For the most part, a loosely defined pragmatism has helped me make sense of the world fairly well. But in this “post-truth” era — including, but not limited to, Trump and his enablers — I’ve been feeling the need to think more rigorously.
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I stumbled on pragmatism shortly after I walked away from Christianity. I wasn’t walking toward anything specific; I wasn’t replacing my faith with some competing worldview — not Buddhism, not Reason, not hedonism, not even atheism (that would come later). No: Christianity had simply stopped making sense to me. So I cut the lines and let myself sort of drift away.
To be sure, Christianity had offered a certain amount of comfort, a sense that we were all in the same boat, safe from the tempest. And I’ll admit that, once I left, there were a few moments — especially around major life challenges — when I felt at sea, a bit like Mark Wahlberg’s character at the end of The Perfect Storm:
But for the most part, I’ve been fine. Even if I wanted to find comfort in some totalizing worldview, I don’t see how I could, given my postmodern skepticism about grands récits, those Grand Narratives about Capital-T Truths that people use, consciously or not, to amass and wield power. So I’ve embraced the idea that we need to make meaning, rather than to simply find it, or accept it, or interpret it.
My oversimplified pragmatism centered on two questions, which I would bring to any truth claims or perspectives or decisions that I thought needed examination (probably fewer than would be warranted): What difference does it make? and What works?
The first question sounds snarky, but it’s not meant to be. It draws attention to the consequences of a position. A personal example: it took awhile for me to identify as atheist, rather than agnostic. In the end, the difference boiled down to fear: I was afraid to let go of the last traces of my identity as a “person of faith.” So, even though it may be more precise to call me agnostic (I believe there’s no god, but I accept that I could be wrong about that), identifying as atheist clears up a lot of clutter — baggage from my past, for example, or unnecessary hedging during dinner conversations.
But the second question — What works? — is the one that has been tripping me up a bit lately.
It’s been a long time since I’ve read William James, so I’ve lost the nuances of his argument. But his idea was that — and I’ll just quote from a summary of a book about philosophy from Oxford University Press — “A belief is true if it is beneficial to our lives, if it is useful or satisfying. Hence the notion that the truth is ‘what works.'”
That flies in the face of a lot of ideas about Capital-T Truth, whether it be rationalism or empiricism or religion (though, as I remember it, James’s argument was meant in part to demonstrate value in religious thought). But I found it useful, and thus true enough — a circular logic, to be sure, but this “little-t-truth” fits nicely within my general skepticism toward big claims.
Or, at least it did, until we entered this “Post-Truth” era, which seems characterized by a brutish and cynical pragmatism. It predates Trump’s presidency, but lately it’s had an increasingly suffocating grip on American politics.
Submitted for your consideration: the GOP’s unblinking allegiance to Trump certainly works, even when — especially when? — it involves public and explicit hypocrisy (or, as the fictionary would have it, hypocracy):
December 2019 McConnell: “I’m not an impartial juror. This is a political process; there’s not anything judicial about it. Impeachment is a political decision. The House made a partisan political decision to impeach; I would anticipate we’ll have a largely partisan outcome in the Senate. I’m not impartial about this at all.”
Impeachment oath, January 2020, which the Chief Justice administered, and to which all senator, including McConnell, signed their names: “Do you solemnly swear that in all things appertaining to the trial of the impeachment of Donald John Trump, president of the United States, now pending, you will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws, so help you god?”
It seems they can get away with saying just anything — whatever works in the moment, without regard for what they’ve said before, or how it lines up with reality. It certainly seems to offer a huge advantage. But while that advantage may work for them, it might not work for the rest of us.
All of this has made me want to ask two additional questions: (a) works for what? and (b) works for whom?
When “what works?” was primarily a personal question — a question from a position of privilege, of course, but a personal one nonetheless — I didn’t even think to ask these follow-up questions. A certain ethical expectation — whether it was a vestigial tail from my Christian morality or a skeletal set of rules internalized from society more generally — was always baked into my question about what works.
But now, my main question is this: what mechanism, if any, does pragmatism offer to ensure a reasonable level of ethics?
I know a couple easy-ish answers or, at least, distinctions we can make.
The first is that this should never have been primarily a personal question in the first place. Pragmatists often wrote about community in important ways. This may not fully answer the for whom? question, as different communities compete for the power of accepted “truth.” But it does help avoid the (oft-criticized, if I remember correctly) claim that pragmatism makes truth purely subjective.
The second is that there are different time frames in which to judge what works. Those who deny that we’re in the middle of a climate emergency have convinced a lot of people that no one can really know that there’s a problem, or that those who claim there is a problem are downright lying. Their tactics mimic those of the tobacco companies who denied that cigarettes cause cancer (you can read about the overlap of these tactics and, in some cases, the people deploying these tactics, in McIntyre’s Post-Truth). In the short term, they muddied the waters and reaped their profits. But in the long term, people died.
I think that qualifies as “not working.”
Similarly, in the long term, it will become obvious that the climate denialists were acting out of personal, or corporate, or nationalist interests. But that’s not really that comforting, is it?
As I said, these are easy-ish answers, and they don’t really address the heart of the issue I’ve recently become concerned about. We all live personal lives in the short term. So how might pragmatists like me ensure that “what works” remains ethical?
Of course, behind all that lies my skepticism of isms — philosophical traditions, including pragmatism, that purport a coherent worldview. But I’m not looking for the Truth, just a truth that works.
I’ll be starting my inquiry with two books, though I call on my philosophy-minded friends or readers to offer cautions (if I’ve chosen poorly) and/or better or additional recommendations.
The first is a fairly well-reviewed textbook: Michael Bacon’s Pragmatism: An Introduction. I expect to be half-reminded and half-taught about the major players and their interests, which should help me figure out whose work I want to delve into more deeply.
The second is Larry A Hickman’s Pragmatism as Post-postmodernism: Lessons from John Dewey — mainly because the title does two things that I love: it contains two isms that really shouldn’t be isms, and it posts postmodernism. Right up my alley.
