
the law of right intercourse with one’s fellows; there was uncertainty and obscurity
as to obligations. Moreover, in case of dispute or conflict there was no impartial
judge, and no impartial executor of justice, no impartial redressor of wrongs. Each
individual is likely to be prejudiced in judging his own case and to be passionate
and unwise in securing his rights and rectifying his wrongs. Hence, sensible of these
inconveniences, that is of the bad consequences of this condition, men met together,
and agreed to surrender their right to judge and execute, to protect and redress by
force their own rights. This they handed over to political authority to government
which therefore came into existence as a funded or pooled power. But its powers
were strictly limited by terms of the bargain or agreement that gave it existence. Its
sole business is to promulgate the law, to judge of disputes between citizens and to
secure fulfillment of its decisions. For these ends /sum total of the/ it has the powers
of all citizens at command. And the citizens consent to this and agree to obey. But this
power is limited to securing certain ends – the security of the life and property of the
citizens. Men did not give up all their liberties for the sake of doing so; they gave up
a few liberties in order to make the rest of their rights more certain and guaranteed.
When the political authority (like that of the Stuarts) passes these bounds, and renders
life and property insecure by arbitrary action, it is a usurper. It breaks the terms of
the agreement upon which its power depends. Revolution under such circumstances
is not illegal rebellion. It is merely a recognition by the people that the Government
has abdicated its functions and is no longer a legitimate authority. In effect the people
reserve the right to decide whether the Government is carrying out the purposes of the
[End page 2]
original contract.
Many persons have thought that the theory was exploded when it was shown
that such compacts were not the historical origin of government, that they are purely
mythological, historically speaking. But the fundamental idea is not touched thereby.
Locke was not trying to account for the actual origin of governments. He was trying
to account for the source of the rightful power of the government or political authority.
And he found it in the use of this power to make the rights of individuals clear and
explicit by promulgating laws, and to protect individuals in the surer and more constant
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exercise of their rights. Government exists for the sake of maintaining rights that exist
in idea if not in historic time before it. The theory proclaimed the responsibility of all
government to certain ends for the sake of which it exists, and the right of the citizens
to determine whether the government is serving or destroying those ends. It brought
the discussion of state affairs within the region of experience, out of the vague and
mysterious air of divine rights and the superman, into the region of judgment and
examination by commonsense tests of utility. It was in no sense a revolutionary theory
except at crises of extreme misgovernment. It was but a check on possible excessive
arbitrary action. It did not hold that in the [illeg.] of legitimate government the people
were the actual holders of political power and authority. Locke was a monarchist not
a republican, but a constitutional monarchist. The radical step was taken by Rousseau
who was the philosopher of the French Revolution of 1789 as Locke was of that of
1688 in Great Britain. Rousseau held that there were no legitimate governments in
existence, but that a just one might come into existence when all the people made a
contract with one another – not with the government – to surrender all their private
wills to a common will which should put the force of all individuals back of the rights
and liberties of every member of society. The government is but a hired
[End page 3]
servant to be engaged and dismissed at the will of the collective people for
executing, carrying out its declared purpose. Thus the organized people are the sole
repository of political power which they never surrender for any purpose. The only
legitimate government is the democratic where the people as a body makes law –
the legislative function being the prerogative of sovereignty because it declares the
common will and interest. Thus the idea of popular sovereignty was extended from the
original formation of political society and its spasmodic exercise in case of extreme
misgovernment to the regular and constant maintenance of political activity. Only
the democratic state is a legitimate form of state because the only one that solves the
problem of reconciling individual liberty with the common good.
This doctrine while embodied more or less in the French Revolution did not take
root in England where it was regarded as revolutionary as Bolshevism is today. In
the early nineteenth century however Locke’s liberalism was greatly modified by a
new movement of thought, proceeding from leaders of the utilitarian school. Locke’s
theory was largely as [we] have seen negative in its practical workings out. It aimed
at preventing extreme abuses in government. It was quite consistent with such an
oligarchy as governed England till the Reform Bill of 1832 and later. The reformers
of liberalism wanted positive guarantees that the Government would actually operate
for the greatest good of the greatest number instead of in behalf of class interests –
democratic in effect though not a pure democracy like Rousseau’s in source. Their
main ideas were (1) that each individual is the best judge of his own interests and
welfare. Therefore there must be universal suffrage, so that the interest of each shall
receive an equitable, fair expression. Everyone knows where the shoe pinches his own
[foot], no one can possibly represent him in the primary expression of his desires. (2)
[Members] of government, of the official class are individuals who left to themselves
will pursue their own interests. There must be
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[End page 4]
such measures as will make them identify their own interests with those of the
people. Frequent and stated elections is the means. By having to render an account
frequently, they will be made responsible to the people and find their own interest in
serving their constituents – the idea of representative government. (3) Paradoxical as
it sounds, the lawmakers must themselves be under [the] law and act according to it.
There must be a fundamental law which shall determine not merely how judges and
administrative officials shall act but which shall decide what the lawmakers shall and
shall not do and how they may do it – a constitution.
(1) Popular suffrage, representative legislatures, parliaments, congresses, (2)
responsibility to the electorate, and (3) constitutional government were thus the
three great planks of the modern struggle for popular or republican government.
The first plank was directed against the aristocratic notion that a wise selected class
shall govern, on the ground that even the ignorant man knows his own wants and
sufferings better than some one else. The second was aimed at securing legislation
by orderly and public discussions of representatives of the people, directed against
pure democracy on one hand – direct lawmaking by people – and against personal
government by mandates and edits, pronouncements of officials on other. The third
was directed to combining permanence and continuity in the state with fundamental
guarantees of a political sort against abuse of power and with provision for regular
change as conditions [of] change – amendments to the fundamental or organic law.
The end is well expressed in the words of American statesmen which however go
back to Aristotle “in order that government should be a government of laws and not
of men.”
[End page 5]
In the various forms of liberal political philosophy we have the elements of political
democracy set forth. These are: (1) The people are the source of political power, that
is, authority to govern, to legislate and administrate proceeds from them, not from
any superhuman force, not from a ruling dynasty or family, nor from a selected class.
The idea of “Government by consent of the governed” seems like an inversion, a
verbal paradox, but it conveys the idea that the people as a whole is the depository of
power which in a certain sense it may be said only to delegate to the specific persons
who govern. (2) The state exists for society, for promoting human intercourse, not
society for the state. Rule, order, law and submission, are not valuable for their own
sakes, but only for [the] sake of furthering of deepening and extending the processes
of living together. The great error in the theories of liberalism is [that] they tended
to make political organization a means of purely individual welfare, the rights of
individuals conceived apart from the social ties and connections through which
alone the individual can attain a full life (Hence reduction of happiness to pleasure in
utilitarianism, and emphasis upon security, upon possession. Recognize state as tool
of society and happiness will be seen to be found in establishing connections with
others, and development to be more important than security). (2) The government
is responsible to the people. It must be so organized as to render an account, to be
liable to the people for the way in which it administers its affairs in the interest of the
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people. Suffrage, representative lawmaking bodies, a constitution, a distribution of
powers among legislative executive, judiciary, so that each will not assume functions
of others, the definition by law of the powers and limits of power of each official,
provision for penalty the same as for private citizens – these things are not ends
in themselves. They have no intrinsic sacredness. But they are the best devices yet
invented for keeping officials responsible
[End page 6]
to the public will. These means are not perfect and will doubtless be improved.
The extension of suffrage irrespective of sex, wealth or even education has been
resorted to in order that an adequate expression of public will might be secured on
one hand, and on the other that all persons might become interested in public affairs,
might be sharing be awaken to recognition of their public responsibilities and abilities.
Referendum and initiative are experiments in combining elements of pure democracy
with representative.
The error in liberalism in thinking that the state originated in the choice of isolated
individuals and aims to protect them as individuals in their rights resulted in two
other errors. The first was in thinking of government as a kind of necessary evil, a
surrender of some rights and liberties in order to be more certain of others – especially
of physical existence and property (The especial possession of individual as such – see
Locke). In fact the government is an organ or tool for the realization of public interests,
the things that men have in common, that affect all in the way they work out, in their
consequences. For example, roads, regular means of communication, schools, money,
land coal, water supply. It does not follow of necessity that government must own these
things, but it must see that they operate [and] function for general welfare [and] not for
private gain. How this shall be accomplished is scientific rather than a moral matter –
the end however is moral and positive, constructive. Private ownership can be tolerated
only if upon the whole this is a better means of serving the universal interest. Jealously,
distrust, suspicion of government has always come about as a survival of the dynastic,
family, and superhuman state – formerly in Great Britain and US, now in Russia and
Chine. This survival after the political organization has become democratic hampers
the full use of the government as a democratic tool. It fosters private disregard of the
public interest in social undertakings, economic and otherwise, the feel[End page 7]
ing that one business, one’s affairs are his own private and exclusive concerns, that
any public supervision or regulation is an impertinent interference, an encroachment
upon proper personal liberty. This attitude tends not only to weaken government, to
render it incompetent, but also tends to corruption – the strong private organizations,
corporate cliques, militaristic or industrial, use governmental powers to promote their
special interests at the expense of the public. The argument against extension of public
activities, namely that government is both more corrupt and more incapable than
private agencies, is largely due to two causes – one a survival of the non democratic
government, the other the effect of an exaggeration of private activities.
The other great mistake of liberal philosophy was in supposing that the individual
is an adequate judge of his own interest, and this self-interest of each may be counted
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upon to secure a regard for the net welfare of all. Modern society is so complex and so
mobile, changing, that most measures of political activity, legislative and administrative
are beyond the reach of judgment on the basis of personal interest. Loyalty to a group,
a class, a country, a party, is more effective with most men than consideration for their
self-interest – the latter is likely to lead either to abstinence from political activity,
or to a corrupt employment of public agencies which prostitutes them to means of
private gain and prestige. A public interest and public opinion rather than self-interest
and judgment of what is to [be] the interests of the self must be the chief reliances of
democratic government. This is why the attempt to introduce political democracy as
a separate institution (that is suffrage, constitutions, parliaments etc.) has often failed.
[It] will work on where there is a public, a civic conscience, where men are habituated
to thinking as citizens, that is, as from the standpoint of the whole society and not
from private or family or class standpoint, and where there is public opinion – that is
means for popular discussion, exchange, com[End page 8]
munication. Physical things like telegraph, railways, letters, travel, newspapers, as
well as rights of public meetings, rights of assembly, petition, publication are parts of
the machinery of creation of a truly public opinion.
Rubbing of social elements against each other, breaking down of barriers to
free communication and positive facilities for diffusion of ideas and knowledge are
necessary. Hence also universal education as a public charge – to get both a public
interest and ability to use the tools by which public opinion is produced – expression
of one’s own point of view and reception of other men.
Political democracy thus runs into the broader moral and social democracy. The
ulterior justification of political democracy, that is of popular government, is its
educative effect. That is, its effect in broadening the interests and imagination, in
extending sentiments from personal and local and family, clique interests, to take in
the welfare of the country, producing a public conscience and civic loyalty; and its
effect in stimulating thought, ideas and their expression about social matters.
Carlyle ridiculed parliament, calling attention to the fact that literally it means a
collection of talkers. He made fun of the notion that by enactment following upon
talking men could make laws – they might as well talk the multiplication-table into
existence, he said. But experience shows that social laws, that is desirable regulations
of conduct are not easy to discover, and that up to the present general discussion,
speech back and forth is the best way hit upon to bring them to light. Mutual speech
subjects ideas to criticism, improves them by selection and combination, leads to new
thought and to inquiries. It brings to light hidden considerations, and broadens the
range of ideas that influences action. In short, government tends to be at last resort
by public opinion, and the only way to improve government is to improve public
opinion by improving ideas and the methods of their circulation. Suffrage, chambers
of deputies etc., are ultimately means of creating and expressing public opinion.
[End page 9]
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Lecture XIV [Chapter Intellectual Freedom, pp. 173-180]
At the last hour we discussed the dependence of social life in its varied forms upon
intellectual and ideal factors, and especially the dependence of the present crisis of the
world upon shifting in intellectual authority and influence. Today we shall discuss the
other aspect – the culmination of social institutions and arrangements in intellectual
or ideal factors. Association is something quite different from mere herding together.
Sheep crowd together for protection and warmth. Human beings associate in sharing
ideas and experiences, in seeking ends seen to be common, in exchange of opinions
and discoveries, in being loyal to the same persons and objects. The value of physical
proximity and contact lies in the intercourse of affection, thought and action it makes
possible. Culture, civilization measure the worth of social life, and civilization and
culture are what they are because of ideal elements.
Put in a more specific form, the actual worth of any social arrangement lies in its
educative effect: its release of thought, its nurture of the imagination, its refinement
of emotions, in the persons who are influenced by it. It is for this reason that the act to
think freely and the right to express thought in choosing beliefs, forms of worship and
in free speech and publication are so important. Fear of ideas, intolerant suppression
of thought and discussion is the common mark of every social tyranny. Distrust of
the people, of human nature has nowhere been more marked than in the uniform
endeavor of autocracy to limit freedom of conscience, inquiry, and publication. For
the same reason the struggle towards democracy has always centred in the struggle
to secure these rights. But the struggle of autocracy to limit thought and feeling to
certain prescribed lines is not only aimed against the central thing in democracy, but
it is aimed against civ[End page 1]
ilization itself for it is only through the development of thought, of knowledge,
that civilization exists. The fight for freedom of thought, conscience, worship belief,
speech, publication, discussion, is not merely a fight for personal freedom, but it is
fight for all that distinguishes human society from an animal herd.
It is sometimes said that freedom of expression may be limited by external
action, but not freedom of thought, since no outer power can make its way into inner
consciousness. The statement is false. Whatever restricts freedom of expression limits
and perverts freedom of mind. Mind lives only in communication, in give and take.
It has to receive from others to be stimulated; it has to give out in order that its ideas
may take form be rendered clear and articulate, coherent. Thought and language
go together. Freedom of expression is a necessity not only that society may get the
advantage of every individual’s contribution, but in order that the individual may have
anything worth expressing.
Only acts, however, can come directly within the notice of the public and its official
representatives. Hence it is the act of speech, oral and written, that comes within
the scope of legislation and the police. Constitutional governments all guarantee
citizens the right of assembly, speech and publication. This does not mean that he
[can] say anything he pleases with immunity from all punishment. If he incites others
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he is liable to punishment, just as when in the use of his liberty to free movement he
trespasses upon the land of another or sets fire to a building he is liable to punishment.
The individual has to take the risks of the way he uses his freedom. Two great reasons
are supplied by experience for guaranteeing this freedom. The first is the safety vale
argument. Speech is a mode of action, and when criticism and constructive suggestion
are allowed in speech, this act prevents, this act prevents more
[End page 2]
violent and destructive acts. Secondly, there are two ways of government, coercion
and persuasion. Without free speech, there is no opportunity for the use of persuasion,
no possibility for formation of public opinion. The protection against foolish ideas
is found in expression; not all people are foolish in the same way at the same time
– opinions call out counter opinion, and in the mixture of discussion some light is
shed, some advance in secure knowledge is made. No government however ever
undertakes the suppression of all communication of ideas. Certain ideas which are
orthodox, which are agreeable to social rulers are permitted and even encouraged.
Only contrary ideas are prohibited. But this implies that no social changing is to be
permitted, except by the way of terrorism and revolution. Without new ideas society
would stagnate. The natural inertia of mind, the force of custom, is a sufficient check
on rapid propagation of social changes without additional governmental action. At
times new and dangerous ideas spread like an epidemic. But this is because of other
conditions besides the ideas themselves. Men that are hungry and desperate will listen
to anything that promises relief. It is the madness of despair that moves men rather
than the ideas. Emotions, hope, revenge, not ideas are the real moving forces – as with
the Bolsheviki. The remedy is not in suppressing ideas but in reforming the wrongs
that breed the desperate willingness to believe anything that promises relief.
At the present time, that intellectual freedom which is the best safeguard of order
as well as means of progress has a new enemy, in addition to the old one of direct
suppression. It is propaganda, organized on a vast scale. This is more dangerous than
censorship because it has the form of free speech. It poisons the sources of belief, the
wells of truth. The war revealed its power. Government rests more and more upon
persuasion and consent. Hence interested persons who have wealth or power try to
control
[End page 3]
the organization and distribution of news, cables, writers, newspapers. The
problem of the supply of intelligence required for proper actions can no longer be
met merely by permitting individual freedom of speech and writing. There has to be
a social organization of publicity in the interest of the public instead of some special
class or country or government. There was never a time when real knowledge of
what people all over the world are doing and thinking was so badly needed as at
present, and upon the whole there hasn’t been a time when this information was so
perverted and distorted. However much men may rightly differ as to the wisdom of
schemes of socialism and communism, all wise and sympathetic persons ought to
agree upon the need of the widest possible sharing of knowledge, including news,
the knowledge as to what is going on in society, in the whole society of humanity
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a communism of intelligence. Public and universal education is a social necessity
in order to give a basis for this common sharing in knowledge and thought. But it
cannot stop with school years. There must be means for continuing the education
of all members of society about the things that concern society – its movements,
problems, tendencies. In order that public opinion may control, there must be means
of forming public opinion. In order that wise public opinion may control, the true facts
must be gathered and disseminated by the press, by discussion. Private, local and class
interest will govern men’s actions until through the communication of knowledge the
whole society, nay, the whole humanity, becomes spiritually one.
Common or like thoughts cannot in the present stage of the world be secured either
by suppression or by direct inculcation, by trying to stamp one set of ideas on alike.
Divergence of opinions is necessary for progress, and the only real unity is that which
comes by exchange, based on toleration.
[End page 4]
Intellectual freedom is a true calculation of social life. In it individuality gets its
best expression. Only where there is intellectual freedom can communication, the give
and take of thought and feeling be full and varied. As we have seen before mere legal
freedom to labor, move about, hold property etc., is incomplete unless at the same
time men’s minds are free to share in the meaning of what they do, free to take part
in understanding the thoughts and plans that are expressed in industry and business.
This activity of thought and emotion is distinctively human, and without it man lives
on a non-human plane. Intellectual freedom thus depends on more than absence of
restrictive laws. It depends upon positive factors and the legal right to free speech,
free assembly, publication is important because without it these positive conditions
get no good opportunity for expression. These positive conditions are first education
which develops intellectual abilities and put the person in command of power to see,
think and feel, and secondly opportunity to express thought in action not simply in
words. Freedom of speech is precious, but it is not an end, only a means. To be able
to put thought into operation in what we do and to find that what we do contributes
to our life of thought and satisfactory sentiment and not merely to material products
is the important thing. This ideal is manifested in the work of an artist and scientific
man. The painter, the laboratory worker, is free to act upon his interest, to embody his
thought. His limitations are due only to his ignorance, and lack of skill. Also what he
does brings a return wave of thought and emotion back to him. He learns and gains
intellectual skill through what he does. The tangible, material product is secondary
to this intellectual enlargement and emotional enrichment. This basic problem of
industrial society is to establish conditions that will place all men in their labor on the
plane which the small class of scientists
[End page 5]
and artists now occupy. Then there will be a real consummation of social life in
full freedom. There will [be] a true social democracy.
The same supremacy of mental factors is seen in the political side of social life.
Carlyle made fun of popular government on the ground that it depends upon talking.
It took the word Parliament from the French word parler as the object of his wit.
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He ridiculed the idea that by talking men could make social laws and more than
they could make the laws of arithmetic by speech-making. Carlyle here showed an
inability to appreciate the deepest thing in democracy. It is not that talking makes
laws but that only through free and full communication, consultation, exchange,
social conditions are discovered and the public interest and welfare are made clear
and plain. What is needed is even more general participation in social discussion than
we now have, an awakening of all the people to express their needs and desires and
communicate to others their suggestions. The best value of the spread of suffrage,
representative government etc. is that they promote this tendency. Every individual
is a centre of conscious life, of happiness and suffering, of imagination and thought.
This is the final principle upon which democracy rests. But this conscious life cannot
be developed or realized except in association with others, interchange, flexible
intercommunication. The relations of friends illustrates the meaning of this. If on
the personal side, democracy means that all should have the opportunity for mental
realization which artists and scientific men have, it also means that they shall be in the
relations of free unobstructed intercourse with one another that friends are. Political
democracy provides the machinery the form of this intercourse; it makes it possible.
Education, companionship, the breaking down of class and family walls and barriers
make it actual.
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EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PRAGMATISM AND AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY
COPYRIGHT © 2009 ASSOCIAZIONE PRAGMA
Roberto Gronda*
What Does China Mean for Pragmatism?
A Philosophical Interpretation of Dewey’s Sojourn in China (1919-1921)
Abstract: This paper aims to investigate the transformations undergone by
Dewey’s philosophy in the period from 1916 to 1921. By analyzing three different
problematic situations with which Dewey found himself confronted (German
militarism; the effects of propaganda on American society; the experience of a twoyear stay in China), the paper seeks to show the various lines of development at
work in his thought. The thesis of the paper is that in the war and immediately
post-war years Dewey was concerned with outlining a new account of the nature of
theory which was preliminary to the formulation of his social philosophy. The paper
presents Dewey’s main philosophical achievements, with the aim of providing
some background knowledge that could be useful to understanding that place and
significance of the Lectures in China in the overall context of his thought.
1. Twilight of Idols, Birth of New Ideas
“I think of James now because the recent articles of John Dewey’s on the war
suggest a slackening in his thought for our guidance and stir, and the inadequacy of
his pragmatism as a philosophy of life in this emergency” (Bourne 1917: 199). With
these famous words Randolph Bourne – a pupil of Dewey at Columbia University
– expressed his bitter disappointment with Dewey’s endorsement of American
intervention in the first World War. The violence of Bourne’s words – “slackening
in his [Dewey’s] thought,” “inadequacy” – reveals the violence of the shock caused
by Dewey’s sudden decision to side with the pro-war faction. Dewey was not simply
a pacifist; he was widely perceived as one of the leading intellectuals of the pacifist
movement. No surprise, therefore, that Dewey’s endorsement had stricken many of
his friends and readers like a blow to the face.
Bourne’s charge was simple and direct: he argued that Dewey’s philosophy was an
inspiring philosophy “for a society at peace” since it relied on the belief that human
beings’ greatest desire is for happiness and prosperity (Bourne 1917: 201). In this
context, Bourne remarked, Dewey was right in holding that the best method at our
disposal to achieve those goals was the scientific mentality, which investigated the
intelligent relations between means and ends. However, in a time of war where these
favorable conditions were no longer available, where the “store of rationality” was
gone, human beings had experience of an increasing development and growth of
irrational forces. In these conditions, Bourne concluded, Dewey’s pragmatism proved
itself to be an unreliable tool for shedding light on the problems of men.1
In what follows I will try to assess whether Bourne’s remarks may function
as a reliable historiographical hypothesis which would make sense of Dewey’s
philosophical development. The period from 1916 to 1921 is the most enigmatic
* Università di Pisa [[email protected]].
1. The number of secondary literature about this subject is so extensive that it is impossible to give a
comprehensive bibliography. Two very interesting approaches are however provided by Stuhr (2015,
Chapter 7), and Livingston 2003.
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in Dewey’s life, from many different points of view. It is not by chance, I think,
that relatively few studies have been devoted to investigating the transformations
undergone by his thought in this brief span of time; it is as if the traditional interpretative
categories that we usually apply to Dewey’s philosophy reveal themselves to be not
completely reliable when we turn our attention to the war and immediately post-war
years. The thesis that I will articulate in the present article is that Dewey became
engaged in a long and tortuous process of revision of his own philosophical position
– a process which started in 1915, immediately after the outbreak of the First World
War, continued during the war years, and lasted until about 1921, when he eventually
went back to the United States after a two-year stay in China. I will suggest that that
was a period marked by a need to put his philosophical assumptions to the test of
reality, to be concrete, to be as close as possible to the world and to its complexity.
Consequently, I will assume that Bourne’s criticism was substantially correct: at
the time in which America had to decide whether or not to enter the war, Dewey’s
philosophy was inadequate to account for what was going on, and it could not supply
Americans with the intellectual tools needed to choose rationally among the various,
possible courses of action. But this is one part of the story. It should be added, indeed,
that contrary to what Bourne seemed to believe, Dewey was well aware that the war
in which America was becoming involved posed serious problems to his philosophy.
He clearly perceived that his conceptual apparatus was not rich enough to account for
the complexity of the new forces that were set in motion by that event.
In other words, what Bourne did not realize when he wrote “The Twilight of
Idols” was that, at that time, Dewey’s philosophy had already undergone significant
modifications. According to the reading presented here, during the war years Dewey
became aware that his philosophy was not sensitive enough to the complexity of the
activity of thinking, and struggled to shape new conceptual tools that could account
for those aspects (the social conditioning of thought, the ‘ideological’ composition of
social reality) that had not been adequately taken into consideration in his previous
texts. The problem with which Dewey was concerned was that of understanding
the plurality of functions performed by theories and ideas in social life. Indeed, the
clarification of the manifold effects of theory on social reality was necessary to the
formulation of a sound pragmatist social philosophy – a project which, as Frega has
convincingly shown in his contribution to the present symposium, was the hinge on
which Dewey’s philosophical work in the years 1918-1923 turned. To realize how
important and how difficult it was for Dewey to come to term with that problem, it is
enough to read the first chapter of the Lectures in China. In that chapter, significantly
entitled “The function of theory,” Dewey wrote that the question of the practical effect
of theory was “the first great question concerning social philosophy” (Dewey 2015:
I.3). However, his approach to that question was far from being clear and consistent:
apparently, he conflated the different functions performed by theories, thus blurring
the distinction between the effects that theories brought about when used as tools to
reconstruct a problematic situation and the effects that stemmed from the fact that
social reality is ‘ideal’ through and through, human behavior being necessarily in the
realm of ideas and theories. Such a confusion – which was probably due to the need
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to provide his audience with all the concepts required to understand his argument in
a small amount of time – is evidence of the tensions that marked his thought in that
period of his life.
In the following pages I will highlight the most relevant stages of the process
that led Dewey to develop his new, original ‘theory of theory,’ as preliminary to the
formulation of his social philosophy. I will not deal explicitly with his Lectures in
China, but I will provide some background knowledge that I hope will be useful to
understanding that text’s place and significance in the overall context of Dewey’s
thought. The reconstruction attempted in this article is articulated in three distinct
moments, which correspond to three different problematic situations with which
Dewey found himself confronted. In section 2, I will discuss Dewey’s reaction to
German militarism, and I will emphasize the philosophical importance of the widelyneglected book German Philosophy and Politics within the economy of his thought. In
section 3, I will focus on Dewey’s reflections on the problem of propaganda, in order to
bring to light the logical conclusions that he drew from the experience of the effects of
the First World War on American society. Finally, in section 4, I will analyze Dewey’s
writings on China, with a particular attention to the articles in which he described and
explained the Chinese civilization to his American audience. I will suggest that these
articles present us with an extremely interesting and original account of the nature of
thinking activity, which unfortunately almost disappeared in Dewey’s later thought.
Such an account was grounded on the theoretical results that he had achieved in the
previous years – actually, it would not have been possible without them – and was
the direct outcome of an extraordinary experience of intercultural exchange. From
such a perspective, I will argue that Dewey’s confrontation with the Chinese situation
represented the completion of a line of thought aimed at reaching what may be labeled
– using a famous Gramscian expression – “the absolute secularisation and earthliness
of thought” (Gramsci 1971: 465).
2. Understanding Germany: Philosophies of Life and Cultural Relativism
On October, 4th, 1914 the New York Times published an appeal to ‘the civilized
world’ signed by about one hundred influential German artists and intellectuals. The
manifesto was intended to protest against ‘the lies and calumnies’ that were thrown at
their country by those whom they referred to as ‘our enemies’ – that is, the Allies led by
British and French governments and presses. The appeal’s signatories – who proudly
proclaimed themselves ‘heralds of truth’ – dismissed the accusations of cruelty and
illegitimate use of violence by the German army as well as any charge that Germany
was responsible for the war, and argued that, for historical reasons, militarism was a
distinctive feature of German culture.
Dewey was strongly impressed by the content of the manifesto. As is well
known, his most elaborated answer to the issue of Germanism was outlined in
German Philosophy and Politics, originally published in 1915 (and then significantly
reprinted in 1942). In this extremely controversial little book, Dewey argued rather
surprisingly that the origin of German militarism should be sought not in Nietzsche’s
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philosophy of power – as many contemporary interpreters were inclined to do –
but in Kant’s thought with its distinction between phenomena and noumena. If one
looked more closely to the German culture, Dewey remarked, one could not escape
from the impression that “the chief mark of distinctively German civilization is its
combination of self-conscious idealism with unsurpassed technical efficiency and
organization in the varied fields of action”: “[i]f this is not a realization in fact of
what is found in Kant,” Dewey concluded, “I am totally at loss for a name by which
to characterize it” (MW 8: 151).
Dewey did not maintain that Germans consciously adhered to the philosophy of
Kant, that each and every action they did, or every decision they take, was evaluated
in the light of that system of thought. He was well aware that a reading of this sort
would have implied an overestimation of the power of ideas to control and direct
human behavior. More cautiously, he argued that “Kant detected and formulated the
direction in which the German genius was moving,” and that “[i]n bringing to an
imaginative synthesis what might have remained an immense diversity of enterprises,
Kantianism helped formulate a sense of a national mission and destiny” (MW 8: 152).
Kantianism provided Germans with a “banner and a conscious creed” in whose terms
they could harmonize their external acts and their internal feelings and desires in the
most consistent way (MW 8: 152). “Outside of Germany,” Dewey remarked, “the
career of the German idealistic philosophy has been mainly professional and literary”;
it was in countries like France, England and the United States that it had revealed
its purely theoretical significance (MW 8: 199). In Germany it performed a broader
function: it was a ‘philosophy of life.’
As is well known, Dewey’s provocative interpretation of German civilization and
its relation with American culture has been widely discussed and criticized. It is not
my intention to take a position on this issue since it is not necessary for my present
purposes. My point is more modest. I would simply like to avoid throwing away
the baby with the bath water: the undeniable defects and shortcomings of Dewey’s
historical reconstruction should not impede us from seeing the important theoretical
achievements that made that very analysis possible. More clearly stated, the thesis
that I want to defend is that it would have been impossible for Dewey to thematize the
relation between philosophy and politics in the way in which the issue is presented
in German Philosophy and Politics if he had relied strictly on the standpoint
formulated in his previous works. According to this reading, the introduction of the
notion of philosophy of life represented a remarkable moment of rupture and change
in Dewey’s philosophical development, which forced him to profoundly revise his
conceptual apparatus.
First of all, the very idea of a philosophy of life was difficult to accommodate
within a theoretical framework that conceived of theories as tools for solving
problems. Dewey’s standard account of ideas and theories – for instance, as
formulated in the Studies in Logical Theory – emphasized almost exclusively their
logical value. Dewey’s view was that the distinction between suggestions and ideas
emerges precisely from the need of distinguishing the pre-reflective material of
mental life (what comes unreflectively to our mind) from that very material in a later
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stage of its development, when it happens to acquire logical significance and value
as a consequence of its being tested and controlled (for a definition of suggestion see,
for instance, MW 6: 207ff.). Ideas and theories are logical notions which refer to a
particular set of tools that originate within the process of inquiry, and whose import
depends on their capacity to meet the needs and demands of the problematic situation
that they are supposed to reconstruct. Now, it is evident that the way in which Dewey
described the function performed by Kantian philosophy in the German world could
not be traced back to the logical function performed by theories and ideas in the
context of an inquiry. In the latter case, the function of a theory is that of rationally
reconstructing a problematic situation; in the former, it is that of providing a general
pattern of action, thought, and feeling that controls and directs the behavior of a group
of people by working on a pre-rational, emotional level.
For similar reasons, the conflict between the various philosophies of life could not
be explained by reducing it to the conflict arising between alternative philosophical
theories about a certain subject-matter. Indeed, the two kinds of conflict are governed
by two different logics. Dewey was well aware of their difference since he was a
master of the dialectical treatment of philosophical questions, and in many of his
pre-war writings – especially those dealing with ethical theory – he had made a large
use of that technique of analysis. In those texts, Dewey usually presented his own
position as the synthesis of different, competing philosophical theories. First of all, he
started with arguing that the traditional accounts were flawed; then he tried to locate
the specific source of their disagreement; and finally, he showed that neither of the two
theories adequately accounted for a given range of phenomena because each theory
selected a single aspect of the explanandum as determinant of the others. In doing
so, Dewey showed that the two alternative theories adopted the same reductionist
approach which conceived of the organic whole – for instance, the ethical behavior
– as a sort of mechanism made up of single, independent parts, some of which were
more fundamental than the others. As Dewey wrote in his Ethics, “the various types
of theory are not arbitrary personal devices and constructions, but arise because, in the
complexity of the subject-matter, one element or another is especially emphasized, and
the other elements arranged in different perspectives” (MW 5: 209). A more promising
approach, therefore, was that which acknowledged that no part was subordinate to the
other, but that all the different elements were equally important moments of a whole.
In the light of this assumption, the conflict between different philosophical theories
could be recomposed in a higher unity, that is, in a higher explanation that gave equal
recognition to all the features of the subject-matter.
Now, such a re-composition and reconciliation – which is the goal of the
philosophical discussions – could not be attained in the case of conflicting philosophies
of life. Indeed, it would be meaningless to say that the conflict between German and
American philosophy of life could be recomposed in a higher unity; in this case,
there is no explanation that could properly account for what is objectively valid
in the various philosophies of life. Again, the difference between the two types of
conflict depends upon the difference of function performed by philosophical theories,
on the one hand, and philosophy of life, on the other hand. While the former have
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a truth-value, the latter have only a representative-value; while the former pretend
to be true, the latter aim at articulating in a satisfactory way – satisfactory for the
people who hold a particular philosophy of life – the direction in which a particular
national genius is moving. Accordingly, while the success of a philosophical theory is
a consequence of its capacity to make sense of a specific subject-matter, the success of
a philosophy of life stems from its capacity to be representative of a particular point of
view. In other words, while the logic that governs the conflict between philosophical
theories is monistic, the logic that governs the conflict between philosophies of life is
intrinsically pluralistic.
The notion of philosophy of life posed a serious challenge to Dewey’s thought
because it was a sort of ‘borderline’ concept which cut across many of the functional
distinctions that he had so patiently drawn in his previous writings. What was
particularly difficult for him to formulate was the immediacy of the connection between
thought and overt activity. Dewey had always insisted on the fact that theories and
ideas suspend overt activity, that they are logical elements insofar as they contribute
to the deliberate reconstruction of a new experience. For him, the essence of a theory
was to be intermediate and mediating. Philosophies of life do not operate in this way;
rather, they influence action in an immediate, direct and unreflective way. As Dewey
wrote, through education they get embodied not in “men’s minds,” but rather “in
their permanent dispositions of action” (MW 8: 141). They somehow infiltrate into
the “habits of imagination and behavior” of a people, thus becoming part of their
intellectual endowment.
If one focuses on the way in which philosophies of life operate, it is apparent
that the latter are more similar to suggestions than to logical ideas. However, they
are different from suggestions since a) they are highly refined and complex; b) they
are valid not only for a single individual, but for a community of people; c) they
are general. The last point is particularly relevant. Philosophies of life are general
in the sense of being the horizons which influence and somehow predetermine the
plausibility that a people is driven to acknowledge to different suggestions. I take this
to be the meaning of the following sentence: “in this way can we get a clue to those
general ideas with which Germany characteristically prefers to connect the aspirations
and convictions that animate its deeds” (MW 8: 147). Here it seems clear that Dewey
had in mind something like a Weltanschauung, a general conception of life permeating
the beliefs, desires, and aspirations of a people. The main difference between the
concept of Weltanschauung and Dewey’s notion of philosophy of life is that the latter
insists much more than the former on the intrinsic connection between a theory and
the material and political conditions of the situation in which it originates. For Dewey,
a philosophy of life is never a private option, an existential choice, something that a
person can freely and individually choose to believe. Here as everywhere else, Dewey
was highly suspicious of what was merely private, merely individual. A philosophy
of life is something which is capable of providing a synthesis that could formulate “a
sense of a national mission and destiny” (MW 8: 152).
In German Philosophy and Politics Dewey never uses the word ideology;
nonetheless, it does not seem inappropriate to say that what he was trying to understand
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and describe in that book was precisely the ideological function of theories. Indeed,
to become a philosophy of life, a general system of thought must be acknowledged
by a group of people as their “banner” and “conscious creed”; they have to recognize
themselves in the values and ideals that that system of thought defend. As is evident,
such an insistence on the ideological function of theories has strong relativistic
consequences: the idea that a philosophy of life supplies a people with “a sense of a
national mission and destiny” means that the cultural world in which a man is raised
influences the way in which he justifies his own beliefs. Different people holding
different philosophies of life are guided by different ideals, different values, different
beliefs as well as different standards of justification. Different people live in the same
world, obviously, but they do not speak the same language (MW 10: 218).
Dewey explored the relativistic import of his ‘new philosophy’ in the article “On
Understanding The Mind of Germany” (1916). In that article, which was a sort of
continuation of German Philosophy and Politics, he discussed at length the problem
of the possibility of intercultural understanding. Dewey did not believe that the
plurality of philosophies of life supported a relativistic account of social life. He did
not provide any argument in favor of this view, but it is very likely that he thought that
the relativistic position was a too abstract description of the dynamics of intercultural
interaction. In order to show how the conflicts between different cultures actually
originated and how they could be settled, or at least defused, he introduced a concept,
that of national philosophies, which differs from the notion of philosophy of life only
in that the former puts more emphasis on the intrinsic connection between a system
of thought and the political community to which it refers. National philosophies, he
wrote, are different ways of articulating on a symbolic level the content that history had
made “familiar and congenial” to a people. “Each nation,” he remarked, “expresses
its justification through the ideas which its past history has made most intelligible to
itself – in terms, that is, of its national philosophy” (MW 10: 218-9).
By relating national philosophies to national histories, Dewey managed to found
a concrete and positive ground on which to assess the problem of cultural relativism.
He argued that the differences between national philosophies stemmed from the
differences between national histories, which, in their turn, were influenced and
transformed by the actions undertaken under the guidance of the former. That meant
that the intercultural difference was not a brute fact, but rather the result of a long
process of differentiation, which became obnoxious only when, for strictly historical
reasons, a people did not enter in almost any relation with the others. That was the
case of the Germans, for instance, and that was the reason why English and Americans
found the mind of Germans much more difficult to penetrate than that of the French. So,
the problem of relativism was not that of confronting different and incommensurable
worldviews, but that of providing the conditions for entering in contact and becoming
acquainted with other national communities. In Dewey’s hands, a metaphysical
problem was translated into a concrete, empirically testable hypothesis that suggested
concrete and empirical solutions. In doing so, the relativistic implications of the
existence of a plurality of philosophies of life – a fact that the outbreak of the First
World War had brought violently to the fore – were substantially defused, and the
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description of the historical situation was made consistent with his overall position.
A problem was turned into a fact: the menace of cultural relativism was replaced by
the acknowledgment that cultural pluralism was one of the fundamental factors that
any social philosophy had to take into account.
We can draw some conclusions from what has been said so far. Our starting point
has been the hypothesis that the First World War presented Dewey with some facts
that were not easily accounted for in his traditional instrumentalist framework. One of
these facts was the ideological function performed by general theories, and the harmful
political and social consequences that they could bring about. In order to account for
this aspect of contemporary societies, Dewey developed the notion of philosophy
of life. This notion enabled him to highlight the complexity of social reality: he
conceived of philosophies of life as elements of social life enhancing the richness and
diversity of the interactions among social agents. At the same time, that very notion
compelled Dewey to take into consideration the complexity of the ideal dimension
of human behavior. The analysis of the role played by Kantianism in German world
made him aware that general theories and systems of thought were not merely logical
tools; they could perform also a different function, which we have called ideological.
Dewey did not openly discuss this issue, but it is evident that the problem with which
he was concerned was that of understanding the ideological articulation produced by
philosophies of life: the fundamental thesis of German Philosophy and Politics was
precisely that the success of a philosophy of life depends on its capacity to articulate
the forces at work in a specific community. This doctrine was in continuity with his
instrumentalist position, but it was not logically deducible from it. Indeed, it relied
on concepts that were not available to Dewey when he wrote the Studies in Logical
Theory, and which were deeply interwoven with the philosophical anthropology that
he was struggling to formulate – significantly, the lectures on which Human Nature
and Conduct (1922) is based were delivered just a couple of years later, in 1918.
As we will see in the last section of this article, this broad conception of instrumentalism
was the theoretical tool that allowed Dewey to deal with a puzzling feature of the
Chinese civilization.
3. Dewey at War: Thought, Emotion and the Power of the Irrational
In the opening pages of German Philosophy and Politics Dewey raised the
question of the general validity of thought: the point at stake was that of understanding
which kind of practical consequences were brought about by philosophies of life,
in the context of a more general inquiry devoted to clarifying “the nature of the
influence of general ideas upon practical affairs” – which Dewey himself defined
as “a troubled question” (MW 8: 139). The same problem was tackled at the
beginning of the article “On Understanding The Mind of Germany” as well as in the
first chapter of the Lectures in China. The insistence with which Dewey discussed
that issue in his writings can be taken as clear evidence of the importance that he
attached to it in that particular moment of his life. In all these texts, he moved from
the observation that the development of physical and psychical sciences had made
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it more and more difficult to stick to the belief that reason actually controls action.
We need to believe that we are “lords” of our “intellectual structures,” that we are
creators of our conceptual structures, he argued, but unfortunately psychologists tell
us that there are “vital instincts, obscure inclinations, imperative preferences” which
are “at work below the surface of consciousness” and shape our “systems of belief”
(MW 10: 216). Similarly, the development of physical sciences has brought about a
lack of confidence in the power of reason and thought: a malicious interpretation of
the results of physical sciences promotes the reduction of mind to a “bare spectator of
a machine-like nature.” Finally, the same conclusion has been reached by the theorists
of evolution, who “regard intelligence as a deposit from history, not as a force in its
making” (MW 8: 139).
All these episodes of distrust in reason are part of a much broader scenario which
is essentially coincident with the history of modernity.2 As Dewey lucidly noted,
modernity is prima facie paradoxical: in previous stages of civilization, when men
had “least control over nature and their own affairs,” they were nonetheless pretty
confident in “the efficacy of thought” (MW 8: 139). On the contrary, in modern times
scientific and technological discoveries have made available a huge number of tools
and techniques which allow human beings to predict and control natural and social
changes with a high degree of reliability. However, the enhancement of predictive
and controlling power has gone hand in hand with an increasing perplexity about the
force and efficacy of thought. Dewey formulated the paradox in this way: “Yet just
in the degree in which men, by means of inventions and political arrangements, have
found ways of making their thoughts effective, they have come to question whether
any thinking is efficacious” (MW 8: 139). The fate of modernity is that of calling into
question that very force that has generated it – the force of thought.
Dewey did not believe that what I have called ‘the paradox of modernity’ was
genuine. In the end, he wrote, “like the rest of us,” those who question the capacity of
thought to direct and control natural and social events “are human, and infected with a
belief that ideas, even highly abstract theories, are of efficacy in the conduct of human
affairs” (MW 8: 140). But he argued that the lack of confidence in the force of thought
which lay behind that paradox was a sign of something different and more profound,
which had to do not with the metaphysical constitution of reality, but with the logical
conditions of thought.
In his early writing, Dewey had stressed that thinking is a fallible activity, grounded
in no metaphysical or ontological warrant. The distinction that he had drawn between
a constructive and a reconstructive conception of thought was precisely intended
to emphasize the contingent and tentative character of every act of thought against
those views that tended toward an absolutization of reason. Dewey’s target were the
upholders of Anglo-American idealism, a tradition of thought to which he himself
had been strongly sympathetic: the distinction between thought as constructive and
thought as re-constructive paved the way for the wholesale rejection of Absolute
idealism with which Dewey inaugurated a new course of his thought.
2. Dewey’s conception of modernity is an unexplored issue. To my knowledge, the only attempt to
thematize this problem, which is fundamental to understanding Dewey’s philosophy, is Koopman 2010.
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During the war years Dewey came to realize not simply the fallibility of thought,
but also its fragility. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of his increased
awareness of the limits that beset the activity of thinking. In his early writings Dewey’s
main concern was to provide a sound criticism of the view that, in order to account for
the meaningfulness of immediate experience, it is necessary to postulate a constitutive
and unconscious activity of an Absolute mind of which the reflective and controlled
activity of a finite mind is only a pale and powerless imitation. The problem now
became that of arguing for the very possibility of thought. In the first case, the idea of
the fallibility of thought was a means to save thought from the risk of its annihilation.
In the second case, the feeling of the fragility of thought was the very problem stated
in its simplest and clearest terms.
It would not be difficult to show how relevant the idea of ‘limits of thought’ was
for Dewey’s philosophy. However, to offer a detailed reconstruction of this notion
exceeds the scope of the present paper. I will therefore use it as an unproblematic and
well-grounded concept, postponing its clarification and justification to a future article.
With ‘limits of thought’ I mean to highlight two fundamental assumptions of Dewey’s
logical instrumentalism: on the one hand, the idea that the act of thinking originates
from a problematic situation which sets the conditions for its valid application as a
factor acting to solve the problem; on the other hand, the thesis that the scope of the
act of thinking is restricted to the specific situation at stake.
These two assumptions were firstly formulated with clarity in the Studies in
Logical Theory. My thesis is that, as a consequence of his experience of the effects
of the war on the American society, Dewey subjected the idea of limits of thought to
a substantial revision. In many of the texts that he wrote during that period, Dewey
pointed out that thought could be limited in another additional way. He realized that
the activity of thinking can be limited by particularly hostile social conditions which
hamper the use of intelligence and experimentation.
In the article “Conscription of Thought” Dewey lucidly explained what he felt
was the most threatening aspect of the state of war in which America was involved.
Surprisingly enough, he stated that he was not particularly worried about the widely
spread tendency to limit the liberty of thought and speech: the latter had been so
severely menaced in the past that there was no sound reason to doubt that it could
survive this new attack. In his eyes, much more harmful were those attacks that
acted obliquely. Conscription of thought was an instance of the latter type in its most
clearly marked form. In times of war, Dewey remarked, a people looked for social
cohesion and unity, and rewarded them over and above any other thing. Consequently,
any opinion perceived as a threat to social unity was banned. This happened even
though history had shown the complete “inefficacy of the conscription of mind as a
means of promoting social solidarity.” From the point of view of its efficacy, indeed,
conscription of thought was a self-defeating strategy. Much better would have been
to encourage public discussion, because through the latter “unpopular ideas [...] burn
themselves out or die of inanition,” while the “direct suppression of thought” usually
increases “the vitality of obnoxious beliefs” (MW 10: 277). The problem with the
social dangerousness of conscription of thought lied therefore not in its intended
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consequences, but in the indirect and uncontrolled ones. Conscription of mind
was socially and politically dangerous since it ended by undermining freedom of
thought and speech by promoting absence of reflection and “apathy of intelligence”
(MW 10: 279).
What Dewey had in mind was a sort of ‘transcendental’ criticism. His argument
was that rather than being concerned with the various, ‘positive’ attempts to limit the
activity of thought, one should be alert to those forces that aimed to transform the
structure of the society, and, in doing so, posed a serious threat to the very conditions
of possibility of thinking. According to Dewey, such forces were actually at work in
American society. The means through which they were trying to bring about these
social transformations was propaganda.
Dewey was concerned about the damages caused by propaganda. The events
that took place in America during the war years made him aware that the negative
effects of propaganda concerned society as a whole, and not simply one of its factions.
Indeed, contrary to what was commonly believed, the real victims of propaganda
were less those whose opinions were subjected to censorship than the censors and
those who symphatized with them. While the former were prompted by the attack
they continuously received to discuss and defend their own views, the latter tended to
rest satisfied with the beliefs that were accepted and sanctioned by Government and
by the silent majority of the population. Their answer to the challenges presented by
different opinions was to get rid of them: by calling them seditious and threatening,
they defused the situation of intellectual confrontation, and continued to follow
obediently and unreflectively the path of tradition.
Dewey was deeply impressed by the fact that the vast majority of the American
society was living in a condition of “hypersensitiveness of nerves,” as a consequence
of which the recourse to controlled thinking activity as a force to reconstruct problems
was for them no more a real possibility (MW 10: 276). “Emotional perturbations,” he
wrote, “are so deep and general in war that any one who keeps himself outside can behold
the suborning of intelligence in progress”: the outcome of those perturbations was the
reinforcement of “native partisanship of thought and belief,” and a growing aversion
towards “[i]mpartiality and detachment of mind” (MW 10: 216). By observing the
dramatic changes in America, Dewey realized that emotional stir had taken the place
of reflective and controlled reasoning. A people longing for a strong sense of national
identity did not want to have the possibility to choose among different, competitive,
and equally possible courses of activity. That plenty of opportunities was perceived
as disturbing and distressing. Rather, Americans wanted to have a clear set of beliefs
to hold, in the conviction that social and political unity could be attained only by
outlawing different opinions. In times of war, emotion became therefore intelligence’s
greatest enemy: “[f]or an emotion which sweeps all before it, so undivided as to leave
room but for one kind of thinking and one form of belief, affords a sweetly complete
sense of certainty” (MW 10: 216).
It is important not to misunderstand the import of Dewey’s remarks on propaganda.
In his eyes, to acknowledge that a society becomes inhospitable to differences of
opinions and to free thinking when its citizens happen to become slave of emotions
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aroused by propaganda was not merely a sociological analysis; it was first and
foremost a logical thesis which could account for an essential feature of that concrete
human activity which is reflective thinking – that is, the fact that the latter was a social
activity that could be hampered and distorted by an uncontrolled emotional outburst of
energies. More precisely, Dewey’s argument was not intended to prove that emotion
could actually replace thought; rather the contrary, it aimed at showing that, in certain
occasions, propaganda could be strong enough to modify the logical endowment of a
people by perverting the relation between thought and emotion. In times of war, Dewey
remarked, emotion worked not by inhibiting thought in general, but, more subtly, by
fostering “only those ideas which support and reinforce their own operation”; in doing
so, it ended by producing “intellectual structures which effectively mask from view
whatever trouble action were it recognized” (MW 10: 217).
In Dewey’s eyes, the main effect of propaganda had been that of making most
of the Americans intellectually blind, as a consequence of which they had lost their
capacity to undertake inquiries. They continued to make use of general ideas and
theories, but instead of using them in a logical way, they used them ideologically.
As Dewey remarked, men always need a justification for what they are doing: “[m]
en are profoundly moral even in their immoralities”; they cannot act without a moral
justification of their decisions (MW 10: 217). The name that Dewey gave to this
process of justification was ‘idealization’: through idealization, he remarked, people
found a way to justify their beliefs without having to submit the latter to a process
of rational evaluation.3 The ‘logic’ of idealization acted by severing the relations that
hold together means and ends: ends and values were estimated more than specific
purposes; “the nurture of personal motives” was privileged over “the creation of
social agencies and environments” (MW 10: 262). Dewey seemed here to suggest that
idealization was a sort of negative counterpart of rational investigation, characterized
by its own distinctive logic, whose aim was precisely to undermine the very possibility
of an intelligent treatment of social problems.
At that stage, Dewey did not use ‘public’ as a technical term; however, one
promising way to clarify the difference between idealization and controlled inquiry
in social affairs would be to say that the latter generates the public, while the former
generates the masses. While the rise of the public originates from the conscious
perception of the public consequences of a certain act, the rise of the masses in
politics is a direct effect of the increasing complexity of social life, of the enormous
quantity of energies released by dramatic events of contemporary life such as the
First World War. Consequently, from a theoretical point of view, it can be said that
the genesis of the public depends on the capacity of a society to prevent its people to
become a mass. As is well known, a complete theory of the public was formulated
by Dewey only in The Public and its Problems (1927), as an answer to the problems
3. From this point of view it is relevant what Dewey wrote in his article “Conscience and Compulsion”
(1917): “One of my most depressing experiences in connection with this matter was the number of
young men who when war was actually declared merely clumsily rolled their conscience out from
under the imperative of ‘Thou shalt not kill’ till it settled under the imperative of ‘Obey the law’
although they still saw the situation exactly as they had seen it before” (MW 10: 263).
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raised by Lippman. Almost nothing of this sort could be found in the texts that Dewey
wrote in the war years. However, in these texts he did a preliminary work aimed at
discovering what may be called the conditions of ‘perturbation’ of public reason. Such
a preliminary work – which was mainly negative, since it was directed to highlighting
the ‘pathology’ of public – was very likely the most difficult part of the project. Indeed,
it compelled Dewey to go against the grain of his philosophy, focusing not on the
positive, reconstructive function of thought, but rather on its intrinsic powerlessness.
4. Dewey in China: Managing Cultural Differences
It should be evident from what has been said until now that when the First World
War eventually came to an end, Dewey’s philosophy was dramatically different not
only from the representation that Bourne had given of it two years before in the Twilight
of Idols, but also from the shape that it had before the outbreak of the war. It was now
richer, more concrete, less abstract and less schematic. It was more attentive to the
social conditioning of thought as well as to the possible relativistic implications of
such conditioning. It was undoubtedly less optimistic: on the one hand, the progressive
refinement of the logical analysis had led Dewey to acknowledge the limits of the
activity of thinking as well as the consequent problems that the latter pose to the
theory and practice of education; on the other hand, the irrational forces released by
the war, in internal as well as in international affairs, made him aware that the process
of rational reconstruction of society was much more difficult and troublesome than he
had previously realized. Finally, it was more ‘prometheic’ and more ambitious: if the
assessment of the difficulties in which thinking is involved dispels easy optimism, it
also stimulates human activity to tackle social problems with a renewed confidence in
the capacity of the intellectual tools to account for the complexity of reality.
So, when Dewey finally arrived in China after a brief and far less productive stay
in Japan, he had behind himself a concrete attempt – which had been lasting for a
period of almost five years – to understand the complexity of social reality in all its
many forms. Thanks to that preliminary work, he was lucidly aware – probably more
aware than any other American philosopher of his time – that a great part of what
was going on in contemporary societies was influenced by philosophies of life. His
sojourn in China gave him the opportunity to put his theoretical assumptions to a far
more trying test.4 Indeed, the object to be analyzed and understood was not simply a
society completely different from America and Europe, but a world that was engaged
in a ground-shaking revolution.
Dewey and his wife, Alice, arrived in China on May, 1st, 1919, three days before
the outbreak of the Fourth May Movement. Their first impression of China was
registered by Alice in a letter to her children, dated May, 3. Coming to China from
Japan, Alice wrote, she had experienced a feeling of freedom and liberation from a
world in which social life was completely controlled and regulated by fixed rules of
4. For a similar reading, even if more concerned with Dewey’s political philosophy, see Wang (2007:
65ff). For a discussion of the philosophical significance of Dewey’s visit in Japan, see Saito 2011 and
2012.
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behavior (Letter, A. Chipman Dewey to her Children, May 3, 1919). Dewey agreed
with his wife’s remark. In an article published few months later, he noticed that,
even though it was a “three days easy journey from Japan to China,” “[i]t is doubtful
whether anywhere in the world another journey of the same length brings with it such
a complete change of political temper and belief” (MW 11: 174). In a letter to his
children, dated May, 9, he stressed the differences between the two nations by saying
that while Japan was “baffling and tantalizing,” China was “overpowering” (Letter,
J. Dewey to his Children, May 9, 1919). In another letter he wrote that the feeling that
he was “going to see more of the dangerous side of life” was more than welcomed
(Letter, J. Dewey to his Children, May 3, 1919). Dewey could not suffer the “feeling of
weakness current in Japan about Japan itself”: he disliked the sense of doubleness that
characterized Japanese society, the distinction drawn between internal and external,
the desire to preserve the society unmodified (MW 11: 176; see also Letter, J. Dewey
to A. Barnes, September 15, 1919). He needed something more concrete and genuine;
he needed to get in touch with a living and troublesome reality.
No surprise therefore that Dewey was truly impressed and somehow excited by
the Chinese situation. The obstacles that Chinese had to overcome were momentous:
indeed, the problem at stake was not simply the modernization of China, but the
preservation of its very existence against Japanese interference. At the Paris Peace
Conference it had been decided that the German concessions in China should be
transferred to Japan instead of being reverted to Chinese sovereignty. In doing so, the
Western powers – with the remarkable exception of the United States – were implicitly
supporting Japan’s imperialist politics in China, thus hindering the formation of a
Chinese national state. The consequence of that decision was a mass protest – the socalled Fourth May Movement – which began with a student demonstration against the
Chinese government, criticized for accepting the decision of the Western powers to
give the Shandong province to Japan. In the very same letter in which he highlighted
the differences between China and Japan, Dewey told his children about his views on
what was going on in the country. He wrote:
[t]he other day the Peking univ students started a parade in protest of the Paris Peace
Conference action in turning the German interests in China over to the Japanese. Being
interfered with by the police they got more unruly and beat up the Chinese minister
to Japan who negotiated the treaties that sold China out, he having been bribed; they
burned the house where he was staying, and he went to the hospital, in fact was reported
dead. Well, in one sense this was a kind of Halloween students spree with a somewhat
serious political purpose attached. In another sense, it may be – tho probably not – the
beginning of an important active political movement, out of which anything may grow.
(J. Dewey to his Children, May 9, 1919)
Over time Dewey become more and more enthusiastic about the possibility of
a revolution that could transform Chinese society. He sided with the students; he
supported the boycott of the merchants; he felt that what was happening was a raising
of public opinion. It is easy to see why Dewey was so excited by the opportunity
to get involved in the Fourth May Movement: pure chance had put him at the very
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center of an epoch-making event; he was not simply in the position of observing
and commenting on facts; he was part of them, and he could legitimately hope to be
a factor influencing them. What was going on in China was nothing less than “the
transformation of the mind of China”: “the realm problem of the Pacific,” Dewey
observed, “is the problem of transformation of the mind of China, of the capacity
of the oldest and most complicated civilization of the globe to remake itself into the
new forms required by the impact of immense alien forces” (MW 11: 206). Dewey
realized that the Fourth May Movement was a major occasion to test his idea of social
philosophy, and, at the same time, to actively intervene in the course of events. As
he himself remarked in one of his earlier articles on China, “[t]o the eye of the mind
[China] presents the most enthralling drama now anywhere enacting” (MW 11: 214;
see also MW 12: 41, and MW 13: 94).
At the same time, however, Dewey clearly perceived that China was different from
almost everything that he had had experience of in his life. In one occasion, Dewey
spoke of “[t]he baffling and ‘mysterious’ character of China to the West” (MW 11:
209). Even time seemed to run differently in China: “the foreigner interpreter,” he
wrote in a sort of autobiographical mood, “comes to the scene with a mind adapted
to the quick tempo of the West,” but then she will soon realize that she is not “used to
history enacted on the scale of that of China” (MW 11: 205). China has a history of four
thousand years, Dewey remarked, so it is impossible that it could find “new courses” of
action in a short span of time. The process of absorption and appropriation of Western
knowledge needed much time and efforts to be completed. The main difficulty for a
Westerner was precisely due to the fact that China was an evolving civilization which
was not willing to adopt “western external methods for immediate practical ends”: as
Dewey observed, “the Chinese genius does not lie in that direction” (MW 11: 207).
But this meant that even those concepts that lied at the basis of Western political and
social philosophy – as, for instance, the concept of State to which Dewey had devoted
considerable attention in his Reconstruction of Philosophy – were not reliable tools for
understanding the Chinese situation: “[n]either our political science nor our history,”
he bitterly remarked, “supplies any system of classification for understanding the
most characteristic phenomena of Chinese institutions” (MW 11: 210).
As usual in Dewey, the difficulty to cope with a different reality turned out to be
a logical problem – that of the reliability of the Western categories of thought. He
did not take much time to realize that his conceptual framework did not fit very well
to the Chinese situation, and that in order to properly understand the latter he had
to strip off most of his habits of thought.5 Accordingly, he adopted the attitude of a
cultural anthropologist. Keeping faithful to his instrumentalist approach, however,
he tried not only and not simply to describe the main differences between the two
cultures; he also attempted to explain the reasons why Chinese mentality had taken
its characteristic shape.
In particular, Dewey was deeply surprised by a specific trait of Chinese mentality.
“The Chinese,” he remarked, “talk more easily than they act – especially in politics [...].
5. See, for instance, Letter, J. Dewey to H. W. Schneider, January 3, 1921; quoted in (Wang 2007: 75).
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One of the defects upon which they dwell is the love of finding substitutes for positive
action, of avoiding entering upon a course of action which might be irrevocable.”
(MW 11: 176). Their motto could be formulated as follows: “If things are fairly well
off, then let well enough alone. If they are evil, endure them rather than run the risk
of making them worse by interference.” (MW 12: 54). In the article “As the Chinese
think,” originally published in 1922 and then reprinted in Characters and Events
with the significant title (chosen by Joseph Ratner and approved by Dewey) “The
Chinese Philosophy of Life,” Dewey rhetorically asked: “Why are the Chinese so
unperturbed […] Is their attitude one of callous indifference, of stupid ignorance?”
