Pragmatism in the Americas 9780823292424

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pragmatism in the americas



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american philosophy Douglas R. Anderson and Jude Jones, series editors

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pragmatism in the americas

 Edited by

gregory fernando pappas

fordham u niversity press

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new y ork

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Copyright 䉷 2011 Fordham University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means— electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Fordham University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Fordham University Press also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pragmatism in the Americas / edited by Gregory Fernando Pappas.—1st ed. p. cm.— (American philosophy) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-8232-3367-0 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8232-3368-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8232-3369-4 1. Pragmatism. 2. Philosophy, Latin American. I. Pappas, Gregory Fernando, 1960– B1008.P73P73 2011 144⬘.3098—dc22 2011007213 Printed in the United States of America 13 12 11 5 4 3 2 1 First edition

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Para todos los que viven en dos mundos, especialmente para Beatriz, Fema y en memoria de mi querido papa´.

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Contents



Preface xi Introduction gregory fernando pappas

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Pa r t I . The Reception of the Classical American P ragmatists in the Hispanic Wo r l d 1 John Dewey in Spain and in Spanish America anto´ n donoso

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2 Pragmatism in Brazil: John Dewey and Education marcus vinicius da cunha and de´ bora cristina garcia

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3 Charles Peirce and the Hispanic World jaime nubiola

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4 John Dewey and the Legacy of Mexican Pragmatism in the United States ruben flores

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Pa r t II. Hispanic P hilosophers and t he P hilosophy of P ragmatism 5 The Neglected Historical and Philosophical Connection between Jose´ Ingenieros and Ralph Waldo Emerson manuela alejandra gomez

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6 The Pragmatism of Eugenio d’Ors marta torregrosa

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7 Pedro Zulen and the Reception of Pragmatism in Peru pablo quintanilla

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8 Vaz Ferreira as a Pragmatist: The Articulation of Science and Philosophy paloma pe´ rez-ilzarbe

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9 Dewey and Ortega on the Starting Point douglas browning

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10 Was Risieri Frondizi a Hispanic Pragmatist? gregory fernando pappas

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11 The Latino Character of American Pragmatism gregory fernando pappas

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12 Leopoldo Zea, Stanley Cavell, and the Seduction of ‘‘American’’ Philosophy carlos alberto sanchez

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P art I I I . Pr a g m a t i s m a s a Resource in t he Hispanic Experience of t he Twenty-f i r s t Ce n t u r y 13 Pragmatic Pluralism, Multiculturalism, and the New Hispanic jose´ medina

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14 Pragmatism, Latino Intercultural Citizenship, and the Transformation of American Democracy jose´ -antonio orosco

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15 Understanding Immigration as Lived Personal Experience daniel campos

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16 Dewey and Latina Lesbians on the Quest for Purity gregory fernando pappas

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17 Dewey and Martı´: Culture in Education alejandro strong

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18 Dewey’s and Freire’s Pedagogies of Recognition: A Critique of Subtractive Schooling kim dı´ az

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19 Religiously Binding the Imperial Self: Classical Pragmatism’s Call and Liberation, Philosophy’s Response alexander v. stehn

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Notes 315 List of Contributors 365

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Preface

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he impact and promise of pragmatism in the Hispanic world and beyond North America have been neither appreciated nor documented. I am grateful to Peter Hare, Jorge Gracia, Douglas Browning, and John J. McDermott for insisting years ago that I pursue and lead the requisite inquiry. The inquiry for this book was facilitated by my recent travels to Spain, Peru, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico. I am happy to acknowledge the institutional support that I have received from Texas A&M University to travel and to have a faculty development leave to devote myself fully to this project. Thanks to Tomas Alexander, Douglas Anderson, Jaime Nubiola, and many other members of the Society for the Advancement of Philosophy for their encouragement. I am indebted to Cyndy Brown for her help with editing, and everyone at Fordham University Press has been splendid. I gratefully acknowledge the Diego Rivera estate and the City College of San Francisco for the permission to use Rivera’s Pan-American Unity mural for the cover. Earlier versions of a few of the essays in this book where published elsewhere. I am grateful to publishers of the journals for the permission to use ‘‘John Dewey in Spain and in Spanish America’’ by Anto´n Donoso (International Philosophical Quarterly Volume 41, No. 3, September 2001); ‘‘Dewey and Ortega on the Starting Point’’ by Douglas Browning (Transactions of the Charles Peirce Society Vol. XXXIV, No. 1); ‘‘The Latino Character of American pragmatism’’ by Gregory Fernando Pappas (Transactions of the Charles Peirce Society Vol. XXXIV, No. 1 1998); and ‘‘Dewey and Latina Lesbians on the Quest for Purity’’ by Gregory Fernando Pappas (Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Vol. 15, issue 2, 2001). { xi }

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introduction Gregory Fernando Pappas



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n the last ten years, investigators worldwide have focused on the connections between the philosophy of classical figures in American pragmatism (e.g., William James, Charles Peirce, and John Dewey) and the Hispanic world.1 This anthology documents the results of this new and thriving area of research while also functioning as a primer that can guide and provoke further inquiry. These essays, from North American, Spanish, and Latin American scholars, fill a void in the humanities. They question gaps that never existed and instead build new bridges. In short, this anthology provides the connections for a twenty-first-century dialogue between two great philosophical traditions. This volume challenges the notion that there are no significant historical and philosophical bridges to be found between philosophy done in the Hispanic world and philosophy done in North America. There is no deep rift between these two philosophical traditions; instead, there is a real affinity between the central questions of American pragmatism and the topics and problems addressed by many { 1 }

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Hispanic thinkers. This volume introduces students and scholars in the United States to philosophers in the Spanish-speaking world that they may never have heard of, such as Jose´ Ingenieros, Eugenio d’Ors, Pedro Zulen, and Vaz Ferreira. It is hoped that such an introduction will stimulate further research and translation of these Hispanic figures, as well as encourage more inter-American collaborations in the humanities. In a recent article, Guillermo Hurtado claims that neither analytical nor continental philosophy has been a vehicle for a pan-American philosophical dialogue. Hurtado states, ‘‘A dialogue between our philosophical communities is not only desirable, but urgent.’’2 The essays in this volume provide a foundation for a philosophical dialogue between the two Americas in the twenty-first century that is based on an encounter between philosophies and philosophers that were once related and have much in common, but that academics have largely ignored. Today there is agreement among American philosophy scholars that the practice of limiting pragmatism to the classical North American figures must be questioned. This revisionist practice is consistent with the openness and fallibilism defended in the writings of most pragmatists. Recent scholarship has, for example, shown the neglected historical contributions of women and African Americans to the pragmatic tradition.3 This anthology provides the next step in that direction by including Hispanic figures in the diverse body of pragmatism as a living philosophical tradition. This is a contribution consonant with the growing number of voices calling for a deeper understanding of the impact of Hispanic people on American history. Let us recall the words of the late Peter Hare: We need to look closely at the relations between the Hispanic world and the American tradition. This need is urgent for many reasons. Hispanic civilization, after all, has been present in this part of the world longer than we conventionally consider European civilization. Only the Native American population has been here longer. American intellectual historians have given little attention to the influence, direct and indirect, that early Hispanic

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civilization had on the development of American thought. But more important is the demographic reason that soon the Hispanic population will be the largest minority in America.4

Hispanics and Latinos, the fastest-growing minority in the United States, are an emerging population on American college campuses, and these students may become interested in studying philosophy if they learn how Hispanic philosophers have appropriated and modified the insights of pragmatism. Some of the essays in this collection will argue for the inclusion of Hispanic figures in the history of pragmatism, and therefore they challenge the notion that pragmatism is a philosophy that is exclusively North American. Other essays put forth pragmatism as a philosophy that can contribute to dealing with the present social, ethical, or political problems experienced by Hispanics in and outside of the United States. This anthology is divided into three parts, according to three different types of inquiry in this new area of research: the reception of the classical American pragmatists within the Hispanic world; Hispanic philosophers and the philosophy of pragmatism; and pragmatism as a resource for the Hispanic experience in the twenty-first century. Part I: The Reception of the Classical American Pragmatists in the Hispanic World The essays in Part I are primarily historical and bibliographical in nature. The authors have undertaken unprecedented research on the actual historical connections of the American pragmatists (Peirce, Dewey, and James) with Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula. Some of the questions addressed by this set of essays are: What took pragmatism beyond the borders of the United States and into the Hispanic world? What were the first references to the works of American pragmatists, the first translations into Spanish and Portuguese? Were the American philosophies well received by Hispanic thinkers of the early decades of the twentieth century? What are the tenets of pragmatism that have had the greatest impact on Hispanic cultures?

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Some of the essays read as historical surveys; others lay out for the first time the results of many years of careful bibliographical research about translations and secondary sources on the topic. They constitute a first step toward filling a scholarly gap, and they encourage further research on pragmatism and the Hispanic world. Some of the essays present possible hypotheses about and explanations for the influence, reception, and renewed interest in pragmatism in the Hispanic world at different historical periods. There is agreement that pragmatism had a receptive audience during the first half of the twentieth century in both Americas. In contrast, the second half of the twentieth century witnessed an eclipse in the study of pragmatism that is only now abating. The historical and political circumstances of the Americas during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were very different. While these differences cannot be ignored, similarities are also important in assessing the reception toward pragmatism in the two Americas. North American pragmatists and Latin American philosophers at the turn of the twentieth century were reacting to common challenges and circumstances and asked similar questions. What should we do about our European philosophical inheritance? Should we be critical of the dualisms of modern European philosophies? What are the consequences for philosophy of the prestige and acceptance of science as a source of knowledge? Philosophers in the Americas were engaged in parallel efforts to reconstruct their European inheritance under new, and to some extent similar, philosophical problems. One common goal among philosophers from the Americas at the turn of the twentieth century was to construct a philosophy that, while empirical and informed by the sciences, was neither scientistic nor reductionistic. In spite of the utility of science, it was perceived as a threat to the beliefs in values, freedom, and human dignity. This was especially true in Latin America, where positivism, in spite of its initial acceptance, became a philosophy that was used in Latin America to justify dictatorships and threaten values and beliefs dear to Latin Americans. One of the reasons that the philosophy of James and Dewey was attractive to early twentieth-century thinkers in Latin

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America was the promise of a philosophy that welcomed scientific knowledge without the excesses of positivism. In the second half of the twentieth century, however, negative but mistaken views of pragmatism as a variety of positivism or as a shallow American-style utilitarianism spread throughout Latin America. Sadly, pragmatism was often dismissed as a consequence of these prejudices, if not also for the poor political relations of the time. The negative predisposition of many toward anything that came from the new imperial power may have contributed to the decline of interest in pragmatism in Latin America. Equally important, however, was the invasion in the Americas by European philosophical movements, including existentialism and analytic philosophy. North American and Latin American academicians have shared the stubborn habit of looking to Europe for philosophical insights to deal with their own problems or to copy any new philosophical fashion. There is no doubt that the ‘‘analytic turn’’ during the 1960s overwhelmed pragmatists’ texts in the Americas. It was not until the publication in 1979 of Richard Rorty’s Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature that the interest in classical pragmatism enjoyed a resurrection. Several contributors to this volume, such as Jaime Nubiola and Anto´n Donoso, signaled the resurgence of interest in pragmatism in the Hispanic world. Every year there are more Spanish translations of important texts in American philosophy. With time, and with a more honest effort to actually read the pragmatist texts, the prejudices against pragmatism are gradually disappearing in the Hispanic world. The works of Charles S. Peirce are being translated at such a pace that I would not be surprised to see the body of Spanish-language works match its English cousin. Spain has become the center of collaborative worldwide efforts by Hispanics to translate and reevaluate pragmatism as a viable philosophy.5 In the last decade, several Latin American countries, such as Argentina and Brazil, have held annual conferences centered on pragmatism.6 Analytic philosophy no longer has the clout that it enjoyed over the Americas in the last century. Gradually but surely, a more pluralistic environment in philosophy is developing that opens the

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possibility of rediscovering the forgotten philosophers of the Americas. The fact that both renowned analytic and continental philosophers are finally recognizing their debt to the classical pragmatists has helped this rediscovery. Moreover, as the last part of this book demonstrates, Hispanics have found pragmatism to be a useful and congenial resource for throwing light on present philosophical problems as well as the social problems that they are experiencing. This book invites us to rethink how many conceive the history of philosophy. Philosophical thinking in the Hispanic world had its own separate and parallel development in comparison to philosophy in North America. However, it would be a mistake to think of the development of these philosophical traditions as being isolated from each other. In our age of globalization we tend to forget how much more dramatic were the changes in communication and global interaction at the turn of the twentieth century. In philosophy, just as in the arts and sciences, people and their ideas traveled and transacted with others. It is common to write and think of the history of philosophy in terms of a linear national-territorial bounded development, but historical research reveals that philosophers must abandon the habit of thinking of philosophical schools or types of philosophy as developing in isolation from others. There are points of intersection between linear developments in the history of philosophical traditions, and studying those points of intersection can yield important lessons. In a recent book, intellectual historian John Graham writes that an examination of Jose´ Ortega y Gasset’s archives and private library reveals that William James inspired his philosophy of life. Ortega y Gasset ‘‘postponed till too late any explicit acknowledgment of his original basic debt to James’s pragmatism.’’7 This sort of historical discovery is important for philosophy because it may lead to new insights and ways to reassess someone’s philosophy. The connections between Ortega y Gasset and James are significant because Ortega y Gasset is considered one of the most influential philosophers by multiple generations in Latin America. His writings were among the key philosophical texts studied in the former Iberian colonies.

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William James and Ralph Waldo Emerson were widely read in Latin America at the turn of the twentieth century. Their ideas had an impact on important thinkers in the Hispanic world, including Miguel de Unamuno,8 Ortega y Gasset, Eugenio d’Ors, Jose´ Ingenieros, and Carlos Vaz Ferreira. However, apart from James’s scientific expedition to the Amazon River (1865), there is no evidence that he had the direct contact that Peirce and Dewey had with the Hispanic world. Nubiola examines the historical and personal connections of Peirce with the Hispanic world, including his experiences in Spain and the reception of his texts in Spanish. He is optimistic about how the rediscovery and deeper understanding of Peirce in the Hispanic world is transforming philosophy in Spain and Latin America and closing the gap between the American and Hispanic philosophical traditions. Dewey is the only classical pragmatist who personally visited Latin America, and he was the one who had the most extensive influence in Latin America. Dewey’s views on the philosophy of education were particularly influential. This volume’s contributions on Dewey by Marcus Vinicius da Cunha, De´bora Cristina Garcia, Ruben Flores, and Anto´n Donoso complement each other. While Donoso provides a general historical survey of Dewey’s influence and reception in different places in Latin America, Cunha and Garcia’s essay focuses on Brazil and Flores’s on Mexico. These last two chapters are good examples of the more detailed and careful research that still needs to be done regarding the impact of Dewey in Chile, Cuba, Mexico, Argentina, and many other countries in Latin America. Dewey’s ideas came to be known throughout Latin America via his former students who held influential positions in universities. Generations of teachers found Dewey’s ideas instrumental to pedagogical renovation in their countries. Moise´s Sa´enz and Rafael Ramı´rez are two Mexican students who studied under Dewey at Columbia, returned to Mexico, and adopted Deweyan ethics as part of a grand experiment to construct a rural school system capable of solving the everyday problems of rural Mexicans. Flores claims that these thinkers and their Deweyean experiments in Mexico had in turn an influence on educational reforms in the American West.

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Dewey was the object of tributes (publications and conferences) and special honorary recognition by institutions in Latin America. Among Dewey’s key ideas that made his work and pragmatism attractive to the Hispanic world were, and continue to be, the concern with practical lived experience; the conception of the individual as an organic whole and active in social relationships; and the importance of education as a process for living in the present and transforming society in a democratic direction. In spite of the favorable reception of Dewey’s philosophy of education in the Hispanic world, the Spanish translations of his major works were not available until after his death. Thereafter, many of Ortega’s students saw the importance of translating Dewey’s central philosophical texts in order to provoke inquiry and confront Latin American philosophers with an alternative way of dealing with modern problems, such as dualisms, apart from their own proposals or those originating in Europe. This is the same motivation that continues to propel new translations of and publications about Dewey in the Hispanic world. Part II: Hispanic Philosophers and the Philosophy of Pragmatism The essays in the middle section of this volume are more philosophical, and they focus on Hispanic thinkers. Some essays argue that there is a real affinity between the central philosophical questions of American pragmatism and those addressed by a prominent Hispanic thinker of the last century. Other essays argue that pragmatism definitively influenced a given Hispanic philosopher, while still other essays advocate something stronger: the inclusion of neglected Hispanic figures into the history of pragmatism. Manuela Alejandra Gomez explores the influence of Emerson on Jose´ Ingenieros. Inspired by Emerson and with plenty of references to James, Ingenieros argued for a conception of morality based in experience and nature, and not on dogma or anything transcendent. The appeal to lived experience or concrete everyday life (la vida) is an important point of commonality between the classical pragmatist and the philosophical tradition in Latin America that had its Iberian roots

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in the philosophies of Ortega y Gasset and Miguel Unamuno. While Graham had already established an actual historical-biographical connection between Ortega and pragmatism, Douglas Browning explores the fundamental shared insights between Ortega and Dewey and why ‘‘rubbing’’ these philosophers against each other is of great value for philosophy. As Browning demonstrates, although these two philosophers used different terms and in different languages, they argued that the practical stance of everyday life has been neglected in philosophy when it should instead be the starting point and the primary focal point for philosophical inquiry. Given this fundamental, shared, metaphilosophical commitment, it is not surprising that most of the first translations of Dewey’s works were by students or followers of Ortega. The importance of experience was also the central concern of Argentinean philosopher Risieri Frondizi (1910–83). In my contribution to this section of the book, I argue that Frondizi should be of interest to pragmatism because he offered plausible arguments for taking ‘‘experience’’ as the proper starting point of any philosophical inquiry. Moreover, he developed original theories of the self and of values based on this starting point. Frondizi is especially important to this volume because he was a philosopher that actually lived in between the two worlds and the philosophical traditions that concern us. Throughout his life, Frondizi remained in a constant dialogue with philosophers from all the Americas and was concerned about the mutual ignorance between the two Americas in the field of philosophy. In spite of the differences, a case can be made for some interesting historical intersections and deep philosophical affinities between the two philosophical traditions that are often assumed to have always been separate, or at least to have grown apart from each other. Contributors to this volume explore how philosophers from the Americas shared similar views about the nature of philosophy (Carlos Alberto Sanchez, Browning), science (Paloma Pe´rez-Ilzarbe), education (Alejandro Strong, Kim Diaz), ethnicity (Jose´ Medina, Jose´ Antonio Orosco), and religion (Alexander Stehn). But the bolder claim made by the essays in Part II is the introduction of original but neglected Hispanic

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figures in the history of pragmatism. There have been Hispanic philosophers who have taken the philosophical insights of pragmatism in some innovative directions, yet their contributions have been discounted in North America. In other words, Hispanic philosophers have made a unique but neglected contribution to pragmatism as a philosophy that has transcended national boundaries. Marta Torregrosa argues that Eugenio d’Ors is the Hispanic philosopher most conscious of his personal connection with American pragmatism. By 1907 he had defined himself as a pragmatist, but he worked on providing a version of pragmatism that overcame the tendency to associate pragmatism with the merely utilitarian by stressing the aesthetic dimension of human action. D’Ors’s proposal to reconstruct pragmatism has yet to be examined by scholars in pragmatism. Pe´rez-Ilzarbe introduces Carlos Vaz Ferreira, one of the first Hispanic readers of pragmatism. Vaz Ferreira’s importance lies in his critical revision to William James’s ideas. He wanted to ensure that pragmatism did not become a philosophy that encourages anti-intellectualism, irrationalism, and relativism. He therefore developed his own account of reason based on an original account of the relation between science and philosophy, which are seen as two different but complementary aspects of human knowledge. Vaz Ferreira, as well as the other Hispanic thinkers mentioned in this part of the book, shared with the classical pragmatists a view of intelligence and judgment that emphasizes the importance of flexibility, fallibilism, process, pluralism, vagueness, continuity, free play, and sensitivity to context. For some of the Hispanic philosophers mentioned in this volume, the relation to pragmatism is more direct because they traveled to the United States for their education. Pablo Quintanilla introduces Peruvian philosopher Pedro Zulen, who from 1920 to 1922 studied at Harvard University, where he became very familiar with the work of Josiah Royce and Charles S. Peirce. Zulen returned to Peru to publish two books that are very influential in the history of philosophy in Peru.

