European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy

XI-1 | 2019 European Pragmatism

Giovanni Maddalena and Friedrich Stadler (dir.)

Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/ejpap/1459 DOI: 10.4000/ejpap.1459 ISSN: 2036-4091

Publisher Associazione Pragma

Electronic reference Giovanni Maddalena and Friedrich Stadler (dir.), European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019, « European Pragmatism » [Online], Online since 19 July 2019, connection on 24 September 2020. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/ejpap/1459 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/ ejpap.1459

This text was automatically generated on 24 September 2020.

Author retains copyright and grants the European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy right of frst publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. 1

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Symposia. European Pragmatism

Introduction to European Pragmatism Giovanni Maddalena and Friedrich Stadler

Georg Simmel and Pragmatism Martin Kusch

Wilhelm Jerusalem, the Social Element in his Pragmatism, and its Antecedent in Völkerpsychologie Thomas Uebel

Ramsey, Pragmatism, and the Vienna Circle Cheryl Misak

Pragmatism and the Birth of Subjective Probability Maria Carla Galavotti

Lewis and Schlick Verificationism between Pragmatism and Logical Empiricism Massimo Ferrari

Pragmatism in the Third Reich Heidegger and the Baumgarten Case Hans-Joachim Dahms

Vailati, Papini, and the Synthetic Drive of Italian Pragmatism Giovanni Maddalena

Scientific Method and Juridical Accountability in Mario Calderoni’s Pragmatism Rosa M. Calcaterra

Finnish Versions of Pragmatist Humanism Eino Kaila and Georg Henrik von Wright as Quasi-Pragmatists Sami Pihlström

Between Pragmatism and Realism The Philosophy of John Elof Boodin Matthias Neuber

Multilingual

Peirce e Leibniz L’interpretazione socio-politica della logica Mariannina Failla

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 2

Book Review

PADRÓN Charles & Krzysztof Piotr SKOWROŃSKI (eds), The Life of Reason in an Age of Terrorism Brill/Rodopi, Leiden-Boston, 2018, 266 pages María Aurelia Di Berardino

Pietro SALIS, Pratiche discorsive razionali: Studi sull’inferenzialismo di Robert Brandom Milano-Udine, Mimesis, 2016, 332 pages Massimo Dell’Utri

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 3

Giovanni Maddalena and Friedrich Stadler (dir.) Symposia. European Pragmatism

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 4

Introduction to European Pragmatism

Giovanni Maddalena and Friedrich Stadler

Introduction

1 In the past few years, the Vienna Circle Institute has been interested in the issue of ascertaining whether a specifically European Pragmatism existed and in identifying its characteristics as compared to its better-known North American cousin. The Institute organized two conferences to discuss this question: “Logical Empiricism and Pragmatism” in 2013 and “European Pragmatism – Historical and Contemporary Perspectives” in April 2018. The University of Chieti and the University of St. Gallen organized conferences on these topics in 2017 and in 2019, respectively.

2 This issue of the European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy intends to follow and foster this historical and theoretical line of thought in pragmatist studies. In fact, pragmatism can be understood in two ways: more narrowly as a specific school of philosophy, and more broadly as providing perspectives on methods of inquiry, science, and human life. Charles S. Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and George H. Mead understood pragmatism primarily as a distinctive method for addressing logical and philosophical questions, but other proponents of pragmatism found it more important to emphasize its pluralistic nature: in the classical epoch of pragmatism, Arthur O. Lovejoy and Ferdinand C. S. Schiller distinguished between thirteen and seven forms of pragmatism, respectively. After its first generation, the classic tradition of pragmatism entered into a dialogue with other schools of thought, especially those coming from the twentieth-century “neo-positivist” tradition. Despite what they declared, a clear thread unites logical empiricism as it existed in Berlin, Prague, and Vienna with the American movement, both in its classic form and in new forms that were proposed around the middle of the past century by authors like Clarence I. Lewis, Charles W. Morris, and Willard O. Quine. Starting from the late 1970s, neo-pragmatist authors began offering a different spin on the classic American movement by fostering an ongoing collaboration with analytic philosophy and other traditions of thought.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 5

3 This issue, following a historical perspective, intends to identify and reassess the different forms of “European pragmatism” and how they interacted with American pragmatism, above all with the authors of the classic period. This attempt can be seen as the first step of a much broader project that we hope will involve many other researchers. Reasonable starting points for such a comparison on the European side are Ernst Mach, Wilhelm Jerusalem, Eduard Baumgarten, Georg Simmel, Moritz Schlick, Rudolph Carnap, and Frank P. Ramsey. Although critics have traditionally read some of these thinkers as antagonists of pragmatism, recent scholarship has identified many points of contact and even convergences. The papers collected here demonstrate this keener reading of the philosophy of the period. One upshot of this focus is the insight that since the second half of the nineteenth century, lively pragmatic modes of thought and methods have emerged in Europe, in parallel and also interacting with classical American pragmatism – even if this movement was not always presented under the explicit label “pragmatism” by its proponents. This inchoate pragmatism can characterize a first approach to a genuine European philosophizing à la pragmatiste, which has become manifest in many fields. One of these is probability theory, which was one of the focuses of the long-term Research Network Program titled “The Philosophy of Science in a European Perspective” (PSE) sponsored by the European Science Foundation (ESF) that ran from 2008 to 2013, the products of which have appeared in many publications. In this issue one can find an interesting update to this thread of thought related to probability theory. 4 A second approach to European pragmatism is characterized by differences among its national manifestations. European thinkers have read and absorbed classical pragmatism but have developed original forms of it according to the traditions of thought already present in each of their countries, forms that are relevant to understanding European pragmatism as a whole. The present issue contains innovative articles about pragmatism in Italy and Finland, two of the most distinguished forms of European pragmatism. The conclusion that can be drawn from these articles is that despite the fact that many different varieties of pragmatism have been developed, there is still a common project shared by American and European pragmatists. It is expected that future issues will expand the analysis to include pragmatism as it has been developed in England, France, Poland, Spain, and central Europe. 5 In the dual perspective on European pragmatism that the symposium tackles – the dialogue with logical empiricism and the various national forms – it is clear that pragmatism has always involved a common project concerned with a unity between practice and theory and with a serious consideration of the methods and results of modern science, while still giving due attention to a wider philosophical perspective. 6 This symposium introduces the concept of “European pragmatism.” It is the hope of the editors that it will inspire future studies comparing the intellectual and philosophical manifestations of pragmatism on the two continents as part of an ongoing transatlantic exchange and enterprise.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 6

AUTHORS

GIOVANNI MADDALENA

Università del Molise maddalena[at]unimol.it

FRIEDRICH STADLER

Institut Wiener Kreis, Universität Wien Friedrich.Stadler[at]univie.ac.at

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 7

Georg Simmel and Pragmatism

Martin Kusch

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Work on this paper was made possible by ERC Advanced Grant Project “The Emergence of Relativism” (#339382).

§1. Introduction

1 Georg Simmel’s name does not appear in book-size accounts of the pragmatist tradition. But the latter does regularly feature in monographs on Simmel’s intellectual development. Simmel-scholars seem to agree that he was – at least at one stage of his life – close to pragmatism. Horst Helle even declares Simmel to be the “inspiration” behind this whole intellectual movement (1988: 60). Wilfried Geßner disagrees, but he too diagnoses a “continuous proximity” (2003: 64). As will become clear in what follows, I am closer to Geßner than to Helle.

2 Many of Simmel’s contemporaries also diagnosed a proximity to pragmatism. Of his German and Austrian colleagues, Leonard Nelson discussed Simmel’s pragmatist tendencies in correspondence with his father in 1908, right after the Heidelberg Philosophie Kongress in which pragmatism featured prominently (Simmel 2008: 660-1). Around 1905 Hugo Münsterberg encouraged William James to read Simmel; in so doing Münsterberg emphasized Simmel’s pragmatist leanings (Perry 1935: 470). Wilhelm Jerusalem (in 1913) praised Simmel’s Philosophie des Geldes (1989 [1900]) for its pragmatist theory of truth. And Max Frischeisen-Köhler argued that Simmel anticipated central themes of American pragmatism (1920: 15). 3 Even some American pragmatists showed an interest in Simmel. In reply to Münsterberg, James (in 1905) wrote that he had read Simmel’s “original pragmatistic article (which seemed to me rather crude, though essentially correct) […]” (Perry 1935: 470). James referred to Simmel also in his published writings. In The Meaning of Truth James remarks that in “Germany the name of Simmel offers itself as that of a humanist

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 8

of the most radical sort” (1909: 28). Simmel fared well also amongst U.S. sociologists. Albion Small, the head of the sociology department in Chicago between 1892-1924, published no less than 15 translations of Simmel’s texts in the American Journal of Sociology. And George Herbert Mead published a longish and highly positive review of Philosophie des Geldes, concluding that it “demonstrates […] the value of approaching economic science from the philosophic standpoint” (1901: 619). Simmel’s influence on Mead has been noted by several scholars (e.g. Prus 1996: 144). 4 What did Simmel himself think about his relationship to pragmatism? This question is not easy to answer since at different times Simmel gave different answers. I shall look at his published record below, but in order to give an initial sense of his wavering, the following two comments will serve. Neither was published during Simmel’s life. In 1908 Heinrich Nelson reported to his son Leonard the following conversation with Simmel: […] he remarked […] that it is strange that everyone counts him amongst the pragmatists just because, many years ago, he wrote something en passant which sounds vaguely similar; whereas his whole general tendency is absolutely different [...]. (Simmel 2008: 660-1) 5 And yet, in 1916 Simmel wrote a one-page document in which he “took stock” of “the original central motifs” he thought himself to have contributed to the “ Geistesentwicklung.” And here his early work on truth did get a special mention: […] the concept of truth, developed out of the context of life (an idea which later, in a crass and crooked way, and independently of my hard-to-find paper, was developed under the title “pragmatism”) [...]. (Simmel 2016: 71)

§2. “The Relationship between the Theory of Selection and Epistemology” (1885)

6 I now turn to the published sources. The most important piece of evidence is the early 1885-paper, the paper which James read and which lead to the perception of Simmel as a pragmatist.

7 Simmel begins by explaining the “received view” he wishes to dislodge. Both the received view and Simmel himself accept that cognition is the result of “the practical necessities to preserve […] life” (1885: 70). But the received view adds an important two-pronged “assumption”: to wit, that there is a set of “objective truths,” independent of all cognizers; and that different cognizers, with different needs and under different selection pressures, grasp different subsets of these objective truths. We might call this the “spotlight” model: the needs of the species determine the direction of the cognitive spotlight that brings truths into view. Moreover, for the received view, truth means “an objective mirroring of the world.” And finally, the “goal of mental selection” is that thought “parallels” “objectivity,” thereby avoiding clashes with reality (1885: 71). 8 What Simmel finds problematic about the received view is its dualism of “practical life- constituting needs” on the one hand, and the “objectively cognizable world” on the other hand. Simmel wants to find a “common root at a deeper level.” His proposal is that: “[…] there is no theoretically valid ‘truth’ on the basis of which we act in ways advantageous to us […] [Rather] we call those beliefs ‘true’ that […] [are] the basis for advantageous, life-supporting actions.” (1885: 72). To make sense of this passage, it is important to keep in mind that when Simmel talks of “truth” being “theoretically valid,” he refers to the ideas of truth as correspondence, coherence or provability. In

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 9

the quoted passage Simmel thus wants to introduce a concept of truth that is “practical,” and thereby independent of the ideas of correspondence, coherence and provability (1885: 72). 9 As Simmel has it, there is one important “prejudice” that stands in the way of his proposal: this is the prejudice according to which “cause and effect must have the same form [eine morphologische Gleichheit]” (1885: 72). What he has in mind is the idea that a mental effect must have a mental cause, or more specifically, that a conscious mental effect must have a conscious mental cause. The version of the prejudice most important in the present context is this. Assume one of our actions triggers the conscious state of feeling satisfied with the way the world is. Call this way “p.” According to the prejudice, such conscious state must have among its “immediate” causes other conscious states of a certain kind. These other conscious states too are “satisfactory” or “successful,” namely satisfactory and successful insofar as they accurately represent the state of the world p which the subject desired, and that was brought about by the action. In other words, the state of satisfaction and the action-guiding representation must have the same propositional content p. 10 According to Simmel, the assumption of “morphological identity” is a mistake. Conscious volitions and “plans” (qua causes) lead to actions (qua effects) via sequences of neural and muscular causal processes, none of which typically is conscious. A specific volition and representation can cause an action, which in turn causes a feeling of satisfaction, without that this representation endures and guides in a homogeneous and continuous conscious mental realm. Instead the combination of volition and representation triggers the propagation of a “force” across neural and muscular states, a force that eventually results in the satisfying action. Simmel writes: “[…] a force that via the most varied transformations in the mental, bodily and inorganic world eventually results in a subjectively satisfying and objectively advantageous result.” (1885: 73). Simmel compares this process to the transmission of words by means of the telegraph. The physical processes in the wire bear no resemblance to the words that are written down in response to these physical processes at the destination. Moreover, the fact that an action based on a mental representation is satisfying does not “decide in advance” what the relationship between representation and the facts must be. 11 It remains for Simmel to explain how the mechanism of selection functions under the conditions of his proposal, or his “New Idea” (as I shall call it subsequently). The answer is this: : “[…] among the countless beliefs that appear in consciousness there are some whose effects prove to be useful for action and life-supporting for the subject. These beliefs get picked out by the usual processes of selection, and taken as a whole they form the ‘true’ world of beliefs.” (1885: 73). By calling these useful beliefs “true,” we give them a special “dignity.” Or as Simmel puts it later in the paper: “For an animal that belief is true which leads the animal to behave in its circumstances in the most advantageous way; and this because the demand for this behaviour has formed the very organs that shape the animal’s beliefs.” (1885: 75). 12 The idea seems clear enough. Still, let me repeat it in my own words. Some types of beliefs lead to actions that increase fitness. And the cognitive faculties which produce such types beliefs are therefore selected by evolution. Humans do not generally understand this mechanism. But they notice that certain (types of) beliefs in the ancestry of their satisfaction-triggering actions are important. And they therefore dignify these beliefs with the label “truth.”

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 10

13 Earlier I quoted Simmel as saying “[…] there is no theoretically valid ‘truth’.” Nevertheless, as his argument progresses, Simmel comes to soften this stance: according to this more moderate view, the “practical” conception of truth is primary with respect to theoretical truth. While Simmel thinks that – after Kant – truth as correspondence is out of the question, he still is willing to leave room for truth as coherence or provability. The primacy of practical truth lies in the fact that the truth of our criteria and axioms can ultimately only be practical (1885: 74). 14 Simmel is well aware that his theory has relativistic consequences. Consider non- human animals and their sensory beliefs. Since they have different needs from us, they must also have perceptual systems very unlike ours. Note here that Simmel stresses the distinction between “true” and “false” beliefs also in the case of animals. After all, animals too have “misperceptions,” and they too make mistakes they later correct. And yet, when animals correct a mistake, they do not thereby reach “absolute truth.” At best they reach a “normal belief” for their species. The same is true of humans (1885: 75). 15 Finally, and in conclusion, Simmel stresses that the difficulty of the New Idea is analogous to the difficulty of Kant’s theory of space … The process of intuition [Anschauungsprozess], following its immanent laws – the scientific expression of which are mathematical sentences – creates what we call “space.” In similar fashion, our thinking, in accordance with the principle of usefulness, creates certain norms of its behaviour. In and through these norms comes about what we call “truth”; and the abstract formulation of these norms are the logical laws. (1885: 77) 16 Here I have not got enough space to explore Simmel’s historical debts to other authors before him – a detailed analysis would have to mention at least Darwin, Spencer, Windelband, Lange and especially von Helmholtz.1 At this point it suffices to stress that Simmel did not need to read the early American pragmatists to arrive at his New Idea. He had enough other authors, closer to home, from whom he could pick up the building blocks for his position. von Helmholtz is particularly important. Simmel’s text contains numerous allusions to the famous §26 of von Helmholtz’s Handbuch der physiologischen Optik (1867). In this context it is interesting to remember that Simmel’s first attempt (in 1880) to gain a doctorate in philosophy – with a thesis on Darwin – failed because of von Helmholtz’s criticism. von Helmholtz pointed out that the young Simmel lacked sufficient knowledge of physiology and biology (Simmel 2016: 182-3). It may well be that Simmel’s 1885-paper was an attempt to show von Helmholtz that Simmel had learnt his lesson.

17 In many ways Simmel’s paper reads like a further development of von Helmholtz’s claim that “the only sense in which our sensory presentations can be said to be true, is practical” (1867: 443). Simmel also picks up on the idea that sensations are mere “signs” or “symbols,” not “copies” of events in the external world. And the discussion of Kant on space at the end of Simmel’s paper recalls von Helmholtz’s discussion of “axioms” of geometry and spatial intuition. Not to forget that von Helmholtz also uses the “telegraph” analogy (1867: §26). I think this evidence speaks for itself. It is also worth pointing out that von Helmholtz too was sometimes regarded as a pragmatist. For instance, in the Heidelberg philosophy congress of 1908 – in which pragmatism figured prominently – Gregorius B. Itelson, a Ukrainian Privatgelehrter living in Berlin, claimed

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 11

that von Helmholtz’s §26 very much anticipated the “formula of pragmatism,” at least for sensations (Elsenhans 1909: 91).

§3. Philosophy of Money (1900)

18 The next obvious question is: what happened to Simmel’s New Idea in his later work? Did he quickly leave it behind, as he suggested to Heinrich Nelson in 1908? I think not. It seems to me that Simmel was not entirely honest when he talked to Nelson.

19 In Philosophie des Geldes (1989 [1900]) the New Idea re-appears, in an abridged form, as one argument in defence of relativism. But there is now an important new twist in that Simmel introduces the idea of “normative stability”: for each animal species there is a “principally fixed” set of truths constituted by the species’ needs. Thus, given human needs, Newton’s “Law of Universal Gravitation” would be true even if humans had never formulated it (1989 [1900]: 102). This move seems to be Simmel’s quick way of answering Husserl’s and the Neo-Kantians’ objections to naturalistic views in logic and epistemology.

§4. Kant (1904), Goethe (1913), and “The Conflict of Modern Culture” (1918a)

20 In his Kant-book of 1904 Simmel criticizes the Königsberg philosopher for overlooking what Simmel claims pragmatism has correctly recognized: to wit, that radical Erkenntniskritik must locate knowledge in the “ total context of life” (Simmel 1997 [1904]: 50). Unfortunately, Simmel does not go into any detail.

21 Jerusalem in 1913 objected to the fact that in his Goethe-study (of 1913) Simmel had called pragmatism “crude.” But this seems to be a misreading on Jerusalem’s part: in “ roher Pragmatismus” the attribute is used in a restrictive sense, that is, there are also forms of pragmatism that are not “roh” – Simmel’s own pragmatism for example (Simmel 2003 [1913]: 33). 22 “Der Konflikt der modernen Kultur” (1918a) calls “American” pragmatism “the most superficial and limiting version” (1999 [1918a]: 196). Simmel immediately goes on however to present his own version as an adequate expression of the Zeitgeist (1999 [1918a]: 198). That the idea appears so prominently even in 1918 is a further indication that Simmel never gave it up. The evidence for this thesis is even stronger in Lebensanschauung.

§5. The Perspective of Life (1918b)

23 This book is the most important source for understanding what Simmel gave up, and what he kept, of the New Idea of 1885 even in his last writings. In a nutshell, and put anachronistically, Simmel now insists on science, religion and art as “constructed niches”: as such they are “in the last instance” dependent upon biological evolution. But this dependence notwithstanding, they also have a considerable degree of independence.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 12

24 Incidentally, here too Simmel is influenced by other authors. Already the word “ Lebensanschauung” is a clear allusion to Rudolf Eucken who used the term in a book title already in 1890 (Eucken 1890). Simmel reviewed Eucken’s book positively, writing that “I do not know any living philosopher whom I regard as a deeper thinker” (Simmel 1999 [1918b]: 273). Be this as it may, Eucken’s distinction between “biological” and “noological” evolution bears more than a superficial resemblance to Simmel’s distinction between biological and the “ideocentric” evolution. That said, finding a way of reconciling biology (or organism) with the social and human sciences (or culture) was a central problem for everyone at the time: in Europe and the US. And of course it still is a challenge a hundred years later. 25 The New Idea of 1885 remains important in Lebensanschauung even though Simmel now restricts its scope. He makes full use of it when he offers an evolutionary- epistemological argument against scepticism: (1) If our (human) cognitive system did not produce many true beliefs, our species would have died out long ago. (2) Our species has not died out long ago. Ergo: (3) The human cognitive system does produce many true beliefs. (Simmel 1999 [1918b]: 257) 26 Unfortunately, Simmel does not spell out how truth is here to be taken. Normally such evolutionary arguments tend to presuppose truth in a realist, correspondence sense. But slotting in Simmel’s truth-as-species-specific useful cause of fitness-increasing actions does also works in this context.

27 Simmel regards scientific research as no more than a “wave” or “scene” of biological life. And he alludes to von Helmholtz’ “practical truth” of sensations in passing (1999 [1918b]: 258). Moreover, in line with the 1885-position, he writes: “[…] we call those intellectual contents ‘true’ that have proven their mettle in the way they further the life [of the species or our social community].” Simmel also still maintains that the practical needs of our “form of life” have led to a certain form of cognition. It builds “a world for our practical life.” Simmel still accepts the relativism that follows (1999 [1918b]: 259-60). 28 The central new twist comes when Simmel points out that our cognitive apparatus has produced in us awareness of certain general ideas, ideas such as “causation, inductive and deductive inference, or systematic order […].” These ideas have become “ideal […] criteria” for further knowledge-gathering: “In barely noticeable transitions they have – in certain contexts – replaced the practical unconscious criterion of being useful in the evolutionary struggle for survival.” (1999 [1918b]: 283). The crucial change is one of attitude or intention: from the “biological” to the “ideocentric.” The latter term sounds like a neologism to answer the pragmatists Jerusalem and Perry who spoke of pragmatism as “biocentrism.” The crucial change in attitude amounts to an “axial rotation”: “first humans gather knowledge in order to live, then there are humans who live in order to gain knowledge.” (1999 [1918b]: 261). This means that the original connections between beliefs are dissolved and that beliefs are re-ordered according to the “intrinsic values” of science (1999 [1918b]: 262). 29 Simmel concludes his discussion with three provisos. First, the results of science can be “reinserted” into the biological-evolutionary context (1999 [1918b]: 262). Second, science as a whole can only be justified via the evolutionary argument from survival

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 13

summarized above (1999 [1918b]: 264). And third: “[…] many contents, considered in isolation, look the same in the biological predecessor of science, and in science itself.” (1999 [1918b]: 266). Let me also add a proviso of my own. Even as concerns the “ideocentric” element there is continuity rather than a radical break between 1885 and 1918. After all, already in the 1885 paper Simmel allowed for theoretical truth, truth that builds on axioms and standards which in turn need to be understood in an evolutionary light.

§6. Simmel and Peirce

30 In §§2-5 above I have assembled the core elements of one of Simmel’s central lines of philosophizing, to wit, the line of argument that several interpreters have taken to be pragmatist in character. In the remainder of this paper I want to explore the issue of Simmel’s pragmatism in a different way: I shall compare Simmel’s New Idea of 1885 with signature views of the three main “classical American pragmatists,” Charles Sanders Peirce, William James and John Dewey. This seems to me of interest despite the fact that Simmel did not read these authors, and that in turn they too were largely unfamiliar with his work. I here wish to explore similarities and differences in positions, not influences.

31 Starting with Peirce, his best-known thoughts on truth are of course contained in his paper “How to Make Our Ideas Clear” (1878): “All the followers of science are fully persuaded that the processes of investigation, if only pushed far enough, will give one certain solution to every question to which they can be applied. […] The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth.” (1986 [1878]: 273). In a footnote on the same page, Peirce explains that “fated to be ultimately agreed” means “sure to come true, and can nohow be avoided.” The reference to what will invariably happen – provided investigation is not prematurely terminated – sounds like a prediction concerning the future of science, that is, rings of a philosophy of history (of science). This highly ambitious overtone may well be the reason why, in later writings, Peirce modifies his position. Rather than appeal to fate he ties truth to a counterfactual scenario: “Truth is that concordance of an abstract statement with the ideal limit towards which endless investigation would tend to bring scientific belief.” (1935 [1902]: 565). And in 1908 Peirce follows James in linking truth to “satisfaction”: “If Truth consists of satisfaction, it cannot be any actual satisfaction, but must be the satisfaction that would ultimately be found if the inquiry were pushed to its ultimate and indefeasible issue.” (1998 [1908]: 449). Of course, James would not have situated the relevant satisfaction so far into the future. 32 Several aspects of these passages are worth highlighting: truth is characterized counterfactually in terms of an ideal limit; truth is linked to scientific inquiry; and truth is something that is at least approximated in the progress of science. This suggests that for Peirce true, or approximately true, beliefs are those that scientific inquiry can build on (Capps 2019). 33 Finally, Peirce is critical of the correspondence theory of truth. A central reason is that this account of truth fails to refer to processes of inquiry, and central amongst them processes of believing and doubting: “If by truth and falsity you mean something not definable in terms of doubt and belief in any way, then you are talking of entities of

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 14

whose existence you can know nothing, and which Ockham’s razor would clean shave off.” (1998 [1906]: 336). 34 How do Peirce’s thoughts on truth relate to Simmel’s New Idea? Clearly, the differences are more salient than the similarities. To begin with, whereas Peirce is particularly interested in characterizing truth in the context of scientific inquiry, Simmel’s account of truth is first and foremost concerned with those beliefs and needs that all (or most) members of a given species regard as instrumental for satisfying their (basic) needs. Moreover, when Simmel briefly addresses truth in the context of science, he is ready to background his “practical” conception of truth in favour of the more traditional “theoretical” conceptions of truth as coherence or truth as provability. This does not mean that Simmel gives up on practical truth – it remains the ultimate backdrop for science, too – but he does not think that practical truth is sufficient for making sense of what scientific inquiry is after. 35 It is also striking that, other than Simmel, Peirce situates neither individual truths nor the concept of truth in an evolutionary context. More generally, Darwin’s or Lamarck’s biological theories of evolution do not figure centrally in Peirce at all (Burks 1997). Peirce’s most extensive discussion of biological evolution occurs in the 1893 paper “Evolutionary Love.” In this text Peirce contrasts Darwinian “evolution by chance” (i.e. “tychastic evolution”) with Nägeli’s, Kölliker’s and Waismann’s “evolution by mechanical necessity” (i.e. “anancastic evolution”) and “the Gospel’s” “evolution by creative love” (i.e. “agapistic evolution”). Peirce laments the fact that in contemporary culture a Darwinian “Gospel of Greed” has managed to all but silence the “Gospel of Christ” with its key message “that progress comes from every individual merging his individuality in sympathy with his neighbors” (1992 [1893]: 357-62). All this would have sounded very foreign to Simmel and is clearly incompatible with his outspoken naturalism. 36 Simmel differs from Peirce also in how he conceptualizes the relationship between satisfaction and truth. For Peirce the relevant satisfaction is that “which would ultimately be found if the inquiry were pushed to its ultimate and indefeasible issue.” For Simmel the pertinent satisfaction is located in actual history, that is, the past and present of a given species. 37 Prima facie Simmel and Peirce seem closer to one another when the German philosopher writes that the needs of each species determine a “principally fixed” set of truths accessible to that species. Obviously, Simmel does not think that humanity can discover the whole set in anything but a very long, perhaps even endless, process of inquiry. But this is where the similarity with Peirce ends: Simmel does not define truth as what the human species will discover in the future. The humanly accessible truths are determined by evolutionary history in the past and present. 38 Finally, Simmel and Peirce differ even in their reasons for rejecting the correspondence theory of truth. For Peirce, what makes this account of truth problematic is that it detached the definition of truth from the processes of inquiry. Simmel instead is worried that the theory of correspondence is based upon an untenable dualism of mind and world.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 15

§7. Simmel and James

39 Above I quoted the 1905-letter in which James calls Simmel’s “original pragmatistic article [Simmel 1885] […] rather crude, though essentially correct” (Perry 1935: 470). I also noted that James referred to Simmel in The Meaning of Truth (1909) as “a humanist of the most radical sort.” To this we can now add that James lists Simmel alongside other allegedly important humanists such as Dewey, Schiller, Bergson, Poincare, Mach, Hertz and Ostwald (1909: 28). James explains that humanists conceive of “the more ‘true’ as the more ‘satisfactory’ (Dewey’s term)” and “renounce rectilinear arguments and ancient ideals of rigor and finality.” Calling this “spirit of humanism” a “temper of renunciation” James adds that “satisfatoriness has to be measured by a multitude of standards” and that a decision on what is the most satisfactory path in a given situation must be based upon a provisional weighing up of “pluses and minuses.” James stresses that recognizing this provisional and fallible nature of our judgements involves “a real change of heart, a break with absolutistic hopes” and the adoption of an “inductive view of the conditions of belief” (1909: 25). Moreover, “the humanistic state of mind” is shaped by the “suspicion” that what makes one scientific “formula” better than another is not “its literal ‘objectivity’” but its “usefulness, its ‘elegance’ or its congruity with our residual beliefs” (1909: 26, 718). As far as truth is concerned humanists conceive of it to mean “[…] everywhere, not duplication, but addition; not the constructing of inner copies of already complete realities, but rather the collaborating with realities so as to bring about a clearer result” (1909: 28).

40 These brief 1909 comments on truth follow of course on from James’ discussions in his Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (of 1907). This book contains many of the passages for which James’ account of truth is famous (or notorious). For instance, James write that a true idea is “one […] upon which we can ride, […] that will carry us prosperously from any one part of our experience to any other part, linking things satisfactorily, working securely, simplifying, saving labor; […]. This is the ‘instrumental’ view of truth […].” (1907: 461). Moreover, “the true” is “only the expedient in the way of our thinking, […]” and the “‘absolutely’ true, meaning what no farther experience will ever alter, is that ideal vanishing-point towards which we imagine that all our temporary truths will some day converge” (1907: 1571). A few pages earlier, James links “truth” to verification, commenting that truth… “happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process: the process namely of its verifying itself, its veri-fication.” (1907: 1409-16, 1537). 41 Finally, just like Peirce, so also James rejects traditional versions of the correspondence theory of truth. The version of the correspondence theory James rejects postulates – in an abstract fashion – a relationship of agreement or fit between a bit of the world and a human belief. The version James accepts is formulated in terms of verification and satisfaction: […] the pragmatist […] asks what such “agreement” may mean in detail. He finds first that the ideas must point to or lead towards that reality and no other, and then that the pointings and leadings must yield satisfaction as their result. […] The “satisfaction,” […] is assumed to consist of such satisfactions (in the plural) as concretely existing men actually do find in their beliefs. (1909: 43) 42 Re-enter Simmel. As we saw above, James was aware at least of Simmel’s 1885-paper and he was willing to classify Simmel as a pragmatist and humanist. Alas, Simmel did

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 16

not return the favour. There are only two perfunctory references to James’ psychology in Simmel’s oeuvre (2004: 455; 2012: 741) and there is no sign of Simmel ever having made a careful study of James’ writings on pragmatism.

43 Still, it is possible to discern some striking similarities between the two men’s views on truth. It is especially noteworthy that both link truth to satisfaction and utility. Indeed, it is easy to imagine that Simmel might have referred to his position as something of an “instrumental view of truth” or that he might have endorsed the metaphorical sentiment that a truth is “any idea upon which we can ride.” No doubt the card- carrying relativist Simmel could also have agreed with James’ animus against “absolutistic hopes” for our knowledge, or against claims to “literal objectivity.” After all, such locutions are easily read as referring to the possibility of transcending the biological limits of our evolutionary history, and to seeing the world from something like a “view from nowhere.” Not to forget that James and Simmel are united in their opposition to received forms of the correspondence theory of truth. And yet, for all these intriguing similarities, the differences between Simmel and James are profound all the same. 44 First, when Simmel speaks of certain beliefs being useful, it is clear that the relevant subject is the human species. This is because Simmel is concerned to bring the theory of evolution to bear on epistemology, knowledge and truth. In James’ writings, it remains unclear what the relevant subject is supposed to be: the species, the culture, the group, or the individual. To be sure, James speak of “we” or “us”: but this talk can be interpreted in precisely these different ways. James’ vagueness on this score is all the more astonishing not only because James was aware of Simmel’s (or Dewey’s) work, but also because, in his Principles of Psychology, James discusses a wide range of evolutionary theories (Darwin, Lamarck, Spencer, Romanes), and sides with Darwin. In so doing he insists that human cognitive faculties are the product of biological (rather than cultural) evolution (James 1918: Ch. 28). 45 Second, it is doubtful that Simmel would have been comfortable with being lumped together with James, Schiller, Dewey, Bergson, Poincare, Mach, Hertz or Ostwald under the label “humanists” or “pragmatists.” Simmel thought highly of Bergson (Simmel 2014) and respected Mach (2008: 166) but he did not signal any commonalities with the others, and certainly did not regard himself as part of the pragmatist or humanist movement. 46 Third, while Simmel would have agreed with James’ unease about “absolutist hopes,” at least in 1885 there is no sign of him accepting the idea of “the ‘absolutely’ true” as that “towards which we imagine that all our temporary truth will some day converge” (James 1907: 1571). For the Simmel of 1885 the latter idea would have been of a piece with the “absolutist hopes” James himself was denouncing. Things are less clear in the Philosophy of Money when Simmel speaks of the set of truths constituted by the needs of the species. At least if these needs are taken to be constant – and if the stage of evolution is held fixed – talk of a definite set of truths upon which science might converge, does seem to make sense. 47 Fourth and finally, James’ and Simmel’s criticisms of the correspondence theory of truth are directed differently. James tries to rescue what he regards as the plausible core of the “correspondence platitude.” That is to say, he seeks to show that a combination of the ideas of verification and satisfaction allows one to capture what is adequate about the concept of correspondence. Simmel’s unease is more fundamental:

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 17

he regards the theory of correspondence to be invariably tried to views that we need to give up. The view that seems most problematic is a dualism of facts and beliefs. This is why, even in Simmel’s realm of “theoretical truth,” the theory of correspondence does not appear.

§8. Simmel and Dewey

48 There is no mention of Dewey anywhere in Simmel’s published or unpublished writings, and only one perfunctory reference to one of Simmel’s papers (on secrecy) in Dewey (1909: 18335). Nevertheless, of the three classical American pragmatists, Dewey is intellectually closest to Simmel’s New Idea of 1885. In making this claim, I am not thinking of Dewey’s direct comments on truth.

49 The early Dewey’s theory of truth builds on familiar themes from Peirce and James (Capps 2019). He follows Peirce in linking truth to scientific inquiry and he takes his lead from James in characterizing truth as an idea verified by past inquiry. He does not adopt the Peircean thought that truth is “the ideal limit towards which endless investigation would tend to bring scientific belief” (1902: 565). As Dewey puts it in 1911: “From the standpoint of scientific inquiry, truth indicates not just accepted beliefs, but beliefs accepted in virtue of a certain method. […] To science, truth denotes verified beliefs, propositions that have emerged from a certain procedure of inquiry and testing.” (2008 [1911]: 28). The later Dewey develops a more original position in maintaining that the received terms “truth” and “knowledge” are so overloaded with intellectual baggage that they should be replaced with an altogether new terminology. Here the central new term is “warranted assertibility” (2008 [1911]: 15-6). 50 Like Peirce and James, and throughout his oeuvre, Dewey is willing to accept the correspondence theory only if it is radically reformulated: not as an ideal relationship between a proposition and a state of affairs, but as an interaction of sorts: “Our definition of truth […] uses correspondence as a mark of a meaning or proposition in exactly the same sense in which it is used everywhere else […] as the parts of a machine correspond.” (2008 [1911]: 45). This motif is kept also in Dewey’s later writings: “My own view takes correspondence in the operational sense […] of answering, […] as, in short, a solution answers the requirements of a problem.” (1941: 178). Or formulated more generally, and in response to Herbert Spencer’s thought that life is to be defined as a “correspondence of an inner with an outer order”: […] the genuine correspondence of life and mind with nature is like the correspondence of two persons who “correspond” in order to learn each one of the acts, ideas and intents of the other one, in such ways as to modify one’s own intents, ideas and acts, and to substitute partaking in a common and inclusive situation for separate and independent performances. (1925: 283) 51 The context of this last quote is a discussion of life, cognition and evolution and it is here that Dewey and Simmel are intellectually very close to each other. Like the Simmel of 1885, so also Dewey is adamant that the theory of evolution in general, and Darwin’s Origin of Species must become the central resource of philosophy: “Doubtless the greatest dissolvent in contemporary thought of old questions, the greatest precipitant of new methods, new intentions, new problems, is the one effected by the scientific revolution that found its climax in the ‘Origin of Species’.” (1997 [1909]: 19).

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 18

Still, there are both commonalities and differences in Dewey’s and Simmel’s uses of evolutionary theory. I shall now give examples of both categories.

52 One important commonality is the goal of overcoming dualisms of various kinds, and especially the dualism of mind and world. As we saw above, the Simmel of 1885 is particularly keen to close the gap between the organism’s needs and what the organism – given its cognitive faculties – comes to construct as the objective world: True representations for an organism A are those representations that are salient for A as causes of successful attempts to satisfy one of A’s needs. Dewey does not formulate his anti-dualism in quite this way but he comes close. For instance, he often denies there to be any “mystery” about the mind’s ability to grasp worldly structures: […] traditional theories have separated life from nature, mind from organic life, and thereby created mysteries. […] Since both the inanimate and the human environment are involved in the functions of life, it is inevitable, if these functions evolve to the point of thinking and if thinking is naturally serial with biological functions, that it will have as the material of thought, even of its erratic imaginings, the events and connections of this environment. And if the animal succeeds in putting to use any of its thinkings as means of sustaining its functions, those thoughts will have the characters that define knowledge. (1925: 278-9) 53 If this means that the thinkings or thoughts are true insofar as they help the animal sustain its functions, then Dewey’s position is almost identical with Simmel’s. Be this as it may, note that elsewhere Dewey seeks to overcome the dualism of organism and environment in the following way: […] the distinction [between organism and environment] is a practical and temporal one, arising out of a state of tension in which the organism at a given time, in a given phase of life-activity, is set over against the environment as it then and there exists. There is, of course, a natural world that exists independently of the organism, but this world is environment only as it enters directly and indirectly into life-functions. (1938: 33) 54 Simmel lacks an account of environment-organism interaction. Dewey goes further than Simmel also in insisting that evolution is never “over”: “Of human organisms it is especially true that activities carried on for satisfying needs so change the environment that new needs arise which demand still further change in the activities of the organism by which they are satisfied: and so on in a potentially endless chain.” (1938: 28). This emphasis on the “endless chain” obviously puts pressure on Simmel’s talk of “normative stability,” that is, the idea that for each animal species there is a “principally fixed” set of truths constituted by the species’ needs. Surely, if the species constantly changes and mutates, there is no such stability.

55 There is an interesting tension between Dewey and Simmel also concerning the latter’s attempt to theorize the differences between biological and ideocentric evolution. The crucial change from the former to the latter Simmel calls an “axial rotation”: “first humans gather knowledge in order to live, then there are humans who live in order to gain knowledge.” (Simmel 1999 [1918b]: 245, and 261). Intriguingly enough, Dewey criticizes a very similar idea in Thomas Henry Huxley. Huxley distinguished between “cosmic” and “ethical” evolutions. Dewey summarises the distinction as follows: “The rule of the cosmic process is struggle and strife. The rule of the ethical process is sympathy and co-operation. The end of the cosmic process is survival of the fittest: that of the ethical, the fitting of as many as possible to survive. […] The two processes are not only incompatible but even opposite to each other.” (1972 [1898]: 36). Dewey rejects

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 19

the suggestion of a fundamental conflict between “the natural process and the ethical” and by implication talk of “axial rotations” in evolution: If we personify Nature, we may say that the influences of education and social approval and disapproval in modifying the behavior of the agent, mark simply the discovery on the part of Nature of a shorter and more economical form of selection than she had previously known. (1972 [1898]: 50)

§9. Conclusion: Was Simmel a Pragmatist?

56 Since the argument of this paper has been long and complex, it is best to conclude by reviewing its structure and protecting it against possible misinterpretations. I began by sketching the dispute – even within Simmel’s own mind – over the question whether his early paper on “the relationship between the theory of selection and epistemology” expressed views best categorized as “pragmatist.” Subsequently I summarized the key thought of this paper, and how its New Idea lived on in Simmel’s oeuvre all the way to texts written towards the end of his life. I then turned to comparing Simmel’s New Idea with some central threads in the writings of the three classical American pragmatists, Peirce, James and Dewey. Like his American contemporaries, Simmel was hostile towards traditional forms of the correspondence theory of truth; emphasized the link between truth and satisfaction; and opposed received forms of dualism. Intellectually, Simmel’s closest counterpart on the other side of the Atlantic turned out to be Dewey, especially since both put the theory of evolution front and center in their philosophical efforts. Still, some of Dewey’s uses of Darwin were more sophisticated and more naturalistic than Simmel’s.

57 Was Simmel a pragmatist then? Yes and no. If by “pragmatist” one means a thinker whose work is, in important respects, similar to such paradigmatic pragmatist thinkers as Peirce, James or Dewey, then the answer must certainly be “yes.” I think the above evidence is telling in this respect. And yet, there is also a consideration that might pull one to opt for a “no.” Simmel’s oeuvre is very wide-ranging, unsystematic – at least by the German standards of his time – and shaped by intellectual engagements with an unusually broad group of philosophers, natural scientists, historians and artists: from Meister Eckhart to Spinoza, Kant to Rickert, von Helmholtz to Dilthey, Marx to Schmoller, Schopenhauer to Nietzsche, Lazarus to Lamprecht, Michelangelo and Rembrandt to Rodin, Goethe to George, Durkheim to Weber. The men on this list were of much greater importance to Simmel’s work than any of the American or European pragmatists of his time. And this speaks against labelling Simmel a pragmatist. 58 Finally, almost needless to say, the topics discussed in this paper do not exhaust the points of contact between Simmel and the pragmatist traditions. One could also compare and contract… (a) the respective critical receptions of Comte, Darwin, Spencer, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche or Bergson; (b) the re-conceptualizing of experience so that it includes values and feelings; (c) the focus on interest-, value-, memory-, or culture-ladenness of cognition and concepts; (d) the re-interpretations of apriori principles as merely “regulative”; (e) the emphasis upon community and the “social self”; (f) and the book-length discussions of religious experience. But these are issues for future work.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 20

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BURKS Arthur W., (1997), “Logic, Learning, and Creativity in Evolution,” in Nathan Houser (ed.), Studies in the Logic of Charles Sanders Peirce, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 497-534.

CAPPS John, (2019), “The Pragmatic Theory of Truth,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Accessed Juni 10th, 2019.

DEWEY John, (1909), Ethics, New York, Henry Holt and Company. (Amazon Kindle Edition, numbers refer to Kindle locations.)

DEWEY John, (1925), Experience and Nature, Mccutchen Press, Kindle edition.

DEWEY John, (1938), Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, New York, Henry Holt.

DEWEY John, (1941), “Propositions, Warranted Assertibility, and Truth,” The Journal of Philosophy, 38, 169-86.

DEWEY John, (1972 [1898]), “Evolution and Ethics,” in Early Works of John Dewey, 1882-1898, vol. 5, ed. by Jo Ann Boydston, Carbondale and Edwardsville, Southern Illinois University Press, 34-54.

DEWEY John, (1997 [1909]), “The Influence of Darwinism on Philosophy,” in Id., The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy and other Essays, Amherst, Prometheus Books, 1-19.

DEWEY John, (2008 [1911]), “The Problem of Truth,” in John Dewey: The Middle Works, vol. 6, ed. by Jo Ann Boydston, Carbondale and Edwardsville, Southern Illinois University Press, 12–68.

ELSENHANS Theodor (ed.), (1909), Bericht über den III. Internationalen Kongress für Philosophie zu Heidelberg, 1. Bis 5. September 1908, Heidelberg, Winter.

EUCKEN Rudolf, (1890), Die Lebensanschauungen der großen Denker: Eine Entwickelungsgeschichte des Lebensproblems der Menschheit von Plato bis zur Gegenwart, Leipzig, Veit & Co.

FRISCHEISEN-KÖHLER Max, (1920), “Georg-Simmel,” Kantstudien, 24, 1-51.

GESSNER Wilfried, (2003), Der Schatz im Acker: Georg Simmels Philosophie der Kultur, Göttingen, Velbrück.

HELLE Horst, (1988), Soziologie und Erkenntnistheorie bei Georg Simmel, Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.

HELMHOLTZ Hermann von, (1867), Handbuch der physiologischen Optik, Leipzig, Voss.

JAMES William, (1907), Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, Amazon Kindle Edition. (Numbers refer to Kindle “locations” since no page numbers are provided in this edition.)

JAMES William, (1909), The Meaning of Truth, Amazon Kindle Edition.

JAMES William, (1918), The Principles of Psychology, Pantianos Classics, eBook Edition.

JERUSALEM Wilhelm, (1913), “Zur Weiterentwicklung des Pragmatismus,” Deutsche Literaturzeitung, 34, 3205-26.

KÖHNKE Klaus Christian, (1996), Der junge Simmel – in Theoriebeziehungen und sozialen Bewegungen, Frankfurt a. M., Suhrkamp.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 21

MEAD George Herbert, (1901), “Review of Philosophie des Geldes,” Journal of Political Economy, 9, 616-9.

MISAK Cheryl, (2013), The American Pragmatists, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

PEIRCE Charles Sanders, (1935 [1902]), “Truth and Falsity and Error: Logical,” in Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vol. 5, ed. by Charles Hartshorne & Paul Weiss, Cambridge, M.A., Harvard University Press, 565-573.

PEIRCE Charles Sanders, (1986 [1878]), “How to Make Our Ideas Clear,” in Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition (Volume 3: 1872-1878), ed. by Christian Kloesel et al., Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 257-76.

PEIRCE Charles Sanders, (1992 [1893]), “Evolutionary Love,” in The Essential Peirce, Selected Philosophical Writings, vol. 1 (1867-1893), ed. by Nathan Houser & Christian Kloesel, Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 352-71.

PEIRCE Charles Sanders, (1998 [1906]), “The Basis of Pragmaticism in the Normative Sciences,” in The Essential Peirce, Selected Philosophical Writings, vol. 2 (1893-1913), ed. by the Peirce Edition Project, Nathan Houser et al., Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 371-97.

PEIRCE Charles Sanders, (1998 [1908]), “A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God,” in The Essential Peirce, Selected Philosophical Writings, vol. 2 (1893-1913), ed. by the Peirce Edition Project, Nathan Houser et al., Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 434-50.

PERRY Ralph Barton, (1935), The Thought and Character of William James, as Revealed in Unpublished Correspondence and Notes, Together with his Published Writings, Westpoint, Conn., Greenwood Press.

PRUS Robert C., (1996), Symbolic Interaction and Ethnographic Research, Albany, N.Y., State University of New York Press.

SIMMEL Georg, (1885), “Über eine Beziehung der Selectionslehre zur Erkenntnistheorie,” in Id. (1992), Aufsätze und Abhandlungen 1894-1900 (Simmel Gesamtausgabe 5), ed. by Heinz-Jürgen Dahme & David P. Frisby, Frankfurt a. M., Suhrkamp, 62-75. English translation in Martin A. Coleman (2002), “Taking Simmel Seriously in Evolutionary Epistemology,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Part A, 33, 55-74. Page references are to the English translation.

SIMMEL Georg, (1914), “Henri Bergson,” in Aufsätze und Abhandlungen 1909-1918. Band II (Simmel Gesamtausgabe 13), ed. by Klaus Latzel, Frankfurt a. M., Suhrkamp, 53-69.

SIMMEL Georg, (1989 [1900]), Philosophie des Geldes (Simmel Gesamtausgabe 6), ed. by David P. Frisby & Klaus Christian Köhnke, Frankfurt a. M., Suhrkamp.

SIMMEL Georg, (1997 [1904]), Kant. Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie (Simmel, Gesamtausgabe 9), ed. by Guy Oakes & Kurt Röttgers, Frankfurt a. M., Suhrkamp.

SIMMEL Georg, (1999 [1882]), “Psychologische und ethnologische Studien über Musik,” in Id., Das Wesen der Materie nach Kant’s Physischer Monadologie. Abhandlungen 1882-1884. Rezensionen 1883-1901 Simmel Gesamtausgabe 1), ed. by Klaus Christian Köhnke, Frankfurt a. M., Suhrkamp, 45-90.

SIMMEL Georg, (1999 [1918a]), “Der Konflikt der modernen Kultur,” in Der Krieg und die geistigen Entscheidungen, Grundfragen der Soziologie, Vom Wesen des historischen Verstehens, Der Konflikt der modernen Kultur, Lebensanschauung (Simmel Gesamtausgabe 16), ed. by Gregor Fitzi & Otthein Rammstedt, Frankfurt a. M., Suhrkamp, 181-207.

SIMMEL Georg, (1999 [1918b]), “Lebensanschauung,” in Der Krieg und die geistigen Entscheidungen, Grundfragen der Soziologie, Vom Wesen des historischen Verstehens, Der Konflikt der modernen Kultur,

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 22

Lebensanschauung (Simmel Gesamtausgabe 16), ed. by Gregor Fitzi & Otthein Rammstedt, Frankfurt a. M., Suhrkamp, 209-425.

SIMMEL Georg, (2000), Das Wesen der Materie nach Kant’s Physischer Monadologie, Anhandlungen 1882-1884, Renzensionen 1883-1901 (Simmel Gesamtausgabe 1), ed. by Klaus Christian Köhnke & Otthein Rammstedt, Frankfurt a. M., Suhrkamp.

SIMMEL Georg, (2003 [1913]), Goethe, Deutschlands innere Wandlung, Das Problem der historischen Zeit, Rembrandt (Simmel Gesamtausgabe 15), ed. by Uta Kösser, Hans-Martin Kruckis & Otthein Rammstedt, Frankfurt a. M., Suhrkamp.

SIMMEL Georg, (2004), Postume Veröffentlichungen. Schulpädagogik (Simmel Gesamtausgabe 21), ed. by Torge Karlsruhen & Otthein Rammstedt, Frankfurt a. M., Suhrkamp.

SIMMEL Georg, (2008), Briefe 1880-1911 (Simmel Gesamtausgabe 22), ed. by Klaus Christian Köhnke, Frankfurt a. M., Suhrkamp.

SIMMEL Georg, (2012), Kolleghefte und Mitschriften (Simmel Gesamtausgabe 21), ed. by Angela Rammstedt & Cecile Rol, Frankfurt a. M., Suhrkamp.

SIMMEL Georg, (2016), Nachträge, Dokumente, Gesamtbibliographie, Übersichten, Indices (Simmel Gesamtausgabe 24), ed. by Otthein Rammstedt, Angela Rammstedt & Erwin Schullerus, Frankfurt a. M., Suhrkamp.

WINDELBAND Wilhelm, (1875), “Die Erkenntnislehre unter dem völkerpsychologischen Gesichtspunkte,” Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft, 8, 166-78.

NOTES

1. Simmel wrote extensively about Darwin already in the early 1880s (Simmel 1999 [1882]). Although he rarely mentions Spencer by name, Spencerian themes are prominent in the young Simmel (Köhnke 1996: 64-8). Although Lange is never mentioned in Simmel’s published writings, Köhnke seems to me to be right to diagnose an influence (Köhnke 1996: 103). Windelband (1875) sketched a psychologistic theory of logic in the vicinity of Simmel’s New Idea. Simmel repeatedly contributed to the same journal, the Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft, and thus it is likely that he was familiar with Windelband’s proposal.

ABSTRACTS

This paper offers some brief reflections on pragmatist themes in Georg Simmel’s philosophy. §1 presents a number of assessments – by Simmel’s contemporaries, by later interpreters, and by Simmel himself – concerning his proximity to pragmatism. §2 offers a reconstruction of Simmel’s 1885-paper “The Relationship between the Theory of Selection and Epistemology,” focusing in particular on what the argument owed to von Helmholtz. It was this paper first and foremost that suggested to many that Simmel was close to pragmatism. §§3-5 follow the development of the core idea of the 1885-paper in Simmel’s subsequent writings. §§6-8 compare and contrasts

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 23

Simmel’s views on evolution and truth with the positions of Peirce, James, and Dewey. §9 returns to the overall question whether Simmel was a pragmatist and offers an irenic answer.

AUTHOR

MARTIN KUSCH

Universität Wien martin.kusch[at]univie.ac.at

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 24

Wilhelm Jerusalem, the Social Element in his Pragmatism, and its Antecedent in Völkerpsychologie

Thomas Uebel

1.

1 The German edition of William James’s Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking was published within months of the original, translated by the Viennese educationalist, psychologist and philosopher Wilhelm Jerusalem who had been in correspondence with its author on matters of psychology for some years.1 In his “Translator’s Preface,” dated November 1907, Jerusalem wrote that despite being a “sincere follower,” indeed despite having been himself a pragmatist avant-la-lettre, he could not agree “completely in all respects” with James.2 Being of recent vintage he expected pragmatism to undergo “a few important expansions and also a few corrections”: For instance, pragmatism’s theory requires a very important complementation. In particular it ought to be investigated historically what forms the concept of truth has taken in the course of scientific research and in philosophical speculation. Only then will it become clear and only then will it be understood that truth always consists in the leading and directing of our intellectual self in a fashion that is advantageous for life. Then one will also have to take greater account of the social factor in the development of knowledge and cognition and attain greater clarity about the nature of historical truth and the content and point of the historical sciences than the author of the current book has achieved. (Jerusalem 1908a: vi-vii)3 2 Even conceding that Jerusalem was talking about pragmatism mainly on the basis of James’s book, what might he have meant? After all, in Lecture Six, James twice recurred to the social as of considerable significance: once, in pointing out that the foundation of all of our talk of truth rests, like credit, on the fact that at least some claims are verified by somebody somewhere;4 and once in stating categorically: “All human thinking gets discursified; we exchange ideas, we lend and borrow verifications, get them from one

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 25

another in social intercourse.” (1907/1991: 94). What more might Jerusalem wish for – except perhaps an argument for why or how all human thinking gets “discursified”?5

3 Well, that most likely was the point. Consider John Dewey’s later remark that, compared to James’s highly personal approach to determining the meaning of conceptions and his attachment to the will to believe, Peirce himself had “a more explicit dependence on the social factor.” Peirce’s appeal was “essentially to the consensus of those who have investigated, using methods which are capable of employment by all. It is the need for social agreement, and the fact that in its absence ‘the method of tenacity’ will be exposed to disintegration from without, which finally forces upon mankind the wider and wider utilization of the scientific method.” (1916/1925: 308).6 Jerusalem’s point was broadly similar, for against James he meant to strengthen the notion of “objective truth.” That notion was distinguished, as he soon put it, by relying not on “the intersubjective criterion, which consists in agreement with fellow thinkers,” but on “the objective criterion of the fulfillment of predictions.” While he conceded that these objective truths also needed to be socially shared “to attain constancy and effectiveness” (1909a/1925: 150), it is not entirely clear whether this sharing was procedurally grounded (as with Peirce and Dewey) or pertained only to content. 4 What then did Jerusalem’s criticism of James amount to?7 The first thing to note is that he talked about the need to consider the social factor more than it had been so far. That it was noted at all to be as important in the respects specified by James was, I take it, one of the things that Jerusalem found attractive in James’s conception. It certainly resonated with his own ever increasing appreciation of the role of the social, as documented in the relevant chapters of his Einleitung in die Philosophie (Introduction to Philosophy) being expanded in later editions (1st ed. 1899, 10th ed. 1923). The next thing to note is where Jerusalem thought greater attention to the social factor was needed: in the development of cognition and knowledge. 8 Within one year, after all, he had published his own “Soziologie des Erkennens” (Sociology of Cognition) which is often regarded as a founding treatise of the sociology of knowledge and prompted Émile Durkheim to inaugurate a regular section devoted to the topic, “Les conditions sociologique de la connaissance,” in his journal Année sociologique. 9 It seems indicative of the tension within the field that the next generation of practitioners of the new discipline of sociology of knowledge tended to reject Jerusalem’s efforts as mere social psychology.10 These early critics (there were no later ones as his pioneering work was largely forgotten) had a point but they also overlooked something very important. This is the third thing to note. It was not the accumulation of knowledge that interested Jerusalem, but the emergence of the conceptual wherewithal required to have anything like knowledge in the first place. The role of the social at the dawn of cognition and in the development of the concept of knowledge itself was his topic. 5 Finally we may note that Jerusalem spoke of the need to pay attention to both “the nature of historical truth” and the “content and point of the historical sciences.” Here Jerusalem pointed to the ongoing struggle for the correct epistemological foundations of the emerging social sciences and envisaged a philosophical anthropology on an evolutionarily informed sociological and psychological, in short empirical basis. Such a program put itself in sharp methodological opposition, of course, both to neo-idealism and, more importantly, to so-called critical philosophy which considered the calling of humanity the exclusive province of transcendental reflection. Jerusalem’s anti-

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 26

apriorism was radical and unabashedly embraced psychologism and so occasioned discomfort even in staunch logical empiricists and continues to do so in present-day naturalists.11 What must not be overlooked, however, is that this created room for a broadly naturalistic approach to epistemological matters. While I call his approach “broadly naturalistic” it must be noted that Jerusalem was no materialist and he insisted on the distinction between Natur- and Geisteswissenschaft. While he rejected the metaphysics associated with Hegel’s concept of objective spirit (objektiver Geist), he believed that its content was spelt out by an empirical science that remained irreducible to natural science. When he insisted that sociology (his psycho-sociology or social psychology) provided the foundation for Geisteswissenschaft, he sought to provide a scientific framework within which, without undue reductions or naturalistic fallacies, a pronounced ethical idealism was to take root.12 6 Like James, then, Jerusalem’s philosophy fell between standard positions still before he became the German spokesman for pragmatism. What he sought to stress was that ideas and concepts are Menschenwerk, of human hand, that emerged in history and that, since (as his friend Mach had stated long ago) what history can do it also can undo, these ideas and concepts were continually under construction and need periodic reassessment.13 On this point, of course, he joined forces again with James as well. Fittingly Jerusalem ended a brief review of Germanophone sympathisers with pragmatism with a quotation from Rudolf Goldscheid, his fellow founder of the Viennese Sociological Society, who voiced a very distinctive voluntarism of his own: “We must not rest – not until we have recognized the purposefulness of all that happens, but until we have brought about its purposefulness.”14 7 An interim result: while we may leave open how much he advanced matters we can see that Jerusalem sought to re-enforce the recognition of the role of the social in pragmatism.

2.

8 It may be noted that Jerusalem himself had already started work on the program he outlined in his “Translator’s Preface.” Thus we may note that he happily accepted James’s advice to translate as him freely as needed to get his point across. Where James spoke of “men’s beliefs at any time [being] so much experience funded,” there Jerusalem has him talk of these beliefs being the “Summe der verdichteten Erfahrung” (sum of condensed experience). Likewise James’s “the whole body of funded truths” became “verdichtete Wahrheiten” (solidified truths).15 In other words, where James used a term that resonated with his concern with the “cash-value” of truth and his simile of truth living on credit in order to indicate the experiential well-groundedness of beliefs and concepts, there Jerusalem employed the notion of Verdichtung. 16 These translations (and others) give a good first impression what Verdichtung (a term with wide currency at the time) is about: the retention of the content of a set of experiences by condensation or compression to a representative minimum.17

9 Here Jerusalem grafted a conception onto James’s pragmatism that he had adopted some time earlier and was about to turn into his vehicle of the further socialization of pragmatism. This was the complex of ideas associated with the concept of Verdichtung that had been introduced by Moritz Lazarus and given a central role in his and Heyman Steinthal’s Völkerpsychologie. In his “Soziologie des Erkennens” Jerusalem was to turn the original from Verdichtung simpliciter into soziale Verdichtung (social solidification).

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 27

But it is the early stage that we must consider first; here is Jerusalem’s very first remark about it: This is what makes it possible to formulate in short judgments the results of many a complicated train of thought: making what has been found to be the law governing the events at issue into a constant mark of a new relational concept. Such concepts are themselves the result of many judgments that preceded them and it is in these that the thought labor of previous generations is condensed [ verdichtet]. Such condensations [Verdichtungen] – Lazarus introduced this term – are often taken up ready-made and […] as ill-understood slogans or empty knowledge of phrases can lead to gross errors, even to calamities. For the progress of knowledge, however, they are indispensible. Without them, all thought labor would have to begin anew with every generation. (1895: 150-1; cf. 1902: 119) 10 Characteristically also, Jerusalem’s much later obituary for Ernst Mach (1916) did not fail to note the use of Verdichtung his late friend had made nearly a quarter of century earlier in his address to the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften. There Mach stated, equally as physicist, philosopher and historian of science: No human mind could comprehend all the individual cases of refraction. But knowing the index of refraction for the two media presented and the familiar law of the sines, we can easily reproduce or fill out in thought every conceivable case of refraction. The advantage here consists in the disburdening of the memory; an end immensely furthered by the written preservation of the natural constants. More than this comprehensive and condensed [verdichtet] report about facts is not contained in a natural law of this sort. (Mach 1882/1986: 193)18 11 In Mach’s work, the concept of Verdichtung seamlessly merged with the principle of mental economy (Denkökonomie) which he had adopted from the economist Emanuel Herrmann in the 1860s and which provided the foundation of his own naturalistic and pragmatist approach to epistemological matters.19

12 Note also Mach’s still earlier remark in History and Root of the Principle of the Conservation of Energy about the “difficulties [that] lie in wait for us when […] propositions which have often cost several thousand years’ labour of thought are represented to us as self- evident. Here too there is only one way to enlightenment: historical studies.” (1872/1911: 156). Mach’s comment helps us see the reasoning behind Jerusalem’s remarks about the need to expand James’ Pragmatism. To be sure, we may marvel at and appreciate the short-cuts of human cognition for their utility but we also must not be misled by naïve conceptions, for instance, of correspondence truth, which may be encouraged by taking these short-cuts at face value. (Thus Mach once admonished his readers not to mistake our thought-pictures for the things themselves.) Preventing the “calamities” incurred by misunderstood Verdichtungen required historical study – indeed, required periodically revisiting the grounds on which common theories or conceptions were accepted to prevent the fossilization of doctrine into dogma – for which the kind of investigations that Jerusalem was urging were providing the psychological and sociological foundations.20 13 Jerusalem’s use of Verdichtung points to the social scientific research program that he built on early on (just as in later years he was to call on Durkheimian sociology).21 Lazarus and Steinthal’s Völkerpychologie was a relatively short-lived and much misrepresented scientific enterprise in the second half of the nineteenth century, which aimed to provide both a psychology of social life and a theory of socio-cultural evolution, in short, a philosophy of culture.22 To see what this theoretical alignment

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 28

amounted to, we must first consider Jerusalem’s theory of cognition in a little more detail. 14 Jerusalem’s “genetic,” i.e. biological, perspective on knowledge (his term: 1899a: 75) produced a distinctive psychology that considered itself opposed to Herbart’s psychology (still dominant in Austria in the second half of the 19th century). According to Herbart, mental life was accounted for solely in terms of representations and their interplay. Not only did feeling and volition need separate investigation, Jerusalem held, additions were also required on the cognitive side: an active psychological mechanism was needed to impose a certain structure on the cognized material as well as social mechanisms to operate alongside it. In providing these Jerusalem built on extensions and corrections which Lazarus and Steinthal had already made to the psychological theory of Herbart, whom they otherwise revered as a path-breaking empirical philosopher, 15 For Jerusalem, a pre-linguistic stage operating with “typical ideas” (said to picture biologically significant features of objects) was followed by a stage of primitive concept use (by means of one-word-sentences) and finally by a properly judgemental stage. The broad outlines of this were already given (important details discounted) in Steinthal’s account of the emergence of language (1851) which, in turn, was portrayed by Lazarus as developmental stages of human Geist as such (1857/1885, Chs. 2 and 4). What Jerusalem contributed (besides the elaboration of the concept of typical ideas in 1902: 97-101) was a constructive principle he claimed to have been the first to have properly understood, the “basic judgement function” (fundamentale Apperception), a principle that allowed for progression from the second to the third developmental stage. It consisted in interpreting every happening as separated into the two elements of a “centre of force” and an “expression of force” such that the centre of force has ascribed to it a “will” that wills the expression in question.23 “By separating the root [one-word- phrases, TU] into subject and object we form, structure and objectivize the process at issue. Only then do we begin to interpret it in a way that is conducive to our own nature so as to comprehend and master it intellectually.” (Jerusalem 1902: 107). Originally formulated in his 1888 Textbook of Empirical Psychology this principle and the general schema received repeated elaborations in later work.24 16 Now the central concept for Jerusalem’s own attempt to understand the cognitive development of individuals and, more generally, human intellectual development from prehistory onwards was, again, Verdichtung. Prior experience of the environment, keyed to survival needs, was condensed first in typical ideas, then in concepts and judgements. Verdichtung made cumulative learning, indeed culture as such, possible (in which capacity Jerusalem came to term it soziale Verdichtung).

3.

17 As noted, Jerusalem’s developmental account was an elaboration of Lazarus and Steinthal’s schema from the formation of non-linguistic proto-representations through primitive concepts (roots or one-word phrases) to fully fledged concepts and all the way to the common use of the concept of theoretical truth. For Lazarus, Verdichtung was one of two basic psychological processes (the other one being representation: Vertretung) by which he proposed to overcome what Herbart had called the “narrowness of consciousness” and make consciousness capable to handle ever more

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 29

complex contents (1857/1885: 247-51).25 The first, still non-linguistic proto- representations select only biologically important feature and processes and combine in intuitions (Anschauungen) of objects and states of feeling. Later on, linguistic ideas (Vorstellungen), which possess no intuitive content of their own, were formed to represent (vertreten) these intuitions by being associated in apperception with sounds that were invariably produced in the company of the intuitions. In this process the linguistic ideas “distil and condense (verdichten) as an extract” the intuitive content (ibid.: 323). It was the interplay of synchronous Vertretung and diachronous Verdichtung that led to ever higher orders of representation: repeated and iterated innumerable times this process lead first to one-word sentences and after further differentiation – Jerusalem added his basic judgement function here – to the properly judgmental stage. Only from that point onward did any conscious formation of clearly defined concepts (Begriffe), which unlike ideas (Vorstellungen) give necessary and sufficient conditions, become possible. Jerusalem rightly praised Lazarus and Steinthal for stressing that “language is by far the most important social factor in the development of knowledge” (1905c: 158), and added that “only language allows the development of cognition beyond typical ideas to concepts.”

18 The work of Verdichtung did not stop with the provision of language. Lazarus and Steinthal’s opening article for the first issue in 1860 of their Zeitschrift für Vö lkerspychologie und Sprachwissenschaft pointed for illustration of the broad developmental dimension of the concept of Verdichtung to “the comparison of the trained mathematician and the beginner: what the latter has to work out most laboriously for himself in order to think it clearly and safely, the former condenses (verdichtet) in great sweeps and still thinks more safely, more distinctly and more definitely” (1860: 65).26 And in a brief paper dedicated to its explication, Lazarus distinguished Verdichtung as denoting the phenomenon of conscious effort becoming a stable disposition (as in individual learning) from what accounts for the formation and transfer of social habits, customs, and a great variety of other social and cultural phenomena. We must distinguish between two types of the solidification (Verdichtung) of thought. One is individualistic, subjective, such that the solidified (verdichtet) product of thought emerges from one’s own efforts, one’s own slow process of solidification (Verdichtung). The other is universal, objective, such that it is only the result of a historical process that is taken into one’s mind. The former shows the culture of the individual, the latter the public culture of an age. (1862/2003: 35) 19 According to Lazarus, in Verdichtung in the objective sense the intellectual labour of past generations is laid down in concepts, (seemingly) self-evident judgements, also in firm customs reflecting a certain moral standard attained by previous generations, or even in works of art. Both subjective and objective Verdichtungen were accomplished (above the level of typical ideas) exclusively with help of language, where, importantly, language was conceived of not as a mere means of communication but as formative and indispensible in the development of cognition itself. Between subjective or objective Verdichtungen, between the individual and the social domain, obtains an interaction that goes either way: what are subjective Verdichtungen can enter the public sphere via their linguistic representation, whereas objective Verdichtungen sedimented in language and ways of life obviously have direct consequences via language learning and socialization. Verdichtungen mediate the social and the individual.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 30

20 Verdichtung, in short, is emblematic for the material process of mental-conceptual (geistig) development. It would lead too far here to demonstrate Lazarus’s and Steinthal’s inheritance of themes and adaptations of ideas from the linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt (“innere Spachform,” the inner form of language) or of the philologist August Boeckh (“das Erkennen des Erkannten,” the re-cognition of what was known) who once named Steinthal as the student who had understood him best.27 But it may be noted that with Humboldt they accepted as axiomatic the deeply social nature of linguistically mediated thought and with Boeckh the ever provisional nature of interpretive understanding and its complexities (he elaborated the hermeutical circle). Especially from the former they inherited a problem. Humboldt was unrivalled in his evocation of the role of language for the human Geist, but what it all meant concretely was not all that clear. Just why was language, as Humboldt argued, not just a means of communication for thoughts fully formed by an individual alone, but instead the very medium for forming thoughts in the first place, a medium that could itself only develop in social interaction and so allow thought and the recognition of thought to develop? Clearly Verdichtung has a role to play here. 21 Now Lazarus and Steinthal too declared themselves to be no materialists – by which they meant, I take it, that they were no reductive materialists. Lazarus (1857/1885: 80), for one, declared himself for Fechner whose psycho-physical parallelism can be understood as a non-reductive materialism. 28 Verdichtungen do not only mediate the social and the individual, they also mediate, Fechner-style, the mental and the physical. To be sure, even Lazarus’s eloquent language at times strained to lend its customary dignity to rather expansive flights of motivational idealism. But this must be stressed: the modus operandum of his and Steinthal’s Völkerpsychologie was decidedly empirical and they stated unequivocally that their social psychology-cum-science of culture “could only take its start from the facts of human social life” (1860: 23).29 22 While he was persuasive in resisting thinking of Geist in substantive terms and in outlining its creative force as the activity of thinking thoughts in virtue of the ability for reflection, an ability that only arose given language and linguistic exchange, Lazarus nevertheless owed his readers a proper theory of the phenomenon he outlined: Verdichtungen and its other, Vertretungen, as the means of complex non-sensuous or non-intuitive representation, precisely not as transcendental but material conditions of the possibility of rational thought.30 It seems only fair, therefore, to view Jerusalem’s later efforts concerning soziale Verdichtung as an attempt to elaborate Lazarus and Steinthal’s approach to what they called the objective side of Verdichtung. Jerusalem stayed, as a matter of fact, within the paradigm of their basically naturalistic approach to social cognitive phenomena.31 (That due to his desire to distance himself from godless materialism Jerusalem chose to advertise his sociology of cognition as Geisteswissenschaft must not be allowed to obscure this fact.)32 23 Another interim result: Jerusalem and his völkerpsychologische antecedents appealed to the social as constitutive of Geist in a naturalistic fashion. It was in the social domain of material interaction that Geist developed and its customs were formed – even in all the normative glory that Lazarus’ practical idealism bestowed.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 31

4.