And then he added: “Is her [of China] course stupid inertia, a dull obstinate clinging
to the old just because it is old? Or does it show something more profound, a wise,
even if largely unconscious, aversion to admitting forces that are hostile to the whole
spirit of her civilization.” (MW 13: 221). In a letter to Barnes, he noticed that there
were many things in China that made him believe that the “future [was] with China”;
nonetheless, the Chinese did not seem interested in “bring[ing] in that future.” “The
puzzle of their contrasting strong and weak sides,” he wrote, “is one of the most
fascinating things I[’]ve ever experienced, and keeps one always on the alert to see
what is coming next […]. It is a fascinating game to watch, but hard to repress one
desire for a [little] more d[i]rect western energy to tackle things before they get to the
top[p]ling over point.” (Letter, J. Dewey to A. Barnes, September 15, 1919; see also
Wang 2007: 75ff.).
As should be evident, the Chinese tendency towards inaction posed a powerful
challenge to Dewey’s thought: one of the pillars of his philosophy was the idea that
inquiry has a temporal structure, that it is an intermediate stage of experience, and
that an intelligent action is that which control the course of the events by assessing
the means to achieve a certain end. Now, Dewey found himself confronted with a
culture that was greatly suspicious of any active intervention in the course of events,
that did not praise at all private initiative and personal responsibility, that was not
confident in the power of intelligence. It seemed that, in China, the rational assessment
of successful lines of behavior was actually replaced with a sort of passive attitude
suggesting that the only wise thing to do was to wait for the unfolding of the events.
In addition, Chinese culture did not believe that reflection could yield positive results
in the field of politics – at least, if politics is conceived of as centering on the notion
of Government. Since in those years Dewey was struggling to develop a consistent
social philosophy, the empirical fact of a people utterly opposed to the very idea of
social reform was something theoretically disturbing and problematic.
In other words, it seemed that Chinese civilization had developed a conception
of reason which was at odds with Dewey’s instrumentalism. The difficulty of the
problem was enhanced by the fact that Dewey could not resort to any version of
the idea of primitive mind in order to account for the Chinese ‘logical difference.’6
6. On this point, see Fallace 2011. In his book Dewey and the Dilemma of Race, Fallace has convincingly
shown that by 1916 Dewey started criticizing the traditional evolutionary view (which he himself
had previously adopted) according to which native and primitive societies should be conceived of as
earlier and less developed stages of civilization that our “modern, civilized culture had moved beyond”
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Indeed, his deep respect for the Chinese civilization did not allow him to think of it
as undeveloped or less developed than the European culture: “no one who knows the
Chinese,” he wrote, “can believe that the difficulty is intellectual, that the people have
not the mental gifts required in successful organization” (MW 12: 51). He often spoke
of China as “the oldest and most complicated civilization of the globe”; it was clear
to him that Chinese achievements in the fields of art and philosophy were not inferior
to those reached by America or any other country in the world (MW 11: 206; see also
MW 13: 93). At the very same time, Dewey did not believe that such a difference
could be explained by postulating an alleged essential character that somehow marked
all the products of Chinese civilization as different from those of the other cultures. He
was never fascinated by that kind of metaphysical explanations that Oswald Spengler
made so popular in his Decline of the West.
Dewey argued therefore that the Chinese civilization was the outcome of particular
choices taken in the past – he significantly devoted great attention to the teachings
of Laotze and Confucius; even in the Lectures in China there is evidence of that
interest (Dewey 2015: I) – in order to cope with problems that were specific to the
Chinese situation. As he wrote in “Chinese National Sentiment,” referring to the
traditional Western way of dealing with political questions, Europeans and Americans
tend to take the European development “as a necessary standard of normal political
evolution”: “[w]e have made ourselves believe that all development from savagery to
civilization must follow a like course and pass through similar stage” (MW 11: 215).
Dewey was well aware that such an attitude was not only immodest and unjustified,
but also harmful in that it prevented the understanding of the history of China as
well as of its future course. The starting point of every possible analysis should be,
therefore, the recognition that China had its own line of development, and that the
latter was the only legitimate criterion for evaluating and predicting the behavior
of the Chinese people. Consequently, he suggested that Chinese civilization should
be interpreted “only in terms of the institutions and ideas which have been worked
out in its own historical evolution” (MW 11: 216). “We can get the key to mental
operations,” Dewey remarked, “only by studying social antecedents and environment
[…]. We have to understand beliefs and traditions to understand acts, and we have to
understand historic institutions to understand beliefs.” (MW 11: 210).
As is evident, the functional socio-anthropological approach that Dewey
advocated was in strong continuity with his broad instrumentalist account of theories
and philosophies of life since it relied on the assumption that the latter should be
treated as essential elements of social reality.7 What is interesting in this case is that
(Fallace 2011: 3-4; see in particular MW 2: 39-52). Dewey came to realize that the relation between
civilized cultures and ‘primitive’ ones could not be explained in terms of lower and higher levels of
growth within a linear process of cultural development, but rather in terms of different realizations of
a set of natural instincts which constitute our biological endowment.
7. In the article “As the Chinese think,” Dewey did not hesitate to say that even the economic
factors should be conceived of as subordinated to cultural factors. This was an explicit rejection
of the Marxist thesis of the determinant character of the economy. Contrary to that tradition, which
assumed that “the causes of all difficulties between nations [were] economic,” he rebutted that “the
friction generated by economic competition and conflict would not break out into the flames of war
if atmospheric conditions were not favorable.” And then he concluded by remarking that the origin
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the nature and size of the differences between Chinese and Western civilizations led
him to broaden the scope of his analysis to include geographical and economical
considerations, and, in doing so, to revise and improve his account of the ideological
function of ideas. Both in German Philosophy and Politics and in “On Understanding
the Mind of Germany” Dewey had focused his attention on the problem of the
justification of a line of conduct which, even though it was perceived as stemming
from a body of beliefs (a mentality) different from that of the other Western countries,
could be easily accommodated within a broader conceptual framework. In the end,
Germans’ activities were firstly directed toward achieving national unity, and then
toward fostering the economic, social and military progress of Germany. These goal
could hardly be said to be idiosyncratic because, in different degrees and in different
ways, they were shared by all the European powers.
Dewey’s description of the differences between the various national philosophies
of life revolved around the metaphor of a plurality of languages, each of which
represented the way in which a nation expressed “its own moral grounds in the terms
which its history [had] made familiar and congenial” (MW 10: 218). In the case of
China that approach did not seem very promising. On the one hand, the traditional
seclusion of China was a well-known fact – actually, it was the problem at stake – so
that no real explanatory advantage could be gained by simply re-stating it. On the
other hand, the ‘Chinese difference’ was so great that it was not possible to presuppose
a shared set of beliefs or values that could provide a sort of general horizon of
interpretation, in the light of which the various national histories could be understood
and compared. The problem was precisely that such a horizon did not seem to exist –
or, at least, it did not seem easy to discover it.
Consequently, it was not enough to appeal to the national history of China to
account for the specific traits of Chinese mentality. Dewey realized that historical
reconstruction did not have enough explanatory power, but had to be backed and
supported by considerations of other kind. A much more radical approach was needed.
In order to account for the ‘Chinese difference’ – the fact that Chinese did not seem to
conceive of rationality in instrumentalist terms, as the search for the means by which
to control the future course of events (or at least that they were not willing to adopt it
as a method to solve their own problems) – he had to take a step further towards the
elaboration of a theory of logic that could highlight the concrete, material factors on
which the activity of thinking depends.
Dewey argued that the key to solve this puzzle was to acknowledge the full
complexity of the context in which philosophies of life had originated as well as
the problems that they were asked to face. He reasoned as follows. Despite all the
differences in their national histories, Western countries are very similar in their
environmental conditions. To put it rather simply: in the European countries and
in America human beings have enough room to live together without hurting each
other. The environmental conditions promote the development of personal initiative,
of social conflict was intrinsically moral and intellectual: “[t]he atmosphere that makes international
troubles inflammable is the product of deep-seated misunderstandings that have their origin in
different philosophies of life” (MW 13: 218).
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and foster the adoption of an experimental attitude towards social problems. On the
contrary, China presents a completely different scenario. It should not be overlooked,
Dewey remarked, that its “extraordinary and long-continued density of populations”
is not simply a brute geographical and demographic fact; it is first and foremost an
important structural factor whose effects had an enormous cultural impact (MW 12:
53). Historically, that situation of overpopulation had been the background condition
that any Chinese attempt to formulate a new course of action had to take into account.
Consequently, Dewey concluded, it is not particularly strange that the philosophy of
life resulting from a confrontation with an environment so different from the one with
which Europeans and Americans are acquainted is marked by specific and distinctive
traits that have no comparable equivalents in any other country in the world.
Dewey’s analysis is extremely sophisticated on this point. Thanks to his previous
reflections on the social effects of propaganda, he was not uncomfortable with the idea
that the activity of thinking could be conditioned by the concrete social circumstances
in which the agent happens to find himself. He therefore used some of the principles
lying at the basis of the notion of “psychology of crowd” to account for the diffidence
of the Chinese towards initiative and experimentation. It is worth remarking, indeed,
that one of the problems that the psychology of crowd was meant to solve was
the irrational behavior of people when in large numbers, their incapacity to adopt
a rational and reflective attitude on social matters when participating in a strike or
manifestation. In the case of China, Dewey noticed, the situation was even more
complicated because that condition was not an episodic event, but a standard fact of
associated living. As he wrote, the psychologists who invented the mob-psychology
“have not inquired as to the effect upon the mind of constant living in close contact
with large numbers, of continual living in a crowd” (MW 12: 53).
It was on the basis of these assumptions that Dewey could eventually explain
away the ‘Chinese difference.’ He moved from the assumption that any course of
action human beings undertake – and logical investigation should be conceived of
as a particular way of behaving in presence of other people – is dependent upon the
environment with which they have to cope. Now, because of overpopulation in China
there was no possibility of “solitude and loneliness”: every act was a public act, every
behavior was subjected to social approval or disapproval. There was “no room to
stir about, no relief from the unremitting surveillance of their fellows” (MW 12: 53).
Every person was constantly judged by the other persons who had a direct interest
in the consequences of his activities: Chinese acquired “the fear that if one strand is
touched, the whole will unravel,” and accordingly they came to believe that “the safe
thing [was] to leave things alone” (MW 12: 54). Consequently, the virtue of free and
responsible initiative was quite naturally replaced by the attention to the “face,” to
public reputation, to the opinion of the others. “Imagine all elbow-room done away
with, imagine millions of men living day by day, year by year, in the presence of the
same persons (a very close presence at that),” Dewey remarked; if you could imagine
that condition, “new light may be shed upon the conservatism of the Chinese people”
(MW 12: 53).
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Conservatism was then the source of the Chinese distrust in the power of reason
to control and redirect the course of events. But Dewey never tired of stressing that
Chinese conservatism was substantially different from the Western one. Chinese
conservatism hinged upon the idea of the superiority of nature over man, the “laissezfaire reverence for nature,” the doctrine that the world is not at our disposal (MW 13:
222). To clarify this point and to better highlight the differences between the Chinese
and the Western form of conservatism, Dewey used the example of the belief in
Feng-shui – that is, the belief in the existence of “mystical influences connected with
the land” (MW 13: 224). That belief, which was an essential part of the Chinese
philosophy of life as codified in the teachings of Laotze and Confucius, played a major
role in obstructing and retarding the introduction of new industrial forces in China.
From a Western perspective, the belief in Feng-shui was a cultural force opposing
to the industrial forces aiming at the modernization and rationalization of China. It
impeded the economic and political development of the country, its transformation in
a modern nation with a strong central government and an economy based on industry
and free market. However, in the broader context of the Chinese civilization that
belief acquired a much more positive meaning: indeed, it represented an appeal to
the conservation of natural forces, “a remarkable exhibition of piety toward nature,” a
warning against the risks of an uncontrolled exploitation of natural resources. If that
belief were rationalized, Dewey remarked, “one would see in it a belief that the land
and its energies belong to the whole succession of human beings, past generations and
future” (MW 13: 224).
Against the Western emphasis on creativity and initiative, regardless of any
possible future consequences on the environment, the Chinese civilization advanced
a different conception of life and nature, much more respectful of the soil and its
fertility. The ultimate reason of the ‘Chinese difference’ relied precisely here, on
the fact that, traditionally, China was “agrarian, agricultural”; and the success of the
teachings of Laotze should be traced back to their capacity to express “something
congenial to Chinese temperament and habits of life.” Among all the people, he wrote,
Chinese were the only ones who succeeded in not exhausthing their soil: “the Chinese
have gone on tilling, tilling, tilling, even, as in north China, against great odds; and
their soil is still productive, as productive, probably, as ever it was” (MW 13: 222).
Consequently, Dewey held conservatism to be a positive value of Chinese
civilization – in a twofold sense. On the one hand, it was positive in a functional,
articulative sense: conservatism was an apt response to the particular environmental
conditions with which Chinese had been confronted for thousands of years. It stemmed
from the need to preserve what was most precious for them – the resources of nature.
With a remarkable image, Dewey said that “[t]heir minds are as steeped in contact with
natural processes as their bodies are apt for agricultural work” (MW 13: 222). It was
natural for them to “wait for the fruition of slow natural processes,” to give nature the
“time to do her work” (MW 13: 223, and MW 13: 222). And, similarly, it was natural
for them to believe that ”[t]he workings of nature will in time bring to naught the
artificial fussings and fumings of man,” their motto being “[c]onquering by yielding”
(MW 13: 222). On the other hand, it was positive in the moral sense of the term:
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indeed, it represented a different set of values, contrary and alternative to the Western
worldview, and nonetheless worthy of preserving. As Dewey explicitly remarked,
“the Chinese philosophy of life embodies a profoundly valuable contribution to
human culture and one of which a hurried, impatient, over-busied and anxious West is
infinitely in need” (MW 13: 223).
As should be evident, the overall tone of Dewey’s philosophy as well as its specific
doctrines were substantially different from the ones formulated in his previous
writings: his attempt to come to terms with the ‘Chinese difference’ prompted him to
radicalize his thought in a direction that led him to formulate in a more inclusive and
holistic way the relation between nature and culture. In order to account for Chinese
conservatism he had to admit that theories and ideas – the realm to which philosophies
of life belong – were sensitive to the natural, environmental conditions in which they
originated, such conditions being a major component of what a philosophy of life
had to articulate. In doing so, he came to see that cultural choices were responsive to
the ‘natural’ traits of the situation, while, at the very same time, the latter found their
proper realization in the civilization whose development and evolution they directly
supported or hindered: “[t]he teachings of Laotze,” he remarked, “spring from the
depths of Chinese life and in turn they have influenced that life” (MW 13: 223). A
civilization thus became a self-included whole – a sort of cultural organism – in which
cultural aspects (philosophies of life) and natural aspects (environmental conditions)
were so closely interwoven that they were impossible to disentangle.
The realization of the intertwining of nature and culture was consistent with
Dewey’s overall philosophical project, and in particular with the philosophical
anthropology that he sketched in the series of lectures published in 1922 as Human
Nature and Conduct, based on the notions of natural, unarticulated instincts and
culturally mediated habits.8 It did not represent, therefore, a theoretical novelty: it
was more a matter of different emphasis than of different meaning. However, the
introduction of this new conceptual tool within the context of Dewey’s thought had
some important bearing upon his social philosophy. First of all, it paved the way for
a naturalized, anti-reductionist account of the notion of philosophy of life, and, more
in general, of the ideal dimension of human behavior: in his articles on China, Dewey
was willing to treat philosophies of life as natural events that had to be discussed
and dealt with in a purely naturalistic and experimental way, without denying their
autonomy as ideological products. It also implied that a social philosophy which
aimed to provide an account of social reality should become more and more empirical
and concrete, more terrestrial and attentive to the material background of theories. As
a consequence, the notion of philosophy of life became a richer and more powerful
tool of analysis, which could enlarge the explanatory power of his pragmatist social
philosophy grounded on the notion of ideological articulation.
Two were the main theoretical consequences that followed from such a change
of perspective. The first one was the idea of the ‘humility of thought,’ which could
be read as a sort of radicalization of the notion of ‘limits of thought.’ We saw above
8. On this point, see Torres Colon & Hobbs 2015.
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that Dewey’s analysis of the harmful effect of propaganda on American society
was intended to highlight the ‘pathologies’ that could affect thought. In that case,
the reconstructive activity of thinking was conceived of as a value to preserve
against the menace of irrational forces at work in the contemporary world. To put
it roughly, Dewey believed that the activity of thinking was intrinsically good, and
the preservation of its very possibility was an end to attain. Dewey’s reflections
on the ‘Chinese difference’ partially modified this view, which was too simplistic.
It is not that Dewey rejected the instrumentalist tenet that rationality is the meansends evaluation, with the aim of controlling a future course of action. This would be
probably a too strong statement, even though it is possible to find some quotations
that support such interpretation.9 Rather, he became suspicious of the too naïve belief
in the neutrality and unproblematic character of the recourse to thinking activity. In
China, he remarked, “[i]nnovation, experimentation, get automatically discouraged,
not from lack of intelligence, but because intelligence is too keenly aware of the
mistakes that may result, the trouble that may arise” (MW 12: 58). The philosophical
contribution of the Chinese civilization amounted precisely to this – to call attention
to an aspect which had gone completely neglected in Western culture. That is, that in
certain particular situations even our most precious and successful tools could turn
into a menace for ourselves and other people.
The second theoretical achievement was the idea of the cultural contingency of
thought. In his previous writings Dewey had always treated logical activity as a sort
of universal constant, even in those cases in which he was concerned with its social
pathologies. That he was strongly committed to the belief in the ‘universal validity’
of thought (as codified by Western civilization) is shown by the fact that when he first
tried to advance some proposals on how to solve the problems of China, he relied on
the assumption that Western method and knowledge could provide a reliable means to
reach the ends that Chinese wanted to achieve, even though that assumption led him
to completely anti-pragmatist conclusions – such as, for instance, the view that means
could be given before and independently from the end that they were supposed to
bring about, and the end could be, in its turn, determined without taking into account
the means available to the agents. So, for instance, in the article “What Holds China
Back,” published in May 1920, he argued that the only way to change how Chinese
thought, acted and felt was not “by expostulation, exhortation and preaching.” That
would have amounted to a complete misunderstanding of how deeply was that
mentality rooted in the material conditions with which Chinese civilization had to
cope, and of how ingrained was it in the habits of behavior of the Chinese people.
Rather, he suggested that what was needed was a “change of conditions, an alteration
of environment,” and that “an introduction of modern industrial methods” was
the only thing that could “profoundly affect the environment” (MW 12: 59). Now,
from a certain point of view, Dewey’s proposal was genuinely pragmatist since it
acknowledged that the ideal dimension of human activity could not be severed from
the material in which it happens to be embodied. As Dewey wrote in the Lectures in
9. See, for instance, (MW 13: 221).
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China, “[i]deas, theories are originally products, causes of non-intellectual forces”
(Dewey 2015: I.3). However, by recommending the application of Western tools to
solve Chinese problems, he implicitly admitted that, no matter what was the problem,
it could be handled by Western means. But this was not a conclusion that Dewey could
accept without reservation and embarrassment.
One would be willing to say that this tension within Dewey’s philosophy was due
to the fact that the different strands of his thinking did not develop in parallel: at the
time he wrote “What Holds China Back,” Dewey was well aware that philosophies
of life had to be treated as natural events, but he did not succeeded in drawing all
the possible conclusions from that thesis. As a consequence, his logical account of
thinking was not consistent with his naturalism. Two years later, when he wrote “As the
Chinese Think,” his position was much more consistent. In the context of a discussion
of Chinese conservatism, Dewey drew a comparison between the Western and the
Chinese mentality. He wrote: “[w]hile western peoples have attacked, exploited and in
the end wasted the soil, they [the Chinese] have conserved it.” And then he concluded:
“[t]he results are engraved upon both Chinese and western psychologies” (MW 13:
223). No pride of place was given to Western civilization. The analysis contained in
that article shows that he had now realized that the logical activity of thinking, Western
technology, the whole body of Western knowledge, were all part of a civilization
which was not less grounded on a particular philosophy of life than the Chinese one.
Dewey’s attempt to come to terms with the ‘Chinese difference’ resulted therefore
in a philosophical position which was radically pluralist, anti-foundationalist, and
which nonetheless did never indulge in the quietism to which relativism inevitably
leads. His eye was now trained to perceive the different layers that made up social
reality. His confrontation with the Chinese civilization reminded him of something
which he had to know very well, that is, that much of what we are ready to assume to
be natural is, in reality, second nature.
5. Conclusion
After a twenty-six month stay in China, Dewey eventually went back to the United
States in October 1921. He returned to his previous job; he was again a professor of
philosophy after two years in which he had “no philosophical reading at all” (Letter,
J. Dewey to F. C. S. Schiller, July 18, 1922). Occasionally, he wrote some articles on
China, but his attention was captured by other concerns. The remaining part of the
third decade of the century was devoted to developing a naturalistic metaphysics:
the problem of accounting for the relation between ideal and real was replaced by
the problem of understanding the relation between nature and meaning, between
naturalism and humanism. The aim of a future research will be to determine how
much of the theoretical achievements that Dewey had reached in the period 19151921 passed into the new phase of his philosophy, and too evaluate if something
that did not receive adequate recognition in this new phase could be preserved and
revitalized in the contemporary philosophical debate.
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References
Bourne R., (1917), “The Twilight of Idols,” Seven Arts, Vol. II, October 1917,
reprinted in J. E. Tiles, ed., John Dewey. Critical Assessments, Vol. II. Political
Theory and Social Practice, London, Routledge 1992, 199-208.
Dewey J., (1897), “The Significance of the Problem of Knowledge,” in The Early
Works of J. Dewey, 1882-1898, Vol.5 (1895-1898), J. A. Boydston, ed.,
Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press, 2008, 4-24.
— (1902), “Interpretation of Savage Mind,” in The Middle Works of J. Dewey, 18991924, Vol. 2 (1902-1903), J. A. Boydston, ed., Carbondale, Southern Illinois
University Press, 2008, 39-52.
— (1903), Studies in Logical Theory, in The Middle Works of J. Dewey, 1899-1924,
Vol. 2 (1902-1903), J. A. Boydston, ed., Carbondale, Southern Illinois University
Press, 2008, 293-378.
— (1908), Ethics, in The Middle Works of J. Dewey, 1899-1924, Vol. 5 (1908),
J. A. Boydston, ed., Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press, 2008.
— (1910), How We Think, in The Middle Works of J. Dewey, 1899-1924, Vol. 6
(1910-11), J. A. Boydston, ed., Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press,
2008, 177-355.
— (1915), German Philosophy and Politics, in The Middle Works of J. Dewey, 18991924, Vol. 8 (1915), J. A. Boydston, ed., Carbondale, Southern Illinois University
Press, 2008, 135-204.
— (1916), Democracy and Education, in The Middle Works of J. Dewey, 1899-1924,
Vol. 9 (1916), J. A. Boydston, ed., Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press,
2008.
— (1916a), “On Understanding the Mind of Germany,” in The Middle Works of
J. Dewey, 1899-1924, Vol. 10 (1916-17), J. A. Boydston, ed., Carbondale,
Southern Illinois University Press, 2008, 216-233.
— (1917), “Conscience and Compulsion,” in The Middle Works of J. Dewey, 18991924, Vol. 10 (1916-17), J. A. Boydston, ed., Carbondale, Southern Illinois
University Press, 2008, 260-264.
— (1919a), “On the Two Sides of the Eastern Sea,” in The Middle Works of J. Dewey,
1899-1924, Vol. 11 (1918-19), J. A. Boydston, ed., Carbondale, Southern Illinois
University Press, 2008, 174-179.
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Dewey J., (1919b), “Transforming the Mind of China,” in The Middle Works of
J. Dewey, 1899-1924, Vol. 11 (1918-19), J. A. Boydston, ed., Carbondale,
Southern Illinois University Press, 2008, 205-214.
— (1919c), “Chinese National Sentiment,” in The Middle Works of J. Dewey, 18991924, Vol. 11 (1918-19), J. A. Boydston, ed., Carbondale, Southern Illinois
University Press, 2008, 215-227.
— (1920), Reconstruction of Philosophy, in The Middle Works of J. Dewey, 18991924, Vol. 12 (1920), J. A. Boydston, ed., Carbondale, Southern Illinois University
Press, 2008, 77-201.
— (1920a), “What Holds China Back,” in The Middle Works of J. Dewey, 1899-1924,
Vol. 12 (1920), J. A. Boydston, ed., Carbondale, Southern Illinois University
Press, 2008, 51-59.
— (1922), Human Nature and Conduct, in The Middle Works of J. Dewey, 18991924, Vol. 14 (1922), J. A. Boydston, ed., Carbondale, Southern Illinois University
Press, 2008.
— (1922a), “As the Chinese think,” in The Middle Works of J. Dewey, 1899-1924,
Vol. 13 (1921-1922), J. A. Boydston, ed., Carbondale, Southern Illinois University
Press, 2008, 217-227.
— (1973), Lectures in China 1919-1920, Honolulu, The University Press of Hawaii.
— (2015), “Lectures in Social and Political Philosophy,” The European Journal of
Pragmatism and American Philosophy 7 (2), 7-44.
Letter, A. Chipman Dewey to her Children, May 3, 1919, The Correspondence
of John Dewey, Volume 2, 1918-1939, Electronic Edition, L. Hickman, ed.,
Charlottesville, Intelex.
Letter, J. Dewey to his Children, May 3, 1919, The Correspondence of John Dewey,
Volume 2, 1918-1939, Electronic Edition, L. Hickman, ed., Charlottesville,
Intelex.
Letter, J. Dewey to his Children, May 9, 1919, The Correspondence of John Dewey,
Volume 2, 1918-1939, Electronic Edition, L. Hickman, ed., Charlottesville,
Intelex.
Letter, J. Dewey to A. Barnes, September 15, 1919, The Correspondence of John
Dewey, Volume 2, 1918-1939, Electronic Edition, L. Hickman, ed., Charlottesville,
Intelex.
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Letter, J. Dewey to F. C. S. Schiller, July 18, 1922, The Correspondence of John
Dewey, Volume 2, 1918-1939, Electronic Edition, L. Hickman, ed., Charlottesville,
Intelex.
Fallace T. D., (2011), Dewey and the Dilemma of Race. An Intellectual History, 18951922, New York, Teacher College Press.
Frega R., (2015), “John Dewey’s Social Philosophy: A Restatement,” The European
Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 7 (2), 98-127.
Gramsci A., (1971), Selections from the Prison Notebooks, New York, International
Publishers.
Koopman C., (2010), “The History and Critique of Modernity: Dewey with Foucault against Weber,” in P. Fairfield, ed., John Dewey and Continental Philosophy,
Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press, 194-218.
Livingston J., (2003), “War and the Intellectuals: Bourne, Dewey, and the Fate of
Pragmatism,” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2 (4), 431-450.
Martin J., (2003), The Education of John Dewey: A Biography, New York, Columbia
University Press.
Rogers M., (2009), The Undiscovered Dewey: Religion, Morality, and the Ethos of
Democracy, New York, Columbia University Press.
Saito N., (2011), “Becoming Cosmopolitan: On the Idea of a Japanese Response to
American Philosophy,” Transactions of the Charles Sanders Peirce Society 47
(4), 507-523.
— (2012), “Is Thoreau More Cosmopolitan than Dewey?,” The Pluralist 7 (3), 71-85.
Stuhr J., (2015), Pragmatic Fashions. Pluralism, Democracy, Relativism, and the
Absurd, Bloomington, Indiana University Press.
Torres Colon G. & C. Hobbs, (2015), “The Intertwining of Culture and Nature: Franz
Boas, John Dewey, and Deweyan Strands of American Anthropology,” Journal of
the History of Ideas 76 (1), 139-162.
Wang Ching-Sze J., (2007), John Dewey in China. To Teach and to Learn, New York,
State University of New York Press.
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COPYRIGHT © 2009 ASSOCIAZIONE PRAGMA
Yung-chen Chiang*
Appropriating Dewey: Hu Shi and His Translation of Dewey’s “Social and
Political Philosophy” Lecture Series in China
Abstract: The significance of the discovery of half of Dewey’s most important
China lecture series notes, “Social and Political Philosophy,” cannot be
overestimated. These newly-discovered lecture notes provide us with a unique
opportunity to conduct a translation case study in both directions: first, to check Hu
Shi’s translation against Dewey’s lecture notes; and second, to check John Dewey:
Lectures in China, 1919-1920, “back translations” in the terminology of translation
studies, both against Hu’s translation and against Dewey’s original notes that the
back translators tried to reconstruct. More important, by treating translations as
re-writes and as products of cultural and ideological manipulations, this case study
enables us to analyze how Hu Shi appropriated Dewey’s ideas to advance his own
cultural and political agenda while acting as the latter’s interpreter.1
John and Alice Dewey’s visit to Japan in 1919 and their subsequent sojourn in
China from 1919 to 1921 are well documented and celebrated. Their Letters from
China and Japan published in 1920 and his articles published in the New Republic
and Asia and, later, reprinted in Characters and Events in 1929, contained many pithy
observations and incisive analyses of China and Japan that remain useful to historians
even today. Yet while his lectures at the Imperial University of Tokyo were published
as The Reconstruction in Philosophy, his China lectures were unfortunately lost. In
1973, the University Press of Hawaii published John Dewey: Lectures in China,
1919-1920, which used the Chinese transcripts of Dewey’s lectures and translated
them back into English.
Until recently, whether John Dewey: Lectures in China, 1919-1920 can be admitted
into the Dewey œuvre has been a moot point. The discovery that I made in the Hu
Shi (Hu Shih) Archives in Beijing of Dewey’s most important China lecture series
notes, “Social and Political Philosophy,” changed the situation.2 Hu Shi translated all
of Dewey’s lectures in Beijing and in the provinces of Shandong and Shanxi. Now,
with three texts available to us – these newly-discovered Dewey’s lectures notes, Hu
Shi’s Chinese translation of them, and the University Press of Hawaii’s translation of
Hu’s Chinese translation back to English – we have a unique opportunity to conduct
a translation case study in three directions: first, to check Hu Shi’s translation against
Dewey’s lecture notes; and second, to check John Dewey: Lectures in China, 19191920, “back translations” in the terminology of translation studies, both against
Hu’s translation and against Dewey’s original notes that the back translators tried to
* DePauw University [[email protected]].
1. I would like to thank Mac Dixon-Fyle, my colleague at the History Department at DePauw
University, for his keen comments on the paper.
2. The extant Dewey’s lecture notes on “Social and Political Philosophy” can be found in “Authors
Unidentifiable” Folder, the “Hu Shi Archives,” E087-001 (Dewey 1919-20a). In this article, they will
be referred to as “SPP” followed by the Roman numeral indicating the lecture number and the Arabic
number indicating the page number.
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reconstruct. More important, by treating translations as re-writes and as products of
cultural and ideological manipulations,3 this case study enables us to analyze how
Hu Shi appropriated Dewey’s ideas to advance his own cultural and political agenda
while acting as the latter’s interpreter.
Dewey’s “Social and Political Philosophy” lecture series consisted of sixteen
lectures that he delivered at Peking University once a week on Saturday afternoons
from 4 P.M. to 6 P.M. beginning on September 20, 1919. His lecture notes that
are extant in the Hu Shi Archives consist of Lectures I, II, III, IV, X, XI, XII, and
XVI, exactly half of this lecture series.4 Dewey’s name does not appear on any of
these notes. The words “Social Pol Phil Lecture I” appear on the first page of the
first lecture, with the page number typed on the top middle of the page for this
lecture. The rest of the extant lecture notes have “SPP” typed on the top left margin,
followed by a Roman numeral indicating the lecture number in the series and then
by a dash and an Arabic number indicating the page number of the lecture. These
notes are typed by Dewey himself using the typewriter that he brought with him to
Japan and China.
Hu explained the process of production in translating Dewey’s lectures in China
forty years later in a speech given in Honolulu:
Typing on his own typewriter, Dr. Dewey always wrote out his brief notes for every
lecture, a copy of which would be given to his interpreter so that he could study them
and think out the suitable Chinese words and phrases before the delivery and the
translation. After each lecture in Peking, the Dewey notes were given to the selected
recorders so that they could check their reports before publication. (Hu Shi 1962: 765)
Thus, the Dewey lectures as published in Chinese were a product of a three-party
collaboration that was twice removed from the original version, that is, from Dewey’s
own typed notes and his delivery of them, through Hu’s interpretation, and, finally,
to the recorder’s transcript. Interestingly, John Dewey, Lectures in China, 1919-1920
was also a production of a three-party collaboration and was also twice removed
from the Chinese translation: first, Chung-ming Lu, a graduate student from Taiwan
who was studying the philosophy of education at the University of Hawaii in the
early 1960s, made a literal translation back into English of Dewey’s lectures as they
appeared in the Chinese translation; then Robert Clopton of the University of Hawaii
rendered them into idiomatic English; Tsuin-chen Ou, a Dewey scholar of the New
Asia College in Hong Kong, compared Clopton’s version for fidelity to the Chinese
text; and, finally, Clopton incorporated Ou’s suggestions for modifications.5 The aim
was to replicate as closely as possible Dewey’s own style and language.
For ease of following the analyses in this paper, I would like to define the
terminology employed to refer to the three texts available to us. Following the
3. Andre Lefevere 1992.
4. Please note that the extant Lecture IV is missing the last page, which I suspect, by comparing it
with the transcript of Hu’s Chinese version, contains only the remainder of the sentence that begins at
the bottom of p. 13, the last of the extant copy. The extant Lecture VI has only one page, that is, p. 1.
5. Robert Clopton & Tsuin-chen Ou (1973: 33).
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terminology commonly used in translation studies, the newly-discovered Dewey’s
lectures notes will be referred to as the source text; Hu Shi’s Chinese translation of
them, the target text; and Clopton and Ou’s translation of Hu’s Chinese translation back
to English, back translation. In analyzing Hu’s translation and how he appropriated
Dewey, I basically use the back translation, as it is published and is available for
scholars to consult and to verify. However, because Clopton and Ou put a premium on
recouping Dewey’s elocution, they at times deviated from the target text when they
deemed the latter patently uncharacteristic of what Dewey would have said. In the
cases where the deviation was minor, I highlight the passages in question in bold and
put my own renditions also in bold in the brackets and indicate that they are from the
target text. In the cases where Clopton and Ou’s back translation deviated too much
from the target text, I offer my own translation, indicate it as such in parentheses at the
end of the passage, and place it next to Clopton and Ou’s for comparison.
While Clopton and Ou reported that many scholars complimented them for
their success in replicating the style and language of Dewey’s during that period,6
they sidestepped the issue of the content. This, however, may not have been a
deliberate evasion, but rather a misplaced confidence on their part in the fidelity
of Hu’s translation. In this, Clopton and Ou were not alone. Given Hu’s superstar
stature in China – Dewey’s most famous Chinese student and modern China’s most
celebrated intellectual leader – no one would be so impertinent as to suspect that his
understanding of Dewey’s ideas, his command of English and, least of all, his mastery
of the vernacular Chinese could be less than perfect. To question the fidelity of his
translation of Dewey’s lectures would be tantamount to being sacrilegious.
Clopton and Ou’s presumption of Hu’s fidelity to Dewey’s ideas was not the
most damaging to the value of their back translations, however. In privileging the
recoupment of how Dewey may have remarked over what he actually said and, more
to the point, what his Chinese audience and readers may have heard and read, they
were completely oblivious of the role Hu Shi played in fashioning Dewey’s messages
to his Chinese audience, in addition to that of his competence as a translator.
To take up the issue of fidelity that Clopton and Ou addressed in their second
round of back translation first. The irony is that fidelity was not the top priority in
Hu’s translation philosophy. In a letter written in 1933, Hu reflected on the translation
practice common in his friends’ circle: “Twelve years ago, translation practice was
quite different from today’s. Back then, literal translation had not become a practice.
[…] We aimed for readability and often did not stick to the original language.”7
Even as Hu began to accept literal translation as the practice by the 1930s, he
continued to view fidelity as a misplaced fixation. He dismissed the three golden rules
of translation made famous by Yan Fu in China since the turn of the 19th- and 20thcenturies – “fidelity,” “lucidity,” and “elegance” – as a false trichotomy. There was
only one golden rule in translation, he contended, which was “to carefully discern the
author’s intention and to convey it elastically in Chinese.” It was like asking oneself:
“How would the author say it in Chinese if he were Chinese?” “Lucidity equals
6. Robert Clopton & Tsuin-chen Ou (1973: 9).
7. Hu Shi (1933: 24.154).
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fidelity,” snapped him with a quip: “If lucidity is not there, what’s the use of fidelity?
Wouldn’t it be better to read the original?”8
Hu’s dismissal of fidelity as a misplaced fixation reflected a situation that was both
historical and idiosyncratic. As the foremost champion of vernacular Chinese, the
colloquial language of the common people as opposed to the classical language used
by the elite, Hu was keenly aware of the poverty of its vocabulary and the looseness
of its syntax. He lamented in a diary entry in 1922 that he could not find appropriate
words in Chinese to render such simple terms in English as “tone,” “rhythm,” and
“form.”9 As late as 1935, he contended that only by fully assimilating the precise and
fine syntax of the Western languages, could vernacular Chinese express complex ideas
and intricate theories.10 In addition to being limited by the historical circumstances
of the rudimentary state of vernacular Chinese, Hu was further constrained by an
idiosyncratic aversion to use idioms from Classical Chinese, which he dismissed as
clichés, and by an equally idiosyncratic insistence on being plain and simple so as to
be accessible to everyone. When he had difficulty finding appropriate vocabulary and
syntax of the vernacular to translate the sentence at hand, he would often settle for
colloquialism to render the meaning without bothering to find a syntactic structure
parallel to the source text to embed it.
I have analyzed elsewhere Hu’s works in translation, including his translation
of Dewey’s “Social and Political Philosophy.” I illustrated with examples how his
translation philosophy, the rudimentary state of the vernacular Chinese, and his
idiosyncratic writing style combined to make him, though fluent, masterful, and
elegant in Chinese and English respectively, a mediocre translator.11 Suffice it here to
say that his translations were marred by errors, imprecisions, emendations, elisions,
and truncations. The most egregious examples happened to be from his translation of
“Social and Political Philosophy.”
Before we look closely at Hu’s translation of “Social and Political Philosophy,”
a little bit more information about the context of its production will be in order. The
extant Dewey lecture notes are about twelve pages in average for each of the lectures,
the shortest being Lecture XVI, which is six pages long. As these lecture notes were
written in prose form, it is really a misnomer to call them lecture notes. Granted that
they were not polished and ready for print, each lecture was fully written out, with
the beginning, the main body, and the conclusion. In Lecture II, Dewey even wrote
interlinearly in one place and on the margin in another with his fountain pen: “Will
condense the above in lecture” and “Condense with p. 6.” I suspect that these extant
notes were pretty close to what he actually spoke to his Chinese audience.
I have already mentioned that the translation was a three-party collaboration and
that each lecture of this series lasted for two hours. Although the announcement of this
lecture series indicated that it began at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, I inferred from other
8. Hu Shi (n.d.).
9. Hu Shi (1922: 3.503).
10. Hu Shi (1935: 12.294-300).
11. See Chapter 7: “Fidelity and Lucidity: A Dilemma in Translation?,” of the second volume of my Hu
Shi biography series in Chinese, Yung-chen Chiang 2013.
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announcements of Dewey’s lecture series at Peking University that it lasted for two
hours, with one hour of time allotted for Dewey and another for his translator. With
Dewey having provided the lecture notes before hand, the translation apparently did
not proceed sentence by sentence, but rather paragraph by paragraph. According to the
reminiscences of the recorder, who collaborated with Hu Shi, for Dewey’s “Types of
Thinking” lecture series:
Interpretation was done consecutively, Dewey giving about a paragraph in English,
then the interpreter turning this paragraph into Chinese. At times in the Peking lectures
Hu Shih would stop interpreting to ask Dewey for clarifıcation on some point, then
continue the Chinese version.12
By all accounts, Dewey was a notoriously slow speaker, who spoke haltingly and
often with long pauses between sentences. According to a Time cover story from 1928
about his China lectures:
Dewey doctrines are best not heard from the lips of the Second Confucius. His delivery
is monotonous, halting, full of long pauses while the great mind ponderously moves
careless of the impatience of auditors. But a printed page of Dewey is starred with
diadems.13
In lecturing, Dewey apparently stayed close to his text. Irving Edman, Dewey’s
former student and, later, colleague at Columbia, described Dewey’s classroom
lecture style as follows: “He sat at his desk, fumbling with a few crumpled yellow
sheets and looking abstractedly out of the window. He spoke very slowly in a Vermont
drawl.”14 Hu Shi, too, described Dewey’s lecture style in the same vein in his diary
entry for July 6, 1921, a few days before the Dewey’s departure from China: “Dewey
is not an eloquent speaker. When he speaks, it looks like every word is labored. If he
has a prepared text, he can give quite forceful lectures; otherwise his lectures are quite
dull.” 15
Thus, even though Dewey’s lecture notes for each lecture were only about twelve
pages in length and the two-hour time allotted for each lecture should give him and Hu
Shi enough time for delivery in English and translation in Chinese, I suspect Dewey did
not stray much from his prepared notes to elaborate and digress. There are, however,
significant differences between Hu’s translations and the extant Dewey’s lecture
notes. Some of these may indeed have reflected elaborations and digressions from
Dewey when delivering his lectures. I believe, nonetheless, that these differences were
derived mostly from the fact that Hu’s translations were re-writes, but not translations
in the conventional sense. As he put Dewey’s ideas in words and phrases in vernacular
Chinese – What Dewey would say if he were Chinese, as dictated by Hu’s translation
philosophy – he simplified, conflated, emended, rearranged, and even expunged
Dewey’s text, along with not infrequent translation mistakes. At the end, what he
12. Quoted in Barry Keenan (1977: 13).
13. “Foreign News: To Moscow,” Time, June 4, 1928, quoted in Scott R. Stroud (2013: 106-7).
14. Philip Jackson (2000: 183).
15. Hu Shi (1921a: 3.166).
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accomplished was, I submit, as much a translation of Dewey as an appropriation of
Dewey to serve his own cultural and political agendas.
Space precludes the possibility of presenting a sufficient number of exhibits of
Hu’s translation samples from “Social and Political Philosophy.” Many of the errors of
and lack of precisions in his translations can be attributed to the poverty of vocabulary
and syntax of the vernacular that was being elevated into the medium for scholarly
and creative discourses, in addition to the fact that translation was not his forte. I will
cite two sets of examples to illustrate the typical ways Hu simplified, rearranged,
and conflated Dewey’s argument until he completely distorted Dewey’s ideas. The
first set of examples illustrate Hu’s tendency to simplify Dewey’s nuanced analyses
of contrasts or comparisons to the extent that they were often painted in stark black
and white contrasts and impute with good and bad connotations. In Lecture I, Dewey
began by saying that human beings were creatures of habits and customs and were
averse to question them:
Men built up customs and transmitted traditions to their offspring for centuries
before they tried to discover any rationale in what they did. They made no attempts
at explanation. If asked what for one they would have said they had such and [such]
customs because they liked them, or because their ancestors told them so to act or
because their gods had established them. To question too closely was to be impious or
disloyal, and might result as with Socrates in death. (SPP: I.1)
Hu’s translation of this passage, with emendations, was longer:
We no longer think about what we do; we don not ask ourselves “Why do we do it this
way rather than some other way?” If someone does raise the question, we reply that
“everybody does it this way,” or that “this is the way that is has always been done.” As
long as our way of dealing with a class of situations provides reasonable satisfaction,
we do not need a theory to justify our action.
[T]here is a general tendency to shy away from examination and… to become annoyed
at or resentful toward people who insist upon raising the questions of what? and how?
and why? Men [“Men with high ideals” in the target text] who have raised such
questions have often been unpopular [“reviled” in the target text], and some who have
persisted in pressing their questions about existing institutions have even been put to
death for their pains. The classic example, of course, is Socrates […]. (Clopton/Ou: 46)
Clopton and Ou were right in taking out the prepositional phrase in the “Men
with high ideals,” for they correctly judged that Dewey would not have said that.
Nevertheless, they could not change the fact that Hu in his target text was pitting the
“men with high ideals” against a traditionalist society. In so doing, Hu conjured up a
black and white contrast and a good versus bad contest that was not there in Dewey’s
lecture notes. Note the contrast on the origin of philosophizing between Dewey’s
original text and Hu’s target text:
So men began to philosophize about their collective habits, their established institutions
only when these began to cease [to] function satisfactorily. The difficulties might be
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internal strife or external contacts and conflicts or both. But something threatening
change or disintegration made men compare and inquire and attempt to select and hold
on to the really good. (SPP: I.2)
And,
It is only when existing customs and institutions cease to function adequately that we
tolerate – and even then, quite unwillingly in many cases – questioning as to their form
and function. When our laws, customs, and institutions no longer serve the purpose
for which they were originally evolved, we are forced to ask “What’s the trouble?”
or “Why aren’t they working?” [What follows in the target text is expunged in the
back translation: “‘Are there ways to remedy them?’ Thus ideas emerge only when
social institutions are not working or are diseased. Only when society is diseased
will social philosophy emerge and only when politics is diseased will political
philosophy emerge.”]. (Clopton/Ou: 47)
The expunged passage in bold from the target text sheds light on why Hu was
enamored with “men of high ideals.” For he believed that society, and China of his
times in particular, depended on these “men of high ideals” to provide guidance to
dismantle the anachronistic and defective institutions and customs. He took to heart
Dewey’s point that “men began to philosophize about their collective habits, their
established institutions only when these began to cease [to] function satisfactorily.”
He was, however, completely oblivious of Dewey’s next point that “something
threatening change or disintegration made men compare and inquire and attempt to
select and hold on to the really good.” Thus he left out in his translation Dewey’s point
on philosophy as an attempt to salvage what was good in the tradition and replaced
it with his own notion of philosophy as reformative, as illustrated in his emendation
in bold.
That Hu would expunge and emend as he did here in this case is understandable.
He came to Dewey late in his education in the United States, after he had studied
philosophy of the objective idealist school at Cornell for five years. Following
Wilhelm Windelband, he believed that philosophy emerged in ancient China, as it
did in ancient Greece, when the breakdown of the social, political, and intellectual
systems prompted the search for remedies and guidance.16
The second example I use to illustrate the typical way Hu simplified, rearranged,
and conflated Dewey’s argument until he completely distorted Dewey’s ideas is a
composite example. In Lecture II, Dewey expounded on the rise of pragmatic
philosophy under the influence of science. Dewey first discussed the new social
sciences of the 19th century and their pretensions to discover universal laws in society
as exact and inexorable as those in physics and astronomy. In so doing, the social
sciences dismissed philosophy as speculative and unverifiable. Dewey argued that
whereas the social sciences had fallen short of realizing their claims, the spirit of
science and the scientific method had contributed to the rise of pragmatic philosophy.
16. Wilhelm Windelband (1919: 2, 13). For a detailed analysis of Hu’s education in philosophy at
Cornell and his later transfer to Columbia to study under Dewey, see the first volume of my Hu Shi
biography: Yung-chen Chiang 2011.
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Hu’s translation did not always follow the steps through which Dewey made his
argument. He rearranged, mismatched, and conflated. The result was a chaotic jumble.
On the relationship between the social sciences and philosophy, Hu’s translation
reads as follows:
We must bring philosophy to bear on our present situation. Science operates from a
purely objective viewpoint. It can describe and record natural phenomena, but it cannot
guide them or change them according to human ideals. But social philosophy [“the
social sciences” in the target text] cannot stop with mere recording and description; it
must direct with thoughtful understanding the conclusions and recommendations which
grow out of the records and descriptions of science. A certain amount of speculation
is, therefore, necessarily present in social philosophy [“the social sciences” in the
target text]. On the positive side is the tremendous change in the psychological attitude
of people in general following the development of the social sciences. We have
come to regard human activities as something from which law and principle can also
be formulated, rather than something erratic and unpredictable. The social sciences
have introduced the scientific spirit into social philosophy. Philosophy, former purely
speculative, has been brought down from the clouds to dwell among men. (Clopton/
Ou: 57)
Hu not only erred in conflating philosophy with the social sciences, he also
mistakenly attributed philosophy’s being “brought down from the clouds to dwell
among men” – Dewey’s major theme in “The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy” and
The Reconstruction in Philosophy – to the social sciences.
Dewey was at once more nuanced and precise. He called the new social sciences’
claim to universality of their laws based on the observations of certain tendencies
prevailing under certain historical conditions absurd, “a deification of local and
possibly temporary circumstances” (SPP: II.3). The social sciences looked askance at
classical philosophy without realizing their own pretentiousness:
When the positivistic matter of fact spirit invaded the consideration of society and
politics, philosophy was condemned as speculative and pretentious, unverifiable… The
“sciences” may be called more artificial than the philosophes because the latter were
more or less frankly imaginative and speculative, telling what should be, while the
sciences claimed to give an account of things as they must be. (SPP: II.1, 3)
And yet, it was precisely in their frankly imaginative and speculative nature that lay
the value of philosophes, which Hu completely expunged from his translation:
The great thing about the classic systems of philosophy is that they thought with a
purpose in view. They were not satisfied with mere description or observation. They
tried to deduce principle for the directions of life, principles to be used in judging the
value of events and in projecting plans and purpose. Nothing less than this can content
man in social affairs. For we are not mere outside observers; we are sharers, partners.
Our own destiny and fortune is at stake in the course of events. We want them to turn
out one way rather than in another way, and we use our observations of what is in order
to make decisions about [what they] may and shall be. (SPP: II.4-5)
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In conflating the social sciences with philosophy, Hu completely missed the
focal point of Dewey in this lecture. Using the section heading, the “union of the
scientific spirit with the moral and practical aim of philosophy,” Dewey spelled out
the difference that distinguished the pragmatist philosophy from classical philosophy
and, for that matter, the social sciences. Of the social sciences, with their pretension
to become objective sciences – “spectator theory of knowledge,” as Dewey called
it, Dewey scoffed: “It is absurd to suppose that we can have a coldblooded social
science that eliminates desire and preference and emotion and bias” (SPP: II.6). In
contradistinction to this “spectator theory of knowledge,” the pragmatist philosophy
was “pragmatic, instrumental”:
That is, it aims to be an art, an applied science, a form of social engineering. Politics
is an art, but [it] should not be a blind or routine or magical art, not directed by
intrigue or vested interest, etc. […] The building of railways and bridges, of canals and
electric dynamos recognizes the supremacy of human aims and desires. It uses factual
knowledge in behalf of collective human ends and purposes. But the use depends upon
positive science, and hence is not blind, random, accidental, or merely traditional. It
can conceive and execute new things in an orderly way that turns the course of natural
phenomena in definite channels. In like fashion our social and political notions and
theories and systems must be used for social constructions, for social engineering and
must be subjected to the tests of such use. (SPP: II.6-7)
What this composite example reveals is as much about translation as about
appropriation. As appropriation is the focus for the second half of this article, I would
like to mention at this point two more issues related to translation. The first involved
the difficulty Hu faced when neologisms or technical terms required to render foreign
terms had not been coined or agreed upon. There is one good example in Lecture
XII where Dewey discussed the early 19th century British political reforms under
the influence of utilitarians. Of the three main ideas the utilitarians brought to bear
on reforms, the third one was about constitutional government. Dewey said in part:
“Paradoxical as it sounds, the lawmakers must themselves be under [the] law and act
according to it” (SPP: XII.5). As Hu must have experienced difficulty in finding an
appropriate word to render “paradoxical,” he settled – aghast! – for “superficial.” It
should be pointed out that Hu’s translation of this sentence was faithfully translated
back into English by Clopton/Ou, including the wrong choice of word in question
“superficial”: “Legislators are also subject to the restrictions embodied in the law.
At first glance this appears to be a superficial point, but actually it is extremely
important.” (Clopton/Ou: 145).
The other issue concerning translation is a personal and ideological one, which
speaks volumes about how translation is never a neutral operation. In Lecture XVI,
Dewey said: “However much men may rightly differ as to the wisdom of schemes of
socialism and communism, all wise and sympathetic persons ought to agree upon the
need of the widest possible sharing of knowledge, including news, the knowledge as
to what is going on in society, in the whole society of humanity, a communism of
intelligence” (SPP: XVI.4). Hu’s translation with emendations reads: “Many people
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naturally are opposed to socialism in economics. Because it impinges upon private
interests, opposition is to be expected. Yet even though many people would object
to the equal division of properties, there is one area for which all would be willing,
which is socialism of knowledge. Whereas a property becomes smaller the more
it is divided, knowledge increases the more it is distributed.”17 Cloptin/Ou’s back
translation in this case, though not quite faithful to Hu’s translation, is closer to
Dewey’s usual practice in specifying the class component: “We can understand why
some members of the privileged classes oppose socialism in the realm of economics
– It is simply that they don’t like the idea that their possessions will be shared with
others. But the same objection does not apply to what we might call socialism of
knowledge. Where material possessions are concerned, the more people who share
them, the less each will have; but just the opposite is true of knowledge.” (Clopton/
Ou: 178).
That Hu would substitute “socialism” for “communism” had nothing to do with
fear of censorship. China was then divided, with regional warlords vying for power
among themselves. They were too weak and too preoccupied with other priorities to
exercise thought control. Hu’s decision to substitute “socialism” for “communism”
was purely a personal one. While Hu was averse to Communism throughout his life,
for almost thirty years until the early 1940s, he believed that socialism represented the
latest phase of the development of the democratic ideal. In “The Civilizations of the
East and the West” published in Whither Mankind in 1928 edited by Charles Beard,
he contended:
The ideals of Socialism are merely supplementary to the earlier and more individualistic
ideas of democracy. They are historically part of the great democratic movement. […]
Hence the rise of the socialistic movements which, when freed from their distracting
theories of economic determinism and class war, simply mean the emphasis on the
necessity of making use of the collective power of society or of the state for the greatest
happiness of the greatest number.18
He proclaimed that “[t]he world is becoming socialistic without being aware of
it.” Citing as evidence the social legislations enacted in England, “the mother country
of capitalism,” and the United States, “the champion of individual liberty,” he argued
that these great democracies had elevated the liberal ideals to the highest level akin
to a “religion of Democracy” that “not only guarantees one’s own liberty, nor merely
limits one’s liberty by respecting the liberty of other people, but endeavors to make it
possible, for every man and every woman to live a free life; which not only succeeds
through science and machinery in greatly enhancing the happiness and comfort of the
individual, but also seeks through organization and legislation to extend the goods of
life to the greatest number.”19
Such effervescent celebration of utilitarian political philosophy, though coming
from an essay written ten years later, reveals only the tip of the iceberg of the problems
17. Dewey (1919-20c: XVI.42.93). (Translation mine.)
18. Hu Shi (1928: 36.344-345).
19. Hu Shi (1928: 36.345-346).
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in Hu’s translation of “Social and Political Philosophy.” I will analyze now how Hu
manipulated and appropriated Dewey’s ideas to advance his own cultural and political
agendas in the following four areas: the utilitarian political philosophy; the modern
state as the best instrument to produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number;
society as an organicist entity; and, last but not the least, democratic realism.
In the extant lecture notes on “Social and Political Philosophy,” Dewey referred
to utilitarianism only once, that is, in Lecture XII, where he analyzed the utilitarian
political philosophy in the context of the development of British liberalism. Yet
in Hu’s translated version, utilitarianism appeared in two other places through his
emendations. In all three, including where Dewey referred to utilitarianism both as
a historical movement and as a critique, Hu made Dewey appear to be a utilitarian.
In Lecture II where Dewey characterized the goals of pragmatic philosophy, he said,
Politics is an art, but should not be a blind or routine or magical art, not directed by
intrigues or vested interest, etc. It rests on the possibility of introducing more conscious
regulation to the course of events in behalf of the general or public interests. (SPP:
II.6-7)
It is perhaps no longer a surprise to readers of this article that Hu’s translation
did not exactly follow Dewey’s text. In fact, Dewey’s references to “intrigues” and
“vested interest” were generally expunged from Hu’s translation, the reason of which
will be analyzed below. At any rate, this particular paragraph in Hu’s translation
differed quite significantly from Dewey’s original. It may have been the result of
Dewey’s impromptu elaboration, or Hu’s rearrangement of Dewey’s lecture notes,
or Hu’s emendation. The point here, however, is to compare the phrases in bold in
Dewey’s original and Hu’s translation in Clopton/Ou’s back translation:
It is not enough, for example, for economists merely to describe the production and
exchange of goods, and stop there; they must indicate the directions, based upon their
study of economic situations and events, in which men are to move so that the greatest
number of people may achieve the maximum satisfaction [“the greatest happiness
of the greatest number” in the target text]. (Clopton/Ou: 59)
Note that Clopton and Ou did not render in their back translation the entirety of
that famous utilitarian dictum: “the greatest happiness of the greatest number.” They
substituted “the maximum satisfaction” for “the greatest happiness.” The reason for
this substitution is not hard to find; they knew Dewey was no utilitarian.
In lecture X, Dewey discoursed on the nature of the state and the use of force.
Toward the end of this lecture, he discussed one of the moral criteria for judging the
state:
It must be admitted that the historic state has been conducted largely in the interest of an
exploiting governing few, a reigning house or dynasty, or an economic class that could
use political power to further its own interests. But it must also be admitted that political
struggles for democratic government have been waged against these conditions, and the
political struggle for democratic government has been in the main an attempt to see that
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the state functioned in behalf of the public interest – that it legislates and administers
in the interest of the people at large. (SPP: X.7-8)
Hu’s translation reads as follows:
To sum up what we have said, the state is judged to be good when it represents the
general public welfare [“the broadest public interest” in the target text]; but it is
not good, no matter whether it be called a democracy or something else, if it represents
the interests of a minority of its people, or of a monarch and his relatives, or of one
political party, or of one economic class. The fundamental problem in politics is to build
a state which consistently works for the welfare of all its people [“the broadest public
interest of the greatest number” in the target text]. (Clopton/Ou: 132)
The phrases highlighted in bold clearly indicated that this second time, Clopton
and Ou eschewed completely Hu’s utilitarian language. Yet even though the back
translators could vindicate Dewey by stripping off mistaken or misleading emendations
in the target translation, they could not restore what had already been expunged in the
first round of translation if the source text is no longer extant, as had been the case of
Dewey’s “Social and Political Philosophy.”
This was exactly what Hu did. In Lecture XII, Dewey did not merely analyze
liberalism and the utilitarian political philosophy. He presented his critique as well.
None of Dewey’s critique of utilitarian philosophy and his larger critique of liberalism,
however, appeared in Hu’s translation. As Dewey’s critique of utilitarianism was
embedded in his critique of liberalism in general, it is easier to reproduce both at the
same time to see what Hu expunged:
The great error in the theories of liberalism is [that] they tended to make political
organization a means of purely individual welfare, the rights of individuals conceived
apart from the social ties and connections through which alone the individuals can attain
a full life (Hence reduction of happiness to pleasures in utilitarianism, and emphasis
upon security, upon possession). (SPP: XII.6; emphasis in the source text)
And:
The error in liberalism in thinking that the state originated in the choice of isolated
individuals and aims to protect them as individuals in their rights resulted in two
other errors. The first was in thinking of government as a kind of necessary evil, a
surrender of some rights and liberties in order to be more certain of others – especially
of physical existence and property. […] The other great mistake of liberal philosophy
was in supposing that the individual is an adequate judge of his own interest, and this
self-interest of each may be counted upon to secure a regard for the net welfare of all.
(SPP: XII.7-8)
What Hu left out was not simply Dewey’s discussion of the shortcomings of
utilitarianism and liberalism. He excised from his translation long paragraphs in which
Dewey pointed out the dangers that threatened democracy and his cherished goals for
democracy. Toward the end of this lecture, Dewey recapitulated what he referred to as
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the “three planks” of liberal political philosophy: suffrage, representative legislature,
and constitutional government. It is true that Dewey said that “they are the best
devices yet invented for keeping officials responsible to the public will.” At the same
time, he insisted that “they are not ends in themselves,” that “they have no intrinsic
sacredness,” and that “these means are not perfect and will doubtless be improved”
(SPP: XII.6-7). On the positive side, he cited the extension of suffrage irrespective of
sex, wealth, and education as one area of improvement. He even referred to referendum
and initiative as experiments in combining the ideas of representative democracy with
that of pure democracy. On the negative side, he warned of the danger of dynastic,
family, and business interests in subverting democracy and thereby hampering “the
full use of the government as a democratic tool.” Then, finally, capping his lecture was
the quintessential Dewey: the reminder that political democracy was but part of the
broader moral and social democracy. He insisted,
The ulterior justification of political democracy, that is[,] of popular government, is
its educative effect. That is, its effect in broadening the interests and imagination, in
extending sentiments from personal and local and family, clique interests, to take in the
welfare of the country, producing a public conscience and civic loyalty and its effect
in stimulating thought, ideas, and their expression about social matters. (SPP: XII.9;
emphasis in the source text)
None of these – Dewey’s critique of utilitarianism and liberalism, dangers that
threatened democracy, and Dewey’s ideal about democracy as a moral and social
democracy – appeared in Hu’s translation. In place of them all was a Dewey who
concluded this lecture celebrating liberalism as the crowning achievement of the
humankind and to admonish his audience to count their blessings:
These issues – general elections, direct election, terms of office, revision of election
laws – are nothing sacrosanct in themselves, but are moving in the same direction.