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One could argue that in spite of the discoveries of historical and philosophical connections between pragmatism and the Hispanic world, the exercise seems somewhat forced because pragmatism is a philosophy that reflects values and ways of living that are foreign to Hispanic cultures. However, I question the assumption that pragmatism is the intellectual reflection of American culture. In fact, one could argue that pragmatism is a philosophy that affirms and reflects values that are predominant and cherished by Hispanic cultures and not the Anglo-Saxon world. Part III: Pragmatism as a Resource in the Hispanic Experience for the Twenty-first Century One of the key ideas of pragmatism is that philosophy should function as a ‘‘tool’’ of criticism in its historical context. For pragmatists, philosophy should be considered a resource with which to deal with problems of everyday experience. What took pragmatism beyond the borders of its birth and into the Hispanic world was precisely its promise as a resource. It was a philosophy that emphasized experience and practice over idle speculation and dogma without positivism’s narrow and reductionistic view of experience, a philosophy based on the hope of an amelioration of concrete problems instead of a faith in inevitable progress. Instead of being Utopian, pragmatism stressed the importance of the adequacy of means. It offered a break with tradition that favored reconstruction over revolution. It favored education as inseparable from political reform. It favored an experimental approach instead of a one-size-fits-all formula. It rejected atomistic individualism, certainty, decontextualized rationality, and other Enlightenment fictions. Today it continues to have an appeal as a philosophy that assumes a democratic vision as a bottom-up, grassroots process, and a democratic reconstruction that is sensitive to context. It trusts people to figure out the means to their own liberation. The essays in Part III are evidence of the emphasis on pragmatism as a resource and not merely as a passing academic fashion. They demonstrate that pragmatism still holds great promise and potential

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in addressing problems experienced in the Hispanic world, such as ethnic identity, educational reform, democracy, religion, and immigration. Medina draws on pragmatists such as Dewey and Locke and on the Cuban writer and philosopher Jose´ Martı´ to articulate a view of ethnic identity that avoids the pitfalls of recent philosophic views. A pragmatist approach to ethnicity promises to adequately make sense of Hispanic identity—as a unity in diversity—and also help solve the problems that multicultural societies face today. The pragmatist view of diversity can serve Hispanics in fighting homogenizing tendencies in their identity while also making sense of their collective experience and empowerment. Orosco and Daniel Campos rely on pragmatism to examine, from different angles, the current problems of immigration and identity. Informed by the experiences of Hispanics in the United States and the ‘‘interculturalism’’ movement in Latin America, Orosco surveys and examines the different models of citizenship within the pragmatist tradition (Horace Kallen, Jane Addams, John Dewey, W. E. B. Du Bois). Pragmatism rejected simplistic models of the relation between immigrant communities and mainstream society, and it should continue to reconstruct its proposals in light of the experience of oppressed minorities. Hispanic communities today present useful resources for engaging the pragmatist imagination. Both Orosco’s essay and my essay on Latina lesbians assert that pragmatism can guide us while we also learn from and complement notions of mestizo cultural citizenship and identity that develop out of Hispanic thinkers such as Gloria Anzaldu´a and Maria Lugones. In pragmatism, the Hispanic world can find a philosophy that validates important aspects of their historical reality. Hispanics are an evolving historical family, open to new elements and to mestizaje, which is the opposite of purity. From a pragmatist perspective, the quest for purity is problematic. Instead, pragmatism is a philosophy that celebrates the pluralism and openness that fits well within the Hispanic world. Campos’s pragmatist angle on identity and the problem of immigration is phenomenological and personal. He draws on Peirce to give

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a philosophical account of the personal experience of immigration. Pragmatism requires that any effective amelioration of the problem of immigration starts or takes seriously the concrete lived personal experience of millions of people in the Americas today. Orosco and Campos are faithful to this requirement, even though one emphasizes the communal point of view and the other the personal view. They do this without presupposing a dualism between the individual and the community or between the political and the ethical, which is yet another aspect of pragmatism that appeals to Hispanics. One key resource of pragmatism is that its philosophy of education is grounded in a democratic vision of society. We have already mentioned how Dewey’s conception of democratic education has been particularly attractive for renovating the education system in many Latin American countries.9 The contributions of Strong and Diaz complement the more historical accounts of Cunha and Garcia, Flores, and Donoso in this regard. They demonstrate the present potential of the ideas of John Dewey to reflect on educational practices that affect Hispanics today. Strong claims that an analysis and comparison between John Dewey and Jose Martı´ in regard to the place of cultural difference in education can help to construct a theoretical framework for dealing with the diversity in today’s U.S. student population. The goal should be a philosophy of education that does not overlook or belittle students’ different cultural heritages. The present neglect of cultural differences in schools, especially when teaching Hispanic students, is Diaz’s central concern. She criticizes the practice of ‘‘subtracting schooling,’’ a term used by Angela Valenzuela to describe the present assimilationist policies and practices in schools that minimize, if not eliminate, the culture and language of minority and immigrant students. According to Diaz, in Dewey and in the philosophy of education of Paulo Freire,10 we can find similar and complementary arguments to further support Valenzuela, since both Dewey and Freire emphasized the importance of respecting and recognizing students’ experience for their development. Religion has always held a key place in Hispanic cultures. Stehn explores a point of convergence between American pragmatism and

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Latin American liberation philosophy: their recognition of the practical (e.g., ethical and political) significance of religion. Stehn argues that Dussel’s liberation philosophy can help us critically develop James’s pragmatist claim that it is possible for religion to constitute a force that can widely and positively transform our ethical and political lives. Pragmatism has been appropriated and welcomed in Latin America because there is much prior practice and circumstance that makes for a good fit, and not simply because it was an external solution to local problems. In fact, many developments have already occurred in Latin America that, although not directly influenced by Dewey, are better examples of his methods and ideas than what happens north of the Rio Grande. Educational reform and practices have close parallels with Dewey-inspired education. As Donoso explains, Latin America ‘‘saw Dewey’s work as a confirmation of their own ideas and practices, and so view Dewey as an ally.’’ Indeed, when Dewey was in Mexico he was impressed with their educational reforms, while Sandinista Nicaragua, as Joe Betz has argued, attempted to reform education there in ways ‘‘quite like the social experimentation Dewey called for in his 1935 ‘Liberalism and Social Action.’ ’’ This last point about the recent interest in pragmatism’s attempts to ameliorate current conditions is a sensitive one, given Latin America’s history of importing foreign ideas (e.g., from Europe) that seem imposed and unfit. Latin American philosophers have been critical of the colonial mentality. In fact, this may continue to be the cause of some resistance to welcoming pragmatism, since it may reinforce the spirit of imperialism and subordination that has affected the Hispanic world. This concern, though legitimate, is misplaced when it comes to pragmatism. In any case, Dewey would be the first to oppose an imposition of his philosophy from outside. Dewey would want his philosophy, if appropriated by Hispanics, to be conceived as one more possible tool to deal with their own problems and circumstances. This is not a form of interventionism from outside; Latin Americans will still be resolving their own problems. Indeed, Dewey infused into his Latin American students a desire to improve their

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respective societies that was grounded in their own local educational experiences and not from imposed solutions that may have worked in the United States. Regrettably, for many philosophers ‘‘American’’ philosophy is what originates from North America alone. Such a myopic view is harmful because it perpetuates imperialistic attitudes and hides the contributions of Hispanics to the intellectual life of the Americas. I share Eduardo Mendieta’s hope that ‘‘we will begin to think of Latin American and North American philosophies as chapters in a larger geo-political and world-historical school of philosophy from this hemisphere.’’11 Indeed, as Carlos Alberto Sanchez demonstrates in Chapter 12, there have been thinkers on both sides ready to embrace and to argue for this expanded understanding of ‘‘American’’ philosophy. It may be too late to find and encourage an alternative term that is more inclusive, such as ‘‘pan-American,’’ but there is plenty that can be done in terms of the criticism of beliefs that undermine exclusivist attitudes. This volume is an important step in this direction. Understanding pragmatism in and through the Hispanic world can undermine the notion that the United States has intellectual borders that cannot be crossed, or that it has epistemic privilege over its own historical creations. Today, pragmatist philosophy, like jazz, is North American only in its historical origin. This point is especially poignant today, when more and more boundaries are being questioned and Hispanics are becoming participants rather than outsiders in the United States. The Hispanic world referred to in this volume does not lie outside the United States, but within it.

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john dewey in spain and in spanish america Anto´n Donoso



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he first half of the twentieth century saw the peak of the worldwide influence of John Dewey (1859–1952), and by midcentury there was a sharp decline in his influence both at home and abroad. However, during the last two decades there has been a renewed interest in pragmatism in general and in Dewey in particular. Although separate studies have been published on Dewey’s influence in a number of countries, only passing mention has been made of Spain and Latin America. This essay is an effort to begin to fill that gap.1 The first part is a historical survey of Dewey’s influence in Spain and in four Spanish American countries (Chile, Cuba, Mexico, and Argentina), while the second part consists of observations on why the influence occurred, why it attained the levels it finally did before it declined, and what signs indicate a renewed interest in Dewey’s work.2

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Historical Survey Spain In 1900, a translation appeared in Spain of Dewey’s The School and Society. It was made by Domingo Barne´s, an educator with ties to Madrid’s prestigious Institucio´n Libre de Ensen˜anza (ILE); he edited eight volumes of translations of Dewey between 1926 and 1929.3 The ILE, a pre-university institution of learning, free in the sense of being independent of both church and government control, was founded in 1876 (while Dewey was still an undergraduate at the University of Vermont) by Francisco Giner de los Rı´os (1839–1915). Dewey was inspired by the ideas and ideals of Karl Christian Friedrik Krause (1781–1832), a German Idealist who was a contemporary of Schelling and Hegel, as interpreted and adapted to Spanish ‘‘circumstances’’ by Julia´n Sanz del Rı´o (1814–96). Spanish Krausism was rationalist (or ‘‘scientific,’’ in the nineteenth-century sense) in philosophy, liberalist in politics, and reformist in social policy. A detailed examination of these positions shows that on some points there was a parallel, if not an identity, between them and the ideas of Dewey’s pre-pragmatist idealism.4 It is not surprising that, in the pages of the ILE’s Boletı´n, eleven of Dewey’s works appeared in translation, plus four studies of his philosophy.5 The work of Giner de los Rı´os was continued by Manuel Bartolome´ Cossı´o (1875–1935), who held the first university chair of pedagogy at the University of Madrid (1904). That same year he traveled to the United States to attend the International Congress of Education in St. Louis, the site of the centennial exposition in honor of the Louisiana Purchase. According to Joaquı´n Xirau, one of his biographers and his collaborator in Barcelona in the reform of Spanish education, Cossı´o was profoundly influenced by popular (public) education in North America. Still another biographer with ties to the ILE, Lorenzo Luzuriaga (1889–1959), maintained that the educational system of the United States produced an extraordinary impression on Cossı´o, who discovered that some of his own ideas on ‘‘the active school’’ (la escuela activa), with its ‘‘active education’’ as basic to all

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education, had been anticipated by his worldwide contemporaries in pedagogy, including Dewey. It was this aspect of Dewey’s position, above all, that attracted Spanish and Latin American educators to him.6 Luzuriaga was to translate more of Dewey’s works than any other translator. Having been a student of Jose´ Ortega y Gasset in the first year of his teaching career after his return from postdoctoral studies in Germany, Luzuriaga combined educational administration and teaching with writing, authoring a number of books on the history and philosophy of education. What initially attracted him to Dewey was their mutual interest in the movement known as ‘‘new education’’ (la educacio´n nueva). In fact, Luzuriaga was to become the prime representative in Spain of the International League of New Education, founded in 1921. When Ortega assumed the editorial directorship of the newly founded (December 1917) Madrid liberal newspaper, El Sol, he invited his former student to take editorial charge of the page devoted to pedagogical matters in public education. It was on this page that there appeared, on April 22, 1918, the first study of Dewey in the Spanishspeaking world, Luzuriaga’s ‘‘La pedagogı´a de Dewey: La educacio´n por la accio´n.’’ With his writing and editorial experience, Luzuriaga founded the Revista de Pedagogı´a (1922), Spain’s first professional journal devoted to education, and its allied publishing house. In 1936, with the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, both ceased to operate, and Luzuriaga emigrated to South America, finally settling in Argentina. With the final capitulation of the Republican forces to the Nationalist forces of Franco (1939), there began decades of governmental and ecclesiastical control of education at all levels and censorship of educational ideas. ‘‘Modernist’’ and ‘‘liberal’’ ideas were excluded in favor of ‘‘scholastic’’ and ‘‘traditionalist’’ ideas and practices. As censorship gradually decreased, studies of Dewey began to appear, some by members of the clergy. It was not until after the death of Franco (1975) that more interest in Dewey could be seen in professional publications.

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Spanish America The year in which a translation of Dewey first appeared in a Latin American nation will be the criterion employed in determining the order of the four countries surveyed: Chile (1908), Cuba (1925), Mexico (1929), and Argentina (1939). (If this study were covering all of Latin America, at least during Dewey’s lifetime, we would also need to consider that in 1930 the first translation of Dewey appeared in Brazil, while in Honduras and Peru it was 1950 and in Uruguay 1951.) This is not to deny, of course, that educators and philosophers in Latin America were familiar with Dewey before the dates when translations appeared in their respective countries, whether by way of the English originals or by way of translations from other Spanish-speaking countries. chil e A Spanish translation by Darı´o E. Sa´las of Dewey’s ‘‘My Pedagogical Creed’’ (1897) appeared in Chile in 1908. Since 1906, information about Dewey had been appearing in two Chilean journals: Revista de Instruccio´n Primaria and Revista de la Asociacio´n de Educacio´n Nacional. This information was sent by Chilean teachers studying with Dewey in the United States. In this manner Dewey’s ideas began to make themselves known in Chile, supplemented by conferences and other educational activities organized by his former students. The most influential of these was Sa´las, who, as holder of the Chair of Pedagogy in the Instituto Pedago´gico for thirty years, introduced generations of Chilean teachers to the ideas of Dewey. The degree of Sa´las’s respect for Dewey can be seen in the note he appended to his translation. He expressed the hope that those teachers who read it would feel more conscientious of the great role they were able to perform in contributing to the reform of society and to the happiness that comes from children’s self-expression. Still another Chilean educator who studied under Dewey and who returned to make a great name for herself, especially for her work among women, was Amanda Labarca Hubertson.

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Both Sa´las and Labarca were apparently even more impressed by Dewey’s regard for his own students than by his writings. Still another Chilean, though not a former student of Dewey, was impressed by his character. On December 4, 1918, Enrique Molina, who would become the founding president of the University of Concepcio´n, met Dewey at the University of California at Berkeley, where Dewey had stopped off on his way to Japan and China at the invitation of some former students. In a letter written on that day, Molina declared: ‘‘What a pleasant man he is! We talked about his philosophy and he accepted my terming it social idealism.’’ In honor of Dewey’s ninetieth birthday, on October 20, 1949, four papers were presented at the University of Chile. That same day the government of Chile bestowed on Dewey its Order of Merit through its consul general, Carlos Delabarra, at the dinner held in Dewey’s honor in New York City. Finally, at the time of his death, a tribute to Dewey appeared in El Mercurio of Santiago, one of Chile’s leading newspapers.7 cuba The Cuban educational system came under the direction of the United States immediately after the Spanish American War, but the influence here was more from progressive education in general than from Dewey in particular. It was not until 1925 that a translation of El intere´s y esfuerzo en la educacio´n appeared in Cuba, a translation of Dewey’s 1913 publication Interest and Effort in Education dealing with the training of the will in moral education. The translator was Alfredo M. Aguayo, author of Filosofı´a y nuevas orientaciones de la educacio´n, published that same year. Aguayo is said to have been the spiritual director of all pedagogical renovations that have been brought about in Cuba, according to Martha de Castro in her 1939 doctoral dissertation for the University of Havana, Estudio crı´tico de las ideas pedago´gicas de Dewey. A copy of Aguayo’s translation was found in Dewey’s personal library. In closing her study, Castro called herself a disciple of Dewey and expressed her admiration and gratitude for the intellec-

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tual pleasure she derived from the study of his works. She was especially interested in the New School (la escuela nueva) movement, happy that at last such a school had been created in Havana that same year and named after Aguayo. As part of a movement to ‘‘renovate’’ philosophical activity in Cuba, a discussion group—one of the topics of which was pragmatism and Dewey—met periodically in the 1940s under Dr. Jose´ Marı´a Vela´zquez. In 1952, as a tribute to Dewey after his death on June 1, at the age of ninety-three, a short essay appeared in Cuba, ‘‘John Dewey: Filo´sofo de la libertad,’’ written by Jorge Man˜ach, a Cuban educator and writer who had studied at Harvard University and had taught Hispanic literature at Columbia University from 1935 until 1939 but who was then teaching philosophy and the history of philosophy at the University of Havana. The next year there appeared his short study El pensamiento de Dewey y su sentido americano. Man˜ach was also the author of a longer work, Dewey y el pensamiento americano, published in 1959 in honor of the centennial of Dewey’s birth. In concluding his tribute, Man˜ach pointed out the parallel between two of the main cultural traditions of North America (the religious Puritans and the practical pioneers) and two of the cultural traditions of Latin America (the Hispanic ethic of contemplation and the concern for action that arises directly from experience). He claimed that the first tradition in Latin America had attracted its writers while the second attracted its philosophers. In validating his claim that Latin American philosophers, like Dewey himself, have a bent toward the empirical, the naturalistic, and the relativistic, Man˜ach reminded his readers of the influence upon Latin American thought of empiricism, utilitarianism, and positivism as well as of historicism and perspectivism. He particularly reminded his fellow Cubans that Charles S. Peirce (1829– 1914), the founder of pragmatism, considered the same Alexander Bain, who was the ‘‘distant teacher’’ of Enrique Jose´ Varona (1849– 1933), to have been one of his antecedents. All three philosophers agreed that the validity of thought is measured by its resulting action. This historical fact contributed, Man˜ach claimed, to explaining why Dewey’s ideas had been received so systematically in Latin America,

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particularly among educators, and why his death was felt as that of one of ‘‘our own mentors.’’8 (Mention of education in Cuba under the Castro regime will be made in Part II.) mexico The only country in Latin America that Dewey personally visited was Mexico. He did so on two quite different occasions. The first was to lecture at the 1926 Summer Session at the National University, following his trip to Europe with Albert Barnes. The second was in 1937 as chair of the Preliminary Commission of Inquiry into the charges brought by Stalin against Trotsky, a trip that does not enter the theme of this study. By the time Dewey arrived in Mexico, the federal government’s main means of implementing the educational reform called for by the Revolution of 1910 had been created: the Secretarı´a de Educacio´n Pu´blica (SEP, 1921). It was first headed by the popular (especially with the North American press) former rector of the National University, Jose´ Vasconcelos (1882–1959), whose policies included a network of rural schools for the peasants and urban schools for the working classes, as well as resources to encourage libraries and the arts, both indigenous and fine (as a result of which, some of the most famous of Mexican murals were painted)—all federally funded for the first time. Vasconcelos considered the SEP and its works ‘‘the only glory of the Revolution,’’ and Dewey, after his visit, agreed—as seen in Dewey’s essays on Mexico.9 Both educators also agreed that peasants and workers should be educated in theory as well as in practice. Thus, when ‘‘action pedagogy’’ was formally introduced in 1923, it drew heavily on North American progressive educational thought in general and on Dewey’s ideas in particular, ideas supplemented by others originating in Europe. However, Vasconcelos had a negative view of North American progressive education, considering it an application of Protestant doctrine and techniques to education, and thus in his judgment not applicable to Catholic Mexico. Had Vasconcelos still been in office

