John Jacob Kaag - Recherche en IA spécialisée au MIT

John Jacob Kaag

Pragmatism & the lessons ofexperience

Experience has lessons to impart. Its

ability to teach, cependant, turns on our
willingness to learn. Attending to the
lessons of human experience brought
American pragmatists of the nineteenth
century to a new conception of philoso-
phy, one that embraced the fallibilism
that had long de½ned the natural sci-
ences. It led them back to the abiding
existential questions that underpinned
the Wisdom Traditions of the past in
order to explore the personal, sociale,
and political trials of the present. These
thinkers established a new intellectual
tradition that allows us to “learn from
experience.”1

Classical pragmatism stood against
the prevailing current of European phi-
losophy, which continued to be motivat-
ed by Immanuel Kant’s insistence that
philosophy should be concerned with
the limits and conditions of “pure rea-
son," c'est, reason devoid of empiri-
cal content. In contrast, American intel-
lectuals such as Charles Sanders Peirce,
William James, Jane Addams, Ella Ly-
man Cabot, and John Dewey held that
philosophy should concern itself with
the messiness of human meaning, lequel
James acknowledged as “various, tan-

gled and painful.” Philosophy ought to
be understood, they thought, as the re-
sult of human beings thinking through
the meaningful questions of living as
incarné, thoughtful organisms. These
questions can never be purely cerebral;
they are laden with emotion, careful-
ly negotiated in daily life, and pressed
upon us in moments of personal and
social crisis–always, donc, empir-
ically conditioned and experiential. Ex-
perience was to replace pure reason as
American pragmatism’s enduring lode-
stone.

Pragmatism took the reconstruction
of experience as its principal task: le
only way to respond effectively to the di-
lemma that philosophy faced in the early
years of the twentieth century. Dans 1907,
William James called it the “present di-
lemma,” but it now is more accurate to
call it a perennial one. It is the crisis that
philosophy faces when it jeopardizes its
own relevance. Academic philosophy
has spent the better part of the past
century earning a deservedly bad repu-
tation. Since the time of Socrates and
Aristophanes, philosophy has been ac-
cused of being only loosely tethered to
the world of human affairs, and today
the string appears to have been severed
completely. As Dewey noted in 1917,
the “recovery of philosophy” is only

Dædalus Spring 2009

D
o
w
n
o
un
d
e
d

F
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
je
r
e
c
t
.

je
t
.

e
d
toi
d
un
e
d
un
r
t
je
c
e
–
p
d

F
/

1
3
8
2
6
3
1
8
2
9
6
5
9
d
un
e
d
2
0
0
9
1
3
8
2
6
3
p
d

b
oui
g
toi
e
s
t

o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

John Jacob
Kaag

possible if philosophers are willing to
take a stand with the sciences, and a
variety of other academic disciplines,
on the ground of human experience.

Experience: the term reverberates as
a noun, a verb, and ultimately as a com-
mand. While Bertrand Russell, echoing
the sentiment of traditional empiricism,
reduced experience to a description of
“sense-data,” the classical pragmatists
insisted that human experience is de-
½ned by a particular qualitative dimen-
sion; by its purpose, effect, and the liv-
ing memory of past experiences. Expe-
rience is not merely something under-
gone, mais aussi, and always, something
actively done. Dewey’s Experience and
Nature (1925) suggests that a human be-
ing, like any other organism, continu-
ally transacts with its natural surround-
ings, and this observation serves as the
starting point of pragmatic naturalism.
For human beings, cependant, Dewey
presents this natural transaction not as
a mere fact of existence, but an ongoing
question concerning the transaction’s
origin, histoire, processus, and destination.
While pragmatism maintained a sci-
enti½c bearing, it was quite careful not
to succumb to scientism. Dewey, ame-
nable to the studies of psychology, biol-
ogy, and early cognitive neuroscience,
nonetheless held that these disciplines
did not give us absolute answers, only
useful perspectives on the variety and
novelty that de½ne our transactions
with the affairs of nature. James, le
father of experimental psychology in
America, conceded, “[E]xperience as
we know, has ways of boiling over and
making us correct our present formu-
las.”2 Following his father Benjamin
Peirce, C. S. Peirce made a name in
mathematics and physics before cul-
tivating a reputation in philosophy.
He studied under the foremost mathe-
maticians and physicists of the nine-

teenth century, but the young Peirce still
concluded, “[W]ithout beating longer
round the bush . . . experience is our only
teacher.”3 At times this teacher seems to
know only one pedagogical method: le
often painful process of trial and error.
Modern philosophy, beginning with

