Fish on Pragmatism
In today’s episode of “FishWatch”, I’d like to point you to Stanley Fish’s most recent essay at the New York Times, which deals with pragmatism. Not the pragmatism we’ve so often discussed in this blog (i.e. the preference of the possible over the ideal, the concrete over the abstract, etc), but the related philosophical tradition by the same name.
As Fish explains:
Pragmatism’s basic move is to declare that the answers to [philosophical] questions will not be found by identifying some transcendental universal and then conforming ourselves to its normative demands (like “Be ye perfect”). Rather, we must, and can, make do with the “ordinary aptitudes of human beings (ourselves) viewed within a generously Darwinized ecology, without transcendental, revelatory, or privileged presumptions of any kind.” (quotes from Joseph Margolis’s new book, Pragmatism’s Advantage)
Pragmatism lowers our epistemological and moral gaze to ground level, eschewing appeals to absolute truth or objectivity. It also reassures is that all is not lost, suggesting that our “truths” have always been contingent and provisional in this way, and we’ve gone on advancing in science and ethics just fine…
Of particular interest is Fish’s momentous final paragraph, in which he tries to locate the use for such a philosophy if it cannot be said to actually improve our lives:
But if pragmatism doesn’t have a real world payoff, if it is of no help when the next crisis comes your way, what’s the use of it? Why should anyone be interested in it? Behind these questions is a larger one: why should anyone be interested in philosophy in any of its versions? The usual answer is that philosophy, by identifying first principles, can serve both to guide and justify our actions. When pragmatism tells us that there are no first principles, it not only disqualifies itself as the source of guidance and justification; it disqualifies the whole enterprise, at least in its more ambitious forms. What it leaves are the pleasures of doing philosophy, the pleasures of thinking about thinking freed from the burdensome expectation that we will finally get somewhere. Now there’s an advantage and a gift to boot.
Wow. There’s a lot to ponder there, but it seems to me that this is the clearest statement yet of Fish’s core beliefs – it also explains why I (and I think many others) have difficulty with his political commentary. There’s a distant postmodernism here that is uncomfortable, at the very least, with any and all substantive claims. For Fish, philosophy is worthwhile not because of the importance of first principles (indeed, they are illusory) or because of its effectiveness at parsing arguments, exposing fallacies, or furthering our understanding of the world around us. The best we can do in that vein is, as he says, to “muddle through.”
Philosophy, in this view, is worthwhile as an intellectual exercise. It’s poetic, whimsical, and enlightening. But this brand of critique thrives on just that – critique. Fish and other like-minded intellectuals spend the bulk of their time relentlessly knocking down the ambitions of other philosophers, scientists, journalists, and advocates. From a lofty perch, they pity the attempts of these demagogues to advance this or that theory.
The notion that philosophy is but an endearing (and perhaps frivolous) pastime of wise men may not be devastating to postmodernists, as they hardly expected more in the first place. But for most others, from religious fundamentalists to professional ethicists, it’s a notion that is quite unsettling.
But with regard to pragmatism, I think Fish vastly overstates his case. Does rejecting absolute first principles (at least of the transcendental sort) necessarily invalidate philosophy writ large? That’s a tremendous claim, and it’s one that I think most pragmatists would strongly contest. Once again, Fish posits two extreme positions (Truth is monolithic and objective vs. truth is an illusion) and happily picks apart the more ambitious claim. But there is a fertile middle ground for philosophy which has little patience for transcendental dogma and yet proceeds in earnest to work through nature, experience, and reason to make sense of the world around us. Let’s not be so quick to abandon it.
-Colin
Related posts:
- Obama’s pragmatism
- Fish on the First, Continued
- Pragmatism cont.
- Obama’s pragmatism
- Fish on the First
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