24 It must be stressed that the Völkerpsychologie at issue here is Lazarus and Steinthal’s own, not the one reduced to collections of myth, folklore and customs in earliest, quasi- prehistoric times into which it was turned by Wilhelm Wundt at the end of the century, and certainly not what Nazidom made of it.33 (What happened to Völkerpsychologie is comparable to the gruesome perversions suffered by Ferdinand Tönnies’s conception of Gemeinschaft.)34 With Lazarus and Steinthal’s Völkerpsychologie we actually have a science – or better: a program for an empirical science of culture – that was practically lost among the battles to establish the social sciences in Germany at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century.35 The name survived, to be sure, but already in Jerusalem’s time from the later 1880s onwards, virtually no one practiced it as a science derived from Lazarus and Steinthal and certainly no-one practiced it as a science in the sense of Lazarus and Steinthal. Jerusalem himself was one of the very few writers who remarked upon Steinthal’s passing.36 But while he was unusually ready to extend credit in the direction of Steinthal and Lazarus, he too judged Völkerpsychologie in its original form to be passé.37 One mistake Jerusalem shared with others of their successors, like Wundt, who compensated for their unacknowledged borrowings by misrepresenting them as uncritical followers of a by then overcome Herbartian psychology, was to exaggerate the difference between their psychological conceptions and his.38 In particular, it appears that Jerusalem failed, in this respect, to distinguish sufficiently between Wundt and Lazarus and Steinthal when he accused them of them of undue individualism and contrasted his own recognition of the social factor.39

25 In short, Jerusalem’s reception of the original Völkerpsychologie was not altogether straightforward. That the connection is nevertheless significant and bears emphasizing is shown, first, by the continuity of socio-psychological theorizing that I exhibited above. It is also shown, second, by the idealist humanist pathos that is shared by Jerusalem and Lazarus and Steinthal and animates their ethical philosophy, a pathos which, incidentally, links both parties with the early cosmopolitanism of Herder and Humboldt. This was an ultimately political, orientation that, tellingly, was shared neither by Wundt or other German successors of Völkerpsychologie nor many other representatives of late nineteenth century German culture – but thereby hangs a story too long and complex to be related here.40 Yet the connection between Jerusalem and Lazarus and Steinthal is important also for still another reason and it is this aspect that I want to explore before concluding. It concerns the question of how recognition of “the social” as important for cognition was brought to bear on philosophy. It is here again that Jerusalem’s adaptation of Lazarus’s concept of Verdichtung plays a central role. 26 Jerusalem frankly conceded that is a “banal truism” that the social factor is of importance in the development of human knowledge. “We all know that we receive linguistic communications from our fellow men and learn a lot in this way. And that scientific research consist in a community of labour of ever greater comprehensivenss, that no researcher can do without earlier results, all that hardly needs mentioning.” (1909a/1925: 141) Wherein then lay the distinctive contribution of his own sociology of cognition? “I will attempt to show,” he answered early in his first paper on the subject, “that in cognition the social and the individual factor are always operating together, and that the nature and validity of human knowledge can only be properly understood

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 32

and appreciated, if it is considered in the light of social development, especially of social differentiation.” (1909a/1925: 140-1). What was important for Jerusalem was the interaction of the social and the individual factors. It is in drawing attention to the role of this interaction in the cognitive development of humanity that the distinctive contribution of Jerusalem’s theory lies. (His innovation did not lie in the provision of new anthropological results but in the interpretation of what he found available.) 27 As we saw, already Lazarus distinguished between the subjective work of Verdichtung in an individual’s concept and belief formation and the objective, socio-cultural work of Verdichtung. Jerusalem’s elaboration of this scheme points out that what comes first is the purely social factor. Typical ideas contain nothing that is individually determined or individually colored. Typical ideas represent, by virtue of their rigidly determined tendencies of reaction, the level of adaptation to the average environment of which the herd has been capable to date […]. An important step in the development of conceptual thought is the formation of language […]. The linguistic concept is an economic generality which again contains an important social factor. All fellow speakers understand the word and use it in a similar fashion […] that is what gives it its stability and efficacy […]. Typical ideas and their biological generalities, linguistic concepts and their economic generalities are both social condensations (soziale Verdichtungen). They designate the degree of adaptation and totality of experiences of a human herd. At this level of development single humans are socially bound in their thought as much as in their volition and action. What is true for everybody is what is believed by everybody, what everybody agrees on. This holds equally for empirical judgements about the environment and religious ideas. (1909a/1925: 146-7) 28 Needless to say, cognition at this stage barely covers what is needed for survival. “It is only when human beings emerge from the herd, when human beingsbecome individualized, that more precise instruments of thought are created […]. This most significant change in the nature of man is the result of the social differentiation due to the ever increasing division of labour.” (Ibid.: 147). It is only at such an advanced level that objective knowledge becomes possible. The now independent human being is wont to liberate himself from the bonds of social solidifications (soziale Vedichtungen). He does not wish to learn traditional opinions about things, but to know the things themselves. He gives to cognition the direction towards what is objective. What is true no longer is what everybody believes but what is stated by means of careful observation and measurement of the things themselves […]. The place of the intersubjective criterion of truth, which consisted in the agreement of fellow thinkers, is taken by the objective criterion of the satisfaction of predictions. (Ibid.: 149-50) 29 Jerusalem summarised his findings: “The social factor must be accompanied by the individual one if true knowledge is to be attained.” (Ibid.: 149). But – and this is of great importance – this is not the end of the relevance of the social factor. The individual may have found a new truth all by himself and independently, he may have irrefutably demonstrated its objective validity by the satisfaction of predictions. But the truth can become an effective force only by being recognized by other people and being acted upon by them. Objective truth too must become social solidifications (soziale Vedichtungen) if they are to attain determinacy and efficacy. (Ibid.: 150) 30 Again we may think Jerusalem’s point a banality, but this would be to overlook the deeply pragmatist bent of his philosophy: what is truth, if it is not an aid in orienting humans in the world they live? To be so effective, Jerusalem rightly concluded, it must

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 33

be socially shared. And to be so effective in its distinctive way, unlike the haphazard way in which mere opinion is effective, it must be objective – and this makes clear why despite his admiration of him Jerusalem’s criticism of James was so persistent.41 To say that truth is what works was just too simplistic, for what works may not be true and what is true may not work. No social science is needed to see this, nor is it needed to see that the differentiation of truth from mere intersubjective agreement is crucial. But to see what makes this differentiation possible for humans, Jerusalem argued, that is what only social science, in particular his sociology of cognition, helps explain.

31 In addition, Jerusalem was able to point to still another but no less striking instance of the interplay of individualistic and social factors in history where the wider social recognition of its outcome is essential: the discovery of the phenomenal realm as a distinct realm of knowledge which in turn gave rise to the idea of humanity and universalist thinking. The individualistic developmental tendency also […] opened up an entirely new field for thought and investigation that it had not been possible to turn into an object of reflection at the stage of social dependency. This is the humans’ own inner psychic life which only personalities who had grown fully independent were capable and eager to explore. (1923: 297) 32 For Jerusalem, the self-conscious, individualistic “inward turn” of thought (1924: 195) had begun with Herclitus in Greek antiquity and led to the idea of humanity as such in the thought of the Roman Stoics, laying the foundation for the universalism of the Renaissance. This new access to a field of knowledge that in a previous stage of development had not been recognized as such, provided not only for a quantitative increase of knowledge but also for a qualitative jump in our knowledge of knowledge: Descartes reached the firm conviction, based on his method of doubt, that in the depth of his own consciousness there existed a source of indubitable certainty and a guarantee of his own real existence. This very thought is of a strongly individualistic character. Descartes did not doubt for a moment that his inner self- certainty should make itself known to every human being. The individualistic tendency of his thought thus immediately turns him towards universalist claims, i.e. claims that hold for everybody. Only because of this is it possible for starting from one’s own consciousness to become the basis of a new epistemology. (1923: 300) 33 The history of philosophy itself, Jerusalem in effect suggested, cannot be understood without understanding the interplay of the forces of social reinforcement and individualist differentiation in the development of human culture. Descartes’s epoch- making work was itself a “sociologically conditioned” and historically contingent “bold synthesis of individualism and universalism” (1924: 197). Care was needed in handling Descartes’s insight, Jerusalem added, for while it was responsible for “extensive and dangerous self-deceptions,” it also provided the basis on which to develop further the idea of common humanity as an aspirational ethical ideal and a self-chosen telos for history.42 Like the idea of objectivity as universal validity, he argued, the idea of an ethical universalism became conceivable only at an advanced stage of social development characterised by increased individualist differentiation in cognition – and required social solidification (soziale Verdichtung) to become effective.

34 Yet even the species history of truth and of ethical aspiration, as it were, is not yet the entirety of the contribution that sociological thought can make to the development of pragmatism, according to Jerusalem, for they join forces in the battle with aprioricist philosophy. In his contribution to Max Scheler’s 1924 anthology edited for the Cologne

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 34

Forschungsinstitut für Sozialwissenschaften, a collection which marked the coming of age of the sociology of knowledge, Jerusalem joined his own work in this field to the polemical stance that already had marked him out in the impassioned discussions about pragmatism at the International Congress of Philosophy in Heidelberg in 1908.43 Kant’s firm belief in the timeless, wholly unchangeable logical structure of our reason, a belief that since has become common among all aprioricists and is defended with much energy by the most recent representatives of this tendency of thought as well, has not only not been confirmed by the results of modern anthropology, but rather has been shown to be in error. For this reason alone it appears justified to try to replace Kant’s transcendental analysis by a sociological analysis of the contents of human cognition. (1924: 183) 35 Needless to say, the opposition retaliated charging psychologism and conceptual confusion.44 But note that when it is not the validity of formal logic, but concepts pertaining to empirical matters that are at issue, then aprioricists have a much harder task. Why should the contingent conditions for applying such a concept at all (never mind the conditions of applying it correctly) not be relevant to understanding and using it – and to efforts to prevent its misuse?

36 James’s very own depreciation of aprioricism and his emphasis of the “cash value” of knowledge thus found support and confirmation in Jerusalem’s sociology of cognition, which, we saw, built squarely on concepts and insights developed in Lazarus and Steinthal’s Völkerpsychologie. Their ideas were thus joined to battles fought long after their Völkerpsychologie had become forgotten by all but a very few. Thus we can read in the concluding paragraph of Jerusalem’s first paper on the sociology of cognition: American pragmatism stresses the activist character of truth and with this point touches on the efforts of sociology. Together we fight against philosophy’s overwhelming attitude of mere contemplation […]. Consideration of the social factor in cognition is well suited to remind all theoreticians that human knowledge results from exercising the vital drives and that it is the highest and ultimate task of a thinker to serve life. (1909a/1925: 153) 37 If readers are struck by a certain similarity of sentiment and wording of this closing sentence with the final sentence of the inofficial manifesto of the Vienna Circle, written by Rudolf Carnap and Otto Neurath with help from Hans Hahn and others (1929/2012, 90), they are not alone.45 But the connection between Jerusalem and the Vienna Circle is even more subterranean than that between James and the Circle, though it may well account for whatever echoes of Lazarus and Steinthal’s work to be found in Neurath’s (“ Ballungen”). In any case, my concern here has been only to establish the first link in this line of influence, between Lazarus and Steinthal’s Völkerpsychologie and Jerusalem’s sociology of cognition and the significant imprint it left on the latter’s form of pragmatism.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 35

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BELKE Ingrid, (1971), “Einleitung,” in Id. (ed.), Moritz Lazarus und Heymann Steinthal. Die Begründer der Völkerpsychologie in ihren Briefen, 2 vols, Tübingen, Mohr, xiii-cxxxvi.

BICKEL Cornelius, (1991), Ferdinand Tönnies. Soziologe als skeptische Aufklärung zwischen Historismus und Rationalismus, Opladen, Westdeutscher Verlag.

BOECKH August, (1877), Encyclopaedie und Methodenlehre der philologischen Wissenschaften, ed. by Ernst Bratuschek, Leipzig, Teubner. Excerpts trans. On Interpretation and Criticism, Norman, Oklahoma University Press, (1968).

BUNZL Matti, (2003), “Völkerpsychologie and German Jewish Emancipation,” in H. Glenn Penney & Matti Bunzl (eds), Worldly Provincialism. German Anthropology in the Age of Empire, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 47-85.

CARNAP Rudolf, HAHN Hans & Otto NEURATH (1929), Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung. Der Wiener Kreis, Vienna, Wolf. Trans. “The Scientific World Conception. The Vienna Circle,” in Friedrich Stadler & Thomas E. Uebel (eds), Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung. Der Wiener Kreis, Hrsg. vom Verein Ernst Mach (1929), Vienna, Springer, (2012), 75-116.

DEWEY John, (1908), “What Does Pragmatism Mean by Practical?,” Journal of Philosophy, 5, 85-99.

DEWEY John, (1916), “The Pragmatism of Peirce,” Journal of Philosophy, 13, 709-15. Repr. in C. S. Peirce, Chance, Love and Logic, ed. by Morris Raphael Cohen, New York, Harcourt, Brace and Co., (1925), 301-8.

DOSTAL Robert J., (2016), “August Boeckh,” in Niall Keane & Chris Lawn (eds), The Blackwell Companion to Hermeneutics, Oxford, Blackwell, 342-7.

DURKHEIM Émile, (1910), “[Review] Wilhelm Jerusalem, ‘Soziologie des Erkennens’,” L’Année Sociologique, 11, 42-5. Trans. in Durkheim, Contributions to L’Année Sociologique, ed. by Yash Nandan, New York, Free Press, (1980), 107-10.

ECKSTEIN Walther, (1935), Wilhelm Jerusalem. Sein Leben und Wirken, Vienna, Verlag von Carl Gerold’s Sohn.

ELSENHANS Theodor (ed.), (1909), Bericht über den III. internationalen Kongress für Philosophie zu Heidelberg 1. bis 5. September 1908, Heidelberg, Carl Winter.

GRAEVENITZ Gerhart von, (1999), “‘Verdichtung.’ Das Kulturmodell der Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft,” Kea, 12, 19-57. Repr. in Aleida Assmann, Ulrich Gaier & Gisela Trammsdorft (eds), Positionen der Kulturanthropologie, Frankfurt a M., Suhrkamp, (2004), 148-71.

GOLDSCHEID Rudolf, (1905), Grundlinien zu einer Kritik der Willenskraft, Wien, Braumüller.

GUSKI-Leinwand Susanne, (2009), “The Loss of the Scientific Approach of Völkerpsychologie,” Journal of Psychology, 217, 79-84.

HALLER Rudolf, (1986), “Emanuel Herrmann. A Nearly Forgotten Chapter of Austrian Intellectual History,” in Wolfgang Grassl & Barry Smith (eds), Austrian Economics: Historical and Philosophical Background, London, Croom Helm.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 36

HEIDELBERGER Michael, (1993), Die innere Seite der Natur: Gustav Theodor Fechners wissenschaftlichphilosophische Weltauffassung, Frankfurt, Klostermann. Trans. Nature From Within, Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, (2004).

JAMES William (1907), Pragmatism. A New Name for some Old Ways of Thinking, London, Longmans, Green & Co. Repr. Buffalo, Prometheus, (1991). Trans. Pragmatismus. Ein neuer Name für alte Denkmethoden, Leipzig, Klinkhardt, (1908). Repr. Hamburg, Meiner, (1977).

JERUSALEM Wilhelm, (1888), Lehrbuch der empirischen Psychologie, Wien, Braumüller.

JERUSALEM Wilhelm, (1895), Die Urtheilsfunction. Eine psychologische und erkenntniskritische Untersuchung, Wien, Braumüller.

JERUSALEM Wilhelm, (1897), “Ernst Machs ‘Populärwissenschaftliche Vorlesungen’,” Neue Freie Presse, 27 August, Vienna. Repr. in Jerusalem (1905a), 185-93.

JERUSALEM Wilhelm, (1899a), Einleitung in die Philosophie, Wien, Braumüller.

JERUSALEM Wilhelm, (1899b), “H. Steinthal,” Neue Freie Presse, 8 April, Vienna. Repr. in Jerusalem (1905a), 203-11.

JERUSALEM Wilhelm, (1900), “Ernst Machs Analyse der Empfindungen,” Neue Freie Presse, 5 August, Vienna. Repr. in Jerusalem (1905a), 194-205.

JERUSALEM Wilhelm, (1902), Lehrbuch der Psychologie, 3rd edition, Wien, Braumüller.

JERUSALEM Wilhelm, (1905a), Gedanken und Denker, Wien, Braumüller.

JERUSALEM Wilhelm, (1905b), “Anmerkungen,” in Jerusalem (1905a), 279-84.

JERUSALEM Wilhelm, (1905c), Der kritische Idealismus und die reine Logik. Ein Ruf im Streite, Wien, Braumüller.

JERUSALEM Wilhelm, (1908a), “Vorwort des Übersetzers,” in James (1907/1908), iii-x.

JERUSALEM Wilhelm, (1908b), “Der Pragmatismus,” Die Zukunft, 25th January. Repr. in Jerusalem (1925a), 130-9

JERUSALEM Wilhelm, (1908c), “Philosophenkongress in Heidelberg,” Die Zukunft, 10 October, 55-61.

JERUSALEM Wilhelm, (1909a), “Soziologie des Erkennens,” Die Zukunft, 15 May 1909, 236ff. Repr. in Jerusalem (1925), 140-53.

JERUSALEM Wilhelm, (1909b), “Apriorismus und Evolutionismus,” in Elsenhans (1909), 806-14.

JERUSALEM Wilhelm, (1913), “Zur Weiterentwicklung des Pragmatismus,” Deutsche Literaturzeitung, 34, 3205-26.

JERUSALEM Wilhelm, (1914), “Psychologen und Philosophen,” Die Zukunft, 18 July. Repr. in Jerusalem (1925), 187-200.

JERUSALEM Wilhelm, (1916), “Ernst Mach,” Die Zukunft, 24 June. Repr. in Jerusalem (1925), 202-11.

JERUSALEM Wilhelm, (1922), “Meine Wege und Ziele,” in Raymund Schmidt (ed.), Die Philosophie der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen, Leipzig, Meiner, 53-98; uncut version in Jerusalem (1925), 1-35.

JERUSALEM Wilhelm, (1923), Einleitung in die Philosophie, 10th edition, Wien, Braumüller.

JERUSALEM Wilhelm, (1924), “Die soziologische Bedingtheit des Denkens und der Denkformen,” in Max Scheler (ed.), Versuche zu einer Soziologie des Wissens, Munich, Duncker & Humblot, 182-207.

JERUSALEM Wilhelm, (1925), Gedanken und Denker. Gesammelte Aufsätze. Neue Folge, Wien, Braumüller.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 37

JERUSALEM Wilhelm, (1926), Einführung in die Philosophie, ed. by Walther Eckstein, Wien, Braumüller.

KALMAR Ivan, (1987), “The Völkerpsychologie of Lazarus and Steinthal and the Modern Concept of Culture,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 48, 671-90.

KLAUTKE Egbert, (2013), The Mind of the Nation. Völkerpsychologie in Germany 1855-1955, New York, Berghahn.

KÖHNKE Klaus Christian, (1990), “Four Concepts of Social Science at Berlin University: Dilthey, Lazarus, Schmoller and Simmel,” in M. Kaern, B. S. Phillips, R. S. Cohen (eds), Georg Simmel and Contemporary Sociology, Dordrecht, Kluwer, 99-107.

KÖHNKE Klaus Christian, (2003), “Einleitung/Anmerkungen des Herausgebers,” in Lazarus, Grundzüge der Völkerpsychologie und Kulturwissenschaft, ed. by Klaus Christian Köhnke, Hamburg, Meiner, ix-xxxvii and 243-74.

KUSCH Martin, (1995), Psychologism. A Case Study in the Sociology of Philosophical Knowledge, London, Routledge.

LAZARUS Moritz, (1857), Das Leben der Seele in Monographien über seine Erscheinungen und Gesetze. Zweiter Band: Geist und Sprache, Berlin, Schindler, 3rd ed. (1885).

LAZARUS Moritz, (1862), “Verdichtung des Denkens in der Geschichte. Ein Fragment,” Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft, 2, 54-62. Repr. in Lazarus, Grundzüge der Völkerpsychologie und Kulturwissenschaft, ed. by Klaus Christian Köhnke, Hamburg, Meiner, (2003), 27-38.

LAZARUS Moritz & Heyman STEINTHAL, (1860), “Einleitende Gedanken über Völkerspychologie, als Einladung zu einer Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft,” Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft, 1, 1-73.

MACH Ernst, (1872), Die Geschichte und die Wurzel des Satzes von der Erhaltung der Arbeit, Prague. Trans. History and Root of the Principle of the Conservation of Energy, Chicago, Open Court, (1911).

MACH Ernst, (1882), Die ökonomische Natur der physikalischen Forschung, Wien. Trans. “The Economical Nature of Physical Inquiry,” in Id., Popular Scientific Lectures, Chicago, Open Court, (1895), repr. (1986), 186-213.

MACH Ernst, (1883), Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwicklung historisch-kritisch dargestellt, Leipzig, Brockhaus, 9th ed. (1933). Trans. The Science of Mechanics, Chicago, Open Court, 6th ed. (1960).

MACH Ernst, (1894a), “On the Principle of the Conversation of Energy,” The Monist, 5, 22-54. Repr. in Mach (1894c/1986), 137-86.

MACH Ernst, (1894b), “On Transformation and Adaptation in Scientific Thought,” in Mach (1894c/ 1986), 214-35.

MACH Ernst, (1894c), Popular Scientific Lectures, Chicago, Open Court. Repr. (1986).

MALLY Ernst, (1909), “[Diskussionsbeitrag],” in Elsenahns (1909), 814-5.

MAUTHNER Fritz, (1902), Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache. Bd.2: Zur Sprachwissenschaft, Suttgart, Cotta. Repr. Frankfurt, Ullstein, (1982).

PEIRCE Charles Sanders, (1905a), “What Pragmatism Is,” The Monist, 15, 161-81.

PEIRCE Charles Sanders, (1905b), “Issues of Pragmaticism,” The Monist, 15, 481-99.

STEINTHAL Heyman, (1848), Die Sprachwissenschaft Wilhelm von Humboldts und die Hegelsche Philosophie, Berlin, Dümmler.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 38

STEINTHAL Heyman, (1851), Der Ursprung der Sprache im Zusammenhang der letzten Fragen alles Wissens, Berlin, Dümmler.

UEBEL Thomas, (2012), “But Is It Sociology of Knowledge? Wilhelm Jerusalem’s ‘Sociology of Cognition’ in Context,” Studies in East European Thought, 64, 265-99.

UEBEL Thomas, (2014), “European Pragmatism? Further Thoughts on the German and Austrian Reception of American Pragmatism,” in Maria Carla Galavotti, Dennis Dieks, Wenceslao J. Gonzalez, Stephan Hartmann, Thomas Uebel & Marcel Weber (eds), New Directions in the Philosophy of Science, Dordrecht, Springer, 627-43.

UEBEL Thomas, (2015), “American Pragmatism and the Vienna Circle. The Early Years,” Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy, 3 (3), 1-35.

UEBEL Thomas, (2016), “Pragmatisms and Logical Empiricisms. Response to Misak and Klein,” Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy, 4 (5), 48-63.

UEBEL Thomas, (2019), “Mach, Jerusalem and Pragmatism,” in Friedrich Stadler (ed.), Ernst Mach Centenary, Cham, Springer.

NOTES

1. For a biography of Jerusalem see Eckstein 1935; see also his own 1922/1925. 2. For descriptions of Jerusalem’s and Mach’s philosophies as indigenous form of pragmatism, see Uebel 2014 and 2019, and an exploration of the pragmatist sympathies of certain older members of the Vienna Circle (“brought up in a Machian tradition”), see Uebel 2015. For a re-assessment of Jerusalem’s philosophy and pioneering steps towards the sociology of knowledge, see Uebel 2012. 3. All translations of texts for which none are indicated in the bibliography are by the present author. 4. “Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs ‘pass,’ so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them. But all this points to direct face-to-face verifications somewhere, without which the fabric of truth collapses like a financial system with no cash-basis whatever. You accept my verification of one thing, I yours of another. We trade on each other’s truth. But beliefs verified concretely by somebody are the post of the whole superstructure.” James (1907/1991: 91). 5. For other writings by Jerusalem on pragmatism for a German and Austrian audience, see his 1908b and 1913. 6. For a more comprehensive critique of James by Dewey, see his 1908. For criticism by Peirce, see his 1905a and 1905b. 7. Note that whether Jerusalem’s criticisms of James’s pragmatism – based on the contents of the book he translated – were correct is not the issue in this paper. My concern here is to locate Jerusalem’s joint interest in pragmatism and in the social and then to investigate where it led him. 8. The German term Erkenntnis exhibits a perfect process-product ambiguity that Jerusalem never bothered to resolve, therefore the “and” in my translation of “Erkenntnisentwicklung.” By contrast, the term Erkennen as used in the title of Jerusalem 1909a is weighted towards the process but the ideas developed there again concern the product as much as the process. 9. See Jerusalem 1909a, and Durkheim 1910. 10. For discussion of this assessment, see Uebel 2012. 11. For a thorough survey of the psychologism dispute in German philosophy, see Kusch 1995. 12. See, e.g., Jerusalem (1923: 359-65) and (1926: 3-17).

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 39

13. See Jerusalem (1909a/1925:145), Mach (1894a/1986: 138). 14. Goldscheid (1905: 15). What I have translated somewhat freely as “purposefulness” – “Zweckmässigkeit” – could also be translated as “appropriateness,” “expediency” or “functionality.” 15. See James (1907: 99, trans. 142) and (ibid.: 103, trans. 148), respectively. 16. The terms literally could be translated as “thickening,” “increase of density,” “solidification” or “compression.” It was translated as “condensation” when it was employed by Freud and Mach and as “consolidation” when used by Fleck. (For references see Uebel 2012: Fns. 29, 39 and 41). I shall use both “condensation,” “compression” and “solidification” in my translations below. 17. Likewise, James’ claim that “abstractions […] are so much past experience funded” became in Jerusalem’s translation that in them “ist eine Summe vergangener Erfahrung verdichtet” (a sum of past experience is condensed) (1907: 116, trans. 170); “the consummate factor of all conscious experience” is translated as “die Verdichtung aller bewussten Erfahrung” (the condensation of all conscious experience) (ibid.: 17, and 19); and where James spoke of “truth-processes” – by which he understood “worthwhile […] leadings” of the mind by ideas – as “primary verifications arrested, multiplied or substituted for one another,” there Jerusalem has him talk of “verdichtete primäre Verifikation” (condensed primary verification) (ibid.: 91, and 129). 18. Compare: “In nature there is no law of refraction, only different cases of refraction. The law of refraction is a concise compendious rule, devised by us for the mental reconstruction of a fact, and only for its reconstruction in part, that is, on its geometrical side.” Mach (1883/1960: 582). 19. On Herrmann and his relation to Mach, see Haller 1986. 20. See Mach (1894a/1986: 138) and (1894b/1986: 232-3). 21. See Jerusalem 1899b and (1922/1925: 2 and 18). In all editions of his Einleitung in die Philosophie (which discipline, given his anti-aprioricism, took its data from the sciences) he stated that the developmental approach to psychological phenomena led to sociology: “Not only man’s natural environment, also the fellow humans living with him give direction and content to the development of psyche. Thus individual psychology is expanded to social psychology or Vö lkerpychologie.” And he added that “this science” was “founded by Lazarus and Steinthal.” But where the first edition still continued that while “has made progress in recent decades but still has not yet found its secure method and boundaries” (1899a: 25), there the tenth edition spoke of “great progress” and referred to Wundt’s multi-volume comparative work on language myth and customs (1923: 23). For more on these comparative matters, see §4 below. 22. Lazarus and Steinthal’s Völkerpsychologie has long been the subject of conflicting descriptions. For characterisations that guide me here se e Köhnke 2003 and compare Kalmar 1987 and Graevenitz 1999 who restored Lazarus and Steinthal’s Völkerpsychologie against much misrepresentation of varying sorts (including confusion with nominal successors; see §4 below). As Köhnke put it: “‘Völkerpsychologie’ is indeed a psychology of social life, but at the same time it is a theory of socio-cultural evolution.” (1990: 100). For a comprehensive critical appreciation of the life and work of Lazarus and Steinthal that preceded the recent interest, see Ingrid Belke’s ground-breaking and still unsurpassed (1971). For a longer-term account of the fate of Vö lkerpsychologie that casts much light on later practitioners, see Klautke 2013. 23. A faint anticipation of this idea can be seen in Lazarus when without further elaboration he spoke of the “energische Beziehung” of different representations (Vorstellungen) as accounting for the unity of a judgement (1857/1885: 273). 24. See particularly Jerusalem (1895, Ch. 3) and (1902: 102-23), later, his (1899a: 77-80), (1902: 89-91), (1909a/1925: 142-3) and (1923: 86-7). 25. For the central role of Verdichtung in Lazarus, see particularly Graevenitz 1999. 26. Cf. Lazarus (1857/1885: 229-30) and (1862/2003: 27-8). 27. For the influence of Humboldt on Steinthal especially see Belke (1971: civ-cvii) and, of course, Steinthal (1851); in 1884 Steinthal published Humboldt’s Sprachphilosophische Werke, the first

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 40

collection of its kind. For Boeckh’s judgement of Steinthal see Boeckh (1877: 68), for a compact summary of Boeck’s work see Dostal 2016. Characteristically, Steinthal once spoke of Boeckh’s philology as “the study of the historical development of humanity, the science of its developing Geist” (cited in Belke 1971: ciii). 28. For a detailed reading of Fechner along these lines see Heidelberger (1993, Kap. 2). 29. Stressing their empiricism in social science is consistent with allowing for variation their ethical theories in later years. 30. Belke rightly stressed that Steinthal regarded language as a “mental organ” and was less interested in how language came to be historically than in “the conditions of human consciousness that force the emergence of language” (1971: cvii). 31. As noted above, Jerusalem’s use of the term dates back to (1895: 150) where it is credited to Lazarus. 32. See, e.g., Jerusalem (1923: 219) and (1926: 3-17) and consider his dissent from the anti- metaphysics of Mach whom he followed in all other respects in 1897, 1900 and 1916. 33. For incisive comparisons of Lazarus and Steinthal’s Völkerspsychologie with Wundt’s version, see Belke (1971: cxvi-cxxii) and Bunzl (2003; 80-1); for the descent of a later version of Vö lkerspsychologie into conformity with Nazi-ideology Guski-Leinwand 2009; on Wundt’s Vö lkerspsychologie and the later 1930s version, see also Klautke (2013, chs. 2 and 3). 34. For a still relevant corrective account of Tönnies’s work against an image derived from its misuse in the 1930s, see Bickel 1991. 35. Unrecognized traces of Lazarus and Steinthal’s conception of the social entered anthropology and sociology in the work of Franz Boas and Georg Simmel (see Kalmar (1987, passim), and Bunzl (2003: 81-4), on the former, and Köhnke 2003 on the latter); on the dimension of disciplinary competition between emerging social sciences, see Klautke (2013, passim). 36. See Belke (1971: lxxxi Fn. 7) for the relatively small list list of Nachrufe. On the quite scandalous failure to mention Lazarus and Steinthal when they made use of their ideas by other far more prominent philosophers and theorists of culture, see Köhnke 1990. 37. See, again, Jerusalem (1895: 150) for the explicit reference Lazarus as originator of the concept of Verdichtung and Jerusalem 1899b for his knowledgable and, if not faultless, largely fair assessment in his of Steinthal. 38. See, e.g., Lazarus (1857/1885: 80 Fn., 229 Fn.) for replies (also covering Steinthal) to the charge of uncritical Herbartism; see also a telling quote from his lectures in Belke (1971: xx, Fn. 25). See Lazarus & Steinthal (1860: 70), and (ibid.: 3) and Lazarus 1862 for explicit statements contradicting the charge of undue individualism. 39. See Jerusalem 1899b. Jerusalem criticized Wundt’s lack of attention to the social nature of language in his (1905b: 281). 40. It must be added at least at this juncture that Lazarus and Steinthal, like Jerusalem, were Jewish, a fact that, amongst numerous other consequences, accounted for the impediments they faced in their academic careers; see Belke 1971, Köhnke 2003 and Klautke 2013 on the former two and read between the lines of Jerusalem 1922/1925. 41. Still in the tenth edition of his Introduction to Philosophy Jerusalem was moved to remark in retrospect: “Pragmatism did not realize the indispensability of the theoretical concept of truth for science and because of it incurred many unnecessary disputes.” (1923: 83). 42. See Jerusalem (1923: 328-30, 350-1) and (1924: 204-6) 43. See Jerusalem 1908c and 1909b. 44. For such in-person criticism at Heidelberg, see Mally 1909. For Jerusalem’s view of the ongoing debate, see his 1913, and 1914; for a general overview, see again Kusch 1995. 45. See Carnap, Hahn & Neurath (1929/2012: 90). For the pragmatist sympathies of members of the pre-World War One “first” Vienna Circle, see Uebel 2015, and 2016.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 41

ABSTRACTS

Ernst Mach and Wilhelm Jerusalem may be considered exponents of a homegrown European version of pragmatism. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the strongly social orientation Jerusalem gave to his. Particular attention will be paid to some of his predecessors to exhibit the relevance of a pioneering but largely forgotten type of social science for the development of his version of European pragmatism. Broadly speaking, considerations from Völkerpsychologie played the role for the development of Jerusalem’s views that considerations from the history of science played for the views of Mach. Of particular interest to us here is how these broadly sociological ideas fed into Jerusalem’s philosophy and his understanding and appreciation of pragmatism.

AUTHOR

THOMAS UEBEL

The University of Manchester thomas.uebel[at]manchester.ac.uk

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 42

Ramsey, Pragmatism, and the Vienna Circle

Cheryl Misak

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Much of this paper is drawn from Misak 2020. I thank Christoph Limbeck-Lilineau, the reviewers of this volume, and the participants of the Vienna conference on European Pragmatism for their helpful comments on an earlier draft.

1. Ramsey’s Reputation

1 Frank Ramsey is often aligned with the Vienna Circle. He was listed in the Circle’s 1929 “Manifesto” as one of those “sympathetic” to their mission (Carnap, Hahn & Neurath 1973 [1929]: 318). It might be said that being listed in the Manifesto didn’t mean much: a number of people were invoked there, without, it seems, their foreknowledge or consent, and the document itself was controversial within the Circle. But the idea that Ramsey was on board with the Vienna Circle’s mission wasn’t confined to their official announcement. In the 1950s, Carnap and Hempel would take Ramsey’s paper “Theories,” posthumously published in 1931, to be an important contribution to their own attempts to construct scientific theories from observation and logic. Hans-Johann Glock has recently said that Ramsey was “pre-eminent” amongst the school of Cambridge analysts, who shared with the Vienna Circle and Wittgenstein the idea that “simple propositions occur in complex ones only in such a way that the truth-value of the latter depends solely on those of the former.” According to Glock, the Cambridge analyst’s “attempts to reduce all meaningful propositions to truth-functional constructions out of elementary propositions referring to sense-data were no more successful than Russell’s fledgling attempts and Carnap’s heroic effort in Der logische Aufbau der Welt” (2008: 80-1).

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 43

2 His connection with Wittgenstein’s Tractatus is largely responsible for the perception that Ramsey was aligned with the Vienna Circle. Wittgenstein’s biographer, Ray Monk, says that Ramsey was “unable to follow [Wittgenstein] in his radical departures from the theory of the Tractatus” and suggests that Ramsey may be the stupid man in the following dream, which Wittgenstein reported to his diary in 1929:1 This morning I dreamt: I had a long time ago commissioned someone to make me a water-wheel and now I no longer wanted it but he was still working on it. The wheel lay there and it was bad; it was notched all around, perhaps in order to put the blades in (as in the motor of a steam turbine). He explained to me what a tiresome task it was, and I thought: I had ordered a straightforward paddle-wheel, which would have been simple to make. The thought tormented me that the man was too stupid to explain to him or to make a better wheel, and that I could do nothing but leave him to it. I thought: I have to live with people to whom I cannot make myself understood. That is a thought that I actually do have often. At the same time with the feeling that it is my own fault. (Monk 1990: 276) 3 While Wittgenstein never thought himself signed up with the Vienna Circle, he certainly had a sustained engagement with them from 1929 till the mid-1930s. And he was quick to accuse Waismann and Carnap of plagiarizing his ideas. Wittgenstein had, in step with the Circle, reduced all meaningful language to an elementary language of simple, basic statements that hook on to simple objects in the world. The Circle took the Tractatus to be the “deepest and truest” work of “the new philosophy” (Schlick 1927).

4 Ramsey died in January 1930, shortly after Wittgenstein’s dream and the Vienna Circle’s claiming of him. He was just 26 years old, robbed of the opportunity to develop and sum up his work, and to put it in careful relation to the traditions in which he operated. It falls to others to piece together the record and put it straight. For in fact, Ramsey argued, against Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, that it was impossible to reduce all meaningful propositions to a primary language of experience and logic. He was not aligned with the Vienna Circle’s mission, but rather, was a self-described pragmatist. His persistent pragmatist objections to the “picture theory” of meaning and truth were responsible for Wittgenstein’s turn away from the Tractatus and towards his latter approach, with its emphasis on the primacy of practice and the idea that meaning is use.2 And Ramsey’s objections were of the kind that would make some members of the Vienna Circle liberalize their own positions after his death. 5 Ramsey of course had things in common with the Vienna Circle, such as an interest in the foundations of mathematics and the relationship between propositions and reality, and a facility with logical methods. It’s not surprising that he was interested in talking philosophy with them.3 Their problems were his problems, even if he didn’t agree with their solutions. And Ramsey was indeed initially engaged with Wittgenstein’s project, and tried to improve some aspects of it.4 But even as an undergraduate, as early as 1923, he was arguing that the primary or elementary language was not sufficient to account for the great variety of legitimate and truth-apt beliefs. We shall see that, while Ramsey did indeed have an influence on the Vienna Circle, he ended up pulling against, not toward, their project.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 44

2. Introducing the Tractatus to the Circle

6 In 1921, at the age of 18, Ramsey was asked by the publisher C. K. Ogden to translate the manuscript that Wittgenstein had finished during the First World War. Russell and Keynes had managed to get it out of war-torn Europe and, with the help of Dorothy Wrinch, get it printed, full of errors and without any revision by its author. That was in a German journal, Annalen der Naturphilosophie. Wittgenstein was keen to have it come out in English. Ramsey was well-versed in logic and in Russell’s philosophy, and was keen to do it. He went to Miss Pate’s secretarial agency in the winter of 1921-22 and directly read this difficult manuscript in English – off the Annalen proofs – to a shorthand writer, who then typed it up. After much correspondence, with Wittgenstein making corrections to his own thinking and to the translation, it was published in 1922, with the German and Ramsey’s English translation side-by-side. Ogden took the credit for the translation, merely expressing “his indebtedness to Mr F. P. Ramsey, of Trinity College, Cambridge, for assistance both with the translation and in the preparation of the book for the press” (Wittgenstein 1922). No one at the time, however, took anyone but Ramsey to have done the job.5

7 In September 1923 Ramsey went to the small town near Vienna, where Wittgenstein was teaching school, and the two finally met. For two weeks, they went over the Tractatus line by line, for 5 hours a day. At this point, Ramsey was the only person who really understood the Tractatus. (Wittgenstein had declared that Moore, Russell, and Frege didn’t understand him.) Ramsey’s critical notice of the book was in press at Mind, and he was relieved, during his marathon conversation with Wittgenstein, to find that he still thought it was basically right. 8 In March 1924, Ramsey went to Vienna for six months, both to be psychoanalyzed and to spend more time talking with Wittgenstein. Gretl Stonborough, Wittgenstein’s sister, introduced him to Schlick. Ramsey’s first impression of Schlick remained steady throughout his life: “he didn’t seem to me much of a philosopher, but a very nice man.” 6 The Cambridge mathematician Max Newman was in Vienna as well, and introduced him to Hans Hahn, who granted Ramsey permission to use the University library and invited him to attend his seminar on Theory of Functions of a Complex Variable. Ramsey didn’t attend Hahn’s seminar, but he did rue that he wouldn’t be in Vienna the following year, when Hahn was to give a seminar on Russell and Whitehead’s Principia Mathematica. 9 It was during this 1924 visit that the emerging Vienna Circle (and the Berlin Circle) was properly introduced to the Tractatus.7 Carnap had been in New York in 1923, when some mathematicians told him about Russell’s influence on the new “mathematical philosophy.” Carnap wrote to Reichenbach about the people connected to this new philosophy. The list was long. It included Wittgenstein, Keynes, and Broad, but gave no particular importance to Wittgenstein. Reichenbach immediately forwarded Carnap’s letter to Schlick, and asked Schlick to write to Russell (with no mention of Wittgenstein) to see if Russell might be interested in being involved in a journal they were planning. Schlick then wrote to Reichenbach and noted that one of those new mathematical philosophers was nearby: “Wittgenstein, whose book is edited by Russell, lives here close to Vienna.”8 It seems that Schlick didn’t yet have a copy of the revised and translated Tractatus, for he didn’t know that Russell was not in fact the book’s editor, but merely wrote the Introduction. His University Library had one copy of the

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 45

substandard Annalen version, but it isn’t clear whether Schlick had looked at it at the time he was exchanging these letters in 1923. 10 That would change in the summer of 1924, when Schlick met Ramsey. Schlick wrote to Reichenbach on August 5. He was no longer merely mentioning Wittgenstein, but was fired up about him. He had now read the Annalen version: Do you know the “Tractatus-logico-philosophicus” from L. Wittgenstein, which appeared in the Annals of Natural Philosophy and which has been edited by Russell in a book version in German and English? The author lives close to Vienna, and is highly original, also as a human being; the more one studies his treatise, the more one is impressed by it. The English translator, a mathematician from Cambridge, whom I met in the summer, is also a very intelligent and sophisticated mind.9 11 Schlick then wrote to Wittgenstein on Christmas Day, expressing his admiration of the Tractatus and his desire to meet its author. He told him that the mathematician, Kurt Reidemeister had recently given a talk at the University of Vienna about the Tractatus, and mentioned that “last summer I had the pleasure to meet Mr. Ramsey, the translator of your work, during his last stay in Vienna.”10 Schlick asked Wittgenstein how he and Reidemeister might get their own copies of the Tractatus. Wittgenstein wrote back, saying he himself didn’t have spares, but Ramsey “would certainly be kind enough to arrange for some copies.”11 By early 1925, the Circle was in possession of the Ramsey translation.

12 The Vienna Circle read the Tractatus with care and attention, steadily until 1927, taking it to be a kind of founding document of their movement. While there was some plurality already in the view of the members of the Vienna Circle, it’s fair enough to say that they differed from Wittgenstein in that they explicitly said that the basic statements were observation statements, whereas Wittgenstein was vague on this matter. And the Circle ignored Wittgenstein’s insistence that the propositions of ethics and religion were without sense, yet more important than the propositions which had sense. These differences aside, the Circle took Wittgenstein, not unreasonably, to be a kindred spirit. One insight of Wittgenstein’s was especially important. That was the idea that the truths of logic are tautologies, true, come what may, and hence exempt from the empirical standard of meaningfulness. Their interest in Ramsey in 1924 was very much related to this point.

3. Logic and Mathematics as Tautology

13 Ramsey wrote “The Foundations of Mathematics,” his undergraduate thesis, while he was in Vienna and published it in the 1925 Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society. In it, he tried to fix the “defects” in Principia Mathematica. At this point, Ramsey was on board with Russell’s logicist project and spent most of the paper trying to repair Russell’s solution to logicism’s biggest problem – the set theoretic paradoxes. He argued for a modification of Russell’s theory of types that could do without the Axiom of Reducibility.

14 The Vienna Circle was open to new ideas, from Cambridge especially. They had devoured Principia and the Tractatus. “The Foundation of Mathematics” provided the next discussion point. Ramsey sent Schlick the published paper, writing “With the compliments of the author” on the first page. Carnap transcribed parts of it and Schlick scribbled comments on the whole of his copy. We can see from Carnap’s Tagebuch that

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 46

the Circle talked about the paper for two weeks in January 1927 and then intermittently right through to 1929. The first entry in January notes: “Waismann told us about the Ramsey paper.” The next week: “We talked about Wittgenstein and Ramsey. Very interesting.”12 15 What they found very interesting was Ramsey’s extension of Wittgenstein’s idea of tautology. Like all empiricists, the members of the Vienna Circle struggled to say why the statements of logic and mathematics are legitimate, given that they don’t satisfy their observational criterion of meaningfulness. Hume had invoked a too-convenient separation of matters of fact and relations of ideas, with statements concerning the latter (including mathematical and logical statements) simply being exempt from the observational criterion. Mill had made an unsuccessful attempt to treat mathematics as an observable science. The Vienna Circle had been happy to find part of their own answer in the Tractatus. The truths of logic fit with any state of the world. Hence, they make no claims about the world and do not need to be verified by the world. But what about mathematics? Wittgenstein held that mathematical concepts consist of purely syntactic or formal equations. He thought they didn’t have sense, but not in the way that logic lacks sense. 16 Ramsey claimed that Wittgenstein’s position was “obviously a ridiculously narrow view of mathematics,” as it was confined to simple arithmetic (FM: 180). Ramsey argued that mathematical truths, like logical truths, are tautologies. Russell wanted to build up the whole edifice of mathematics from primitive principles, and Ramsey thought he should do it by taking primitive logical and mathematical propositions to be tautologies, so that everything that he built up will be necessarily true. 17 As far as the Circle was concerned, the two moves taken together – first logic, then mathematics, being seen as tautologies – were a fundamental turning point in philosophy.13 Hahn was especially clear that the tautological character of mathematics is absolutely essential: “If this position can be made out […] the existence of mathematics is then also compatible with the empiricist position.” (1980 [1931]: 34). Ramsey had given them a nice way out of a difficult problem.

4. The Dispute Between Ramsey and Wittgenstein about Identity

18 Wittgenstein himself staunchly resisted the suggestion. His resistance manifested itself in a dispute with Ramsey about the nature of identity statements, a dispute that involved the Circle, at least as minor players in the drama. On June 20, 1927, Wittgenstein, Carnap, and Waismann met with Schlick at his house. It was the first time that Carnap had met Wittgenstein. They discussed Ramsey’s paper, and Wittgenstein registered an objection to the account of identity in it. Carnap wrote in his in his diary afterwards that Wittgenstein was very interesting and original. But he thought that his objections to Ramsey were such that he took a rapid or impulsive position and then tried to find arguments for that assessment. One week later, on the 27th, they all met again, this time at Carnap’s house. On this second meeting, Wittgenstein dictated a letter to Schlick, for delivery to Ramsey. (Wittgenstein was giving Ramsey the silent treatment, because of an argument they had had in 1925 about the value of Freud.) Carnap typed the letter, and Wittgenstein then wrote the opening and closing

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 47

paragraphs by hand. He addressed it to “Dear Mr. Ramsey” and it asked Mr. Ramsey to send a response to the logical point not directly to him, but via Schlick.14

19 Ramsey considered not following Wittgenstein’s instructions to write only to Schlick. He wrote two draft replies to Wittgenstein himself, saying that Schlick “won’t know whether my answer is any good.” He also said that Schlick’s 1918 Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre (The General Theory of Knowledge) contained some “sad rubbish,” but was willing to consider the possibility that “he may have got cleverer since then.” In the end, he obeyed his difficult friend and sent his reply via Schlick. 20 Wittgenstein had an identity statement being part of mathematics, and hence consisting of “equations” and “therefore pseudo-propositions.” Ramsey thought that identity statements were true, but trivially so – they were tautologies.15 The debate, conducted in its entirety is this two-letter exchange, would soon be moot. Immediately after the publication of “The Foundations of Mathematics,” Ramsey expressed doubts about it, and in 1929, he would abandon the logicist project and start actively exploring intuitionism. He wrote two long notes in August 1929, “Principles of Finitest Mathematics” and “The Formal Structure of Intuitionist Mathematics,” in which he opted mostly for Weyl’s introduction rules and arrived at his own substitution rules.16 Wittgenstein, who returned to Cambridge in January 1929, was also at that point interested in intuitionism. Together, they would become attracted to what Ramsey in “The Foundations of Mathematics” had called “the Bolshevik menace of Brouwer and Weyl” (FM: 219). When Braithwaite published a collection of Ramsey’s papers, posthumously in 1931, he sounded the alert in introduction that Ramsey had abandoned logicism for intutionism. It took Russell by surprise.17 21 Also in 1931, it seems not yet having read Braithwaite’s introduction, Carnap registered a worry about Ramsey’s logicism.18 He said that Ramsey “courageously” tried to solve Russell’s problems by arguing that the circles of the set theoretic paradoxes are harmless, not vicious. Carnap thought that Ramsey’s solution was “certainly tempting,” but “we should not let ourselves be seduced by it.” It smacked too much of “a platonic realm of ideas which exist in themselves independently of if and how finite human beings are able to think them.” While intuitionism, he said, has been called “anthropological mathematics,” Ramsey’s logicist theory might well be called “theological mathematics” (1983 [1931]: 39). Ramsey’s notes about intuitionism were only published in 199119 and the Circle never registered that Ramsey had moved away from the conception of mathematics as tautology – the conception of mathematics that was so useful to them.

5. “Facts and Propositions”

22 While Ramsey’s move away from logicism was only noticed after his death, evidence that he wasn’t aligned with Circle’s project certainly existed in at least one paper the Circle read during his lifetime. “Facts and Propositions” was published in the 1927 Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, and was mentioned in the Manifesto as one of Ramsey’s sympathetic papers. In it, he utilized Wittgenstein’s conception of tautology in a novel way. Wittgenstein had argued (in Ramsey’s words) that “a logical truth excludes no possibility and so expresses no attitude of belief at all” (FP: 47). Ramsey built on this idea to arrive at one of his most fruitful insights. Beliefs exclude possibilities, and that’s how we can a) individuate belief and b) measure partial belief.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 48

What it is to believe a proposition is, in large part, to behave in certain ways, and to take various possibilities as alive or dead. This pragmatist position holds that it is of the essence of a belief that it has a causal impact on our actions.

23 In this paper, Ramsey made a remark about truth that many have mistaken for a “deflationary” or “redundancy” theory, in which talk of truth is a superfluous add-on and can be simply dropped: there is really no separate problem of truth but merely a linguistic muddle […] “It is true that Caesar was murdered” means no more than that Caesar was murdered, and “It is false that Caesar was murdered” means that Caesar was not murdered […]. (FP: 38) 24 But Ramsey argued that once you have laid out the matter in this way, it becomes clear that it is the nature of belief, judgement, or assertion that is the interesting problem. He prefaced his deflationary remark by saying that he should briefly discuss truth “before we proceed further with the analysis of judgment,” and he finished the whole discussion by concluding that if we have analysed judgment “we have solved the problem of truth” (FP: 39). Yes, the assertion of the truth of p is equivalent to the assertion that p. But that leaves all the hard work still ahead of us. The deflationary move must be followed by an examination of belief, judgement, and assertion, which will provide us with a complete theory of truth.

25 Ramsey then proceeded with his pragmatist examination. Belief, he argues, involves a habit or disposition to behave. It is not reducible to behavior, as there is still a mental factor involved. And there are still objective factors to be taken into account. If a chicken “believes” that a certain caterpillar is poisonous, it abstains from eating that kind of caterpillar on account of the unpleasant experiences associated with eating them: The mental factors in such a belief would be parts of the chicken’s behaviour, which are somehow related to the objective factors, viz. the kind of caterpillar and poisonousness. An exact analysis of this relation would be very difficult, but it might well be held that in regard to this kind of belief the pragmatist view was correct, i.e. that the relation between the chicken’s behaviour and the objective factors was that the actions were such as to be useful if, and only if, the caterpillars were actually poisonous. (FP: 40) 26 Ramsey is close to adopting a certain kind of pragmatist account of truth in this passage. If a belief leads to successful action, it is true. But importantly for his kind of pragmatism, the success of the action must be connected to the belief being related in the right way to the relevant objective factors.20 “Facts and Propositions” is thus Ramsey’s official rejection of the correspondence, logical analyst theory that so attracted Moore, Russell, Wittgenstein, and the Vienna Circle. At this stage, he thought Wittgenstein might easily join him. He ended the paper by saying: In conclusion, I must emphasize my indebtedness to Mr. Wittgenstein, from whom my view of logic is derived. Everything that I have said is due to him, except the parts which have a pragmatist tendency, which seem to me to be needed in order to fill up a gap in his system. (FP: 51) 27 Wittgenstein would not take the pragmatist suggestion to be a friendly amendment. And the Vienna Circle glossed over the pragmatist tenor of “Facts and Propositions.” If they liked it because of the deflationary idea of truth, they misread that paper.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 49

6. Ramsey’s Critical Notice of the Tractatus

28 How can the Circle have got Ramsey so wrong? Part of the answer may be that there is no evidence that they read Ramsey’s Critical Notice of the Tractatus, published in Mind in 1923. It would have alerted them to Ramsey’s worries about Wittgenstein’s project, and by extension, their own.

29 Ramsey had remarked in his Critical Notice that Russell’s introduction may not be “an infallible guide to Mr. Wittgenstein’s meaning,” for Russell said that Wittgenstein was concerned with a logically perfect language. But Wittgenstein, Ramsey wrote, seems to maintain that his doctrines apply to ordinary languages in spite of appearances to the contrary. […] This is obviously an important point, for this wider application greatly increases the interest and diminishes the plausibility of any thesis such as that which Mr. Russell declares to be perhaps the most fundamental in Mr. Wittgenstein’s theory; that “In order that a certain sentence should assert a certain fact there must […] be something in common between the structure of the sentence and the structure of the fact.” (CN: 465) 30 Ramsey agreed with Wittgenstein that his doctrines should apply to ordinary language, but the linchpin for the pressing, and eventually fatal, problems Ramsey raised for the Tractatus is that they failed to do so.

31 Ramsey noted that there are two things at work in the Tractatus. One is “the non- mystical deductions” that occupy most of the text – the arguing in detail for “the necessity of something in common between the picture and the world” (CN: 468). The other consists of indicating or gesturing at all the things that are “intrinsically impossible to discuss” (CN: 468). He saw difficulties arising for both. That is, he threw spanners into the works of Wittgenstein’s elaborate machinery (the picture theory of meaning) and he worried about the main contention of the book, as Wittgenstein himself saw it (the distinction between saying and showing). 32 The idea of representation in the Tractatus is that the picture has the same structure, or the same logical form, as reality. Ramsey’s most general objection,21 which hangs over the whole of Wittgenstein’s project, is this: But it is evident that, to say the least, this definition is very incomplete; it can be applied literally only in one case, that of the completely analysed elementary proposition. (CN: 469) 33 Ramsey made note of some propositions that cannot be reduced to elementary sentences that correspond to simple objects. For instance, what about those containing logical connectives, such as ‘~’ and ‘v’, which do not have objects to represent? Wittgenstein treated these as operators on propositions, and thought that we could use such symbols to express things that we cannot state, but can only show. Ramsey thought that this subverted the simple isomorphic structure that Wittgenstein was supposed to be putting in place. The negation operator ‘~’ illustrates the problem perfectly. The Tractatus gives us an account of representation, understanding, and truth that is essentially positive.22 To understand a proposition is to see how things are if it is true. All elementary propositions depict positive facts, and the world is fully described by one unique set of such propositions. Ramsey noted that it would be “absurd” to represent ~(aRb) as mirroring a negative fact, and was not mollified by Wittgenstein’s rendering of ‘~’ as saying that that there is no such combination between objects or things.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 50

34 But it was not just the logical connectives that couldn’t be pictured in the elementary language. Ramsey announced: “We must now turn to one of the most interesting of Mr. Wittgenstein’s theories, that there are certain things which cannot be said but only shown, and these constitute the Mystical.” (CN: 472). He registered in the “Critical Notice” what would later become a more fully-formed unease about the saying/ showing distinction. Wittgenstein’s form of representation is itself an “elusive entity which is intrinsically impossible to discuss.” That is, Wittgenstein’s own discussion of what representation is goes beyond elementary propositions. Wittgenstein of course saw this, saying that his philosophical discussion had to be used like a ladder and then kicked away. Ramsey thought this an unacceptable move. His conclusion in the “Critical Notice” is that “we cannot be satisfied with a theory that deals only with elementary propositions.” Later he would put the point more sharply: “But what we can’t say we can’t say, and we can’t whistle it either.” (GPC: 146). 35 It should be clear that already in 1923, Ramsey was not trying to get the logical analyst view right. Much of what is important about language cannot be reduced to a primary language, and we cannot sweep the secondary language under a rug as unsayable (Wittgenstein) or merely instrumental (some of the members of the Vienna Circle).

7. What about “Theories”?

36 Braithwaite included Ramsey’s 1929 manuscript “Theories” in the volume he published in 1931. In the 1950s, Carnap and Hempel would famously employ what they called Ramsey Sentences. But it is important to see that, by that time, Carnap and Hempel had relaxed their reductive tendencies. At the time of writing “Theories,” Ramsey took it to be pulling away from Carnap, not towards him.

37 To be sure, Ramsey started “Theories” as follows: Let us try to describe a theory simply as a language for discussing the facts the theory is said to explain. (T: 112) 38 He started, that is, with the idea held by Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle in the mid-1920s – facts are expressible in the “universe of discourse which we will call the primary system” (T: 112) or the primary language, which expresses simple propositions that are absolutely true or false. He then argued that when we try, we can indeed construct a theory, using a set of axioms and a dictionary that translates the primary language into the secondary language. But he is clear that these definitions are not necessary for the “legitimate use of the theory” (T: 129). It is merely “instructive” to show how such definitions could be constructed. Part of the instruction is to show how it might be done, for Russell, Carnap, and others “seem to suppose that we can and must do this” (T: 120). But part of the instruction is negative. Ramsey thought that the project wouldn’t work. The first obstacle, perhaps surmountable, is how complicated it will be. For instance, if the primary language is concerned with a series of experiences, it needs “time order” and a structure for things like colour and smells.

39 The second, less surmountable, obstacle is what Ramsey (elsewhere) calls the “objection from the philosophy of science” (OT: 35). A problem for the Vienna Circle was that there seems to be no meaning to our beliefs about unobservable entities such as electrons, or even the backside of the moon being made of green cheese. For we can’t directly observe them. Moreover, there is also no way of accounting for how the theory

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 51

of mass, for instance, changes or is improved upon. On the explicit definition account of scientific theories, it seems that every time the theory changes, we change the meanings of the terms in the older versions or refer to new entities. As Ramsey put it, “if we proceed by explicit definition we cannot add to our theory without changing the definitions, and so the meaning of the whole” (T: 130). He takes it as obvious that we need to be able to explain how a concept both evolves and retains its meaning, and how a theory grows. Thus, “the dictionary alone does not suffice,” unless we are happy with a finite, primary system much less rich than the theory itself (T: 122ff). All “useful theories” must have “more degrees of freedom” than the primary system. There would be no point in having a scientific theory unless it went beyond a catalogue of the current facts. Ramsey, that is, showed that Carnap’s project, as Ramsey understood it from the Aufbau, could be completed, but would be no good at all. 40 He then instructed the empiricist on how to think of scientific theories, without employing explicit definitions. In keeping with his pragmatism, he highlighted the consequences of belief. A theory is a system of judgments or beliefs, whose consequences will meet the future successfully or not. We employ the theory as a whole, as a shorthand expression of all those judgments, and can thus make sense of unobservable things, such as the back of the moon: If our theory allows as a possibility that we might go there or find out in any other way, then it has meaning. If not, not; i.e. our theory of the moon is very relevant, not merely our theory of things in general. (T: 134) 41 Our theory of the moon, and of solid bodies in space, will tell us something about the likely constitution of the moon’s far side – the whole theory gives meaning to beliefs about the unobservable part of the moon and determines whether they are true or false.

42 Ramsey then made a new move, the idea that would later excite Carnap and Hempel. He argued that we can elucidate the role of theoretical terms such as “electron” in a long and complex formal sentence which contains both theoretical and observational terms. The sentence will start with: “There are things which we call electrons, which […],” and then will go on to tell a story about those electrons. We assume there are electrons for the sake of the story, just as we assume there is a girl when we listen to a story that starts “Once upon a time there was a girl, who […].” Any additions to the theory are to be made within the scope of the quantifier that says that there exists at least one electron. That is, the theory can evolve while still being about the original entities. Additions to the theory of electrons are not “strictly propositions by themselves just as the different sentences in a story beginning ‘Once upon a time’ have not complete meanings and so are not propositions by themselves” (T: 131). That is, they are not beliefs that are true or false in the strict sense of the primary language. We commit ourselves to the existence of the entities in our theory, knowing that if it gets overthrown, so will our commitment to its entities. In the meantime, we use the theory. 43 This innovation is entirely consistent with Ramsey’s pragmatist view of definitions in 1929: definitions “are to give at least our future meaning, and not merely to give any pretty way of obtaining a certain structure” (P: 1). Definitions tell us how to go on using a term by making more precise the vague and complex concept it stands for. While this view of definitions and theories didn’t serve the 1929 Vienna Circle well, it would be attractive once the Circle had given up on the strict reductionist project, largely due to those objections from the philosophy of science.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 52

44 We can see from Carnap’s copy of the Braithwaite volume, that he read “Theories” in the early 1930s carefully.23 Hempel heard of Ramsey’s idea much later, from Braithwaite’s 1946 Tarner Lectures.24 In the early 1950s Carnap and Hempel started to employ Ramsey’s existentially quantified sentences as a tool in their attempts to show how the world can be constructed from experience.25 The origin of the idea had become hazy in Carnap’s mind, only to become clear again when in 1958 he read a draft of Hempel’s “The Theoretician’s Dilemma: A study in the logic of theory construction,” in which Hempel coined the term “Ramsey Sentence.” Carnap wrote to Hempel, saying that his paper had prompted him to go back to the Braithwaite volume and see that he had “neatly underlined” important passages in “Theories,” and expressing his gratitude for being prevented from presenting Ramsey’s idea as his own.26 In 1966, Carnap sent Braithwaite his Philosophical Foundations of Physics, which had a chapter titled “The Ramsey Sentence.” 45 That Carnap wasn’t ready to employ Ramsey’s innovation in 1929 is unsurprising. At that time, as Keynes put it, Ramsey had been “departing […] from the formal and objective treatment.” That treatment marked Carnap’s work at the time. Ramsey and Wittgenstein had started off by helping Russell to perfect the system of Principia Mathematica. But, Keynes said, the effect was gradually to empty it of content and to reduce it more and more to mere dry bones, until finally it seemed to exclude not only all experience, but most of the principles […] of reasonable thought. Wittgenstein’s solution was to regard everything else as a sort of inspired nonsense, having great value indeed for the individual, but incapable of being exactly discussed. Ramsey’s reaction was towards what he himself described as a sort of pragmatism […]. Thus he was led to consider “human logic” as distinguished from “formal logic.” (1972 [1931]: 338) 46 Keynes was right. By 1929, Ramsey had found the deductive approach a sack of dry bones. A central point in “Theories” is that questions of usage – in this case, how we use a scientific theory – are more important than questions of metaphysics. The metaphysics of logical atomism does not provide enough to go on in real life and real science. Theories are true or false, not in the strict, atomist sense, but in a holist, pragmatist sense. The way Ramsey dealt with scientific theories (and everything else that went beyond the primary system) was very much against the spirit of the late 1920s Vienna Circle. It was to adopt a pragmatist account truth or falsity, an account that asked whether the consequences of beliefs meet the future well.

8. Ramsey on Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, 1929

47 Wittgenstein returned to Cambridge, after his self-imposed exile, on January 17, 1929. Ramsey died on January 19, 1930. In that year, the two were locked in an almost daily conversation. One might call it a battle over the right approach to philosophy. As Ramsey put it, in a 1929 paper titled “Philosophy,” one method, “Ludwig’s,” is to construct a logic, and do all our philosophical analysis entirely unselfconsciously, thinking all the time of the facts and not about our thinking about them, deciding what we mean without any reference to the nature of meanings. (P: 5) 48 Ramsey’s pragmatist method, in contrast, directed us to the human facts, not the facts somehow abstracted from all human understanding. He thought that we will often run

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 53

into terms “we cannot define, but […] can [only] explain the way in which they are used” (P: 5). He admitted to having once been under the sway of Wittgenstein’s conception of philosophy: I used to worry myself about the nature of philosophy through excessive scholasticism. I could not see how we could understand a word and not be able to recognize whether a proposed definition of it was or was not correct. I did not realize the vagueness of the whole idea of understanding, the reference it involves to a multitude of performances any of which may fail and require to be restored. (P: 1-2) 49 All this of course foreshadows Wittgenstein’s later move to the idea that meaning is use. But in 1929, Wittgenstein was still trying to construct an ideal definition in a perfect language. Ramsey thought that an instance of scholasticism, “the essence of which is treating what is vague as if it were precise and trying to fit it into an exact logical category” (P: 7).

50 He opened a draft of “Philosophy” with an explicit reprimand to Wittgenstein: Philosophy must be of some use and we must take it seriously; it must clear our thoughts and so our actions, Otherwise it is mere chatter. or else it is a disposition we have to check […] i.e. the chief proposition of philosophy is that philosophy is nonsense. And again we must then take seriously that it is nonsense, and not pretend, as Wittgenstein does, that it is important nonsense!27 51 We must avoid the “absurd position” of the child in the following dialogue: “Say breakfast.” “Can’t.” “What can’t you say?” “Can’t say breakfast.” (P: 6) 52 Wittgenstein maintained that philosophy is nonsense and should be abandoned. Ramsey’s objection in “Philosophy” was twofold. First, Wittgenstein cannot argue for a particular view of the nature of meaning, a consequence of which is that the very argument for that view is meaningless. We do in fact understand Wittgenstein’s philosophical argument. It is not a ladder that, once climbed, needs to be kicked away. The same point holds for the Vienna Circle’s dismissal of metaphysics. Second, this kind of philosophy is impoverished. If, as Wittgenstein thinks, philosophy’s task is to take the propositions of science and ordinary life and “exhibit them in a logical system with primitive terms and definitions,” philosophy really is of not much use at all (P: 1). In a note, Ramsey said: The standardisation of the colours of beer is not philosophy, but in a sense it is an improvement in notation, and a clarification of thought. (NPPM: 55) 53 Philosophy must be more than an improvement in notation.

54 It is clear that in 1929, Ramsey’s approach, and his rebellion against Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, was in full swing. He says in another note: We cannot really picture the world as disconnected selves; the selves we know are in the world. What we can’t do we can’t do and it’s no good trying. Philosophy comes from not understanding the logic of our language; but the logic of our language is not what Wittgenstein thought. The pictures we make to ourselves are not pictures of facts. (NPPM: 51) 55 If a proposition is a picture of the world, disconnected from any reference to the self whose picture it is, then we are totally vulnerable to skepticism or solipsism. How are we to bridge the gap between ourselves and that world? How we can even make claims about that world? Ludwig’s primary world “contains no thought.”28 If we want to understand the world, we must not neglect the “subjective side” (P: 6). Carnap, Ramsey thought, made the same “mistake”:

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 54

Solipsism in the ordinary sense in which as e.g. in Carnap the primary world consists of my experiences past present and future will not do. For this primary world is the world about which I am now thinking […]. (NPPM: 66) 56 We need the irreducible secondary world, full of hypotheses, laws, and claims about the existence of all manner of objects, if we are to think about the world at all. Carnap’s mistake was to reduce a patch of red, say, into, say, infinite classes of points, thus destroying its being my patch or your patch.

57 Ramsey never wrote more about the Vienna Circle. He and Carnap never met. But his mind was on Carnap during his fatal illness. A month before he died, Ramsey wrote to Schlick about the Aufbau, expressing doubts about Carnap’s attempt to reconstruct the world out of a primary language: I feel very guilty that I’ve not yet written a review of Carnap’s book, which is really inexcusable. I found it very interesting, though some things I thought certainly wrong and others I felt very doubtful about.29 58 Ramsey wanted to get “clear about the truth of these things” himself before writing about the “merits” and the doubtful points in Carnap’s book.

9. Conclusion

59 Ramsey cannot be seen as sympathetic to the Vienna Circle, as he knew it. During his lifetime the Circle’s project was to reduce all meaningful language to a certainly true empirical foundation. He did not know that more liberal and pragmatist versions would come after his death. In the early 1930s, the Vienna Circle started to see that a correspondence theory of truth collided with their verificationism – how can we verify that which is utterly independent of us? And “the problem from the philosophy of science” about unobservable entities and theory change also pressed in on them. Philipp Frank, as early as 1930, suggested that pragmatism was the answer: The physicist in his own scientific activity has never employed any other concept of truth than that of pragmatism. The “agreement of thoughts with their object,” which the school philosophy requires, cannot be established by any concrete experiment […] In reality, physicists compare only experiences with other experiences. They test the truth of a theory by what it has become customary to call “agreements.” (1949 [1930]: 101-2) 60 Just like Ramsey, Frank employs the term “school philosophy” as a description of the project he now thinks is to be avoided in favour of the pragmatist theory of truth. In this way, and others, too complex to enter into here,30 many in the Circle moved closer to Ramsey, as their position fractured and evolved into various camps. Had Carnap been ready for Ramsey’s pragmatism when he first read the Braithwaite volume in the early 1930s, the Circle might well have taken Ramsey’s position as a model, instead of realizing only in the 1950s that he had important things to offer a liberalized empiricist philosophy.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 55

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BRAITHWAITE Richard, (1931), “Editor’s Introduction,” in Frank P. Ramsey, The Foundations of Mathematics and other Logical Essays, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, ix-xiv.

CARNAP Rudolf, (1958), “Beobachtungssprache und Theoretische Sprache,” Dialectica, 12/3-4, 236-348.

CARNAP Rudolf, (1983 [1931]), “The Logicist Foundations of Mathematics.” Originally published in Erkenntnis. Reprinted in Philosophy of Mathematics: Selected Readings, 2nd ed., ed. Paul Benacerraf & Hilary Putnam, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 41-52.

CARNAP Rudolf, HAHN Hans & Otto NEURATH, (1973 [1929]), “The Scientific Conception of the World: The Vienna Circle,” in Marie Neurath & Robert S. Cohen (eds), Empiricism and Sociology, Dordrecht, D. Reidel, 299-318.

FRANK Philipp, (1949 [1930]), “Physical Theories of the Twentieth Century and School Philosophy,” in Modern Science and Its Philosophy, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 90-121.

GALAVOTTI Maria Carla (ed.), (1991), Frank Plumpton Ramsey, Notes on Philosophy, Probability and Mathematics, Naples, Bibliopolis. Cited as NPPM.

GLOCK Hans-Johann, (2008), “The Development of Analytic Philosophy: Wittgenstein and After,” in Dermot Moran (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Twentieth Century Philosophy, London, Routledge, 76-117.

HAHN Hans, (1980 [1931]), “Discussion about the Foundations of Mathematics,” in Id., Empiricism, Logic and Mathematics, Vienna Circle Collection, vol. 13, ed. by Brian McGuinness, Dordrecht, Springer.

HEMPEL Carl G., (1958), “The theoretician’s dilemma: A study in the logic of theory construction,” Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 2, 173-226.

KEYNES John Maynard, (1972 [1931]), “Review of the Foundations of Mathematics,” The New Statesman, 3 October, 1931. Reprinted in Essays in Biography. The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes, vol. 10, ed. by Elizabeth Johnson & Donald E. Moggridge, London, Macmillan, 336-9.

MACBRIDE Fraser, (2018), On the Genealogy of Universals: The Metaphysical Origins of Analytic Philosophy, New York, Oxford University Press.

MCGUINNESS Brian (ed.), (2012), Wittgenstein in Cambridge: Letters and Documents 1911-1951, Oxford, Blackwell.

METHVEN Steven J., (2015), Frank Ramsey and the Realistic Spirit, London, Palgrave Macmillan.

MONK Ray, (1990), Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius, New York, The Free Press.

MISAK Cheryl, (2016), Cambridge Pragmatism: From Peirce and James to Ramsey and Wittgenstein, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

MISAK Cheryl, (2020), Frank Ramsey: A Sheer Excess of Powers, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

PSILLOS Stathis, (1999), Scientific Realism: How Science Tracks Truth, London, Routledge.

RAMSEY Frank P., (1923), “Critical Notice, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, by Ludwig Wittgenstein,” Mind, 32/128, 465-78. Cited as CN.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 56

RAMSEY Frank P., (1925), “Universal,” Mind, 34/136, 401-17. Reprinted in Ramsey (1990), 8-30.

RAMSEY Frank P., (1926), “The Foundations of Mathematics,” Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, s2-25/1, 338-84. Reprinted in Ramsey (1990), 164-224. Cited as FM.

RAMSEY Frank P., (1927), “Facts and Propositions,” Reprinted in Ramsey (1990), 34-51. Cited as FP.

RAMSEY Frank P., (1929b), “General Propositions and Causality,” in Ramsey (1990), 45-164. Cited as GPC.

RAMSEY Frank P., (1929c), “Theories,” in Ramsey (1990), 112-37. Cited as T.

RAMSEY Frank P., (1929d), “Philosophy,” in Ramsey (1990), 1-8. Cited as P.

RAMSEY Frank P., (1990), Philosophical Papers, ed. by David Hugh Mellor, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

RAMSEY Frank P., (1991 [1930]), On Truth, ed. by Nicholas Rescher & Ulrich Majer, Dordrecht, Kluwer. Cited as OT.

RUSSELL Bertrand, (1931), “Critical Notice of The Foundations of Mathematics and Other Logical Essays, Frank Plumpton Ramsey,” Mind, 40/160, 476-82.

SCHLICK Moritz, (1927), Letter to Albert Einstein, July 14, 1927, Einstein Collection, Hebrew University, EC 21-599.

WITTGENSTEIN Ludwig, (1922), Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. C. K. Ogden, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul.

