James, Rorty and Pragmatism
Those who claim, in homage or disgust, that James’ pragmatism is simply an updated model of utilitarianism are deeply mistaken. Most notable on this point is Richard Rorty. On at least two occasions Rorty libels pragmatism and James, even though he is quite fond of both of them. In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature he claims that the pragmatists did “for science what the utilitarians had done for morality.” In an essay entitled, “Pragmatism as Romantic Polytheism,” included in what I consider to the best collection of recent work in pragmatism, The Revival of Pragmatism, Rorty follows up his claim with a direct claim about James. He writes: “James and Nietzsche did for the word ‘true’ what John Stuart Mill did for the word ‘right’.”
Rorty is mistaken on all three accounts; Mill, Nietzsche, and James. In regard to James, Rorty reveals his greatest hope for pragmatism that is, sadly, as I see it, a deep misinterpretation of James’ thought (and Dewey’s too, I might add). I should admit that this disaffection for Rorty began as purely visceral response but has been deeply augmented by reading bits and pieces of Hillary Putnam’s view of the matter. I think that the contrast we find between their two competing views in the collection I mentioned (Putnam’s essay is entitled, “Pragmatism and Realism”) is striking, and, of course, I fancy Putnam’s version over Rorty’s.
Rorty seems to think that the criterion of pragmatism, action, is the cash-out sort of thing that hinges on the whimsy of our belief. From this Rorty makes pragmatic reality, meaning, and truth a matter of personal selection. We see this in action in his essay, “On Heidegger’s Nazism,” in his moving collection of essays, Philosophy and Social Hope. Here he writes: “So for us Heidegger’s writings are not a conduit through which we can hear the voice of Being. Rather, they are a toolbox. They are the receptacle in which Heidegger deposited the tools that he invented at various times to accomplish one or another project.”
Here, Rorty’s (mis)understanding of pragmatism is clear. Flowing from his fetish of rejecting correspondence theories, or mirrors of nature, Rorty rightly identifies a similar rejection of metaphysics in James. What Rorty misses, however, is that for James there is metaphysics and then there is metaphysics, and James uses the two terms interchangeably.
Let us take James’ theory of consciousness as an example. In his essay Does Consciousness Exist?, James answers the titular questions as both yes and no. Such answers tend to be too cute or clever to take seriously, but with James, this is the only answer he could offer considering his complicated stance on metaphysics. If what we mean by consciousness is a Platonic substance that gives the world its form, then, no, consciousness does not exist. But, if what we mean is the flux of our thoughts and mind-events—our experience—then, yes, consciousness does exist. Because of this careful distinction, James can reject ethereal metaphysics and affirm phenomenological reality, which can function in way not altogether different from Plato’s ideas without their disconnected sense of being.
Rorty only seems to see the first sense of metaphysics, the one James rejects. On that rejection Rorty postulates the impossibility for there to be any governing reality for human experience. But this is clearly not the case. In one sense Rorty is right: Heidegger’s writings are tools; tools in the sense that they do not come from some kind of Being. But—and here is Rorty’s great mistake—for James, Heidegger’s writings also are not tools, they only say what they say, regardless of what we want to use them for. Also regardless of what the consequences happen to be.
There may be many reasons to reject pragmatism, but rejecting it on grounds that it is utilititarian, idealist, or ontologically relativistic are not any of them.
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Sam: Jonah Goldberg has written a lot about American pragmatism. Before I comment on that and on your generalizations, what is your thought on his thoughts, for example here:
http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=M2JjMzQ4ZjMzYTMwYzE3OThjNmRiMDlkMjExM2U5ZmM=
One thing he has been correct about, at the least: if many pragmatists were alive today, they might be rather mournful of those they praised the skies when they were writing.
jonathanjones02: I has so much to say about this article and your question. Let me try to be brief.
1. James (and Peirce and Dewey) was a rather ambivelant pragmatist. He was much more fond of “radical empiricism” and its corresponding pluralism. So, from the outset, I find that any one who see James as a pragmatist, pure and simple, is off to a bad start.
2. The article you linked takes Rorty at his word, and, as I mentioned here, I think he is dead wrong. Taking Rorty at his word “pragmatism” can be downright toxic.
