Notes
CHAPTER 1 1. As Menand (2001) and Goodman (1995) note, there has been a renewed interest in American pragmatism during the last decade. Similar to many on the Left, we have found Dewey’s alternate orientation to scholarship (1920) and social action (1946 [1929]) much more relevant to our goals than say, the tradition of Marxism. American pragmatism is attractive for many reasons. First, like Hegel, Darwin, and Marx, Dewey (1920) argued that our conception of the world should emerge primarily from the study of human and natural history. Most importantly, and similar to postmodernism, pragmatism rejects the notion of “Truth” with a capital “T.” All ideas are human constructions and, as Nietzsche (1968) argues in many of his works, what we call truth is largely a matter of social, geographical, and historical location and personal biography. There are no fixed, eternal, or essential truths regarding human existence or the construction of culture, or what Rorty (1989) refers to as a “final vocabulary.” Instead of seeking truth, Dewey suggested that we search for “warranted assertability,” that is, ideas that enrich and deepen our existence over time and in light of human experience. Unlike postmodernists, Dewey recognized the contingent “truth” (with a small “t”) embedded in the social contract that exists between people at any given time and location . Every social contract contains, what Foucault (1970) refers to as regimes of truth, or what others (e.g., Apple, 1996) refer to as “cultural capital,” that is, ideas, values, knowledge, and ways of acting and being that are taken for granted as “truth.” Some of these ideas are codified into laws, while many others are informal understandings such as “proper manners” (Elias, 1982). From a pragmatist perspective, human cultures are best viewed as temporary social contracts among people of unequal power who seek to influence what cultural capital is deemed most worthy and/or what “truths” govern society as a whole. In this way, pragmatism avoids the nihilism implied in much of the postmodern project. Although there are no ultimate, immutable values, structures, systems , or ideals upon which a given society should be based, we, as members of a given society, can tentatively (and to some degree arbitrarily) identify a multiplicity of values (e.g., prosperity, social justice, democracy, freedom, liberty), systems, and structures (e.g., the U.S. Constitution) that we use in the construction and modification of culture . These types of truth claims can be useful as long as they maintain their basic vulnerability and contingency (Rorty, 1989). In other words, the value of any idea is not rooted in its ability to mimic or “represent the world” in which we live, but rather lies ultimately in its usefulness in understanding our experiences and in living meaningful lives. From a pragmatist perspective, the truth of any idea ultimately lies in human experience. This rejection of universal and unchanging truths extends to our understanding of morality. Pragmatism forces us, as scholars and activists, to be highly skep121 N O T E S tical of actions based on claims of moral righteousness. Great misery often comes from those who claim to represent some form of architectonic morality. For example, our commitment to the notion of democracy is not based upon its “moral superiority” over other forms of government, but rather upon its utility in allowing people with different public interests to tentatively resolve disputes over public policy without resorting to armed conflict. There is nothing “moral” about democracy, it is just a more compelling basis for establishing a polity over other possibilities of which we are currently or historically aware. Similarly, we are not advocates of a society that is committed to social or economic justice because it is “moral,” but rather, because it is in the self-interest of society (more stability, greater contentment among citizens) as a whole to avoid having significant numbers of its citizens oppressed by poverty, or suffer from discrimination , or live without hope and opportunities. Pragmatists recognize the importance of the continued struggle to balance competing ideas and values in the reform of society. Pragmatists are thus not nihilists but rather value pluralists who recognize that the most difficult task of the scholar or reformer is not to advocate for a particular social value such as democracy, freedom, social control, prosperity, liberty, empowerment , or social and economic justice, but rather to address the difficulty of balancing competing values that are all needed in order to develop the “good” society (Galston, 2002). 2. “Otherization” refers to identification...
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