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when Dewey arrived, it is highly unlikely he would have been pleased to greet him. Dewey’s pragmatism was, in Vasconcelos’s estimation, a variety of the positivism that was precisely the ‘‘official’’ philosophy of the thirty-five-year dictatorship of Porfirio Dı´az, against which the Mexican Revolution had been waged and against whose principles he and Antonio Caso (1883–1946) had argued. Under Vasconcelos’s successor, the SEP continued to follow North American educational trends by emphasizing child and industrial psychologies. The undersecretary, Moise´s Sa´enz, was a self-proclaimed follower of John Dewey who had trained at Columbia University after an education in a Protestant secondary school and a Presbyterian seminary. He provided leadership in the new emphasis on the escuela de accio´n. Sa´enz was one of the ‘‘many’’ Mexican educators who had been to American universities and brought back an enthusiasm for progressive education. In a lecture at the University of Chicago just prior to Dewey’s trip to Mexico, Sa´enz declared: John Dewey has [already] gone to Mexico. He was first carried there by students at Columbia; he went later in his books—The School and Society is a book well known and loved in Mexico. And now he is going there personally. When John Dewey gets to Mexico, he will find his ideas at work in our schools. Motivation, respect for personality, self-expression, vitalization of school work, the project method, learning by doing, democracy in education— all of Dewey is there. Not, indeed, as an accomplished fact, but certainly as a poignant tendency.10

In brief, during the 1930s the SEP became steadily more radical, culminating in the adoption of a plan for ‘‘socialist’’ education as mandated by the ruling political party. Important in the movement were the efforts of politicians and educators from the state of Yucatan who had adopted an educational ideology—open to ideas of Dewey and others—based primarily on the rationalist school founded in Barcelona by the anarchist Francisco Ferrer Guardia, the other major educational innovation in modern Spain. The national plan to change society through the schools was soon dropped for various reasons: a lack of a precise definition of what was meant by socialism, the rejec-

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tion of the plan—if not an outright rejection, then at least delay of its active implementation—by the vast majority of Mexican teachers, and the active resistance against secular, if not atheist, education by those who favored the more traditional (usually Catholic) education. None of Dewey’s works had been translated in Mexico by the time he arrived in 1926. The first translation was in 1929, when his essay on ‘‘New Schools for a New Era’’ appeared in the pages of Coopera: Revista de Educacio´n. That year there also appeared a forty-five-page monograph, La pedagogı´a de John Dewey, by the same Swiss educator, Edouard Clapare`de, who had published an essay on Dewey in Spain in 1922. No further translations of Dewey appeared until 1944, after which six were published over a span of twenty years. Among these translations were Dewey’s major contributions to general philosophy, the first such made into Spanish: Experience and Nature (in 1952), by Jose´ Gaos (1900–1969); Art as Experience (in 1949), by Samuel Ramos (1897–1959); and Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (in 1950) and The Quest for Certainty (in 1952), both by Eugenio Ima´z (1900–1951). These translators were some of the most outstanding philosophers in the Spanish-speaking world and by far the most important philosophers to have translated Dewey. argentina Of all the countries in Latin America, Argentina has the longest history of interest in North American educational philosophies and practices. It dates from the mid–nineteenth century, when the former schoolteacher turned politician Domingo Sarmiento (1811–88) met Horace Mann while Sarmiento was acting as minister from Argentina to the United States. It is said that during this time he never missed an opportunity to attend educational conferences. Impressed by Mann’s work in public education, Sarmiento was convinced that these schools were the basis of the prosperity of the United States. He was determined to correct Argentina’s educational errors by creating a system of public education patterned after that in the United States. His opportunity came when he was elected president of his country

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while still minister in the United States. He asked leading North American educators to select thirty teachers for assignment in Argentina. Despite Sarmiento’s support, the presence of these teachers did not change much for several reasons: the clash of cultures, resistance from Catholics to what they saw as the secularization of the public primary education, and the prevalence of European educational ideas (in a country that was and is by far the most European-oriented nation in Latin America).11 The first essay published in Argentina that mentioned Dewey was by Alejandro A. Jascalevich, ‘‘Tendencias filoso´ficas en los Estados Unidos.’’ It was Jascalevich who in 1917 had translated Dewey’s How We Think (1910) for D.C. Heath of Boston, the only instance known to me of a translation of Dewey made in the United States for the Spanish-reading market. In 1940 there appeared a short monograph entitled Lı´neas fundamentales de la filosofı´a de John Dewey by Ange´lica Mendoza, who had studied at Columbia University through a cooperative arrangement with the University of Buenos Aires. In 1949, A´nibal Sa´nchez Reulet, an Argentinean connected with the division of philosophy, letters, and sciences of the (then) Pan American Union, was instrumental in that organization’s publishing a tribute in Spanish in honor of Dewey’s ninetieth birthday, John Dewey en su noventa an˜os. In the 1950s, Ange´lica Mendoza published her Fuentes del pensamiento de los Estados Unidos, thus enabling the Spanish-reading students of Dewey to place him in his North American philosophical context. This was followed, in 1958, by her Panorama de las ideas contempora´neas en los Estados Unidos. Tributes to Dewey were published in Argentina at the time of his death and during his centennial year, including a bibliography of his works in Spanish compiled by Gustavo F. G. Cirigliano, president of the John Dewey Society of Buenos Aires.12 It was not until 1939 that the first work by Dewey was published in translation in Argentina. This was the year that its translator, Lorenzo Luzuriaga, arrived in Argentina. Already well known in educational circles because of his work in Spain, Luzuriaga continued to edit his Revista de Pedagogı´a as well as to translate, to write his own books,

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and to teach at the Universities of Tucuma´n and Buenos Aires. He sent an inscribed copy of the 1946 edition of his Historia de educacio´n pu´blica to Dewey, a work in which he called Dewey not only the educator who most clearly represented the spirit of present-day democratic education in the United States but also the most illustrious thinker and eminent defender of educational democracy in our epoch. Until his death in 1959, the centennial year of Dewey’s birth, Luzuriaga continued to play a key role in educational circles in the Spanish-speaking world and always remained an admirer of John Dewey’s work. Observations Although North American influences on philosophical thought in Spain and in Latin America had been slight during the first half of the twentieth century, at least in comparison with the overwhelming influence stemming from European philosophies, the educational philosophy of John Dewey had a comparatively wide circulation. It must be kept in mind that Dewey attained his reputation, both at home and abroad, in the area of the philosophy (and psychology) of education long before he developed and published his general philosophy. This would leave an imprint on (one of) his definition(s) of philosophy as the general theory of education as seen, for instance, in his Democracy and Education (1916), the work that served to present Dewey’s philosophy to the public before he published quite late in life his in-depth treatments of logic, epistemology, ontology, and aesthetics. Dewey participated in the development of psychology as a distinct science and advocated the extension of the scientific method to education. What was most convincing about his contribution was his assertion that his theory was based on practical experience, and above all on the educational ‘‘experiment’’ he undertook at the University School—affectionately known as the Dewey School—of the University of Chicago. The distinguishing character of this experience was ‘‘learning by doing.’’ Others throughout North America and Europe who were in on this movement of establishing a ‘‘new education,’’ an ‘‘active school,’’

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saw Dewey’s work as a confirmation of their own ideas and practices and so viewed Dewey as an ally; hence the attraction to Dewey of the educators in Madrid’s Institucio´n Libre de Ensen˜anza. Between Dewey and the Spanish educators there were various similarities in background, theory, and practice. Both advocated a philosophy that had emerged from nineteenth-century ‘‘Objective Idealism.’’ Both utilized the method of ‘‘scientific’’ intelligence to discover and verify their findings, both espoused ‘‘liberal’’ political causes, and both had ‘‘faith’’ in humanity’s ability to improve society through its schools without resorting to armed uprisings. Rousseau, the Pestalozzis, Herbart, Froebal, and their followers had anticipated most of their educational ideas. The originality of both lay in their extension and practical application of these ideas under the new industrial conditions in their respective national circumstances. Dewey had moved to Chicago precisely because there he was able to teach in the areas of philosophy and education. Chicago, the fastest growing industrial center in North America, convinced him that children were being deprived of the educational experiences from which their parents and grandparents had benefited. The knowledge from experience, the ‘‘socialization’’ that had previously been obtained from everyday family and social life in small towns and on family farms. must now be made available through educational institutions. Education that was ‘‘traditional’’—a cover word for a variety of practices in which students sat in a stationary position, listened without asking questions, and took notes to memorize for examinations without adding any personal views—had to be altered to become a student-centered activity that was based on ‘‘understanding through doing.’’ The politico-social confidence of the young North American nation in a ‘‘better’’ future encouraged Dewey and other educators in their efforts. Older educational traditions and methods did not appear capable of reversing this new trend. The national circumstances of Spain were quite different from those of the United States. Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, efforts to industrialize and modernize Spain met with very limited success, and, at that, mainly in the north. There seemed

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to be no hope of changing traditional education; thus ILE was established outside of government and church control (which was also the case with Dewey’s University School). The Spanish national attitude was oriented toward the past, when Spain had ruled a vast empire that supplied the country with wealth without the need to industrialize. By 1900 even the remnants of that empire were gone, lost to the United States as a result of Spain’s defeat in the Spanish American War of 1898. Thus it was an uphill battle for the ILE educators and their graduates to improve education, having only limited success even during the years of the Republic (1931–36). After the ILE closed, many of its educators and its graduate teachers emigrated to Mexico, where they had greater, if still limited, success. The main similarity, if not identity, between Dewey and the ILE educators was the ‘‘principle of activity.’’ Dewey expressed his adherence to this principle in ‘‘My Pedagogic Creed’’ (1897), especially when he wrote that we must conceive of the individual as active in all social relationships, including education. In this way education becomes a process for living in the present rather than a preparation for future living by imparting information to passive students. In an 1882 lecture before the National Pedagogic Congress in Madrid, Cossı´o voiced this principle when he said that education must develop activity, spontaneity, and reasoning skill in children so that they might be the main actors in their own education. As a result of this conviction, the first shops, the first laboratories, and even the first field trips were introduced into Spain by the ILE, and they may have been the first in all of Europe. In the ILE the principle of activity had various dimensions, and much the same could be said for Dewey’s University School: behavioral, sensory, aesthetic, intellectual, social, and moral. In other words, there was an effort in both to educate what today we would call the whole child.13 As far as can be ascertained, there was no contact, in person or by mail, between Dewey and the ILE educators. There is no record that Cossı´o, when he was in the United States in 1904, tried to meet Dewey or that he visited the University School (given that he probably had to pass through Chicago on his way to the St. Louis congress). In any

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case, Dewey would not have been available because that was the year he resigned from the University of Chicago and traveled to Europe with his family before taking up his position at Columbia University. Likewise, there is no record that Dewey made an attempt to contact Spanish educators, especially those connected with the ILE, when in 1926 he visited Madrid to view the collection of paintings in the Prado. Apparently, the admiration for Dewey on the part of the ILE educators stemmed solely from their study of his publications. When we turn to Latin American educators, we discover that the primary source of Dewey’s influence stemmed directly or indirectly from their personal contact with him. At Columbia University’s Teachers College, Dewey had the opportunity to teach students and postgraduate teachers from all over the world. He apparently infused in them a desire to improve their respective societies through their national school systems. His example of interest in and respect for his own students—so different from the aloofness of Latin American professors at that time—seemingly encouraged these future teachers to do the same with their students. When they returned home, most strikingly in Chile and Mexico, his former students introduced their own students to Dewey’s ideas and practices. Buenos Aires even had its own John Dewey Society. More important, Dewey communicated to them that his ideas were grounded in his own educational experiences and would be verifiable in theirs. In this way Dewey attracted those educators in Latin America, as well as in Spain, who were antitraditional in their educational practices, mostly liberal in politico-social reforms, and advocates of a secular education (which, in many cases, meant being anticlerical). It is thus not surprising that the more traditional educators viewed Dewey as a threat to their inherited moral and religious values and did everything possible to limit his influence. The very philosophy that most facilitated an acceptance of Dewey in Spain and in Latin America—Krausism—also limited his appeal because Krausists were already doing what Dewey advocated. Students of the history of modern and contemporary Western philosophy know little, if anything, about Krausism. Krause himself, if

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mentioned at all, is spoken of very briefly in conjunction with Schelling, whose philosophy (along with that of Hegel) overshadowed Krausism (as can be seen in Frederick Copleston’s volume on the history of modern philosophy). What is usually added is that it is surprising that Krausism had a wide influence in Spain, where it became a ‘‘fashionable’’ system of thought. If any adjective discourages careful study of a philosophy, labeling it ‘‘fashionable’’ does so. However, one cannot be a student of the philosophy, history, politics, or literature of modern Spain and Latin America and be ignorant of Krausism. It was the most influential and long-lasting movement in modern times in that part of the West. In a way that is similar to Objective Idealism (once accepted by Dewey), it placed as much emphasis on intelligent (or scientific) understanding of the world, politics, and human life as is possible without denying the unique value of the human person and the international ‘‘communion’’ of persons based on ethical values (in this respect, not unlike Dewey’s later philosophy). Some forms of Krausism even merged with positivism, especially with the variety that was open to religious experience, and had an even greater influence in Latin American society and politics. The influence, both in Spain and in Latin America, of Jose´ Ortega y Gasset (1883–1955), who was familiar with the latest philosophical work coming out of Germany, stemmed the influence of Dewey even further. Through the pages of Ortega’s internationally influential Revista de Occidente (founded in 1923), the Spanish-reading world knew of early twentieth-century German and French philosophical works decades before the English-reading world. It was not that the students of Ortega ignored Dewey; some even saw parallels between the two. Luzuriaga, as mentioned earlier, translated more of Dewey’s works than any other Spanish-language translator. All of the philosophers who translated Dewey’s four major works in general philosophy were, in some manner, former students of Ortega. Gaos and Ima´z had been students of Ortega’s at the University of Madrid; indeed, Gaos was considered by many to be Ortega’s philosophical heir. Ramos accepted Ortega’s basic intuition that ‘‘I am myself plus my circumstances’’ in order to begin philosophizing about Mexican cultural

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circumstances. Gaos (who had been the last rector of the University of Madrid under the Republic) and Ima´z had emigrated to Mexico, where they were welcomed at the National University, and went on to gain reputations for teaching. The prologue by Gaos to his 1948 translation of Experience and Nature is significant and worth quoting at length, for it shows why Gaos considered Dewey worth studying by Spanish-language philosophers. Gaos began as follows: John Dewey is not exactly unknown to the Spanish-speaking public. And not only because he came to be [considered] the most representative philosopher of the United States could he not be ignored by the cultured publics of any country, even before any of his translations had appeared, but because there are already various publications of his translated into Spanish. Yet none of them are of his principal philosophical works. This signifies in general a real deficiency for the culture of the Spanish language, for the fullness of any culture requires that it should incorporate within itself, through translations [if need be], works eminently representative of great foreign cultures. Still more, it signifies a real deficiency in the specific area of philosophy in the culture of our [Spanish] language. [For] the most complete confrontation possible between philosophies always results, at the very least, in being instructive; above all, it is normally the manner par excellence for philosophies to reach an awareness of their own limitations and to open for themselves decisive horizons.14

Gaos wanted Spanish-language philosophers to confront Dewey’s way of solving the modern philosophical problems of dualism vs. monism and transcendentalism vs. immanentism. It was Dewey’s great merit, as Gaos evaluated his philosophy, that Dewey did not separate the cultural or the human from the natural as did most philosophers in Latin America. Gaos wanted to present Latin American philosophers with an opportunity to consider a solution to modern problems other than their own proposals. Accordingly, he taught a course on Dewey. The influence of Dewey in the Spanish-speaking world probably reached its peak around the time of World War II, after which two

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factors contributed to its swift decline. One factor was the (mis)perception that Dewey’s educational theories and practices were ethically neutral, a variety of the positivism that had helped the ruling classes deliver the resources of Latin America into the hands of North Americans and Europeans without a bad conscience (believing that they were being swept by inevitable historical currents). To espouse a philosophy similar to positivism could be seen as unpatriotic. The other factor was the influx of European intellectuals into various countries in both North and Latin America due to the expansion of fascism into politics. This influx contributed greatly to what were to become the most influential philosophies in the Americas, from Canada to Argentina and Chile, in the second half of the twentieth century: existentialism, phenomenology, historicism, perspectivism (of Ortega), Marxism, neo-Thomism, and, above all, especially in the United States, linguistic analysis. It is one of those paradoxes of history that Dewey’s major works in philosophy were available for the first time to the Spanish-reading world at the very time when his influence in philosophy at home and abroad was rapidly declining and his life was ending. The consequence of this decline in influence in Spain and in Latin America was that Dewey was considered primarily as a philosopher of education rather than as a philosopher who wrote works, among others, on the philosophy of education. Thus he is not regarded as highly as William James in the Spanish-reading world. After World War II, students from Latin America studying in North America and in Europe brought home the prevailing philosophies they had studied. As transportation and communication improved, these foreign-educated educators, as well as their nativeeducated colleagues, could keep in closer contact with colleagues throughout the world, and they began attending more and more conferences in other countries. Some were invited to accept visiting or permanent teaching positions in the leading universities of North America and Europe. As a result, Spanish and Latin American philosophers have been in worldwide conversation, as never before, with their colleagues in philosophy and in the philosophy of education.

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Some have even exhibited a renewed interest in pragmatism in general and in Dewey in particular.15 After the appearance of a few studies on Dewey in post-Franco Spain, a doctoral dissertation entitled ‘‘La democracia inquieta: E. Durkheim y J. Dewey’’ was presented in 1989 at the University of Barcelona by the Argentine-born Juan Carlos Geneyro de Bueno. To the best of my knowledge, it is the first dissertation to include Dewey that has been presented to a university in Spain. The dissertation discusses the axiological and procedural implications necessary, according to Dewey and Durkheim, for attaining democracy. Part II is on Dewey and consists of three chapters, one on the ‘‘restlessness’’ of democracy because of the impossibility of attaining it once and for all; another on democracy’s faith in moral equality as the true and universal (or natural) aristocracy; and another on some of the problems in the realization of the democratic goals of education. According to the author (with an eye on the reemergence of democracies in the Spanishspeaking world), both Durkheim and Dewey still have something to offer us today. Furthermore, the task of the educator is to prepare citizens to participate fully in the constant realization of the democratic way of life by conveying appropriate attitudes and actions, given that each citizen is offered equality of opportunity through the eradication of unjust economic orders. Where there is a dissertation, there is a director sufficiently familiar with the theme. At the University of Barcelona (as well as at the University of Navarra, Pamplona), there are at least two members of the faculty interested in Dewey. Jaime Nubiola, of the department of philosophy (Navarra), has participated in meetings of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, once with a paper on ‘‘Peirce and the Hispanic Philosophy of the XX Century.’’ Research is underway on Dewey’s influence in Chile, as seen in Sandra M. Boschetto-Sandoval’s paper (now being prepared for publication in Chile) on ‘‘The Pedagogical Reform of Amanda Labarca Hubertson (Chile, 1886–1975): Progressive Pragmatism Revisited,’’ originally presented at the 1998 meeting of the Latin American Studies Association. The literature on Cuban education after the Revolu-

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tion does not reveal any influence by Dewey, and yet many governmental practices have close parallels with Dewey-inspired education. According to various studies, Fidel Castro, who is said to have taken a personal interest in education on all levels, maintains that only under his government has the promise of education for the elimination of illiteracy—a promise made by the United States after the Spanish American War—been fully realized. There is no indication in the literature that the Spanish translation (made in 1964) of Harry K. Wells’s Pragmatism: Philosophy of Imperialism has been influential. In the four chapters devoted to Dewey, Wells calls him an apologist for North American imperialism and accuses him of indoctrinating bourgeois ideology and leaving the way open for white supremacy and for Anglo-Saxon superiority.16 This criticism of Dewey echoes the views of the Mexican philosopher Jose´ Vasconcelos, who had written in 1939 that Cuba, in adopting Dewey and behaviorism for its education, had surrendered the soul of the nation to the same people who were controlling her sugar and manipulating her politics. Just how different Vasconcelos was from Dewey can be seen when their philosophies of education are compared point by point, as Stanley D. Ivie has done.17 In sum, each was a spokesperson for his own national culture (which, as Dewey himself observed when he returned from Mexico, mix as well as oil and water): Vasconcelos for the Mexican religious conservative and Dewey for the North American secular liberal. The changing conditions in Latin America (both political and economic) call for new ideas and practices that cannot be found directly in Dewey. What is needed are educational ideas like those of the Brazilian Paulo Freire, who has now attained a worldwide reputation. Acknowledging that he was influenced by Dewey, among others, Freire’s ideas on adult education are most welcome in Latin America’s battle to overcome adult illiteracy, especially since these ideas show how to correct the institutional structures that contribute to inhumane living conditions. In various parts of Latin America, even voices previously identified as advocates of traditional education are calling for new educational practices. In the words of the assassinated

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Archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero, writing as early as 1978: ‘‘We have to criticize the fact that education, generally throughout Latin America, does not correspond to the needs of those peoples who are seeking to develop themselves. It is an education that has an abstract content, it is formalistic, and it is teaching that is more preoccupied with transmitting knowledge than in creating a critical spirit.’’18 If Dewey were still alive, he would probably be sympathetic to this call for new ideas for new conditions, much as he had been regarding Mexican conditions. But it is virtually certain that he would refrain (as he did in Mexico) from offering direct advice, relying instead on persons (like Sa´enz in Mexico in the 1920s and 1930s) directly familiar with the local situation to adapt any of his ideas to local conditions. This is precisely what is being done in the United States by those who think that Dewey’s ideas are still relevant to its educational conditions, especially now that there has been a sharp decline in the influence of linguistic analysis, the very philosophy that had replaced pragmatism in the second half of the twentieth century.19 The prospect for a renewed interest in all of Dewey’s philosophical ideas in Spain and in Latin America is greater than it would seem. We now have in professional philosophy in North America younger people who either came from Cuba as children with their political refugee parents or who were born into Hispanic minorities living in the United States. They were educated in North American (including Canadian) universities that offered no courses on philosophy as it developed in Spain and Latin America, they wrote doctoral dissertations on topics acceptable according to the then current guidelines, and they were hired based on their studies and dissertation topics. For one reason or another, they became interested in philosophy as it developed in Spain and in Latin America. They have introduced their students to this area, as well as to their colleagues at meetings of the American Philosophical Association, especially through the efforts of Jorge Gracia and Ofelia Schutte. The Committee on Hispanics in Philosophy has been formed within the American Philosophical Association and now has its own newsletter. This introduction to the area of philosophy in Spain and Latin America was made easier because of

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two events: my own appointment (1968) to the staff of the Philosopher’s Index as the first assistant editor for journals in Spanish and Portuguese, and the founding (1976) of the interdisciplinary Society for Iberian and Latin American Thought (SILAT), to which most of these younger professional philosophers actively belong.20

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pragmatism in brazil John Dewey and Education Marcus Vinicius da Cunha and De´bora Cristina Garcia



T

he starting point of pragmatism in Brazil occurred through John Dewey’s works; his works that are best known by Brazilians are those that address educational topics. For this reason, during most of the twentieth century pragmatism and Dewey were considered synonyms; the same occurred in relation to Dewey and education. Consequently it is also reasonable to say the same in relation to pragmatism and education. Therefore, in order to provide a significant description of pragmatism in Brazil in the previous century, it is indispensable to analyze the presence of the American philosopher in education. In this essay, we show that the identification between pragmatism, Dewey, and education was gradually eased throughout that century, more precisely in the last decades. In our conclusion we make some observations on this phenomenon and point out the trends that, according to our beliefs, are present today and may develop in the future. We utilize two sources, the publication of translations of { 40 }

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Dewey’s works and the references made to Dewey in articles published in educational journals. It is not possible to provide a full explanation for these sources since the period we are analyzing is very long and Brazil is a country of continental dimensions. Even so, we hope to offer the readers a reasonably clear picture of our topic. I From 1920 up to the beginning of the 1930s, several Brazilian states sought to modernize their public systems of education, making amendments to the schools’ administration and to the theoretical bases of the pedagogy then in force. The state reforms, as they became known, were not coordinated by the central government and did not always coincide with one another. However, the legislators made use of similar theoretical grounds since all of them sought inspiration in new educational and philosophical concepts that originated in Europe and in the United States. It is believed that these state reforms introduced the New School in Brazil.1 What was conventionally named ‘‘New School’’ was a movement consisting of ideas and achievements that were characterized by a great ‘‘plurality and confusion of doctrines which were barely covered under the generic denomination of ‘new education’ or ‘new school’, and that were susceptible to very diverse meanings.’’ The term ‘‘New School’’ is ‘‘vague and inaccurate,’’ comprising ‘‘all forms of education’’ that took into account modern pedagogical trends and children’s needs.2 In the set of disfigured and incipient ideas that the states tried to introduce by means of the reforms, there was room for the penetration of Dewey’s ideas. For instance, in the reform begun in 1927 in Rio de Janeiro (Federal District), Nereu Sampaio presented proposals for the teaching of arts that were clearly inspired by Dewey’s ideas. However, it seems that Sampaio made a ‘‘wrong interpretation’’ of certain aspects of the American philosopher’s theses, since the practices he had planned aimed at providing realistic representations of the objects whereas Dewey argued that art should serve as a means to develop students’ ability of expression.3

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The year 1930 gave rise to a new phase in Brazil’s institutional life, bringing great expectations of social and educational transformation. The so-called Second Republic started with a coup d’e´tat led by Getu´lio Vargas, who set up a provisional government with the promise to establish the foundations of a modern industrialized country in which the people could participate in the decision-making process, leaving behind a country ruled by powerful landowners. By immediately creating a Ministry of Education and Health, Vargas met the aspirations of the intellectuals who wanted an educational policy that would encompass the whole country.4 The relative uncertainty of Brazil’s political directions as well as the expectations of social transformation led to discussion of the theoretical fundaments of education. Educators who were considered progressive and called themselves Liberals, such as Anı´sio Teixeira, Fernando de Azevedo, and Lourenc¸o Filho, took leading posts in the administration of the public systems of education in the states; Francisco Campos, who had led the reform in the state of Minas Gerais in the 1920s, headed the newly created Ministry. The first half of the 1930s was favorable to the dissemination of Dewey’s ideas on democracy and education as a crucial means of promoting the democratic way of life. In 1930 the book Vida e educac¸a˜o (Life and Education) was published. It consisted of a compilation that presented two of Dewey’s essays translated into Portuguese by Anı´sio Teixeira, ‘‘The Child and the Curriculum’’ and ‘‘Interest and Effort in Education.’’5 The first essay was also published in the journal Escola Nova (New School) in that same year, and two years later in the journal Revista de Educac¸a˜o (Journal of Education) in a new translation whose author was not identified. In 1932 the journal Educac¸a˜o (Education) published a text titled ‘‘Alguns aspectos da educac¸a˜o moderna’’ (Some Aspects of Modern Education), which was a translation of one of Dewey’s conferences that was broadcast in 1931 by the National Broadcasting Company of the United States.6 One educator engaged in spreading Dewey’s concepts was Anı´sio Teixeira, the Director of Education of the Federal District.7 In addition to publishing articles in educational journals, in 1934 he wrote

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the book Educac¸a˜o progressiva (Progressive Education), which was clearly influenced by Dewey’s ideas. In 1936 the translation of Democracy and Education was published. Teixeira prepared it in partnership with Godofredo Rangel, who in 1933 translated the first version of How We Think, published in 1910. Although we cannot specify the date of the publication and the translator’s name, we know that at that time a translation of Reconstruction in Philosophy was also published. It is clear that, except for Reconstruction in Philosophy, all of Dewey’s works that had been published in Brazil to that point were of immediate interest to educators. Dewey’s works mentioned in the previous paragraph were launched by the Nacional Press, which also published works by other authors important to education such as Wallon and Clapare`de. Vida e educac¸a˜o was edited by Melhoramentos Press as part of a series directed by Lourenc¸o Filho in which books by Kilpatrick, Ferrie`re, and others were also published.8 The cultural environment at the beginning of the 1930s contributed to a clearer definition of the theoretical and political significance of the expression ‘‘New School.’’ Such significance was defined by some Liberal educators in a document titled ‘‘A reconstruc¸a˜o educacional no Brasil—Ao povo e ao governo’’ (The Educational Re-construction in Brazil—To the People and to the Government), which became known as the Manifesto of the Pioneers of New Education. Published in 1932, this document, which was clearly guided by democratic ideals, was based on the ideas of various thinkers, including John Dewey.9 II In 1892, when the first Republican constitution was established, Brazil became disconnected from the Catholic Church. From that point on, the members of the Church’s hierarchy and the intellectuals linked to it took a series of initiatives to regain Catholicism’s influence on Brazilian political and social life and, in particular, on education. In the 1920s, for instance, Catholics began to edit the journal A Ordem (The Order) with the mission of spreading the Church’s ideas and of fighting its opponents, including Liberals and the defenders of Dewey’s

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educational theories. According to the Catholics, the Liberals were disguised communists; the same assumption applied to Dewey. In 1932 when the Manifesto of the Pioneers of the New Education was published, the conflict between Catholics and Liberals became even stronger since that document defended the idea that the entire school system should be controlled by the state and not by private enterprise.10 In 1935 the Brazilian Communist Party was involved in an armed insurrection to take power. Pressed by the Catholics and by the Army, Getu´lio Vargas created a Committee for the Repression of Communism.11 A ‘‘witch-hunt’’ then began, persecuting various individuals and groups who were allegedly considered Brazil’s enemies. In 1937 Vargas introduced a dictatorship named the New State. During the dictatorship, the Catholics, members of the army, and other groups with conservative political tendencies exerted substantial influence on the decisions made by Vargas and Gustavo Capanema, the Minister of Education, which led to the dismissal of the progressive leaders of the New School.12 At the very beginning of the dictatorship, Capanema set up a dividing line between the New State and the New School by stating that it was education’s role to inculcate ‘‘the childhood and the youth with the spirit of the new political regime,’’13 that is, the dictatorship’s guidelines that openly contradicted the positions of a great part of the Liberals. We must say ‘‘a great part’’ and not ‘‘all’’ of the Liberals because some intellectuals, up to that time considered progressive, had accepted the ideas of the New State. For instance, in 1938 Lourenc¸o Filho, who had signed the Manifesto of the Pioneers, became the first director of the National Institute of Pedagogical Studies (known by the acronym INEP), a body created by the Ministry of Education with the purpose of developing research and organizing documents related to teaching. Jointly with Azevedo Amaral and Francisco Campos, who, as mentioned before, had led the reform in the state of Minas Gerais, Lourenc¸o Filho helped work out the New State’s pedagogical guidelines.14 In 1935 when Vargas triggered the witch-hunt, Anı´sio Teixeira resigned from the post of teaching director of the Federal District. One

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of his coauthors, Paschoal Lemme, who actually embraced the communist ideas, was arrested. The publication of the translation of Democracy and Education in 1936 can be considered the last public manifestation of Dewey’s ideas in Brazil until the end of the New State in 1945.

III With the end of Vargas’s dictatorship, it was possible to revive the renovating spirit that had been in force from the 1920s to the mid– 1930s, that is, the democratic spirit of the New School expressed in the Manifesto. In 1952 Anı´sio Teixeira took leadership of the INEP, whose activities gave priority to scientific research on Brazilian educational problems. In the middle of 1950 Teixeira set up the Brazilian Center of Educational Research, whose aim was to combine these investigations and foster discussions that could lead to the transformation of the schools.15 At this time, a period that can be called the second period of the New School, it was also possible to revive the spirit of Dewey’s ideas. In 1952, the National Press published a translation of the new version of How We Think (published in 1933), carried out by Hayde´e de Camargo Campos. In celebration of Dewey’s one-hundredth anniversary in 1959, INEP launched a new translation of Reconstruction in Philosophy by Anto´nio Pinto de Carvalho and revised by Teixeira, and republished Vida e educac¸a˜o and the translations of Democracy and Education and How We Think. In 1959, Brazilians Gilberto Freyre and Anı´sio Teixeira were invited by Columbia University to form a committee in charge of organizing ceremonies to celebrate the anniversary. In Brazil, however, the celebrations were not very impressive; some educators evaluated this fact as evidence that the ‘‘neo-conservative’’ forces intended to ‘‘bury Dewey’s experimentalism.’’16 This evaluation suggests that the Brazilian political environment was not fully favorable to the democratic way of life promoted by Dewey and his followers—an impression, as we shall see, that was accurate.

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Dewey’s reappearance on the Brazilian intellectual scene occurred in 1944, when INEP’s official journal titled Revista Brasileira de Estudos Pedago´gicos (Brazilian Journal of Pedagogical Studies), known by the acronym RBEP, published in its second issue Lourenc¸o Filho’s article ‘‘Modalidades de educac¸a˜o geral’’ (Types of General Education). In this text Dewey’s name appears in brackets, illustrating the idea that the aim of socializing the child could be reached by means of the reconstruction of the pupil’s experience, as established by Durkheim. RBEP was created in 1944 as one of the last acts of the Ministry of Education during the New State; its mission was to ‘‘exert influence in the formation of the Brazilian conceptions of education.’’17 With the end of the dictatorship, however, it became one of the most important means of diffusing the renovating educational ideas; today it provides an important space for the spread of academic and scientific studies, as well as for debate about education in Brazil.18 From 1944 to 1974, RBEP published 121 texts that made references to the American philosopher; if we exclude from these accounts less important texts, such as lists of published works and essays in which Dewey is only briefly mentioned to illustrate or exemplify some topic, the number of fifty-four texts is reached. In these texts Dewey’s ideas play a relevant role, either as the main theme or as an essential reference for the development of the main theme. In this set of fifty-four texts, thirty-nine have as their central theme subjects linked to education and fifteen relate specifically to philosophy. An example of a text on education is the 1956 article titled ‘‘O processo democra´tico de educac¸a˜o’’ (The Democratic Process of Education), in which Anı´sio Teixeira relies on Dewey to state that it is through education that one learns the democratic way of life. An example of a text on philosophy is the 1960 work John Dewey: Uma filosofia da experieˆncia (John Dewey: A Philosophy of Experience), in which Newton Sucupira considers the concept of experience as the key to understanding Dewey’s ideas. In 1960, RBEP published reviews of two of Dewey’s works that were translated into Portuguese: Beatriz Oso´rio wrote about Democracy and Education and Luis Washington Vita reviewed Reconstruction in Philosophy.

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IV A new breach in Brazil’s institutional life occurred in 1964: a coup d’e´tat led by members of the army gave rise to a dictatorship that would be in force for the next twenty years. An immediate consequence of this event was the resumption of the witch-hunt in a similar way to what had occurred during the New State. Anı´sio Teixeira went into exile in the United States, where he occupied the position of visiting scholar at universities in New York and California. In spite of this, the publication of texts referring to Dewey in RBEP was not immediately interrupted: from the beginning of the dictatorship until 1974, thirty-three texts were published in which the American philosopher was quoted. Of this total, twenty-six only mentioned his name and seven presented and discussed his ideas. In two of these the central theme was philosophy, and five focused on education. In this set of post-1964 texts it is interesting to point out a review of Vida e educac¸a˜o written by Lourenc¸o Filho in 1966. Three texts in honor of Anı´sio Teixeira also deserve special attention: the first, published in 1970, made reference to his seventieth birthday; the other two, published in 1971, represented a posthumous homage since Teixeira had died the year before.19 The publication of Dewey’s works began again in 1970 with the edition of Liberalismo, liberdade e cultura (Liberalism, Freedom and Culture), which comprised the essays ‘‘Liberalism and Social Action’’ and ‘‘Freedom and Culture.’’ Anı´sio Teixeira carried out the texts’ translation and the organization of the volume. The following year, the Nacional Press launched the translation of Experience and Education, also by Teixeira. Taking into consideration all of Dewey’s texts that had been published in Brazil to that point, Liberalismo, liberdade e cultura occupies a relevant position for two reasons: First, together with Reconstruction in Philosophy, it constitutes an exception since the essays presented in the collection do not address topics directly related to education. Second, at the time of publication Brazil was experiencing the most difficult phase of the military dictatorship, and the topics of ‘‘Liberalism and Social Action’’ and ‘‘Freedom and Culture’’ are marked by strong political engagement.

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The texts issued by RBEP and the publication of the above-mentioned books by Dewey can be seen as signs that, despite the dictatorship, there was still intellectual life in the Brazilian society. This is obviously just a hypothesis. In truth, Experience and Education was the last of Dewey’s books published in Brazil during the rest of the twentieth century, even after the dictatorial period—and until today, as a matter of fact. Either due to the end of a generation of educators (an end symbolized by Teixeira’s death) or for other reasons, in the years following this publication Dewey’s ideas were scarcely discussed in educational areas. V The last appearance of Dewey’s texts in the intellectual Brazilian scene of the twentieth century occurred in the collection Os Pensadores (The Thinkers), a series of books in which each volume consisted of works or pieces of works by one or more authors. The existence of this collection reinforces the hypothesis raised earlier: under the full force of the military dictatorship, to spread philosophy to a wide public demonstrates the persistence of intellectual life in Brazil. The purpose of Os Pensadores was to make known authors from several periods in an innovative way: books by authors such as Plato, Marx, and Sartre were sold in newsstands for reasonable prices. The first edition of the collection, a volume devoted to Dewey published in 1974, consisted of chapters 1 and 5 of Experience and Nature, chapters 6 and 8 of Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, and chapter 3 of Art as Experience, all translated by Murilo Ota´vio Rodrigues Paes Leme. The same volume included translations of chapters taken from works by William James and Thorstein Veblen. Six years later, in the second edition, a full volume was devoted to Dewey. An integral version of Vida e educac¸a˜o, including the introductory study written by Anı´sio Teixeira as well as the translation of ‘‘Theory of Moral Life’’ by Leoˆnidas de Carvalho, were added to the texts of the first edition. Pablo Rube´n Mariconda, professor of philosophy at the University of Sa˜o Paulo, wrote the introduction to the volume. Dewey’s presence in this

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collection suggests that a broadening of the public interested in the ideas of the American philosopher was occurring. Os Pensadores presented texts by authors whose ideas were reflected in the field of education, but its target public was not exclusively educators but a wider public consisting of teachers and students of courses in the human sciences who were interested in philosophy. From 1974—the date of the first edition of Os Pensadores—to 1984, RBEP published no articles on Dewey. This may indicate that interest in the American philosopher had decreased. However, it is necessary to be careful with this statement, since from the 1970s onward there was a significant increase in the number of educational journals; as time went by, many of them became as important as RBEP. Postgraduate courses on education gave rise to the production of a great many academic works whose results were published by these journals. These facts make it difficult to evaluate if interest in Dewey really decreased during this period. What we can say in favor of our statement is that in the 1970s education in Brazil was strongly influenced by theories derived from business administration.20 Discussion on the aims of education lost ground to the implementation of technological innovations, which, according to what was believed at the time, would fulfill the aims established by the military governors. On the other hand, in the 1980s the movements that opposed the dictatorship began to express themselves publicly, which made the development of Marxist theorizations in education possible.21 There was no place for Dewey in any of these schools of thought. The first was advertised as a more-developed substitute for the New School since it was capable of accomplishing the innovations that the pioneers had not been able to introduce. The second placed the New School and Dewey’s ideas in the list of bourgeois idealistic formulations, which discouraged academic studies on such subjects. In the 1980s, however, even in such adverse conditions, research began to be carried out on the New School and on Dewey. For instance, in 1982 Ana Mae Barbosa published a book about the influence of Dewey’s ideas on the teaching of art from 1927 to 1935, the golden period of the New School.

