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2. Philosophy as a Reconstructive Activity: William James on Moral Philosophy
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31 2 HILARY PUTNAM Philosophy as a Reconstructive Activity: William James on Moral Philosophy1 In his “Introduction: Reconstruction as Seen Twenty-Five Years Later” to the second edition of Reconstruction in Philosophy,2 John Dewey wrote, Today Reconstruction of Philosophy is a more suitable title than Reconstruction in Philosophy. For the intervening events have sharply defined, have brought to a head, the basic postulate of the text: namely that the distinctive office, problems and subject matter of philosophy grow out of the stresses and strains in the community life in which a given form of philosophy arises, and that, accordingly, its specific problems vary with the changes in human life that are always going on and that at times constitute a crisis and a turning point in human history.3 Both Dewey and his philosophical ally William James shared the conception of philosophy as a reconstructive activity, an activity that aims at making a difference to the way we understand and the way we live our scientific, aesthetic, educational, religious, and political lives, one comprehensive and durable enough to deserve the name of a “reconstruction.” But by the time Dewey wrote the words I have just quoted, philosophy was going in a very different direction or set of directions, which is why Dewey writes that we need “reconstruction of philosophy” and not just reconstruction in philosophy. 32 Hilary Putnam And he goes on to lament that contemporary philosophy—in the 1940s, when those words were penned—is “concerned for the improvement of techniques” and with “erudite scholarship about the past that throws no light on the issues now troubling mankind” at the expense of “substantial content,” and in a way that involves “a withdrawal from the present scene.”4 Today, however, a half century after Dewey’s “Reconstruction as Seen Twenty-Five Years Later” was written, the willingness to consider that the pragmatist tradition may say something worth listening to seems to be on the rise (although, unfortunately, not always for the best of reasons).5 In the present essay, I shall explore the way in which such a conception of philosophy informs the thinking of one great pragmatist. My pragmatist of choice today, however, will be not John Dewey but the ally I mentioned, William James, whose reconstructive conception of philosophy is still less often noted than is Dewey’s. Before I turn to James, let me say one further word. I am troubled by the way in which contemporary moral philosophy still seems to have what one might call a “Queen of the Sciences” conception of philosophy (“sciences” in the sense of “knowledges” or “Wissenschaften,” that is, not natural sciences). When I read today’s distinguished moral philosophers, the conception of the subject I often encounter is that the moral philosopher will provide a set of principles—to be sure, very general and abstract ones—which hoi polloi are then to apply. In a recent and brilliant study, Michelle Moody-Adams—who acknowledges Dewey as a predecessor—has criticized both this conception and the various recent attacks on the very idea of moral theory: An effective challenge to . . . skepticism about the relevance of moral theory to moral life must begin by relinquishing the vain insistence on the authoritative status of philosophical moral inquiry—along with the implausible notion that moral philosophy produces moral expertise. There is a middle way between the skeptical anti-theorist view on which moral philosophy should be replaced by some other discipline—such as cultural anthropology, or experimental psychology, or literature, or some combination thereof—and the unsupportable view that moral philosophy is the final court of appeal on questions of moral justification. That middle way involves thinking of moral philosophy as a valuable and distinctive participant in the ongoing process of moral inquiry.6 As we shall see, what bothers Moody-Adams today also bothered William James, and her idea that moral philosophy can be a “valuable and distinctive participant” without claiming “authoritative status” is one that James anticipated. But my aim is not simply to celebrate James today (for [54.224.52.210] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 09:21 GMT) Philosophy as a Reconstructive Activity 33 some of his metaphysical assumptions were certainly problematic), but to see what were the insights and what were the problems in the ways in which a great, if still neglected, philosopher thought about the problem of “reconstruction in philosophy.” For the most part, my discussion will be based on the essay in which James discusses...