Reconstructing Individualism: A Pragmatic Tradition from Emerson to Ellison

Notes

{  } Notes B In citing works in the notes, short titles have generally been used after the first reference to a text. Works frequently cited have been identified by the following abbreviations: E&L Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays and Lectures (New York: Library of America, ). CE Ralph Ellison, The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison, ed. John F. Callahan (New York: Modern Library, ). IM RalphEllison,InvisibleMan(NewYork:RandomHouse[]). JMN The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson , ed. William H. Gilman, et al.,  vols. (Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press, –). LW John Dewey: The Later Works: –, ed. Jo Ann Boydston,  vols. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, –). MW John Dewey: The Middle Works: –, ed. Jo Ann Boydston,  vols. (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, –). W William James, Writings – (New York: Library of America , ). W William James, Writings – (New York: Library of America , ). introduction: “individualism has never been tried”: toward a pragmatic individualism . The epigraphs for this chapter are taken from the following: Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, abr. ed., ed. Thomas Bender, trans. Henry Reeve, as revised by Frances Bowen and Phillips Bradley (New York: Modern Library,  []), . William James, notes for  lecture series “Characteristics of an Individualistic Philosophy,” quoted in Robert D. Richardson, William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism not E s  (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, ), . John Dewey, Individualism Old and New, in LW, :. Ralph Waldo Emerson, JMN, :. . As I drafted this introduction, in September , President Obama had just delivered a speech to the joint houses of Congress on health care reform , in which he argued for retaining the healthy individualistic skepticism toward big government solutions, while also arguing that at times large collective efforts at regulation are necessary. In this sense, Obama is articulating a flexible and pragmatic approach that is broadly in the spirit of the experimentalism described in this introduction (and throughout this study), although I would not claim that Obama’s vision is specifically pragmatic in the senses I draw from writers like Emerson, James, and Dewey. For more specific considerations of whether Obama’s politics align with the school of American pragmatic philosophy, see Michael Eldridge, “Barack Obama’s Pragmatism,” http://www.obamaspragmatism.info/ (accessed  September ), and James T. Kloppenberg, Reading Obama: Dreams, Hope, and the American Political Tradition (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, ). As I revise this introduction, fresh evidence of how the Right, by contrast , deploys the rhetorical power of individualism in a dogmatic stance against government regulation appears in the official Republican response to Obama’s  State of the Union address, in which Rep. Paul Ryan asserted that “‘the pursuit of happiness’ depends upon individual liberty; and individual liberty requires limited government” (“Republican Response to State of the Union Address,” The Washington Post, www.washingtonpost. com/wp-dyn/content/article////AR.html [accessed  January ]). . In Dewey’s terms, everything is a process or “event,” one particular career of interactions occurring in relation to myriad other processes of interaction . See my chapter . . William James, Pragmatism, in W, . . For a discussion of James’s theory of truth, see my chapter . . William James, The Principles of Psychology,  vols. (New York: Dover,  []), :. . John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy, in MW, :. . See note  to chapter , below. . “The person who holds the doctrine of ‘individualism’ or ‘collectivism ,’” Dewey argues, “has his program determined in advance,” and indulges in an absolutism that “appl[ies] a hard and fast doctrine which follows logically from his preconception of the nature of ultimate causes” and thereby abdicating the “responsibility of discovering the concrete correlation of changes . . . and events through their complicated careers” (John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems, in LW, :). not E s  . Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Man the Reformer,” in E&L, . . This key verb is deployed by Locke in section  of “Of the Ends of Political Society and Government” (chapter , book  of his Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ], ). The key sections of book  that outline the metaphysical and political argument I summarize here are chapters , , and –. The critique I outline here is articulated by Dewey. See my fuller discussion in chapter . . For example, see in note  above the classic liberal axiom that equates individual liberty with limited government, as asserted by Republican representative Paul Ryan. . Dewey, Public and Its Problems, ; Individualism Old and New, –. . John Dewey and James H. Tufts, Ethics, in LW, :. . A recent study that parallels my central contention that a viable model of individualist ethics can be distinguished from, and against, classic...