PRAGMATISM AND THE PRAGMATIST MOVEMENT
In considering some of the results of pragmatist and voluntarist
doctrines in the case of European writers, to whom the American-English
triumvirate used to look somewhat sympathetically, we may begin with
Italy, which boasted, according to Dr. Schiller (writing in 1907),
of a youthful band of avowed pragmatists with a militant organ, the
_Leonardo_. “Fundamentally,” declares Papini,[33] the leader of this
movement, “Pragmatism means an unstiffening of all our theories and
beliefs, by attending to their instrumental value. It incorporates and
harmonizes various ancient tendencies, such as Nominalism, with its
protest against the use of general terms, Utilitarianism, with its
emphasis upon particular aspects and problems, Positivism, with its
disdain of verbal and useless questions, Kantism, with its doctrine of
the primacy of practical reason, Voluntarism, with its treatment of
the intellect as the tool of the will, and Freedom, and a positive
attitude towards religious questions. It is the tendency of taking all
these, and other theories, for what they are worth, being chiefly a
corridor-theory, with doors and avenues into various theories, and a
central rallying-ground for them all.” These words are valuable as one
of the many confessions of the affiliations of Pragmatism to several
other more or less experiential, or practical, views of philosophy.
It is perfectly obvious from them that Pragmatism stands, in the
main, for the apprehension of all truth as subservient to practice,
as but a device for the “economy” of thought, for the grasping of the
multiplicity and the complexity of phenomena. It looks upon man as
made, in the main, for action, and not for speculation--a doctrine
which even Mr. Peirce, by the way, now speaks of as “a stoical maxim
which to me, at the age of sixty, does not recommend itself so forcibly
as it did at thirty.”[34]
“The various ideal worlds are here,” continues Papini, according to
the version of James,[35] “because the real world fails to satisfy us.
All our ideal instruments are certainly imperfect. But philosophy can
be regenerated ... it can become pragmatic in the general sense of the
word, a general theory of human action ... so that philosophic thought
will resolve itself into a comparative discussion of all the possible
programmes for man’s life, when man is once for all regarded as a
_creative_ being.... As such, man becomes a kind of god, and where are
we to draw the limits?” In an article called “From Man to God,” Papini,
in the _Leonardo_, lets his imagination work in stretching the limits
of this way of thinking.
These prophetic, or Promethean, utterances--and we must never forget
that even to the Greeks philosophy was always something of a religion
or a life--may be paralleled by some of the more enthusiastic and
unguarded, early utterances of Dr. Schiller about “voluntarism”
or “metaphysical personalism” as the one “courageous,” and the
only potent, philosophy; or about the “storming of the Jericho of
rationalism” by the “jeers” and the “trumpetings” of the confident
humanists and their pragmatic _confrères_. The underlying element
of truth in them, and, for that part of it, in many of the similar
utterances of many of our modern humanists, from Rabelais to Voltaire
and from Shelley to Marx and Nietzsche, is, as we may see, that a true
metaphysic must serve, not only as a rational system for the intellect,
but as a “dynamic”[36] or motive for action and achievement, for the
conscious activity of rational, self-conscious beings.
As for the matter of any further developments[37] of the free,
creative religion hinted by Papini, we had, in 1903, the solemn
declaration of Professor James that “the programme of the man-god is
one of the great type programmes of philosophy,” and that he himself
had been “slow” in coming to a perception of the full inwardness of
the idea. Then it led evidently in Italy itself to a new doctrine
which was trumpeted there a year or two ago in the public press as
“Futurism,”[38] in which “courage, audacity and rebellion” were the
essential elements, and which could not “abide” the mere mention
of such things as “priests” and “ideals” and “professors” and
“moralism.” The extravagances of Prezzolini, who thinks of man as a
“sentimental gorilla,” were apparently the latest outcome of this
anarchical individualism and practicalism. Pragmatism was converted
by him into a sophisticated opportunism and a modern Machiavellism, a
method of attaining contentment in one’s life and of dominating one’s
fellow-creatures by playing upon their fancies and prejudices as does
the religious charlatan or the quack doctor or the rhetorician.
