The Spirit of American Philosophy: Both/And

i was intrigued when the call for papers for this special issue dedicated to Richard J. Bernstein came out. I especially wanted to write something on understanding pragmatism “not as a canon at all, but rather as a living, evolving movement.”1 But as I thought about it, the either/or nature of the proposed topic struck me as unpragmatic. One common pragmatist move is to replace either/or propositions with both/and. That is what I would like to discuss here. The call noted three “key distortions” that Bernstein wants us to rethink. The first is a tendency toward essentialist definitions of pragmatism and debates about who “really counts as a pragmatist.” The second distortion worried that there is a kind of canonization that follows from essentialist definitions of pragmatism. Bernstein worried that this excluded women, Black thinkers, and many working outside of philosophy departments. And then the third concern related to many not understanding pragmatism as a critique of America and this resulted in not understanding pragmatism as a “a living, evolving movement.” The call for papers then invited three kinds of submissions: (1) “historical essays, reconsidering entrenched narratives to bring in previously overlooked voices, movements, or thinkers from outside of philosophy or academia”; (2) “contemporary applications or uptake of pragmatic themes by socio-political movements”; (3) “reconsidering the philosophical implications of understanding pragmatism not as a canon but as a living, evolving movement.” Again, this struck me as too compartmentalized and too much involved in either/or thinking.While this call for papers was not authored by Bernstein, it was inspired by comments he made in his final lectures on American pragmatism as reported by Tara Mastrelli. And, while I greatly admire Bernstein as a scholar and a person (I benefitted personally from his support for junior scholars working within American philosophy), it struck me as coming from a perspective that had not engaged with much of the recent work going on in pragmatism now and at the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy (SAAP) for quite some time. It described the SAAP I had first encountered in 1992, but not the community of diverse, engaged scholars I found writing on American philosophy and pragmatism in 2024. The second concern noted above does not apply to a community with many notable women and people of color engaging with pragmatism, expanding the canon, and applying pragmatism to contemporary issues and keeping it alive as “a living, evolving movement” (the third concern listed above). Here, I name just a few examples from the 2024 SAAP program: a session on American Identity with papers titled “Inter-American Perspectives on the US Latinx: Marti, Locke, and Uranga” and “Mariátegui and the Failed Promise of a Mestizaje Otherwise”; a panel on Feminist Pragmatists Readings of Non-canonical Texts; a panel on Luis Villoro on the Possibility of Political Community: Liberation from Ideology, Radical Democracy, and Understanding the Other; an invited session on Public Philosophy in Times of Crises with papers titled “On the Need for Activist Philosophers: A Deweyan Response to Public Philosophy in Times of Crises” and “Philosophy at the Service of the Public Space”; and a session on American Indian History and Philosophy with papers titled “History, Place, and the Meaning of Life in God is Red” and “Logic and Colonization in North America.” The only time I saw Bernstein at SAAP during the time I have been coming is the year he received the Schneider Award, so he may not have been paying attention to the changes that had occurred. Part of the reason he did not attend, he said, was because he felt that Richard Rorty had not been treated respectfully at SAAP. Ironically, that very move seems to buy into the kind of “canonization that follows from essentialist definitions of pragmatism” as Bernstein seemed to insist on a particular approach to the person and work of Rorty.2 Nonetheless, I shared some of Bernstein's concerns and think it is profitable in understanding pragmatism as a “a living, evolving movement.”I think pragmatism has an ever-evolving, non-entrenched canon that feeds the work of various sociopolitical movements. It is an ever-evolving philosophical movement that can respond to lived experience in real time and shape policy and legal discourse. It is an approach to philosophy that values historical figures and debates but puts the thinking of those figures into conversation with contemporary problems and movements. The present, past, and future are always in an intimate conversation in the pragmatist tradition.3 While there are debates about the pragmatist canon, in my experience most are open to it being an inclusive and evolving canon. There are, however, some scholars who want to claim that figure X is the only or best exemplar of pragmatism, or only linguistic pragmatism counts, or that only analytically influenced pragmatism is worthwhile (ironically, some of these scholars are people to whom Bernstein points positively in his own work). Those who claim a limited or exclusionary canon miss something important about the kind of pragmatism Bernstein practiced and wrote about, as he thought pragmatism was not a set of ideas but rather an ethos that included anti-foundationalism, fallibilism, an awareness of contingency and chance, and owning up to the inescapable plurality we face. They also miss some important parts of what John E. Smith (one of Bernstein's teachers) called the “spirit of American philosophy.”In The Spirit of American Philosophy, Smith said the “spirit” was more than a set of doctrines; it was about beliefs, style, and a particular stance toward life (187). One of the hallmarks of American philosophy, for Smith, is an openness of mind and an experimental spirit. As William James noted, “pragmatism unstiffens all our theories, limbers them up and sets each one at work” (30–31). John Dewey continued this line of thinking when he argued that pragmatism should unstiffen our very brains. If we embrace the method of intelligence, we must always be open to new problems, new evidence, and new angles of vision. Jane Addams famously embodied this aspect of the spirit by thinking and doing in ways that challenged set societal habits of mind and policy, and she pointed to a social ethics that she saw emerging in response to the excesses of capitalism.For Smith, the spirit of American philosophy also deals forthrightly with the reality of change and development. This can be seen in the likes of thinkers such as Dewey, Charles S. Peirce, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who all took some version of evolutionary theory seriously and sketched out the implications for philosophy and life. Dewey argued that all of philosophy must be reconstructed in the wake of the realities of change and development. Perhaps this came to bear most famously on his approach to education, as he recognized humans as developmental creatures in constantly changing environments. Importantly, it also provided hope that change in social habits is always possible. Peirce emphasized the continuity and chance found within the ongoing change and argued that from the human perspective this meant no one person could have anything like infallible truth. Fallibilism and an experimental method involving a diverse community of inquirers is how he thought philosophy should proceed given the ever-evolving universe. Gilman expanded on these insights with a specific focus on undermining the social habit of heteropatriarchy. Bringing women into the community of inquirers showed how many social habits limited their opportunities in life and how that harmed the possibilities for democratic growth for everyone. Gilman not only focused on changing how people thought about gender and democracy, but she also worked to rearrange how they live that out. She showed how changing arrangements in the home, and the domestic work typically done in the home, could allow for the development of a social ethic (which she saw as the next evolutionary step for humanity) which could take humanity in new directions and undo the binary system of gender that trapped humans in limited social options.Related to this kind of thinking and doing, for Smith, American philosophy also understands that ideas themselves are important and can be evaluated by their relevance to life. Smith described American philosophy as committed to the notion that ideas make a difference and that thinking emerges from life situations. American philosophers have not “been satisfied merely to praise ideas or to expound on them; they have been animated rather by the desire to see them embodied and provided with whatever power it is within the capacity of the human self to bestow” (Smith viii–ix). While the thinkers already discussed clearly embody this commitment that ideas both emerge from life's situations and can change and shape those life situations, so do many others. Some clear examples can be found in thinkers dealing with issues of race. Anna Julia Cooper and Alain Locke both thought that ideas can really make a difference to what is possible, and both argued that their particular situatedness allowed for insights missing from the philosophical and political discourses of their times. Long before intersectionality became “the thing,” Cooper stressed that Black women in the United States faced multiple intersecting/interlocking forms of oppression and so provided an important but overlooked voice in the community of inquirers. She challenged both feminist thinkers/activists and male African American intellectuals/activists on issues of enfranchisement, education, and evolving ethics. In A Voice from the South, she noted “only the BLACK WOMAN can say when and where I enter, in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special patronage, then and there the whole Negro race enters with me” (Cooper 31). Alain Locke notably argued that African American art forms, which grew out of the unique hybridizing of cultures forced by the Atlantic slave trade, had changed the world and provided a challenge to any arguments about cultural or racial superiority. This, in turn, allowed him to point to the dangers of dogmatism and fanaticism that have worried so many pragmatist thinkers. In “Pluralism and Intellectual Democracy,” he notes that “[p]olitical and cultural dogmatism, in the form of culture bias, nation worship, and racism still stands in the way and must first be invalidated and abandoned” if we are to have “hope for stable world order of any kind—democratic or otherwise” (Locke 63).This sketch of the spirit of American philosophy, and some specific thinkers who exemplify this spirit, is not meant to be exhaustive. Rather, it is an attempt to demonstrate, in a truncated amount of space and time, the diversity of the range of historical thinkers in the living, evolving movement of pragmatist philosophy. I also hope to demonstrate the openness and flexibility entailed in the tradition. This demands that it be an ever-evolving way of thinking and being in the world. That there is staying power in this spirit can be found in the array of more contemporary thinkers who have picked up the ideas and thinkers in the movement.For example, Charlene Haddock Seigfried's work on the likes of James, Dewey, and Addams resulted in her pushing the entire field of pragmatism to interrogate the sexism present in how the history of pragmatism was told, and she named the field of Pragmatist Feminism. Pragmatist feminism is now an established and vibrant field of study that informs activists and scholars who work in areas other than philosophy. Patricia Hill Collins brings Dewey and Seigfried to bear on her work in Black feminist thought and sociology and challenges pragmatism to deal more explicitly with power and bias. In “Piecing Together a Genealogical Puzzle” she writes: I want to examine . . . the contemporary period of revitalization that pragmatism shares with intersectionality. The revitalization of contemporary discourse on pragmatism operates in three interrelated sites, namely, efforts to (1) flesh out omissions or holes in the discourse, primarily by including thinkers and works that have been excluded; (2) revise the narrative to correct for existing bias and/or explicate existing themes; and (3) replace the standard narrative with one that more accurately explains the field in light of contemporary realities. (Collins 11)Political theorist Deva Woodly does some of this work in relation to contemporary realities. Picking up on Melvin Rogers's (himself a political scientist) work on Dewey, Woodly sketches a Radical Black Feminist Pragmatism that she sees at work in the Black Lives Matter Movement. In her book Reckoning: Black Lives