Descartes, had been de½ned by the
search for absolute and enduring prin-
ciples that might serve as the founda-
tion of human knowledge. In contrast,
Peirce echoed Ralph Waldo Emerson
by suggesting that experience happens
as a “series of surprises” and continual-
ly–inevitably–de½es the theories and
principles that attempt to describe it.4
Peirce’s anti-foundationalism, cependant,
did not signal the ultimate bankruptcy
of the empirical and theoretical sciences.
Unlike many relativists of the twentieth
siècle, he did not regard uncertainty
and fallibility as postulates that proved
the futility of analytic disciplines; rath-
er, insights achieved in the midst of in-
quiry kept these disciplines on the move.
“The pragmatist knows,” wrote Peirce,
“that doubt is an art which has to be ac-
quired through dif½culty.”5 The belief
that doubt is not something given, mais
something carefully acquired, distin-
guishes him from strains of contem-
porary relativism, as well as the unbri-
dled skepticism that de½ned the Carte-
sian system. The Cambridge pragma-
tists dismissed the radical doubt of Des-
cartes, insisting that meaningful skep-
ticism could never be cultivated ex situ,
beyond the constraints of a pressing
and immediate situation.

Indeed the situation, indeterminate
and confused, provides the occasion for
genuine philosophic inquiry. Dewey ex-
plains, “[T]o set up a problem that does
not grow out of an actual situation is to
start on a course of dead work,” and to
arrive rather quickly at the dead end
of “busy work.” Dewey’s observation

Dædalus Spring 2009

D
o
w
n
o
un
d
e
d

F
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
je
r
e
c
t
.

je
t
.

e
d
toi
d
un
e
d
un
r
t
je
c
e
–
p
d

F
/

1
3
8
2
6
3
1
8
2
9
6
5
9
d
un
e
d
2
0
0
9
1
3
8
2
6
3
p
d

b
oui
g
toi
e
s
t

o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

changed the ground rules for philoso-
phy. No longer were thinkers meant to
retreat to their salons and ivory towers
in order to raise questions that would
never be negotiated in the world of ex-
expérience. Instead they were challenged
to engage the world and set upon prob-
lems, in order to face questions that
ought to be negotiated–no small chal-
lenge. This is never simply a matter of
uncovering a question that lays in wait
for us. According to Dewey, determin-
ing a “problematic situation” is an ac-
tive process of creation and discovery.
A problem arises in the midst of investi-
gation and serves as the pivot between
the indeterminacy of the present state
and the determinacy that one seeks as
the end of inquiry. Once a problem is
identi½ed, James suggests that we are
able to “unstiffen all our theories, lim-
ber them up and set each one to work.”6
Not surprisingly, the growing num-
ber of non-philosophers who claim the
title of “pragmatist” often do so in light
of comments such as James’s, which in-
dicate that theoretical progress ought to
be measured in terms of it instrumen-
tal consequences. Pragmatism gets stuff
fait, and if one’s thought effects any
type of change in the “real world,” then
that thinker is a pragmatist–or so the
story goes. Cependant, this version of the
story misconstrues the meaning of prag-
matism and jeopardizes the future of
the tradition in America. Dewey, James,
and Peirce did not advocate unreflective
instrumentalism. When James suggests
that we set our theories to work, he does
not suggest that we ram abstract expla-
nations into the face of a relatively unac-
commodating world. The world, not our
theories, will inevitably win in this sort
of confrontation. Plutôt, James under-
stood abstract concepts as adaptive in-
struments that can, for the time being,
help individuals and their communities

negotiate the twists and turns of experi-
ence. Pragmatism entails the cultivation
of a sensitivity to our surroundings, les deux
local and remote. James echoes Ralph
Waldo Emerson’s insistence that we at-
tune ourselves to the “slightest sensorial
nuance.” In this respect, certainty and
truth are not relative terms, but provision-
al guides that help us “feel out” the tran-
sient flow of experience and the possibil-
ity that it affords.

