Life and politics as plural: James and Bentley on the twentieth century problem

Abstract

If twentieth century thought has been characterized by a preoccupation with the themes of analysis, fragmentation, specialization, alienation and anomie, American speculation on the disunity of the cosmos has owed a great debt to the metaphysics and psychology of William James and the political theory of Arthur F. Bentley. While James revolted against idealistic holism by describing a "pluralistic universe" and an empirical self constituted by disparate processes, Bentley reacted against a political science of state and sovereignty by developing a doctrine of political pluralism based on the activity of interest groups. The division of the whole into its separate, and often unrelated, constituents was carried out in America in the name of pluralism. Though Europeans might despair about dissolution and estrangement, American pragmatists and behaviorists revelled in their new freedom from the "block universe." The destruction of monism could be interpreted as the final step in the liberation of America from the Old World. With optimism and confidence James used the political analogy of a federal republic to elucidate his pluralistic metaphysics, t Bentley, a self-conscious disciple of James, improved upon his master by dissecting the "federal republic" itself. No pessimist, he praised the Jamesian approach: "No one has made a more brilliant raid into the social field than James in his analysis of the 'selves.' " e Karl Jaspers has remarked that while pragmatism "seemed to be laying new foundations" for existence-philosophy, "what it built thereon was nothing more than an aggregate of crude analysis of life and cheap optimism, was a mere expression of a blind confidence in the extant confusion." 3 Why, when others were attempting to reconstruct unity of purpose, did philosophers like James and Bentley embrace a purposeless diversity? Did they discover something worthwhile in twentieth century life and politics to which Europeans were blinded and which contemporary Americans have lost? James was one of the first writers to adopt a fully pluralistic view of government and politics. In The Varieties of Religious Experience he noted that no major social institution could be defined simply. This was particularly