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In 1984, the military dictatorship that had started in 1964 finally ended. Educational theories based on business administration then started to lose ground. Educational Marxist theorizations, on the other hand, faced the consequences of the impact suffered by Marxism all over the world. For these reasons or for others, the subjects of the New School and Dewey, which had been set aside, reappeared in INEP’s journal in 1984 with the publication of ‘‘O Manifesto dos Pioneiros da Educac¸a˜o Nova e suas repercusso˜es na realidade educacional brasileira’’ (The Manifesto of the Pioneers of New Education and its Repercussions in the Brazilian Educational Reality) by Paschoal Lemme. From 1984 to 2000, RBEP published twenty-five texts that mentioned Dewey. Among those, a 1990 text by Anı´sio Teixeira titled ‘‘A escola pu´blica, universal e gratuita’’ (The Universal, Free of Charge, Public School), which had been previously published in 1956, was reprinted. One of the last articles from that period was written by Roselane Fa´tima Campos and Eneida Oto Shiroma; it dealt with the influence of the New School on contemporary education and analyzed Dewey’s ideas on the relationship between life and education, the pragmatic and functional character of the educational process, and the value of the democratic experience. Conclusion It is undeniable that educational topics occupy a position of great relevance in Dewey’s thinking, but it is also undeniable that all of Dewey’s thoughts on education were carried out in the light of philosophy or, better, in the light of the need to reconstruct philosophy in the contemporary world. Dewey’s strictly pedagogical formulations are part of a wider discussion on democracy as a way of life and on the obstacles that obstruct this purpose. Dewey’s ideas clearly occupy an unparalleled position within pragmatism, but it is also clear that Dewey’s ideas are better understood when placed in the realm of the productions of the other pragmatist philosophers, either those from the past or current ones. Before anything else, pragmatism is a

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method, as stated by James—‘‘a method of settling metaphysical disputes that otherwise might be interminable’’22 —and methods are collective creations. As we attempted to demonstrate in this work, Dewey was an author who was directly involved in education during a great part of the twentieth century in Brazil. It is interesting to observe that, from the last decades of that century, Brazilian philosophers have turned their attention to Dewey. Additionally, philosophy and education have become very closely related areas because philosophers have started to deal with educational topics and because educators have been realizing more and more that philosophy is indispensable to education. This interchange has given rise to works that express a new, rich, and dynamic situation. Specific works on Dewey’s philosophy have come out, such as the book John Dewey: filosofia e experieˆncia democra´tica (John Dewey: Philosophy and Democratic Experience) by Maria Nazare´ C. P. Amaral, published in 1990. Moreover, there are works that jointly analyze Dewey’s philosophical and educational concepts, such as Entre o indivı´duo e a sociedade: um estudo da filosofia da educac¸a˜o de John Dewey (Between the Individual and Society: A Study of John Dewey’s Philosophy of Education) by Carlos O. F. Moreira in 2002. Essays on Dewey appear side by side with texts on other contemporary thinkers such as Deleuze and Wittgenstein, as can be seen in the 1999 book O que ´e filosofia da educac¸a˜o? (What Is the Philosophy of Education?), edited by Paulo Ghiraldelli Jr. In addition, pragmatism—and not only Dewey’s pragmatism—has been studied by groups of researchers who devote themselves to the human sciences. An example is A questa˜o da verdade: da metafı´sica moderna ao Pragmatismo (The Question of the Truth: From Modern Metaphysics to Pragmatism), edited in 2006 by Vera Vidal and Susana de Castro. The books Epistemologia da aprendizagem (Epistemology of Learning) and Oposic¸o˜es filoso´ficas (Philosophical Oppositions) by Luiz Henrique de Arau´jo Dutra, published in 2000 and 2005 respectively, also belong to this category. These publications indicate the rise of a new generation of educators-philosophers and philosophers-educators, consisting of university professors whose courses prepare teachers for various levels of

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teaching, graduate and postgraduate). Such publications represent trends that stand out from the end of the last century: discussing John Dewey’s philosophical concepts and educational ideas; analyzing Dewey’s thinking at the core of pragmatism; locating pragmatism at the core of the history of philosophy; and making use of pragmatism, as well as of Dewey’s ideas, to understand the contemporary world. To sum up, the present situation seems promising. As of this writing, we have learned that there are plans to resume the publication of Dewey’s works in Brazil—new translations of previously published texts, and translations of unpublished works.

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c h a r l e s pe i r c e an d t h e hi s p a n i c wo r l d Jaime Nubiola



A

surprising fact in the historiography of twentieth-century Hispanic philosophy is its almost total opacity toward the American tradition. This deep rift between the two traditions is even more striking when one realizes the almost total neglect in the Hispanic world of such an outstanding Hispanic-American thinker as George Santayana, or the real affinity between the central questions of American pragmatism and the topics and problems addressed by the most relevant Hispanic thinkers of the last century: Miguel de Unamuno, Jose´ Ortega y Gasset, Eugenio d’Ors, Carlos Vaz Ferreira, Jose´ Ferrater Mora, and so on. Within this wide framework, this essay describes the situation of mutual ignorance between both traditions, paying special attention to the figure and thought of the founder of pragmatism, Charles S. Peirce (1839–1914). In order to do this, I first justify the usage of the expression ‘‘Hispanic philosophy,’’ highlighting its heuristic and { 53 }

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practical value. Second, I discuss the most important of Peirce’s connections with the Hispanic world. Third, I mention the major milestones of the textual reception of Peirce in Spanish and, fourth, some of the connections that lie nearly hidden under the cloak of ignorance that divides the two traditions. Finally, by way of conclusion, I sketch some effects that the recent resurgence of American pragmatism has had on this situation. The Notion of Hispanic Philosophy The term ‘‘Hispanic philosophy,’’ used for the philosophical tradition of Spain and Latin America, was coined by the Catalan philosopher in exile Eduardo Nicol.1 It was the Cuban philosopher Jorge J. E. Gracia, however, who recently presented a full case in favor of this term as a way of gaining a better understanding of all the philosophical thinking that has developed over the last few hundred years in Spain and Portugal, the Spanish colonies of the New World, and the countries that grew out them.2 The concept of Hispanic philosophy is particularly accurate because it brings out the close relationship between philosophers in these geographical areas, and because the other geographical descriptions that have been used (Spanish philosophy, Portuguese philosophy, Catalan philosophy, Latin American philosophy, Hispano-American philosophy, and Ibero-American philosophy) do not do justice to or neglect the historical reality of the relations between them. Nonetheless, the use of a category such as this does not imply—as Nicol believed, and with him scores of Hispanic authors in the twentieth century3 —that there is some special idiosyncratic trait that characterizes all the figures who have devoted their energies to philosophy within the Hispanic world. Instead, the name Hispanic philosophy serves to highlight the phenomenon of the real historical relationship between the philosophy of the Iberian Peninsula and that of Latin America, which other descriptions tend to neglect. The authors who form part of this tradition do not share a language, a race, or a nationality, but they have a common history: It is the historical reality they share that provides a uniting factor and gives them a certain family resemblance.4

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One of the features of modern Hispanic philosophy is its isolation from the main current of European thought. The process by which late Hispanic scholasticism—as exemplified by the work of Domingo de Soto, Francisco Sua´rez, Francisco Arau´jo, and John Poinsot— broke away from Europe was influenced by many factors. One of its most regrettable consequences was the resulting ignorance in Europe of the rich creative ferment and speculative depth of this tradition with regard to the central problem of the nature of signs and their activity. John Deely has emphasized that it is in these Hispanic philosophers, rather than in the modern Cartesian tradition, that we find ‘‘the first genuine awakening of semiotic awareness, that is, the first thematic understanding of the difference between using signs and comprehending their basis, and the ubiquitousness and naturalness of a phenomenon such as semiosis.’’5 Of particular interest in this context are the efforts made in recent years by Deely, Beuchot, and others to identify the links between this late scholastic philosophy and the vigorously anti-Cartesian thought of the founder of pragmatism, Charles S. Peirce, and his followers. Peirce’s Connections with the Hispanic World A good indication of the almost complete absence of the Hispanic world from Peirce’s cultural horizons is that the only direct mention of Spain in the eight volumes of his Collected Papers is his usage of the English expression of French origin ‘‘to build castles in Spain,’’ which occurs in his article ‘‘A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God’’ in which Peirce explains the notion of ‘‘musement.’’ This term indicates free, unrestrained speculation in which the mind entertains itself to no particular end, purely playing with ideas: ‘‘The particular occupation I mean . . . may take either the form of aesthetic contemplation, or that of distant castle-building (whether in Spain or within one’s own moral training)’’ (CP, 6.458, 1908).6 Nevertheless, Peirce visited Spain briefly in 1870, and a remembrance of that visit may help to reach a better understanding of Peirce’s work and life, and perhaps make it easier to close the gap between the American and Hispanic traditions.7

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The circumstances of that journey bear witness to the wide scope of Peirce’s interests. In 1861, upon finishing his studies in the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard, Peirce started to work as an aide to his father, Benjamin, in the U.S. Coast Survey. In 1869 Charles S. Peirce was a member of one of the teams in Kentucky that studied the total eclipse of the sun on August 7. The observation of the solar corona and its protuberances through telescopes, and the detection of helium by use of the spectroscope, led the American astronomers to formulate new theories on the composition of the sun that were received with a certain skepticism by European astronomers. As no other such favorable occasion would arise in the nineteenth century, Benjamin Peirce, the third superintendent of the Coast Survey, obtained a Congressional appropriation to organize an expedition to observe the next solar eclipse, which was to take place at midday on December 22, 1870, on the Mediterranean Sea. To ensure the success of the project and also to help Charles’s international profile as a scientist, Benjamin sent his son to organize the preparations in Europe six months beforehand. Charles had to make adequate arrangements for two teams of observers, and was asked by his father to establish links with eminent European scientists such as Augustus de Morgan, Stanley Jevons, and others. As he would write more than thirty years later, ‘‘Philosophy is a study which needs a very protracted concentrated study before one, so much as, begins to be at all expert in the handling of it, if one is to be precise, systematic, and scientific. I gave ten years to it before I ventured to offer half a dozen brief contributions of my own. Three years later, when I had produced something more elaborated, I went abroad and in England, Germany, Italy, Spain, learned from their own mouths what certain students at once of science and of philosophy were turning in their minds.’’8 Charles passed through London, Rotterdam, Berlin, Dresden, Prague, Vienna, and Pest, finally arriving in Constantinople. From Constantinople Peirce went back along the entire path of the eclipse from east to west in search of suitable locations for observatories. Peirce visited Turkey, Greece, and Italy, where he selected some sites

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in Sicily, and on October 28, Peirce left Florence to begin what he called his ‘‘Spanish hurry-skurry.’’9 The highlights of his Spanish trip were probably Malaga, Granada, and Madrid. Peirce arrived in the south of Spain by boat in the first days of November. From Ma´laga, Charles Peirce wrote to his father, Benjamin, giving him news of his visit and suggesting a possible site in Marbella.10 In Granada he was greatly impressed by the Alhambra, which he visited on November 7. In his Cambridge Conferences Lectures of 1898, almost thirty years later, he compared mathematical hypotheses with the Alhambra decorations: mathematical hypotheses are inferior, but similar: they are ‘‘as pretty but soulless.’’11 On November 12, 1870, Peirce was in Madrid, as can be seen from the passport he was issued at the United States’ legation. Peirce’s visit to Spain was extremely brief, less than two weeks. He probably made the whole journey through Spain by train, since Ma´laga, Granada, Seville, Jerez, and Madrid were already on the railway network. In any case, Peirce did not know Spanish, and he was little more expert after his visit, as he explains in a letter to his mother from Grenoble on November 16: ‘‘The Spanish speak as if they had pebbles in their mouths, which makes it very difficult to catch the distinction of their sounds.’’12 In fact, Charles S. Peirce joined the group of American scientists— his wife, Zina, and his father, Benjamin, among them—who followed the eclipse in the vicinity of Catania (Sicily), even though his spectroscope was sent by mistake to Jerez, Spain, where the second group from the U.S. Coast Survey was finally stationed.13 Even though the day turned out to be cloudy with some rain, the observations made by both expeditions on December 22 were successful and confirmed the conclusions drawn by the Americans on the basis of the previous eclipse. As Joseph Brent wrote, ‘‘This expedition was Charles’s first experience of large-scale international scientific cooperation, and it illustrated for him the importance of the community of science in reevaluating and validating its hypotheses.’’14 Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and, perhaps to a lesser extent, Italy are the European countries mentioned most frequently

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in Peirce’s writings. References to Spain or other countries of the Hispanic world are scarce and on most occasions of a negative tone, in keeping with the insignificant role that these countries played in the scientific and cultural community of Europe during the last quarter of the nineteenth century.15 As Wells noted, Peirce was sympathetic and responsive to both British and German ideas and ideals, but gave little thought to the influence of French culture. This is probably due to the scant attention Peirce paid to social and political philosophy, but in fact there appears to be a wide presence of French culture in Peirce’s mind.16 My guess is that the real influence of Juliette, his French second wife, whom he married in 1883, should not be underestimated.17 It is not unlikely that through Juliette the anti-Hispanic bias of nineteenth-century French culture had some effect on Peirce. For instance, in his notebook of French grammar he wrote down as an example of subordination: ‘‘Les espagnols desesperant de retenir les nations vaincues dans la fidelite´ prirent le parti de les exterminer’’ (‘‘The Spaniards, despairing of keeping the people in submission to the faith, took the alternative of exterminating them’’) (MS 1237). Among Peirce’s manuscripts there is a small notebook of Spanish grammar handwritten by him in French (MS 1236); as the only example of the adjectives that take an ‘‘a’’ to form the feminine he writes: ‘‘hombre haraga´n: homme peresseux/muger [sic] haragana: femme peresseuse [lazy man, lazy woman].’’ Two other comments from Peirce’s reviews in The Nation deserve some attention. First, in his review of the volume of Park Benjamin on The Intellectual Rise in Electricity, in discussing the history of the introduction of the compass in Europe, Peirce writes: ‘‘To show how slow progress was in those days, the compass is mentioned (as Klaproth shows) as a familiar thing in the laws of Alfonso X. of Castile dated a.d. 1263; and yet the evidence seems to be (we are indebted to Mr. Benjamin for this) that Spanish galleys were never supplied with it before 1403. The rational conclusion seems to us to be that it was probably known in the Mediterranean before a.d. 1200; but, owing to

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the choppy seas, it was little used in these waters until it was balanced on a point.’’18 This is not a negative comment, but simply the assertion—related to Spain—that the incorporation of the compass in sea navigation in the Mediterranean came two hundred years after its invention. The second comment has an incidental nature, but is full of meaning. It occurs in Peirce’s review of John Aston’s book The History of Gambling in England: ‘‘The innate simplicity of the gamester appears in the statement that Government lotteries and great gambling casinos are honestly conducted. Will any man of sound judgment who knows how affairs connected with Government go on in Spain and Italy, hold their lotteries to be materially more trustworthy than if Croker or Quay or Platt managed them?’’19 The only Spaniard with whom Peirce corresponded was Ventura Reyes y Pro´sper (1863–1922). Reyes was a Spanish mathematician, a mathematics teacher in Toledo who corresponded widely with the best-known mathematicians of his time, and whose works he wished to publicize in Spain.20 Peirce’s offprints and two copies of his 1883 book Studies in Logic by Members of the Johns Hopkins University, sent to Reyes by Peirce, are kept with Reyes’s library in the Biblioteca de Matema´ticas del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientı´ficas in Madrid. Another Spaniard with whom Peirce had a close relationship was General Carlos Iba´n˜ez de Ibero (1825–91), who lived in Paris and was the co-founder in 1866 and later president (until his death) of the International Geodesic Association.21 In accordance with Peirce’s profession as a logician, the Spaniard most frequently quoted, some twenty times in the Collected Papers and the first six volumes of the Chronological Edition, is Peter of Spain (c.1226–77), ‘‘the highest authority for logical terminology, according to the present writer’s ethical views’’ (CP, 2.323n). For Peirce, Petrus Hispanus was ‘‘a noble Portuguese’’ because it was believed that he had been born in Lisbon.22 His famous Summulae logicales, which survived as a manual of logic until the beginning of the seventeenth century, is quoted by Peirce at length: ‘‘This man, who had he survived would surely have been reckoned among the world’s great

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men’’(CP, 4.26). Second, Peirce mentions Ramon Lull (1233–1316), ‘‘one of the most acute logicians’’ (CP, 4.465), even though he labels his Ars magna ‘‘nonsensical’’ and calls him ‘‘crazy’’ (N 1, 130); and also Juan Luis Vives (1492–1540), in whom he recognizes a noteworthy precedent for Euler’s logical diagrams (CP, 4.353, 2.390). Peirce also refers a few times to Seneca, and mentions Isidore of Seville’s definition of abstract numbers (CP, 2.428) and the theologian Sua´rez’s position on the union of body and soul (CP, 6.362). Peirce himself wrote two letters in The Nation in December 1884, discussing the ‘‘Reciprocity Treaty’’ signed by the United States and Spain in February of that year to regulate the importation of Cuban and Puerto Rican sugar (N 1: 65–67, W 5: 144–48). As is well known, the situation led to war between the United States and Spain: ‘‘our difficulty with Spain by the destruction of the Maine,’’ as he described it in 1902 (N 3: 68). When the war finally came about, Peirce wrote to his first cousin, the influential Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, offering his contribution to the war effort in the form of a machine he had invented to code and decode messages and voicing his prediction that the Spanish would put up little resistance in the war. This letter deserves to be quoted at length: My dear Cabot I take the liberty of reminding you of my strong desire to serve the country in some way at this time, and also to say more explicitly than I did that other things being equal I believe I should be particularly useful were unflurried nerves desirable in a situation of extreme danger. At the same time, I would not decline any position in which I should be of use. I have from boyhood been taught by all our Massachusetts statesmen the U. S. ought to possess Cuba. I am sorry to say I don’t believe the Spaniards will make a good fight; for as I have studied them in Spain, the whole people has been corrupted with the centuries of cruelty, injustice and rapine they have indulged in, and they have little manhood left. But as for the Cubans, they have passed through the refining furnace of adversity, and those of them that inhabited Key West, refugees mostly, the winter I was there, were far better than the Negroes, the Bahama people, or the

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Americans there, and much superior to what I should fancy the Lymn (?) shoemakers to be. Every morning a man, hired by the cigar makers, mounted a pulpit in the factory & read to them all day. The only crime of violence that winter was by an American. My ingenuity ought to be rendered serviceable. I cannot make it so without basking. I could make a machine which would write a cipher for dispatch, as secure as a combination lock, and as readily as an ordinary typewriter, and a companion machine would translate it as fast as a stock ticker—every dispatch in a different cipher which the machine itself would discover. This would be valuable to merchants in war times.23

Without any doubt, Charles Peirce was a son of the New England culture of his time, and the letter reflects well the great distance in those times between the Hispanic world and the American culture. In a similar vein, one may read Peirce’s letter to his brother Jim: I am entirely in favor of the war. Two years ago I thought the United States instead of recognizing Cuba, for which there was no justification, ought to have intervened in the name of civilization. Besides, I have always thought we wanted Cuba, and what I have seen of the Cubans makes me think them very superior to the Spaniards of Spain who have been thoroughly corrupted by centuries of indulgence in cruelty, injustice, treachery, and rapine. That Cuba will fall into our hands ultimately I have no doubt. Besides, I think on the whole it is clear the Spaniards blew up the Maine, and we ought not to let that pass simply because we cannot produce a formal proof of the fact. We did right in not making it a formal casus belli but still in going to war because of it. Besides that, I think it is a very fortunate thing to have a war with Spain; for we could not go on forever without a war. It might have been Germany, with which we must probably fight sooner or later; certainly we must if we are not prepared for it. Now nothing would ever wake us up but an actual war.24

The contemporary reader will be surprised by Peirce’s clarity of mind about the unavoidability of a future war with Germany, which became a reality fifteen years later. In any case, both letters reflect well the deep hostility from the American side toward the Hispanic world.

