i was recently asked to write on the philosophy of history from a pragmatist perspective. My initial response was that this is not my area of specialization and that I didn't really have much to say. Then I realized that it was interesting to think about how I view and use notions of history in my work as a feminist pragmatist. It turns out that in my own work, there is a theme of approaching/understanding history through the possibilities of the future. Rather than being confined by settled or fixed views of the present or the past, the present and past are better seen as possibilities for shaping new and different futures. This can be unsettling for many, as humans often like to justify practices and institutions with the idea that “it has to be this way” and/or “it has always been this way.” But unsettling this habit is important if we hope to approach conflict and disagreements in a productive manner that avoids dogmatism and division.Examining my own use of history in my varied philosophical work turned out to be interesting and instructive. It also revealed my reliance on theorists such as Jane Addams, Anna Julia Cooper, and John Dewey in my writing and my teaching. Usually, I work with implicit notions of history and its role in my philosophical writing. The one exception to that was in writing American Philosophy: From Wounded Knee to the Present, co-authored with Scott L. Pratt. In that work, we explicitly took up a pragmatist approach to history rooted in the work of John Dewey. There, we wrote: For Peirce, James, and Dewey, philosophy worth the name began in response to experienced problems—situations marked by confusion, doubt, indeterminacy—and then returned to these problems, aiming to transform and reconstruct them in ways that allowed the inquirer to go forward, to encounter still more experience. Philosophy, then should be understood as an activity that arises from experience. Since experience is framed by language, culture and history, philosophy is not a transcendental practice engaged with the really real and truly true. (McKenna and Pratt 3)In “Philosophy and Civilization,” Dewey noted that philosophy is closely tied to the histories of cultures. These ties are mutually transformative, as the philosophy produced is rooted in, and shaped by, the place and time just as it then transforms the place, time, and traditions that give rise to it.Dewey's own philosophy of history guided our work in American Philosophy: From Wounded Knee to the Present as we strove to offer a history of American philosophy that acknowledges its rootedness in particular times and places. In Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, Dewey noted that history is always in the making, when he wrote: The slightest reflection shows that the conceptual material employed in writing history is that of the period in which a history is written. There is no material available for leading principles and hypotheses save that of the historic present. As culture changes, the conceptions that are dominant in a culture change. Of necessity, new standpoints for viewing, appraising and ordering data arise. History is then rewritten. Material that had formerly been passed by, offers itself as data because the new conceptions propose new problems for solution requiring new factual material for statement and test. (LW 12:232–33)Dewey went on to argue that changes happening in the present put the past into a new perspective and bring to light new problems. This means that one's understanding of the past is changed, and “we gain new instruments for estimating the force of present conditions as potentialities of the future” (LW 12:238). For this reason, in American Philosophy: From Wounded Knee to the Present, Pratt and I embedded the history of American philosophy in actual historical events that we thought could profitably provide context for the philosophy and could themselves be rethought from our present vantage point. We were guided by the standpoint that American philosophy is a tradition committed “to a dynamic, pluralistic world of experience in which knowledge is a product of ongoing investigation, always limited in resources and scope, subject to failure, and liable to be overturned as the problems of the world change. . . . From this perspective there is no final story of American philosophy” (McKenna and Pratt 4). While there is no “final” or “objective” history on this account, the various histories that might be told each provide for different possibilities in the future, and so much is at stake in how one approaches any particular history. We chose to tell a story “of the way philosophy can challenge domination, and of a living philosophy whose practice is still available and perhaps never more important” (McKenna and Pratt 6). The present conditions when we were writing motivated this choice and guided the selection of material. In this way, the present helped us rethink the history of American philosophy in light of hoped-for futures.As I think about most of my other work, this same philosophy of history, this same approach to the history of philosophy, and the same commitment to contextual analysis is in play in almost everything I write. Interestingly, I now find it at play in my very first book, The Task of Utopia: A Pragmatist and Feminist Perspective. While this book is about the importance of envisioning pluralistic and open-ended futures, it does make clear that it is the hopes and fears for the future that shape our views of various histories. I would argue that, while fear tends to result in limited histories that contract the possibilities for the future, a grounded hope results in more capacious histories that enlarge the possibilities for the future. This, I think, is the importance of a pragmatist approach to history—it is an approach to history through the future.Those visions of the future that seek some specific final end (what I call end-state utopian visions) are dangerous. They also tend to be rooted in an appeal to a fixed and objective history. The