NOTES

1. Monk also thinks it possible that Wittgenstein took himself to be the one who kept tinkering with the broken machine. 2. For the full argument about Ramsey’s influence on Wittgenstein, see Misak 2016, and 2020. 3. Ramsey wrote to Schlick in the spring of 1928: “I am thinking of coming to Vienna almost immediately, and wonder whether, if I did, you or any of your circle would be able to spare a little time to talk philosophy with me. If you could, I should be extremely grateful as I get very little stimulus here and make no progress.” (The Vienna Circle Archive, Noord-Hollands Archief: 114-Ram-2.) Schlick was away during Ramsey’s proposed dates, but invited him to come and stay some other time. 4. For instance, his 1925 “Universals” is an extension and deepening of Wittgenstein’s position that we cannot specify, a priori, the logical form. See MacBride 2018 for an excellent discussion. 5. See Misak 2020. 6. King’s College Archive FPR 5/5/434. In July 1927, Ramsey would invite Schlick to present a paper at the Moral Sciences Club – “The Meaning of Cognition.” Schlick’s wife accompanied him to Cambridge, and they got along very well with the Ramseys. 7. Christoph Limbeck-Lilineau uncovered this story for me. 8. Archives of Scientific Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh, Han Reichenbach Collection: ASP/ HR-016-42-16. 9. Archives of Scientific Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh, Han Reichenbach Collection: ASP/ HR-016-42-16. 10. Wittgenstein Collection, Brenner Archive: M31. 11. Vienna Circle Archives, Noord-Hollands Archief: 123/Wittg-1.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 57

12. Archives of Scientific Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh: Rudolf Carnap Collection 025-72-06 42-01: 68, 769. 13. See Carnap, Hahn & Neurath 1973 [1929]. 14. The letter is published in McGuinness (2012: 158-61). 15. It’s not clear that Ramsey’s own account was satisfactory. In order to make mathematics a collection of tautologies, he had to introduce a range of entities to ensure that, when true, ‘a=b’ comes out true on every interpretation. But the introduction of such entities makes the tautologies that emerge nothing like the innocent, trivially true, tautologies that Wittgenstein took to constitute logic. 16. See Archives of Scientific Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh: 1983.01: 006-06-1; 1983.01: 006-06-07. 17. See Russell (1931: 477). 18. It’s unclear when Carnap acquired his copy of Braithwaite’s volume, but there is evidence that it was not many years after its publication. There are extensive comments and annotations in Carnap’s young hand, and another set in a more elderly hand, and enough years had passed so that Carnap, in the 1950s, forgot what was in it. See Misak 2020. 19. In Galavotti 1991. 20. Whether or not he went all the way to adopting a pragmatist account of truth, he certainly adopts a pragmatist account of meaning or content, in which equivalent beliefs have the same “causal properties” (FP: 44). 21. He also raised more particular problems, such as what is now known as the colour exclusion problem. See Misak 2020. 22. See Methven (2015: 113). 23. Archives of Scientific Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh: RC.1974.0: 102-13-53. 24. See Psillos (1999: 46). 25. See Carnap 1958; Hempel 1958. 26. See Archives of Scientific Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh: RC.1974.01: 102-13-53. 27. Archives of Scientific Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh: 1983.01: 006-02-03. (The strikethrough is Ramsey’s.) 28. Archives of Scientific Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh: 003-30-05. 29. Vienna Circle Archives, Noord-Hollands Archief, #114-Ram-4. 30. See Misak 2020 for more, especially about generalizations and scientific laws.

ABSTRACTS

Frank Ramsey (1903-1930) is usually taken to be sympathetic to the Vienna Circle’s project. I will argue that this is not right. Ramsey was a pragmatist, and he put pragmatist objections to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, objections which also had the Vienna Circle as their target. Ramsey thought the Circle’s position (like Wittgenstein’s) was mistaken in that, instead of starting with human inquiry, it tried to construct the world out of elementary particulars and logic, and resulted in an unacceptable solipsism. This paper traces the trajectory of Ramsey’s pragmatist thought, and its relationship to the early Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 58

AUTHOR

CHERYL MISAK

University of Toronto Cheryl.misak[at]utoronto.ca

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 59

Pragmatism and the Birth of Subjective Probability

Maria Carla Galavotti

1. Pragmatism and the Foundations of Probability

1 The debate on the foundations of probability in the first half of the twentieth century is imbued with ideas that are distinctive of pragmatism. In earlier work, I have emphasized that a number of protagonists of that debate, regardless of the attitude taken in connection with the interpretation of probability, were strongly influenced by pragmatist philosophers. For example, Rudolf Carnap acknowledged his debt towards Clarence Irving Lewis, as did Hans Reichenbach and Frank Plumpton Ramsey in connection with Charles Sanders Peirce and William James, while Bruno de Finetti identified with the Italian pragmatists, especially Giovanni Vailati, his source of inspiration. Moreover, Ernest Nagel claimed to have borrowed the leading idea of his “truth-frequency” theory of probability from John Dewey.1

2 According to a widespread opinion, even before the encounter between logical empiricism and American pragmatism a number of European scientists including Ernst Mach, Ludwig Boltzmann, Henri Poincaré, Pierre Duhem, and Karl Pearson, had embraced a view of science with strong affinities to the pragmatist outlook.2 Their influence extended not only to the above mentioned authors, but also to others such as Richard von Mises, Janina Hosiasson, Harold Jeffreys, Émile Borel, and Maurice Fréchet, all of whom took part in the debate on the foundations of probability and heralded a probabilistic approach to epistemology revolving around the conviction that science, and knowledge at large, are probabilistic in nature, and that knowledge acquisition is obtained inductively from empirical data. Of the main interpretations of probability, namely frequentism, logicism, subjectivism and propensionism, subjectivism is the closest to the pragmatist perspective first and foremost for the centrality ascribed to man as an agent acting in the world, and the idea that human action is guided by belief. 3 In what follows attention will be called to the influence of pragmatism, and more in particular European pragmatism, on the birth of subjective probability, concentrating

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 60

on three of its major representatives in different countries, namely Borel, Ramsey and de Finetti. 3 Before embarking on that discussion, it is useful to highlight those aspects of the pragmatist outlook that are more relevant to our present purposes. In a recent paper called The Spirit of Pragmatism in the Quads of Oxford, David Backhurst identifies five major components of pragmatism, which can be summarized as follows: (1) a doxastic theory of truth as that which is deserving of belief; (2) an empiricist account of meaning – the meaning of an expression resides in its consequences for action; (3) a fallibilist, dynamic, inquiry centered account of knowledge; (4) an anti-dualistic approach according to which the distinction between theoretical and practical reasoning is rejected in favour of a unified conception of inquiry grounded in scientific method; (5) the primacy of practice (Backhurst 2017: 77-8). Focusing on the literature on the foundations of probability, the following tenets, which are obviously in tune with the features described by Backhurst, play a pivotal role: (1) knowledge is intrinsically probabilistic; (2) prediction is the primary purpose of science; (3) probability statements acquire meaning in connection with their capability to guiding decision and action; (4) the criterion for testing probabilistic evaluations and justifying inferential methods (induction) is success; (5) scientific truth corresponds to a special sort of belief, and results from consent in the long run. Although one or the other of these statements is shared by a number of supporters of different interpretations of probability, they constitute the gist of the subjective theory.

2. The Subjective Theory

4 Subjectivism is the theory that probability is the degree of belief actually held by someone in a state of uncertainty regarding the occurrence of an event. According to this approach, probability is a primitive notion endowed with a psychological foundation, which requires an operative definition specifying a way of measuring it. A longstanding method dating back to the seventeenth century is the betting scheme, according to which the degree of belief corresponds to the odds at which an agent would be willing to bet on an event whose occurrence is uncertain. The probability of such an event equals the price to be paid by the agent to obtain a certain gain should the event occur. The only requirement to be imposed to degrees of belief is coherence. Put in terms of betting, coherence ensures that betting ratios are chosen in such a way as to avoid sure loss, or gain, namely the situation known in the literature as a Dutch book. The strength of the notion of coherence amounts to the fact that the laws of probability are derivable from its assumption, or, in other words, coherent degrees of belief satisfy the rules of additive probabilities. This result, which lies at the core of the subjective theory, was stated for the first time by Ramsey in 1926, and demonstrated by de Finetti in 1928. Although the betting scheme is probably the best-known operative method that allows measurement of degrees of belief, it is by no means the only one; more on this will be said in what follows.

5 Since they were the first to realize the importance of coherence and its role within the subjective outlook, Ramsey and de Finetti are reputed to be the “fathers” of subjective probability. But they were by no means the only ones to embrace a subjective approach to probability, together with a probabilistic conception of knowledge and science. In the first half of the twentieth century, the same approach was shared by other authors

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 61

in distant parts of Europe, including Janina Hosiasson,4 Émile Borel, and Paul Lévy. In addition, Harold Jeffreys, albeit embracing the logical theory of probability, heralded a view of epistemology in many ways close to subjectivism.5

3. Frank Ramsey’s Pragmatism

6 Ramsey’s pragmatism is broadly discussed in the literature, where he is deemed a pragmatist in connection with his conception of meaning, theories and scientific laws.6 His view of probability is just as imbued with pragmatist ideas, as he himself acknowledges by referring to James, and especially Peirce on whose writings he maintains that the final section of Truth and Probability is “almost entirely based” (Ramsey 1990: 90).7 The gist of Ramsey’s pragmatism lies with the centrality of belief as our guide to action, which goes hand in hand with the stress put on predictive success, providing the criterion for evaluating probability assessments, and more generally for justifying induction. As put by Ramsey in Induction: Keynes and Wittgenstein: “a type of inference is reasonable or unreasonable according to the relative frequency with which it leads to truth and falsehood. Induction is reasonable because it produces predictions which are generally verified, not because of any logical relation between its premisses and conclusion.” (Ramsey 1991: 301). The pragmatic flavor of this attitude is emphasized by Ramsey himself, who notices that “this is a kind of pragmatism: we judge mental habits by whether they work, i.e. whether the opinions they lead to are for the most part true, or more often true than those which alternative habits would lead to” (Ramsey 1990: 93). By taking such a stand Ramsey anticipates work by de Finetti, Savage, and subsequent subjective statisticians who developed a whole family of methods for the validation of probability assessments, like scoring rules. More on this in Section 4 below.

7 A peculiar trait of Ramsey’s version of subjectivism is his definition of chance – which represents an important contribution to the subjective theory, surprisingly overlooked by the literature.8 Although endowed with objective import, Ramsey’s notion of chance, together with the related notion of probability in physics, are framed within the subjective outlook. Contrary to Norman Campbell’s definition of chance in terms of frequencies, Ramsey holds that “chances are degrees of belief within a certain system of beliefs and degrees of belief; not those of any actual person, but in a simplified system to which those of actual people, especially the speaker, in part approximate” (Ramsey 1990: 104). Such systems of beliefs typically contain empirical regularities. Chances differ from frequencies because the frequencies actually observed do not necessarily coincide with them; for instance the chance of a roulette hitting the 0 is the same irrespective of the fact that yesterday it never hit the 0 for the whole day. Unlike frequencies, chances are deemed objective in a twofold sense. In the first place, saying that a system includes a chance value referred to a given phenomenon means that the system itself cannot be made to include a pair of deterministic laws, ruling the occurrence and non-occurrence of the same phenomenon. Moreover, chances are objective “in that everyone agrees about them, as opposed e.g. to odds on horses” (Ramsey 1990: 106). 8 The related notion of probability in physics is then defined as chance referred to a more complex system which contains reference to scientific laws and theories. Physical probabilities represent ultimate chances, meaning that within the theoretical framework

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 62

in which they belong there is no way of replacing them with deterministic laws. The assessment of physical probabilities, as well as their objective character, rests on scientific theories that are accepted by the scientific community. These are part of a strong system, supported by a good deal of evidence from experience. Ultimately, reference is made to the “true scientific system” which is “uniquely determined” because “long enough investigation will lead us all to it” (Ramsey 1990: 161). Notably, Ramsey’s attitude in this connection echoes “Peirce’s notion of truth as what everyone will believe in the end” (ibid.), as he puts it. A similar conception of truth was shared by James, whom is often mentioned in Ramsey’s writings. 9 Ramsey takes a constructivist approach to knowledge centered on the notion of reliability. In the note Knowledge, he holds that a belief is knowledge if it is “formed in a reliable way. We say ‘I know,’ however, whenever we are certain, without reflecting on reliability. But if we did reflect then we should remain certain if, and only if, we thought our way reliable.” (Ibid.: 110). A number of clues contained in other notes give an idea of the criteria for reliability Ramsey had in mind. They include, in the first place, experimentation, which is crucial for the formation of beliefs and the assessment of probabilities. In Ramsey’s words: “Why should one experiment? To increase the weight of one’s probabilities.” (Ibid.: 161). The note called Statistics calls attention to another important ingredient, namely statistics whose “significance is in suggesting a theory or set of chances” (ibid.: 102). Statistics is also the tool to perform causal analysis: “we find that chances are not what we expect, therefore the die is biased.” (Ibid.: 103). In this way, knowledge is made to rest on the possibility of establishing a strong link between belief and success. As described by Nils-Eric Sahlin for Ramsey “a belief is knowledge if it is obtained by a reliable process and if it always leads to success” (Sahlin 1990: 93).9 10 That Ramsey’s pragmatism was influenced by Peirce and James has been argued in some detail by a number of authors.10 Less emphasis has been placed on the influence of Poincaré, whose conception of chance was taken into serious consideration by Ramsey, as shown by a number of mentions in his notes.11 We also know that Ramsey read Mach’s Analysis of Sensations and it is plausible to conjecture that the ideas spelled out in that book had an impact on him. Such a conjecture has been made by Sahlin, who considers Mach “may have had an unforeseen influence on Ramsey” (Sahlin 1990: 125). Note 15 in Notes on Philosophy, Probability and Mathematics, titled “On ‘I can’,” in which Ramsey comments on a passage from Mach’s book, points in the same direction.

4. Bruno de Finetti, Radical Probabilist

11 Bruno de Finetti embraced an uncompromising version of subjectivism, which earned him the epithet “radical probabilist” coined by Richard Jeffrey.12 His probabilism was influenced in equal measure by the Italian pragmatists Mario Calderoni and Giovanni Vailati and the scientist-philosophers Ernest Mach and Henri Poincaré.

12 For de Finetti, pragmatism meant the opposite of the “hundred ways of not saying anything” (de Finetti 1976: 285)13 common to all philosophical trends from scholasticism to idealism, except for empiricism. He claims to have “adopted the mode of thinking advocated by authors like Vailati and Calderoni” because “it was precisely this form of reasoning which, in successive waves, from Galileo to Einstein, from Heisenberg to Born, freed physics – and with it the whole of science and human

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 63

thought – from those superstructures of absurd metaphysical dross which had condemned it to endless round of quibbling about pretentious vacuities” (de Finetti 1975: 41). Similar statements recur many times in de Finetti’s writings, which abound with attacks on metaphysics and realism, seen as contrary to a view of science as a product of human activity aimed primarily at prediction. In line with the mode of thinking of pragmatists, de Finetti rejects the “immutable and necessary” nature of scientific laws, in the conviction that “the absolute truth does not exist” and therefore “science, understood as the discoverer of absolute truths, remains idle for lack of absolute truths” (de Finetti 1989: 169). The refusal of such unrealizable ideals gives way to a deep concern for the applicability of science. 13 The application of science, and above all forecast, requires probability. Here, de Finetti appeals to Poincaré who “has clearly understood that only an accomplished fact is certain, that science cannot limit itself to theorizing about accomplished facts but must foresee, that science is not certain, and that what really makes it go is not logic but the probability calculus” (ibid.: 173). Right in the beginning of his most famous paper, namely La prévision: ses lois logiques, ses sources subjectives, containing the text of the lectures he gave in 1935 at the Institut Henri Poincaré in Paris, de Finetti calls Poincaré “the thinker who attributed the greatest domain of application to the theory of probability and gave it a completely essential role in scientific philosophy” (de Finetti 1980a: 59). Moreover, de Finetti praises Poincaré for “having used psychological analysis to put life back into some formally arid questions which it is not enough to consider only from the formal point of view” (de Finetti 1989: 219). The psychological element is obviously crucial for de Finetti, who advocates the subjective view and defines probability as the degree of belief “as actually held by someone, on the ground of his whole knowledge, experience, information” (de Finetti 1968: 45) in the occurrence of an event whose outcome is unknown. Probability is a primitive notion defined implicitly by the role it plays with respect to the decisional criterion of an individual; in other words the meaning of probability resides in its being our guide to prediction and action. Also in this regard de Finetti’s attitude is patently close to pragmatism. 14 Importantly, de Finetti regards his own position as “analogous to Mach’s positivism, where by ‘positive fact’ each of us means only his effective subjective impressions” (de Finetti 1989: 171). Mach is also mentioned as a source of inspiration in a letter of 1957 to the jurist and political scientist Bruno Leoni, in which de Finetti describes his own viewpoint as close to “scientific criticism (for instance Mach; ‘operational definitions’ in modern physics, ‘behaviourism,’ and so on) tracing back to the perspective of Hume, Berkeley, etc.”14 15 Operationalism is, together with pragmatism and empiricism, a fundamental component of de Finetti’s perspective, because in order to endow probability with effective import “it must not be based on vain or over-elaborate phrases, but it must be operative, i.e. based on the indications given by experiments, albeit conceptual ones, that must be carried out in order to measure it” (de Finetti 1976: 294). Most influential in that connection was Percy Bridgman’s The Logic of Modern Physics (1927), which de Finetti read in the German edition titled Die Logik der heutigen Physik (1932), mentioned many times in his writings. The definition of probability in terms of betting quotients is by no means regarded as the only option by de Finetti, who in the 1931 paper Sul significato soggettivo della probabilità15 introduced an alternative definition based on the

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 64

qualitative relation “at least as probable as,” and from the sixties onwards preferred to adopt scoring rules of the Brier kind. Named after the meteorologist who applied it to weather forecasts, such a rule serves the twofold purpose of obliging probability evaluators to be as accurate as possible and improve evaluations, made both by single agents and groups, by providing them with a tool apt to enhance “self-control” as well as “comparative control” (de Finetti 1980b: 1151).16 16 The idea of improving probability evaluation is far from being alien to the subjective viewpoint, in spite of the widespread misunderstanding whereby subjectivism is some sort of an “anything goes” approach, according to which in no way can probability judgments can be judged right or wrong, once coherence is satisfied.17 Such a misunderstanding has obviously been suggested by de Finetti’s assertion that “probability does not exist” printed in capital letters in the preface to the English edition of Teoria delle probabilità. 18 De Finetti’s claim has been taken to mean that probability evaluations, as the expression of personal feelings, can be made without taking into account empirical evidence. On the contrary, the assertion was meant to reject the metaphysical tenet that probability is an objective feature of phenomena. However, while objecting to metaphysics, de Finetti firmly insisted that empirical evidence is an essential ingredient of probability assessment that must not be neglected. He makes it clear that the evaluation of probability “depends on two components: (1) the objective component, consisting of the evidence of known data and facts; and (2) the subjective component, consisting of the opinion concerning unknown facts based on known evidence” (de Finetti 1974: 7). The effectiveness of subjective probability as a tool for prediction can and must be assessed, and the criterion for it is the success of forecasts. As de Finetti puts it: “though maintaining the subjectivist idea that no fact can prove or disprove belief I find no difficulty in admitting that any form of comparison between probability evaluations (of myself, of other people) and actual events may be an element influencing my further judgment, of the same status as any other kind of information.” (de Finetti 1962: 360). In other words, de Finetti took very seriously the problem of objectivity, or the “goodness” of probability evaluations, and actively worked on the topic, partly in collaboration with Jimmie Savage, pioneering a thriving field of research.19 17 If the emphasis on successful prediction is perfectly in tune with pragmatism, so is de Finetti’s result known as the “representation theorem,” which secures to subjective probability applicability to statistical inference. In brief, the representation theorem states that the adoption of the Bayesian method in conjunction with exchangeability ensures the convergence between degrees of belief and frequencies. Such a convergence offers the grounds for the reduction of objective to subjective probability, because once it is made clear how information on frequencies interacts with subjective elements, there is no need for objective probabilities (chances). The pragmatic meaning of this move has been stressed by Brian Skyrms, who observes that “de Finetti does not offer a translation of chance. Rather, he looks at the role that chance plays in standard statistical reasoning, and argues that that role can be fulfilled perfectly well without the metaphysical assumption that chances exist” (Skyrms 1984: 12). Furthermore, de Finetti thinks that the representation theorem answers the problem of induction, because it justifies “why we are also intuitively inclined to expect that frequency observed in the future will be close to frequency observed in the past” (de Finetti 1972:

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 65

34). Once again, the argument is pragmatical, as it is based on the role of induction, which amounts to guiding our reasoning and decision.20 18 Although de Finetti’s fierce opposition to the notion of chance marks a divergence with Ramsey’s subjectivism, it must be added that late in his life de Finetti softened his attitude somewhat, admitting that probability evaluations deriving from accepted scientific theories have a more robust meaning than those not supported by such a strong evidence, thereof coming close to Ramsey’s position. Unlike Ramsey, who – as we saw – developed the idea, de Finetti did not go beyond the admission that probability evaluations constrained by scientific theories – for instance the distributions belonging to statistical mechanics – “provide more solid grounds for subjective opinions” (de Finetti 2008: 52).21 To this he adds that “by looking at the outcome of a phenomenon we could be driven to formulate a rule by virtue of which, in each case, things would blend in that way, as if it were a necessary law of nature” (ibid.). This claim highlights de Finetti’s conviction that scientific laws are rules, or instruments for prediction and action; in his colorful prose: “if one takes science seriously, then one always considers it also as an instrument. Otherwise, what would it amount to? Building up houses on cards, empty of any application whatsoever!” (Ibid.: 53). The author’s position regarding scientific laws and theories goes hand in hand with the conviction that there is a continuity between science and everyday life. Also in that connection there is a patent affinity between de Finetti’s position and pragmatism.

5. Émile Borel, Temperate Subjectivist22

19 In a review of Keynes’s Treatise on Probability (1921) published in 1924 in Revue philosophique and reprinted as an appendix in the monograph Valeur pratique et philosophie des probabilités (1939),23 Borel moves a number of objections to Keynes, and outlines a view of probability that shares some aspects of both subjectivism and pragmatism and is in various ways influenced by Poincaré. To Borel’s eyes, Keynes overlooked the application of probability to science, for concentrating on the probability of judgments. Starting from the consideration that “the probability that an atom of radium will explode tomorrow is, for the physicist, a constant of the same kind as the density of copper or the atomic weight of gold. Albeit these constants are always at the mercy of the progress of physical-chemical theory, they are constants in the present state of science” (Borel 1964: 50), Borel concludes that probability has a different meaning in different contexts. In particular, probability has a different meaning depending on the body of information available within the context in which it occurs. In science, where its assessment is backed by laws accepted by the scientific community, probability has a more objective value than in everyday life, where it can take “different values for different individuals” (ibid.). It is important to clarify what “objective” means for Borel. As he puts it: “objective probabilities can be defined as probabilities whose value is the same for a certain number of individuals who are well informed of the conditions of the aleatory event.” (Borel 1952: 105). In other words, the objectivity of probabilities occurring in science derives from the theories accepted by the community of scientists, and as such are supported by a good deal of evidence. The similarity with Ramsey’s notion of objective probability is striking. Poincaré’s conception of objective chance as having intersubjective character24 is also likely to have exerted an influence upon Borel’s views on the matter.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 66

20 As concerns single case probability assignments, Borel maintains that “the probability of a single case is defined subjectively by the conditions at which an agent is ready to accept to bet on the occurrence or non-occurrence of the event” (Borel 1952: 105). In this connection he takes sides with subjectivists and mentions de Finetti’s La prévision. The betting method is taken to provide the operative tool that allows probability to be connected with action, since it “can be applied to all verifiable judgments; it allows for a numerical evaluation of probabilities with a precision quite comparable to that with which one evaluates prices” (Borel 1964: 57). Bridging the gap between probability and action is deemed crucial by Borel, who strongly advocates the importance of practice, and embraces the pragmatist principle that “a proposition has practical interest for men only insofar as it can exercise an influence on their actions” (1952: 89). 21 While borrowing such a principle from Reichenbach,25 Borel makes it clear that agreement does not extend to the frequency approach, against which he raises a few objections. In particular, he criticizes Reichenbach’s treatment of the single case by observing that imposing a requirement of homogeneity to the reference class would lead to considering increasingly narrow classes, ending up with “classes that contain so few elements that the concept of frequency does no longer apply” (ibid.: 87). The more detailed is the description of the single case, the more evident the differences with other instances of the same kind, so that “one will find that probability is defined in a way that is less and less precise, the better known is the case at hand” (ibid.: 88). 22 As already observed, Borel takes a subjective approach to the estimation of single case probabilities, which he reckons crucial in view of practical applications. While endorsing the subjective approach, he does not overlook the importance of frequencies nor does he deny that they are a fundamental component of probability evaluation; rather he holds that in some contexts other elements come into play. To exemplify his position, Borel invites us to consider the case of a medical doctor who is asked to make a forecast about the probability of survival of a patient who has contracted a certain disease. The doctor will consider the relevant statistics of deaths among patients affected by the same illness, but he is also likely to consider additional information regarded to be relevant to the case at hand, in the light of his own experience. Like de Finetti, for Borel single case probability attributions result from the concurrence of information on frequencies, personal experience and common sense. In a note titled Punti di vista: Émile Borel de Finetti praises Borel for holding that probability must be referred to the single case and can be measured sufficiently well by means of the betting method, but criticizes his eclectic attitude according to which probability can take an objective as well as a subjective value.26 As we saw, Borel feels the need to address the issue of defining an objective notion of probability suitable for application to science, putting forward a solution having some similarity with Ramsey’s and Poincaré’s. To sum up, Borel’s subjectivism has much in common with de Finetti’s but is more moderate, mainly due to his tenet that probability assessments made in the context of disciplines like physics, endowed with theories shared by scientists, have an objective character. However, it must be stressed that his view of objective probability does not have a realistic import, being rather close to the pragmatist idea of objectivity as agreement of the scientific community. 23 Borel’s commitment to the subjective interpretation goes hand in hand with a probabilistic approach to epistemology inspired by the conviction that “probability lays at the core of scientific knowledge” because “the value of all scientific results can be

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 67

assessed only by means of a probability coefficient” (Borel 1952: 10).27 Moreover, “the theory of probability not only possesses the same practical and philosophical value of all of other scientific theories; but is the basis of all knowledge” (Borel 1952: 11). The crucial importance of probability is given by its practical value, which “surpasses that of the rest of human knowledge” (ibid.: 42). Borel’s deep concern for the practical value of probability is not confined to science, but extends to all aspects of life, including everyday life, which is regarded on a par with science, in line with the pragmatist perspective.

6. Concluding Remarks

24 Although – as already observed – other authors contributed to the birth of subjective probability, Borel, Ramsey and de Finetti played a key role in its formation. In addition to the subjective approach to probability, these authors shared a view of epistemology grounded in the conviction that science and knowledge in general are deeply probabilistic in nature. Such a viewpoint is imbued with ideas that are ingrained in the pragmatist tradition, including the tenet that the main purpose of science is prediction and success is the canon for the justification of induction; the overall importance ascribed to practice; and the emphasis on action, regarded as the gist of the meaning and the value of probability. These ideas were inspired partly by American pragmatists and partly by European scientist-philosophers like Mach and Poincaré, who were a formidable source of inspiration for the mathematicians and scientists of their time, including those working on the foundations of probability.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BACKHURST David, (2017), “The Spirit of Pragmatism in the Quads of Oxford,” in Cheryl Misak & Huw Price (eds), The Practical Turn: Pragmatism in Britain in the Long Twentieth Century, 75-90.

BOREL Émile, (1952 [1939]), “Valeur pratique et philosophie des probabilités,” in Traité du calcul des probabilités et ses applications (1925-1939), 4 (3), Paris, Gauthier-Villars. (Translation of passages quoted in the text is mine.)

BOREL Émile, (1964 [1924]), “Apropos of a Treatise on Probability,” in Henry Ely Kyburg & Howard Edward Smokler (eds), Studies in Subjective Probability, New York, Wiley, 47-60.

BOREL Émile, (2014 [1907]), “An Economic Paradox: The Sophism of the Heap of Wheat and Statistical Truths,” Erkenntnis, 79, 1081-8.

BRIDGMAN Percy, (1927), The Logic of Modern Physics, New York, MacMillan.

CALDERONI Mario & Giovanni VAILATI, (2009 [1909]), “Pragmatism and the Various Ways of Saying Nothing,” in Claudia Arrighi, Paola Cantù, Mauro De Zan & Patrick Suppes (eds), Logic and Pragmatism. Selected Essays by Giovanni Vailati, Stanford, CSLI Publications, 249-59.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 68

DAWID Philip A. & Maria Carla GALAVOTTI, (2009), “De Finetti’s Subjectivism, Objective Probability, and the Empirical Validation of Probability Assessments,” in Maria Carla Galavotti (ed.), Bruno de Finetti, Radical Probabilist, London, College Publications, 97-114.

DE FINETTI Bruno, (1939), “Punti di vista: Émile Borel,” Supplemento Statistico ai Nuovi problemi di Politica, Storia, Economia, 5, 61-71.

DE FINETTI Bruno, (1962), “Does it Make Sense to Speak of ‘Good Probability Appraisers’?,” in Irving John Good, Alan James Mayne & John Maynard Smith (eds), The Scientist Speculates. An Anthology of Partly-Baked Ideas, New York, Basic Books, 357-64.

DE FINETTI Bruno, (1968), “Probability: the Subjectivistic Approach,” in Raymond Klibansky (ed.), La philosophie contemporaine, Florence, La Nuova Italia, 45-53.

DE FINETTI Bruno, (1972), “Subjective or Objective Probability: is the Dispute Undecidable?,” Symposia Mathematica, 9, 21-36.

DE FINETTI Bruno, (1974), “The Value of Studying Subjective Evaluations of Probability,” in Carl- Axel Stäel von Holstein (ed.), The Concept of Probability in Psychological Experiments, Dordrecht- Boston, Reidel, 1-14.

DE FINETTI Bruno, (1975 [1970]), Theory of Probability, New York, Wiley.

DE FINETTI Bruno, (1976), “Probability: Beware of Falsifications!,” Scientia, 70 (3), 283-303.

DE FINETTI Bruno, (1980a [1937]), “Foresight: Its Logical Laws, Its Subjective Sources,” in Henry E. Kyburg & Howard E. Smokler (eds), Studies in Subjective Probability, Huntington, N.Y., Krieger, 57-118.

DE FINETTI Bruno, (1980b), “Probabilità,” in Enciclopedia Einaudi, Torino, Einaudi, 1146-87.

DE FINETTI Bruno, (1989 [1931]), “Probabilism,” Erkenntnis, 31 (2-3), 169-223.

DE FINETTI Bruno, (1992 [1931]), “On the Subjective Meaning of Probability,” in Paola Monari & Daniela Cocchi (eds), Bruno de Finetti: Probabilità e induzione (Induction and Probability), Bologna, CLUEB, 298-329.

DE FINETTI Bruno, (2008 [1995]), Philosophical Lectures on Probability, ed. by Alberto Mura, Dordrecht, Springer.

DOKIC Jérôme & Pascal ENGEL, (2002 [2001]), Frank Ramsey. Truth and Success, London-New York, Routledge.

GALAVOTTI Maria Carla, (1989), “Anti-realism in the Philosophy of Probability: Bruno de Finetti’s Subjectivism,” Erkenntnis, 31 (2-3), 239-62.

GALAVOTTI Maria Carla, (1995), “F. P. Ramsey and the Notion of ‘Chance’,” in Jaakko Hintikka & Klaus Puhl (eds), The British Tradition in the 20th Century Philosophy. Proceedings of the 17th International Wittgenstein Symposium, Vienna, Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, 330-40.

GALAVOTTI Maria Carla, (1999), “Some Remarks on Objective Chance (F. P. Ramsey, K. R. Popper and N. R. Campbell),” in Maria Luisa Dalla Chiara, Roberto Giuntini & Federico Laudisa (eds), Language, Quantum, Music, Dordrecht-Boston, Kluwer, 73-82.

GALAVOTTI Maria Carla, (2003), “Harold Jeffreys’ Probabilistic Epistemology: Between Logicism and Subjectivism,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 54, 43-57.

GALAVOTTI Maria Carla, (2005), Philosophical Introduction to Probability, Stanford, CSLI Publications.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 69

GALAVOTTI Maria Carla, (2008), “A Tribute to Janina Hosiasson Lindenbaum: a Philosopher Victim of the Holocaust,” in Robero Scazzieri & Raffaella Simili (eds), Migration of Ideas, Sagamore Beach, Watson, 179-94.

GALAVOTTI Maria Carla, (2011), “Probability and Pragmatism,” in Dennis Dieks, Wenceslao Gonzalez, Stephan Hartmann, Thomas Uebel & Marcel Weber (eds), Explanation, Prediction, and Confirmation, Dordrecht, Springer, 499-510.

GALAVOTTI Maria Carla, (2014a), “Probabilistic Epistemology: A European Tradition,” in Maria Carla Galavotti, Elisabeth Nemeth & Friedrich Stadler (eds), Philosophy of Science in Europe; European Philosophy of Science, Dordrecht, Springer, 77-88.

GALAVOTTI Maria Carla, (2014b), “New Prospects for Pragmatism: Ramsey’s Constructivism,” in Maria Carla Galavotti, Dennis Dieks, Wenceslao Gonzalez, Stephan Hartmann, Thomas Uebel & Marcel Weber (eds), New Directions in the Philosophy of Science, Dordrecht, Springer, 645-56.

GALAVOTTI Maria Carla, (2017a), “The Ghost of Pragmatism. Some Historical Remarks on the Debate on the Foundations of Probability,” in Sami Pihlström, Friedrich Stadler & Niels Weidtmann (eds), Logical Empiricism and Pragmatism, Cham, Springer International Publishing, 167-82.

GALAVOTTI Maria Carla, (2017b), “On Some French Probabilists of the Twentieth Century: Fréchet, Borel, Lévy,” in Hannes Leitgeb, Ilkka Niiniluoto, Päivi Seppälä & Elliot Sober (eds), Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science - Proceedings of the 15th International Congress, London, College Publications, 155-73.

GALAVOTTI Maria Carla, (2018), “Who is Afraid of Subjective Probability?,” in Ciro de Florio & Alessandro Giordani (eds), From Arithmetic to Metaphysics, Berlin/Boston, De Gruyter, 151-7.

JEFFREY Richard C., (1992), “Radical Probabilism (Prospectus for a User’s Manual),” in Enrique Villanueva (ed.), Rationality in Epistemology, Atascadero, Cal., Ridgeview, 193-204.

MISAK Cheryl, (2016), Cambridge Pragmatism, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

MISAK Cheryl, (2017), “Ramsey’s 1929 Pragmatism,” in Cheryl Misak & Huw Price (eds), The Practical Turn: Pragmatism in Britain in the Long Twentieth Century, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 11-28.

MISAK Cheryl & Huw PRICE (eds), (2017), The Practical Turn: Pragmatism in Britain in the Long Twentieth Century, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

PIHLSTRÖM Sami, STADLER Friedrich & Niels WEIDTMANN (eds), (2017), Logical Empiricism and Pragmatism, Cham, Springer International Publishing.

RAMSEY Frank Plumpton, (1990), Philosophical Papers, ed. by David Hugh Mellor, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

RAMSEY Frank Plumpton, (1991), Notes on Philosophy, Probability, and Mathematics, ed. by Maria Carla Galavotti, Naples, Bibliopolis.

REICHENBACH Hans, (1937), “Les fondements logiques du calcul des probabilités,” Annales de l’Institut Henri Poincaré, 7, part 5, 267-348.

ROMIZI Donata, (2017), “Classical Pragmatism and Metaphysics: James and Peirce on Scientific Determinism,” in Sami Pihlström, Friedrich Stadler & Niels Weidtmann (eds), Logical Empiricism and Pragmatism, Cham, Springer International Publishing, 43-66.

SAHLIN Nils-Eric, (1990), The Philosophy of F. P. Ramsey, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 70

SKYRMS Brian, (1984), Pragmatics and Empiricism, New Haven, Yale University Press.

THAYER Horace Standish, (1968), Meaning and Action. A Critical History of Pragmatism, Indianapolis, Bobbs Merrill.

TIERCELIN Claudine, (2004), “Ramsey’s Pragmatism,” Dialectica, 58 (4), 529-47.

WIENER Philip P., (1973), “Pragmatism,” in Id. (ed.), Dictionary of the History of Ideas, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, volume III, 551-70.

NOTES

1. For more details see Galavotti 2017a. 2. Evidence that in Europe ideas close to pragmatist philosophy were around before the encounter with American pragmatism has been disclosed by a number of authors including Friedrich Stadler, Thomas Uebel, Donata Romizi and Massimo Ferrari; see their chapters in Pihlström, Stadler & Weidtmann (eds) 2017. 3. More on this is to be found in Galavotti 2011. 4. The reader interested in Hosiasson’s contribution to the philosophy of probability (largely overlooked by the literature) is addressed to Galavotti 2008. More to be found in Galavotti 2014a, where the work of Hosiasson, together with that of the other authors discussed here, is located within a larger European trend in probabilistic epistemology, which anticipated of a few decades the tendency today predominant in philosophy of science. 5. On Harold Jeffreys’s probabilistic epistemology see Galavotti 2003 and 2005. 6. Ramsey’s pragmatism has been discussed among others by Philip Wiener 1973, Horace Standish Thayer 1968, Nils-Eric Sahlin 1990, Jérôme Dokic & Pascal Engel 2002, Claudine Tiercelin 2004, Cheryl Misak 2016 and 2017. 7. In Galavotti 2011 attention is called to the influence of pragmatism on Ramsey’s conception of probability. 8. See Galavotti 2005 for a more extensive treatment of Ramsey’s subjectivism, and Galavotti 1995 and 1999 for more on his notion of chance. 9. Ramsey’s constructivism is dealt with in some detail in Galavotti 2014b. 10. See footnote 6. 11. See Ramsey’s note “Chance” and notes 67 and 69, which is titled “Poincaré’s Essay on Chance in Science and Method,” in Ramsey 1991. 12. See Jeffrey 1992. 13. De Finetti refers to the title of an essay by Calderoni and Vailati which appeared in 1909 – for the English translation see Calderoni & Vailati 2009. 14. Quoted from document BD 10-13-27 of the “Bruno de Finetti Collection,” with the permission of the University of Pittsburgh. All rights reserved. 15. English edition in de Finetti 1992. 16. See Dawid & Galavotti 2009 for more details. 17. For a rebuttal of such misunderstanding see Galavotti 2018. 18. See de Finetti 1975. 19. For more details see Dawid & Galavotti 2009. 20. See Galavotti 1989 for a more extensive treatment of the connections between de Finetti’s anti-realism, operationalism and pragmatism. 21. The quotation is from Philosophical Lectures on Probability, which contains the English translation of a series of lectures delivered by de Finetti in 1979, see de Finetti 2008. 22. Some passages of this section are borrowed from Galavotti 2017b.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 71

23. The monograph is the last one of a series of eighteen forming the Traité du calcul des probabilités et ses applications, published between 1925 and 1939. For the English version of Borel’s review of Keynes’s Treatise see Borel 1964. 24. On this issue see Romizi 2017. 25. Borel refers to Reichenbach 1937. 26. See de Finetti 1939. 27. See also Borel 2014 where the author addresses the “sophism of the heap of wheat” suggesting a way out of it based on probability.

ABSTRACTS

Pragmatism, taken not just as a philosophical movement but as a way of addressing problems, strongly influenced the debate on the foundations of probability during the first half of the twentieth century. Upholders of different interpretations of probability such as Hans Reichenbach, Ernest Nagel, Rudolf Carnap, Frank Ramsey, and Bruno de Finetti, acknowledged their debt towards pragmatist philosophers, including Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, Clarence Irving Lewis, William Dewey and Giovanni Vailati. In addition, scientist-philosophers like Ernst Mach, Ludwig Boltzmann, Henri Poincaré, Pierre Duhem, and Karl Pearson, who heralded a conception of science and knowledge at large that was close to pragmatism, were very influential in that debate. Among the main interpretations of probability – frequentism, propensionism, logicism and subjectivism -, the latter is no doubt the closest to the pragmatist outlook. This paper concentrates on three representatives of the subjective theory, namely Frank Ramsey, Bruno de Finetti and Émile Borel.

AUTHOR

MARIA CARLA GALAVOTTI

Università di Bologna mariacarla.galavotti[at]unibo.it

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 72

Lewis and Schlick Verificationism between Pragmatism and Logical Empiricism

Massimo Ferrari

1. Lewis’s Pragmatic A Priori

1 In 1937 Otto Neurath claimed that in a country like the United States, “in which Peirce, James, Dewey and others have created a general atmosphere that is empiricist in many respects,” the philosophical insights of the Vienna Circle and related groups were friendly and welcome. “The very fertile American manner of thinking,” Neurath added, “successfully combines with the European in this field, and important results may probably be expected from such cooperation” (Neurath 1983: 190). Some years before, Charles Morris had stressed, for his part, that Pragmatism and Logical Empiricism “are essentially complementary” so that “much is to be expected from a conscious cross- fertilization of the two tendencies” (Morris 1937: 23). According to Morris, a new scientific empiricism was in the making, thanks to a kind of pre-established harmony between the Vienna Circle and American pragmatism. Thus, both Neurath and Morris were in perfect agreement with a view of the relationship between Pragmatism and Logical Empiricism that would have until recent time been recognized as the official history of a successful “cross-fertilization.” New scholarship, however, has shown that, at least for two main reasons, the story is more complicated than is usually assumed. On the one hand, before the emigration of the Vienna Circle from Europe to the United States during the 1930s, Logical Empiricism and Pragmatism inaugurated a very fruitful collaboration, and increased significant affinities (Ferrari 2017). On the other hand, today it is no longer admissible to contend that a supposed “dogmatic” Logical Empiricism “was driven by a much more liberal Pragmatism to a liberal turn,” profiting thereby – as Neurath suggested – from the “very fertile” American way of thinking (see Limbeck-Lilienau 2012: 108).

2 In order to shed new light on this very intricate network of conceptual and historical relations, attempting a closer examination of the case study “Lewis and Schlick” seems to be of some interest. To be sure, the general historical and biographical context of this fascinating history (though to be told in detail elsewhere) had been originated by

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 73

the relationship between Schlick and the Anglo-Saxon milieu since the end of the 1920s. Schlick’s stay as visiting professor at Stanford in 1929 and at Berkley in 1931/32, his participation in the Seventh International Congress of Philosophy in Oxford in 1930, and finally the lectures on Form and Content he delivered in London in 1932 testify to “a bilateral (and intercontinental) exchange of ideas” between the Vienna Circle and the philosophical communities both in Great Britain and the United States (Stadler 2003: 167; Stadler 2007: 582). Schlick was not the only one to give impulse to the international dialogue within the scientific philosophy of that time, but he also played a very important role, not least due to the publication of several articles in English in the last years of his life.1 3 In 1929, the same year as Schlick’s stay at Stanford, Lewis’s philosophical masterpiece Mind and World Order saw the light. This profound, but hitherto over-neglected book was the result of a research program devoted to a pragmatic theory of A priori. Lewis had sketched the main lines of this original theory in 1923, when he overcame the first step of his philosophical career through the influential A Survey of Symbolic Logic, first published in 1918 and deeply inspired by his “friend and teacher” Josiah Royce (Lewis 1918: vi). The brief essay A Pragmatic Theory of the A Priori and the more detailed contribution of 1926 on The Pragmatic Element in Knowledge offer a clear account of Lewis’s major philosophical project. More precisely, Lewis was engaged in framing a “conceptual pragmatism” which represents quite an original contribution to both alternative conceptions of A priori elaborated by Ernst Cassirer and Arthur Pap (Stump 2011; Stump 2015: 94-101; Stump 2017), and the debate about the “relativization of A priori” within the early Logical Empiricism (Mormann 2012: 113-4). Lewis’s very idea of “pragmatic A Priori,” as well as of “conceptual pragmatism,” rests upon the articulation of a theory of knowledge in three elements (Calcaterra 2009). First, A priori are only the logic-mathematical concepts established by definition, without any reference to sense-qualities or things given in experience (Lewis 1970: 244). They are nonetheless “principles of procedure”: namely, their principal function is a “pragmatic” one, as well as prior to the process of investigation (Lewis 1970: 232, 234). A priori signifies thus independent of experience, “but precisely,” Lewis contended, “because it prescribes nothing to experience” (Lewis 1970: 231). Second, the given of experience is a totally independent element from thought, purely belonging to experience as such. The given is in no way affected by thought and in any case subsists in itself before perception or any form of relation to the mind (Lewis 1970: 248). Finally, the interpretation of experience rests upon the activity of mind and is more than experience itself, being that “truth,” as Lewis maintained in genuine pragmatic spirit, “is made by mind” (Lewis 197: 240, 248-9). According to Lewis, however, the active interpretation provided by mind is not rooted in a fixed system of a priori categories as conceived by Kant (Lewis 1970: 241). This does not mean, though, that knowledge would be possible without “a network of categories and definitive concepts” exploring experience (Lewis 1970: 237). Pragmatism, in contrast, outlines a conception of mind that fully recognizes the priority of “the act of interpretation with its practical consequences” (Lewis 1970: 240). In a later essay of 1941, Lewis will state that the “emphasis upon relevance to some active intent” represents precisely the point of difference between Pragmatism and Logical Positivism. While the former is more or less interested in the sophisticated techniques of empirical testability (meaning here Rudolf Carnap), the latter omits “largely or wholly” the activity of human mind, and

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 74

conceives of experience essentially in the sense of physicalism, namely too far from the language of everyday experience (Lewis 1970: 94, 103). 4 Accordingly, in his major work of 1929 Lewis endorsed a philosophical point of view rooted in the tradition of American pragmatism, and in particular Peirce’s thought, though still largely dependent upon Kantian epistemology in a broad sense. According to Sandra B. Rosenthal, “the work is strongly and consciously Kantian in its focus on ‘categories,’ though as always with Lewis, the Kantian schematic undergoes a radical transformation” (Rosenthal 2007: 16). To be sure, this “transformation” represents the core of Lewis’s philosophical enterprise and can be acknowledged as his most important contribution to contemporary philosophy. One can even remark that Lewis anticipated, to some extent, the later discussion on “conceptual schemes” that would, from the 1950s on, animate analytical philosophy (Beck 1953/54; Beck 1968). Similarly, the forward-looking critique of the “myth of the given,” which would take a key role in philosophical agendas only after Wilfried Sellar’s celebrated contribution of 1956, had already been developed by Lewis, albeit within his own peculiar perspective, in Mind and World Order.2 In Lewis’s mind, at stake here is not the claim that the given can be altered or even ignored by our thinking, but that empirical data is always in need of interpretation by means of our thought (a typical Peircean point of view, as one can easily comprehend).3 Lewis unambiguously says: “We cannot describe any particular given as such because in describing it, in whatever fashion, we qualify it by bringing it under some categories or other, select from it, emphasize aspects of it, and relate it in particular and avoidable ways.” (Lewis 1929: 52). The field of the given belongs therefore to a specific context. Knowledge means going beyond the given, but this is possible only by using conceptual schemes delimiting, in Kantian terms, the “possible experience,” or, in a pragmatist sense, the workability of the schemes. The relationship between scheme and given makes it possible to determine what the given properly is. In other words, knowing an object implies the activity of mind and requires its “integration.” As Lewis very clearly argues: “For the merely receptive and passive mind, there could be no objects and no world.” (Lewis 1929: 137). 5 At the center of Lewis’s conceptual Pragmatism lies therefore the very idea of philosophy as inquiry into the nature both of A priori and categories we use in framing our knowledge. And knowledge means for Lewis the equipment of all the concepts exhibiting the propriety of “common, shareable and expressible meaning” (Lewis 1929: 80). Mathematics offers, in this sense, the best illustration of a similar “body of truth which may rise [both] from pure concepts” and logical relations having no reference to sense-qualities of any sort (Lewis 1970: 244). According to Lewis W. Beck, Lewis once affirmed he was a Kantian, but a Kantian – he paradoxically explained – “who disagrees with every sentence of the Critique of Pure Reason” (Beck 1968: 273). There is no doubt, however, that what is distinctive in Mind and World Order is exactly the rethinking of Kant’s theory of A priori in a very unusual manner, though Lewis’s greatest philosophical debt was indeed to Kant (Murphey 2006: 99). 6 To begin with, Lewis conceives the Kantian a priori in a pragmatic and not in a synthetic sense. More precisely, the very function of a priori consists of classifying and ordering the empirical material, although the crucial point is rather that for Lewis the authentic character of a priori resides in its analyticity: “The a priori is not a material truth, delimiting or delineating the content of experience as such, but is definitive or analytic in its nature.” (Lewis 1929: 231). A priori is something valid or truth by definition, upon

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 75

which the experience depends in so far as analytic rules or stipulations embrace the conditions enabling our relationship to experience. By recognizing the analytical A priori as fundamental in order to constitute experience, Lewis proposes a sort of challenge to traditional Kantianism, because analytical statements a priori become the condition of possibility of experience in general. Lewis seems to be in no doubt over what concerns this crucial aspect: “The naming, classifying, defining activity is at each step prior to the investigation. We cannot even interrogate experience without a network of categories and definitive concepts. Until our meanings are definite and our classifications are fixed, experience cannot conceivably determine anything.” (Lewis 1929: 259). To be further stressed here is that Lewis refers to (intentional) “meanings” in the sense of “criteria of application” of verbal expressions, determining in advance the “testable and sense-recognizable characters” of field of application (Lewis 1946: 157).4 7 A second intervention on the Kantian A Priori in Lewis’s conceptual Pragmatism, on the other hand, focuses on the treatment of the classical problem of categories. His main issue consists of recognizing the set of categories we employ in our knowing with a dynamic character, similarly to the analogue attempt developed by the Neo-Kantian Cassirer that Lewis once sympathetically quotes (Lewis 1929: 363*). According to Lewis’s account, we are to work with a “list of categories” (as the young Peirce would have said), including, e.g., substance, accident, cause, effect, thing, content, event, propriety, law and so on. These relatively vague categories are, properly speaking, “guides to action” (Lewis 1929: 21), that is, instruments whose validity is testified through the practice both of knowledge and linguistic communication. Moreover, the very idea of a priori – which at first glance “smacks of magic and superstitious nonsense,” as Lewis ironically remarks (Lewis 1929: 22) – can be considered as something prior to experience, precisely as a purpose is prior to the goal to be reached (Lewis 1929: 24). Hence, for Lewis, what is more important is that categories are necessary in order to enable experience – namely to make it possible – in a genuinely Kantian sense: “The world of experience is not given in experience: it is constructed by thought from the data of sense.” (Lewis 1929: 29). And Lewis goes on: “The categories are ways of dealing with what is given to the mind, and if they had no practical consequences, the mind would never use them.” (Lewis 1929: 31). “Practical consequences” also legitimate the validity of the categories; and in this sense the Kantian deduction of categories is still acceptable, or more precisely it is acceptable in the sense that both the practical use and success of conceptual frameworks determine the possibility of experience, without any postulation of unique “modes of intuition” or “fixed forms of thought” (Lewis 1929: 320). Nonetheless, to reject the “transcendental and miraculous status” of categories as eternal structures of human Reason does not imply, in Lewis’s mind, eliminating their function as rules finding an exemplification in the “very wide range of heterogeneous sensory content” (Lewis 1929: 99-100). From this point of view, the pragmatist Lewis acknowledges his own indebtedness to the Kantian legacy; or one could affirm that “we must all be pragmatists in the end, not in the beginning” (Lewis 1929: 267).

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 76

2. Schlick, Lewis and Verificationism

8 Bearing this maxim in mind, in the early 1930s Lewis contacted Schlick and Carnap, making an effort in bridging the gap between Pragmatism and Logical Empiricism. The first important upshot of this intellectual exchange is mirrored in Lewis’s article “Experience and Meaning” (published in 1933 in The Philosophical Review), where he brought to attention the danger of solipsism he saw in Schlick’s and Carnap’s criterion of verification through direct experience, dangerous because it is based on the subjective experience lived by the Ego. For Lewis, by contrast, cognition is guided by “an element of anticipation” foreshadowing the datum. Hence, verification indicates the potential for “being verifiable,” a word connoting – like any word ending in “able” – possibility in general, and in particular the conditions under which the verification can be projected and obtained (for instance when we consider a sentence regarding the other side of the moon).5 In a nutshell, Lewis intended to rework the logical-positivistic conception of verification by pointing out that “to know (empirically) is to be able to anticipate correctly further possible experience” (Lewis 1970: 268).

9 Lewis also recasts the concept of experience in the sense of a kind of “activity,” underlying thereby the main difference between Pragmatism and Logical Empiricism. “The pragmatic emphasis upon relevance to some active intent,” Lewis holds, “is largely or wholly omitted in logical positivism” (Lewis 1970: 94). Note that by “logical positivism” Lewis here means exclusively Carnap, who had, in Lewis’s eyes, excluded precisely what was supposed to be at the heart of a pragmatic conception of meaning. This is understood not only in the sense of what the logical positivists mean by “protocols” or “observation sentences” over and against what the pragmatists mean by the “content of experience,” but also in the sense that Carnap’s logical syntax overlooks the distinction between linguistic meaning and empirical meaning, “which concerns the relation of expressions to what may be given in experience” (Lewis 1970: 96-7). It is precisely at this point that Schlick enters the scene through an extensive answer to Lewis, which places great emphasis on the concept of verifiability. Before considering Schlick’s position in detail, however, it is worth recalling that from the early days of his philosophical development he had manifested a sharp disagreement with the pragmatist conception of truth and, in particular, with James’s own. In his dissertation on The Nature of Truth in Modern Logic, published in 1910, Schlick already deemed as false (or even “unscientific”) the pragmatist theory of truth, because it confuses the essence of truth with both the criteria of its verification and its practical consequences (Schlick 1979, vol. I: 67). Schlick found James’s account of truth unacceptable for two main reasons: on the one hand, because while all true judgments have to be verified, it does not follow, conversely, that all the judgments that are (or can be) verified are true; on the other hand, because James’s definition attributes to truth in general “a property uncharacteristic of it in either everyday or scientific language, namely that of mutability” (Schlick 1979, vol. I: 64-5). Hence Schlick’s claim that he differed “sharply from pragmatism” (Schlick 1979, vol. I: 88), maintaining by contrast that truth is the “one-to-one coordination” of judgments with some “states-of- affairs.” This insight would be at the center of Schlick’s main work too, i.e. the General Theory of Knowledge from 1918, where he emphasizes once again his disagreement with James’s Pragmatism, suggesting rather – as he already did in 1910 – that “the great merit” of Pragmatism consists exactly of considering the “process of verification” as

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 77

“the only way of recognizing the univocal nature, and thus the truth, of the judgment” (Schlick 1979, vol. I: 96; Schlick 1974: 165). 10 Twenty-five years after his youthful study on the concept of truth, Schlick would have the occasion to reconsider his previous view on the pragmatist procedure of verification. Needless to say, in the meantime the context had become quite different from at the time of Schlick’s first writings. In the early 1930s Schlick was involved in the protocol sentence debate; he had become a long-time devoted admirer of Wittgenstein; and, last but not least, he had endorsed a new conception of philosophy as an activity of linguistic clarification. Nonetheless, a subtle link to Pragmatism seems to re-emerge in his very influential paper “Meaning and Verification,” which appeared under the auspices of Lewis himself in the July 1936 issue of The Philosophical Review. Actually, Schlick’s article required careful preparation and was published not long after his tragic death. It can also be considered as his philosophical testament, a kind of message in the bottle for further developments in Logical Empiricism and analytic philosophy (see Schlick 2008: 703-7). 11 Interestingly enough, in 1936 Schlick claimed that Lewis’s remarks on verifiability seemed to be in “perfect agreement” with Viennese Empiricism (Schlick 2008: 716). As a convinced, enthusiastic follower of Wittgenstein’s conception of meaning, Schlick maintained that the meaning of a proposition consists of “the method of its verification” (Schlick 2008: 712). The core argument here is that verification means, exactly as Lewis suggests, “possibility of verification,” that is “verifiability,” but not “verifiable here now” or “being verified now.” In Schlick’s own words: “Verifiability means possibility of verification.” (Schlick 2008: 717-8, 720). Furthermore, it is quite crucial to bear in mind that for Schlick the possibility of verification always means the logical possibility. The empirical verification concerns the truth of a proposition, for instance its accordance with the laws of nature, or lack thereof. By contrast, the meaning of a proposition, i.e. the question about its sense, may be posed only in the framework of the logical possibility of verification. Note that precisely this point was at stake in the November 1934 discussion between Schlick and Carnap concerning the Lewis’ essay, to which Carnap also aimed to respond. For Schlick it was implausible to assume, as Carnap did, that the logical possibility of verification could be in contrast with the laws of nature, because in that case dismissing a natural law would imply that natural laws can be meaningless (RC 029-28-08). Meaningless propositions, by contrast, are, in Schlick’s opinion, the propositions that represent logical impossibilities (Schlick 2008: 723; see also Friedl 2013: 103-4). A further consequence is thus that verifiability as logical possibility represents the sufficient and necessary condition of meaning, showing at once that a meaningful problem can not be “insoluble in principle” (Schlick 2008: 726). And the very example Schlick brings to one’s attention is again the question posed by Lewis about the other side of the moon (Schlick 2008: 728). Accordingly, Schlick underlines that “it will be easy to show that there is no serious divergence between the point of view of the pragmatist as Professor Lewis conceives it and that of the Viennese Empiricist” (Schlick 2008: 716). 12 In answering to Schlick’s proposal to discuss ”Experience and Meaning,” Lewis remarked, in a letter dated December 14, 1934, that with regard to verification the point was perhaps not clear. Lewis’s doubt was in particular about the solipsism vindicated by Carnap but, according to Lewis, also implicit in Schlick’s own verificationism. Lewis wrote: “I have not intended to accuse the Vienna Circle of

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 78

metaphysical solipsism; I have meant to indicate that, for you, the issue between metaphysical solipsism and any metaphysical alternative is meaningless; and I have meant to take exception to that conclusion.” (Schlick Nachlaß, Inv. 107/Lewis – 1). Actually, Lewis was convinced that to ascribe to the act of knowing a solipsistic character was “no more strange or fantastic than Kant’s transcendental unity of apperception” (Lewis 1970: 262). For his part, Schlick too was not satisfied with Carnap’s “methodological solipsism” and in his response to Lewis he defined Carnap’s terminological choice “unfortunate” (Schlick 2008: 735). Schlick stressed that, on a closer look, Carnap’s formulation would reveal not a kind of solipsism, but rather “a method of building concepts” (Schlick 2008: 735). And this move provided Schlick with the opportunity of bringing up for discussion the mistake affecting any manner of considering the mind as something inside the body: the mistake, he explained, that characterizes “the idealistic fallacy which leads to solipsism,” and whose danger Lewis had rightly denounced (Schlick 2008: 737).6 13 Schlick’s late convergence with Lewis, along with his warm interest in Percy W. Bridgman’s The Logic of Modern Physics (Schlick 2008: 187-91, 714), thus testifies to an increasing dialogue between Logical Empiricism and American Pragmatism, even before the dissolution of the European scientific community. They represent – as Alan W. Richardson has rightly underlined – “kindred rather than opposing projects” (Richardson 2003: 1). From a philosophical point of view, the question is whether a careful (re)examination of the Schlick and Lewis case can suggest a possible third way beyond the parting of the ways Schlick had initially seen at the time of the first reception of what he had called in 1910 “unscientific” Pragmatism in Germany. It seems plausible to suggest that Lewis’s conceptual pragmatism and Schlick’s late conception of meaning and verification found a significant convergence point in verificationism, although their respective origins remain doubtless very different and, to some extent, mutually extraneous.7 It is not by accident, we may add, that Lewis played a leading role in rediscovering in the 1930s the father of pragmatism, Charles Sanders Peirce, thereby posing the premises for further developments of the movement, as later exemplified, for instance, by Willard V. O. Quine. In 1981 Quine himself suggested that Peirce’s famous pragmatic maxim could be considered as the first attempt to elaborate a verifiability theory of meaning similar to that shared by the Vienna Circle in its final period (Quine 1981: 30). Moreover, one can suggest that Peirce’s late philosophy offered a sophisticated account of what verification means, inasmuch as Peirce never believed in the “myth” of definite testability of empirical sentences (Chauviré 2001). In this respect Peirce anticipated the “liberalization” of empiricism later pursued by Carnap, though his conception of experience was at any rate “much richer” – according to Hookway – than the Viennese verificationism was able to formulate (Hookway 2013: 33). 14 The later realignment of Pragmatism along Pierce’s positions is of crucial importance to understand Lewis’ own views regarding Logical Empiricism. In vindicating Peirce’s self-identification with a kind of metaphysics Lewis aimed to stress how metaphysical questions, that is more general questions not to be tested by empirical verification, can play a crucial role in orienting inescapable and more general discussions about both the nature of knowledge and science. As Lewis argued in 1941: “There are questions with respect to which some decision must be made in the interest of any theory of science or of knowledge in general, or of the character of experience in general, with respect to which any limited set of experiments or observations, such as those of the

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 79

natural sciences, is either unnecessary or futile or both.” (Lewis 1970: 106). The Logical Positivists, Lewis contended, have totally excluded a similar function of metaphysics conceived, we might say, as a kind of general framework within which it would be possible to treat philosophical questions as a class of statements that surely have meaning, but are not verifiable “under human conditions, and do not belong to the field of science” (Lewis 1970: 107). Was this insight compatible with Schlick’s philosophical rejection of metaphysics and with the linguistic turn he had advocated since the early 1930s? This question leads to a third issue, unfortunately to date little considered by scholarship.

3. Verificationism and Ethical Values

15 Following Lewis’s own suggestions, a final point must thus be stressed. In his article on “Logical Positivism and Pragmatism” Lewis pointed out an aspect that very well summarizes what is at stake here. “It is with respect to problems of evaluation and of ethics,” Lewis suggested, “that the contrast between logical positivism and pragmatism is strongest […] For the pragmatist there can be no final division between ‘normative’ and ‘descriptive’.” (Lewis 1970: 106, 112). As Lewis had written to Schlick in 1934, “the line between the empirical and verifiable and the metaphysical and meaningless” seemed drawn “a little too sharply” when we consider “the objectivity of judgments of values.” This is just the point we need to emphasize in order to properly account for the discussion between Schlick and Lewis about verificationism. According to the standard view of the Vienna Circle, moral judgments and ethical norms in general do not belong to the sphere of cognitive meanings, and consequently, unlike meaningful propositions, they are unconcerned with the value of truth or falsity. This point of view is maintained by Carnap, since The Logical Structure of the World (1928) and even more precisely since his subsequent contributions both on the principle of verification and on the refusal of metaphysics.8 The core thesis of Carnap’s not cognitive ethics is presented in a short article of 1934, where the domain of practical decision and moral values is sharply distinguished from scientific knowledge as well as from verifiable statements. “The scientific consideration,” Carnap argues, “does not determine the goal, but only the way leading to the goal that has been established [by our will].” (Carnap 1934: 259). Hence, in Carnap’s view, an unbridgeable division subsists between the factual dimension and the normative sphere.

16 In 1936 Lewis, by contrast, makes it immediately clear that the problem consists just of establishing if it is actually possible to confine normative statements in the field of the meaningless or the “emotive” language (Lewis 1970: 152). In sketching an alternative solution, Lewis proposes to take into account a different conception of language from the formal-syntactical structure Carnap had privileged. Though Lewis was not influenced by the “linguistic turn” opened by Wittegenstein’s Tractatus, he seems here very sensitive to the different uses of language (both in everyday life and in the scientific context). The use he considered excessively neglected by the Vienna Circle is “expressive use,” entailing the capability of expressing living experience, feelings, esthetic or moral appreciations, intuitions, imagination. Since that domain of human life seems, at first sight, to be quite different from the field of judgment, cognition, knowledge, and verification, a strange ambiguity – Lewis believes – arises when investigating the question of normativity and language use. Usually, and in Vienna in

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 80

particular, expressive meanings have been neglected, assuming that the class of cognitive statements includes only verifiable, true or false propositions belonging to meaningful language. According to Lewis, this narrow categorization simply represents great “confusion,” that we should address as the consequence of an unjustified criterion of verification “denying the possibility of objective meaning in the case of value-predications” (Lewis 1970: 157). A similar failure depends, moreover, on another failure concerning the conception of objectivity. Objectivity (in the authentic pragmatist sense) presupposes and involves at once intersubjectivity, namely the possibility of communicating meanings beyond the risk – not avoided by Carnap – of legitimating a sort of solipsism. To sum up, for Lewis the “reasonable argument” unfortunately not shared by Carnap leads to the conclusion that “there is no law against defining intersubjective value-meanings to a community of behavior” (Lewis 1970: 158). As a consequence, it sounds just very “reasonable” to hold that “it would be highly paradoxical to say that such expressive statements are not true or false” (Lewis 1970: 155). 17 The challenge Lewis posed to the Vienna Circle was surely of the greatest significance. There is a further important difference that has typically been overlooked. For his part, Schlick was indeed engaged in creating a scientific ethics free of metaphysics, questioning nevertheless the not cognitive status of ethics claimed by other followers of Logical Empiricism, as in the very influential case, for instance, of Ayer’s emotive theory of values (Ayer 1946: 102-20). Schlick’s naturalistic ethics was elaborated in his Problems of Ethics, published in 1930 and also quoted by Lewis in the article we examined above. At first glance, Schlick’s work seems to be perfectly imbued with the linguistic turn inaugurated by Wittgenstein, as is easy to see by reading the programmatic declaration of the preface, where Schlick emphasizes that philosophy should not to be intended as a science or “a system of propositions,” but rather as an activity. Not unlike the conception of philosophy that Schlick had already outlined in his seminal article concerning the turning point in philosophy (Schlick 2008: 213-22), the task of philosophy ought to be defined as making clear the sense of scientific propositions or discovering their meaning. Properly speaking, this is in no way a scientific enterprise, but only an activity which “constitutes the essence of philosophy; there are no philosophical propositions, but only philosophical acts” (Schlick 1939: xiii). Nonetheless, in his ethical inquiries Schlick aims to deliver a contribution to the “psychological knowledge” of human moral behavior, the foundation of ethics being a psychological one: ethics is, any commitment to Wittgenstein’s insights about ethics and values notwithstanding, a “factual science” (Schlick 1939: 20-2).9 18 That being said, it is worth noticing that ethics as psychological science or – put otherwise – as a cognitive and naturalistic discipline implies the overcoming of the “great division,” namely the division between factual sciences and normative sciences. 10 For Schlick this kind of opposition is “fundamentally false” (Schlick 1939: 17) and he insists that philosophers ought to conceive of ethics as a science of human reality. As a consequence it appears perfectly right to dismiss Kantian ethics and, more generally, the “pride of those philosophers who hold the questions of ethics to be the most noble and elevated of questions just because they do not refer to the common is but concern the pure ought (das reine Sein-sollende)” (Schlick 1939: 21). In evident opposition to Carnap, Schlick suggests that ethics requests an explanation (Erklärung) both of moral judgment and of moral conduct: because the “essence of moral” is explicable only through the exploration of the causes of human actions, i.e. of their order and

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 81

regularity, the proper method of ethics is a psychological one. In this sense ethics is characterized not by its supposed independence from experience, but rather by its seeking of truth (Schlick 1939: 26-30). 19 Ultimately, Schlick’s approach to ethical problems involves the opposition to the traditional views of both values and ethics of values that represented a widespread trend within the German philosophy at that time (in this connection one could mention, for instance, figures such as Heinrich Rickert or Max Scheler). According to Schlick, contrary to the wrong conception of values as “absolute” and totally independent from both psychological experience and psychological process of evaluation, the principle of verification can be applied to the field of values too. Values are not valid “in themselves” (an sich), but are the result of a psychological genesis, so that they are rooted in empirical state of affairs and, what is more important, they can be verified in light of some given psychological facts. Because of the psychological foundation of values and evaluating acts, it seems fully justified to find “the verification of a proposition concerning value (Wertaussage) in the occurrence of a definite experience.” The criterion of verification regarding moral values lies therefore in finding – as Schlick says – the “corresponding experience,” that is “the feeling of pleasure” they awake. This feeling completely exhausts “the essence of value” (Schlick 1939: 105). 20 Let us turn now to Lewis. The critical attitude he takes toward Carnap cannot be considered as valid in the case of Schlick either. To begin with, Lewis is in accordance with Schlick regarding the empirical status of any sort of evaluation, which can be verified and, accordingly, tested as truth or false. As Lewis will suggest, “evaluations are a form of empirical knowledge, not fundamentally different in what determines their truth or falsity, and what determines their validity or justification, from other kinds of empirical knowledge” (Lewis 1946: 365). In spite of his deep commitment to Kant’s ethics, Lewis remains a veritable pragmatist in considering human actions in the light of the consequences we can foresee, so that, in doing so, we are dealing with “one of the most essential of cognitive capacities” (ibid.). This places him at quite some distance from Schlick. In framing this conceptual space for ethics and value judgments, Lewis attempts to seriously take into account the problem of the objectivity of the ethical sphere, inasmuch as this sphere belongs to inter-subjectivity, to human communication, and to a project of social life universally desirable as rich and rationally oriented by common goals. In this context Lewis stresses again and again how it is important to correctly define the role of the “final test of judgment,” which consists – in few words – of prediction and verification (Lewis 1970: 173-4). 21 There is also something else in common between Lewis and Schlick, albeit surely not between Lewis and Carnap. Lewis and Schlick share the basic assumption that both ethical values and judgments (or propositions) exhibit a cognitive content, being therefore verifiable in the broader sense of verificationism as it was discussed during the 1930s in Vienna as well as at Harvard. By contrast, in comparing Lewis’s and Schlick’s concept of experience one can conclude that Schlick’s was patently narrower than Lewis’. As Sandra Rosenthal has pointed out, for Lewis “means and ends are inextricably fused in the holistic nature of ongoing experience in its temporal flow,” whereas “his ethics integrates the importance of consequences and the role of imperatives rooted in our natural capacities as temporal, goal-oriented, problem- solving beings” (Rosenthal 2007: 139, 151). Whether or not starting from such a

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 82

conception of experience would have made it possible to enlarge and enrich the insights of the Vienna Circle in the period of the “cross-fertilization” between Logical Empiricism and Pragmatism is a question demanding not only historical, but also, and especially, systematic considerations. But this is, of course, a task for further research.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

AYER Alfred J., (1946), Language, Truth and Logic, 2nd edition, New York, Dover.

AYER Alfred J., (1977), Part of my Life, London, Collins and Sons.

BECK Lewis W., (1953/54), “Die Kantkritik von C. I. Lewis und der analytischen Schule,” Kant- Studien, 45, 3-20.

BECK Lewis W., (1968), “The Kantianism of Lewis,” in Paul A. Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of C. I. Lewis, La Salle (Illinois)-London, Open Court-Cambridge University Press, 271-85.

BONNET Christian, (2001), “Le positivisme éthique de Schlick,” Les Études philosophiques, juillet- septembre, 371-85.

CALCATERRA Rosa M., (2009), “L’a priori pragmatico di Clarence Irving Lewis,” Discipline Filosofiche, 29 (2), 103-20.

CALCATERRA Rosa M., (2015), “Il pragmatismo concettuale di Clarence Irving Lewis,” in Giovanni Maddalena & Giancarlo Marchetti (eds), Il pragmatismo. Dalle origini agli sviluppi contemporanei, Roma, Carocci, 157-68.

CARNAP Rudolf, (1934), “Theoretische Fragen u. praktische Entscheidungen,” Natur und Geist, II, 257-60.

CARNAP Rudolf, (2003), The Logical Structure of the World and Pseudoproblems in Philosophy, trans. Rolf A. George, Chicago and La Salle, Open Court.

CHAUVIRÉ Christiane, (2001), “De Cambridge à Vienne. La maxime pragmatiste et sa lecture vérificationniste,” in Jan Sebestik & Antonia Soulez (eds), Le Cercle de Vienne. Doctrines et controverses, Paris, L’Harmattan, 43-58.

FERRARI Massimo, (2017), “William James and the Vienna Circle,” in Sami Pihlström, Friedrich Stadler & Niels Weidtmann (eds), Logical Empiricism and Pragmatism, Wien/New York, Springer, 15-42.

FERRARI Massimo, (2018), “Felicità e conoscenza in Schlick,” in Paola Rumore (ed.), Momenti di felicità. Per Massimo Mori, Bologna, Il Mulino, 93-114.

FONNESU Luca, (2006), Storia dll’etica contemporanea, Roma, Carocci.

