Idealism vs. Pragmatism and Other False Dichotomies

Abstract

first of all, I want to thank Micah Hester and Jackie Kegley so much for their generous and pertinent comments on my work. They are both too kind, I think, and I am not only grateful but also impressed by their taking the time to acquaint themselves with a wide range of my articles and my books, some of which are pretty hard to access these days. As I thought of a response to their comments on my work, I was reminded of how Hester distinguished its three main thrusts as classical American philosophy (especially in the writings of Royce), feminism, and bioethics. In my professional life, I came to each of these content areas in succession, mainly incorporating each previous focus into the other. But then I realized that my interest and involvement in each was sparked and sustained, in a very Deweyan way, by my own life experience, that is, my personal life. Events in my personal life have not been entirely separable from my professional pursuits, and this has led me to describe my remarks today as a critique of the dichotomy that is often assumed between the personal and professional domains. I think this critique is applicable to other often-assumed dichotomies such as those between mind and body, or reason and feeling, or theory and practice, as well as in the relationship between idealism and pragmatism that I identified long ago in my work on Royce (Mahowald, Idealistic Pragmatism). In the intervening years, I have become quite comfortable with describing myself, not just Royce, as an idealistic pragmatist. Both Hester and Kegley have well articulated my overall approach, my understanding of an idealistic pragmatism, as applicable to issues involving nondominant groups in society, especially in the context of health care. Both have stressed the standpoint theory that is, I believe, another way of expressing the perspectival account of knowledge found in the classical American philosophers. My central starting point, which Hester accurately identifies,