John Jacob Kaag Pragmatism & the Lessons Ofexperience

John Jacob Kaag

Pragmatism & the lessons ofexperience

Experience has lessons to impart. Its gled and painful.” Philosophy ought to ability to teach, however, turns on our be understood, they thought, as the re- willingness to learn. Attending to the sult of human beings thinking through lessons of human experience brought the meaningful questions of living as American pragmatists of the nineteenth embodied, thoughtful organisms. These century to a new conception of philoso- questions can never be purely cerebral; phy, one that embraced the fallibilism they are laden with emotion, careful- that had long de½ned the natural sci- ly negotiated in daily life, and pressed ences. It led them back to the abiding upon us in moments of personal and existential questions that underpinned social crisis–always, therefore, empir- the Wisdom Traditions of the past in ically conditioned and experiential. Ex- order to explore the personal, social, perience was to replace pure reason as and political trials of the present. These American pragmatism’s enduring lode- thinkers established a new intellectual stone. tradition that allows us to “learn from Pragmatism took the reconstruction experience.”1 of experience as its principal task: the Classical pragmatism stood against only way to respond effectively to the di- the prevailing current of European phi- lemma that philosophy faced in the early losophy, which continued to be motivat- years of the twentieth century. In 1907, ed by Immanuel Kant’s insistence that William James called it the “present di- philosophy should be concerned with lemma,” but it now is more accurate to the limits and conditions of “pure rea- call it a perennial one. It is the crisis that son,” that is, reason devoid of empiri- philosophy faces when it jeopardizes its cal content. In contrast, American intel- own relevance. Academic philosophy lectuals such as Charles Sanders Peirce, has spent the better part of the past William James, Jane Addams, Ella Ly- century earning a deservedly bad repu- man Cabot, and John Dewey held that tation. Since the time of Socrates and philosophy should concern itself with Aristophanes, philosophy has been ac- the messiness of human meaning, which cused of being only loosely tethered to James acknowledged as “various, tan- the world of human affairs, and today the string appears to have been severed © 2009 by the American Academy of Arts completely. As Dewey noted in 1917, & Sciences the “recovery of philosophy” is only

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/daed.2009.138.2.63 by guest on 01 October 2021 John Jacob possible if philosophers are willing to teenth century, but the young Peirce still Kaag take a stand with the sciences, and a concluded, “[W]ithout beating longer variety of other academic disciplines, round the bush . . . experience is our only on the ground of human experience. teacher.”3 At times this teacher seems to Experience: the term reverberates as know only one pedagogical method: the a noun, a verb, and ultimately as a com- often painful process of trial and error. mand. While Bertrand Russell, echoing Modern philosophy, beginning with the sentiment of traditional empiricism, Descartes, had been de½ned by the reduced experience to a description of search for absolute and enduring prin- “sense-data,” the classical pragmatists ciples that might serve as the founda- insisted that human experience is de- tion of human knowledge. In contrast, ½ned by a particular qualitative dimen- Peirce echoed Ralph Waldo Emerson sion; by its purpose, effect, and the liv- by suggesting that experience happens ing memory of past experiences. Expe- as a “series of surprises” and continual- rience is not merely something under- ly–inevitably–de½es the theories and gone, but also, and always, something principles that attempt to describe it.4 actively done. Dewey’s Experience and Peirce’s anti-foundationalism, however, Nature (1925) suggests that a human be- did not signal the ultimate bankruptcy ing, like any other organism, continu- of the empirical and theoretical sciences. ally transacts with its natural surround- Unlike many relativists of the twentieth ings, and this observation serves as the century, he did not regard uncertainty starting point of pragmatic naturalism. and fallibility as postulates that proved For human beings, however, Dewey the futility of analytic disciplines; rath- presents this natural transaction not as er, insights achieved in the midst of in- a mere fact of existence, but an ongoing quiry kept these disciplines on the move. question concerning the transaction’s “The pragmatist knows,” wrote Peirce, origin, history, process, and destination. “that doubt is an art which has to be ac- While pragmatism maintained a sci- quired through dif½culty.”5 The belief enti½c bearing, it was quite careful not that doubt is not something given, but to succumb to scientism. Dewey, ame- something carefully acquired, distin- nable to the studies of psychology, biol- guishes him from strains of contem- ogy, and early cognitive neuroscience, porary relativism, as well as the unbri- nonetheless held that these disciplines dled skepticism that de½ned the Carte- did not give us absolute answers, only sian system. The Cambridge pragma- useful perspectives on the variety and tists dismissed the radical doubt of Des- novelty that de½ne our transactions cartes, insisting that meaningful skep- with the affairs of nature. James, the ticism could never be cultivated ex situ, father of experimental psychology in beyond the constraints of a pressing America, conceded, “[E]xperience as and immediate situation. we know, has ways of boiling over and Indeed the situation, indeterminate making us correct our present formu- and confused, provides the occasion for las.”2 Following his father Benjamin genuine philosophic inquiry. Dewey ex- Peirce, C. S. Peirce made a name in plains, “[T]o set up a problem that does mathematics and physics before cul- not grow out of an actual situation is to tivating a reputation in philosophy. start on a course of dead work,” and to He studied under the foremost mathe- arrive rather quickly at the dead end maticians and physicists of the nine- of “busy work.” Dewey’s observation