shift to a pragmatist (and feminist) vision of the future (what I call the process model of utopian visions) makes no pretense to such a history or such a future. It is a developmental model that assumes change over time and place, and change within time and place. “Utopian visions can avoid the problems of static totalitarian visions only when we no longer seek a final, static goal, but realize that it is the process of transformation itself that is our task. What is needed is to keep the possibility of change alive; what is needed is to introduce the notion of evolution and process into utopian visions” (McKenna, Task of Utopia 8–9).In a different vein, anarchist utopian visions try to operate as if history has no bearing on the future. There is a tendency for “anarchist visions to endorse, and rely for their success on a more or less spontaneous, immediate, and complete revolution—often violent in nature. Severing connections to past institutions, value systems, beliefs, and habits would leave people without the tools to make the choices of how they want to live” (McKenna, Task of Utopia 11). From a pragmatist point of view, such a severing from the past is not really possible as values, beliefs, and habits live on in individuals and institutions. You can't simply wish away, or violently destroy, the traces of the history of these various values, beliefs, and habits. The evidence for this can be found in the fact that such visions (fictional and real life) end up relying on repression and killing to try to sever the ties with the past. On the other hand, the feminist pragmatist visions embrace “ongoing process” as exciting and “develop an ability to try to adapt the changing world to our needs. The world becomes unending possibility, rather than simply an obstacle to be overcome. Critical engagement with the world allows us to begin to see new and more complex relationships between various aspects of existence and our horizons of experience begin to expand” (McKenna, Task of Utopia 9).Understanding history as still in the making means that rather than try to ignore or escape from the past, one needs to reshape and rethink the past in light of present and future goals. This approach to history expands the possibilities of the future. “As the horizon expands, the possibilities of the future become more numerous. While we must critically select and act on particular goals, at least we now realize these decisions have wide-ranging consequences. What we select makes a difference. As our possibilities increase, so too do our responsibilities” (McKenna, Task of Utopia 9). It is our responsibility to the future that guides and shapes our histories. While, at the time, I wrote that if one can come to see that there are “multiple possible futures-in-process, one has taken the first step in understanding the responsibility each of us has to the future in deciding how to live our lives now” (McKenna, Task of Utopia 167–68), I would now add that it is also an important step in a more engaged and living relationship with the limits and possibilities of the past. Since the past lives on in the present and future, we must engage history constructively.Feminist activism provides a good example of this understanding of history as lived and understood through the future. From the mid-1800s to the early 1900s, many of the same women worked on women's suffrage, the abolition of slavery, and the prevention of cruelty to other-than-human animals. This early example of a radical notion of intersectionality made it possible to envision a different future by rethinking the past. While some white women activists for women's suffrage tried to forward their cause by appealing to racialized fears and prejudices (arguing that white women were more deserving of the vote than black men), others saw clear connections among the systems that oppressed women and people of color. Some black men also saw the problems of granting only men of color the vote, and worked in concert with women of all races to argue that the philosophies of liberalism developed in the past meant something different from what the ruling elite had been willing or able to see. They did, in fact, use the master's philosophies to dismantle the master's house. They also created new philosophies and new histories at the same time.As Anna Julia Cooper notes, the early formulations of liberalism that came into being during the Reformation were not meant to radically unseat the idea of a power elite; they were just to make some small adjustments and include a few more in the circle of power. But once the ideas of individual liberty, autonomy, and equality were out in the world, they were there for still others to re-interpret and re-purpose given their visions of the future. She wrote: The fathers of the Reformation had no idea that they were inciting an insurrection of the human mind against all domination. None would have been more shocked than they at our nineteenth century deductions from their sixteenth century premises. Emancipation of mind and freedom of thought would have been as appalling to them as it was distasteful to the pope. . . . The sacred prerogative of the individual to decide on matters of belief they did not dream of maintaining. Universal tolerance and its twin, universal charity, were not conceived yet. The broad foundation stone of all human rights, the great democratic principle “A man's a man, and his own sovereign for a’ that” [sic] they did not dare enunciate. They were incapable of drawing up a Declaration of Independence of humanity. The Reformation to the Reformers meant one bundle of authoritative opinion vs. another bundle of authoritative opinions. (Cooper, “Woman versus the Indian” 106)Cooper sees that the principles of the Reformation in their own time and place were limited by that time and place. However, that's not the end of the story. Viewed from another time and place, the same ideas can be taken up and repurposed for the sake of new possibilities and radically different futures. She continues: “To our eye, viewed through the vista of three centuries, it was the death wrestle of the principle of thought enslavement in the throttling grasp for personal freedom; it was the great Emancipation Day of human belief, man's intellectual Independence Day, prefiguring and finally compelling the world-wide enfranchisement of his body and all activities” (Cooper, “Woman versus the Indian” 106). The vision that emerged was one that enlarged the community of persons and allowed for the possibility of growth and development as people with different experiences found themselves with common cause. She then uses these past principles of autonomy and freedom, combined with the more recently developing notions of universal tolerance and charity, and argues for a deeply intersectional approach to change going forward into the future. She writes: It is not the intelligent woman vs. the ignorant woman; nor the white woman vs. the black, the brown, and the red,—it is not even the cause of woman vs. man. Nay, ‘tis woman's strongest vindication for speaking that the world needs to hear her voice. It would be subversive of every human interest that the cry of one-half the human family be stifled. . . . Hers is every interest that has lacked an interpreter and a defender. Her cause is linked with that of every agony that has been dumb—every wrong that needs a voice. (Cooper, “Woman versus the Indian” 107)This was a new understanding of a common cause, across what had been seen as deep and irresolvable divides, which brought new possibilities to light and changed people's thinking in a way that changed their habits and ways of acting as well. This was only possible through a rethinking of history, though.Similarly, many who came to take up the cause of other-than-human animals’ suffering and death used many of these same concepts and principles to argue that animals had needs and interests that needed to be respected. While some saw any connection between the oppression of women and the oppression of animals as disrespectful of women (Mary Wollstonecraft, for example), this position demonstrated a failure of imagination with regard to the present situations of women and other-than-human animals as well as their futures. The same can be said for those who have resisted connections among the thinking and the practices that allowed for the enslavement of some human beings and the common treatment of other-than-human beings. Since human exceptionalism mirrors male exceptionalism and European exceptionalism, real change requires a more radical vision of a different future that allows one to see through the status quo of the present and the past. The failure to do that results in women of color having their health endangered as they work in the animal slaughter industry to provide the white middle class with abundant and cheap meat (animal flesh). These same women then further endanger their own health by buying into the standard American diet—eating lots of meat, dairy, and sugar.The irony of black bodies being sickened and killed by a diet that has only been made possible through the enslavement of people of color (the ubiquitous presence of sugar in all our food), and the idea that the bodies of people of color are expendable (the high rates of injury in the slaughter industry), should be clear to anyone who can see through the histories that try to make this seem normal and healthy. Breeze Harper's Sistah Vegan includes several essays that call on women of color to understand how their own interests, health, and freedom are tied to those of other animal beings and the environment as a whole.This view requires an understanding of how women of color have been positioned in the past by the dominant philosophies and power structures. It also requires a vision of the future that allows for re-interpretation of the past and resistance to its limiting forces. If one has a sense of history as settled and dead, there is less room for change moving forward. If one believes there is one objective interpretation of history, then the possibility of the transformation of present circumstances is seriously limited. A feminist pragmatist understanding of history, however, makes it possible to re-imagine the past as part of the way to transform the present and the future. The possibility of grounded hope is at stake in the various understandings of history.It is important to note, however, that this kind of grounded hope requires facing difficult and troubling aspects of one's present and past. The past is not to be romanticized or cleaned up, nor is the present to be made some kind of necessary passage to a better future. That way of thinking returns us to “the end justifies the means” way of thinking that infects end-state models of utopia. Rather, the present and the past must be faced with all their tensions, contradictions, and injustices. It is the real experiences of women of color being raped and used as “breeders” that build the awareness of greater connections among human beings and other animal beings, and make possible calls for solidarity among women of all classes, races, ethnicities, and religions. It doesn't mean that all will realize or act on those connections, however.The history of activism around women's reproductive rights can serve as a case in point. In the United States, in the first half of the twentieth century, there were activists smuggling in birth control devices (at great personal risk) so women could exercise some control over their reproductive decisions. Breaking the law was seen by some as a necessary step to changing the law and gaining more freedom of choice for women. At the same time, doctors were denying the autonomy of women who were deemed “less fit,” and these women were being sterilized without their knowledge or consent. To understand present-day politics around women's reproductive rights, it is necessary to explore this complex and contradictory history from many different angles and try to incorporate insights from those with radically different experiences. An