Human experience is transient; its

lessons are fleeting. For all of its un-
certainty, experience assures us of one
chose: it will be over soon. This is the
hardest teaching that experience has
to offer, and it is the enduring one
around which the history of Western
philosophy has turned. American prag-
matism could not make human experi-
ence central to its philosophy without
attending to the torturous course of
experience and its starkly abrupt end.
James, along with his colleague Josiah
Royce, sought to re-center philosophy
around the hard fact of human ½nitude.
Early American thinkers, such as Rog-

er Williams (1603–1683) and Jonathan
Edwards (1703–1758), established hu-
man fragility and terminality as focal
points of their respective philosophies.
By the 1890s, as pragmatism began to
hit its stride, life in New England had
grown considerably easier, but human
½nitude remained fodder for American
thinkers. Ella Lyman Cabot, a philoso-
pher who worked closely with Royce
and James at the turn of the century,
put it thus: “What is our Life? A sleep
and a forgetting, a happy rising and a
painful setting.”7 Cabot knew that the
experience of life is the all-too-hasty
process of dying. And she understood,
as Plato suggests in the Phaedo, that phi-
losophy at its best is principally con-
cerned with the process of dying well.

Pragmatism
& the les-
sons of
experience

D
o
w
n
o
un
d
e
d

F
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
je
r
e
c
t
.

je
t
.

e
d
toi
d
un
e
d
un
r
t
je
c
e
–
p
d

F
/

1
3
8
2
6
3
1
8
2
9
6
5
9
d
un
e
d
2
0
0
9
1
3
8
2
6
3
p
d

b
oui
g
toi
e
s
t

o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Dædalus Spring 2009

John Jacob
Kaag

What Cabot knew only in theory,
Royce knew ½rsthand, having been
raised in near-poverty in Grass Valley,
California. He made it to Harvard, mais
remained at the margins of the intel-
lectual clique there. He continues to
remain at the margins of contempo-
rary treatments of American pragma-
tism, aussi, in part because he respond-
ed to the problem of human ½nitude
by developing “an absolute idealism,»
a synthesis of Christian theology and
Hegelian system-building that ran
counter to the methodological novel-
ty of the pragmatic tradition. Whereas
Royce maintained the necessity of an
absolute God, the pragmatic method
self-consciously eschewed such ideas.
Royce did, though, influence pragma-
tism in general and James in particular
in at least two respects.

D'abord, Royce’s existential insight re-
garding the human condition–his ac-
knowledgment of the ephemeral and
tragic character of human experience
–helped temper the forward-looking
optimism often associated with what
would come to be known as Deweyian
instrumentalism. Writing in 1894, Cab-
ot reflected on the difference in tem-
perament between Dewey and Royce:

Dewey perhaps understates what Royce
dwells on too much–the storm-stress as-
pects of life. Dewey’s attitude is tremen-
dously healthy . . . and he is not without
feeling and appreciation as the half-unin-
tentional touches in his books show. Mais
could he possibly have such a wide sym-
pathy as Royce with mystics and romanti-
cists? Could he be as fair to them as Royce
est? And if not is his position the best one!
A healthy scorn for all things abstract and
spiritual is a bracing tonic, but passion
and pathos and the tragedy and mystery
. . . must be met with understanding criti-
cism not mere condemnation.8