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/daed.2009.138.2.63 by guest on 01 October 2021 changed the ground rules for philoso- negotiate the twists and turns of experi- Pragmatism phy. No longer were thinkers meant to ence. Pragmatism entails the cultivation & the les- sons of retreat to their salons and ivory towers of a sensitivity to our surroundings, both experience in order to raise questions that would local and remote. James echoes Ralph never be negotiated in the world of ex- Waldo Emerson’s insistence that we at- perience. Instead they were challenged tune ourselves to the “slightest sensorial to engage the world and set upon prob- nuance.” In this respect, certainty and lems, in order to face questions that truth are not relative terms, but provision- ought to be negotiated–no small chal- al guides that help us “feel out” the tran- lenge. This is never simply a matter of sient flow of experience and the possibil- uncovering a question that lays in wait ity that it affords. for us. According to Dewey, determin- ing a “problematic situation” is an ac- Human experience is transient; its tive process of creation and discovery. lessons are fleeting. For all of its un- A problem arises in the midst of investi- certainty, experience assures us of one gation and serves as the pivot between thing: it will be over soon. This is the the indeterminacy of the present state hardest teaching that experience has and the determinacy that one seeks as to offer, and it is the enduring one the end of inquiry. Once a problem is around which the history of Western identi½ed, James suggests that we are philosophy has turned. American prag- able to “unstiffen all our theories, lim- matism could not make human experi- ber them up and set each one to work.”6 ence central to its philosophy without Not surprisingly, the growing num- attending to the torturous course of ber of non-philosophers who claim the experience and its starkly abrupt end. title of “pragmatist” often do so in light James, along with his colleague Josiah of comments such as James’s, which in- Royce, sought to re-center philosophy dicate that theoretical progress ought to around the hard fact of human ½nitude. be measured in terms of it instrumen- Early American thinkers, such as Rog- tal consequences. Pragmatism gets stuff er Williams (1603–1683) and Jonathan done, and if one’s thought effects any Edwards (1703–1758), established hu- type of change in the “real world,” then man fragility and terminality as focal that thinker is a pragmatist–or so the points of their respective philosophies. story goes. However, this version of the By the 1890s, as pragmatism began to story misconstrues the meaning of prag- hit its stride, life in New England had matism and jeopardizes the future of grown considerably easier, but human the tradition in America. Dewey, James, ½nitude remained fodder for American and Peirce did not advocate unreflective thinkers. Ella Lyman Cabot, a philoso- instrumentalism. When James suggests pher who worked closely with Royce that we set our theories to work, he does and James at the turn of the century, not suggest that we ram abstract expla- put it thus: “What is our Life? A sleep nations into the face of a relatively unac- and a forgetting, a happy rising and a commodating world. The world, not our painful setting.”7 Cabot knew that the theories, will inevitably win in this sort experience of life is the all-too-hasty of confrontation. Instead, James under- process of dying. And she understood, stood abstract concepts as adaptive in- as Plato suggests in the Phaedo, that phi- struments that can, for the time being, losophy at its best is principally con- help individuals and their communities cerned with the process of dying well.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/daed.2009.138.2.63 by guest on 01 October 2021 John Jacob What Cabot knew only in theory, Most pragmatists resisted the in- Kaag Royce knew ½rsthand, having been grained, often destructive symptoms raised in near-poverty in Grass Valley, of Christian ideology of nineteenth- California. He made it to Harvard, but century America, setting themselves remained at the margins of the intel- against fanaticism of all forms and lectual clique there. He continues to the stultifying effects that dogma had remain at the margins of contempo- on individuals and their communities. rary treatments of American pragma- Royce, aware of the pitfalls of institu- tism, too, in part because he respond- tionalized religion, recognized the valu- ed to the problem of human ½nitude able role that religion has, for better and by developing “an absolute idealism,” for worse, played in the lives of individ- a synthesis of Christian theology and uals; this was Royce’s second contri- Hegelian system-building that ran bution to the pragmatic tradition. In counter to the methodological novel- his diary of 1873, several years prior to ty of the pragmatic tradition. Whereas meeting Royce, James reflects on this Royce maintained the necessity of an value: “Religion in its most abstract absolute God, the pragmatic method expression may be de½ned as the af½r- self-consciously eschewed such ideas. mation that all is not vanity.”9 Vanity, Royce did, though, influence pragma- the grim prospect that our limited ef- tism in general and James in particular forts come to naught, de½nes large in at least two respects. swathes of human experience. In spite First, Royce’s existential insight re- of this fact, we doggedly, triumphantly, garding the human condition–his ac- often irrationally marshal on. James knowledgment of the ephemeral and was fascinated by this determination. tragic character of human experience His close interaction with Royce en- –helped temper the forward-looking couraged him to face the challenge optimism often associated with what of adjusting pragmatism to account would come to be known as Deweyian for the full range and depth of human instrumentalism. Writing in 1894, Cab- experience, an experience willfully ot reflected on the difference in tem- embraced despite its inevitable limita- perament between Dewey and Royce: tions. According to James, pragmatism was to make philosophy more “tough- Dewey perhaps understates what Royce minded,” more scienti½c, experiential dwells on too much–the storm-stress as- and empirically grounded. Yet pragma- pects of life. Dewey’s attitude is tremen- tism was also to preserve the “tender- dously healthy . . . and he is not without minded” temperament which was keen- feeling and appreciation as the half-unin- ly attuned to the existential situation to tentional touches in his books show. But which religion responds and the action- could he possibly have such a wide sym- able belief that religion entails–namely pathy as Royce with mystics and romanti- that life is worth living. cists? Could he be as fair to them as Royce But is it? In his 1895 article, “Is Life is? And if not is his position the best one! Worth Living?” James keeps the answer A healthy scorn for all things abstract and to that question intentionally vague: spiritual is a bracing tonic, but passion “Maybe.” For the pragmatist, religious and pathos and the tragedy and mystery belief is an open question or possibility, . . . must be met with understanding criti- not a promise. Maybe there is afterlife; cism not mere condemnation.8 maybe there is a transcendent spiritual

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/daed.2009.138.2.63 by guest on 01 October 2021 reality; maybe there is redemption to ond, Emerson points to the fact of con- Pragmatism our suffering. James’s audience was dis- tinuity; there are no walls that inherent- & the les- sons of appointed by his ambiguity, but he ex- ly cordon off the ground of experience. experience plained that scienti½c life has much to This openness is at once an invitation do with “maybes,” and human life on for communion and conversation. the whole has everything to do with The fact that modernity continues to them. Scienti½c advancement, political be de½ned by disciplinary, interpersonal, revolution, social reform, evolutionary and experiential divides has nothing to adaptation, psychological treatment: all do with experience itself, but rather with turn upon a “maybe,” a risky possibility the rigid conceptual schemes that indi- that things may turn out otherwise. Why viduals habitually employ, often to poor should we expect more certitude from effect, in understanding their respective religious beliefs? worlds. When an individual peers over Just as fallibilism does not have to these self-imposed walls, James believes threaten scienti½c inquiry, existential that one catches sight of “a universe . . . risk does not cut short life’s broader that possesses in its own right a concate- projects in which human beings seek nated or continuous structure.”11 When meaning. To the contrary, only by risk- this individual ventures beyond the nar- ing ourselves in an encounter with pos- row con½nes of self-de½nition, there is sibility do we broaden our projects and the chance to experience this relation- ourselves. Possibility exists at the bor- al world, with all of its subtle and novel der of selfhood, a permeable, indeter- connections, as one’s own. Failing to minate, precarious region that individ- venture, according to Emerson, consti- uals explore at their own peril. The dan- tutes “the only sin,” for it forfeits the po- ger is real, but so, too, are the meaning- tentiality that quietly resides at the heart ful alternatives that can only be found of being human. It is in this sense that in this experiential borderland. In “Cir- “experience” is not only a description, cles,” Emerson sets the groundwork but also an imperative. for a pragmatic conception of selfhood: “There is no outside, no enclosing wall, If failing to recognize fertile possibil- no circumference to us.”10 This com- ities in one’s own life is a sin, it follows ment can cut in one of two directions, that individuals have a moral obligation both of which provided fruitful avenues to foster communities and societies for thinkers such as James, Dewey, and that provide the vistas and pathways by Addams. which individuals can explore their own First, Emerson suggests that experi- experiential frontiers. This is the conclu- ence is essentially open-ended, a fact sion that drove classical pragmatists into that corresponds to a metaphysical po- a variety of academic disciplines in order sition that holds that the universe itself to develop living networks that embody is not bounded by a set of determinable this ideal. It led Peirce to a new vision of limits. Pragmatism maintains that there science as the cooperative processes of a is neither a single god’s-eye view to be certain type of community. In the 1890s, sought nor a totalizing divine force to be John Dewey extended Peirce’s insight worshiped. If anything is to be consid- concerning group dynamics in order to ered sacred, it is time itself, the medium place educational and democratic theory through which individual humans work on a new footing. Jane Addams followed out the creative business of living. Sec- suit a decade later by employing it in es-

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/daed.2009.138.2.63 by guest on 01 October 2021 John Jacob tablishing the early peace movement current circumstance, in accord with the Kaag and cultivating social reform in Chica- living struggles of the present. At every go. George Herbert Mead, Addams’s moment, its emergence, like the devel- colleague in the 1920s, adjusted this an- opment of natural selection, depends gle of vision in order to develop the ba- on the precondition of variation. With- sis for a signi½cant branch of modern out a variety of perspectives, the scien- sociology. ti½c community would be ill-equipped At the core of the pragmatic under- to deal with the indeterminacy of novel standing of community are three relat- situations. The pragmatic concern for ed tenets, all of which stem from expe- pluralism is not merely an issue of con- rience: interpretation, pluralism, and venience or expediency, but one of expe- loyalty. Experience does not come ready- riential honesty. If we are honest with made as discrete points of sense-data, experience, we cannot neglect its variety but rather blooms with meaning as indi- of forms, each with its own qualitative viduals tend it in the process of careful dimension. It is impossible to anticipate interpretation. According to Peirce, nei- which perspective will prove fortuitous ther meaning nor truth are simply mat- in the course of human inquiry. “For- ters of objective fact, but rather matters tuitous” variation is only identi½ed in of inter-subjective interpretation. It is hindsight; in the midst of development in this sense that he states, “Nature is a there is only variation tout court and its book which science interprets.”12 This continual engagement with experiential is not to say that the ½ndings of science realities. are the stuff of whim and fancy. Genu- Interpretation and pluralism serve ine interpretation always points to an as the drivers of pragmatic inquiry, but object that is being interpreted. In the thinkers such as Royce and James knew case of nature, the object of interpreta- that these ideas lacked power without tion is never wholly stable, but this dy- the energy of loyalty, or the will to be- namic object can, and does, serve as the lieve. Pragmatism hoped to redeploy ground on which science makes its col- the notion of loyalty, often associated lective ½ndings. According to Peirce, with the willingness to adopt the cause the “dynamical object” provides the of a particular or exclusive group. In so limits, but also the enabling conditions, doing, it maintained that the identi½ca- for scienti½c interpretation. The limits tion of individual interests with com- of interpretation are set by nature but munal projects could, and should, be also by the course of human history. inclusive and seek the greatest degree Even the most novel interpretation de- of participation without compromis- pends on convention–the history of ing the personal stakes that underpin past interpretations–for its commu- the lives of individuals. nicability. The pragmatists appropriat- In the 1930s, at a time when rigid ideo- ed the long-held understanding of aes- logical categories de½ned international thetic taste as being conveyed in a com- and domestic affairs, John Dewey con- mon sense, and claimed that it might tinued to express a loyalty to cultural provide a systematic organization for and political pluralism. Pluralism, a vi- the sciences. tal lesson of experience, was not to re- Pragmatic common sense is a curious- main hide-bound in lecture halls and li- ly flexible benchmark. It expands, con- braries, but let loose and enacted in the tracts, and evolves under the pressure of public square. While Peirce and James

