Review Essays: Pragmatism and Pluralism, Together Again

Abstract

These three otherwise very different books are tied together by a common commitment to resolving the problems of plurality. Alison Kadlec argues that Deweyan pragmatism can help us resist the power and domination that appear inevitable under conditions of plurality and difference. In sharp contrast, Robert Talisse argues that Deweyan pragmatism cannot succeed under the conditions of reasonable pluralism that we actually encounter, and offers instead a democratic theory rooted in C. S. Peirce’s epistemology. Finally, Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, with the help of more than 150 co-authors and five hundred illustrations, challenge us to fundamentally rethink politics, representation, and things in ways that defy a one-sentence summary. Alison Kadlec’s Dewey’s Critical Pragmatism is an interesting if, in my judgment, unsuccessful attempt to reconcile Dewey and critical theory. On her reading, critical theorists (especially Horkheimer and Habermas) have leveled two main charges at pragmatism (and Dewey in particular): that it can appeal to no independent normative standards in its efforts to criticize and improve political life; and that, in fact and as a consequence, pragmatism has generally failed to produce serious criticisms of power and domi­ nation. Her intent is to demonstrate that pragmatism deserves to be recognized as a critical philosophy, one that has faith in the capacity of individuals to engage in critical reflection on inequality and injustice, while also helping us to cope with the dangers of becoming entrapped in the assumptions and power relations of the status quo. Kadlec rightly recognizes that the thrust of the critical theorists’ charges is that pragmatism is caught in a dilemma: if it forbids us to appeal to standards that in some sense transcend our individual experience, then it seems impossible that pragmatism would help us critique and change the assumptions of the world in which we live, since we would always already be trapped in assumptions and ideas that reflect existing relations of power; but, on the other hand, if pragmatism permits appeal to more enduring standards, then it seems to lose its philosophical distinctiveness, and becomes yet another transcendental theory. Thus, she writes: “For Habermas . . . Dewey is unable to adequately justify his commitments. Dewey must offer more of a foundation than a commitment to free inquiry and the proliferation of perception of shared consequences if he is to justify his democratic vision and defend it against those forces which seek to undermine and subvert the pursuit of just arrangements” (pp. 18-19). Kadlec’s strategy is to argue that pragmatism does in fact make reference to standards that are partially independent of everyday experience, but then to claim that those standards are not transcendent. Hence: