Pragmatism has a complicated intellectual history with multiple definitions, a plurality of advocates and detractors, and a variety of disparate figures all claiming some allegiance to its worldview (Menand 2002; Diggins 1994; Bacon 2012; Stuhr 1999; Misak 2015). This bookâs aim is not to settle any of the controversy surrounding pragmatism or to reduce the multiplicity or plurality of definitions and forms of it. That kind of multiplicity demonstrates the advantages and vitality of the pragmatist tradition. This book aims to cultivate a greater degree of variety and complexity within the pragmatist tradition by interpreting and relating a series of figures that we might not ordinarily think of as pragmatists. In order to expand the range of characters and commitments that characterize the pragmatist tradition, I will argue, in this chapter, that we consider the difference between philosophical pragmatism and rhetorical pragmatism . This distinction will help us track the influence of early pragmatists on the disparate figures assessed in the forthcoming chapters of this book. This distinction, in other words, will help orient our understanding of why some key intellectual figures in the history of the twentieth century have been overlooked as important pragmatists, and what the cash value of reading those figures back into the pragmatist tradition might be.
Philosophical pragmatism , as I call it, refers to the professional, academic concern with tracking the intellectual and theoretical implications of positions that foreground social interaction , pluralism , and contingency as basic facts of human experience . William James spent considerable time in both Pragmatism and The Meaning of Truth explicating an epistemology that issues from a commitment to contingency, plurality , and social interaction . Contemporary neo-pragmatists like Donald Davidson and Robert Brandom develop philosophical pragmatisms that go further and explicate a theory of language that issues from the same set of commitments. Professional philosophers like Davidson and Brandom pursue their work even though first-generation pragmatism rejected much of the tradition of philosophy that extended from Plato to Descartes . In other words, many pragmatist figures remain devoted to the task of providing answers to traditional questions in the academic discipline of philosophy despite the deep critiques of the philosophical tradition authored by James and Dewey. But what about those figures that might work outside of, or at the margins of, professional academic philosophy? Rhetorical pragmatism , as I call it, takes the philosophical insights of James, Dewey, and other pragmatist philosophers and uses them as a theoretical resource and justification for seeking, developing, and deploying methods and practices for improving our democratic culture. These methods and practices are, more often than not, matters of communicative practice. William Jamesâs commitment to public lecturing and his investment in creating an intellectual community with his audiences were signs of the connection between pragmatism and rhetoric/communication (Stob). To put it more succinctly: rhetorical pragmatism turns questions of epistemology or metaphysics into questions about the effects of our communicative practices.
In my view, philosophical pragmatism (from its beginning in the works of John Dewey and William James) has entailed a commitment to communication and rhetorical practice . One can see this commitment even in the most professionalized versions of contemporary philosophical pragmatism like Richard Rortyâs account of the contingency of language and Robert Brandomâs social practice account of meaning. If we take the entailment to communication and rhetorical practice seriously, then one way to advance the pragmatist project is to turn philosophical questions about truth, morality, logic, or aesthetics into rhetorical questions about the best practices for citizenship , leadership, inquiry, deliberation , public argument, and community building. In other words, one of the intellectual projects that first-generation pragmatism has left for us is the development and use of methods of communicative practice fit for the advancement of contemporary democracy . The variety of chapters in this book all show different kinds of practices or methods that could realize such an end and different figures that sought ways of improving their socio-political circumstances through leveraging pragmatist intellectual commitments to different ends. In other words, the essays in this book argue that what remains after philosophical pragmatism has furnished all of the answers that it can to the full range of philosophical problems is rhetorical pragmatismâs commitment to pursuing communication practices that will build a form of democratic life capable of generating good decisions about pressing public issues and promoting freedom.
Taken as a whole, this book offers an alternative intellectual history of American pragmatism, one that reclaims a series of intellectual figures whose work can push neo-pragmatism beyond its philosophical limitations. From Jane Addams and Jane Bennett to Hu Shi and Bhimrao Ambedkar , this intellectual history asserts that a variety of forms of pragmatism developed throughout the twentieth century both inside the United States and outside, and that these forms of pragmatism were all deeply concerned with rhetoric and communication in their orientations . Taken as a whole, therefore, the essays in this book argue that one of the major entailments of the invention of American pragmatism at the beginning of the twentieth century is that rhetoric and communication are important intellectual objects of study, as well as important means of improving democratic life. Pragmatism entails a commitment to rhetoric and communication practices . This is the argument that philosophical pragmatism either continues to fail to realize or continues to misunderstand. This book can hopefully stretch our imagination beyond the limits of philosophical pragmatism in order to find useful ways toward important intellectual insights and practical methods for improving our own circumstances. In this Chapter, I will also argue that a rhetorical pragmatism will be more faithful to the project of John Dewey and William Jamesâs work, will offer insight into the ways in which communication operates in contemporary democratic cultures , will recommend practices, methods and modes of action for improving contemporary democratic cultures , and will subordinate philosophy to rhetoric by reimagining appropriate ways for pragmatist scholarship and social research to advance. In order to explicate this argument and to continue the conversation about the relationship between pragmatism, rhetoric, and communication, I want to clarify the distinction between philosophical pragmatism and rhetorical pragmatism , to consider this distinction in the light of the disciplinary politics of higher education, and then return to the original pragmatists for insight into what is at stake in this distinction.