Most pragmatists resisted the in-
grained, often destructive symptoms
of Christian ideology of nineteenth-
century America, setting themselves
against fanaticism of all forms and
the stultifying effects that dogma had
on individuals and their communities.
Royce, aware of the pitfalls of institu-
tionalized religion, recognized the valu-
able role that religion has, for better and
for worse, played in the lives of individ-
uals; this was Royce’s second contri-
bution to the pragmatic tradition. Dans
his diary of 1873, several years prior to
meeting Royce, James reflects on this
valeur: “Religion in its most abstract
expression may be de½ned as the af½r-
mation that all is not vanity.”9 Vanity,
the grim prospect that our limited ef-
forts come to naught, de½nes large
swathes of human experience. In spite
of this fact, we doggedly, triumphantly,
often irrationally marshal on. James
was fascinated by this determination.
His close interaction with Royce en-
couraged him to face the challenge
of adjusting pragmatism to account
for the full range and depth of human
experience, an experience willfully
embraced despite its inevitable limita-
tion. According to James, pragmatism
was to make philosophy more “tough-
minded,” more scienti½c, experiential
and empirically grounded. Yet pragma-
tism was also to preserve the “tender-
minded” temperament which was keen-
ly attuned to the existential situation to
which religion responds and the action-
able belief that religion entails–namely
that life is worth living.

But is it? In his 1895 article, “Is Life
Worth Living?” James keeps the answer
to that question intentionally vague:
“Maybe.” For the pragmatist, religious
belief is an open question or possibility,
not a promise. Maybe there is afterlife;
maybe there is a transcendent spiritual

Dædalus Spring 2009

D
o
w
n
o
un
d
e
d

F
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
je
r
e
c
t
.

je
t
.

e
d
toi
d
un
e
d
un
r
t
je
c
e
–
p
d

F
/

1
3
8
2
6
3
1
8
2
9
6
5
9
d
un
e
d
2
0
0
9
1
3
8
2
6
3
p
d

b
oui
g
toi
e
s
t

o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

reality; maybe there is redemption to
our suffering. James’s audience was dis-
appointed by his ambiguity, but he ex-
plained that scienti½c life has much to
do with “maybes,” and human life on
the whole has everything to do with
eux. Scienti½c advancement, politique
revolution, social reform, evolutionary
adaptation, psychological treatment: tous
turn upon a “maybe,” a risky possibility
that things may turn out otherwise. Why
should we expect more certitude from
religious beliefs?

Just as fallibilism does not have to
threaten scienti½c inquiry, existential
risk does not cut short life’s broader
projects in which human beings seek
meaning. To the contrary, only by risk-
ing ourselves in an encounter with pos-
sibility do we broaden our projects and
ourselves. Possibility exists at the bor-
der of selfhood, a permeable, indeter-
minate, precarious region that individ-
uals explore at their own peril. The dan-
ger is real, but so, aussi, are the meaning-
ful alternatives that can only be found
in this experiential borderland. In “Cir-
clés,” Emerson sets the groundwork
for a pragmatic conception of selfhood:
“There is no outside, no enclosing wall,
no circumference to us.”10 This com-
ment can cut in one of two directions,
both of which provided fruitful avenues
for thinkers such as James, Dewey, et
Addams.

D'abord, Emerson suggests that experi-
ence is essentially open-ended, a fact
that corresponds to a metaphysical po-
sition that holds that the universe itself
is not bounded by a set of determinable
limits. Pragmatism maintains that there
is neither a single god’s-eye view to be
sought nor a totalizing divine force to be
worshiped. If anything is to be consid-
ered sacred, it is time itself, the medium
through which individual humans work
out the creative business of living. Sec-

ond, Emerson points to the fact of con-
tinuity; there are no walls that inherent-
ly cordon off the ground of experience.
This openness is at once an invitation
for communion and conversation.

The fact that modernity continues to
be de½ned by disciplinary, interpersonal,
and experiential divides has nothing to
do with experience itself, but rather with
the rigid conceptual schemes that indi-
viduals habitually employ, often to poor
effect, in understanding their respective
worlds. When an individual peers over
these self-imposed walls, James believes
that one catches sight of “a universe . . .
that possesses in its own right a concate-
nated or continuous structure.”11 When
this individual ventures beyond the nar-
row con½nes of self-de½nition, there is
the chance to experience this relation-
al world, with all of its subtle and novel
relations, as one’s own. Failing to
venture, according to Emerson, consti-
tutes “the only sin,” for it forfeits the po-
tentiality that quietly resides at the heart
of being human. It is in this sense that
“experience” is not only a description,
but also an imperative.

