John Jacob Kaag Pragmatism & the lessons ofexperience Experience has lessons to impart. Its gled and painful.” Philosophy ought to ability to teach, however, turns on our be understood, they thought, as the re- willingness to learn. Attending to the sult of human beings thinking through lessons of human experience brought the meaningful questions of living as American pragmatists of the nineteenth embodied, thoughtful organisms. These century to a new conception of philoso- questions can never be purely cerebral; phy, one that embraced the fallibilism they are laden with emotion, careful- that had long de½ned the natural sci- ly negotiated in daily life, and pressed ences. It led them back to the abiding upon us in moments of personal and existential questions that underpinned social crisis–always, therefore, empir- the Wisdom Traditions of the past in ically conditioned and experiential. Ex- order to explore the personal, social, perience was to replace pure reason as and political trials of the present. These American pragmatism’s enduring lode- thinkers established a new intellectual stone. tradition that allows us to “learn from Pragmatism took the reconstruction experience.”1 of experience as its principal task: the Classical pragmatism stood against only way to respond effectively to the di- the prevailing current of European phi- lemma that philosophy faced in the early losophy, which continued to be motivat- years of the twentieth century. In 1907, ed by Immanuel Kant’s insistence that William James called it the “present di- philosophy should be concerned with lemma,” but it now is more accurate to the limits and conditions of “pure rea- call it a perennial one. It is the crisis that son,” that is, reason devoid of empiri- philosophy faces when it jeopardizes its cal content. In contrast, American intel- own relevance. Academic philosophy lectuals such as Charles Sanders Peirce, has spent the better part of the past William James, Jane Addams, Ella Ly- century earning a deservedly bad repu- man Cabot, and John Dewey held that tation. Since the time of Socrates and philosophy should concern itself with Aristophanes, philosophy has been ac- the messiness of human meaning, which cused of being only loosely tethered to James acknowledged as “various, tan- the world of human affairs, and today the string appears to have been severed © 2009 by the American Academy of Arts completely. As Dewey noted in 1917, & Sciences the “recovery of philosophy” is only Dædalus Spring 2009 63 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/daed.2009.138.2.63 by guest on 01 October 2021 John Jacob possible if philosophers are willing to teenth century, but the young Peirce still Kaag take a stand with the sciences, and a concluded, “[W]ithout beating longer variety of other academic disciplines, round the bush . experience is our only on the ground of human experience. teacher.”3 At times this teacher seems to Experience: the term reverberates as know only one pedagogical method: the a noun, a verb, and ultimately as a com- often painful process of trial and error. mand. While Bertrand Russell, echoing Modern philosophy, beginning with the sentiment of traditional empiricism, Descartes, had been de½ned by the reduced experience to a description of search for absolute and enduring prin- “sense-data,” the classical pragmatists ciples that might serve as the founda- insisted that human experience is de- tion of human knowledge. In contrast, ½ned by a particular qualitative dimen- Peirce echoed Ralph Waldo Emerson sion; by its purpose, effect, and the liv- by suggesting that experience happens ing memory of past experiences. Expe- as a “series of surprises” and continual- rience is not merely something under- ly–inevitably–de½es the theories and gone, but also, and always, something principles that attempt to describe it.4 actively done. Dewey’s Experience and Peirce’s anti-foundationalism, however, Nature (1925) suggests that a human be- did not signal the ultimate bankruptcy ing, like any other organism, continu- of the empirical and theoretical sciences. ally transacts with its natural surround- Unlike many relativists of the twentieth ings, and this observation serves as the century, he did not regard uncertainty starting point of pragmatic naturalism. and fallibility as postulates that proved For human beings, however, Dewey the futility of analytic disciplines; rath- presents this natural transaction not as er, insights achieved in the midst of in- a mere fact of existence, but an ongoing quiry kept these disciplines on the move. question concerning the transaction’s “The pragmatist knows,” wrote Peirce, origin, history, process, and destination. “that doubt is an art which has to be ac- While pragmatism maintained a sci- quired through dif½culty.”5 The belief enti½c bearing, it was quite careful not that doubt is