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Contemporary Pragmatism Contemporary Pragmatism Editors John R. Shook Center for Inquiry Transnational, USA Paulo Ghiraldelli, Jr. Centro de Estudos em Filosofia Americana, Brazil Editorial Board Susana de Castro Amaral, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Randall Auxier, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, USA James Bohman, Saint Louis University, USA Randall Dipert, University at Buffalo, USA Pascal Engel, Université Paris IV–Sorbonne, France Jose Miguel Esteban, Universidad Autonoma del Estado de Morelos, Mexico Nancy Frankenberry, Dartmouth College, USA Jim Garrison, Virginia Tech University, USA Eddie Glaude, Princeton University, USA Russell Goodman, University of New Mexico, USA Susan Haack, University of Miami, USA Leoni Henning, Universidade Estadual de Londrina, Brazil Susan Hurley, University of Warwick, Great Britain Robert Kane, University of Texas, USA Paul Kurtz, Center for Inquiry Transnational, USA John Lachs, Vanderbilt University, USA Alvaro Marquez-Fernandez, Universidad del Zulia, Venezuela Joseph Margolis, Temple University, USA James Marshall, University of Auckland, New Zealand Glenn McGee, Albany Medical Center, New York, USA Floyd Merrell, Purdue University, USA Cheryl Misak, University of Toronto, Canada Lucius Outlaw, Jr., Vanderbilt University, USA Michael Peters, University of Auckland, Austr.; University of Glasgow, Scotland Huw Price, University of Sydney, Australia Hilary Putnam, Harvard University, USA Bjørn Ramberg, University of Oslo, Norway Mike Sandbothe, Aalborg University, Denmark Jeffrey Stout, Princeton University, USA Claudine Tiercelin, L’Université de Paris-XII, France Celal Türer, Erciyes University, Turkey Bas van Fraassen, Princeton University, USA Marcus Vinícius da Cunha, Universidade de São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil Cornel West, Princeton University, USA Contemporary Pragmatism is affiliated with the International Pragmatism Society. See information for subscribers and contributors on the inside back cover. CONTEMPORARY PRAGMATISM Edited by John R. Shook and Paulo Ghiraldelli, Jr. Volume 4 Number 2 December 2007 Amsterdam – New York, NY, 2007 The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and Documentation – Paper for documents – Requirements for permanence” ISSN: 1572-3429 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam – New York, NY, 2007 Printed in The Netherlands Contemporary Pragmatism Volume 4 Number 2 December 2007 Contents Symposium on Robert Westbrook’s Democratic Hope: Pragmatism and the Politics of Truth Brendan Hogan Guest Editor Introduction 1 Eric MacGilvray Pragmatism and the Epistemic Defense of Democracy 3 Brendan Hogan Translating Democracy or Democratic Acts of Translation: On Cornel West’s Democracy Matters 11 Robert Talisse Two Democratic Hopes 19 Robert Westbrook Replies to Symposium Participants 29 Articles Judith Green On The Passing of Richard Rorty and the Future of American Philosophy 35 Colin Koopman Rorty’s Moral Philosophy for Liberal Democratic Culture 45 Tom Spector Dewey and Dancy and the Moral Authority of Rules 65 Elizabeth Baeten Embedded and Embodied Moral Life 77 Rick Werner Pragmatism for Pacifists 93 Book Reviews Douglas McDermid Review of Richard Rorty, Philosophy as Cultural Politics: Philosophical Papers, Volume 4. 117 Gregory Pappas Review of John R. Shook and Joseph Margolis, eds., A Companion to Pragmatism 120 Contemporary Pragmatism Editions Rodopi Vol. 4, No. 2 (December 2007), 1–2 © 2007 Guest Editor Introduction to a Symposium on Robert Westbrook’s Democratic Hope: Pragmatism and the Politics of Truth Brendan Hogan This symposium on Robert Westbrook’s John Dewey and American Democracy explores the continuing relevance of pragmatism for democratic political theory. Robert Westbrook’s John Dewey and American Democracy, published in 1991, was a rare book insofar as it was hailed by intellectuals whose disciplinary aims were very different from each other.1 As the commentators on the back of the book indicated, scholars working in sociology, English, and philosophy all had reason to turn to this work in addition to those in Westbrook’s own field of history. Besides offering a compelling narrative, John Dewey and American Democracy also contained arguments that convincingly demonstrated theses concerning a variety of longstanding debates regarding Dewey’s theory of education, his social philosophy, and his political theory. Far from being a strictly historical document, the text showed the relevance of Dewey’s philosophy to contemporary democratic theory. Specifically, by relating Dewey to issues that have emerged in the New Left and more generally in political discourse concerning the norms of democracy, as well as by emphasizing Dewey’s pluralism, did John Dewey and American