FRIEDL Johannes, (2013), Konsequenter Empirismus. Die Entwicklung von Moritz Schlicks Erkenntnistheorie im Wiener Kreis, Wien-New York, Springer.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 83

HOOKWAY Christopher, (2013), “The Principle of Peirce and the Origins of Pragmatism,” in Alan Malachowksi (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Pragmatism, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 17-35.

KEGLEY Jacqueline A. K, (2017), “C. I. Lewis? A Significant Figure in American Pragmatism: Tracing Lines of Influences and Affinities of Themes and Ideas,” in Peter Olen & Carl Sachs (eds), Pragmatism in Transition. Contemporary Perspectives on C. I. Lewis, Cham, Palgrave Macmillan, 11-39.

LEWIS Clarence Irving, (1918), A Survey of Symbolic Logic, Berkeley, University of California Press.

LEWIS Clarence Irving, (1929), Mind and World Order. Outline of a Theory of Knowledge, London, Scribner’s Sons.

LEWIS Clarence Irving, (1946), An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, La Salle (Illinois), The Open Court Publishing.

LEWIS Clarence Irving, (1970), Collected Papers of Clarence Irving Lewis, edited by John D. Goheen & John L. Mothershead Jr., Stanford (California), Stanford University Press.

LIMBECK-LILIENAU Christian, (2012), “Carnap’s Encounter with Pragmatism,” in Richard Creath (ed.), Rudolf Carnap and the Legacy of Logical Empiricism, Dordrecht/Heidelberg/London/New York, Springer, 89-111.

MORMANN Thomas, (2006), “Werte bei Carnap,” Zeitschfrift für Philosophie und philosophische Forschung, 60, 169-89.

MORMANN Thomas, (2012), “Toward a Theory of the Pragmatic A Priori: From Carnap to Lewis and Beyond,” in Richard Creath (ed.), Rudolf Carnap and the Legacy of Logical Empiricism, Dordrecht/ Heidelberg/London/New York, Springer, 113-32.

MORRIS Charles, (1937), Logical Positivism, Pragmatism and Scientific Empiricism, Paris, Hermann.

MURPHEY Murray G., (2005), C. I. Lewis. The Last Great Pragmatist, Albany, State University of New York Press.

MURPHEY Murray G., (2006), “C. I. Lewis,” in John R. Shook & Joseph Margolis (eds), A Companion to Pragmatism, Oxford, Blackwell, 94-100.

NEURATH Otto, (1983), Philosophical Papers 1913-1946, ed. by Robert S. Cohen & Marie Neurath, Dordrecht/Boston/Lancaster, Reidel.

OLEN Peter, (2017), “Diverging Paths? Conceptual Pragmatism and Logical Empiricism,” in Peter Olen & Carl Sachs (eds), Pragmatism in Transition. Contemporary Perspectives on C. I. Lewis, Cham, Palgrave Macmillan, 63-77.

QUINE Willard V. O., (1981), “The Pragmatists’ Place in Empiricism,” in Robert J. Mulvaney & Philipp M. Zeltner (eds), Pragmatism: Its Sources and Prospects, Columbia, University of South Carolina Press, 21-39.

RICHARDSON Alan W., (2003), “Logical Empiricism, American Pragmatism, and the Fate of Scientific Philosophy in North America,” in Gary L. Hardcastle & Alan W. Richardson (eds), Logical Empiricism in North America, Minneapolis-London, University of Minnesota Press, 1-24.

ROSENTHAL Sandra B., (2007), C. I. Lewis in Focus. The Pulse of Pragmatism, Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press.

SCHLICK Moritz, (1939), Problems of Ethics, trans. by David Rynin, New York, Prentice-Hall.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 84

SCHLICK Moritz, (1974), General Theory of Knowledge, trans. by Albert E. Blumberg, with an introduction by Albert E. Blumberg & Herbert Feigl, Wien, Springer.

SCHLICK Moritz, (1979), Philosophical Papers, vol. I: (1909-1922), edited by Henk L. Mulder & Barbara F. B van de Velde-Schlick, trans. P. Haeth, Dordrecht/Boston/London, Reidel.

SCHLICK Moritz, (2008), Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Abteilung I, vol. 6, Die Wiener Zeit. Aufsätze, Beiträge, Rezensionen 1926-1936, edited by Johannes Friedl & Heiner Rutte, Wien-New York, Springer.

SIEGETSLEITNER Anne, (2014), Ethik und Moral im Wiener Kreis. Zur Geschichte eines engagierten Humanismus, Köln-Weimar, Böhlau.

STADLER Friedrich, (2003), “The ‘Wiener Kreis’ in Great Britain: Emigration and Interaction in the Philosophy of Science,” in Edward Timms & John Hughes (eds), Intellectual Migration and Cultural Transformation. Refugees from National Socialism in the English-Speaking World, Wien-New York, Springer, 155-79.

STADLER Friedrich, (2007), “History of the Philosophy of Science. From Wissenschaftslogik (Logic of Science) to Philosophy of Sciences: Europe and America, 1930-1960,” in Theo Kuipers (ed.), Handbook of the Philosophy of Science: General Philosophy of Science – Focal Issues, Amsterdam, Elsevier, 577-658.

STERN-GILLET Suzanne, (1983), “Schlick’s ‘Factual Ethics’,” Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 144-145, 145-62.

STUMP David J., (2011), “Arthur Pap’s Functional Theory of the A Priori,” Hopos, I, 273-89.

STUMP David J., (2015), Conceptual Change and Philosophy of Science. Alternative Interpretations of the A Priori, New York, Routledge.

STUMP David J., (2017), “The Pragamtic Theory of A Priori,” in Peter Olen & Carl Sachs (eds), Pragmatism in Transition. Contemporary Perspectives on C. I. Lewis, Cham, Palgrave Macmillan, 147-67.

ZAREBSKI Tomasz, (2017), “Sellars and Lewis on the Given and Empirical Knowledge,” in Peter Olen & Carl Sachs (eds), Pragmatism in Transition. Contemporary Perspectives on C. I. Lewis, Cham, Palgrave Macmillan, 199-217.

NOTES

1. These articles are now collected in Volume 6 of Schlick’s works (Schlick 2008). 2. Zarebski 2017 has very well shown that Lewis’s epistemology is immune to Sellar’s criticism of the “myth of the given.” 3. On this issue see in particular Kegley (2017: 20). 4. As Rosenthal (2007: 41) points out: “Lewis emphatically rejects as epistemologically untenable the nominalist conception that individuals are the first knowables and that individuals are primitively determinable by ostensive reference. It is only by reference to intentional meaning as criterion in mind by which one applies or refuses to apply a term that denotation is possible, for we must first have criteria for determining what experiences are relevant.” 5. This example had been already formulated by Schlick in his article on positivism and realism (1932), which Lewis likewise had in mind (Schlick 2008: 332). 6. See furthermore (Schlick 2008: 743): “Solipsism is nonsense, because its starting-point, the egocentric predicament, is meaningless.” 7. Olen 2017 suggests that Schlick’s and Lewis’s point of views are patently quite different and they do not allow for a convincing claim on the convergence between Logical Empiricism and

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 85

Pragmatism. Olen still seems to consider Schlick and Carnap as the common targets of Lewis’s criticism, thereby overlooking the fact that Carnap’s formal language surely represents a very particular declination of verificationism. Lewis’s skeptical attitude toward Carnap does not overlap with his doubts toward Schlick. See especially what Lewis remarks on in the late article Logical Positivism and Pragmatism by referring to Carnap’s Philosophy and Logical Syntax: “The logical-positivistic theory [i.e. Carnap] fails to distinguish between syntactic or linguistic meaning – a relation of one verbal expression to other verbal expressions – and empirical meaning, which concerns the relation of expressions to what may be given in experience.” (Lewis 1970: 96). This last statement (“the relation of expressions to what may be given in experience”) is just the point of Schlick’s unfortunately only sketched conception of Konstatierungen (Friedl 2013: 179-244). 8. To tell the truth, in 1928 Carnap was not so clear in questioning the not cognitive status of values (see Carnap 2003: 233-4; and Mormann 2006). In any case, Lewis was very well acquainted with Carnap’s major work, which he had carefully studied (Murphey 2005: 221). 9. It is worth noticing that in his article of 1932 The Future of Philosophy Schlick underlines the scientific characters of ethics (and esthetics) in these terms: “Ethics and esthetics certainly do not yet possess sufficiently clear concepts; most of their work is still devoted to clarifying them, and therefore it may justly be called philosophical. But in the future they will, of course, become a part of the great system of the sciences.” (Schlick 2008: 388). 10. On Schlick’s ethics see Stern-Gillet 1983, Bonnet 2001, Fonnesu (2006: 240-3), Siegetsleitner (2014: 265-331) and Ferrari 2018.

ABSTRACTS

This paper explores the philosophical relationship between Clarence Irving Lewis and Moritz Schlick, questioning their understanding of verificationism. At stake is not only the crucial point of the possibility of verifying statements regarding, for instance, the other side of the moon, but also the proper status of ethical values in opposition to, or in connection with, scientific propositions grounded in experience. This latter aspect can better explain how both Lewis and Schlick understand the notion of experience in general, posing the conceptual framework within which Pragmatism and Logical Empiricism established a dialogue in the 1930s but still worthy of closer inquiry.

AUTHOR

MASSIMO FERRARI

Università degli Studi di Torino massimo.ferrari[at]unito.it

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 86

Pragmatism in the Third Reich Heidegger and the Baumgarten Case

Hans-Joachim Dahms

AUTHOR'S NOTE

I published some years ago an article covering briefly the current subject: Dahms (1987/1998: 299-303). In the meantime new literature appeared on the theme, especially Vogt 2002 and Hausmann 2003. Whereas Hausmann tackled the task from the viewpoint of American Studies in Germany, though adding a number of new sources, Vogts writes as a historian of philosophy without considering any archival files concerning the Baumgarten case. I will not only comment on these works, but also add some new sources from the Göttingen university archive and its library. I thank Prof. Robert P. Ericksen (Gig Harbour, Wa., USA) for valuable help in improving my English draft.

1. Introduction

1 A very peculiar picture emerges when one looks at the reception of American pragmatism in Germany and takes not only the third Reich into account, but the entire 60 year timespan from 1900 to 1960, that is: the period of the Wilhelminian Empire, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich and the Federal Republic till around 1960. Each of these periods covers 15 years more or less, and so may be compared. If one would only take into account the political and historical situation, the Großwetterlage so to speak, one would probably assume that the intensity of German dealings with pragmatism would show the following order: 1) Federal Republic, 2) Weimar Republic, 3) Wilhelminian Empire, 4) Third Reich.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 87

2 The strange thing now is that the real order seems the reverse. I will not try to create the illusion that one could measure exactly a complex entity such as intensity of reception in general and cross-border in particular. That is not possible, because number and kind of international contacts between scientists, reviews and translations of foreign books, the amount of secondary literature and dealings in lectures and seminars are each difficult to grasp, let alone to be combined into a weighted summary criterion. Also the (positive or negative) evaluations contained in or implied by those activities and their results need to be considered. 3 Nevertheless I will try to give some hints for the justification of my thesis. These may serve at the same time as a short overview of the reception of pragmatism in Germany, before I then concentrate on my main theme in this article: pragmatism in the Third Reich. 4 The relatively widespread reception of pragmatism during the Wilhelminian empire has surely its main cause in the fact that William James, as the best-known pragmatist, published in 1907 a popular synthesis of his philosophy under the title Pragmatism. A New Name for some Old Ways of Thinking,1 which was translated a year later by Wilhelm Jerusalem into German.2 In this small book James not only propagated and defended the pragmatic maxim of the founding father of pragmatism, Charles Sanders Peirce, but also tried to apply the maxim to the problem of truth. According to his theory the truth of a belief consists in one formulation in its verification, in another one in the usefulness for the bearer of that belief. 5 At the Third International Congress of Philosophy 1908 in Heidelberg, Pragmatism made a first big appearance on the European continent. The theme “pragmatist theory of truth” was by far the most widely discussed at the whole congress. Only very few German philosophers present in Heidelberg missed the opportunity to give their opinion on James’s pragmatism. Many published a critical review afterwards (including Moritz Schlick,3 the founder of the Vienna Circle). But that reception was more or less superficial: most of James’s critics leaned only on the chapter on truth and not at all on the introduction and the last one, where James propagated his theory as a “happy harmonizer” between the fact-orientated “toughminded” and the “tenderminded,” who preferred a religious world-view. The toughminded were given “truth” as verification in James´s book, the tenderminded truth as usefulness, as a guide to life. As far as I know, no full-fledged monograph on pragmatism came forward in Germany at the time. 6 During the following period of the Weimar Republic, only a few articles on pragmatism were published in Austria by Wilhelm Jerusalem, the translator of James’s Pragmatism book.4 Max Scheler’s book, Die Wissensformen und die Gesellschaft, came a little later in Germany. There Scheler conceded a role for a pragmatistic interpretation of some of the sciences, namely the natural sciences, but refused to extend such an interpretation to the humanities and theology.5 7 During the Third Reich, well-informed monographs on pragmatism appeared for the first time in German in 1936 and 1938, namely the two volumes of Die geistigen Grundlagen des amerikanischen Gemeinwesens (the spiritual foundations of the American community) by Eduard Baumgarten.6 Part one dealt with Benjamin Franklin, a pragmatist “avant la lettre” in the eye of the author. Part two was called, Der Pragmatismus: R. W. Emerson, W. James, John Dewey.7 Later on a number of publications appeared which leaned on the second part, namely by Wilhelm Burkamp,8 Arnold

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 88

Gehlen9 and Helmuth Schelsky. These publications are better informed about pragmatism than their forerunners in the two previous periods (with the possible exception of Scheler) and evaluate it throughout more positively. 8 Afterwards in the early Federal Republic of Germany (up to 1960), only a small but extremely well-informed book was published by Jürgen von Kempski on Peirce in 1952. 10 In it Kempski filled the gap which was left open by Baumgarten’s strange omission of Peirce. 9 Now for the question that I will try to answer in this article: how can one explain the fact that the most intense philosophical reception of pragmatism in Germany up to the 1960s took place in the Third Reich, where one would expect perhaps the opposite, a revival of German leadership aspirations in philosophy or a sort of philosophical autarky (perhaps masked with a German doppelgänger for pragmatism like Nietzsche)? 10 The answer to that question is – to put it shortly – that the blossoming of the German reception of pragmatism in the Third Reich had a prehistory during the Weimar Republic, which I will sketch in a first section. It came about by the first organized exchange of young scientists and philosophers between Germany and the USA, which led to first-hand-knowledge of pragmatism. 11 A book project based on that close experience was almost aborted during Nazi rule, and not only that, its author (namely Baumgarten) almost lost his job and all hope to pursue an academic career. That was a consequence of a negative expert opinion (Gutachten) on Baumgarten by Martin Heidegger, who was without doubt at the time the most prominent German (and at the same time National Socialist) philosopher, who seemingly dreamed in the first year of the dictatorship to play the role of a “Führer des Führers.” This Heidegger-Baumgarten affair I describe in the second section. 12 That Baumgarten could prevail in the end, get a habilitation, publish his book and later on even got a philosophy chair in Königsberg, can only be explained by the circumstance that he built ties with the rising star in Nazi philosophy, who so to speak succeeded Heidegger as Führer of German philosophy, a certain Alfred Bauemler. Baeumler had built a career in philosophy at the university of Dresden prior to 1933. He was known as co-editor (together with Manfred Schröter) of the prestigious Handbuch der Philosophie (Handbook of Philosophy), which started in 1926 and, for our theme more importantly, also of an edition of the works of Friedrich Nietzsche from 1930 onwards. It was he who already in 1931 depicted Nietzsche as a propagandist of the authoritarian state in his book, Nietzsche als Philosoph und Politiker.11 13 But Baumgarten’s alliance with Baeumler came at a cost. Although he had already tried to appear as a Nazi shortly after 1933, Baumgarten now needed to rewrite his book manuscript thoroughly, mainly in two directions: a “re-interpretation” of the democratic tendencies and traditions of pragmatism and an assimilation of pragmatism with Nietzsche´s philosophy. Baumgarten’s alliance with Baeumler I describe in the third section. 14 How was Baumgartens pragmatism-book reviewed both in Germany and in the USA? It is remarkable that it was received on the whole better in pragmatism’s homeland than in Germany. I describe and discuss this divergence in section four. 15 After his habilitation and the publication of the pragmatism-book Baumgarten had to wait a couple of years, before he was promoted surprisingly in 1941 to one of the most prestigious chairs of philosophy: the Kant-professorship in Königsberg. It seems that he

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 89

embraced during that period national-socialist ideology more fully than in his Göttingen years. A sketch of this episode I give in section five. 16 Concluding remarks try to answer the question whether it is justified to call Baumgarten a Nazi philosopher.

2. Baumgarten and Pragmatism (prior to 1933)

17 In order to understand the following some facts about Eduard Baumgarten’s biography and his academic career must be stated. He (26.8.1898-15.08.1982) stemmed from a liberal academic family. His father, Fritz Baumgarten, had been director of a Gymnasium and later on university professor in Freiburg.12 The famous brothers Max and Alfred Weber were his uncles, as was Otto Baumgarten, a liberal theologian, who towards the end of the 1920s became chairman of the German league of Human Rights. Baumgarten immediately after his final exams at school volunteered as a soldier in the First World War. During that time he came into contact with Heidegger who at the time served as an agent in the office of postal censorship in Freiburg. After studies of philosophy and sociology in Heidelberg and Munich (there still with Max Weber before his premature death in the spring of 1920), Baumgarten submitted his dissertation with Alfred Weber in Heidelberg under the longish title, “Inner forms of human community. Material sociological investigations for the interpretation of the present cultural movement.” The thesis remained unpublished. After receiving his doctorate he – together with 12 other postgraduates – took a scholarship for the USA from an organization founded by Alfred Weber,13 which shortly later became the Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst. Baumgarten visited as a post-doctoral student (not as a visiting professor),14 first in the winter semester of 1924/25 at Columbia university in New York, and in the summer semester of 1925 at Harvard. While in New York he came in contact with Dewey and some of his pupils, an encounter which led to his plan to translate Dewey’s “Experience and Nature.”15 When Baumgarten asked Dewey for his opinion on the introduction Baumgarten had written for the envisaged German edition, he received the following response: […] you have stated the tenor of my ideas with great exactness and clearness; I have no criticisms to make, either of the general statement or of the analysis of “Experience and Nature” […] I almost wish I could help you with some adverse comments, but as it is I can only beg you to go ahead and wish you godspeed. I feel most grateful to have you as an interpreter of my ideas in German thought.16 18 After his stay in New York and Harvard and several short-time engagements elsewhere, Baumgarten served as lecturer and assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison from spring 1926 onwards. His future wife, Grete (also a former guest-student from Germany, whom he met at Harvard), had attained there an assistant professorship in ancient history earlier. In Madison Baumgarten offered mostly courses on German contemporary philosophy. He also showed a lively interest in the culture and philosophy of his host country, especially for pragmatism.

19 Baumgarten left the USA in 1929, first on a leave of absence from the university of Madison, in order to study current trends in German philosophy. In 1931 he decided to quit his position in the USA and go permanently back to Germany. Heidegger, who was called to the prestigious philosophy chair in Freiburg in 1929 as succesor of Husserl, had offered Baumgarten a position as assistent professor. Already in the first Heidegger

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 90

seminar, however, focused on Kant, it came to a clash between the two on proper interpretation of the categorical imperative. This meant that any hope for the assistant professorship died immediately as well. 20 In place of Baumgarten, the assistant position in Freiburg went to Werner Brock, a pupil of the phenomenologist philosopher Moritz Geiger in Göttingen and son in law of Herman Nohl, a follower of Wilhelm Dilthey who, after a stint in Jena, became a professor of pedagogy in Göttingen.17 None of these connections, however, protected Brock, when shortly afterwards he was dismissed as a Jew in Freiburg by the Nazis. Heidegger gave him at least a letter of recommendation for an exile in England.18 21 What became of Baumgarten? He was determined to pursue his career in Germany (even later on in the Third Reich) and he got very prominent backing. It was the former Prussian minister of Culture Carl Heinrich Becker, who organized a small campaign in favor of Baumgarten. Becker singled out the Göttingen pedagogy professor Herman Nohl to head this campaign, and Nohl in turn asked a number of professors to give their expert opinions on Baumgarten. 22 In this context the opinion of Edmund Husserl is the most noteworthy: […] How seriously he (Baumgarten) took his intellectual growth and his intention to influence the totality (Gesamtheit) of the German population is shown by his leaving the beautiful and secure position in Madison, and also by the passionate energy he has shown in recent years in his scientific work. The failure of his habilitation project in Freiburg – considering the circumstances – only documents his honour; it is testimony to the strength of his individuality, which does not let him deviate, neither by fashionable suggestions (let alone personal favours), from what he gained as his own insight and conscientious work.19 23 One might overlook here – reading only the praise of Baumgarten’s character and work – the term “fashionable suggestions,” against which Baumgarten had struggled. Given the circumstances, this anonymous hint can be interpreted only as a criticism of Heidegger’s work. Seen in this way, it shows the split in the German phenomenological movement already before 1933, that is, between its founding father Husserl and his most prominent follower, Heidegger.

24 There is another letter written by one of the elder statesmen in German philosophy in Baumgarten’s favor, namely by Heinrich Rickert, the head of the southwestern branch of Neukantianism, a letter which survives in the Baumgarten personal file at Göttingen university. Rickert writes that he had known Baumgarten even as a child. When he met him again later on, Baumgarten made an unfavorable, immature impression, giving Rickert no inclination to discuss philosophical issues with him. He then heard from Marianne Weber, Max Weber’s widow, that Baumgarten had experienced a hard fight for survival in the USA. When he came back from America, he “was changed completely.” He had considerably matured and was very sympathetic now. Rickert found his information on American universities and American youth interesting, and now this more mature Baumgarten made a very good impression on him.20 25 Baumgarten’s ties to the Göttingen academic scene as well to some of the most prominent German philosophers helped him in the end to achieve a lecturer position for American studies (Amerikakunde) at the English Seminar at Göttingen in 1933. Amerikakunde was not introduced in Göttingen by the Nazis, as Hausmann has it. 21 There was a long tradition in place in Göttingen, which dated back to the time when the university had been – before the annexion of the kingdom of Hannover by Prussia in 1866 – the university of the state of Hannover (Landesuniversität). Plans to found an

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 91

entire institute for American studies before the First World War did not materialize. But at least the subject was covered from 1921 onwards by an honorary professor, the US-American Thomas Cuming Hall, until he reached emeritus status in 1931.22 He had been also in charge of the Englisch-Amerikanischer Kulturkreis (English-America Culture Circle),23 which cared for visiting student from Britain and the USA and organized public lectures given mostly by experts from outside Göttingen. 26 The aftermath of the economic crisis of 1929 ff. then led to the idea to pursue Amerikakunde with younger (and cheaper) lecturers instead. Baumgarten was invited to give a lecture on the 15th of November 1932 in the English-American Culture Circle of the University of Göttingen on “Benjamin Franklin and the psychology of American everyday life (Alltag).”24 27 Although he had published next to nothing (even his dissertation remained unpublished), he seems to have made a good showing at this event, which gave him the upper hand over a rival candidate, Dr. Plessow, in the discussions of the philosophical faculty. 28 Hans Hecht, the director of the English seminary, then asked the faculty to decide the lectureship case in favor of Baumgarten – in a letter which was sent on the 30th of January 1933, the exact date of the Nazi “seizure of power.” The faculty had agreed on the 17th of January.25 While the decision-making about his lectureship in the faculty in Göttingen and the ministry in Berlin dragged on (possibly caused by the turnover in the administration after the Nazi “seizure of power”), Baumgarten prepared extensive programs for his lectures and seminars, as he reported to Hecht. The themes he proposed were centered on the philosophy of Peirce, James and Dewey, American psychology (James and Watson) and pedagogy (Dewey). What he then actually taught after 1933 is a bit different: Peirce is no longer mentioned, nor Watson. 29 The relevant document for the lectureship was sent in April 1933 to the ministry, now under the Nazi – and former Göttingen student of classical philology – Bernhard Rust. Already in May Baumgarten should have started his courses, but it seems that the time between obtaining the lectureship and the publication of the personal- and lecture- program was too short to announce his course for the summer-semester 1933. For the winter-semester 1933/34, he announced in any case a lecture series “American man as seen in his philosophy (Emerson, James, Dewey).” That is almost identical with the main idea of his pragmatism book of 1938. Relevant for his publications were also the lectures from the winter-semester 1936/37 “Emerson” and the winter semester 1937/38, again “Emerson.”26 30 Baumgarten’s habilitation thesis is not my main subject here, pragmatism is. But it is important for the following to know at least approximately what the main trends are in it. I think that one of the members of the habilitations commission described the content remarkably well. Hans Lipps, promoted from Göttingen to a philosophical chair in Frankfurt in 1935, wrote from there: The present monograph about Franklin is the middle piece of a book on the “world- view foundations of the American community.” Two thesis are presented: 1. the entire theological-political body of ideas of the colonial commonwealth of the earlier 17th century was captured and radically secularized to a purely political “common sense”; 2. In doing this Franklin was the real inaugurator of the following American philosophy in the 19th and 20th century, he was the first American “pragmatist.”27

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 92

31 It seems that Lipps was also helpful to provide a publisher for the Franklin-book.28

3. The Heidegger-Baumgarten Affair

32 When Baumgarten submitted in 1935 his habilitation thesis, “Die Grundlagen des Amerikanischen Gemeinwesens, Band I”29 (“Foundations of the American community, part one: Benjamin Franklin. The Teaching Master of the American Revolution”), his career came to an abrupt end as a result of the following expert opinion on him from Martin Heidegger, which seemingly had followed Baumgarten after his move from Freiburg to Göttingen. I need to quote the letter from the 16th of December 1933 in full: Dr. Baumgarten attended from 1929 to 1931 my lecture courses and seminars with the intention to habilitate in Freiburg in philosophy. During that time it became clear that he neither scientifically nor morally (charakterlich) was suitable. I made that clear to him in 1932 and ended personal contacts with him. Baumgarten stems in his relationships as well as his intellectual attitude from the liberal- democratic Heidelberg-based circle of intellectuals around Max Weber. During his stay here he was everything other than a National Socialist […]. I am surprised to hear that he is lecturer (Privatdozent) in Göttingen, because I cannot imagine on the basis of which scientific achievements he was admitted for habilitation. After Baumgarten had failed with me, he had lively contacts with the Jew Fränkel, who worked earlier in Göttingen and now was dismissed here. I assume that Baumgarten has accommodated himself in Göttingen in this way, which may also explain his actual connections there. Baumgarten is very clever rhetorically. In philosophy I regard him as a deceiver without a thorough and sound knowledge. This judgment is based on my acquaintance two years ago. Whether a real change of his political outlook has prepared itself in the meantime, I don´t know. Because of his stay in America, during which he was americanized considerably in outlook and ways of thinking, he has doubtless achieved good knowledge of the country and its people. But I have considerable reasons to doubt his political instinctive reliability and capability of judgment. Basically there is always the possibilty that Baumgarten changes thoroughly and strengthens. But it needs a proper (trial period?). I find at the moment his entrance into the SA as equally impossible as into the Dozentenschaft (the association of academic lecturers).30 33 There are other copies of slightly different versions of Heidegger’s opinion. The original did not survive. The files of the Göttingen chapter of the Dozentenschaft, to which it was seemingly addressed, were all burned by its last Führer, the classical philologist Hans Drexler, shortly before the end of the Second World War.31 After 1945 Heidegger tried to downplay the importance of his expert opinion in his denazification process. He wrote to a member of the denazification committee that he had been asked from Göttingen to give his judgment on Baumgarten’s scientific abilities and his National Socialist reliability. Regarding this aspect he had pointed to Baumgarten’s liberal descent (but he omits his reference to “the Jew Fränkel”). Heidegger also avoids identifying who “in Göttingen” asked him to give his opinion.

34 Very telling in Heidegger’s Gutachten is the antisemitism, which was brought up first as a theme in Toni Cassirer’s book.32 It was then discussed anew, when a letter from the late 1920s (that is: before the Nazi “seizure of power”) was published, and later on resurfaced again after the publication of Heidegger’s black notebooks.33 In my view Heidegger was not an antisemite on principle, but used it here and there as a means to discredit enemies. Think of the “Jews” in his environment: his forerunner Edmund Husserl, his pupils Karl Löwith and Herbert Marcuse or his relation with Hannah Arendt. In the context of the Heidegger-Baumgarten affair, it is also noteworthy that he

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 93

preferred the “Jew” Werner Brock to the “aryan” Eduard Baumgarten. Furthermore, Heidegger’s suspicion that Baumgarten had achieved his position in Göttingen through a connection with “the Jew Fränkel” is wrong, (as I showed above). 35 It seems that after the winter 1933/34 Heidegger’s opinion slept in the files of the Dozentenschaft, until Baumgarten again “wanted something,” now indeed to undergo the habilitation process. 36 Martin Heidegger in November/December 1933 surely was the most prominent German philosopher, because of his philosophical stature as the author of Sein und Zeit and the Davos dispute with Ernst Cassirer, but also because of his extraordinary engagement for National Socialism. It became public for the first time in his famous speech as Rector of Freiburg University, “Die Selbstbehauptung der deutschen Universität” (The Self-affirmation of the German University), with its famous propagation of the trias of Arbeits-, Wehr- and Wissensdienst (labor, military and knowledge service) and many other speeches and activities.34 It remains to be explained how Baumgarten, depicted as liberal, associated with Jews and, furthermore, mostly unknown in academic circles won that struggle in the end.

4. The Rescue of Baumgarten’s Habilitation and of his Pragmatism Book and its Ideological Costs.

37 At first Baumgarten’s case seemed hopeless. The Dozentenschaft not only denied the habilitation, but also demanded a time-limit for his lectureship. They argued that Baumgarten was not suited to present American studies in the National Socialist state, given his time in America, because, “There is the danger that many foreigners are not acquainted with National Socialism in the sense it needs to be under all circumstances.” 35 The preferred limitation for Baumgarten’s lectureship was a half year.

38 So how could Baumgarten’s career and his habilitation on the foundations of American society, the second part of which was his book on pragmatism, survive and prevail? 39 Baumgarten was able through “connections” in the office of the Dozentenschaft to look into Heidegger’s opinion. He then got an appointment with the leader of the Göttingen chapter of that organization, the medicine professor Werner Blume, and was allowed to describe the whole conflict with Heidegger from his perspective, backing it up with a lengthy documentation.36 As a first step toward regaining respectability for Baumgarten, the new professor of English studies, Hans-Oskar Wilde,37 intervened. At the age of only 28, he had replaced the “Jew” Hans Hecht.38 Now, in his capacity as the new dean of the Philosophical faculty at Göttingen, he asked the leader of the Dozentenschaft for a rejection of Heidegger’s expert opinion. He indeed got it. The leader of the Dozentenschaft wrote: There have been at different times expert opinions on Dr. E. Baumgarten issued by the Dozentenschaft. All these opinions I would now like to supplement. Our former opinions were based on information negative for Baumgarten coming from Freiburg. We today have come to the conclusion that this information was not valid and that false facts have been reported. Under these circumstances, and especially since I have come to know Dr. E. Baumgarten better, I declare now that the Dozentenschaft will always speak up in favor of Dr. Baumgarten.39 40 From then onwards everything went as quick as lightning. The required colloquium lecture to be delivered by Baumgarten took place less than a week later. It was on

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 94

Kant’s categorial imperative, exactly the theme over which Baumgarten and Heidegger’s ways had parted before 1933. In order to take the final step toward the status of Privatdozent, Baumgarten had to undergo a “Gemeinschaftslager” (community camp) – the name given to paramilitary drill and ideological indoctrination at Rittmarhausen near Göttingen.40

41 It seems that Baumgarten had in the meantime found a powerful ally, namely Alfred Baeumler (19th of November 1887-19th of March 1968). When exactly that happened I don’t know. Baumgarten wrote about this encounter on other occasions, but the original correspondence between the two men from the 1930s is not accessible.41 42 Baumgarten said at the end of 1938 in a letter about his relationship to Baeumler: Herr Baeumler in 1935 took notice of some of my works, got interested in them, invited me to a scientific discussion and, as a result, let me publish some longer articles in his journal; he gave me good advice in 1936 about the call to the University of Berlin (a.o. chair for national science (Nationenwissenschaft)) and invited me to a meeting […] with Reichsleiter Rosenberg […].42 43 Who was Baeumler? As I indicated in the introduction, he built his academic career before 1933 with the edition of the Handbook of Philosophy43 and an edition of Nietzsche’s works.44 But he also leaned politically early on towards fascism, especially in his small book, “Nietzsche as philosopher and politician,” of 1931.45 Its content does not need to be treated here at length. However, he reviewed there all of Nietzsche’s antidemocratic and antisocialist polemics.46 In his epilogue, Baeumler reminded readers of Nietzsche’s recommendation for a close coalition with Russia (at Nietzsche’s time the Czarist empire, at Baeumler’s the Soviet state) on the one hand and his admonition against an American-style future on the other. The last paragraph reads: Germany can exist on the world stage only under the form of greatness. It has the choice only to be the anti-Roman power of Europe or not to exist at all. If it integrates into the civilisation of the West, it submits to Rome; if it forgets its Germanic descent, it submits to the east. The creator of a Europe which is more than a Roman colony, can only be the nordic Germany, the Germany of Hölderlin und Nietzsche. Germany does not belong alongside Bismarck, it belongs in the age of the Great War. The German state of the future will not be a continuation of Bismarck’s creation, it will be created from the spirit of Nietzsche and the spirit of the Great War.47 44 Shortly after the publication of this book, Baeumler also went public politically when he joined the National Socialist “Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur,” founded by the Nazi party’s ideologue, Alfred Rosenberg, when he signed on the 27th of July 1932 a call on university professors to vote for Hitler.48 These several activities earned Baeumler a newly founded chair for philosophy and political pedagogy in early 1933 in Berlin. The university and the philosophical faculty were not even asked to give an opinion on that move. Already on the occasion of the bookburnings in May 1933 Baeumler gave a speech to the Nazi students.49

45 Now three years later, when the Baumgarten case entered its decisive stage, Baeumler had been promoted in Rosenberg’s administrative body, comissioner of the Führer for the supervision of the whole ideological training and education of the NSDAP (“Beauftragter des Führers für die Überwachung der gesamten geistigen Schulung und Erziehung der NSDAP”) to the directorate of the Amt Wissenschaft (science office). This not only allowed him to mingle within the Nazi-party, but also gave him significant influence within science and education as a whole.50

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 95

46 Heidegger had held American pragmatism in low esteem, having said for instance in Freiburg to Baumgarten that Dewey was not worthwhile to study because he lacked a philosophical niveau of his own.51 That opinion on pragmatism was endemic among German philosophers.52 So why did Baumgarten (and Baeumler) not share this wide- spread suspicion and resentment? 47 We can look at several choices Baumgarten made in preparation, before his books were ready for publication. The overall idea of his book series included, 1) his decision to start with Benjamin Franklin, 2) his decision to shape the second volume, the one on pragmatism, around the inclusion of Emerson, and the omission of Peirce, 3) and his “reinterpretation” of pragmatism’s relationship to democracy. 48 Ad 1) Baumgarten’s book series was meant to show that pragmatism was the systematized version of a way of thinking that was present already in early stages of the American revolution and embraced intuitively by some of its leading figures like Franklin. The thesis is not that philosophers like James and Dewey somehow followed consciously Franklin’s steps or even cared about his works. According to Baumgarten, they rationalized or – to use the phrase of Ernst Rothacker – highly stylized the American spirit embodied by people like Franklin. This overall idea becomes especially transparent in the last chapter of the Franklin book. 49 More interesting than Baumgarten’s general idea in the Franklin book seems to me his critique of certain ideas presented by his uncle Max Weber about the origins of capitalism, especially in the USA. Weber in his book, “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,” had depicted Franklin as an important example of that kind of Protestant asceticism which made it possible for capitalism in the USA to flourish. Citing exact biographical information about Franklin, Baumgarten showed good reason to doubt Weber´s portrayal. 50 Ad 2) Moving beyond the Franklin book, it seems quite odd from today’s perspective that Baumgarten included a chapter in his pragmatism book on Ralph Waldo Emerson – while not saying anything about the founding father of pragmatism, Charles Sanders Peirce. Why is that? 51 Baumgarten seems to have convinced himself, and Baeumler, that pragmatism – and especially its alleged forerunner Emerson – had a systematic and personal relationship to Nietzsche, the philosopher whom not only Baeumler, but also his master Rosenberg, took as the decisive ideological forerunner of National Socialism. Emerson is presented as someone who enormously influenced Nietzsche. Some passages about Emerson’s position vis-a-vis democracy at first glance stand in strange contrast to Baumgarten’s reinterpretation of the term “democracy” in his introduction (see below): “It is… (important, Dahms) to establish this firm taking root (Verwurzelung) by Emerson in the political realm of American democracy. Emerson was not so much prophet of a future time or of an Übermensch (like Nietzsche, Dahms), but friend of his nearest neighbors, priest of an already existing parish community and its present faith […]. Emerson was as philosopher a democrat and an American.53 52 Baumgarten described later on, how he formed the hypothesis that Nietzsche must have something to do with Emerson already during his first seminar-course in Göttingen in the summer-semester 1933, at a time when almost nobody, including the personel in the Nietzsche-archive in Weimar, would believe in the existence of such a relationship.54 But then in the Winter-Semester 1937/38, Baumgarten went to Weimar

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 96

himself and indeed found convincing corroboration for his hypothesis.55 He was then given the opportunity to publish a piece about Emerson and Nietzsche in Baeumler’s “Internationaler Zeitschrift für Erziehung.”56 The full story about similarities and ties between Emerson and Nietzsche was developed later on after 1945, in a long article starting the first volume of the “Zeitschrift für Amerikakunde” in 1956.57 Baumgarten published in the documentary part of that article excerpts from Nietzsche’s hand from the works of Emerson and annotations Nietzsche made in his copy of Emerson’s works. Baumgarten as well described in more detail than before the various influences of Emerson on Nietzsche and also the differences between them. I cannot comment on these investigations here at length. To take just one example: Baumgarten presented the thesis that Nietzsche leaned on Emerson in his construct of the Übermensch (“the constructions of the Übermensch after models taken from Emerson”) 58 in his Zarathustra. Thesis 4 of Baumgarten’s concluding statements reads as follows: The impact of Emerson on Nietzsche is of a sweeping and central importance for Nietzsche’s work (criticism of christianity, critic of “history,” critic of the present man, outline of the idea of an Übermensch). It was at the same time for Nietzsche’s life a comprehensive support. 53 To sum up: Baumgarten seemingly was successful in persuading Baeumler of philosophical ties between a would-be forefather of pragmatism and the man he took as the main ideological source of National Socialism: Nietzsche.

54 It seems that Baumgarten’s articles establishing the Emerson-Nietzsche tie made no big impression on the German philosophical scene neither in the late 1930s nor afterwards in the late 1950s. The first statement of these ideas came as a hypothesis only in his pragmatism-book from 1938 and as a statement without sufficient backing of evidence in the article in Baeumler’s journal shortly before the war was started by Hitler and his army. When Baumgarten’s full documentation and commentary was published in 1956, Nietzsche, who was admired during the Third Reich by many inside and outside philosophy (like Baeumler), had fallen into disrespect precisely for the same reason: his role as an ideological forerunner of National Socialism. 55 A renewed interest in pragmatism in Germany in the 1960s neglected (or perhaps intentionally avoided) both Emerson and Baumgarten’s investigations and instead leaned mostly on the real founding father of pragmatism, Charles S. Peirce. In Jürgen Habermas’s Erkenntnis und Interesse as well as in Otto Apel’s Transformation der Philosophie, the most important books introducing this pragmatist turn, you will not find a single mention of either Emerson or Baumgarten.59 56 It therefore comes as a big surprise that in recent years the Emerson-Nietzsche connection receives much attention in the USA. It is impossible here to draw a full picture of that development. However, it seems at least ironic that what was originally invented by Baumgarten as a bridge to make pragmatism welcome in dictatorial Germany now seems to serve as a way to make Nietzsche more acceptable to the USA. 57 It would be easier to swallow the chapter on Emerson in Baumgarten’s genealogy of pragmatism, if he had not constantly omitted the real founding father of pragmatism, Charles Sanders Peirce. When one observes Peirce’s description of the historical foundations of pragmatism, a very different picture emerges. It has nothing to do with the non-philosophical American community spirit, but very much with non-American philosophical forerunners. I have in mind the Scottish school of common-sense philosophy and especially Alexander Bain, its last representative. The Scottish school

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 97

shared a rejection of all foundationalist philosophy, especially Descartes idea of a methodical doubt, i.e. doubting everything, until one arrives in the last resort at the doubting self, which cannot be doubted, and from that undeniable starting point begins to rebuild all knowledge. For the Scottish school that Cartesian idea was implausible and impossible: one can only doubt from time to time and here and there, when occasion arises, but not “methodically,” because one needs belief as a guide to action. This idea was underlined by Alexander Bain, one of the last representatives of the Scottish school and the grandfather of pragmatism – in Peirce’s judgment –, when he declared that all belief was a disposition to act. Whether Bain’s view is defensible, I must leave out here. It gets difficult when it comes to scientific beliefs and theories, especially those concerning events remote in space and/or time. What could possibly be the corresponding action-dispositions? Peirce’s pragmatism was in its content (although not in its name) first outlined in his 1878 article “How to Make our Ideas Clear.” It proclaims for the first time the pragmatic maxim: Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.60 58 Easier than this pronouncement is §398 to understand: The essence of belief is the establishment of a habit; and different beliefs are distinguished by the different modes of action to which they give rise. If beliefs do not differ in this respect, if they appease the same doubt by producing the same rule of action, then no mere differences in the manner of consciousness of them can make them different beliefs, any more than playing a tune in different keys is playing different tunes.61 59 Without that maxim the whole pragmatist movement is unthinkable. James relied on it as well as Dewey and every other pragmatist in the proper sense of the word.

60 Baumgarten at least had heard of Peirce (as the title of his planned lectures indicate). But the edition of Peirce’s “Collected Papers” started only in 1931, and the volume containing pragmatism and pragmaticism was published in 1934. It went almost completely unnoticed in the Third Reich.62 61 Peirce’s importance as the greatest American philosopher was only detected – in Germany at least – by a younger generation comprising Jürgen Habermas and Hans- Otto Apel, and even this novel declaration was met with much scepticism in the German philosophical public. 62 Ad 3) The second move for making pragmatism acceptable for National Socialist ears consisted in a thorough reinterpretation of American democracy, intended to make it acceptable for the ideological needs of the Nazi regime and its ideological spokesmen. Baumgarten wrote that he had to add relevant remarks and footnotes “quasi as a repetition course to the course of the text” in order to achieve this. 63 Although I have not seen the original manuscript, which is still kept in private hands, and so cannot compare it with the published version, I cite a telling example from the introduction: Before we can turn to three philosophers of American “democracy” […] Emerson, James, Dewey, some disturbing misunderstandings, which could enter, should be removed […] Is not Amerian democracy, like all democracy, and it in the first place, a phenomenon of decay? Is it not the hothouse for “liberalism” and “individualism”? […] Nothing stands in the way of a mutual understanding between Germans and the Anglo Saxons as much as these concepts, by which something

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 98

different is denoted here and there. The name of democracy lives on as a concept for a political system, which was introduced at the end of a lost war in a situation of deepest national exhaustion and humiliation from outside. This hateful meaning (odium) is attached to “democracy” here. The concept of democracy in England and America is associated with the most glorious national memories. It is there a concept of ascendance, of power, of enthusiasm.63 64 Baumgarten’s description is wrong in asserting that democracy was brought from the outside world to Germany. It was achieved instead by a democratic revolution. One could perhaps stomach the rest of his statement, when one takes into account the situation in Germany after the military defeat and especially after the Versailles peace treaty with its sole-responsibility-preambula, the heavy reparations imposed on Germany on that basis, the occupation of the Ruhr-region by French troops in order to harvest reparations from Germany’s industrial centre region, the sky-high inflation brought about by the long general strike of coal- and steel-workers in that area as resistance against the occupation, the loss of most individual savings as a result of the inflation, etc.

65 But Baumgarten also – in order to please Baeumler – wrote in a footnote about “Baeumler’s simple determination to awake from the remnants of Nietzsche’s life and thought a ‘pragmatism’ of a German kind.”64 66 This passage is telling, because it can be interpreted as a confirmation of the thesis put forward by Peter Vogt, who writes that Baumgarten’s interpretation of pragmatism, which he regards as “widely superior to every other” of the ones he discusses in his book, did not preclude Baumgarten from an open sympathy for National Socialism.65 He offers as explanation for this peculiar fact the following: As the innermost motive for his worship of pragmatism and of American society, the seemingly paradoxical venture of an antidemocratic heroisation of American democracy comes to light.66 67 That can only be underlined, because the paragraphs in the Pragmatism-book were only a mild version of things Baumgarten had published elsewhere in a number of articles. The most noteworthy is the piece American Philosophy and German Faith (Amerikanische Philosophie und deutscher Glaube).67 There he not only tried to remove those “conceptual misunderstandings” concerning the term “democracy” in the introduction of his book on pragmatism, but had added a sentence of a (then) seeming actuality: Hitler confesses to be an adherent of the true (plebiscitarian) Führer-democracy: free choice of the Führer and his responsibility, Führer-hierarchy from the most able sons of the whole people, support through referendum.68 68 Indeed: the cited paragraph from the 1934 article is an example of an early and strong nod in the direction to National Socialism. The phrase “support through referendum” makes this clear. In November 1933 Hitler introduced a plebiscite about the exit from the League of Nations. A big demonstration of the German academic and intellectual scene gave applause to this event at a meeting in Leipzig, among them in first line also Martin Heidegger. Not less than 961 intellectuals signed the accompanying document, among them 25 academic philosophers.69 Baumgarten was not among them. Perhaps this was simply due to the fact that he belonged not yet fully to academia, because he was still working on his habilitation. Perhaps the cited paragraph is an attempt to compensate for that missed opportunity. In any case: it could hardly have escaped Baumgarten’s attention that already in May 1933 all political parties had been

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 99

forbidden and so democracy was overthrown; the different referenda that Hitler organized, served only the acclamation of his regime.

69 Between the cited article of 1934 and the publication of his book on pragmatism, Baumgarten was given by Baeumler the opportunity to clarify his position towards democracy more inclusively. He started to publish a series of articles on John Dewey in the Internationale Zeitschrift für Erziehung (International education review) founded in 1931 and edited by Alfred Baeumler and Paul Monroe from New York’s teachers college. In the first of this series Baumgarten varied his thesis about the different meanings of “democracy” in Germany and the USA as follows: The word “democracy” has for us a dark aura. All the lighter, I hope, it became evident, that Dewey subsumes under that concept attitudes and convictions, to which we today stand much closer to than at a time, where we did it according to name only. For a while – as a consequence of unheard-of effort and an overstrain of all forces of the nation – exactly the opposite of a democratic faith gained place among us: namely, lack of hope for the future and passivity, as a merely negative response to a bad and community-less peace, which Europe concluded.70 70 Baumgarten continues with a reinterpretation of Dewey’s well known statement against godlike leaders: “democracy is not concerned with freaks, or geniuses, or heroes, or divine leaders.” Against a “misunderstanding” that Dewey propagated a bad, leaderless and even leader-inimical (führerfeindiche) democracy, “from which we happily escaped,” Baumgarten stresses the eminent role that leadership played from the very beginning in British and US-American democracy. According to this reinterpretation, Dewey only rejected “community-foreign (gemeinschaftsfremde), irresponsable leadership, which wanted blind subjects, in contrast to a leadership which “to the last house of the nation” searches its “co-workers, wakens them and makes them step in.”71

5. Contemporary Judgments on Baumgarten’s Pragmatism Book

71 What about the reception of Baumgarten’s work during the Third Reich in Germany and US-America? Hausmann cites only a very negative review about the Franklin book and adds that author and publisher were not able to enter into the Anglo-American sphere.72 That picture is at least one-sided and needs a correction.

5.1 In Germany

72 Baumgarten’s books and articles were published in years not very suited to a favorable reception, namely in the last years leading up to the second World War. Hausmann cites from a review by Friedrich Schönemann, an engaged National Socialist expert on English literature and American studies and as such a competitor of Baumgarten, published in the Völkischer Beobachter (the daily of the Nazi party) on the 15. of August 1936: One can only wonder, why it is possible, that such a book is presented to us as a serious piece of literature (Schrifttum). One needs to have the strongest reservations against the consequences of such a spiritually confused as well as stylistically un- German work on the foreign public. Because our German-ness must rest on a

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 100

solidity born from a plain clarity and veracity, so our Schrifttum can only have effect abroad and promote our cause, if it expresses such German-ness.73 73 It needed some effort on Baumgarten’s part to convince the publisher of the Franklin book to edit also his pragmatism book. This one received a quite favorable review from Helmut Schelsky in 1940 (written, as he adds, from the front), who, after 1945 became one of the leading German sociologists. He welcomes Baumgarten’s book in general and its quasi-sociological approach, saying that Baumgarten sees pragmatism politically as one of the “foundations of the American community,” really as the philosophically interpreted and systematized spirit of Franklin and Lincoln.74 74 The question mark he adds is: […] the days […] of the frontier are over. Are they in America not only national memories? In which degree does the present America stick to the spirit of an Emerson, even of a James or Dewey? 75 After raising some doubts about the inclusion of Emerson in the genealogy of pragmatism he nevertheless ends with a quite positive judgment: It (i.e.: Baumgarten’s book) brings a chapter from the history of philosophy, but one that today is of the utmost systematical interest, namely a theory of man which is in close connection with the newest insights of the disciplines studying man. Herein lies the importance of this book, in contrast to the fullness of works in the history of philosophy in which philosophy seems to drown today. So, we like to end this review with the wish, that the author starting from the historical description will arrive at a systematical […] philosophy of man, at a treatment of the questions of consciousness, of drives, etc., which can be regarded as valid for the present time.75

5.2 In the USA

76 Baumgarten’s book on pragmatism received even more praise in a review published outside Germany. The US-American philosopher Herbert Schneider, a pupil of Dewey, wrote in the prestigious Journal of Philosophy the following words: Eduard Baumgarten is the most serious student of American thought Germany has produced and is one of the best informed writers of the subject in any language.76 77 Baumgartens interpretation of Dewey’s philosophy especially was praised as “the best I have read anywhere” (that is: even including the philosophical literature in the USA up to 1938).

78 This positive evaluation perhaps might invite a question mark, because Schneider known after the Second World War mostly for his standard work on the history of American philosophy,77 had during the 1920s and 1930s developed a lively interest in Italian fascism (as a consequence of a visiting scholarship to Italy in the ‘20s). As an early résumé of his political investigations and experiences in Italy, he had published in 1928 the book The Making of the Fascist State. 78 And only shortly before Baumgarten’s pragmatism book he added in 1936 another book on the theme.79 79 Now Vogt in his book on pragmatism and fascism took the example of Schneider as one of two American pragmatists who had themselves fascist leanings.80 When reading only Schneider’s books, one is surprised by its mostly descriptive and “positivistic” approach in describing the Mussolini dictatorship. But, as Vogts makes it clear, unpublished papers show fascist inclinations.81

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 101

80 But Baumgarten was not only praised by Schneider: He was invited to contribute to the very first volume of the Library of Living Philosophers founded by Paul Arthur Schilpp, a series, which afterwards became a sort of counterpart to a (missing) Nobel-prize in philosophy. The volume was dedicated to John Dewey and appeared on the occasion of his 80th birthday in 1939. In his letter of invitation Schilpp expressis verbis left it open to Baumgarten to proceed from his own standpoint or “the spiritual stance of his own people” and “to deal with the theme as critically as you like.”82 81 Baumgarten tried in vain to get a permit by the German authorities to contribute an article, because Schilpp had made critical remarks about National Socialism in his book, “The Quest for Religious Realism.”83 This book was prompted, as Schilpp wrote in the introduction, by the course of world events in the last quarter century. On the one hand, he began to name the First World War, the Russian revolution, the Versailles peace-treaty, and then ended in the immediate present with other events which had fallen “with increasing suddenness and tempo and with the staccato sound of a machine gun!”84 This included “the arrival of Hitler! The rearming of Germany […] The persecution of the Jews!” On the other hand, he went on to ask what religion could say to and do about such a world. In the chapter, “Can we both be Patriotic and Christian?” indeed he came forward with a straightforward rejection of fascism and National Socialism. In the second part of that chapter, with “illustrations from abroad, from sufficiently far away,”85 he summed up his investigations as follows: […] it is easy to perceive that no one who takes seriously the Christian position, the Sermon on the Mount, can, in the present Italian, German, or, for that matter Russian sense, be both “patriotic” and “Christian.”86 82 The reason for this assessment for the case of Germany was clear when, as a happily naturalized US-American, he underlined that in his own native country, Germany, “Patriotism” is today being defined as unquestioned acceptance of and absolute loyalty to the Nazi regime. Anyone who dares to disagree with the acts or with the policies of the Nazi government is considered a traitor; and, if his disagreement becomes known in official quarters, he is dealt with as such.87 83 As he explained elsewhere, these dealings meant to be “put into concentration camps or murdered by the state.”88

84 To sum up: Baumgarten’s work was valued highly outside of Nazi Germany by experts on pragmatism, including by people who were severe critics of the Hitler dictatorship and its ideology.

6. Baumgarten Career in the Third Reich after his Göttingen Years

85 Baumgarten had joined the Nazi party, at the earliest possible moment, in May 1937, after the first rush of joiners in early 1933 and the temporary closing off new membership.

86 He also was invited by Baeumler together with 29 handpicked young philosophers to the castle of Buderose (near Guben) to a conference for a week from 12th to 19th of March 1939,89 the only one of that type during the entire Nazi dictatorship. This gathering was meant to further the indoctrination with Nazi ideology and screen the participants for possible later careers. It came under the very general title

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 102

“Weltanschaung und Philosophie” (wordview and philosophy). Nietzsche belonged there to the themes discussed after Baeumler’s lecture on Kant on the 14th of March (with Baeumler himself, Schlechta, Baumgarten and Springmeyer as discussants).90 Pragmatism had a place at most indirectly, in or after Alfred Zastrau´s talk on “Das Wort Wahrheit” (“the word truth”) the following day. Baumgarten, who intervened after all the other talks in the discussion, remained silent this time. Rosenberg himself invited the participants to a comrades’ evening on the 16th and gave a talk on “Sense and task of the science conference.” 87 Baumgarten seems to have had a good showing in Buderose in the eyes of the relevant authorities. He was called in 1941 to a philosopy chair in Königsberg, in a way as a distant successor to Kant. He replaced directly Arnold Gehlen, who went to Vienna a year earlier, and who had shown in his main work from that time, Der Mensch, pragmatist tendencies and obvious knowledge of Baumgarten’s work.91 In Königsberg Baumgarten developed a program for a biological pragmatism based on evolution theory. He named some people who could possibly work on that program in cooperation, but he was only partially successful in his efforts. He at least achieved a move in the opposite direction as Gehlen’s voyage, that is, from Vienna to Königsberg. I have in mind Konrad Lorenz, later the very famous founder of animal ethology and a trained biologist, who received a psychology chair in Königsberg.92 They had met earlier in Göttingen, when the (also later on) famous biologist and animal physiologist Erich von Holst introduced Baumgarten to Lorenz. But the good cooperation between Baumgarten and Lorenz lasted only for a short while, before Königsberg was threatened by Soviet troops. Baumgarten gave a radio talk shortly before he and Lorenz escaped. It was a matter of fierce controversy after the end of World War II, whether this talk was meant as a hold out appeal against the “bolshevist danger” or not. 88 In the very last days of the war, Baumgarten turned up in Göttingen again. There he earned some fame as the leading spokesman of a small crew who drove out in an open military car with a white flag towards the allied troops in order to save the town from annihilation. Soon after the liberation he gave a triumphant speech to a gathering of students in which he denied German guilt in the atrocities of the National Socialist regime. That earned him a suspension from academic work for a while by the British education branch, and his denazification became ever more difficult. Especially his actions in Königsberg were held against him: did he give, for instance, a hold-out-talk via radio ln the 14th of March 194593 or not? I do not know whether any files (in what is now) Kaliningrad or elsewhere survive. It is difficult to give an opinion on denazification matters on the basis of the Göttingen files alone. 89 It took a long time before Baumgarten was again admitted to a university, taught students or started publications. That came in Mannheim, where he started a new academic career. He abandoned his big theme, pragmatism, more or less completely. It is small wonder that his official position was no longer in American studies, nor was it in philosophy. Rather, he moved into sociology, with main themes during that period in organisation sociology and university reform. In the 1960s, he also turned to one of his relatives, Max Weber, who in Nazi-times had stood for a while in the way of his career. In 1964 he served as organizer of the big congress of the German sociological society in Heidelberg on the occasion of Weber’s 100th birthday, and he published in that year a collection of Weber’s more political works.94 So, for Baumgarten the Nazi-period, during which he wrote his major works on American society, on Franklin and on

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 103

pragmatism, remained in the end a transitory one. Not a single author in the Festschrift dedicated to him on the occasion of his 70th birthday cared to write anything on pragmatism.95

7. Concluding Remarks

90 In view of the evidence given above, one might ask, was Baumgarten a Nazi? Can it even be said that Baumgarten had a “perverted love for pragmatism,” as Hans Joas assessed it?96

91 First of all, one has to take into account that everyone who wanted to pursue an academic career in the Third Reich needed to find a difficult balance between his and her own beliefs and projects and the demands of the dictatorship. That applies to academics in every field, but especially in a highly ideologically-loaded subject as philosophy.97 Furthermore, unlike many others, Baumgarten had to struggle already before 1933 with the wrath of Heidegger, and later on especially with the “expert opinion” given in December 1933 and its devastating consequences. So, any judgments about what were merely opportunistic moves in order to save his career and what represented a willingness to embrace National Socialism needs to be studied very carefully, and in full knowledge of the relevant university files (which are completely neglected by Joas and Vogt). 92 In Königsberg, Baumgarten was much more “explicit” (as Hausmann termed it) as an ideologue of National Socialism. One only needs to read some titles of articles and booklets he published, like Der Mensch als Soldat (Man as a soldier). 98 But more material has to be studied in order to form a definitive judgment on his Königsberg period, his relationship to his colleague Konrad Lorenz, his lectures and seminars, his flatly propagandistic speeches and publications, his dealings with the university and government authorities. Special emphasis needs to be laid on the radio message mentioned above, which played a big role in his Göttingen denazification process. Given the limitations of space the interpretation and evaluation of this vast and complicated material can only be attempted in another article.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

(Unpublished source) UNIVERSITÄTSARCHIV GÖTTINGEN (UAG), Protokollbuch der Philosophischen Fakultät der Georgia Augusta (1930-1949).

(Unpublished source) UNIVERSITÄTSARCHIV GÖTTINGEN (UAG), Dr. Baumgarten (signature: Phil. Pers. Baumgarten), Lehrauftrag für Amerikakunde 1933, Habilitation für Philosophie.

(Unpublished source) UNIVERSITÄTSBIBLIOTHEK GÖTTINGEN (UBG), Nachlass Herman Nohl, Akte 14: Baumgarten.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 104

ALBERT Hans (Hrsg.), (1971), Sozialtheorie und soziale Praxis. Eduard Baumgarten zum 70. Geburtstag, Meisenheim am Glan, Hain Verlag.

APEL Karl-Otto, (1973), Transformation der Philosophie, Band 1: Sprachanalytik Semiotik, Hermeneutik, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp Verlag.

BAEUMLER Alfred, (1930) “Nachwort,” in Nietzsche (1930), 699-709.

BAEUMLER Alfred, (1931), Nietzsche der Philosoph und Politiker, Leipzig, Reclam Verlag.

BAEUMLER Alfred (ed.), (1926/1934), Handbuch der Philosophie (with Manfred Schröter), München, Oldenbourg Verlag.

BAEUMLER Marianne, BRUNTRÄGER Hubert & Hermann KURZKE, (1989), Thomas Mann und Alfred Baeumler. Eine Dokumentation, Würzburg, Königshausen & Neumann.

BAUMGARTEN Eduard, (1919), “Nationalismus und Sozialdemokratie,” in Schriften der Sozialistischen Studentengruppe der Universität Freiburg, Heft 2.

BAUMGARTEN Eduard, (1934a), “Kritische Bemerkungen zur Rektoratsrede Martin Heideggers (1933) Die Selbstbehauptung der deutschen Universisät,” in Mitteilungen der Deutschen Akademischen Freischar (1934, Nr. 2).

BAUMGARTEN Eduard, (1934b), “Amerikanische Philosophie und deutscher Glaube,” in Zeitschrift für Französischen und englischen Unterricht, Bd 33 (1934), 96-112.

BAUMGARTEN Eduard, (1936), Die geistigen Grundlagen des amerikanisches Gemeinwesen, Band I: Benjamin Franklin, Frankfurt am Main, Klostermann Verlag.

BAUMGARTEN Eduard, (1936a), “John Dewey, Teil I: Die Idee der Demokratie,” in Internationale Zeitschrift für Erziehung, 5 (1936) Heft 2.

BAUMGARTEN Eduard, (1938), Die geistigen Grundlagen des amerikanischen Gemeinwesens, Band II: Der Pragmatismus, Frankfurt am Main, Klostermann Verlag.

BAUMGARTEN Eduard, (1939), “Emerson-Nietzsche,” Internationale Zeitschrift für Erziehung, 8, 1-16.

BAUMGARTEN Eduard, (1942), “Der Mensch als Soldat,” Blätter für deutsche Philosophie, 16.

BAUMGARTEN Eduard, (1945), Das Gedächtnis Kants und die Zukunft Europas (Rundfunkrede, Berlin 14. März).

BAUMGARTEN Eduard, (1956), “Das Vorbild Emersons im Werk und Leben Nietzsches, Teil I,” Jahrbuch für Amerikastudien, Band I, 93-152

BAUMGARTEN Eduard, (1964), Max Weber – Werk und Person. Dokumente ausgewählt und kommentiert, Tübingen, J. C. B. Mohr.

BECKER Heinrich, DAHMS Hans-Joachim & Cornelia WEGELER (eds), (1987/1998), Die Universität Göttingen unter dem Nationalsozialismus, München, Saur Verlag.

BURKAMP Wilhelm, (1912), “Biologische Bedeutung des Erkennens und Pragmatismus,” Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie und Soziologie, 36, 477-514.

BURKAMP Wilhelm, (1938), Wirklichkeit und Sinn (2 Bände), Berlin, Junker & Dünnhaupt Verlag.

CASSIRER Toni, (1981), Mein Leben mit Ernst Cassirer, Hildesheim, Gerstenberg Verlag.

DAHMS Hans-Joachim, (1987/1998), “Aufstieg und Ende der Lebensphilosophie. Das philosophische Seminar der Universität Göttingen,” in Becker, Dahms & Wegeler (eds), Die Universität Göttingen unter dem Nationalsozialismus, München, Saur Verlag, 287-317.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 105

DAHMS Hans-Joachim, (1992), “Positivismus und Pragmatismus,” in David Bell & Wilhelm Vossenkuhl (Hrsg.), Wissenschaft und Subjektivität. Science and Subjectivity. Der Wiener Kreis und die Philosophie des 20. Jahrhunderts. The Vienna Circle and Twentieth Century Philosophy, Berlin, Akademie Verlag, 239-57.

DAHMS Hans-Joachim, (1994), Positivismusstreit. Die Auseiandersetzungen der Frankfurter Schule mit dem logischen Positivismus, dem amerikanischen Pragmatismus und dem kritischen Rationalismus, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp Verlag.

DAHMS Hans-Joachim, (2003), “Philosophie,” in Hausmann (2003), 193-228.

DAHMS Hans-Joachim, (2018), “Verpasste Chancen. Kritische Theorie und Pragmatismus,” in Max Beck & Nicholas Coomann (Hrsg.), Historische Erfahrung und begriffliche Transformation. Deutschsprachige Philosophie im Exil in den USA 1933-1945, Wien, Lit Verlag, 132-57.

DEWEY John, (1925), Experience and Nature, New York, Open Court.

EBEL Wilhelm, (1962), Catalogus Professorum Gottingensium 1934-1962, Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

FARIAS Victor, (1987), Heidegger et le nazisme. Morale et politique, Lagrasse, Éditions Verdier.

FARIAS Victor, (1989), “Heidegger und der Nationalsozialismus (mit einem Vorwort von Jürgen Habermas),” Frankfurt am Main, S. Fischer Verlag.

GEHLEN Arnold, (1940/1993), Der Mensch. Seine Natur und seine Stellung in der Welt (Hrsg. Karl- Siegbert Rehberg), Frankfurt am Main (= Gesamtausgabe, Band 3), Klostermann.

HABERMAS Jürgen, (1968), Erkenntnis und Interesse, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp Verlag.

HAUSMANN Frank-Rutger, (2003), Anglistik und Amerikanistik im “Dritten Reich,” Frankfurt am Main, Klostermann.

HEIDEGGER Martin, (1933a/2000), Die Selbstbehauptung der deutschen Universität (27. Mai 1933), abg. in: ders. (2000), 107-17.

HEIDEGGER Martin, (1933b/2000), 289. Gutachten über Baumgarten, in: ders. (2000), 774 f.

HEIDEGGER Martin, (1946/2000), 186. Zum Gutachten über Baumgarten, in: ders. (2000), 417 f.

HEIDEGGER Martin, (2000), Reden und andere Zeugnisse eines Lebensweges (= Gesamtausgabe, I. Abteilung: Veröffentlichte Schriften 1910-1976, Band 16), Frankfurt am Main, Vittorio Klostermann.

HEIDEGGER Martin, (2014), Überlegungen XII-XV (Schwarze Hefte 1939-1941) (Hrsg. Peter Trawny), Frankfurt am Main, Vittorio Klostermann.

HINGST Kasi-Michael, (2000), “Nietzsche pragmaticus. Die Verwandtschaft von Nietzsches Denken mit dem Pragmatismus von William James,” Nietzscheforschung, 7, 287-308.

JASPERS Karl, (1978), Notizen zu Heidegger (Hrsg. Hans Saner), München/Zürich, R. Piper & Co. Verlag.

JAMES William, (1907/1975), Pragmatism. A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, Cambridge, Mass, London, Cambridge University Press.

JAMES William, (1908), Der Pragmatismus. Ein neuer Name für alte Denkmethoden. Volkstümliche philosophische Vorlesungen (deutsch von Wilhelm Jerusalem), Leipzig, Klinkhardt.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 106

JERUSALEM Wilhelm, (1907), “Vorwort des Übersetzers,” in James, Der Pragmatismus. Ein neuer Name für alte Denkmethoden. Volkstümliche philosophische Vorlesungen, V- IX.

JERUSALEM Wilhelm, (1908), “Der Pragmatismus. Eine neue philosophische Methode,” Deutsche Literaturzeitung, 25.01.1908, 197-206.

JERUSALEM Wilhelm, (1925), Gedanken und Denker. Neue Folge, Wien/Leipzig, Wilhelm Braumüller.

JOAS Hans, (1992), Pragmatismus und Gesellschaftstheorie, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp Verlag.

JOAS Hans, (1992a), “Die unterschätzte Alternative. Amerika und die Grenzen der ‘Kritischen Theorie’,” in Id, Pragmatismus und Gesellschaftstheorie, 96-113.

JOAS Hans, (1992b), “Amerikanischer Pragmatismus und deutsches Denken. Zur Geschichte eines Mißverständnisses,” in Id., Pragmatismus und Gesellschaftstheorie, 114-45.

VON KEMPSKI Jürgen, (1952), Charles Peirce und der Pragmatismus, Stuttgart/Köln, Kohlhammer Verlag.

LEAMAN George, (1993), Heidegger im Kontext. Gesamtüberblick zum NS-Engagement der Universitätsphilosophen, Hamburg, Argument Verlag.

MÜLLER-FREIENFELS Richard, (1913), “Nietzsche und der Pragmatismus,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, Bd. 26, Berlin.

NAGL Ludwig, (1998), Pragmatismus, Frankfurt am Main/New York, Campus Verlag.

NIETZSCHE Friedrich, (1930), Der Wille zur Macht. Versuch der Umwertung aller Werte (mit einem Nachwort von Alfred Baeumler), Leipzig, Alfred Kröner Verlag.

OTT Hugo, (1988), Martin Heidegger. Unterwegs zu seiner Biographie, Frankfurt am Main, Campus Verlag.

PEIRCE Charles Sanders, (1934), Pragmatism and Pragmaticism. Scientifc Metaphysics (eds. Charles Hartshrone/ Paul Weiss) Cambridge (Mass.) (= Collected Papers vol. V and VI), Belknap Press.

PEIRCE Charles Sanders, (1978/1934), “How to Make Our Ideas Clear,” in Id., Pragmatism and Pragmaticism. Scientifc Metaphysics, 248-71.

RATZKE Erwin, (1987/1998), “Das Pädagogische Institut der Universität Göttingen. Ein Überblick über seine Entwicklung in den Jahren 1923-1949,” in Becker, Dahms & Wegeler (eds), Die Universität Göttingen unter dem Nationalsozialismus, München, Saur Verlag, 318-36.

SANER Hans, (1978), “Vorwort,” in Notizen zu Heidegger, München/Zürich, R. Piper, 7-21.

SCHELER Max, (1926), “Erkenntnis und Arbeit. Eine Studie über Wert und Grenzen des pragmatischen Princips in der Erkenntnis der Welt,” in ders.: Die Wissensformen und die Gesellschaft, Leipzig, Der Neue Geist Verlag.

SCHELSKY Helmut, (1940), “Rezension von: Eduard Baumgarten. Der Pragmatismus,” Die Tatwelt, 16, 27-9.

SCHILPP Paul Arthur, (1938), The Quest for Religious Realism. Some Paradoxes of Religion, New York/ London, Harper.

SCHILPP Paul Arthur (ed.), (1939), The Philosophy of John Dewey, La Salle (Illinois), Open Court.

SCHLICK Moritz, (1910), “Das Wesen der Wahrheit nach der modernen Logik,” Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie und Soziologie, 34, 386-477.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 107

SCHOLL Lars-Ulrich, (1998), “Um Besten der besonders in Göttingen gepflegten Anglistik. Das Seminar für Englische Philologie,” in Becker, Dahms & Wegeler (eds), Die Universität Göttingen unter dem Nationalsozialismus, München, Saur Verlag, 391-426.

SCHNEIDER Herbert W., (1928), Making the Fascist State, New York, Oxford University Press.

SCHNEIDER Herbert W., (1936), The Fascist Government of Italy, New York, van Nostrand.

SCHNEIDER Herbert W., (1938), “Review of Baumgarten (1938),” The Journal of Philosophy, 35, 695-8.

SCHNEIDER Herbert W., (1947/1957), A History of American Philosophy [Deutsch: Geschichte der amerikanischen Philosophie (Übersetzung: Peter Krausser)], New York/Hamburg, Columbia University Press/Felix Meiner.

SUKALE Michael, (1971), (Auswahl und Einleitung) Eduard Baumgarten: Gewissen und Macht. Abhandlungen und Vorlesungen 1933-1963, Meisenheim am Glan, Hain Verlag.

TILITZKI Christian, (2002), Die deutsche Universitätsphilosophie in der Weimarer Republik und im Dritten Reich (2 Teile), Berlin, Akademie Verlag.

VOGT Peter, (2002), Pragmatismus und Faschismus. Kreativität und Kontingenz in der Moderne, Weilerswist, Velbrück Wissenschaft.

NOTES

1. James 1907. 2. James 1908. 3. Schlick 1910. 4. Jerusalem 1925. 5. Surprisingly in Habermas’s “Erkenntnis und Interesse” 40 years later such a peculiar three- part division of the sciences pops up again, now only with the difference that religious knowledge is replaced by psychoanalysis and criticism of ideology: Habermas 1968; see for comments Dahms (1994: 369 ff.). 6. Baumgarten 1936. 7. Baumgarten 1938. 8. Burkamp 1938. 9. Gehlen 1940/1993. 10. Kempski 1952. 11. Baeumler 1931. 12. See Baumgarten’s “vita,” 7th of February 1933, in: Phil. Pers. Baumgarten (in UAG) 13. Its title was “Staatswissenschaftliche Austauschstelle beim Institut für Sozial- und Staatswissenschaften der Universität Heidelberg.” 14. Hausmann 2003. 15. Dewey 1925. 16. Cited after a report of Baumgarten to Hecht, 20th January 1933, in: Phil. Pers. Baumgarten. 17. Ratzke 1987/1998. 18. There Brock wrote a book about the current philosophical situation in Germany; after 1945 he went back, but fell severely ill and so could not serve as Heideggers successor in Freiburg. 19. Husserl to Regierungspräsident, without date, in: Nohl papers in UBG, file 14: Dr. Baumgarten. 20. Rickert (without adressee), 2nd February 1933, in: Phil. Pers. Baumgarten (p. 354 f.) 21. Hausmann 2003. 22. Ebel (1962, 120, Nr. 11).