Matter and the Democratic Necessity of Social Movements, this includes a willingness to live and fight in an unfinished world, and she stresses the importance of pragmatic imagination, social intelligence, democratic experimentation, and liberatory aims.4 Leonard Harris and Lee McBride challenge the pragmatist values of tolerance and democratic process as they interrogate oppression and the demands of an insurrectionist ethics that requires the violation of social norms in order to survive (much less thrive). McBride's Ethics and Insurrection: A Pragmatism for the Oppressed pushes pragmatists to interrogate the very values that underpin most pragmatist discourse and to face up to possible limitations of pragmatism as a liberatory philosophy. Grace E. Lavery picks up on Peirce and the reality of change to support trans philosophy and life in Pleasure and Efficacy: Of Pen Names, Cover Versions, and Other Trans Techniques. They argue that trans-pragmatism makes it clear that change and transition really happen in the world and so are obviously possible. Bryan Norton has put pragmatist ideas into the formation of environmental philosophy, and Andrew Light has used this work to inform actual environmental policy at a national and global level. Ben Minteer and I have brought pragmatism to bear on debates within animal ethics. Danielle Lake, Judy Whipps, and Tess Varner have demonstrated some of the ways pragmatism can inform community organizing and activism. And the list can go on. . . . Just this short account shows that there are ongoing debates and changes within the pragmatist philosophical tradition and that that same dynamic tradition is being taken up by thinkers working in a variety of fields and being put to work on a variety of social/political issues.Part of what makes this staying power possible is that as a philosophical movement, one can name key thinkers working within the tradition of pragmatism, past and present, and that there has been healthy debate about their ideas. Their ideas remain alive and relevant to a number of contemporary issues. While many contemporary thinkers are probably more familiar with, and more drawn to, particular figures within the pragmatist movement, this does not entail a limited or frozen canon of thinkers. In fact, the diversity of the canon of the pragmatist movement is part of what keeps it so flexible, open, and present. One might enter into pragmatism through the study of one particular figure, but then find many other thinkers who build on and challenge that thinker, and this then opens doors to many others. The work of recovering and re-invigorating a whole host of figures strengthens the movement by expanding the canon—not by thinking that naming a canon limits the movement. If individual thinkers are not named, and/or not named as working within or being inspired by the pragmatist movement, pragmatism becomes invisible.I myself was taught about the work of some historically key figures within pragmatism as an undergraduate, but it was not named as such. As I tried to find myself within the field of philosophy in graduate school, I finally found the pragmatism label attached to a few of the thinkers I had found useful, and a whole host of thinkers began to emerge for me. Many people I know fought to arrive at a position that made sense to them and ended up re-inventing many of the main tenets of a pragmatist approach to philosophy despite never having encountered any named pragmatist thinkers in their education. Bernstein himself noted this invisibility of pragmatism. He attributed it to the success of pragmatism—so fully taken up in fields such as education and sociology that it need not be explicitly named. But the lack of visibility for the tradition presents a problem for the continuation of a healthy and vibrant pragmatist movement.The general invisibility of pragmatism also makes it hard to teach it in many philosophy departments, and even harder to maintain graduate specializations in American Philosophy. I think one contributing factor is that many who work with a pragmatist philosophy put it to work on present problems in their writing and teaching. Their focus is more on the problems than on promoting pragmatism as a philosophical movement or tradition. I applaud this work, but I think it is helpful to be explicit about what pragmatism is and how it informs these projects. Many students, and the public at large, are hungry for a philosophy that fits with their own experiences and does obvious work in the world. When we do not name pragmatism more explicitly, the field is taken up by debates about ethics that focus only on deontological, utilitarian, and care ethics, but miss the social ethic that emerges from pragmatism. When we do not name pragmatism more explicitly, the ways of approaching philosophy become limited to analytic and continental approaches, and maybe some Eastern philosophy if one is lucky. When we do not name pragmatism more explicitly, US politics ends up being examined through perspectives that do not have roots in the soil from which those problems emerge—not a detriment, by any means, but an unfortunate limitation. In my opinion, this limitation fosters either/or thinking in the public sphere and fails to develop a sensitivity to human fallibilism, an awareness of contingency and chance, and a willingness to own up to the inescapable plurality we face—the very things Bernstein called on us to embody in our thoughts and actions.Given all of this, I do not think it is profitable to suggest that in order to be “a living, evolving movement,” pragmatism should abandon the idea of a canon. This strikes me as an either/or choice. Understanding pragmatism as a living, evolving movement means thinking more with the attitude of both/and rather than either/or. Canons can be open and evolving and need not connect with essentialist understandings of pragmatism. I think the ever-changing SAAP posters demonstrate this beautifully (and this is one reason they can be fun to collect and compare). The diversity of invited societies on a SAAP program demonstrates an in the of philosophical the (which such as those and philosophical demonstrate a pragmatist commitment to and have resulted in vibrant I not to on but rather to point to some of the ways we can see that the very kind of pragmatism Bernstein wanted to emerge is and has been It is a and evolving movement, with all the and that that can of