The Journal of Speculative Philosophy

In an article titled "Old Ideals Crumble: War, Pragmatist Intellectuals, and the Limits of Philosophy," John Stuhr identifies a kind of question that those philosophers interested in pragmatism only as a theory are often tempted to ask: "How if at all, has pragmatism's criticism of traditional philosophy contributed to philosophy and to other disciplines?" (2004, 82). The problem with this question, or varieties of it (of which Stuhr provides many examples), is that it is irrelevant to pragmatism's stated aim of improving the kind of life we live every day. Another way to put this problem is to claim that insofar as pragmatism is understood as merely a theoretical endeavor, an endeavor isolated from practical, worldly concerns, we are likely to ask questions that will be pointless, uninteresting, and antipragmatic. And, just as important, we will be creating an unfortunate and unproductive theory versus practice dualism that is completely at odds with the intent of the classic pragmatist philosophers (and with the intent of many of its best practitioners today) of understanding theory and practice as complimentary rather than antithetical activities. The kind of questions that Stuhr identifies as problematic, to put the issue yet another way, are so because they do not respond to social concerns and because they do not enrich our experience. Questions of these kinds, in sum, are not pragmatic questions.

How this came to be so, how it is that a way of thinking aimed specifically at enhancing life's experiences, at reconstructing social life, and at conceiving of philosophy as criticism, has become so often deployed as, in effect, a way of thinking that avoids critical engagement with the practical realities of everyday life is a central problem behind much of Stuhr's exciting Pragmatism, Postmodernism, and the Future of Philosophy. Stuhr treats this central topic through ingenious, smart, and often witty perspectives on such diverse topics as liberalism, democracy, terrorism, art, critical theory, and pluralism, and on such diverse theorists as John Dewey, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Ernest Hocking, Theodor Adorno, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, and William James. These new, provocative angles from which to look at both the topics and critics are in themselves commendable. But what is truly exciting about the ten essays that constitute this collection is the way Stuhr's relentless style of genealogical questioning and reconstruction highlights how deadening it can be to conceive of pragmatism as merely a theoretical tool. Compare the kind of antipragmatic question I quoted above and the kind of questions abundant in this book: [End Page 274]

Where does this [genealogical] criticism come from? How is it circulated and contained? Who controls it? What displacements are determined for subjects within genealogical criticism? Who can fulfill these diverse subject functions?

(149)

And again look at Stuhr's on the role of questions:

[E]xperimentalists may be tempted to ask for instructions, to look for the policeman in the Kafka's story, to ask how one can engage in pragmatic cultural criticism: How can I do this? This question appears to presuppose that criticism is not only a task with instructions but also a task for individuals. Consider instead another question. Upon what social conditions does criticism, or the capacity for criticism, depend? . . . This is not a question about supposed logical or metaphysical or epistemological preconditions of criticism. Rather, it is a question about the ways in which social conditions make possible or impossible the genealogies necessary for the communities of memory; the imagination necessary for communities of hope; and the instrumentalities or strategies necessary for a community of agents.

(132)

What is important about the line of questions that Stuhr proposes here is that they arouse what I would like to call a "pragmatic affect" in the reader, one that effectively erases the theory/practice dualism (as well as many others like thinking/acting, reason/emotion, and so forth). Let me be more specific. Questions—traditionally considered—invite answers...