Reconstructing Individualism: A Pragmatic Tradition from Emerson to Ellison

3 Moments in the World’s Salvation: James’s Pragmatic Individualism

{  } three moments in the world’s salvation James’s Pragmatic Individualism B This then is the individualistic view. . . . It means many good things: e.g. Genuine novelty order being won, paid for. the smaller systems the truer man [is greater than] home [is greater than] state or church. anti-slavery in all ways toleration—respect of others democracy—good systems can always be described in individualistic terms hero-worship and leadership. the vital and the growing as against the fossilized and fixed in science, art, religion, government and custom. faith and help in morals, obligation respondent to demand. Finally, it avoids the smugness which Swift found a reproach. —William James They don’t make intellectuals like William James anymore.1 James forged a career whose remarkable breadth seems unimaginable in the academic and popular cultures of today. He traversed and blended several disciplines, writing pioneering works in psychology and religion in addition to the work for which he is most famous—providing one of the founding articulations of pragmatism, the most distinctive and influential school in American philosophy. Moreover, James was a true public intellectual2 : he was an expert contributing to his discipline at the highest level, writing texts that continue to challenge and inspire professional philosophers, but he also translated his work—in essays of “popular philosophy”3 and in widely attended public lectures that were collected in books like The Will to Believe and Pragmatism—into forms that Pr agm at Ism  effectively communicated to popular audiences how ideas debated by philosophers might actually have significance in their own lives. While this penchant for popularizing has led academic philosophers at times to chide James for a lack of precision or rigor, such criticisms have never cast into doubt the significance of his contributions, and the accessibility of James’s works, written in a style that communicates the enormous vitality , charm, and passion of his personality, probably ensures that James’s version of pragmatism will continue to eclipse those of Dewey or Charles Sanders Peirce among general readers—and even most academics. Yet if—or perhaps because—James remains an influential spokesman for pragmatism, his individualism is often lamented as detracting from the power or relevance of this thought. Critics who stress pragmatism’s progressive, even radical, political potential tend to view James’s individualism as an unfortunate encumbrance (perhaps, as Dewey at times suggested, a vestige of the “pioneer” era in American history, sadly outmoded for more modern times4 ), one that separates James from the more thoroughly “social” thought of pragmatists like Dewey and Mead.5 It would be better, such critics imply, if pragmatism could be divested of its individualistic aspects. A central aim of the present study is to challenge the assumptions behind such assessments. The first such assumption is that pragmatism can be divested of its individualism . The outline quoted above—from a lecture series that Robert D. Richardson reports can be viewed as a “first draft for Pragmatism”6 — identifies individualism with benefits that readers familiar with James will recognize as key elements of his own pragmatism and pluralism: “the vital and the growing as against the fossilized and fixed”; “Genuine novelty”; “order being won, paid for”; and “toleration—respect of others .” If individualism indeed means such things, it becomes hard to see not only if Jamesian pragmatism could have its individualism removed, but why such radical surgery, if possible, would be desirable. Much of the challenge here is to distinguish between classic liberal individualism and a pragmatically reconstructed individualism, and to envision what the latter might look like: to understand why pragmatists would view the cultivation of individuality as an essential social concern; why individuality is both an essential means to the ongoing experimental reconstruction of experience and a primary end for any truly humane society—especially any society that aspires to democracy, since, as James asserts above, good democratic systems “can always be described in individualistic terms.” mom E n t s I n t h E wor l d’s sa lVat Ion  A second, related assumption involves the relation of James’s “individualistic ” and Dewey’s “social” ethics. While it would be hard to deny that the focus and tenor of James’s ethical writings are more individualistic than Dewey’s, any stark opposition between James’s and Dewey’s ethics perpetuates a dualism of individual versus collective approaches to reform that Dewey explicitly rejects. It overlooks how...