Democracy serve as a major touchstone in pragmatism’s “renewal.” These democratic theoretic strands of this rich work are most pertinent in approaching Westbrook’s latest effort at working out the consequences of pragmatism, Democratic Hope: Pragmatism and the Politics of Truth.2 In Democratic Hope, Westbrook extends the investigation into pragma- tism and the relationship between democracy and philosophy. Specifically, two questions, regarding the political valence of pragmatism and the relationship of truth to politics, and more specifically to democracy, drive this text. These questions are asked of the classical pragmatists Peirce, James, and Dewey, and brought into a more contemporary context through Sidney Hook and the question of pragmatism’s relationship to Marxism. Westbrook extends these questions of democracy and philosophy to contemporary neopragmatism. Cornel 2 BRENDAN HOGAN West, Hilary Putnam, Cheryl Misak, and the late Richard Rorty are all brought into the conversation by Westbrook’s inquiry into the resources that contemporary thinkers in the pragmatic vein have to address the problems of humans and not just the problems of philosophers. Specifically, Westbrook employs Cheryl Misak’s arguments for the “truth-aptness” of moral claims in his argument for a political valence to philosophical pragmatism. In addition he argues for a commitment to a set of practices that foster the habits necessary to carry out the kind of discourse that achieving the truth claims that a truth apt moral discourse is committed. These practices bear a normative family resemblance to those put forward by advocates of fostering the public virtues of civic republicanism. The critics assembled for this symposium are reflective of the interdisciplinary scope and impact of Westbrook’s work. That a historian has produced such a rich source of reflection on themes central to pragmatic self- understanding as truth, democracy, and politics is another testament to the author’s ongoing ability to contribute to the discourse of pragmatism in varying registers in the same book. It is also fitting given the varieties of interests and contributions the classical pragmatists made to American intellectual life. Eric MacGilvray and Brendan Hogan both query the role, resources, and desirability for the epistemological justification in democratic theory, and specifically in Democratic Hope. Robert Talisse argues that the resources for pragmatic democratic theory cannot be drawn from the Deweyan stream of pragmatism given its commitment to both substantive goods on the one hand, and pluralism on the other. Robert Westbrook’s replies take into consideration these criticisms, extending his argument for democratic hope that is supportable by practices committed to the implicit commitment to moral claims that are truth-apt. NOTES 1. Robert Westbrook, John Dewey and American Democracy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991). 2. Robert Westbrook, Democratic Hope: Pragmatism and the Politics of Truth (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005). Brendan Hogan Assistant Professor of Philosophy Philosophy Department Harstad 112 Pacific Lutheran University Tacoma, Washington 98447 United States Contemporary Pragmatism Editions Rodopi Vol. 4, No. 2 (December 2007), 3–9 © 2007 Pragmatism and the Epistemic Defense of Democracy Eric MacGilvray Robert Westbrook argues in Democratic Hope that for the pragmatist “all believers [must] be democrats simply by virtue of their desire to assert their beliefs as true,” and that they must therefore “open their beliefs to the widest possible range of experience and inquiry.” I argue against this view that doubt, not belief, lies at the center of the pragmatic theory of inquiry, and that our beliefs can be placed into doubt only by those whom we consider to be epistemically reliable. It follows that any connection between pragmatism and democracy must be empirical and not conceptual in nature. When I first became interested in pragmatism more than ten years ago, one of the first books that I turned to was Robert Westbrook’s seminal intellectual biography of John Dewey, John Dewey and American Democracy.1 It provided me with an invaluable road map through Dewey’s dauntingly large and wide- ranging corpus, the dauntingly wide range of political movements and figures that he was associated with, and the dauntingly complicated question of the relationship between his life and his thought. As I worked my way through Dewey’s writings over the next several years, I would often turn to Westbrook’s book for help in clarifying Dewey’s ideas, placing them within their proper context, and getting a sense of what I should look at next. It is still not at all uncommon for me to reach for it when I need to brush up on some point of
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