not something given, but to succumb to scientism. Dewey, ame- something carefully acquired, distin- nable to the studies of psychology, biol- guishes him from strains of contem- ogy, and early cognitive neuroscience, porary relativism, as well as the unbri- nonetheless held that these disciplines dled skepticism that de½ned the Carte- did not give us absolute answers, only sian system. The Cambridge pragma- useful perspectives on the variety and tists dismissed the radical doubt of Des- novelty that de½ne our transactions cartes, insisting that meaningful skep- with the affairs of nature. James, the ticism could never be cultivated ex situ, father of experimental psychology in beyond the constraints of a pressing America, conceded, “[E]xperience as and immediate situation. we know, has ways of boiling over and Indeed the situation, indeterminate making us correct our present formu- and confused, provides the occasion for las.”2 Following his father Benjamin genuine philosophic inquiry. Dewey ex- Peirce, C. S. Peirce made a name in plains, “[T]o set up a problem that does mathematics and physics before cul- not grow out of an actual situation is to tivating a reputation in philosophy. start on a course of dead work,” and to He studied under the foremost mathe- arrive rather quickly at the dead end maticians and physicists of the nine- of “busy work.” Dewey’s observation 64 Dædalus Spring 2009 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/daed.2009.138.2.63 by guest on 01 October 2021 changed the ground rules for philoso- negotiate the twists and turns of experi- Pragmatism phy. No longer were thinkers meant to ence. Pragmatism entails the cultivation & the les- sons of retreat to their salons and ivory towers of a sensitivity to our surroundings, both experience in order to raise questions that would local and remote. James echoes Ralph never be negotiated in the world of ex- Waldo Emerson’s insistence that we at- perience. Instead they were challenged tune ourselves to the “slightest sensorial to engage the world and set upon prob- nuance.” In this respect, certainty and lems, in order to face questions that truth are not relative terms, but provision- ought to be negotiated–no small chal- al guides that help us “feel out” the tran- lenge. This is never simply a matter of sient flow of experience and the possibil- uncovering a question that lays in wait ity that it affords. for us. According to Dewey, determin- ing a “problematic situation” is an ac- Human experience is transient; its tive process of creation and discovery. lessons are fleeting. For all of its un- A problem arises in the midst of investi- certainty, experience assures us of one gation and serves as the pivot between thing: it will be over soon. This is the the indeterminacy of the present state hardest teaching that experience has and the determinacy that one seeks as to offer, and it is the enduring one the end of inquiry. Once a problem is around which the history of Western identi½ed, James suggests that we are philosophy has turned. American prag- able to “unstiffen all our theories, lim- matism could not make human experi- ber them up and set each one to work.”6 ence central to its philosophy without Not surprisingly, the growing num- attending to the torturous course of ber of non-philosophers who claim the experience and its starkly abrupt end. title of “pragmatist” often do so in light James, along with his colleague Josiah of comments such as James’s, which in- Royce, sought to re-center philosophy dicate that theoretical progress ought to around the hard fact of human ½nitude. be measured in terms of it instrumen- Early American thinkers, such as Rog- tal consequences. Pragmatism gets stuff er Williams (1603–1683) and Jonathan done, and if one’s thought effects any Edwards (1703–1758), established hu- type of change in the “real world,” then man fragility and terminality as focal that thinker is a pragmatist–or so the points of their respective philosophies. story goes. However, this version of the By the 1890s, as pragmatism began to story misconstrues the meaning of prag- hit its stride, life in New England had matism and jeopardizes the future of grown considerably easier, but human the tradition in America. Dewey, James, ½nitude remained fodder for American and Peirce did not advocate unreflective thinkers. Ella Lyman Cabot, a philoso- instrumentalism. When James suggests pher who worked closely with Royce that we set our theories to work, he does and James at the turn of the century, not suggest that we ram abstract expla- put it thus: “What is our Life? A sleep nations into the face of a relatively unac- and a forgetting, a happy rising and a commodating world. The world, not our painful setting.”7 Cabot knew that the theories, will inevitably win in this sort experience of life is the all-too-hasty of confrontation.