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 108

23. The circle was not an invention of the young Nazi regime, as Hausmann (2003: 216) writes. 24. Hecht to Neumann (dean of the Phil. Faculty of the Uni. of Göttingen, 30th January 1933, in: Pers. Phil. Baumgarten. 25. Protokollbuch der Phil. Fak., 17th February 1933, p. 83 f. 26. See Hausmann (2003: 218, fn 18) for a full list of all of Baumgarten’s announcements during his time in Göttingen. 27. Opinion of Hans Lipps, 14th of June 1935, in: Phil. Pers. Baumgarten in UAG, see also Lipps’s opinion on Baumgarten’s pragmatism book, 29th of January 1936, ibidem. 28. Hausmann (2003: 222). 29. Baumgarten 1936. 30. Copy cited from Heidegger (1933b/2000: 774), my translation; passages in italics are also found in the incomplete copy in the Baumgarten files in the UAG. The last sentence features only in the Göttingen copy. It is absent from Heidegger (1933b/2000: 775), where the editor states: “(a copy of the last sentence is missing)”. See for other versions of Heideggers opinion Jaspers (1978: 14 f.), Farias (1989: 283 f.), and Ott (1988: 183). 31. Drexler told me this in an interview. 32. Cassirer (1981: 182). 33. See Heidegger 2014. 34. See Heidegger 1933a and Heidegger 2000 passim. 35. Dozentenschaft (Blume) to dean of the phil. faculty (Wilde), 15th of January 1935, in: Phil. Pers. Baumgarten (p. 327 f.). 36. This documentation survived in the Göttingen university archive as part of the new signature “Phil. Pers. Baumgarten” (formerly: “Habilitation Dr. Baumgarten”). 37. Ebel (1962: 118, Nr. Ph. 1, 258). 38. (Ibid.: 117, Nr Ph 1, 245); for a description and discussion of the move from Hecht to Wilde see Scholl 1998. 39. Blume (Dozentenschaft) to Wilde (dean phil. fac.) 22nd of January 1936; my italics, in: Phil. Pers. Baumgarten. 40. That camp took place from the15th of Feb. to the 7th of March 1937. Baumgarten asked the dean on the 15th of March 1937 to send the certificate of participation to the ministry in Berlin. 41. I thank Brigitte Parakenings (Archive of Scientific Philosophy, Konstanz university) for the information that Baeumler’s widow Marianne submitted to the archive only correspondence with Baumgarten dating from after 1945. 42. Baumgarten to Gaudozentenbundsführer Schürmann, 28th of December 1938, in: Phil. Pers. Baumgarten. That letter was written in the course of tumultuous events in the Göttingen philosophical faculty, where the doctoral thesis written by an American student of Baumgarten was judged negatively by the philosophy chairholder Hans Heyse, whereas Baumgarten critized heavily a dissertation thesis submitted under the supervision of Heyse. The confrontation even led to a call to a duel between Baumgarten and Schürmann, which did not take place only because of the outbreak of the Second World War. See more information on this strange episode Dahms (1987/1998: 306 f.). Baumgarten declined the call to Berlin in 1936 (mentioned above), because he wanted to pursue a career as a philosopher and not as a political scientist (and have a smaller teaching load than the 10 weekly hours in Berlin). 43. Baeumler 1926/1934. 44. See for example Nietzsche (1930); Baeumler regarded “The Will to Power” as Nietzsche’s main work. 45. Baeumler 1931. 46. See especially the chapter II, 3: „Rousseau. Gegen Demokratismus und Sozialismus,” (ibid., 113-9).

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 109

47. (Ibid.: 183); Baumgarten did not need to change that paragraph in the reprints of the booklet in Nazi times. 48. Leaman (1993: 100). 49. Tilitzki; this speech is not mentioned in Baeumlers defense in the denazification process: see M. Bauemler, Bruntäger & Kurzke (1989: 192 ff.). 50. See Tilitzki (2002, passim). 51. It is interesting to note that Heidegger later on made at least an effort to deal with pragmatism. In his Schwarze Hefte of 1939 he has an entrance “Pragmatismus,” where he characterizes this philosophy as consequence of an utmost rationalism: Heidegger (2014: 39). 52. It was not only popular among right-wing academics, but also was shared by some on the left (like Theodor Adorno, Ernst Bloch, Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse, who came to the USA as emigrants from Hitler Germany). See Dahms 2018 for a description and assessment of the Frankfort schools view of pragmatism. 53. Baumgarten (1938: 60). 54. Baumgarten (1956: 94). 55. Baumgarten (1956: 94). 56. Baumgarten 1939. 57. Baumgarten 1956. 58. Compare its announcement as a chapter in the content list (ibid.: 93) and on page 152, where it was not delivered in the text, but only announced for another article (which to my knowledge was not published). 59. Habermas 1968, Apel 1973. 60. Peirce (1978/1934: 258, §402). 61. (Ibid.: 255). 62. The single exception was Jürgen von Kempski, who wrote a short review in the Deutsches Adelsblatt in 1938. 63. Baumgarten (1938: XI). 64. (Ibid.: 456). 65. Vogt (2002: 17). 66. (Ibid.), see also 190 ff. 67. Baumgarten 1934b. 68. (Ibid.). 69. Leaman (1993: 100). 70. Baumgarten (1938: 95). 71. (Ibid.: 96). 72. Hausmann (2003: 223). 73. (Ibid.). 74. Schelsky 1940; see for Schelsky´s habilitation Tilitzki (2002: 727 ff.). 75. (Ibid.). 76. Schneider 1938. 77. Schneider 1947/1957. 78. Schneider 1928. 79. Schneider 1936. 80. Vogt (2002: 41-60). 81. Vogt (2002: 52 ff.). 82. Schilpp to Baumgarten, 13th of Dec. 1938, in: Phil. Pers. Baumgarten in UAG. 83. Schilpp 1938; see for he causes of the rejection Dahms (1987/1998: 302). 84. (Ibid.: 1 f.); It seems to me that – mutatis mutandis – similar worries could be named with today’s course of world events. 85. (Ibid.: 78).

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 110

86. (Ibid.: 79). 87. (Ibid.: 79). 88. (Ibid.: 81); Schilpp seems to have followed very closely the religious battle (Kirchenkampf) between the state-official “Deutsche Christen” on the one hand and the opposing “Bekennende Kirche” (Confessing Church) on the other. 89. See Leaman (1993: 244-7) for lists of organizers and participants as well as the programme of that conference and Tilitzki (2002: 955-63) for additional information on the talks, discussion participants and their theses and viewpoints 90. (Tilitzki 2002: 958). 91. Gehlen 1940/1993; see also Joas (1992 b: 130) and Karl-Siegbert Rehberg’s introduction to Gehlen 1940/1993. 92. See for details Tilitzki (2002: 789 ff.). 93. Baumgarten 1945. 94. Baumgarten 1964. 95. See Albert 1971. 96. Joas (1992 b: 133). 97. See for other rather difficult examples in philosophy in Göttingen alone Dahms (1987/1998). 98. See more titles in Hausmann (2003: 225, footnote 37).

ABSTRACTS

In this article I try to answer one central question: how can it be explained that the most intense reception of American pragmatism in Germany took place during the Nazi dictatorship (and not in democratic political environments before – during the Weimar Republic – and afterwards – in the first 20 years of the Federal Republic)? The answer is complicated: it starts with an academic exchange programme between Germany and the USA which brought the young post-doc Eduard Baumgarten in the mid -20ties to America and put him in contact with John Dewey and some of his pupils. After his return in 1929 he hoped to write and teach about pragmatism. This project came to an abrupt end, when Martin Heidegger denied him a promised position at the university of Freiburg. After the Nazi “seizure of power” the situation became worse when a completely negative expert opinion by Heidegger, by then the leading Nazi philosopher, blocked Baumgartens habilitation in Göttingen. Baumgarten fought back and established ties to a rising star in Nazi-philosophy, Alfred Baeumler, a devoted follower of Nietzsche’s “Will to Power.” This move secured in the end the publication of Baumgarten´s two books on American philosophy and especially on pragmatism. But this triumph came at a cost: a “reinterpretation” of the democratic content of pragmatism and an effort to show similarities between it and Nietzsche´s philosophy.

AUTHOR

HANS-JOACHIM DAHMS

Institut Wiener Kreis, Universität Wien hans-joachim.dahms[at]univie.ac.at

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 111

Vailati, Papini, and the Synthetic Drive of Italian Pragmatism

Giovanni Maddalena

1. Introduction

1 According to the standard interpretation, Italian pragmatism is split into two groups. On the one hand is the mathematician Giovanni Vailati, Peano’s former collaborator, and his disciple, the economist Mario Calderoni. On the other hand, there are the two “brats,” Giovanni Papini and Giuseppe Prezzolini, naïve philosophers with eccentric ideas. While Vailati and Calderoni followed Peirce’s mathematical and logical pragmatism, the other two articulated a “magical” pragmatism, a kind of relativist, post-modern version of the original American movement. This latter view can be found in Papini’s description of it,1 and the twofold description of the Italian pragmatism has become a common place of the scholarship. However, our knowledge of the development of pragmatism and of contemporary mathematics allow us to suggest a more precise definition of the Italian movement.

2. A Three Stripes Story

2 Let us start by examining the standard interpretation. The source of this twofold narrative can be found in the dialectical exchange between Calderoni and Prezzolini in November 1904 and February 1905 numbers of Leonardo, the journal that Papini founded in 1903.2 This narrative is at the heart of De Waal’s reconstruction of the period (DeWaal 2004), and may also be found in Colapietro (2007) and in other Italian scholars, such as Garin (1963), Santucci (1963), and Dal Pra (1984). The narrative is, however, not completely accurate. The April 1905 number of Leonardo contained the article “Il pragmatismo messo in ordine” authored by the Florentine Pragmatist Club, which listed and described three kinds of pragmatism in Italy (L III/2, aprile 1905: 45-7). The first was “loyal” to Peirce’s maxim, and apparently took Calderoni as the Italian representative. The second, denoted as “magical pragmatism,” focused on the “Will to

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 112

believe” as a power capable of transforming reality. Prezzolini and Papini were identified as belonging to this camp. In the middle, there was a third stripe represented by those who thought that Peirce’s maxim was a logical tool for making free choices among various kinds of postulates. Vailati probably fell into this group. This article concludes with the metaphor of pragmatism as a “corridor” that James liked so much and attributed to Papini.3 The articulation of three kinds of Italian pragmatism appeared again in Papini’s February 1906 article “Cronaca pragmatista,” dedicated to pragmatism and politics (L IV/5, Febbraio 1906: 58-61). The article is open to the notion that there may be even more than three varieties of pragmatism, a pluralism which, for Papini, is a cause for rejoicing. Thus, even if Papini sometimes presented the “two pragmatisms” theory in subsequent writings, the two stripes theory is, even from Papini’s point of view, somewhat misleading.

3 Connected to the misleading notion of “two pragmatisms,” there is a notorious and mistaken legend that Papini and Prezzolini somehow influenced the rise of fascism.4 Curiously, very good scholars like Colapietro (2007) and Bordogna (2015) seem to have accepted this misconception. At the bottom of this philosophical “fake news” was a statement by Mussolini himself who, in an interview with the New York Times Magazine in 1926, cited William James as one of his philosophical models (O’Hare 1926; Livingston 2016). The post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy runs as follows: Papini imported William James’s thought into Italy, Mussolini liked James, and therefore Papini was responsible for inspiring Mussolini and fascism. The origin of the fallacious reasoning was an article by Herbert Read in the Spectator from October 23, 1936 hinting that Papini and Leonardo were responsible for Mussolini’s acquaintance with James and pragmatism. According to Read, further proof was supplied by the fact that Mussolini wrote for Leonardo. The story was completed with the considerations that fascism proclaimed action and an accompanying transformation of reality as its aims and that Mussolini quoted a statement by James about “action being judged by results and not by its doctrine” (Read 1936). How could one doubt the connection? 4 I presented some counterarguments to this fable in a book I wrote some years ago with Giovanni Tuzet (Maddalena & Tuzet 2007). Some facts may be helpful to set the argument. Papini shut down Leonardo in 1907, and at that time he considered his pragmatist phase to be at an end, so much so that James asked in a letter where that genial “dago” ended up (CWJ, 12.209). In 1907 Mussolini was 24 and a self-proclaimed socialist. His favorite readings were by Marx and Schopenhauer. Fascism was born in 1919; by that time, Papini was about to convert to Catholicism. Fascism considered Giovanni Gentile’s idealism to be its official philosophy. Gentile, not Papini, was called to serve as Mussolini’s Minister of Education. Also, while it is possible that Mussolini remembered something from Leonardo from 19 years before, there is no proof that he ever read the journal. Read’s statement that Mussolini was a cooperator with Leonardo is simply false – he never wrote for the journal. In addition, Mussolini’s quote from James does not accurately summarize any of the three forms of pragmatism as described in Leonardo. At that time almost every philosophy was talking about action, including Marxism, to which the young Mussolini was certainly close. Further, the political ideas of Leonardo reflected a profound individualism, a clear allegiance to liberalism, and sometimes, in Vailati’s writing, some appreciation for Fabianism, a doctrine that mingled socialism and liberalism.5 It is hard to get politically further away from fascism than these ideas. Finally, it should be noted that Papini became a

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 113

fascist much later, in 1935. He had dismissed pragmatism as youthful attraction and a mistake as early as 1908, and had then become a follower of theosophy, then a futurist, then a Catholic. Facing all these facts, the idea of locating the fundamental link between Papini and fascism in pragmatism seems to be at least arbitrary. 5 Returning to theory, there is a further question about Vailati, one of the “good guys” of the standard view. Which was his kind of pragmatism? According to the standard view he should have anticipated analytic philosophy. Is this true? Yes and no. He certainly advocated for precision of thought and language. He anticipated Wittgenstein’s idea of philosophy as therapy that reduces metaphysical problems to language issues. He appreciated the contemporary development of logic, to which he had contributed by assisting Peano in the compilation of the Formulario. Finally, Vailati hated vagueness. No wonder that many years after his death he was quoted in the Vienna Circle Manifesto as a possible precursor. However, as I have noted elsewhere (Maddalena 2007), Vailati had a strong consciousness of the evolutionary historicity of truth. He even allowed for a description of science as a “lie,” in accord with a sort of pre-Rortyan view of science fostered by Prezzolini among the Leonardians.6 Moreover, because of his acknowledgement of the role of historicity, Vailati was a fervent anti-Kantian and agreed with Papini’s attacks on the definition of a priori necessities, whether synthetic or analytic.7 The third kind of pragmatism, the one adhered to by Vailati according to the Florentine Pragmatist Club, relied upon a very close link between ethical choices – even in an open and declared Nietzschean spirit – and logical/mathematical deductions. Vailati understood pragmatism as a way to verify consequences but had a sophisticated view of the psychology that runs beneath the surface of logic. For this kind of psychology Vailati relied on Brentano’s views and his distinctions among representations, beliefs, and volitions. Of these three states of consciousness that respectively refer to sensations (which can also be images, ideas, or memories), previsions (which can be beliefs, doubts, fears, satisfactions, etc.), and value judgments, Vailati is primarily interested in the reflection or the impact they have on logic. The first category, representation, is reflected in “definitions,” “propositions that have the sole purpose of clarifying and analyzing the meaning of a word or of a sentence” (S II: 88). Definitions can be analyzed as “data” but do not produce new knowledge. The expansion of knowledge, instead, is given to beliefs that are reflected in statements regarding “matters of fact,” opinions that may be true or false “independently of any human convention on the way of expressing them” (S II: 88). Here ideas and facts find their unity. This level of experience is the one in which hypothetical-deductive knowledge works. Finally, there are volitions, the “value judgments” which find their logical equivalent in the choice of postulates or of the “table of values” (S II: 91) for which expectations will be ordered as means to ends. At this point Vailati meets James and the other Italian pragmatists: the will determines the purposes and on them the monistic claims of idealism and the rationalist claims of positivism have no power. There are several purposes and they depend on the individual as he/she emerges from the socio-historical development, anti-deterministically seen as a necessary but not sufficient condition. 6 In conclusion, we can say that Vailati was closer to his “magical” friends much more than is usually thought. If one considers Calderoni’s reliance on Vailati’s theses and, in addition, considers Calderoni’s own theses (other than those he expressed in his debate with Giuliano il Sofista), one can say that much like the American pragmatists, the

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 114

common project that united the Italian pragmatists was deeper and stronger than some of the members of the movement thought.8 7 A final philological question can be asked about what the Italian pragmatists as a group understood about the original American philosophy and what they added to it. Surely, as a group, they understood that pragmatism opposed both positivism and rationalism, while they remained more confused about the distinction between pragmatism on the one hand and Berkeley’s idealism and Locke’s empiricism on the other. As for rationalism, they identified Descartes and Kant as theoretical adversaries, exactly as their American counterparts had.9 They also understood the thick sense of experience that pragmatism advocated and the overthrow of the ancient dualisms between theory and practice, mind and body, and norms and descriptions that was the inevitable implication of the pragmatic maxim. However, they knew only a few of Peirce’s writings and only a few more by James – they missed the sophisticated mathematical, phenomenological, semiotic, and metaphysical views that Peirce and James developed in the last phase of their lives. In particular, Vailati was unfamiliar with the intersection of Peirce’s studies on continuity and abduction,10 the latter a method of reasoning that would have opened up Vailati’s views to different, logical and mathematical landscapes. 8 What did the Italian pragmatists add to American pragmatism, leading Calderoni to claim that Italian pragmatism was an “original” form? They added an existentialist11 and even nihilist12 leaning that reverberated in their theory about values choice. This theory of values choice was the link between the magical and logical varieties of pragmatism and was also the origin of some extremely innovative research, like that conducted by Calderoni in the field of economics (Calderoni 1906). Italian pragmatists embraced the philosophical movement from the U.S. because they were looking for answers to vital problems, a thirst that was evident in Papini and also in the skeptical attitude of Prezzolini. As the correspondence with Papini confirms (Vailati 1971: 319-473), Vailati comprehended this existential drive and tried to put it in philosophical terms with the idea of the “third pragmatism.” In the course of applying Vailati’s ideas to economics and ethics, Calderoni, who was Vailati’s pupil, had implicitly accepted the third brand of pragmatism advocated by his mentor much more than he ever admitted. The use of the collective name – the Florentine Pragmatist Club – under which all the important pragmatists authored the article that distinguished the three kinds of pragmatism and the intersections among them, was an index of the common belonging they professed in the years 1905-6, the years in which Vailati lived in Florence and in which Leonardo published its most important material.

3. Action and Creation. The Peak and the End of Italian Pragmatists’ Common Project

9 I want to dedicate the last part of this paper to a topic that can illuminate the kind of theoretical attitude that united the participants in the club, a topic that reveals both their strength and their weakness. The topic is the conception of action as creation, whose theoretical side could be seen in the bond between the universal and the particular.

10 In December 1903, Papini, 22 years old at the time, published an article in Leonardo about the “Death and Resurrection” of philosophy. He adopted his usual apocalyptic

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 115

tone. He clearly condemned intellectualist abstraction and generalization as a perennial error in philosophy and identified dualisms between theory and practice, generality and particularity, as the consequences of this erroneous starting point. Philosophical resurrection must involve turning the generalizing point of view upside down, as well as “a practical research and creation of the particular and the personal” (L I/11-12, 20 dicembre 1903: 7). Some of the consequences of this resurrection were simply weird, such as an appreciation for studies on single strange or miraculous events, magic, and egology, but Papini also describes the unity of theory and practice, and the improvement of technology as a necessary consequence. After reading the article, Vailati wrote to Papini highly praising the idea of individualization of ideas and of moving to a radical psychology of philosophy,13 which would make the link between philosopher and philosophy much more evident and clear. In a second letter, he takes another step in Papini’s direction. This magical, practical, creative activity is simply what any art or science does; he therefore attacks Papini because he thinks that philosophy is special in this sense, different from other arts and sciences. Certainly, Vailati stresses that creation cannot be ex-nihilo and criticizes Papini for allowing too much freedom to the will.14 However, after Papini’s response, Vailati understands that the real difference between his philosophical notions and Papini’s is in the method of this transformation of the world through the embodiment of ideas into particulars. As he says: “I have no a priori objection to the possibility of educating our will and to its extension to further domains. However, I believe that the verification of this possibility should be sought more in experiment and induction than in speculation and intuition.” (Vailati 1971: 391). The difference is in the tools but not in the goal: Vailati thinks that the enlargement of the realm of will depends on mediate tools of knowledge, while Papini thinks of these tools as immediate. 11 In a subsequent issue of Leonardo, Papini returned to the same topic in an article titled “Martha and Mary, from contemplation to action” (L II/1, marzo 1904: 8). Here Papini stressed that there is no distinction between the external and internal consciousness and that consciousness itself is always act and change. Papini considers the magical attitude as one that emphasizes this normal situation until ideas are transformed into reality: “It is a difference of measurement not of nature,” he concluded (L II/1, marzo 1904: 8). The great logician Vailati was not opposed to this goal. In a letter dated November 21, 1904, Vailati, almost 20 years older than Papini, attempted to make his young friend aware that this revolution in philosophy was somehow the dream of many philosophers in the past: concepts are means to an end-in-view, and facts (their production and prediction) are the goal of any science.15 Vailati tried also to fix Papini’s attention on the research of general ideas as an effective means of reaching the goal of facts, as an organ that helps produce them. Vailati also explained the extent to which creativity and imagination are tools for creating those general ideas, which in turn are tools for the creation of facts. This debate occurred before Vailati moved to Florence. After he moved, Leonardo changed and many of the subsequent articles show that Vailati’s idea of saving Papini’s dream and aim was at the foundation of the pluralist unity that Italian pragmatists found in their club. As we have seen, a united viewpoint appeared in April 1905 under the name the “Florentine Pragmatist Club.” In this article, the Leonardians recognized that there were three kinds of pragmatism, but they identified some common characteristics: the softening of theories and beliefs; the relationship between general and particular; the choice of topics according to the ends in view; the culture of believing; the “corridor” theory, according to which pragmatism

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 116

is a method of inquiry and not a system. We are unable to go deeply into all these commonalities, but I want to underline the conclusion of the theoretical part of the article, in which the Leonardians say that “it is easy to see the relationship” among the theoretical topics: “The common goal is to act; that is, to strengthen our power to modify things. In order to act, you must also forecast and in order to forecast with certainty you must have well-formed sciences which are fit for the task and verifiable. From induction to the Will to Believe there is a continuity which is provided by the common goal: the aspiration to be able to act” (L III/2, aprile 1905: 46). In a later paper Papini points out that the difference between pragmatist and positivist explaining that in the former previsions and consequences are considered to be matters of definition and interpretation as well as of practical application (L V/1, febbraio 1907: 26-38). Leonardians never reached Peirce’s theory of modality and its application to the pragmatic maxim, but they were well aware that rationalism, positivism, and empiricism were far away from the pragmatic understanding of ideas. The theoretical bond between the kinds of pragmatism consisted in keeping clear the continuity between induction and the “Will to believe”; that is, in Prezzolini’s words, between the first floor in which science works as doorman and the second floor where there is an orderly ability to create (L IV/4, ottobre-dicembre 1906: 355). This was the particular, theoretical addendum of the Italians to the original American movement: pragmatism as a way to create. This is why they could be so inclusive with respect to science, poetry, religion, and art – in every field we can see the act of creation. In the few months they worked together, Italian pragmatists thought that creative power must be a particular action that is connected to the generality of ideas. In creation we see these ideas at work, in concreto. An issue of Leonardo in June 1905 published three papers on “Belief and Will” by Calderoni, Papini, and Vailati. They all identified the capacity of foresight as characteristic of the voluntary will. Papini characterized foresight as an “experiment” and listed various kinds of experiments, from the scientific to the “personal,” pointing out that the pragmatist method implies the reversal of the usual doctrine concerning the influence of what we know on what we do. The contrary is also true: what we do influences what we know. The passage from direct “intuition” of his early writings to indirect “experiment” was a huge step for Papini, and possibly the point at which Italian pragmatists could recognize a common conception of “creation” as “continuity between induction and the will to believe,” the point at which they could insert their existential leanings into the pragmatist pattern (L III/3, giugno-agosto 1905: 127-8).16 On the other side of the equation, Vailati deepened his focus on both the need for the “use and construction of examples” and for “contemplation and representation of ideal, or even fantastic, situations” that it would be unscientific and unreasonable to forbid (S1: 59-66). 12 This was a high point of their common experience. It was a moment in which they belonged to pragmatism fully. In a book written with Rosa Calcaterra and Giancarlo Marchetti, we proposed some basic characteristics that classic pragmatists shared: the acceptance of the pragmatic maxim, evolutionism as a method, continuity between reality and knowledge, anti-Cartesianism, acknowledgment of mediate forms in epistemology, and an intertwinement among normative sciences (and possibly anti- Kantianism) (Calcaterra, Maddalena & Marchetti 2015: 13-8). If you accept those points, it becomes clear that Papini’s passage to “personal experiment” and the Italian pragmatists drive to unite imagination and will-deduction-induction into a single continuous action was the most advanced point of their research. They touched upon

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 117

something new and important for the general story of pragmatism in that moment. After Vailati moved from Florence in 1906, he became more and more attentive to fighting against vagueness and for precision, while Papini moved closer to occultism. However, for a moment they proposed an original form of pragmatism in which love for experiment as particular action, rich realism well beyond any datum, an ampliative form of deduction and psychology, a passion for science, and existential questions coexisted. To build something theoretically new they needed a far most advanced study of mathematical continuity and the semiotic bases of logic, in order to understand that some experiments are simply the way in which we act upon the continuity of reality, a reality that is always changing. Moreover, they should have undertaken an experiment – such as Peirce’s existential graphs – in which they could capture reasoning as an act that happens through that continuity, performing a synthesis, namely, a recognition of identity through change. Italian pragmatists stressed the need for a kind of creative knowledge that would involve not only the analysis of concepts but also the psychology underpinning our emotions, representations, and choices of value. Perhaps they also needed a different conception of reasoning, and in particular of synthetic reasoning. Unfortunately, they did not have the same tools that American pragmatists had. And when Vailati left Florence in 1906, they lost the united track they had found. However, James was right in thinking that they were up to something new – a sort of synthetic, existential pragmatism that has only been vindicated with recent mathematical discoveries (Zalamea 2012; Maddalena 2015).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

AA.VV., “Il pensiero di Giovanni Vailati,” Rivista critica di storia della filosofia, vol. 18, No. 3, luglio- settembre 1963, 275-523.

AA.VV., “Il pensiero di Mario Calderoni,” Rivista critica di storia della filosofia, vol. 34, No. 3, luglio- settembre 1979, 243-426.

BENVENUTO Beppe, (2003), Giuseppe Prezzolini, Palermo, Sellerio.

BIONDI Marino, (2001), Giuseppe Prezzolini: diario di un secolo, Bolzano, Centro di Cultura dell’Alto Adige.

BIONDI Marino, (2006), “Papini saggista. La critica, il giudizio, la memoria,” in Ceccuti Cosimo (ed.), Papini e il suo tempo, Firenze, Le Lettere, 121-208.

BORDOGNA Francesca, (2015), “‘Thought and Action’: William James, the Magic Pragmatists, and the Fascist Mystics,” Second European Pragmatist Conference, Paris, 11 September.

CALCATERRA Rosa Maria, MADDALENA Giovanni & Giancarlo MARCHETTI (eds), (2015), Il pragmatismo dalle origini agli sviluppi contemporanei, Roma, Carocci.

CALDERONI Mario, (1906), Disarmonie economiche e disarmonie morali: saggio di un'estensione della teoria ricardiana della rendita, Firenze, Lumachi.

CASINI Paolo, (2002), Alle origini del Novecento. “Leonardo,” 1903-1907, Bologna, Il Mulino.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 118

CILIBERTO Michele, (1983), “Tra ‘societas christiana’ e cesarismo: Giovanni Papini,” in Gentili Stefano (ed.), Giovanni Papini nel centenario della nascita, Milano, Vita e Pensiero, 77-104.

COLAPIETRO Vincent, (2007), “‘Di al tuo amico Giuliano…’ Gli entusiasmi di James e le riserve di Peirce,” in Maddalena Giovanni & Tuzet Giovanni (eds), I pragmatisti italiani tra alleati e nemici, Milano, AlboVersorio, 97-114.

DAL PRA Mario, (1984), Studi sul pragmatismo italiano, Napoli, Bibliopolis.

DE WAAL Cornelis, (2004), On Pragmatism, Belmont, Wadsworth.

GARIN Eugenio, (1963), “Giovanni Vailati nella cultura italiana del suo tempo,” Rivista critica di storia della filosofia, 18 (3), 275-93.

GENTILI Stefano, (2003), “L’altra metà. Prezzolini e Papini,” in Ceccuti Cosimo (ed.), Prezzolini e il suo tempo, Firenze, Le Lettere, 113-43.

JAMES William, (1906), “G. Papini and the Pragmatist Movement in Italy,” The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Method, 3 (13), 21 June 1906, 337-41.

JAMES William, (1992-2004), The Correspondence of William James (CWJ), ed. by Ignas K. Skrupskelis & Elizabeth M. Berkeley, Charlottesville and London, University of Virginia Press.

LEONARDO (1903-1907). The abbreviation “L” is followed by volume Roman number, issue Arab number, date, and page. For instance: L I/1, 4 gennaio 1903: 1.

MADDALENA Giovanni, (2007), “Giovanni Vailati e l’arte di ragionare,” in Maddalena Giovani & Tuzet Giovanni (eds), I pragmatisti italiani. Tra alleati e nemici, Milano, Alboversorio, 23-42.

MADDALENA Giovanni, (2010), “Peirce and Vailati on Semiotics and Freedom,” Cognitio, 1 (11), 58-68.

MADDALENA Giovanni, (2015), The Philosophy of Gesture, Montreal, McGill- Queen’s University Press.

MADDALENA Giovanni, (2019), “Anti-Kantianism as a Necessary Characteristic of Pragmatism,” in Pragmatist Kant, Nordic Pragmatist Network.

MADDALENA Giovanni & Michela BELLA (2017), “William James and Italian Pragmatism,” in David H. Evans (ed.), Understanding James, Understanding Modernism, New York, Bloomsbury, 249-58.

MADDALENA Giovanni & Giovanni TUZET (eds), (2007), I pragmatisti italiani tra alleati e nemici, Milano, AlboVersorio.

LIVINGSTON Alexander, (2016), Damn Great Empires! William James and the Politics of Pragmatism, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

O’HARE MCCORMICK Anne, (1926), “Behind Fascism Stands a Philosophy,” New York Times Magazine, Sept. 26, 2-3, 18.

PAPINI Giovanni, (1906), Il crepuscolo dei filosofi, Milano, Società Editrice Lombarda.

PAPINI Giovanni, (1911 [1922]), L’altra metà, Firenze, Vallecchi (4 ed.).

PAPINI Giovanni, (1948 [1994]), Passato remoto, Firenze, Ponte alle Grazie (2 ed.)

PAPINI Giovanni, (1977), Opere. Dal “Leonardo” al futurismo, Milano, Mondadori.

PAPINI Giovanni & Ardengo SOFFICI, (2003), Carteggio IV (1919-1956). Dal primo al secondo dopoguerra, Roma, Storia e Letteratura.

PIGA Francesco, (1983), “Papini e Nietzsche,” in Gentili Stefano (ed.), Giovanni Papini nel centenario della nascita, Milano, Vita e Pensiero, 244-54.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 119

PREZZOLINI Giuseppe, (1907 [1971]), L’arte di persuadere, Firenze, Lumachi.

PREZZOLINI Giuseppe, (1925), Le fascisme, Paris, Éditions Bossard.

PREZZOLINI Giuseppe, (1978), Diario 1900-1941, Milano, Rusconi.

PREZZOLINI Giuseppe, (2001), “Fascismo e cultura,” in Biondi Marino, Giuseppe Prezzolini: diario di un secolo, 87-100.

QUARANTA Mario, (1986), “Positivismo e marxismo di fine secolo. Lettere di Giovanni Vailati a Guglielmo Ferrero,” Schema, 8 (2), nuova serie, 269-83.

QUARANTA Mario, (2015), La discussione filosofica nelle riviste del novecento (1900-1970), Padova, Saperi.

READ Herbert, (1936), “The Significance of William James,” The Spectator, Oct. 23, 24.

SANTUCCI Antonio, (1963), Il pragmatismo in Italia, Bologna, il Mulino.

SEGRE Umberto, (1963), “Vailati e la discussione sul socialismo,” Rivista critica di storia della filosofia, 18 (3), 487-98.

VAILATI Giovanni, (1971), Epistolario (1891-1909), Torino, Einaudi.

VAILATI Giovanni, (1987), Scritti (vol. 1: Scritti di filosofia; vol. 2: Scritti di scienza; vol. 3: Scritti di scienze umane), ed. by Mario Quaranta, Bologna, Arnaldo Forni.

VILLA Guido, (1962), Sul pragmatismo logico di Vailati e Calderoni: la questione delle varietà del pragmatismo, “Memorie della Accademie delle Scienze di Bologna. Classe di scienze sociali,” 10 (5), 188-213.

ZALAMEA Fernando, (2012), Synthetic Philosophy of Contemporary Mathematics, New York, Urbanomics.

NOTES

1. In 1911, Papini wrote the book L’altra metà, in which he defined the two kinds of pragmatism that they held during the epoch of Leonardo (1903-1907). On the one hand, there was “il vero pragmatismo, il custode della vecchia induzione, il profeta della previsione, l’analizzatore dei motivi e dei ripieghi delle scienze, il sentenziatore cauto dei sensi e dei non sensi” (Papini 1911: 17). On the other hand, there was “il gran sogno taumaturgo non mai rinnegato: l’uomo signore del mondo, la mente creatrice di verità, la volontà madre di miracoli, tutto l’universo una pasta duttile e docile sotto le mani del nuovo Iddio” (ibid.). As he said in the article “Avvertimento” (1913): “Presso di noi il Pragmatismo si divise quasi nettamente in due sezioni: quella che si potrebbe dire del Pragmatismo logico e quella del Pragmatismo psicologico o magico. Alla prima appartenevano Vailati e Calderoni ai quali moltissimo deve […] la teoria della scienza e la logica considerata come studio del significato delle proposizioni e delle teorie. La seconda era composta da me e da Prezzolini e noialtri, spiriti più avventurosi, più paradossali e più mistici svolgemmo soprattutto quelle teorie che ci facevano sperare un’efficacia diretta sul nostro spirito e sulle cose.” (Papini 1977: 7). For a theoretical formulation of the second stripe of Pragmatism, see L’arte di persuadere by Giuseppe Prezzolini (1907). 2. The dialectic exchange between Prezzolini and Calderoni started in L II/3, novembre 1904: 3-8. Hereafter, I will use L for referring to the journal Leonardo, followed by volume Roman number, issue Arabic number, date, and page. The aforementioned reference is to Leonardo, volume II, issue 3, November 1904, pages 3-8. The discussion on pragmatism continued on L III/1, febbraio

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 120

1905: 15-21 and ended on L III/2, aprile 1905: 48. As for the history of Leonardo, see Casini 2002, and Quaranta 2015. 3. In G. Papini and the Pragmatism Movement in Italy (1906) James writes: “Pragmatism according to Papini […] is like a corridor in a hotel, from which a hundred doors open into a hundred chambers. In one you may see a man on his knees praying to regain his faith; in another a desk at which sits some one eager to destroy all metaphysics; in a third a laboratory with an investigator looking for new footholds by which to advance upon the future. But the corridor belongs to all, and all must pass there. Pragmatism, in short, is a great corridor theory.” (James 1906: 33). 4. In 1922, the year of the fascist march on Rome, Prezzolini wrote in his diary: “il fascismo è grossolano, incolto, mette sotto i piedi la libertà e minaccia la politica estera.” (Prezzolini 1978: 363). Some years later, he published in France an essay called Le fascisme (1925), hit by fascist censorship (for the history of this work see Biondi 2001). In a letter to Soffici on the 15th of September 1919, Papini writes: “L’Italia, in apparenza, è oggi rappresentata da tre energumeni sifilitici [syphilitic energumenes]: D’Annunzio, Mussolini e Marinetti. Ma tu sai che l’avvenire non è lì e non è coi loro.” (Papini & Soffici 2003: 45). Michele Ciliberto wrote about Papini’s late connection to fascism: “Non è dunque il fascismo come ristrutturazione istituzionale, statuale, in termini reazionari di massa, della nazione italiana, che attrae Papini. E neppure lo stimolano […] le proposte di tipo corporativistico […]. Ciò che nel fascismo gli sembra essenziale non è l’organizzazione delle masse […] Ciò che lo attrae e convince è la figura del duce, del capo, del cesare, il ruolo da essa svolto sul piano politico e anche ideale, culturale.” According to Ciliberto, the philosophical link between the late Papini and fascism is not the ideology but the strong attraction for cesarismo, the need of a Cesar, as typical character of Italian history (Ciliberto 1983: 95). In his work about fascism, Prezzolini says: “La parola d’ordine del fascismo è azione, non pensiero. Non è stato preparato o proceduto da un movimento ideale; si ricollega alla guerra, che non dà modo al pensiero di esercitarsi, e alla giovinezza, che non è la stagione della vita più adatta alla riflessione […] Il fascismo è, sotto questo aspetto, indice di grossolanità e impoverimento intellettuale. Leggendo la produzione degli anni del dopoguerra e confrontandola con quella anteriore si ha la sensazione che il progresso allora raggiunto si sia in parte perduto. È un po’ come immaginare dei contadini che tolgano da una borsa chirurgica trovata nei campi i ferri pieni di ruggine e si mettano a fare delle operazioni!” (Prezzolini 2001: 87-8). 5. Vailati’s political writings are collected in the third volume of his complete works (S3). Segre 1963, and Quaranta 1986 provided a good account of his political views. 6. In L’arte di persuadere (1907), Prezzolini says: “Non v’è dunque grande differenza […] tra il ragazzo che nasconde una scampagnata con una lezione straordinaria e attribuisce al gatto i furtarelli commessi nella credenza casalinga, e lo scienziato che inventa atomi, particelle, eteri ed altri personaggi della sua mitologia scientifica per i bisogni di coesione della scienza. Lo scienziato è un bugiardo utile collettivamente, il bugiardo è uno scienziato utile egoisticamente. La bugia è dunque il portone d’ingresso della scienza.” (Prezzolini 1971: 105). In 1907 Vailati writes a long review of Prezzolini’s book under the head of Un manuale per i bugiardi. In the review, he agrees with Prezzolini’s paradoxes: “Perfettamente fondate a questo riguardo, nonostante il loro carattere paradossale, mi sembrano le considerazioni che conducono il Prezzolini, nel suo volume L’arte di persuadere, a stabilire un parallelo tra le costruzioni delle ‘bugie’ e quella delle teorie scientifiche.” (S1: 82). 7. In a letter written to Papini in 1903, Vailati said that the apriori is a “illusione dell’evidenza, derivante […] da una rapida oscillazione tra due significati affatto diversi di una data frase” (Vailati 1971: 371). In his first book, Crepuscolo dei filosofi, Papini follows Vailati’s teaching: “L’apriori, in Kant, è piuttosto un articolo di fede che una teoria critica, e il devoto kantiano dovrebbe aggiungerlo alle cose che bisogna credere senza poterlo dimostrare.” (Papini 1906: 29). For an overview of Vailati’s attacks to Kant see Maddalena (2015: 16-8).

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 121

8. For the mutual links between Calderoni and his master (and their relationship with the American pragmatists) see the issues dedicated to their thoughts by Rivista critica di storia della filosofia in 1963 and 1979, as well as Villa 1962. 9. For an overview of anti-Kantism as fundamental characteristic of pragmatism see Maddalena (2015: 10-9). The problem with anti-Kantism as intrinsic to pragmatism is always related to Peirce’s attitude towards the German master. Peirce changed his mind over the years and arrived to a profound anti-Kantism. The story of this change is documented in Maddalena 2019. 10. Vailati wrote only one review of Peirce’s articles (see S1: 361-2). 11. The existentialist way is the real element of novelty that the Italians added to pragmatism (Maddalena & Tuzet 2007). According to Sandro Gentili, Prezzolini and Papini tried to find a discipline committed to a practical, existential aim. “Cercarono di disciplinarsi attraverso uno scopo che abbia una possibilità di traduzione pratica e sembra indirizzarsi a entrambi, in una sorta di pragmatismo non più gnoseologico ma esistenziale.” (Gentili 2003: 133). In another article, Biondi maintains: “L’intreccio fra cultura e vita era strettissimo, ed era un intreccio pragmatista. Un pragmatismo cognitivo ed esistenziale.” (Biondi 2006: 144). Benvenuto 2003 considers the young Prezzolini as an existentialist nihilist. 12. Francesco Piga worked on the connection between Papini and Nietzsche. “È evidente che l’invettiva di Papini, il tono forte e accusatore degli articoli del ‘Leonardo’ e delle stesse pagine de Il Crepuscolo dei filosofi e di Un uomo finito risalgono scopertamente alla lettura di Nietzsche.” (Piga 1983: 247). Papini’s interest in Nietzsche was a stimulus for Vailati; in a letter sent to Papini in 1904, Vailati wrote: “Che Nietzsche dicesse male di Spencer, prova che sentiva il bisogno di contraddirlo come ogni discepolo intelligente ha bisogno di contraddire al suo maestro. La sua dottrina filosofica porta l’impronta di una continua evoluzione verso la teoria dell’evoluzione, accompagnata dal desiderio di oltrepassarla.” (Vailati 1971: 383). The same statement appears in the review that Vailati wrote on Orestano’s book about the strongholds of Nietzsche’s thought (see S1: 329-33). 13. In the letter Vailati writes: “[…] la ‘filosofia,’ dopo essere andata diventando a poco a poco […] la storia di se medesima, non deve fermarsi a mezza strada e deve trasformarsi risolutamente nella […] psicologia della filosofia o, più precisamente, nella ‘psicologia dei filosofi’ (Philosophen- Psychologie, la quale comprende invece lo studio delle manifestazioni meno individuali, più gregarie dello spirito umano: politica, tecnologia, folklore, religione, etc.) Ciò che dici della filosofia come documento, non potrebbe essere meglio detto, ed è impossibile resistere all’impulso di trattare subito come documento anche quella stessa tua filosofia che si propone di studiare le altre in tal modo.” (Vailati 1971: 384). 14. “[…] questa ‘attività creatrice, magica,’ etc., da che cosa distingue la filosofia? Se essa non la distingue dall’arte […] non la distingue neppure dalle scienze particolari, ciascuna delle quali, nel proprio campo speciale, è o può essere altrettanto creatrice o magica quanto l’arte e la filosofia nel loro. Un chimico che compone un nuovo profumo o un nuovo veleno, un ingegnere che fa un impianto elettrico, un allevatore che crea una nuova specie o varietà di bachi da seta o una nuova razza di cani, uno psicologo o un educatore che forma (o perverte) un’anima, etc., sono perlomeno altrettanto creatori quanto il costruttore di nuovi schemi filosofici, o il cesellatore di nuovi aforismi o il coniatore di nuove ‘parole d’ordine’ (o di ’disordine’) atte a servire nelle logomachie filosofiche, o lo scopritore di nuove giustificazioni per gli istinti umani, etc., etc. […] Le verità, le leggi di natura, etc., sono rotaie su cui i fatti, e in particolare le nostri azioni, si devono muovere; tu, dal tuo istinto di libertà, sei portato invece a concepire l’uomo come una nave che crea la propria rotta e non ha solchi davanti a sé, ma solo di dietro, cioè quelli che essa stessa fa.” (Vailati 1971: 386-7). 15. Vailati says: “Che vi sia una differenza tra un concetto e un fatto, tra un’idea astratta e una sensazione concreta, non vi sarà nessuno uomo che te lo neghi. Sul valore di questa differenza, cioè, in altre parole, sulla questione: quale delle suddette due categorie di fatti mentali abbia

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 122

carattere di fine rispetto all’altra (nel senso ben preciso di ‘fine,’ che tu determini così bene nelle prime pagine di quel capolavoro che è l’opuscolo sulla previsione); sulla questione insomma del compito dei concetti e delle idee generali, come puoi attribuire ai filosofi in genere, o anzi alla filosofia, di avere un solo parere, quello opposto al tuo, mentre una metà almeno (il ballottaggio si potrebbe tentare) dei più grandi filosofi del passato (i quali lo sono anche del presente) è precisamente d’accordo con te, salvo lievi sfumature dovute al diverso modo d’esprimersi e alle diverse lingue in cui scrissero, nel sostenere che i concetti sono dei mezzi e che i fatti (cioè la loro produzione e previsione) sono il fine di ogni scienza e d’ogni speculazione.” (Vailati 1971: 425-6). 16. In the same issue Papini published his article on the congress of psychology held in Rome in 1905 (123-4). The three papers are in fact the summaries of the papers that Vailati, Calderoni and Papini read in that place. Another review of the congress is by Vailati (S3: 153-4). During the congress the Italian pragmatists met William James, who was the guest star of congress. In Passato remoto, many years later, Papini remembered their private meeting during those days, underlining James’s kindness and openness of mind (Papini 1948). James famously wrote to his wife Alice an enthusiastic comment about the encounter (CWJ, 11,26). See also Maddalena & Bella 2017.

ABSTRACTS

According to the standard interpretation, Italian pragmatism is split into two groups. On the one hand is the mathematician Giovanni Vailati, Peano’s former collaborator, and his disciple, the economist Mario Calderoni. On the other hand, there are the two “brats,” Giovanni Papini and Giuseppe Prezzolini, naïve philosophers with eccentric ideas. While Vailati and Calderoni followed Peirce’s mathematical and logical pragmatism, the other two articulated a “magical” pragmatism, a kind of relativist, post-modern version of the original American movement. The paper shows that this narrative is incomplete. During the years 1905-6, while Vailati was living in Florence, Italian pragmatists listed three kinds of pragmatism among themselves. Relying on the third stripe, attributed to Vailati, they found a more Unitarian, theoretical project that united the will to belief and the precision of reasoning. The unity did not last very long because Vailati moved from Florence in 1906. However, the common project from 1905-6 remains the highest peak of their awareness of pragmatism and, possibly, an original way to interpret it.

AUTHOR

GIOVANNI MADDALENA

Università del Molise maddalena[at]unimol.it

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 123

Scientific Method and Juridical Accountability in Mario Calderoni’s Pragmatism

Rosa M. Calcaterra

1 Calderoni’s pragmatism is characterized by a polemical stance towards some important William James’s theses. This controversy was one with his philosophical choice in favor of Peirce’s pragmatism. We could define this choice as ethically founded, that is, as linked to the typically Peircean attribution of a strong ethical value to the scientific- experimental method.

2 The ethical choice in favor of Peirce’s pragmatism seems to be confirmed as long as Calderoni identifies a third form of pragmatism, in addition to the Peircean and Jamesian versions. In the two writings published at a short distance on “Leonardo” – i.e Le varietà del pragmatismo (November 1904) and Variazioni sul pragmatismo (February 1905) – Calderoni defines three forms of pragmatism: 1) the “critical” pragmatism, which, in harmony with Peirce’s pragmatic maxim, aims at eliminating as unsubstantiated issues all those philosophical (and non-philosophical) questions that do not refer to “actual or even simply possible expectations of ours”; 2) the pragmatism of “the will to believe,” which temporarily or definitively refrains from pronouncing itself on the question of the truth or falsity of beliefs (with clear reference to the James- Schiller-Prezzolini trend of thought); 3) “a third variety […] which recognizes the great role played by active and voluntary transactions in the progress of our knowledge, which draws different methodological consequences from it, relating to the sphere of definitions, hypotheses and experiments.” This third form is clearly inspired by the idea of pragmatism as a philosophical ratification of the experimental scientific method. It recognizes an ethical quality also in the pragmatism of the “willingness to believe,” since this form is implicitly close to the criterion of the voluntary construction of experimental hypotheses that contribute to modify – positively or negatively – our beliefs. However, Calderoni’s penchant for positivistic trust in scientific knowledge pushes him towards an ethic based on clarity, confrontation with facts and, especially, on the conception of experience as an “uncomfortable and severe

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 124

teacher.” According to Calderoni, this concept essentially characterizes Peirce’s pragmatism and his divergence from James. 3 The distinction between a “respectable” pragmatism and a non-Peircean “degenerate” pragmatism – the pragmatism of James and the Oxfordian Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller – has produced an interpretative koiné which is deeply rooted in the Italian philosophical culture. One fact contributed to this phenomenon. Calderoni’s controversy with James was connected with the heated discussions among the young intellectuals who created the Florentine magazine “Il Leonardo.” These discussions testify the widening gap between two different ways of welcoming pragmatism, namely that of Vailati and Calderoni on the one hand, and that of Prezzolini and Papini on the other. These differences would soon have led to the conclusion of the story of “Il Leonardo.” It is interesting to note that the two forms of reception of pragmatism were linked to conflicting political attitudes: the constant socialist orientation of the “logical pragmatists” and – after the conclusion of the Leonardo – the sympathies for fascism expressed by Papini and Prezzolini, who, moreover, later distanced themselves from it. In this regard, Vincent Colapietro noted the contrast between “the exuberant denial of human limits” by Prezzolini and “the humble recognition of them” by Calderoni, and pointed to “the denial of the existence of any limits to human will” as an element that predisposed Prezzolini and Papini towards fascism. 4 Supposing hypothetically that these expressions partly reflect the thoughts of the so- called “magic” pragmatists Papini and Prezzolini, it would certainly be easy to prove how little they are compatible with James’s thinking. However, the contrast between the pragmatism of Peirce and James as a “degenerate” form of the peircean version is still quite lively on the international philosophical scene. In various contexts I have refuted this opposition, trying to show affinities rather than the alleged radical differences between Peirce’s pragmatist trend and that of James, Mead, Dewey and their more recent epigones. 5 To this end, it is worth noting an important point of convergence between Peirce and James, namely their common intention to make room for the core criteria of scientific methodology: Experimentalism, fallibility and the principle of “sociality.” The allegedly individualist James did not fail to stress these points in The Meaning of Truth, the text in which he tried to respond to the various misunderstandings of his own philosophy, a text that, perhaps not by chance, has been ignored for a long time especially in Europe. 1 6 However, Calderoni identified a firm point of divergence between Peirce and James precisely in their respective attitudes of “respect” and “suspicion” towards the scientific method. Calderoni would probably have reviewed some of his views on James, had he been able to have a deeper understanding of his work. Let us consider the following passage of the conference “Pragmatism and Humanism,” in which James regretted the real misunderstandings caused by the title he had chosen for his most famous work: “I once wrote an essay on our right to believe, which I unluckily called the Will to Believe. All the critics, neglecting the essay, pounced upon the title. Psychologically it was impossible, morally it was iniquitous. The ‘will to deceive,’ the ‘will to make believe,’ were wittily proposed as substitutes for it.”2 7 Leaving these reflections in the background, I would now like to try to look a little more closely at the reasons for appreciating the pragmatism of Peirce that Calderoni offers us and the applications he proposes. As I mentioned earlier, Calderoni shares the

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 125

ethical quality of Peirce’s pragmatism, for example his emphasis on the values of clarity, of confrontation with facts and, especially, of the conception of experience as “boaring but indispensable” (Calderoni 2007: 70). Starting from these criteria, which are both ethical and epistemological values, he introduces his most original arguments. First of all, the understanding of the meaning of terms and concepts by means of examples rather than definitions, in relation to their use and “grammatical” relationships – as Wittgenstein will later say – with other terms or concepts – in short, in relation to a given semantic context. 8 On this issue, introduced in the review of Giorgio Del Vecchio’s book “The philosophical assumptions of the notion of law” (1905),3 Giovanni Tuzet wrote interesting and precise pages.4 Tuzet clearly highlighted the points of difficulty that emerge when one tries to explain the meaning of legal and moral concepts and their normative character through the application of Pierce’s maximum pragmatic approach, which as we have seen Calderoni interprets in terms of predicting the probable consequences of an idea or belief. It is appropriate, however, to take up here a few passages of the text under discussion: The need for a real “definition” is not always felt: it is sufficient, sometimes, to make a word usable, to indicate a number of examples chosen conveniently, by trusting in a vague similarity that we perceive, or we suppose to exist among the examples themselves, without however indicating in what this resemblance consists […] The need of knowing the meaning of a word does not arise therefore as long as there is consensus in the use of it. In fact, it is felt strongly every time dissent arises between those who have to apply it […] All sciences, all disciplines have their “difficult cases,” which are unknown to the routiniers of the sciences and disciplines themselves: these need prompt the need to define what the routiniers find evident, obvious, intuitive; in them lies in the fact, the “practical” justification of every philosophy. Philosophy is born, therefore, from dissent and it presupposes dissent.5 9 In addition to the questions related to the understanding of meaning, we find in these passages a precise definition of the origin and task of philosophy, understood as a therapeutic activity that aims at identifying and dissolve the “mental cramps,” the “enchantments” produced by the use of language itself, as Wittgenstein later said.

10 The comparison with Wittgenstein is particularly interesting if one considers Calderoni’s reflections on the distinction between voluntary and involuntary acts, on which the theme of individual responsibility – both moral and juridical – is based. The ethics of clarity, inspired by Peirce’s pragmatic maxim, is expressed in the proposal to address the question of the meaning of words or concepts through the production of examples and, sometimes, the display of objective references of words. This same strategy must also be adopted when we try to clarify issues relating to the concept of human will. It is necessary to start from the observation and description of the events of everyday life in order to understand what expressions such as “voluntary” and “involuntary” mean, as long as these expressions recur continuously and, above all, in a “spontaneous” way in our ordinary practices. The distinction between voluntary and involuntary acts belongs to our language as well as to our emotional attitudes. At the emotional level, it makes a big difference if we judge a certain event as the result of a voluntary act or of an involuntary cause – e.g. natural causes or human actions which cannot be attributed to the voluntariness of the subjects involved. There will be different emotional/affective reactions to the same event, depending on their explanation in terms of voluntary cause, or vice versa.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 126

11 On the other hand, according to Calderoni a key role is played by the clarity and obviousness through which the distinction between voluntary and involuntary presents itself, both in relation to acts already carried out and those still to be carried out. It is interesting to underline the theoretical question that emerges from these statements, namely the intention to seek a way to eliminate the contrast between science and ethical practice. On the one hand, this intention is in line with positivistic confidence in scientific knowledge – in fact, Calderoni stresses the need to bring ethical analysis back to the criteria of the scientific knowledge and method; on the other hand, we can observe here an anticipation of the typical tendency of the second twentieth century to go beyond a fixed point of logical positivism, namely the clear distinction between the scientific sphere and the practical sphere, and the certainty that these two domains are governed by completely heterogeneous criteria – respectively, a subjective-emotional and an objective-rational one. 12 More specifically, Calderoni claims that the characteristic of voluntary action consists in being “capable of being provoked or modified by the prediction of specific events, both outside of us and within us.”6 A questionable clarification, since the range of possible predictions is always related to a number of potentially indefinable factors. However, Calderoni does not fail to pay attention to the distinction between “being able to predict” and “knowing how to predict.” This distinction is clearly crucial for the attribution of moral or legal responsibility for an act. Calderoni expresses a strong disappointment with regard to the “Lombarans” who claim an equivalence between power and will, against which – writes Calderoni – the common sense rebels. 13 For the purposes of comparison with Wittgenstein and the theorists of the action that have followed his traces, Calderoni’s distinction between the explanation of the material properties – e.g. colours – and the explanation of whether or not human actions are voluntary plays an interesting role. According to Calderoni, the explanation of material properties can be met ostensively, while the explanation of the voluntariness or involuntary nature of human actions requires an ad hoc experimental procedure, suitable to verify whether a certain act would have been repeated in any possible circumstance. Calderoni sets a difference between voluntariness and involuntary acts, which corresponds to the difference between elasticity and plasticity of physical bodies. In this way the possibility is ruled out that the voluntary act can consist only in the memory of past experiences, since it is rather characterized by a cognitive component whose specific nature consists in being a conditional prediction. This last aspect represents the constitutive trait of voluntariness and coincides with the meaning of human freedom.7 14 On this point, there is a divergence with Wittgenstein. With regard to the analysis of intentional verbs – e.g. deciding, intending, wanting, saying, etc. – Wittgenstein refuses the confusion caused by the continuous interference of physical language with all our discourse forms: “All our ways of speaking are borrowed from the normal physical language and are not to be used in epistemology or phenomenology without putting the subject to a wrong light.”8 The grammar of will has its own specific status, which has very little to do with the knowledge of any past experience or with the verifiability or falsifiability of asserts in which terms such as “volunteer” or “involuntary” appear. Rather, it is necessary to refer to the plan of practical reason, and to the subjectively constituted normativity that characterizes its articulation and its possible developments. A similar argument can be found in Calderoni, if we move on to the

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 127

ground of his observations about legal or moral responsibility, a domain that is obviously close to that of voluntariness/liberality. In this context, normativity is defined as a social product, by affirming the close link between the existence of rules of conduct and customs and the very concept of responsibility. Calderoni affirms in short that the meaning of the term responsibility alludes to certain “artificial” consequences – i.e. produced by society and its history – which certain acts imply.9 15 It is not clear how the definition of normativity as a “social product” can be linked to a conception of will which is still imbued with a “factual” human ontology. I would therefore like to focus on his clarification that “the norms of custom” imply “constant ways of reacting to the actions of others,”10 bearing in mind that Calderoni tends to combine a pragmatic approach to the conceptual network of notions of will, responsibility and normality with a brentanian approach to the problem of explaining human action. 16 As we know, scholars often singled out into Brentano’s thought an “internalist/ mentalist” perspective that is not entirely consistent with Peirce’s pragmatism. And yet Calderoni invites us to value Brentano’s theory of “mental facts,” according to which they must be distinguished in representations or ideas and beliefs and judgments, defining the latter as mental facts susceptible to truth or falsity, precisely because they imply predictions or expectations:11 What distinguishes voluntary action from involuntary action is precisely this: that voluntary action is what counts among its causes some judgments, some predictions in general, and in particular predictions relating to the act itself that is about to take place. Voluntary action is the kind of action that can be provoked or modified by the prediction of specific events, both outside of us and within us, and more particularly by the prediction of what would happen if the action were to be carried out (the consequences, that is, of the action itself).12 17 Following Brentano, Calderoni maintains that beliefs or judgments are the phenomena that cause the voluntary act. Here the distance from Wittgenstein is considerable. Within the phenomenological framework inspired by Brentano, intentionality is understood as the specific characteristic of the mind, and as what defines the relationship between states or mental processes and real facts, including those related to human action. On the other hand, according to Wittgenstein intentional verbs derive their meaning from certain relationships “internal” to the language itself, and not from the relationship between thought and reality to which Brentano sought, precisely, to link his notion of intentionality.

18 In Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, this anti-Brentano position takes on a particularly interesting aspect in comparison with Calderoni. In a nutshell, Wittgenstein understands voluntary action in connection with a specific context and language games. The set of mutual expectations that are generated among speakers contributes to the creation of this context and these games. Intentional verbs express attitudes that depend on the agent and, at the same time, on the language game within which he acts. They depend on contexts “which we govern” and which, precisely for this reason, differ from linguistic games relating to physical or psychological facts, which instead happen regardless of our will, i.e. “whether we want it or not.”13 Wittgenstein thus invites us to recognize the strength and permeability of the normative dimension of human life. As free persons, we are responsible for the standards that we ourselves build and which, precisely for this reason, we can also potentially change. While Calderoni tends to assimilate human freedom to the logical

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 128

capacity to construct predictions, the wittgensteinian perspective attributes it instead, and in apparent paradox, to the normativity interweaving human actions. The freer are these action, the more they are normatively determined.14 19 Following Wittgenstein, Georg Henrik Von Wright elaborated a conception of free actions that can supplement Calderoni’s observations on the relationship between freedom and determinism. As Pastore observes, Calderoni frames the relationship between freedom and determinism into a compatibilist vision that has an important predecessor in Hume: “Will and choice are determined by our history, our experience, our circumstances, the environmental and family influences that have formed us. Actions are determined by human will, which, in turn, is determined by factors external to the agent.” (Pastore 2016: 379). In this same direction, Von Wright’s studies converge in his neo-wittgensteinian theory of action, in particular in the notion of “action for reasons,” a concept he defines as “twin” to the concept of free action.15 If the very concept of cause itself brings with it the idea of the rigidity of the laws of nature, affirming the centrality of “reasons” means understanding the exercise of the ability to reason as the domain of the meanings and of the interpretations of terms or concepts that gradually intervene in the assessments of our and others’ behaviours. This entails setting aside the idea according to which this capacity implies a causal relationship with respect to action, thus providing an exact, unambiguous logical explanation of the individual actions. 20 As we have seen, the term “cause” occupies a steady position in Calderoni’s notes on human actions. On the other hand, it is likely that he would have subscribed to Von Wright’s assertion that the concept of freedom is a logical presupposition for the comprehension/explanation of all these phenomena, namely that the concepts used to describe and explain human actions, such as motive, reason, choice, deliberation, etc., all relate to the idea of “freedom.”16 21 Perhaps a logical-semantic in-depth analysis could help to bring forward the ethical quality of Calderoni’s pragmatism that I mentioned at the beginning of my speech. Moreover, it could also help to revisit the relationship between the normative level and the descriptive level, which his writings propose as a philosophical theme of primary importance. It seems therefore interesting to recall Wittgenstein’s uses the expression “creative acts” to refer to what it is expressed by some intentional verbs and in particular the verb “will,” just to underline that their normative status does not derive from past or possible experiences. In this way, I believe there is an interesting turning point with respect to the “logicist” rationalism that Calderoni has tried to defend contra James – although Calderoni follows a theoretical approach that is far from being old- fashioned and, in any case, invites him to retrieve the most original traits precisely in order to revisit the concepts of rationality and human creativity. But then it is perhaps not entirely out of place to rethink also, without surrendering to irrationalist scepticism, to the prophetic expression of his friend and contender Giuliano the Sofist: “the rational animal will give way to the creative animal.”17 22 In 1924, concluding his introductory pages to the two volumes in which he had collected the writings of Mario Calderoni, Giovanni Papini wrote: Someone, sooner or later, will pick up the broken threads, the unfinished walls, and then, however absurd such a prophecy may seem today, Calderoni’s thought will appear as one of the major contributions of Italian philosophy in the first decade of this century.18

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 129

23 There is no doubt that the originality of this philosopher, his ability to develop arguments and philosophical practices that anticipated important lines of twentieth- century philosophy, are now finally recognized. Therefore I believe that it is more than appropriate to accept the invitation of Papini to take up the “broken threads” of the short yet intense philosophical activity of Calderoni, and to attempt to develop further intertwining and articulations.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

CALDERONI Mario, (2007), Le varietà del pragmatismo, in Scritti sul pragmatismo, a cura di A. Di Giovanni, Bonanno Editore, Acireale-Roma, 69-78.

CALDERONI Mario, (2007), Variazioni sul pragmatismo, in Scritti sul pragmatismo, a cura di A. Di Giovanni, Bonanno Editore, Acireale-Roma, 79-97.

CALDERONI Mario, (1924), Scritti di Mario Calderoni, Firenze, La Voce editrice, vol. I-II.

EGIDI Rosaria, (2008), Intendere e volere nelle “Ricerche filosofiche,” in Id. (a cura di), Wittgenstein. Rileggere le ‘Ricerche’, “Paradigmi,” XXVI, n.s. 2, 83-98.

JAMES William, (1907), “Pragmatism and Humanism,” Lecture 7 in Pragmatism: A new name for some old ways of thinking, New York, Longman Green and Co, 100.

JAMES William, (1975), The Meaning of Truth. A Sequel to Pragmatism, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press. The first italian traduction Il significato della verità. Una prosecuzione di Pragmatismo, ed. F. Bordogna, Torino, Aragno, 2010.

PAPINI Giovanni, (1924), “Prefazione,” G. Papini (a cura di), Scritti di Mario Calderoni, Firenze, La Voce editrice, vol. I.

PASTORE Baldassarre, (2016), “Pragmatismo e diritto penale. Le riflessioni di Mario Calderoni su ‘libero arbitrio e impossibilità’,” Quaderni fiorentini per la storia del pensiero giuridico moderno, 45.

PREZZOLINI Giuseppe, (1907), L’arte di persuadere, Firenze, F. Lumachi.

TUZET Giovanni, (2007), “Ha senso fare previsioni normative? Pragmatismo ed etica in Calderoni,” in Giovanni Maddalena & Giovanni Tuzet (a cura di), I pragmatisti italiani, Milano, AlboVersorio (“Pragmata”).

TUZET Giovanni, (2012), La pratica dei valori. Nodi tra conoscenza e azione, Macerata, Quodlibet.

WITTGENSTEIN Ludwig, (1953), Philosophical Investigations, G.E.M. Anscombe & R. Rhees (eds), Oxford, Blackwell.

VON WRIGHT Georg Henrik, (1980), “Freedom and Determination,” in Acta Philosophica Fennica, XXXI.

VON WRIGHT Georg Henrik, (1981), “Explanation and Understanding of Action,” Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 35.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 130

NOTES

1. James 1975 (the first italian traduction 2010). 2. James (1907: 100). 3. Calderoni (1924, vol. I: 275-83). 4. Tuzet (2007: 53-74; 2012: 125-40). 5. Calderoni (1924, vol. I: 276). 6. Calderoni (1905: 102). 7. Calderoni (1924, vol. I: 41-3, e 68). 8. See Wittgenstein (1953: §57c). 9. Calderoni (1924, vol. II: 59-60). 10. Calderoni (1924, vol. II: 60). 11. Calderoni (1905: 101). 12. Calderoni (1905: 102); see also Calderoni, I postulati della scienza positiva ed il diritto penale (1924, vol. I: 99). 13. Wittgenstein (1953: §116). 14. See Egidi (2008: 100). 15. Von Wright (1981: 133). 16. Von Wright (1980: 67). 17. Prezzolini (1907: 102). 18. Papini (1924, vol. I: x).

ABSTRACTS

The paper firstly reconstructs Mario Calderoni’s criticism of the Jamesian version of pragmatism, which corresponds to his philosophical choice in favor of the ethical value assigned by Peirce to the scientific-experimental method. In this light, I propose a reading of some Calderoni’s arguments concerning the link between the construction of beliefs, practical norms and moral or legal responsibility, trying to reassess his criticisms of James and then his conception of philosophy as a practical and therapeutic activity. The latter will be discussed considering Wittgenstein’s analysis of intentional verbs and Calderoni’s approach to the issues of freedom, of the definition of voluntary acts as well as of individual responsibility, both moral and legal. In particular, I will focus on the paradigm shift suggested by Wittgenstein with regard to the problem of human will, which seems useful for enhancing Calderoni’s pragmatist insights.

AUTHOR

ROSA M. CALCATERRA

Università Roma Tre Rosamaria.calcaterra[at]uniroma3.it

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 131

Finnish Versions of Pragmatist Humanism Eino Kaila and Georg Henrik von Wright as Quasi-Pragmatists

Sami Pihlström

AUTHOR'S NOTE

This is not exactly the paper I presented at the conference on “European Pragmatism” in Vienna in April, 2018, on which this publication is based. At that conference, I discussed Nordic pragmatism (cf. Pihlström 2010). This essay summarizes some of my views on Kaila’s and von Wright’s relations to pragmatism originally developed in other contexts (see the bibliography for references). In addition to three anonymous reviewers, I am greatly indebted to Martin Kusch, Matthias Neuber, Ilkka Niiniluoto, Mikko Salmela, Friedrich Stadler, and of course the late Georg Henrik von Wright regarding many of the ideas discussed in this essay.

1. Introduction

1 As the papers in this collection demonstrate, philosophers active in Europe in the early decades of the twentieth century developed not only insightful and original responses to the American pragmatist tradition but also philosophical ideas not explicitly influenced by the American pragmatists yet bearing striking resemblance to pragmatist thought. Philosophers in the Nordic countries were no exception. Pragmatist themes were discussed early on especially in Denmark, Sweden, and Finland. (For historical examinations of “Nordic pragmatism,” see Pihlström 2010; Rydenfelt 2018.) This paper will not trace the general history of Nordic pragmatism reception. I will only examine, as a case study, two major Finnish philosophers, Eino Kaila (1890-1958) and Georg Henrik von Wright (1916-2003), whose contributions to pragmatism were perhaps not obvious – and are certainly less known and less frequently acknowledged than their contributions to logical empiricism and analytic philosophy – but were nevertheless

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 132

original and potentially relevant to the on-going re-evaluation of the pragmatist tradition and its European influences and analogies.

2 Obviously, pragmatism has never been a major current of thought in Finland or any of the other Nordic countries; even so, William James’s writings, in particular, were relatively widely read in the 1910s, and some critical discussions continued in the 1920-30s, although after those decades pragmatism was – as in many other places, too – eclipsed by logical empiricism.1 Some Finnish thinkers were genuinely interested in pragmatism even in the 1940s and 1950s, when analytic philosophy became overwhelmingly dominant. The grand old man of Finnish analytic philosophy, von Wright, referred to Peirce and James in his introductory book on logical empiricism (von Wright 1943). Oiva Ketonen, who (like von Wright) was Kaila’s pupil and who became Kaila’s successor as Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Helsinki, wrote an essay on Dewey after Dewey’s death (Ketonen 1954), and his Deweyan naturalism is also visible, for instance, in his popular work on ”the world- view of the European man,” Eurooppalaisen ihmisen maailmankatsomus (Ketonen 1981 [1961]: chapter 10). However, most Finnish philosophers around that time, and perhaps even more so in the 1970s and 1980s, were presumably relatively unfamiliar with pragmatism. None of the internationally well-established analytic philosophers in Finland – von Wright, Ketonen, Erik Stenius, Jaakko Hintikka, Raimo Tuomela, Ilkka Niiniluoto – can be said to have been a pragmatist, but upon closer inspection it is clear that most if not all of them have been preoccupied with pragmatist or at least quasi- pragmatist themes.2 3 The most important figure in the early Finnish reception and development of pragmatism was undoubtedly Eino Kaila. As a young man, Kaila was impressed by James’s philosophy and other pragmatist ideas (cf., e.g., Jääskeläinen 1983: 13, 16-8; Niiniluoto 1990: 18). Already in 1911, he wrote an essay on Henri Bergson (Kaila 1911a), whose vitalism and anti-intellectualism had influenced James’s late views, and in the same year he published another short paper with references to philosophers close to pragmatism – Bergson, Emil Boutroux, and F. C. S. Schiller (Kaila 1911b). In 1912 he interpreted James’s views to the readers of the newspaper Uusi Suometar in a paper to be discussed in some detail shortly. He then reviewed several Finnish translations of James’s works (Kaila 1914, 1915, 1916). While Kaila soon turned to other ways of philosophizing and became a kind of external member of the Vienna Circle in the late 1920s and early 1930s, his logical empiricism still contained significant traces of pragmatism, as can be seen by studying his later works (Kaila 1986 [1943], 2014 [1939]).3 4 Among Kaila’s many students who later became distinguished professors, von Wright stands out as the most eminent figure. The pragmatist dimensions of his thought were much less explicit than Kaila’s, though. It would be impossible even to begin to describe von Wright’s enormous impact on the development of logic, philosophy of science, theory of action, and many other fields; I will only, after having explored Kaila’s pragmatism at some length, provide some remarks on a pragmatist aspect we may perceive in von Wright’s views on causation and action (see further Pihlström 2014). 5 I will begin by an exposition of some of Kaila’s views relevant to the topic of this paper – first his early pragmatist writings and then his later discussions of “practical testability” – and subsequently move on to consider von Wright’s pragmatist lines of thought. Overall the paper will suggest that these two philosophers and the many others around and succeeding them (not to be discussed here) might be seen as having

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 133

established a hidden tradition of Finnish philosophy: a kind of pragmatist humanism. Their versions of such pragmatism are quite different, however. Whereas Kaila moved from a Jamesian pragmatist humanism concerned with religion and metaphysical Weltanschauungen to logical empiricism and its critique of metaphysics, von Wright’s humanist or pragmatist ideas are to be found, for example, in his theory of action and “actionist” theory of causation. As a public philosopher engaged with societal and cultural issues, von Wright was, moreover, closer to Deweyan social humanism than Kaila (without any explicit Deweyan influences, though).