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This trend had its counterpart in the anti-Americanism that had been a dominant and leading factor—and which is still active today—in Hispanic culture throughout the twentieth century, both in Spain and in the Hispanic countries of Central and South America. In spite of this, it is not unfair to say that America and the Hispanic culture are two separate worlds destined by history and geography to understand each other and to get along well.25 Yet a piece of information that comes as a real surprise to the Hispanic reader is that in his later years, Peirce added to his own name the Spanish name ‘‘Santiago.’’ It has been said that this name was to honor his great friend and benefactor William James, but this conjecture seems ill founded, since Peirce used it occasionally from at least 1890, prior to receiving any effective help from William James.26 The Reception of Peirce in the Hispanic World As Vericat suggested, Peirce’s reception in Spain has been somewhat shadowy in the sense that his importance is openly acknowledged, but little is known about what he actually wrote.27 Much the same could be said of Latin America. However, there is evidence that this is beginning to change: translations are now appearing that make a relevant amount of Peirce’s vast production accessible, and in 1994 a ‘‘Grupo de Estudios Peirceanos’’ was founded in Navarra to coordinate and encourage the efforts of researchers from Spain and several Latin American countries. Similar initiatives are appearing in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and other places. In the last decade a wide interest in Peirce seems to have awakened in most Spanish-speaking countries. The first reference to Peirce’s work in Spanish appeared very early. On October 25, 1883, the journal Cro´nica Cientı´fica of Barcelona published a short article titled ‘‘Irregularidades en las oscilaciones del pe´ndulo,’’ a translation of the observations published by Peirce the previous year in The American Journal of Science. The second reference to Peirce in Spanish scientific literature are the three notes on symbolic logic by Ventura Reyes Pro´sper published in 1891 in Naturaleza, Ciencia e Industria, and a paper on Peirce and Mitchell by the

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same author published in 1892 in El Progreso Matema´tico of Zaragoza. In this last paper Reyes reviews the logical-mathematical works of Peirce, and offers him ‘‘with apologies for the errors which I may have made, a testimony of the genuine admiration which a foreigner bears you from beyond the seas.’’28 It seems especially meaningful that the first Hispanic references to Peirce correspond to his work as a scientist. In the world of philosophy, however, the first references appear in texts from 1907–8 by Eugenio d’Ors, who became acquainted with American pragmatism through E´mile Boutroux during his studies in Paris. In 1920 a short entry about Peirce appears in the huge Enciclopedia Universal Ilustrada Europeo-Americana, but we have to wait until 1933 for a brief exposition of Peirce’s logic under the heading ‘‘Simbo´lica (Lo´gica)’’ in the Appendix to this Enciclopedia, in which Juan David Garcı´a Bacca summarized the information given by C. I. Lewis in A Survey of Symbolic Logic in 1918.29 The first Spanish-language editions of Peirce are Juan Martı´n RuizWerner’s two short translations, Deduccio´n, induccio´n e hipo´tesis and Mi alegato en favor del pragmatismo, followed by that of Beatriz Bugni La ciencia de la semio´tica. Dalmacio Negro’s translation of Peirce’s 1903 Lectures on Pragmatism was more ambitious. It was published under the title Lecciones sobre el pragmatismo and was envisaged as part of a project to translate all eight volumes of Peirce’s Collected Papers, which later did not work out. In the last twenty years other Spanish translations have appeared. Armando Sercovich’s edition Obra lo´gico-semio´tica consists of a compilation of some of Peirce’s papers on semiotics, ten of the more important letters to Lady Welby in which he explains the theory of signs, and ten sections of the Collected Papers concerning these subjects. Pilar Castrillo’s translation titled Escritos lo´gicos follows, which contains eleven papers representative of Peirce’s contributions to logic. Third, Jose´ Vericat’s edition titled El hombre, un signo (El pragmatismo de Peirce) includes a sound introduction and many useful notes. In more recent years careful translations of Peirce have flourished, most of them published on the Web under the general supervision of

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Sara Barrena, that make available to a wide audience thousands of pages of Peirce’s writings as well as articles about Peirce and pragmatism.30 The growing interest in Peirce’s work evident in the Hispanic world in recent years31 is probably due more to the influence of Umberto Eco, Ju¨rgen Habermas, and Karl-Otto Apel and to the gradual approximation of the Hispanic philosophers to American academic philosophy than to the effect of these translations. The recent resurgence of pragmatism,32 allied with these two other factors, may be decisive in showing the Hispanic world that Charles Sanders Peirce was, or rather is, important for a sound understanding of our contemporary culture. Moreover, the discovery of pragmatism in the Spanish-speaking countries highlights some hidden affinities between American philosophy and Hispanic philosophy that may provide an explanation for this resurgence. Some Connections Hidden Beneath a Mutual Incomprehension Hispanic philosophy’s ignorance of Peirce and of pragmatism in general, and the American pragmatist tradition’s lack of knowledge of Hispanic philosophy, are probably the result of mutual cultural incomprehension in which the sociological factors that have separated these two spheres throughout the twentieth century have prevented both parties from recognizing their special affinity. On the other hand, the overwhelming dominance of the analytic tradition in the Anglo-American world over the last fifty years has resulted in a neglect of studying the history of thought. In more recent years, growing interest in the history of the analytic movement itself has shown that Peirce could be regarded as an analytic philosopher avant la lettre, or could even be counted with Frege, Russell, and Wittgenstein as one of its founding fathers.33 It has often been said that the central problem of Hispanic philosophy in the twentieth century has been that of the connection between thought and life. In very general terms, this is also the central theme of American pragmatism. Or rather, pragmatism is a response from

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scientific and life experience to the typical problem of modern Cartesianism concerning the rift between rational thought and creative vitality. The Hispanic philosophers Unamuno, Ortega, and d’Ors, in a way analogous to that of the Italians Papini, Vailati, and Calderoni,34 were answering this common problem in a way that was strikingly similar to their North American counterparts. Recognition of this ‘‘community’’ has been very slow, perhaps because of the decline of pragmatism in previous decades, the eternal claim to originality that characterizes the Hispanic tradition, and the typical parochialism of the North American tradition. This peculiar affinity between North American thought and the Hispanic world perhaps accounts for the great spread of the Spanish translations of Ralph W. Emerson and William James in the first decades of the twentieth century. As far as Spain is concerned, in 1961 Pelayo H. Ferna´ndez studied in detail how Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) read William James, including his frequent quotations of James and his marginal notes in the works by James preserved in his library. Ferna´ndez’s conclusion was that Unamuno’s pragmatism was ‘‘original with respect to that of the American, from whom he absorbed only complementary features.’’ However, the abundance of facts that he lists bears witness to a great influence, and a great similarity between the two thinkers on many issues and problems.35 Very recently, Izaskun Martı´nez has stressed more accurately the real scope of James’s influence in Unamuno’s intellectual development.36 Regarding Jose´ Ortega y Gasset (1883–1955), John Graham published a careful study in which, after noting Ortega’s hostility to American pragmatism, he reveals ‘‘many basic connections, similarities and points of identity, so that concrete influence and dependence seem more plausible than ‘coincidence’ between Ortega and James.’’37 Graham gives evidence that Ortega read James early in his career, and that Ortega was aware that James had anticipated his central notion of ‘‘razo´n vital.’’38 His evidence of James’s influences on Ortega through German sources themselves influenced by James is especially convincing.39 Along these lines, Gregory F. Pappas studied the remarkable similarities between Peirce and Ortega on the distinction

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between indubitable and doubtable beliefs, which is a central topic in a pragmatist view.40 In contrast with Ortega, Eugenio d’Ors (1881–1954) is perhaps the Hispanic philosopher most conscious of his personal connection with American pragmatism. By 1907 he had defined himself as a pragmatist, driven by the same desires as moved his American counterparts whom he hoped to outstrip by recognizing an esthetic dimension of human action that could not be reduced to the merely utilitarian.41 Forty years later, in 1947, in his El secreto de la filosofı´a that crowned his philosophical career, he generously acknowledges what he owes to the American tradition.42 His personal interest in experimental science, logic, and methodology in the early years of his career, united with his consideration of his whole life as a failure, make him a good candidate to be considered the ‘‘Hispanic Peirce.’’ In Latin America the connection with American pragmatism can be traced back to the first decade of the twentieth century. Carlos Vaz Ferreira (1871–1958) from Uruguay should be credited for publishing the first book in Spanish devoted to pragmatism in 1909, particularly related to James’s ideas. As Zalamea has written, ‘‘this is an admirable text for its time; accurate in the quotations, independent and fairly critical in its remarks.’’43 In fact, Einstein read the French translation of this book on the occasion of his 1925 visit to Montevideo. Einstein wrote to Vaz Ferreira thanking him for the gift, explaining that he was in agreement with Vaz about incongruities in the uses of truth between several pragmatists and adding, ‘‘I believe that the concept of ‘truth’ cannot be treated separately of the problem of reality.’’44 In the following decades there is a long silence on Peirce in the Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America, with the only exception the Peruvian Pedro Zulen (1889–1925), who in 1924 published a book on the history of recent philosophical ideas in England and the United States.45 On the one hand, it is not unlikely that Ortega’s hostility toward American pragmatism was inherited by mainstream Hispanic philosophy of the twentieth century.46 Ortega is the foremost figure in recent Hispanic philosophy, and the fact that some of his students emigrated to Latin America at the time of the Spanish Civil

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War may have helped disseminate his attitude.47 Agustı´n Basave Ferna´ndez del Valle, in his ‘‘Significacio´n y sentido del pragmatismo norteamericano,’’ makes one exception to this generally negative trend: the Mexican philosopher Jose´ Vasconcelos (1882–1959).48 Vasconcelos is a very intriguing case since, despite being openly hostile to the United States and American philosophy, a great deal of his educational ideals rely heavily on Dewey’s ideas. This deep lack of congeniality appears reflected with enormous clarity in his De Robinson a Odiseo (1935), as Jane Duran and Ana Paola Romo have highlighted recently.49 On the other hand, Hispanic Marxism—with very few exceptions, perhaps including Maria´tegui50 —tended to see American pragmatism, Peirce included, as the most typical product of U.S. imperialism. Among the small group of friends of American pragmatism in the Spanish-speaking countries, it is necessary to mention Jose´ Ferrater Mora (1912–91), as exhibited by his outstanding Diccionario de Filosofı´a.51 Ferrater taught for three decades at Bryn Mawr College; he knew both worlds quite well, and was able to trace affinities between Hispanic and American philosophical traditions. In his excellent paper on Peirce and Kant, Ferrater writes: ‘‘There are some respects in which Peirce and Kant completely agree. For instance, that philosophical activity must be deliberate and, whenever possible, highly conscious, that the arbitrary and the individualistic are prejudicial and, last but not least, that philosophy must be like a building capable of sheltering everybody and not only a few technical-minded philosophers.’’52 Along these lines, some hidden connections between American pragmatism and the Hispanic world may surely be uncovered. Conclusion In recent years we have been witnessing a resurgence of pragmatist philosophy in Anglo-American culture, which is generating a profound renewal and transformation of analytic philosophy. One of the landmarks in this process has been the rediscovery and deeper understanding of C. S. Peirce. The growing awareness of the connections

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between the Hispanic and the North American philosophical traditions—formerly regarded as worlds apart—would seem to offer a better perspective for appraising the philosophical output of the past century. Moreover, a new phenomenon has appeared in the last few years: Hispanic scholars from different countries and backgrounds have begun to listen to each other and to talk about Peirce and the philosophers of classical pragmatism. On the American side, there is a growing awareness of the almost total neglect that the Hispanic philosophical tradition has suffered, as the present volume bears witness. The study of Peirce’s person and thought may be one of the ways to overcome the typical individualistic isolation of the Hispanic philosopher, and also to close the gap between the American and Hispanic philosophical traditions.

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j o h n d e w e y an d t h e le g a c y of me x i c a n pragmatism in the united states Ruben Flores



T

he lament by academic practitioners of Latin America’s philosophical traditions that John Dewey has been left out of the discussions of philosophy in the Spanish-speaking world may leave philosophers surprised to learn that their colleagues across the quad, the historians, have assigned Dewey an important role in the development of postrevolutionary Mexican social theory since at least the 1950s. One participant in this trend was historian Ramo´n E. Ruı´z, who argued in 1961 that Dewey’s Mexican students Moise´s Sa´enz and Rafael Ramı´rez had adopted Deweyan ethics as part of a grand experiment to construct a rural school system capable of solving ‘‘the everyday problems of rural Mexicans.’’1 Economic and political constraints prevented Deweyan experimentalism from becoming a sustained component of postrevolutionary transformation, but Sa´enz and Ramı´rez were nonetheless committed, Ruı´z argued, to the creation of a social democracy that would allow individuals to live lives of democratic independence.2 Ruı´z could not have been familiar with Robert { 69 }

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Westbrook’s John Dewey and American Democracy, but his sympathetic portrayal of Dewey was not unlike Westbrook’s interpretation of Dewey as a radical democrat who fought for the right of the masses to participate in the political and economic conversations from which they had been eliminated.3 Ruı´z’s portrayal was representative of the role that historians assigned to Dewey in postrevolutionary Mexican society through the late 1970s.4 Dewey’s presence did not diminish in new interpretations of Mexican history that emerged after the federal army’s 1968 Tlatelolco massacre, but it did undergo a dramatic transformation. Where Ruı´z had underscored the liberationist potential of pragmatism, the harsh new assessments of the Mexican Revolution (1910–20) stressed the failures of Deweyan theory and of the functionaries like Sa´enz that promoted it. These revisionist accounts are now standard in the historical literature as part of a wide-ranging reassessment of the Mexican state that replaced what some believed was an uncritical view of the federal government’s role in postrevolutionary social transformation.5 In the work of one leading revisionist, historian Mary Kay Vaughan, pragmatist social theory was transformed from a cluster of ideas stressing the reformist potential of scientific experimentalism to a manifesto sustaining the state’s need to create a tractable labor force.6 Dewey, wrote Vaughan, ‘‘accepted a productive order that denied the worker any control over the content, execution, and product of his labor.’’7 If Ruı´z and others had nodded in the direction of the new criticism by acknowledging the institutional inertia of postrevolutionary Mexican society, they had nonetheless distinguished Dewey as a reformer, not as an agent of capitalism. For the revisionists, by contrast, Dewey had become an instrument of social control who worked indirectly for the capitalist class as a disciplinarian stressing obedience to the social hierarchy. Yet if philosophers might be surprised to learn of Dewey’s prominence in historical interpretations of twentieth-century Mexico, their larger point about the absence of scholarship on Dewey’s philosophical influence in Latin America is underscored by the uneven attention that historians have given to Dewey’s relationship with his Mexican

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students. Given the strategic role that they have assigned to Dewey’s ideas in remolding the social contract in postrevolutionary Mexico, for example, historians have given remarkably thin treatment to the use of Dewey’s texts by Mexico’s postrevolutionary intellectuals. Dewey’s most prominent Mexican student, Moise´s Sa´enz, once famously acknowledged his debt to Dewey’s School and Society in a 1926 University of Chicago address frequently cited by historians.8 But one suspects that Sa´enz’s essay, and not Dewey’s book, has become the major source of Deweyan ideas for historians who have looked into Dewey’s role in Mexico. One can find no treatment among historians of the book that Dewey called his most important, Democracy and Education, or of Reconstruction in Philosophy, Dewey’s 1920 classic on the moral failures of Western philosophical traditions.9 Likewise, Ethics, The Public and its Problems, Experience and Nature, and Art as Experience are nowhere to be found amid the heavy volume of academic histories that continue to be published on the Mexican Revolution more generally, and on the Mexican state’s education project more narrowly.10 Such sparse treatment of Dewey’s ideas would be less glaring if historians had not given substantial attribution to Dewey’s role in Mexico. But given his pervasive presence in the historical literature, the failure to examine Dewey’s oeuvre has left unanswered some important questions that deserve more attention if historians are to better understand the relationship between Dewey and Mexico’s postrevolutionary pragmatism. Perhaps most important is the question of whether Ruı´z’s portrayal of Dewey as a liberal progressive theorist is a more accurate rendering of this important philosopher than is Vaughan’s portrait of Dewey as an instrument of economic determinism.11 Questions about the relationship between science and religion are equally important. Just as Dewey’s biographers have noted the close affiliation between liberal Protestantism and Dewey’s early metaphysics in the context of the United States, for example, historians of Mexico might begin to better understand why Protestant thinkers like Sa´enz were more attracted to Deweyan pragmatism than were Catholics in revolutionary Mexico. A third range of questions

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concerns the relationship of indigenous communities to Deweyan school systems in Mexico: precisely how did pragmatists there propose to reconcile the epistemological structures of Mexico’s indigenous communities with those of Mexico’s school administrators, given Dewey’s intense commitment to experimentalism rather than force as the solution to conflict? Finally, one wonders whether Mexican pragmatists like Sa´enz and Ramı´rez were ever attracted to Deweyan social theory as a discourse of psychology, not just as a system for banishing metaphysics from discussions of social consensus. These are important questions, but I know of no work by historians of Mexican society that has addressed them. Tracing the precise configuration of Dewey’s ideas in Mexico is just as important to an understanding of one of the central yet missing chapters in the history of philosophy in Latin America: the influence of Mexican experimentalism on the United States, the national community that spawned the pragmatist tradition in the first place. The influence of Mexican pragmatism on the United States may seem extraordinary, but important American social scientists who later participated in the educational integration campaigns of the American civil rights era were, in fact, pragmatists who had studied the educational experiments of Dewey’s Mexican students as laboratory models for social reconstruction projects in the United States. This mutual relationship of Mexican to U.S. thinkers through Dewey’s ideas has received little attention, in part because the imprint of pragmatist social theory on the Americans has gone unnoticed. The formative role of postrevolutionary Mexico in the development of their careers in the United States has also attracted little attention. But if we sharpen our understanding of their intellectual development to account for the influence of Mexican pragmatism on their thought, we could extend the legacy of pragmatism to cover not only certain important American intellectuals who have not been included within the pragmatist tradition. We would also extend that legacy to include the symbiotic relationship between pragmatist projects in Mexico and pragmatist projects in the United States. The careers of the Americans who turned to postrevolutionary Mexican pragmatism tells us that

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Mexico’s experience with Deweyan philosophy became an important political platform for reform projects in twentieth-century U.S. society. This fact underscores an important corollary in the scholarship on Dewey in Latin America: that in reconstructing Dewey’s ideas in Mexico, scholars will go a long way toward understanding the ancillary influence of Mexican pragmatism in the United States. The American pragmatists who turned to Dewey’s Mexican students in the 1930s did so at the moment that Mexico’s ministry of public education, the Secretarı´a de Educacio´n Pu´blica (SEP), was entering the second decade of a national campaign in educational experimentation that did not end until after World War II. Beginning in 1921, the SEP launched a series of grand experiments in education under the directorship of Mexican philosopher and polymath Jose´ Vasconcelos. Best known as the author of La raza co´smica, Vasconcelos instituted the use of itinerant platoons of educators, las misiones, to establish rural public schools under the direction of the federal government.12 Historians have argued vigorously about whether the ministry’s ultimate aim was to create a democratic polity or to rebuild a national economy under the supervision of capitalist elites, just as they have argued about the relationship of the SEP to the communities where the misiones did their work. They disagree less over the character of that project, which Vasconcelos rooted in Catholic metaphysics and the classical education associated with ancient Greece and Rome. When Manuel Puig Causaranc became the new SEP secretary in 1924, he hired the Mexican Deweyite Moise´s Sa´enz to assume supervision of the rural school campaign that Vasconcelos had initiated three years earlier. Sa´enz had trained to be a schoolteacher at Jalapa Normal School in the state of Veracruz, graduating there in 1915 before being elevated to the directorship of Mexico’s Escuela Nacional Preparatoria, the prominent preparatory academy that educated the children of Mexico’s elite.13 Then, at age twenty-five, he left Mexico to study with Dewey at Columbia Teachers College in New York City for reasons that remain unclear. The decision may have resulted from his immersion in the Protestant missionary circles of Mexico, part of

