How American is American pragmatism? This question has been asked again and
again since the first international discussions about pragmatism after the
publication of William James's famous lectures in 1907. It was almost forced on
the founders of pragmatism because critics and sympathizers alike found this new
philosophical school or movement quintessentially American. They differed very
much, however, with regard to the question what being American precisely means.
Is it the spirit of democracy, an egalitarian vision of creativity, the
affirmation of ordinary life that lies in the emphasis on practical-mindedness,
as the proponents and sympathizers seemed to assume? Or is it vulgar
commercialism, crass materialism, moral and political opportunism, and
anti-intellectualism, as the critics maintained? All the leading pragmatists
felt themselves terribly misunderstood by such critics; after many attempts to
dispel what they took to be mere anti-American prejudices, they withdrew into
irony. Pragmatism, wrote George Herbert Mead,
"is regarded as a pseudo-philosophical formulation of that most obnoxious
American trait, the worship of success; as the endowment of the four-flusher
with a faked philosophical passport; the contemptuous swagger of a glib and
restless upstart in the company of the mighty but reverent spirits worshiping
at the shrine of subsistent entities and timeless truth; ...a Ford efficiency
engineer bent on the mass production of philosophical tin lizzies." (Philosophy
of the Act (Chicago, 1938), p. 97)
But this question has taken on new relevance in our time, and this for two
reasons. One is the indisputable revitalization of the pragmatist tradition
within the United States itself. Although work on pragmatism is still
uncomfortably squeezed between the schools of analytic philosophy on the one
hand and what is called, strangely enough, "continental" thinking in American
philosophy departments, the interest in pragmatism in American intellectual life
in general has increased enormously. The other reason is that this renewed
interest in America is accompanied by a similar resurgence in other countries,
in Germany and France, for example, but also in the formerly communist countries
of Central and Eastern Europe. Pragmatism has become a focus again for debates
about American self-understanding and is becoming an interesting intellectual
alternative for European intellectuals dissatisfied with aspects of their own
traditions of thought.
The present volume documents this state of affairs in an impressive way. Some
of the contributions clearly take the idea of pragmatism as a philosophy of
democracy, as it was articulated most forcefully by John Dewey, as their point
of departure. They either expect a better understanding of the democratization
processes going on in Central and Eastern Europe from Dewey's thinking — or they
expect, in the case of some American contributors, new impulses from Europe for
the somewhat slackened spirit of democracy in America.
Another point on which such effort is concentrated in this volume is the
comparison of American pragmatist thinkers with somewhat parallel intellectuals
from Europe. A constant theme in this volume seems to be the comparison of
pragmatist philosophy with aspects of one contemporary author, namely Jiirgen
Habermas. His philosophy of communication, rational discourse and democratic
politics obviously is of great interest for discussions about pragmatism in our
time. More original perhaps are comparisons with European thinkers that are of
the greatest importance, but whose works have found so far only a very selective
or a superficial reception in America. This volume contains, in this regard,
attempts to establish connections between pragmatism and, for example, the
philosophical anthropology of Helmuth Plessner or the literary theory and
dialogical philosophy of Mikhail Bakhtin. Other contributions discuss the
relationship between pragmatism and the work of an outstanding analytic
philosopher (Michael Dummett) or of a sociologist whose work lies somewhere
half-way between structuralism and a theory of action (Pierre Bourdieu).
The third area of interest in this volume is the field of aesthetics. Like
some of the most creative American pragmatists today, European thinkers seem to
find inspiration for innovative work here. But this fact also makes two lacunae
in this volume visible, for which nobody should blame the editors but which
nevertheless shed light upon the current reception of pragmatism. There is no
piece on the pragmatist understanding of religion, although we cannot even
understand what James was trying to achieve if we do not include this dimension
of human life. And there is nothing about the major social thinker among
pragmatists, namely George Herbert Mead; the strange separation of the histories
of reception — Dewey in philosophy, Mead in sociology — is thus unfortunately
continued.
But these are observations about an ongoing process and its first steps, not
about a settled matter of the past. If this process goes on, many things will
change in the future. This volume is clear evidence of the increasing
internationalization of pragmatism; and not of any Americanization of the world.
Hans Joas Professor of Philosophy Universitat Erfurt
PREFACE
A tradition is in the process of being established. As a response to the
growing interest in American pragmatist philosophy in Europe, the Central
European Pragmatist Forum (CEPF) was founded in and it first conference was in
2000 in Stara Lesna, Slovakia. The second was held in Krakow, Poland in 2002,
creating this volume. CEPF will hold its international conferences every second
year; the 2004 meeting will be in Potsdam, Germany.
The Krakow meeting's theme was "Deconstruction and Reconstruction."
Presenters included fifteen scholars from North America and roughly the same
number from Germany, Finland, Russia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, and
South America. The term "Deconstruction" in the title of the conference refers
to postmodernism, arising in the second half of 20th century, while
"Reconstruction" is drawn from one of John Dewey's prominent works, evoking a
main trend in the pragmatist tradition. Nonetheless, the participants of the
conference did not use the term "deconstruction" in Derrida's sense;
decon-struction was absorbed by the pragmatist idea of reconstruction and
understood as a necessary phase in the changeable and precarious process of life
in its all dimensions, in particular as shaped by shaped by human beings.