2. Kaila’s Early Pragmatist Influences

6 The 1912 article on James is, clearly, the most important among Kaila’s early contributions to pragmatism. In this relatively popular essay Kaila emphasizes the significance of James’s pragmatism as a new, revolutionary philosophy. James, he claims, has shown us that we are not mere passive spectators of the world but, above all, actors (Kaila 1912: 84). According to Kaila, James’s view is a “new answer” to the problem of how someone who does not want to give up reason and rationality, or make any easy intellectual compromises, can still deal with their religious needs, with their hope to reach “higher” spirituality in life, a hope whose satisfaction might be necessary for the happiness of their entire life (ibid.: 81-2). Kaila here endorses James’s doctrine of the “Will to Believe” (see James 1979 [1897]: chapter 1): a religious or “idealistic” hypothesis concerning the significance of human life in connection with a more spiritual eternal universe can be accepted through an active, voluntary effort; yet, we have to embrace such beliefs with our own risk, being unable to ever finally “prove” any such hypotheses. Still, according to both James and Kaila, it is better to believe and act on the basis of such an insecure belief than to fall into skeptical or agnostic inactivity. Only thus can life have a deeper meaning and be worth living. (Kaila 1912: 84-6.) The same idea is repeated, for instance, in Kaila’s (1917) short biography of Ernest Renan. These early writings demonstrate that Kaila was intensely preoccupied with religious and existential issues, even though his professional academic work focused, at that time, mostly on empirical psychology.

7 Let me quote Kaila (paraphrasing James) at some length: All life, therefore, consists essentially in daring, “risking” – life-threatening experiments, in which we expose a great deal of things to risk, and a great deal of things, perchance, will be won by us. Yet, if we do not expose anything to risk, neither will we gain anything; that, for one, is certain. This primordial wisdom of everyday experience William James has elevated into a philosophical principle, making it one of the cornerstones of his pragmatic philosophy. At the center of each world-view is the question concerning the value of life. […] To the question concerning the value of life we must thus respond: this is contingent on the living person. If I tend not to dare anything simply because no one can prove the value of life to me, I surrender myself to doubt, and the victory of skepticism is sure, the world around me pitch-black. Should I dare believe, on the other hand, in the meaning of life even at the risk of error, so life will be luminous at least on this spot, and if death puts an end to it all, I couldn’t have faced it better. (Kaila 1912: 84)4 8 In the same essay, Kaila also discusses, albeit only briefly, James’s notorious pragmatist theory of truth, pointing out that while James is sometimes obscure and even

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 134

contradictory, his theory amounts to the thesis that a mere “agreement” of an idea with reality is insufficient as a criterion of truth and that we therefore have to use the “working” of ideas as such a criterion (ibid.: 91). Hence, Kaila joins those, presumably including James himself, who consider the mere correspondence-theoretical “agreement” between a truth and what it is true about empty or trivial while endorsing the correspondence theory as a basically correct general account of truth. This view is, clearly, compatible with a correspondence theory insisting on the distinction between the meaning of truth (correspondence) and the criterion of truth (pragmatic working, usefulness, value, satisfactoriness, etc.), even though a more sophisticated pragmatist account of truth might continue to question the sharpness of this dichotomy between meaning and criterion. In his review of the 1913 Finnish translation of James’s Pragmatism, Kaila remarks that the pragmatist theory of truth may remain an “awkward mistake,” but goes on to say that all those preoccupied with “ultimate questions” should read James’s work (Kaila 1914).

9 On the whole, Kaila’s attitude to James and pragmatism seems to have been very positive throughout most of the 1910s. The pragmatist theory of truth was never his main concern; above all, he was interested, as James also was, in the application of pragmatism to profound weltanschaulichen questions about the significance of human life and the possible role of religion regarding such questions. He was vitally concerned with the question of whether we, being unable to ever reach any certainty about religious conceptions, could nevertheless find some value and direction to our lives. Kaila, then, was never (even in his early thought) a pragmatist in anything like the full sense of the term, but as a reader of the 1912 James essay easily notices, he did substantially contribute to pragmatist examinations of the relation between science and religion, in particular. Moreover, his contribution was not restricted to his early enthusiasm with James; nor did he merely embrace and develop Jamesian pragmatist ideas but made, as we will see, original developments with the pragmatist views he had originally adopted from James.

3. Kaila’s Later Pragmatism: “Practical Testability”

10 Turning to Kaila’s later thought, let us start from the obvious: as a logical empiricist, Kaila was of course “officially” sharply critical of religion and metaphysics, including the kind of Jamesian-inspired pragmatist philosophy of religion he had defended in the 1910s. Famously, leading logical empiricists like Rudolf Carnap maintained that religious and theological questions concerning, say, theism and atheism were meaningless pseudo-problems, lacking cognitive content. The mature Kaila of the 1930-40s was, in the spirit of the Vienna Circle, primarily a philosopher of science, also introducing modern logical and epistemological ideas in Finland. However, Kaila never abandoned his early Jamesian idea that truth about religious issues and, more generally, metaphysical or weltanschaulichen questions concerning the significance of human life must be assessed from the point of view of practice.

11 As metaphysical and religious statements fail to meet the rigorous criteria of scientific meaningfulness set by the philosophers of the Vienna Circle, Kaila’s criticism of metaphysics culminates in the “principle of testability,” a variation of Carnap’s and other logical empiricists’ related principles: any statement about reality must be constructed in such a way that a set of empirical statements (the “real content” of the

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 135

original statement) can be derived from it; the truth or probability of the statement can only be assessed on the grounds of its real content (for detailed formulations, see the essays collected in Kaila 1979). Now, even though metaphysical and religious views are not scientifically acceptable in this sense, they may, as Kaila (1946 [1934]: 365) suggests in his psychological magnus opus on human personality, function as “spiritual insurance companies” defending us against various threats of life, especially the fear of death. Metaphysical and religious conceptions need not be entirely fruitless, as they may still be critically tested and evaluated, albeit only in a practical way. 12 Accordingly, Kaila argued – pragmatistically, we might say – that religious and metaphysical worldviews may be “practically testable,” even if they cannot meet the requirement of empirical testability applied to scientific theories because of their minimal “real content.” What Kaila calls practical testability has nothing to do with the real content of beliefs or statements; rather, it focuses on their results in practical action and ways of living. Religious and metaphysical ideas may serve as motives for action, and they may even be endorsed insofar as their practical results are worthwhile (Kaila 1986 [1943]: 188-9). Religions may, then, be acceptable as “systems of action,” not as systems of beliefs. Their “practical truth” must, however, be distinguished from “truth in the proper sense,” the pursuit of which is the concern of scientific theories (ibid.: 190). Religions and religiosity must, furthermore, be clearly distinguished from each other: religiosity is the “deep-mental”5 or spiritual core of religions. Mental life, Kaila maintained, is “deep-mental” (deeply spiritual) when the depth dimension of an emotion reaches its maximum value, i.e., when the object of the feeling, some value, is perceived as “sacred” (Kaila 1946 [1934]: 364-5; cf. 239). 13 Taking a somewhat more detailed look at Kaila’s richest elaboration of the concept of “deep-mentality,” i.e., the book Syvähenkinen elämä (1943, 3rd ed. 1986), it is interesting to note that Kaila there explicitly proposes to apply, “without restrictions, the way of thinking called pragmatism,” to metaphysical “explanations of the world,” pointing out that pragmatism leads to contradictions when applied to theoretical conceptions of the world but may legitimately be applied to “views of life.” Echoes from the early James essay are certainly identifiable here. However, here deep-mentality is not merely an instrument for saving religious and metaphysical views; it seems to become a normative concept to be applied in ethics as well; indeed, deep-mentality or spirituality in this sense is argued to be the most important thing in human life (cf. Niiniluoto 1992a: 19-20). However, the basis of this normative concept lies in our biological nature. Kaila remained a naturalist, though an antireductionist one. From the biological and psychological point of view, deep-mentality belongs, he argues, to the emergent totality of human needs. 14 The pragmatically most interesting reasoning here proceeds as follows (as already anticipated in the 1934 psychology book cited above). While the “real content” of religion and metaphysics is small, virtually zero, religious and metaphysical Weltanschauungen can, according to Kaila, be significant in a practical sense. “Practical testability” does not assess the real content of a system of beliefs at all, but rather its consequences in our practical actions and the ways the belief system tested is able to satisfy our human needs. Kaila, the son of a Lutheran arch-bishop, did not approve of religions as systems of beliefs, but he did respect them in his own critical manner and maintained that they might be (at least partially) justified as systems of action. Eubulos,

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 136

one of the fictitious characters and presumably his alter ego in Syvähenkinen elämä, reflects: Views of life are testable on the basis of the results they have as motives of action. From their fruits you shall know them. Those views of life are good which have good fruits. For my part, I am inclined to judge metaphysical “explanations of the world” from this perspective. I would apply to them, without restrictions, the way of thinking called pragmatism, which leads to contradictions and other impossibilities, if applied to theoretical conceptions: whatever is good is “true.” Some view of life is “true,” that is: acceptable, insofar as it leads to acceptable results when followed in practice. But this “practical truth” is of course something else than truth in the proper theoretical sense. (Kaila 1986 [1943]: 189) 15 Hence, while pragmatism for some of its critics was an enemy not only of science and rationality but also of ethics and objective values, humanly vitally important value judgments and the metaphysical or religious views of life within which such judgments are embedded were, for Kaila, eventually only pragmatically justifiable.6

16 There are, we may note, a number of important parallels between Kaila and James, even if we consider Kaila’s mature work. Both men were – especially in early stages of their careers – psychologists as much as philosophers. Even more strikingly, both were extremely broad in their intellectual profiles, combining scientific perspectives with strong “romantic” sentiments focusing, rather, on art and religion. Indeed, Syvähenkinen elämä is explicitly a dialogue between a scientifically-minded and a more romantically-oriented character with process-metaphysical ideas. In Kaila’s case, perhaps more than James’s, the scientific “ego” was stronger. However, even in that late work from the 1940s, James’s voice can be heard in Aristofilos, the “romantic” and more metaphysical character – as Kaila explicitly admits both in the preface and in the dialogue itself (1986 [1943]: 8, 202). Indeed, Aristofilos points out, as James himself might have done, that theoretical and practical testability may in the end collapse into one another, especially when we are dealing with “theories about the spiritual.” 17 Thus, Kaila’s “scientific” alter ego Eubulos is seriously confronted by Aristofilos, whose point of view is also to some extent Kaila’s own. It is Eubulos, the scientific-minded clear-headed philosopher representing logical empiricism, who formulates the above- mentioned distinction between the two versions of the testability principle and the corresponding distinction between truth in its theoretical and practical sense, but it is Aristofilos, the religiously and aesthetically inclined partner in the dialogue, whose pragmatism is more thoroughgoing. His words could indeed have been written by James himself:7 It seems to me that you are making a mistake when you distinguish in a strict and principled way between this “theoretical testability” and the “practical testability” through which the “validity” of views of life is determined. It seems to me, on the contrary, that they are close to each other. [...] When we are dealing with theories about the spiritual, theoretical and practical testability collapse together. (Kaila 1986 [1943]: 192) 18 For example, God may, according to both Kaila’s Aristofilos and William James, need our faith as a support of His existence (ibid.: 193). This is a suggestion that the “winner” of the dialogue, Kaila’s scientific ego, of course firmly rejects, but one can hardly deny that Kaila was internally tormented by these diverging ideas, perhaps partly as a result of his early admiration of James, a philosopher also tormented by conflicting “temperaments” – and the need to reconcile them. He may have seen the identification of theoretical and practical testability as a temptation of his own philosophical

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 137

temperament (to employ a Jamesian concept),8 a temptation he nevertheless at least mostly succeeded in resisting. The two voices of the dialogue are both genuinely his own, while the scientific one ultimately prevails. While Aristofilos is not just an opponent of Kaila’s logical-empiricist position expressed by Eubulos but an organic part of Kaila himself, it is Eubulos who won the battle within Kaila – and in Finnish philosophy at large.

4. Kaila and Jamesian Pragmatism: Further Similarities and Differences

19 Kaila’s philosophy, when it comes to “ultimate questions,” is very close to James’s at least in one significant respect: he is, we may say, a “pluralist” not in the metaphysical sense that would conflict with his monism (cf. von Wright 1992) but in a more metaphilosophical sense manifested in his philosophical methodology, especially in the dialogical work Syvähenkinen elämä. Different voices – the different philosophical temperaments appearing in that book – deserve to be heard, to be carefully listened to, and taken seriously. While a dialogue may in the end be a disguised monologue (see Kaila 1986 [1943]: 7), and thus “monistic,” there are sometimes genuinely diverging “voices,” e.g., scientific and religious ones, within a single thinker. Developing and maintaining a fundamentally monistic view of the world may be a special challenge for such a person, a challenge that can only be met by engaging in a genuine internal dialogue.

20 James himself, I believe, would have been happy with the merging of theoretical and practical testability – to the extent that something like their integration could even be regarded as a corner stone of his pragmatism. Moreover, James was characteristically ambivalent between focusing on the (conceivable, potential) practical effects of believing something, on the one side, and focusing on the (conceivable, potential) practical effects that might follow from that belief being true (and he has often been criticized because of this ambivalence). Insofar as there were, in the end, no fundamental difference between theoretical and practical testability – that is, insofar as the pragmatic consequences of one’s believing in a certain (e.g., metaphysical or religious) proposition that might come about in one’s life played a role in determining the actual content of that proposition and its “truth” in a more literal sense – this ambivalence would be better justified than it would if based on a more conventionally realistic picture of beliefs and their relation to a belief-independent reality. To collapse this difference would be to take extremely seriously the original pragmatist idea of beliefs as “habits of action.” It is clear that Kaila never went that far in his admiration of James – not even in his early 1912 essay – and it is unclear whether even James ever embraced pragmatism in such a strong form. However, James’s pragmatism (but presumably not Kaila’s) can be developed into a conception of ethical values penetrating into the very core of our metaphysical beliefs and postulations (cf. Pihlström 2009). Such developments of pragmatism might be cashed out in terms of Kaila’s notions of theoretical and practical testability. 21 In addition to the fact that Kaila was, thus, in the end more scientifically focused than James, a major philosophical difference between the two is that while James was, famously, a philosophical pluralist, Kaila was always strongly tempted to advance a monistic position and struggled throughout his career to find an adequate

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 138

philosophical expression for this idea. Since his early “philosophical awakening” as a teenager, he was convinced that the world is a monistic totality (see Kaila 1953; cf. von Wright 1992). At some points of his intellectual development, he may therefore have been close to something like the “neutral monism” advocated by Ernst Mach, Bertrand Russell, and others – a position often compared to James’s “radical empiricism” – although he opposed, from early on, the “superficiality” of such positivistic forms of monism, their tendency to overlook the highly significant “riddle of reality”; indeed, Kaila never joined the logical positivists in regarding that problem as a pseudo-issue.9 Another dimension to Kaila’s monism is metaphilosophical: philosophers’ dialogues, presumably including his own construction of an imagined dialogue in that book, are often just “monologues in disguise” (Kaila 1986 [1943]: 7). 22 In any case, Kaila’s monism was always non-reductive;10 he never accepted reductive mechanical materialists’ scientistic views, any more than James did. However, it might also be suggested that the very controversy between monism and pluralism is among those that should, on the basis of Kaila’s own principles, in the end be evaluated – “tested” – practically, not theoretically. While Kaila himself viewed this controversy as a scientific one, to be settled within “scientific philosophy” – or, possibly, synthetic philosophy of nature based on the most advanced findings of science – I believe we should join James in construing the monism vs. pluralism debate in more pragmatic terms, as a fundamental weltanschaulich issue to be explored in terms of the question concerning our ability of finding ourselves “at home” in the universe. 23 It is clear that Kaila never became a thoroughgoing pragmatist. As a strict empiricist he was, despite his early admiration of Bergson and James, unable to arrive at the kind of dynamic, active, and holistic concept of experience that may be seen as one corner- stone of pragmatist philosophy. Accordingly, he was never able to build a sustainable bridge between normativity (deep-mentality) and naturalness (its bio-psychological basis), although he sincerely tried. 24 On the other hand, there is also a touch of pragmatic pluralism in Kaila’s suggestion, toward the end of the 1912 James essay, that the “man of action” understands the multi-layered structure of reality better than the person who views the world solely from the natural-scientific perspective. For a narrow-sighted scientistic reductionist, Beethoven’s string quartet is just something material and physical (“[r]ubbing horse’s mane against cat’s intestines”) (Kaila 1912: 91; again quoted from the 2011 English translation). In contrast, the pragmatist realizes that there are multiple contexts and perspectives of description and inquiry, with their different pragmatic grounds and purposes. The world as a “structured whole”11 is thus, though monistic in a basic naturalistic sense, not reductively monistic but enormously rich and deep. Within such monism, the conflict between monism and pluralism may in the end vanish, at least as a traditional metaphysical issue, when seen from a pragmatic point of view.12 25 Kaila’s non-reductive monism is in some ways even close to panpsychism, refusing to draw any dualistic distinction between mind and matter. “Allt är materia, allt är själ,” “Everything is matter, everything is soul,” as Kaila (1952) put it in the title of one of his essays written in Swedish.13 For a pragmatist, one way of accounting for the different “layers” of reality could be by means of the kind of “relativization of reality” Kaila proposed in his late work. According to Kaila, real objects can be “ordered” in terms of their increasing invariance, which is connected with increasing conceptualization, with theoretical scientific entities as the most conceptualized (and in a sense the most

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 139

“real”) ones.14 While this position is neither Kantian nor pragmatist but in an important sense scientifically realist, it might be compared to Hilary Putnam’s internal realism, which, in turn, was one of the most important neopragmatist approaches to the realism issue in the late twentieth century.15 Kaila’s stance to the problem of realism remains ambivalent, but his relativizing move might be employed, by a pragmatist at least, in the non-reductive project of acknowledging the (contextualized) reality of both physical, scientifically conceptualized reality and everyday phenomenal experiences – as well as values and other cultural structures and processes. This would take us beyond Kaila’s own concerns with the problem of reality, though.

5. Von Wright on Action and Causation

26 Let us now turn to Kaila’s most important pupil, G. H. von Wright, who, as was mentioned, already referred to pragmatism – Peirce and James – as an informal precursor of logical empiricism in von Wright (1943), even though pragmatism never explicitly played any important role in the philosophical views von Wright is famous for all over the world.

27 What I would like to suggest (as I have done earlier: see Pihlström 2014) is that von Wright’s later philosophy of action and the related theory of causation are the places to look for any pragmatist aspects of his views. We should, however, start by noting that there is a sense in which von Wright’s well-known theory of action is not particularly pragmatist: it primarily considers individual actions rather than continuous habits of action, whereas the latter instead of the former would be in the focus of a paradigmatically pragmatist approach to action theory. However, there are four areas in which we might view von Wright’s philosophy “pragmatist” in a broad sense.16 28 First, von Wright (1971, 1974) famously defends a controversial theory of causation essentially linked with the concept of action. He labels this theory “actionist,” “manipulative,” and “experimentalist,” suggesting that the notion of cause is “essentially tied to the idea of action and therefore, as a scientific notion, to the idea of experiment” (von Wright 1971: 36-7; cf. 189-90; see also von Wright 1974: 57).17 While admitting that etymology is not decisive here, he also refers to the link between the concepts of cause and guilt captured by the corresponding words in classical languages (as well as Finnish) (von Wright 1971: 64-5). Regardless of etymology, “we cannot understand causation, nor the distinction between nomic connections and accidental uniformities of nature, without resorting to ideas about doing things and intentionally interfering with the course of nature” (ibid.: 65-6). More precisely, the connection between causation and action is spelled out by von Wright as follows: “p is a cause relative to q, and q an effect relative to p, if and only if by doing p we could bring about q or by suppressing p we could remove q or prevent it from happening” (ibid.: 70). Thus, by manipulating the cause we can, in principle, bring about the effect; this is of course crucial in scientific experimentation. 29 In a slightly later work, von Wright specifies the theory while connecting it to the issue of determinism. The leading argument is that “[t]he idea that causal connections are necessary connections in nature is rooted in the idea that there are agents who can interfere with the natural course of events” (von Wright 1974: 1-2). In our conceptual order, so to speak, action is the primary concept and causation the secondary one (ibid.: 2). The conclusions he eventually arrives at regarding the determinism vs.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 140

indeterminism dispute are not ontological or metaphysical, either, but rather of a conceptual or epistemic nature (see ibid.: 136). Von Wright concludes: To say that to establish the ontic certainty of a change presupposes an epistemic certainty […] is but another way of saying that establishing causal bonds in nature presupposes action. It is by virtue of these relationships that I say that the concept of cause presupposes the concept of action. Action, however, cannot rightly be said to presuppose the existence of ontic alternatives in nature, i.e. the truth of some form of indeterminism. What action presupposes is only the epistemic certainty which, as long as it is not undermined, entails the belief in the ontic contingency of some changes and thus takes for granted a certain margin of indeterminism in the world. (Ibid.) 30 This theory of causation, which might be claimed to come somewhat close to the “interventionist” developments in contemporary discussions of causality and explanation (e.g., Woodward 2003), has often been criticized because it appears to make causation “human-centered” in a problematic way. The relations between cause and effect seem to be relative to what we can, or could, manipulate and what we cannot. However, von Wright makes it clear that he is not aiming at any anthropocentric metaphysics of causation, even though he maintains that “to think of a relation between events as causal is to think of it under the aspect of (possible) action” (von Wright 1971: 74). This is only a matter of how we must think, or how we (must) organize our concepts; it does not mean that there is any genuine agency involved in causation (ibid.: 73). Causation, after all, “operates throughout the universe – also in spatial and temporal regions forever inaccessible to man” (ibid.). Von Wright (1974: 48-50) makes this more precise by saying that while causation is conceptually dependent on agency, it is “ontically independent of agency” (ibid.: 49). The “conceptual” dependence lies between “the notion of a (causal) counterfactual conditional and action,” instead of lying directly between cause and action (ibid.: 50). Thus, in brief, “the concept of causal connection rests on the concept of action” (ibid.: 53). In any event, this conceptual link does connect von Wright’s views with pragmatism: our world- picture generally, including our conception of causal relations in particular, must be thought of in terms of, or on the basis of, our conception of our own agency.18

31 The second pragmatist aspect of von Wright’s views I want to highlight emerges from the fact that, while causation must be thought of in terms of, or “under the aspect of,” possible action, human actions cannot, according to von Wright, be simply causally explained. To attempt to do so would be to commit a kind of category mistake. Von Wright’s (1971, 1980, 1998) “non-causalist” conception of action, agency, and freedom – and their proper explanation – is arguably more relevant in contemporary philosophy of mind and action than has been generally acknowledged by mainstream philosophers in these fields. Von Wright has consistently opposed attempts to reduce intentionality or agency to a causal, natural-scientific picture of the world.19 The concept of freedom, in particular, cannot be accommodated in such a picture. Denying that agents are free would be “to commit a contradiction in terms,” while the “mystery” of human freedom is nothing more than the “mystery” that “there are agents and actions” (von Wright 1980: 77-8). Freedom, then, is a fully non-mysterious feature of agency based on our ability to understand human beings as persons and to rationally explain their actions on that basis. No non-natural causal connections between the mental and the physical are presupposed, because intentions are reasons, not causes; there is no need to postulate such Cartesian-like interactionist causation, according to von Wright (1998: 109). As Rosaria Egidi (2009) emphasizes, von Wright shares with Deweyan pragmatism

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 141

the reconciliatory desire to develop a worldview rich enough for both human agency and natural science – a “naturalistic humanism.”20

6. Antireductionism and the Disunity of Science

32 Thirdly, von Wright might be read as a pragmatic pluralist not only in his theory of explanation but also at a metaphilosophical level. He defends a conceptual and explanatory pluralism according to which our different levels of inquiry and explanation, or different perspectives of description and conceptualization (i.e., the neural, the behavioural, and the mental or psychological), each have their own roles to play in our overall understanding of human experience and action. These different schemes, “vocabularies” (as a Rortyan pragmatist would prefer to put it), or language- games (in Wittgensteinian terms) are each legitimate for their own purposes – just like the two essentially different modes of explanation, the causal and the intentional (teleological), investigated in von Wright’s seminal work on explanation and understanding (von Wright 1971). When explaining any event taking place in the world, we must always explain it under some description, first conceptualizing and thereby understanding it either as a natural event to be causally explained or as a human action with meaning, to be intentionally, rationally, and hence teleologically explained. In this sense, explanation – and even the notion of causation insofar as it is involved in causal explanations, in contrast to intentional or teleological explanations – is interest- relative (as is, of course, intentionality or teleology, as well).

33 At this point, we might, in addition to von Wright’s pragmatism, even speak about his fundamental Kantianism. Just like Kant sought to reconcile the “worlds” of causally determined nature, on the one hand, and human action and moral responsibility, on the other, von Wright investigates the pragmatic interest-relativity of different explanations of the “same” world under different aspects. Furthermore, if the same compatibility of nature and freedom – determinism and moral responsibility – is also a pragmatist theme, Kantianism and pragmatism seem to converge on this key issue. 34 This idea becomes extremely important in von Wright’s late work on the philosophy of mind (von Wright 1998), which is less generally known and appreciated among philosophers today than his action-theoretical investigations from the 1960s and 1970s. 21 Von Wright’s antireductionism and his resistance to any reductively naturalist “unity of science” also clearly links him to his teacher Kaila, whose antireductionism was discussed above (see also von Wright 1992). As non-reductive naturalism has been a major theme in pragmatism – arguably all the way from the classical figures Peirce, James, and Dewey to contemporary neopragmatists22 – these two Finnish philosophers’ ways of developing similar ideas make them original contributors to a stream of thought at least analogous to pragmatism if not pragmatist properly speaking. 35 The difference to pragmatism proper, however, is that the different schemes, vocabularies, or language-games that von Wright distinguishes and whose irreducibility he defends are not all ontologically relevant in the same way. While rational (intentional) explanations of actions, referring to reasons instead of causes (von Wright 1998: 19-20, 38-9), can be said to be epistemically prior to behavioral and neural explanations, because mental (psychological) states are epistemically prior to neural (physiological) states, and while behavior in turn can be regarded as semantically prior to mental states, because the content of mental states is available only through

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 142

observations of outward actions,23 neural processes within the organism are, von Wright admits, causally prior to behavior. In a nutshell, an action, according to von Wright, is a bodily movement “viewed under the aspect of intentionality” (ibid.: 142); the muscular activity and the action share the same “robust reality” while being differently described and conceptualized (ibid.: 34-5). Thus, there is a sense in which the neural or neuro-physiological processes giving rise to certain behavior are ontologically fundamental in comparison to everything else in human action and agency. The pluralism of relevant conceptualizations and explanations is not to be conflated with ontological pluralism. 36 This is a key contrast to, say, Hilary Putnam’s (1995, 2002) conceptual relativity and pragmatic pluralism – or to James’s (1975 [1907]) pluralistic constructivism, according to which objects themselves arise out of human purposive practices.24 I would be tempted to add that this is also a somewhat non-Wittgensteinian dimension in von Wright’s pragmatic pluralism – despite his profound and long-lasting exposition to Wittgenstein’s work. If any ontological or metaphysical inquiry can be said to be possible or acceptable in Wittgenstein’s philosophy at all, Wittgenstein would presumably resist the conclusion (or, rather, assumption) that some schemes, vocabularies, perspectives, or language-games are ontologically serious while some others are not (though in this paper I won’t make any detailed comments on the Finnish pragmatists’ relations to Wittgenstein, as important as those relations are). The very distinction von Wright relies on in his theory of causation, that is, the distinction between, as we may say, the ontological order of the world and the conceptual order of our ways of thinking about the world – a distinction crucially manifested in his contention that while the concept of causation presupposes the concept of agency, causation itself, as operative throughout nature, is independent of actions and agents – is, for a pragmatist, precisely the problematic starting-point of metaphysical realism that leads to philosophical difficulties. Both classical pragmatists like James (and even Peirce and Dewey, suitably interpreted) and neopragmatists like Putnam would argue, in opposition to this distinction, that we can have access only to a world that we have conceptualized from the perspectives of our practice-embedded categorial (categorizing) frameworks or language-games. Hence, the distinction between ontic (ontological) and epistemic (conceptual) conclusions regarding indeterminism to be drawn from von Wright’s (1974) application of the theory of causation to the determinism vs. indeterminism issue might also be argued to be problematic from a pragmatist perspective (cf. again, e.g., Pihlström 2009). 37 Even so, von Wright in his late work arrived at a position denying the unity of the scientific worldview – maintaining that there is an irreducible plurality in our descriptions and explanations of reality in the sense sketched above – and this endorsement of the “disunity” of science may be seen as a truly pragmatist theme in his work. At least von Wright joins the pragmatists, classical and contemporary, in resisting any reductive physicalism about human action and culture.25 He also joints his teacher Kaila in developing an (admittedly very different) combination of non- reductive naturalism and pragmatist humanism. 38 There is, furthermore, one interesting remark in von Wright’s Wittgenstein, in his essay on Wittgenstein’s views on certainty, that connects von Wright’s interpretation of Wittgenstein with his theory of action and explanation. Having examined at some length On Certainty and Wittgenstein’s (1969) conception of the “non-propositional” or

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 143

“pre-propositional” – hence pragmatic – character of the “world-picture” and forms of life underlying our language (cf. also, e.g., Pihlström 2003a), he observes: “But in order that my behaviour should be describable as actions of a certain kind, it must be interpreted in terms of the notions of the language-game itself. So, to this extent the praxis at the basis of the language-game is a pre-praxis, one could say, and not yet a full- fledged action.” (Von Wright 1982: 179). 39 This is a profound remark. We too easily speak about action lying at the basis of our language-games, or about “deed” being “in the beginning.” Wittgenstein himself says things of this kind. But actions properly speaking are something that are always already conceptualized – they have reasons. They can be conceptualized and understood only within a language-game, or more generally within a meaningful human practice. Hence, the “action” that incorporates and manifests our most fundamental (albeit revisable) certainties – the action constituting our “hinges” – cannot really be action in this sense. The non-propositional hinges enabling language- games and meanings are not themselves meaningful; in the same sense, the actions manifesting those hinges are not proper actions. In this pre-praxis, we might say, we follow rules blindly and our “spade is turned” (cf. Wittgenstein 1953: I, §§ 217, 219). 40 To take a von-Wrightian example: it belongs to my “pre-praxis,” to my fundamental certainties (“hinges”), that I do not first make sure that I still have my two hands before engaging in the proper “praxis” or action of opening the window (manifested in certain kind of outward behavior) with the intention of cooling the room. However, the pragmatist insisting on beliefs and other propositional states being “habits of action” might resist this division of human behaviors into proper actions and (a kind of) pseudo-actions, or the corresponding division of our activities into proper praxis and pre-praxis. There is, arguably, a continuity here instead of any sharp separation reflecting an essentialistic difference. The very notion of a habit of action can be employed to highlight this continuity.26

7. Concluding Remarks: Kaila and von Wright as Public Philosophers

41 The fourth dimension of von Wright’s so-called pragmatism is presumably better known to his Finnish and Scandinavian colleagues and followers than to his international academic audience. In his home country Finland, he was a widely respected “public philosopher” in a manner perhaps comparable to, say, Dewey in the United States or even Jean-Paul Sartre in France. Probably his best known work in this area is Vetenskapen och förnuftet (Science and Reason, 1986), which criticizes the self- destructive tendencies of Western civilization, particularly the way in which human reason itself, through its scientific and technological advances and applications, has driven the world close to ecological destruction.27 Had he lived to witness the growing worries about the global climate change in the 2000s, he might have ended up even more pessimistic than he was in his old days.

42 Clearly, a pragmatist thinker may be expected to be active in public issues such as environmental problems, social policy, or war and peace. In contrast to many pragmatists’ (especially Dewey’s) progressivism and optimism, von Wright as a publically well-known figure commenting on deep issues facing our human civilization

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 144

shared the cultural pessimism of figures like Wittgenstein and Oswald Spengler. Neither Wittgenstein nor von Wright felt completely “at home” in the world and culture they lived in. Thus, again, he was not a pragmatist properly speaking while developing a pragmatic way of doing philosophy as cultural criticism. The kind of profile as a public philosopher that Kaila had was somewhat different – and closer to that of someone like James. For Kaila, public engagements by philosophers were essential (or so it seems) primarily because the kind of “ultimate questions” he dealt with in Syvähenkinen elämä deserved to be discussed in a generally accessible way; while Kaila himself was an aristocratic elitist, he seems to have felt that his general readers and listeners had a right to find deeper layers of meaning in their lives, and that he could offer something like philosophical guidance in this respect. 43 Von Wright’s and Kaila’s cases demonstrate that one can be a pragmatist in many different ways. Here we may see pragmatic contextuality and (Wittgensteinian) family resemblance at work. One can be a pragmatist in “first-order” issues but also in “second-order” or meta-level ones, or both. There is very little we find in von Wright’s thought that can be directly linked with pragmatism, but at the meta-level there is, in fact, a lot. 44 To sum up, we may say that Kaila was a logical empiricist and, perhaps, a quasi- pragmatist with explicit Jamesian influences, while von Wright was never really influenced or even very much inspired by any of the old pragmatists. He was, thus, an original “European pragmatist” in the sense that his pragmatic view of causation was truly his own innovation, not derived from any of the pragmatist classics (unlike, it seems, Kaila’s idea of practical testability, which can to a certain degree be traced back to James). As a quasi-pragmatist, von Wright was, then, more independent, but both were equally independent as central figures of Finnish and European philosophy throughout the twentieth century. 45 Kaila’s and von Wright’s pupils and followers developed their own versions of pragmatic humanism – or so, at least, we may interpret Oiva Ketonen’s work on naturalism in a broadly Deweyan context, and possibly even Ilkka Niiniluoto’s critical scientific realism, which is to a large extent based on Peircean ideas of scientific progress, while maintaining a humanistic acknowledgment of the autonomy of philosophy and its irreducibility to empirical science.28 On the other hand, Jaakko Hintikka’s relation to this tradition (if it can be called by that name) seems to be much more complicated.29 In a way or another, all these Finnish thinkers have engaged in a critical dialogue with the program of naturalism and naturalization in analytic and post-analytic philosophy. In this sense, too, their projects resemble the classical pragmatists’ and are also central background views for those of us (in Finland and elsewhere) working on the history of pragmatism.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 145

BIBLIOGRAPHY

APEL Karl-Otto, (1988), From a Transcendental-Semiotic Point of View, Manchester, Manchester University Press.

CALCATERRA Rosa M., (1999), “W. James’ Defence of Free Will: A Step toward a Paradigm Shift,” in Egidi Rosaria (ed.), In Search of a New Humanism: The Philosophy of Georg Henrik von Wright, Dordrecht, Kluwer, 139-46.

EGIDI Rosaria (ed.), (1999), In Search of a New Humanism: The Philosophy of Georg Henrik von Wright, Dordrecht, Kluwer.

EGIDI Rosaria, (1999), “Von Wright and ‘Dante’s Dream’: Stages in a Philosophical Pilgrim’s Progress,” in Id. (ed.), In Search of a New Humanism: The Philosophy of Georg Henrik von Wright, Dordrecht, Kluwer, 1-34.

EGIDI Rosaria, (2009), “Von Wright’s Philosophical Humanism,” European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, 1 (1), 1-8. Online: [journals.openedition.org/ejpap/973].

HARTSHORNE Charles, (1989), “Von Wright and Hume’s Axiom,” in Paul Arthur Schilpp & Lewis Edwin Hahn (eds), The Philosophy of Georg Henrik von Wright, La Salle, IL, Open Court, 59-76.

HINTIKKA Jaakko, (1998), “What Is Abduction? The Fundamental Problem of Contemporary Epistemology,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 34, 503-33.

JÄÄSKELÄINEN Manu, (1983), Eino Kailan psykologia: Rakenne ja kehitys. Käsiteanalyyttinen tutkimus [Eino Kaila’s Psychology – Its Structure and Development. A Conceptual Analysis], Helsinki, Department of Psychology, University of Helsinki.

JAMES William, (1975 [1907]), Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, eds. Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, & Ignas K. Skrupskelis, Cambridge, MA and London, Harvard University Press.

JAMES William, (1979 [1897]), The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, eds. Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers & Ignas K. Skrupskelis, Cambridge, MA and London, Harvard University Press.

KAILA Eino, (1911a), “Nykyajan filosofeja. Henri Bergson” [Contemporary Philosophers. Henri Bergson], in Valitut teokset 1: 1910-1935 [Selected Works 1: 1910-1935], ed. Ilkka Niiniluoto, Helsinki, Otava, 43-58 (abridged).

KAILA Eino, (1911b), “Tiede ja todellisuus. Lausuntoja Bolognan filosofikongressista” [Science and Reality. Statements about the Philosophy Congress in Bologna], Aika, 5, 761-4.

KAILA Eino, (1912), “William James. Amerikan filosofi” [William James. The Philosopher of America], in Valitut teokset 1: 1910-1935 [Selected Works 1: 1910-1935], ed. Ilkka Niiniluoto, Helsinki, Otava, 80-92. (English translation by Heikki A. Kovalainen, (2011), in Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 47, 136-45.)

KAILA Eino, (1914), Review of William James, Pragmatismi (1913) [the Finnish translation of Pragmatism], Uusi Suometar, April 7, 1914. (Finnish National Library, microfilm 214.)

KAILA Eino, (1915), Review of William James, Uskonnollinen kokemus moninaisuudessaan (1914) [the Finnish translation of The Varieties of Religious Experience], Uusi Suometar, March 9, 1915. (Finnish National Library, microfilm 219.)

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 146

KAILA Eino, (1916), Review of William James, Elämän ihanteita (1916) [Finnish translation of Talks to Teachers], Uusi Suometar, May 20, 1916. (Finnish National Library, microfilm 224.)

KAILA Eino, (1917), Renan [in Finnish], Porvoo, WSOY. (Abridged in Kaila 1990.)

KAILA Eino, (1941-48), Unpublished diaries, Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura (Finnish Literature Society), archives, Helsinki (No. 22230).

KAILA Eino, (1946 [1934]), Persoonallisuus [Personality], Helsinki, Otava, 3rd ed. (Abridged in Kaila 1990.)

KAILA Eino, (1952), “Allt är materia, allt är själ” [Everything Is Matter, Everything Is Soul], in Id. (1992), Valitut teokset 2: 1936-1958 [Selected Works 2: 1936-1958], ed. Ilkka Niiniluoto, Helsinki, Otava.

KAILA Eino, (1953), “Laatujen asema suureiden maailmassa” [The Place of Qualities in a World of Quantities], in Id. (1992), Valitut teokset 2: 1936-1958 [Selected Works 2: 1936-1958], ed. Ilkka Niiniluoto, Helsinki, Otava.

KAILA Eino, (1979), Reality and Experience: Four Philosophical Essays, ed. Robert S. Cohen, Dordrecht, D. Reidel.

KAILA Eino, (1986 [1943]), Syvähenkinen elämä: Keskusteluja viimeisistä kysymyksistä [Deep-Mental Life: Dialogues concerning Ultimate Questions], Helsinki, Otava, 3rd ed. (Abridged in Kaila 1992.)

KAILA Eino, (1990), Valitut teokset 1: 1910-1935 [Selected Works 1: 1910-1935], ed. I. Niiniluoto, Helsinki, Otava.

KAILA Eino, (1992), Valitut teokset 2: 1936-1958 [Selected Works 2: 1936-1958], ed. I. Niiniluoto, Helsinki, Otava.

KAILA Eino, (2014 [1939]), Human Knowledge: A Classic Statement of Logical Empiricism, trans. Anssi Korhonen; eds. Juha Manninen, Ilkka Niiniluoto, and George A. Reisch, La Salle, IL, Open Court.

KETONEN Oiva, (1954), “John Dewey 1859-1952” [in Finnish], Ajatus, 18, 85-98.

KETONEN Oiva, (1981 [1961]), Eurooppalaisen ihmisen maailmankatsomus [The World-View of the European Man], Porvoo, WSOY, 3rd ed.

KUUSELA Antti, (2010), Non-reductive Physicalism, Irreducibility of the Mental and the Problem of Mental Causation: A Study of Donald Davidson’s and Georg Henrik von Wright’s Positions in the Philosophy of Mind, PhD Diss., Department of Philosophy, University of Helsinki, available online: [doria.fi/ handle/10024/64338].

NEUBER Matthias, (2012), “From Carnap to Kaila – A Neglected Transition in the History of ‘ wissenschaftliche Philosophie’,” in Niiniluoto & Pihlström, Reappraisals of Eino Kaila’s Philosophy, Acta Philosophica Fennica 89, Helsinki, The Philosophical Society of Finland, 53-70.

NIINILUOTO Ilkka, (1990), “Luonto, elämä ja sielu: Eino Kaila 1910-35” [Nature, Life, and Soul: Eino Kaila 1910-35], in Kaila 1990, 9-38.

NIINILUOTO Ilkka, (1992a), “Syvähenkisen empiristin hahmottuva maailma: Eino Kaila 1936-58” [The Structuring World of the Deep-Mental Empiricist: Eino Kaila 1936-58], in Kaila 1992, 7-33.

NIINILUOTO Ilkka, (1992b), “Eino Kaila and Scientific Realism,” in Niiniluoto et al. 1992, 102-16.

NIINILUOTO Ilkka, (1999), Critical Scientific Realism, Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 147

NIINILUOTO Ilkka, (2012), “Eino Kaila’s Critique of Metaphysics,” in Niiniluoto & Pihlström, Reappraisals of Eino Kaila’s Philosophy, Acta Philosophica Fennica, 89, Helsinki, The Philosophical Society of Finland, 71-90.

NIINILUOTO Ilkka, (2017), “Eino Kaila and The Vienna Circle,” in Sami Pihlström, Friedrich Stadler, & Niels Weidtmann (eds), Logical Empiricism and Pragmatism, Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook 19, Cham, Springer, 185-99.

NIINILUOTO Ilkka, (2018), Truth-seeking by Abduction, Cham, Springer.

NIINILUOTO Ilkka, SINTONEN Matti & Georg Henrik VON WRIGHT (eds), (1992), Eino Kaila and Logical Empiricism, Acta Philosophica Fennica 52, Helsinki, The Philosophical Society of Finland.

NIINILUOTO Ilkka & Sami PIHLSTRÖM (eds), (2012), Reappraisals of Eino Kaila’s Philosophy, Acta Philosophica Fennica, 89, Helsinki, The Philosophical Society of Finland.

NIINILUOTO Ilkka & Thomas WALLGREN (eds), (2017), On the Human Condition: Philosophical Essays in Honour of the Centennial Anniversary of Georg Henrik von Wright, Acta Philosophica Fennica, 93, Helsinki, The Philosophical Society of Finland.

PIHLSTRÖM Sami, (2001), Filosofin käytännöt: Pragmatismin perinteen vaikutus suomalaisessa filosofiassa 1900-luvulla [The Philosopher’s Practices: The Influence of the Pragmatist Tradition in Finnish Philosophy in the Twentieth Century], Kuopio, UNIPress.

PIHLSTRÖM Sami, (2003a), Naturalizing the Transcendental: A Pragmatic View, Amherst, NY, Prometheus/Humanity Books.

PIHLSTRÖM Sami, (2003b), “Pragmatistic Influences in Twentieth Century Finnish Philosophy: From Pre-Analytic to Post-Analytic Thought,” in Leila Haaparanta & Ilkka Niiniluoto (eds), Analytic Philosophy in Finland (Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 80), Rodopi, Amsterdam and New York, 511-35.

PIHLSTRÖM Sami, (2009), Pragmatist Metaphysics: An Essay on the Ethical Grounds of Ontology, London and New York, Continuum.

PIHLSTRÖM Sami, (2010), “Nordic Pragmatism,” European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, 2 (1), available online: [journals.openedition.org/ejpap/945]. (Earlier version in Sami Pihlström & Henrik Rydenfelt (eds), Pragmatist Perspectives, Acta Philosophica Fennica 86, The Philosophical Society of Finland, Helsinki, 2009: 11-25.)

PIHLSTRÖM Sami, (2012), “Eino Kaila on Pragmatism and Religion,” in Niiniluoto & Pihlström 2012, 195-212.

PIHLSTRÖM Sami, (2014), “A Pragmatist Dimension in Georg Henrik von Wright’s Philosophy,” Acta Baltica Historiae et Philosophiae Scientiarum, 2 (1), 5-17.

PIHLSTRÖM Sami (ed.), (2015), The Bloomsbury Companion to Pragmatism, New York and London, Bloomsbury.

PRICE Huw, (2011), Naturalism without Mirrors, Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press.

PUTNAM Hilary, (1995), Pragmatism: An Open Question, Oxford and Cambridge, MA, Blackwell.

PUTNAM Hilary, (2002), The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays, Cambridge, MA and London, Harvard University Press.

RYDENFELT Henrik, (2018), “Nordic Context,” in Matthias Festl (ed.), Handbuch Pragmatismus, Stuttgart, Metzler, 321-6.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 148

SALMELA Mikko, (1998), Suomalaisen kulttuurifilosofian vuosisata [A Century of Finnish Philosophy of Culture], Helsinki, Otava.

SALMELA Mikko, (2012), “Eino Kaila on Ethics,” in Niiniluoto & Pihlström 2012, 213-32.

SCHILPP Paul Arthur & Lewis Edwin HAHN (eds), (1989), The Philosophy of Georg Henrik von Wright, La Salle, IL, Open Court.

WITTGENSTEIN Ludwig, (1953), Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1958.

WITTGENSTEIN Ludwig, (1969), On Certainty, eds. G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe and Denis Paul, Oxford, Basil Blackwell.

WOODWARD James, (2003), Making Things Happen: A Theory of Causal Explanation, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

VON WRIGHT Georg Henrik, (1943), Den logiska empirismen: En huvudriktning i modern filosofi [Logical Empiricism: A Main Orientation in Modern Philosophy], Helsingfors, Söderströms.

VON WRIGHT Georg Henrik, (1971), Explanation and Understanding, Ithaca, NY and London, Cornell University Press.

VON WRIGHT Georg Henrik, (1974), Causality and Determinism, New York and London, Columbia University Press.

VON WRIGHT Georg Henrik, (1980), Freedom and Determination, Acta Philosophica Fennica, 31 (1), Helsinki, The Philosophical Society of Finland.

VON WRIGHT Georg Henrik, (1982), Wittgenstein, Oxford, Basil Blackwell.

VON WRIGHT Georg Henrik, (1986), Vetenskapen och förnuftet [Science and Human Reason], Finnish trans. Anto Leikola, Tiede ja ihmisjärki, Helsinki, Otava, (1987).

VON WRIGHT Georg Henrik, (1992), “Eino Kaila’s Monism,” in Niiniluoto et al. 1992, 71-91.

VON WRIGHT Georg Henrik, (1993), The Tree of Knowledge, Leiden, Brill.

VON WRIGHT Georg Henrik, (1998), In the Shadow of Descartes: Essays in the Philosophy of Mind, Dordrecht, Kluwer.

VON WRIGHT Georg Henrik, (2001), Elämäni niin kuin sen muistan [My Life as I Remember It], trans. Iiro Kuuranne, Helsinki, Otava.

WALLGREN Thomas, (2003), “Critical Theory,” in Leila Haaparanta & Ilkka Niiniluoto (eds), Analytic Philosophy in Finland. Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities, 80, Amsterdam, Rhodopi, 537-79.

NOTES

1. The topic of this paper has been more comprehensively discussed in several earlier writings of mine: see Pihlström 2001, 2003b, 2010, 2012, 2014; see also Pihlström 2015. This essay is indebted to those previous investigations of “Finnish pragmatism.” 2. Hintikka’s relation to pragmatism would clearly deserve a separate comprehensive study. In particular, his research on Peirce and abduction is an original contribution to the development of the specifically Peircean strand of pragmatism (as is Niiniluoto’s work on abduction; cf.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 149

Niiniluoto 2018). It might be mentioned that Hintikka was President of the Charles S. Peirce Society in the 1990s. 3. In addition to his early articles on James, he also published a brief monograph in Finnish on Ernest Renan’s work on religion (Kaila 1917), dealing with related matters. Kaila’s most important writings, including some of the early pieces of the 1910s (e.g., the James article and selections of the Renan book), are collected in Kaila 1990. The writings on Renan, James, and other figures testify about Kaila’s deep interest in religious issues and the conflict between science and religion. 4. I am here quoting from Heikki A. Kovalainen’s 2011 translation of Kaila 1912, though otherwise my page references are to the reprinted version of the original Finnish essay available in Kaila 1990. The last sentence in the quotation seems to have been taken almost directly from James’s essay, “What Makes Life Worth Living,” reprinted in James 1979 [1897]. 5. Niiniluoto, in his introduction to Niiniluoto et al. 1992, uses this as a translation of Kaila’s most original terminus technicus, “syvähenkisyys.” This concept has been discussed in Jääskeläinen 1983, Niiniluoto 1992a, and Salmela 1998, among other secondary sources. See also the essays in Niiniluoto & Pihlström 2012. 6. It is, however, still an open question whether we should say that what Kaila thought to be pragmatically acceptable or justifiable could be regarded as (pragmatically) “true.” Kaila clearly does not follow the pragmatists all the way down, because he still insists on distinguishing between theoretical and practical testability (and truth). Furthermore, Salmela (1998, 2012) claims that Kaila’s principle of practical testability is applicable only to religion and metaphysics, not to value judgments. There is still room for further scholarly discussion of Kaila’s metaethical position: did he subscribe to some kind of emotivism, or are his treatments of deep-mentality reinterpretable on the basis of a pragmatic moral realism? For a detailed account of Kaila’s relation to other twentieth-century Finnish developments in the philosophy of culture and values, see Salmela 1998. 7. Kaila does regard James (along with Carlyle and Tolstoy) as one of the background figures of Aristofilos’s feelings about life (see Kaila 1986 [1943]: 8, 202). Kaila’s diaries in 1941-48 indicate that he was thinking about James while preparing the manuscript of Syvähenkinen elämä during World War II. He mentions James at least on December 13, 1941, and on May 4, 1942. On January 24, 1943, he formulates the distinction between theoretical and practical testability. 8. On the notion of a philosophical temperament, see James 1975 [1907], Lecture I. 9. On Kaila’s life-long concern with the issue of scientific realism and the “riddle of reality” in the context of the logical empiricists’ criticism of metaphysics, see Niiniluoto 1992b, 2012, 2017; cf. also Neuber 2012. 10. See von Wright 1992 for some elaborations of this. 11. Kaila’s last work, only fragments of which were posthumously published, was tentatively titled Hahmottuva maailma (“The World as a Structuring Whole,” or perhaps just “The Structuring World,” or maybe “The Self-Structuring World”). For English translations of some material that Kaila intended as part of that volume, see Kaila 1979, especially the essay “The Perceptual and Conceptual Components of Everyday Experience” (259-312). 12. Compare James’s own discussion of monism and pluralism in James 1975 [1907], Lecture IV. While James obviously favors pluralism, even that conflict is for him an issue that needs pragmatic adjudication. 13. This 1952 paper is reprinted in Kaila 1992. 14. Again, see the elaboration of this idea in Kaila’s posthumous essay, “The Perceptual and Conceptual Components of Everyday Experience,” in Kaila 1979. See also Niiniluoto (1992b: 111). 15. This is suggested, with some reservations, in Niiniluoto (1992b: 112-3). I agree with Matthias Neuber (2012) that Kaila cannot be interpreted as an internal realist in the Putnamian sense, because he never accepted the Kantian view that reality is dependent on our conceptualizations

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 150

and categorizations. (This Kantian idea is in my view crucial in pragmatist and neopragmatist ways of dealing with the problem of realism. I would also be happy to agree with Neuber that Putnamian internal realism, at least insofar as it is a pragmatist position, is indeed very close to Kantian-like idealism.) Even so, the link between conceptualization and reality is tight in Kaila. 16. The Library of Living Philosophers volume devoted to von Wright (Schilpp & Hahn 1989) does not seem to recognize von Wright’s pragmatist aspects in any explicit way. See, however, Hartshorne 1989. 17. Huw Price’s work on causation might be seen as coming close to von Wright’s, because Price (2011: 31) also suggests that “uses of causal concepts in science” may reflect the “agentive perspective.” 18. Regarding this deep connection between the ways we talk and think about the world generally and the ways we talk and think about human agency, it might be speculated that von Wright’s later views on the conceptual dependence of causation on action might be partly based on, or at least parallel to, his earlier idea – originated during his Cambridge years (1948-1951), leading up to his pioneering work on modal and deontic logic, with the first publications in the early 1950s – that there is an analogy between the behaviors of the standard quantifiers of first- order predicate logic, on the one hand, and the operators expressing modalities and deontic modalities, on the other. Thus, our basic logical concepts “some,” “all,” and “no” can be seen as functioning in ways analogous to modal concepts (“possible,” “necessary,” and “impossible”) and deontic ones (“allowed,” “obligated,” “forbidden”). Von Wright (2001: 179) tells us that this analogy came to him as a sudden insight when he was walking along the river Cam (presumably around 1950). 19. On the relevance of von Wright’s “actionistic” account of causation for an “anti-naturalistic” “humanization of nature,” see Egidi (1999: 4-5). Similarly, pragmatists are generally naturalists, but their naturalism is never reductive but always already “humanized” – and the same, as we saw, holds for von Wright’s teacher Kaila. Calcaterra (1999) is one of the very few scholars explicitly comparing von Wright’s theory of action and (James’s) pragmatism, pointing toward a “non-causalistic” theory of action and an “emancipation of the discussion about human freedom from traditional epistemological and ontological approaches” (ibid.: 139). See Egidi’s (1999, ed.) volume more broadly for several investigations of von Wright’s views on action (among other things) and their significance for “humanistic” philosophy. 20. As von Wright explains in his autobiography (von Wright 2001), he later came to resist the term “humanism,” though. For more recent discussions of von Wright’s humanism and his views on “the human condition,” see Niiniluoto & Wallgren 2017. 21. I am here indebted to Antti Kuusela’s (2010) work on von Wright’s philosophy of mind, with comparisons to not only Wittgenstein but also Donald Davidson. 22. Dewey, of course, contributed to the logical empiricists’ International Encyclopedia of Unified Science with his Theory of Valuation in 1940 and was in this sense not exactly a critic of the “unity of science” movement but rather one of its supporters. On the other hand, Dewey’s version of pragmatic naturalism is clearly one of the most influential accounts of non-reductive naturalism available. It would require another inquiry to determine in what sense exactly a non-reductive (and in this sense “rich” or “soft”) version of naturalism can be committed to the idea of “unity” (i.e., in what sense, if any, unity itself can be reconstructed in a non-reductive manner). 23. The mental, von Wright (1998: 162) tells us, is “the meaning of complex patterns of bodily reactions.” 24. See also Pihlström 2009 for some developments of these versions of pragmatism. 25. Von Wright’s view on causation has also inspired, among others, Karl-Otto Apel (cf. Apel 1998: 22-3, 133). The “interventionist” position has been important for Apel as a background idea in his defense of critical hermeneutics and “transcendental pragmatism” in the Erklären vs. Verstehen controversy (see also Wallgren 2003: 543).

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 151

26. The issue of continuity is also related to the question concerning the possible intentionality (or lack thereof) of the actions or behaviors of higher animals. Is there an evolutionary continuity here or a fundamental difference between our intentional actions and the purely causally explainable non-intentional (though possibly intentional-seeming) behavior of animals? I must here leave this question untouched, but I should like to note that the difference between those who find human beings essentially different from animals in this regard and those who find them not essentially different but only very different – that is, see them continuous yet very far from each other regarding capacities for reasoned action – may itself be a problematic distinction, or even a distinction without (pragmatic) difference. The pragmatic method could perhaps be employed here in order to show that there is no conceivable difference in the potential practical effects of these only apparently different views. I imagine that this issue could be interestingly investigated in the context of Kaila’s and von Wright’s ideas, too. 27. Some of von Wright’s “cultural” writings of this kind have been translated into English: see von Wright 1993. Here I am not even trying to summarize his profound views on “the myth of progress,” the self-destructiveness of human reason, and cultural pessimism. Von Wright’s career as a cultural discussant did not begin with his politically engaged comments in the 1960s but goes back to his early essays in the 1940s on Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. 28. In their distinctive ways, Ketonen and Niiniluoto have also continued the tradition of “public philosophy.” For example, in his popular writings and talks, Niiniluoto has recently been a strong critic of the corruption of the commitment to reason and truth in our “post-truth” era. 29. I have deliberately avoided discussing any of Hintikka’s complex views here, as his relations to pragmatism would deserve a separate analysis (cf., e.g., Hintikka 1998, as well as footnote 2 above). He was obviously greatly influenced by both Kaila and especially von Wright.

ABSTRACTS

This essay introduces two leading Finnish philosophers of the twentieth century, Eino Kaila and Georg Henrik von Wright, who not only established analytic philosophy in Finland but also made original contributions to the development of pragmatism. The pragmatist dimensions of Kaila’s thought were clearly influenced by the classical American pragmatists, primarily William James, whose writings Kaila read and commented on already at an early stage of his career in the 1910s. Kaila then continued to develop a quasi-pragmatist idea of “practical testability” during his logical empiricist period in the 1930s and 1940s. Unlike Kaila, von Wright was never directly inspired by James or any other classical pragmatists, although he did refer to Peirce and James as informal precursors of logical empiricism in the 1940s. His highly original theories of human action and causation, mostly developed in the 1970s, contain interesting pragmatist aspects, however. Both Kaila and von Wright, moreover, shared a life-long engagement with an issue that also troubled all the classical pragmatists: a reconciliation of a “humanist” philosophy with a thoroughgoing appreciation of the natural sciences. Thus, they both developed non-reductive versions of naturalism (or naturalist versions of pragmatist humanism) that, in their emphasis on the disunity of science, were not terribly far from the positions of classical pragmatists like James and Dewey.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 152

AUTHOR

SAMI PIHLSTRÖM

University of Helsinki sami.pihlstrom[at]helsinki.fi

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 153

Between Pragmatism and Realism The Philosophy of John Elof Boodin

Matthias Neuber

1. Introduction

1 The present paper is devoted to a systematic reconstruction of the philosophical approach of the Swedish-born thinker John Elof Boodin (1869-1950). It will be shown that Boodin’s work underwent a development from a more or less direct form of pragmatism to a certain variant of realism, which Boodin himself called “functional” realism. In order to adequately understand this shift in philosophical perspective, it is important to take into account both Boodin’s intellectual socialization in the United States and the surrounding philosophical context. Thus, in section 2 of this paper, I shall provide some information concerning Boodin’s life and work, and, in section 3, I shall reflect on the philosophical situation in the United States during the first two decades of the twentieth century. Section 4 discusses Boodin’s specific understanding, blending and eventual disentanglement of pragmatist and realist ideas. Section 5 concludes the paper with some critical comments.

2. Boodin’s Life and Work1

2 John Elof Boodin was born in Pjätteryd, Småland (Southern Sweden), in 1869. Being one of nineteen children of a farmers family (his father had married twice), he, at the age of 18, decided (like a couple of his siblings) to emigrate to the United States. Boodin knew no English when he arrived in Colchester, Illinois, in 1887. And he had no money. However, one of his brothers had settled in Colchester some time before. Moreover, the little town housed around one hundred Swedish immigrants, which in turn helped Boodin to work for the Episcopal Church during the first few years. After a short time working in a “low vein” mine owned by the Quincy Coal Company, Boodin attended Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, in 1890-91 where he studied Latin, Greek, Swedish, and Geometry. In 1893, he got a position as a lay reader in the Episcopal Church of St. Mark in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he did parish work with other

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 154

Swedish immigrants. Boodin transferred his college studies to the University of Minnesota and made acquaintance with the work of William James. Being fascinated by the latter’s academic contributions Boodin became eager to study under James at Harvard. This plan didn’t work out, but Boodin received a funded scholarship at nearby Brown University. There he studied philosophy and received his master’s degree in 1896. In 1896-97, he taught Logic, Ethics, and Comparative Religion at Brown. Furthermore, he participated in the department Philosophy Club. As a matter of fact, it was in this context that he personally encountered James for the first time. At one of the Philosophy Club’s meetings, James gave a talk titled “Is Life Worth Living?”. Boodin attended the talk. And he did not remain unrecognized. As Nelson points out in his biographical sketch: Though Boodin was awed by James – the very man he had most wanted to meet – he proceeded during the discussion period to ridicule some of the points James had made. […] [H]is critical speech had made a permanent impression. James inquired into Boodin’s background and plans, and nicknamed him “the orator.” He then went on to revise his paper in response to Boodin’s critique. He presented the new version at a subsequent meeting of the Brown Philosophy Club that year. (Nelson 1984: 137) 3 In 1897, Boodin eventually entered Harvard (on a Hopkins scholarship). There, he primarily studied with the American idealist Josiah Royce and came in closer (friendship-like) contact with James. At that time, Harvard no doubt was the stronghold of (the still quite young) American philosophy. Among Boodin’s fellow graduate students were the later influential realist philosophers Arthur O. Lovejoy, William Pepperell Montague, Edwin B. Holt, and Ralph Barton Perry. In 1899, Boodin finished his dissertation on “The Concept of Time.”

4 After his stay at Harvard, Boodin had a couple of academic positions in the United States, culminating with his becoming Faculty Research Lecturer at U.C.L.A. in 1937. In the same year, he was elected to membership in the permanent council of the World Congress of Philosophy. In 1932-33 he had already served as president of the American Philosophical Association, Western Division. Boodin died in 1950. 5 As for Boodin’s philosophical work, it should be mentioned first that he is characterized by Shook as one of the twelve “major figures” (Shook 1998: xiii) of pragmatism. Boodin himself writes at one place: “Whether I had any influence in turning pragmatism into a more realistic direction, I do not know.” (Boodin 1930: 140). Be that as it may, the particularly realistic element in Boodin’s approach to pragmatism had obviously to do with his European, Swedish, roots. According to Pihlström, Boodin was of the opinion “that his work and training on his home farm with intimate contact with nature may have made him an ‘empirical realist’” (Pihlström 2010: 6). At any rate, the emigration to the United States fundamentally changed Boodin’s overall outlook. Thus one can read in his book The Social Mind from 1939: I was uprooted from my community. However kind the new world has been and whatever my success within it, the loss of my own community has always haunted me. The change meant a change of language, a change of history and tradition. It was a complete cleavage with my world before eighteen. (Boodin 1939: 56) 6 Whether Boodin’s specific variant of philosophical thinking should be seen as an expression of “European pragmatism” is hard to say. Maybe his Swedish rural growing up, as it were, predestined him in terms of viewing the world from a primarily realistic point of view. On the other hand, it should be seen that his entire academic education

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 155

took place in the United States. And it is more than obvious that his principal inspirations were promoted by his tight academic contacts with James and Royce at Harvard. Moreover, his Harvard student fellows, such as Holt, Montague or Perry, attempted to interpret James’s account of pragmatism within a realistic framework.2 Accordingly, a fusion of pragmatism and realism seemed to be en vogue among the younger Harvard generation. Boodin himself belonged to that very generation, so that it appears more adequate to speak of the “pragmatism of a European-born philosopher” than of Boodin’s “European pragmatism.”3

7 Boodin published eight books and more than sixty articles for journals, both in the field of theoretical philosophy (which concerns us here) and in the field of practical philosophy. His major contributions to theoretical philosophy are the following: the 1911 book Truth and Reality; the 1916 book A Realistic Universe; and an article published in 1934 (in The Philosophical Review) titled “Functional Realism.” In Truth and Reality, Boodin explicitly argues for what he calls “pragmatic realism” (see Boodin 1911a, esp. ch. XIV). Interestingly enough, the dedication of that book reads as follows: “To my friend and teacher William James, not the late but the ever living and inspiring genius of American philosophy, this book is affectionately dedicated.” The five years later published Realistic Universe, then, is dedicated to “my friend and teacher Josiah Royce.” In programmatic terms, Boodin argues in that book for what he now calls “pragmatic energism” (see Boodin 1916, esp. ch. III). Whereas Truth and Reality is, according to its subtitle, an “Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge,” A Realistic Universe is, according to its subtitle, an “Introduction to Metaphysics.” Boodin’s 1934 “Functional Realism” doesn’t contain any mentioning of pragmatism or pragmatic elements. We will see later why. 8 On the whole, Boodin’s philosophical work fell into oblivion with the death of its author. Even during his lifetime, Boodin had the impression that his philosophical contributions were not sufficiently appreciated. According to Nelson, “Boodin lived in the continual hope that times would change and that people would increasingly look to his work […] as a source of sanity, value, and enlightenment. It was the greatest disappointment of his life that this did not happen.” (Nelson 1984: 145).

3. The Philosophical Context

9 Before discussing the details and the development of Boodin’s philosophical position, it is instructive to take a brief look at the surrounding philosophical context. Regarding the situation in late nineteenth-century American philosophy, it can be said that idealism, especially in the form advocated by Royce, was the prevailing point of view.4 Royce’s Gifford Lectures, delivered at the University of Aberdeen in two series in 1899 and 1900, proved to be particularly impactful. In Royce’s opinion, there is no way out of our “absolute system of ideas.” Reality itself is an idea, and it is for this reason that Royce, quite frankly, states: “[W]e propose to answer the question: What is to be? by the assertion that: To be means simply to express, to embody the complete internal meaning of a certain absolute system of ideas, – a system, moreover, which is genuinely implied in the true internal meaning of purpose of every finite idea, however fragmentary.” (Royce 1900, 36).

10 It can hardly surprise that statements like these provoked a realist reaction. And indeed, it were (among others) some of Royce’s best students who stood at the forefront of a

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 156

new movement in early twentieth-century American philosophy. Inspired by James’s “Does Consciousness Exist?” (1904), authors such as Holt, Montague, and Perry had joined forces, in order to promote what they called “new” realism.5 The attribute “new” had partially to do with the fact that the members of that group saw themselves as participating to the new scientific endeavor (informed by both psychology and the natural sciences) which demanded a more robust realist epistemology. Their most outstanding contribution was the cooperative volume The New Realism, which appeared in 1912. But already two years earlier they had published “The Program and First Platform of Six Realists.” In this manifesto, they came along with a couple of – more or less general – realist theses. Holt, for example, claimed that “[t]he entities […] under study in logic, mathematics, and the physical sciences are not mental in any usual or proper meaning of the word ‘mental’” (Holt in Holt et al. 1910: 394). Going in the very same direction, Montague stated that “the existence of a thing is not correlated with or dependent upon the fact that anybody experiences it, perceives it, conceives it, or is in any way aware of it” (Montague in Holt et al. 1910: 396). Edward Gleason Spaulding, another of the new realists, even went as far as to assert that consciousness and the process of knowing as such are “eliminable” (Spaulding in Holt et al. 1910: 399). 11 In a similar vein, American pragmatism had evolved as an anti-idealistic movement. James’s “Does Consciousness Exist?” is a good example in this respect. Also his seminal lecture series Pragmatism from 1907 and especially his 1909 monograph A Pluralistic Universe should be seen under this aspect. 6 However, it was John Dewey who most firmly stressed the realistic element in pragmatism. Thus in an article from 1905, titled “The Realism of Pragmatism,” Dewey points out: Speaking of the matter only for myself, the presuppositions and tendencies of pragmatism are distinctly realistic; not idealistic in any sense in which idealism connotes or is connoted by the theory of knowledge. […] Pragmatism believes that in knowledge as a fact, an accomplished matter, things are “representative of another.” Ideas, sensations, mental states are, in their cognitive significance, media of so adjusting things to one another that they become representative of one another. When this is accomplished, they drop out; and things are present to the agent in the most naïvely realistic fashion. (Dewey 1905: 324-5) 12 It is a well-known fact that, in the further course of the twentieth century, pragmatism became the predominant philosophical current in the United States (cf. Misak 2013). Its accentuation of practice and consequences appeared as something “distinctively American” (Sellars 1969: 27). Yet, the philosophical scenario in the 1910s and 1920s was quite complex. Besides idealism, neo-realism, and pragmatism there existed a further influential movement, namely so-called critical realism. The critical realists – philosophers such as Durant Drake, George Santayana, Roy Wood Sellars and the already mentioned Arthur O. Lovejoy – shared the neo-realists’ rejection of idealism. Moreover, the critical realist movement joined in the format of cooperative publication as already executed by the new realists’ 1912 volume. Thus in 1920 they published their Essays in Critical Realism, which was subtitled “A Cooperative Study of the Problem of Knowledge.”7 In the preface to that volume, the authors pointed out: The doctrine here defended, while definitely realistic, is distinctly different from the “new” realism of the American group, whose volume, published in 1912, was a signal example of the value of co-operative effort in crystallizing and advertising a point of view in philosophy. Our realism is not a physically monistic realism, or a merely logical realism, and escapes the many difficulties which have prevented the general acceptance of the “new” realism. (Drake et al. 1920: vi)

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 157

13 As for the movement’s label, the critical realists were critical insofar as they aimed at a more reflected approach to the issue of cognition (especially perception) than our everyday’s “naïve” as well as philosophical “new” realism.8 They were realist insofar as they, on the other hand, agreed with new realism in the postulation of the existence of mind-independent things.

14 Regarding their relation to pragmatism, the critical realists no doubt saw certain affinities. As Sellars makes it clear in his Evolutionary Naturalism (1922), the critical realist “is very sympathetic with the position of the pragmatist, albeit he thinks that many pragmatists are too utilitarian and do not value enough, or sufficiently admit, a theoretical interest in knowledge” (Sellars 1922: 55-6). As Sellars further points out, critical realism is a “mediate” (77) position. “In it,” Sellars writes, “both pragmatism of a chastened sort and neo-realism of a less doctrinaire type may ultimately find the satisfaction of their insights.” (Ibid.). However, the prevailing attitude toward pragmatism in the critical realist camp was unfavorable. This becomes particularly clear from Lovejoy’s contribution to the 1920 essay volume. Titled “Pragmatism Versus the Pragmatist,” Lovejoy’s paper may be considered as one of the most unrelenting critiques of the pragmatist point of view. In his opinion, “the doctrine commonly put forward as ‘pragmatism’ may be said to be a changeling, substituted almost in the cradle” (Lovejoy 1920: 80).9 15 Summing up thus far, it can be stated that Boodin, when he entered the American philosophical scene, encountered a confusing, if not chaotic, diversity of programs, movements and related -isms. Our next task will be to determine what he made out of this kind of situation.

4. Boodin on the Relation between Pragmatism and Realism

16 Boodin’s chronologically first publication to be considered here is a paper titled “Philosophic Tolerance. A Winter Revery.” It appeared in The Monist in 1908. Recall that James’s Pragmatism had appeared in 1907. Boodin does not refer to James’s lecture series in his paper, but he mentions the latter’s “favorite principle of pragmatism” (Boodin 1908: 305). At the same time he speaks of “my friend Royce” (1908: 303), mentions the latter’s “absolute idealism” (1908: 300) and suggests that “[i]deals may prove truer than facts” (ibid.). It is apparent that Boodin seeks some sort of “idealized” as well as “humanized” conception of reality and truth. He explicitly analogizes philosophy and art. “Why,” he asks, “should a man’s soul be crowded into one system of philosophy?” (1908: 302). And he continues: The ultimate realities with which metaphysics deals are no less plastic in the hands of the potter than the realities of art. In either case the soul is endeavoring to create an objective counterpart to its tendencies or needs, to mirror itself, become conscious of itself. Philosophy like poetry and art, when it is genuine, is only the expression of a mood of the soul, and it is not always for the artist to tell what mood is most significant. […] In the realm of truth, as well as art, man must be the measure, however finite and passing the measure may be. (Ibid.) 17 James’s conception of philosophy stands, according to Boodin, in that very tradition. Reflecting on his own philosophical development, especially on his time at Harvard,10 he provides the reader with the following picture:

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 158

The temple where I spend most of my time is an unfinished Gothic sort of structure, where many artists are at work, each in his own way. I was introduced to the group by a friend of mine, the brilliant and human William James, who spent a lifetime trying to provide a framework and who is now at work on some plans for the interior. It is a place where everybody has something to do. Each one is allowed to choose his own task, make his own plan and fix his own salary. There is no supervision as yet, in fact the plan is that there shall be no supervision of the work as a whole. (Ibid.: 305) 18 Boodin is extremely enthusiastic about the prospects of this whole enterprise. He writes: But after all, the center of interest in this religion is not the temple but the artists. The temple may never be finished, as each artist and each generation of artists modify the plans to suit their own ideals. But the artists get practice and the temple is first of all a school for artists. And each artist is paid at least through the joy of the working and the appreciation he feels for such momentary beauty as each can produce. Here at least the artist has the sense of doing something, for in the other temples there is nothing to do but contemplate that which is, whether beauty or desert. Here worship is work and work is worship. (Ibid.) 19 It was certainly this very passage that provoked the following critical comment by the journal’s editors: Pragmatism is the latest philosophical movement which is at present sweeping over the country, and the foregoing article by Professor Boodin may be taken as a typical instance of the philosophic temperament that is at present in the ascendancy. The founder of Pragmatism is Mr. Charles S. Peirce, and its standard bearer, Prof. William James of Harvard. We must confess that we do not share the enthusiasm of the pragmatism movement, and not join its ranks. We believe that it has its weak points, and it is our intention to publish in the coming number of The Monist a critical discussion of pragmatism as a system of philosophy. (Editorial Comment to Boodin 1908: 306) 20 As is well known, the Monist’s editor-in-chief, German-born Paul Carus, stood in close contact to the pragmatists. Peirce, for example, published many of his most important papers for The Monist. However, Carus’s own philosophical outlook was that of a Spinozist and a Buddhist (cf. Suzuki 1962). He believed in eternal truth and rejected its relativization by the pragmatists.11

21 The announced critical discussion of pragmatism as “a system of philosophy” can be found in Volume No. 15 of The Monist, published in 1909. Boodin, although invited to do so (see below, fn. 14), did not contribute to that volume. Instead, he published – in the very same year – an article titled “What Pragmatism Is and Is Not” for The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Method. He obviously knew of Peirce’s 1905 contribution for The Monist (Peirce’s paper had the title “What Pragmatism Is”). At any rate, Boodin starts his article with the following characterization: In the first place, pragmatism as a doctrine is so simple and so old as a matter of scientific procedure that it is impossible to understand why so much dust should have been raised about it by its opponents. It is simply the application of the ordinary method of the scientific testing of an hypothesis to philosophic hypotheses as well. (Boodin 1909: 627) 22 As Boodin further makes it clear, the pragmatist holds that the truth of a hypothesis stands in close connection to human habit and conduct. “The truth of an idea or plan,” he writes, “must be tested by the procedure to which it leads.” (Ibid.). Accordingly,

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 159

science, from the pragmatist point of view, is “a systematic sorting of experience in the realization of our interests” (ibid.: 629).

