Stoic Pragmatism by John Lachs (review)

Pragmatists have maintained, at least since William James and John Dewey, that philosophy should be relevant to life. Yet pragmatists themselves have often been stuck in debating matters whose practical relevance is limited, including the question who has a right to be called “a pragmatist”. John Lachs, for decades an original voice in American philosophy, has repeatedly argued that philosophy ought to be reconnected with life, and in his new book he forcefully continues this line of argument. The volume seems to be somewhat hastily woven together out of originally separate writings not always closely related to each other, and the lack of an index is a handicap in any scholarly monograph, but even with these defects it is a valuable contribution to the ongoing discussion of how pragmatism should be developed today—though Lachs’s philosophical heroes (e.g., George Santayana) are thinkers whose relation to pragmatism remains problematic.

Lachs proposes to integrate pragmatism with Stoicism, arguing that this synthesis yields a more satisfactory overall philosophy than either pragmatism or Stoicism by itself. These two philosophies can supplement each other, though both are by themselves unsatisfactory: while pragmatism insists on active effort and meliorism (that is, changing the world) and Stoicism on passive acquiescence, detachment, and acceptance (that is, changing the self or its attitude to the world), Lachs persuasively argues that Stoics “give up too soon” whereas pragmatists make the opposite mistake of “never wanting to give up” (23). The most promising path, as so often, can be found between the extremes. We should acknowledge that though things may and must often be transformed to make the world better, there are limits to how far this amelioration of the human condition can go. A healthy Stoic pragmatism encourages us to accept our finitude. There is no need, then, to see these standpoints as opposites: “Pragmatists are just as vitally interested in habits of self-control as stoics are committed to appropriate social ameliorative action” (47). Both pragmatist “strive” and Stoic “surrender” are necessary for a good life (52).

I strongly sympathize with Lachs’s suggestion to make pragmatism and Stoicism compatible and complementary. Indeed, this defense is itself pragmatic at a meta-level: we can live better by endorsing Lachs’s synthesis of apparently conflicting ideas. Yet Lachs occasionally goes too far in demanding that we simply “accept” the tragic fact that—as James clearly saw—we inevitably exclude some legitimate interests in our pursuit of the good (44). His analysis of the varieties of “human blindness” (as discussed in James’s famous essay, “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings”) is exemplary (see 88–95), but when he continues to criticize James’s view on the “infinity” of moral obligation he is in my view led astray by his desire to avoid attributing unnaturally heavy moral burdens to finite individuals. “To load infinite obligations on finite beings is to let them escape with none” (97) is a weak argument, as it overlooks the Jamesian point (which, arguably, Emmanuel Levinas makes as well, albeit within a very different tradition) that morality begins from the need to acknowledge the reality of evil (and the tragic conflicts between goods) as well as the infinity of our duty to fight against evil and tragedy.

Lachs, of course, deeply disagrees with the Levinasian approach, suggesting that infinite obligations would be “devastating for the moral life” (104) and guarantee moral failure (108). But it could be argued, to the contrary, that if we fail to understand the moral task as infinite we also devastate moral life, because morality begins from our realization of inevitable failure. Morality was never meant to bring us “inner peace and joy” (105), was it? It is because of the (infinite) obligations of morality that our peace and joy are often lost. At least, it seems that Lachs’s philosophical temperament regarding these issues is profoundly different from James’s (or Levinas’s).

One topic of vital human importance to which Stoic pragmatism may be applied is the understanding of death...