A More Luminous Life: An Attempt at a Religiously Informed Pragmatism

Abstract

A first rate test of the value of any philosophy.... Does it end in conclusions which, when they are referred back to ordinary life experiences and their predicaments, render them more significant, more luminous to us, and make our dealings with them more fruitful? John Dewey is often described in “fatherly” terms, because he took the concerns of earlier generations of American pragmatists, and brought to them the empiricism of the scientific method, thus turning a methodological corner, while preserving concrete concerns expressed in earlier generations. As early as Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the rise of Transcendentalism, pragmatism centered on seeing history as the theatre in which the person-in-society uses creative intelligence to engage and construct the world, through experimental reflection and action. Pragmatists stress the voluntaristic and instrumental views of the human person. Dewey took these concerns and read them through the lens of what he knew of scientific empiricism, considering structures, systems, and social dynamics as part of the equation, in a way not considered by pragmatists before him. He helped pragmatism to see the social context in which dreaming, envisioning, and acting took place. All human interaction could be seen in the light of these contexts, and social intelligence would enable significant human problems to be addressed. At the core of his concerns were ideas which have been the concern of pragmatists since: individual, world, social freedom, and democratic lifestyle.