John McDermott, a central contemporary figure in American pragmatism and the
honored guest of the conference, opens the volume with "Tranciency and
Amelioration: Revisited." He situates pragmatism in the field of three main
questions taken from the Kant's First Critique and responds to them in a Deweyan
spirit. He shows how pragmatism is inscribed in the tradition of the history of
philosophy on the one hand, and how it crosses the limits of this tradition, on
the other. John Ryder, in paper that completes the volume, also puts the problem
of the place and role of contemporary pragmatism in the context of three
questions. In this case, however, the questions grow not from the heritage of
the history of philosophy, but rather from an observation of today's
social-political reality. Although the questions are complex, and in this regard
they are open to interpretation and exploration, Ryder does not avoid the
challenge and presents, as a proposition, his own answers. His diagnosis
regarding the place of pragmatism in the contemporary world (the thought which
lost its fatherland, thought in exile, thought that is looking for
domestication) is provocative in its radicality.
During the conference it became clear that of the classic American
pragmatists, John Dewey is the figure most appreciated by the participants. Many
of the authors refer to him in those of their papers devoted the problems of
contemporary theory of democracy, ethics, aesthetics, and also the theory of
cognition and knowledge. The semiologically oriented Peirce, the only pragmatist
thinker present in continental philosophy during the period of a virtually
complete amnesia about pragmatism in Europe, in the time of its renaissance had
to give way to John Dewey, a social reformer and a theorist of democracy.
Dewey's broad idea of democracy as a way of life in the process of endless
melioration, is reconsidered by Wegmarshaus and Kilanowski. While the former
stresses the importance of education in the theory of democracy, the latter
emphasizes the central role of ethics, and both speak about forming democracy in
the practice of a changeable life. The ethical thread continues in Shook's
paper, in which the conceptions of limited (Habermas, Rawls) and unlimited
(Dewey) democracy are compared; the distinction between the two models of
democracy derives from the problem of the extent to which moral values have a
universal character. The solution of the problem is decisive for the shape of
any given democracy and its social institutions, a point taken into
consideration by Campbell.
If in the first part of the volume, "Toward Democracy," ethics was in a
background for the reflections on democracy and democratic society, in the
second part, "Ethics," the problem of democracy underlies ethical issues. In
this respect sections one and two are complementary. Koczanowicz continues the
thought developed in Shock's paper, namely the degree to which ethical problems
can be rationally deliberated, and whether there is it at all any rational
grounding for ethics? Koczanowicz shows the essence of the problem by
considering different theories of ethics. Thomson, for his part, compares
discoursive ethics, a la Habermas, and the practical ethics of pragmatism, and
explores their apparent similarities.
Dewey was the only overtly pragmatist thinker who built the foundation for a
pragmatist philosophy of art, and the authors interested in art and aesthetics
all refer to his work. Nevertheless, Graybosch shows in his analysis that the
American idea of beauty is deeply rooted in the works of Edwards, the American
Transcendentalists, and especially Emerson, and that Dewey's pragmatist
conception is their offspring. Ostman indicates how Dewey's aesthetic idea of
"art as experience" functions in the practice of design. Marsoobian,
acknowledging the centrality of Dewey, considers Richard Shusterman's recent
work, and draws on Peirce and Justus Buchler to develop a richer theory of
aesthetic meaning. Wilkoszewska, referring to Dewey, McDermott, Alexander, and
Shusterman, offers a short history of pragmatist aesthetic thinking in order to
put a basic question: how does one construct a pragmatist aesthetics?
The two final parts concern the problem of the subject, knowing, and
knowledge. Some of the papers have a comparative character, particularly in
relation to German philosophy, especially to Plessner's anthropology (Kruger)
and Habermas' theory of communication (Hanzel), or to British analytic thought,
for example to Dummet (Szubka). The American neopragmatist thinkers Margolis and
Putnam are also recalled, while the point of departure in Visnovsky's work on
rationality and Gutowski's on realism is still John Dewey. Throughout the
dominant themes of the volume - democracy, ethics, art, reason, knowledge —
other authors weave discussions of justice (Lovas), memory and imagination in Santayana (Bugaeva), education (Skinner), and the
critique of metaphysics (Oleksy). Taken together the papers convey a sense of
the breadth of contemporary thought in the American, more or less pragmatist
vein, and the depth of its reach into the work of many European philosophers.
Acknowledgements
The editors would like to express our gratitude to the many people who
provided assistance in preparation of and during the Second Central European
Pragmatist Forum (CEPF) at Jagellonian University in Krakow, Poland in June
2002. Jagellonian University made available a delightful conference facility
just outside the city which made an ideal venue for the conference. We wish to
thank Emil Visnovsky of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, one of CEPF's
co-founders and co-directors, who has provided the needed leadership for the
organization of the conference and the development of the study of American
philosophy in contemporary Europe. We would also like to thank James Campbell, a
member of CEPF's Board of Directors, who provided invaluable assistance
preparing several of the papers for publication. John Shook, the series editor
and a contributor to the volume, has been terrifically helpful and patient. In
the end, the excitement of the Pragmatist Forum derives from the European and
American philosophers who devoted a week of their time to come together as a
community to engage the issues that define the pragmatist and American
philosophical traditions and their application to contemporary social and
intellectual conditions. For that commitment the editors are especially
grateful.
