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1. The Insistence on Futurity: Pragmatism’s Temporal Structure
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11 1 LUDWIG NAGL The Insistence on Futurity: Pragmatism’s Temporal Structure In his lectures of 1906, Pragmatism, A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, William James announced that Pragmatism, “from looking backwards upon principles [. . .] shifts the emphasis and looks forward [. . .] The really vital question for us all is, What is this world going to be?”1 This shift in perspective is the topic of this essay, in which I will investigate James’s insistence on futurity, his emphasis on action and on its horizon: hope, and his accompanying strategy of de-dramatizing “intellectualistic” questions of metaphysical origin. My essay has three parts: After briefly assessing the influence of James’s “paradigm change” on neopragmatic discourse (part 1), I will deal, in the main part of my essay (part 2), with selected aspects of James’s emphasis on futurity. In section 2.1, James’s overall project—his “pragmatism”—will be described, somewhat riskily, as a “de-transcendentalized” version of Kantianism. Within this frame of reference I will then analyze, in section 2.2, James’s failed attempts to conceptualize time-experience psychologically and will try to connect, en passant, James’s pragmatic resituation of temporality within the European debate around (what was recently called) the “temporalizability” of time. After this, two of James’s “pragmatic considerations ” that hinge on temporal arguments will be examined: in section 2.3 I will deal with his attempt to relocate the quarrel between materialists 12 Ludwig Nagl and theists within a logic of hope, and in section 2.4 I will look at his effort to undermine the aporetical dispute between the advocates of determinism and the defenders of free-will by reflecting upon the future-relatedness of our pragmatic Lebenswelt. In the concluding section of the essay (part 3), I will compare James’s pragmatic strategy (that paves the way for our “right to believe”) with a new French contribution to notions of the “future” and religion: Marcel Gauchet’s thesis—presented in his book The Disenchantment of the World. A Political History of Religion2 —that “after the end of ideology” we have entered “the phase of ‘pure future,’” where society starts to structurally “absorb its other”—an “other” that was conceived, in premodern times, as “transcendent.” This structural change, Gauchet argues, induces “a postreligious ” era in which—masking the imminent “end of religion”—a “widespread adherence to privately practiced beliefs, including syncretic reconstructions” characterize the age of “man after religious man.”3 How does James fit into this picture? Is Gauchet’s thesis corroborated by James’s pluralistic “logic of hope”? Or can we trace elements in James’s pragmatic exploration of time that contradict Gauchet’s ambivalent theory of “religion’s aftereffects”? I will finally conclude with a critical assessment of the GauchetJames link, based—in part—on arguments from the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor. 1. “FUTURE” AS A TOPOS OF CONTEMPORARY NEOPRAGMATIC DISCOURSE James’s theme resounds through neopragmatic philosophies. For instance, both Richard Rorty and Hilary Putnam find James’ insistence on futurity inspiring. Let us begin with a brief look at Rorty. 1.1 In his 1993 Viennese Lectures, Hoffnung statt Erkenntnis. Eine Einführung in die pragmatische Philosophie, Rorty’s leitmotif is “anticipation”: “If there is anything distinctive about pragmatism, it is that it substitutes the notion of a better human future for the notions of ‘reality’, ‘reason’, and ‘nature.’ ”4 Rorty returns to this theme in his 1997 essay “Religious faith, responsibility, and romance”5 (where he characterizes pragmatism, with James, as “a kind of religious faith [. . .] in the future possibilities of mortal humans”), as well as in his 1998 book Achieving our Country. Leftist Thought in TwentiethCentury America,6 where he sides with Walt Whitman and Dewey—who (poetically and philosophically) explore mankind’s “future”—and contrasts their outlook to the perspective of people who take “refuge in self-protective knowingness about the present.” [54.226.25.246] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 13:27 GMT) The Insistence on Futurity 13 1.2 Rorty is not the only neopragmatist who is impressed by James’s move; Hilary Putnam finds it congenial, too. Although he is very critical of Rorty’s— rhetorically exaggerated—claim to replace “reason” and “reality” by “hope,” Putnam—like Rorty—focuses on those temporal shifts that form the core of pragmatic reflection. In his 1995 book Pragmatism: An Open Question, Putnam argues that the central emphasis of pragmatism is the “emphasis on the primacy of practice.”7 This sea-change...