23 All of this sounds pretty Jamesian.12 And the same holds true for the following passage (although it could likewise be read before the Peircean background): Is pragmatism realistic? Only in so far as it intends a world beyond our finite cognitive purposes. The finite fragmentary intent must find its reality or correction in a larger whole. I do not know of any striving for truth which is not realistic in this sense. […] The reality we seek to know may ultimately be more experience – yes, we must be willing to have it turn out to be an absolute unity of thought, if the procedure of truth leads that way. (Ibid.: 632)13 24 On the whole, Boodin applauds the Jamesian variant of pragmatism. For him, as for James, truth, “so far as we are finite seekers are concerned, is a limit which we are far from having realized. Whether we can realize it or not only the historical outcome of the pragmatic test can prove.” (Ibid.: 633).

25 In 1910, Boodin’s paper “Pragmatic Realism” appeared in Volume No. 19 of The Monist.14 In that paper, Boodin again, and more explicitly, draws the connection between pragmatism and realism. Laying the focus on what is implied by a realistic – in contrast to an idealistic – point of view, he declares: Leaving out all reference to the metaphysical stuff for the time being, realism means the reference to an object existing beyond the apperceptive unity of momentary individual consciousness, and that this object can make a difference to that consciousness so as to be known. The object, in other words, is dependent upon the cognitive moment not for its existence, but for its significance. Idealism, on the other hand, would hold that there is strictly only one unity of consciousness and that existence is a function of being part of a significant system. Thought is so wedded to things that things cannot exist without being thought. (Boodin 1910: 602-3) 26 It is clearly Royce’s version of idealism to which Boodin is alluding in the last two sentences of that passage. Anyway, the actually important point is that by ‘realism’ he essentially understands an “epistemological attitude” (ibid.: 603) and not a “brand of metaphysics” (ibid.). Consequently, both idealism and materialism are, in his view, variants of “dogmatism” (ibid.: 606) and therefore to be abandoned. It is all but astonishing that Boodin continues thus: Instead of the dogmatic method pursued by the old idealism and materialism alike, we must substitute scientific method. This method has been rechristened within recent years by C. S. Peirce and William James and called pragmatism. As I understand this method it means simply to carry the scientific spirit into metaphysics. (Ibid.: 608) 27 The Monist’s editors (most probably Carus) laconically commented upon this claim by raising the following question: “If pragmatism avowedly accepts the scientific method, would it not be better to call it the ‘Philosophy of Science’?” (Editorial Comment to Boodin 1910: 614).

28 It was in Volume No. 21 of The Monist, published in 1911, that Boodin directly replied to that comment. He argued: An hypothesis, whether of atoms or morals, God or devil, is true because it works. We do not wonder over the disappointment at this lack of novelty of the pragmatic method. No doubt Dr. Paul Carus expresses a general feeling when he says: “If pragmatism, as commonly understood, were truly nothing but another name for ‘scientific method,’ it would not have anything to offer.”15 But what the critic

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 160

forgets is that pragmatism is the baptism of a new consciousness as to the meaning of science. It makes definite and articulate what was only implied before. Few great reformations have been original, to any great extent, in their intellectual content. Their originality has lain mostly in the simplicity and directness of their aim – the clearness and intensity of their emphasis. (Boodin 1911a: 85) 29 Apparently, pragmatism stood in need of being defended (or at least of being clarified) against its opponents.

30 In Truth and Reality, Boodin attempted to tackle this sort of challenge. In the preface to that book he made the following announcement: In the bewildering amount of discussion and misunderstanding to which the pragmatic movement has led, there is need for fresh emphasis of the main issues. There is also need for building out the pragmatic theory in neglected directions. In a small way, this book tries to serve both purposes. (Boodin 1911b: vii) 31 Just as in “Pragmatic Realism” (which was included as chapter XIV in Truth and Reality), Boodin divorces himself from any metaphysical reading of the realist stance. This becomes obvious from his rejection of Kantian “things-in-themselves” (cf. Boodin 1911b: 58) as well as from his focusing on the pragmatic element in knowledge. He categorically distinguishes between “prediction and control of certain practical situations” (1911b: 60), on the one hand, and “nature in the abstract” (ibid.), on the other. However, James’s theory of truth is, according to Boodin, only a halfway house. He points out: While such a theory, with abundant illustrations from natural science, accounts for how knowledge can control the world of processes, it leaves us in the dark as to the real question – the relevancy of knowledge to its object. (Boodin 1911b: 216) 32 Boodin’s own solution to that problem amounts to the endorsement of contemporary energetics, as it was primarily established in the German-speaking area by thinkers such as Wilhelm Ostwald and Georg Helm.16 On Boodin’s reading, energetics provides us with the essential tools for bridging the gap between “the” subjective and “the” objective. In his own words: Realism has always insisted upon the trans-subjective reference of the cognitive meaning. But the paradox, often pointed out by realists themselves, that the object must be both in and out of experience, must remain an absolute mystery so long as we deal with meanings as subjective pictures, inclosed within the magic circle of epiphenomenal consciousness. […] If we, however, regard the universe under the conception of plural energetic centers, which can figure in various contexts, including our cognitive context, and some at least as having meaning of their own and capable of entering into cognitive relations with us; and if, furthermore, we regard cognitive purposes as themselves energies, evolving in complexity with, and having survival value through, their control of other energies, such as the physiological, then the paradox is resolved […]. We have at least found a motive for our ideas seeking agreement with their intended reality, for successful adjustment in the end depends upon such agreement. And the only key to external reality is what we must take it as, in the realization of our purposes. (Boodin 1911b: 223-4) 33 Understood that way, the object itself becomes “a truth process” (ibid.: 225). The knower and the known are related through certain energetic dependencies. We will come back to this point in a moment. For the time being, it is important to note that, according to Boodin, any talk of truth requires some basis in the extra-mental realm. Consequently, the Jamesian reduction of truth to verification turns out to be insufficient.17

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 161

34 In the preface to his 1916 Realistic Universe, Boodin delivered a couple of programmatic clarifications. For one thing, he stressed that Truth and Reality and the present volume “furnish a survey of the field of general philosophy from the point of view of pragmatic realism” (Boodin 1916: vii). Whereas Truth and Reality belonged to the theory of knowledge, A Realistic Universe is, Boodin writes, “a volume on metaphysics” (ibid.). As concerns his primary sources of inspiration, he mentions James, Royce and “the vitalizing influence in our country of its great teacher, John Dewey, and the Chicago School” (1916: ix). On the other hand, he explicitly demarcates his position from “the movement sometimes called ‘the new realism’” (ibid.). His own approach, Boodin maintains, “has little in common with it [i.e., new realism; M.N.] either in spirit or method” (1916: ix-x). Thus “pragmatic” realism should be seen as an independent variant within the realist camp. 35 Now Boodin’s attitude in “Pragmatic Realism” was, as we have seen, non-metaphysical. In A Realistic Universe he changes this sort of attitude in favor of what might be called a scientifically informed account of metaphysics. In contrast to both idealism and materialism this kind of metaphysics is driven by criticism instead of dogmatism in terms of method. Writes Boodin: For the dogmatic method, too often applied in matters of philosophy, we must substitute the empirical or critical method – the method which the special sciences have proved so fruitful in their own domain. It is not the province of metaphysics to dictate to reality what it must be, but to discover its fundamental meaning. It is only when pursued in this spirit that metaphysics can take rank as a science, and, at least in its ideal, as the science of sciences. (1916: xvii) 36 Unlike in his early paper “Philosophic Tolerance” Boodin now sharply distinguishes between metaphysics and art. “In art,” he maintains, “the selective activity is for the sake of permanent objects of enjoyment; in metaphysics, for the sake of understanding. Metaphysics is science, not art.” (1916: xxi). Accordingly, metaphysics “implies, and furnishes the inspirations of, the special sciences” (ibid.). It “deals with the common and overlapping problems, left over by the special sciences” and it “must ever be present as a regulative ideal in all our search for truth” (ibid.).

37 Just as in “Pragmatic Realism,” Boodin defines “being” in terms of energetics (cf. Boodin 1916: 3). In his view, energy is to be conceived of as an “Urstoff” (1916: 15). James’s account of experience as “self-sufficient” (ibid.) is therefore wrongheaded.18 For Boodin, “our experience, at any rate, seems to depend in many ways upon an extra- experiential constitution” (1916: 16). Consequently, “we cannot resolve reality, whether conscious or unconscious, into bundles of perception, or into experience of any form, altogether. We must interpolate, somehow, realities which are not immediate experience.” (1916: 20). 38 It is at this very point that, according to Boodin, pragmatism and realism coincide. Chapter III of A Realistic Universe is titled “Pragmatic Energism.” By “energism” Boodin understands a thoroughly realistic interpretation of the concept of energy. Energy is, on this account, not to be thought of as an unknowable Kantian thing-in-itself (cf. Boodin 1916: 33). Rather, it is the driving force of natural processes and, as such, by all means knowable. The pragmatic element primarily pertains to the dynamic aspect of energetically conceived reality. Boodin therefore declares: “We must hold to the pragmatic postulate that energy is what it does.” (Ibid.). For example, physical properties such as weight, for Boodin, do not exist in the abstract. Nor do physical things have properties in themselves. Rather, things possess properties “only within a

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 162

system, and such properties vary with the conditions which determine the system” (1916: 35). Thus the weight of a body varies at different points of the surface of the earth; it is, in other words, a function of the attraction of the earth. More generally, “[p]roperties have no meaning for science, except as energy determinations, characteristics within energy systems” (ibid.: 36). Accordingly, relativity is “a fundamental characteristic of energy systems” (ibid.: 50). Alluding to Einstein’s theory of relativity (without mentioning Einstein himself) Boodin points out that “[w]e know of no absolute position in space or absolute system of relations” (ibid.) and that “[o]ur standards of measurement, whether of energy, time, or space, are all alike pragmatic” (ibid.). 39 From all this, however, it does not follow that things are “created or ‘faked’” (1916: 70). Rather, “[t]he thing must suggest an own center of energy” (ibid.). It is for this reason that Boodin assumes that things cannot be infinitely divisible. A certain form of atomism recommends itself. Boodin writes: Do we come to a limit in our division where we have to deal with a final natural unity? We do for practical reasons at least. The molecule, which, thanks to Perrin, has now been definitely identified and measured, seems like a distinct stopping place, if we would preserve the character of the compound. And in recent years interesting experiments have been made by Rutherford and others to prove the real existence of the atom. These results cannot be ruled out by any a priori theory as regards infinite divisibility. (Boodin 1916: 71) 40 Ontologically, atoms, according to Boodin, have the status of energy centers: they must be conceived as “more or less stable dynamic clusters within dynamic systems” (ibid.: 83). Yet it is important to emphasize that this does not imply a “relapse” to materialism. Just as in the case of Ostwald (cf. Ostwald 1895) energetics (or “energism”) qualifies as an alternative to the materialistic point of view. The energy concept simply proves to be more general than the concept of matter. In Boodin’s words: The conception of energy has gradually supplanted the conception of matter as a universal ideal of description. Matter is applicable only within a limited field. It is not applicable, for example, to electricity; while energy with its equivalences of transformation can be made to cover the whole extent of process, material and immaterial, physical and psychological. (Boodin 1916: 389)19 41 Let us now make a time jump to 1934. This was the year when Boodin’s “Functional Realism” appeared in The Philosophical Review. The principle aim of this paper was to establish “functional” realism as a “third way” within the realist movement. Remember that American realism had emerged in two forms, “new” and “critical” realism. In the paper, Boodin repudiates both of these two forms. Right at the beginning he makes the following critical statement: Naïve [i.e., new; M.N] and critical realism have one fundamental assumption in common. They both assume that to say that substances and qualities exist independently of the environment has a meaning. They make, at the outset, a bifurcation of thing and environment as though they were only externally related. They postulate things in themselves with properties in themselves. This postulate rests on an antiquated science. (Boodin 1934: 147-8) 42 As a programmatic characterization, this diagnosis is false. To be sure, the bifurcation of thing and environment figured prominently within the framework of new realism. 20 However, from the standpoint of critical realism, there is no such bifurcation. It was particularly Sellars who, in his Evolutionary Naturalism, insisted upon the interrelatedness of physical objects, perceiving organisms and their environment.21

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 163

Furthermore, the entire functional idea is obviously prefigured in Sellars’s writings. For him, [p]hysical things possess dynamic capacities. They are centers of produced change. […] Real processes occur all around us of prime importance for our welfare. The physical world is the seat of activities whose drift and course it is to our advantage to learn. (Sellars 1922: 127) 43 Much the same is asserted by Boodin when we writes: As opposed to the assumption of things in themselves with properties in themselves, functional realism holds in common with present science that the bifurcation of thing and environment is vicious, that things exist only in fields, in mutuality with other things, and that they have properties only in their dynamic interrelations. (Boodin 1934: 148) 44 In order to prevent misunderstandings let me emphasize that I do not claim that Boodin simply took over one of Sellars’s most prominent ideas. The functional aspect as such can already be found in A Realistic Universe, i.e., six years before Sellars made his claim. In fact, the actual problem is to understand why Boodin thinks his own approach needs to be so sharply distinguished from critical realism. Moreover, one might wonder how ‘functional’ realism is related to pragmatism. It is these questions that I finally want to briefly address.

5. Lost in the Isms?

45 To begin with, when Boodin published his “Functional Realism” the philosophical context had significantly changed as compared to the time when Truth and Reality and A Realistic Universe came out. Idealism had almost disappeared from the scene, and the realist camp had developed into a more diversified form. Moreover, classical pragmatism had shifted to so-called neo-pragmatism, especially with the appearance of C. I. Lewis’s Mind and the World Order in 1929 (cf. Misak 2013, ch. 10).

46 Now the striking thing about Boodin’s critique of critical realism is that it is far too selective. His main target in “Functional Realism” is George Santayana’s Skepticism and Animal Faith from 1923 (see Boodin 1934: 149-57). However, as Sellars repeatedly stressed (see, for example, Sellars 1924: 383), there existed two “wings” within the critical realist movement: a metaphysical (“essentialist”) wing, primarily represented by the work of Santayana, and an empirical (“naturalist”) wing, primarily represented by Sellars’s own contributions. Would Boodin have focused on Sellars’s account of critical realism, his critique, I maintain, would not have worked. Thus, if at all, then functional realism stood in sharp contrast to the essentialist version of critical realism. 47 Regarding pragmatism, it is interesting to note that Boodin does not make any mention of it in “Functional Realism.” To be sure, at two places he casually refers to James (1934: 161) and to Dewey (1934: 171). But the major purpose of the paper is obviously to establish functional realism as an autonomous position. On the other hand, the realist aspect as such is undermined, or at least downplayed, by statements such as: “Things are the result of interest and conceptual interpretation.” (Ibid.: 151). It is quite hard to understand how this should motivate a realist position. All in all, one might suspect that Boodin eventually got lost in the -isms. 48 However, a more charitable reading would account for the fact that the systematical and historical relation of pragmatism and realism, as it were, provoked the sort of

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 164

eclectic fusion to be found in Boodin’s later work. In some cases, even nowadays it is unclear, where exactly pragmatism and realism part their ways (see in this connection, for example, the writings of the late Hilary Putnam). At any rate, Boodin’s contributions to the complex discussion of realism, pragmatism, and their mutual relationship are worth reconsidering.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BOODIN John Elof, (1908), “Philosophic Tolerance. A Winter Revery,” The Monist, 18, 298-306.

BOODIN John Elof, (1909), “What Pragmatism Is and Is not,” Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, 23, 627-35.

BOODIN John Elof, (1910), “Pragmatic Realism,” The Monist, 20, 602-14.

BOODIN John Elof, (1911a), “From Protagoras to William James,” The Monist, 21, 73-91.

BOODIN John Elof, (1911b), Truth and Reality: An Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge, New York, Macmillan.

BOODIN John Elof, (1916), A Realistic Universe: An Introduction to Metaphysics, New York, Macmillan.

BOODIN John Elof, (1930), “Nature and Reason,” in Contemporary American Philosophy: Personal Statements, vol. 1, edited by George P. Adams & William Pepperell Montague, New York, Macmillan,135-66.

BOODIN John Elof, (1934), “Functional Realism,” The Philosophical Review, 43, 147-78.

BOODIN John Elof, (1939), The Social Mind: Foundations of Social Philosophy, New York, Macmillan.

CARUS Paul, (1908), “Pragmatism,” The Monist, 18, 321-62.

DELTETE Robert J., (1983), “The Energetics Controversy in Late Nineteenth Century Germany: Helm, Ostwald, and Their Critics,” PhD diss., Yale University.

DEWEY John, (1905), “The Realism of Pragmatism,” Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, 2, 324-7.

DRAKE Durant, LOVEJOY Arthur O., PRATT James B., ROGERS Arthur K., SANTAYANA George, WOOD SELLARS Roy & Charles A. STRONG (eds), (1920), Essays in Critical Realism: A Co-Operative Study in the Problem of Knowledge, London, Macmillan.

EDITORIAL COMMENT TO BOODIN, (1908), The Monist, 18, 306.

EDITORIAL COMMENT TO BOODIN, (1910), The Monist, 20, 614-5.

HOLT Edwin B., MARVIN Walter T., MONTAGUE William P., PERRY Ralph B., PITKIN Walter B. & Edward G. SPAULDING (eds), (1910), “The Program and First Platform of Six Realists,” The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, 7, 393-401.

HOLT Edwin B., MARVIN Walter T., MONTAGUE William P., PERRY Ralph B., PITKIN Walter B. & Edward G. SPAULDING (eds), (1912), The New Realism: Cooperative Studies in Philosophy, New York, Macmillan.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 165

JAMES William, (1904), “Does Consciousness Exist?,” Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, 1, 477-91.

JAMES William, (2017 [1907]), Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, Whithorn, Anodos.

JAMES William, (1909), A Pluralistic Universe. Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the Present Situation in Philosophy, New York, Logmans, Green.

JAMES William, (1912), Essays in Radical Empiricism, New York, Longmans, Green.

KUKLICK Buce, (2001), A History of Philosophy in America, 1720-2000, Oxford, Clarendon.

KUKLICK Bruce, (2017), “Who Owns Pragmatism?,” Modern Intellectual History, 14, 565-83.

LEWIS Clarence I., (1929), Mind and the World Order: Outline of Theory of Knowledge, New York, Scribner’s.

LOVEJOY Arthur O., (1908), “The Thirteen Pragmatisms,” Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, 5, 5-12.

LOVEJOY Arthur O., (1920), “Pragmatism Versus the Pragmatist,” in Durant Drake, Arthur O. Lovejoy, James B. Pratt, Arthur K. Rogers, George Santayana, Roy Wood Sellars, & Charles A. Strong (eds), Essays in Critical Realism: A Co-Operative Study in the Problem of Knowledge, London, Macmillan, 35-81.

MISAK Cheryl, (2013), The American Pragmatists, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

NELSON Charles H., (1984), “John Elof Boodin. Philosopher-Poet,” Swedish-American Historical Quarterly, 35, 124-50.

NEUBER Matthias, (2002), “Physics Without Pictures? The Ostwald-Boltzmann Controvery, and Mach’s (Unnoticed) Middle-Way,” in Michael Heidelberger & Friedrich Stadler (eds), History of Philosophy of Science: New Trends and Perspectives, Dordrecht, Kluwer, 185-98.

OSTWALD Wilhelm, (1895), “Die Überwindung des wissenschaftlichen Materialismus,” Verhandlungen der Gesellschaft deutscher Naturforscher und Ärzte, 1895, 155-68.

PEIRCE Charles S., (1905), “What Pragmatism Is,” The Monist, 15, 161-81.

PERRY Ralph Barton, (1912), Present Philosophical Tendencies: A Critical Survey of Naturalism, Idealism, Pragmatism, and Realism, Together With a Synopsis of the Philosophy of William James, New York, Longmans, Green.

PIHLSTRÖM Sami, (2010), “Nordic Pragmatism,” European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, 2 (1), 108-20. Online: [journals.openedition.org/ejpap/945].

RANDALL John H., (1966), “Josiah Royce and American Idealism,” The Journal of Philosophy, 63, 57-83.

ROYCE Josiah, (1900), The World and the Individual, First Series, New York, Macmillan.

SANTAYANA George, (1923), Skepticism and Animal Faith: Introduction to a System of Philosophy, New York, Dover.

SELLARS Roy Wood, (1908), “Critical Realism and the Time Problem,” The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, 5, 542-48.

SELLARS Roy Wood, (1916), Critical Realism: A Study of the Nature and Conditions of Knowledge, Chicago and New York, Rand McNally and Company.

SELLARS Roy Wood, (1922), Evolutionary Naturalism, Chicago, Open Court.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 166

SELLARS Roy Wood, (1924), “Critical Realism and Its Critics,” The Philosophical Review, 33, 379-97.

SELLARS Roy Wood, (1969), Reflections on American Philosophy from Within, Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press.

SHOOK John R., (1998), Pragmatism: An Annotated Bibliography, 1898-1940, Amsterdam, Rodopi.

SLATER Michael R., (2011), “William James’s Pluralism,” Review of Metaphysics, 65, 63-99.

SLURINK Pouwel, (1996), “Back to Roy Wood Sellars: Why His Evolutionary Naturalism Is Still Worthwile,” Journal of the History of Philosophy, 34, 425-49.

SUZUKI Daisetz T., (1962), The Essentials of Zen Buddhism, New York, Greenwood Press.

WERKMEISTER William H., (1949), A History of Philosophical Ideas in America, Ney York, The Ronald Press Company.

NOTES

1. For a comprehensive account of Boodin’s life and work, see Nelson 1984 (on which I primarily draw here). 2. Werkmeister writes in this connection: “James was instrumental in preparing the way for realism. His personality as well as his philosophy had a marked and far-reaching influence upon a whole generation of American thinkers. James’s books and articles published during the first decade of the twentieth century contain many realistic tendencies, and not less than seven of the leading realists – Drake, Montague, Perry, Pratt, Santayana, Sellars, and Strong – have repeatedly stated that their philosophical position was determined by James.” (Werkmeister 1949: 371). 3. It is, by the way, quite difficult to determine what the distinctive characteristic of “European” pragmatism could be. Maybe the present volume helps to come closer to an answer to that question. 4. See Randall 1966. As, on the other hand, Werkmeister makes it particularly clear, Royce’s variant of idealism was by no means the only idealistic statement at that time. Rather, idealism was a multifaceted movement. There were many kinds of idealism (and many pre-eminent idealists) in the United States around the 1890s, such as the Hegelian-inspired St. Louis Group around Henry C. Brokmeyer and William Harris, the “personalisms” of Borden Parker Bowne and George H. Howison and several explicitly religious versions of idealism. For further details, see Werkmeister 1949, chapters 5-9. 5. Holt, Montague and Perry all had studied under Royce at Harvard. See, in this connection, Kuklick (2001: 202-3). However, James’s influence upon them was obviously the trend-setting factor. As, again, Werkmeister points out: “It is evident […] that James, who never regarded himself as a realist, was the intellectual godfather of the realistic movement in America. It was he who encouraged the younger men in the field to break with tradition, to explore new possibilities and new horizons.” (Werkmeister 1949: 371). 6. For the latter, see the insightful reconstruction in Slater 2011. 7. It should be noted that the very term “critical realism” was used by Sellars as early as 1908 (see Sellars 1908) and that he already in 1916 published a book explicitly titled Critical Realism (see Sellars 1916). 8. Furthermore, they demarcated their understanding of the term “critical” from the Kantian one by declaring that “the word ‘critical’ has no reference to the Kantian philosophy, which should not be allowed to monopolize that excellent adjective.” (Drake et al. 1920: vi). 9. See, in this connection, already Lovejoy 1908; further, for an evaluation, Kuklick 2017.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 167

10. When he wrote the 1908 paper, Boodin already had a professorship at the University of Kansas. 11. See, in this connection, his extended critique of James’s variant of pragmatism in Carus 1908. The concluding remarks of this paper are sufficiently explicit: “Personally, I have a decided liking for Professor James, and I am sure that in expressing it I voice the opinion of many. I have met him repeatedly and have felt the sympathetic charm of his personality. I wish him all possible success and the honor of merited renown. I hope that for the rest of his life he will remain as buoyant and spirited as he has ever been, and will meet with unlimited recognition. But for all that I can not agree with or accept the philosophy of the great Harvard Professor, and I go so far as to look upon its wide acceptance as a symptom of the immaturity and naivite that obtains sometimes even in the professional circles of our universities. With all due respect for Professor James, for whose extraordinary and fine personality I cherish an unbounded admiration, I must confess that I would deem it a misfortune if his philosophy would ever exercise a determining and permanent influence upon the national life of our country.” (Carus 1908: 361-2). 12. The following passages from James’s 1907 lecture series might corroborate this diagnosis: “Pragmatism […] asks its usual question. ‘Grant an idea or belief to be true,’ it says, ‘what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone’s actual life? How will the truth be realized?’” (James 2017[ 1907]: 74). “Truth in science is what gives us the maximum possible sum of satisfaction, taste included, but consistency both with previous truth and with novel fact is always the most imperious claimant.” (Ibid.: 80). 13. In James’s words, the same message reads thus: “The ‘absolutely’ true, meaning what no farther experience will ever alter, is that ideal vanishing-point towards which we imagine that all our temporary truths will some day converge. It runs on all fours with the perfectly wise man, and with the absolutely complete experience.” (James 2017 [1907]: 82). 14. In this case, too, an Editorial Comment was attached. In its opening paragraph the following is clarified: “Prof. John E. Boodin will be remembered by the readers of The Monist for his article ‘Philosophic Tolerance’ (April, 1908) in which he supported the pragmatism of Professor James. At that time the editor asked him to make a reply to comments on his views in the editorial article which appeared in the following issue [cf. Carus 1908; M.N.]. Professor Boodin has not made use of the invitation, but prefers to offer to the readers of The Monist an exposition of his views without reference to the controversy in question.” (Editorial Comment to Boodin 1910: 614). 15. Editorial Comment to Boodin (1910: 615). 16. For a comprehensive reconstruction of the energetic world-view, see Deltete 1983. 17. In his Pragmatism, James explicitly states that „[t]ruth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process: the process namely of its verifying itself, its veri-fication.” (James [1907] 2017: 74). According to Boodin, on the other hand, “[t]ruth is our version of reality. […] It is nonsense to speak of an hypothesis, which is our meaning or attitude, as true previous to verification; but previous to verification there exist certain conditions, which make some hypotheses come true.” (Boodin 1911b: 228). These latter conditions should be conceived of as – energetically definable – “truth-makers,” which in James’s theory wouldn’t find any place because of their being postulated as existing previous to verification. 18. Boodin refers here implicitly to James’s Essays in Radical Empiricism from 1912. 19. It should be noted that Ostwald – unlike Boodin – not only rejected materialism, but also atomism. For further details, see Ostwald 1895 and the reconstruction in Neuber 2002. 20. See, in this connection, especially Perry’s account of “external relations” in Perry 1912. 21. See esp. Sellars (1922: 72-3) and the reconstruction in Slurink 1996.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 168

ABSTRACTS

This paper explores the philosophical approach of the Swedish-born thinker John Elof Boodin. It will be shown that Boodin’s philosophical development ran through various stages, beginning with more or less “orthodox” pragmatism and ending with what he labeled “functional” realism. My principal thesis is that, in the last analysis, Boodin failed in establishing a stable systematic point of view. However, his philosophical development is worth considering in some detail because it nicely reflects the situation of a European-born philosopher in early-twentieth century America.

AUTHOR

MATTHIAS NEUBER

Universität Tübingen matthias.neuber[at]uni-tuebingen.de

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 169

Multilingual

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 170

Peirce e Leibniz L’interpretazione socio-politica della logica

Mariannina Failla

1. Premessa

1 Ci sono già nella letteratura critica molte ricerche che hanno messo in relazione il tema del continuo in Peirce e in Leibniz. Un primo passo potrebbe essere rappresentato da uno studio della metà degli anni 60 dedicato al platonismo della filosofia anglosassone e alla collocazione di Peirce nel dialogo critico con la tradizione razionalista del ‘600.1 Inserire Peirce in una ricerca sulla tradizione platonica della filosofia anglosassone può trovare una giustificazione nel suo concetto di general e più in particolare nella supposizione che la realtà del generale si trovi nell’interconnessione delle rappresentazioni segniche delle percezioni e non nel loro processo di astrazione uniformante. Un’altra testimonianza dell’influenza di Leibniz su Peirce è offerta da Max Fisch:2 dopo un accurato esame dei luoghi e contesti in cui il filosofo americano si riallaccia alle tematiche logiche leibniziane, egli sottolinea l’impulso leibniziano alle critiche di Peirce al nominalismo e al suo passaggio al realismo cognitivo. Un’altra prospettiva esegetica è rappresentata da J. M. C. Chevalier il quale mette in risalto come l’interpretazione non ortodossa di Kant, presente in Peirce, abbia un’origine leibniziana.3 Il continuo leibniziano è diventato inoltre terreno di confronto con il pragmatismo peirciano evidenziando, come fa Rossella Fabbrichesi, la sua intima relazione con la continuità nell’evoluzione della natura. L’idea che le forme viventi si colleghino in una “catena,” modificandosi, trasformandosi, ma rimanendo in una sostanziale continuità rappresenterebbe dunque – secondo la studiosa – il lascito leibniziano operante nell’evoluzionismo semiotico di Peirce. Il riferimento a Leibniz è così in funzione di una visione metamorfico-evolutiva in senso goethiano della semiosi illimitata.4

2 Riflettendo sul concetto di continuo e sulla sua famiglia categoriale – formata dalle nozioni di relazione, individuo/discreto, possibilità, chance – il presente lavoro intende delineare la ricaduta sociale e politica delle teorie logiche di Peirce.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 171

3 Uno stimolo interessante all’interpretazione politico-sociale del continuo in Peirce nasce dall’aspetto teoretico sopra accennato ossia dal confronto con il platonismo di area anglosassone e dall’idea di general come processo evolutivo verso l’universale. Tale linea interpretativa si può chiarire iniziando dal concetto di generalità presente nella teoria delle associazioni di Peirce il quale in The Law of Mind scrive: “[…] Credo che si possa sostenere solo che dovunque le idee si uniscono, tendono a fondersi in idee generali, e dovunque esse sono generalmente connesse, idee generali governano la connessione e queste idee generali sono sentimenti viventi diffusi.”5 Se le idee raggiungono la generalità entrando in relazione fra loro e se è un’idea generale a governare il loro processo relazionale – il generale non è astrazione dagli elementi sensibili individuali, né codificazione della loro uniformità, ma loro interrelazione. È la nozione di relazione a stare al centro dei nostri interessi, consapevoli come siamo che essa apra più vie d’indagine nel pensiero di Peirce. In primo luogo, la “relazione” si lega alla trattazione proposizionale semiotica della logica (§2) che confluirà nella logica dei relativi (§4). In secondo luogo, essa si unisce al tema del continuo. Già presente nelle iniziali riflessioni sull’attività rappresentativa sotto le spoglie della correzione alla visione kantiana dell’infinito matematico (§3) – il concetto di continuo sarà un vero e proprio rovello per Peirce che lo porterà a cambiare più volte la propria posizione fino ad approdare all’interpretazione topica e geometrica, esposta nella logica della relazione (§4). Saranno i concetti di possibilità, chance, scelta, legati all’elaborazione matura del continuo e alla logica del probabile, a completare il percorso che conduce al significato sociale, etico e politico della visione peirciana della logica (§5).

2. Origine logico-semiotica del pensiero di Peirce

4 Le riflessioni iniziali di Peirce si confrontano con gli esiti della logica booleiana e rivendicano la centralità dello studio della struttura grammaticale della proposizione; centralità volta ad assegnare un ruolo significativo alle strutture pronominali (io, esso, tu) per sottolineare come le funzioni logiche abbiano una natura essenzialmente relazionale. Tale natura, tuttavia, non riguarda solo le parti sintattiche della proposizione e si manifesta pienamente grazie alla convinzione che le stesse componenti sintattiche della proposizione siano interpretabili semioticamente, ossia come rinvii segnici. La logica dunque non si attesta solo sull’esigenza di attuare un’analisi proposizionale ma anche, e forse soprattutto, su quella d’approfondire il carattere segnico (ossia di rinvio) di ogni elemento del pensiero discorsivo. Attraverso le critiche alla logica matematica di Boole, il confronto proficuo con De Morgan e grazie alla concezione della logica come analisi relazionale dei segni, Peirce arriva a trasformare in senso antikantiano la stessa teoria del giudizio.6 La forma logica soggetto-predicato è interpretata, infatti, come relazione condizionale di antecedente- conseguente e, soprattutto, è considerata come relazione puramente segnica: il soggetto è segno/rinvio del predicato come la premessa è segno/rinvio della conclusione. Se la proposizione si forma a partire dai rinvii interni, costruiti dai suoi elementi segnici, la logica diventa studio segnico della sintassi, dunque semiotica in cui simbolizzazione e inferenze alla fine coincidono;7 ogni concetto è un simbolo e la logica è lo studio della relazione dei simboli ai propri oggetti.8

5 Partendo proprio dalla concezione semiotico-relazionale della logica simbolica – nelle Lectures degli anni 1865-1866 e in particolare nelle Memoirs of the American Academy

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 172

dedicate prevalentemente all’ampliamento di alcuni concetti della logica di Boole – Peirce elabora una tripartizione dell’uso delle lettere (segni logici), che sembra preludere all’elaborazione delle tre categorie di cui parlerà in On a New List of Categories. Possiamo così supporre che gli studi di logica simbolica puntino non solo alla trasformazione della teoria del giudizio, ma anche alla rielaborazione dell’apparato categoriale della logica e della filosofia della conoscenza. 6 Vi sono segni – scrive Peirce nelle Memoirs, la cui forma logica “comporta solo il concetto di qualità,” essi indicano in modo rudimentale l’essere semplice di un oggetto, il suo essere “un – ” e così “discriminano” gli oggetti in modo talmente primitivo da escludere ogni consapevolezza della loro distinzione; tali segni indicano l’oggetto com’è in sé stesso (quale) e sono termini assoluti, pura oggettività ideale. Vi sono, invece, segni la cui forma logica implica il concetto di relazione e, nell’analisi proposizionale della logica simbolica, la relazione richiede la presenza o l’aggiunta di un secondo termine per completare la denotazione. In questo caso gli oggetti sono distinti e discriminati con chiara consapevolezza della loro differenziazione e a volte anche della loro opposizione. Queste forme-segni sono considerate “termini relativi semplici,” mentre la terza classe dei segni logici implica il concetto di mediazione poiché considera un oggetto “medio o terzo fra altri due.” Preludendo anche solo terminologicamente alle successive elaborazioni categoriali, Peirce aggiunge subito dopo: “il termine coniugativo,” ossia quello che media più relazioni oggettuali (ad esempio: compratore di – per – da – ) “esprime la nozione di terzo, il relativo quello di secondo o altro, il termine assoluto considera semplicemente un oggetto [corsivo nostro].” 9 Queste argomentazioni rappresentano il calco semiotico da cui il filosofo americano foggerà in seguito quella lista di nuove categorie logiche che rimarrà anche nel suo pensiero maturo. La qualità, come posizione semplice e positiva ma indistinta, la relazione segnica, capace di comprendere in sé anche rapporti logici oppositivi e duali, e in ultimo la capacità segnica di mediare fra più relazioni verranno concepite in On a New List of Categories come predicati che consentono il passaggio dall’essere (ground) alla sostanza e al tempo stesso designano sia singoli termini (il quale semplice), sia proposizioni (capacità relazionale anche oppositiva, disgiuntiva), sia argomenti in cui la relazione mediatrice è fra l’interpretante e i segni che rimandano a oggetti semplici o alle loro connessioni.10 Non va, inoltre, taciuto come l’iniziale riferimento ai concetti di primo, secondo, terzo accompagni l’intero corso delle riflessioni sulle categorie. 7 Nelle Sundry Logical Conceptions e in On Phenomenology, ripercorrendo gli iniziali studi di semiotica, Peirce parla della Primità come qualità assoluta, positiva, ancora indipendente dal processo percettivo, ossia come possibilità [ideale] non ancora attuata in distinte percezioni: La qualità in sé stessa non possiede né vividezza né debolezza, quindi non può essere in sé coscienza. Infatti, in sé stessa è una pura possibilità. La coscienza deve essere (più o meno) desta altrimenti non ha alcun essere. La Possibilità, invece, che è il modo d’essere della Primità, è l’embrione dell’essere. Non è un Nulla. Non è esistenza.11 8 Dalla pura possibilità positiva, assoluta, indistinta, Peirce passa alla Secondità che esprime un concetto “duro” e “brutale” di realtà, cui si collega l’esperienza della duplicità. Proprio il rapporto logico disgiuntivo della logica simbolica potrebbe rappresentare l’analogon semiotico della dualità espressa dalla più matura categoria della realtà. Il fatto bruto – dirà Peirce nelle Sundry Logical Conceptions – implica sempre la duplice e al tempo stesso unitaria esperienza di resistenza e di sforzo. In essa prende

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 173

forma la coscienza di azione e reazione tra un ego e un non-ego, la sua espressione autentica si ha nella “volizione” cosciente in cui si sperimenta l’urto con il mondo, la costrizione che tale urto provoca e la resistenza a esso. L’anticipazione in nuce della trasformazione categoriale coinvolge anche la matura categoria del Pensiero, inteso come Terzità. La capacità coniugativa dei segni, quella cioè di mediare l’intreccio relazionale dei rinvii costitutivi di ogni segno e di riferirlo a un interpretante, nella futura elaborazione categoriale si trasformerà nelle categorie della Legge e del Pensiero, basate su un concetto di norma inteso come adeguazione futura alla regolarità aperta all’infinito. La Legge è “esse in futuro” – scrive Peirce in On Phenomenology – poiché indica quel tipo di regolarità per eccellenza relazionale, cui si dovranno conformare gli infiniti intrecci futuri delle cognizioni scientifiche. Rappresentando la sfera del Pensiero, la Terzità esprime, da un lato, la processualità dei contenuti scientifici e la loro imprescindibile interrelazione e, dall’altro, il conseguente legame del pensiero scientifico con la comunità illimitata degli scienziati. Il Pensiero, così, non appartiene al soggetto ma è qualcosa di esterno o sovra soggettivo cui la coscienza tende a uniformarsi. In questo contesto assume un ruolo significativo l’ analogon semiotico, seguendo il quale Peirce dirà che il Pensiero è qualcosa di simile al significato di una parola: è “incarnato in” questo o quell’esistente semiotico, ma non è limitato a nessuno di essi.

9 Accanto alla via che dai primi scritti di logica simbolica porta all’elaborazione delle nuove categorie – volte a trasformare radicalmente le categorie modali (Möglichkeit/ Wirklichkeit/Notwendigkeit) dei Postulati del pensiero empirico di Kant – Peirce si appresta a mettere in atto un interessante movimento di avvicinamento e superamento di altri importanti nodi della filosofia kantiana che coinvolgono l’attività intuitiva e il suo rapporto con la cognizione. Il filosofo americano ha, infatti, concepito l’attività intuitivo-associativa mettendola in relazione con il continuo temporale. Tale gesto teoretico potrebbe indurre, come del resto è stato fatto, a considerare questa fase del suo pensiero ancora troppo legata alle interpretazioni psicologiste dell’attività associativa.12 In altri termini si potrebbe ipotizzare una ricostruzione storico-evolutiva del pensiero di Peirce che lo veda distaccarsi solo progressivamente dalla psicologia post-kantiana e dall’associazionismo di J. St. Mill. L’ipotesi interpretativa di chi scrive, tuttavia, è che le analisi perciane delle attività rappresentative si discostino fin da subito dalle soluzioni psicologiste.13 L’approccio all’intuizione temporale – in quanto forma continua del fluire associativo-percettivo – e in generale l’approccio all’attività intuitiva sembrano essere in realtà di natura logica e implicano – come vedremo – una valutazione del continuo e dell’infinito matematico diversa da quella kantiana.

3. Associazione e continuo temporale

10 Nello scritto Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man, Peirce parte dalla convinzione secondo cui l’intuizione sia una cognizione non determinata da una precedente cognizione, ma da qualcosa di esterno alla coscienza,14 riconoscendosi così nella tradizione che da Scoto arriva a Kant. Nel momento in cui si domanda quale ruolo svolga l’elemento cognitivo e come si possa arrivare alla cognizione riflessiva del continuo intreccio di attività e passività della coscienza e, ancor più, se e come si possa distinguere fra l’elemento cognitivo (credenza) e quello percettivo, Peirce sembra offrirci, tuttavia, una teoria della saturazione percettiva. Essa si muove nell’orizzonte di

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 174

quella logica del continuo, legata al concetto analitico, matematico d’infinito, con cui egli inizialmente si confronta e in seguito abbandonerà. Per dar conto, almeno in prima approssimazione, dell’espressione “saturazione percettiva,” non usata dall’autore negli scritti sulla rappresentazione, si può partire dall’assunto secondo il quale le infinite stimolazioni nervose non contengono di per sé la percezione spaziale; essa si forma come “unità semplice mediata” delle innumerevoli e complesse informazioni cerebrali derivanti dalla stimolazione esterna dei nostri organi visivi (retina). Quasi a dire che l’elemento cognitivo nella dinamica percettiva è il momento di saturazione delle informazioni fisiologico-cerebrali. Tale momento consentirebbe di organizzare in un insieme unitario le informazioni fisiologiche e di riconoscere nella semplicità non immediata della cognizione, spaziale o temporale, il tessuto relazionale degli stessi stimoli fisiologici. Tessuto relazionale che chiude in un composto strutturato e unitario (semplice) le infinite diramazioni degli stimoli nervosi. Essendoci […] un numero immenso di terminazioni nervose colpito da un numero altrettanto immenso di eccitazioni successive, le relazioni delle impressioni risultanti saranno complicate all’inverosimile. Ora, è una nota legge della mente che quando si presentano fenomeni di estrema complessità, che sarebbero ridotti all’ordine o alla semplicità mediata applicando un certo concetto, prima o poi quel concetto emergerà e si applicherà a quei fenomeni.15 11 La funzione della rappresentazione è dunque quella della riduzione della complessità alla semplicità o all’unita; semplicità e unità capaci di comporre la correlazione interna ai singoli, innumerevoli, stimoli cerebrali, rappresentando così la loro saturazione connettiva. La cognizione, in questo caso la cognizione dell’estensione spaziale, da un lato, sembra contenere la misura massima di stimoli fisiologici riconducibili a una specifica intuizione, dall’altro, appare in grado di organizzare la complessa pluralità di tali stimoli regolandone la collocazione in una rappresentazione. Lo stesso vale per il tempo: d’altro canto, continua Peirce, anche le impressioni di ogni istante sono molto complesse – contengono tutte le immagini (o gli elementi delle immagini) di senso e di memoria, complessità che è riducibile alla semplicità mediata per mezzo del concetto di tempo.

12 Come lascia intendere una nota a Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man, tale interpretazione non presenta alcuna differenza dall’analisi kantiana dell’apprensione intuitiva.16 Nella seconda edizione della Critica della ragione pura è lo stesso Kant, infatti, a porre l’accento sulla capacità compositiva dell’apprensione intuitiva (§26 dell’Analitica dei concetti). La sua riflessione su tale capacità scava poi così profondamente nelle potenzialità organizzative della dimensione sensibile da approdare in una nota – inserita anch’essa solo nella seconda edizione della Critica – all’idea che sia la sensibilità stessa a dare unità al molteplice. In questa direzione va la distinzione fra “forma dell’intuizione,” ossia quella forma capace di offrire la molteplicità sensibile, e “intuizione formale,” il momento, cioè, in cui la sensibilità è in grado di afferrare in modo unitario le rappresentazioni sensibili.17 13 Al di là dalla questione secondo cui Kant sembrerebbe pensare a una capacità unificante interna alla stessa sensibilità,18 ci sembra di poter concordare con il rimando di Peirce all’apprensione intuitiva nella misura in cui Kant la analizza mostrando i suoi due movimenti interni: da un lato l’apertura al molteplice e dall’altro la sua composizione unitaria (compositio). Movimenti questi che emergono nella loro reciproca dinamica in modo ancora più istruttivo per le nostre riflessioni quando Kant ne decreta il fallimento, ossia quando, nella Terza Critica, li mette in relazione con l’esigenza di

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 175

totalità della ragione per dar conto del sublime matematico. Ricondurre, infatti, la funzione cognitiva dell’apprensione intuitiva alla trattazione estetica del sublime matematico offre la possibilità di cogliere con maggiore chiarezza il rimando kantiano alle tematiche del continuo che sembrano operare nella concezione di Peirce, anche se in una diversa direzione. Vedere nella capacità compositiva della cognizione una semplicità non astratta ma mediata, in grado di organizzare le relazioni fra gli infiniti stimoli neuronali, significa in qualche modo guardare alla dinamica delle intuizioni spazio-temporali con gli occhi della teoria del continuo. Ma si può dire c’è di più: se – come abbiamo appena asserito – l’unità semplice è frutto della mediazione fra il fluire ad infinitum degli stimoli cerebrali e la loro composizione unitaria, si vede già qui – ossia nell’ambito del continuo matematico, analitico (metrico), relativo a elementi numerabili – un’anticipazione del rapporto fra continuo e discreto che molto impegnerà le successive riflessioni di Peirce. 14 Del resto, non è forse dell’infinito matematico (continuo), del suo modo di operare nell’attività immaginativa e della sua insufficienza rispetto alle pretese della ragione, ciò di cui parla Kant nella Terza Critica quando mette in relazione illimitatezza e limite della composizione immaginativa?19 Coadiuvata dall’intelletto, l’immaginazione è capace di produrre e progredire illimitatamente (continuità ad infinitum) nelle composizioni di grandezze. Posta, tuttavia, in relazione all’idea razionale di totalità e incondizionato, essa sperimenta i propri limiti, si disorienta e entra in conflitto con sé stessa. Nel momento in cui l’apprensione immaginativa ha accumulato molte rappresentazioni intuitive sensibili, essa comincia a perdere le prime che svaniscono dall’immaginazione, per cui nel suo progredire ad infinitum l’immaginazione perde tanto quanto guadagna e nella composizione immaginativa vi è un massimo oltre il quale l’apprensione stessa non può andare. Voler comporre in unità l’illimitatezza sembra veramente contraddittorio perché non si può mai dare “una totalità assoluta di un progresso senza fine.” L’immaginazione vive, così, il dissidio fra la sua incessante, progressiva, e per questo anche dispersiva, attività apprensiva e il limite, rappresentato da una presa comprensiva massima delle sue raffigurazioni, oltre la quale l’intelletto non riesce ad andare. 15 L’idea peirciana della cognizione spaziale o temporale come unità semplice – frutto e regola al tempo stesso della mediazione compositiva degli innumerevoli stimoli sensoriali – cerca in definitiva di risolvere e di superare proprio l’insufficienza e il dissidio fra apprensione e composizione immaginative. Di fronte alla diffidenza kantiana nei confronti della capacità compositiva mutuabile dal concetto matematico d’infinito o, per dir meglio, di fronte al rifiuto di far confluire l’idea “razionale” d’infinito nei concetti di numero e di enumerabilità,20 non introduce Peirce una nuova prospettiva nell’interpretare l’infinito matematico? Domandiamo ancora: Peirce non fa qui un movimento molto raffinato di ritorno a Kant e di suo superamento, avendo interiorizzato la lezione leibniziana la quale, da una giovanile e del tutto provvisoria condanna dell’impotenza conoscitiva del rimando all’infinito, passa all’individuazione di una regola che consenta all’infinito matematico di arrivare alla definizione certa di verità e concetti? 16 Nel frammento giovanile De Organo sive Arte Magna Cogitandi, databile intorno al 1679, Leibniz parte dal presupposto che si possa potenziare la vis cogitandi tramite rimedi rivolti sia alla cura del corpo sia a quella della mente. I rimedi corporei sono: scacciare il torpore, rinsaldare l’immaginazione, acuire i sensi. Il massimo rimedio per la mente

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 176

consiste, invece, nella possibilità di scoprire pochi pensieri dai quali scaturiscano in ordine altri infiniti pensieri, “allo stesso modo in cui da pochi numeri (presi dall’uno al dieci) si possano derivare in ordine tutti gli altri numeri.”21 Dall’introduzione di questo concetto – che porterà al calcolo binario, ma forse anche all’elaborazione del carattere intensionale del vero – Leibniz passa a esaminare il tema del rimando all’infinito denunciando però una sua interna contraddizione. Rimandare all’infinito i presupposti che rendono possibile una conoscenza, significa, in realtà, rendere nulla la conoscenza stessa. Se tutto ciò che pensiamo, implica il concetto di qualcos’altro, così come avviene nel rimando all’infinito, non è possibile concepire nulla di per sé stesso, ma sempre in vista di qualcosa d’altro. Se nulla si concepisce per sé stesso, non si può, allora, concepire “nulla” affatto.22 Il rimando all’infinito da potenziale conoscitivo si ribalta in impotenza della mente che può portare con sé l’annichilimento di ogni forma di conoscenza. Questa concezione dell’infinito vedrà, tuttavia, una trasformazione radicale nelle Generales Inquisitiones de Analysi Notionium et Veritatum del 1686, in cui Leibniz afferma che la continuazione della scomposizione all’infinito delle definizioni si può ridurre a una regola della progressione: E se poi diciamo che è possibile la continuazione della scomposizione all’infinito, allora si può per lo meno osservare se lo sviluppo nella scomposizione si può ridurre a qualche regola, sicché anche nella prova dei termini complessi, nei quali entrano i termini non complessi scomponibili all’infinito, risulti tale regola della progressione [corsivo nostro].23 17 La regola della progressione ha poi un duplice compito: da un lato guida le ricerca dell’assenza di contraddizioni contribuendo alla definizione di predicati e soggetti possibili o impossibili, se si riscontrano contraddizioni, e dall’altro permette di passare dal possibile al vero o dall’impossibile al falso ed è in questo contesto che subentra il concetto di grandezza [differenza] infinitesimale. Se nella scomposizione definitoria si giunge fino al punto in cui la differenza tra i termini che devono coincidere sia minore di qualsiasi differenza data, allora la proposizione è vera. Se invece risulta dalla progressione che un tale evento non si verificherà mai, è dimostrato che la proposizione è falsa.24 L’attenzione alle coppie possibile/impossibile e vero/falso ci spinge a dire che la regola della progressione all’infinito delle definizioni può condurre sia alla certezza delle verità logico-razionali sia alla certezza delle asserzioni contingenti che ricadono nell’ambito del possibile: la contingenza è, infatti, possibilità dei contrari. Ciò che sembra rilevante per il rapporto fra infinita pluralità delle stimolazioni cerebrali e sua composizione nella generalità semplice della rappresentazione spaziale e/o temporale, pur ricondotta da Peirce a una legge naturale della mente, è proprio la forza epistemica che già Leibniz attribuisce alla logica del continuo, ossia alla regola della differenza infinitesimale fra la certezza della definizione data e tutte le altre infinite scomposizioni definitorie. Per Leibniz si tratta di ricondurre le infinite definizioni scompositive di un concetto a una regola che ci faccia arrivare alla certezza della definizione, per Peirce bisogna comporre in una rappresentazione semplice il continuum infinito di stimolazioni nervose. Detto in altri termini: la dinamica compositiva – apparentemente così vicina alla sintesi compositiva (Zusammenfassung) dell’intuizione kantiana – non può non passare attraverso la concezione leibniziana del continuo (o della numerabilità).25 L’ipotesi iniziale – secondo la quale già nelle riflessioni sulle attività associative emerge un impianto logico e non psicologico – trova una sua giustificazione non solo nell’uso peirciano della nozione di continuo matematico, ma anche nella capacità della rappresentazione percettiva (in

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 177

quanto semplice mediato) di anticipare temi maturati solo successivamente nella Logica dei relativi risalente alla seconda metà degli anni ’90. Vogliamo alludere con ciò all’idea mutuabile dalle prime riflessioni sulla cognizione da noi interpretata come forma di riconoscimento di relazioni sature fra gli impulsi cerebrali. La saturazione di legami richiama la chimica che, pur del tutto assente terminologicamente nei primi studi sulla rappresentazione, diventerà un decennio dopo il modello cui richiamarsi per dar conto del massimo grado di chiarezza della nozione logica di relativo.

4. Logica dei relativi e logica delle relazioni: individuo relazionale

18 Nello scritto maturo del 1897 dedicato alla logica dei relativi (Description of a Notation for Logic of Relativ Resulting of an Amplification of The Conception of Boole’s Calculus of Logic), si trova un’argomentazione preliminare molto utile per chi voglia scandagliare la nozione peirciana di relazione. Il lettore s’imbatte, infatti, molto presto nella distinzione fra relazione e connessione o meglio nella loro non identificazione.

19 Se la relazione non fosse altro che la connessione fra due cose, si dovrebbe sostenere che “tutte le cose sarebbero connesse”26 eppure “se A non è connesso con B tale non- connessione sarebbe comunque una relazione”27 di cui la sinonimia fra connessione e relazione non riuscirebbe a dar conto. Da questo semplice esempio si può già intuire come il filosofo americano assegni alla relazione una generalità maggiore rispetto alla connessione, poiché la prima comprende in sé non solo inferenze inclusive, ma anche escludenti, oppositive. “Inoltre è evidente che due cose qualunque costituiscono una coppia” e se la relazione coincidesse con la connessione una cosa qualunque sarebbe parimenti connessa con qualsiasi altra cosa. Questo vanificherebbe il potere denotativo (insieme sintattico e semantico) della relazione, la quale diventerebbe un nulla, a meno che – aggiunge Peirce – non si ricorra “all’espediente di dire che la relazione in generale è effettivamente nulla [corsivo nostro]” e solo “i modi di relazione sono invece qualche cosa [corsivo nostro].”28 L’identificazione fra connessione e relazione, da un lato, decurterebbe la relazione della capacità di comprendere in sè rapporti oppositivi, dall’altro, la svuoterebbe del suo potenziale denotativo verso gli oggetti proposizionali. Che cosa caratterizza allora la relazione? In primo luogo, la struttura relazionale riguarda un numero definito di correlati. Di fratelli – scrive Peirce – se ne possono avere un numero qualunque, la fratellanza, però, è una relazione fra coppie. Se A, B e C sono fratelli ciò è semplicemente la conseguenza di tre relazioni, A è fratello di B, B è fratello di C, C è fratello di A. All’idea che alla relazione appartenga un numero ben definito di correlati si aggiunge l’altra fondamentale caratteristica secondo la quale ogni relazione ha un numero definito di posti vuoti che vanno riempiti con indici, ossia con nomi denotativi. Per nomi denotativi Peirce intende nomi propri che esprimono lo stesso valore deittico dei pronomi dimostrativi come “questo” o “quello.” I posti vuoti, ossia le possibilità relazionali delle parti sintattiche di un enunciato, possono andare da uno a enne per cui si avranno relativi monadici, diadici o ennadici. 20 Nella seguente struttura relazionale: “una cosa ne ama un’altra,” vi sono, ad esempio, due relazioni, quella di amare e quella di essere amato. Esiste un relativo nominale per ognuna di queste relazioni, come “amante di –” e “amato da –.” Questi relativi nominali, appartenenti a una struttura relazionale, “uno di fronte all’altro sono detti correlativi.”29 Nel caso di una diade, “i due correlativi e le relazioni corrispondenti

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 178

vengono detti rispettivamente l’uno il converso dell’altro. Gli oggetti le cui designazioni riempiono gli spazi vuoti di un relativo completo sono detti i correlati. Il correlato cui si attribuisce un relativo nominale viene detto relato.”30 Attraverso queste argomentazioni possiamo arrivare a un concetto di relativo intendendolo come una struttura relazionale che può essere aperta e chiusa al tempo stesso. Chiusa perché tale struttura riguarda sempre un numero definito di correlati e aperta perché sopraggiungono quei posti vuoti (capacità relazionali), lasciati dalle componenti indicative (ecceità scrive Peirce) o iconiche che la caratterizzano. Per componenti indicative dobbiamo intendere quei nomi propri che hanno una funzione individuante nei confronti degli oggetti dell’enunciato e per componenti iconiche dobbiamo pensare a elementi sintattici che indicano idee generali e familiari senza dimenticare che sarà il verbo, ossia la dimensione meta-oggettuale per eccellenza a mantenere aperta la struttura relazionale della proposizione. Ora sulla capacità di delimitare una struttura proposizionale chiusa, grazie ad aperture relazionali di alcuni componenti sintattici – Peirce costruisce un’analogia con la struttura chimica della materia, molto utile per definire il massimo grado di chiarezza di un relativo e al tempo stesso per tornare retrospettivamente alle intuizioni spazio-temporali e intenderle come composizioni (compositio) sature del fluire continuo di stimoli fisiologici. Non a caso la teoria dei relativi ammette anche relativi ennadici mostrando così la capacità di comporre in strutture sintattiche definite enne rimandi logico-proposizionali, così come infiniti e complessi sono gli stimoli fisiologici. 21 Se, analizzando la logica dei relativi, sembra possibile guardare indietro e in particolare al modo in cui agisce sottotraccia e silenziosamente la logica proposizionale anche nelle riflessioni sull’attività percettivo-rappresentativa, non va però dimenticato che l’orizzonte entro cui si muovono le riflessioni sull’attività rappresentativo-associativa, è tracciato dalla valorizzazione del concetto matematico di infinito. Entrambi gli ambiti problematici – ovvero il modello chimico per la logica proposizionale e la concezione analitica (aritmetica) del progredire all’infinito degli stimoli fisiologici (continuum) – ci conducono, tuttavia, verso una delle questioni centrali del pensiero di Peirce. Essa è formulabile con la domanda: quale rapporto si può instaurare fra individuo (struttura chiusa) e continuo (struttura aperta), qual è il posto e qual è il ruolo dell’individuo nella generalità dell’universale? A tale questione Peirce risponde asserendo che l’individuo ha rilevanza solo nella misura in cui è generatore di relazioni, così come egli stesso scrive in Detached Ideas: “[…] un certo individuo […] potrebbe essere chiamato l’origine della relazione. Per esempio, nel sistema dei numeri cardinali da zero in su la relazione di essere il numero successivo più basso nell’ordine di grandezza è una relazione generatrice.”31 Applicando queste riflessioni al processo associativo avremo: se è un’idea generale a comprendere in sé la generalità delle altre idee – ossia se è una correlazione più generale a poter regolamentare le interrelazioni fra le idee – si può pensare che le idee (frutto di attività associative) possono essere concepite come insiemi di cardinalità infinite riproponendo all’interno stesso della mente il tema essenziale del rapporto fra singole idee determinate (individuo) e la loro continua infinità.32 22 Se l’individuo è relazione generatrice binaria, terziaria ecc., esso rimanda non solo al concetto di continuo, ma anche alla connessa interpretazione insiemistica dell’infinito – o per meglio dire della cardinalità degli infiniti che in Peirce – come vedremo a breve – coinvolgerà la nozione di possibilità.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 179

23 Il passaggio dal continuo analitico (calcolabilità all’infinito degli elementi, la cui paternità potrebbe risiedere nell’equiparazione di origine leibniziana fra numero e infinità moltiplicativa propria della mente) alla teoria insiemistica delle relazioni indica come il continuo in Peirce si arricchisca di molti problemi teorici: divisibilità, non divisibilità, numerabilità e abnumerabilità degli elementi, connessione fra parti, discreto, continuo geometrico, e così via.33 24 La questione più emblematica rimane per noi sempre quella del rapporto fra individuo (inteso come elemento discreto del continuo) e continuo stesso poiché probabilmente ha costituito il filo conduttore delle ripetute oscillazioni di Peirce nell’affrontare le molteplici versioni della teoria del continuo: aristoteliche, kantiane, cantoriane.34 25 Un’analisi lucida e matura della relazione fra individuo, distinto e determinato, e continuo, ossia serie infinita di cardinalità, è offerta dalla concezione topica e non più metrica del continuo. La topica si occupa dei modi in cui connettere le parti dei continui. “Il filosofo che cerca d’imparare dalla geometria qualcosa sulla continuità deve studiare la topica geometrica,”35 sostiene Peirce nello scritto The Logic of Continuity, offrendo agli uditori il seguente ragionamento: Se partiamo da una serie infinita di cardinalità di abnumerabili (più che numerabili) ciascuna collegata alla successiva come M è collegata alla 2M e dove si può mettere qualsiasi altra quantità al posto di 2. La più piccola di queste cardinalità abnumerabili è 2N dove N è la cardinalità di tutti i numeri interi. È allora impossibile che vi sia un insieme di individui distinti l’uno dall’altro che abbia una cardinalità più grande di queste abnumerabili. Tuttavia – scrive Peirce – ciascuna di queste cardinalità è possibile, e l’esistenza di un insieme di ciascuna di queste cardinalità non è affatto in contraddizione con l’esistenza di un insieme di ciascun’altra cardinalità.36 26 La domanda che sembra percorrere questi pensieri la possiamo formulare nel seguente modo: se dunque abbiamo insiemi in cui le singole cardinalità indicano un’abnumerabilità all’infinito, perché non possiamo immaginare un insieme d’individui distinti che sia un aggregato di un insieme di ciascuna di quelle cardinalità? Cioè, perché non possiamo immaginare un infinito alla n cardinalità che rappresenti la completezza di tutti gli insiemi abnumerabili? Compare qui la nozione di completezza: immaginare l’aggregato di ogni cardinalità d’insiemi determinati e individuali implica, infatti, immaginare che il processo d’aggregazione sia completo e che la serie delle cardinalità abnumerabili “sia portata a termine, mentre si può provare che non esiste limite ultimo alla serie.”37 Ed è in queste parole che riconosciamo lo stesso problema che aveva caratterizzato l’apprensione intuitiva, messo sul tappeto da Kant quando nella riflessione sul sublime matematico sottolinea il conflitto fra il procedere all’infinito del continuo matematico (l’illimitatezza di una serialità, però, ancora numerabile) e l’esigenza di completezza, paragonata lì alle pretese della ragione. Mentre Kant accentua l’incompatibilità fra completezza razionale e illimitatezza matematica, Peirce cerca una soluzione a questo stesso problema scegliendo però di rimanere all’interno della concezione topico-geometrica dell’infinito e individuando nella “possibilità” il limite del continuo.38 Il possibile non è una cardinalità d’individui distinti, non coincide né s’identifica con le parti del continuo poiché è più di quella stessa cardinalità e proprio per questo ne costituisce il limite, ossia è quella generalità massima che comprende in sé tutte le cardinalità pensabili. Identificata con il generale, la possibilità diviene allora il valore limite della completezza degli individui.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 180

27 Come limite compiuto d’insiemi e della loro infinità, la possibilità s’imparenta subito anche con altri concetti come potenziale e vago; la vaghezza, come del resto la possibilità, non ha nulla a che vedere con l’indeterminatezza in un senso ben specifico, ossia non s’identifica con l’assoluto indeterminato; essa è pronta, piuttosto, alla determinazione di ogni oggetto logico particolare. Se poi pensiamo che lo stesso concetto di “potenziale” significa “indeterminato determinabile,” ovvero capace di “determinazione in ogni caso particolare,”39 possiamo affermare che il vago è potenziale senza intendere con ciò che il vago e il potenziale siano sinonimi.40 Il vago sembra legarsi più all’anticipazione futura, propria delle inferenze condizionali. Il potenziale, invece, è indeterminatezza determinabile poiché esibisce un concetto generale, logicamente privo di determinazioni qualitative interne. Esso indica, cioè, una generalità distinta, non individuata che, proprio per questo, funge da limite meta- individuale di ogni aggregato d’infiniti individui o della loro cardinalità. In conformità a queste riflessioni Peirce sostiene che ci può essere un aggregato potenziale di tutte le possibilità che possono coesistere con certe condizioni generali. In questo senso il potenziale sembra collaborare attivamente con l’idea di completezza di tutti i possibili aggregati. Sorge però un problema: la capacità del potenziale di determinare individui non si sottrae all’iterabilità all’infinito; in altri termini la stessa potenzialità, senz’altro legata alla nozione di possibile, non riesce a dar conto fino in fondo della nozione di completezza, così importante per la definizione e distinzione degli individui. È Peirce stesso a metterlo in evidenza quando, da un lato, afferma che il potenziale si debba considerare il limite di ogni cardinalità e di ogni individuo poiché l’aggregato potenziale è più grande di ogni possibile cardinalità degli individui (la via verso l’idea di completezza). Dall’altro, proprio in quanto potenziale, esso non contiene alcun individuo, contiene solo condizioni generali che permettono la determinazione sempre iterabile degli individui.41 Come arrivare alla distinzione delle qualità d’individui determinati, chiede dunque Peirce in queste pagine? Essi si possono distinguere distintamente l’uno dall’altro solo tramite relazioni.42 28 È dunque il rapporto fra potenzialità e relazionalità degli individui a permettere l’inserimento di un individuo distinto nella continuità, a consentire, così, la connessione fra discreto e continuo. Se le differenze qualitative di ogni individuo logico, matematico-geometrico si possono determinare grazie alle sue relazioni ad altri individui, ci troviamo di fronte alla visione dell’individuo come apertura relazionale ad altro, regolata dalla nozione di possibilità. Gli individui non sono, infatti, isolati elementi discreti, interruzioni, eccedenze rispetto al tessuto relazionale del continuo; al contrario solo partendo da tale tessuto essi possono determinarsi in modo specifico e qualitativo. 29 Fornendo il modello per intendere il nesso fra individuale e generale, la logica delle relazioni può offrire anche l’orizzonte in cui ricondurre il rapporto fra singolo e comunità.43 Il significato dell’individuo come frutto e al tempo stesso generatore di relazioni reciproche in un insieme induce, infatti, a ipotizzare che non si dia singolarità se non comprendendo il tessuto comunitario in cui è collocata. Se a ciò aggiungiamo il richiamo all’anticipazione condizionale delle comunità future per assicurare logicità alle scelte del singolo, possiamo cogliere quei criteri logici essenziali per una teoria sociale riconducibile al pensiero politico liberale che vede in Leibniz uno dei suoi padri fondatori. Il modo in cui l’anticipazione condizionale diventi teoria sociale e colori la comunità di tonalità etiche e politiche è più esplicito attraverso le riflessioni sulla

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 181

probabilità. Esse aiuteranno a comprendere come la concezione dell’io isolato o la prevalenza degli interessi individualistici si possano considerare non solo illogiche, ma errori etico-politici.44

5. Logica della probabilità come teoria etico-politica

30 Vogliamo partire dalla definizione che Peirce dà del concetto d’inferenza e di scelta basata sulla logica del probabile: In verità, poiché la validità di un’inferenza consiste nella verità della proposizione ipotetica che se le premesse sono vere anche la conclusione sarà vera, e poiché l’unico fatto reale che può corrispondere a una tale proposizione è che dovunque l’antecedente è vero anche il conseguente lo è, ne segue che non vi può essere alcun senso nel ragionare su un caso isolato [corsivo nostro].45 31 Così com’è insensato ragionare su un caso isolato è altrettanto insensato ragionare sulla singola scelta di un individuo. Il valore che si deve dare alla scelta di una carta fra 25 carte rosse di cui solo una è nera (simbolo della morte) o alla scelta di una carta fra 25 carte nere di cui solo una è rossa (simbolo di salvezza dalla morte) non è legato al fatto che il soggetto si sia, ad esempio, indirizzato verso il mazzo di carte rosse ma al modo in cui si struttura la credenza che lo spinge a indirizzarsi verso quel mazzo. Se quell’individuo sceglierà l’unica carta nera del mazzo di carte rosse, in questo singolo caso la sua scelta ha condotto verso l’evento da evitare e non si può dire affatto che, isolandola dalla serie delle possibili scelte, sia una scelta ragionevole. Dove risiede allora la ragionevolezza nella ponderazione fra più possibilità, giacché le singole scelte in sé e per sé possono essere sia ragionevoli sia irragionevoli, o forse è meglio dire né ragionevoli, né irragionevoli? La ragionevolezza si trova nella credenza condizionale, espressa dal wuold be (sarebbe), risiede, cioè, nella capacità di proiettare davanti a sé l’intera serie possibile di casi. Si tratta, dunque, di scegliere applicando la credenza nella continuità ad infinitum dell’esperienza.