The reader who may care to contemplate all this radical, pragmatist
enthusiasm for the New Reformation in a more accessible, and a less
exaggerated, form had better perhaps consult the recent work of Mr.
Sturt of Oxford on the _Idea of a Free Church_. In this work the
principles of Pragmatism are applied, first, critically and in the
main negatively, to the moral dogmas of traditional Christianity, and
then positively to the new conception of religion he would substitute
for all this--the development of personality in accordance with the
claims of family and of national life. A fair-minded criticism of
this book would, I think, lead to the conclusion that the changes
contemplated by Mr. Sturt are already part and parcel of the programme
of liberal Christianity, whether we study this in the form of the many
more or less philosophical presentations of the same in modern German
theology, or in the form of the free, moral and social efforts of the
voluntary religion of America and England. In America many of the
younger thinkers in theology and philosophy are already writing in a
more or less popular manner upon Pragmatism as a philosophy that bids
fair to harmonize “traditional” and “radical” conceptions of religion.
One of these writers, for example, in a recent important commemorative
volume,[39] tries to show how this may be done by interpreting the
“supernatural,” not as the “trans-experimental,” but as the “ethical”
in experience, and by turning “dogmatic” into “historical theology.”
And it would not be difficult to find many books and addresses in
which the same idea is expressed. The more practical wing of this same
party endeavours to connect Pragmatism with the whole philosophy and
psychology of religious conversion, as this has been worked over by
recent investigators like Stanley Hall,[40] Starbuck,[41] and others,
and, above all, by James in his striking volume _The Varieties of
Religious Experience_.[42]
The fact, of course--and I shall immediately refer to it--that
Pragmatism has been hailed in France as a salutary doctrine, not
merely by Liberals and Evangelicals, but by devout Catholics and
Anti-modernists, is perhaps enough to give us some pause in the matter
of its application in the sphere of theoretical and practical religion.
It is useful, it would seem, sometimes to “liberate” the spirit of
man, and useful, too, at other times to connect the strivings of the
individual with the more or less organized experiences of past ages.
Turning, then, to France, it is, judging from the claims of the
pragmatists, and from some of the literature bearing upon this entire
subject,[43] fairly evident that there has been a kind of association
or relationship between Pragmatism and the following tendencies in
recent French philosophy: (1) the “freedom” and “indeterminism”
philosophy of Renouvier[44] and other members of the Neo-Critical
school, and of Boutroux and Bergson, who, “although differing from each
other in many important respects,” all “belong to the same movement of
thought, the reaction against Hegelianism and the cult of science which
has dominated France since the decline of the metaphysics of the school
of Cousin”;[45] (2) the philosophy of science and scientific hypotheses
represented by writers like Poincaré,[46] Brunschvicg, Le Roy,[47]
Milhaud, Abel Rey,[48] and others; (3) the religious philosophy and the
fideism of the followers of the spiritualistic metaphysic of Bergson,
many of whom go further than he does, and “make every effort to bring
him to the confessional faith”;[49] and (4) the French philosophy
of to-day that definitely bears the name of Pragmatism, that of M.
Blondel,[50] who in 1893 wrote a suggestive work entitled _L’Action_,
and who claims to have coined the word Pragmatism, after much careful
consideration and discrimination, as early as 1888--many years before
the California pamphlet of James.
The first of these points of correspondence or relationship we can pass
over with the remark that we shall have a good deal to say about the
advantage enjoyed by Pragmatism over Rationalism in the treatment of
“freedom” and the “volitional” side of human nature, and also about the
general pragmatist reaction against Rationalism.
And as for the philosophy of science, it has been shown that our
English-speaking pragmatists cannot exactly pride themselves in the
somewhat indiscriminate manner of James and Schiller upon the supposed
support for their “hypothetical” conception of science and philosophy
to be found in the work of their French associates upon the logic of
science. “The men of great learning who were named as sponsors of this
new philosophy have more and more testified what reservations they
make, and how greatly their conclusions differ from those which are
currently attributed to them.”[51] Both Brunschvicg and Poincaré, in
fact, take the greatest pains in their books to dissociate themselves
from anything like the appearance of an acceptance of the doctrine of
the relativity of knowledge, from the signs of any lack of faith in the
idea that science, as far as it goes, gives us a true revelation of the
nature of reality.