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a long tradition of Protestantism within his family. As children, he and his sister had attended Protestant schools in Mexico City and Laredo, Texas, and Protestant preacher Isaac Boyce was among the family’s closest friends. These ties to Protestantism carried over into his professional career. Even as he was directing the Escuela Preparatoria Nacional, he was simultaneously helping to widen the influence of liberal Christianity in revolutionary Mexico. In 1918 the American missionary organization whose efforts were directed at proselytizing Mexicans to evangelical Christianity, the Protestant Cooperating Committee, turned to Sa´enz to edit their monthly newsletter El mundo cristiano. It may have been through this editorship that Sa´enz was first exposed to Dewey, since it regularly published articles on pedagogical practice in the United States. The translations of Dewey and work of American progressive educators would have reinforced the pedagogical training that Sa´enz had already received at Jalapa. Scholars have much work to do before they understand Sa´enz’s turn to Dewey, but Sa´enz’s understanding of the problems of Mexican society at the moment that he arrived at Columbia University in 1919 well-mirrored at least three of the major characteristics of Dewey’s experimentalist ethics. First, Sa´enz came to Columbia already searching for a philosophical method that could reconcile the multiple pluralisms of Mexico’s social community into a contingent unity that responded to the call of diverse and sometimes antagonistic constituencies.14 El mundo cristiano is filled with Sa´enz’s attempt to reconcile the various strands of liberal Protestantism in Mexico into an overarching ethical system, a concern for unification amid diversity that would follow him throughout his life. Ten years later he would find himself searching for ways to reconcile the autonomous political systems of Mexico’s diverse indigenous communities with the integrationist ethics of the SEP’s public schools that sought to transform Mexico’s Indian communities. A second complementary feature concerned the place of industrialization in Sa´enz’s understanding of social integration. Not unlike the effect that rapid industrialization in Chicago had had on the development of Dewey’s ethics, the effects of rapid industrialization in

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the vicinity of the village in northwestern Mexico where Sa´enz had been raised left a permanent imprint on his intellectual development. Monterrey was, in fact, among the most rapidly industrializing cities in late nineteenth-century Latin America, and the concomitant debates there about the proper role of the state versus private interests as the mediator for social transformation became standard points of discussion in Sa´enz’s educational essays.15 The third resemblance to Dewey was the deeply seated sympathy that both exhibited for human communities that were at the receiving end of modern economic transformation. Scholars have rightly noted that Sa´enz sought to at least partially transform the structure of Mexico’s rural communities as part of the postrevolutionary state’s attempt to build a unified nation. But their criticism of his role as a colonialist administrator underestimated Sa´enz’s defense of the right of local communities to participate in the processes of mediation that would help determine their future relationship to the national community. The visceral connection that Sa´enz had to Mexico’s rural communities resulted from his upbringing in one of them, and anchored his sympathetic orientation to their concerns about the limits on state power. Sa´enz’s post-Columbia writings reflect a dramatic turn away from the Christian metaphysics that had defined his description of human morality during his editorship of El mundo cristiano three years earlier. For our present purpose, Dewey’s influence on Sa´enz is better understood through two institutional contributions that Sa´enz made to the SEP’s public schools. First, he expanded Mexico’s rural education system to new areas of the Mexican countryside by dramatically increasing the number of schoolteachers in the field and, alongside fellow Deweyite Rafael Ramı´rez, instituting normal training academies to supervise schoolteacher fieldwork. Second, Sa´enz remolded Vasconcelos’s platoons of educators, las misiones, to emphasize Dewey’s experimentalist ethics rather than Christian metaphysics as the guiding philosophy of rural education. By replacing a classical curriculum with an experimentalist project in scientific education, Sa´enz elevated Dewey’s concept of creative intelligence to a primary role in the public schools and imbued these schools with the opportunity to

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transform postrevolutionary society. Some indication of Sa´enz’s rapid success is indicated by the enthusiasm that John Dewey himself noted in Mexico’s schools during a summer research trip that he took to Mexico City in 1926, two years after Sa´enz had assumed control of the rural schools. Dewey famously declared his admiration for the scientific efforts of the Mexican schools, concluding that Mexico’s education efforts were providing the perfect model of rural education for the rest of the world. ‘‘The most interesting as well as the most important educational development is the rural schools,’’ Dewey wrote. ‘‘This is the cherished preoccupation of the present regime; it signifies a revolution rather than renaissance. It is not only a revolution for Mexico, but in some respects one of the most important social experiments undertaken anywhere in the world.’’16 Dewey’s comments were published in The New Republic in 1927. They give scholars some of the most important glimpses into the pedagogical practices that would attract American pragmatists to Mexico, beginning in the 1930s. Above all, Dewey believed Mexico’s rural schools had closed the split between the school and the larger community that had been the focus of his educational work since his early laboratory school at the University of Chicago. ‘‘I am willing to go further and say that there is no spirit of intimate union of school activities with those of the community than is found in this Mexican development,’’ he declared, enshrining a famous judgment that students of Mexican history now frequently repeat.17 The construction of 2,600 new schools since the end of the revolution in 1920 had also created the possibility of incorporating Mexico’s Indians ‘‘into the social life and intellectual culture of Mexico as a whole,’’ he added. No longer would the forces of Catholicism, geographic extremes, and cultural heterogeneity work to prevent the emergence of a unified nation as the fulfillment of social progress. Finally, Mexico’s rural schools had also fostered a vibrant ‘‘spirit’’ of new social possibility, wrote Dewey. While traveling to China and Turkey earlier in the decade, Dewey had theorized that the so-called ‘‘backward’’ nations of the world presented great opportunity for educational progress. But until he encountered Mexico’s schools, he wrote, he had ‘‘never

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found much evidence in support of th[e] belief that new countries, educationally new, can start afresh, with the most enlightened theories and practices of the most educationally advanced countries.’’ Indeed, ‘‘vitality’’ characterized Mexico’s schools, not smug conventions, conservative traditions, or rigid institutionalism. ‘‘There is evident everywhere a marked spirit of experimentation, a willingness ‘to try everything once,’ and most things more than once,’’ he wrote. Mexico’s school buildings and educational curricula were simple, he argued, but the work there exhibited ‘‘energy, sacrificial devotion, [and] the desire to put into operation what is best approved in contemporary theory.’’ If Dewey directed many of his comments toward the originality of Mexico’s educational project, it was because the absence of obstacles to creative intelligence made Mexico a contrast to schools that Dewey had seen in other parts of the world. Mexico’s rural schools still manifested the exemplary coordination of the school with the community that Dewey had described in 1926. In the eyes of the American pragmatists, Mexico’s postrevolutionary programs became models of social reconstruction in the 1930s. One American pragmatist declared that social theorists in the United States had ‘‘proposed this doctrine [of coordination] often but, except in rare instances, [had] not achieved the success desired,’’ whereas Mexico was home to ‘‘many schools where one may observe the operation of these principles.’’18 The Americans also concurred with Dewey’s judgment five years earlier that the rural schools were making political integration a practical, not merely theoretical, outcome of postrevolutionary reform. Contrasting the federal government’s weak efforts in the United States to address social conflict against the more robust efforts of the rural schools in Mexico, pragmatist Loyd Tireman argued to a Colorado audience in 1932 that the Mexican model for social reconstruction was ‘‘proof, to me, of what one might expect in our own southwestern states if the people were given a like opportunity.’’19 For the American philosopher and educational theorist George Isidore Sanchez, the work of Moise´s Sa´enz and the postrevolutionary

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Mexican state represented the epitome of the social scientist’s normative role in the development of the well-ordered society. Born in 1906 into a New Mexico family that traced its origins in North America to seventeenth-century Spanish exploration, Sanchez studied educational psychology and pragmatist philosophy at the University of Texas and the University of California before assuming a leading role in the development of the educational system of the state of New Mexico beginning in 1932. His career-long concern with the role of education in creating a democratic society has drawn attention to his work as a theorist of elementary education in Texas and as a champion of the American civil rights movement. But these career commitments have received so much attention that his philosophical development has been completely neglected. The linchpin of Sanchez’s Berkeley dissertation had been, in fact, Dewey’s Democracy and Education, which Sanchez had used to critique the lack of social opportunities that government had provided to New Mexico’s rural schoolchildren.20 Rural pupils had been denied the opportunity to develop their latent talents, he argued, because government had used a priori assumptions about their capacities rather than designing systems that allowed them to develop their creativity and democratic independence. When political forces within the state government would not allow him to experiment with new ideas about the role of government in fostering creative intelligence, however, Sanchez chose to recede into postrevolutionary Mexico on a fellowship he received from a prominent Chicago foundation to study rural education in Mexico. During six months of research Sanchez traveled extensively throughout Mexico in 1934 and 1935. In southern Mexico he traveled to the state of Oaxaca, Jose´ Vasconcelos’s home province, and its neighbor, Guerrero, where he documented the rural homes of the workers who tilled the land and the federal schools that the consolidationist campaigns by Vasconcelos and Sa´enz had established in the 1920s. In the immediate vicinity of Mexico City Sanchez visited the states of Morelos and Puebla, documenting community parks established by the federal agencies of the Mexican central government and

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the craft industries of their rural residents. Farther east, in the state of Tabasco, he noted the patterns of agriculture of local villagers and the varieties of elementary schools they had constructed with the assistance of the government. Meanwhile, beginning with the states to the immediate west of Mexico City, Sanchez visited the north-central and northern provinces of Mexico, as far north as the Mexican boundary with Texas. In Zacatecas he photographed the teachers of the misiones that Sa´enz had converted into experimentalist platoons of Deweyan educators. In the state of Chihuahua, just south of Texas, he photographed federal schools in the harsh environment of Mexico’s northern deserts. The book that Sanchez published in the wake of his trip, Mexico: A Revolution by Education, was a pragmatist celebration of the rural schools that Moise´s Sa´enz had been busily building since 1925.21 Explicitly juxtaposing the philosophical system of John Dewey with the erstwhile work of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century pedagogues who had first journeyed among the Native Americans of the Spanish empire in the New World, Sanchez argued that the 1920s work of Dewey’s Mexican students followed in a long line of enlightened Mexican educators who had historically used the principles of activity and experimentalism to widen the circle of freedom in Mexico. ‘‘Almost four hundred years before John Dewey, [Fray Pedro de Gante] had an activity school [in Mexico],’’ Sanchez wrote, ‘‘a school based on current life.’’22 Sanchez analogized the sixteenth-century Enlightenment project of the Spanish mendicant orders to the Dewey-inspired schools of action that Sa´enz had established in the twentieth century, arguing that both belonged to a single line of enlightened social scientific thought separated by long periods of government neglect and dismal social practice. By the twentieth century and the advent of the Mexican Revolution, Mexico’s schools had embarked on the permanent transformation of the national community through the Deweyan principles that Sa´enz’s work had institutionalized during his years with the SEP. Sanchez argued that three elements of Deweyan thought in Mexico made the rural schools an exemplar of social transformation. First, the rural schools had stripped away the

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‘‘hidebound formalisms’’ of nineteenth-century social thought and Catholic doctrine.23 Second, if the Porfirian era of the late nineteenth century had been characterized by the breach between technical and moral progress that Dewey had critiqued in Reconstruction in Philosophy, Mexico’s postrevolutionary government had produced a new point of view:24 ‘‘Whereas the view of the past might be described as having been capitalistic—the profit of the few—today it is characterized by its concern for the popular welfare.’’25 Last, just as Dewey had noted during his trip to Mexico in 1926, Sanchez argued that experimentalism still represented the methodology of progress in the decade of the 1930s. ‘‘The present educational movement in Mexico is still in an experimental stage,’’ wrote Sanchez. ‘‘Each school changes with its milieu and the pace of progress is adapted to the capacities of the school’s patrons. Many of the accomplishments of the new schools are still in the future and the effectiveness of the new program must be weighed in the balance of time.’’26 Two characteristics of the Deweyan ‘‘revolution by education’’ that Sanchez recorded in Mexico stayed with him throughout a career in educational reform in the United States that did not end until the early 1970s. First, in consequence of his philosophical interest in creating a broader democratic society in New Mexico through the instrument of the public schools, he celebrated the work of las misiones that Vasconcelos and Sa´enz had created as the levers of social unity in a society struggling to define itself amid rapid social change. The itinerant platoons of teachers that Dewey’s Mexican student Moise´s Sa´enz had sent from the normal schools of the nation to the remote rural communities of revolutionary Mexico represented for Sanchez the epitome of educational process that melded the realm of ideas with the realm of practice that was at the core of Sanchez’s commitment to Deweyan experimentalism. ‘‘The Cultural Missions of the SEP,’’ Sanchez wrote in Mexico, ‘‘serve not only as teacher-training and social welfare agencies, but in the much more important capacity of bridging the gap between theory and practice.’’27 Here was the most important quality of Mexican experimentalism, Sanchez noted. They

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brought the realm of social action in line with the realm of philosophical speculation, the two working in tandem as part of a reformist effort to recreate the institutions of a nation that was still struggling to redefine itself after the military conflict represented by the Mexican Revolution. The second characteristic was the activist state. In contrast to the passive work of government in New Mexico, Sanchez celebrated the Mexican central state as the agent of transformation in postrevolutionary society. For Sa´enz and other revolutionary pragmatists in Mexico, the role of the state as an arbiter of social conflict was axiomatic. Rarely did Sa´enz have to remind himself that he was working for the central government within his capacity at the SEP, and rarely did he have to remind others that the political history of the Mexican Revolution included a heavy narrative of state-centered reform. But for the American Sanchez, who, based on his New Mexico experience, could not take for granted that government would necessarily act as the agent of social change, the work of the Mexican state defined the difference between social reconstruction in Mexico and social reconstruction in the United States. Sanchez made this contrast explicit when he referred to the role of the school in social change in New Mexico: ‘‘Those of us who are accustomed to schools with more limited responsibilities find it difficult to think of state educational agencies that are actively involved in revolutionary, social, and economic reforms.’’28 Sanchez also captured this contrast in the criticism that he directed in Mexico toward President Roosevelt’s New Deal program. In contrast to some liberals, Sanchez would have none of the celebratory rhetoric that followed in the wake of the expansion of the New Deal state, instead finding it shameful that the American schools had not been brought into the arena of social change. ‘‘The people of the United States have never seriously considered the use of their schools as organs for the propagation of ‘new deal’ beliefs, for example, nor as active social forces in contemporary reconstruction.’’29 Not the United States, he argued, but postrevolutionary Mexico was setting the standard for social change. ‘‘The front-line place given to the

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educational missions in the [Mexican] plan of action adds to the importance of these institutions, both in their scholastic functions and in their role of a political New Deal.’’30 Sanchez’s deliberate capitalization of the term ‘‘New Deal’’ when referring to Mexico would have been lost on no one in the United States of the 1930s. Sanchez celebrated Dewey’s role in Mexico for the rest of his career and never stopped considering pragmatist-inspired reform there as an ethical example for the educational reform movements of the American West in which he participated after 1940. ‘‘Gante and Quiroga were operating schools of experience . . . a century before Comenius and Bacon’s Novum Organum, and were showing that their interest was not in knowledge per se but as a tool for the utilization of the forces of nature in the interests of human welfare—precursors of the scientific method and of pragmatism,’’ he wrote in 1942.31 A year later Sanchez underscored the influence of Mexico’s schools on the United States as he considered his own involvement in the educational reform movements of New Mexico and Texas. ‘‘In the United States . . . some of our efforts in developing community schools, the education of rural teachers, and Indian education have been influenced by ideas and procedures which Mexico has applied to related problems with resounding success,’’ he wrote in 1943.32 In 1959 Sanchez invited historian Oscar Handlin to speak at UT Austin on Dewey’s role in educational reform, following the recent publication of Handlin’s John Dewey’s Challenge to Education.33 And in the 1960s he continued to maintain an allegiance to postrevolutionary Mexican reform. ‘‘Nothing has affected my thinking and my feelings more than Mexico’s experience—redemption by armed Revolution, then Peace by Revolution,’’ he said in 1966, as he examined the historical roots of the Mexican-American public school integration campaigns of the 1940s and ’50s in which he had participated. ‘‘This latter revolution still goes on, and I associate myself with it vicariously—from afar, and from closeup examination there as often as I can.’’34 For Sanchez, the consolidationist projects of the Mexican state bore a clear relationship to the consolidationist projects that he pursued throughout

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his professional career in the United States. Indeed, though he is primarily known as an American civil rights activist, Sanchez continued to write frequently about Mexico into the 1960s.35 Throughout his lifetime Mexico’s Dewey-inspired educational projects remained a forceful example for American society that he never forgot. The visit to Mexico of a second American pragmatist, linguist Loyd Tireman, predated that of Sanchez by three years. As with Sanchez, Tireman’s early career as a teacher directed him to graduate training in philosophy and psychology. He had trained at the University of Missouri’s experimental school—one of the laboratory schools that John Dewey had profiled in his 1915 Schools of Tomorrow—while en route to a bachelor’s degree at Upper Iowa State University in 1917.36 Later, after serving as a principal and superintendent in the rural communities of northeastern Iowa, he studied language acquisition at the University of Iowa under Ernest Horn, the founder of Iowa’s laboratory school, who in 1914 had earned his PhD at Columbia Teachers College under Dewey, Harold Rugg, and William Kilpatrick. Tireman earned his PhD in 1927, immersed in the principles of Deweyan experimentalism.37 Tireman moved to the University of New Mexico in 1927. As an assistant professor of education, he established the San Jose´ Laboratory School, the only experimental school in the United States to specialize in the education of Spanish-speaking pupils. There he tested Dewey’s pedagogical principles in the context of a rapidly changing community characterized by deep tensions between white Protestants, Mexican-American Catholics, and recent immigrant Mexicans. These social challenges required creative thought, Tireman believed, and San Jose´ represented his attempt to craft a participatory curriculum rooted in Dewey’s ideas of experience and social consensus. Between 1928 and 1935, Tireman attempted to persuade state government to invest in the public education system as a remedy to ethnic hostility. He also attempted to standardize the public school curriculum of New Mexico’s isolated rural communities, and performed language experiments at San Jose´ to accelerate the rate at which children learned English.

