Abstract
Leonard Harris’s work on Alain Locke and insurrectionism are invaluable contributions to American philosophy, but for some reason his “insurrectionist challenge to Pragmatism” gets the most attention; it presses Pragmatism to show how it can facilitate insurrection and revolt against moral abominations such as oppression, racism, and slavery. For some, the implication of the challenge is that Pragmatism and insurrectionism are incompatible; for others, there is still hope that at least future Pragmatism could meet the challenge. But overall the legitimacy or soundness of the insurrectionist challenge has not been questioned. Pragmatism does have weaknesses and should be subject to criticism, but I argue that none of the arguments presented by Harris, and repeated by others, undermine the adequacy of Pragmatism in any significant way. Pragmatism is compatible or includes everything that Harris accuses it of lacking, or it has good reasons not to meet his expectations of adequacy.
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Notes
- 1.
Leonard Harris, “Insurrectionist Ethics: Advocacy, Moral Psychology, and Pragmatism,” in Ethical Issues for a New Millennium, ed. J. Howie (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002).
- 2.
See José Medina, “Pragmatism, Racial Injustice and Epistemic Insurrection: Toward an Insurrectionist Pragmatism,” in Pragmatism and Justice (Oxford University Press, forthcoming); Jacoby Carter, “The Insurrectionist Challenge to Pragmatism and Maria W. Stewart’s Feminist Insurrectionist Ethics,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 49 (2013): 54–73; Lee McBride, “Insurrectionist Ethics and Racism,” in The Oxford Handbook of Race and Philosophy, ed. Naomi Zack (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming); “Insurrectionist Ethics and Thoreau,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 49, no. 1 (Winter 2013): 29–45; Colin Koopman “Contesting Injustice: Why Pragmatist Political Thought Needs Du Bois” (discussion paper at 2016 SAAP conference) http://www.american-philosophy.org/saap2016/openconf/modules/request.php?module=oc_program&action=view.php&id=39.
- 3.
What makes me think that Leonard Harris wants the target of his challenge to be pragmatism as a philosophy and not the particular lives or character of classical pragmatists philosophers is the fact that he recognizes that some pragmatists have engaged in resistance and insurrection against racial injustices, but what is not so clear is that they have done so “as a function of their pragmatism”: “Certainly, John Dewey, Alain Locke, and Jane Addams held deep commitments to uplifting the downtrodden. My query is whether there exist features of pragmatism that require, as necessary conditions to be a pragmatist, support for participation in insurrection” (2002, 200–201).
- 4.
Leonard Harris. “Insurrectionist Ethics: Advocacy, Moral Psychology, and Pragmatism,” 192.
- 5.
Ibid., 208.
- 6.
Ibid., 192.
- 7.
Ibid., 199.
- 8.
Middle Works of John Dewey, volume 14, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press), 195.
- 9.
Ibid.
- 10.
Leonard Harris, “Insurrectionist Ethics: Advocacy, Moral Psychology, and Pragmatism,” 202. “Assuming we have duties that are not contingent on the successful outcome of action nor on effective predictions of what will become successful, what duties are there from a pragmatists standpoint to overflow slavery??” (203). “Are the normative resources so deeply ingrained in classical pragmatism adequate? Is the category of humanity understood in a way that would justify radical action on behalf of the downtrodden, even if the consequences were likely to be harmful to the actors and others?” (200).
- 11.
Ibid., 208.
- 12.
Ibid., 206.
- 13.
This is obvious from reading Dewey’s “Three Independent Factors in Morals” (Later Works of John Dewey, volume 5, 279–88).
- 14.
Later Works of John Dewey, volume 5, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press), 280.
- 15.
Leonard Harris, “Insurrectionist Ethics: Advocacy, Moral Psychology, and Pragmatism,” 204.
- 16.
Middle Works of John Dewey, volume 14, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press), 183.
- 17.
Leonard Harris, “Insurrectionist Ethics: Advocacy, Moral Psychology, and Pragmatism,” 200.
- 18.
Ibid., 208.
- 19.
Richard J. Bernstein, Violence: Thinking Without Banisters (Polity: New York, 2013).
- 20.
Leonard Harris, “Insurrectionist Ethics: Advocacy, Moral Psychology, and Pragmatism,” 202.
- 21.
Ibid., 203.
- 22.