Many procedures are naturally the result of common sense political experiences and
are important. Considering the long and hard struggle humankind has gone through to
develop such a mechanism to make the state responsible to the people and to abide by
laws when dispensing its power, these procedures are the gems humankind has distilled
from years of political experiences! (Translation mine)20
Clopton and Ou obviously thought these pronouncements were so blatantly unlike
Dewey that they toned them down until they were quite innocuous, if also vacuous:
Political liberalism poses a host of down-to-earth problems – general elections, direct
election, terms of office, revision of election procedures, and many others – and solutions
to these problems vary from time to time and from place to place. However, treatment
of such problems is fundamentally based on the theory we have been discussing. Even
when solutions must be sought in our everyday experience and on the basis of political
common sense, they are still important problems. We must not allow ourselves to
forget that both the concept of a state that is response to the people and the methods by
which the people may effectively control the government are the fruit of many years
20. Dewey (1919-20b: XII.42.69).
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of laborious struggle. Even the everyday practicalities which we sometimes take as a
matter of course represent the crystalized and accumulated political experience of many
generations. (Clopton/Ou: 146)
That Hu would excise completely from his translation Dewey’s critique of
democracy and of utilitarian political philosophy was not surprising. It is not just
that democracy was a rallying cry of the New Culture Movement, of which Hu was
its foremost leader, and he would not want to see its luster tarnished. He genuinely
believed democracy embodied the highest value of modern Western civilization, as
testified by his hyperbolic phrase of the “religion of Democracy” cited above. His
faith in democracy was closely linked to his belief that the modern state was the best
instrument to promote the greatest happiness for the greatest number.
It was perhaps fitting that the first time Hu publicly spelled out his belief in the
modern state was at the conference held to celebrate Dewey’s eightieth birthday in
New York in 1939. While it is well known among Dewey scholars that Sidney Hook,
Dewey’s “Bull Dog,” attacked Hu on that occasion, there is no paper trace that allows
them to reconstruct what had happened. The only direct reference to it was in a letter
from Dewey, who was not present at the celebration, to Roberta Lowitz in which
he said, “I hadn’t heard about S[idney]. H[ook].’s attack on Dr. Hu – The latter sent
me a copy of his remarks, & I wrote him an appreciative letter – there was nothing
to object to in his criticisms.”21 As for Hu himself, he left only a terse note in his
diary entry, “I went to the so-called ‘Conference on Methods of Philosophy.’ […] The
atmosphere was very disagreeable […] I read my short paper, participated briefly in
the discussion, and left.”22
Hu’s presentation was revised and published in the celebration volume under the
title, “The Political Philosophy of Instrumentalism.”23 I discovered in the Hu Shi
Archives in Beijing the transcript of his original paper, “Instrumentalism As A Political
Concept,” which offers us concrete evidence to suggest what may have prompted
Hook to attack Hu. More germane to our discussion here, this paper provides us with
an argument, albeit developed twenty years afterwards, which was in germination
when Hu translated Dewey’s “Social and Political Philosophy.” This latter point
is not a speculation, for Hu himself said as much. A year after the Dewey birthday
celebration, Hu gave another revised version of the same essay, reverting back to
use his original title, “Instrumentalism As A Political Concept,” at the bicentennial
celebration of the founding of the University of Pennsylvania.24 After having revised
the same essay three times, he was happy with the result and noted with satisfaction
in his diary, “This has been a subject matter that I ponder over often in the past twenty
years. […] Having worked on it three times within a year enables me to have a pretty
good grip of it. It has taken shape, having torn apart some old ideas and staked out
some of my own.”25
21. John Dewey (C2) 2, 1919-1939.
22. Hu Shi (1939: 7.718).
23. Hu Shi (1940a: 205-19).
24. Hu Shi (1941: 1-6).
25. Hu Shi (1940b: 8.66).
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Hu did not abandon his thesis in the revised version that appeared in the Dewey
birthday volume, which was strikingly similar to what he put into Dewey’s mouth at
the end of Lecture XII quoted earlier: “The state is a tool for us to use, to experiment
with, to master and control, to love and cherish – but not something to be afraid of.”26
It differed from the original version, in the first place, in that it invoked for support
Dewey’s own ideas, particularly his two essays that differentiated force, coercion, and
forces written in 1916. More interesting, however, was in what it had deleted. A few
of these deleted passages would suffice to illustrate why Hook may have found them
objectionable:
All institutions are tools for definite actions and for definite ends. The judge, the king,
the law, the state, are tools invented by men for the purpose of performing actions
which cannot be effectively performed by private and separate individuals.
The modern state is probably one of the greatest inventions ever made by the intelligence
of men. It is the instrumentality that makes use of all instrumentalities; it is the machine
of machines.
And,
The state may originate as a mere Vigilante Committee for protection against horse
thieves. It may develop into a tribal organization for common defense against a
threatening enemy tribe. It may at one time be dedicated to the establishment of Justice
and the securing of the Blessings of Liberty. At another time it may be inspired to
undertake positive endeavors for the promotion of the greatest happiness of the greatest
number.27
Hu had become a committed utilitarian before he returned to China in 1917. In
1921, he coined the English term, “Euarchism” (“good-government-ism” or, literally,
“good-men-in-government-ism” in Chinese), to refer to the ideal modern state he had
in mind. In a diary entry for August that year, he gave a précis of a talk on euarchism
that contained exactly the same premises that would underpin his paper at Dewey’s
birthday celebration: Euarchism as political instrumentalism; government being the
biggest invention by man as Homo faber; government as a force that, when properly
organized and directed, could prevent waste and conflicts and lead to purposeful
actions being executed efficiently; government so organized and directed having
the greatest effect in leading social progress; euarchism providing a criterion for
evaluating the performance of a government; euarchism providing a rationale for
political participation by people as inventors of government as a tool; and, finally,
euarchism providing a justification for mending, retooling, or even overthrowing the
government when it failed to perform.28
I argue that the locus classicus of Hu Shi’s euarchism can be found in the passage in
Lecture II of Dewey’s “Social and Political Philosophy” quoted above, where Dewey
26. Hu Shi (1940a: 219).
27. Hu Shi (1941: 4, 5, and 6), Hu Shi (n.d.) “Hu Shi Archives,” E17-055.
28. Hu Shi (1921b: 3.259-261).
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referred to the pragmatic social philosophy as “pragmatic, instrumental, that is, it
aims to be an art, an applied science, a form of social engineering” and that politics as
“an art […] rests on the possibility of introducing more conscious regulation into the
course of events in behalf of the general or public interests.”
Euarchism prevented Hu from appreciating Dewey’s analyses of the nature of
the state. He had no problem following Dewey’s differentiation between the state
and the government. He also appreciated Dewey’s reminder that “the government is
itself composed of human beings having their own private interests, their own love of
power and gain” (SPP: XI.1). Both of these points appeared in his translation. In fact,
euarchism was his clarion call to a few “good men” to enter government in order to
transform Beijing government that was hopelessly mired in an endless cycle of chaos,
scandals, and incompetency.
Yet, Hu had difficulty seeing the state as anything but an instrument invented for
the benefit of society in general. He cared not who invented “the judge, the king,
the law, and the state.” Nor would he consider it important to raise the question
as to whose interests these inventions served. That the earlier inventions may have
been crude, parochial, or even brutal, he would readily grant. As he postulated in
his paper at the Dewey birthday celebration, if this string of inventions could result
in a linear progression – from the vigilante committee, to tribal, to the founding of
the United States with the goal of securing the Blessings of Liberty “to ourselves
and our posterity,” and, finally, to the modern state bending on the promotion of the
greatest happiness of the greatest number – it would seem to more than compensate
for whatever social cost and even sufferings these experimentations may have
incurred historically. For the modern state, “the greatest invention ever made by the
intelligence of men,” had been perfected to deliver “the greatest happiness of the
greatest number.” It is thus not surprising that he did not translate what Dewey said
about the state in the past:
Historically it must be admitted that the state originated in violence and oppression,
in conquest of one people by another usually, and [in] the desire of the victorious
people to hold the conquered in such subjection that they could exploit them. It must
be admitted that the historic state has been conducted largely in the interests of an
exploiting governing few, a reigning house or dynasty, or an economic class that could
use political power to further its own interests. (SPP: X.7-8)
Nor was he interested in Dewey’s comments on how the modern state and its
instrument, the government, could be held hostage to private and corporate, as well
as militaristic and industrial, interests at the expense of the public. The following
paragraph was similarly discarded:
This survival after the political organization has become democratic hampers the full
use of the government as a democratic tool. It fosters private disregard of the public
interest in social undertakings, economic and otherwise, the feeling that one[’] business,
one’s affairs are his own private and exclusive concerns, that any public supervision
or regulation is an impediment, interference, and encroachment upon proper personal
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liberty. This attitude tends not only to weaken government, to render it incompetent,
but also tends to corruption – the strong private organizations, corporation cliques,
militaristic or industrial, use governmental power to promote their special interests at
the expense of the public. (SPP: XII.7-8)
Hu’s belief in the state as an instrument that could be harnessed to serve the public
interest regardless of the power relations in society was closely tied to his organicist
view of society, the third of the preoccupations that underpin his appropriation
of Dewey. In February 1919, three months before Dewey’s arrival in China, Hu
published “Immortality – My Religion” in Xin Qingnian (La Jeunesse), the most
celebrated journal of the New Culture Movement. This was an article that Hu was
so proud of that he penned an English version and continued to lecture on it in the
United States until the 1940s. The major theme of this article was immortality, which
Hu began to articulate when he was a student at Columbia University. It represented
his critique of traditional notions of immortality, particularly of what Hu viewed as
an obsession in Christendom: the immortality of the soul. None of the traditional
notions of immortality was sufficient to serve as guiding principles of life. In their
places, Hu proposed the notion of social immortality. The individual, the “Lesser
Self,” has a finite life span, but will leave his legacy, positive as well as negative, on
society, the “Greater Self” or the “Social Whole,” and thus achieve immortality. He
summed up this guiding principle of life in the form of an imperative: “[T]o act in
order that I may not disgrace the great social past, that I may contribute my humble
best to the great social present, and that I may not do injustice or injury to the great
social future.”29
There are two paragraphs in the original version of “Immortality – My Religion”
where Hu waxed lyrical about organicism that most readers will not know they
existed. Chastened by a critic’s remark, Hu left them out completely from the English
version and yet, most revealingly, only perfunctorily edited out of the Chinese version
that was eventually included in his Complete Works. He removed the first paragraph
that was an all-out celebration of society as an organism and replaced or softened the
offensive word in question in the second paragraph and yet keeping the organicist
argument intact:
Society is like an organism. An organism can live only when each of its components
performs the function assigned to it and when all these special functions coalesce. If a
component becomes detached, that part of the organism would suffer or would at least
become severely impaired. The prime example is the human body. We live because of
the various functions the different parts of our body perform together. None of these
functions can operate independently, except when the whole body is intact. Take away
these special functions, the whole will cease to exist. Conversely, when the whole
disappears, so are these various functions. This is organism.
The life of society is an organism [“like that of an organism” in the revised version],
whether viewed cross-sectionally or longitudinally. Looking at society longitudinally, the
history of society is organistic. Our predecessors left imprints on us and we, in turn, on
29. Hu Shi (1919c: 35.273).
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our descendants. […] From the cross-sectional view, the life of society is also organistic
[“interpenetrated” in the revised version]. Individuals make up society and society
molds individuals. Social life depends on the division of labor among the individuals.
Likewise, no matter how different individual lives are, no individuals can live without
being influenced by society. A particular kind of society produces a particular kind of
individuals; and a particular kind of individuals make up a particular kind of society.30
Hu believed that society had to be viewed as a whole. There exists in society
inequalities in the distribution of wealth, power, and intelligence, to be sure. But what
look like inequalities at the individual level are nothing but nature’s way of fitting
individuals to tasks suitable for them that resulted in the division of labor, which is
necessary for society to function. Hu was by no means callous. Ever since his student
days in the United States, he had come to believe that nature and humanity were
locked into a bitter struggle and that the level of a civilization was to be measured
according to its ability to bring humanity triumphant over nature. An ardent admirer
of Thomas Huxley, Hu was familiar with the former’s analysis of the eternal struggle
between the “cosmic process” and the “ethical process.” It should be pointed out
that Hu most likely had never read Dewey’s 1897 essay, “Evolution and Ethics,” in
which Dewey took Huxley to task for a false dichotomy between the two processes
and for failing to see that “man is an organ of the cosmic process in effecting its own
progress,” which “consists essentially in making over a part of the environment by
relating it more intimately to the environment as a whole; not, once more, in man
setting himself against that environment.”31
At any rate, while Hu could invoke social legislation as the “ethical process”
to address inequalities in society, his organicism left no room for accommodating
social conflicts. From organicist viewpoint, social conflicts were anomalies and had
to be resolved for society to return to normalcy. Note how Hu manipulated Dewey’s
analyses of social conflicts. In Lecture III, Dewey made a number of observations as
he proceeded to analyze social conflicts:
Theory began in disturbance, confusion, friction. It attempts to discover causes and
project plans of reorganization that bring about unity, harmony, freer movement. (SPP:
III.1)
And,
In dealing then on the basis of theory with any particular social condition we need first
to ask what pattern of human association tends to be central and regulative; what are
the one-sidednesses and arrests, fixation [and] rigidities thereby produced; where are
the suppressions from which society is suffering in consequence; what are the points of
conflict, strife, antagonism of interest. (SPP: III.8)
And, finally, toward the end of this lecture:
30. Hu Shi (1919a) (February 15, 1919), 6.2:100. For the revised version, see Hu Shi (1919b: 1.663).
31. John Dewey (EW: 5.38).
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That the unequal and unbalanced development of forms of life is the source of social
difficulties in general and that the problem of theory is to detect these causes in detail
and provide plans for remedial action thus appears. (SPP: III.11)
As usual, Hu’s translation here did not follow Dewey verbatim. The closest I can
find is a long paragraph that combined these quotes and read like a summation toward
the end of this translated lecture:
The time has come, however, when we can no longer afford to wait for our society
to become disjointed and then seek means of putting it back together again; we must
rather devise methods and instruments to forestall disaster, to prevent infection rather
than waiting to try to cure it when it occur. We need to observe, first of all, the causes
of social conflict, to find out what groups have become too dominating and have
come to exercise disproportionate power, as well as to identify the groups that have
been oppressed, denied privilege and opportunity. Only by making such an accurate
diagnosis can we hope to prevent social infection and build a healthier society. We must
devise means for bringing the interests of all the groups of a society into adjustment,
providing all of them with [“equal” in the target text] opportunity to develop [“and
to advance” in the target text], so that each can help the others instead of being in
conflict with them. We must teach ourselves one inescapable fact: any real advantage
of one group is shared by all groups; and when one group suffers disadvantage, all
are hurt. Social groups are so intimately interrelated that what happens to one of
them ultimately affects the well-being of all of them [“When one group benefits,
all groups will benefit; and when one group suffers, all will suffer. This is because
social relations are interlocked.” in the target text]. (Clopton/Ou: 71)
Note the contrast between Clopton and Ou’s back translation and mine that
I highlight in bold. Clopton and Ou’s back translation in this particular case tried
to restore what Dewey may have said. But in so doing, they obscured the fact that
this was Hu the social organicist who was speaking, but not Dewey. Dewey had no
illusion about all social groups in society having “equal opportunity to develop and
to advance.” In fact, Dewey stated in this lecture that such vision was utopian and
counterfactual, which, not surprisingly, did not appear in Hu’s translation:
We can frame in imagination a picture in which there is a proportionate equal
development of all these forms of associated life, where they interact freely with one
another, and where the results of each one contribute to the richness and significance
of every other, where family relations assist equally the cooperation of men in science,
art, religion and public life, where association for production and sale of goods enriches
not merely materially but morally and intellectually all forms and modes of human
intercourse – where in short there is mutual stimulation and support and free passage
of significant results from one to another. Such an ideal picture is of use only because
it helps us paint by contrast the state of things which has actually brought about social
divisions and conflict. (SPP: III.3)
Nor would Dewey suppose that “when one group benefits, all groups will benefit;
and when one group suffers, all will suffer.” In concluding his Lecture IV, Dewey
characterized the pragmatist as reformer:
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The innovator has a case to prove. He is the propounder of a hypothesis that the welfare
of society would be promoted by the adoption of a certain change, that if this harms a
special class for a time, this loss to the class is in the interests of the community of the
whole, and is the measure of justice to some other class now suffering from inadequate
social recognition. He does not present himself as a mere rebel, hostile to the authority
as such, willing to tear down recklessly in a blind hope something better may appear.
His claim that certain defects exist, and that they may be remedied by the adoption of
certain proposed measures of change are propositions to be examined in the light of
facts. (SPP: IV.13)
Hu translated this paragraph as follows:
The function of reformers then becomes that of advancing diagnoses of social ills and of
formulating and propounding suggestions for changes which will improve the situation;
and, given the theory we have advanced, they can then join forces with other elements
of society in assessing the accuracy of their diagnoses, and the probable efficacy of their
proposed remedies. (Clopton/Ou: 80-1)
While Clopton and Ou’s back translation here, as is elsewhere, is not literal,
the important point here is that it accurately reflected what Hu had left out in his
translation, that is, class interests are not mutually compatible, which is a far cry from
Hu’s belief that “when one group benefits, all groups will benefit; and when one group
suffers, all will suffer.”
Not only was Hu oblivious to group and class interests, but he was also convinced
that one day would come when society would transcend group and class interests to
become unified in thinking. In Lecture XVI, Dewey began by discussing free speech
and attempts, whether by the government or by special class, at controlling and
manipulating public opinion. He averred:
Private, local and class interest will govern men[’]s actions until through the
communication of knowledge the whole society, nay, the whole of humanity, becomes
spiritually one.
Common or like thoughts cannot in the present stage of the world be secured either
by suppression or by direct inculcation, by trying to stamp one set of ideas on alike.
Divergence of opinions is necessary for progress, and the only real unity is that which
comes by exchange, based on toleration. Intellectual freedom is a true calculation of
social life. In it individuality gets its best expression. Only where there is intellectual
freedom can communication, the give and take of thought and feeling be full and
varied. (SPP: XVI.4-5)
What follows are two versions of back translation of Hu’s translation:
It would be a splendid thing that the people of a nation would think and believe alike.
But in this time of change, such unity can only be a goal in the future through gradual
development and could not be achieved by force. Why is it that this goal can only be
achieved through gradual development? Just let everyone expound freely his/her ideas
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and let those that are not satisfactory be eliminated one by one in the process, unity of
ideas will eventually be achieved. (Translation mine)
Ideally, of course, it is a good thing to have the people of a nation thinking about the
same problems and moving in the direction of agreement. But – and this is especially
true of a time like the present – this sort of consensus can be achieved only through
gradual development, as the result of free discussion and evaluation of conflicting
ideas and claims; it can never be achieved by force. The reason this is true is that free
discussion brings to light the irrelevance, the inconsistency, or the contrariety of ideas
that are inimical to the development of associated living, and thus serves to eliminate
these ideas through the action of human reason instead of by governmental suppression.
True unification is the result of free communication and interaction, never of force.
(Clopton/Ou: 178)
Whether we follow my back translation or Clopton and Ou’s, which attempted to
approximate what Dewey might have said without the benefit of seeing the original, it
is clear that something at once nuanced and precise was lost when crucial words and
phrases were left out of the translation. Banished from view for the Chinese readers
were Dewey’s insistence on how “individuality gets its best expression” in a social
life characterized by free communication and exchange, on thought and feeling be
“full and varied,” and that “[d]ivergence of opinions is necessary for progress.” What
gets foregrounded in Hu’s translation was a millenarian future when people would
“think and believe alike.”
A case can be made that Hu’s social organicism had its roots in the Chinese
tradition. That society is an arena where different classes and groups compete for
ascendancy or advantage is an anathema to traditional Chinese. What interest groups
and class interests conjured up was a specter of people forming cliques for selfish
purposes, which was condemned by traditional Chinese political philosophy. In the
Chinese tradition, the “public” and the “private” were two antithetical concepts,
with the former connoting “openness” and “fairness” and the latter “concealment”
and “unseemliness.” Only by “sublimating the ‘private’ into the ‘public’,” – “huasi
weigong” as the traditional saying goes – could the “private” have a redeeming value.
Hu’s social organicism complemented well this traditional ideal of “sublimating the
‘private’ into the ‘public’” in that it enabled him to envision a society in which all
members would follow their callings – a natural division of labor – without being
riven by class or group interests.
This brings us to the fourth and final point of this paper, that is, how Hu’s
democratic realism shaped his interpretation of Dewey’s notion of democracy. There
is no doubt that Hu was in complete agreement with Dewey about democracy and the
role of education in fostering democracy in society. Dewey went further, however. For
Dewey, democracy was not merely a political concept, but rather a moral and social
ideal. As early as 1888 when he was teaching at the University of Michigan, Dewey
had already enunciated in no equivocal terms his democratic ideal:
To say that democracy is only a form of government is like saying that home is a more
or less geometrical arrangement of bricks and mortar; that the church is a building with
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pews, pulpit and spire. It is true; they certainly are so much. But it is false; they are so
infinitely more. Democracy, like any other polity, has been finely termed the memory
of an historic past, the consciousness of a living present, the ideal of the coming future.
Democracy, in a word, is a social, that is to say, an ethical conception, and upon its
ethical significance is based its significance as governmental. Democracy is a form of
government only because it is a form of moral and spiritual association.32
Not only was democracy a moral and social ideal, it was also an ideal that had to
begin and end with the individual:
It admits that the full significance of personality can be learned by the individual only as
it is already presented to him in objective form in society; it admits that the chief stimuli
and encouragements to the realization of personality come from society; but it holds,
none the less, to the fact that personality cannot be procured for any one, however
degraded and feeble, by any one else, however wise and strong. It holds that the spirit of
personality indwells in every individual and that the choice to develop it must proceed
from that individual.33
As a democratic realist, this was where Hu parted with Dewey. Hu cherished his
public image as a staunch champion for democracy. He talked about democracy often,
but mostly in general terms, never in the sustained and systematic manner as Dewey
did. On a few occasions, however, he did let slip his frank assessment of the general
public. In 1926 when he went to Europe by traveling on the trans-Siberian railway
through Moscow, he was greatly impressed by what the Soviets were able to achieve
through economic planning. Until the early 1940s, he continued to extol the New Deal
in the United States and the Soviet Five-Year Plans as representing the two alternative
approaches to increasing the productive forces in society. His enthusiasm about the
Soviet experiment caused consternation among many of his friends, who thought he
was deceived by the Soviet propaganda. In a vigorous defense of his position, he made
a comment that revealed what he thought of the public:
Whether it is under communistic or private property system, men with talent will
always endeavor to improve themselves. […] As for the great majority of the common
people, their unwillingness to improve, exert, and better themselves is such that even
“riches and power can’t entice them” or, conversely, “threats and force can’t subdue
them” [a flippant use of two of the triplet stock phrases usually reserved for the vaunted
Confucian gentleman]! What difference does it make whether they live under the
system of private property or Communism? 34
Hu’s democratic realism differed fundamentally from Dewey’s uncompromising
conviction that democracy was a moral and social ideal in which every individual,
“however degraded and feeble,” should take charge to work out his or her individual
development. Hu’s interest was in political democracy, pure and simple. Not
surprisingly, he did not feel the need to translate any of what he may have considered
32. John Dewey (EW: 1.240).
33. John Dewey (EW: 1.244).
34. Hu Shi (1926: 3.56).
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Dewey’s pontifications on superfluous fine points. One case in point was in Lecture
XVI where the entire paragraph was left out of the translation:
Freedom of speech is precious, but it is not an end, only a means. To be able to put
thought into operation in what we do and to find that what we do contributes to our
life of thought and satisfactory sentiment and not merely to material products is the
important thing. This ideal is manifested in the work of an artist and scientific man. The
painter, the laboratory worker, is free to act upon his interest, to embody his thought.
His limitations are due only to his ignorance, and lack of skill. Also what he does brings
a return wave of thought and emotion back to him. He learns and gains intellectual skill
through what he does. The tangible, material product is secondary to this intellectual
enlargement and emotional enrichment. This basic problem of industrial society is to
establish conditions that will place all men in their labor on the plane which the small
class of scientists and artists now occupy. Then there will be a real consummation of
social life in full freedom. There will [be] a true social democracy. (SPP: XVI.5-6;
emphasis in the source text)
Even Dewey’s summation in this culminating lecture did not escape Hu’s act
of deletion and attenuation:
Every individual is a centre of conscious life, of happiness and suffering, of imagination
and thought. This is the final principle upon which democracy rests. But this conscious
life cannot be developed or realized except in association with others, interchange,
flexible intercommunication. The relations of friends illustrates the meaning of this. If
on the personal side, democracy means that all should have the opportunity for mental
realization which artists and scientific men have, it also means that they shall be in the
relations of free unobstructed intercourse with one another that friends are. Political
democracy provides the machinery, the form of this intercourse; it makes it possible.
Education, companionship, the breaking down of class and family walls and barriers
make it actual. (SPP: XVI.6; emphasis in the source text)
What a beautiful vision it was, “[D]emocracy means that all should have the
opportunity for mental realization which artists and scientific men have!” But Alas!
Look at what an impoverished version the Chinese readers were given:
The fundamental idea of democracy rests on a profound belief in education in that
the majority of the common people are educable: the ignoramuses can be made
knowledgeable and the unskilled can be taught crafts. Democracy means education,
continuing education. After the individuals leave school, they will work in a democratic
society where they will receive training no matter what they do, as if they were still in
school. In this way, individual ideas will extend to the entire society and, eventually, the
entire world. The day education achieves its goal will be the day when the whole world
reaches consensus on the common interests of the humankind. When that day arrives,
it will not just be one society or one nation that reaps the benefit. (Translation mine)
Education is basic to democracy, because democracy, by definition, is based on the
conviction that most people have the capacity to be educated, and that they are capable
of learning. In fact, democracy means education; it is, itself, a process of continuing
education of all the people. A democratic society provides schooling, but it also calls for
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those who have had the privilege of schooling to dedicate themselves to public service,
and at the same time, to continue learning as they did while in school. Each person is
called upon to make his contribution to his own society, and ultimately to the whole of
humanity. If we had effective education, we would have a world in which each person
would recognize that his own welfare is intimately interrelated with that of his fellow
men. The entire world would benefit from this sort of education, not just one nation or
a single society. (Clopton/Ou: 180)
We can see how Clopton and Ou tried very hard to salvage Hu’s translation to
make it passably look like what Dewey might have said. Now, with Dewey’s lecture
notes, we can see how little Hu’s translation of this paragraph resembled what Dewey
actually said.
The significance of these newly-discovered Dewey “Social and Political
Philosophy” lecture notes cannot be overestimated. These lectures notes enable us to
check them against Hu’s translation and to reach the conclusion that the messages the
Chinese readers received differed significantly from what Dewey intended to impart
to them. Any future research on Dewey’s lectures in China will have to use these
lecture notes, albeit incomplete, rather than Clopton and Ou’s back translation.
Roberto Frega’s “John Dewey’s Social Philosophy: A Restatement” in this
issue is a salutary case in point. He compares Clopton and Ou’s back translation of
Lectures III and IV with the corresponding lectures in Dewey’s original and finds
significant divergences between the two. He cites one particular passage in which
Dewey discussed the conflicts within the Chinese family to demonstrate how the back
translation has distorted Dewey’s original ideas, viz., whereas “equality” that was
not there in Dewey’s original text was foregrounded in the back translation, Dewey’s
focal point on groups as embodying basic interests was totally lost. This was a typical
case of emendations and elisions typical of Hu’s translation strategy, driven by his
New Culture Movement agenda to challenge the traditional Chinese family structure.
The pitfall of using back translation based on seriously flawed target translation is
well illustrated by the recent study by Scott Stroud of Dewey’s visit to China.35 Stroud
is perhaps the first scholar to have made use of these newly-discovered lecture notes
to analyze Dewey’s lectures in China. His otherwise sensitive analysis of Dewey’s
rhetorical activities is marred, however, by an indiscriminate use of Dewey’s lecture
notes and Clopton and Ou’s back translation, as if the two were interchangeable. For
instance, instead of using Dewey’s own Lecture XVI notes in which he expounded
eloquently on democracy as a moral and social ideal, Stroud used the greatly
impoverished version in Clopton and Ou. Then reading it teleologically against
the eventual triumph of Communism in China, he reached the mistaken conclusion
that Dewey was using intellectual freedom and toleration of dissent to exhort the
increasingly radicalized Chinese students to engage in political reform through
discussion and persuasion, but not violence or coercion. More erroneous, Stroud went
on to contend that Dewey adapted the content and form of his message to address his
Chinese audience. As a percipient rhetor, it was only natural that Dewey would in his
35. Scott R. Stroud (2013: 97-132).
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lectures to the Chinese audience use Chinese philosophers and tradition as reference
points to explicate Western social and political philosophy. These are familiar
rhetorical tactics, which do not affect the content itself. What these extant Dewey
lecture notes elucidated were exactly the same major themes that he expounded in
Reconstruction in Philosophy, which he had delivered a few months earlier at the
Imperial University of Tokyo. Dewey did not adapt the content or the form of his
message because he was addressing the Chinese.
To sum up, these extant Dewey’s lecture notes on “Social and Political Philosophy”
enable us, first of all, to appreciate the difficulties early 20th century Chinese
encountered when they first attempted to translate foreign works using vernacular
Chinese, which had never been a medium for scholarly or academic discourse before.
The many errors, together with the lack of precision and loss of nuance, which
vitiate Hu’s translation of Dewey, have to be considered in this larger context. More
important, no translators are neutral or transparent conduits that decode ideas from
one language to another. And when that translator happened to be the most celebrated
intellectual leader of modern China, he was poised to stamp his imprint unequivocally
on the translation. He tweaked, rearranged, and even expunged at will the source text.
He was translating Dewey, to be sure. But it would be more accurate to say that he was
using Dewey to advance his own cultural and political agenda.
References
Chiang Yung-chen, (2011), Shewo qishei: Hu Shi, Diyibu, Puyu Chengbi, 1891-1917
(Educating Hu Shi, 1891-1917), Taipei, Linking Publishing Company; Beijing,
New Star Press.
— (2013), Shewo qishei: Hu Shi, Di’erbu, Rizheng Dangzhong, 1917-1927 (The
Midday Sun: Hu Shi and China’s New Culture, 1917-1927), Taipei, Linking
Publishing Company; Hanzhou, Zhejiang People’s Press.
Clopton Robert & Tsuin-chen Ou, (1973), John Dewey, Lectures in China, 19191920, Honolulu, Hawaii University Press.
Dewey John, (1919-20a), “Social and Political Philosophy,” “Authors Unidentifiable,”
Folder, E087-001, deposited at the “Hu Shi Archives” at the Institute of Modern
History, Academy of the Social Sciences, Beijing, China.
— (1919-20b), tr., Hu Shi, “Social and Political Philosophy, XII,” Complete Works
of Hu Shi, 42.69
— (1919-20c), tr., Hu Shi, “Social and Political Philosophy, XVI,” Complete Works
of Hu Shi, 42.3-94.
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Dewey John, (C2), Letter to Roberta Lowitz Grant Dewey, 1939.11.02 (06910), The
Correspondence of John Dewey, 1871-1952 (I-IV) (Electronic Edition), 1919-1939.
— (EW1), “The Ethics of Democracy,” The Collected Works of John Dewey, 18821953 (Electronic Edition), 227-249.
— (EW5), “Evolution and Ethics,” The Collected Works of John Dewey, 1882-1953
(Electronic Edition), 34-53.
Hu Shi, (1919a), “Immortality – My Religion,” Xin Qingnian (La Jeunesse), (February
15), 6.2:96-106.
— (1919b), “Immortality – My Religion,” Complete Works of Hu Shi, 1.659-668.
— (1919c), “Immortality As A Guiding Principle in Life,” Complete Works of Hu
Shi, 35.262-273.
— (1921a), Diary Entry for July 6, The Complete Diary of Hu Shi, Taipei: Linking
Publishing Company (2004), 3.166.
— (1921b), Diary entry for August 5, The Complete Diary of Hu Shi, 3.259-261.
— (1922), Diary Entry for April 13, The Complete Diary of Hu Shi, 3.503.
— (1926), “Letter Dispatched En Route to Europe,” Complete Works of Hu Shi,
3.49-60.
— (n.d.), “The Rules of Translation,” the “Hu Shi Archives,” 242-2, deposited at the
Institute of Modern History, Academy of the Social Sciences, Beijing.
— (1928), “The Civilizations of the East and the West,” Whither Mankind, Charles
Beard, ed., Complete Works of Hu Shi, 36.323-348.
— (1933), Letter to Liu Yingshi, February 28, Complete Works of Hu Shi, 24.153155.
— (1935), “Introduction to The Compendium of the New Chinese Literature: the
Theory Volume,” Complete Works of Hu Shi, 12.256-300.
— (1939), Diary Entry for October 22, The Complete Diary of Hu Shi, 7.718.
— (1940a), “The Political Philosophy of Instrumentalism,” The Philosophy of the
Common Man: Essays in Honor of John Dewey to Celebrate His Eightieth
Birthday, New York, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 205-219.
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Hu Shi, (1940b), Diary entry for September 19, The Complete Diary of Hu Shi, 8.66.
— (1941), “Instrumentalism as a Political Concept,” Studies in Political Science and
Sociology, Philadelphia, Penn., University of Pennsylvania Press, 1-6.
— (1962), “John Dewey in China,” Charles A. Moore, ed., Philosophy and Culture
East and West, Honolulu: Hawaii University Press, 762-779.
Jackson Philip, (2000), John Dewey and the Lessons of Art, New Haven: Conn., Yale
University Press.
Keenan Barry, (1977), The Dewey Experiment in China: Educational Reform and
Political Power in the Early Republic, Harvard University Press.
Lefevere Andre, (1992), Translation, Rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary
Fame, London and New York, Routledge.
Stroud Scott R., (2013), “Selling Democracy and the Rhetorical Habits of Synthetic
Conflict: John Dewey as Pragmatic Rhetor in China,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs,
16.1 (Spring), 97-132.
Windelband Wilhelm, (1919), A History of Philosophy, New York, The Macmillan
Company.
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EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PRAGMATISM AND AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY
COPYRIGHT © 2009 ASSOCIAZIONE PRAGMA
Roberto Frega*
John Dewey’s Social Philosophy: A Restatement
Abstract: This paper provides a fresh examination of John Dewey’s social
philosophy in the light of new evidence made available by the recent discovery
of the original manuscript Dewey wrote in preparation of the Lectures on Social
and Political Philosophy delivered in China and published here for the first time.
The paper reconstructs Dewey’s ambivalent relationship with social philosophy
throughout his long career and focuses upon his attempt between 1919 and 1923
to develop his own’s social philosophy. It proceeds to examine the contribution
of the Chinese Lectures in Social and Political Philosophy to Dewey’s project in
social philosophy and shows that our understanding of Dewey’s social philosophy
was severely hampered by the unavailability of the original text. It concludes by
assessing the critical potential of Dewey’s social philosophy.
The discovery of the original manuscript1 Dewey wrote in preparation of the
Lectures in Social and Political Philosophy delivered in China and here published for
the first time provides a unique opportunity to re-assess Dewey’s social philosophy.
Combined with other published and unpublished sources of the same period, analysis
of the original manuscript provides new and compelling evidence that between 1919
and 1923 Dewey was actively involved in the project of developing a social philosophy
that however never saw the light. This project becomes particularly momentous if
seen in the perspective of Dewey’s struggle to formulate a normative account of social
and political life.
To appreciate the originality and importance of the text, I will begin by providing
an overview of the evolution of Dewey’s ideas on social philosophy. In the second
section I will offer an interpretation of the theoretical relevance of this text for
Dewey’s social philosophy, and in the third section I will elaborate on Dewey’s notion
of conflict in its relation with social philosophy. In the fourth section I will draw
some lessons from the comparison of the two texts, and in the fifth section I will
propose some general conclusions on the philosophical implications of this text for
the development of a pragmatist social philosophy.
1. What Dewey Meant by ‘Social Philosophy’
Dewey’s struggles with social philosophy throughout his long career are difficult
to assess in a synthetic way. Social philosophy is not a clearly defined subject,
and Dewey’s view varied quite significantly over time. Moreover, he appeared to
have ambivalent views about having a social philosophy. A manageable solution
to navigate among Dewey’s differing views consists in examining the evolution of
* CNRS-IMM, Paris [[email protected]].
1. As is known, the Lectures in China have so far been available only in translation from Chinese
to English of the transcription of the oral communication. See the Note to the critical edition for a
description of the manuscript, including a list of the lectures that have been preserved and those that are
missing. See Yung-chen Chiang’s paper in this Symposia for an evaluation of the differences between
the two editions.
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his terminology, in particular in tracing the different uses of the expression ‘social
philosophy’ in Dewey’s texts. As we will see, this strategy will bring to light a decisive
turn in Dewey’s thought that took place in the years shortly before his trip to China.
A look at the ensemble of Dewey’s works may give the impression that the
expression ‘social philosophy’ is not used in a consistent way. It occurs some 65 times
within the totality of his Works, and seldom as an object of distinct concern. For the
sake of the present analysis, I propose to group Dewey’s remarks on social philosophy
into four chronologically organized phases.
In the first phase, from Dewey’s first writings until 1901, there is no single
occurrence of this expression in his published works. Dewey’s interest in political
philosophy during the first phase of his career is limited though well attested, but
it betrays no concern for the social dimension. In (Dewey 1888), certainly the most
important political text of the period, there is no trace of a social approach, and
democracy is meant to refer to a political regime and to a moral ideal. The lack of
references to the social as the central dimension of human life hence of politics is
not surprising in this first phase of Dewey’s thought, dominated as it is by idealist
assumptions which drove his interest either toward the psychological or the moral
dimension. A few exceptions can be found in the Lectures in Ethics and Politics
delivered from 1896 to 1903. Here the expression ‘social philosophy’ occurs some 15
times, but the use is always generic, and always refers to the work of other scholars.
A few examples show this point:
Organism as fixed is at the bottom of Spencer. Now the whole is evolving, not one
alone. The process may be stated as the growing complexity and interrelation of the
environment and organism. The bearing of the above upon social philosophy is upon
the definition of the individual, as independent of the universe. Now it seems to me that
this is the chief point of view not merely of social philosophy, but of any philosophy, –
to get hold of the fact that the world of experience is a world of values, and as such is
in continuous change, in continuous evolution, and it is only certain things which we
abstract for specialized purposes of analysis that in any sense remain the same. (Dewey
2010: 1536)
Edward Caird’s Social Philosophy of Comte, while a little off the line of questions we
shall discuss here, is from a philosophical point of view certainly one of the best things
that any student of social philosophy can read. I do not know of any book that is so good
as an introduction to the real problems of modern philosophy, because it brings in the
relations between philosophy in its more technical sense and society, social problems
and also historical and religious questions. (Dewey 2010: 1891)
The investigation of the social function of the physician, as followed out from primitive
times down, would be a most fundamentally important contribution to sociology and
social philosophy as well. If we take the thing as perhaps the first view presents itself to
us, it seems to be an individual matter. One person is sick and another not particularly
sick waits upon him. (Dewey 2010: 1961)
A second phase occurs between 1901 and 1918 when the term is seldom used,
generally in three ways all instructive about how Dewey began to conceive the task
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of social and political theory. The first way refers to his own and others’ work on
education, the second to the works of the British philosophers of the 19th century,
and the third to his own view of social life. In particular, it is in texts dealing with
educational issues that the expression appears, generally to emphasize that pedagogy
must take social factors into account rather then confine itself to the study of the
individual. Indeed, through these texts, Dewey insists on the social dimension of
education, of school being a ‘social institution,’ that is to say an institution essentially
involved in the progress and functioning of the whole social body. By this, Dewey
means that education is appraised in the perspective of its contribution to the
functioning of society. The following three quotations are exemplary of this use:
If it seems unnecessarily remote to approach school problems through a presentation
of what may appear to be simply a form of social philosophy, there is yet practical
encouragement in recognizing that exactly the same forces which have thrust these
questions into the forefront of school practice are also operative to solve them.
(MW 1: 285)
A slight amount of social philosophy and social insight reveals two principles
continuously at work in all human institutions: one is toward specialization and
consequent isolation, the other toward connection and interaction. (MW 1: 286)
Much later but in the same vein he writes:
Our position implies that a philosophy of education is a branch of social philosophy
and, like every social philosophy, since it requires a choice of one type of character,
experience, and social institutions, involves a moral outlook. (LW 8: 80)
According to this view, which is inspired by a reformist attitude toward educational
matters, “an educational reform is but one phase of a general social modification” (MW 1:
262). Here Dewey pits “the reformist” against “the conservative” and describes them
as two competing social philosophies, meaning by this two competing general views
about the role education should have in mediating relationships between indi-viduals
and society. As is known, he sides without compromise with the reformist view.
This treatment of social philosophy shows that, for Dewey, social philosophy has
to provide indications of both the means and ends of social reform. On the one hand,
it needs to provide normative standards to define the place of education within the
larger picture of social life. On the other hand, it needs to describe the steps that are
necessary to reach these goals as well as the methods – organizational and educational
– which this undertaking requires. Given the internal connection between Dewey
establishes between means and ends, the theoretical discussion of ends is not complete
until means, processes, and procedures are taken into account. Dewey insists on the
“impossibility of separating either the theoretical discussion of the course of study, or
the problem of its practical efficiency, from intellectual and social conditions which at
first sight are far removed ; it is enough if we recognize that the question of the course
of study is a question in the organization of knowledge, in the organization of life, in
the organization of society” (MW 1: 276).
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At the same time, and inseparably, Dewey argues that social philosophy should be
concerned with the study of the means by which these ends can be achieved, and should
orient a process of transformation of these very means, perceived as the conditions
by which the ends are achieved. Hence the constant mingling of philosophical and
pedagogical considerations in Dewey’s texts on the philosophy of education.
The distinguishing mark of a social approach is the positive acknowledgement
of the entangling of means and ends, which implies in turn that social philosophy
should proceed through analysis, critique, and reform of existing conditions. Thus
a social philosophy intended as a form of reflexion limited to final ends and values
is incomplete. According to Dewey’s views, there is an internal connection between
social philosophy and reformism because social philosophy should indicate means,
steps, stages, paths to be pursued in order to reach the normative goals it sets for
reform. In that sense, social philosophy is seen by Dewey as the instrument of social
reform or, put otherwise, as the critical moment of social reform. Dewey’s emphasis
on terms such as ‘direction’ and ‘control’ to define the normative task of social
philosophy should be understood precisely in this sense.
Although in a rather indirect way, by these uses we get a clear glimpse of Dewey’s
normative views: the aim of social philosophy consists in the conscious orientation
of the social process, a process which Dewey sees as being always in flux, always in
the making, hence always in need of being steered, controlled, directed through what
he usually terms “intelligence,” or social inquiry. Dewey’s social philosophy is, to
this extent, progressive rather than revolutionary. Dewey never tired of criticizing
the revolutionary project for its incapacity to articulate experimentally how the
transformational path should unfold, to devise concrete means to bring society stepby-step from its present circumstances to better circumstances. This theme will
dominate the first of the Chinese Lectures in Social and Political Philosophy.
A second use of the expression marking this phase is historical, as Dewey often
refers to the social views of Modern philosophers, specifically those of the British
tradition from Hobbes to Spencer, in order to denote philosophical theories having
a reformist orientation, and which address social issues such as poverty, exclusion,
oppression, and equality through specific projects of reform. These uses reveal
Dewey’s philosophical references of the time, and what he retained of these authors.
Whilst in all these occurrences the use of the expression ‘social philosophy’ is rather
loose, and never intended by Dewey to describe his own work, they point clearly
to a social-reformist understanding of the task of philosophy. Discussing Herbert
Spencer’s philosophy, Dewey defines social philosophy as: “a theory of conduct
which, being more than individual, serves as a principle of criticism and reform in
corporate affairs and community welfare” (MW 3: 207). Spencer’s social philosophy
is criticized for being “speculative” or “romantic,” by which Dewey means “couched
merely in terms of a program of criticism and reconstruction” (MW 3: 207). This
“merely” points polemically towards the lack of a direct engagements with social and
material circumstances in connecting means to ends.
A third and less prominent use typical of this second phase refers to the generic
meaning of social philosophy as a theoretical undertaking having society as its object
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and emphasizing the inescapably social dimension of phenomena such as individual
life, politics, education. This use is in consonant with the Lectures of 1896-1903, and
corresponds to the use of the term common at the time.
We enter into the third and decisive phase in 1919 with the unpublished “Syllabus
of Eight Lectures on Philosophical Reconstruction,” that will be the basis for Dewey’s
conference series in Japan the same year, later published under the title Reconstruction
in Philosophy. In the Syllabus and in the published lectures the expression ‘social
philosophy’ appears explicitly in the title of the last lecture: “Reconstruction as
Affecting Social Philosophy,” in a way that clearly shows Dewey’s willingness to
endorse as he never did before ‘social philosophy’ as a central dimension of his own
intellectual undertaking. In the same year Dewey delivered in China the series of
conferences entitled Social and Political Philosophy here published in its original
version. These texts are animated by a reiterated critique against the speculative
practice of social philosophy, and by Dewey’s efforts to delineate the contours of
what he calls a “third philosophy,” an expression he uses to refer to his own social
philosophy. Methodologically, this third social philosophy is defined in terms of the
pragmatist method of inquiry, according to which: “general answers supposed to have
a universal meaning that covers and dominates all particulars [...] do not assist inquiry.
They close it. They are not instrumentalities to be employed and tested in clarifying
concrete social difficulties.” (MW 12: 188).
Yet to find a complete definition of social philosophy we need to look at an
unpublished text of the period, the 1923 “Syllabus: Social Institutions and the Study of
Morals” (MW 15: 230-373). Here we find the following definition of social philosophy:
Social philosophy is concerned with the valuation of social phenomena. The latter
include all the customs, institutions, arrangements, purposes and policies that depend
upon human association, or the living together of men. (MW 15: 231)
Dewey proposes to conceive of social philosophy as the critical task of producing
normative standards for assessing social phenomena starting from the immanent
examination of these phenomena themselves. Accordingly, the task of social
philosophy is to carry further:
the process of reflective valuation which is found as an integral part of social phenomena,
apart from general theorizing. [...] Social philosophy is a technique for clarifying the
judgments which are constantly passed of necessity upon social customs, institutions,
laws, arrangements, actual and projected. Its subject-matter involves a study (1) of
the influence of distinct types of social grouping upon the generation of beliefs and
standards as to right and wrong, good and bad; and (2) of the reflex reaction of these
beliefs and standards, upon other social forces with special regard to their effect upon
the production of goods and bads by these social forces. Its purpose is to render the
social criticism and projection of policies which is always going on more enlightened
and effective. (MW 15: 231-2)
From these uses, the reader gets a clear sense of a research program that fuses
together the main themes of social philosophy: concern for direct engagement with
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present social ills; an orientation toward non-ideal theory; the search for criteria for
validating specific normative claims; a sense of the relevance of the social and historical
circumstances in fixing the ends and means of social reform, and rejection of a purely
political approach to sociopolitical issues. Social philosophy is also sometimes used to
denote the national mind-sets of peoples (French, British, German social philosophy),
sometimes to describe a political philosophy which is anti-individualistic, or a
philosophy oriented toward the transformation of social conditions.
Throughout these texts, Dewey’s critical target is invariably German philosophy
from Hegel to Marx, and the central argument is that social philosophy, in contrast
with other methods, denotes a form of inquiry which concerns specific social
problems and has the aim of devising testable and implementable working solutions.
Dewey reiterates his claim that social philosophers should refrain from excessive
generalizations. Rather, they should help: “men solve problems in the concrete by
supplying them hypotheses to be used and tested in projects of reform”(MW 12: 189).
And in the Lectures in China, after another critique of the classical social philosophies
for their excessive use of “sweeping generalizations,” Dewey explains: “What is
needed is to see that every philosophy since it has a practical aim is relative to the
specific situation which requires rectification. We must think within limits set by
special ills and special resources at hand for correcting them. Avoid large generalisms,
and consider specific questions, using the isms simply for what light they may throw
on the special need at hand.” (Dewey 2015: II.11).
Analogous formulations can be found in several other texts of the period in
which Dewey deals with social philosophy or, on a more abstract level, with the task
of theory. The two assumptions to which Dewey regularly resorts to define social
philosophy are (1) the problem-driven and experimental orientation of inquiry, and
(2) the subordination of the task of general critique to science-led projects in social
reform and reconstruction. These two points provide the cornerstone of Dewey’s
social philosophy.
We enter a fourth and last phase around 1924. Starting from that year, uses of the
expression itself again become scant. Moreover, in the following three decades the
expression will scarcely ever be used again by Dewey to define his own philosophical
project, a clear sign that he abandoned the very project of developing a personal social
philosophy. Surprisingly, his concern for social philosophy as a specific intellectual
undertaking declined precisely as his concern for social issues steadily increased, as
can be observed by Dewey’s theoretical interest in the social as a general philosophical
category (Dewey 1928), for social phenomena, social reform, social problems, social
control, social movements, social revolution, social life, and so forth. Indeed, all
major political texts of the time emphasize the failure of purely political conceptions
of democracy and propose the importance of social and moral factors in shaping the
political course of events.
After 1923 the most consistent and extensive use of the term can be found in
Dewey’s several essays devoted to liberalism, where he defines and analyzes liberalism
as a distinctive social philosophy, meaning a philosophy with a distinctive conception
of the individual and of his place in society, to which he opposes a different social
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philosophy, one that rejects the individualist standpoint of liberalism.2 From this time
onward, the social dimension became deeply entrenched in all aspects of Dewey’s
thought. Yet no traces of a project of social philosophy are to be found any more, sign
that the 1919-1923 phase had been definitely close, as is proven also by the fact that
none of the materials included the 1923 Syllabus and in the Lectures in China have
been published by Dewey during his life time. Also the publication of The Public
and its Problem few years later may be taken as a proof that Dewey abandoned the
project of an anthropological foundation of normative theory in order to get back to a
more prudent and thinner procedural account, more consistent with his experimental
particularism.
Yet this project remains an important document of Dewey’s philosophical views.
Before proceeding to describe and discuss Dewey’s views on social philosophy
as they appear in the original version of the Lectures in China, we need to return
to the philosophical meaning of the 1923 Syllabus. This is an extremely important
text to understand Dewey’s concern with social philosophy and a decisive one to
contextualize the Lectures in China.
In this text Dewey makes clear that social philosophy at this time denoted for him a
normative discipline, the aim of which is the assessment of social progress in specific
circumstances. Dewey wants to carve out a specific space for social philosophy between
what he considers the useless abstractions of classical philosophy and the normative
irrelevance of social-scientific empirical descriptions of reality. This space is that of
the development of a concrete hypothesis to carry on social reform, a space in which
normative claims and empirical description combine in fruitful processes of pragmatic
social inquiry. In this text Dewey adumbrates a division of labor between social
philosophy and the social sciences, according to which to formulate its evaluations,
social philosophy relies upon descriptions of social phenomena that it “accepts from
the best authenticated sources” (MW 15: 231). He then proceeds to define the aim of
social philosophy as ‘ethical,’ by which we should understand ‘normative.’
The task of social philosophy, as Dewey will make clear is to provide guidance
for social change. In the Syllabus, written shortly after Dewey’s return from China,
he struggles with a question that had haunted him in the Lectures in China, which is
the question of what normative standard could and should be used to assess social
situations for the sake of social reform? While Dewey has a clear idea of the role of
the social sciences in producing empirical knowledge about social phenomena, he
remains quite agnostic concerning how social philosophy should proceed in assessing
social phenomena.
My assumption is that, during these years, Dewey became increasingly uneasy
with the limitations of his pragmatist method. He began to realize that a procedural,
particularistic, and contextualist approach such as the one he had championed his
whole life was theoretically insufficient to sustain the normative needs of a social
philosophy.3 Dewey is concerned here, as elsewhere, with the daunting task of
2. See for example LW 3: 41-54, LW 11: 1-65, LW 13: 63-188, and LW 15: 261-76.
3. For a slightly different interpretation of this transition in Dewey’s thought, see Roberto Gronda’s
paper in this Symposia.
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deriving normative standard from within the social situation, while avoiding to
take actors’s evaluations at face value. As he observes, “the standard of valuation is
derived from the positive phenomena and yet is not a mere record of given valuations”
(MW 15: 231).
One of the most original ideas of Dewey’s social philosophy is precisely that
normative evaluations are part of social life, social actors incessantly produce
evaluations concerning the normative value of social phenomena, and these
evaluations need to be taken into account because of their emancipatory potential
and because they deliver the normative standpoint of agents involved in the situation.
As Dewey notes explicitly, social life is driven by social valuations, which are in
that sense a powerful tool of social change as well as social conservation. Yet he is
aware that social philosophy cannot merely take these evaluations at face value. It
should transcend social reality while remaining immanently rooted within it. Indeed
the plurality of social evaluations: “provide the subject-matter for a systematic or
philosophical valuation of values and of ordinary valuations” (MW 15: 231). Yet how
this subject-matter should be handled for the sake of philosophical valuation is not
clear. What is evident is that the mere appeal to empty universals such as ‘growth’ was
perceived by Dewey at the time as an insufficient answer to the normative demands
of social philosophy.
Refusing at the same time the standpoint of traditional philosophy and that of the
newly emerging empirical social sciences, Dewey located the subject matter of social
philosophy in the philosophical valuation of values, a move that clearly requires the
social philosopher to step back from given situations in order to provide an independent
perspective on the valuations that actors themselves produce, but which at the same
time deprive the social philosopher of the traditional tools of speculative philosophy.
As Dewey conceived it, social philosophy has inevitably a context-transcending
function as it takes these social evaluations as its own object. At the same time, it is
immanent to the social situation, as it:
only carries further the process of reflective valuation which is found as an integral
part of social phenomena, apart from general theorizing. It does not differ from any
thoughtful judgment upon the value of an institution or proposed policy or law except
in greater generality and effort at system. It follows that like them it is tentative and
experimental and is subject to further revision. In other words, even the most elaborate
social philosophy is itself in the end an additional social fact that enters into subsequent
judgments of value. (MW 15: 232)
On the one hand, social philosophy denotes a second order criticism, an evaluation
of evaluations, intended as a critical tool for bettering the quality of ordinary social
valuations. But on the other hand, social philosophy is expected to provide its own
social valuations which engage critically with those of other actors in the process of
social change. As such, it is conducted from within the social field, and the social
philosopher has to be seen as merely an actor among others. This is, as it happens, a
fragile and unstable position to defend.
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This tension is not completely resolved by Dewey. He begins by recalling the
immanent character of social philosophy, defining its subject matter as involving:
a study (1) of the influence of distinct types of social grouping upon the generation of
beliefs and standards as to right and wrong, good and bad; and (2) of the reflex reaction
of these beliefs and standards, upon other social forces with special regard to their effect
upon the production of goods and bads by these social forces. (MW 15: 233)
He then proceeds to contrast this method with traditional, transcendental conceptions
of social philosophy, according to which normative evaluation requires the
achievement of an independent normative standpoint, which philosophy has usually
found either in extra-social sources such as nature or God, or in individual states such
as consciousness, intuition, or pleasure. These approaches are resolutely criticized,
as is customary for Dewey, because in their attempt to avoid the problem of deriving
normative standards from the phenomena to be assessed, they fall prey of much worse
problems: “becoming absolutistic and non-historical, and, in effect, partisan, since
they choose their outside standard to serve the purpose they have in mind, and there is
no objective check upon their choice” (MW 15: 234).
As Dewey is aware, only an immanent approach can help us evaluate a social
situation in the light of the ends that the agents set themselves. It is not adequate,
however, once we set off on the task of assessing the ends themselves. Hence, in
a subsequent section of this Syllabus, devoted to the idea of normative standards
of social evaluation, Dewey first reassesses his usual views that criteria need to be
hypothetical rather than categorical and experimental rather than absolute. He then
proceeds to define social standards as follows:
A social criterion must (1) express the intrinsic defining principle of human associations
as they actually exist, but (2) in such a form that the idea or principle may be contrasted
with existent concrete forms. (MW 15: 238)
This definition comes after a short analysis in which he defines human associations
in terms of basic human needs that social groups are called upon to fulfill. It is with
reference to society defined in terms of these basic needs that Dewey writes that: “this
definition becomes a criterion when actual phenomena are compared with it to see
how fully they realize or express it” (MW 15: 238).
As we can infer, Dewey sees in these basic human needs, and in the duty a society
has to fulfill them, an independent standpoint from which to assess, as it were from
outside, the quality of a social phenomena. Here Dewey is clearly assuming that social
philosophy can and indeed must derive its own normative standard from phenomena
that are not themselves completely internal to the social situation it has to assess. In
this way we reach normative standards that are independent of the social situation and
can, for this reason, sustain the normative project of social philosophy. This project
is clearly consistent with Dewey’s naturalism. Of this standard, that Dewey calls
“criterion,” he says that it is hypothetical and experimental, and can be compared
with the standards of health in hygiene and medicine and with those of truth in the
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natural sciences (MW 15: 239). This naturalistic theory of society can rely upon a
functionalist argument – “certain conditions have to be fulfilled in order that there
may be a social group at all” – to produce the needed benchmark against which to
formulate normative judgements.
Here Dewey seems to contrast two competing interpretations of the content of a
normative standard. On the one hand, he refers to the procedural criteria which define
the quality of human interaction, in particular to: “communication, participation,
sharing, interpenetration of meanings.” According to this view, it would be possible to
formulate normative evaluations of social phenomena on the basis of their capacity to
promote or hamper these specific qualities of human interaction. On the other hand,
he refers explicitly to “the application of the criterion to the five different tendencies
listed as characteristic of different groups” (MW 15: 239), where the five different
tendencies refer to basic human needs that any society is supposed to fulfill, such
as reproduction, material security, communication, leisure. Here Dewey seems once
again to hesitate between a procedural and a substantial interpretation of the nature of
the normative standard that social philosophy requires.
As I intend to show in the next section, in the original version of the Lectures in
China Dewey attempts in a more systematic way to develop a pragmatist model of
social philosophy based upon a naturalistic interpretation of human nature which was
in turn based upon the need to integrate what I have called the procedural and the
substantial criteria. In so doing, he attempts to articulate the principle of growth in
a more concrete way, and he does so by relying upon the discipline that, at the time,
appeared to him as the most adequate to sustain a normative account consistent with
his naturalism, that is, social anthropology. And in a very unique way he presented his
views as a general theory of conflict, that for him provided the theoretical ground of
social philosophy.
2. In Search of a Solid Ground for Social Philosophy
The previous historical reconstruction has shown that the Lectures in China appear
to be one of the rare documents in which Dewey elaborated a systematic account of
his social philosophy. Until today, the use of this text for a serious reconstruction of
Dewey’s views has been hampered by the ambiguous editorial status of this text. With
the discovery of the manuscript originally typewritten by Dewey as a material support
for these lectures, we are now in a much better position to assess Dewey’s views on
social philosophy. We are lucky that the first four lectures have been preserved in their
integral form, so that a close comparison between them and the previously published
version can be easily achieved.
While at first sight the two texts appear to be clearly and directly connected,
so that there can be no doubt that they are two versions of the same text, there are
nevertheless significant divergences. For once, we can safely make the assumption
that Dewey did not read the text he prepared to his audience, as it is clear that this text
was not written to be read but rather as a basis for the talk. Yet there are significant
stylistic and semantic differences which it is difficult to impute to the distance which
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may have been introduced by Dewey between the written and the spoken word,
as they clearly betray a different philosophical standpoint on some crucial philosophical
themes.
As we have seen, to understand this text we have to contextualize it in this short
and intense phase of theoretical reflection on social philosophy, a time during which
Dewey was concerned with the possibility of developing a normative account of social
life that might provide the theoretical background for the kind of social analyses he
considered to be the backbone of the new ‘third’ philosophy he advocated. We should
also consider that the Lectures in China were delivered only a year after he delivered
the series of lectures published later as Human Nature and Conduct, the text in which
Dewey presents his views on social anthropology. Similar attempts at rooting a
normative analysis of social life in a naturalistic theory of action were pursued at the
same time by authors close to Dewey such as William I. Thomas and Thorstein Veblen
(Kilpinen 2000). These are also the years in which Dewey’s intellectual collaboration
with the cultural anthropologist Franz Boas was at its most intense (Torres Colon &
Hobbs 2015).