32 L’uomo che Peirce ha immaginato alle prese con i due mazzi di carte, capirà allora che non farà una scelta logica finché si preoccuperà solo del proprio destino e non di ciò che può accadere in tutti i casi possibili della sorte. Comprendere questo richiede però l’identificazione meditata dei propri interessi con quelli di una comunità illimitata. “Ora non esiste ragione alcuna per pensare che la specie umana, così come ogni specie dotata d’intelletto, esisterà per sempre. D’altra parte, non ci può essere alcuna ragione neppure per pensare il contrario”;46 con questo, afferma Peirce, non s’intende ammettere l’assolutamente inconoscibile; l’esperienza è, infatti, in grado di mostrare cosa accadrà dopo un qualsiasi lasso di tempo e benché si possa stabilire un tempo successivo che l’attuale esperienza non può comprendere in sé, tuttavia anche questo lasso di tempo sarà coperto dall’esperienza. La teoria logica della scelta si lega così alla comunità e alla sua illimitatezza. Sulla scia del concetto di continuo, la comunità non può essere considerata come limitata e chiusa, un elemento discreto, ma deve estendersi non solo “a tutte le razze,” bensì a tutte “le razze” con cui possiamo entrare in una relazione “intellettuale” in modo immediato e mediato.47 Se attribuiamo un senso temporale all’aggettivo “mediato,” non possiamo non pensare alle comunità passate e future, ribadendo che per il filosofo americano, come del resto per Leibniz (Monadologia), il presente è gravido di futuro.48

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 182

33 La logica per essere tale si deve basare sulla capacità di estendere quel would be alle comunità interculturali presenti e future. La comunità – aggiunge subito dopo Peirce – deve giungere, anche se “vagamente, oltre questa era geologica, oltre ogni confine [corsivo nostro].”49 Se la logica è strettamente legata al futuro, essere illogici è dunque l’incapacità di proiettarsi nelle proprie scelte verso la totalità dei possibili mondi culturali di cui il presente è la loro anticipazione vaga e aperta. Il motivo per cui il pensiero logico è radicato nella società, anzi nel principio sociale50 è, allora, esplicato dalla necessità di anticipare le future comunità in ogni inferenza e scelta. C’è, però, dell’altro: poiché lo slancio contenuto nell’anticipazione condizionale delle future comunità è, scrive Peirce, sempre salvifico; il principio sociale della logica è, pertanto, etico. La logica finisce per rimandare a presupposti non propriamente logici: si affida alla speranza, al “tranquillo e gioioso desiderio” 51 che la comunità possa durare oltre ogni data assegnabile. Con la speranza nasce anche la fiducia nella sperimentabilità infinita, anche solo possibile, delle nostre cognizioni e scelte logiche. Peirce pone, così, alla base della logica del probabile, sentimenti che, al pari delle inferenze condizionali, hanno come motore il futuro: l’interesse per una comunità indefinita, il riconoscimento della possibilità che questo interesse divenga supremo e la speranza nell’illimitata continuità dell’attività intellettuale. Possiamo dire, allora, che scegliere una singola possibilità condizionale, prescindendo completamente dalla sua effettiva realizzabilità, significa porre alla base della logica del probabile una condotta mentale simile a un atto di fede; non a caso Peirce nomina la fiducia, ovvero una vera e propria disposizione etica dell’individuo. 34 Questo, però, è solo un primo passo verso la possibilità di mettere in relazione la logica con l’idea politica di comunità. 35 Peirce si fa più esplicito e convincente quando sostiene che la logicità richiede la “non limitatezza” dei nostri interessi i quali, per qualificarsi come tali, non si devono legare al destino del singolo, ma abbracciare quello dell’intera comunità. Ed è approfondendo in senso relazionale e comunitario la stessa nozione d’interesse dell’individuo che sembrano unirsi proficuamente i risultati della logica della continuità, quelli della logica probabilistica delle scelte con la visione politica liberale che mette al centro della riflessione il bene comune. 36 Si può dire meglio: indirizzandosi verso la riformulazione dello stesso concetto di interesse e bisogno del singolo, la teoria della probabilità recupera in senso sociale e politico i risultati della logica della continuità (la relazionalità dell’individuo) valorizzando il legame comunitario dell’individuo. 37 Per essere logici gli uomini non dovrebbero essere egoisti e, di fatto, non sono così egoisti come si pensa. Lo stesso avaro – fortemente criticato nello scritto Evolutionary Love perché è inteso lì come baluardo della filosofia dell’avidità – non è egoista. Non lo è, però, nella misura in cui il suo denaro non gli porta alcun beneficio e le sue preoccupazioni non riguardano il suo “io,” ma il destino dei beni dopo la sua morte. Parlare “dei nostri possessi nel Pacifico e del nostro destino di Repubblica [corsivo nostro],”52 sono tutte questioni nelle quali non sono implicati interessi particolari, ma il futuro delle comunità. È questa la ricaduta politica della teoria probabilistica della scelta e della logica della continuità: per appartenere all’individuo, il bisogno, i desideri devono essere comuni e condivisi, anzi lo stesso individuo si qualifica solo come crocevia d’interessi più ampi che vanno ben oltre la stretta cerchia dell’ego. Discutere del possibile esaurimento delle riserve fossili fra alcune centinaia di anni o del

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 183

raffreddamento del sole fra alcuni milioni di anni, concepire, inoltre, nei credi religiosi più popolari, la possibilità di scendere negli Inferi per la salvezza dei propri simili sono tutti esempi riportati da Peirce per mostrare come gli interessi del singolo si qualifichino come tali solo se vissuti e concepiti come interessi comunitari, rivolti al “noi.” La teoria della scelta ripone allora il suo significato politico nella trasformazione della natura degli stessi interessi individuali, i quali appartengono all’individuo se coinvolgono il destino d’intere comunità. 38 Proprio nell’essere sé intersecando il “noi,” “ciò che è comune,” possiamo cogliere l’efficace riflesso di un concetto cardine del pensiero politico di Leibniz, ossia il riverbero della nozione di persona. Questo termine compare in una schematica differenziazione di Peirce tra “absolute thruth” e “wath you do not doubt”;53 nella concisione argomentativa egli assegna alla persona un ruolo comunitario significativo: la persona è identificata con la “cerchia sociale/man’s circle of society”54 e, sotto certi aspetti, ha un rango superiore a quello del singolo individuo.55 Messa in relazione alla nozione di “personalità,” la persona si foggia, tuttavia, anche a partire dalla temporalità, e dal continuo temporale la cui idea rimanda all’armonia teleologica dei singoli e puntuali istanti temporali. Per dar conto dell’organizzazione coordinata delle idee che nel continuo temporale compongono la personalità, Peirce ricorre all’armonia finalisticamente orientata delle idee stesse.56 39 Non deve meravigliare come questi due motivi siano già presenti in Leibniz: la “persona” mira, infatti, sia allo scioglimento e superamento delle opposizioni fra singolo e comunità, a favore del rispecchiamento attivo dell’individuo nella comunità, sia al rapporto interno armonioso fra sentimento memorativo di sé (tempo) e pensiero. Il pensiero è azione su sé stesso in cui si dà coincidenza di agente e paziente, ma per agire su di sé, il pensiero si deve legare alla memoria: ci ricordiamo quando sentiamo di aver sentito, scrive Leibniz. Pensare dunque non può prescindere dal sentire sé stessi tramite la memoria del proprio flusso percettivo e sentimentale. La memoria ci fornisce la capacità di legare le percezioni passate, presenti e future all’armonia e disarmonia della loro varietà, dunque a diversi gradi di presenza o assenza di un composito tessuto relazionale, da cui derivano piacere e dolore.57 Essere bruti, per contro, significa vedersi negato qualunque tipo di partecipazione (intellettiva, sentimentale, memorativa) alla relazionalità, all’armonia di sé. Si è macchine che rispecchiano il mondo esterno senza sentirne e vederne la natura essenzialmente relazionale e per questo macchine isolate, asociali, solitarie. Il pensiero della “persona,” inteso come azione su di sé tramite la memoria sbocca poi per Leibniz nel conato ad agire, ossia nella volontà. Con l’intima unione di cognizione e azione s’introduce l’idea che non si può volere alcunché senza la capacità di “intelligere” l’ordine armonioso del mondo e di sé stessi, ossia senza la capacità di cogliere con la mente l’universale. “Conoscere a fondoi”58 è sapere ciò che la cosa può fare e subire, sia nella sua singolarità, sia nella relazione con altre. É Leibniz stesso a ricordarlo […] Segue di qui che nessuno può conoscere a fondo una cosa singola se non sia al tempo stesso sapientissimo, se cioè non conosca l’universale. Al posto di conoscere a fondo (pernoscere), si potrebbe, in miglior latino dire intelligere, cioè “leggere nell’interno” […].59 40 Ogni conoscenza profonda dell’universale (la sapienza) non è astratta, così come non astratto, ma reale è l’ordine armonioso dell’universo, quell’“interno” che va letto dalla mente per poter agire. All’azione allora si arriva attraverso la visione della natura relazionale interna ed esterna di ogni ente il cui modello è il concetto di perfezione.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 184

L’universale diventa allora sinonimo di relazionalità degli enti e degli individui e si fa reale proprio per questo. Illuminanti a tal proposito sono le parole di Leibniz: Ora, anche il pensiero è, in qualche modo realtà; e lo è tanto maggiormente quanto più la cosa viene in certo modo moltiplicata dal fatto di pensarla: infatti, le singole menti contengono ognuna una certa rappresentazione dell’intero mondo. Perciò è più perfetto quel modo di pensare attraverso il quale si ha che un solo atto di pensiero si estende a più oggetti insieme: così […] vi è maggiore realtà in quel pensiero. Ciò d’altronde avviene grazie alle Relazioni: la relazione è, infatti, una specie di unità nel molteplice. E le forme di relazioni sono i nessi (nexus) e i rapporti delle cose fra loro, le proporzioni, le proporzionalità. Da tutte queste relazioni considerate insieme in un dato oggetto, risulta l’armonia. Pertanto quante più relazioni (il cui aggregato è l’armonia) vi sono nell’oggetto pensabile tanta più realtà o, che è lo stesso, tanta più perfezione vi è nel pensiero di esso; da ciò segue che l’Armonia è la perfezione dei pensabili, considerati beninteso, in quanto pensabili [corsivo nostro].60 41 Sembra dunque possibile dire che il vero e proprio significato della perfezione sia quello della massima estensione e intensione relazionale di tutti i possibili. L’estensione relazionale riguarda i possibili nessi fra gli enti, mentre il concetto intensionale della massima perfezione o relazionalità dei possibili concerne la capacità produttiva di un’idea o di una verità, dovuta all’attività riflessiva della mente, ossia alla facoltà di comprendere forme ideali e concettuali che si moltiplicano all’infinito.

42 Se la perfezione risponde per Leibniz alla massima implicanza relazionale estensiva e intensiva dei possibili (essenza come realtà) si stabilisce un nesso fra armonia- perfezione-relazione in grado di offrire un concetto fondamentale per concepire l’individuo come inscindibile dalle interrelazioni mondane. Conoscendo l’universale, la persona stessa si qualifica come eminentemente relazionale e definibile solo in base alla sua partecipazione pratico-cognitiva al complesso intreccio di relazioni intra mondane. È quest’idea di universale che Peirce ci aiuta in fondo a pensare e declinare quando ricorre allo strumentario della topica del continuo in cui potenzialità (generalità distinta ma indeterminata), possibilità e relazione s’integrano a vicenda per dar conto delle qualità dell’individuo e quando, nella teoria del probabile, la natura logica della singola scelta si qualifica in funzione delle relazionali attuali e future con le comunità, trasformando la stessa nozione d’interesse individuale in bisogno e interesse comunitari. 43 La valenza politica di questa visione logica non deve essere trascurata né in Leibniz né in Peirce: in Leibniz fa sì che la giustizia si basi sulla reciproca limitazione di utile e bene – in cui però è il bene ad avere un valore sanzionatorio verso l’utile – e sulla critica del diritto privato a favore del diritto pubblico, comunitario. In Peirce le conseguenze politiche si possono vedere in maniera compiuta se aggiungiamo alle riflessioni già fatte sulla trasformazione del concetto di bisogno individuale anche quelle sul significato della nozione pragmatista di autolimitazione e sacrificio di sé.61 Tale concetto ha almeno una duplice funzione: in ambito logico il modello sacrificale ripropone l’esigenza di sentirsi parte di una comunità più ampia per la scelta delle proprie azioni. Tale modello rappresenterebbe il movente per agire indirizzando la prospettiva condizionale del would be alla realizzazione di scopi comuni. 44 Per la logica del probabile – scrive Peirce – non è necessario che un uomo debba essere egli stesso capace dell’eroismo del sacrificio di sé, poiché è sufficiente che ne riconosca la possibilità; questo non esclude però che siano sentite come realmente logiche solo le inferenze di un uomo che ammetta tale principio. Realmente logiche sono, dunque, le

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 185

inferenze di un individuo solo nella misura in cui sarebbero ispirate dal modello dell’auto-limitazione, ma se il singolo riferisce le proprie inferenze e scelte a tale standard s’identifica con esso.62 Non è, dunque, privo di conseguenze sociali per la logica adottare, anche solo come possibile, il modello dell’autolimitazione poiché esso diventa il criterio con cui identificarsi, o da emulare, nella prassi. Per agire il singolo si deve poter sentire parte integrante di una sfera meta individuale e le azioni significative da compiere sono solo quelle destinate alla comunità. Ciò che è comune diventa così movente e destinazione al tempo stesso dell’agire. Il soldato che si lancia all’assalto di un muro sa che probabilmente sarà colpito, ma questa non è la sua massima preoccupazione poiché sa (ecco la reale inferenza condizionale meta individuale che presiede all’azione) che se tutto il reggimento, “con il quale s’identifica sentimentalmente, scatta in avanti insieme, il forte sarà conquistato. In altri casi possiamo solo imitare la virtù [corsivo nostro].”63 Pensiero relazionale, scelta condizionale, motivi e intenti comuni, vanno qui di pari passo. 45 L’idea del self-surrender è però anche un avamposto pratico-teoretico per combattere quel pensiero politico che, nel saggio Evolutionary Love, corrisponde al Vangelo dell’avidità, cui Peirce intende opporre un interessante principio evolutivo, quello agapico. L’amore diventa principio dinamico formativo per l’evoluzione della natura, degli individui e delle comunità e si sostituisce, in definitiva, al principio casuale del darwinismo e a quello anancastico dello Spirito Assoluto hegeliano. All’esposizione degli avversari filosofici del principio agapico, si accompagna l’interpretazione delle sue potenzialità socio-politiche da far valere contro la degenerazione del pensiero politico-economico, imbarbarito dal connubio dell’utilitarismo con le teorie evolutive darwiniane. Il principio agapico di cui parla Peirce rimanda al modello sacrificale nella misura in cui non indica un rapporto fra e di perfezioni, bensì la limitazione di sé per favorire la perfezione dell’altro: Così l’amore che è in Dio non è un amore di cui l’odio è il contrario; altrimenti Satana sarebbe una forza coordinata; ma è un amore che abbraccia l’odio come stadio imperfetto di sé, un pre-Eros. […] Perché l’amore di sé non è amore, così se il sé di Dio è amore, ciò che ama deve essere un difetto d’amore, così come una luminaria può illuminare solo ciò che altrimenti sarebbe oscuro.64 46 Se l’amore di Dio, per essere tale, non può riguardare la perfezione (ossia sé stesso), ma l’imperfezione e il difetto, anche quello dell’uomo non riguarda l’accrescimento dei propri desideri, la soddisfazione dei propri impulsi egoistici, bensì il sacrificio di sé in vista del perfezionamento dell’altro. È questo il significato da assegnare alla Regola d’Oro “Fa agli altri quello che vorresti fosse fatto a te.”65 L’interpretazione della Regola d’Oro come impegno al perfezionamento altrui non deve, poi, essere confusa con il detto di Bentham, Helvetius e Beccaria “Agisci per il bene maggiore del maggior numero” perché l’amore non può esercitarsi tramite astrazioni aritmetiche; l’amore, infatti, è rivolto a persone, scrive Peirce.66 Insieme all’interpretazione della Regola d’Oro e alla critica dell’astrattezza dei rapporti aritmetici del più e del meno, compare qui di nuovo la parola “persona.” La priorità dell’altro, del suo perfezionamento, come fonte dell’evoluzione agapica nei rapporti sociali, così efficacemente messa in relazione alla persona da Peirce, distinguendola nettamente dalla visione meramente aritmetica ed astratta degli individui, sembra portare con sè i valori di quella tradizione liberale già ben delineata nelle riflessioni giuridiche di Leibniz. Con esse sono denunciati i limiti della concezione astratta e aritmetica dell’eguaglianza a favore della nozione di equità sociale in cui la “persona” ha un ruolo di primo piano.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 186

47 Analizzando tre precetti giuridici, mutuati dal giurista Ulpiano, Leibniz elabora tre diverse forme e gradi di diritto: privato, pubblico e naturale, custode, quest’ultimo, della forma sapientissima di virtù: l’amore disinteressato per l’altro. I precetti sono: vivere onestamente, non nuocere ad alcuno, dare a ciascuno ciò che gli spetta. Se ci fermiamo alle due ultime massime, possiamo vedere con chiarezza la contrapposizione fra individuo astratto e persona cui lo stesso Peirce ha fatto riferimento, sottolineando i limiti dell’utilitarismo economico. La massima “non nuocere ad alcuno” è ricondotta dal giovane Leibniz al diritto di proprietà, che si basa su una concezione aritmetica d’eguaglianza, del tutto astratta. Avvalendosi dell’uguaglianza aritmetica degli individui, il diritto di proprietà presume in modo del tutto indifferenziato che tutti siano di pari dignità, e ciascuno abbia il diritto di recuperare quanto possiede senza riguardo alcuno al valore della persona. Proprio l’estraneità al valore della persona, al rapporto proporzionato di azione e passione, di cui abbiamo detto sopra, rende del tutto rudimentale, povero e alla fine conflittuale il criterio d’uguaglianza del diritto privato. Con l’altra massima: “dare a ciascuno ciò che gli spetta,” Leibniz ha in mente il diritto pubblico o il diritto di società, volto al massimo benessere della comunità e basato sul criterio proporzionale e non astratto aritmetico della giustizia. In esso grande ruolo svolge il valore della persona, la sua capacità di perfezionare sé stessa e l’altro nel rapporto amoroso. Colui che agisce per amore non lo fa con l'intenzione di incrementare il proprio piacere; il piacere non è che una conseguenza dell’amore disinteressato per l’altro, il cui fine è il perfezionamento dell’amato, come in definitiva afferma Peirce. Attraverso l'amore, che è una fusione di due felicità, l’amante ha accesso a una dimensione della relazionalità, preclusa ad altri tipi di esperienza: egli fuoriesce da una dinamica che ha di mira l’utile per impegnarsi in una pratica perfezionante, coinvolgente, rallegrante e infinita di armonizzazione, il cui corrispettivo è individuato da Leibniz in un sentimento di perfezione, massimo grado di relazionalità e incremento del proprio grado di realtà. 48 Nel diritto pubblico il modello relazionale amoroso, volto al perfezionamento dell’altro, trova, infatti, il proprio riferimento nel rapporto proporzionato di vizi e virtù dell’amato; l’amore si elargisce in proporzione al grado di perfezione sempre diverso dell’altro; solo così si raggiunge il concetto non astratto di uguaglianza, espresso dall’equità sociale. 49 Il passaggio dal diritto privato a quello pubblico introduce un nuovo concetto di eguaglianza, che in Leibniz come in Peirce si distanzia nettamente dall’astrazione aritmetica dei calcoli del più e del meno, tipici dell’utile. Tutte e due queste prospettive si basano sulla concezione essenzialmente relazionale dell’individuo che in Peirce ha avuto varie vicende teoriche: dalla logica proposizionale come semiotica (segni/rinvii), alla maturazione del concetto di continuo, sfociato nella stretta relazione di potenziale e relazione, fino ad arrivare all’anticipazione di tutti le possibili comunità per conferire ragionevolezza alle scelte condizionali. 50 Possiamo affermare in sede conclusiva che la teoria relazionale dell’individuo, cui Peirce approda in sede logica, possa guidare anche la sua visione politica e sociale; visione riassumibile con le sue stesse parole: “Qui dunque sta la questione: Il Vangelo di Cristo dice che il Vangelo si avvera quando ciascun individuo fonde la sua individualità nella simpatia con il prossimo.”67 L’individuo non ha dunque senso se non fuso nella relazione con l’altro. E se il termine simpatia usato da Peirce è per lo più messo in relazione all’utilitarismo di J. Bentham, non possiamo non vedere come esso si innesti

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 187

in una concezione dell’individuo che molto deve alle riflessioni leibniziane sulla persona e sulla sua saggezza.68 Se intesa come intellezione della mente volta all’universale, la saggezza costituisce, infatti, la “visione profonda” della natura relazionale di ogni ente. Possiamo così dire così che l’idea, auspicata da Peirce, di una società capace di superare l’individualismo sterile e competitivo della filosofia dell’avidità, risente molto delle teorie logiche e giuridico-politiche di Leibniz, che non può concepire l’individuo se non immerso nella relazionalità intramondana.

BIBLIOGRAFIA

ABSAD Ibri Ivo, (2017), “The Double Face of Habits. Time and Timeless in Pragmatic Experience,” Rivista di Storia della filosofia n.s., 72 (3), 455-74.

APEL Karl Otto, (1973), Transformation der Philosophie, Frankfurt a.M., Suhrkamp; trad. it., parziale Comunità e Comunicazione, (1997), Torino, Rosenberg & Sellier.

BAGGIO Guido, (2016), Fuori prezzo. Lyotard oltre il postmoderno, Lecce, Pensa Multimedia.

CALCATERRA Rosa Maria (ed.), (2005), Semiotica e fenomenologia del sé, Torino, Aragno.

CALCATERRA Rosa Maria., (2015), “Epistemologia del Sé,” in Massimo A. Bonfantini, Rossella Fabbrichesi & Salvatore Zingale (eds), Su Peirce. Interpretazioni, ricerche, prospettive, Milano, Bompiani, 59-68.

CATENA Maria Teresa, (1996), Orientamento e disorientamento. Il sublime come luogo sistematico della filosofia di Kant, Milano, Guerini.

CHEVALIER J. M. C., (2013), “Peirces First Critique of the First Critique: A Leibnizian False Start,” A Quarterly Journal in American Philosophy, 49 (1), 1-26.

COLAPIETRO Vincent, (1989), Peirce’s Approach to the Self: A Semiotic Perspective on Human Subjectivity Albany, State University of New York Press.

COLAPIETRO Vincent, (1996), “The Ground of Semiosis: An Implied Theory of Perspectival Realism?,” in Vincent Colapietro & Thomas Olshewski (eds), Peirce’s Doctrine of Signs, Berlin and New York, Mouton de Gruyter, 129-40.

COLAPIETRO Vincent, (2000), “Further Consequences of a Singular Capacity,” in John Muller & Joseph Brent (eds), Peirce, Semiotics, and Psychoanalysis, Baltimore and London, The Johns Hopkins University Press.

COLAPIETRO Vincent, (2017), “The Tones, Tints, and Textures of Temporality: Toward a Reconstruction of Peirce’s Philosophy of Time,” Rivista di Storia della filosofia n.s., 72 (3), 435-51.

FABBRICHESI Leo Rossella, (1992), Il concetto di relazione in Peirce, Milano, Jaca Book.

FABBRICHESI Leo Rossella & Federico LEONI, (2005), Continuità e variazione. Leibniz, Goethe, Peirce, Wittgenstein, con un’incursione kantiana, Milano, Mimesis Transiti.

FISCH Max, (1972), “Peirce and Leibniz,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 33 (3), 485-96.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 188

HAVENEL Jérôme, (2008), “Peirce Classifications on Continuity,” in Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society: A Quarterly Journal in American Philosophy, 44 (1), 86-133.

HOHENEGGER Hansmichael, (1990), “Note per un’interpretazione del sublime in Kant,” Il cannocchiale, Rivista di Studi filosofici, 3, 156-88.

KANT Immanuel, (1904), Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Gesammelte Schriften, Abt. I, Bd. III., Berlin, Reimer; trad. it., Critica della ragione pura (2004),Torino, Utet.

LEIBNIZ W. Friedrich Gottlieb, (1903a), “De Organo sive Arte Magnum Cogitandi [ubi agitur de vera characteristica, cabbala vera, algebra, arte combinatoria, lingua naturae, scriptura universali],” in L. Couturat (ed.), Opuscules et fragments inédits de Leibniz, Paris, Félix Alcan éditor, rist. fot., Hildesheim, Olms, 1966, 429-30; trad. it., Dell’organo o grande arte del pensare, in Francesco Barone (a cura di), Scritti di logica, 1, (1992), Roma-Bari, Laterza, 134-39.

LEIBNIZ W. Friedrich Gottlieb, (1903b), Generales Inquisitiones de Analysi Notionium et Veritatum, (1686), in L. Couturat (éd.), Opuscules et fragments inédits de Leibniz, Paris, Félix Alcan éditor, 356-99; trad. it., Ricerche generali sull’analisi delle nozioni e delle verità, in Francesco Barone (a cura di), Scritti di logica, 2, (1992), Roma-Bari, Laterza, 271-325.

LEIBNIZ W. Friedrich Gottlieb, (1948), “Elementa verae pietatis,” in Grua G. (éd.), Textes inédits, d’après le manuscrit de la Bibliothèque provinciale de Hanovre, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 10-7; trad. it., Elementi della vera pietà, ovvero sull’Amore di Dio sopra ogni altra cosa (1677-1678), in Confessio philosophi, (2003), Napoli, Cronopio Edizioni, 95-105.

LEIBNIZ W. Friedrich Gottlieb, (1978), “Philosophische Abhandlungen,” IX, in Die Philosophischen Schriften, herausgegeben von Carl Immanuel Gerhardt, vol. VI, Berlin 1885 (rist. an.), Hildesheim - New York, Georg Olms Verlag, 607-23; trad. it., I principi della filosofia o La Monadologia, in Salvatore Cariati (a cura di), (2014), Milano, Bompiani, 60-99.

LEIBNIZ W. Friedrich Gottlieb, (2003), Frühe Schriften zum Naturrecht, Lateinisch-Deutsch, Hamburg, Meiner Verlag; trad. it. Elementi di diritto naturale, in Scritti politici e di diritto naturale, (1951), Torino, UTET.

LUISI Maria, (2008), Introduzione a Esperienza e percezione. Percorsi nella fenomenologia, Pisa, ETS, 7-50.

LYOTARD Jean-François, (1990), “La réflexion dans l’esthetique kantienne,” Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 44 (175/4), 507-51.

MADDALENA Giovanni, (2009), Metafisica per assurdo, Soveria Mannelli, Rubbettino.

MADDALENA Giovanni, (2015), “Peirce, l’antikantismo e l’intenzione sintetica del pragmatismo,” in Massimo A. Bonfantini, Rossella Fabbrichesi & Salvatore Zingale (eds), Su Peirce. Interpretazioni, ricerche, prospettive, Milano, Bompiani, 69-78.

MUIRHEAD John H., (1967), The Platonic Tradition in Anglosaxon Phylosophy. Studies in the History of Idealism in England and America, London-New York, The Macmillan Company - G. Allen & Unwin LTD.

PEIRCE Charles Sanders, (1976a), “Detached Ideas continued and the Dispute between Nominalist and Realists,” Ms. 439 in The New Elements of Mathematics by Chalers S. Peirce, vol. 4, Carolyn Eisele (ed.), Mouton, The Hague, 331-46; trad. it., “La logica delle relazioni,” in Giovanni Maddalena (a cura di), Scritti scelti, (2005), Torino, UTET, 277-98.

PEIRCE Charles Sanders, (1976b), The New Elements of Mathematics by Chalers S. Peirce, vol. 3, Carolyn Eisele (ed), Mouton, The Hague.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 189

PEIRCE Charles Sanders, (1976c), “The Logic of Continuity,” Ms. 948, The New Elements of Mathematics by Chalers S. Peirce, vol. 3, Carolyn Eisele (ed.), Mouton, The Hague, 101-15; trad. it., “La logica della continuità,” in Giovanni Maddalena (a cura di), Scritti scelti, (2005), Torino, UTET, 393-424.

PEIRCE Charles Sanders, (1982a), “On the Logic of Science (Harward Lectures of 1865),” in Writing of Charles S. Peirce, A Chronological Edition, I, (1857-1866), Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 162-302.

PEIRCE Charles Sanders, (1982b) “The Logic of Science” (Lowell Lectures of 1866), in Writing of Charles S. Peirce, A Chronological Edition, I, (1857-1866), Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 358-504.

PEIRCE Charles Sanders, (1982c), “On a New List of Categories,” in Writing of Charles S. Peirce, A Chronological Edition, II, (1867-1871), Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 49-59; trad. it., “Una nuova lista di categorie,” in Giovanni Maddalena (a cura di), Scritti scelti, (2005), Torino, UTET, 71-82.

PEIRCE Charles Sanders, (1991a), “Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man,” in The Essential Peirce, vol. 1, Indianapolis-Bloomington, Peirce Edition Project, 11-27; trad. it., “Questioni riguardo a certe pretese capacità umane,” in Giovanni Maddalena (a cura di), Scritti scelti, (2005), Torino, UTET, 83-105.

PEIRCE Charles Sanders, (1991b), “Sundry Logical Conceptions,” in The Essential Peirce, vol. 2, Indianapolis-Bloomington, Peirce Edition Project, 267-88; trad. it., “Vari concetti logici,” in Maria Luisi (a cura di), Esperienza e percezione. Percorsi nella fenomenologia, (2008), Pisa, ETS, 67-76.

PEIRCE Charles Sanders, (1991c), “The Doctrine of Chances,” in The Essential Peirce, vol. 1, Indianapolis-Bloomington, Peirce Edition Project, 142-54; trad. it., “La dottrina della probabilità,” in Massimo A. Bonfantini (a cura di), Opere, (2003), Milano, Bompiani, 1023-33.

PEIRCE Charles Sanders, (1991d), “The Fixation of Belief (1877),” in The Essential Peirce, vol. 1, Indianapolis-Bloomington, Peirce Edition Project, 109-23; trad. it., “Il fissarsi della credenza,” in Massimo A. Bonfantini (a cura di), Opere, (2003), Milano, Bompiani, 357-71.

PEIRCE Charles Sanders, (1991e), “Wath Pragmatismi Is,” in The Essential Peirce, vol. 2, Indianapolis- Bloomington, Peirce Edition Project, 331-45; trad. it., “Che cos’è il pragmatismo,” in Massimo A. Bonfantini (a cura di), Opere, (2003), Milano, Bompiani, 399-404.

PEIRCE Charles Sanders, (1991f), “Evolutionary Love,” in The Essential Peirce, vol. 1, Indianapolis- Bloomington, Peirce Edition Project, 352-71; trad. it., “Amore evolutivo,” in Massimo A. Bonfantini (a cura di), Opere, (2003), Milano, Bompiani, 1149-68.

PEIRCE Charles Sanders, (1997a), “The Law of Mind,” in Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 6, Harward, Belknap Press of Hardward University Press, 86-113; trad. it., “La legge della mente,” in Massimo A. Bonfantini (a cura di), Opere, (2003), Milano, Bompiani, 1101-20.

PEIRCE Charles Sanders, (1997b), “Description of a Notation for Logic of Relativ Resulting of an Amplification of The Conception of Boole’s Calculus of Logic,” in Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 3, Harward, Belknap Press of Hardward University Press, 27-98; trad. it., “Descrizione di una notazione per la logica dei relativi che risulta da un ampliamento dei concetti del calcolo logico di Boole,” in Charles Hartshorne & Paul Weiss (a cura di), Scritti di logica, (1981), Firenze, La Nuova Italia, 35-142.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 190

PEIRCE Charles Sanders, (1997c), “Man’s Glassy Essenz,” in Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 6, Harward, Belknap Press of Hardward University Press,155-77; trad. it., “La cristallina essenza dell’uomo,” in Massimo A. Bonfantini (a cura di), Opere, (2003), Milano, Bompiani, 1125-42.

ROSENTHAL Sandra, (2004), “Peirce’s Pragmatic Account of Perception: Issues and Implications,” in Cherly Misak (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Peirce, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

SCARAVELLI Luigi, (1973), “La struttura trascendentale del sublime,” in Scritti kantiani, Firenze, La Nuova Italia, 451-66.

SINI Carlo, (1974), L’etica e il problema delle scienze normative in Peircei, L’Aquila, Centro tecnico Culturale e Assistenziale.

SINI Carlo, (1979), “L’attualità del socialismo logico di Peirce,” Cultura e Scuola, 70, aprile-giugno, 129-39.

STANGO Marco, (2015), “‘I’ Who? A New Look at Peirce’s Theory of Indexical Self-Reference,” Pluralist, X (2), University of Illinois Press, 220-46.

VETTER Barbara, (2015), Potentiality. From Dispositions to Modality, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

WARTENBERG Gerd, (1971), Logischer Sozialismus. Die Transformation der Kantschen Transzendentalphilosophie durch Charles Sanders Peirce, Frankfurt a.M., Suhrkamp.

WILSON Aaron Bruce, (2016), Peirce’s Empiricism. Ist Roots and Its Originality, New York/London, Lanham-Boulder/Lexington Books.

NOTE

1. Muirhead (1967: 324-46). 2. Fisch (1972: 485-96). 3. Chevalier (2013: 1-26). 4. Fabbrichesi & Leoni (2005: 13-68). 5. Peirce (1997a: 105; trad. 2003: 1115). 6. Fabbrichesi (1992: 9-30). 7. Peirce (1982a: 189). 8. Per questo si vedano anche le Lowell Lectures del 1866 (Peirce 1982b: 358-504). 9. Peirce (1997b: 33-4; trad. 1981: 44-5). 10. Peirce (1982c: 54-5; trad. 1995: 78). Per un’analisi estesa del rapporto fra gli studi di logica degli anni 1865-1866 e la riformulazione delle categorie Fabbrichesi (1992: 31-64, 105-12). 11. Peirce (1991b: 268-9; trad. 2008: 70). 12. Maddalena (2009: 193-223, in particolare 205-6) pone l’accento sulla relazione del continuo con il concetto di tempo e dunque con le dinamiche associative dell’io e indica la presenza di tratti psicologisti sia nelle riflessioni giovanili degli anni ’70, sia nelle concezioni più mature del continuo percettivo. Sul tempo si veda inoltre Absad Ibri (2017: 455-74). Lo studioso fa emergere la capacità del tempo di indicare la continuità e la discontinuità dei fenomeni, sia l’ordine del continuo che la sua rottura. Sul rapporto fra tempo e rottura si sofferma anche Colapietro offrendo una significativa riflessione sul trauma (2017: 435-51). 13. La distanza dall’associazionismo di Mill non è segnata solo dall’interesse di Peirce per la logica matematica, ma anche – come afferma Aaron Bruce Wilson (2016: 86-92) – dalla via biologico-evolutiva basata sulle categorie di eredità e selezione. 14. Il rapporto percezione-reale è considerato da Rosenthal (2004: 193-213). 15. Peirce (1991a: 16; trad. 2005: 90).

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 191

16. Peirce (1991a: 16-7; trad. 2005: 91). 17. Kant (1904: 154; trad. 2004: 181-2). 18. Catena (1996: 98 e ss); Hohenegger 1990. 19. Per il rapporto fra sublime matematico e apprensione intuitiva Scaravelli 1973, per un’analisi dei concetti di quantità e grandezza Lyotard (1990: 509-10) e Baggio (2016: 213-7). 20. E qui sembrano tornare temi antichi di Kant ad esempio la sua critica all’interpretazione che Crusius aveva dato dell’infinito leibniziano identificandolo con il numero. Alludo a uno scritto giovanile verso cui Kant ha avuto un rapporto travagliato, anche di rifiuto, si tratta del suo brevissimo scritto sull’ottimismo del 1759. 21. Leibniz (1903a: 429-30; trad. 1992: 135). 22. A questo proposito Leibniz usa una similitudine: “[...] ti faccio dono di cento monete che devo ricevere da Tizio, ma qualora Tizio ti rimandi da Caio e Caio da Mevio sicché tu venga rimandato di continuo, si dirà allora che tu non hai mai ricevuto nulla,” Leibniz (1903a: 430; trad. 1992: 135). 23. Leibniz (1903b: 373-4; trad. 1992: 297). 24. Leibniz (1903b: 374; trad. 1992: 294). 25. Non sono l’introspezione o la priorità del senso interno a giocare un ruolo decisivo nell’interpretazione della vita associativo-rappresentativa della mente, ma i temi del continuo matematico visto come metodo euristico del tessuto relazionale degli enti. La via logica per la composizione degli stimoli percettivo-sensoriali rifiuta dunque l’idea che l’attività intuitiva si possa risolvere completamente nel fluire temporale del senso interno, rifiuta il fenomenismo kantiano. Tale rifiuto ha una ricaduta sulla stessa formazione dell’identità riflessiva dell’io. La dinamica proprio percettiva parte dalle esperienze corporee del bambino, il quale struttura la propria identità personale (io esisto) avvalendosi di esperienze mondane erronee e fallaci. Senza gli oggetti esterni, senza l’urto con la realtà, l’io non può dire: “io esisto.” Sul rifiuto del fenomenismo kantiano, inteso come nominalismo, si veda Maddalena (2015; in particolare 71-7). Al razionalismo di Cartesio e all’ascesa dell’empirismo moderno, con una particolare attenzione all’introspezione e all’autoconoscenza intuitiva in Peirce, è dedicato un interessante capitolo di Aaron Bruce Wilson (2016: 86-92). Una ricostruzione della formazione del sé – basata sull’analisi della “testimonianza” come veicolo del bambino per verificare la verità/falsità della propria percezione del mondo e volta a evidenziare i possibili legami delle riflessioni di Peirce con l’intenzionalità husserliana – è offerta da Calcaterra (2015: 59-68). 26. Peirce (1997b: 292; trad. 1981: 273). 27. Peirce (1997b: 292; trad. 1981: 273). 28. Peirce (1997b: 292; trad. 1981: 273). 29. Peirce (1997b: 294; trad. 1981: 276). 30. Peirce (1997b: 295; trad. 1981: 277). 31. Peirce (1976a: 339-40; trad. 2005: 290). 32. La natura relazionale dell’individuo è del resto una costante nel pensiero di Peirce; non a caso essa è ribadita nella lettera a Cantor del 1900. Dopo aver scritto che per individuo in senso generale s’intende un soggetto di cui ogni predicato può essere universalmente vero o universalmente falso, Peirce passa poi a distinguere fra l’individuo primario e secondario. Il primo è, possiamo dire con un neologismo, “arelazionale” e ciononostante ha proprietà non contraddittorie, le quali però non appartengono all’ambito della conoscenza. L’individuo secondario o derivato è quell’individuo che possiede qualità derivate solo da certe relazioni tra altre cose, oltre a quelle (regolarità relazionali) derivanti dalla conoscenza. È, dunque, questo secondo tipo d’individuo ad avere un valore euristico fondamentale in grado di dare risposte alle questioni epistemiche relative alla vita associativa della mente. Peirce (1976b: 773-5). 33. Maddalena (2009: 137-236). 34. Sono state distinte sei (Maddalena, 2009: 137-224), cinque (Havenel, 2008: 86-133), e quattro (Luisi, 2008: 29-50) fasi nelle riflessioni sul continuo in Peirce. Il nucleo teoretico del tornare e

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 192

ritornare sull’argomento sembra essere, tuttavia, il rapporto fra continuità e divisibilità delle parti e con esso quello fra continuo e discreto. Nel momento in cui la continuità deve dar conto della natura processuale della conoscenza, realizzabile solo nel concatenamento infinito di cognizioni, essa ingloba in sé anche l’idea della divisibilità all’infinito delle parti espressa da Kant nella Critica della ragione pura, asserendo che in una quantità continua nessuna parte è la più piccola possibile. È questa la criticità più forte della teoria kantiana secondo gli sviluppi del pensiero di Peirce, il quale sancisce così la non perfetta sinonimia fra continuità e divisibilità infinita e si avvia ad affrontare, prima, il problema della concatenazione delle parti in un continuo e in seguito quello del rapporto fra individuo e continuo. 35. Peirce (1976c: 103; trad. 2005: 399). 36. Peirce (1976c: 103; trad. 2005: 399). 37. Peirce (1976c: 103; trad. 2005: 399). 38. Peirce (1976c: 103-4; trad. 2005: 399). 39. Peirce (1976c: 104; trad. 2005: 400). 40. Per la loro differenziazione e per il rapporto fra potenziale e possibilità, si veda Vetter 2015. 41. Peirce (1976c: 104; trad. 2005: 400). 42. Peirce (1976c: 104-5; trad. 2005: 401). 43. Si aggiunge così un nesso diretto fra logica e teoria sociale che integra e corrobora dall’interno la ricostruzione storica degli influssi di Henry James senior sulla convinzione di Peirce, secondo la quale l’individuo isolato è idiosincrasia ed errore. Sini 1979. Una visione diversa, se non opposta, del ruolo del “sé” nella filosofia di Peirce è offerta da Colapietro 1989 e dalla raccolta di saggi dedicata al ruolo e al significato dell’analisi fenomenologica della coscienza in Peirce: Calcaterra 2006. Si veda anche Marco Stango 2015. 44. Sini 1974. 45. Peirce (1991c: 148; trad. 2003: 1027-8). 46. Peirce (1991c: 150; trad. 2003: 1030). 47. Peirce (1991c: 150; trad. 2003: 1030). 48. Così Leibniz nel §22 della Monadologia “Ora, ogni stato presente di una sostanza semplice è una conseguenza naturale del suo stato precedente, per cui in essa il presente è gravido dell’avvenire” Leibniz (1978: 610; trad. 2014: 69). Se lo sguardo al futuro si lega in Leibniz ai temi della prescienza divina e dei futuri contingenti, ciò rappresenta una lontananza solo apparente dalle riflessioni sulla scelta condizionale della logica del probabile. Leibniz distingue, infatti, fra necessità assoluta metafisica, basata sul principio di non contraddizione, e necessità del conseguente, o ipotetica. Questo secondo gruppo di necessità qualifica i decreti divini e rimanda al principio logico “se A allora necessariamente B” – rivendicato anche dalla teoria della probabilità di Peirce – e non può prescindere dalla visione chiara e distinta degli infiniti intrecci relazionali dei possibili presente nella mente divina. 49. Peirce (1991c: 149; trad. 2003: 1029). 50. Peirce (1991c: 149; trad. 2003: 1029): “Logic is rooted in the social principle.” Se consideriamo la riflessione di Peirce secondo cui la logica dipende dalla lotta per sfuggire al dubbio – lotta che inizia nell’emozione e termina nell’azione – e se supponiamo che “[…] la sola causa del nostro fissarci sulla ragione è che gli altri metodi di sfuggire” al dubbio “falliscono a causa dell’impulso sociale” Peirce (1991c: 145; trad. 2003: 1030), potremmo dire che il principio sociale si lega anche a un altro motivo che induce Peirce a scavare nella natura emotiva e sentimentale della logica: il rapporto della logica con le insidie dell’impulso sociale, individuate nella manipolazione culturale politica delle credenze. Il legame della logica con la società ha allora un doppio volto: da un lato il sentimento della speranza nell’illimitatezza futura delle comunità e delle sperimentabilità cognitiva rende logiche le scelte del singolo, dall’altro la scienza, attraversata dal continuo conflitto con il dubbio, può rappresentare un catartico delle devianze manipolatorie dell’impulso sociale. L’articolazione di tale impulso – analizzata nel saggio dedicato al fissarsi

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 193

delle credenze – mostra tre forme non del tutto adeguate del rapporto fra saperi, credenze e società. Esse trovano il loro riscatto nell’idea di un metodo scientifico aperto al dubbio e al confronto pubblico. Peirce indaga il rapporto fra certezze pratico-culturali e dinamiche sociali articolandolo in quattro diversi metodi di fissazione delle credenze cognitive. Il metodo della tenacia, che difende le credenze, ormai consolidate, dalle ingerenze o confutazioni provenienti dal confronto pubblico, dall’impulso sociale e dalla pubblica opinione, avvertiti come fonti di dubbi laceranti e pertanto come pericoloso indebolimento delle proprie convinzioni. Il metodo del terrore, il quale basa il consolidarsi delle convinzioni sul solo esercizio capillare della censura e della repressione. Il terzo metodo è quello della filosofia metafisica la quale, pur riscattandosi dal terrore e dalla ferocia repressiva, finisce per agire in modo illusorio sulla pubblica opinione nel momento in cui – lasciando che le credenze si armonizzino da sole nel loro articolato e complesso movimento di avvicendamento e differenziazione – fa sì che le convinzioni razionali finiscano per trasformarsi in manifesti e cliché teorici alla moda. Sembrerebbe dunque che quello scientifico sia l’unico metodo capace di comprendere in sé il dubbio, interpretato come utile inquietudine della ricerca. Esso deve, però, sapersi confrontare in modo costruttivo con la responsabilità sociale e con le istanze provenienti dal confronto pubblico, dunque dall’impulso sociale. Peirce (1991d: 109-23; trad. 2003: 357-71). 51. Peirce (1991c: 145; trad. 2003: 1030). 52. Peirce (1991c: 149; trad. 2003: 1029). 53. Peirce (1991e: 338; trad. 2003: 406). 54. Peirce (1991e: 338; trad. 2003: 406). 55. Peirce (1991e: 338; trad. 2003: 406). 56. Così Peirce (1997c: 176; trad. 2003: 1141): “Questa personalità, come ogni idea generale, non è una cosa che si può apprendere in un istante. Deve essere vissuta nel tempo, e nessun tempo finito può contenerla in tutta la sua pienezza. Tuttavia, in ogni intervallo infinitesimale è presente e vivente, benché peculiarmente colorata dai sentimenti immediati di quel momento. La personalità, nella misura in cui è appresa in un momento, è autocoscienza immediata. La parola coordinazione, però, implica un po’ più di questo, implica un’armonia teleologica delle idee.” 57. Per far emergere la distanza del concetto di armonia dall’omogeneo astratto e autoreferenziale, mi sembra opportuno far vedere come l’armonia intrattenga un rapporto saldo e imprescindibile con le nozioni di varietà e dissonanza. Così, infatti, si esprime Leibniz (2003: 316-7; trad. 1951: 104-5): “Armonia è la diversità equilibrata dall’identità [Harmonia est diversitas identitate compensata]. Armonico cioè è l’uniformemente dissimile. Piace la varietà ma ridotta in unità, ben disposta e collegata. L’omogeneità pure piace quando sia sempre nuova, sorprendente e inaspettata e, pertanto, o suggestiva o ingegnosa; essa è gradevole soprattutto fra cose diversissime, in cui nessuno sospetterebbe una connessione. Per questo sono vane le proposizioni identiche, in quanto ovvie e troppo omogenee. […] I dipinti con le ombre, e i canti con le dissonanze armonicamente composte, è noto che acquistino rilievo. […] In favore di Dio parla l’armonia del mondo, in favore del caso la confusione degli affari umani. Ma a chi guardi più nel profondo una confusione di sei volte mill’anni (per quanto neppur essa manchi di una sua armonia) paragonata con l’eternità, appare come una semplice nota dissonante che, compensata da altre dissonanze e restituita nell’armonia dell’intero, non fa che accrescere l’ammirazione per il Reggitore che, con la sua mente, abbraccia infinite cose.” 58. Leibniz (2003: 315-7; trad. 1951: 104). É significativo che la traduzione tedesca del testo originale latino leibniziano: “seu pernoscens universalis” sia: “den Grundzusammenhang der Dinge gründlich kennen.” 59. Leibniz (2003: 315-7; trad. 1951: 104). 60. Leibniz (1948: 14; trad. 2003: 99). 61. La lontananza di Leibniz da una visione competitiva e conflittuale della vita sociale e civile lascia le sue tracce anche nel pensiero politico liberale contemporaneo: si pensi al pragmatismo

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 194

linguistico trascendentale di Karl Otto Apel. Nella sua concezione dell’Apriori della comunicazione, egli riprende argomenti legati alle concezioni leibniziane relative all’intrinseca relazionalità dell’amicizia e dell’amore, da intendere come declinazione politica del concetto di armonia. La prima caratteristica dell’Apriori della comunicazione è estendere l’istanza universalistica non solo alle pretese di verità degli scienziati, bensì anche alle pretese virtuali dell’umanità, ossia a tutti i potenziali bisogni di tutti gli esseri umani. Parlare di potenziali bisogni di tutti gli esseri umani implica riflettere anche sull’accordo fra le innumerevoli istanze soggettive ed è in questo contesto che l’Apriori della comunicazione rimanda al principio pragmatista del self-surrender (auto-arresa o auto-limitazione). Il concetto di self-surrender ha il compito di limitare l’imporsi soggettivo-egoistico degli interessi a vantaggio della “transoggettività della [loro] rappresentanza argomentativa.” Si veda Apel (1973; trad. it. parziale 1997). Apel si ispira qui al socialismo logico di Ch. S. Peirce, ma in definitiva attinge ai presupposti leibniziani del liberalismo moderno, ossia a quel nodo problematico del rapporto fra utile e amore disinteressato affrontato da Leibniz nei suoi scritti di diritto naturale e in particolare nella differenziazione fra diritto privato e diritto civile pubblico. Una ricostruzione articolata del socialismo logico di Peirce e del suo influsso sulle teorie di Apel, priva, tuttavia, di un rimando ai suoi germi leibniziani logici e politici si trova in Wartenberg 1971. 62. Peirce (1991c: 150; trad. 2003: 1029). 63. Peirce (1991c: 150; trad. 2003: 1029). 64. Peirce (1991f: 353; trad. 2003: 1149). 65. Peirce (1991f: 353; trad. 2003: 1149). 66. Peirce (1991f: 353-4; trad. 2003: 1150). 67. Peirce (1991f: 357; trad. 2003: 1154). 68. Non possiamo inoltre tacere la diffidenza di Peirce nei confronti di alcune diramazioni dell’utilitarismo così amato dall’illuminismo francese in particolare da Voltaire: si tratta della critica che il filosofo americano rivolge a Mandeville e alla sua Favola delle api volta, come è noto, a mostrare come la comunità e la sua solidità si basino sui vizi privati del singolo. Peirce (1991f: 357; trad. 2003: 1153).

RIASSUNTI

This essay shows the logical interpretation of the perception in Peirce to highlight Leibniz’s influence on the conception of associative representation. This influence conditions Peirce’s interpretation of Kant’s intuitive apprehension and initiates the interpretation of the individual as essentially relational. That concept is deepened by Peirce’s studies on the logic of relations and even more on the logic of continuity. The relational individual is the key concept for a possible social-political interpretation of the continuous by Peirce. The relationship between individual and continuous, based on the notions of possible and relation, offers the model to conceive the ego as originally social. The relational nature of the individual is also analysed with reference to the doctrine of chances. In this context, it emerges clearly the relationship of logic with society and with Peirce’s political conceptions. This paradigm can also be traced back to the analyses by Leibniz (studies of natural law).

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 195

AUTORE

MARIANNINA FAILLA

Università degli Studi di Roma Tre mariannina.failla[at]uniroma3.it

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 196

Book Review

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 197

PADRÓN Charles & Krzysztof Piotr SKOWROŃSKI (eds), The Life of Reason in an Age of Terrorism Brill/Rodopi, Leiden-Boston, 2018, 266 pages

María Aurelia Di Berardino Translation : Leonardo de Rose

REFERENCES

PADRÓN Charles & Krzysztof Piotr SKOWROŃSKI (eds), The Life of Reason in an Age of Terrorism, Brill/Rodopi, Leiden-Boston, 2018, 266 pages

AUTHOR'S NOTE

This work is developed within the framework of the ffi2017-84781-p research project, which is co-funded by the AEI (Spain) and the FEDER (European Union).

1 More than one reader of George Santayana will approach the pages of this book with the same anxiety that led me to go through them: Could it be even possible to give account of a current burning problem, terrorism, with elements of the philosophy of that “detached” thinker? A problem, the one of terrorism, that as the editors of the book note, presents itself with an uncommon visceral intensity whose media coverage surpasses by far the one of other urgent topics (global warming, immigration, etc.)

2 This book joins in its pages two indefinable potentials: reason (such as it is conceived by Santayana) and terrorism. What this ordered display that buries its roots into chaos and instinct may exactly refer to, and how the kaleidoscopic reality of terrorism can be dissected, seem to meet here in a raw dialogue that refuses to take distance from the circumstances, at the same time that it prudently steps away in order to gain

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 198

perspective. It is a strategy worthy of Santayana that we find in these pages: sometimes producing ironies from the grave and, some others, generating strategies to help us understand (understanding ourselves) some passage of this maze. 3 The territory of this dialogic meeting (reason and terrorism) is run through by this tension that is a vague ghostly reflection of what the very reading of Santayana generates. We have seen him detached but not overwhelmed; we know him ironic and, at the same time, joyful of the unusual moments of lucidity in the history of the human animal; we think him deaf, but still with wide open eyes. This ambivalence will probably be better understood if we resort to an analogy: let us imagine that the multiple interpretations contained in the book represent an effort similar to the one made by a group of athletes who are ordered to keep jumping two steps away from an abyss. Only two rules that the organizer of this strange competence might have dreamed are suspected (Santayana): 1) not getting too close to the edge, and 2) not getting too far away from the edge. Violating rule number 1 constitutes “the” rule of some philosophies (those I call “philosophies of the urgency”). On the contrary, violating rule number 2 seems to be the recurring strategy of what could be called “philosophies of the distancing.” As a spectator of the tournament, I think that Santayana, the organizer, has always chosen to violate rule number 2). That is to say, he has chosen the ironic retreat to his own citadel: The philosophers and the nations cannot be happy unless they are separated; then they can only have a single purpose in their house and be tolerant in the street. If they possess a spirit worthy of being cultivated – which is not always the case –, they need to entrench it in some established citadel, in which it can reach its perfect expression. (Santayana, 2006, The Realms of Being, 17) 4 Nevertheless, someone might say that the game mentioned in the analogy presents a problem in the very formulation of its rules, which would disable any binary exclusive reading such as the one I have just offered: near/distant. After all, how many steps imply an “approach” and how many represent a “distancing”? Could it be that the interpretation of these rules depends, as in the case of dominations and powers, on who evaluates them? Is it thinkable that, being Santayana a philosopher of the distancing, he offers, in spite of himself, discursive strategies to face urgencies? Because, let me remind you, the issue (terrorism) is urgent, but our thinker seems not to be in a hurry, and to prefer the flight of the freed soul to the scream of the shipwrecked sailor.

5 In this light, the territory itself is a whole provocation that leads us to think that at times the tension is precisely that, a tension and, in that case, Santayana turns out to be a philosopher of the balance: he can calculate the steps in such a way that, as he mentions something interesting to understand terrorism – the urgent –, he sits back in his Poltrona armchair to see the sad show of the world – the invariant. 6 Going through these pages, I have got closer to the game containing the abyss of interpretations of this book. In that key, I think that some of them meet a balanced view of Santayana’s thinking; others insist on the distancing, but even then, they find reasons to reflect on the background of his philosophy; and others, why not, challenge the analogy, the view and the categories with which I read this happy provocation. 7 Jaquelyn Ann Kegley (“Forgetting and Remembering History: Memory and Self Identity ”) takes us closer to the phenomenon of terrorism from the memory/oblivion dynamic. This way, from her perspective, a good part of the terrorist’s task lies in the destruction

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 199

of history with the purpose of proposing new narrations and generating other identities. Two concerns lead Kegley’s proposal, namely: 1) why would terrorism deliberately try to “erase” memory and, consequently, to destroy history? And 2) which are the conditions of possibility for terrorism to be able to perform this task? The answers to what terrorism is will arise from Santayana’s work, as long as it allows us to ask ourselves: what are those things that prevent us from being morally free and from being exposed to an attack, which might well “erase” our history without having even started babbling about what this all has been about? 8 Herman Saatkamp Jr. (“The Life of Reason and Terrorism: Strategies”) sketches for us a Santayana that more than a “philosopher of the distancing” turns out to be a perfect sceptic. Saatkamp will pose out two questions regarding terrorism: What can we do? and what should we do? The author’s strategy will be to rebuild four movements of Santayana’s thinking to answer these questions (life of reason as an art, the possibility of a government that encourages it, the unpredictability of governments, and the monastic model). Santayana’s answer is individualistic, and, what is more, reason is ineffective. 9 Katarzyna Kremplewska (“Managing Necessity: Santayana on Forms of Power and the Human Condition”) offers an analysis of Santayana’s policy highlighting a hermeneutic tool which, for the authoress, constitutes Santayana’s legacy to understand some current political phenomena, namely management of necessity. It is a tool that, on the other hand, implies a class of anthropological, naturalistic hermeneutic of self- governance. This is a significantly methodological reading which places necessity between dominations and powers. 10 Charles Padrón (“Santayanan Reason, Terror and Terrorism, and the Everyday World”) wonders about the reach of Santayana’s distrust in the potentiality of reason. The answer he offers advances in the following direction: it supposes the evolution and the recalibration of that concept throughout Santayana’s life and work, which begins as an almost ubiquitous presence, to end as a brief perception of a murmur of nature. This fading away of the role of reason seems to render it quite ineffective against terrorism. 11 Eduardo Mendieta (“Assassination Nation: The Drone as Thanatological Dispositif”) inspires a philosophic taxonomy to shine a light on his reading of Santayana. He points out that there would be a way of writing the history of philosophy by making a distinction between pacifist philosophers and proponents of war. Stantayana is characterised here as a philosopher of war who, paradoxically, did not even thematise the real wars. 12 Luka Nicolić (“Santayana and the (Postmodern) Spirit of Terrorism”) explores the modifications that terrorism has generated in the societies threatened by it. He specifically focuses on the substantial change that the idea of “death” has suffered. While, for Santayana, death is conceived from the perspective of temporality, terrorism makes us think about the contingency of the moment of death. 13 Till Kinzel (“ Santayana, Self-Knowledge and the Limits of Politics”) analyses a peculiarity of the political life of the 21st century: the one of being the result of a deep disappointment about political organization in many countries. This state of affairs is a fertile ground to think about politics and its limits. In this text, Santayana will act as Cicerone in the attempt to rebuild a thought framed in a tradition of philosophical

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 200

modesty: a thought that is far from concrete political circumstances even though it stops to consider concepts such as those of freedom, democracy, and authority. 14 Daniel Moreno (“Santayana on Americanism”) will return to a problematic relationship between philosophy and politics in Santayana, namely philosophic distancing which is not – and cannot be understood as – political indifference. Leaving aside the fact that Santayana did not answer to the events he witnessed, Moreno understands that his philosophy does indeed belong to this world inasmuch as it can be set as a conceptual frame to delineate some solutions to the here and now. It is the essay Americanism that will guide Moreno’s reflections to give an account of this pretension of bringing Santayana’s flight down to earth 15 Matthew Caleb Flamm (“Liberalism and the Vertigo of Spirit: Santayana’s Political Theodicy”) develops Santayana’s political theodicy. According to Flamm, this author’s power lies in its interesting proposals about the origin and destiny of societies. This destiny conceals a paradox: having conquered matter, human beings feel more miserable every time. 16 Matteo Santarelli (“Dewey, Santayana, and ‘Ndrangheta: Understanding a Complex Phenomenon”) invites George Santayana and John Dewey to dine with the Calabrian mafia: the ‘Ndrangheta. Two things will appear as relevant here: on the one hand, the need to think organised crime philosophically; and on the other hand, the need to think it multifocally. Santayana’s contribution is related to his conception of the activistic order, specifically, in his characterization of what a faction is. The point that makes the direct association between the mafia and the activistic order difficult is that the mafia has updated (aggiornato) as an enterprise. However, behind the corporate shine, there remain aftertastes of both the old wars between clans and the existence of codes of honour – chivalry – which would allow for Santayanan reading. 17 Nóra Horváth’s interest (in “‘A Happy Snow-Flake Dancing in the Flaw’: Reflections on Santayanan Alternatives and Surviving a New Dark Age”) lies in giving an account, from Santayana, of a state of anxiety: that of the current changes in international politics. Some of the questions the authoress intends to answer are about the nature of what kind of political position to take and what to do at an individual and collective level; ultimately, how to face radicalism. Santayana will be understood here as a social critical philosopher, since he understands that political conditions originate in human ambitions. The political use of these ambitions may be prevented partly by resorting to self-knowledge and, partly, by promoting a political system ensuring the opportunities to take genuinely free decisions. 18 Giuseppe Patella (“Barbarism Begins at Home: Santayana and Barbarism in Art and Life ”) reflects on barbarism and its place in history. From Walter Benjamin to George Santayana, through Giambattista Vico, the author proposes that we understand the phenomenon of barbarism as a central component of any civilization. But he also proposes to understand barbarism in local terms; this means that every well understood barbarism begins at home. Patella will analyse Santayana’s conception of barbarism, which is closely linked to this author’s conception of art. In contrast to the barbaric idea of art for art’s sake (which exalts vehemence and abundance without questioning the consequences), his notion of art incorporates him into life and, by doing so, he is given back intelligence. Associating art with life becomes an antidote against barbarism.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 201

19 Daniel Pinkas (“Egotism, Violence and the Devil: On Santayana’s Use of the Concept of Egotism”) gives us a reading of egotism in Santayana, relating it to the resurgence of this topic in current psychology, and to its links with violence and aggression. In this way, he recovers those considerations that Santayana placed in his analysis of the German philosophy and egotism. This approach of Santayana to the transcendental philosophy also implies a possible relationship between egotism and Teutonic bellicosity. 20 José Beltrán Llavador (“A Religion without Fanaticism: Little Lessons of Wisdom from Santayana”) journeys through the history of Santayana’s education through his intellectual autobiography. This journey is the complete expression of an initial idea: behind any theory, there is a biography. From Persons and Places to The Realms of Being, Santayana displays his philosophical credo: spiritual materialism. Santayana’s actuality consists, in the author’s opinion, in leaving us a foldable manifest throughout all his work, or even, some materials to attain a state of utopia. The acknowledgement of barbaric elements in the existence is precisely the reason for dreaming of a possible better world. 21 Andrés Tutor (“Santayana on Pluralism, Relativism and Rationality”) intends to analyse the problem of the pluralism of values in Santayana’s socio-political writings. This becomes an indispensable procedure once Tutor defines terrorism as a conflict of values. In Santayana’s opinion, pluralism belongs to the realm of matter, and not to the one of essences. If the latter were the case, there would be no conflict of values, because essences do not admit contradiction among themselves. Therefore, Tutor will wonder if Santayana is even a relativist, and will offer, as part of his answer, a strategy that changes the axis of the discussion: he will propose the notion of “relationism” to state explicitly its values and plurality, according to Santayana. 22 Cayetano Estébanez (“Santayana’s Idea of Madness and Normal Madness in a Troubled Age”) will refer to the loss of the humanistic sense of life in the current world. This is a real loss of which Santayana has a lot to say from his philosophy. Especially, regarding (Nietzschean and contemporary) nihilism, Santayana represents a philosophical/poetic effort to explore the weight madness and normal madness have in our lives without sacrificing reason. Estébanez reminds us that, far from sinking into the egotism that he criticises so much, Santayana makes of this one an open approach – such as life itself –, towards which all his worries are directed. 23 Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński (“Santayana’s Philosophy of Education against Fanaticism and Barbarity”) approaches the reflections about education in Santayana’s work. The progress through philosophy, liberal arts, and humanities possibly constitutes the means to prevent or limit barbarism and fanaticism. It is true, Skowroński says, that there is no systematised corpus on education in Santayana. However, it is a research we owe ourselves and which can shed light on current events. Skowroński points out the fact that schooling becomes part of a broader humanistic project (the one of boosting individuals by encouraging creativity, harmonization of interests in conflict, imagination, and self-expression) which makes sense especially when we want to think about social and political matters seriously. That all-inclusive and humanistic project represents an alternative way to say that the possibility of thinking freely blocks, in principle, any domination.

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 202

AUTHORS

MARÍA AURELIA DI BERARDINO

Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina aure.diberardino[at]gmail.com

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 203

Pietro SALIS, Pratiche discorsive razionali: Studi sull’inferenzialismo di Robert Brandom Milano-Udine, Mimesis, 2016, 332 pages

Massimo Dell’Utri

REFERENCES

Pietro SALIS, Pratiche discorsive razionali: Studi sull’inferenzialismo di Robert Brandom, Milano-Udine, Mimesis, 2016, 332 pages

1 As the subtitle reveals, this is a book devoted to one of the most distinguished philosophers of our time, Robert Brandom, a thinker whose importance for the debate on topics such as meaning, truth, rationality, objectivity, agreement, holism, compositionality – to name just a few of them – is hardly deniable. Thousands among articles and books have been dedicated in the last two decades to the evaluation of Brandom’s thought, but still considerably few are the works in the Italian panorama dedicated to him. In this respect, Pietro Salis’s book remedies this – and greatly so. Indeed, the book not only gives us a perspicuous illustration of a multi-faceted philosophical system, carefully showing how its many features combine together, but highlights what turned out to be its controversial points, discussing them in full and putting forward original solutions to them. An essential Brandom with improvements, we might say.

2 Accordingly, the book divides into two parts. The former lays down the foundations of Brandom’s inferentialist program – based on the idea that the content of thoughts and the meaning of sentences are a result of our inferential abilities and the social practices these abilities engender. Not any inference is relevant in this respect, though. Only “materially good inferences” can serve the purpose of giving content and meaning to our utterances, because what we are talking about here are not just the inferences

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 204

logically valid – the ones analyzed by logicians on a purely formal ground – but the ones that can be considered good on the basis of the non-logical concepts they involve. Moreover, the inferences at the center of Brandom’s system are nonmonotonic, i.e. inferences in which new premises can affect the validity of an argument involving them. And this is another trait that distances this kind of inferences from the ones of classical logic. Relying then on what he calls “Frege’s pragmatic principle” – according to which when a person asserts a sentence, she commits herself to the truth of the sentence, implicitly acknowledging that, if challenged, she must give a reason in favor of her assertion – Brandom develops his celebrated illustration of the activity known as “giving and asking for reasons.” This is a particular linguistic game in which a speaker, for the sheer fact of making an assertion, takes a commitment before her (actual and potential) interlocutors: the commitment towards the truth of the assertion. It therefore follows that, if the speaker is able to give a justification for what she said, then she gains an entitlement to her assertion. In their turn, commitments and entitlements determine a score that has to be assigned to the assertions in a given discursive practice. Salis stresses how Brandom’s is a systematic conception of the human discursive practice, and how the special linguistic game of giving and asking for reasons is what rationality amounts to. This is what allows Brandom to claim that human rationality possesses an inherent pragmatic character. 3 The first part of the book ends with an explanation of what the notions of representation and reference are within Brandom’s inferentialist framework. According to Salis, here resides one of the most original features of the framework, in that it does completely without primitive notions of reference, truth and representation in the account of meaning and discursive practice, thereby setting itself against large part of the received view – which is decidedly representationalist. This is what makes Brandom one of the leading anti-representationalist philosophers nowadays, arranging the stage for a bold alternative explanation of the representational dimension of our assertions: “the intentional directionality of thought and language, in Brandom’s perspective, is clarified thanks to a particular de re conception of propositional attitudes ascriptions” (16). This is particularly important considering the danger inferentialism must avoid of putting human rationality on a mere linguistic basis, quite irrespectively of the world. So, let us briefly see what this de re conception of propositional attitudes ascriptions amounts to, given that it is the central element in Brandom’s task of reconstructing the notions of representation and reference on expressivist grounds. 4 The just mentioned danger is quite clear to Salis. Indeed, he stresses how the notion of materially good inference is not enough to dispel the risk of subjectivism and relativism, since this kind of inference is based on the “perspectival character of the individual epistemic and doxastic commitments” (96), and it is just that risk that that perspectival character paves the way for. Relying on the well-known distinction Quine drew between de dicto (to believe that) and de re (to believe of) ascriptions of propositional attitudes, and having clarified that usually we use a de re ascription when we want to make explicit an implicit divergence between our commitments and the ones made by our interlocutors, Brandom suggests “a methodical transformation of the (referentially opaque) de dicto ascriptions into the (referentially transparent) de re ascriptions by means of which differentiate one’s own commitments from the others’ via the reference to factual data” (103). This transformation is particularly useful in cases of misunderstandings and ambiguities: it is in cases like these that the de re

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 205

ascriptions can make explicit what a speaker’s statement is about, clarifying commitments and entitlements and updating the deontic score. Accordingly, such a transformation is able to guarantee a satisfactory foothold for the evaluation of our arguments, because it would place our assertions within a verifiable – thus debatable – domain. The description of the theoretical link connecting the de re ascriptions of propositional attitudes to the inferentialist conception of meaning – a link centered on the key notion of substitution – is one of the greatest merits of Salis’s analysis. 5 The second part of the book contains four essays on some hotly debated topics linked to inferentialism: Brandom’s version of alethic deflationism, the relationship between inferentialism and semantic holism, its relationship to compositionality, and the notion of objectivity. All the essays aim at defending Brandom’s stance, and they manage to do this by means of what proves to be interesting original arguments. 6 Just to give an example of how hotly these topics are debated, let us give a quick look at Brandom’s understanding of truth and what a possible qualm may be raised about it. Salis introduces it in the course of his account of the difference which separates Brandom’s inferentialism from Michael Dummett’s justificationism. As is well-known, Dummett advanced a fierce criticism to the traditional non-epistemic conception of truth (and so does Brandom), claiming that it is useless in order to explain how speakers grasp the meaning of the linguistic expression they use. Truth must be something that we epistemically master, according to Dummett, and subscribing to an epistemic conception of truth led him to embrace anti-realism, given that in his perspective what reality amounts to follows from our demonstrative and justificatory abilities. Brandom, however, opts for alethic deflationism, an option opposed to Dummett’s – because alethic deflationism utterly denies that truth can be an “explanatory” concept, thereby denying that, e.g., it can enter in an explanation of the meaning of linguistic expressions. Salis illustrates the features that differentiate Brandom’s from other varieties of alethic deflationism – Brandom’s is a version of the so-called prosentential theory of truth: anaphoric deflationism. Among these features there is “maintaining a dimension that transcends the subjective and intersubjective acknowledgment of what is true” (128): this would allow the prosentential theory of truth to save a typical realist intuition, i.e. the idea according to which the way things stand might be independent from what we know or can in principle know about them. Indeed, philosophers endorsing the prosentential theory deem it “possible to clearly and explicitly distinguish the dimension of truth from that of justification” (128). This is revealed by sentences that have the same circumstances of application, but different consequences of application. It is correct to assert “I will marry Ophelia” in the same circumstances in which it is correct to assert “I believe I will marry Ophelia,” so that both share the same justifications for their assertion, but a priori they do not have the same consequences of application. If Ophelia unfortunately died in a week or so, the former sentence would be false, whereas the latter would still be adequate in the moment it was uttered. And this, according to Salis, shows the transcendental character of “true” in respect of “justified”: “the only justifications supporting an assertion are not sufficient to account for its meaning” (129) and truth – contrary to Dummett. 7 Now, I think that the transcendental dimension is a very important feature of truth that, however, the prosententialists are unable to give an account for. This happens because the prosentential theory of truth (and alethic deflationism in general) is neutral

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 206

toward that transcendental dimension. If Brandom manages to explain this dimension, as he does, it is thanks to his particular version of inferentialism. It is inferentialism that helps making a distinction between the justifications an assertion can currently have and the justifications it can have in principle, as Salis himself beautifully shows elsewhere in the book. The inferential role of a sentence S, according to Brandom, “does not simply boil down to the justifications Js for S, but extends also to its consequences Cs” (124): we may discover in the future that the inferences we are accustomed to use regarding S are different, and find ourselves in the need of changing our inferential use of S. This suffices to speak of a realist character of Brandom’s inferentialism. After all Brandom himself, Salis recalls, applies the term “conceptual realism” to the metaphysical position stemming from his inferentialism: “the idea according to which reality is already conceptually structured, and our knowledge of reality extends so far as our grasp of the concepts that we use in order to describe and understand it finds a space” (124; cf. also 198). So, it is inferentialism, not prosententialism, that possesses the necessary resources to do justice to the “structural gap between truth and justification” (129). Of course, this gap should be recognized at the level of truth as well, and failing to do this might reveal a weak spot in prosententialism. 8 However, Salis may have a rejoinder to this. Since truth is – as we may sensibly claim – the most objective concept we have, and since the final chapter of the book is devoted to the task of averting the charge of subjectivism that might be raised toward Brandom’s inferentialism, an argument in favor of the suitability of prosententialism for vindicating the realist character of truth may derive from the arguments of that final chapter. So let us see what Salis says on behalf of Brandom there. 9 The challenge facing inferentialism (the one we have been considering above) is something Brandom is quite aware of, and “becomes to say how the commitments and entitlements involved can be understood to have conceptual contents that are objective in the sense of not reducing to what someone or everyone is committed or entitled to” (Brandom, Reply to Bob Hale and Crispin Wright’s “Assertibilist Truth and Objective Content,” in B. Weiss & J. Wanderer (eds), Reading Brandom: On Making It Explicit, Milton Park, Routledge, 2010, 361). Meeting this challenge would then suffice to show that inferentialism can intelligibly distinguish between “being right and merely believing one is right” (194), making enough room for a notion of objectivity that does not come down to intersubjectivity – let alone subjectivism. Salis’s strategy is ingenious: he starts admitting that not only the subjectivist danger is facilitated by the perspectival nature of speakers’ commitments, but it is even worsened by the nonmonotonic and counterfactually robust character of material inference itself. Indeed, what this character brings about are strong epistemic asymmetries among participants in the discursive practice, due to the contribute of a specialist nature made by experts within that practice, which gives rise to an imbalance among the commitments participants undertake. Therefore, Salis notices, at first blush Brandom’s deontic scorekeeping model might appear epistemically inadequate, since those asymmetries seem to require additional expressive resources. As a matter of fact, however, this is not the case: on closer inspection, the purported additional expressive resources turn out to be internal to the dynamic of the game of giving and asking for reasons. From this more refined perspective, both the afore-mentioned asymmetries and the imbalance they trigger guarantee an expressive surplus to the discursive interactions in the practice, showing the existence of a transcendental notion of objectivity functioning as a sort of

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019 207

regulative ideal of epistemic progress. But – and this is the chief point made by Salis – since this transcendental idea of objectivity is structurally embedded in the discursive practice, Brandom’s model appears to be “perfectly capable of reaching the very idea of objectivity” (207), defeating once and for all the charge of subjectivism. 10 How could all this have an impact on Brandom’s notion of truth? It seems to me that whether or not the idea of objectivity stemming from the discursive practice is attributable to truth itself remains controversial, and so remains the further question regarding whether or not this move would be tantamount to recognize an explicative nature to truth, not only an expressive one. However, what is certain is that Salis’s book is a great contribution to the debate on this and other deep topics currently at the center of the philosophical discussion.

AUTHORS

MASSIMO DELL’UTRI

University of Sassari dellutri[at]uniss.it

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019