Pragmatism: An Old Name for Some New Ways of Thinking? Author(s): James T. Kloppenberg Source: The Journal of American History, Vol. 83, No. 1 (Jun., 1996), pp. 100-138 Published by: Organization of American Historians Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2945476 . Accessed: 27/07/2011 13:56 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=oah. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Organization of American Historians is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of American History. http://www.jstor.org Pragmatism:An Old Name forSome New Waysof Thinking? JamesT. Kloppenberg WilliamJames was stuck. Facing the publication of Pragmatism in 1907,he had to decidewhether to stressthe novelty of his philosophyor itscontinuity with earlierideas. James joked that pragmatism would launch "something quite like theprotestant reformation" and predictedthat it wouldbe "thephilosophy of thefuture." Yet he alsobelieved that he andhis fellow pragmatists were building on a foundationlaid byphilosophers from Socrates to theBritish empiricists. To softenthe blowhe was aboutto deliver,James dedicated Pragmatism to the memoryof the venerated John Stuart Mill and addedthe subtitle A NewName forSome Old Waysof Thinking, hoping that such a pedigreemight restrain those inclinedto denouncehis progeny. As myinversion of James's subtitle suggests, a historianseeking to analyzeand explainthe currentrevival of pragmatism confrontsthe same question James faced: Have contemporary pragmatists resur- rectedthe ideas of earlierthinkers or rejectedeverything but the name?' Thereturn of pragmatism is something of a surprise.When David A. Hollinger recountedthe career of pragmatism in theJournal of American History in 1980, he notedthat pragmatism had all but vanishedfrom American historiography duringthe previousthree decades. In 1950,Hollinger recalled, Henry Steele Commagerhad proclaimedpragmatism "almost the officialphilosophy of America";by 1980, in Hollinger'sjudgment, commentators on American culture had learnedto get alongjust finewithout it. "If pragmatismhas a future," Hollingerconcluded, "it will probably look very different from its past, and the twomay not evenshare a name."Yet pragmatismtoday is not onlyalive and JamesT. Kloppenbergis associateprofessor of historyat BrandeisUniversity. For stimulatingconversation and criticism,I am gratefulto Susan Armeny,Thomas Bender, Casey Blake, David Depew, John Diggins, RichardFox, Giles Gunn, Peter Hansen, David Hollinger,Hans Joas,James Livingston,Timothy Peltason, Am6lie Oksenberg Rorty, Dorothy Ross, CharleneHaddock Seigfried,Richard Shusterman,David Thelen, RobertWestbrook, and Joan Williams.I am particularlyindebted to RichardJ. Bernsteinand RichardRorty for their generosity. ' WilliamJames to HenryJames, May 4, 1907, in The Lettersof WilliamJames, ed. HenryJames (2 vols., New York, 1920), II, 279; WilliamJames to TheodoreFlournoy, Jan. 2, 1907, in Ralph BartonPerry, The Thoughtand Characterof WilliamJames: As Revealedin UnpublishedCorrespondence and Notes, Together withHis PublishedWritings (2 vols., Boston,1935), II, 452-53. Jamestraced pragmatism to its ancientroots in WilliamJames, Pragmatism: A New Namefor Some Old Waysof Thinking(1907; Cambridge,Mass., 1978), 30-31. Ibid., 3. 100 The Journalof AmericanHistory June 1996 Pragmatism:An Old Namefor Some New Ways of Thinking? 101 well, it is ubiquitous.2 Referencesto pragmatismoccur with dizzying frequency fromphilosophy to socialscience, from the study of literatureto thatof ethnicity, fromfeminism to legal theory.As Hollingerpredicted, much of thispragmatism looksvery different from the originalversion. Some postmodernistsare attracted to pragmatismbecause it offersa devastatingcritique of all philosophicalfounda- tionsand justifiesa wide-ranginglinguistic skepticism against all claimsof objectiv- ity,consensus, and truth.So conceived,as a speciesof postmodernismrather than as an updated versionof the quest fortruth that James identified with Socrates and Mill,pragmatism has indeed becomean old name fornew waysof thinking. In thisessay I advancethree arguments: First, the early pragmatists emphasized 'experience,"whereas some contemporary philosophers and criticswho have taken "the linguisticturn" are