In his search for more stringent normative criteria for advancing social philosophy
as a project of normative evaluation, Dewey sought solutions in the anthropological
foundation of social life. This move was nothing new in the context of Dewey’s lasting
commitment to naturalism. Indeed, this has been the leading assumption of his social
and political philosophy. Nevertheless, late in 1932, for example, while describing the
normative ideal of democracy, he explains that:
it simply projects to their logical and practical limit forces inherent in human nature and
already embodied to some extent in human nature. It serves accordingly as a basis for
criticism of institutions as they exist and of plans of betterment. (LW 7: 349)
As can be seen from this passage, which echoes many others of this time, normative
social ideas have a direct connection with human nature.
The novelty present in the Lectures in China concerns rather the more explicit
intention of accounting for normative standards in terms of a basic set of universal
human needs that each group must fulfill. Dewey’s reliance upon the language of
needs and interests which characterizes the original Lectures in China is fully
consistent with his anthropology. However, what may surprise the reader is the
explicit reference to basic and universal needs as a benchmark for his normative social
philosophy. Dewey’s statements about human nature are elsewhere more elusive,
and the vocabulary of cultural variation is generally preferred to that of universal
invariants. We all know Dewey’s provocative claim that: “in conduct the acquired is
the primitive” (MW 14: 65). Yet, as he reminds us, what is acquired is not the impulse
in itself, but rather its meaning.
It is important to see that the Lectures in China do not violate this basic postulate
of Dewey’s anthropology. Yet in this text he takes a different tack. He attempts to
provide a taxonomy of the basic needs that qualify human nature before their cultural
articulation, and to use them as a normative benchmark for social analysis. To fulfill
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this task, rather than focusing upon how these basic needs are differently shaped
according to social circumstances, Dewey chooses to emphasize a supposedly
universal trait, which is to say that the satisfaction of these basic needs can be achieved
only through associated action. Society in general, and group life in particular, can
therefore be assessed according to their capacity to fulfill this universal task. This
social-theoretic claim provides the means by which the anthropological invariant is
contextually articulated.
While the idea that the satisfaction of human needs is always socially mediated is
a classical theme of Dewey’s philosophy, a major point emphasized by the Lectures in
China concerns the necessary function of groups as well as of institutions in fulfilling
this task. This argument will be formulated once again in the 1923 Syllabus, although
on that occasion Dewey will refrain from drawing normative implications from it.
Is Dewey here assuming a biological definition of human essence defined in terms
of its “native impulses” – something that would patently contradict his most basic
ideas, in particular his criticism of transcendental approaches to social philosophy?
I’m persuaded that the basic ideas presented in the Lectures in China do not contradict
Dewey’s basic philosophical principles. In this text Dewey leaves completely
undetermined the question of how the diversity of social conditions influence the ways
in which impulses consolidate into habits, precisely because his interest is elsewhere.
In the 1923 Syllabus Dewey explains that, whereas needs are limited and basic, their
social expression takes shape as ‘wants,’ which vary according to social circumstances
and: “may become indefinitely diversified and complex” (MW 15: 249). Yet in the
Lectures in China, Dewey is not concerned with the influence of the environment on
human character, but rather with how the struggle to fulfill basic needs produces new
forms of human association, hence with its genealogical function in the history of
human beings. In the context of his social philosophy, this assumption is then used to
ground a general theory of conflict. This notion, that Human Nature and Conduct puts
at the heart of human individual life, is now presented as the basic trait of social life.
As we may expect, Dewey will come up with a theoretically general and ambitious
theory of social conflict, as the basis of which he will posit his social anthropology.
This surprising connection dominates the entire analysis of social conflict and social
reform found in Lectures 3 and 4.
3. Dewey’s Theory of Social Conflict
Dewey’s Lectures in China have been generally considered one of the most
important documents for understanding Dewey’s theory of conflict. Some have seen
in this text the confirmation of a form of political radicalism based on a quasi-Marxist
interpretation of social change as rooted in the conflict among social groups struggling
for recognition and for the appropriation of material resources. Taken from the history
of the labor movement, along with a whole array of sentences referring to relations
of group domination and to social groups oppressing other social groups, Dewey’s
examples could indeed have given the impression that here for the first and probably
the last time he embraced a theory of society that could be easily reconciled with the
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paradigm of class struggle, and with the assumption that in the end material conditions
of inequality play a central role in social dynamics of conflict.
As I intend to show, this interpretation of Dewey’s social philosophy appears to be
unsupported by textual evidence, once we compare the two versions of the text. Not
only does the original manuscript written by Dewey not warrant such an interpretation,
but it also shows that this interpretation was not warranted even by the version of
the lectures known till today. In particular, the newly discovered manuscript shows
that Dewey’s theory of conflict is much more abstract and ambitious than is usually
believed. Indeed, only by reaching a very high level of abstraction he could transform
the notion of conflict into one of the pillars of his social philosophy.
Dewey begins his analysis of social conflict with a definition that, as I will show,
is full of ambiguities:
The significant conflicts are conflicts of groups, classes, factions, parties, peoples.
A group is a number of people associated together for some purposes, some common
activity that holds them. (Dewey 2015: III.1)
What remains unclear in this definition is the nature of groups. What kind of groups
is Dewey referring to? What are the criteria which preside over the genesis of groups?
Are they determined according to general external circumstances such as economic
standing, occupation, or education or by intrinsic traits such as gender or race?
To understand the real import of Dewey’s social philosophy, we need first to
clarify what he has in mind when he speaks of groups. Examination of the original
manuscript offers sufficient evidence that Dewey’s theory of groups is very different
from contemporary social theories of groups. While of course on several occasions
Dewey refers to groups loosely as any association of individuals sharing some interest
in common, when it comes to the theory of conflict, he has in mind a very specific idea
of the group, one deriving from his functional understanding of social life.
According to the view introduced by Dewey in his Lectures, a group denotes a
specific form of social organization qualified by its capacity to satisfy a specific basic
human need. This idea is also formulated by Dewey in the 1923 Syllabus, where he
states that: “Fundamental human needs are the basis of association or group formation
and characteristic interests reflect these need” (MW 15: 236).
Here Dewey identifies five basic human needs to which he explicitly associates
five types of group organization: (1) support and sustenance are fulfilled by industrial
groups; (2) protection and security are fulfilled by ecclesiastical, military, and political
groups; (3) reproduction is granted by family; (4) recreation and leisure is fulfilled
by clubs and other types of voluntary associations, and (5) language and sociability
are related to schools and academies. As in the Lectures in China, here too Dewey
acknowledges that, historically, a given group may take on different functions, and
that individuals belong to a plurality of groups. But the notion of the group as such
is defined, in nearly ideal typical ways, in terms of its functional correlation with the
basic human need it is called upon to fulfill.
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This notion of the group obtains its full theoretical import in the context of Dewey’s
theory of conflict. Particularly in the Lectures in China, where Dewey is concerned
with the ambitious task of developing a new pragmatist social philosophy, in order
for this notion to fulfill its foundational task, the idea of conflict is endowed with a
more general meaning. In particular, Dewey refrains from the usual interest-based
conception. Rather, he defines conflict in terms of a contrast taking place not among
social groups, but among competing normative principles which impose incompatible
injunctions upon reality. In the Ethics Dewey will rely upon the same strategy to
define the nature of moral conflict in its most general terms as a conflict among the
competing incompatible principles of virtue, the right, and the good rather than as a
lower order conflict among competing goods or among competing rights.
Human beings have universal basic needs which refer to material as well as
spiritual conditions of survival and self-realization. In the Lectures in China these
needs are often referred to as ‘interests’:
Human nature has a variety of interests to be served, a number of types of impulses that
have to be expressed, or instincts that form needs to be satisfied, and about each one
of the more fundamental of these some form of association, of living together as or of
acting together continuously or repeatedly and regularly (as distinct from mere chance
and transient contacts). (Dewey 2015: III.2)
As is clear from this text, the term ‘interest’ refers neither to material interests nor to
individual preferences. Rather, it is a synonym of need, impulse, or even instinct. It
refers to the basic structure of human nature. Here and in the Syllabus Dewey refers
explicitly to basic interests which are common to all human beings. The recurrent list
includes the following: reproduction and affective security; material comfort; spiritual
guidance and security; intellectual curiosity, and artistic expression. This typological
approach is fundamental to understanding Dewey’s theory of conflict and its place
in his social philosophy. There are types of interests which typically find expression
in given types of human association. The family, the church, the state, the business
enterprise, the school, are all forms of institution which have developed to better
fulfill specific human needs.
The real innovation introduced by the Lectures in China is the sociological
hypothesis concerning the relationship between basic human needs and social life.
Here Dewey formulates the following hypothesis. Given their social nature, human
beings can satisfy their basic needs only by associating in groups. Groups evolve
functionally according to their capacity to fulfill one or another basic human need
and they develop institutions which are more or less effective. In the evolutionary
perspective taken by Dewey, each basic human need has been best fulfilled by specific
societal forms, among which Dewey cites the family, the business, religion, the state,
and science.
In the context of this theoretical framework, Dewey can then define the object of
social philosophy as the study of how a given society succeeds or fails to satisfy these
basic human needs through a process of sociological differentiation and institution
building. This functionalist theory of associations explains the genesis of the basic
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forms of social life as the result of human attempts to satisfy these basic social needs.
As a consequence, associations and groups can be classified according to which
interest they serve, and evaluated according to their capacity to fulfill that task. This
is the basic idea behind Dewey’s group-based theory of social life. As a consequence,
in this context, by groups Dewey does not refer to social aggregates composed on
the basis of whatever specific interest, as will be the case in his theory of publics.
Here Dewey is referring to a very specific kind of interest, and one which is universal
because common to all human beings.
The further theoretical assumption which characterizes Dewey’s theory of conflict
is that once a group succeeds in satisfying a basic human need, it tends to impose
the successful organizational logic upon the whole of social life. In that way, the
social solution to satisfy a basic need transforms itself into a hegemonic attempt to
organize the whole society according to its own logic. Dewey takes the example of
families and kins, an organizational model that has emerged in order to promote
human reproduction, and that has progressively expanded to the other social spheres
subjecting all spheres of social life to the principle of kinship. Similarly, Dewey
points to the historical tendency of the Church to interpret all dimensions of human
experience in terms of its own driving principle, which is that of spiritual salvation
through renunciation of worldly goods. Here too, Dewey emphasizes the negative
consequences produced by the generalization of the religious group logic beyond its
legitimate sphere of influence.
Against this background, group conflict are understood as mere instantiations of
a more radical type of conflict, one taking place among competing and irreducible
principles struggling for the organization of social life. Conflict among groups
is relevant at this explanatory level only insofar as it reflects and enacts in reality
this deeper conflict among basic needs. Politicians, capitalists, priests, scientists,
patriarchs represent for Dewey types of groups which may come into conflict one
against the other. The paradigmatic type of conflict Dewey has in mind is not that
between capitalists and workers for the redistribution of profit, but rather that between
the Church and science concerning the legitimate source of epistemic authority.
This is the basic normative argument which sustains Dewey’s theory of conflict
and which provides the basis for developing a normative standard for assessing the
quality of social phenomena. Indeed, as the consequence of the failed fulfillment in
these basic needs reverberate into human beings’ lack of flourishing and into societies’
decline, the normative standard of a good society is defined by the integrated and
successful satisfaction of all these basic needs. Hence a society in which there is
a plurality of forms of association, each consistent with one specific interest and
globally capable of satisfying them all.
Here we find the positive norm underlying Dewey’s social philosophy. A
functioning society is one that is successfully integrated, in which all these needs are
taken into account. As Dewey writes:
We can frame in imagination a picture in which there is an equal proportionate
development of all these forms of associated life, where they interact freely with one
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another, and where the results of each one contribute to the richness and significance of
every other, where family relations assist equally the cooperation of men in science, art,
religion and public life, where association for production and sale of goods enriches not
merely materially but morally and intellectually forms and modes of human intercourse
– where in short there is mutual stimulation and support and free passage of significant
results from one to another. (Dewey 2015: III.3)
Dewey defines here the basic forms of a successful social organization as “universal
modes of union and association,” because these modes of association depend directly
from universal assumptions concerning our anthropological constitution. The normative
ideal of an appropriate form of social organization is derived from a hypothesis about
human constitution, and particularly about their basic interests and needs.
Failure to achieve this state of social integration produces what for Dewey are
the real marks of social failure, which is to say ‘division’ and ‘conflict.’ Division,
and especially conflict, are defined in terms of the failure of social integration. In
its turn, social integration is conceived in terms of equilibrate satisfaction of all the
basic human needs, a condition that to be achieved requires the successful integration
of the social groups which most concur to this satisfaction. Hence a society fails to
fulfill its main task when it fails to prevent one form of association to predominate
over all others. In these conditions, a principle of social organization and hence
the social group that represents it may succeed in ‘colonizing’ the rest of society,
imposing its logic upon all the spheres of social life. This kind of colonization is not
properly pathological, insofar as for Dewey the tendency of each principle to impose
itself over the others is natural and inevitable. It is a tendency inscribed within social
life, a tendency, however, against which we have constantly to strive. Normative
reconstruction is the endless task of countering the negative consequences associated
with this tendency.
Dewey supports his theory using a whole series of historical examples. In
primitive societies the familial form of organization predominated over all others. In
medieval times religious principles tended to impose itself upon all domains of life.
In the modern era and in totalitarian states it is the political principle which tends to
dominate all others. Then in contemporary life this function has been taken over by
the economy. Conflict emerges in these conditions as a consequence of frustration in
the satisfaction of the other basic human needs.
Conflict can, therefore, be defined as a struggle among competing interests
provided one understands interests in terms of this anthropological structure of basic
needs, as Dewey does, and provided one understands groups as the social bearers of
these universal human interests.
Hence, at the cost of repetition, by conflict among competing interests Dewey
does not mean a conflict among the competing claims of different groups for scarce
resources or rival versions of the same principle (capitalists against workers, catholics
against protestants, liberals against socialists, men against women, black against
white), but conflict among rival principles each striving to organize social life in
incompatible ways. The following quotation provide one example among many
others: “During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the history of the progress of
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natural science is largely a history of conflict of the interest in observation and inquiry
with the better established authority of the church” (Dewey 2015: III.5).
Because basic needs require social organization to be fulfilled, Dewey claims
that the conditions of possibility for the satisfaction of these needs depend upon the
social circumstances within which human beings live. Different social groups are
formed to satisfy different basic needs, and they succeed in varying degrees. As a
consequence of this fact: “men’s various interests do not march four abreast, evenly
and uniformly.” This is because interests are advanced through the forms of their
social organization. Hence an interest’s chances of success depends, among other
things, upon the form of social organization it takes, from the types of institutional
support it obtains etc.
This is the original and for Dewey most profound source of social conflict. What
happens in fact is that:
Some interest with the form of association in which it is embodied gets a particularly
intense and widespread start; it then lords it over other interests and associations and
makes them tributary so far as may be to itself. It insists upon dominating activity,
monopolizing attention and interest. (Dewey 2015: III.5)
The outcome of this process is, therefore, social imbalance, unequal fulfillment of
human basic interests, and in the end social suffering:
A mode of social life that is monopolistic of human energy and attention, comparatively
speaking, necessarily becomes itself one-sided; it lacks the contact which will give it
fullness and an all-around character. It becomes at once harsh and relatively empty,
barren. (Dewey 2015: III.6)
In this context, Dewey never speaks of a conflict among social groups in a way that
may authorize us to think that the source of conflict may reside in the self-interest
of group members themselves. What comes into conflict are principles of social
organization, and in this context Dewey speaks of ‘the family principle’ and not of the
family as a group. Similarly, he uses the expression ‘scientific interest’ to refer to this
more abstract level of interest formation. The focus is really upon social groups viewed
as the bearers of specific basic human interests and tending to promote the interest they
represent to the detriment of other equally important universal human interests.
Dewey’s social philosophy should, therefore, not be read as a theory of social
domination, but rather as a theory of social development, because the subject that
suffers or flourishes is, first of all, the entire society. Within this specific and very
original perspective on social conflict, Dewey develops his own version of social
philosophy:
In dealing then on the basis of theory with any particular social condition we need
first to ask what pattern of human association tends to be central and regulative; what
are the one-sidednesses and arrests, fixation rigidities thereby produced; where are the
suppressions from which society is suffering in consequence; what are the points of
conflict, strife, antagonism of interest. (Dewey 2015: III.8)
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Of a social situation in which a given principle comes to dominate the whole of social
life, Dewey writes:
Now obvious that all these things involve a one-sidedness and distortion of human
nature – suppression of growth in some direction, exaggeration in others. Lordship,
mastery, authority stimulated out of all properties in a few. The qualities that could
be developed only by direct share in associations for advance of intellectual life, art,
industry, religion, inhibited. Even as these forms of association grow up, they are not
free to grow; they have to accommodate themselves to habits carried over from a prior
dominate association. (Dewey 2015: III.11)
What is then, for Dewey, the great social problem of the time? Is it economic
exploitation? Is it the oppression of one class by another? They are not. We only need
to read the remarks closing the chapter on social conflict to have a clear grasp of his
social diagnosis:
At the present time, the need for social philosophy [is] urgent because the increased
mobility of life has affected both the great principles of association. Old forms of
association are thrown out of gear, family, church political, school, because of the rapid
development of industrial change. These also have brought local groups into closer
contact with each other increased sources of friction in increasing those for combined
action and cooperation. Made common understanding more important and organization
to perpetuate it. Critical state of world. (Dewey 2015: III.12)
In light of this larger and more ambitious theoretical perspective, it is only at a second
and derivative level that conflict among organizing principles can be read as conflict
among the groups who represent and defend these principles and try to impose it upon
the whole of society:
the practical difficulties which lie back of theoretical social problems are due to the
exaggerated development of some interest in a given type of society, the family, the
religious, the economic, that of personal acquaintance, the political or whatever. This
exaggerated development of some interest brings groups or classes of persons into
conflict with one another; it leads to friction[,] contention, strife and division, and to
confusion, disorder and uncertainty. (Dewey 2015: IV.1)
And again:
For at some point the suppressed side of human interest, the instincts that have not got
expression and satisfaction come to consciousness, and they claim the right to operate.
And they are not abstract but are embodied in definite groups of persons. There is
no struggle between science and religion, between church and state, but there is one
between those concrete human beings who exercise, say, the controlling power through
the church and other men and women whose instincts to investigate and discover or
to promote secular welfare, or achieve political power, are repressed and thwarted.
(Dewey 2015: IV.1)
Only at an even more derivative level do we find the empirical fact of social conflict
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among groups competing for access to scarce entitlements – rights or resources. The
women’s movement, labour movements, anti-slavery movements are cases in point.
And yet again, as I will show later, this form of conflict is for Dewey legitimate and
conducive to social emancipation only on condition that it can be considered a struggle
for re-equilibrating opportunities for the full realization of all the human interests of
society. The humanist concern for development has priority over the sociopolitical
concern for equality. Equality is certainly a necessary condition for human flourishing.
Yet for Dewey this is only a small part of the picture, because in a world in which the
economic principle of social organization dominates all spheres of social life, even
under conditions of strict equality there human society cannot flourishing.
Indeed, equilibrated satisfaction of all the full array of human basic interests is
more important than equality in the satisfaction of one basic interest
4. Lessons from the Comparison
4.1 Does Dewey Possess a Theory of Domination?
This interpretation of social conflict remains partially obscured in the version of
the Lectures in China that we have known so far, from which one might gain the
impression that Dewey’s social philosophy was mainly, or exclusively, concerned
with relations of social domination in which a given group prevents another from
having legitimate access to given entitlements. Indeed, many sentences in the crucial
chapters on Social Conflict and Social Reform are formulated in terms that emphasize
conflict among social groups striving for equality in the distribution of entitlements,
rather than among groups representing competing basic needs.
However, I do not wish to deny that Dewey had a clear sense of the reality of
these types of conflicts – something that also finds independent confirmation in other
writings such as the 1932 Ethics.4 Rather, my claim is that, by focusing upon the
rather conventional understanding of conflict and domination as qualifying relations of
subordination among groups with asymmetric access to resources, we miss the radical
content of Dewey’s understanding of conflict and domination, which certainly includes
this form of domination, but which is indeed much broader and ambitious. As we have
seen, this point is largely obscured by the way in which the text was formulated.
Access to the original manuscript of the Lectures clearly shows that, for Dewey,
group domination is only a part – not the largest or the more important – of a much
broader theory of social conflict. A paradigmatic example of why readers relying on
the previous version have been misdirected is the following quotation:
since a society is made up of many groups each of which is constituted on the basis
of at least one interest held in common by its members, social conflict is not, in any
real sense, conflict between the individual and his society, but rather conflict between
classes, occupational groups, or groups constituted along ideational, or perhaps even
ethnic lines. (Dewey 1973: 65)
4. LW 7: Chapter 16.
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From this and several other similar quotations a reader may gain the impression that,
for Dewey, social conflict denotes essentially the conflict that arises when groups
compete on the basis of similar but opposed interests: two classes competing for scarce
resources; two nations fighting over a contested territory; two religious professions
striving to maximize the number of followers, or two occupational groups such as
farmers and merchants competing for profit etc. Many other passages emphasize this
group-based conception of conflict and domination. Dewey speaks, for example, of
the: “domination of ecclesiastical organizations over other groups, largely because
of the special respect and status that has been accorded to them” (Dewey 1973: 67).
Later in the text he says: “thus again we see the results of one group in society
gaining more power than is its just due, and so retarding the development of other
groups and other activities necessary to a healthy society” (Dewey 1973: 69). At the
end of the chapter we find the following sentence: “we need to observe, first of all,
the causes of social conflict, to find out what groups have become too dominating and
have come to exercise disproportionate power, as well as to identify the groups that
have been oppressed, denied privilege and opportunity” (Dewey 1973: 71). And then
later again: “social conflict occurs when the interests of certain groups are achieved
to the disadvantage of other groups and to the suppression of their interests. A
disproportionately privileged position of certain groups at the disadvantage of others
constitutes injustice which generates conflict” (Dewey 1973: 72). Another formula
is even more striking: “in our present view social conflict occurs when one or more
groups enjoy a degree of freedom and rights which deprives other groups of their just
due” (Dewey 1973: 73-4). And again: “in our theory, social conflict is a matter of
groups in conflict – and groups are, by definition social” (Dewey 1973: 74).
From these passages one gets easily the impression that what Dewey means is that
a social group directly or indirectly oppresses and dominates other groups in order to
promote its own self-interest, and that social conflict emerges out of these relations
of oppression and domination. And Dewey’s reference to women and workers’
movements has certainly contributed to this interpretation. These and similar quotes
have been invoked by readers to claim that Dewey’s Lectures in China present a
materialistic theory of domination which anticipates contemporary ones.
The publication of the original manuscript of Dewey’s Lectures in China does
not warrant this interpretation. First, because none of the passages quoted above,
nor others with a similar meaning, can be found in the original manuscript.5 Second,
because in most passages of the edition based upon the Chinese transcription, in
which Dewey refers to social conflict and group dynamics, the reference to basic
needs as defining groups has disappeared. This reference, as I have shown, provides
the core of Dewey’s theory of conflict in the original manuscript. Third, because the
terms of domination and oppression, which are widespread in the version based upon
the Chinese transcription, are seldom used in the text originally written by Dewey,
and always in milder, non-technical forms. Indeed, in the original text Dewey seldom
refers to dominant groups or to relations of domination in the sense of asymmetrical
5. We should note that, while the newly discovered manuscript is incomplete, the text of the chapters
on “Social Conflict” and “Social Reform” has come to us in its complete form.
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social relations of oppression based upon personal convenience and privilege.
As a consequence of these major semantic and conceptual differences between
the two texts, readers have felt justified in interpreting conflict not in terms of conflict
among basic principles (and among the groups in which they are embedded) but in more
conventional terms of social conflict: whites against blacks; men against women, and
elites against lower classes. For these reasons, recourse to the language of domination
is not appropriate to account for the variety of forms and causes of social conflict
which, according to Dewey, social philosophy should take into account.
Dewey’s social philosophy is indeed more complex precisely because its organizing
principle lies at a more abstract level than that of interest-based group domination.
The central difference concerns the way in which Dewey understands conflict as the
general factor of social evolution. The conclusion that I wish to draw then is not that
Dewey did not consider material domination as a central concern, but only that in
his project of a normative foundation of social philosophy this type of domination
plays only a limited and indirect explanatory role. Indeed, Dewey believes that the
paradigmatic form of social conflict is defined by the clash among groups in their
capacity as bearers of irreconcilable principles of social organization.
This explains why Dewey always comes back to the example of the medieval
conflict between religious and scientific authority, and with the ensuing consideration
that in medieval times interests associated with emotional security, knowledge,
power, and material comfort were frustrated because the religious principle colonized
all other social spheres:
Family life [was] affected because chastity was supposed to involve abstinence from
marriage, the celibate life superior; industry, because wealth and material production
was a distraction from the spiritual life; science because the results of free inquiry
might be dangerous to theological doctrines of the church; art might instill a love for
the things of the eye and the flesh at the expense of divine things. So these were allowed
and cultivated only as they took a form subordinate to the dominant religious interest;
they had to be made to contribute in a one-sided way to the supremacy of the church –
architecture, music, painting, philosophy etc. (Dewey 2015: III.4)
Dewey sees the predominance of a human interest over others as a general tendency
in the evolution of human societies, not as a specific pathology of modern times.
Because of the social dynamics which are needed to fulfill basic needs, human life is
characterized by the tendency of a principle to dominate others, hence to impede the
fulfillment of other equally important human needs, impoverishing social life. Indeed
social life evolves through the struggle of a principle: “to be central and regulative”
(Dewey 2015: III.8). For this reason, we can classify forms of social organization
with reference to the principle that regulates them: kinship in primitive societies;
religion in the Middle age; politics in the age of nation states and totalitarian states,
and economy in capitalism.
This dynamic model of social change gives pride of place to conflict because of the
natural tendency of each principle to affirm itself always at the expense of the others,
with the result that conditions for human fulfillment become impoverished: “all these
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things involve a one-sidedness and distortion of human nature – suppression of growth
in some direction, exaggeration in others” (Dewey 2015: III.10). For Dewey, this
one-sidedness defines the paradigm of social pathologies and provides the normative
benchmark for social philosophy in her task of providing guidelines for social change.
I conclude this section by comparing the two versions of a passage. This will
provide clearer evidence of the extent to which the editorial process undergone by the
Lectures in China has profoundly distorted Dewey’s ideas about social philosophy.
The passage I refer to instantiates a case of social conflict. In the original manuscript
written by Dewey the passage reads as follows:
It can only claim that certain natural, inherent and inalienable claims of individuality
are being suppressed by the exactions of convention and social institutions. The
social side of their aspiration may present itself only as a vague utopian idealism,
a passionate assertion of a new and redeemed society. Actually they claim the right
to assert individualism no matter what happens socially; they become rebels against
society while in truth [they are] only asking for social reorganization, which will make
the relation of the family group to scientific, literary, religious, industrial and political
groups more flexible, less frozen and rigid. (Dewey 2015: IV.6)
The corresponding passage in the version of the Lectures derived from the Chinese
transcription reads as follows:
Any movement then for greater freedom on the part of the young, freedom to select
vocation, to choose their own mates, to make their own political affiliations, to
determine their own moral and religious beliefs is resented not merely as a conflict of
personal wills, of one set of individuals over an another, but as an attack of licentious
individualism upon the foundations of society. As leading to lawless individualism,
overthrowing all coherent social authority, because undermining organization. On the
other hand, the young, while they may feel a strong faith that the accomplishing of
their desire for greater freedom would improve society and put human relationships on
a secured basis, can not prove it by pointing to an established order where this state is
realized. The demand to choose one’s job, to elect one’s faith, to select one’s spouse,
is in essence a demand for social equality, for equal opportunity for free development;
such demand seems to threaten disaster for the simple reason that it has not yet been
accorded sufficiently wide public recognition by society at large. This is another
illustration of the fact that the interests of groups which are still subordinate to the
dominant groups, who identify their own interests with those of their total society, are
generally opposed or disregarded – at least until the subordinate group grows large
enough to enforce its demand that it, too, be recognized as an operating component of
the larger society. (Dewey 1973: 76)
As we see, whilst the basic meaning of the text is the same, in the version derived from
the Chinese transcription the idea of equality has a priority than cannot be found in the
text originally written by Dewey, and the idea of groups as embodying basic interests
is lost. From this and dozens of other similar changes, we have derived a false idea
of Dewey’s social philosophy and his theory of conflict. This process has probably
rendered Dewey’s social philosophy more compatible with other social philosophies,
but it has completely obscured the originality of Dewey’s views.
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4.2 Recognition in Dewey’s Social Philosophy
The second pillar of mainstream interpretations of Dewey’s social philosophy
which is cast into doubt in the light of the newly discovered manuscript is the idea
that in this text Dewey develops a theory of recognition. Certainly the notion of
recognition is present in Dewey’s text, but the interpretive context which emerges from
the publication of the original manuscript does not warrant a strong interpretation of
Dewey as a philosopher of recognition. Certainly the Lectures in China derived from
the Chinese transcription lend themselves more easily to the impression that Dewey
considered recognition to be the motor of social life, based on a plurality of quotes in
which Dewey explicitly refers to the central political function of the social dynamics
of recognition of oppressed groups. On this basis, Torjus Midtgarden (Midtgarden
2012) and Arvi Särkelä (Särkelä 2013) have claimed that Dewey’s Lectures in China
present a theory of conflict based upon the idea of a struggle for recognition the subject
of which are those social groups whose main interests have been denied.
The publication of the original manuscript sheds new light on this perspective,
showing that conflict among social principles rather than among groups is for Dewey
the motor of social life. Social groups, as we have seen, are involved in struggles
for recognition because they are the bearers of principles referring to basic human
needs, not because they have suffered personal injustice. In that sense, the normative
standard against which Dewey understands social change is not justice but human
development. Whereas standard interpretations of recognition are framed in terms
of justice and consider that a group is dominated and unrecognized as long as its
interests are suppressed to the advantage of other groups’ interests, Dewey’s starting
point is that human interests as such become frustrated, and that the groups associated
with them may (or may not) happen to be marginalized or oppressed. Moreover, One
should acknowledge that the term ‘recognition’ is used by Dewey in the original
manuscript only six times, and of these only one instance can be referred to the
theoretical framework of a theory of recognition. Moreover, even in that case the
context explains that Dewey is reconstructing a fictive position he attributes to other
thinkers. The passage reads as follows:
He is the propounder of a hypothesis that the welfare of society would be promoted by
the adoption of a certain change, that if this harms a special class for a time, this loss to
the class is in the interests of the community of the whole, and is the measure of justice
to some other class now suffering from inadequate social recognition. (Dewey 2015:
III.13)
Similarly, while it is legitimate to see the germs of a theory of recognition in Dewey’s
three-stage model of social conflict, it should be clear by now that Dewey’s main
concern is not with the political relevance of recognition as a movement whereby
oppressed social groups overcome relations of domination, but rather as the process
whereby a universal human need comes to be acknowledged and then fulfilled. To
this extent, one should consider that, whereas the only examples of processes of
recognition found in the text based on the Chinese transcription were feminism and
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the labor movement, in the original text Dewey includes also the struggle between
science and religion in Modern Europe as an example of paradigmatic dynamics of
social conflict. In this example, which for Dewey stands on the same ground of the
other two, recognition means that the search for knowledge should be freed from
subordination to religious authority. The object of recognition are the basic human
curiosity and desire for knowledge, and what is to be recognized is the autonomy of
science in the search for truth. Oppression, on the other hand, is defined as the denial
of this legitimate aspiration. The question of a supposed injustice perpetrated against
scientists, or of a lack of recognition of their standing, is never raised by Dewey.
Given this perspective, one should also notice that for Dewey young men
in traditional societies, and scientific men in religious societies, are even more
misrecognized than women, minorities, or exploited workers in our society.
Recognition and misrecognition has primarily to do with social principles and basic
interests which have universal import, in the same manner in which, for Dewey, social
emancipation has mainly to do with the successful satisfaction of the largest possible
range of human interests for the largest number of people. As he says with reference
to youth movements, some of which were very strong at the time he visited China,
in their social protest these groups were not asking for equal rights with elders or for
recognition of their social worth. Rather, they were: “asking for social reorganization,
which will make the relation of the family group to scientific, literary, religious,
industrial and political groups more flexible, less frozen and rigid” (Dewey 2015:
IV.6). Once again, we see that the normative ideal which guides Dewey’s social
philosophy is always that of an integrated society in which there is room for the
realization of a plurality of human basic interests. Similarly, the social worth of such
a movement is seen in its propensity to improve a society’s capacity to fulfill basic
human interests and to avoid social compartmentalization.
Only at a theoretically subordinate level does Dewey acknowledge that problems
of recognition or domination may occur when access to a given resource is unequally
conceded, so that part of the population is devoid of concrete opportunities to develop
their own personality and to fulfill their own needs and aspirations.
5. The Normative Potential of Dewey’s Social Philosophy
What in the end is the normative potential of Dewey’s social philosophy? What
criteria of social diagnosis and social evaluation can be derived from the social
philosophy sketched in the version of the Lectures in China originally drafted by
him? In this last section I wish to suggest that the normative content and the critical
potential of Dewey’s social philosophy are much stronger than usually understood,
and that they reach far beyond a more conventional understanding based upon ideas
of domination and recognition. To appreciate this point, I will first show that Dewey’s
normative framework cannot easily be reduced to mainstream approaches. The reason
why such reductions fail is that they miss the depth and radicalism of Dewey’s notion
of conflict and hence fail to grasp the depth at which his social philosophy analyzes
social phenomena.
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As I have emphasized in my reconstruction of Dewey’s normative project, he
thinks that social life is such that basic human needs find expression in principles
of social organization which in turn display a hegemonic tendency to colonize other
spheres of social life. This fact is in no particular way related to western modernity
or to capitalism, or dependent upon phenomena such as individual egoism or the
oligarchic tendencies of groups.
This is, simply put, a mere fact of human associated life. Human beings have basic
needs, they associate to solve them and in so doing they form social aggregates which
in turn develop institutions to fulfill their needs. When successful, these forms of social
organization tend to impose their organizational logic upon the totality of social life.
And in so doing they frustrate other basic human needs, whose realization conflicts
with the principle of social organization implemented by this or that form of social life.
Hence social life is intrinsically unstable because human flourishing requires the
simultaneous fulfillment of a plurality of needs which give rise to incompatible claims
about how society should be organized in the same way as claims to rightness, to
goodness, and to virtue give rise to incompatible moral claims at the level of individual
action. The humanistic ideal of a society in which human beings are given adequate
opportunities to develop their own capacities and to fulfill their needs is based upon
the idea of a temporary and fragile equilibrium among competing, incompatible, but
legitimate instances. Basic human needs find expression in social organization, basic
human impulses find realization in human habits, and basic moral requirements find
expression in ways of behavior.
There is a tragic sense in Dewey’s moral and social philosophy, a sense of the
fragility of the human condition due not only to external dangers and global insecurity,
but also to its own conflictual constitution. Hence the constant appeal to values of
reconciliation and integration, meant as temporary, fallible, ever-changing states
of equilibrium among conflicting tendencies. Problems of domination, oppression,
and recognition trouble human life in all its different spheres because of its internal
complexity, because legitimate impulses and needs struggle to find an outlet and often
fail, and in so doing they frustrate the possibility of realizing human potentialities.
Dewey’s normative account has the whole of humanity in view, and begins from the
assumption of a human potential which is always insufficiently deployed.
In the context of this enlarged understanding of the scope of social philosophy, the
original manuscript of the Lectures in China delivers at least three kinds of normative
criteria that can be used to evaluate social phenomena. These criteria are organized
according to their relation to the anthropological model of basic human needs
I have reconstructed and display different degrees of generality, hence of theoretical
priority. Going from the most general and most important to the least general and
least important, we can say that a social conflict has emancipatory potential if one
or more of the following conditions apply: (a) it contributes to the recognition of a
basic human need that has so far been frustrated; (b) it realizes a better integration
of existing basic human needs, and (c) it grants greater satisfaction of a given basic
human need.
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(1) The first, and theoretically prior, set of normative criteria refers then to the
recognition of a basic human need that has remained so far suppressed. There is
social emancipation any time a social group succeeds in providing new scope and
legitimacy for the realization of a human basic need. Emancipation is here conceived
in abstract terms, because what is properly emancipated is not a social group itself,
but rather the organizing principle of which it is the bearer. This form of emancipation
is for Dewey paramount, and the majority of the examples discussed in the original
manuscript of the Lectures in China belong to this group. This interpretation of social
conflict is used by Dewey to paint a picture of human development in the course of
its whole history, a development which adumbrates a theory of human progress. The
paradigmatic example is that of scientists seen as a social group which succeeded in
freeing the human desire for knowledge from the domination of a religious principle
which imposed an external illegitimate form of authority on it. The emancipation
of a political form of social organization from the traditional principle of kinship is
another example, and democracy provides the normative standard to assess the quality
of this process.
(2) The second set of normative criteria to be found in the text refers to the capacity
of a social group to ameliorate the overall quality of social integration of the larger
social group to which it belongs. Here again the reference to social emancipation is the
whole society, and the normative criteria refers to its general capacity to adequately
recognize a plurality of basic human needs. Logically, this set of normative criteria is
subordinated to the first, because it does not refer to the recognition and advancement
of a new set of basic needs, but rather to the concrete re-equilibration in the social
fulfillment of needs that have already been recognized.
In the original manuscript of the Lectures in China youth and women are taken by
Dewey as examples of this particular form of social emancipation. With reference to
both, Dewey explicitly states that these social groups act as the unconscious bearers
of a universal interest of humanity. Indeed, while at the superficial level they seem
to fight merely to resist some form of personal oppression and in order to obtain
recognition, this is however not the main reason why Dewey sees emancipatory
potential in what they do. Nor is their emancipatory potential explained in terms of
the overcoming of states of injustice. Rather, their action is positively valued because
in so doing they increase the level of social integration and promote the fulfillment
of a larger array of basic human needs. They concur with the human development of
their society.
The emancipatory contribution of feminism is seen by Dewey in its capacity to
expand the reach of the family principle to the whole society by:
insuring that the humane and sympathetic interests and aims of the family which have
been the especial charge of women shall not be confined within the walls of the home,
but shall have a chance to [be] carried into schools, shops, factories, professions,
politics etc., and that the more impersonal, abstract and possessive interest of the male
shall no longer so dominate action as to set up barriers against the free give and take of
social groups and the interests which they represent. (Dewey 2015: IV.7)
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In close to identical terms he praises the revolt of youth against old generations:
they become rebels against society while in truth [they are] only asking for social
reorganization, which will make the relation of the family group to scientific, literary,
religious, industrial and political groups more flexible, less frozen and rigid. (Dewey
2015: IV.6)
(3) The third type of normative criteria found in the Lectures refers to the more
conventional struggles conducted by groups which estimate that they have received
an unfair share of a given entitlement, be it respect, recognition, rights, or material
resources. This type of criteria operates at the level conventionally identified by
theories of domination, as it refers to relations among groups which have competing
claims to a single dimension, so that in most of the cases domination can be described
in terms of injustice, and normative requirements can be formulated in terms of
equality or non-discrimination: equality of women and men; equality of slaves and
freemen; equality of capitalists and workers, and non-discrimination of minorities.
From the perspective of the basic normative framework of Dewey’s social philosophy,
this third type plays a theoretically even more subordinate function because it refers
to struggles in contexts in which the legitimacy of a given normative principle is not
disputed. In the original version of the Lectures in China, only the workers’ movement
belong to this group.
It is important to note that these three types of criteria denote normative standards
for the analysis and assessment of social conflicts as they unfold in reality. This means
that a given social phenomena may bear emancipatory potential at more than one
of these levels. Hence the women and youth movements have also an emancipatory
meaning in the third sense. Yet their primal emancipatory meaning is defined in terms
of the second type of normative criteria, as Dewey’s text clearly shows.
Once again it is important to note that this theoretical reconstruction has no direct
political implications in terms of the intrinsic value of types of conflict. In no way
does Dewey assume or say that the third kind of struggle is politically less relevant
or that the claims advanced in its context are less important. Quite the contrary, here
as well and in several other texts we have concrete evidence of Dewey’s concern for
the social ills produced by unequal distribution of resources. Yet from the theoretical
vantage point of a social philosophy and of its normative scope, these forms of social
conflict become intelligible only within a broader schema which inscribes them in a
larger picture of social evolution considered as a process which should, and could, be
oriented in the direction of a fuller acknowledgment and fulfillment of basic human
needs.
Conclusions
This reconstruction of Dewey’s social philosophy has important implications for
understanding the normative potential of a pragmatist project in social philosophy.
First, it shows that Dewey’s project is much more ambitious than better known
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theories of domination and recognition. Secondly, it bears unexpected similarities with
the tradition of Critical Theory.6 Not only, as it has been show elsewhere, Dewey’s
theory of social conflict is consistent and compatible with the recognition,7 but it
also bears unexpected resemblance to Jürgen Habermas’ theory of the colonization
of the lifeworld, and proves to be consistent with a central intuition of this tradition,
which is to say, the idea that each sphere of social life should be governed by its
own internal standards, and that social pathologies emerge once one criteria colonizes
social spheres which should be organized according to other normative standards.
There is however an important difference. Whereas for Habermas each social
sphere should be governed by its own steering principle, for Dewey all the principles
should as far as possible be satisfied conjointly in all social spheres. To this extent,
Dewey proposes a model of social integration rather than one of autonomization of
social spheres. Moreover, it is precisely from the vantage point of its higher degree
of abstraction that Dewey’s social philosophy shows the closest affinities with the
project of a critical theory of society, as here Dewey for the first and last time attempts
to provide concrete normative criteria to assess social phenomena on an evolutionary
and large-scale perspective which, as I have shown, implies reference to a theory of
social and moral progress based upon a clear conception of human nature.
Dewey’s theory of conflict plays a decisive function in this context, as it shows
that genuine conflict emerges once a given organizing principle such as personal
attachment, spirituality, power, knowledge/rationality, or money extends its normative
reach to the whole of society and impedes the equal satisfaction of the others. Most
of the examples of social conflict and failed recognition evoked by Dewey fall within
this type of dynamic. The conflict between science and religion, the dominance of
kinship and patriarchal relations outside the familial sphere, the politicization of life
under totalitarianism and the generalization of business logic in capitalist societies all
exemplify this social trend which in the end has to be criticized not because it produces
social domination, but because it impedes the realization of other basic human needs.
Therefore, the publication of the original version of the Lectures in China provides
new evidence for the thesis that pragmatism, and Dewey’s variant in particular,
developed an original social and political philosophy which only at great loss can be
reduced to either one or the other contemporary competing traditions. Whatever we
may think of the concrete realizability of Dewey’s project, we have to acknowledge
that his legacy lies in the humanistic conception of social progress that he developed
consistently throughout his pedagogy, his moral theory, his anthropology, and his
politics. The discovery of the original manuscript of the Lectures in China confirms
this interpretation and enables us to extend it to a domain of his thought that has so far
received insufficient attention – his social philosophy.
6. For a fuller account, see Frega 2013.
7. For a fully articulated account of this point, see in particular Richter 2008. For an analysis which
refers more specifically to the Lectures in China, see Sarkela 2013, Midtgarden 2012.
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Conception of Action and Social Theory, Helsinki.
Midtgarden T., (2012), “Critical Pragmatism: Dewey’s Social Philosophy Revisited,”
European Journal of Social Theory, 1-17.
Richter E., (2008), Die Wurzeln der Demokratie, Velbrück Wissenschaft.
Särkelä A., (2013), “Ein Drama in Drei Akten,” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie
61 (5-6), 681-696.
Torres Colon G. & C. Hobbs, (2015), “The Intertwining of Culture and Nature: Franz
Boas, John Dewey, and Deweyan Strands of American Anthropology,” Journal of
the History of Ideas 76 (1), 139-162.
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Essays
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Allen Mendenhall*
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and the Darwinian Common Law Paradigm
Abstract: This essay builds on recent work by Susan Haack to suggest that Oliver
Wendell Holmes Jr.’s conception of the common law was influenced by Darwinian
evolution and classical pragmatism. This is no small claim: perceptions of what
the common law is and does within the constitutional framework of the United
States continue to be heavily debated. Holmes’s paradigm for the common law both
revised and extended the models set forth by Sir Edward Coke, Thomas Hobbes,
Sir Matthew Hale, and Sir William Blackstone. Adding additional substance to
Haack’s argument by pointing out passages in Holmes’s opinions and in his only
book, The Common Law, that corroborate her claims about the particular features
of Holmes’s pragmatism, this essay concludes by suggesting that, because of his
connections with the classical pragmatists and his reverence for Emerson, Holmes
is the best place to begin answering the famous question formulated by Stanley
Cavell: “What’s the Use in Calling Emerson a Pragmatist?”
Among the operative paradigms for the common law within the American
constitutional framework, two take prominence: one that treats the common law as a
settled and complete canon of rules unchanged over time, and the other that treats the
common law as a process for deciphering malleable and adaptive rules.1 The former is
evoked whenever a judge or justice declares, “At common law, the rule was such and
such,”2 as if the rule had never been anything else and was not still within the common
* Supreme Court of Alabama, Faulkner University, and Huntingdon College [[email protected]].
1. The dichotomy can be expressed as the difference between a static and dynamic view. Consider
this passage, which is not strictly about the common law but about two interpretative modes of legal
analysis: “Static and dynamic modes have in common that the lawyer appeals to history for authority;
to the authority of an original text or tradition or founding moment, or to the authority of the course
of history itself, that is to the changing circumstances or long-run evolutionary trends that dictate
the need for a new rule or new interpretation. The past is read as if it were a legal text with binding
force, even if what is being cited is not exactly a text, but a body of intentions or a collection of
practices. The premise is that if we decipher the signs correctly, we can read out of them principles
and precedents that ought to control current interpretations. The past can control the present because
it is continuously connected with the present through narratives of stasis or tradition, or of progress
and decline.” (Gordon 1996: 125). Gordon goes on the state: “The critical modes by contrast are
used to destroy, or anyway to question, the authority of the past. They assert discontinuous breaks
between past and present. In ordinary legal arguments perhaps the most familiar of these critical
modes is the argument from obsolescence or changed circumstances; the argument that the original
reasons or purposes of a rule have ceased to exist, or that the rule sprang from motives or a context
that are no longer acceptable to modern eyes, are rooted in ugly, barbaric, primitive conceptions or
practices.” (Gordon 1996: 125). Jeffrey G. Miller presents a similar dichotomy in “Evolutionary
Statutory Interpretation,” which “examines the seeming contrast between the legal doctrines that the
interpretation of statutes can evolve over time and that the interpretation of statutes must be grounded
only in their texts, which never change unless amended by Congress” (Miller 2009: 409). Bernadette
Meyler has likewise explained that “Originalists’ invocations of the common law posit a fixed, stable,
and unified eighteenth-century content, largely encapsulated in William Blackstone’s Commentaries
on the Laws of England” (Meyler 2006: 553). On evolutionary common law within a constitutional
context, see Jack M. Balkin’s “The Roots of the Living Constitution,” Balkin 2012.
2. Consider these examples from arbitrarily selected court decisions bearing the phrase at common
law: “Jury trial at common law was not applicable to all common law actions, but was grudgingly
conceded by the crown as to some and when our Constitution was adopted, was inapplicable to cases
at common law where property was taken for public use” (Welch v. TVA 1939: 98). “The coroner is
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law tradition, albeit in attenuated form and subject to constitutional restrictions.
Although these paradigms of the common law track similar, related debates about
whether the United States Constitution should be interpreted as a “living” document
or according to its original meaning,3 they involve a different subject and inquiry: the
role of the judge or justice with regard to case precedent derived from custom and
practice and the assimilation of cultural norms and standards into the body of rules
that govern society. A constitution fixes the parameters within which a judge or justice
may interpret rules and precedents, but the methodology of following or revising
precedent is still settled by common law traditions and hermeneutics to a great extent,
even in the United States.4
not bound at common law to put down the effect of the evidence, in writing, in any case” (U.S. v. Faw
1807: 1052). “To play at any game is no crime at common law, even to play for money; therefore there
can be no offence unless it be attended with such circumstances as would themselves amount to a riot,
or a nuisance, or to actual breach of the peace without the playing” (U.S. v. Willis 1808: 699). “In the
case of libel in personam for the recovery of damages for personal injuries, the reason for following the
limitations of the common law in courts of admiralty is emphasized by reason of there being preserved
to the libelant in such a case the right to sue at common law, as well as in admiralty. In the event the
libelant sued at common law, the statute of limitations would bar a recovery. It would be inconsistent
to permit him to sue in admiralty, with the same effect as at common law (as is true in the case of a
libel in personam), after his right to sue at common law had become barred.” (McGrath v. Panama
R. Co. 1924: 304). “In divining the generic, contemporary meaning, we look to a number of sources,
including federal law, the Model Penal Code, treatises, and modern state codes. At common law, it was
not necessary to allege or prove an act in furtherance of a conspiracy” (U.S. v. Pascacio-Rodriguez
2014: 4). I acknowledge that the phrase at common law has a long usage and that Sir Edward Coke
himself employed it.
3. “One of the most important contemporary constitutional debates is whether the meaning of the
Constitution may evolve in light of current circumstances, or whether the Constitution should be
interpreted in accordance with how the text was originally understood by the public that ratified it”
(Schor 2010-1: 961). Gordon states: “The Constitution and the common law had a core of ‘principle,’
of fundamental unchanging meanings. But principles had to be adapted to changing circumstances,
and above all, to the modernizing dynamic of historical evolution. The static and dynamic modes
were ultimately reconciled through eleology: the assertion that basic legal principles were ‘working
themselves pure,’ were gradually evolving from primitive, obscure or cluttered forms to the highest
and best realization of themselves. The ‘Classical’ liberals who dominated legal thought at the end of
the 19th century needed a dynamic view of history because they knew perfectly well that the economic
and political liberalism they espoused had not existed in any pure form at the Nation’s founding.”
(Gordon 1996: 128). Gordon believes Originalists upend the traditional approach to constitutional
interpretation in the United States: “In their insistence that the ‘rule of law is a law of rules,’ the
originalist-traditionalist jurists are, ironically, swimming against the main current of traditional
American historical jurisprudence, that is common-law dynamic adaptationism, given content and
direction by liberal modernization theory” (Gordon 1996: 132). David Strauss agrees, stating, “[T]
extualism and originalism remain inadequate models for understanding American constitutional
law. They owe their preeminence not to their plausibility but to the lack of a coherently formulated
competitor. The fear is that the alternative to some form of textualism or originalism is ‘anything
goes’.” (Strauss 1996: 879).
4. According to Strauss, “The common law method has not gained currency as a theoretical approach
to constitutional interpretation because it is not an approach we usually associate with a written
constitution, or indeed with codified law of any kind. But our written constitution has, by now, become
part of an evolutionary common law system, and the common law – rather than any model based on
the interpretation of codified law – provides the best way to understand the practices of American
constitutional law.” (Strauss 1996: 885). He adds that “[c]onstitutional law in the United States today
represents a flowering of the common law tradition and an implicit rejection of any command theory”
(Strauss 1996: 887).
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The paradigm of a static common law results from the messy incorporation of the
British common law into the legal system of the former colonies during the early years
of the American Republic.5 The common law was never permanently stable, unified,
or complete; however, it did include a definite and operational set of rules in Britain
when the colonies sought to implement it in their legal training and methods.6 The
two paradigms for the common law seem like an irresolvable dichotomy, but they are
permeable: in theory, both necessarily exclude the other, but in practice the separation
is not total and the difference not obvious.
Throughout his legal writing and in his book The Common Law, Holmes presented
the common law as evolutionary rather than static.7 In the third paragraph of The
Common Law he cautioned against the error of “supposing, because an idea seems
familiar and natural to us, that it has always been so” (Holmes 1881: 1). His notion
of the common law was rooted in “historicism and Darwinian natural selection”
(Alschuler 2000: 87). Holmes admired Sir Frederick Pollock, his British pen pal
and a popular jurist, and Pollock admired Darwin and modeled his jurisprudence on
evolutionary theory. Pollock once stated in a letter to Holmes that “I have been turning
over the life of a much greater man, C. Darwin. His letters are about the most fairminded and charitable a much attached man ever wrote” (“Letter to Holmes from Sir
Frederick Pollock,” November 14, 1923). Harold Laski seemed to be reading Darwin
regularly and dashing off missives to Holmes that praised Darwin as a great, brilliant,
and gentle man. Frederic R. Kellogg (Kellogg 2007) picks up on Holmes’s Darwin
connection and calls attention to the pragmatic qualities of Holmes’s evolutionary
common-law theories. Kellogg suggests that the common law was the instantiation of
Holmes’s Darwinian pragmatism.
The term pragmatism was not in wide circulation during the early years of
Holmes’s long career. Holmes did not declare himself a pragmatist. Nevertheless, the
term pragmatism gained purchase because of such pragmatist thinkers as C. S. Peirce,
5. Theodore Plucknett states, “When English common law was being adopted in America there
was sometimes a question as to how far certain statutes were to be regarded as inseparable from
the customary common law” (Plucknett 2010: 309). “In Blackstone,” says William D. Bader, “early
American lawyers encountered a legal authority who regarded precedent as the cornerstone of the
common law, the principal bulwark against the usurpation of the rule of law by judicial tyranny”
(Bader 1994-5: 8). See also Van Ness v. Pacard. (1829) 27 U.S. (2 Pet) 137, 144: “The common law of
England is not taken in all respects to be that of America. Our ancestors brought with them its general
principles, and claimed it as their birthright; but they brought with them and adopted only that portion
which was applicable to their situation.”
6. David Konig states: “Identification of the role of the common law in providing a constitutional
foundation does not suggest an intent to adopt a federal common law. Rather, the ‘common-law mind’
was a way of thinking, of using judicial authority to express abstract principles through the application
of particular privileges and rights, such as trial by jury. It rested on consent created by long adherence
to custom and precedent, and it was controlled by practice rather than abstraction.” (Konig 2010: 5101). He adds that “[c]ommon-law constitutionalism […] provided both legitimacy and method. It meant
a deference to the tacit consent that came only from long adherence to precedent and the refinement and
perfection of law by common-law reasoning and decision making.” (Konig 2010: 511).
7. “Holmes considered himself a Darwinist and concentrated his scholarly energies on the question of
how law evolves. When Holmes was attending the meetings of the Metaphysical Club during the early
1870s, Chauncey Wright, the group’s leader who Holmes treated as a mentor, was in the midst of an
extended, mutually supportive correspondence with Darwin.” (Blasi 2004: 25).
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William James, John Dewey, Chauncey Wright, Jane Addams, George Santayana,
and George Herbert Mead. Writers on Holmes have assigned the term pragmatist to
Holmes’s common law methodology that tropes Darwin. This essay explains why this
is fitting and examines the pragmatic aspects of Holmes’s only book, The Common
Law. I limit my discussion of The Common Law to those “lucid and marvelous periods
by which Holmes’ inner struggle is transformed into insights about the law,” because
the other sections of The Common Law consist of “the usual dust of the law that we
all know” (Touster 1981-2: 684). I then propose something novel: that Emerson’s
influence on Holmes contributed to Holmes’s evolutionary conception of the common
law and that Holmes, more than any other pragmatist, substantiates the claim that
Emerson was a pragmatist, proto-pragmatist, or at least a philosopher who espoused
theories that represent pragmatism in embryonic form. I end my discussion with an
invitation to consider how Holmes’s fascination with Emerson plays into Darwinian
common-law theory and lends support for the controversial notion that Emerson
inaugurated the pragmatist tradition.
The analytical, positivist, or legal realist schools of jurisprudence as exemplified
and examined by H. L. A. Hart and his progeny have opened up new ways of looking at
Holmes but are at odds with, or uninterested in, the tradition of pragmatist scholarship
on which I focus (i.e., the tradition that can be traced back to Kenneth Burke through
Russell B. Goodman, Giles Gunn, Richard Poirier, Cornel West, Joan Richardson,
Jonathan Levin, and Louis Menand). Over the years I have found research on Hart
and Holmes useful and interesting, including works by Stephen R. Perry and Anthony
D’Amato, but this scholarship tends to concentrate on the jurisprudence that came
after Holmes (i.e., on spin-offs and seemingly endless interpretations of the “bad man
theory”) and not on the pragmatism that came before Holmes or that arose alongside
Holmes (e.g., the pragmatism of Emerson, Peirce, James, and Dewey). The recalcitrant
concentration on legal realism, the separation of law and morals, the nature of the law,
and the is/ought distinction have led legal scholars into redundancy and insularity
and away from pragmatism’s rich and always relevant inquiries into deliberative
democracy, pluralism, metaphysical realism, anti-authoritarianism, aesthetic
experience, pluralism, and instrumentalism. The best starting point for understanding
Holmes is not legal realism and the like but rather those figures like Emerson and
William James who actually corresponded with Holmes, advised Holmes, and served
as Holmes’s sounding-boards. Counterintuitively, returning to pragmatism’s classical
roots can revivify the enterprise of Holmes scholarship by shifting emphasis to the
aesthetic features of language, poetry, representation, and culture, which interested
the young Holmes, who still considered himself to be primarily a poet and an artist
and not a lawyer or jurist. It is true that, after the Civil War, during his studies at
Harvard Law School and shortly thereafter, Holmes read Bentham and Austin and
seemed to have read every major legal mind in the Anglo-American legal tradition,
and also that the influence of these jurisprudents played into his pragmatism, especially
into his “bad man theory,” but I believe, with regard to Holmes’s influences, these
jurisprudents are secondary to Emerson and the classical pragmatists. Among legal
scholars there is an understandable inclination to view Holmes through the prism of
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the jurisprudential writing that came after him while disregarding the teachings of the
non-legal pragmatist thinkers who came before him or who were his contemporaries
during his formative years. A more fruitful and interesting retrospective approach
to Holmes, however, would account for his pragmatic aesthetics because Holmes
demonstrates that the operational and functional role of artistic signs and forms shapes
the law and legal institutions to varying degrees.
Holmes and Pragmatism
Kellogg has argued that Holmes’s paradigm for the common law not only “draws
heavily from the historical debate between English legal theorists over the nature
and source of legal rationality” but also “finds remarkable parallels to certain ideas
of Holmes’s nonlawyer friends, Chauncey Wright, Charles S. Peirce, William James,
and others, among whom were founders of the American school of philosophical
thought known as pragmatism, growing out of the multifaceted influence of the
Scottish Enlightenment on American thought and the response of Cambridge
intellectuals to Darwin’s Origins of Species” (Kellogg 2007: 14). Kellogg is not alone
in spotting the connection between Holmes, pragmatism, Darwin, and the common
law. In 1943 Paul L. Gregg described Holmes’s pragmatism as seeking out truth
through hypothesis, experiment, and community consensus. Gregg called attention
to Holmes’s “delightful literary style” (Gregg 1942-3: 263) and placed Holmes in the
tradition of Peirce and James insofar as Holmes “refers to majority vote as the test of
truth” (Gregg 1942-3: 267). Holmes’s pragmatism underwent pointed reproach in the
1940s and was even accused of sharing the positivist themes and goals of Nazism.8
Such tendentious exaggerations were not widespread and were counterbalanced by
more reasonable and levelheaded assessments just a few years later.9 Attention to
Holmes’s pragmatism fell away as general attention to pragmatism fell away during
the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. With the explosion of studies on pragmatism in the 1980s and
1990s, scholarship on Holmes began to reconsider his relationship to pragmatism and
the pragmatists. “[W]hile there are indeed multiple and apparently clashing strands
in Holmes’s thought,” Thomas C. Grey observed at this time, “most of them weave
together reasonably well when seen as the jurisprudential development of certain
central tenets of American pragmatism” (Grey 1989: 788). Likewise, Richard Posner
pointed out that “Holmes was a friend of Peirce, James, and other early pragmatists,
and his philosophical outlook is strongly pragmatic” (Posner 2003: 57).
In 1990, Southern California Law Review held a symposium entitled “The
Renaissance of Pragmatism in American Legal Thought.” Holmes was the catalyst for
this renaissance. Six years later a conference on Holmes and pragmatism took place
at Brooklyn Law School to commemorate the 100th anniversary of “The Path of the
Law.” Posner was the keynote speaker. Other speakers included Grey, Catharine Pierce
Wells, G. Edward White, and Gary Minda. A flurry of articles on Holmes and legal
8. E.g., Palmer (1945: 569-73); Palmer (1946: 328-32); Palmer (1951: 809-11).
9. E.g., Howe (1951: 529-46); Hart (1951: 929-37); Howe (1950-1: 937-39).
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pragmatism pursued the arguments put forth at the conference.10 The sudden attention
to Holmes led legal scholars to contemplate the relationship between pragmatism
and the American legal system. Richard Rorty, seemingly dismissive of the growing
interest in pragmatism among legal academics, declared, “I think it is true that by now
pragmatism is banal in its application to law” (Rorty 1989-90: 1811).
