Inquiry, Agency, and Art: John Dewey’s Contribution to Pragmatic Cosmopolitanism

Introduction

By 1909, when Dewey celebrated his fiftieth birthday, he had long since augmented the pragmatic ideas of Charles Peirce and William James and forged from them a powerful method of philosophical, social, and educational critique and reconstruction. James had labeled him a philosophical hero and his ideas were inspiring leading philosophers and progressive era reformers. Following his death in 1952, and by his centennial year 1959, during the depths of the Cold War and the ascendency of Anglo-American analytical philosophy, Dewey was at best a marginal figure in both social criticism and philosophy. In recent years, however, his star has again risen. Dewey’s pragmatism has attracted abundant scholarly attention, inspired a new wave of original pragmatist thinkers such as Richard Rorty, Cornel West, and Richard Shusterman, and in Dewey’s sesquicentennial year is again an important resource in addressing contemporary issues.

Cosmopolitanism in 2009 is arguably the philosophical and social counterpart of the progressivism of 1909. In this paper, I argue that Dewey’s pragmatism has (at least) two valuable lessons for the theory and practice of cosmopolitanism. After situating Dewey in the current discussion of cosmopolitanism and locating this cosmopolitan strain in his own philosophy, I show the value of his theory of inquiry as a meta-theory for cosmopolitan studies and of his theory of agency through art for building cosmopolitan publics for deliberation and action.

Pragmatism and Cosmopolitanism

I start with a few words about pragmatism and cosmopolitanism. Pragmatism, in its primary philosophical sense, is a set of theories about truth, meaning, experience, and method. Familiar examples include James’s pragmatic theory of truth as a kind of good we can use to form productive expectations, and Peirce’s theory of meaning as consisting in empirical observations hypothetically conducted under specifiable conditions. Dewey’s philosophy is built upon these earlier pragmatic notions, though it contains other elements, including some not strictly implied by pragmatism in this primary sense.

Contemporary cosmopolitanism also is a set of theories, first, about justice, rights and obligations, and institutions that can sustain them, and second, about culture and identity. Cosmopolitan theories of the first sort take the social unit to which a theory of justice applies to be global humanity. It implies global obligations, and thus seeks trans-national institutions capable of fulfilling them. Cosmopolitan theories of the second sort claim that human agency and identity do not depend upon enclosed membership within, and identification with, determinate social groups; even (or only) individuals making multiple attachments and forming hybrid identities can thrive. They hold, moreover, that social groups are not in themselves determinate; they are always in flux and depend on contact with other groups for their own vitality.¹

Armed with these definitions we can speak about both “pragmatic cosmopolitanism” and “cosmopolitan pragmatism,” but these ideas are not interchangeable. The first is a kind of cosmopolitanism, a theory of justice or culture (etc.) infused with pragmatic insights regarding truth, meaning, experience, and method. The latter is a kind of pragmatism, a theory of truth, meaning or method infused with cosmopolitan insights regarding justice culture, or identity. Dewey’s own philosophy was itself cosmopolitan, but I will not primarily be concerned about whether Dewey’s cosmopolitanism grew from his pragmatism, or whether his distinctly cosmopolitan notions have much to contribute to contemporary cosmopolitanism, though both are intriguing questions. My aim here is rather to understand the relevance of Dewey’s pragmatism for contemporary cosmopolitanism.

The Contemporary Discussion of Cosmopolitanism

Let me turn to the current state of discussion. Fine and Cohen² have identified four cosmopolitan moments: the era of Roman imperial domination, the Enlightenment’s spread of universal moral ideas, the post-World War II response to totalitarianism, and the current era of globalization with its migrations, terrorism, and eco-disasters. Each of these, they argue, has had a primary philosophical voice: the Stoics, Kant, Hannah Arendt, and Martha Nussbaum.

This oft-cited account has recently been challenged. Giri argues that it excludes events in the non-Western world and non-Western philosophical responses.³ Closer to home, Keck claims...