Then in regard to (3) the French pragmatist philosophy or religion
we have only to read the reports and the quotations of M. Lalande
to see in this philosophy the operation of an uncritical dogmatism
or a blind “fideism” to which very few other philosophers, either
in France or in any other country, would care to subscribe. “_La
Revue de Philosophie_, which is directed by ecclesiastics, recently
extolled pragmatism as a means of proving orthodox beliefs.” ... “This
system solves a great many difficulties in philosophy; it explains
the necessity of principles marvellously.” ... “The existence of God,
Providence and Immortality are demonstrated by their happy effects upon
our terrestrial life.” ... “If we can consider the matter carefully,
it will be seen that the Good is the useful; for not to be good in
anything is synonymous with being bad, and everywhere the true is the
useful. It is in this assertion that Pragmatism consists.”[52]
And as to the fourth tendency, there is, at its outset, according
to M. Lalande, a more rational or ethical basis for the fideism of
M. Blondel’s book upon action, which starts off with a criticism
of philosophic dilettantism quite analogous with that which Mr.
Peirce follows in _How to Make Our Ideas Clear_. But M. Blondel
“does not continue in the same manner, and his conclusion is very
different. Rejecting all philosophical formalism, _he puts his trust
in moral experience, and consults it directly_. He thinks that moral
experience shows that action is not wholly self-contained, but that
it _presupposes a reality which transcends the world in which we
participate_.”[53]
Finally, maintains M. Blondel, “we are _unable_, as Pascal already
said, _either to live, or to understand ourselves, by ourselves alone_.
So that, unless we mutilate our nature by renouncing all earnestness of
life, we are necessarily led to recognize in ourselves the presence of
God. Our problem, therefore, can only be solved by an act of absolute
faith in a positive religion [Catholicism in his case]. This completes
the series of acts of faith, without which no action, not even our
daily acts, could be accomplished, and without which we should fall
into absolute barrenness, both practical and intellectual.”[54]
Now again these words about our being unable to understand ourselves
“by ourselves alone” contain an element of truth which we may
associate with the pragmatist tendency to believe in a socialized
(as distinguished from an individualistic) interpretation[55] of
our common moral life, to believe, that is to say, in a society of
persons as the truth (or the reality) of the universe, rather than
in an interpretation of the universe as the thinking experience of a
single absolute intelligence. This, however, is also a point which we
are obliged to defer[56] until we take up the general subject of the
relations between Pragmatism and Rationalism. The other words of the
paragraph, in respect of our absolute need of faith in some positive
religion, are, of course, expressive again of the uncritical fideism
to which reference has already been made. As an offset or alternative
to the “free” religion of Papini and James and to the experimental or
practical religion of different Protestant bodies, it is enough of
itself to give us pause in estimating the real drift[57] of Pragmatism
in regard to religious faith and the philosophy of religion.[58]
We shall meantime take leave of French Pragmatism[59] with the
reflection that it is thus obviously as complex and as confusing
and confused a thing as is the Pragmatism of other countries. It is
now almost a generation since we began to hear of a renascence of
spiritualism[60] and idealism in France in connexion not merely with
the work of philosophers like Renouvier and Lachelier and Fouillée[61]
and Boutroux, but with men of letters like De Vogué, Lavisse, Faguet,
Desjardins[62] and the rest, and some of the French Pragmatism of
to-day is but one of the more specialized phases of the broader
movement.
And as for the special question of the influence of James and his
philosophy upon Bergson, and of that of the possible return influence
of Bergson upon James,[63] the evidence produced by Lalande from
Bergson himself is certainly all to the effect that both men have
worked very largely independently of each other, although perfectly
cognisant now and then of each other’s publications. Both men, along
with their followers (and this is all that needs interest us), have
obviously been under the influence of ideas that have long been in the
air about the need of a philosophy that is “more truly empirical”[64]
than the traditional philosophy, and more truly inclined to “discover
what is involved in our actions in the ultimate recess, when,
unconsciously and in spite of ourselves, we _support existence and
cling to it whether we completely understand it or not_.”[65]
As for Pragmatism and pragmatist achievements in Germany, there is,
as might well be supposed, little need of saying much. The genius
of the country is against both; and if there is any Pragmatism in
Germany, it must have contrived somehow to have been “born again” of
the “spirit” before obtaining official recognition.[66] So much even
might be inferred from the otherwise generous recognition accorded to
the work of James by scholars and thinkers like Eucken and Stein[67]
and the rest. Those men cannot see Pragmatism save in the broad light
of the “humanism” that has always characterised philosophy, when
properly appreciated, and understood in the light of its true genesis.
