The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism

293 Pages·1989·21.33 MB·English

by  Cornel West

The American Evasion of Philosophy
The Wisconsin Project on American Writers
A series edited by Frank Lentricchia
F. O. Matthiessen and the Politics of Criticism
William E. Cain
In Defense of Winters: The Poetry and Prose of Yvor Winters
Terry Comito
A Poetry of Presence: The Writing of William Carlos Williams
Bernard Duffey
Lionel Trilling: The Work of Liberation
Daniel T. O'Hara
Visionary Compacts: American Renaissance Writings
in Cultural Context
Donald E. Pease
"A White Heron" and the Question of Minor Literature
Louis A. Renza
The Theoretical Dimensions of Henry James
John Carlos Rowe
The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism
Cornel West
Specifying: Black Women Writing the American Experience
Susan Willis
The American Evasion
of Philosophy
A Genealogy of Pragmatism
Cornel West
The University of Wisconsin Press
The University of Wisconsin Press
1930 Momoe Street
Madison, Wisconsin 53711
3 Henrietta Street
London WCZE 8LU, England
www.wisc.edu\wisconsinpress
Copyright © 1989
The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
All rights reserved
8 10 12 13 11 9
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging·in.Publication Data
West, Cornel.
The American evasion of philosophy.
(The Wisconsin project on American writers)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Pragmatism-History. 2. Philosophy, American
History. l. Title. II. Series.
B944.P72W47 1989 144'.3'0973 88-40446
ISBN 0·299·11960·2
ISBN 0·299·11964-5 (pbk.)
To
my beloved brother
CLIFTON L. WEST III
who sticks closer than a brother

If one must philosophize, then one must philosophize; and if one must
not philosophize, then one must philosophize; in any case, therefore,
one must philosophize. For if one must, then, given that Philosophy
exists, we are in every way obliged to philosophize. And if one must
not, in this case too we are obliged to inquire how it is possible for there
to be no philosophy; and in inquiring we philosophize, for inquiry is
the cause of Philosophy.
-Aristotle
Pragmatists keep trying to find ways of making anti-philosophical points
in nonphilosophical language.
- Richard Rarty

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 3
1 The Emersonian Prehistory of American Pragmatism 9
Emerson on Power (and Tradition) 11
Emerson on Provocation (and the Market) 25
Emerson on Personality (and Race) 28
Emerson as Organic Intellectual 35
2 The Historic Emergence of American Pragmatism 42
Peirce on Scientific Method, Community, and Christian Love 43
James on Individuality, Reconciliation, and Heroic Energies 54
3 The Coming-of-Age of American
Pragmatism: John Dewey 69
Dewey on Historical Consciousness, Critical
Intelligence, and Creative Democracy 71
4 The Dilemma of the Mid-Century
Pragmatic Intellectual 112
Sidney Hook: The Deweyan Political Intellectual 114
C. Wright Mills: The Neo-Deweyan Radical Social Critic 124
W E. B. Du Bois: The Jamesian Organic Intellectual 138
Reinhold Niebuhr: The Jamesian Cultural Critic 150
Lionel Trilling: The Pragmatist as Amoldian Literary Critic 164
5 The Decline and Resurgence of American Pragmatism:
W. V. Quine and Richard Rorty 182
6 Prophetic Pragmatism: Cultural Criticism
and Political Engagement 211
Roberto Unger and Third-Wave Left Romanticism 214
The Challenge of Michel Foucault 223
Tragedy, Tradition, and Political Praxis 226
Prophetic Pragmatism and Postmodemity 235
Notes 243
Index 273