John Dewey, Lectures in China, 1919–1920, trans. and ed. Robert W. Clopton and Tsuin-Chen Ou (Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii, 1973).
- 23.
“John’s Dewey Lectures in Social and Political Philosophy (China),” in European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 7, no. 2 (2015), eds. Roberto Frega (CNRS-IMM, Paris), Roberto Gronda (Università di Pisa), 16.
- 24.
Ibid., 18.
- 25.
In America, for instance, Dewey notices that the tyranny of the economical dimension of life have recently been the dominant interest. “The contemporary West, especially America industrial and economic groups cutting across the other forms of life, and tending to subordinate them to its own unchecked aggrandizement.” Ibid.
- 26.
Ibid., 23.
- 27.
Ibid.
- 28.
Ibid.
- 29.
Ibid., 23.
- 30.
Ibid., 20.
- 31.
Ibid.
- 32.
The struggle for the recognition and rectification of a social inequality is usually met with much resistance and characterization of those making the demands as just pursuing disturbance for the sake of some special treatment or self-interest. When in fact, those in power are the ones that are usually masking their one-sided interests, which have become institutionalized and conventionalized under some higher social value. “An innate egotism is clothed and armed with socially important purposes and supports” (Ibid.).
- 33.
Ibid., 25.
- 34.
Ibid.
- 35.
Ibid.
- 36.
We can rely on some knowledge of previous social conflicts, the lessons learned from history and theories, but ultimately discriminating between good and bad institutions, laws, and associations will be a matter of having a context sensitive intelligence to study present forces and come to a more reasonable judgment; rather than relying on the authority of some ideology or theory. This means “an appeal to intelligence, not to bias and prejudice and vested interests, to inquiry to trace causes and consequences, to see what produced this or that institution or arrangement, the historic method, and also to trace consequences, to see how the arrangement works, what effects it produces—and the same for any proposed measure of reform, improvement. The practical difference is thus the substitution of the scientific method for the method of opinion, dogmatic assertion, bitter recriminations and disparaging name calling, epithets of abuse. Method of analysis, of taking things in details and discriminating, instead of wholesale isms” (Ibid.).
- 37.
Leonard Harris, “Insurrectionist Ethics: Advocacy, Moral Psychology, and Pragmatism,” 208.
- 38.
Ibid., 192.
- 39.
Ibid., 200–201.
- 40.
201.
- 41.
Ibid.
- 42.
Middle Works of John Dewey, volume 5, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press), 379.
- 43.
See chapters 10–12 in Gregory F. Pappas’s John Dewey’s Ethics: Democracy as Experience (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008). “Courage is needed for more than the few heroic moral acts we will do in our life. Courage is needed at every step of the way for the instability, indeterminacy, and uncertain possibilities inherent in every moral situation” (90).
- 44.
For example, see Scott R. Stroud’s “Pragmatism and the Pursuit of Social Justice in India: Bhimrao Ambedkar and the Rhetoric of Religious Reorientation,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 46, no.1: 5–27. For the influence of Pragmatism in Latin American social struggles there are many examples in Pragmatism in the Americas (ed. Gregory F. Pappas, Fordham University Press, 2011).
References
Dewey, John. 1973. Lectures in China, 1919–1920, Trans. and ed. Robert W. Clopton and Tsuin-Chen Ou. Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii.
———. 2008. The Later Works of John Dewey, Volume 5, 1925 – 1953. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
———. 2015. Lectures in Social and Political Philosophy (China). European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 7 (2): 7–44.
Harris, Leonard. 2002. Insurrectionist Ethics: Advocacy, Moral Psychology, and Pragmatism. In Ethical Issues for a New Millennium, ed. J. Howie. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Pappas, Gregory F. 2008. John Dewey’s Ethics: Democracy as Experience. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
———., ed. 2011. Pragmatism in the Americas. New York: Fordham University Press.
Stroud, Scott R. 2016. Pragmatism and the Pursuit of Social Justice in India: Bhimrao Ambedkar and the Rhetoric of Religious Reorientation. Rhetoric Society Quarterly 46 (1): 5–27.
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Pappas, G.F. (2023). Leonard Harris’s Insurrectionist “Challenge” to Pragmatism. In: Carter, J.A., Scriven, D. (eds) Insurrectionist Ethics. African American Philosophy and the African Diaspora. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16741-6_9
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