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/daed.2009.138.2.63 by guest on 01 October 2021 celebrated diversity primarily in theo- The ideals of freedom and pluralism Pragmatism ry, Dewey and Addams translated this can neither march on their own nor be & the les- sons of celebration into projects of social activ- dictated to a foreign population. At best, experience ism. In so doing, they began to make they can be embodied in diplomatic mis- pragmatism truly practical. As a found- sions that seek to expose alternatives ing member of the American Civil Lib- and possibilities indigenous to experi- erties Union (aclu) and the National ence and that might be cooperatively Association for the Advancement of negotiated. Colored People (naacp), Dewey main- tained, “[A] progressive society counts Advocating a genuinely pragmatic ap- individual variations as precious since proach to foreign policy is dif½cult in a it ½nds in them the means of its own nation of ideals. It becomes nearly im- growth.”13 He continually, if not unerr- possible when exceptionalism and na- ingly, sought to honor, encounter, and tionalism are among these ideals. Jane foster diversity, taking the message of Addams learned this lesson the hard Democracy and Education to Japan and way. Having been quicker than Dewey China in 1919; seeking education re- to denounce U.S. military involvement form in Turkey in 1924 and in the Sovi- in the early years of the twentieth cen- et Union in 1928; and chairing the Dew- tury, Addams was deemed “the most ey Commission in 1936, which aimed dangerous woman in America” by The- to engage and critique the growth of au- odore Roosevelt in 1917. In a time of thoritarianism in Communist Russia. war, cooperation was a subversive act. Dewey’s intent as a public intellec- Her work with the Women’s Peace Par- tual, however, was not to set “freedom ty stemmed directly from the social re- on the march,” but to explore careful- form that Addams spearheaded at Hull ly and humbly those political frontiers House beginning in 1889. Addams sug- that remained uncharted. His initial en- gested that instead of traveling abroad dorsement of American intervention- in order to experience genuine differ- ism in World War I quickly shifted in ence, one needed only open her eyes light of the experiential realities that and step through any doorway in nine- emerged after the military confronta- teenth-century Chicago, just beyond tion. In a remark that remains disturb- the stereotypes that bar the way of mu- ingly prescient, Dewey maintained tual understanding. The settlement that the war (and the subsequent peace) house movement that Addams initiat- failed, to the extent that it prioritized ed was unique in its approach to cultur- abstract ideals over experiential evi- al difference and took pragmatism not dence: only as its intellectual touchstone, but [The United States] took into the war as an enduring way of life. our sentiment, our attachment to moral Working among the immigrant poor sentiment . . . our pious optimism as to of Chicago led Addams to recognize the inevitable victory of the “right,” our “lessons of experience” that could never childish belief that physical energy can be replicated in the elite academic cen- do the work that only intelligence can ters of the Northeast. Residents of Hull do, our evangelical hypocrisy that mor- House emphasized the value of local di- als and ideals have a self-propelling and versity, the unique relation that individ- self-executing capacity.14 uals living in close quarters had to lan- guage, ethnicity, gender, and class differ-