If failing to recognize fertile possibil-

ities in one’s own life is a sin, it follows
that individuals have a moral obligation
to foster communities and societies
that provide the vistas and pathways by
which individuals can explore their own
experiential frontiers. This is the conclu-
sion that drove classical pragmatists into
a variety of academic disciplines in order
to develop living networks that embody
this ideal. It led Peirce to a new vision of
science as the cooperative processes of a
certain type of community. In the 1890s,
John Dewey extended Peirce’s insight
concerning group dynamics in order to
place educational and democratic theory
on a new footing. Jane Addams followed
suit a decade later by employing it in es-

Pragmatism
& the les-
sons of
experience

D
o
w
n
o
un
d
e
d

F
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
je
r
e
c
t
.

je
t
.

e
d
toi
d
un
e
d
un
r
t
je
c
e
–
p
d

F
/

1
3
8
2
6
3
1
8
2
9
6
5
9
d
un
e
d
2
0
0
9
1
3
8
2
6
3
p
d

b
oui
g
toi
e
s
t

o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Dædalus Spring 2009

John Jacob
Kaag

tablishing the early peace movement
and cultivating social reform in Chica-
go. George Herbert Mead, Addams’s
colleague in the 1920s, adjusted this an-
gle of vision in order to develop the ba-
sis for a signi½cant branch of modern
sociology.

At the core of the pragmatic under-
standing of community are three relat-
ed tenets, all of which stem from expe-
rience: interpretation, pluralism, et
loyalty. Experience does not come ready-
made as discrete points of sense-data,
but rather blooms with meaning as indi-
viduals tend it in the process of careful
interpretation. According to Peirce, nei-
ther meaning nor truth are simply mat-
ters of objective fact, but rather matters
of inter-subjective interpretation. C'est
in this sense that he states, “Nature is a
book which science interprets.”12 This
is not to say that the ½ndings of science
are the stuff of whim and fancy. Genu-
ine interpretation always points to an
object that is being interpreted. In the
case of nature, the object of interpreta-
tion is never wholly stable, but this dy-
namic object can, and does, serve as the
ground on which science makes its col-
lective ½ndings. According to Peirce,
the “dynamical object” provides the
limits, but also the enabling conditions,
for scienti½c interpretation. The limits
of interpretation are set by nature but
also by the course of human history.
Even the most novel interpretation de-
pends on convention–the history of
past interpretations–for its commu-
nicability. The pragmatists appropriat-
ed the long-held understanding of aes-
thetic taste as being conveyed in a com-
mon sense, and claimed that it might
provide a systematic organization for
the sciences.

Pragmatic common sense is a curious-

ly flexible benchmark. It expands, con-
tracts, and evolves under the pressure of

current circumstance, in accord with the
living struggles of the present. At every
moment, its emergence, like the devel-
opment of natural selection, depends
on the precondition of variation. With-
out a variety of perspectives, the scien-
ti½c community would be ill-equipped
to deal with the indeterminacy of novel
situations. The pragmatic concern for
pluralism is not merely an issue of con-
venience or expediency, but one of expe-
riential honesty. If we are honest with
experience, we cannot neglect its variety
of forms, each with its own qualitative
dimension. It is impossible to anticipate
which perspective will prove fortuitous
in the course of human inquiry. “For-
tuitous” variation is only identi½ed in
hindsight; in the midst of development
there is only variation tout court and its
continual engagement with experiential
realities.

Interpretation and pluralism serve
as the drivers of pragmatic inquiry, mais
thinkers such as Royce and James knew
that these ideas lacked power without
the energy of loyalty, or the will to be-
lieve. Pragmatism hoped to redeploy
the notion of loyalty, often associated
with the willingness to adopt the cause
of a particular or exclusive group. In so
faire, it maintained that the identi½ca-
tion of individual interests with com-
munal projects could, and should, être
inclusive and seek the greatest degree
of participation without compromis-
ing the personal stakes that underpin
the lives of individuals.