uneasywith that concept. Second, the earlypragmatists believedtheir philosophical ideas had particularethical and politicalconsequences, whereassome contemporarythinkers who call themselvespragmatists consider it merelya methodof analysis.Third, the currentcontroversy about pragmatism mattersprofoundly to historians.At stakeis not merelythe historicalmeaning of early-twentieth-centurypragmatism, important as thatissue is forintellectual history.Looming even larger for historians in contemporarydebates about pragma- tismare implicitquestions about our practiceof historicalscholarship. Two rival campsare struggling over the legacy of pragmatism. Early-twentieth-century prag- matistsenvisioned a modernistdiscourse of democraticdeliberation in which communitiesof inquiry tested hypotheses in orderto solveproblems; such contem- porarypragmatists as RichardJ.Bernstein and HilaryPutnam sustain that tradition. Othercontemporaries such as RichardRorty and StanleyFish present pragmatism as a postmodernistdiscourse of criticalcommentary that denies that we can escape the conventionsand contingenciesof languagein orderto connectwith a world of experienceoutside texts, let alone solve problemsin that world.Connecting withexperience is preciselywhat we historiansattempt to do. These controversies overpragmatism old and neware thus tied directly to thelegitimacy of our practice in studyingthe past and to the claimsof our communityof inquiryabout the significanceof the past forthe present. Experienceand Language The earlypragmatists sought to reorientphilosophy away from interminable and fruitlessdebates by insistingthat ideas should be testedin practice.As partof theiroverall commitment to problemsolving, their conception of experience linked the philosophiesof WilliamJames and JohnDewey, the pragmatistswho most powerfullyinfluenced American culture during the firsthalf of the twentieth 2 David A. Hollinger,"The Problemof Pragmatismin AmericanHistory,"Journal of AmericanHistory, 67 (June 1980), 88, 107. Fiveyears later Hollinger cheerfully admitted that his obituaryhad been premature.See David A. Hollinger,In theAmerican Province: Studies in theHistory and Historiographyof Ideas (Bloomington, 1985), 23, 25, 43. A splendidsurvey is RichardJ. Bernstein,"The Resurgenceof Pragmatism,"Social Research, 59 (Winter1992), 813-40. 102 TheJournal of American History June1996 century.3What did Jamesand Dewey mean by experience?Both rejectedthe dualisms-the separationof the mind fromthe body, and of the subjectfrom the object-that had dividedidealists from empiricists since Rene Descartesand JohnLocke. They were equally scornful of nineteenth-century idealists' infatuation withintrospection and positivists'reduction of all philosophicalquestions to matter and motion.Instead they preferred other metaphors such as "field"or "stream" or ''circuit"to suggestthe continuityand meaningfulnessof consciousnessthat had eluded bothempiricists and rationalists;their "radical empiricism" rested on theirrevised concept of consciousness.Immediate experience as James and Dewey conceivedof it is alwaysrelational (it neverexists in the abstractor in isolation froma worldcontaining both other persons and concreterealities, as did Descartes's rationalistcogito), creative (it nevermerely registers sense data passively,as did Locke'sempiricist tabula rasa), and imbuedwith historically specific cultural values (it is never"human" or universal,but alwayspersonal and particular).Pragmatists distrustedall formsof foundationalism,all attemptsto establishphilosophy on unchanginga priori postulates.Rather than groundingvalues in the bedrockof timelessabsolutes, they urged us to evaluateall of our beliefs-philosophical, scientific,religious, ethical, and political- beforethe test they considered the most demandingof all: our experienceas social and historicalbeings.4 The earlypragmatists' conception of testingthe truthof ideas in experience igniteda firestorm of controversythat continuesto rage. Philosopherssuch as BertrandRussell, George Santayana, Josiah Royce, and ArthurLovejoy immediately targetedJames. Cultural critics such as RandolphBourne, Van WyckBrooks, and LewisMumford and partisansof naturallaw such as (the erstwhilepragmatist) WalterLippmann and MortimerAdler