Native Pragmatism: Rethinking the Roots of American Philosophy

Introduction

I N T R O DU C T I O N Pragmatism is America’s most distinctive philosophy. In the received history , it has been understood as a development of European thought in response to the “American wilderness.” A closer examination, however , reveals that the roots and central commitments of pragmatism are grounded not just in European intellectual traditions, but also in ways of thinking indigenous to North America. In this book I will present a different history of pragmatism that traces its origins along the border between Native and European America in a context signi¤cantly conditioned by Native American thought. It is common for critics of American thought and culture to argue that American history is fundamentally a story of conquest, dispossession , slavery, and destruction. American philosophy and history, from this perspective, is ¤nally the philosophy and history of Europeans in America made distinct by their particular form of capitalism and imperialism . While one can view American thought as a kind of intellectual (or perhaps anti-intellectual) monolith, a broader reading of the past argues against a single “American way” and in favor of a complex story of interaction among Europeans, Native peoples, and other peoples and cultures as they came together in the Western hemisphere. Although it is rarely clear from the published histories, the immigrant Europeans were never alone in America and were never free of the diverse in®uences of those they encountered, enslaved, and dispossessed. While some held fast to particular ways of thinking that justi¤ed and rewarded the processes of colonization, others came to learn new ideas. Those who did the latter sought to structure American communities in ways compatible with the richness they found. When this complex history is recognized , the American intellectual tradition can be seen to have at least two lines of development, one largely dominated by a philosophical perspective exported to the Americas from Europe, and another informed by an indigenous philosophical perspective. That pragmatism is, in important ways, a product of European philosophy is already wellrecognized . My purpose will be to examine the ways in which it is also a product of an indigenous philosophy. xi Evidence for the claim that an indigenous philosophical perspective served as a crucial source of American pragmatism involves three general points. First, the central commitments of the later classical pragmatism of Charles S. Peirce, William James, and John Dewey are apparent much earlier in Native American thought, particularly within Northeastern Native traditions. These commitments, I will argue, are pre-¤gured in indigenous thought at a time when European thought in America was marked by a set of contrary commitments. Second, there are at least some clear cases in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries where one can reasonably trace the in®uence of these Native commitments on European American thinkers. I will argue that these ¤gures, who are also important in the development of the recognized American philosophical tradition, were in a position to learn from the Native perspective and integrate aspects of indigenous philosophy into their own philosophical perspectives. Third, a genealogy can be given connecting these early European American thinkers to the philosophical context out of which classical pragmatism emerged. This genealogy is crucial because it helps to af¤rm that pragmatism is not simply a further development of modern European thought faced with the conditions of a “wilderness.” Rather, it develops as a philosophy of resistance, to challenge the European perspective. The genealogy also suggests that pragmatism is not only a critical perspective but one that tries to respond to the problems faced by those who ¤nd themselves in a place where radically different peoples meet and seek to coexist. The reconstructed history brings two signi¤cant results. First, by locating the origins of American pragmatism in Native thought and tracing its development as a resistance movement, it converts the limited canon of well-known academic philosophers into a broad philosophical tradition. This expanded tradition requires a place for the philosophical voices of Native people, women, and others within American philosophy and provides a means to frame their points of agreement and divergence in an ongoing dialogue with both the classical pragmatist and European philosophical traditions. Second, the reconstruction of the history of American philosophy can ground a new interpretation of the ideas of pragmatism both as a philosophy of resistance but also as a viable framework for reconstructing American society in a new pluralist era. By reconsidering the history of American philosophy in this way, new...