Others disagreed, including Louis Menand, who recognized an Emersonian streak
in Holmes’s pragmatism. Perhaps more than any other book, Menand’s Pulitzer Prize
winning The Metaphysical Club generated attention to Holmes’s pragmatism as a
response to the trauma and suffering of the Civil War and to the burgeoning ideas of
Darwinian evolution. Menand also attended to the ways in which Holmes’s boyhood
“enthusiasm for Emerson never faded” and explained how Holmes’s “posture of
intellectual isolation” was “essentially Emersonian” (Menand 2001: 68). Menand
thereby complicated the already ramified literature regarding Emerson’s alleged status
as a forerunner to pragmatism. Scholars as wide-ranging as Burke,11 Goodman, Gunn,
Poirier, West, Richardson, and Levin have weighed in on the pragmatic elements of
Emerson’s thought. Each of these scholars missed or failed to account for the manner
in which Emerson’s pragmatism bore out in Holmes’s judicial writings.
Holmes’s pragmatism is now established. Susan Haack has announced that “both
legal scholars and historians of philosophy acknowledge Holmes as the first legal
pragmatist; and with good reason, for many themes familiar from the philosophers of
the classical pragmatist tradition can also be found in Holmes’s legal thinking” (Haack
2011: 67-8). Haack goes on to sketch the most important links between Holmes and
the classical pragmatists; rather than rehashing this sketch, I assume my readers are
familiar with it and will touch upon only those areas concerning Holmes’s common
law theories and pragmatism. Given that Holmes’s debt to pragmatism is no longer
disputed, it is remarkable that the still-disputed pragmatism of Emerson has not been
evaluated in terms of Holmes, especially in light of the fact that Holmes himself, in
a letter to Emerson, articulated the “mark of gratitude and respect I feel for you who
more than anyone else first started the philosophical ferment in my mind” (Novick
1989: 149). Legend has it that Holmes, at age fourteen, informed Emerson that “[i]f
I ever do anything, I shall owe a great deal to you” (Baker 1991: 85; Menand 2001:
25). Holmes is rumored to have sought out Emerson’s autograph in 1862 (Baker 1991:
125), and on his seventeenth birthday his parents presented him with two volumes of
Emerson’s essays (Menand 2001: 22). What elements of Emerson’s thought might
have guided Holmes’s approach to the common law? How might Emerson’s drive
to renew past paradigms parallel the judge’s handling of settled case precedents in
matters of immediate urgency?
10. E.g., Alschuler (1997: 353-420); Fisher (2001: 455-92); Brown & Kimball (2001: 278-321);
Friedman (2001: 1383-1455); Bernstein (2003: 1-64); Strasser (2003: 1379-1408).
11. In A Grammar of Motives, Burke states, “we can see the incipient pragmatism in Emerson’s
idealism” (Burke 1952: 277); moreover, he says, “Emerson’s brand of transcendentalism was but a
short step ahead of an out-and-out pragmatism” (Burke 1952: 277).
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Holmes’s Common Law
To avoid getting tangled in the “desperately confusing scholarly mare’s nest”
resulting from “a divergence of the legal meaning(s) of a word [pragmatism] from its
philosophical meanings” (Haack 2005: 74), Holmes should be considered alongside
the classical pragmatists and not alongside the neopragmatists12 because the latter
tradition sullied and distorted pragmatism, at least according to Haack.13 Regardless of
whether Haack is correct, the conceivable parameters of pragmatism would have been
different before the mid-20th century trends and advances in analytical or languagebased philosophies gained traction in legal theory. Holmes intended the lectures that
made up The Common Law “to take up from time to time the cardinal principles and
conceptions of the law and make a new and more fundamental analysis of them […]
[f]or the purpose of constructing a new Jurisprudence or New First Book of the law”
(Gordon 1992: 2). Viewing Holmes through the lens of neopragmatism can cause
one to forget there was a time when Holmes’s theories were considered novel and
when it would have been unthinkable for someone to declare that “everybody seems
to now be a legal realist. Nobody wants to talk about a ‘science of law’ any longer.
Nobody doubts that what Morton White called ‘the revolt against formalism’ was a
real advance, both in legal theory and in American intellectual life generally.” (Rorty
1989-90: 1811).
Kellogg is an excellent starting point for approaching Holmes’s theories of the
common law because he avoids the anachronistic application of neopragmatist ideas in
his study of Holmes and situates Holmes’s common-law theories alongside canonical
thinkers on the subject: Sir Edward Coke, Thomas Hobbes, Sir Matthew Hale, and Sir
William Blackstone. These figures were by no measure uniform in their understanding
of the common law; their ideas diverged widely and continue to demonstrate how
common law theory is never settled. Precisely because it is never settled, the common
law is ripe for theoretical appropriation. Holmes was able to put his own mark on it in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. “It would seem,” says Kellogg, “that
nothing quite like the intellectual background of Darwinian evolution and [Chauncey]
Wright-influenced fallibilism could be found in previous theoretical writings about
the common law, and it is evident that Holmes himself believed his theory to be
original” (Kellogg 2007: 47). Darwin’s Origins of Species did not appear until 1859,
just 21 years before the publication of The Common Law, and Chauncey Wright was
12. My earlier work made this very mistake: Mendenhall (2011: 679-726); Mendenhall (2012: 51750). I am, however, in good company: see, e.g., Weisberg (1996: 85-96); Pearcey (2000-1: 483-511);
Matsuda (1990: 1763-82); Minow and Spelman (1990: 1597-1652); Radin (1990: 1699-1726); and
Schanck (1992: 2505-97).
13. “In recent decades philosophical pragmatism has been vulgarized and abused; and of late it
has sometimes found itself co-opted in support of this or that neo-analytic fashion. Something not
dissimilar has also happened in legal thinking: occasionally you read that legal pragmatism is enjoying
a ‘renaissance,’ but as you look closer you soon begin to wonder what, exactly, this is a renaissance of;
for the sad fact is that, in legal as in mainstream philosophy, vulgarization and co-option seem to be the
order of the day.” (Haack 2008: 455).
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Holmes’s friend and contemporary. Holmes himself admitted that as a young man he
had absorbed Darwinism without having read much of it: “The Origin of Species I
think came out while I was in college – H. Spencer had announced his intention to put
the universe into our pockets – I hadn’t read either of them to be sure, but as I say it
was in the air” (Holmes to Morris Cohen, in The Essential Holmes 1992: 110). When
Holmes died, a marked-up copy of Darwin’s The Origin of Species was found among
his books (Baker 1991: 84).
It has been said that “it is quite impossible to understand and appreciate the judicial
method of Justice Holmes without taking into account the fact that he was steeped
in the tradition of the common law” (Wu 1960-1: 222). Holmes’s career spanned
some of the most transitional eras of American history; widely accepted notions of the
common law changed during various periods of his life. Many of those changes are
attributable to him.14 He pushed American jurisprudence away from the Blackstonian
conception of the common law that had appealed to the founding generation15 and that
had been dealt a heavy blow by the Civil War and Reconstruction.16
Kellogg summarizes Blackstone’s conception of the common law as a fixed
14. “He is one of the few jurists in American history whose career was long enough, and whose
impact pervasive enough, to have functioned as a kind of repository of changing juristic attitudes.
Holmes’s role as a repository has in part been a function of the seminality of his thought and the
memorable quality of his style, but it has also been a function of the deeply ambivalent character of his
jurisprudence and the cryptic nature of his expressions.” (White 1986: 440).
15. “It was in thinly settled colonial America that the Commentaries received most acclaim. By 1776
nearly twenty-five hundred copies were in use here, one thousand five hundred of which were the
American edition of 1772; a sale which Burke in 1775 in his speech on ‘Conciliation with the American
Colonies’ said rivaled that in England.” (Waterman 1932-3: 629-59). “It is part of the accepted wisdom
of American history that Sir William Blackstone and his Commentaries on the Laws of England
(Commentaries) have exercised a dominant and pervasive influence on America’s political thought
and legal development” (Nolan 1976: 731-68). “Before the Revolution one thousand English sets [of
Blackstone’s Commentaries] at ten pounds a set were sold in American and many more American
editions sold at the bargain price of three pounds a set. In fact, before the war broke out almost as many
sets were sold in the American colonies as in England. The work had an enormous effect in America
not because of the ‘social consistency’ of Blackstone’s thinking, but because it was the only general
treatise available in a land where well-trained lawyers were almost non-existent.” (McKnight 1959:
401). Moreover, “during the period from 1789 to 1915, the authority of the Commentaries was cited
ten thousand times in reported American cases” (McKnight 1959: 401). Americans’ reverence toward
Blackstone was not reciprocated: “While in Parliament from 1761 to 1770, he went along with all
those restrictive measures which first enraged and then estranged the American colonists. Actually, he
was very extreme in his anti-American bias, and he appeared among the most vociferous advocates of
a harsh and uncompromising attitude towards America. It might be said that he definitely delighted in
showing the colonists the rod.” (Chroust 1949: 28-9).
16. Coke stated (2003: 275), “And it appeareth in our Books, that in many Cases, the Common Law doth
controll Acts of Parliament, and somtimes shall adjudge them to be void: for when an Act of Parliament
is against Common right and reason, or repugnant, or impossible to be performed, the Common Law
will controll it, and adjudge such Act to be void.” Cf. Hale’s statement (1713: 45): “I come now to that
other Branch of our Laws, the common Municipal law of this Kingdom, which has the Superintendency
of all those other particular Laws used in the before-mentioned Courts, and is the common Rule for
the Administration of common Justice in this great Kingdom; of which it has been always tender, and
there is great Reason for it; for it is not only a very just and excellent Law in itself, but it is singularly
accommodated to the Frame of the English Government, and to the Disposition of the English Nation,
and such as by a long Experience and Use is at it were incorporated into their very Temperament, and,
in a manner, become this Complexion and Constitution of the English Commonwealth.”
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entity that is universal, continuous, valid because of its long standing, and customary
(Kellogg 2007: 48-9). Like Coke and Hale, Blackstone envisioned the common law as
the institutional perfection of human reason that was separate from codified legislation
(Kellogg 2007: 48-9).17 As against statutory commands, Blackstone referred to
the common law as unwritten law (Blackstone 1996: 63) or “the monuments and
evidences of our legal customs [as] contained in the records of the several courts
of justice, in books of reports and judicial decisions, and in the treaties of learned
sages of the profession, preserved and handed down to us from the times of highest
antiquity” (Blackstone 1996: 62-3). He acknowledged that the common law was
rooted in binding oral traditions and submitted that “[o]ur ancient lawyers […] insist
with abundance of warmth, that these customs are as old as the primitive Britons, and
continued down, through the several mutations of government and inhabitants, to the
present time, unchanged and unadulterated” (Blackstone 1996: 64). Whether these
appeals to antiquity and claims of unbroken lineage were intended to validate judicial
power or engender national pride is a matter of scholarly debate that exceeds the scope
of this essay.18 Suffice it to say that with some exceptions Blackstone portrayed the
common law as a static canon dating from time immemorial and that his notions of
natural law attracted religious traditionalists as well as Enlightenment intellectuals
who extolled the powers of human reason that purportedly discriminated between
competing ideas to discern the true laws that governed the universe.19
Blackstone’s insistence upon the “unchanged” and “unadulterated” aspect
of the common law is inapposite to Holmes’s conception of the common law as a
spontaneously ordered system of growth. Blackstone viewed the common law as
17. To say that Blackstone was categorically opposed to legislation is hyperbolic. The mistake is
understandable given Blackstone’s celebration of the common law. However, Blackstone notoriously
declared that, “if the parliament will positively enact a thing to be done which is unreasonable, I know
of no power in the ordinary forms […] that is vested to with authority to control it” (Blackstone 1966:
91). Blackstone would seem to suggest here that a statute could be valid even if it does not correspond
with divine or natural law, a position that contradicts his willingness to overturn any prior cases that
do not comport with reason or divine law: “For it is established rule to abide by former precedents,
where the same points come again in litigation; […] [y]et this rule admits of exception, where the
former determination is most evidently contrary to reason, much more if it be contrary to the divine
law” (Blackstone 1966: 69-70). Michael Lobban explains that “Blackstone seems to have adopted [his]
notion of parliamentary without fully realizing its difficulties for his natural-law arguments and his
belief in the primacy of the common law” (Lobban 1987: 326).
18. Jeremy Bentham famously attacked Blackstone’s jurisprudence from a utilitarian, positivist
perspective; at sixteen, Bentham allegedly attended Blackstone’s lectures. John Austin would go
on to become Bentham’s positivist protégé. For more on this topic, see Mendenhall (2010: 319-34)
(discussing the relationship between the natural law theories of Jefferson and Blackstone in contrast to
the utilitarian, positivist theories of Bentham and Austin). For critiques of Blackstone’s jurisprudence
regarding the validation of British law and state power, see the following: McKnight, who states, “The
aim of English law, then, as Blackstone saw it, was to return the Englishman to the ideal primitive state
long since departed from” (McKnight 1959: 404); Chroust (1949: 24-34) (discussing Blackstone’s
“abject flattery of the British crown” and his genuflections regarding the King’s “absolute perfection”
and accusing Blackstone of creating “pure fiction” and “calculating flattery” rather than scholarship).
19. “Blackstone’s popularity can be attributed to his smooth transformation of the crabbed particularities
of the English law into the abstract and universal language demanded by the intellectual fashions of
the Enlightenment. His theoretical bow to the ultimate supremacy of the natural law was dictated by
the same fashions – fashions which, in England, reflected the continuing prestige of the great figure of
Locke.” (Grey 1978: 859-60).
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divorced from legislation (Kellogg 2007: 54-5), as a “judicial prerogative” set against
“a transformative tide toward majoritarian legislation and central government”
(Kellogg 2007: 55), and as a “defense of embedded, and not entirely well reasoned or
intentioned, practices” (Kellogg 2007: 55). Holmes more than Blackstone took into
account the manifold rules and regulations that were not judicially made: the countless
acts of the state and federal legislatures (Kellogg 2007: 56). Also more than Blackstone,
Holmes accounted for the role of the sovereign, through its legislature, to confer rights
and duties upon its citizens. In Blackstone’s paradigm, the sovereign was the king,
who shared his power with the legislature or Parliament, but in Holmes’s it was an
executive and legislative branch in a maturing American Republic or democracy.
For Holmes the judge did not divine pure law or right reason by consulting the
wisdom of the ages as embodied in enduring case precedent but considered “intractable
legal disputes [as] bearing a certain degree of unforeseen novelty or originality” while
treating the “legal profession, in concert with the community at large, [as] work[ing]
out a gradual resolution through progressive abstraction from specific cases” (Kellogg
2007: 56). As Holmes put it, “The substance of the law at any given time pretty nearly
corresponds, so far as it goes, with what is then understood to be convenient; but its
form and machinery, and the degree to which it is able to work out desired results,
depend very much upon its past.” (Holmes 1881: 1). This observation about the law
is in keeping with Emerson’s imperative to “let the breath of new life be breathed by
you through the forms already existing” (Emerson 1883: 147). Emerson, like Holmes,
rejected “[a]ll attempts to project and establish a Cultus with new rites and forms”
(Emerson 1883: 147) and instead encouraged individuals to “employ the symbols
in use in his day and nation” because “the new […] is always formed out of the old”
(Emerson 1996: 431). Emerson invoked the spirit of common-law adjudication in
“The American Scholar” when he discussed books as past authorities that facilitated
future inspiration and advancement as though books themselves were precedential
laws that bound artists even as they liberated those same artists into creative freedom
(Emerson 1996: 56-9). Following Emerson, Holmes projected onto the common law
a vision of history and influence in which present forms and conditions were revisions
and extensions of past forms and conditions. Holmes envisioned common-law judges
to be inventors like Emerson’s artists with the important proviso that “the inventor
only knows how to borrow” (Emerson 1996: 634).
Although Holmes went beyond Blackstone in acknowledging the plain historical
fact that codification was on the rise and increasingly displacing the common law
tradition, he remained enamored with the common law. The irony of The Common
Law is that it describes a “theory of the judiciary alone, limited to the special
conditions of the common law development during a period before legislation became
the dominant mode of lawmaking” (Touster 1981-2: 693). Holmes’s tome about
judicial and precedential law appeared at a time when “legislation had become the
acknowledged and central means by which the state pursued social ends” (Touster
1981-2: 693). Holmes’s awareness of this tendency toward immense legislative
classifications, more obvious and severe in his day than in Blackstone’s, had to do
with his unique understanding of the positivism of Thomas Hobbes and John Austin,
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whose theories he had challenged and rejected (Kellogg 2007: 58). The Common Law
might have mimicked Sir Henry Maine’s Ancient Law in organization and framework
as well as in its subtle and mostly implied recognition that law had been graduating
from the supposedly inherent reason of the common law system to the rigid logic
of positivism.20 “Maine proposed […] that law, in its formal aspects, moves from a
period of legal fictions to one of equity or case-law to one of legislation,” and Holmes
“seems to have been determined to do a comparable work of historical analysis for the
common law and even went so far as to structure his book chapter by chapter on the
model of Maine’s work” (Touster 1981-2: 684).
Unlike Maine, Holmes sought to incorporate the latest science into his
jurisprudence, “apparently go[ing] further than Maine by using the new biological
and anthropological materials on evolution that the Darwinian revolution in thought
was providing” (Touster 1981-2: 684). Holmes’s apparent Darwinism dovetailed with
pragmatism. His jurisprudence has been called “evolutionary pragmatism” (Gordon
1981-2: 721). “According to this idea,” explains one scholar, “no legal form has a
frozen meaning; rather, legal forms are changing and contingent and depend on the
specific practical uses to which successive generations wish to put them. The form
may stay the same, but the content changes with changing views of policy – the policy
upon which all law must ultimately be grounded.” (Gordon 1981-2: 721). The primary
difference between Blackstone and Holmes is that the former embraces a common-law
paradigm consisting of fixed rules rooted in ancient custom whereas the latter embraces
a common-law paradigm consisting of fluid rules responsive to changing social
conditions. Holmes’s common-law paradigm reveals his indebtedness to Emerson,
who availed himself of pragmatic superfluities of language to ensure the continuity
and freshness of old ideas in new contexts. The term superfluity signifies the creative
urge to overcome, outdo, move beyond, facilitate, generate, push forward, transcend,
outlast, or surpass. Like genius according to Emerson, superfluity “looks forward”
and “creates” (Emerson 1996: 58). Superfluous language “smites and arouses” with
its “tones,” “breaks up” our “whole chain of habits,” and “opens” our eyes to our
own “possibilities” (Emerson 1983: 409). It is characterized by an extravagance of
style that consists of sound, metaphor, rhythm, and complexity. Poirier suggests that
Emersonian superfluity counteracts repose in writing and ideas and involves “a kind
of rapid or wayward movement of voice” that “is associated […] with speed” and a
“momentum or volatility of style” (Poirier 1992: 45). Superfluity is about “generative
interaction” (Poirier 1992: 47), “a struggle with language” (Poirier 1992: 50) or the
“continuous struggle with language” (Poirier 1992: 67), “creative energy” (Poirier
1992: 50), a “commitment” to “more than is necessary [for the] survival” of ideas
and influences (Poirier 1992: 55), “accelerations of a process” (Poirier 1992: 55), the
“power of invention” (Poirier 1992: 57), an “overwhelming excess of productivity”
20. “There is no question that Holmes was influenced by, and sought a relationship to, the work of Sir
Henry Maine. Scholars have yet to explore thoroughly the relationship between Maine and Holmes.
Holmes met Maine in the 1880s. As a law student, Holmes read Ancient Law more than once. In 1875,
Henry Adams described Holmes as ‘one of Maine’s warmest admirers.’ Scholars have even claimed,
unfortunately without adequate citation, that, in The Common Law, Holmes wanted to do for commonlaw materials what Main had done for Roman law materials in Ancient Law.” (Parker 2003: 68-9).
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(Poirier 1992: 58), “words in excess of the minimum daily requirements of human
beings” (Poirier 1992: 58), the “plenitude and power of language” that propels one’s
“voice into the future” (Poirier 1992: 60), “the power for new creation” (Poirier 1992:
71), “generative” and “creative power” (Poirier 1992: 73), “engendering” (Poirier
1992: 74), and “speaking to a posterity in no way bound by th[e] discourse” in
which people in their specific time and place are immersed. All of these notions are
emphatically against “a loss of creative powers” (Poirier 1992: 47), “immobility”
(Poirier 1992: 59), “stand still” (Poirier 1992: 58), “the stasis achieved by former
movements that have become textualized or intellectualized” (Porier 1992: 65), and
“bareness” (Poirier 1992: 70-1). Emersonian superfluity finds expression in Holmes’s
sparkling judicial writing that calls attention to itself and thereby ensures that his rules
and reasoning attract future audiences and reach beyond their present moment.
The Common Law and Pragmatism
Haack lists the following features of Holmes’s jurisprudence that are compatible
with traditional common law theory that flies in the face of legal positivism and
underplays the role of legislatures in transmitting laws to the public: the prediction
theory of law (Haack 2011: 68); the growth and adaptation of legal concepts (Haack
2011: 69); the evolution of legal systems (Haack 2011: 70); the past and the future
of the law (Haack 2011: 71); the relevance of the sciences, and especially the social
sciences, to the law (Haack 2011: 71); and moral fallibilism (Haack 2011: 72). Each
of these features of Holmes’s pragmatism participates with one another; none exists
to the exclusion of the others. Holmes’s dogged insistence that law and morality were
separate or only incidentally aligned, for instance, brought about his reasonable man
theory of negligence that turned on the foreseeable consequences of a given human
action. This theory captures his signature concept of law as prediction,21 grows out
of his prior theories of negligence,22 and incorporates moral fallibilism insofar as it
21. “[A] legal duty so called is nothing but a prediction that if a man does or omits certain things he will
be made to suffer in this or that way by judgment of the court; – and so of a legal right” (Holmes 1897:
458). Here Holmes calls the law a “body of dogma or systemized prediction” (Holmes 1897: 458).
22. “The law talks about rights, and duties, and malice, and intent, and negligence, and so forth, and
nothing is easier, or, I may say, more common in legal reasoning, than to take these words in their
moral sense, at some stage of the argument, and so to drop into fallacy. For instance, when we speak
of the rights of man in a moral sense, we mean to mark the limits of interference with individual
freedom which we think are prescribed by conscience, or by our ideal, however reached. Yet it is
certain that many laws have been enforced in the past, and it is likely that some are enforced now,
which are condemned by the most enlightened opinion of the time, or which at all events pass the limit
of interference as many consciences would draw it. Manifestly, therefore, nothing but confusion of
thought can result from assuming that the rights of man in a moral sense are equally rights in the sense
of the Constitution and the law. No doubt simple and extreme cases can be put of imaginable laws
which the statute making power would not dare to enact, even in the absence of written constitutional
prohibitions, because the community would rise in rebellion and fight; and this gives some plausibility
to the proposition that the law, if not a part of morality, is limited by it. But this limit of power is not
coextensive with any system of morals. For the most part it falls far within the lines of any such system,
and in some cases may extend beyond them, for reasons drawn from the habits of a particular people
at a particular time. I once heard the late Professor Agassiz say that a German population would rise if
you added two cents to the price of a glass of beer. A statute in such a case would be empty words, not
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proposes that a tortfeasor is not judged according to his particular state of mind but
according to an objective standard about how reasonable people in general ought to
behave in light of their circumstances.23
The Common Law, which is only a brief introduction to Holmes’s jurisprudence,
touches upon each of the features mentioned by Haack. Here is Holmes on the
prediction theory of law:
The degree of apprehension may affect the decision, as well as the degree of probability
that the crime will be accomplished. (Holmes 1881: 46)
There must be an intent to deprive such owner of his ownership therein, it is said. But
why? Is it because the law is more anxious not to put a man in prison for stealing unless
he is actually wicked, than it is not to hang him for killing another? That can hardly
be. The true answer is, that the intent is an index to the external event which probably
would have happened, and that, if the law is to punish at all, it must, in this case, go on
probabilities, not on accomplished facts. (Holmes 1881: 48)
The only guide for the future to be drawn from a decision against a defendant in an
action of tort is that similar acts, under circumstances which cannot be distinguished
except by the result from those of the defendant, are done at the peril of the actor; that if
he escapes liability, it is simply because by good fortune no harm comes of his conduct
in the particular event. (Holmes 1881: 54)
Here is Holmes on the growth and adaptation of legal concepts and the evolution of
legal systems:
The law embodies the story of a nation’s development through many centuries, and
it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of
mathematics. (Holmes 1881: 1)
The customs, beliefs, or needs of a primitive time establish a rule or formula. In the
course of centuries the custom, belief, or necessity disappears, but the rule remains.
The reason which gave rise to the rule has been forgotten, and ingenious minds set
themselves to inquire how it is to be accounted for. Some ground of policy is thought
of, which seems to explain it and to reconcile it with the present state of things; and
then the rule adapts itself to the new reasons which have been found for it, and enters
on a new career. The old form receives new content, and in time even the form modifies
itself to fit the meaning which it has received. (Holmes 1881: 3-4)
The truth is, that the law is always approaching, and never reaching, consistency. It is
forever adopting new principles from life at one end, and it always retains old ones from
because it was wrong, but because it could not be enforced. No one will deny that wrong statutes can be
and are enforced, and we should not all agree as to which were the wrong ones.” (Holmes 1897: 460).
23. “[N]owadays no one doubts that a man may be liable, without any malevolent motive at all, for
false statements manifestly calculated to inflict temporal damage. In stating the case in pleading, we
still should call the defendant’s conduct malicious; but, in my opinion at least, the word means nothing
about motives, or even about the defendant’s attitude toward the future, but only signifies that the
tendency of his conduct under the known circumstances was very plainly to cause the plaintiff temporal
harm.” (Holmes 1897: 463).
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history at the other, which have not yet been absorbed or sloughed off. It will become
entirely consistent only when it ceases to grow. (Holmes 1881: 25)
However much we may codify the law into a series of seemingly self-sufficient
propositions, those propositions will be but a phase in a continuous growth. (Holmes
1881: 25)
If truth were not often suggested by error, if old impediments could not be adjusted
to new uses, human progress would be slow. But scrutiny and revision are justified.
(Holmes 1881: 25)
Here is Holmes on the past and the future of the law:
The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience. The felt necessities of the
time, the prevalent moral and political theories, intuitions of public policy, avowed or
unconscious, even the prejudices which judges share with their fellow men, have had a
good deal more to do than the syllogism in determining the rules by which men should
be governed. (Holmes 1881: 1)
The substance of the law at any given time pretty nearly corresponds, so far as it goes,
with what is then understood to be convenient; but its form and machinery, and the
degree to which it is able to work out desired results, depend very much upon its past.
(Holmes 1881: 1)
The reader may begin to ask for the proof that all this has any bearing on our law of
today. So far as concerns the influence of the Roman law upon our own, especially the
Roman law of master and servant, the evidence of it is to be found in every book which
has been written for the last five hundred years. (Holmes 1881: 12)
When ancient rules maintain themselves in the way that has been and will be shown in
this book, new reasons more fitted to the time have been found for them, and […] they
gradually receive a new content, and at last a new form, from the grounds to which they
have been transplanted. (Holmes 1881: 24)
To understand [laws’] scope fully, to know how they will be dealt with by judges trained
in the past which the law embodies, we must ourselves know something of that past.
The history of what the law has been is necessary to the knowledge of what the law is.
(Holmes 1881: 25)
It is difficult to find in The Common Law precise examples of how Holmes
incorporates the sciences, and especially the social sciences, into the law, because
the book is itself an exercise in social science that tropes Darwin while mentioning
relevant scholarship in the appropriate places. Here, however, is one example:
There are crimes which do not excite [revenge], and we should naturally expect that the
most important purposes of punishment would be coextensive with the whole field of
its application. It remains to be discovered whether such a general purpose exists, and if
so what it is. Different theories still divide opinion upon the subject. (Holmes 1881: 29)
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Forays into science appear more elaborately in Holmes’s opinions as a United States
Supreme Court justice. In Darling v. City of Newport, for example, he stated with
seeming authority that the “ocean hitherto has been treated as open to the discharge of
sewage from the cities upon its shores. Whatever science may accomplish in the future
we are not aware that it yet has discovered any generally accepted way of avoiding
the practical necessity of so using the great natural purifying basin.” (Darling v. City
of Newport 1919: 542-3). Thirteen years earlier he had carefully examined scientific
studies about bridges, water, typhoid, and navigation to prepare for his opinion in
State of Missouri v. State of Illinois, in which he wrote that “the evidence now is in, the
actual facts have required for their establishment the most ingenious experiments, and
for their interpretation the most subtle speculations, of modern science, and therefore
it becomes necessary at the present stage to consider somewhat more nicely than
heretofore how the evidence in it is to be approached” (State of Missouri v. State of
Illinois 1906: 268). He then undertook an exacting analysis, dividing the plaintiff’s
and the defendant’s experts into opposing factions:
We assume the now-prevailing scientific explanation of typhoid fever to be correct.
But when we go beyond that assumption, everything is involved in doubt. The data
upon which an increase in the deaths from typhoid fever in St. Louis is alleged are
disputed. The elimination of other causes is denied. The experts differ as to the time
and distance within which a stream would purify itself. No case of an epidemic caused
by infection at so remote a source is brought forward and the cases which are produced
are controverted. […] The distance in which the sewage has to travel (357 miles) is not
open to debate, but the time of transit, to be inferred from experiments with floats, is
estimated as varying from eight to eighteen and a half days, with forty-eight hours more
from intake to distribution, and when corrected by observations of bacteria is greatly
prolonged by the defendants. The experiments of the defendant’s experts lead them to
the opinion that a typhoid bacillus could not survive the journey, while those on the
other side maintain that it might live and keep its power for twenty-five days or more,
and arrive at St. Louis. Upon the question at issue, whether the new discharge from
Chicago hurts St. Louis, there is a categorical contradiction between the experts on the
two sides. (State of Missouri v. State of Illinois 1906: 523)
Holmes went on to discuss the quantity of bacteria and typhoid bacillus in the river
water, the speed of the river current in relation to the distance that germs could travel
downstream, and the degree of danger of the bacteria within quick-moving currents
compared to bacteria in stagnant water.
In Steward v. American Lava Co. Holmes evaluated a patent for acetylene gas
burners as well as their processes for burning gas. He described acetylene gas as
follows:
It is very rich in carbon, and therefore has great illuminating power, but, for the same
reason, coupled with the relatively low heat at which it dissociates and sets carbon free,
it deposited soot or unconsumed carbon, and soon clogged the burners then in use. It
was possible to secure a complete consumption of carbon by means of the wellknown
Bunsen burner. This consists of a tube or cylinder pierced on the sides with holes for
the admission of the air, into one end of which a fine stream of gas is projected through
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a minute aperture, and from the other end of which it escapes and then is burned. A
high pressure is necessary for the gas in order to prevent its burning back. The ordinary
use of the Bunsen burner is to develop heat, and to that end a complete combustion,
of course, as desired. But, with an immediately complete combustion, there is little
light. The yellow light of candles and gas jets is due to free particles of carbon at a
red heat, but not yet combined with oxygen, or, as we commonly say, consumed. On
the appearance of acetylene gas, inventors at once sought to apply the principle of the
Bunsen burner with such modifications as would produce this result. In doing so, they
found it best to use duplex burners, – that is burners the outlets of which were inclined
toward each other so that the meeting of the two streams of gas formed a flat flame, and
to let in less air. (Steward v. American Lava Co. 1909: 162)
He then stated, “We should regret to be compelled to decide a case by the acceptance
or rejection of a theoretic explanation upon which it still is possible that authorities
in science disagree” (Steward v. American Lava Co. 1909: 166). These three cases
strengthen Haack’s claim that science and social science were features of Holmes’s
jurisprudence. Finally, here is Holmes, in The Common Law, discussing moral
fallibilism:
If punishment stood on the moral grounds which are proposed for it, the first thing to
be considered would be those limitations in the capacity for choosing rightly which
arise from abnormal instincts, want of education, lack of intelligence, and all the other
defects which are most marked in criminal classes. I do not say that they should not
be, or at least I do not need to for my argument. I do not say that the criminal law does
more good than harm. I only say that it is not enacted or administered on that theory.
(Holmes 1881: 31)
The law of torts abounds in moral phraseology. It has much to say of wrongs, of malice,
fraud, intent, and negligence. Hence it may naturally be supposed that the risk of a
man’s conduct is thrown upon him as the result of some moral short-coming. But while
this notion has been entertained, the extreme opposite will be found to have been a
far more popular opinion; – I mean the notion that a man is answerable for all the
consequences of his acts, or, in other words, that he acts at his peril always, and wholly
irrespective of the state of his consciousness upon the matter. (Holmes 1881: 54-5)
[A]lthough the law starts from the distinctions and uses the language of morality, it
necessarily ends in external standards not dependent on the actual consciousness of the
individual. So it has happened with fraud. If a man makes a representation, knowing
facts which by the average standard of the community are sufficient to give him warning
that it is probably untrue, and it is untrue, he is guilty of fraud in theory of law whether
he believes his statement or not. (Holmes 1881: 217-8)
These are mere samplings. Much of The Common Law substantiates Haack’s
point that Holmes entertained and employed pragmatic theories that represented the
evolutionary theories animating the common law. Kellogg suggests that insofar as
Holmes’s conception of the law offers a model of an “ongoing community exploring
common problems,” it bears “remarkable similarities to the model of scientific inquiry
emerging at roughly the same historical period in the writings of Holmes’s controversial
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friend Charles S. Peirce, a model later adopted by John Dewey” (Kellogg 2007: 34).
The class poet at Harvard, the son of the famous poet and man of letters, and a protégé
of Emerson, Holmes marries the analytical tradition of pragmatism and the aesthetic
tradition of pragmatism explored in the works of Burke, Goodman, Gunn, Poirier,
West, Richardson, and Levin.
Holmes’s “underlying conception of society” reflects his “exposure to the
struggle of Darwinian evolution” (Kellogg 2007: 94). This conception was “much
discussed in the Metaphysical Club and confirmed in some respects by the American
Civil War, both of which reinforced doubts concerning the prospects for [the] lawbased liberal or utilitarian reform” (Kellogg 2007: 94). Kellogg purports that Holmes
“looked backward to common law as the archetypal decentralized model, modified
in the spirit of public inquiry, parallel to the Peircean model of scientific inquiry and
problem solving, balanced with a comprehensibility and predictability derived from
the spread of external standards” (Kellogg 2007: 95). To this end, Holmes viewed the
judge’s role as receptive to existing cultures at local levels and considered order itself
to be “decentralized, supple, […] unfinished, [and] constantly under construction
and revision” (Kellogg 2007: 95). He was unlikely to deem as unconstitutional any
enacted legislation and in fact did so only once during his twenty-year career (18821902) on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. He disapproved of legislation
only if it abridged freedom of speech, and he grew committed to the notion that
a marketplace of ideas was necessary for the best theories to outdo competitors
and prove their practical worth. Holmes’s jurisprudence commemorates judges as
cultural interpreters subject to “community-approved standards and precedents [that]
derive from ancient rules” (Kellogg 2007: 122). He believed that judges ought not to
“set the policy so much as be aware of it,” although they “could and should update
the reasoning” about how to apply old concepts in the current environment (Kellogg
2007: 122).
What sets Holmes apart from other classical pragmatists is not just his station as
a Supreme Court justice but his commitment to Emersonian thought and aesthetics.
Emerson “put the living generation into masquerade” out of the “faded wardrobe”
of the past (Emerson 1983: 547) just as Holmes discussed the “form of continuity”
that is “nothing but the evening dress which the new-comer puts on to make itself
presentable according to conventional requirements” (Holmes 1880: 234). Holmes
never forgot Emerson. He published The Common Law in 1881. In 1882, Emerson
died. The year between 1881 and 1882 represents the passing of a baton as Holmes
preserved Emerson’s ideas and aesthetics but stripped them of the characteristics and
qualities that were no longer suited for the postwar era.24 Holmes was an Emersonian
and a pragmatist, and if there were a model for how those two traditions coincide it is
in Holmes’s famous judicial dissents that mobilize the common law system within the
24. “[T]he North […] was anxious to leave transcendentalism behind. The generational shift from
transcendentalism to pragmatism is well known. […] A classic example is Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.,
the son of Emerson’s good friend Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. The younger Holmes left for a war he
called ‘a crusade in the cause of the whole civilized world,’ but returned to announce, ‘I do not know
what is true.’ Higher law lost its allure among the young men who fought a bloody war on its behalf.”
(Levine & Malachuk 2011: 15-6).
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constitutional framework by undermining current case precedents while anticipating
and establishing future case precedents.
Much ink has been spilled over the vexed issue of Emerson’s putative pragmatism.
It should go without saying that Emerson’s status as a pragmatist has been challenged
repeatedly and most memorably in Stanley Cavell’s essay “What’s the Use in Calling
Emerson a Pragmatist?” It is not worth defending or refuting Emerson’s alleged
standing as a pragmatic thinker here because, at this point, the “notion that Emerson is a
seminal figure or precursor for American pragmatism is no longer new or controversial”
(Albrecht 2012: 18). Cavell’s question has yielded various arguments, but scholars
have yet to formulate a response in terms of Holmes, who was not only a member
of the Metaphysical Club but also a protégé of Emerson. Haack’s work on Holmes
and the common law provides an opportunity for those working in and advocating an
Emersonian pragmatic tradition to outflank their antagonists by tapping into both the
aesthetic and classical pragmatist traditions in the person of Holmes. It might be that
Emersonian superfluity bears out in Holmes’s judicial opinions and dissents, which
themselves form and respond to a canon of case precedents. In the context of commonlaw judging Holmes unites with the analytical tradition of pragmatism Emerson’s
emphasis on “life, transition, and the emerging spirit” as the driving forces behind the
evolution of arts and culture (Emerson 1983: 413). By dissenting with lively language
and an emerging spirit Holmes guaranteed the “generative, agonistic interplay between
power and limitation” that propels the common-law system forward, preserving what
precedents remain constructive and shaking off those holdings which are no longer
fitful in the changed environment (Albrecht 2012: 62). “Emerson value[d] processes
but not necessarily their end products,” Poirier said, “which are in any event only
instruments of further processes” (Poirier 1992: 2). Holmes saw in the common law
the instantiation of these pragmatic processes that Emerson valued. Until scholars of
pragmatism fully account for Holmes’s Emersonian role in the pragmatic tradition,
answers to Cavell’s question will remain incomplete and insufficient. To know what
use it is to call Emerson a pragmatist requires us to look for Emerson’s influence in
Holmes’s judicial writings that bear directly and practically on our society through the
medium of legal cases.
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EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PRAGMATISM AND AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY
COPYRIGHT © 2009 ASSOCIAZIONE PRAGMA
Peter Olen*
The Realist Challenge to Conceptual Pragmatism
Abstract: Although commonly cited as one of the philosophers responsible for the
resurgence of interest in pragmatism, Wilfrid Sellars was also the son of Roy Wood
Sellars, one of the most dedicated critical realists of the early 20th century. Given
his father’s realism and his own ‘scientific realism,’ one might assume that the
history of realism – and, despite contemporary interest, not pragmatism – would
best serve as the historical background for Wilfrid Sellars’ philosophy. I argue that
Wilfrid Sellars, far from being the adherent to classical pragmatism assumed by
some, holds more in common with critical realism – specifically, a realism that
was framed in opposition to pragmatism – than one finds amongst the writings of
Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, or John Dewey. I support this claim by
examining Wilfrid Sellars’ adoption of his father’s criticisms of C. I. Lewis, and
offer various arguments and historical considerations against thematic accounts that
insist on a strong connection between Wilfrid Sellars and pragmatism.
Introduction
When looking back at debates between American realist and pragmatist
philosophers, Wilfrid Sellars occupies a problematic place in the canon. Raised
by one of the most prominent critical realist of the early 20th century, W. Sellars
spent most of his career espousing a form of scientific realism.1 Despite Roy Wood
Sellars’ anti-pragmatist orientation and explicit arguments against John Dewey,
C. I. Lewis, and other pragmatists, there has been increased interest in placing
W. Sellars, both historically and thematically, within the pragmatist tradition.2 Even
though R. W. Sellars depicted critical realism as opposed to pragmatism, this does
not mean that W. Sellars followed suit. It could be the case that son, unlike father,
gravitated towards pragmatic philosophers or themes despite his father’s misgivings.
Nonetheless, W. Sellars’ various discussions of critical realism seem to exhibit more
than mere family resemblance. One fruitful question to ask might be this: if we take
his endorsement of critical realism seriously, why should we place W. Sellars within
the pragmatist tradition?
The point of this paper is to discuss R. W. Sellars’ challenges to pragmatism, as
embodied by Lewis’s form of “conceptual pragmatism,” in an effort to both trace
where the two camps diverge and locate W. Sellars somewhere in the debate. By
discussing R. W. Sellars’ criticisms of pragmatism, which center on issues surrounding
immediate experience, perception, and meaning, we get a clearer picture of W. Sellars’
relationship to the pragmatist tradition. I conclude by arguing that R. W. Sellars’
critiques of the given and meaning are the same critiques offered by W. Sellars in the
* Lake-Sumter State College [[email protected]].
1. Whether scientific realism is necessarily opposed to pragmatism is debatable. The important point
here is the acknowledgement of W. Sellars as being, in some sense, a realist by way of general
orientation.
2. This is not to say that all pragmatists claim W. Sellars as one of their own. Richard Shusterman, for
example, has argued that W. Sellars’ indictment of the given makes him hostile towards a Deweyan
conception of experience. See Shusterman 1997.
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1950s, and that recent attempts to place W. Sellars within the pragmatist tradition have
largely ignored this line of influence.
Of course, much of this argument turns on exactly what is meant by the ‘pragmatist
tradition.’ As Rebecca Kukla and Mark Lance have noted:
There are two large camps of philosophers who fly by the banner of pragmatism. […]
First, there are philosopher who find their roots in the classic American Pragmatist such
as Dewey, James, and Peirce, and often also in the early work of Heidegger and his
French successors such as Pierre Bourdieu and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. […] Second,
there is what we might call “Pittsburgh School Pragmatism.” […] These philosophers
are committed to the principle that the best place from which to begin thinking about
intentional phenomena such as meaningful speech acts and contentful mental states
is with our practical interactions with the world and with others, and their normative
structure. (Kukla & Lance 2009: 3-4)
W. Sellars is clearly committed to, and the founder of, the latter sense of pragmatism,
the kind that emphasizes our practical interactions and their normative structure as the
starting point for philosophy. Classifying W. Sellars as a pragmatist in this sense is, at
least for my purposes, unproblematic. Yet such concerns are not generally indicative
of the kind of classic pragmatism found in the tradition that stretches from C. S. Peirce
to C. I. Lewis. It is within the classic form of pragmatism that some commentators
have placed W. Sellars. This historical classification is what I aim to correct.
This is not to say that thematic discussions of common themes are barred from
connecting philosophers previously thought unrelated. There could be substantial
philosophical value in picking out the commonalities between philosophers who
embrace similar or the same ideas in all of their variations and differing incarnations.
I am not arguing against thematic accounts of Charles Sanders Peirce’s and William
James’s writings on language, for example, that connect some of their ideas with those
found in the later Wittgenstein; there could be – for all I know – something profitable
in re-interpreting Wittgenstein’s ideas in light of Peirce’s and James’s philosophies.
My main concern is with what I take to be the subtle confusion of thematic accounts
for historical claims.3 As a quick distinction, we might classify thematic claims as
those that claim a relationship between figures or ideas on the basis of similarity of
content, while historical claims concern the actual influence and motivations behind
a given figure’s views. While the difference between the two kinds of claims might
initially seem clear enough, there is a tendency to confuse thematic connections as
somehow licensing historical claims about the connection or ‘progression’ of ideas.
Even if classifying W. Sellars as a pragmatist makes thematic sense, this does not
mean that, historically speaking, the chronological succession of W. Sellars to
classical pragmatism entails that it played an influential role in the development of
his philosophy.
3. Mason Cash, in an unrelated context, gave one of the best examples of the reasoning behind
conflating historical and thematic claims. Paraphrasing from one of his lectures: we might think that
if we squint hard enough, the atoms that make up that wall over there kind of look like a toaster. But
they are, in fact, not a toaster. So what difference does it make that the arrangement of atoms happen
to look like a toaster?
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Critical Realism and Pragmatism
Although the later works of W. Sellars, specifically the Sellars one finds in Science
and Metaphysics, is willing to concede some ground to the pragmatist tradition, I am
primarily concerned with W. Sellars’ work leading up to the publication of Science
and Metaphysics in 1968. When reflecting back on the early parts of his career,
W. Sellars claimed that:
When I was coming to philosophical consciousness, the great battles between the
systems which began the Twentieth Century were drawing to a close, although the
lightning and the thunder were still impressive. I cut my teeth on issues dividing Idealist
and Realist and, indeed, the various competing forms of upstart Realism. I saw them
at the beginning through my father’s eyes, and perhaps for that reason never got into
Pragmatism. He regarded it as shifty, ambiguous, and indecisive. One thinks in this
connection of Lovejoy’s “thirteen varieties,” though that, my father thought, would
make too tidy a picture. […] Pragmatism seemed all method and no results.
After striking out on my own, I spent my early years fighting in the war against
Positivism – the last of the great metaphysical systems; always a realist, flirting with
Oxford Aristotelianism, Platonism, Intuitionism, but somehow convinced, at the
back of my mind, that something very much like Critical Realism and Evolutionary
Naturalism was true.
Thus it wasn’t until my thought began to crystallize that I really encountered Dewey
and began to study him. […] He caught me at a time when I was moving away from
“the Myth of the Given” (antecedent reality?) and rediscovering the coherence theory
of meaning. Thus it was Dewey’s Idealistic background which intrigued me the most.
I found similar theme Royce and later in Peirce. I was astonished at what I had missed.
(Sellars 1979: 7; emphasis added)
Not surprisingly, Sellars’ initial philosophical orientation was guided by his father’s
critical realism, though it would be going too far to claim that pragmatism held no
interest for W. Sellars. Sellars’ comment that he came to recognize the importance
of Dewey’s philosophy when moving away from the myth of the given places this
reference sometime in the late 1940s,4 yet whatever engagement the early Sellars
had with pragmatism is not readily apparent in his earliest publications5 and was
filtered through the lens of critical realism. When W. Sellars did turn his attention to
pragmatism, it was the “idealistic background” of Dewey that attracted his attention.
While various issues divide critical realism and pragmatism, the most apparent
influence on W. Sellars are debates between R. W. Sellars and Lewis over the proper
analysis of perception and immediate awareness. A guiding commitment of both
R. W. Sellars and W. Sellars is the idea that perception is an inherently mediated
4. Sellars makes overtures to both of these points as early as 1947, but explicitly credits Dewey in
Sellars 1949.
5. Even though W. Sellars’ initial publications focused on developing a pure account of pragmatics, the
pragmatist tradition is not a factor in W. Sellars’ ‘pure pragmatics’ papers. See Olen forthcoming and
Olen 2016, especially chapter 1.
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practice, one that does not presuppose immediate awareness of ‘bare’ presentations of
sense. From the standpoint of critical realism, “perceptual knowing has its categories
and is not the simple flux of sense-data and images which extreme empiricism wished
to reduce it to” (Sellars 1932: 139). That is, “in even the elementary level of knowing
called perceiving, the human mind is operating in terms of meaning and distinctions”
(Sellars 1932: 69). What is indicative of perception is that it is a “thinking of things”
are not simply a matter of bare receptivity.
This analysis does not amount to an outright rejection of receptivity; perception
is mediated by sensations, though such sensations “are not the objects of perceiving
but one means of perceiving” (Sellars 1932: 59). Even if sensing and sensation are
constitutive aspects of knowing, it is only a naive form of realism that assumes what
is known are primarily sensations and not objects. Perception, whether it leads to
knowledge or ‘simple’ awareness, always presupposes categorical structure; it
involves “denotative intent and a disclosure claim. What I mean by a disclosureclaim is a thinking an object in terms of predicates.” (Sellars 1932: 75). According to
R. W. Sellars, the problem with traditional empiricist approaches to perception is the
confusion of the intentional nature of thought with the receptivity found in sensible
experience. For both R. W. Sellars and W. Sellars, it is a confusion of the ‘aboutness’
of thought with the idea that sensations are, in some sense, ‘information-carrying.’6
The critical realist turn is found in a conception of sensations as mediating entities,
ones through which we gain knowledge of material objects and the external world.
Perception yields knowledge or awareness of “independent and enduring things” and
not just sensory presentations (Sellars 1932: 146). Mistakenly assuming that sensory
experience yields knowledge of mere presentations or sensations, though not objects,
leads to a rejection of what R. W. Sellars calls the “metaphysical veracity” of our
perceptual abilities. That is, perception discloses the external world in such a way that
epistemological considerations entail metaphysical commitments about the objective
existence of the external world. Thus, our experience of seeing a slowly crawling
sloth in our visual field should, ceteris paribus, lead to the knowledge or awareness of
a real, slowly crawling sloth in the world.
R. W. Sellars’ commitment to the metaphysical veracity of our perceptions is
contrasted with Lewis’s explicit dismissal of the idea. For the Lewis-styled pragmatist,
one starts from the pragmatic significance of experience, the fact that our perceptual
apprehensions are significant insofar as they function in the “guidance of our actions and
anticipation” of future consequences (Lewis 1946: 16). The knowledge of an objective
external world holds metaphysical significance, if it holds any significance at all, as
derivative from the pragmatic significance of given elements in experience (Lewis
1946: 16). The given elements of our experience simply yield conditional knowledge
of actual and possible future experience. Even though such conditional knowledge is
available for continued verification in our experience, it does not entail a metaphysical
commitment to an objectively existing world. Thus, the experience of seeing a slowly
crawling sloth, for example, might give us reason to expect the continued presence of
6. One finds this confusion made explicit in Sellars (1956: 210-3).
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the sloth in our visual field, but such experience and expectations do not entail that a
slowly crawling sloth exists independent of our experience of it (simply that we ought
to anticipate the continued visual sensation of a slowly crawling sloth).
R. W. Sellars’ critique of Lewis is not a general indictment of pragmatism as
a movement – insofar as pragmatism is willing to abandon its commitment to a
problematic form of “extreme” empiricism (in favor, of course, of the metaphysical
commitments and analysis of perception found in critical realism), it could be seen as
a promising road to naturalism (Sellars 1932: 134). Yet Lewis’s version of pragmatism
is interpreted by R. W. Sellars as inextricably wed to extreme empiricism, one which
rejects anything like the existence of an external world and embraces a kind of Kantian
approach to “constructing” the world out of phenomenal presentations of sense
(Sellars 1932: 51). What is experienced are not objects or properties of objects, but
sensations, appearances, or presentations. Although immediate awareness of the given
elements in experience may not constitute knowledge of objects in an external world,
our knowledge of objects are “built-up” from the interpretation or categorization of
such experience (Lewis 1929: 37-8).
Lewis’s insistence on the given element in experience is interpreted by
R. W. Sellars as a “logical development of the tradition of immediate perception”
that is found in William James’s form of pragmatism, but stretches back to Locke and
Berkeley (Sellars 1968: 299). Even though some of Lewis’s claims sound realistic,7
his contention that immediate experience constitutes a form of perceptual knowledge
commits him to the aforementioned problematic form of empiricism:
Some twelve years ago in a chapter I contributed to the book, Philosophy for the Future,
I pointed out how realistic Lewis could sound. He affirms that we knew through and by
means of presentations some objective thing or event. Is he, like Dewey, a naive realist
with pragmatic intent or a phenomenalist? But I have the conviction that he regards
these presentations as constituents of the object known. This fits in with ‘immediate
perception’ and the rejection of critical realism. (Sellars 1968: 304)
It is the connection between pragmatism and a kind of empiricism, one that classifies
immediate sensory presentations or appearances as knowledge, that R. W. Sellars finds
problematic. To classify sensory presentations in such a constitutive role locates Lewis
in a Kantian/phenomenalist strand of thought that critical realism explicitly rejects.
Despite R. W. Sellars’ claims, the role of immediate awareness and giveness in
Lewis’s epistemology is an almost categorically misunderstood phenomena. As early
as 1929, Lewis explicitly claims that it is objects, and not phenomenal presentations
of sense, that we experience:
7. The same basic claim can also be found in W. Sellars’ early writings: “I am afraid, however, that
our agreement with Lewis is more shadow than substance. For while he writes in this manner of the
interpretation of the given by means of concepts whose implications transcend the given, he also holds
that the sensible appearances of things do wear their hearts on their sleeves, and that we do have a
cognitive vision of these hearts which is direct, unlearned, and incapable of error – though we may
make a slip in the expressive language by which these insights are properly formulated.” (Sellars 1953:
310-1).
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It is indeed the thick experience of the world of things, not the thin given of immediacy,
which constitutes the datum of philosophical reflection. We do not see patches of color,
but trees and houses; we hear, not indescribable sound, but voices and violins. What
we most certainly know are objects and full-bodied facts about them which could be
stated in propositions. […] Any Kantian “manifold” as a psychic datum or moment of
experience, is probably a fiction, and the assumption of it as such is a methodological
error. (Lewis 1929: 54-5)
Here, as elsewhere, Lewis discusses the idea of “pure” giveness or receptivity as “an
abstraction” or “fiction” from our actual experience of the world (Lewis 1929: 54).
Even though Lewis’s later works (especially Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation)
discuss our knowledge of objects in terms of actual and possible experiences, he
argues that “there is nothing in this character of knowledge or in any consideration
pertinent to it which justly should suggest that our knowledge, though partial, is not,
so far as it extends, a knowledge of existents as they are in themselves” (Lewis 1955:
347; emphasis added).
Even if R. W. Sellars radically misinterpreted conceptual pragmatism,8 the fact that
this is a misinterpretation makes no difference when exploring W. Sellars’ placement
in the history of philosophy. What matters in this case is not whether Lewis’s position
has been accurately depicted as a form of realism or phenomenalism, but whether
R. W. Sellars and W. Sellars understood pragmatism as wed to a problematic form of
phenomenalism. And in this sense, both R. W. Sellars and W. Sellars are in agreement –
conceptual pragmatism remains opposed to critical realism insofar as it presupposes a
problematic epistemology. Even though this may be a misinterpretation of conceptual
pragmatism, it is one held by both R. W. and W. Sellars.9
Wilfrid Sellars
W. Sellars explicated and endorsed his father’s position in 1954, mounting some
of the same arguments against pragmatism, at least what was interpreted as Lewis’s
form of pragmatism, as found in R. W. Sellars’ criticisms of Lewis. Thus, when
characterizing his (and his father’s) realism, W. Sellars claims that
Perhaps the most useful answer is in terms of its contrast with ‘radical empiricism.’ For
the approach of the naturalistic realist to the problems of knowledge and meaning is as
unlike that of radical empiricism as an approach can be without renouncing all claim to
the term ‘empiricism.’ And, indeed, we find that in The Philosophy of Physical Realism,
my father points to the radical empiricism of C. I. Lewis as the most challenging
formulation of the anti-realistic point of view. (Sellars 1954: 27)
8. Although Lewis’s epistemology has been frequently depicted as a problematic form of
phenomenalism, his defenders (as well as Lewis himself) have denied this characterization. For the
most recent defense of Lewis’s epistemology, see Sachs 2014 (especially chapter two).
9. I am not claiming that Lewis’s pragmatism and his epistemology must be interpreted as intertwined,
but simply that R. W. Sellars and W. Sellars saw it this way.
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W. Sellars goes significantly further than his father in diagnosing the ills of pragmatism
as embodied in Lewis’s epistemology. The issue is not just that pragmatists mistakenly
connect perception with immediate awareness, but that this connection leads directly
to a naive understanding of concepts and concept formation. The connection between
immediate awareness and meaning leads pragmatists to claim that concepts are, in
some sense, ‘about’ patterns of sensation or possible future experiences (Sellars 1954:
29). To grant the connection between immediate awareness and meaning is to mistake
thinking that “common sense concepts of seeing a color, hearing a sound, or feeling
a pain are concepts of sensuous immediacy” (Sellars 1954: 29). Indicative of his
endorsement of critical realism, W. Sellars claims that perception is defined by the
categorized, intentional awareness of objects and not patterns of sensation. The kind
of Lockean empiricism that requires concepts to be ‘built-up’ from sensory patterns
of awareness is de facto ruled-out on realistic grounds and such an empiricism, as
indicated by the passage above, is explicitly connected to Lewis’s pragmatism in both
father’s and son’s accounts of perception.
Thus, one finds W. Sellars endorsing the main thesis of critical realism contra
empiricism:
Thus, when Jones sees a chair, although his ‘perceptual experience’ is founded on,
guided, and controlled by his sensations, there is nothing in the nature of aboutness or
reference which requires us to say that his ‘experience is primarily about the sensations,
and only about the chair in some more complicated or derived sense of ‘about.’ His
perception is ‘mediated by’ the sensations, but his perception is not about the sensations.
(Sellars 1954: 20)
This endorsement comes to fruition two years later in “Empiricism and the Philosophy
of Mind” (hereafter EPM) where W. Sellars charges sense data theorists with the
mistake of treating the occurrence of sensations as a cognitive or epistemic fact.
Reminiscent of his father’s wording, W. Sellars argues that this is the mistake of
assimilating “‘having a sensation of a red triangle’ to ‘thinking of a celestial city’ and
to attribute to the former the epistemic character, the ‘intentionality’ of the latter” as
one key instance in the myth of the given (Sellars 1956: 211).
The earlier point surrounding disagreements between critical realism and
pragmatism foreshadow W. Sellars’ objections to traditional empiricism and
foundationalism in EPM. Although some10 have suggested that Lewis is the primary
target of W. Sellars’ objections to sense data theorist and giveness in EPM, this is too
myopic of a reading. Lewis’s later philosophy, as found in Analysis of Knowledge and
Valuation, side-steps many of the early objections to sense data theory discussed by
W. Sellars. It could be that Lewis’s later epistemology avoids connecting immediate
awareness and knowledge in the way criticized by R. W. Sellars in the 1930s. Even
if this is the case, such a change does not settle the earlier dispute between critical
realism and pragmatism or somehow correct the misinterpretation present in both
R. W. Sellars and W. Sellars.
10. See Kuklick (2001: 220-4).
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That being said, it is just as problematic to claim that W. Sellars’ anti-foundationalist
arguments do not target, at least in part, the kind of empiricism that he read into
traditional pragmatism. One finds this kind of reading in Misak:
Sellars explodes the myth of the given. He argues that there are no basic or pure kinds of
knowledge – a belief can only be justified by another belief. Moreover, all beliefs have
an inescapably conceptual element. To grasp even something as simple as a triangle
requires the concept of triangle so that one can classify it as such. To become aware of
something in the first place is to respond to it by applying a concept. Awareness – all of
it – ‘is a linguistic affair.’ We have seen this very thought in Peirce, Lewis, and every
other pragmatist. (Misak 2013: 221-2; emphasis added)
The problem is not that Peirce and Lewis were necessarily committed to the myth
of the given, but that W. Sellars, insofar as he engages with either Peirce or Lewis,
interpreted them this way.11 Even if every classical pragmatist endorsed the kind
of conceptualism suggested by Misak, both R. W. Sellars and W. Sellars didn’t
see what would have been a point of philosophical kinship. More so, it is not clear
why a corrected reading of pragmatism’s history – one that depicts pragmatism as
inherently against the myth of the given – would somehow change W. Sellars’ early
misunderstanding of these points and, thus, his subsequent historical placement.
Exactly how W. Sellars understood pragmatism (and, thus, how much of a role it
played in motivating his early arguments) is the historically relevant factor.
This last point is crucial if we want to establish a historically sound connection
between W. Sellars and the pragmatist tradition, but there is all the difference in
the world between pragmatists’ rejection of giveness and W. Sellars’ recognition of
this fact. While some pragmatists may have rejected giveness in some or all of its
forms, it by no means follows that W. Sellars’ rejection of giveness was motivated
by this particular tradition or that he was aware of this fact while constructing his
own arguments against giveness. One could concede this point and thematically
classify W. Sellars as a pragmatist, but this is not what Misak is claiming when she
connects W. Sellars’ arguments against giveness with “Peirce, Lewis, and every other
pragmatist.” Instead, she is making a historical claim about the actual antecedent
causes and motivations behind W. Sellars’ rejection of giveness.
