Pragmatism in America

I have recently finished reading a biography of William James, a philosophy professor at Harvard in the late 19^th Century. James was a molder of thought in our country; and his influence can be counted alongside of Rousseau, Locke, Voltaire, and Jonathan Edwards in his influence on our present day world. He and his colleagues at Harvard, Charles Sanders Pierce, and Josiah Royce developed the “philosophy” of pragmatism, which has pervaded American thinking as a dominant driving force for well over 100 years. For reasons I will later explain, I doubt that pragmatic philosophy can legitimately be called a complete philosophical system. But, nevertheless, the core of the pragmatic thought process has colored and embellished North American thought and made the accomplishments of our society outstrip those of other nations. For example, compare our pragmatically oriented culture to that of our southern neighbor, Mexico. Mexico’s dominant philosophy, positivism, has remained mired in the mud of pure reason and logic. Positivism is only another name for enlightenment reason—the idea that all of mankind’s problems, including his search for meaning/significance can be obtained through science and reason. Mexican positivists believe that all mankind needs to reach moral, ethical, and religious satisfaction is ever increasing doses of science, the experimental method, and reason. I do not think that any self-respecting philosophers outside the editorial pages of Scientific American buy into that defunct philosophical belief system. At its apex of influence, enlightenment thinking was shattered by World War I and II. Reason and the scientific method only seems to produce progressively sophisticated methods for men to kill one another.

It is interesting to note that William James as far back at the late 19^th Century had more or less downgraded his opinion of enlightenment thinking, also. James had come from a family background of Puritan/Calvinism. He strove all his life with two great conflicts: The 1^st was to reconcile his Christian beliefs with the sciences of his world—which was mainly Darwinian evolutionary theory. The other striving of James mind was the apparent conflict between freedom of the will and the deterministic teachings about God that he had imbibed as a young man.

Pragmatism is the applied belief that the only important things in life are “the things that work,” i.e. if a thing can be caused to function, no matter in what field of action, and if it will produce the desired effect—then, it is true and worthwhile.

For William James the tangible fact at the root of all our thought-distinctions is that there is no thought so important or so strong as to consist in anything but a possible difference of practice. For him, only the consequences of thoughts were important; and this dictum subsequently pervaded American thought. This belief became in the American mind something far more important than a philosophy; it became a habit of mind, a quality of the general public consciousness. And, as such, it has molded American behavior and belief for well over one hundred years.

As a result of this pragmatic attitude, more and more Americans relinquished their faith in “absolutes” and became ready to judge ideas by their consequences rather than by some abstract formula. In getting rid of the absolutes of the Christian religion, the American mind became more ready to adopt the principles of pluralism and tolerance. In common parlance, Americans became more inclined “to live and let live;” this brought on an erosion of dogmatism and a decline in religious and racial prejudices. These ideas also often produced a bewildering absence of certitude, a sense of confusion and even abandonment. So…pragmatism became something like a religion if one were to allow that religion could be pluralistic or merely something that would improve situations.

A true philosophy is a form of thought that searches for wisdom and knowledge through theory or logical analysis of the principles underlying conduct, thought, and the nature of the universe. A true philosophical system cannot tolerate any internal contradictions.

Pragmatism does not always deal with the principles of a true philosophy; and it may, at times contain internal contradictions. For these reasons, I doubt that pragmatism can really be called a philosophical system. Neither can it be called a religion. A right religion must deal with questions of:

1.   Origin, i.e., where did I come from?
2.   Significance, i.e., why am I here?
3.   Morality, i.e. what is right and what is wrong?
4.   Loyalty, i.e., to whom I accountable?
5.   Behavior, i.e., how should I behave?
6.   Destiny, i.e., where am I going?

Only Christianity has those answers.

 

 

But, try as he may, James could not completely divorce himself from the fact that the Christian religion had produced some of the most beneficial effects on society. He tried, but never once in his adult life did he step inside a church. He wrote, “The problem I have set for myself is a hard one: first, to defend experience (of Christian faith) against philosophy as being the real backbone of the world’s religious life—I mean prayer, guidance, and all that sort of thing immediately and privately felt, as against high and noble general views of our destiny and the world’s meaning; and second, to make the hearer or reader believe…that, although all the special manifestations of religion may have been absurd, yet the life of it as a whole is mankind’s most important function.” So...this 19^th Century philosopher could not get away from the truths and manifestations of the true religion, which meant Christianity.

 

None of us should ever forget that the truth is not a set of man-made ideas. Truth is a person, i.e., the Way, the Truth, and the Life.