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/daed.2009.138.2.63 by guest on 01 October 2021 John Jacob ences. Addams reinforced the pragmat- This approach to thoughtful living Kaag ic thesis that experience is never had and social reform seems so dif½cult, at a distance, but only in the intimate so ambiguous, so complicated. So why familiarity of local and provincial cir- bother? This is perhaps the most dif½- cumstances. Today, provincialism has cult question that philosophy ever has the connotations of restriction and nar- to confront. Cabot repeatedly faced the row perspective. Addams, however, sug- challenges entailed in thinking, work- gested that fostering democratic prac- ing, and living pragmatically. Being at- tices must begin at home, in the neigh- tentive to experience, and more speci½- borhoods and locales where experien- cally, being wide-eyed to the experience tial knowledge takes place. She endorsed of others, caused Cabot to suffer from provincialism for countering the broad what she called a type of “moral sleep- and damaging generalizations that ac- lessness.” After a trip to Hull House in company and exacerbate the tensions the early 1890s, Cabot began to formu- of class and race. Pragmatism was, after late her reasons for bearing the sleep- all, a middle-range theory that aimed to lessness that attends the social and polit- clip the wings of abstract concepts in ical projects of pragmatism. She wrote, order to ground philosophy in the par- “[T]he art of living is becoming other ticularities of everyday life. Twenty Years people.”16 This pithy statement lends at Hull House roots Addams’s pragmatic itself to two interpretative frames. First, commitment in the ability and enthusi- individuals participate in the “art of liv- astic willingness to live amidst concrete ing” to the extent that they continually issues of difference. Describing the resi- and creatively expand their experiential dents of a settlement house, she writes, horizons. In effect, each of us engages “They must be content to live quietly in a process of self-discovery, uncover- side by side with their neighbors, until ing broader, deeper, and more intricate they grow into a sense of relationship aspects of ourselves. Second, this pro- and mutual interests.”15 cess of self-discovery depends on an Just as Emerson suggested that being individual’s ability to ½nd oneself in a quiet was necessary to attune oneself wider community of interpretation. to the “slightest sensorial nuance,” Ad- The cultivation of selfhood is never dams held that a type of active receptivi- an isolated affair, but an interpersonal ty was integral to identifying the subtle project of integrating a variety of pur- needs of a diverse community. The prag- poses and interests. Our empathetic matic desire to identify mutual interests and careful involvement with others stood against a bureaucratic imposition always determines the extent to which of projects and purposes on a given com- we “become other people.” munity. Handling social difference is never a matter of dictation and assimila- “What the true de½nition of Pragma- tion, but rather the careful process of in- tism may be, I ½nd it very hard to say.”17 tegration in which ideals are recast in Peirce was correct when he penned these order to accommodate the widest range words in 1903, yet somehow it’s become of living realities. This sort of accommo- easier than ever to say, quite con½dently, dation and integration provided the ba- “I am a pragmatist.” What exactly are sis for the social progressive movement we saying when we claim to be pragma- on the whole, and more particularly, the tists? When William James addressed pragmatic conception of meliorism. this question in his 1907 Lowell Lectures,