3. Pragmatism, as James describes it, is not an American invention. They were not touting it as a new solution or approach.
More later…
Sam’s right about Rorty–in fact, Rorty is not taken seriously by many in philosophy today, be they of the mainstream analytic, continental, or American pragmatist camp (my department has deep roots in pragmatism, and no one does Rorty). Goldberg, presumably not a philosopher or historian, mistakenly accepts Rorty’s genealogy of pragmatism, which misses the influence of Hegel and attributes far too much to Nietzsche (and, seriously, Dewey as parallel to Heidegger???). What betrays Goldberg’s unfamiliarity with the terrain he attempts to navigate is his crediting of Rorty as “one of America’s foremost liberal philosophers.” I mean, honestly, Goldberg must take his token reader to be a philosophical ignoramus to get away with that sort of exaggerated non-sense. Perhaps Goldberg’s most glaring error, to which Sam alludes, is to take pragmatism as a philosophical doctrine or, at least, as subscribing to certain determinate positions. Pragmatism is a philosophical starting-point. Worse still, Goldberg does not even notice that, in light of this real idea of pragmatism, he is operationally equivocating between pragmatism in its philosophical sense (James, Pierce, Dewey) and pragmatism in its colloquial sense (describing Obama as such), the latter being nothing like the former. Such confusion doesn’t deserve any more of our time.
Poli: Thanks for that. And I am so jealous that you get to work with the all-stars you’ve got over there. I hope this isn’t off-putting to people, because as this “word” seems to be popping up via Obama, I think we ought to engage in understanding what it means philosophically and within the history of ideas.
JJones02: I wanted to tread a little lightly because I was strapped for time, but, to echo what Poli wrote: From what he wrote, this guy isn’t a very serious scholar of James, Dewey or pragmatism. I reccomend you read someone like McDermott, Wilshire, or Eddie. Or, if you want, I can send you some of my own work too.
And I am so jealous that you get to work with the all-stars you’ve got over there.
Our two “big” scholars of American pragmatism are John McDermott (who is a legend in his own right) and Gregory Pappas (who just published a dazzling extended treatment on Dewey’s ethics and democratic theory).
From what he wrote, this guy isn’t a very serious scholar of James, Dewey or pragmatism.
He’s not a scholar at all. He’s a dabbler, and since most of his readers likely don’t dabble in philosophy, he exaggerates his knowledge of pragmatism and makes unsubstantiated claims about key thinkers in the movement.
Sam: my work is on British-infused American conservatism, and so I’ve only waded tenatively into American pragmatism when necessary. Goldberg certainly would not claim to be a very serious scholar of James or Dewey – he’s a popular historian whose first book of popular history I think is quite good. Dewey is probably just an occasional hobby horse. (Goldberg is right in his points about fascism, and I’ll try to do a long post on that sometime – likely after the fall when I can birth this diss).
My familiarity with Dewey concerns pedagogue, largely because one can not overstate his influence there. In trying to follow Jefferson in tying education to democracy, I think his interest in the rearrangement of ed. to puruse social reform was at the expense of civic education, so as to chase ideological visions of citizenship, and it was destructive on the whole.
Don’t have much time today, but I’m sure we can return to that.
Oh, and Sam: it would also be interesting to do something on how much Dewey seems to owe to Rousseau (Schools of Tomorrow?). I couldn’t finish Emile, although I kind of tried.
Anyway, the whole notion of training for “social progress” ect. strikes me as frightening.
I am very interested in what you think about those things. Dewey bothers me in many of the way you mention, but they are not ‘pragmatic’. Truth be told, I just find Dewey’s early to middle work lacking irony and a bit naiive. However, I love his late work especially: Experience and Education, Experience and Nature, and Art as Experience.
I think the Emile is the greatest book on education ever written, period. One good thing to remember, in Dewey’s defense is that he wrote Democracy and Education as a textbook not an opus. And he hated the way it was received by “educators”.
If this interests you, then, we have lots to talk (type) about.
Cool. Give me some time and we can go round re: Rousseau. Many of the figures I follow simply despised him and offered pretty substantial critiques. Yet others, most notably Willmoore Kendall, felt very differently.