Pragmatism, Pluralism, and the Role of Inquiry in Comparative Philosophy

The purpose of this paper is to look into the role of inquiry in pragmatism and its implications for comparative philosophy. The self-referential character of the previous statement—that I am “looking into” inquiry—is meant to make a basic point: that inquiry is not something particular to the pragmatist tradition, but is entailed in any form of philosophical consideration (including such considerations of pragmatism as the following). More precisely, I will explore how the peculiar approach to inquiry undertaken within that tradition lends it some noteworthy advantages in comparative philosophy. Thus, if James was right in describing pragmatism as just “a new name for some old ways of thinking,”¹ this paper seeks to identify—at least in part—what merits the new name and how it might contribute to some new ways of thinking.

The impetus for this paper stems from questions pertaining to the surprisingly strong showing of pragmatism in comparative philosophy over the last hundred years.² Why is it, for example, that the classical pragmatists were among the first to take comparative inquiry seriously (e.g., Emerson, James, and Dewey)? Similarly, why have pragmatists been so disproportionately represented in that subfield, especially when compared to their representation in other subfields in philosophy? Why are such a disproportionate number of non-American comparative philosophers interested in pragmatism? Is the increasing interest in pragmatism in analytic and continental traditions of late in any way tied to the increasing influence of comparative philosophy? Is my own interest in comparative philosophy a natural result of my commitments to pragmatism or is it merely a historical accident? The paper that follows cannot possibly answer all of these questions, but it makes at least the modest attempt to determine whether there is anything within the tradition that can account for its comparative success.

The most challenging part of this paper will be framing both pragmatism and comparative philosophy in terms broad enough as to encompass their many respective varieties but not so broad as to avoid saying anything about them at all.³ Pragmatism, as it turns out, is not a new way of thinking any more than comparative philosophy is a new way of thinking. Rather, there are as many pragmatisms as there are pragmatists (some would say there are more), and many of these stand at odds with one another on even their seemingly most basic commitments. Likewise, comparative philosophy, while undertaken with extraordinary fervor over the last half century, is arguably as old as philosophy itself and bears with it all of the internal diversity attendant to such tenure. In short, it is difficult—some might say impossible—to speak in general terms about “pragmatism” or “comparative philosophy” in anything more than a superficial way, let alone to consider the advantages that one might pose for the other.

My initial response to this challenge is that, if either term—“pragmatism” or “comparative philosophy”—is to have any meaning at all, then something of that meaning must be shared among the things that are referred to by that term. Whether their shared meaning is best understood in terms of family resemblances (Wittgenstein), logically vague categories (Peirce, and, more famously, Robert Neville), or some other way, I leave open for the purposes of this paper.⁴ I find it sufficient at the outset to suggest that there are traits shared widely enough within each tradition to be considered characteristic of that tradition, and then to see whether this confidence is borne out by the project that follows. Here’s hoping.

The structure of this paper is relatively simple. In what follows, I will highlight four characteristics that appear to be particularly pronounced in pragmatist approaches to inquiry. These include taking inquiry as a primary methodological focus, as being descriptive before being prescriptive, as being driven by experience, and as being pluralistic in a particularly thoroughgoing way.⁵ A more extensive account would detail how each of these characteristics are specified in at least the more definitive pragmatists, but the constraints of this paper will require that I speak only...