Clarifying12 this aspect of the philosophical relationship between R. W. Sellars and
W. Sellars casts prima facie doubt on the idea that W. Sellars inherited his objections to
giveness from the pragmatist tradition. Although Misak and Richard Shusterman, for
example, are correct that some pragmatist are fairly hostile to the idea of unmediated
perception as a form of knowledge, W. Sellars’ rejection of giveness is inherited, at
least in part, from critical realism and not pragmatism. Even if W. Sellars’ rejection of
11. It is not clear that W. Sellars interpreted pragmatism (as embodied by anyone but Dewey) as
rejecting giveness. W. Sellars recognizes Dewey’s rejection of immediacy, but says little about it. See
Sellars (1949: 127).
12. I say “partially” because there are numerous other issues (e.g., nominalism, meaning, naturalism,
values) where one could connect R. W. Sellars to W. Sellars. To complicate this point more, there is a
large issue about reciprocal influence – one can find some evidence that W. Sellars’ publications in the
1950s influenced his father’s later positions. For example, see Sellars 1968.
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giveness and various pragmatists’ commitments against the immediacy of sense data
line up perfectly well, this does not prove that W. Sellars was aware of that fact in the
1940s-1950s (the period where he was refining his arguments against giveness). If
Peirce and Dewey held commitments consistent with the critical realists’ commitments
against unmediated awareness, this fact falls short of giving us a historical connection
between traditional pragmatism and W. Sellars’ rejection of giveness. This point
becomes explicit at the end of W. Sellars’ analysis of critical realism:
I would go further and say that only a philosophy which, like Physical Realism, has
abandoned the dead end road of immediacy, while yet maintaining a broadly empirical
orientation, can hope to combine a coherence theory of meaning (‘a concept is an
intersection in a network of implications’) with the empiricist’s contention that it
is always proper to ask for an ‘inductive’ justification of any proposal to revise the
framework of law-like sentences (and, hence, of meanings) in terms of which we
approach our environment. (Sellars 1954: 31-2)
The solution to puzzling out perception and immediate awareness is found in a form
of realism diametrically opposed to the kind of empiricism attributed to Lewis.
Insofar as one is wed to a close relationship between immediacy and meaning, (the
relationship both R. W. Sellars and W. Sellars argue characterizes pragmatism), then
one cannot truly reject giveness and foundationalism.
What ties together R. W. Sellars’ and W. Sellars’ interpretation of pragmatism is the
equating of a pragmatist treatment of perception and knowledge with a fairly radical
form of empiricism. While pragmatism deserves credit for moving philosophy away
from 19th century versions of sensationalism and absolute idealism, both R. W. Sellars
and W. Sellars understand pragmatism – at least the version of pragmatism they found
in Lewis’s philosophy – as inextricably tied to problematical empiricist commitments
that ostensibly replaced those movements. Even if this is the wrong interpretation
of pragmatism (as Misak and others might rightly argue), and even if there is no
necessary connection between pragmatism and this kind of empiricism, the issue
is whether W. Sellars saw the connection as embodied in pragmatist epistemology
qua Lewis. Since we are essentially picking out the motivation behind W. Sellars’
arguments, it stands to reason that how he understood pragmatism (in this case) is
a large determiner of how influential pragmatism actually was in helping form his
positions. Of course, this reading of Lewis could be wrong – Murray Murphey,13
for one, provides strong arguments against this reading of Lewis. Since we are
concerned with the historical W. Sellars, both as he interpreted the relative intellectual
movements around himself and as we should place him within his historical context,
it is difficult, even inaccurate, to separate pragmatism (qua Lewis) from a problematic
form of empiricism.14
13. See Murphey 2005.
14. Pragmatism could be separated from a particular conception of empiricism. Although W. Sellars’
aim is to “correct” various aspects of pragmatism, one initially finds this argument in his father’s 1932
work. See Sellars 1932 (especially: 133-4).
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Further Considerations
Even if W. Sellars sides with critical realism over pragmatism, one could argue
there are additional, stronger connections that justify placing W. Sellars within the
pragmatist tradition. One could claim, for example, that W. Sellars’ early15 arguments
for the necessity of material rules of inference are indicative of pragmatism, but
this simply equivocates on the differing senses of ‘pragmatism’ I discussed earlier,
confusing classic pragmatism with a broad interest in pragmatics qua linguistic
practices.16 As early as 1949, one can find W. Sellars referencing linguistic practices and
material rules of inference as distinct from formal notions of inference and language,
but these points are not offered as a defense or endorsement of pragmatism, but as an
indictment of logical positivism.17 W. Sellars’ early emphasis on pragmatics turns on
a complicated debate between positivists and realists over interpretations of Rudolf
Carnap’s philosophy,18 but it does not make substantive contact with pragmatism.
Bernstein and Misak are two of the most recent philosopher to claim W. Sellars
as part of the pragmatist tradition. While admitting that W. Sellars inherited much of
his father’s philosophical commitments and attitudes, Misak claims that “there can
be no doubt that Sellars belongs to the pragmatist tradition” (Misak 2013: 223). Her
evidence for this is found in three main sources: W. Sellars’ reliance on supposedly
pragmatist notions (at least notions traced to pragmatist origins), his early discussion
of pragmatist accounts of language and behavior, and his later theory of truth. Although
I have no qualms with Misak’s claims about Sellars’ later views on truth per se, there
are strong reasons to doubt her characterization of W. Sellars’ early writings.
Misak is right to claim that W. Sellars uses the type/token distinction (starting
in his earliest publication), but it is hasty to read this as a direct influence from
Peirce to W. Sellars (Misak 2013: 218). When W. Sellars credits Peirce with the
type/token distinction, there is no further exploration of the connection between his
own philosophy and Peirce’s work, no discussion of pragmatism and its approach to
language, no adoption of explicitly pragmatist commitments, and no discussion of
Peirce’s own philosophy. Misak is right to point out this connection, but there is not
a substantive relationship to be found between W. Sellars’ employment of the type/
token distinction and any aspect of Peirce’s philosophy. Even when W. Sellars does
mention Peirce or Peirecian terminology, one could just as easily connect W. Sellars’
distinction between expressions types and tokens with Carnap’s distinction between
sign designs and sign events.
Insofar as we are looking for a specifically pragmatist antecedent for W. Sellars’
reasoning about pragmatic (as opposed to pragmatist) treatments of language, a more
proximate source could be Charles Morris’s early writings (Morris 1938; Morris
15. See Sellars 1953, and Sellars 1954.
16. This would be to ignore the influential role then-contemporary behaviorism plays in W. Sellars’
thought. In his autobiographical reflections it is clear that W. Sellars embraced the primacy of
pragmatics at the same time he developed his complicated relationship with various conceptions of
behaviorism (as most notably found in the work of B. F. Skinner, Kenneth Spence, and Edwin Tolman).
17. For a longer account of this point, see Olen 2016.
18. W. Sellars’ early interpretation of Carnap is discussed in Olen forthcoming.
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1946). Morris’s work, especially his later publications, represents a direct connection
between behavioristic treatments of language and norms, and the pragmatist tradition.
Unfortunately, W. Sellars explicitly rejects Morris’s framework as “too psychologistic”
when discussing the then-recent publication of Signs, Language, and Behavior with his
father (Sellars 1948). What helps usher W. Sellars’ early publications from a ‘formal’
conception of philosophy to one that embraces this kind of behavioral-pragmatic
language is more likely to be found in W. Sellars’ endorsement of behaviorism, not
pragmatism.19
There is support for the idea that W. Sellars belongs in the pragmatist tradition;
W. Sellars’ early praising of Dewey’s rejection of giveness, for example, might be
read as W. Sellars identifying rationalist alternatives to empiricism with pragmatism
(though, as we have seen, this is not the case). Crediting what he calls “the more
sophisticated forms of pragmatism,” W. Sellars claims that the linguistic rules that
characterize behavior must be decided pragmatically (Sellars 1949: 134). But it is
important to keep in mind that most of these observations are made in the context
of correcting what W. Sellars saw as an overly descriptivist or scientistic strand of
thinking in traditional pragmatism:
But if I do not accuse the pragmatist as being a descriptivist as a matter of principle,
I do contend that pragmatism has been characterized by a descriptivistic bias. Thus,
while it has defended the important insight that to reject descriptivism in the philosophy
of mathematics is not to embrace rationalism, it has committed itself to descriptivism
in other areas of philosophy (e.g., in its interpretation of truth and moral obligation)
with all the fervor of a Dutch boy defending the fertile lands of Naturalism against a
threatening rationalistic flood. Now it will be my contention in this paper that a sound
pragmatism must reject descriptivism in all areas of philosophy. (Sellars 1949: 118-9)
While there is some commonality between W. Sellars and some pragmatists, what I
have been arguing is that, historically speaking, thinking of W. Sellars as ‘essentially
pragmatist’ is too narrow of a reading to be historically accurate. There are, somewhat
clearly, shared sympathies and pragmatist themes that run through W. Sellars’
publications.
This kind of ‘corrective’ reading of pragmatism is also found in W. Sellars’ short
discussion of pragmatism in “Some Reflections on Language Games”:
Now I would argue that Pragmatism, with its stress on language (or the conceptual) as
an instrument, has had hold of a most important insight – an insight, however, which
the pragmatist has tended to misconceive as an analysis of ‘means’ and ‘is true.’ For it is
a category mistake (in Ryle’s useful terminology) to offer a definition of ‘S means p’ or
‘S is true’ in terms of the role of S as an instrument in problem solving behavior. On the
other hand, if the pragmatist’s claim is reformulated as the thesis that the language we
use has a much more intimate connection with conduct than we have yet suggested, and
that this connection is intrinsic to its structure as language, rather than a “use” to which
it “happens” to be put, then Pragmatism assumes its proper stature as a revolutionary
step in Western philosophy. (Sellars 1954/1963: 324; emphasis added)
19. See Olen 2016.
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Much like his discussion of pragmatism in 1949, these later passages are indicative of
W. Sellars’ corrective attitude towards pragmatism. While W. Sellars may have found
something valuable in the ideas embodied in some pragmatist commitments, the
‘classical’ formulation of these ideas – if they are to be useful for then-contemporary
philosophers – would need to be corrected in order to be useful.
Despite all of this, one might still think there is a pragmatic dimension to
W. Sellars’ philosophy. Those mainly interested in W. Sellars’ later work would have
no problem finding passages in Science and Metaphysics, for example, which rely
on the classical pragmatists (especially Peirce’s discussions of truth and inquiry).
Misak claims that W. Sellars adoption of a modified form of “truth as assertability” is
evidence of W. Sellars’ pragmatist leanings because he frames this position as one that
supports as “Peirceian dimension of the concept of truth” (Sellars 1967/1992: 115).
Misak takes to support the fact that, contra positivism, W. Sellars “makes the move
from traditional empiricism to full pragmatism or naturalism” (Misak 2013: 222-3).
Yet, as I have argued above, even these later claims could only be placed within the
pragmatist tradition if one ignores the realist streak in W. Sellars’ thought. W. Sellars is
clear that such considerations of warranted assertability should be understood within
a realist account of semantical rules (Sellars 1967/1992: 115). Although W. Sellars’
account of different “identities” between conceptual frameworks need not clash with
pragmatism per se (W. Sellars clearly thinks his later position is consistent with
Peirce’s conception of truth and inquiry), the realist commitment is not consistent
with Lewis and other pragmatists. While some of these passages could be read as
W. Sellars’ later turning towards a more pragmatist-oriented philosophy, any claims
of W. Sellars’ place in the pragmatist tradition need to be balanced with the realist and
positivist dimensions inherited from a variety of differing sources.
Bernstein’s placement of W. Sellars in the pragmatist tradition is a straightforwardly
thematic20 account of philosophy, one that eschews the importance of historical
connections between classic pragmatist and contemporary philosophers. Bernstein
claims, for example, that
When Rorty reads the later Wittgenstein, Quine, Sellars, and Davidson as furthering
the pragmatist agenda, or when Putnam raises the question “Was Wittgenstein a
Pragmatist?,” neither is suggesting that the achievements of these philosophers are the
result of direct influence of the classical pragmatists. […] My fundamental point is that
philosophers, starting from the most diverse orientations and without being directly
influenced by the classical pragmatists, have been articulating insights and developing
theses that are not only congenial with a pragmatic orientation but also refine its
philosophical import. (Bernstein 2010:14-5)
Even if, thematically speaking, Bernstein is correct about the irrelevancy of the
historical connection, it would make a difference when there are competing origin
20. I take it that Misak’s account straddles the fence between historical and thematic claims. Although
she frequently characterizes the connection between philosophers as based on the commonality of their
ideas, it seems clear that The American Pragmatists is meant to offer a historical, factual account of
philosophers who fall under the banner of pragmatism.
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stories for contemporary pragmatic themes (i.e., historical accounts matter if there
are competing, yet equally plausible, historical antecedents). If classical pragmatism
was the only plausible source for such ideas, despite the fact that a clear historical
connection could not be drawn between W. Sellars and the classic pragmatists, then
Bernstein’s emphasis on the adoption and refinement of pragmatic theses would be
an invaluable explanation. If the juxtaposition of critical realism with conceptual
pragmatism I presented above is correct, then there is at least one viable, if not more
historically plausible, source for W. Sellars’ views.21
While the thematically-based depiction of diverse philosophers converging on
themes anticipated by the classic pragmatists is compelling, such a placement is simply
not a historical one. Unless we are unnecessarily committed to a hardline historicist
approach to philosophy (i.e., one claiming that anything but a historically and
contextually-grounded account of philosophy is, at best, misleadingly anachronistic),
we need not think that a historically-grounded account is the only acceptable
characterization of philosophy. Yet, this kind of conceptual parsing only works if we
clearly demarcate historical from thematic characterizations of philosophy. In the
same breath that he is willing to claim no historical connection need exist between
classical pragmatists and contemporary philosophers, Bernstein also argues that
Rorty’s placement of contemporary analytic philosophers in conversation with the
classical pragmatists, for example, does much to challenge “the standard narrative of
the development of twentieth-century philosophy in America” (Bernstein 2010: 14).
But how is this not a straightforwardly historical claim? Bernstein’s characterization
of pragmatism simply cannot come from both directions. He is either offering a
historical account of pragmatism’s legacy, one that stretches unbroken from the 19th
century until today, or he is not. If not, then his thematic account of pragmatic ideas
cannot ‘correct’ or ‘challenge’ historical narratives because, quite frankly, there is no
reason to think thematic accounts are making or impacting historical claims. Such an
account could be understood as offering an interesting comparative story of differing
reactions to a common theme, but this is a far different claim than any historically
sensitive account of a given time period.
None of this entails that the pendulum should swing too far the other direction.
Surely it would be wrong to claim that pragmatism plays no influential role in
W. Sellars’ philosophical development, although I fail to see how such claims clarify
his philosophical allegiances unless they appear alongside a carefully articulated
historical context. Although there might be strong thematic reasons to group
W. Sellars’ philosophy (e.g., his social articulation of reason, his later adoption of
a form of warranted assertability, his rejection of giveness) within the pragmatist
tradition, this is a wholly distinct concern from any specifically historical connection
between W. Sellars and pragmatism. As I stated in the beginning of this paper, I do not
think that we need to deny the importance of thematic accounts, we just need to ensure
that such accounts are clearly separated from historical accounts.
21. This is not to suggest that critical realism and pragmatism are the only influences on W. Sellars’
rejection of giveness. For a seldom discussed example see Prichard 1938.
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Another reaction to recent attempts to “pragmatize” W. Sellars might be to point
out the underwhelming amount of literature on the role of new and critical realism
in early 20th century American philosophy. W. Sellars might seem like such a prime
candidate for placement within the pragmatist tradition precisely because discussion
of new and critical realism has been almost completely absent since the early 1930s.22
The issue is not that, conceptually speaking, realism and pragmatism are necessarily
incompatible. The problem is that R. W. Sellars and W. Sellars (at least the early
W. Sellars) understood pragmatism and realism as incompatible paths to naturalism.
W. Sellars was a notorious system-builder, more than willing to appropriate what he
saw as the correct aspects of various, sometimes competing philosophical traditions.
There are numerous interpretations one might give of W. Sellars as rationalist,
empiricist, positivist, pragmatist, or realist. None of them, if taken singularly, would
do justice to the systematic and multi-dimensional character of W. Sellars’ thought.
References
Bernstein R., (2010), The Pragmatic Turn, Cambridge, Polity Press.
Harlow V., (1931), A Bibliography and Genetic Study of American Realism, Oklahoma
City, Harlow Publishing Company.
Kukla R. & M. Lance, (2009), ‘Yo!’ and ‘Lo!’ The Pragmatic Topography of the
Space of Reasons, Cambridge, Harvard University Press.
Kuklick B., (2001), A History of Philosophy in America: 1720-2000, Oxford, Oxford
University Press.
Lewis C. I., (1929), Mind and the World Order: Outline of a Theory of Knowledge,
New York, Dover Publications.
— (1946), An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, La Salle, Open Court Press.
— (1955), “Realism or phenomenalism?,” in The Collected Papers of Clarence Irving
Lewis, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1970.
Misak C., (2013), The American Pragmatists, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Morris C., (1938), Foundations of the Theory of Signs, Chicago, University of
Chicago Press.
22. Harlow 1931 is an oddly prophetic, but short, work on American realism. Harlow observes that
by 1930 the influence and interest in American realism (of both the ‘real’ and ‘critical’ variety) had
largely vanished.
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Morris C., (1946), Signs, Language, and Behavior, New York, Prentice-Hall Inc.
Murphey M., (2005), C. I. Lewis: The Last Great Pragmatist, Albany, SUNY Press.
Olen P., (2016), Wilfrid Sellars and the Foundations of Normativity, London, Palgrave
Macmillan.
— (forthcoming), “A Forgotten Strand of Reception History: Understanding Pure
Semantics,” Synthese.
Prichard H. A., (1938), “The Sense-datum Fallacy,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society (Supplementary Volume) 17, 1-18.
Sachs C., (2014), Intentionality and the Myths of the Given: Between Pragmatism and
Phenomenology, London, Pickering and Chatto.
Sellars R. W., (1932), The Philosophy of Physical Realism, New York, The Macmillan
Company.
— (1968), “In Defense of Metaphysical Veracity,” in P. A. Schilpp, ed., The
Philosophy of C. I. Lewis, La Salle, Open Court Press.
Sellars W., (1948), 1948 Letter to Roy Wood Sellars. Wilfrid S. Sellars Papers,
1899-1990, ASP.1991.01, Archives of Scientific Philosophy, Special Collections
Department, University of Pittsburgh.
— (1949/2005), “Language, Rules and Behavior,” in J. Sicha, ed., Pure Pragmatics
and Possible Worlds: The Early Essays of Wilfrid Sellars, Atascadero, Ridgeview
Publishing Company.
— (1953/1963), “Is there a Synthetic A Priori?,” Science, Perception, and Reality,
Atascadero, Ridgeview Publishing Company.
— (1954), “Physical Realism,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 15, 1332.
— (1954/1963), “Some Reflections on Language Games,” Science, Perception, and
Reality, Atascadero, Ridgeview Publishing Company.
— (1956/2000), “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind,” in W. deVries & T. Triplett,
eds., Knowledge, Mind, and the Given: Reading Wilfrid Sellars’ “Empiricism and
the Philosophy of Mind,” Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing Company.
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Sellars W., (1967/1992), Science and Metaphysics: Variations on Kantian Themes,
Atascadero, Ridgeview Publishing Company.
— (1979), Naturalism and Ontology, Reseda, Ridgeview Publishing Company.
Shusterman R., (1997), Practicing Philosophy: Pragmatism and the Philosophical
Life, New York, Routledge.
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COPYRIGHT © 2009 ASSOCIAZIONE PRAGMA
Paul Giladi*
A Critique of Rorty’s Conception of Pragmatism
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to argue that Richard Rorty’s claim that pragmatism
is opposed to all varieties of metaphysics is fundamentally mistaken. After
detailing pragmatist reasons for thinking Rorty’s proposal is justified, I argue that
there are more compelling pragmatist reasons to think Rorty’s metaphilosophical
interpretation of pragmatism is rather problematic: firstly, Rorty has a narrow
understanding of ‘metaphysics’ and he does not take into account Peirce’s argument
that it is impossible to eliminate metaphysical concepts from ordinary language and
our scientific practices; secondly, Rorty’s Sellarsian philosophical anthropology and
his proto-Brandomian theory of the constitution of norms are in fact instances of
metaphysical positions. I conclude the paper by claiming that given that pragmatism
is in fact supportive of a specific variety of metaphysics, the relationship between
idealism and pragmatism ought to be seen as involving more convergence rather
than great contestation.1
Rorty, Pragmatism, and Metaphysics
Rorty understands ‘metaphysics’ as “a permanent neutral matrix for inquiry.”2
Given the kind of language Rorty uses to characterise metaphysics,3 I think it would
not be unreasonable to suppose he conceives of ‘metaphysics’ in terms of Hilary
Putnam’s notion of ‘metaphysical realism.’ According to metaphysical realism, “the
world consists of some fixed totality of mind-independent objects. There is exactly one
true and complete description of ‘the way the world is.’ Truth involves some sort of
correspondence relation between words or thought-signs and external things and sets of
things.”4 The Weltanschauung of the metaphysical realist/metaphysician is expressed
by Rorty in the following manner: “For our notion of the world – it will be said – is
not a notion of unquestioned beliefs, or unquestionable beliefs, or ideally coherent
beliefs, but rather of a hard, unyielding, rigid être-en-soi which stands aloof, sublimely
indifferent to the attentions we lavish upon it.”5 Such a way of portraying a genus
of inquiry principally concerned with establishing a ‘God’s-eye-view’ is summed up
by Rorty in a later work: “I use ‘metaphysics’ as the name of the belief in something
non-human which justifies our deep attachments.”6 By presenting metaphysics as
comprising ‘non-human’ dimensions, where what is ‘non-human’ appears to refer to
something which transcends the locus of social and cultural practice, Rorty regards
metaphysics as the great nemesis of pragmatism – as he (in)famously writes, “[t]he
pragmatist … does not think of himself as any kind of metaphysician.”7
* University of Sheffield [[email protected]].
1. I would like to thank Bob Stern and the two anonymous referees for their invaluable feedback on
this essay.
2. Rorty (1982: 80).
3. I take my lead from Adrian Moore’s definition of metaphysics: “Metaphysics is the most general
attempt to make sense of things” (A. W. Moore 2012: 1).
4. Putnam (1981: 49).
5. Rorty (1982: 13).
6. Rorty (2001: 89).
7. Rorty (1982: xxviii).
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According to Rorty, pragmatism is the apotheosis of the secular age that runs through
Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, and Dewey, where the vocabulary of foundationalism
and essentialism had been debunked in favour of a fundamentally different mode
of discourse and value-system, where the exigencies of our socio-political and
cultural practices are regarded as the proper grounds and indications of meaning and
normativity. Crucially, for Rorty, the central aspect of the apparent paradigm shift
from the modern era to the ‘postmodern’ era is the gradual abandonment of traditional
categorial/onto-theological dualisms, such as essence/accident, appearance/reality,
freedom/nature, mind/body, etc.8 Unlike Hegel, who argues that these dualisms can be
rejected on the basis that those very dualisms are in fact are capable of being sublated
in favour of a dialectical conceptual framework, Rorty thinks that the problem with
these binary categories of thought is how they exhibit an allegedly pathological
cognitive propensity for regarding normative constraints and the ultimate grounds for
the justification of our beliefs as being beyond our practices.9 As Carl Sachs writes,
“[m]etaphysics, thus understood, consists of the subordination of one’s descriptions
of the world – one’s ‘vocabularies,’ in Rortyan terms – to something beyond all of our
normative social practices – something beyond us, to which we are answerable, and
which anchors our descriptions of the world, society, and self in something beyond
those descriptions.”10 The basic notion of value, according to Rorty, thus undergoes
radical critique in the secular age, because we shift from seeing norms as extrahuman dictates to seeing norms as, to use Robert Brandom’s terminology, “social
achievements,”11 in that what is deemed appropriate or inappropriate in a society is
not determined by any completely mind-independent stuff ‘out there.’ Rather, norms
are established by the intersubjective and rational practices between rational agents
in a society. In other words, norms get their normative purchase by virtue of being
assented to and acknowledged by a community of rational agents. Crucially, though,
the practice of assenting to and acknowledging normative constraints and normative
entitlements does not involve a crude constructivism or crude anti-realism. What this
particular form of social engagement involves is that “the precise content of those
implicit norms is determined through a ‘process of negotiation’ involving ourselves
and those who attribute norms to us.”12 By virtue of being a process of negotiation
as opposed to a non-negotiated process, what is deemed appropriate or inappropriate
is never fixed but always subject to “further assessment, challenge, defence, and
correction.”13
In an obvious way, Rorty’s criticism of metaphysics is different to Kantian and
Positivist critiques of the science of being-qua-being: unlike the Kantian critique of
the metaphysical tradition, Rorty does not aim to expose the amphibolies, paralogisms,
antinomies, fallacies of subreption and hypostatisation, and transcendental illusion
which are symptomatic of metaphysics; unlike the Logical Empiricist critique of the
8. Rorty (2002: 391).
9. See James (2000: 28).
10. Sachs (2013: 700).
11. Brandom (2002: 216).
12. Houlgate (2007: 139).
13. Brandom (1994: 647).
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metaphysical tradition, Rorty does not appeal to any form of verificationist principle,
to conclude that metaphysics is meaningless. Rather, Rorty appears to motivate his
critique of inquiry into the basic structure of the world on two grounds, grounds which
he takes to be pragmatist: (i) methodological-explanatory; and (ii) secular humanist.
With regard to (i), Rorty can appeal to the criticisms of Enlightenment rationalism
made by William James:
Rationalism in general thinks it gets the fullness of truth by turning away from sensation
to conception, conception obviously giving the more universal and immutable picture.
(James 1996: 105)
[The abstract philosophical universe is] far less an account of this actual world than a
clear addition built upon it, a classic sanctuary in which the rationalist fancy may take
refuge from the intolerably confused and gothic character which mere facts present. It
is no explanation of our concrete universe, it is another thing altogether, a substitute for
it, a remedy, a way of escape. (James 2000: 15)
This way of rejecting rationalism14 is also expressed in Schiller’s work15 where – as was
the fashion at the beginning of the pragmatist school – Hegelian idealism is regarded
as its most notorious exponent. Philosophical inquiry, for James and Schiller, must
not be conceived of in the way that rationalism characterised philosophical inquiry.
While the project of ‘pure inquiry’16 aimed to provide substantive conceptions of truth
and knowledge by avoiding corporeality and sociality, thereby making metaphysics
wholly abstract, James and Schiller conceived of pragmatism as the philosophical
school of thought to provide substantive conceptions of truth and knowledge by
embedding all human capacities in the world. As James wrote, the most pressing
problem with rationalism is that it “seems too buttoned-up and white-chokered and
clean-shaven a thing to speak for the vast slow-breathing unconscious Kosmos with
its dread abysses and its unknown tides” (James 2003: 146). One can, therefore, see
why Rorty partly bases his anti-representationalism, specifically his rejection of a
view of the mind-world relation in terms of our cognitive capacities mirroring a
“hard, unyielding, rigid être-en-soi which stands aloof, sublimely indifferent to the
attentions we lavish upon it,” on James’s vocal opposition to Cartesianism.17 For
example, there is excellent reason to think James here would enthusiastically support
Rorty:
14. There is also good reason to suppose James’s and F. C. S. Schiller’s explicit hostility to Hegel may
in fact be rather misplaced: had James and Schiller (and Peirce to some extent) had really known
Hegel, rather than understood Hegel via the distorted view of him presented by F. E. Abbot, Royce and
the British Idealists, James and Schiller (and Peirce to some extent) may have had a far more positive
attitude to Hegel. For all of James’s and Schiller’s caustic criticisms of Hegel as being guilty of abstract
metaphysical speculation, their respective critiques of abstract metaphysics seems to echo Hegel’s
famous Inverted World hypothesis, which is a landmark criticism of transcendent metaphysics. See
Stern 2009 for further on Hegel’s reception by Peirce and James.
15. See Schiller (1910: 160), and Schiller (1903: 98-9).
16. In writing ‘pure inquiry,’ I am using Bernard Williams’s characterisation of the Cartesian
philosophical project.
17. Rorty himself claims that his own philosophical commitments “tend to centre around James’s
version […] of the pragmatic theory of truth” (Rorty 1995: 71).
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A pragmatist turns his back resolutely and once for all upon a lot of inveterate habits
dear to professional philosopher. He turns away from abstraction and insufficiency,
from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems,
and pretended absolutes and origins. He turns towards concreteness and adequacy,
towards facts, towards action and towards power. (James 2000: 27)
The picture of empirical reality as presented by Cartesianism is of a realm of separate
and inert objects, where such objects are governed by strict mechanical laws and
constitute a view of nature as being rather “refined,”18 to use a Jamesian turn-ofphrase. Such a framework is opposed to pragmatism, which does not see the intentional
content of our experience as a pastiche of fragmented objects, but rather views our
environment as being phenomenologically robust and experientially vibrant. As James
writes, “[b]ut I ask you in all seriousness to look abroad on this colossal universe
of concrete facts, on their awful bewilderments, their surprises and cruelties, on the
wildness which they show, and then to tell me whether ‘refined’ is the one inevitable
descriptive adjective that springs to your lips” (James 2000: 15). For pragmatism, the
world of experience, under the Cartesian affection for abstract landscapes, is dead and
static, not alive and dynamic.19 More basically, the allure of the pragmatist critique of
the early modern era, to use an expression from Adrian Moore, is that pragmatism is
better able to make sense of things, where it is exactly the practice of sense-making that
Rorty thinks metaphysics and onto-theological categorial systems fail to successfully
perform in any way at all.
With regard to (ii), Rorty’s secular humanist critique of metaphysics, I previously
claimed that according to Rorty, the basic notion of value undergoes radical humanist
critique in the secular age, because we shift from seeing norms as extra-human dictates
to seeing norms as social achievements.20 Such a shift amounted to the effective
abandonment of the metaphysical tradition, insofar as what was symptomatic of
metaphysics was its attempt to ground normativity in matters beyond human sociocultural practice. As Rorty writes:
I wish, just as Conway suggests, ‘to reject only that pathological quest for transcendent
verities and ahistorical essences’ which Plato initiated and Nietzsche mocked. […]
But surely we have already had enough experience with attempts to use the weapons
of metaphysics against metaphysics? I think of British empiricism, positivism,
contemporary Australian philosophical physicalism, and the like, as such attempts. All
they accomplished was to replace one non-human source of justification (the Will of
God, the Idea of the Good) with another (the Intrinsic Nature of Physical Reality).
(Rorty 2001: 90-1)
18. See James (2000: 15).
19. The lack of phenomenological robustness is not the only problem with the Cartesian
representationalist tradition, according to Jamesian pragmatism. For James, another serious failing
of rationalism and in fact the early modern era in general – where only Reid and Berkeley appear to
radically depart from their contemporaries – is the preference for advocating indirect/representational
realist theories of perception. As James writes, “‘Representative’ theories of perception […] violate the
reader’s sense of life, which knows no intervening mental image but seems to see the room and the
book immediately just as they physically exist” (James 2003: 6).
20. Brandom (2002: 216).
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While the rise of secular humanist axiology principally begins with Nietzsche, Rorty
enlists James a key ally in his cultural war against metaphysics and its alleged antihumanism.21 For that matter, there appears to be compelling reason to think Rorty is
justified to appeal to James:
You see how naturally one comes to the humanistic principle: you can’t weed out the
human contribution. Our nouns and adjectives are all humanised heirlooms, and in
the theories we build them into, the inner order and arrangement is wholly dictated by
human considerations. (James 2000: 111-2)22
Although Rorty would admonish James for relying on the concept of
‘experience,’23 there is still much in this passage for Rorty to find rather alluring:
namely, what James writes in terms of insisting on the ubiquity of intersubjective and
socio-historical inquiry seems to anticipate his own vision of a “post-Philosophical
culture,”24 “in which there are no appeals to authority of any kind, including appeals
to truth and rationality.”25 Given how ordinary language, and the vocabulary and
norms of both the Naturwissenschaften as well as the Geisteswissenschaften are
saturated by human practice, this signifies, for Rorty, that we have not only broken
free from a conception of human mindedness as the mirror of nature, but also that
we have – to use Nietzsche’s term – emerged from the “shadows of God.”26 In other
words, according to Rorty, the great metaphilosophical-cultural consequence of
pragmatism and its essential humanist commitments is the resulting dismissal of the
remaining pillars of representationalism and rationalism, a metaphysical conception
of truth and a metaphysical conception of objectivity. As he writes, “[truth is] not
the sort of thing one should expect to have an interesting philosophical theory
about”;27 “[and we ought to] substitute the idea of ‘unforced agreement’ for that of
‘objectivity’.”28 In place of metaphysical notions of truth and objectivity, Rorty, who
regards himself as the philosophic heir of James and Dewey, proposes a nuanced
epistemic theory of truth, one which is not identifiable with a crude idealised
warranted assertibility:
For pragmatists, the desire for objectivity is not to escape the limits of one’s community,
but simply the desire for as much intersubjective agreement as possible, the desire to
extend the reference of ‘us’ as far as we can. (Rorty 1991: 23)
21. As Cheryl Misak writes on the James-Rorty relationship, “it is tempting to think of [Rorty] as
contemporary pragmatism’s William James” (Misak 2013: 225).
22. See also (James 2003: 100-1).
23. “Forget, for the moment, about the external world, as well as about that dubious interface between
self and world called ‘perceptual experience’” (Rorty 1991: 93).
24. Rorty (1982: xlii).
25. Misak (2013: 230).
26. “But when will we be done with our caution and care? When will all these shadows of god no
longer darken us? When will we have completely de-deified nature? When may we begin to naturalise
humanity with a pure, newly discovered, newly redeemed nature?” (Nietzsche 2001: 109).
27. Rorty (1982: xiii).
28. Rorty (1991: 36).
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Though Rorty has been roundly criticised for apparently advocating epistemic
relativism and showing contempt for any meaningful conception of truth,29 what he
writes here suggests something that in fact places him far closer to Peirce than Rorty
officially countenances: the essence of pragmatism is to clarify our philosophical
ideas by illustrating and reflecting on their role in our cognitive practices; and to be
in a position where we can genuinely clarify our ideas in this specific way requires
us to “expand the frontiers of inquiry.”30 Crucially, though, we expand the frontiers
of inquiry by continuously playing the game of giving and asking for reasons, which
widens the ‘conversations’31 between rational enquirers thereby enabling ideas to
undergo “further assessment, challenge, defence, and correction.”32
So far, I have suggested some pragmatist reasons to think Rorty’s claim that
pragmatism is opposed to metaphysics is justified. However, in what follows, I shall
argue that there are more compelling reasons to think Rorty’s metaphilosophical
characterisation of pragmatism is rather problematic on pragmatic grounds.
Pragmatism and Metaphysics
For all of Rorty’s confidence in pragmatism eo ipso being dismissive of
metaphysics, Peirce, who is arguably the founder of the pragmatist movement, argues
for the indispensability of metaphysics:
Find a scientific man who proposes to get along without any metaphysics – not by
any means every man who holds the ordinary reasonings of metaphysicians to scorn
– and you have found one whose doctrines are thoroughly vitiated by the crude and
uncriticised metaphysics with which they are packed. We must philosophise, said the
great naturalist Aristotle – if only to avoid philosophising. (CP: 1.129)
Peirce argues that not only is it impossible to avoid metaphysics, but also that
to reject metaphysics is to do metaphysics. It is not just that ordinary language
is packed with metaphysical concepts,33 but even those conservative naturalist
attitudes such as positivism and eliminativist varieties of nominalism also contain
metaphysical commitments. So, for all of the positivists’ and eliminativists’
insistence that they have successfully purged inquiry of metaphysics “in the spirit
of Newton’s ‘hypotheses non fingo’,”34 they are committed in some way to the very
enterprise that they seek to reject. There is therefore something self-undermining
about anti-metaphysics, which shows metaphysics to be indispensable – just as there
is something self-undermining about denying the Principle of Non-Contradiction,
insofar as to do so itself involves employing the principle. To quote David Oderberg,
29. See, for example, Haack 1995.
30. Rorty (2000: 60).
31. What is interesting to note here is how Dewey takes pragmatism’s commitment to expanding the
frontiers of inquiry and foster more and more intersubjectivity to express its essential link to democracy.
Rorty, however, does not think there is a link between pragmatism and democracy.
32. Brandom (1994: 647).
33. See also (CP: 1.229) and (CP: 7.579).
34. Stern (2009: 4).
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who would agree with Peirce on this subject:
Natural language is permeated and saturated by metaphysics, and has been so ever since
philosophy began with the pre-Socratics. […] The problem is in thinking that there is a vantage
point from which we can espy language in its ‘ordinary,’ pre-metaphysical state. There is no
such vantage point because there is no such language to be observed in the first place.35
The inevitability of metaphysics, therefore, consists in the ubiquity of metaphysical
concepts in language.36 A similar claim is made by Jonathan Lowe, who writes: “[i]n
my view, all other forms of inquiry rest upon metaphysical presuppositions – thus
making metaphysics unavoidable – so that we should at least endeavour to do
metaphysics with our eyes open, rather than allowing it to exercise its influence upon
us at the level of uncritical assumption.”37
However, in response to this argument from Peirce, Rorty may claim that
confidence in interpreting Peirce as a defender of metaphysics is rather premature, as
the following passage appears to indicate:
It will serve to show that almost every proposition of ontological metaphysics is either
meaningless gibberish […] or else is downright absurd; so that all such rubbish being
swept away, what will remain of philosophy will be a series of problems capable of
investigation by the observational methods of the true sciences. (CP: 5.423)
The apparent proto-positivism and scientism of Peirce’s position also appears in other
areas of his philosophical writings:38
Everybody uses the scientific method about a great many things, and only ceases to
use it when he does not know how to apply it. Experience of the method has not led
me to doubt it, but, on the contrary, scientific investigation has had the most wonderful
triumphs in the way of settling opinion. (EP: 1.121)
Both the content and tone of these passages from Peirce can be reasonably taken
as a staunch defence of scientistic naturalism, a defence which would be especially
welcome in certain corners of the Anglo-American naturalist community. For
example, Michael Shermer, Peter Atkins, and Alex Rosenberg are three notable
thinkers who adopt scientism with pride. To quote Shermer on this point: “[s]cientism
is a scientific worldview that encompasses natural explanations for all phenomena,
eschews supernatural explanations, and embraces empiricism and reason as the
twin pillars of a philosophy of life suitable for an Age of Science.”39 Compare this
with Atkins’s claim that “science, with its currently successful pursuit of universal
competency […] should be acknowledged king.”40 And compare these defences of
scientism with Rosenberg’s proposal that “we’ll call the worldview that all us atheists
35. Oderberg (2007: 43).
36. See Ellis 2002 and Lowe 2006 for an excellent critique of anti-metaphysics.
37. Lowe (1998: v).
38. See also: “[P]hilosophy is either a science or it is balderdash” (CP: 5.13).
39. Shermer (2002: 35).
40. Atkins (1995: 132).
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[…] share ‘scientism.’ This is the conviction that the methods of science are the only
reliable ways to secure knowledge of anything; that science’s description of the world
is correct in its fundamentals; and that when ‘complete,’ what science tells us will not
be surprisingly different from what it tells us today.”41 In other words, under such an
account, there seems to be compelling reason to admit that “scientific inquiry sets the
standards for the acceptability of beliefs”:42 not only does the method of scientific
investigation provide a respectable and rigorous standard for the justification of beliefs,
the method of scientific investigation and only the method of scientific investigation
sets the criteria for acceptability simpliciter. As Paul Boghossian writes, “[w]e take
science to be the only good way to arrive at reasonable beliefs about what is true, at
least in the realm of the purely factual. Hence, we defer to science.”43
Given this, it would appear Rorty’s counter-argument against appealing to Peirce
for a pragmatist defence of metaphysics sets up the following problem: Peirce’s
position is incoherent,44 because he is committed to both the indispensability of
metaphysics and scientistic naturalism, which sets itself against it.45
However, in response to this Rortyan reading of Peirce, I propose that Rorty has a
narrow understanding of the sense of metaphysics Peirce believes is indispensable to
inquiry, to the extent that he fails to draw an important distinction between transcendent
metaphysics and immanent metaphysics: when explicating Rorty’s argument against
metaphysics, one could see that Rorty takes ‘metaphysics’ and ‘theology’ to be
equivalent, since they are both typified by “the temptation to look for an escape from
time and chance” (Rorty 1989: xiii). As Sachs writes, “Rorty frames his disdain for
metaphysics as a radicalisation of Enlightenment disdain for theology, and for much
the same reasons: because it represents a stage of our cultural evolution that we need
to fully get over, and because it is a threat to liberal democratic institutions.”46 The
question, though, is whether Rorty is justified in thinking ‘metaphysics’ and ‘theology’
are equivalent. I contend that Rorty is not justified in making such equivalence, and
that Hegel and Peirce arguably provide the strongest arguments to undermine his
understanding of metaphysics.
Central to Hegelian metaphysics is the aim to reject nominalism about
universals.47 For Hegel, nominalism is inconsistent with the commitments of natural
science; and realism about universals is necessarily consistent with the commitments
of natural science. Hegel’s arguments for those two claims are to be found in the
41. Rosenberg (2011: 6-7).
42. Kitcher (2008: 11).
43. Boghossian (2006: 4).
44. As Thomas Goudge writes, “Peirce’s ideas fall naturally into two broad groups whose opposite
character is a reflection of a deep conflict in his thinking […] the result of his conflicting commitment
to both naturalism and transcendentalism” (Goudge 1950: xx).
45. See the following quote by Rorty: “That mixture of logic-worship, erudition, and romance was
reminiscent of Peirce, with whose writings I had spent a lot of time, hoping to discover the non-existent
secret of his non-existent ‘system’ […] Sellars and Peirce are alike in the diversity and richness of
their talents, as well as in the cryptic style in which they wrote. But Sellars, unlike Peirce, preached a
coherent set of doctrines.” (Rorty 2010: 8).
46. Sachs (2013: 684).
47. See Stern 2008.
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Philosophy of Nature, specifically in those sections of the work which discuss the
content and methodology of natural science, what Hegel frequently calls ‘empirical
physics’ (empirische Physik): for Hegel, natural science is empirical, in that it begins
with the observation of phenomena in nature.48 However, science is not simply an
observational discipline in its entirety, as the observations of scientists lead scientists
to “identify and describe laws and universal kinds within the multitude of observable
natural events and entities.”49 As Hegel himself writes, “[s]cience is a theoretical
and thinking consideration of nature […] [which] aims at comprehending that which
is universal in nature […] forces, laws, genera” (Hegel 1970 I: 196-7). Therefore,
according to Hegel, if an inquiry into the natural world fails to establish commitments
to universals and laws of nature, which have genuine nomological properties, then that
inquiry cannot be a legitimately scientific inquiry. The essence of Hegel’s argument
here appears to be shared in Peirce’s argument that nominalism is inconsistent with
the practices of science:50 Peirce claims that the nominalist idea of there being no
nomological phenomena is incapable of explaining why events/things/processes occur
in such a way that is formulated as following a law of nature – i.e. the paraphrasing of
propositions committed to non-Humean laws of nature is not something that coheres
with how science works.51
Above all, what plays a central role in Hegel’s criticisms of nominalism and
eliminativist attitudes to metaphysics tout court is his ingenious explanation of the
significance of metaphysical inquiry in our lives:
It is true that Newton expressly warned physics to beware of metaphysics; but, to his
honour, let it be said that he did not conduct himself in accordance with this warning
at all. Only the animals are true blue physicists by this standard, since they do not
think: whereas humans, in contrast, are thinking beings, and born metaphysicians. All
that matters here is whether the metaphysics that is employed is of the right kind: and
specifically whether […] we hold on to one-sided thought-determinations fixed by the
understanding, so that they form the basis of our theoretical and of our practical action.
(Hegel 1991: §98Z, 156)
What we find here is Hegel’s dismissal of the question concerning whether metaphysics
tout court is possible, and his insistence on asking the ‘real’ metametaphysical question,
‘What kind of metaphysics is the right kind of metaphysics?’ The new metametaphysical
challenge posed by Hegel amounts to a litmus test for any metaphysical system to
48. Cf. Hegel (1970 I: 193).
49. Stone (2004: 2-3).
50. Peirce’s Hegelianism is in need of qualification: occasionally, Peirce appears to be greatly indebted
to Hegel, whereas he also sometimes appears extremely dismissive of him. See (CP: 6.293-5) for an
example of Peirce’s fondness and contempt for absolute idealism. See Fisch 1974 and Stern 2009 for
Peirce’s complex relationship with Hegel.
51. Cf. 5.210. He also claims that nominalism’s rejection of universals and laws of nature make it “antiscientific in essence” (2.166). Peirce’s many arguments that nominalism is anti-scientific are, in fact,
Hegelian arguments: however, Peirce’s claims to this effect have often been better received and viewed
more seriously than Hegel’s, perhaps because the former’s relation to and understanding of empirical
science has generally been taken to be more credible than Hegel’s. See Stern 2009 for an excellent
discussion of Hegel and Peirce’s category of thirdness. See Forster 2011 for an excellent discussion of
Peirce’s arguments against nominalism.
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not merely be theoretically satisfying but also practically significant in a specific
manner. The specific sense of practical significance I have in mind concerns a broadly
perfectionist notion that our general understanding of how all things hang together,
to use a Sellarsian turn of phrase,52 enables us to achieve at homeness in the world. In
other words, the kind of metaphysics we are properly after is going to be sufficiently
general/broad (hence not ‘one-sided’), and one which is a metaphysics of reason/
speculative reflection (hence not ‘rigidly fixed by understanding’). The distinction,
therefore, between reason (Vernunft) and understanding (Verstand) is going to play a
significant role in the development of the right kind of metaphysics. For Hegel, the
principal advantage of drawing this distinction between reason and understanding is
that we can be in a position to not be wrapped up in the various dualisms which are
the inevitable consequence of reflecting only from the perspective of understanding,
i.e. purely analytical forms of reflection.53 What reason provides consciousness with
is the means to avoid the pitfalls of dualisms and the problems of analysis by thinking
dialectically,54 since reason is a “form of holistic explanation, which shows how all
finite things are parts of a wider whole.”55 A metaphysics which does not draw this
distinction or one which conflates reason with understanding will therefore not be
the right kind of metaphysics. This is because failing to draw the distinction between
reason and understanding or conflating reason with understanding results in a onesided conception of thought.
The question we now need to ask is which metaphysical tradition, if any, satisfies
Hegel’s criteria for the right kind of metaphysics. Of course, a proper answer to
such a question is effectively the task of a monograph. However, for the purposes
of this paper, I would like to very briefly discuss two metaphysical theses. The first
concerns the general metaphysical commitments of ancient Greek philosophy. As
Hegel writes:
A philosophy which ascribed veritable, ultimate, absolute being to finite existences as
such, would not deserve the name of philosophy; the principles of ancient or modern
philosophies, water, or matter, or atoms are thoughts, universals, ideal entities, not things
as they immediately present themselves to us, that is, in their sensuous individuality.
(Hegel 1969: 154-5)
For Hegel, what is attractive about ancient philosophy is its identification of thought
with being – its general commitment to the fundamentally intelligible nature of
reality. However, the basic deficiency with ancient metaphysics, one which is also
exemplified by the Leibniz-Wolffian tradition, is its commitment to transcendent
entities and relations.56 So, for all of the attractive features of ancient metaphysics
52. W. Sellars (1963: 35).
53. See Hegel (1975 I: 99-100).
54. See Hegel (1991: §164Z, 240). For further discussion of this subject, see Stern 2007 and Giladi
2014.
55. F. C. Beiser (2005: 165).
56. Aristotle would seem to be an awkward metaphysician to deal with, given his commitment to a
form of objective idealism – cf. Lear 1988 and Stern 2008 – and also to some transcendent notions,
such as an immaterial divine intellect.
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– its commitments to universals and an intelligible structure of reality – it falls short
of being the right kind of metaphysics, due to its failure in its exact metaphysical
conceptions of the relevant metaphysical phenomena, such as universals. Given this,
one may be inclined to suppose that the right kind of metaphysics we are after is going
to be provided by immanent metaphysical traditions, such as Spinozism. However,
whilst this metaphysical tradition does have an advantage in terms of its broad
naturalist commitments, Hegel thinks that such a position is still not the right kind of
metaphysics. This is because the philosophical methodology that besets Spinozism,
the modo geometrico, is not speculative enough,57 and that Spinozism ends up with a
monism with no room for individuals.58
Both ancient metaphysics and some species of immanent metaphysics have
some attractive features for Hegel. To use Moore’s expression, both traditions
make concerted efforts to make sense of things. However, it must equally be said
that due to the various respective failures of both metaphysical traditions, they are
both ultimately not able to properly make sense of things. Sense-making, at least in
the way I am interpreting Moore’s definition of metaphysics, for Hegelians, would
require a commitment to a form of naturalism that is both speculative and genuinely
immanentist: neither a bifurcation of reality into two ontologically separate realms
nor any attempt to reduce some phenomena to basic naturalistic components will do
the relevant philosophical work to correctly understand the world we inhabit. What
this speculative naturalism aims to accomplish, in its efforts to make sense of things,
is to enable us to see that “[t]he empirical is not only mere observing, hearing, feeling,
perceiving particulars, but it also essentially consists in finding species, universals
and laws.”59
Like Hegel, Peirce is also focused on establishing the right kind of metaphysics.
Contra Rorty, when Peirce writes
[i]t will serve to show that almost every proposition of ontological metaphysics is either
meaningless gibberish […] or else is downright absurd; so that all such rubbish being
swept away, what will remain of philosophy will be a series of problems capable of
investigation by the observational methods of the true sciences. (CP: 5.423)
Peirce is not claiming that metaphysics tout court be abandoned and consigned
to the flames; rather we should understand Peirce as rejecting a specific genus of
metaphysical inquiry, namely traditional onto-categorial metaphysics. In place of
traditional categorial ontology, Peirce aims to establish a new metaphysics. I think
there is excellent evidence for this when we apply the classic formulation of the
Pragmatic Maxim60 to concepts such as ‘explanation’: Peirce aims to clarify the
concept of explanation by using all three categories – firstness, secondness, and
thirdness. By establishing this holistic approach to explanation, I take Peirce to argue
that our explanans of the explanandum illustrates how each specific determination is
57. Hegel (1977b: 105), and Hegel (1977a: §48).
58. See (Hegel 1995: 258).
59. (Hegel 1995: 176).
60. See (CP: 5.402).
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understood in relation to other determinations. Not only that, though, the way in which
each determination is fundamentally interrelated with other determinations illustrates
how experience reveals to us an ontologically complex and intelligibly structured
order of things, and this is something to which natural scientific investigation is
also committed. Understood in this way, I think there is good reason to establish
a powerful philosophical link between Hegelian and Peircean metaphysics: both
Hegel and Peirce seem to share the project of providing “a systematic critique and
overcoming of traditional ontological (categorial) thought in service of an alternative,
revisionary metaphysics.”61 Crucially, what this shows is that Rorty did not see the
important difference between the kind of metaphysical project that Hegel and Peirce
engender and the kind of metaphysical project he wishes to reject, and that Rorty also
mischaracterised Peirce as incoherent.
My pragmatist criticism of Rorty thus far has focused on his narrow conception of
metaphysics and his failure to deal with Peirce’s Indispensability Argument. However,
I think there is an additional pragmatist problem with his metaphilosophical position
that pragmatism is opposed to metaphysics tout court: Rorty’s Sellarsian philosophical
anthropology and his proto-Brandomian theory of the constitution of norms are in fact
instances of metaphysical positions.
Like Sellars, Rorty is committed to the ‘manifest image of man,’ namely a
conception of human beings as normative, self-reflecting discursive agents. To
quote Putnam on this issue, “[l]et us recognise that one of our fundamental selfconceptualisations, one of our fundamental ‘self-descriptions,’ in Rorty’s phrase,
is that we are thinkers.”62 By conceiving of ourselves qua the manifest image, it
would appear that we are doing some variety of metaphysics, where this variety of
metaphysics does not require or involve any appeal to onto-theological categories,
nor does this variety of metaphysics involve transcending the bounds of sense. Rather,
this nuanced genus of metaphysics is a form of naturalism, a naturalism according to
which we understand what it is to be a human being in terms of having a particular set
of natural capacities, namely a capacity for discursivity and self-consciousness. So,
for Rorty to make sense of his own philosophical anthropological commitments, he
must have some metaphysical commitments.
I earlier claimed that the basic notion of value, according to Rorty, undergoes
radical critique in the secular age, because we shift from seeing norms as extra-human
dictates to seeing norms as, to use Brandom’s terminology, “social achievements,”
in that what is deemed appropriate or inappropriate in a society is not determined
by any completely mind-independent stuff ‘out there.’ Rather, norms are established
by the intersubjective and rational practices between rational agents in a society. By
conceiving of the constitution of norms pragmatically, it would appear again that we
are doing some variety of metaphysics: firstly, if one rejects the representationalist
notion that norms derive their authority from factors independent of social practices,
61. Bowman (2013: 7). I acknowledge, though, that a pragmatist critic of Hegel will insist that Peirce’s
metaphysics is more a posteriori and empirically informed than Hegel’s speculative synthetic a
priorism.
62. Putnam (1983: 246).
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“one needs to have in place a conception of nature as not being the sort of thing
that has any authority”;63 secondly, if one claims that norms derive their authority
exclusively from our social practices, one needs to have in place a conception of
normativity as being the sort of thing that is derivable from rational intersubjective
practice. Crucially, however, neither conception requires or involves any appeal to
onto-theological categories.
If the arguments I have proposed against Rorty have been successful, then one has
compelling reason to think his claim that pragmatism is anti-metaphysics tout court is
fundamentally mistaken: Rorty is correct to claim that pragmatism is eo ipso opposed
to non-humanistic approaches to axiology and rejects transcendent metaphysics, but
this does not mean pragmatism is anti-metaphysical.64 Moreover, for Rorty to be in
a position to make sense of his own philosophical commitments, he must engage in
some kind of immanent metaphysical project.
Given the permanent deposit of nuanced metaphysical thought in the American
pragmatist tradition, one may well ask ‘What are the consequences of debunking
Rorty’s metaphilosophical interpretation of pragmatism?’ Arguably, the clearest
consequence of rejecting Rorty’s position would appear to be ‘reconciling’ the postKantian idealist tradition with the pragmatist tradition.65 The sense of reconciliation
I have in mind here is one which melts a barrier that has historically made idealists
and pragmatists reluctant to find at homeness with one another, even though there
is significant positive philosophical overlap between the two: on the one hand, to
pragmatists, idealists represented just the kind of empty and abstract metaphysical
theorising that they wanted to overturn; while idealists on the other hand traditionally
viewed the pragmatists as failing to resolve the problems that concern them by refusing
to metaphysically engage with such problems, offering instead merely a crude appeal
to ‘practical consequences.’ What we have seen is that pragmatism is in fact supportive
of a specific variety of metaphysics, a variety for which Hegelianism has considerable
affinity; and that, by consequence, the relationship between idealism and pragmatism
ought to be seen as involving more convergence rather than great contestation.
63. Sachs (2013: 701). See also the following quote from Terry Pinkard: “To understand ourselves as
having such a self-instituted liberation from nature, however, required us to understand nature itself as
disenchanted, as lacking normative authority on its own” (Pinkard 2007: 149).
64. For further on this tradition of criticising Rorty, see the following works: Alexander 1980, Bernstein
1980, Brodsky 1982, Edel 1985, Sleeper 1985, Haack 1993, 1995, 1998, and Ramberg 2008.
65. I write ‘reconciling,’ because I think the kind of rapprochement between Hegelian idealism and
pragmatism is importantly different to the kind of rapprochement between Hegelianism and the AngloAmerican naturalist philosophic tradition: Hegel came to be arguably the main target of attack by
the founders of the analytic movement, Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore. To quote Angelica Nuzzo
on this issue: “Rudolf Carnap’s seminal attacks to metaphysical thinking of which Hegel was seen
as the champion, as well as Bertrand Russell’s and G. E. Moore’s rejection of his ‘idealism’ have
sufficed to make the case for the radical distance separating Hegel from analytic philosophy in its
very inception” (Nuzzo 2010: 1). In other words, analytic philosophy was founded squarely to repel
and defeat Hegelianism. The pragmatists, however, had a more complex reaction to Hegel: Dewey
was rather sympathetic to Hegelianism; James loathed (what he understood to be) Hegelian idealism;
Peirce admired and loathed Hegelian thought in seemingly equal measure; and more recently, Brandom
claims to have had a far-reaching debt to Hegel.
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EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PRAGMATISM AND AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY
COPYRIGHT © 2009 ASSOCIAZIONE PRAGMA
Rosa M. Calcaterra*
Chance and Regularities. Remarks on Richard Rorty’s Contingentism
Abstract: The relationship between regularity and chance, or necessity and
contingency, is a common concern of classical pragmatists. The metaphysical
quality of this issue flows into the construction of postmodern discourse, although
in a very different framework and, paradoxically, under the auspices of the antimetaphysics that such a discourse claims. This paper proposes at first a brief
reconstruction of the chance and regularity issue in postmodernism; then Peirce’s
cosmological-metaphysical theory of chance, namely his ‘tychism,’ is recalled as
a fruitful suggestion to avoid the conceptual split between chance and regularity.
Subsequently, considering the family resemblances between postmodernism and
Rorty’s neo-pragmatism, the insistence upon history and contingency that stands
out in his work will be tackled as a ‘postmodern tychism’ that, in fact, does not
fit too-easy readings according to which he would have turned pragmatism into
an extreme form of irrationalism and radical moral relativism. In particular, this
paper aims to enlighten Rorty’s effort to re-propose, with new and more refined
philosophical tools, the great challenge posed by the classical pragmatists: namely,
the challenge to translate the pathos of contingency into an anti-dogmatic ethos, that
is a cultural stance that might be able to combine the rejection of absolutes with the
commitment to construct meanings and values hosting argumentative interpersonal
and intercultural practices as the ‘rule’ of our moral history.
When accounting for human events, biographical paths, the life of nature in which
we are immersed, and even cosmic reality, common sense and ordinary communicative
practices deploy regularity and chance as either opposing terms or, alternatively, as
an inseparable conceptual couple. These two possibilities, which often feature in
the same discursive context, sometimes in alternation, or even coexist rather than
exclude themselves from each other, eventually reveal our deep unease with handling
unequivocal, neutral, or “objective” categories – like those of regularity and chance –
which animate the development of our culture from within. An intricate web of logical
and semantic criteria, in addition to psychological and anthropological implications,
holds together these two concepts according to very complex interactions. However,
for purposes of simplification, their different treatment in our philosophical tradition
can be seen in two canonical fronts: chance, or, in more current terms, contingency,
and necessity or determinism.
It is easy to observe that the first theoretical aspect is one of the most consolidated
approaches in postmodernism. I would like to briefly show how the metaphysical
quality of the question of the relationship between regularity and chance flows into the
construction of postmodern discourse, although in a very different way, and, indeed,
under the auspices of the anti-metaphysics that such a discourse claims. I borrow the
term “tychism,” which names Peirce’s cosmological-metaphysical theory of chance,
because I think it lends itself to a translation on the level of postmodern philosophy,
in particular to a positive reading of the connection between history and chance that
stands out in the work of Richard Rorty, the ‘post-modern’ neo-pragmatist philosopher
par excellence. Despite Rorty’s decision to write off the philosophy of Peirce from
* Università Roma Tre [[email protected]].
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his list of sources of inspiration, I believe that the tychism that appears in the latter as
an integral part of the ontological framework of a semiotic epistemology centered on
fallibilism and the so-called “logical socialism” offers ideas that must be re-evaluated
in relation to the ethical stance that goes with Rorty’s anti-foundationalism.
As mentioned above, contingentism has received widespread support within
postmodern culture. More precisely, a good part of the various criticisms of modernity
provided in contemporary culture converge in the tendency to nourish a serious
suspicion regarding any attempt to trace back human phenomena to a deterministic
framework, that is a metaphysical perspective according to which all realities imply
an intrinsic teleology. Such a framework à la Wolff would in principle rule out chance
as an effective component working in each order of reality, or reduce it to a mere
accident of pre-determined substance of being. On the other hand, the biology of the
twentieth century provided an ever wider currency to the idea that chance intervenes
at various levels of life in nature or, rather, that it is a determining factor of every
novelty in the biosphere. In this respect, the biological studies of Jacques Monod are
paradigmatic. However, it is important to notice his assertion that the emergence of
ethical and moral issues and, more generally, ideas of value within the evolution of
reality, mark the “frontières de l’inconnu” (Monod 1970: 156).