Philosophical Versus Rhetorical Pragmatism
Another book about pragmatism may be one book too many, and it might be the case that too much has already been said about the meaning of pragmatism. One could read a fairly large number of books that begin with an account of the tradition of pragmatism and its core philosophical arguments. This book does seek to add to that long list of other books making such claims. But my purpose in this opening essay is not to refute or dismiss this scholarship, much of which is excellent. From Robert Westbrook and John Patrick Diggins (intellectual historians) to Cheryl Misak and Robert Talisse (philosophers), work about pragmatism has offered detailed arguments concerning the relationships and distinctions between various pragmatist figures. All of this work has helped to fully articulate pragmatist-style answers to many philosophical questions, thus extending and developing the tradition of pragmatism in important ways. This book, taken as a whole, offers yet another kind of intellectual history. But instead of trying to define pragmatism or dwelling extensively on reconstructing a pragmatist tradition and extending philosophical analyses, these essays will show the diverse range of influences that pragmatism has had. To begin to explain why pragmatism has been able to have the diverse range of influences outlined within this book, I want to make clear two different kinds of questions that I think pragmatism makes central. The first set of questions concerns the traditional considerations of professional, academic philosophy, and the second set of questions concerns how best to improve our lived experience . In my view, examples of the first set of questions are indicative of work in philosophical pragmatism , and examples of the second set of questions are indicative of work in rhetorical pragmatism . I also think that the first set of questions are mostly a matter of epistemology and that the second set of questions are mostly a matter of communication. The essays in this book reveal the cash value and promise of work in rhetorical pragmatism , and thus attempt to extend the conversation beyond the limits of work in philosophical pragmatism .
What are questions that concern traditional considerations in philosophy? Primarily I mean questions that seek an explanation of the way the world is and an account of why the world is that way, along with a verifiable description of what we know about the world and how we know those things. William James (1907 [1995]) asks, for example, what is truth? It is not the content of this kind of question that interests me, but the form of it. Robert Talisse (2008), to use another example, begins his book by asking a series of questions about the existence and defining characteristics of a pragmatist tradition. These questions have the same form as Jamesâs question about truth. The goal of a philosophical question is to get at the unchanging, universalizable truth of the world and our place in it. Pragmatism does offer some insights that could help reach such an end. One of the unique features of pragmatism is the kind of answers that figures like John Dewey and William James have offered to philosophical questions. The questions themselves, however, are not new in terms of form or content. William James goes so far as to call pragmatism a method of doing philosophy, by which he means it is a set of intellectual practices to use when asking and answering philosophical questions designed to get at universalizable truths. He shows, to name just one example, how pragmatism can answer questions about the one and the many in Pragmatism. What gives the tradition of philosophical pragmatism a center of gravity are the kinds of considerations that get foregrounded in the answering of such questions.
That center of gravity is marked by what Robert Westbrook has called a âworkmanlikeâ position on the nature of knowledge, meaning, and truth (1). A âworkmanlikeâ epistemology rejects realism and idealism and rejects the search for foundations upon which to base our truth claims. In the place of a search for foundational knowledge that is universalizable, pragmatism is committed to the process of inquiry. That process of inquiry leads to an evolutionary and ecological account of knowledge. From this perspective, truth is not the property of a proposition but an outcome of a process. This is a rejection of Rene Descartesâs philosophy (which is understood to be one of the hallmarks of the development of professional, academic philosophy), along with any attempt to assert a strong distinction between a knowing subject and an object for our knowledge. My intention here is not to offer a careful reading of either pragmatist or realist epistemology or the debates between those two perspectives. My aim is simply to note that, from a pragmatist perspective, human interests and actions (taken individually and collectively) become the measure of truth. If we follow this initial insight, several other intellectual positions become important to philosophical pragmatism . For John Dewey , and other pragmatists that have followed, âexperience â is the preferred description for how we interact with our surroundings because it highlights the constitutive exchange between people and environments and helps us think about how we are transformed by our interactions with our surroundings and how we transform those same surroundings by our actions. In addition, pragmatism is committed to a kind of philosophical and political pluralism . Such a perspective suggests that final determinations regarding human affairs are not possible given the multiplicity of ways we can and do experience the world. This also entails that the world, and our place in it, is characterized by contingency and uncertainty. Communities are then left with the task of negotiating and managing the p...