Pragmatism has in fact been long known in Germany under the older
names of “Voluntarism” and “Humanism,” although it may doubtless be
associated there with some of the more pronounced tendencies of the
hour, such as the recent insistence of the “Göttingen Fries School”
upon the importance of the “genetic” and the “descriptive” point of
view in regard even to the matter of the supposed first principles of
knowledge, the hypothetical and methodological conception of philosophy
taken by philosophical scientists like Mach and Ostwald[68] and their
followers, the “empiricism” and “realism” of thinkers like the late
Dr. Avenarius[69] of Zurich.
Then the so-called “teleological,” or “practical,” character of our
human thinking has also been recognized in modern German thought long
before the days of Peirce and Dewey, even by such strictly academic
thinkers as Lotze and Sigwart. The work of the latter thinker upon
Logic, by the way, was translated into English under distinctly
Neo-Hegelian influences. In the second portion of this work the
universal presuppositions of knowledge are considered, not merely as
_a priori_ truths, but as akin in some important respects “to the
ethical principles by which we are wont to determine and guide our free
conscious activity.”[70] But even apart from this matter of the natural
association of Pragmatism with the Voluntarism that has long existed in
German philosophy,[71] we may undoubtedly pass to the following things
in contemporary and recent German thought as sympathetic, in the main,
to the pragmatist tendencies of James and Dewey and Schiller: (1) the
practical conception of science and philosophy, as both of them a kind
of “economy of the attention,” a sort of “conceptual shorthand”[72]
(for the purposes of the “description” of our environment) that
we have referred to in the case of Mach and Ostwald; (2) the close
association between the “metaphysical” and the “cultural” in books like
those of Jerusalem[73] and Eleutheropulos;[74] (3) the sharp criticism
of the Rationalism of the Critical Idealism by the two last-mentioned
thinkers, and by some of the members of the new Fichte[75] School
like Schellwien; and last but not least, (4) the tendency to take a
psychological[76] and a sociological[77] (instead of a merely logical)
view of the functions of thought and philosophy, that is just as
accentuated in Germany at the present time as it is elsewhere.
James and Schiller have both been fond of referring to the work of many
of these last-mentioned men as favourable to a conception of philosophy
less as a “theory of knowledge” (or a “theory of being”) in the old
sense than as a _Weltanschauungslehre_ (a view of the world as whole),
a “discussion of the various possible programmes for man’s life” to
which reference has already been made in the case of Papini and others.
And we might associate with their predilections and persuasions in
this regard the apparent Pragmatism also of a great scholar like
Harnack[78] in reference to the subordination of religious dogma to
the realities of the religious life, or the Pragmatism of Ritschl[79]
himself, in regard to the subordinate place in living religion of mere
intellectual theory, or even some of the tendencies of the celebrated
value-philosophy of Rickert and Windelband[80] and Münsterberg[81]
and the rest. But again the main trouble about all this quasi-German
support for the pragmatists is that most of these contemporary thinkers
have taken pains to trace the roots of their teaching back into the
great systems of the past. The pragmatists, on the other hand, have
been notoriously careless about the matter of the various affiliations
of their “corridor-like” and eclectic theory.
There are many reasons, however, against regarding even the
philosophical expression of many of the practical and scientific
tendencies of Germany as at all favourable to the acceptance of
Pragmatism as a satisfactory philosophy from the German point of view.