As a matter of fact, the fascinating theme of the relationship between the chance
and the regularity of phenomena of both the physical-material and the historicalsocial world runs through, in a more or less declared way, scientific and philosophical
research. Furthermore, it would be incongruous and misleading to downplay the
psychological and existential implications that such a problem entails. In fact, the idea
of chance acts mostly as a disturbing challenge to our need for security that certainly
the idea of regularity succeeds somehow to fulfill. But the reverse question is also
worth inquiring: to emphasize regularity, in an extreme analysis, leads to closing the
space of freedom and of human responsibility, while the notion of chance offers, at
least in principle, the possibility that the events that mostly concern humans do not
form a mechanical chain so strong that can never be broken – or, alternatively, chance
can be thought of as one of the names we give to what seems imponderable to us in
the present moment.
This ambiguity, which could be defined at first as a psychological and existential
ambiguity, is reflected at the logical and semantic level and, in any case, has extremely
concrete roots. In fact, regularity presents itself in an objectively observable way,
so as to be/become the very raison d’être of our scientific and philosophical efforts
to obtain explicative and, at the same time, predictive, theories of the development
of physical-material and cultural facts. The regularities of the relations between
phenomena “appeal to our intelligence as its cousins,” wrote Peirce (CP 6.64), while
the concept of chance is itself “unintelligible” (CP 6.52), that is it does not explain
anything. Yet, it bursts powerfully onto the stage of scientific research whenever one
realizes that the analysis of “facts” not only fails to produce any explanation of the
irregularities that are revealed during their investigations, but also fails to declare, on
the simple basis of their logical and empirical means, the causes to assign the onset of
regularities that support the observed phenomena (Peirce 1923: 201).
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It is important to note that Peirce associates the category of chance with the notion
of the “spontaneity of nature” and, in parallel, with the category of law/regularity.
His suggestion is to consider the hypothesis that chance/spontaneity constitutes
a component of the life of the Universe that is not in opposition to the idea that
the universe is governed by the principle of necessity or objective legality. The
metaphysical conjecture of chance could rather offer an answer to the difficulties about
determinism raised by evolutionary theories. Therefore, Peirce holds that chance/
spontaneity implies a certain degree of regularity, which in fact gets manifested in the
evolutionary continuity, that is to say, in the increasing complexity of reality, which
is marked by the diversification of nature. The latter is considered as an intrinsic
moment in the becoming of nature, and not as its original cause: the principle of
chance cannot be invoked to explain either natural facts or their variations.
Peirce was well aware that the establishment of the intertwining of chance/
spontaneity and regularity/legality of nature was not sufficient to respond to
questions concerning the relations between “psychic” and “physical” facts. To be
sure, these questions ultimately imply the possibility of explaining the position of
human beings in the evolutionary reality of the universe and, in the end, of giving an
account of the relationship between nature and culture. Peirce’s synechism, his theory
of logical-ontological continuum, aimed at providing the epistemological tools to
address precisely these questions. However the deep union of liberty/spontaneity and
necessity/law is, for Peirce, only a working hypothesis, and actually represents an
“open question” – as he says in “The Architecture of Theories.” In this article, he
tries to sustain that regularity makes action by chance/spontaneity effective, since
it constitutes the moment in which the causal event turns into a new “fact” that fits
into the preexisting natural context. Apart from the difficulty that Peirce’s cosmology
certainly involves, what appears particularly interesting is the connection between
chance/spontaneity and regularity/law that forms the evolutionary continuum, which
in fact excludes an absolute original causal principle. After all, this connection
corresponds, for Peirce, to the hypothesis that accounts for one of the cornerstones
of his thought, namely fallibilism. To such an insurmountable normative criterion
of his philosophy Peirce entrusts the authentic spirit of scientific research, and more
specifically both its epistemic and ethical peculiar quality. “The principle of continuity
is the idea of fallibilism objectified” (CP 1.171) he declares, and in his prospect of
his planned The Principles of Philosophy, he specifies: “The great opponent of this
philosophy has been in history, and is in logic, infallibilism, whether in its milder
ecclesiastical form, or in its more dire scientistic and materialistic apparitions” (CP
8, 284, c.1893).
The scientific-philosophical problem of the relationship between regularity
and chance inevitably, although subliminally, verges on the metaphysical level of
analysis. Therefore it is opportune to reflect on the use of such concepts in order to
improve our awareness of the logical and semantic depth of the words that weave
our discourse. From a theoretical point of view, the most critical issue is asking if
and to what extent it is legitimate to treat the notions of regularity and chance in
terms of absolute original principles of phenomenical reality. A positive answer would
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mean accepting to treat these notions according to the traditional foundationalism’s
necessity to indicate a self-sufficient ontological and gnoseological primum, which
could serve as a sort of Archimedean point on which to base all our knowledge and
value statements. As noted above, Peirce’s tychism can be read as a step toward
overcoming such a perspective. In any event, the postmodern culture, together with
kindred pragmatism-inspired philosophies, surely promotes the rejection of the
idea of the absolute primum, committing rather to the elaboration of philosophical
alternatives to the traditional foundationalist stance through which the very idea of
“foundation” is re-structured according to a pragmatic meaning. In a few words, this
means to bypass traditional both empiricist and rationalist foundationalism focusing,
rather, on the continuous interference of conceptual and empirical factors in all forms
of human intelligence and, therefore, on individual and social action as a criterion of
fundamental importance and yet disengaged from any absoluteness. Thus agency is
conceived as the result of an interpretation of the plot between the logical-semantic
elements and the empirical elements that compose the development of the human
world. To put it differently, action is a “fact” (pragma) relative to an interpretative
context that, in principle, bids fallibility instead of indisputability, and the possibility
of adjustment and even of substantial transformation instead of definitive certainty.1
According to this view, one can see a fruitful ethical harmony between Rorty’s
steadfast battle against foundationalist epistemologies,2 on the one hand, and the
centrality of the theme of cultural differences in postmodern thinking as oriented
towards contingency, on the other hand. As is known, the affirmation of the necessity
to not simply recognize differences but above all respect them and treat them as
sustenance for the construction of individual and social life has involved, in a broad
way, various areas of artistic and philosophical production, and has been realized
through more or less radical deconstructions of a large portion of the vocabulary of
modernity. Both on the theoretical and ethical-political levels, all this has seriously
undermined modern thinkers’ attitude to construct abstract philosophical models. In
particular, one can notice attacks on two closely interconnected demands in modern
philosophical thought: the a-temporal or essentialist images of so-called human nature
and the subsequent effort to reduce the disparity of intellectual and social practices
through the formulation of abstract principles or purposes of rationality. The continuous
remarks of Rorty on both matters3 fruitfully intersect with the harsh criticisms that
Jean-François Lyotard – an emblematic representative of postmodern thought – pushed
forward in confronting the incapacity of philosophical thought to recognize the fluidity
of knowledge and practice. In a nutshell, Lyotard challenged modern philosophers for
being unable to acknowledge the ever flowing equilibrium that human inventiveness
can set into motion to respond to the problems and expectations that gradually emerge
in each historical and social contexts.4 It is precisely because of such a philosophical
myopia that, according to Lyotard, the crisis of the “métarécits” offered by the great
1. For a more detailed discussion of these aspects, see Calcaterra 2003.
2. The most decisive arguments in this regard can be found in Rorty 1979.
3. For the anti-essentialist theory of human nature, see in particular Rorty (1989: 35-56).
4. The continuities and discrepancies between Rorty and Lyotard are documented in Rorty 1984.
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thinkers of modernity has occurred and reached a point of no return. According to his
analysis, all systematic modern philosophies produced these meta-narratives just to
try for a unitary – basically teleological and necessary – justification of the developing
processes of the western world.
Lyotard’s expression métarécits is established as one of the most influential
metaphors within contemporary debate regarding the notions of human nature and
rationality based on the epistemological criteria shaping up the plot of philosophical
systems of modernity. It would be interesting to see exactly to what extent the main
lines of thought of this leading figure of the ‘philosophie de la différence’ closely
dovetails with the formulation, “One world, but one world in paribus,” in which
the sociologist Horace M. Kallen synthesizes the principle of ‘cultural pluralism.’
However, I limit myself to note the pervasiveness of the latter expression in the current
language of western society, where in fact its recurrence is now consolidated in the
most oddly assorted theoretical or media contexts. In any event, from a broader point
of view, one can glimpse a significant agreement between the philosophies of Rorty
and Lyotard regarding Kallen’s clarification that the expression ‘cultural pluralism’
designates a precise socio-political orientation according to which one hopes for a
human world enriched by the contributions of its local diversities. But it is evident that
such a socio-political orientation entails specific theoretical and ethical orientations.
There is an evident asymmetry between the convincing discourses provided for
supporting the principle of cultural pluralism and the concrete dynamics of the socioethical reality of our time. Nevertheless, one must consider if such a discrepancy may
justify bracketing or even eliminating postmodern critiques on the traditional search of
all-encompassing epistemic and practical criteria. These critiques, in fact, intertwine
with an appeal to adopt a pluralist perspective focused on the respect for, and the
appreciation of, both synchronic and diachronic differences that mark the human
world. One can try to understand this aspect of the controversies about modernity
in the light of the Kantian notion of “regulative ideal,” which hinges precisely upon
the recognition of the normative potential yet to be fully realized in our ideas of truth
and value. It is an aspect of Kant’s thought that, in my view, condenses his discovery
of the solid practical function of human attitude to ideality. Although it may seem
paradoxical, since he is a prominent protagonist of modernity, one can see that Kant’s
concept of “regulative ideal” tacitly plays an important role also in the pragmatist
postmodernism of Rorty. First of all, this concept seems implied in the emphasis that
he laid upon the ‘prophetic’ quality of philosophical discourse and, more generally, in
the most characteristic features of his historical anti-foundationalism.
Before addressing more closely these elements in the work of Rorty, one should
acknowledge that postmodernism and neo-pragmatism certainly present noteworthy
‘family resemblances,’ in the sense of Wittgenstein’s famous expression. Nonetheless,
and following precisely Wittgenstein’s suggestion, to draw up a list of their affinities
would be a very complex and, also, rather risky endeavor.5 This is due to the simple fact
that neither of these two terms – postmodernism and neo-pragmatism – can designate
5. An attempt of this type is in Malachowski (2010: 6-16).
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a compact and unequivocal cultural movement. Like all labels, ‘post-modernism’ and
‘neo-pragmatism’ serve to gather under a single tag a complex variety of starting
points, styles and perspectives that are both theoretical and socio-political.6 However,
apart from their internal diversity, both classical and contemporary pragmatist
philosophers share with postmodernism a particular attention to the value of human
practices, historicity, and dynamism of epistemic and value criteria. In short, there is
a fully shared commitment to show the interpretive and constructing mark of human
intelligence or, as William James said, to show that “the trail of the human serpent is
thus over everything” (James 1975: 37).
Richard Rorty gave voice to this philosophical attitude with particular vigor. It
is fundamental to consider that he intentionally adopted a provocative style to bring
forward his project to form a cultural climate in which one would be able to renounce
a number of theoretical and methodological criteria deeply rooted in the western
philosophical tradition. It would be a cultural climate in which, first of all, one would
be able to reject the essentialist mindset, which marks the origins and developments of
our history of ideas. It is precisely at this level that Rorty’s ‘post-philosophy’ amounts
to a serious attack against any kind of dogmatism, whether epistemic, value-related,
or socio-political: an attack launched along with an insistent call to recognize the
radical contingency of our ways to know, evaluate, and even plan our future, but such
a call holds a deep ethical tonality.
The combination of contingency/chance and ethical intention certainly poses
problems. Any ethical proposal involves the idea of some norms to be implemented,
which, in turn, implies the issue of individual or social approval, that is, the idea of the
responsibility of the agents to implement or not a certain normative settings. But then,
how can one conciliate all of this with Rorty’s emphasis on the radically contingent
nature of all our cognitive and behavioral criteria, an emphasis that risks to dissolve
irreparably the very notions of normativity and responsibility? Yet, one might say
that the typically postmodern challenge of constructing a pluralistic mentality against
any form of authoritarianism – a challenge which is particularly evident in Rorty’s
philosophy – just takes advantage of the tension between contingency and ethics,
instead of simply outlive it. In this regard, it is particularly interesting to consider the
semantic and conceptual coupling between contingency/chance and history, which
bakes up Rorty’s assertion that there are no ethical certainties or epistemic truths
guaranteed once and for all as well as his proposal of an ethical commitment that
would concern each and every one of us.
One can easily observe, in fact, that chance is most invoked simultaneously
with the statement of historicity of all human events and phenomena. Nevertheless,
in various argumentative contexts, one notes a subtle yet constant shift between
the meaning of chance as a merely fortuitous causal power of historical evolutions
6. Regarding neo-pragmatism, one can even note a consistent tendency to distinguish it from ‘new
pragmatism,’ meaning, in the case of the latter term, a movement toward the revision of Rorty’s thought.
After all, ever since its birth, pragmatism has been marked by a variety of aspects and directions, a
variety that nevertheless represents different ways of declining a common project, rather than true and
real speculative contrasts. I have argued this thesis in various contexts, among which I recall Calcaterra
2003, and Calcaterra 2008.
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and as an opportunity or a potentiality that is offered to human initiative, although
always under the sign of its radical finiteness and fallibility. Some vital aspects of
Rorty’s philosophy fall into the latter category, aspects that would otherwise remain
completely meaningless or even trivial enough to border on mere rhetorical fiction.
It is precisely in this light that ethical normativity can be recovered within Rorty’s
contingentism. I am thinking in particular to irony as a pivotal aspect of his ethicalpolitical prospective, which elsewhere I define as “aesthetic meliorism”7 and, more
specifically, to his assertion that “there is such a thing as moral progress, and that this
progress is indeed in the direction of greater human solidarity” (Rorty 1989: 192).
To be sure, this assertion might seem at first glance quite discordant with
the many phenomena of lack of solidarity that each of us can list from our own
personal experiences as well as those from the international socio-political situation.
Nevertheless, it would be inappropriate to get rid sic et simpliciter of Rorty’s assertion
that the value of solidarity has gradually strengthened enough to have a major or
central role in the positive evolution of the moral field. One can observe, in fact,
that there has been an always-growing number of initiatives based on the criterion
of solidarity, which acquired various forms of institutionalization. Apart from some
undeniable critical points of the neo-pragmatist contingentism of Rorty, it is worth
to notice of the crucial connection of communicating, feeling, and doing that such
a philosophical viewpoint recommends as an alternative to traditional philosophical
accounts of human solidarity.
To briefly illustrate this suggestion, one must recall the heuristic function that
the theme of hope unfolds in the cultural project of Rorty. Placing himself on the
same wavelength as the founding fathers of American democracy as well as Ralph
Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, and John Dewey, Rorty’s philosophical discourse
seeks to support “the ability to believe that the future will be unspecifiably different
from, and unspecifiably freer than, the past” (Rorty 1999: 120) that, according to
him, characterizes the original spirit of American democratic culture. Thus he may
be included among the ‘classical’ representatives of meliorism that characterizes the
American cultural tradition, of which he certainly tends to increase the ‘aesthetic’
dimension, that is to say, those lines of thought that privilege the function of sentiments
with respect to other dimensions of the human being. Such a meliorist-aesthetic
orientation is precisely specified in Rorty’s appeal to revive hope in a continuous
increase in sentiments of human solidarity and of their unique ability to face oppression
and cruelty, relying not on rationalist stances but rather on the power of imagination
and on literary narratives. Such a hope rests on the abandonment of the rhetoric of
objectivity to try to bring forward instead the possibility of realizing in acceptable
terms the search for individual autonomy from transcendent forces and principles, or
better, the search for self-reliance, which modernity itself had presented as in apparent
contrast with its foundational demands of epistemic extra-temporal principles and
morals. To make a very general note, think of the theories of sovereignty of the self
that, starting with Descartes, extend throughout the whole modern era, finding an
7. See Calcaterra 2014.
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exemplary stage in the Kantian theory of the dynamic connection between autonomy
of reason, liberty, and moral obligation.8
Although all this paved the way for the process of disengagement of the value of
solidarity from theological vocabulary and essentialist theories of the human subject,
thus favoring the processes of democratization, according to Rorty the crucial point in
modern thought lies in its having obfuscated the importance of the empirical approach
to the sphere of moral values. On the contrary, his contingentism forces philosophical
attention to the empirical components of ethical and moral criteria, suggesting tacitly
that it is only from this point of view that one can speak of moral obligation without
succumbing to mere precepts, whether of the philosophical or theological type.
Indeed, on this issue Rorty’s position serves to radicalize the classical scheme for
which there can be no moral responsibility if there is no freedom to choose. That
is, as Rorty himself affirms, “Moral obligation is, in this view, to be thrown in with
a lot of other considerations, rather than automatically trump them” (Rorty 1989:
194). Furthermore, speaking of ethical and moral empirical criteria is in line with the
primary commitment of his philosophical project: namely, that of rejecting any nonor extra-discursive constrains on our inquiry, whether scientific or ethical-political,
that is the commitment to argumentation and justification proposed in the course
of inquiry alone.9 However, this amounts precisely to the assertion of a normative
criterion to implement or, better, an ideal to render regular.
Let us return to the declaration that “there is such a thing as moral progress,”
for which it is necessary to recall a decisive component of Rorty’s thought: human
history is linguistic history, that is to say, it amounts to the evolution of “vocabularies”
corresponding to the various forms of life gradually articulated in and by them. Above
all, it is a history marked by influential metaphors in which instances of change in
human life, as well as re-descriptions of the very natural and social reality in which
we are immersed, reverberate. In sharp disagreement with the universalist repertoire
of modern philosophy, Rorty underscores the linguistic nature of every human
activity, or better, the symbolically mediated feature of the very logical-cognitive
parameters that, govern our living practices just as our personal and cultural identity.
In this framework, drawn on the philosophies of Wittgenstein and Davidson, Rorty
supports a notion of the self as centered on contingency rather than on essentialism,
contributing therefore to a narrative model of personal identity, according to which
it consists of a process of self-description where each of us puts in place a request of
recognition by others. This is a process that establishes a strong connection between
language, social interaction, and self-awareness, posing the creation and acquisition
of new metaphors, and in the end, of new vocabularies and ways of speaking, like the
strengths of ethical development of society.
As a consequence, Rorty invites us to pursue what he retains should be an important
factor of contemporary feminism, that is, the “ability to eschew such Enlightenment
fantasies of escape,” without, however, succumbing to the seductions of relativistic
8. An interesting clarification of the centrality of the issue of subjective autonomy in modern thought
can be found in Pippin 1991.
9. See Rorty 1982.
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or irrational rhetoric of postmodernism or to the dynamic of effective powers. More
precisely, the invitation is to avoid “the embarrassments of the universalist claim that
the term human being – or even the term woman – names an unchanging essence,
an ahistorical natural kind with a permanent set of intrinsic factors,” therefore
leaving behind “questions about the accuracy of their representations of ‘woman’s
experience’.” Alternatively, women would themselves be “creating such an experience
by creating a language, a tradition, and an identity” (Rorty 1992: 15).
This approach to the issues of feminism is a specific application of what might
be defined as Rorty’s ‘linguistic historicism.’ The latter includes among its central
notions that one of “semantic authority,” according to which one can acquire a moral
and social identity only when one is able to regain the space of one’s “public word”
and, above all, to the extent that one’s discourse is starting to have success, that is
it is recognized and attended by other people. It is therefore necessary to prepare
the means, not yet currently available, that would help individuals and social groups
suffering from marginalization and injustice to define themselves, their own purposes
and needs. It is precisely here where one finds the gap between pragmatism and the
universalist paradigm that __ according to Rorty __ is equivalent to both ethical and
epistemic realism, which, in turn, often coincides with necessitarianism. Alternatively,
this requires the recovery of the aesthetic dimension in which, as mentioned above,
Rorty couches the key notion of his philosophical proposal: the sentiment of solidarity.
It is strange that among those authors particularly sensitive to the aesthetic level
of culture, and therefore to its importance for philosophical reflection, some are
indeed very critical of Rorty’s thought. A significant example seems to be that of
Thomas Alexander, who holds that human beings strive to live concrete experiences
of meaning and value, especially those embodied in the world. In brief, according
to his theory, being a primary biological necessity, the need for meaning and value
is so radical that its exclusion inevitably brings either death or destructive fury,
being.10 Alexander does not hesitate to define this as Eros, a term that, in his language,
indicates a “desire or need” rather than an exercise in human will: “We need to feel
that our own lives are meaningful and have value” (Alexander 2013: 6). Therefore, he
poses an intimate link between the fields of biology, aesthetics, meaning, and value,
and it is precisely on this intersection that the important recovery of the philosophy
of John Dewey on the part of Alexander insists. In the end, he attributes to Dewey
the merit of having constructed on solid philosophical bases an “ethics of meaning,”
while Rorty would have turned pragmatism in an extreme form of irrationalism and
moral relativism.11 In truth, Rorty repeatedly rejected this charge, and one can instead
say that he has re-proposed, with new and more refined philosophical tools, the great
challenge launched by the classical pragmatists, especially by James and Dewey: to
translate the pathos of contingency into an ethos that is able to combine the dismissal
10. See Alexander (2013: 6). In support of the thesis of the biological nature of the need for meaning
and value, the author invokes the famous work of the psychiatrist Viktor Frankl (see, Frankl 1948),
which shows the experience of prisoners in Nazi concentration camps who that the search for meaning
constitutes a “primary motivational force” of human life and not an already “secondary rationalization”
of instinctual drives.
11. See Alexander (2013: 142-58).
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of absolutes with the responsibility to construct meanings and values, accepting the
argumentative interpersonal and intercultural practices as the regularity of our moral
history.
References
Alexander T., (2013), The Human Eros. Eco-ontology and the Aesthetics of Existence,
New York, Fordham University Press.
Calcaterra R., (2003), Pragmatismo: i valori dell’esperienza, Roma, Carocci.
— (2008), “Truth in Progress The Value of the Facts-and-Feelings Connection in
William James,” in M. C. Flamm, J. Lacks, & K. Skowronski, eds., American and
European Values: Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives, Newcastle upon
Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Press, 90-105.
— (2014), “The Linguistic World. Rorty’s Aesthetic Meliorism,” in L. Koczanowicz,
ed., Beauty, Responsibility, and Politics. Ethical and Political Consequences of
Pragmatist Aesthetics, New York-Amsterdam, Rodopi.
Frankl V., (1948), Man’s Search for Meaning, New York, Simon & Schuster.
James W., (1975), Pragmatism, Cambridge Massachusetts, Harvard University Press.
Malachowski A., (2010), The New Pragmatism, Durham, Acumen.
Monod J., (1970), Le hasard et la nécessité. Essai sur la philosophie naturelle de la
biologie moderne, Paris, Éditions du Seuil.
Peirce C. S., (1923), Chance, Love, and Logic: Philosophical Essays, London, Kegan
Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.
Pippin R. B., (1991), Modernism as a Philosophical Problem: On the Dissatisfactions
of European High Culture, Oxford, Basil Blackwell.
Rorty R., (1979), Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton (NJ), Princeton
University Press.
— (1982), Consequences of Pragmatism, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota
Press.
— (1984), “Habermas and Lyotard on Postmodernity,” Praxis International 4, 32-44.
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Rorty R., (1989), Contingency, Irony, Solidarity, Cambridge (MA), Cambridge
University Press.
— (1992), “Feminism and Pragmatism,” The Tanner Lectures on Human Values,
vol. 13, Salt Lake City, University of Utah Press, 1-35.
— (1999), “Education as Socialization and as Individualization,” in R. Rorty,
Philosophy and Social Hope, Penguin UK.
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EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PRAGMATISM AND AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY
COPYRIGHT © 2009 ASSOCIAZIONE PRAGMA
Let Me Tell You a Story: Heroes and Events of Pragmatism
Interviews by Michela Bella and Matteo Santarelli*
* The interviews are part of the project “Strengthening the relevance of the American Philosophy to
Contemporary Philosophia in Europe and America” sponsored by the Society for the Advancement of
Amercian Philosophy and University of Molise.
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PRAGMATISM AND AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY
COPYRIGHT © 2009 ASSOCIAZIONE PRAGMA
Interview with Charlene Haddock Seigfried
What did you know about Pragmatism when you started? Where did you
start as a student?
I came to pragmatism by way of existentialism. During the late sixties, I took
my first graduate class at the University of Southern California – an introduction to
empiricism – which I didn’t like at all, and I also attended a lecture on existentialism,
which intrigued me. But I was always interested in social and political issues and
I was missing that in existentialism. My next course was at the University of San
Francisco, where John McDermott was teaching a summer school course. McDermott
had just finished his Writings of William James, and he taught from the manuscript,
so I got this wonderful introduction to James and I thought “Wow! There’s a lot going
on here!” When he had corrected my final paper, he came at the end of the class and
threw it on my desk and said: “What’s wrong with you?! You have the best paper and
you have never said a word in class!” I answered that the other students – all guys –,
who were always speaking out, knew what they were talking about and I didn’t know
anything about James and he said “They were just bullshitting; they didn’t know
anything.” So that was my introduction to him and to American philosophy!
While in San Francisco, I had time to get acquainted with the counter-culture
scene in Haight-Ashbury and visited a free clinic which was trying to deal with
the influx of psychedelic drug overdoses. At the time, I was teaching high-school
in Eureka, California, and some of my students were going down to Berkeley and
getting involved in demonstrations. I asked McDermott where I could go to study
both existentialism, which seemed so life-transforming, and American philosophy,
and he said Yale, Northwestern, or Loyola University, where he had a friend. I was
accepted at all three, but went to Loyola University in Chicago because they offered
me a full-ride fellowship.
As it turned out, the only course taught on pragmatism was one on John Dewey
and the professor would just assign texts and ask us what we thought about them. In
my final paper I used Dewey’s Art as Experience to riff on Simon and Garfunkle’s
music, driving all the way across Chicago to find an album of theirs (recollecting
this later kept me from judging my student’s first efforts too harshly). So, basically
I taught myself American Philosophy. I just read a lot, except that I had the benefit of
approaching pragmatism through classes and discussions with Hans Seigfried, who
introduced me to the mind-expanding German tradition of Kant, Marx, Nietzsche,
and Heidegger. I liked Dewey a lot because of the way he grounded philosophy so
thoroughly in everyday life, but my first love was James. I was already involved with
feminist issues and actions and found his approach helpful and his style of writing
liberating. I wrote my dissertation on James and the reality of relations and later wrote
on Dewey and Jane Addams as my interests developed further.
Would you consider Dewey, James and Addams as a sort of basic scheme to
your evolution to pragmatism?
From the beginning I liked their personal appeal, and because my undergraduate
major was in literature, I loved good writers. My favorite graduate course was one on
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Nietzsche taught by Hans, so I got a really good insight from the very beginning into
European views of philosophy along with the pragmatist view. American philosophy
was generally understood in a very insular way. All the well-known scholars I was
reading emphasized its American roots, going back to the Puritans. This approach
owed a lot to Emerson’s call to look to nature for inspiration. More precisely, the
argument in all the books I was reading was that pragmatism was a home-grown
philosophy. But where did the pragmatists get their philosophical background from if
not from European thinkers? They were knowledgeable about the latest developments
in Western philosophy and had many correspondents and other contacts with European
scholars. The emphasis on pragmatism’s local roots is understandable, though, as part
of the effort to emphasize that American scholars were doing something original and
were not just a colonial backwater. It was also a way to rebut the growing hegemony
of analytic philosophy and its denial of the historical context of its assumptions.
An early exception to this isolating trend was H. S. Thayer’s critical history of
pragmatism, Meaning and Action, which opened with three chapters on the European
roots of American pragmatism. Yes, I thought, finally someone got it right! It was the
first book that I’d read that confirmed my suspicions that you have to look at a broader
context.
When I was writing about James, I went to the archive of his work at Harvard
University. It was thought at the time that Nietzsche had not influenced him, but
I recognized Nietzschean themes in James, so I wondered if he had ever read Nietzsche.
I found out that he carried around one of Nietzsche’s books while he was traveling in
Germany, but I don’t recall now which one. In one of the boxes of material that was
not yet indexed I also found an article about Nietzsche that was annotated by James!
They wouldn’t let you type in the archives at the time, or write in ink, so I had to write
my notes in pencil. I intended to write the first article on James and Nietzsche, but
after I returned home, I could never find these notes. The relationship between James
and Nietzsche was only written about by others many years later. So, you see how
the ideas of philosophers depend on accident and chance, and not only on rational
thought. James would have enjoyed that!
So for you pragmatism came out when the other possible ways were
unsatisfactory?
For me pragmatism came out of the powerful idea that philosophy is more than
abstract thinking – it is something that you became and did. As I said, this first struck
me in existentialism and became deeper and more powerful in pragmatism. I’ve tried
to connect life and action in all my writings, beginning with the twin revelations
of feminism and the anti-war radicalization of the Vietnam War. I wanted more
thoughtful practical arguments for why people should get engaged. I found these
deep connections, beginning in James because of McDermott, and then when I was at
Loyola and began reading Dewey. Later, it was a wonderful discovery to find that in
her life, work, and writings, Addams brought all these interests together.
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At that time, which was your perception of pragmatism?
I went to my first APA meeting in 1968 as a first-year graduate student. All the
papers, as far as I could tell, were analytic versions of philosophy. I was ready to quit
philosophy because I thought that if that’s what philosophy was, it had nothing to do
with what I was interested in. What had I gotten myself into? I didn’t understand the
technical terms being used, I didn’t like the kind of arguments being given, I didn’t
care for the subject matter, and the negative tone of the commentaries and questions
was distasteful. I thought it was awful. Then I found out about the SAAP meetings.
I was still a graduate student when I attended my first SAAP meeting along with
Hans. He was surprised that so many papers were historical, dealing with obscure
18th and 19th century figures. I had a different view of the society, probably because –
unlike the larger philosophical scene where women were scarce – the members were so
welcoming and supportive. Their responses to papers were constructive and friendly,
but scholarly and rigorous at the same time. They exhibited a social consciousness and
worked at making young people feel they had a contribution to make. The meetings
were a pleasant relief from the usual philosophical scene, and I’ll always be grateful
for that. Many thoughtful and carefully researched papers also contributed to my
continuing education in pragmatism and provided a space to share ideas and hone my
skills and knowledge of the field. My early papers were on James and got a very good
reception. Having a knowledgeable audience made all the difference.
Do you think this reception was important for your research?
To see why this reception was so important, it’s helpful to convey something of
my experiences outside the society. I received my doctoral degree in 1973 and my
son, Karl, was born shortly after. I taught part-time for five years at three different
universities and was a post-doctoral fellow the last year. No one would hire me fulltime because I was a woman and I was married. So for five years I was teaching like
mad and I was trying to write, but I couldn’t get hired in a tenure-track position. The
first year, I was the only graduate student from Loyola at the Eastern Division APA
meeting and I was looking for a job. I wasn’t getting any interviews, though, and
I thought: “That’s odd!” In those days you put your name in folders of the colleges
and universities with openings you were interested in and they would post the names
of the candidates they wanted to interview. When I didn’t appear on any of the lists,
I asked one of the interviewers why, and he said, “Oh, I have this list of Loyola’s best
graduate students and your name isn’t on it.” I said “What?! I’m the only graduate
student here from Loyola and the only one from there actively applying for a job,
I have excellent grades, I’m the only one of the graduate students that has given a
paper at an APA meeting, and the only one that has published, why is my name not
on the list? When I returned to the university, I was furious, and I asked my chairman
whether I was one of their best graduate students and he said, “Of course!” And then I
said, “Why wasn’t I on the list, then? Didn’t you know I am looking for a job?” He said
“Oh, well, since you had a baby, I didn’t think you’d be interested in a job.” He had
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never consulted me about it but just assumed that, like all the other women he knew,
I’d naturally want to stay home. Then he said, “But anyway, it’s just a list,” as if not
being on it wouldn’t have negative effects for me. Unfortunately, his position wasn’t
an anomaly. I heard variations of these beliefs from those who interviewed me for
jobs over the years before I was hired in a tenure track position at Purdue University.
(By that time, unlike the other candidates for an opening assistant professor position,
I had already published my first book.) The interviewers always downplayed the
importance of a professional career for a woman and told me I should be happy to
have a part-time position. These were the early years before any affirmative action or
non-discrimination policies were in place.
Since I thought that philosophy should involve social transformation, the
name of the society struck me from the first: The Society for the Advancement of
American Philosophy. They had a mission, and their mission was to rescue American
philosophy from the overwhelming influence of analytic philosophers who thought
history was bunk. So they were going to prove that philosophy was more than pure
theory construction and that it didn’t operate in a vacuum. So far, so good. But it often
seemed as though the history was too backward-looking, mining minute details of
American thinkers simply because they were there and not because they were thought
worth reviving because of what they could contribute to pressing contemporary
issues. Along with many excellent papers on what were called “classical American
philosophers,” there seemed to be an underlying assumption favoring an historicist
rather than a contextually relevant approach.
Did you give a different twist to your historical work?
My second book on James was an attempt to resolve the many contradictions in his
writings that I was encountering and that were often remarked on by other scholars.
It bothered me that the most characteristic philosophic breakthroughs that James was
known for were often taken back a few pages later! He talked about the fringe of
relations and the selective interests through which we construct objects, for example,
but then he would appeal to undeniable facts of experience. He was an original and
persuasive thinker, so why was he doing this? It didn’t make any sense. The usual way
to resolve these discordances was to read selectively, emphasizing the positions that
made the most sense to whomever was writing and ignoring or discarding the others.
I wanted to take a more comprehensive approach and develop James’s thought from
beginning to end.
At the time, the categories pragmatists were using in their analyses were very
rigid. Strict distinctions were made between the Principles of Psychology, which
was considered a work in psychology, and his properly philosophical books, such as
The Will to Believe, Pragmatism, and The Meaning of Truth. Even The Varieties of
Religious Experience was an outlier. By beginning with James’s earliest works, which
predated even Principles, and reading straight through to his last works, including
even his Essays in Psychical Research, a more consistent and creative James emerges,
one that demolishes the strict distinctions that were distorting his thought. But the
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contradictions didn’t disappear. Only by reading James on two levels could I make
sense of this puzzle. James was a transitional figure, with vestiges of old ways of
thinking remaining to trip him up even as he was working his way out of them.
So I tried to reconstruct what his intentions were – as disclosed in his writings –
and set alongside of this reading another one. The second level entailed using the
deconstructive force of his new insights and formulations to follow what was being
created. While the first one lays out the twists and turns James was struggling with,
first seeing and then losing sight of the breakthroughs he was making, the second one
looks back at his original accomplishments from our own later understanding of them,
as Dewey did, and demonstrate how they fit together.
By including Principles as part of his philosophical work, many otherwise
obscure or contradictory aspects of James became clearer. As I read it, I said “Oh
my god, Principles is a phenomenology!” It was not the exercise in natural science
it was thought to be. But when I told others about my discovery, they said “It can’t
be, he never even uses the word phenomenology.” Then I said “Look at the text.
Phenomenon, phenomena – the words are all over the place!” More substantively,
the whole work is a demonstration of the role of intentionality, which James called
‘selective interest.’ In his later writings, where he often claims to begin a lecture or
explanation randomly, you can then realize that he is being very deliberate, because
he is presupposing the phenomenological findings and hermeneutical method
already developed in Principles. And then the question was: should we continue to
use old words to describe pragmatic theory, such as empiricism versus idealism and
metaphysics versus reductionism, because of their traditional meanings, or should we
put new wine in new bottles? I opted for new terms taken from the pragmatists’ own
words, such as ‘full fact’ instead of ‘object’ and ‘concreteness’ instead of ‘the given.’
This approach avoids the needless misunderstanding caused by trying to fit new
theory into old categories and encourages reading what the pragmatists are saying in
context, rather than assuming we already know what their words mean because of the
way earlier philosophers have used them.
Do you think that your reading of James is your major contribution to the
development of the history of this American philosophy?
We’ve been talking about my early years in which James played a prominent
part. First of all, I did want to be the one who reset James, which was a challenge
because Gerald Meyers had produced a much lauded, comprehensive book on James’s
philosophy a few years before. He also realized that James was better understood in
the total context of all his writings and he took up many of the issues I was interested
in. The bar was set very high. But his approach was very different from mine, since he
was interested in interpreting James’s philosophy of mind from an analytic perspective
and I was interested in reworking James from within the pragmatist tradition. But,
secondly, I continued to explore Dewey’s philosophy and lately Jane Addams’s. I’ve
not been a public philosopher in the way both Dewey and Addams were, although
I continue to speak out about contemporary injustices in my work and to lecture and
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publish in other disciplines. This speaks to a widening interest in what pragmatism
has to offer, but also means that many of my lectures and writings are not found in
philosophy journals.
Which of my various interests is my major contribution, if any, is for posterity to
say. It’s as futile for me to speculate on it as it is for those who designate some beloved
object as an heirloom, when something only becomes an heirloom over time insofar as
descendents value it and continue to cherish it for reasons of their own.
After your reading of James did you find what you were looking for in the
political side?
Oh no, James has disappointed me socially and politically, although he has some
good things to say. I think there are some helpful ideas you can get from him. In
fact, I wrote a chapter about James’s feminism in my Pragmatism and Feminism.
People think that because I was critical I thought he shouldn’t be read, but I didn’t
mean to say or imply that. What I said was that you have to separate out what’s
useful for feminist insights and what’s mistaken or is no longer useful. In fact,
recognizing James’s masculinist biases increases our ability to read critically the
hidden biases of many other texts we study. Because Dewey and Addams are more
socially progressive doesn’t mean that James doesn’t still have a lot to offer. The
trouble with radicalism, in contrast to pragmatism, is connected to the problem of
purity, namely, the presumption that we must reject all the work of anyone who held
anything not in total agreement with whatever current beliefs are held to be true. And
that’s ridiculous, that’s presentism, and it doesn’t allow for the incremental nature of
human understanding. Nor does it recognize pluralism, the belief that there are many
different perspectives on what is happening and various ways to work toward a better
future. Multiple perspectives don’t make it easier to resolve problems for the better of
all, but they make it more likely that the resolutions arrived at will be more inclusive
and take into consideration more aspects of situations. Addams develops this idea
both theoretically and practically.
Was feminism already there in your philosophical concerns in the seventies,
or did it come out only later?
I came of age before feminism had much of a presence in academia, but this
gave me the opportunity to be part of its development. When I started teaching, there
were no feminist texts; they had to be created. Women’s Studies departments were
just being established in some colleges and universities (I was the graduate student
representative for setting one up at Loyola). When applying for tenure, I could not
put on my vita for promotion anything I had written on feminism, which wasn’t
considered philosophical. That meant that half my research wasn’t counted. I was also
at a disadvantage with my pragmatist publications because pragmatism wasn’t taken
seriously. So, did I have any real philosophy? Because it took me five years to land a
tenure track position, and that gave me more time to build a publication record, I was
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told that I would not be given the usual five years to develop a promotion document
and would be brought up in two years. In later years it was illegal to shorten the
time in this way. Even when I was going to apply for promotion to full professor,
the chairman pulled me aside and said that a professor in analytic philosophy was
also going to apply, but I had such a strong vita, it would lessen his chances. Would
I mind waiting another year, so that he wouldn’t have any competition? No thought
was given to his waiting. When I was brought up a year later, the chairman of the
university committee on promotions asked why my department had waited so long to
propose me for promotion.
Would you describe yourself as a pragmatist or an American philosopher?
Earlier, I would have said I’m an American philosopher because in our curricular
format, and also in the APA listing of areas of specializations, there was a history
category they could slot me in. Pragmatism was considered a subset of American
Philosophy, even in SAAP, because they wanted their focus to be much broader.
The accepted areas of specialization included metaphysics, epistemology, social
and political, ethics, logic, history of philosophy, and aesthetics. Since my area was
pragmatist philosophy, which encompassed all the above, it was frustrating to have to
choose only one, especially since I taught and published in most of these areas from a
pragmatist perspective. The problem was the same with feminist philosophy, which is
also a particular perspective, but analyzes a whole range of subject matter.
In my presidential address at SAAP in 1998, I argued that instead of pragmatism being
a subset of American philosophy, American philosophy was a subset of pragmatism!
My thesis in “Advancing American Philosophy” was that all the characteristics used
to identify which versions of philosophy being done in America constituted ‘American
Philosophy,’ were pragmatic ones, which were read back into earlier writers. I found this
out by surveying prominent books on American philosophy and realizing that the core
conceptions they attributed to the people and positions included were all derived from
the late 19th and early 20th century pragmatism of Peirce, James, and Dewey. Can you
imagine how popular my suggestion was?! Peter Hare, as editor of the Transactions
of the C. S. Peirce Society, asked to publish my paper because he wanted to provide a
forum for discussing what constituted the Americanness of American Philosophy. He
said he would call for responses and give me a chance to answer them. But only one
person bothered to engage the issue. Only some time later were some interesting books
published that developed different criteria, such as Scott Pratt’s Native Pragmatism:
Rethinking the Roots of American Philosophy.
I also criticized the notion of “American exceptionalism” and said that explicitly
labeling what we were doing as American philosophy rather than pragmatism would
not encourage its continued international development. Why would anyone in France
or China want to do American philosophy? But anyone can become interested in
pragmatist philosophy and make their own contributions to it.
So, yes, I’m a pragmatist.
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Nowadays it is difficult for people working in pragmatism to be acknowledged
also because they refuse categorizations.
When I attended feminist meetings over forty years ago, I heard many criticisms of
philosophy that ignored women’s issues and belittled women and alternative theories
were proposed, usually from European perspectives, such as Simone de Beauvoir’s
The Second Sex. Invariably, during the question period, I would point out that “There’s
a philosophy that’s already doing what you’re calling for! It’s American Philosophy!”
They usually looked puzzled and said that American feminists didn’t produce any
theory. Then I went to SAAP meetings and would talk to various philosophers about
feminist theory, and was told that feminism was negative and had nothing positive to
offer. After many years of giving papers on pragmatism at SAAP and on feminism at
feminist conferences, I decided it was time to give a pragmatist feminist paper at both
the Society for Women in Philosophy and at SAAP.
It was 1990, and I challenged the absence of any version of pragmatist feminism
in either society with a paper given at both that asked “Where are All the Pragmatic
Feminists?” Although it was scheduled as one of the many simultaneous papers at
SAAP, it was moved to the auditorium. I was looking forward to showing that American
philosophy has a great contribution to make to feminist philosophy and vice versa.
I was upbeat because I was saying, “look what great insights into theories and practices
feminists have given us. We can understand each other because basically both sides
believe that everyone experiences the world from their own perspectives and women’s
experiences are part of this pluralistic world.” Afterwards, I asked, as usual, “Any
questions?” Dead silence. Again, “Any questions?” Dead silence. So I thought, “What
is going on here? They should be full of questions because they had not heard anything
like this before.” In trying to puzzle out why the paper had been received so coldly,
I thought of the fact that the audience was mostly made up of men who had very little
firsthand knowledge of feminist theory. They seemed to lump feminists in with other
radical groups and assumed that feminism must be an enemy of pragmatism because
it couldn’t be inclusive. At the time, I was beginning to work on papers that would
eventually lead to Pragmatism and Feminism, which wasn’t published until 1996.
I was still ignorant of whether there was a history of feminism in pragmatism. In the
book I would test the hypothesis that either the original pragmatists had no women
students, which was likely in those days, or if they did, at least some of those women
would have written on their lives as women and developed a version of feminism. This
conclusion was based on the fact that pragmatism focuses on lived experience.
Since I didn’t know which side of the hypothesis was correct, I had to do my own
research outside the usual philosophical sources. This meant going behind the scenes
into archival material, class notes, records of disciplinary meetings, correspondence,
etc. That’s why my book was organized into two halves. The first half involved a
recovery of women with some connection to pragmatist philosophy and finding out
whether they did theorize about their experiences as women. So this first half was
one of discovery. In the second half I began questioning the traditionally recognized
pragmatists from a feminist perspective and developing a theory of feminist
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pragmatism. I also discovered Jane Addams and began to realize how much she had
to offer pragmatism.
Along with the initial disquieting reception of my earlier 1990 paper, I also
received a more positive response from the women in SAAP, especially the younger
women. We decided that we needed to support one another. Since there had been
few feminist papers accepted on the SAAP conference over the years, we decided
to sponsor them ourselves. We decided to have a lunch meeting each year where
we could present and discuss feminist papers. These were popular and there were
always men as well as women participating. Eventually, it was called the Jane Club.
Over the following years, more younger men and women joined SAAP who were
interested in feminism, anti-racism, and multi-culturalism. The program committee
began accepting more feminist papers in the general program and women and men
with progressive agendas have been voted onto into the various committees and have
become officers of the society. The need for a separate meeting space has lessened as
the society has transformed itself.
Is not there a missing link to John Dewey if we think of your original interest
in social and political issues?
Not really, I don’t have a specific book on Dewey, but I do have many articles
and chapters on him. I also edited Feminist Interpretations of John Dewey. He truly
reconstructed philosophy, and many of my articles, not only my social and political
ones, have a Deweyan basis. Perhaps the difficulty in recognizing this is that I have
enough articles for another book on feminism and another one on James, as well as
one on Dewey, but I don’t have the time to organize them. I’m more interested in my
next paper. Anyway, Dewey has always been very powerful for me in terms of his
social and political thought, and I’ve always used him when I wrote on contemporary
topics. In fact, his influence is apparent whenever I publish on what’s bothering me at
the time, like when America first invaded Iraq and when Supreme Court justice Sonia
Sotomayer’s ‘Wise Latina Woman’ standard was ridiculed. I use Dewey because I still
think he speaks to contemporary issues.
Don’t forget my anti-metaphysical Dewey interpretation is still controversial.
There are a couple reasons for this. One is that because pragmatism survived longer
in Catholic schools than elsewhere, when it was revived there was a generation of
Dewey scholars who read him through scholastic and Aristotelian lenses. This
perspective was passed on to their students. Another reason is that American
philosophers wanted to challenge the anti-metaphysical, positivist bias of analytic
philosophy. Phenomenology and hermeneutics as a middle ground or alternative was
not an option. Again, it’s a question of reading Dewey back into traditional categories
rather than paying attention to his development and breaks with the past. But Dewey’s
naturalism and instrumentalism replace metaphysics. As I point out in “Ghosts
Walking Underground: Dewey’s Vanishing Metaphysics,” he’s the one who compared
metaphysics to ghosts.
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When you started working in feminism did you feel that people with a
pragmatist background were marginalized from feminists?
Even when I started, feminists like Phyllis Rooney, Jane Duran, Sandra Harding
and a few others knew enough about pragmatism to bring it into their discussions, but
other people didn’t pick up on it much. When I reached out, there was interest and even
follow-up, but no continuing dialogue. I did edit a special issue on “Feminism and
Pragmatism” for the feminist journal, Hypatia, which included an article by Richard
Rorty. I am also one of the eight contemporary “feminist perspectives” included in
Mary Briody Mahowald’s anthology, Philosophy of Woman, along with an excerpt
from Jane Addams. Over the years, I’ve addressed issues other feminists were writing
about, such as the ethics of care, feminist epistemology, and feminist philosophy of
science. Although I offered a different perspective and called into question some of the
premises that were being held, such as the strict separation between care and justice,
these didn’t make much impression until later when these same criticisms were made
by others outside the pragmatist tradition. More recently, writings on Jane Addams’s
philosophy by me and other pragmatists have made the most impression, both within
and outside of philosophy. Instead of being marginalized, it’s been on the cutting-edge.
What about today? How do you see the future of pragmatism?
I’m very thrilled about its future. I never thought when I began working in
pragmatism that there would be so much interest in it in so many countries. A lot
of this is due to the tireless work of Larry Hickman in establishing so many Dewey
Centers around the world. I’ve been surprised at how many students, both in the
United States and abroad, have discovered pragmatism on their own and have found
it so appealing that they’ve decided to major in it, even without anyone in their home
universities being able to direct them.
I deliberately cribbed from Dewey in calling my second book William James’s
Radical Reconstruction of Philosophy because James was very aware that he meant
to revolutionize philosophy. Someone once said to me: “You mean Charlene’s radical
reconstruction of philosophy?” and I said “No, no!” Of course it is my interpretation
of James, but I wanted to understand his philosophy on his own terms as well as to
bring out how imaginative and ground-breaking it was. But the problem in seeing
James clearly has been that his writing is not so much an inter-disciplinary project as a
pre-disciplinary one. He didn’t have to confine his work within the narrow boundaries
used to define philosophy today. Psychology, mysticism, religion, literature, art,
science, truth and verification, but also argument by metaphor, subjectivity as part of
objectivity, overcoming nihilism – he could go wherever his interests took him.
You cannot do that today because people in different disciplines don’t talk
to each other! The engines of change driving strong disciplinary boundaries were
professionalization and specialization. We can’t go back to pre-disciplinary ways of
thinking; we can only go forward. By focusing on the problems besetting us today,
it has become plain that they need to be approached from many sides, with many
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different methodologies, interests, and values if we are to have any chance of lasting
and worthwhile success and this has been the spur to inter-disciplinary studies.
Pragmatism has embodied this approach from the beginning, which is one reason it
continues to attract people.
Talking about ‘pragmatism outside the academia,’ do you see the possibility
that philosophers involve themselves in extra academic activities today?
Well, that’s the whole point of thinking according to Dewey. We reflect whenever
we encounter obstacles to our usual way of doing something or to making sense
of it. And I’ve talked a lot about this to my graduate students, once they realize
that pragmatism encourages active engagement in real world issues as the goal of
philosophy. They then wonder, “What is the use of studying?” The answer is that
they first need to develop the tools necessary to develop worth-while goals and to be
effective. We have to question our own assumptions and beliefs and learn how social
institutions and practices too often work for the benefit of a privileged few rather than
fostering inclusion and fairness for those less privileged.
Even traditions like postmodernism privilege language and playing with language.
But it also emphasizes questioning the assumptions that block us from working
towards a fair and just world. Consequently, it has been influential across disciplines
and people use it to develop political insights. It is not so easy, however, to go from
sophisticated deconstructive analyses to practical policies of liberation. So, I am
often surprised that pragmatism isn’t better known and used as a direct means to
emancipatory projects like anti-racism, removing obstacles to pluralizing gender,
peace initiatives, immigration struggles, etc.
Since pragmatism begins with actual problematic situations and ends in situations
reconstructed more fairly and more inclusively, no great leap is needed to get from
theory to practice. In fact, theory is developed out of practice, which in turn, feeds
back into it. I think this is why students are attracted to pragmatism once they are
introduced to it or find it on their own. Critical thinking, becoming emancipated
from false assumptions, and learning an experiential and experimental method are
means to social transformation. Direct engagement in learning to listen to, understand,
and work together with others to solve common problems are both means and ends.
Instead of directing one’s energies to theory construction with any possible practical
application extraneous to its main focus, as a post-Darwinian experimental philosophy
pragmatism is already in and of the world. Many of the pragmatist philosophers
I know are already engaged in extra-academic activities or make them the focus of
their teaching and research.
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Interview with Larry Hickman
What was the state of Pragmatism studies when you first encountered
pragmatism?
After completing my undergraduate degree in psychology I decided that I wanted
to study philosophy. In order to prepare for graduate school, I spent a year taking
philosophy courses at the University of Texas in Austin. The faculty included Charles
Hartshorne, who was co-editor of the Peirce Collected Papers. There was also David
L. Miller and George Gentry, both of whom had been students of George Herbert
Mead. I was particularly interested in Charles Sanders Peirce. After I was admitted
to the graduate program I took a graduate seminar on Peirce offered by Irwin Lieb.
I read Peirce’s remark that logic is the study of second intentions applied to first
intentions. I had no idea what that meant, so I asked around the department. Only
one professor, Ignacio Angelelli, seemed to have an idea. He said “I don’t know the
answer to your question, but I can help you find out. First, however you have to learn
to read Latin.” So I took intensive Latin courses and with his help I spent the next
couple of years reading what the 16th century Thomists, Scotists, and Nominalists
said about first and second intentions. I was reading some of the same Scholastic
logicians that Peirce had read. After I finished my dissertation I spent almost two years
of research in Germany supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and
then published my own book on the subject. Now Peirce scholars can find out what
he meant by that remark. So what did Peirce mean? Well, it had to do his interest in
properties of properties. Beyond that, you just have to read my 1980 book Modern
Theories of Higher Level Predicates.
After I returned from Germany in 1973 I taught courses on the philosophy of
technology at Texas A&M. My interest expanded outward from Peirce to James and
Dewey and I began to teach courses in American philosophy.
What was the reception of Pragmatism in the United States in the Sixties?
You will notice that I have so far avoided the term “pragmatism.” This is probably
an appropriate place to quote Dewey’s letter to his colleague A. W. Moore. “I have
never known a myth grow so rapidly as that of ‘pragmatism.’ To read its critics one
would think it was a positive system set forth for centuries in hundreds of volumes,
& that its critics were the ones engaged in a tentative development of new &
undogmatic ideas. But I object root and branch to the term ‘pragmatism’ (except in
its origin limited sense)…” (January 2, 1905). I suppose I’ll follow Dewey in saying
that pragmatism in the strict sense can more or less be summed up in Peirce’s maxim
and the ways it was adapted by James and Dewey. I’ve so far talked about American
philosophy because it comprises a broader set of issues and problems among which
pragmatism is but a part.
That having been said, however, I have to admit that during the late 1960s I was
busy writing my dissertation and my information about what was being taught at
various universities around the country was more or less anecdotal, with the exception
of what was going on at Yale, which had a close relationship with some universities in
Texas. From the graduate courses I was taking and the meetings of the Southwestern
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Philosophical Society, however, I was generally aware that analytic philosophy, both
the ideal language and ordinary language varieties, was more or less dominant in that
region, as it certainly was at the meetings of the APA.
It was also becoming clear that philosophy at many Catholic universities was
beginning to drift away from Thomism toward Continental philosophy and there was
some interest in American philosophy there as well. Quine was, of course, very big.
There was also a lot of interest in the Oxbridge philosophers, especially Ryle, Austin,
and Wittgenstein. It was very difficult for Americanists to get papers accepted at APA,
and I have been told that you couldn’t find a course on William James at Harvard
during those years.
How did Dewey come into the picture? Was it because of technology?
I was teaching courses in the philosophy of technology as well as American
philosophy. It began to dawn on me that Dewey had a great deal to say about
technology. At that time nobody had noticed that except Webster Hood, who wrote
one brief, elegant essay on the subject. But there it was, clear as could be, in the
introduction to his 1916 Essays in Experimental Logic, for example, where Dewey
was writing about watch springs and telephones and treating logical objects and other
concepts as tools instead of metaphysical or psychological entities.
At that point I was active in the Society for Philosophy and Technology. I realized
that it was important to introduce Dewey into those conversations, because at that
time it was mainly Heidegger and Jacques Ellul with their ideas about autonomous
technology; it was the Frankfurt School with their critique of instrumental rationality,
all very negative, anti-technology approaches. But Dewey was writing about
technology before any of them, and he was very positive about the promise of
technology. For the Europeans, technology was the problem. For Dewey, technology
was never the problem because of the way he thought that we as humans inhabit the
world as problem solvers who use tools, including ideas, to adapt to our changing
circumstances. That was the path to focusing on Dewey as a research project.
Did you join the SAAP from the beginning?
No, I was not an original member of the SAAP. Their first meeting was in 1974,
I believe, and I was more or less unaware of the organization until John McDermott
came to Texas A&M as department head about 1976.
At that time you did not have the sense of a community of pragmatism
scholars but you were working on the philosophy of technology using Dewey
rather than Heidegger.
Up to the time I attended the first meeting of SAAP I had very little sense of
a community of pragmatist philosophers apart from a couple of colleagues in the
department. But McDermott was very well connected. Texas A&M was still quite
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isolated, so he brought in people for lectures from other parts of the country and he
hosted a meeting of SAAP in College Station.
When did you get involved in the SAAP?
John McDermott brought the annual meeting of SAAP to Texas A&M in about
1978 or 1979. It was a very small group, with maybe 20 people. The party at the end
of the meeting would have been in somebody’s kitchen. I mean it was that small. I was
greatly impressed by the society. At the APA there was what the Village Voice once
called a “designated hit man” for every paper, that is, someone there to try to demolish
your argument. At SAAP it was different. There was a spirit of cooperative inquiry,
and especially a lot of support for younger members.
What about the perception of the rest of America in the 1970s. It was becoming
more and more analytic, I suppose. Which was the feeling of pragmatists? Was
it that of a minority?
There was a feeling of being marginal. I was sometimes asked if I was doing
philosophy or the history of philosophy. I usually responded with another question:
“How can you do one without the other?” In a way I suppose there was a tendency
to organize around the editions – Peirce, Dewey, James, Royce – where the center
of gravity was in those days. The important thing was to provide access to the
texts. McDermott selected one or two volume editions of James in 1967, Royce in
1969, and Dewey in 1973. Jo Ann Boydston published the first volume of Dewey’s
Collected Works in 1967, and the first volume of The Works of William James was
published in 1975.
In 1979 SAAP commissioned a survey of courses in American philosophy in
the U.S. There were at least some offerings in about 21 of the 73 universities that
responded. In the rest, Chicago, Colorado, Cornell, Duke, Harvard, Illinois, MIT,
Michigan, Northwestern, Princeton, Stanford, Virginia, and so on, there was no
American philosophy taught.
Of course in 1979 there was Richard Rorty’s famous presidential address at the
APA during which he said that philosophers ought to read James and Dewey. Many
of the analysts felt betrayed. And a little later there was the pluralist revolt at the
APA, which finally forced its leaders to hold democratic elections and reach out to
Americanists and Continentalists. As I said, during the 1970s departments at Catholic
universities were turning away from Thomism toward Continental philosophy –
Heidegger, especially – with some emphasis on American philosophy as well. Many
of the members of SAAP during that time taught at Catholic universities.
Even in philosophy of technology did you have difficulty in making Dewey’s
view acknowledged?
Yes. Some of my colleagues in the SPT had a hard time understanding what I was
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taking about. I got support from Paul Durbin, who identified himself as a pragmatist,
as well as from Carl Mitcham, Bryan Norton, Paul Thompson, and others. But many
of my colleagues thought Dewey’s characterization of technology was just weird.
I would say things like “What a novelist is doing is a kind of technology. There are
tools, there are raw materials, there are intermediate stock parts, and there are skills,
all of which enter into the finished product. What’s not technological about that?” And
I would tell them that Dewey thought that science was a kind of technology. Some of
my colleagues in the SPT who were used to thinking mostly about engineering and
treating technology as applied science, would tell me that was crazy. What do novels
have to do with technology? They wanted to maintain dualisms of tangible/intangible,
subject/object that Dewey rejected. Don Ihde was also sympathetic to what I was
doing. In his 1993 book Postphenomenology he reported that Dewey’s pragmatism
had influenced his work. He has since described postphenomenology as a blend of
pragmatism and phenomenology.
Do you think your works on Dewey’s philosophy of technology has favored a
more positive pragmatists’ opening/approaches to technology?
Yes, but indirectly. The vogue has changed partially through the work of Don
Ihde and others in the camp of postphenomenology (Ihde’s term, by the way). When
I published John Dewey’s Pragmatic Technology in 1990, it was one of three books that
inaugurated the Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Technology. The other two were
Ihde’s book Technology and the Lifeworld: From Garden to Earth, and Michael E.
Zimmerman’s Heidegger’s Confrontation with Modernity: Technology, Politics, Art.
Ihde had read my book because he was the editor of the series. In his very next book
you can see a pragmatic turn in his own thinking. I think he was there already but
he had not fully articulated it. In the introduction to his book Postphenomenology,
he wrote that he had been sympathetic with pragmatism for a long time but that two
people helped him bring it out. One was Rorty, and I was the other one. He has since
influenced a generation of Dutch philosophers of technology who want to get past
Heidegger’s and Jaspers’ negativity and metaphysics, and Ellul’s reification of an
autonomous technology, in order to effect an empirical turn. Peter-Paul Verbeek, for
example, wrote a wonderful book called What Things Do that consigns Heidegger
and Jaspers to a “classical” period of the philosophy of technology that can be safely
bracketed. So at least indirectly the postphenomenologists have been influenced by
Dewey. Like Dewey, they want to bracket the ontology and look instead at functions
– what things do. So that’s the direction philosophy of technology has gone recently.
The problem with understanding Dewey’s take on technology is that it is not in any
one place: it is there all throughout his work. As someone said, we do not know
who discovered water but we are pretty sure it wasn’t the fish! So you swim around
in Dewey’s many publications and it is easy to miss what is effectively the very
environment. His treatment of technology is everywhere, like water to the fish, so it
is hard to see it. That’s why I wrote John Dewey’s Pragmatic Technology – to show
people where to look.
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Talking about your work not only in terms of scholarship, what do you think
is your major contribution?
There are several things that I might mention. As I said, I published the first
extended development of a pragmatist approach to the philosophy of technology.
There is also my continuing critique of certain vectors in “postmodernism” from a
pragmatic standpoint. There is still work to be done in that area. I tried to do a bit of
that in my book Pragmatism as Post-Postmodernism.