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/daed.2009.138.2.63 by guest on 01 October 2021 he concluded that this American intel- ious ways of thinking through experience. Pragmatism lectual tradition was “a new name for Pragmatism is dif½cult to de½ne because & the les- sons of some old ways of thinking.” Today it it is not one thing. It bespeaks ways, di- experience is no longer a new name. Indeed prag- rections, and pathmarks that guide us matism seems rather worn down, a in traversing the rough terrain of the ex- tool damaged by use and misuse. Like periential landscape. In its attempt to any instance of jargon, “pragmatism” reclaim the original meaning of philo- risks becoming an old name with a for- sophia, a relatively small group of Amer- gotten history. ican thinkers began to do just that, giv- Genuinely reviving this American ing voice to the enduring lessons that philosophical tradition depends on only experience has to offer. our ability to retrace and extend var-

ENDNOTES 1 I would like to thank Dr. Robert Innis for his suggestions and encouragement in the draft- ing of this article. 2 William James, “Pragmatism’s Conception of Truth,” in Pragmatism (New York: Long- mans, Green and Co., 1907), 222. 3 Charles Sanders Peirce, Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vol. 5, ed. Charles Hart- shorne and Paul Weiss (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1934), 37. 4 Emerson writes, “Life is a series of surprises”; Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Circles,” in Emer- son’s Prose and Poetry, ed. Joel Porte and Saundra Morris (New York: Norton Critical Edi- tion, 2001), 181. 5 Charles Sanders Peirce, Writings of Charles Sanders Peirce, vol. 6, ed. Max Fisch (Blooming- ton: Indiana University Press, 1982), 498. 6 James, “What Pragmatism Means,” in Pragmatism, 58. 7 Ella Lyman Cabot, “Philosophy and Nature,” December 13, 1884, in Assorted Poetry, Ella Lyman Cabot Collection, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, (A- 139) Folder 226. 8 Ella Lyman Cabot, “Notebook 1892,” in Philosophical Reflections, Ella Lyman Cabot Col- lection, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, (A-139) Folder 320. 9 William James, “Notebook 1873,” William James Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University, ms am 1092.9 (4500). 10 Emerson, “Circles,” in Emerson’s Prose and Poetry, ed. Porte and Morris, 175. 11 William James, The Meaning of Truth (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975), 7. 12 Peirce, Writings of Charles Sanders Peirce, vol. 1, ed. Fisch, 55. 13 John Dewey, Democracy and Education (New York: Macmillan and Company, 1916), 357. 14 John Dewey, “Force and Ideals,” in Characters and Events: Essays in Social and Political Philos- ophy by John Dewey, vol. 2, ed. Joseph Ratner (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1929), 631. 15 Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House (New York: Macmillan and Company, 1911), 126. 16 Ella Lyman Cabot, “Notebook on Growth,” in Philosophical Reflections, Ella Lyman Cabot Collection, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, (A-139)

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/daed.2009.138.2.63 by guest on 01 October 2021 John Jacob Folder 324. See also John Kaag, “Women and Forgotten Movements in American Philoso- Kaag phy: The Work of Ella Lyman Cabot and Mary Parker Follett,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 44 (1) (Winter 2008): 134–157. 17 Charles Sanders Peirce, Pragmatism as Principle and Method of Right Thinking: The 1903 Har- vard Lectures on Pragmatism, ed. Patricia Turrisi (Albany: suny Press, 1997), 164.

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