Among these reasons are: (1) The fact that it is naturally impossible
to find any real support in past or present German philosophy for the
impossible breach that exists in Pragmatism between the “theoretical”
and the “practical,” and (2) the fact that Germany has only recently
passed through a period of sharp conflict between the psychological
(or the “genetic”) and the logical point of view regarding knowledge,
resulting in a confessed victory for the latter. And then again (3)
even if there is a partial correspondence between Pragmatism and the
_quasi_ economic (or “practical”) conception taken of philosophy by
some of the younger men in Germany who have not altogether outlived
their reaction against Rationalism, there are other tendencies there
that are far more characteristic of the spirit and of the traditions
of the country. Among these are the New Idealism generally, the strong
Neo-Kantian movement of the Marburg school[82] and their followers in
different places, the revived interest in Hegel[83] and in Schelling,
the Neo-Romanticism of Jena, with its booklets upon such topics as
_The Culture of the Soul_, _Life with Nature_, _German Idealism_, and
so on.[84] And then (4) there are just as many difficulties in the
way of regarding the psychological and sociological philosophy of men
like Jerusalem and Eleutheropulos as anything like a final philosophy
of knowledge, as there is in attempting to do the same thing with
the merely preliminary and tentative philosophy of James and his
associates.
Returning now to America and England, although Pragmatism is eminently
an American[85] doctrine, it would, of course, be absurd to imagine
that Pragmatism has carried the entire thought of the United States
with it.[86] It encountered there, even at the outset, at least
something of the contempt and the incredulity and the hostility
that it met with elsewhere, and also much of the American shrewd
indifference to a much-advertised new article. The message of James
as a philosopher, too, was doubtless discounted (at least by the
well-informed) in the light of his previous brilliant work as a
descriptive psychologist, and also, perhaps, in the light of his
wonderfully suggestive personality.[87]
What actually happened in America in respect of the pragmatist movement
was, first of all, the sudden emergence of a magazine literature[88]
in connexion with the Will-to-Believe philosophy of James and the
California address, and in connexion (according to the generous
testimony of James) with Deweyism or “Instrumentalism.” Much of
this tiresome and hair-splitting magazine discussion of “ideas as
instruments of thought,” and of the “consequences” (“theoretical”
or “practical” or what not) by which ideas were to be “tested,” was
pronounced by James, in 1906, to be largely crude and superficial.
It had the indirect merit, however, of yielding one or two valuable
estimates of the many inconsistencies in Pragmatism, and of the many
different kinds of Pragmatism or instrumentalism that there seemed to
be, and of the value of Pragmatism as a “theory of knowledge,” and as
a “philosophical generalization.” The upshot of the whole preliminary
discussion was (1) the discovery that, Pragmatism having arisen (as
Dewey himself put it) out of a multitude of conflicting tendencies
in regard to what we might call the “approach” to philosophy, would
probably soon “dissolve itself” back again into some of the streams out
of which it had arisen,[89] and (2) the discovery that all that this
early “methodological” pragmatism amounted to was the harmless doctrine
that the meaning of any conception expressed itself in the past or
future conduct or experience of actual, or possible, sentient creatures.
We shall again take occasion[90] to refer to this comparative failure
of Pragmatism to give any systematic or unified account of the
consequences by which it would seek to test the truth of propositions.
Its failure, however, in this connexion is a matter of secondary
importance in comparison with the great lesson[91] to be drawn from
its idea that there can be for man no objective truth about the
universe, apart from the idea of its meaning[92] or significance to his
experience and to his conscious activity.
What is now taking place in America in this second decade [_i.e._ in
the years after 1908] of the pragmatist movement is apparently (1)
the sharpest kind of official rationalist condemnation of Pragmatism
as an imperfectly proved and a merely “subjective” and a highly
unsystematic philosophy; (2) the appearance of a number of instructive
booklets[93] upon Pragmatism and the pragmatist movement, some of them
expository and critical, some of them in the main sympathetic, some of
them condemnatory and even contemptuous, and some of them attempts at
further constructive work along pragmatist lines; (3) indications here
and there of the acceptance and the promulgation of older and newer
doctrines antithetic and hostile to Pragmatism--some of them possibly
as typically American as Pragmatism itself.