open pluralism is important for understanding deep divides and unlikely alliances that both keep us stuck and enable movement. The impulse to simplify and reduce the messiness of history is one with which we must wrestle. While it can result in more certainty about one's cause, and allow one to shape the history in one particular direction, this impulse is costly as it reduces the possibilities for myriad possible futures. Such simplification often reinforces false either/or and us/them ways of thinking and acting.Another feminist pragmatist writer who demonstrates a way to work through the realities of past and present injustice and violence to build a better future is Jane Addams. In her book The Long Road of Woman's Memory, she tells stories and provides narratives of women's lives in a way that brings to light the violence faced by these women, their growing sense of uselessness as they age, and their loss of faith in their governments during times of war (among other things). In telling these stories, however, her focus is always on how coming to be aware of these problems places one in a better position to rethink the possibilities going forward. For instance, Addams tells several stories of women who held to the strict moral codes of their past and disowned children who violated these codes by having children of their own outside of marriage. These women often found themselves losing their children to suicide or prostitution. They also lost the chance to know their grandchildren. These women came to realize that caring for the person and addressing the social institutions and injustices that pushed their children into “loose” morals was a better way forward than condemning the individual children. Addams thought that women were more prone to this “moralizing” rooted in the past, but also more able to see the bigger problems society faced in this regard, and so more able to rethink the past in light of some desired future.In the stories she tells, Addams shows women rethinking past conventions and struggling to find a way forward that is more just. They are seeking the tolerance and charity discussed by Cooper above.Addams goes on to note that while these women feel the tension between their past and their desired future, “[f]ortunately the entire burden of the attempt to modify convention which has become unsupportable, by no means rests solely upon such self-conscious women” (34). She gives many examples of women defying past traditions in light of new circumstances. “Such mothers, overcoming that timidity which makes it so difficult to effect changes in daily living, make a genuine contribution to the solution of the vexed problem” (Addams 39). These women make real change and bring to light the “obtuseness on the part of those bound by the iron fetters of convention.” They find the common focus on the children (those without a voice in Cooper's analysis) to overcome their past judgments and dismissal of the “bad woman.” All children “must still be nourished and properly reared,” and this focus makes for “a great modification of the harsh judgments meted out in such cases, as women all over the world have endeavored, through the old bungling method of trial and error, to deal justly with individual situations” (40). Over time, the changes made in individual judgments have been codified into law and social practice.Addams thinks this kind of change is possible when women integrate new experiences with their past—with “the impressions Memory has kept in store for her. Eagerly seeking continuity with the past by her own secret tests of affinity, she reinforces and encourages Memory's instinctive processes of selection” (Addams 41). This “selective memory” helps women make sense of past injustices and work for futures where women will not have to face the same conditions. Like Cooper, Addams thinks that “[m]aternal affection and solicitude, in woman's remembering heart, may at length coalesce into chivalric protection for all that is young and unguarded” and that this demonstrates their desire for the future “protection for those at the bottom of society” (41). For Addams, this translates into a new social ethic that challenges competitive, individualist models of militarized capitalism. This is another example of rethinking history (thinking through memory) in order to create new possibilities for the future.Cooper and Addams are good examples of feminist pragmatists engaging with history in order to remake the possibilities for the future. This kind of work needs to go on in much of the politically engaged and environmentally motivated philosophies of today. In pondering the task of writing this essay, I again found that the pragmatist understanding of the history of philosophy and the philosophy of history informs my most current work on pets and livestock. In this work, I have found it important not to try to hide the history of human relationships with those animal beings commonly considered to be pets and those commonly considered to be livestock, by refusing to use these terms. Instead, I've tried to place the development of these terms and categories in a long historical context that then enables greater understanding of the past, present, and possible futures. However, this runs counter to more dominant views that proceed as if the relationships between humans and livestock animals living and dying in factory farms is what frames all relationships between humans and livestock animals, and so we should end all such relationships. As with the history of reproductive rights in the United States, this approach oversimplifies and so distorts the past and the present. It also unnecessarily limits the possibilities for moving forward—of making things better. There are no non-historical, non-contextual thoughts, principles, or philosophies. So rather than seeking universal principles and being bound by ahistorical ideas and commitments, philosophers need to be willing to engage the future to remake the past and then use the remade past to make the future.