In the 1930s, at a time when rigid ideo-

logical categories de½ned international
and domestic affairs, John Dewey con-
tinued to express a loyalty to cultural
and political pluralism. Pluralism, a vi-
tal lesson of experience, was not to re-
main hide-bound in lecture halls and li-
braries, but let loose and enacted in the
public square. While Peirce and James

Dædalus Spring 2009

D
o
w
n
o
un
d
e
d

F
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
je
r
e
c
t
.

je
t
.

e
d
toi
d
un
e
d
un
r
t
je
c
e
–
p
d

F
/

1
3
8
2
6
3
1
8
2
9
6
5
9
d
un
e
d
2
0
0
9
1
3
8
2
6
3
p
d

b
oui
g
toi
e
s
t

o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

celebrated diversity primarily in theo-
ry, Dewey and Addams translated this
celebration into projects of social activ-
ism. Ce faisant, they began to make
pragmatism truly practical. As a found-
ing member of the American Civil Lib-
erties Union (aclu) and the National
Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (naacp), Dewey main-
tained, “[UN] progressive society counts
individual variations as precious since
it ½nds in them the means of its own
growth.”13 He continually, if not unerr-
franchement, sought to honor, encounter, et
foster diversity, taking the message of
Democracy and Education to Japan and
China in 1919; seeking education re-
form in Turkey in 1924 and in the Sovi-
et Union in 1928; and chairing the Dew-
ey Commission in 1936, which aimed
to engage and critique the growth of au-
thoritarianism in Communist Russia.
Dewey’s intent as a public intellec-
tual, cependant, was not to set “freedom
on the march,” but to explore careful-
ly and humbly those political frontiers
that remained uncharted. His initial en-
dorsement of American intervention-
ism in World War I quickly shifted in
light of the experiential realities that
emerged after the military confronta-
tion. In a remark that remains disturb-
ingly prescient, Dewey maintained
that the war (and the subsequent peace)
failed, to the extent that it prioritized
abstract ideals over experiential evi-
dence:

[The United States] took into the war
our sentiment, our attachment to moral
sentiment . . . our pious optimism as to
the inevitable victory of the “right,” our
childish belief that physical energy can
do the work that only intelligence can
do, our evangelical hypocrisy that mor-
als and ideals have a self-propelling and
self-executing capacity.14

The ideals of freedom and pluralism
can neither march on their own nor be
dictated to a foreign population. At best,
they can be embodied in diplomatic mis-
sions that seek to expose alternatives
and possibilities indigenous to experi-
ence and that might be cooperatively
negotiated.

Advocating a genuinely pragmatic ap-

proach to foreign policy is dif½cult in a
nation of ideals. It becomes nearly im-
possible when exceptionalism and na-
tionalism are among these ideals. Jane
Addams learned this lesson the hard
chemin. Having been quicker than Dewey
to denounce U.S. military involvement
in the early years of the twentieth cen-
tury, Addams was deemed “the most
dangerous woman in America” by The-
odore Roosevelt in 1917. In a time of
war, cooperation was a subversive act.
Her work with the Women’s Peace Par-
ty stemmed directly from the social re-
form that Addams spearheaded at Hull
House beginning in 1889. Addams sug-
gested that instead of traveling abroad
in order to experience genuine differ-
ence, one needed only open her eyes
and step through any doorway in nine-
teenth-century Chicago, just beyond
the stereotypes that bar the way of mu-
tual understanding. The settlement
house movement that Addams initiat-
ed was unique in its approach to cultur-
al difference and took pragmatism not
only as its intellectual touchstone, mais
as an enduring way of life.

Working among the immigrant poor

of Chicago led Addams to recognize
“lessons of experience” that could never
be replicated in the elite academic cen-
ters of the Northeast. Residents of Hull
House emphasized the value of local di-
versity, the unique relation that individ-
uals living in close quarters had to lan-
guage, ethnicity, genre, and class differ-

Pragmatism
& the les-
sons of
experience

D
o
w
n
o
un
d
e
d

F
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
je
r
e
c
t
.

je
t
.

e
d
toi
d
un
e
d
un
r
t
je
c
e
–
p
d

F
/

1
3
8
2
6
3
1
8
2
9
6
5
9
d
un
e
d
2
0
0
9
1
3
8
2
6
3
p
d

b
oui
g
toi
e
s
t

o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Dædalus Spring 2009

John Jacob
Kaag

ences. Addams reinforced the pragmat-
ic thesis that experience is never had
at a distance, but only in the intimate
familiarity of local and provincial cir-
circonstances. Aujourd'hui, provincialism has
the connotations of restriction and nar-
row perspective. Addams, cependant, sug-
gested that fostering democratic prac-
tices must begin at home, in the neigh-
borhoods and locales where experien-
tial knowledge takes place. She endorsed
provincialism for countering the broad
and damaging generalizations that ac-
company and exacerbate the tensions
of class and race. Pragmatism was, after
tous, a middle-range theory that aimed to
clip the wings of abstract concepts in
order to ground philosophy in the par-
ticularities of everyday life. Twenty Years
at Hull House roots Addams’s pragmatic
commitment in the ability and enthusi-
astic willingness to live amidst concrete
issues of difference. Describing the resi-
dents of a settlement house, she writes,
“They must be content to live quietly
side by side with their neighbors, jusqu'à
they grow into a sense of relationship
and mutual interests.”15

Just as Emerson suggested that being

quiet was necessary to attune oneself
to the “slightest sensorial nuance,” Ad-
dams held that a type of active receptivi-
ty was integral to identifying the subtle
needs of a diverse community. The prag-
matic desire to identify mutual interests
stood against a bureaucratic imposition
of projects and purposes on a given com-
munity. Handling social difference is
never a matter of dictation and assimila-
tion, but rather the careful process of in-
tegration in which ideals are recast in
order to accommodate the widest range
of living realities. This sort of accommo-
dation and integration provided the ba-
sis for the social progressive movement
on the whole, and more particularly, le
pragmatic conception of meliorism.

This approach to thoughtful living
and social reform seems so dif½cult,
so ambiguous, so complicated. So why
bother? This is perhaps the most dif½-
cult question that philosophy ever has
to confront. Cabot repeatedly faced the
challenges entailed in thinking, travail-
ing, and living pragmatically. Being at-
tentive to experience, and more speci½-
cally, being wide-eyed to the experience
of others, caused Cabot to suffer from
what she called a type of “moral sleep-
lessness.” After a trip to Hull House in
the early 1890s, Cabot began to formu-
late her reasons for bearing the sleep-
lessness that attends the social and polit-
ical projects of pragmatism. She wrote,
“[T]he art of living is becoming other
people.”16 This pithy statement lends
itself to two interpretative frames. D'abord,
individuals participate in the “art of liv-
ing” to the extent that they continually
and creatively expand their experiential
horizons. En effet, each of us engages
in a process of self-discovery, uncover-
ing broader, deeper, and more intricate
aspects of ourselves. Deuxième, this pro-
cess of self-discovery depends on an
individual’s ability to ½nd oneself in a
wider community of interpretation.
The cultivation of selfhood is never
an isolated affair, but an interpersonal
project of integrating a variety of pur-
poses and interests. Our empathetic
and careful involvement with others
always determines the extent to which
we “become other people.”

“What the true de½nition of Pragma-
tism may be, I ½nd it very hard to say.”17
Peirce was correct when he penned these
words in 1903, yet somehow it’s become
easier than ever to say, quite con½dently,
“I am a pragmatist.” What exactly are
we saying when we claim to be pragma-
tists? When William James addressed
this question in his 1907 Lowell Lectures,

Dædalus Spring 2009

D
o
w
n
o
un
d
e
d

F
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
je
r
e
c
t
.

je
t
.

e
d
toi
d
un
e
d
un
r
t
je
c
e
–
p
d

F
/

1
3
8
2
6
3
1
8
2
9
6
5
9
d
un
e
d
2
0
0
9
1
3
8
2
6
3
p
d

b
oui
g
toi
e
s
t

o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

he concluded that this American intel-
lectual tradition was “a new name for
some old ways of thinking.” Today it
is no longer a new name. Indeed prag-
matism seems rather worn down, un
tool damaged by use and misuse. Like
any instance of jargon, “pragmatism”
risks becoming an old name with a for-
gotten history.