As a single illustration of the partly constructive work that is
being attempted in the name and the spirit of pragmatism, we may
instance the line of reflection entered upon by Professor Moore[94]
in consequence of his claim that to Pragmatism the fundamental thing
in any judgment or proposition is not so much its consequences, but
its “value.” This claim may, no doubt, be supported by the many
declarations of James and Schiller that the “true,” like the “good”
and the “beautiful,” is simply a “valuation,” and not the fetish that
the rationalists make it out to be. It is doubtful, however, as we may
try to indicate, whether this “value” interpretation of Pragmatism
can be carried out independently of the more systematic attempts at a
general philosophy of value that are being made to-day in Germany and
America and elsewhere. And then it would be a matter of no ordinary
difficulty to clear up the inconsistency that doubtless exists between
Pragmatism as a value philosophy and Pragmatism as a mere philosophy of
“consequences.” It is “immediate,” and “verifiable,” and “definitely
appreciated” consequences, rather than the higher values of our
experience that (up to the present time) seem to have bulked largely in
the argumentations of the pragmatists.
And as an illustration of a doctrine that is both American and hostile
to pragmatism, we may instance the New Realism[95] that was recently
launched in a collective manifesto in _The Journal of Philosophy and
Scientific Methods_. This realism is, to be sure, hostile to every
form of “subjectivism” or personalism, and may in a certain sense be
regarded as the emergence into full daylight of the realism or dualism
that we found to be lurking[96] in James’s “radical empiricism.” It
is, therefore, as it were, one of the signs that Pragmatism is perhaps
breaking up in America into some of the more elemental tendencies out
of which it developed--in this case the American desire for operative
(or effective) realism and for a “direct”[97] contact with reality
instead of the indirect contact of so many metaphysical systems.
It is only necessary to add here that it is to the credit of American
rationalism of the Neo-Hegelian type that it has shown itself,
notably in the writings of Professor Royce,[98] capable, not only
of criticising Pragmatism, but of seeking to incorporate, in a
constructive philosophy of the present, some of the features of the
pragmatist emphasis upon “will” and “achievement” and “purpose.” It
is, therefore, in this respect at least in line with some of the best
tendencies in contemporary European philosophy.
Lastly, there are certain tendencies of recent English philosophy with
which Pragmatism has special affinities. Among these may be mentioned:
(1) the various general and specific criticisms[99] that have been
made there for at least two generations on the more or less formal
and abstract character of the metaphysic of our Neo-Kantians and our
Neo-Hegelians; (2) the concessions that have recently been made by
prominent rationalists to the undoubtedly purposive, or “teleological,”
character of our human thinking, and to the connexion of our mental
life with our entire practical and spiritual activity. Many of these
concessions are now regarded as the merest commonplaces of speculation,
and we shall probably refer to them in our next chapter. Then there is
(3) the well-known insistence of some of our foremost psychologists,
like Ward and Stout,[100] upon the reality of activity and “purpose”
in mental process, and upon the part played by them in the evolution
of our intellectual life, and of our adjustment to the world in which
we find ourselves. And (4) the ethical and social idealism of such
well-known members of our Neo-Hegelian school as Professors Jones,
Mackenzie, and Muirhead. These scholars and thinkers are just as
insistent as the pragmatists upon the idea that philosophy and thought
are, and should be, a practical social “dynamic”--that is to say,
“forces” and “motives” making for the perfection of the common life.
(5) A great deal of the philosophy of science and of the philosophy of
axioms and postulates to be found in British writers, from Mill and
Jevons to Karl Pearson and Mr. A. Sidgwick[101] and many others.
Apart from all this, however, or rather, in addition to it, it may
be truly said that one of the striking things about recent British
philosophical literature[102] is the stir and the activity that have
been excited in the rationalist camp by the writings of the pragmatists
and the “personal idealists,” and by the critics of these newer modes
of thought. All this has led to many such re-statements of the problems
of philosophy as are to be found in the books of men like Joachim,[103]
Henry Jones,[104] A. E. Taylor,[105] Boyce-Gibson,[106] Henry H.
Sturt,[107] S. H. Mellone,[108] J. H. B. Joseph,[109] and others, and
even, say, in such a representative book as that of Professor Stewart
upon the classical theme of Plato’s _Theory of Ideas_. In this work an
attempt is made to interpret Plato’s “Ideas” in the light of pragmatist
considerations as but “categories” or “points of view” which we find it
convenient to use in dealing with our sense experience.