The big thing is the editorial projects at the Dewey Center: the electronic edition
of the Collected Works, the four volumes of the Correspondence, the two volumes of
Dewey’s Class Lectures, and Works about Dewey. These have all been collaborative
projects, and I cannot praise the editors at the Center for Dewey Studies enough for
the energy and dedication that they brought to these projects. It has been an interesting
and sometimes difficult process raising the funds to keep the Dewey projects going for
some twenty years, but we have succeeded. It is important to emphasize that the type
of editing we do at the Dewey Center is very much a scholarly activity. Choices have
to be made, and they must be informed by careful scholarship. The editions – Dewey,
James, Santayana, Peirce, Royce – represent scholarship that has made other types of
scholarship possible. We edit the texts and then other scholars build on our work to
write their essays and books such as intellectual biographies, for example. Works by
Steven Rockefeller, Jay Martin, Robert Westbrook, to name a few, would not have
been possible without the resources that have been developed at the Dewey Center.
I’m also pleased to have had a part in establishing several sister Dewey Centers
around the world. The full list by country now includes China, Japan, France, Italy,
Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Hungary, Poland, Turkey, Argentina, and Brazil. I’ve
done a lot of traveling over the years, logging in an average of about one external
presentation per month for more than 20 years. Someone once called me the “Johnny
Appleseed of pragmatism.” I happily accept that.
I’ll add one more thing. My wife Liz Porter and I decided that SAAP needed a
summer institute, so we organized the first one in Burlington, Vermont in 1998, as
I recall. Now, some 20 years later, thanks to the work of a lot of people including Scott
Pratt, the summer institute is still going.
Considering the work of people like Richard Bernstein, would you restrain
the boundaries of the pragmatism conversation? Or rather, would you consider
the pragmatist family to be smaller than Bernstein pretends it to be?
It does seem that today just about everybody claims to be a pragmatist of one
sort or another. I’m not interested in making judgments about who is in the club
and who is not. As far as I am concerned, we should let a thousand flowers bloom.
But I would just invite you to recall my earlier citation of Dewey’s remark that he
understood pragmatism in a very narrow sense. What many people have identified as
his pragmatism, I believe, is more or less what he summed up as his own philosophical
method as opposed to “pragmatism” in its limited sense. In another part of that letter
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to A. W. Moore that I quoted earlier he says: “Any name can only be one sided,
and so it seems a pity to have any. Radical empiricism begs as few as any, though
I should prefer the term experimentalism to empiricism. Philosophy is Functionalism
in the sense that it treats only of functions of experience (not of facts, nor of states,
ideas, &); it is Geneticism as a mode of analyzing & identifying these functions; it
is Instrumentalism as a theory of the significance of the Knowledge-function; it is
Experimentalism as a theory of the test of worth of all functions.”
So I would say that some neo-pragmatists seem to have taken an alternative path
– a linguistic turn away from the path of experimentalism, functionalism, geneticism,
and instrumentalism that Dewey recommended. Peirce, James, Dewey, Mead –
they were all involved in some sort of scientific work, so I expect that they would
be surprised that some self-described pragmatists today have so little to say about
technology (which is, after all, our environment). Then there is the matter that some
of the dualisms that Dewey fought so hard to eject from philosophical discourse
seem to keep creeping back into discussions. Some pragmatists even seem happily
employed in the “epistemology industry” about which Dewey warned us. There is
also the matter of respect for the texts. As an editor I’m sometimes quite surprised to
read what some pragmatists write about the “mistakes” of what someone has termed
“paleo-pragmatists” such as Dewey and James. (I don’t like the term much, since it
calls up images of dinosaurs.) The texts are our scholarly navigational tools. If we
don’t give them their due, then we will be off on some other trip. So it is none of my
business what people call themselves. As a pragmatist (in the narrow sense in which
Peirce and Dewey understood the term) however, I am sometimes amused a some of
the ways the term has been used.
When did the project of editing Dewey’s works start?
That was in 1961. George E. Axtelle started a small Dewey project at Southern
Illinois University Carbondale. He wanted to put together a concordance of Dewey’s
work. But it didn’t take long for him to realize that in order to have a concordance you
have to have a standard edition. When Axtelle left SIU his assistant, Jo Ann Boydston,
became the editor. Over the next 30 years she and her staff produced the 37 volumes
of Dewey’s Collected Works. She worked with the Modern Language Association
(MLA) to establish standards for editorial procedures. Each of her volumes received
the seal of approval of the Committee on Scholarly Editions of the MLA. She retired
in 1992. Volume 4 of the Dewey Correspondence contains an interview I did with Jo
Ann about the history of the Center.
Why did you decide to enter the Dewey’s editorial project, hence moving to
Southern Illinois University?
I had some experience editing journals. I liked editing and I felt it was important.
But also given my interests the Dewey Center position was a perfect job. I arrived at
the Center in 1993. My immediate tasks were to raise funds, to produce an electronic
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edition of Dewey’s correspondence and to publish an electronic edition of Dewey’s
Collected Works. We completed the Collected Works project first, since it was already
in print, and we have since completed (electronic) editions of the four volumes of
the Correspondence and two volumes of Dewey’s Class Lectures. Although our
publications have in the main been electronic, we have published some print volumes
as well. I estimate that on average we have published the equivalent of about five 500
page print volumes every year for the past 20 years.
What do you think is the situation of Dewey’s scholarship in the world?
There is a lot of interest and it is growing. The number of Dewey research centers
is one indication. Barbara Levine, who compiles and edits Works about Dewey, tells
me she is astounded at the proliferation of books and essays about Dewey. It has been
growing steadily over the past 20 years. I think a lot of it has to do with Dewey’s work
on democracy and education. I go to places where I would not expect anyone to know
much about Dewey, but I often find that there are teachers who use his methods, and
that there are philosophers and political scientists and even activists who want to see
their countries adopt the ideas about democracy that Dewey promoted.
Do you think the Putnam-Rorty controversy had to do with that or was that
not fundamental for making pragmatism more known?
Rorty played a major role when he delivered that 1979 presidential address at APA.
He was also a member of the board of the John Dewey Foundation for two decades.
And the Rorty/Putnam debate has greatly raised the profile of American philosophy.
Rorty was of course greatly influenced by French postmodernist writers, and he raised
the eyebrows of more than one Dewey scholar with his pronouncements about what
he thought Dewey either said or should have said. During recent years I think Putnam
has moved a bit towards pragmatism, perhaps pushed a bit by Ruth Anna Putnam. But
there is still a big gap between him and Dewey, for example, on issues such as truth
and representationalism. I contributed an essay on Putnam and Dewey to the Library
of Living Philosophers volume dedicated to him. (In his reply he disagreed with a
good deal of what I had to say.) I think it has been extremely important to have the
contributions of Rorty and Putnam, and even their famous debate, if only because if
you go to a place like Argentina, for example, you find that there are three branches of
philosophy: Marxism, Continental philosophy, and analytic philosophy. Pragmatism
is considered a subset of analytic philosophy since students get to Dewey through
Rorty (and now through McDowell and Brandom).
The other way you can go is to work forward from the classical pragmatists to
the neo-pragmatists. In my view, which direction you travel makes a difference. The
classical pragmatists are rooted in the American tradition of the Puritans, Jonathan
Edwards, the Transcendentalists Emerson and Thoreau, Whitman, Jefferson, and
so on. When people work backward from Rorty they tend to stop with Dewey and
James and Peirce. I myself have worked in both directions: forward from the founding
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pragmatists to the neopragmatists as well as backward to the roots of classical
pragmatism.
Bernstein is a different matter. He has created a very important bridge between
Dewey, whose work he knows very well, and Continental philosophers such as
Hannah Arendt. I’ve suggested that he occupies a position somewhere between Rorty
and Habermas on a number of issues. Joseph Margolis, whose analysis of what is
going on in philosophy is almost always right in my view, is surely right on this as
well: the future of American philosophy lies in its ability to find ways of engaging the
Continental and analytic traditions. American philosophy has enormous and unique
resources to bring to bear on that project. As far as I know Margolis doesn’t mention
neo-Confucianism and Buddhism, but I would add those traditions as well. Roger
Ames is doing some of that, and I’ve been very interested in the similarities between
Dewey’s work and the interpretations of the Lotus Sutra that come through Nichiren
Buddhism, especially as they impact pedagogy.
Given your logical background, you are in a favorable position to appreciate
the proximity between pragmatism and analytic philosophy, not being a priori
against analytic philosophy.
When I was studying the history of logic I read a lot of analytic philosophy,
and it has served me well. I have certainly read and greatly appreciated the work of
Wittgenstein, Ryle, Austin, Russell and Frege. It is just that after reading as much
Dewey as I have, I see him as having solved some of the problems that some analytic
philosophers are still struggling with, and I see his work as more relevant to what he
called “the problems of men [and women].” The continuing quest for certainty is one
example. Philip Kitcher has suggested that we need to reverse the old paradigm, the
one with logic and epistemology as providing the central philosophical problems and
fields such as ethics and aesthetics as residing at the periphery. I think he is correct.
Logic and epistemology are tools that we need to be able to work on the central issues.
But those central issues include ethics, aesthetics, and political philosophy.
How would you locate your work in the pragmatism tradition or American
philosophy?
Apart from being the general editor of the Dewey Correspondence, I would
describe myself as an Americanist who works in the fields of philosophy of technology
and philosophy of education, and who has during the last couple of decades attempted
to get the voices of Dewey and James, especially, inserted into debates where they
are absent.
Because of my work at the Dewey Center I have had the opportunity to travel a
great deal and have had occasion to work with philosophers in China, for example, on
issues like the relation of Dewey to neo-Confucianism. In Japan I have worked with
Buddhists on issues like the relation of Dewey’s work to the teachings of Nichiren
Buddhism. Jim Garrison and I recently collaborated on a book with Daisaku Ikeda,
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the spiritual leader of some 13 million Nichiren Buddhists, on the importance of the
educational theories of Dewey and the Japanese educator Tsunesaburo Makiguchi for
the 21st century. In Italy I’ve collaborated with philosophers of education, offering
continuing education courses for teachers. In Vietnam I’ve presented seminars on
Dewey and American democracy at the national research centers for philosophy and
political science. All of this has been an attempt to raise the profile of a philosopher
who I think mostly got things right and who is much more radical and much more
relevant to our current situation than most people understand.
The last part of our interview is about the future. What is going on, or what
is more important to foster?
Well, I think we are in a very difficult time right now in terms of the future of higher
education, not just in the United States but elsewhere as well. Everything seems to be in
flux: universities are being reconfigured according to business models, and that affects
what is taught, how it is taught, and the distribution of educational opportunities.
There are the still unknown effects of distance education. The recommendations
put forward in the “Browne” report in the U.K. and the “Seven Solutions” report in
Texas, for example, are frightening. American philosophers can have an enormous
role in framing some of these issues, given resources such as Dewey’s educational
theories, Royce’s ideas about community, James’ radical empiricism and pluralism,
and Peirce’s pragmatism, to say nothing of Jane Addams’ ideas about inclusion
and democratic forms of life. I expect that professional philosophy will become
less “hyper-professional” as the younger generation looks for ways to increase the
relevance of what philosophers do. I’m already beginning to see some of that.
People trained in the Deweyan tradition are maybe less interested in the
essential part of the hyper-professionalization of philosophy, but on the other
side this tradition has developed a high sensitivity about how to bring back
cultural reflections to the life of communities, in their vague or specific form. Is
it difficult to make it survive in an academic system that does not seem to leave
room enough for more practice oriented attitudes in philosophers?
You have put your finger on a very difficult problem, and it is not a new one. The
issue calls to mind a philosopher of education who is not a Deweyan in terms of selfidentification, but who is quite Deweyan in terms of his practice. Pedro A. Noguera
has written well-received books about how to improve education in underfunded,
de facto segregated schools in the inner cities of the United States. When he was in
graduate school at Stanford University pursuing a degree in philosophy of education
he was also a member of a local school-board. That is a very Deweyan approach that
combines scholarship with practice outside the walls of the academy. So if graduate
students can do it, faculty can do it. Another example: I am often invited to give talks
in Buddhist community centers in places like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
The audiences tend to comprise school teachers, lawyers, doctors, unemployed people
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– a cross section of the community. The point is that you can teach and write books
and articles and still have time for activities outside the university.
This attitude towards ‘philosophy outside the academia’ is a common feature
among American scholars of your generation: I am thinking e.g. about Jacquelyn
Kegley and John Lachs. Do you see this attitude towards the philosophical
practice to keep on also in younger generations?
It may be difficult for the younger generation because of the additional pressures
on the younger faculty. With one-year appointments they never know where they are
going to be next year. And even if there are continuing non-tenure track appointments,
there is also the pressure of increasing loads of teaching. So it is difficult. But I see
many younger philosophers just working harder to make a difference outside the
classroom as well as for their students. We will have to resist increasing attempts to
reorganize universities on business models. If it comes to the point that philosophers
are regarded as “knowledge workers” who have clients and consumers instead of
students, then it will be a very sad day for education.
Do you see other important challenges for pragmatism in the future? Is
education the first one?
Yes, absolutely! Education is first, because that is the way that society renews
itself. As university professors we have access to a large number of students over the
span of our careers. What we say makes a big difference. I’ve already mentioned the
obvious fact that higher education is in trouble, and I’ve already said something about
that. Beyond that, however, I can say that a generation slightly younger than mine
has provided some very good examples of philosophers trained in or sympathetic to
American philosophy who have been able to make significant contributions outside
academic circles. Paul B. Thompson does work in the ethics of food biotechnology.
Bryan G. Norton has done important work at the Environmental Protection Agency
on environmental sustainability. One of my former students, Tibor Solymosi is also
a good example. I believe he is the one who coined the term “neuropragmatism.”
Jonathan Moreno has made important contributions to medical ethics and has done
work at the Center of American Progress, a progressive public policy think tank. I think
that’s where we are going: more syncretism, with respect to philosophical orientations
and engaging in research that has the possibility of changing people’s lives.
Only philosophers or sociologists are doing this intellectual work?
No. There are others as well. Because of my association with the Dewey Center
I get to know people in lots of different fields who conduct intellectual work outside
the fields of philosophy and sociology. Just to mention a few that come to mind,
there are architects, engineers, public policy researchers, public school teachers, and
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historians. But in philosophy there are still people who want to hang on to some of the
old problems. There are people still publishing and getting tenure by worrying about
the problem of other minds and whether we can know that we have interior states!
I saw an old professor of mine from many years ago at an APA meeting. I had not seen
him in more than two decades. I asked him how he was doing. He said “Let me check
my internal states.” And sometimes we wonder why the public thinks philosophers
are irrelevant.
I don’t want to end on that negative note however. I see enormous energy in
the younger generation of philosophers. Some of my graduate students are doing
marvelous things. Eric Weber, for example, who works in the area of public policy
leadership at the University of Mississippi, recently published a book on democracy
and leadership in the southern part of the United States. And I could go on, but it is
probably time to stop. Thanks for the opportunity to respond to your questions.
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Book Reviews
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Sami Pihlström*
Ana Honnacker, (2015), Post-säkularer Liberalismus: Perspektiven auf Religion
und Öffentlichkeit im Anschluss an William James, Baden-Baden, Nomos, 386 p.
William James is generally regarded as the most important classical pragmatist in
the philosophy of religion; more generally, he can be considered one of the founding
figures of what is today known as interdisciplinary religious studies. However, James
is famous for emphasizing, or even over-emphasizing, individual religious experience,
and he has rarely been discussed as a theorist of religion as a societal form of life, let
alone of political issues emerging from religious practices and their conflicts. The
latter is exactly what Ana Honnacker seeks to do in her ambitious book, based on a
doctoral dissertation defended in 2014 at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in
Frankfurt am Main.
Starting from the timely cultural and political discourse on secularization and
on what is today called the “post-secular” situation, Honnacker carefully examines
James’s pragmatism and the theory of religion based thereupon, proposing an original
project of applying such pragmatism to the current issues of “post-secular liberalism.”
She successfully argues that James’s pluralistic ideas may crucially help us in making
sense of our contemporary cultural and political situation in which there are various
different and partly conflicting views on religion available, campaigning for their
rights to be heard. This situation is aptly labeled post-secular, because religion has
returned to claim its place in public discussions, and the very dichotomy between
religious and non-religious views may have become problematic, if not obsolete.
Among its other virtues, the book is very clearly structured. After an introductory
discussion of post-secularity (Chapter 1), chapter 2 comprehensively examines
various – both “exclusivist” and “inclusivist” – arguments regarding religion in the
public sphere, drawing close attention not only to major authors like John Rawls,
Jürgen Habermas, and Robert Audi but to several minor figures in the debate as well.
James’s pluralistic approach is rather obviously relevant here, as the basic problem
situation can be characterized in terms of the “fact of pluralism” (37ff.). It is against
this background that Honnacker, in her later chapters, moves on to her interpretations
of James’s “humanistic pragmatism” (Chapter 3) and James’s conception of religion
(Chapter 4). The most original part of the book is chapter 5, in which James is shown
to be highly relevant to the examination of religious “voices” in the public and
political arena, as well as to attempts to develop a pragmatic theology. Throughout
her volume, Honnacker demonstrates excellent command of not only James but also
relevant secondary literature. Indeed, the book is full of helpful references – also to
German sources that are not widely cited in mainstream English-language literature
on pragmatism.
In her third chapter, “Grundzüge des humanistischen Pragmatismus,” Honnacker
analyzes many of the key ideas, problems, and tensions in James’s pragmatism,
including James’s radical empiricism, his pragmatic conception of truth, his general
antifoundationalism, and his perspectival, antireductionist attempts to accommodate
both scientific and religious ways of thinking in a pluralistic metaphilosophy. Her
* University of Helsinki, Finland [[email protected]].
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reading of James is balanced, avoiding various unhelpful extremes, both antirealistic
and metaphysically realistic (among others). I find little reason for any significant
disagreements here; generally, I am convinced that Honnacker’s overall picture of
James is very close to being fundamentally correct. Even more importantly, however,
she is not primarily interested in what exactly James “really” thought about these
matters but rather, pragmatically, in what their contemporary relevance in the political,
post-secular “religion in the public sphere” debates might be.
One could of course raise some doubts about the way in which the realism vs.
antirealism (constructivism) tension is claimed to be resolved. Honnacker writes: “Es
scheint mir jedoch völlig ausser Zweifel zu stehen, dass trotz des hohen kreativen
Anteils des Menschen in der humanistischen Auffassung eine subjektunabhängige
Welt – wenn eben auch keine Wirklichkeit im für uns relevanten Sinne – angenommen
wird und werden muss. Diese Welt ist dem Menschen aber nicht zugänglich, sie ist
ihm stets in seiner subjektiven Deutung gegeben, die zwar bis zu einem gewissen
Grade arbiträr und relative ist, aber […] alles andere als willkürlich.” (166). Does this
turn James into a quasi-Kantian thinker postulating inaccessible things in themselves?
What exactly does it mean to say that a world independent of the subject must be
postulated (“angenommen”) even though such a world is not given to us except in its
subjective and relative versions?
I am not entirely convinced that Honnacker succeeds in adequately settling these
issues, but then again I do not think that any other James scholar (or James himself,
for that matter) does, either. There is a not easily resolvable tension between realist
and constructivist ideas right at the heart of Jamesian pragmatism (and perhaps
pragmatism generally). Honnacker’s articulation of these tensions and her attempt to
show the Jamesian pragmatist how to live with them are among the best we find in
recent James scholarship. I strongly sympathize with her proposal to occupy a middleground position between the extremes, “eine Mittelstellung zwischen einem reinen
Konstruktivismus oder Relativismus und einem starken metaphysischen Realismus,
Empirismus oder Sensualismus klassischer Spielart […], zwischen der Behauptung
reiner Geistunabhängigkeit der Wirklichkeit und idealistischen Konzeptionen” (168).
In dealing with these tensions and the quest for a middle path, Honnacker also duly
recognizes issues frequently overlooked in James research, including the problem of
solipsism as something that James actually finds relevant (170-1).
Honnacker suggests, furthermore, that James is a pragmatic scientific realist
endorsing the postulation of theoretical entities in science (186-7). This sounds
plausible to me (and in fact she kindly cites something I wrote about this matter – and
many other topics, too), but I would perhaps prefer to be slightly more careful here,
suggesting that this is how Jamesian pragmatism might and ought to be developed
in contemporary philosophy of science, even though this may not exactly have been
his own view, given that the issues concerning theoretical entities largely emerged
only somewhat later. In any case, the immediately following brief comparison to
Thomas Kuhn (188) is insightful, and this analogy could perhaps have been more
explicitly carried over to the philosophy of religion, too. Another important feature
of Honnacker’s third chapter is that she discusses James’s theory of truth and his will
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to believe theory in conjunction. I agree that it is misleading to treat them entirely
separately, as some scholars tend to do; they are deeply interconnected.
In the fourth chapter, Honnacker focuses on James’s theory of religion. One of
the central concepts here is, unsurprisingly, religious experience. Honnacker argues
persuasively that the primacy of religious experience does not immunize religion
against criticism, as religious experience is continuous with other types of experience
(236ff.). However, in my view, it sounds a bit too evidentialistic to maintain that
religious convictions, though originating in individual experience, “unterliegen im
öffentlichen Diskurs denselben Kriterien wie alle anderen Überzeugungen auch”
(253). Can they really (according to James, or the contemporary Jamesian pragmatist)
be subordinated to exactly the same (“denselben”) criteria as any other convictions?
Wouldn’t this sacrifice the uniquely experience-grounded character of such convictions
in James’s view? At this point it might be worthwhile to compare James’s views on
religion to “Wittgensteinian” (strongly anti-evidentialist) philosophy of religion, but
admittedly such a comparison would lead us far from the main goals of Honnacker’s
project. Generally, again, I believe Honnacker is exactly right when she points out
that James lies between fideism and evidentialism (261). I suppose the key difference
between James and Wittgenstein could be former’s tendency to view religion and
science as continuous (cf. 329), which the latter would never have approved of.
Another very important point Honnacker makes about James’s philosophy of
religion is that the problem of evil, albeit only seldom explicitly discussed by James,
is constantly at the background of his discussions (“stellt aber einen permanenten
Gedanken im Hintergrund dar,” 278). The brief treatment of the problem of evil and
theodicy (278-9) could even have been expanded, given its importance for James.
How would this particular problem become relevant to the “religion in the public
sphere” theme – are there, for instance, political versions of theodicy available there
that the Jamesian pragmatist could criticize?
Chapter 4 ends with an illuminating discussion of the ways in which James’s views
on religious conversion (“Bekehrung”) and prayer (“Gebet”) presuppose a conception
of the reality of God independently of subjects (284-91). Here Honnacker might
have returned more explicitly to the tensions regarding realism and its alternatives
(pragmatic constructivism, idealism, relativism) more thoroughly discussed in the
previous chapter.
The fifth chapter is, as already indicated above, the most original section of the book
in the sense that there James’s pluralism is actually put into substantial philosophical
work in the politically and more broadly culturally hot debates on religious “voices”
in liberal democracies. James’s pragmatic pluralism and his generally fallibilist and
antidogmatic approach are extremely relevant here and should be more adequately
acknowledged as key contributions not only to philosophy of religion but to political
philosophy as well. James’s pragmatism promises to avoid, e.g., both relativism and
fundamentalism – and there can hardly be more important philosophical concerns in
the post-secular liberal situation. Even a pragmatist conception of theological inquiry
(342ff.) can be sketched with James’s help. Here, however, the realism issue – this
time applied to theology and religious studies – could be revisited again (cf. 348).
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In the case of an excellent book like this, it is difficult to suggest any major
improvements. Given that Honnacker shows how James’s pragmatism deals with,
and perhaps also emerges from, largely Kantian tensions (realism vs. idealism or
constructivism, empiricism vs. rationalism, etc.), she might have directly referred to at
least Kant’s First Critique, as well as James’s explicit readings of Kant, as problematic
as they are. Furthermore, it might be suggested that the basic situation of postsecularity – a confusing arena of religious and non-religious voices fighting for their
status in the public sphere – could be analyzed in terms of the quasi-Hegelian notion
of recognition (Anerkennung) that philosophers like Charles Taylor and Axel Honneth
have employed especially since the early 1990s. It would have been extremely
interesting to read more about how James’s pluralism and pragmatism might connect
with the recognition discourse. An integration of pragmatism and recognition theory
might be one way to carry forward the kind of Jamesian promise to make pragmatic
pluralism better serve the post-secular liberalism debate. As James’s pragmatism and
pluralism play a mediating role between different kinds of believers and non-believers
(cf. 256), or between religion and other practices and experiences, this mediation
might itself be interpreted as a process of recognition (cf. also 353).
Ana Honnacker’s book will undoubtedly be the starting point of a successful
career in the philosophy of religion and pragmatism scholarship; it can be warmly
recommended to anyone interested in James, pragmatism, or questions concerning
religion in the public sphere.
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Roberto Gronda*
James Scott Johnston (2014), John Dewey’s Earlier Logical Theory, New York,
SUNY Press, 266 p.
In the last fifteen years, John Dewey’s early philosophy received considerable
attention. John Shook’s Dewey’s Empirical Theory of Knowledge and Reality, Jim
Good’s The Search for “Unity in Diversity”: the “Permanent Deposit” of Hegel
in John Dewey’s Philosophy, Donald Morse’s Faith in Life: John Dewey’s Early
Philosophy, on the top of many articles, critical editions, and reviews: all these texts
have contributed to a better understanding of many important aspects of Dewey’s
early thought. The aspects with which those pieces of scholarship are concerned
reflect, quite naturally, the trends of interest in contemporary pragmatist debates. It is
not strange, therefore, that relatively little attention has been paid to Dewey’s logical
theory. James Scott Johnston’s new book, significantly entitled John Dewey’s Earlier
Logical Theory, aims to fill this gap in Dewey scholarship: its goal is that of outlining
the process of development of Dewey’s theory of logic, from his first articles to his
last great book, the Logic: Theory of Inquiry.
The book comprises an introduction and seven chapters. Of these, the first two –
the best part of the book, in my opinion – are devoted to analyzing what the author
calls ‘Dewey’s Logical Education,’ that is, the “context of Dewey’s education in logic,
the institutions and settings in which Dewey developed his earliest logical ideas, as
well as Dewey’s association with certain individuals germane to his early logical
development” (15). In particular, the first chapter deals with the issue of Dewey’s
indebtedness to his fellow pragmatists (Charles S. Peirce, William James, and
George H. Mead) and to Charles Darwin, as well as with important moments of his
philosophical development such as the so-called turn to Aristotle, his rediscovery of
Peirce, his response to the attacks of realists, and his encounter with Bertrand Russell.
The second chapter is explicitly dedicated to Dewey’s relationship with George
W. F. Hegel. In chapters 3 to 6, Johnston offers an overview of Dewey’s logical texts
of the period 1890-1916, 1916 being the year in which the Essays in Experimental
Logic were published. This part of the book is mainly expository: the author presents
in a detailed and clear way the various arguments that Dewey sets forth in his logical
writings, with an eye to highlighting the shifts and changes, both terminological and
conceptual, that led him to progressively distance from his early formulations. Finally,
chapter 7 tackles the issue of the specific differences that distinguish Dewey’s Logic:
Theory of Inquiry from his earlier works. Johnston speaks of ‘four pressing concerns’
that are distinctive of Dewey’s later logical theory: these are the turn to experience;
the discovery of the biological and social-cultural matrices of inquiry; the relationship
of scientific inquiry to social inquiry and to common-sense; the interrelationships
amongst the tools and techniques within inquiry (198). These four concerns are
interpreted by Johnston as four different problems that Dewey did not succeed in
solving in his earlier logical texts, since they could be appropriately addressed only in
the context of his mature philosophy.
* Università di Pisa [[email protected]].
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The adjective ‘earlier,’ which appears in the title of the book, plays therefore a
twofold function. On the one hand, it has a purely descriptive role: it defines the
period which is the subject-matter of Johnston’s historical reconstruction (18901916). On the other hand, it performs a sort of interpretative function: it indicates that
Dewey’s early logical theory should be interpreted in the light of his later views, with
the aim to show how the latter actually came out from the former. The second function
can be better formulated in terms of the couple discontinuity/continuity. Johnston’s
concern is that of understanding the development of Dewey’s logical thought without
ironing out the differences between what comes before and what comes after. In order
to do that, the author adopts what may be called a ‘differential’ and ‘incremental’
method: he focuses on the problems that Dewey tries to face in his writings, and
shows that Dewey’s thought is constantly evolving toward more accurate accounts
of logical inquiry. Such an approach relies on the idea that Dewey’s later logical
theory is sounder than his earlier formulations – an interpretative hypothesis which
I think very few interpreters will venture to dispute. In doing so, Johnston succeeds in
acknowledging the autonomy of both the earlier and the later logical theories, as well
as their independence of one another.
Johnston’s genetic approach has the merit of counteracting the ‘marginalization’ of
Dewey’s logical development, and of conceiving of the Logic: The Theory of Inquiry
not as ‘an ahistorical document,’ but rather as the results of a series of theoretical
decisions that Dewey made in the course of 40 years of philosophical research.
Johnston invites us to ‘take Dewey at his word’ when he says, in the opening pages of
his Logic, that “[t]he present work is marked in particular by application of the earlier
ideas to interpretation of the forms and formal relations that constitute the standard
material of logical tradition” (LW 12: 3; quoted at 221). In other words, Johnston
suggests that we should read Dewey’s logical development as stemming from an
original, essential commitment to a set of ideas that profoundly affected the way in
which he thought about logical issues. According to Johnston, this set of ideas comes
from Dewey’s confrontation with Hegelian philosophy.
As is well known, in his autobiographical essay “From Absolutism to
Experimentalism” Dewey states that Hegel left a permanent deposit in his thought.
Much has been written on this issue: Johnston takes Dewey’s autobiographical sketch
as a reliable historiographical hypothesis, and argues that Hegel rather than James,
Peirce, Mead or Darwin should be acknowledged as the most important influence on
Dewey’s logical theory. I think that Johnston’s argument is sound and convincing.
I think he is right in remarking that the early Dewey (especially during the 1890s)
attempted to naturalize Hegel, and I completely agree with him when he writes that:
the dialectic of Hegel […] was taken by Dewey and transformed into a functional
account of inquiry in which movement from a whole (an experience) results in a
problem (negation) requiring reflection upon the elements of the problematic situation
(the examination of the shape of Spirit’s particular or moments) and reflection upon the
salient elements that will make the situation different or satisfactory (the realization
of its opposite as both opposite and self) resulting in a reestablished, reconstructed,
qualitatively satisfactory whole. (72)
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I have quoted this passage in its entirety not only because, to my knowledge, it is
probably the clearest formulation of Dewey’s critical appropriation of the Hegelian
legacy, but also because it highlights that many themes of Dewey’s philosophy, that
are usually traced back to the influence exerted on him by Peirce and James are,
in reality, traces of his Hegelian heritage. This is a significant result of Johnston’s
work, which has important consequences for the overall image of Dewey’s thought:
indeed, to say that the Deweyan notion of reconstruction is indebted to Hegel’s
account of conflict has the effect of downplaying the importance of the pragmatist
tradition for the formulation of his logical theory. Johnston correctly maintains that
Dewey realizes only late in his life that he and Peirce were ‘fellow travelers,’ and
that Peirce’s logical work could be a source for his own reflections on that issue,
despite the former’s interest in mathematical, formal logic. Similarly, Johnston
argues that there is no particular contribution of James to Dewey’s logic: “I submit
that nothing specific from James contributed to Dewey’s development of logical
theory from 1890 on.” Even the importance of Darwin, who is usually regarded as a
major influence on Dewey, should be reassessed. As Johnston convincingly remarks,
“scholars have overestimated the influence of Darwin on Dewey”: even though
many concepts that are central to Dewey’s theory of logic are couched in Darwinian
language (adaptation, adjustment, evolution, and so on) “Dewey’s use of Darwin is
not basic to his logical theory” since the logical movement of transformation and
reconstruction is “manifestly Hegelian” (32).
Even though I do not agree with all the details in Johnston’s historiographical
reconstruction – I think, for instance, that something more has to be said about the
influence of James on Dewey’s logical theory – I believe that his attempt to find a
proper place for Dewey’s thought in the broader context of 19th century philosophy
is worthy of serious consideration. Johnston invites us to see Dewey’s philosophy in
continuity with the European post-Kantian tradition, and, by stressing its Hegelian
roots, he provides a general and comprehensive framework for interpretation. More
clearly stated: I read Johnston’s argument as a significant step towards the definition
of a paradigm of historiographical research based on the assumption that, in the last
decades of the 19th century, Hegel’s philosophy represented a sort of lingua franca
shared by American and European philosophers. This transatlantic philosophical
community was held together by a substantive agreement on the problems to be
solved and on the means to be employed. Consequently, the different logical theories
that were formulated by different philosophers belonging to the idealistic tradition
(Dewey, Francis H. Bradley, Bernard Bosanquet, Hermann Lotze, Thomas H. Green,
but also Benedetto Croce) could be seen as variations on a common Hegelian theme.
The definition of the general framework in which Dewey’s logical theory developed
supplies us with more powerful analytic tools. Such an enhancement of the
explanatory capacity of our historiographical account is undoubtedly a remarkable
theoretical achievement.
At this point, however, some defects of Johnston’s approach come to the fore. To
put it boldly, it seems to me that Johnston’s historiographical work is very consistent
in its framing of the general issue of Dewey’s logical development, but – at least in
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some points – it lacks of analytical accuracy. For reasons which are not difficult to
understand, Johnston seems to be very concerned with establishing the standpoint
from which Dewey’s logic can be profitably investigated (that is, the persistence of
his Hegelian heritage), at the expense of the analysis of the particular moves through
which Dewey concretely articulates his position. In the remaining part of the review,
I will therefore highlight and discuss what I deem to be the most questionable aspects
of his reconstruction of Dewey’s logical theory, with the hope that my remarks could
help to clarify some particular, specific problems that are left unexplained – or that
are not adequately explained, at least from my point of view – in Johnston, John
Dewey’s Earlier Logical Theory. In order to remain as close as possible to the spirit of
the book, I will focus my comments on three interrelated points, all of which revolve
around the relation between Hegel and Dewey.
First of all, I think that some of the historiographical categories employed
by Johnston are not wholly clear. The best example is the category of ‘Hegelian
influence.’ In a sense, it is evident that Dewey was strongly influenced by Hegel, and
that he did not abandon his Hegel-inspired approach to logical problems even when
he came to reject the Hegelian garb in favor of a naturalistic language. I believe that
nobody would be willing to question this thesis. However, the use of the category
‘Hegelian influence’ leaves open – and partially conceals – the question of which
Hegel Dewey has in mind. We should not overlook the fact that the Hegel that we
know and discuss is different from the Hegel that Dewey knew and discussed. Dewey
read Hegel through the spectacles of his contemporary philosophical debate. Now, one
of the greatest problems with which he was concerned was that of distancing himself
from the standard version of neo-Hegelianism that was highly influential at his time.
What he found untenable in that position was precisely the idea of a coincidence
of logic and metaphysics. As is well known, he rejected that view in the articles
“Psychology as Philosophic Method” and “The Psychological Standpoint” (1886),
where he advocated that psychology rather than logic should be acknowledged as the
real method of philosophy. In a sense, this is the ‘prehistory’ of Dewey’s logic: his
parting of the ways with Hegelianism took place in 1880s, four years before Dewey
published his first articles on logical topics. However, since it set the stage for his later
logical work, it would have been interesting if Johnston had dealt with that phase of
Dewey’s philosophical development in his book.
The previous remarks lead directly to another point that I consider problematic.
I think that Johnston gives too much emphasis to the importance of Hegel’s
Phenomenology of Spirit for Dewey’s philosophy. In many passages of his book,
Johnston draws comparison between some of Dewey’s logical ideas and some figures
of the Phenomenology of Spirit. So, for instance, at page 101 Johnston writes that
“Dewey develops a conclusion Hegel draws in the Phenomenology of Spirit,” and
than he quotes a long passage from the essay “The Relationship of Thought and
its Subject-Matter” which runs as follows: “Reflection follows so naturally upon
its appropriate cue, its issue is so obvious, so practical, the entire relationship is so
organic, that once [we] gran the position that thought arises in reaction to specific
demand, and there is not the particular type of thinking called logical theory because
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there is not the practical demand” (MW 2: 300; quoted at 101). I do not want to deny
that Dewey draws heavily from Hegel in this passage, even though I must admit that,
in this particular case, I cannot see the specific Hegelian contribution. This is not
the point. The point is that Johnston does not provide any evidence in support of his
reading. Johnston does not limit himself to stating that Dewey develops a conclusion
previously drawn by Hegel; he specifies that that conclusion has been formulated in
the Phenomenology of Spirit. On what grounds can he justifiably make this claim?
Why the Phenomenology and not the Logic or the Encyclopaedia?
Johnston’s argument turns out to be even more puzzling when one considers
the almost complete absence of any reference, in Dewey’s work, to Hegel’s
Phenomenology of Spirit. In his early writings Dewey discusses at length Hegel’s
Lesser Logic and the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences; on the contrary,
he almost never mentions the Phenomenology of Spirit. Even in his 1897 Lecture on
Hegel, Dewey refers to the Phenomenology of Spirit only once, in the context of a
discussion of Hegel’s opposition to Friedrich Schelling (Dewey 2010: 111). The other
two occurrences of the term ‘phenomenology’ (120, and 131) refer to the section of
the Encyclopaedia bearing that name. As most of his contemporaries, Dewey was
an attentive reader of the Encyclopaedia: he was interested less in the science of the
development of consciousness than in the systematic aspect of Hegel’s philosophy.
This is a fact, even though a strange one: to our eyes, indeed, it is difficult to
understand why Dewey did not prefer the Phenomenology of Spirit over the Logic (or
the Encyclopaedia) since the former bears strong similarities to his own philosophical
project. From our point of view, it would have been more natural for Dewey to adopt
Hegel’s phenomenological approach. However, the events did not play out as we
would have expected them to; simply, we should be humble, and acknowledge that
this is one of the cases in which history surprises us. Otherwise, if we decide not to
respect the way in which Dewey actually read and understood Hegel, our historical
reconstruction turns out to be either too impressionistic or too speculative.
The appeal to humility is also relevant in another sense. I have remarked above
that I do not consider the historiographical category of ‘Hegelian influence’ wholly
legitimate because of its lack of clearness. However, this is not the only problem that
I have with the use of this category. Another problem is that its explanatory power
is too strong and, in the last analysis, uncontrolled; it synthesizes too many elements
under one simple concept. I will try to clarify this point with an example. I think that
one of the greatest merits of Johnston’s book is that of defining in an appropriate
way the problem of the origin of Dewey’s logic. Usually, the fact that Dewey was
concerned with logical issues is taken for granted, as if it were somehow natural and
necessary that he should develop a theory of logic. On the contrary, Johnston raises
the question: why did Dewey start writing on logical issues in 1890? He writes:
While his [Dewey’s] motives for both psychology and psychology seem plain enough,
the same cannot be said of Dewey’s motives for embarking on an examination of logic.
For, he could have (along with Wundt) restricted himself to empirical-physiological
psychology. Or he could have restricted himself to the experimental psychology of
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James. But he didn’t. He decided to tackle logical theory, bearing his first (written)
fruits in 1890. (17)
His answers to that question is that Dewey started reflecting on logical issues when
he realized that a proper understanding of the nature of logic was necessary to his theory
of psychology. About the relation between psychology and logic, Johnston remarks:
“I surmise it is the need for a method that concerns Dewey: a method of systematic
collection and ordering of knowledge” (18). I think that this answer is substantially
correct – it is correct to say that, to understand the origin of Dewey’s logic, one has to
take into consideration his particular conception of psychology – and I believe that if
Johnston had articulated it in a more straightforwardly, his interpretation of Dewey’s
logical development would have been more precise and consistent. In my opinion,
the unsatisfactory part of his reconstruction is that, when it comes down to explaining
how Dewey concretely reshaped his conceptual apparatus to find room for his logical
theory, Johnston relies on the notion of idealism and ‘Hegelian influence’ – he speaks
of an “idealism that takes empirical psychology seriously” (18) – and, in doing so, he
puts the cart before the horse. It is true that Dewey’s turn to Hegel is the solution –
actually, a great part of the solution – to the problem of the origin of his logical theory,
but this implies that the writings prior to 1890 (in particular, his Psychology) should
not be treated as genuinely Hegelian – at least for what concerns logic (in the sense in
which Dewey conceives of logic). If it were so, that is if there were a strong continuity
between the pre-1890 and the post-1890 texts, it would be difficult to understand why
Dewey decided to abandon the ‘psychological’ description of the different stages of
thought formulated in his Psychology in favor of a logical theory revolving around the
idea of the reconstructive function of the activity of thinking.
This is why I think that Johnston should have paid more attention to what
I have called above the ‘prehistory’ of Dewey’s logic. Dewey’s move to logical
instrumentalism is more complicated than how it is commonly portrayed; it entails
several minor changes on a terminological level which goes hand in hand with more
general transformations of the philosophical landscape, so to say. Not all of these
changes and transformations can be traced back to the unquestionable influence
of Hegel on Dewey. One of these steps towards instrumentalism is the adoption of
Bradley’s distinction between existence and meaning in 1886; another step is the
analysis of the relations between perception and conception – it is not by chance that
Dewey wrote an article on this issue, entitled “How Do Concepts Arise from Percepts”
(1891), and it is strange that Johnston does not discuss it in the third chapter of his
book, explicitly devoted to Dewey’s earliest views on logic. The distinction between
perception and conception is intrinsically related to the Kantian issue of the synthesis
of intuition and understanding in a judgment, as well as to the issue of the validity
of James’ conceptualist theory of concepts. It is only in the light of this complex
net of conceptual relations that the philosophical import of Dewey’s turn to Hegel
becomes fully understandable. In other words, the category of ‘Hegelian influence’ is
historiographically valuable when it is not used in a wholesale way.
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James Scott Johnston, John Dewey’s Earlier Logical Theory
As a final remark, I would like to stress that all that I have been saying about the
weaknesses – or, better said, what I deem to be the weaknesses – of Johnston’s approach
is not intended to downplay the importance of his work. John Dewey’s Earlier Logical
Theory is an interesting and thought-provoking book that opens new pathways for
understanding Dewey’s philosophy. I hope that my previous considerations will be
read less as a criticism than as an attempt to contribute to the clarification of the
problem of the origin of Dewey’s logical theory.
Bibliography
Dewey J., (1886), “The Psychological Standpoint,” in The Early Works of J. Dewey,
1882-1898, Vol. 1 (1882-1888), J. A. Boydston, ed., Carbondale, Southern Illinois
University Press, 2008, 122-143.
— (1886), “Psychology as Philosophic Method,” in The Early Works of J. Dewey,
1882-1898, Vol. 1 (1882-1888), J. A. Boydston, ed., Carbondale, Southern Illinois
University Press, 2008, 144-167.
— (1891), “How Do Concepts Arise from Percepts,” in The Early Works of J. Dewey,
1882-1898, Vol. 3 (1889-1892), J. A. Boydston, ed., Carbondale, Southern Illinois
University Press, 2008, 142-146.
— (1903), Studies in Logical Theory, in The Middle Works of J. Dewey, 1899-1924,
Vol. 2 (1902-1903), J. A. Boydston, ed., Carbondale, Southern Illinois University
Press, 2008, 293-378.
— (1938), Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, in The Later Works of J. Dewey, 1925-1953,
Vol. 12 (1938), J. A. Boydston, ed., Carbondale, Southern Illinois University
Press, 2008.
— (2010), John Dewey’s Philosophy of Spirit, with the 1897 Lecture on Hegel,
J. Shook & J. Good, eds., New York, Fordham University Press, 91-174.
Good. J., (2006), The Search for “Unity in Diversity”: the “Permanent Deposit” of
Hegel in John Dewey’s Philosophy, Lanham, Rowman and Littlefield.
Morse D. J., (2011), Faith in Life: John Dewey’s Early Philosophy, New York,
Fordham University Press.
Shook J., (2000), Dewey’s Empirical Theory of Knowledge and Reality, Nashville,
Vanderbilt University Press.
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EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PRAGMATISM AND AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY
COPYRIGHT © 2009 ASSOCIAZIONE PRAGMA
Sarin Marchetti*
Trygve Throntveit, (2014), William James and the Quest for an Ethical Republic,
London & New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 232 p.
Because of his unwavering commitment to fight disciplinary and mental closure,
William James is an author who has invited scholars from the most disparate fields to
review aspects of his eclectic and far-reaching body of work. Not only philosophers,
psychologists, historians of medicine and religion, but also artists, political theorists,
and social activists have productively engaged James’s rich and variegated writings
with the goal to reconstructing seminal portions of our intellectual, cultural, and
political history as well to foreseeing viable options for the intellectual, cultural,
and political challenges awaiting us in the future presents. What makes Throntveit’s
volume a valuable addition to such enlightened literature is its succesful attempt to
engage James at the under-explored “boundaries” (to use Francesca Bordogna’s apt
and catchy expression) of ethics and politics, provocatively dislodging a number of
assumptions – mostly advocated by those readers unimpressed with, or unsympathetic
to, James’s effort to draw novel infra-disciplinary relations and envisage novel intradisciplinary assumptions – governing our current compartmental thinking in such
areas. Rather than trying to force James in any of the (often quite narrow) contemporary
philosophical categories purportedly justifying the jungle of curricula, labels, and
headings featuring our academic formation, scholarly work, and job market, driven at
and voted to the hyper-specialization and hyper-comparimentalization of thinking and
research, the author conveys us the full breadth and scale of James’s ecumenical yet
extremely precise ethical-political investigations.
Throntveit’s exercise in interpretative dynamicity and theoretical pluralism gets
manifested in the very title of his work: the book in fact investigates James’s quest
(rather than a treatise or theory) for an ethical republic (a concept whose contours are
promiscuously shared by morality and politics). Rather than as a treatise or theory on
some confined and discrete subject matter whose confines are well-known and agreed
upon in advance by the inquirers, James’s moral and political thought is depicted
and assessed as a pursuit of, and journey in, a field with ambiguous contours and
hidden potentialities to be playfully explored. This imaginative hermeneutical angle is
reflected in the very organization and style of the book, which looks less as a closed and
definitive assessment of James’s views and more as an open-ended exploration of some
overlooked motives featuring his writings. Enriched by a wealth of bibliographical
documentation – the author has a solid grip on James’s unpublished materials and
manuscripts, which he puts in productive dialogue with most well known pages of his
work –, the book will be both a superb introduction to James’s practical philosophy
for newcomers as well as an indispensable guide for more seasoned readers of his
oeuvre. Throntveit’s work joins a fortunate trend of studies currently engaged in a reassessment and re-evaluation of James’s ethical investigations against the background
of his wider philosophical views and intellectual persona – an ensemble comprising
* Univerity College Dublin [[email protected]].
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not only intellectual historians (alongside Throntveit, one might list Paul Croce and
James Campbell) and philosophers (e.g. Sergio Franzese and Colin Koopman), but
also political scientists (Kennan Ferguson and Alex Livingston) and scholars of
religion (Michael Slater and Jeremy Carrette).
The volume comprises a short introduction plus five chapters on, respectively,
James’s elaboration of his pragmatism against the background of his complex family
ties and shifting cultural milieu (Chapter 1); his earlier and later ethical-religious
incursions, adjustments, and revisions (Chapter 2); his conception of the “ethical
republic” as articulated in his most canonical ethical writings from the 1890’s
(Chapter 3); James’s public personae and presence in the social and political debates
of his time, an aspect often downplayed in the secondary literature (Chapter 4); and his
intellectual legacy and fortune in the twentieth and now twentieth-first century, with
a particular emphasis on the American scene (Chapter 5). What is most appreciable
about the volume is the balance between theoretical and historical details: nearly
every insight, twist or turn in James’s intellectual work is backed up with an informed
reconstruction of the wider personal relations and conditions informing it. This is
done in the belief that a thinker such as James simply cannot be understood without
not so much reading his philosophy alongside with his biography, but rather without
reading his philosophy within his biography (and the other way around). Throntveit
is particularly effective in rendering a picture of James as a moral thinker deeply
engaged in moral questions and whose life was literary articulated by recurring
moral concerns: his moral thought was for the sake of his ethical mind and sociopolitical will, and his ordinary practical dilemmas delved deep into his intellectual
investigations.
In a sea of interesting insights and elegant interpretative choices, I would like to
pick out and highlight three particularly original and useful items: the characterization
of James’s close relationship with his father, the account of James’s understanding of
the relationship between ethics and religion, and the presentation of James’s voice
as an engaged citizen of the pragmatist ethical republic. For what regards the first
aspect, in chapter one Throntveit does a great job in flashing out James’s unbroken
wrestling with his father’s religious-moral outlook, which would eventually shape
his own views on why and how the spiritual and the ethical life should communicate
or rather part ways. If there are to date a number of fine works investigating James’s
intricate bond with his old man, Throntveit’s stands out not because it gives us new
details about such conflicting yet passionate bond but rather because it rearranges
what we know already in a congenial way, showing for example how many of James’s
reservations about the uncritical identification of ethics and religion can be brought
back to the resistance of his father’s subjugation of the moral life to the holy one.
This feature is then showed at work, in chapter two, in the very helpful discussion
of James’s prolonged interest in religion in the context of his ethical investigations,
which represents the second aspect of the book I would de like to stress. As against
those interpreters who read James as variously claiming that the moral life simply
could not be led independently from the religious one, that moral beliefs should
wait on religious faith, or that meaningful willful action should be backed up by
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metaphysical-religious considerations, the author reads James (both in “The Will to
Believe” and in Varieties of Religious Experience) as an author surely interested in
making room for religious appeals and in showing the many short-circuits between
religious considerations and ethical ones, yet resisting to ground (or, given the
context, to incardinate) morality on some religious anthropology or metaphysics we
ought to respect. I find this move as necessary as liberating, since James is still toooften recounted as an author driven by some sacred zeal and on a mission to rescue
over-beliefs as features and constituents of the world rather than of our possible
pragmatic stance toward it, despite the textual evidence of the contrary – that is the
several instances in which James claimed to be blessed by no religious faith and that
his respect for religion and defense of the right to believe is motivated by religion
being one of the things we do with ourselves, focusing in fact on religious practices
(which can grow or shrink in meaning accordingly to their place in our lives) rather
than on religious doctrines – which are true or false independently from our ways of
taking them in. This is obviously a nagging quarrel, and despite being in disagreement
with some of Throntveit’s views on the matter (for example his emphasis on James’s
alleged “moralism” or on religion’s chief “auxiliary” role as being that of fostering the
moral life), I think that his voice outside the choir is most valuable.
Finally, for what regards the third aspect of the volume I’de like to emphasize,
the author does a fine job in offering us a lesser known facet of James: namely,
his first-hand socio-political involvement in the problems and discussions of his
time. Sadly enough, even those works addressing James’s socio-political aspect
of his moral thought scarcely mention this important side of his pragmatism, and
the author displays in full his acquaintance with the intellectual history of America
at the turn of the century, to which James contributed in no small portion. What is
particularly insightful is the relation drawn between James’s quasi-methodological
refutation of “bigness” and “greatness” (as against the “molecular moral forces that
work from individual to individual”) with the identification of James’s most positive
“pragmatist polity” to be found in some of his writings and addresses for the wider
public. One of the open questions of James’s scholarship is in fact how to square
his several admonitions to look for particular solutions in pragmatism’s open-ended
analyses and diagnoses (suggesting rather to drawn them ourselves in our practical
life) and his several answers to the most pressing socio-political quests of his time.
Throntveit suggests to read such answers as the possible outcomes of those analyses
and diagnoses with which we readers have to experiment ourselves, thus testing their
validity in deed. If thus for James the chief socio-political challenge is “the problem
of individual or minority interests at odds with more powerful or popular agendas”
(110-1) – admittedly a problem still with us despite the radically different shape it
took in a globalized environment alien from James’s –, than in reading the ingredients
of James’s democratic republicanism (consisting in the nurturing of the ethical virtues
of experimentalism, historical wisdom and empathy as “practiced in the context of
power relations and the institutions that regulate them” (111)), we are called up to test
the viability and fittingness of this project in the world we live in. In this context, the
author suggests, taking a look at the historical feasibility and success of such option
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tells us a lot about its philosophical strength: to give the reader but one example,
James’s campaign to widen one’s (nation’s) ethical-political imagination is related
by Throntveit to his strenuous resistance to the expansionist policy of the Cleveland,
McKinley, and Roosevelt administrations, showing the difference in their respective
understanding of what would count as an ethically permissible expansion of the moral
energy at the heart of our individual and collective life.
Having surveyed some of its themes and highlights, in the remaining of this review
I shall briefly voice a few concerns I have with selected reconstructive nuances of
Throntveit’s book. Despite my disagreement with the author is at times not so small,
still I indulge in no rhetoric in saying that the book is a must-read for James’s scholars
as well as for those intrigued by his revolutionary philosophical method and agenda.
I myself have learned a great deal about James and ethics despite the reservations
I will voice in the below in the hope of opening up a new, productive front in James’s
scholarship and in ethical thinking more widely.
A first doubt I have with Throntveit’s reconstruction hinges on his particular
characterization of the ethical quality of pragmatism. Despite applauding his reproach
of those “narrow” accounts of James’s moral thought down focusing exclusively on
his “explicitly ethical writings,” Throntveit’s “holistic analysis” seems to me still
affected by the very attempt of narrowing the scope of James’s moral thought down
to the ideas expressed in such writings, only backing them up with a larger body
of works, adding in this way more details to what is however agreed to be James’s
core ethical concern. That is, it seems to me that Throntveit’s operation to widen the
list of morally relevant texts beyond the customary three of four usually taken into
considerations by James’s friends and foes alike – surely a laudable operation in itself,
both historiographically and philosophically – is however not moved by an attempt
to radically revise the picture we have of his moral thought (and thus of what moral
philosophy as a whole is about), but rather by the goal to show how such picture can
be extended to ever further areas of concern – social and political thought being the
main targets. The author disagrees in fact with the orthodox reading of James as an
individualist utilitarian thinker because such reading is blind to a whole different set
of considerations (the “necessary components of a nonutulitarian pragmatist ethics”)
present in other less trodden writings, showing his openness to endorse all sorts of
moral principles, utilitarian or not, as long as they fit the needs of the problematic
situation we find ourselves in. For Throntveit, not differently from what the vast
majority of James’s scholars and readers have claimed in various ways, James’s chief
moral problem would have been that of assessing conflicting preferences both in our
individual and in our collective life, and his answer, articulated (hence appreciable)
not only in his canonical ethical texts but rather in the wider archipelago of his
psychological, epistemological, metaphysical, and religious writings, would be that
of endowing us with rich descriptions of the variety of considerations at stake in such
decisions. Now this invitation is no doubt part of what James is doing in these texts,
and yet if we focus on this aspect only we would be blind to several other related
movements (hence partial to the revolutionary character of James’s work) such as
his stress that moral problems often concern impediments in our visions and attitude
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rather than mere shortage of resoluteness in action. And if this is the case, then his
overall conception of what ethics is about will inevitably shift, moving away from a
complex casuistry involving moral unity and consistency, where the ethical challenge
comes from the coherence of one’s actions with one’s ideals, and resembling more
an ethics of self-fashioning and transformation, where the ethical challenge is that of
imagining ever new possibilities for self-expression.
This shift has consequences for the way in which we read James’s metaphilosophical
and moral investigations alike as instruments for ameliorating the moral life. Once
agreed that James is not offering us philosophical solutions to ordinary problems, hence
philosophical foundations of our ordinary practices – and here I once again happily
agree with the author’s heterodox reading resisting those interpretation of James the
moral philosopher as some sort of moral theorist dispensing ethical prescriptions for
our conducts – I part ways with Throntveit in thinking that this different picture of
what moral thought is and does should however still be concerned (or, I would say,
obsessed) with the actions and policies of individuals in their singularity or collectivity,
claiming rather how this shift opens up the way to a more radical understanding of
ethics revolving around the key notions of self-conduct – where both the reflexive
prefix and its object do mark a tremendous difference from the mere reference to
actions and their consequences, disclosing at the very same time a far more interesting
understanding of pragmatism as a philosophy not so much concerned with the
consequence of thought on action (rightly liable to the accusation of instrumentalism)
but rather with the consequences of thought on the way we conduct ourselves midst
problematic practical situations. To put it in a nutshell, it is only when we see James as
concerned with the moral significance of the conduct of the self on the self, that is with
the manifold considerations which enter in the representation and transformation of
what we do with ourselves, rather than simply with the consequences of our thoughts
in action, that we are able to appreciate James’s dissatisfaction with the narrow picture
of ethics as the justification and implementation of principles and rules of behavior
voiced all over his work – both in his “explicit” and most known moral writings
such as “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” and “On a Certain Blindness in
Human Beings”, and in his “implicit” and less known ones such as his earlier writings
on psychology and his later ones on truth.
This is visible in the way in which Throntveit speaks about the three Jamesian
virtues of the ethical republic, that is the virtues that an ethical citizen should nurture
in order to successfully meet the challenges of the pluralist society s/he (inevitably)
lives in. The experimental “willingness to reflect critically on our values and change
them,” the historical wisdom given by the “awareness of the practical needs and
contingent factors that had driven the ethical experiments in the past,” and the emphatic
“recognition that others’ value were facts of experience against which our own must
be tested” are for Throntveit’s James to be implemented for the sake of ameliorating
the moral life, relieving it from practical conflict and misunderstanding. The focus is
once again on the consequences of one’s actions with respects to the collectivity, and
action itself is conceived as some sort of neutral, effortless device of thought (of ideals
and values, in the specific case). Contrary to this interpretation, and indeed in line with
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the way in which the author cashes out the details of the three ethical virtues (102-8),
I suggest to read James as primarily interested on how we shape and transform
ourselves in conduct, that is how the conducts expressive of our mobile sense of
selfhood can touch, or fail to, the lives and conducts of others. Seen this way, one’s
actions are revealing of who we are and how we might be otherwise, and the very
capacity to acknowledge and register what is needed from us in a certain situation
(e.g. the suffering of my fellow beings or the tragic sense of injustice attached to
some socio-political configurations) is a function of our readiness to imagining us
conducting ourselves otherwise.
What I find missing in Throntveit’s James is then the crucial emphasis on the effects
of critical, reflective thinking on the self’s ongoing challenging of her own subjectivity
in conduct (a subjectivity always shaped by the alterity of the others and of one’s
further selves alike), which is simply overlooked if we present the self’s and other’s
values and desires as given to us and simply in need to be registered and added to the
casuistry calculus. According to my radical James, we do experience them in the sense
that we make them in experience while remaking ourselves rather than finding them
in experience hence adjusting our actions accordingly –for James (and Dewey, in this
respect) experience is always Erfahrung rather than merely Erlebnis. If this is so, then
the empathetic historical experimentalist attitude rightly emphasized by Throntveit is
thus a practical goal moved by the appreciation of the responsibility attached to one’s
way of conducting oneself rather than a demand normatively attached to the reality
of things independently from our recognition of their demandingness and willingness
to submit to it. The author works with a somewhat mechanicistic and instrumentalist
conception of human agency, whose goal is to fulfill one’s subjective desires and
square them with the intersubjective/objectivite demands posed by others (see. e.g.
2, 86), rather than with a perfectionist one, aimed at attaining a better relationships
with oneself and others, hence attaining better versions of ourselves with others,
through the monitoring of the ways in which we conduct ourselves in community and
encounter the other in conduct.
James wrote at a time in which academic writing was ideally thought of as a
constitutive part of the intellectual upbringing of learned citizens rather than as a
literary genre appealing for a few elected spirits versed in abstract speculation only,
and strived to present pragmatism as a philosophical sensibility best equipped to talk to
the ordinary life (not to a rarified version of it) and address real problems (rather than
“paper” ones) without renouncing argumentative rigor and inventiveness – reprising
in this way the best teachings and accomplishments of the venerable understanding
and practice of philosophy as a reflective way of life. In the case of his philosophical
investigations of ethics and the moral life, James’s work looks less like a technical
treatise or theory dispensing more-or-less viable ready-made solutions and more like
an invitation to perform ourselves the hard task of self-questioning accompanied by a
set of reflective tools hopefully helping us performing such seminal task. We should
rediscover this ideal and lesson, and try to implement it in our current philosophical
and ethical debates. Throntveit’s book helps us immensely to do exactly that, giving
us a lead to fruitfully unpack James’s work and put it back together for the sake of
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the contemporary world we live in and life of the mind we lead as a response to its
challenges. Our James differ in the measure in which he believes that such operation
can be pursued by leaving the action-principles centered model of modern and
contemporary moral philosophy intact while I suggest that we go back to a conception
of philosophy and of ethics as the art of self-fashioning animating selected moments
of antiquity, and reprised by James and others (both within and outside pragmatism)
at the fringes of modernity.
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