Genuinely reviving this American
philosophical tradition depends on
our ability to retrace and extend var-

ious ways of thinking through experience.
Pragmatism is dif½cult to de½ne because
it is not one thing. It bespeaks ways, di-
rections, and pathmarks that guide us
in traversing the rough terrain of the ex-
periential landscape. In its attempt to
reclaim the original meaning of philo-
sophia, a relatively small group of Amer-
ican thinkers began to do just that, giv-
ing voice to the enduring lessons that
only experience has to offer.

ENDNOTES
1 I would like to thank Dr. Robert Innis for his suggestions and encouragement in the draft-
ing of this article.
2 William James, “Pragmatism’s Conception of Truth,” in Pragmatism (New York: Long-
mans, Green and Co., 1907), 222.
3 Charles Sanders Peirce, Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vol. 5, éd. Charles Hart-
shorne and Paul Weiss (Cambridge, Mass.: Presse universitaire de Harvard, 1934), 37.
4 Emerson writes, “Life is a series of surprises”; Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Circles,” in Emer-
son’s Prose and Poetry, éd. Joel Porte and Saundra Morris (New York: Norton Critical Edi-
tion, 2001), 181.
5 Charles Sanders Peirce, Writings of Charles Sanders Peirce, vol. 6, éd. Max Fisch (Blooming-
ton: Presse universitaire de l'Indiana, 1982), 498.
6 James, “What Pragmatism Means,” in Pragmatism, 58.
7 Ella Lyman Cabot, “Philosophy and Nature,” December 13, 1884, in Assorted Poetry, Ella
Lyman Cabot Collection, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, (UN-
139) Folder 226.
8 Ella Lyman Cabot, “Notebook 1892,” in Philosophical Reflections, Ella Lyman Cabot Col-
lection, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, (A-139) Folder 320.
9 William James, “Notebook 1873,” William James Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard
University, ms am 1092.9 (4500).

10 Émerson, “Circles,” in Emerson’s Prose and Poetry, éd. Porte and Morris, 175.
11 William James, The Meaning of Truth (Cambridge, Mass.: Presse universitaire de Harvard,

1975), 7.

12 Peirce, Writings of Charles Sanders Peirce, vol. 1, éd. Fisch, 55.
13 John Dewey, Democracy and Education (New York: Macmillan and Company, 1916), 357.
14 John Dewey, “Force and Ideals,” in Characters and Events: Essays in Social and Political Philos-
ophy by John Dewey, vol. 2, éd. Joseph Ratner (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1929),
631.

15 Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House (New York: Macmillan and Company, 1911), 126.
16 Ella Lyman Cabot, “Notebook on Growth,” in Philosophical Reflections, Ella Lyman
Cabot Collection, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, (A-139)

Pragmatism
& the les-
sons of
experience

D
o
w
n
o
un
d
e
d

F
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
je
r
e
c
t
.

je
t
.

e
d
toi
d
un
e
d
un
r
t
je
c
e
–
p
d

F
/

1
3
8
2
6
3
1
8
2
9
6
5
9
d
un
e
d
2
0
0
9
1
3
8
2
6
3
p
d

b
oui
g
toi
e
s
t

o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Dædalus Spring 2009

John Jacob
Kaag

Folder 324. See also John Kaag, “Women and Forgotten Movements in American Philoso-
phy: The Work of Ella Lyman Cabot and Mary Parker Follett,” Transactions of the Charles
S. Peirce Society 44 (1) (Hiver 2008): 134–157.

17 Charles Sanders Peirce, Pragmatism as Principle and Method of Right Thinking: Le 1903 Har-

vard Lectures on Pragmatism, éd. Patricia Turrisi (Albany: suny Press, 1997), 164.

D
o
w
n
o
un
d
e
d

F
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
je
r
e
c
t
.

je
t
.

e
d
toi
d
un
e
d
un
r
t
je
c
e
–
p
d

F
/

1
3
8
2
6
3
1
8
2
9
6
5
9
d
un
e
d
2
0
0
9
1
3
8
2
6
3
p
d

b
oui
g
toi
e
s
t

o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Dædalus Spring 2009
Télécharger le PDF