KALLEN: America, the Diversity to Orchestrate

Abstract

AbstractThe concept of cultural pluralism has a very well-identified father in the American pragmatist Horace Kallen, a pupil of William James. The beginning of twentieth century was a decisive age for the formation of the concept of citizenship in the United States, for now one of pluralist culture’s most successful expressions. It is no coincidence that it is attacked by Monists who see multiculturalism as a poison to be removed from the American social context (Allan Bloom, Samuel Huntington etc.). Kallen entered the debate on the melting pot, a mono-cultural metaphor for the crucible in which ethno-cultural diversities mix to give life to a new “league”, the homogeneous one of American citizens, and defended the importance of the different identities that mingle in the harmonious unity of American society like the different instruments of a well-harmonized orchestra. He thus defended Americans’ right to the ‘hyphen’ that can characterizes a united people, but one in which every element (Italian-Americans, Jewish-Americans, etc) defend the first part of their identity alongside the second.KeywordsCitizenshipMelting potCultural pluralismPragmatismZangwillTheodore RooseveltWilliam JamesRichard BernsteinMichael Walzer