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Frustration was his reward amid the lack of state resources, a state school apparatus that provided no outreach to New Mexico’s remote communities, and legislative skepticism about the role of the school as a mediator of social relations. Especially challenging was the persistent language barrier of Tireman’s Spanish-speaking pupils, who fell farther and farther behind in their English-language skills as they continued through school. Stymied by a lack of success at San Jose´, Tireman began to study Mexico’s campaigns in rural education beginning in 1929, especially the Mexican state’s bureaucratic structure and the techniques that Mexican linguists had developed for teaching the Spanish language to Mexico’s Indian communities. That Dewey had played a role in the development of Mexico’s educational system only intensified his interest. By late 1930 Tireman had concluded that only a research trip could help him to comprehend the broad experimentation that was at work in Mexico’s rural school system, with the aim of strengthening his work at San Jose´. Tireman traveled to Mexico in July and August 1931, where administrators close to Moise´s Sa´enz escorted him to Mexico’s rural schools. A careful review of his manuscripts gives us some sense of which institutions he visited. In Mexico City he visited the Casa del Estudiante Indı´gena—the bilingual boarding school for Mexico’s rural native Americans, set in the urban terrain of the city—and he may have visited a related experiment in San Gabrielito, Guerrero, 150 miles to the southwest. He visited one of the SEP’s earliest sites of experimentalist practice, Actopa´n, Hidalgo, sixty miles north of Mexico City, which had been established among the Otomı´ Indians. In Oaxtepe´c, Morelos, forty miles south of Mexico City, he visited a federal rural normal school that had been designed to expand training opportunities for rural teachers within easy reach of the communities in which they worked. He visited native communities at the base of the volcano Ixtaccihuatl, forty miles to the southeast of Mexico City. A complete schedule of the rural schools and normal academies that he visited cannot be completed without some guesswork, but like Sanchez would later, Tireman indicated multiple trips to numerous institutions across various states in the report that he compiled upon

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his return to the United States.38 How he translated into English was a mystery since Tireman never learned to speak Spanish, but Tireman reported to colleagues elsewhere that the experimentalist philosophy at work in the Mexican schools made the language barrier unproblematic to his comprehension of the SEP’s rural school projects. ‘‘My linguistic ability is about zero. . . . I must rely upon my knowledge of the procedure in elementary education. When I visited the schools of Mexico I had no difficulty in judging the work because of my intimate understanding of the work at that level.’’39 Tireman’s visit to Mexico’s institutional projects left a permanent impression on his thought, as demonstrated in the collection of monographs, pamphlets, public addresses, and personal correspondence that he completed in the years after his return to the United States. In 1931 Tireman published The Rural Schools of Mexico, a short monograph circulated widely in the United States that provided his summary review of the revolutionary rural schools that Vasconcelos and Sa´enz had created.40 Facing an experiment at San Jose´ for which he was receiving little support from New Mexico’s legislature, Tireman reported that Mexico’s rural education system offered a model example of government’s role in solving the ethical and pedagogical challenges that faced rural communities such as those in New Mexico. ‘‘As one looks back on these [rural] experiments, he is impressed with the ways in which the Mexican government had attacked these problems,’’ he wrote.41 Tireman was struck by the breadth of Mexico’s educational experimentation, including the rural normal schools, Mexico’s itinerant platoons of teachers, and the government’s metropolitan language academies. Meanwhile, he reported that rural experimentation had had a salutary effect on the rural communities of the Mexican nation, including the creation of a new sense of social advancement. ‘‘It is almost impossible to portray adequately the attitude of the Mexican people toward education,’’ wrote Tireman. ‘‘They were showing the results of leadership and opportunity. Everywhere, I saw them building or repairing school buildings, making a home for the teacher and helping in other ways.’’42

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Throughout the decade of the 1930s, Tireman heralded postrevolutionary experimentalism in Mexico as an ethical example for the United States. By providing leadership and opportunities for individual growth, he believed that Mexico’s revolutionary schools were giving testimony to what might be possible in New Mexico if critical thinking were put to the problem of social conflict in the American West. Tireman acknowledged that Mexico did not represent the same cultural terrain as that of the United States. ‘‘Of course it is unnecessary to build the same sort of house there as we have in the United States of the North, and living conditions were exceedingly primitive,’’ he told a group of teachers in 1932.43 But Mexico was nevertheless a laboratory of scientific experiments oriented to the problems of rural communities from which teachers in the United States could profit. The effect that Mexico’s experimentalist philosophy had had on Tireman was later captured by his most successful graduate student, Frank Angel Jr. ‘‘In 1931, he went to Mexico under a program financed by the U.S. Government,’’ wrote Angel in 1959. ‘‘His visit to Mexico proved to be one of the most stimulating and idea-generating of his career.’’44 Like Sanchez, Tireman was not an academic philosopher steeped in the Western philosophical tradition or even a university intellectual seeking to contribute to the discipline of philosophy. Sanchez and Tireman were not philosophers at all, in the narrow sense of the term. Instead, they were members of the two generations of American intellectuals that, in the words of American intellectual historian David A. Hollinger, elaborated and systemized the twentieth-century American pragmatist tradition between 1900 and 1940.45 Among these elaborators and systematizers were journalists Walter Lippmann and Herbert Croly, literary critic Alfred Kazin, historian James Harvey Robinson, and Senator Paul H. Douglas. None of these individuals could be considered an academic philosopher, but their mutual insistence on using Dewey’s texts as part of a political project in American democracy showed the influence of pragmatism on social circles outside of the departments of philosophy and psychology where Dewey’s ideas had first been traded. As Hollinger argues, these individuals

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took seriously the Deweyan imperative that philosophy should be used to solve the problems of men, not to draw abstract systems of logic that recreated social hierarchies within the human community. What did make Sanchez and Tireman unique among America’s pragmatist experimentalists was their affiliation to the Mexican state at a moment when postrevolutionary Mexican society had become a central site of Deweyan experimentation. Their training in pragmatism allowed them to juxtapose social projects in the United States alongside social projects in Mexico, across the conventional political and cultural boundaries that had historically divided these two nations from one another. While scholars, public intellectuals, and public officials have overwhelmingly treated them as separate social and philosophical universes, Mexico and the United States in the 1930s were in fact discursively connected by a pragmatist-based conversation in which Mexico’s Deweyan projects became exemplars for pragmatist projects in the American West. That relationship has remained unknown, but it represented a fundamental episode in the career of twentieth-century pragmatism across North America. These connections in Dewey are important as signposts for further research in the history of pragmatist philosophy in Mexico and the American West, two places that are not typically associated with Dewey’s experimentalist ethics. Scholars should follow the lead created by these American pragmatists as a way of further developing the intellectual trajectories of American and Mexican philosophers, political scientists, and sociologists whose work in Mexico was based on Dewey’s pragmatism. Likewise, hundreds of schoolteachers and educational administrators in both Mexico and the American West were trained by the Deweyan intellectuals profiled here, giving us the possibility of an expanded field of action throughout rural Mexico and the rural American West where Dewey’s ideas may have been applied between the Great Depression and the advent of the cold war. Mexico constructed more than 15,000 new public schools by 1940, for example, and put to work in hundreds of them the principles of pragmatist education that Dewey had taught to his Mexican students in the 1930s.46 As Sanchez and Tireman developed their experimentalist

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schools in New Mexico, they too trained new educators in the tenets of Deweyan experimentalism that were then fielded widely throughout northern New Mexico. Dewey himself, of course, was widely skeptical of the many claims to pragmatist education that progressive educators made in the first half of the twentieth century, as his 1938 Experience and Education attested.47 Similarly, philosophers and historians today must be critical of the alternative ways that Dewey’s ideas were used within the twentieth-century U.S.-Mexico relationship. But such inquiries can take place only when philosophers and historians first recognize that Dewey’s experimentalist ethics had an important career in Mexico and the American West that scholars have yet to analyze fully. Scholars must also wrestle with questions of translation between Spanish and English, a documentary record of Dewey’s influence in Mexico that is scattered in archival centers throughout North America, and a narrow historiography that will take much effort to expand. Yet acknowledging these difficulties as a first step in understanding Dewey’s role in Mexican philosophy should not stop scholars from investigating Mexican pragmatism’s role in reframing some of the major political questions that occupied thinkers in U.S. society of the 1930s. It is up to us to recover that history, as well as the tangled relationship between Latin America and the United States that it reflected.

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the neglected historical and philosophical connection b etween jose´ ingenieros and r alph waldo emerson Manuela Alejandra Gomez



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he impact of Ralph Waldo Emerson on Latin American philosopher Jose´ Ingenieros needs to be explored for two main reasons. The first is that to better understand and appreciate Jose´ Ingenieros and his moral philosophy, we need to understand his deep admiration for Emerson. Second, this relationship has never been explored in the history of philosophy. For over a hundred years, this unique connection has been hiding a link between Latin American philosophy and American pragmatism. Exploring this link is a promising area of research because the similarities between Emerson and Ingenieros are no mere coincidence. There is great evidence of the influence one had over the other. Each of these men is a strong proponent of the similar philosophies they represent, even though they were from different sides of the world, Emerson from Boston, Massachusetts and Ingenieros from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Undoubtedly, all philosophers have their influences, but what makes the influence of Emerson over Ingenieros peculiar and worth exploring is that it { 91 }

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happened through many barriers, primarily those of culture and politics, but mainly language. The works of Latin American philosopher Jose´ Ingenieros have been limited to Spanish speakers because few have taken on the task of translating his works from Spanish to English. Jose´ Ingenieros was born on April 24, 1877. He died as a young man in 1925. His life was short, but it served as an example of his philosophy of constant change and idealism as he affected many with his works and political activism. Ingenieros is known to many as one of the greatest writers ever produced by the Latin American continent. Throughout his life, Ingenieros practiced as a doctor, psychologist, art critic, criminologist, pharmacist, journalist, historian, sociologist, scientific philosopher, editor, publicist, educator, and moralist, among others.1 Ingenieros’ philosophy was strongly influenced by biological evolution, one of the most complex and general forms of development. Like the classical American philosophers, Ingenieros was inspired by the notions of evolution, process, and experience that are implicit in Darwinism. Specifically, Ingenieros’s philosophical purpose was to inspire individuals to reach their potential and avoid mediocrity. In his main work, El hombre mediocre (The Mediocre Man), he presents his philosophy of moral idealism that was founded in experience as a legitimate basis for all hypotheses and as the groundwork for all perfectionism. Ingenieros conceived human evolution as man’s continuous struggle to adapt to nature, which itself is constantly evolving. The main characteristics of idealism are that it is linked to imagination, creativity, and perfection. The main characteristics of idealists are that they are rebellious, passionate, and unwilling to settle for mediocrity. All of Ingenieros’s philosophical writings have a hint of Emersonian philosophy in them. Although Ingenieros’s works are distinctive and original, Emerson undoubtedly played an important role in his philosophical formation. In 1916, Ingenieros traveled to the United States because of his great interest in Emerson. He obtained some of Emerson’s writings and was inspired three years later to write Hacia

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una moral sin dogmas (Toward a Morality without Dogmas) in which he extensively presents Emerson as an example to be followed. In this work Ingenieros references the life of Emerson, stating, ‘‘Here is an example of what I have been talking about.’’ Not all philosophers can present their moral theories and then point to a particular individual and claim that their life serves as a model of their philosophy. Ingenieros deeply admired Emerson’s life, not just his ideas. He dedicates most of the chapters in Hacia una moral sin dogmas to praising Emerson as a human being, but also as a moralist. Ingenieros states that Ralph Waldo Emerson was one of the most intense moralists of the nineteenth century. According to Ingenieros, Emerson belonged to the family of representative idealist men in the most rigorous sense of the concept; he also believed that it was not possible to appreciate Emerson without knowing his social and religious surroundings. Ingenieros admired Emerson because, despite his religious background, he was able to live a life guided by the unfolding of moral experience rather than by religious dogmatism. For Ingenieros, Emerson represented the example of a man who believed in God but who was not necessarily dogmatic. For Ingenieros, Emerson’s implicit message was that despite the pressures of religion it is possible to be an independent thinker and live an authentic life. This is why Ingenieros claims that Emerson is not recognized in the history of religion as much as he is recognized in the history of ethical thought. Emerson was not perfect in the eyes of Ingenieros, but he was an idealistic man who captured in his everyday life the essence of Ingenieros’s philosophy of constant revision of dogmas. Style The first similarity that needs to be acknowledged between Emerson and Ingenieros is their style of writing. Even though they wrote in different languages, the elegant prose presented in their books is astoundingly similar. Furthermore, even though Ingenieros wrote his books in Spanish after reading Emerson, he was able to capture the

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same precise choice of words; almost every sentence could be a famous quotation. Like Emerson, Ingenieros targeted young audiences because he saw the greatest potential in them, though he argued that being young is a state of mind and not related to age. To this day both Emerson and Ingenieros are taught outside of philosophy departments. Emerson’s work is taught in English, literature, and history classes, while Ingenieros is taught in sociology, psychology, and Spanish literature classes Like those of Ingenieros, Emerson’s writings are directed mainly to idealistic individuals. Both Emerson and Ingenieros attack the mediocre man and persuade individuals to achieve perfection as their underlying purpose.

Experience Both Emerson and Ingenieros emphasize the importance of experience. Ingenieros advocates a sort of moral progress, or what others have interpreted as an evolution of morality. In addition, Ingenieros believes that we should be guided by experience. For him, experience is always the starting point; it should be the basis of moral theories. Seeing, touching, breathing, talking, and socializing all have more power to him as experiences than the intellectual apprehension of the truth of ideas. He also shared with Emerson the importance of being experimental in life and avoiding dogmatism, which results in a paralysis of ideas that never change. The recognition of experience is just as important for Emerson. In his book Emerson: The Mind on Fire, Robert Richardson claims that several years after losing his wife and pondering death, Emerson was thinking about what it meant not to be alive.2 After several hours of consideration, he decided to go to the cemetery and exhume his wife with the purpose of having an experience with death. Emerson opened his wife’s coffin to have an immediate experience with her decomposed body. This event, morbid to some but powerful to many others, proves the significance of experience for Emerson.

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Mediocrity In the first lines of his book El hombre mediocre, Ingenieros states that his writings are only for the men who look at the stars, eager for perfection, and that idealists are those who rebel against mediocrity because they are influenced by the mystery of ideals: When you point your visionary prow toward a star and extend your wing to such an unreachable excellence, keen on perfection and rebel to mediocrity, you carry within yourself the mysterious spring of an Ideal. It is a sacred spark, capable of tuning you for great actions. Guard it; if you allow it to extinguish it will never reignite.3

In some of his writings Emerson mentions that as a young man, he used to gaze at the stars as a way of nightly rediscovering the eternal—making each experience new. Emerson also believed in setting oneself apart from other people to achieve greatness. He shares with Ingenieros the idea that solitude is the best way to achieve inspiration for ideals: ‘‘To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds will separate between him and what he touches.’’4 In both of their writings there is a sense of idealism. They both envision a world with the potential to be improved by men armed with imagination and originality. For Emerson and Ingenieros, the biggest impediment for moral perfection is mediocrity. For them, mediocrity is related to routine. Men who are afraid of changes and rely on dogmas to guide them on how to live tend to be mediocre and are the biggest enemies of perfection. Ingenieros argues that we need to recognize that some men by nature are born to be better than others, and that it is the duty of idealistic men to overlook the inferior and to inspire others to aspire to truth and excellence and refuse to settle for mediocrity. Furthermore, Ingenieros categorizes men in a hierarchy of inferior, mediocre, and superior men.

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Inferior men’s existence is natural and necessary. Ingenieros characterizes them as human animals. They are mentally inferior. They are incapable of imitation; ineptitude is their greatest trait. Mediocre men lack individuality; they are followers and imitators. They are the enemies of perfection. They lack personal characteristics and are in the shadows of society. Superior men are an advantageous accident of human evolution. They are original and creative. They are the forerunners of new forms of perfection; they think of improving the world they live in and can impose their ideals on the routines of others. Ingenieros claims these men are a minority. He often gives examples of superior men as philosophers and artists. Ingenieros uses Emerson as an example of a superior man who used his life as inspiration for others. This kind of motivational approach is also seen in many of Emerson’s writings. The famous Emerson quote ‘‘Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail’’ embodies this approach. Both authors encourage men to lead by example, to be the first and the best at what they do. Both authors’ philosophies advocate the authenticity of self and encourage a modest and honest life. Conformity is the chief Emersonian vice, the opposite of the virtue of self-reliance. Emerson and Ingenieros believe in the power of self-perfection since they admire individuality and men in pursuit of greatness. Ingenieros claims that men who follow the majority tend to be mediocre because they live in the shadow of others. For Emerson, a man independent from society is the only true man. For Ingenieros, conformity, or as he calls it mediocrity, is the main vice. Ingenieros is also explicit about other vices, mentioning among others vulgarity, routine, vanity, envy, and dishonesty. He lists honesty, dignity, and excellence of character among the top virtues. Morality Ingenieros claims that understanding the life, doctrines, and social action of Emerson will enable us to understand that human morality can expand without the guidance of any dogma; moreover, the subordination of morality to dogmas is an obstacle that tends to complicate

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the free unfolding of our moral experience and that the way of error is not one that leads to virtue. Like many idealists, Emerson believed that a person’s ethics flow naturally from an inner disposition. In addition, like Ingenieros, Emerson’s views about morality are based on a metaphysics of process, and a form of perfectionism in which life has the goal of passing into higher forms. The moral perfectionism advocated by Ingenieros and Emerson differs from contemporary versions of perfectionism since they both promote individuality. Their type of perfectionism does not need to be applied by the government onto individuals; instead, they advocate that it should be applied by individuals onto their social environments. Ingenieros had a pragmatic approach to ethics in the sense that he acknowledged that men need morality as a tool to live in society. He argued that life in society demands individual acceptance of duty, social obligation, and the collective fulfillment of justice, like social sanctioning. Ingenieros’s and Emerson’s ethics are very similar. They both question how men can aim toward a morality that is more imperfect every day with no more compass than ideals naturally derived from social experience. Furthermore, Ingenieros wonders whether humanity can indefinitely renovate its ethical aspirations independently from all imperative dogmas. Both see a link between nature and morality. For Ingenieros the words ‘‘divine,’’ ‘‘nature,’’ and ‘‘morality’’ have the same meaning. As for Emerson, he claims that everything that is moral is natural. There is always an instinctive sense of right for Emerson; he calls it an obscure idea that leads us to act. Emerson claims that the idea of right exists in the human mind and lays itself out in the equilibrium of nature. Due to the lack of any systematic and architectonic philosophy, Emerson’s and Ingenieros’s ethics are the antithesis of the ethics of Spinoza. In a positive way, their ethics lack a structure and a system. Unlike types of perfectionism that are founded on specific conceptions of the good and human nature, Ingenieros’s project is an endless unfolding of undefined perfectionism. There is ultimately no

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absolute and single form of perfection for Ingenieros since everything is always evolving and perfection is defined in terms of experience. Both Ingenieros and Emerson advocate a morality in continuous formation, each time improved and better adapted to nature. Emerson claims that no one could feel virtuous as a consequence of following dogmas and lies. He conceives the perfection of morality as an endless improvement of humanity in relation to its environment. Ingenieros believes in a constant formation of morals, each day better adapted to nature and aiming at better harmony between humans and everything that surrounds them. Ingenieros was a passionate activist against war and constantly protested the use of force and violence as a means of resolving conflict. For Emerson, the soul should transcend all conflict and have no enemies. He considered soldiers ridiculous. For Emerson, war was ‘‘abhorrent to all right reason’’ and against human progress. From the perspective of spiritual oneness he stated that ‘‘he who kills his brother commits suicide.’’ Both men believed in the power of idealism and dialogue. A Bridge Between Two Worlds In spite of the fundamental commonalities between Ingenieros and Emerson, it is important to recognize that Ingenieros is not a mere shadow of Emerson, since on his own he revolutionized many aspects of Latin American philosophy and introduced numerous original ideas to philosophical discourse. In comparing their works, Ingenieros provides a more thorough analysis and criticism of the mediocre man with his specific classification of men as inferior, mediocre, or superior and his concrete examples of the lives they lead. Ingenieros wrote El hombre mediocre in 1913; almost a century later the issues he raised are still current and most of the questions he posed remain unanswered. However, he does offer an answer to the question, How should men live? The answer for Ingenieros is simply to not live in mediocrity. Although he does not provide a structured guide or specific rules on how to avoid mediocrity, he encourages

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men to aim for excellence with the help of idealism. In El hombre mediocre, Ingenieros claims that idealism is not a permanent formula, but rather a perfectible hypothesis. For Ingenieros ideals are natural formations: ‘‘They arise when the function of thought achieves such a development that the imagination can anticipate experience.’’ Despite the differences between Emerson and Ingenieros, their similarities are more important, mainly in their determination to change the minds of men, their faith in idealism as a tool for changing the world, and their unique ability to inspire others. Both Emerson and Ingenieros believed in the force of the human spirit. From different sides of the world, and without meeting each other, they agreed that humankind has to avoid mediocrity. Scholars will benefit from analyzing both of these great men’s philosophies because they argue for the power and capacity of humankind to transform. While the philosophical debate continues on which conception of the good is worthy enough to be followed and what exactly constitutes human nature, Ingenieros anticipated many of the theories put forward by present philosophers. In Latin America almost all intellectuals are familiar with both Emerson and Ingenieros; however, in the United States Jose´ Ingenieros is still unknown. I believe it is important to study both men as they signify an essential philosophical bridge between American pragmatism and Latin American philosophy. Countries are divided by many boundaries, but we tend to underestimate that philosophy can travel and is not constrained by physical, national, or cultural boundaries. If a young philosopher in Argentina was so captivated by the writings of an American that he traveled across the world to learn more about him, then returned to initiate his own philosophical mission inspired by Emerson, ultimately influencing many more Latin American philosophers, I believe that at the very least we should acknowledge this and incorporate it into the history of philosophy. Exploring this relationship is a modest step in this direction, which I believe will bring us closer to the ideal of unity and improvement of American pragmatism and Latin American philosophy.

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the p ragmatism o f e ugenio d’ors Marta Torregrosa



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ugenio d’Ors was born in Barcelona in 1881 and died in Villanueva y la Geltru´ (Barcelona) in 1954.1 He took his first steps as a writer within the culture that predominated in the Barcelona of the end of the nineteenth century; we can therefore say that his early work belongs to the Catalan modernist movement. However, while working as a columnist, mainly on art criticism at the newspaper El Poble Catala` during the second half of 1904 and the first half of 1905, a progressive change in his understanding of how Catalonia must be modernized becomes apparent. The reasons behind his break with modernism are his rejection of individualism and the naturalism of modernist aesthetics, the sentimentalism and spontaneity of artistic creation, and the sterility that resulted from Catalan traditionalism anchored in ruralism and folklore. D’Ors proposed an essentially educational project for the renovation of society that he named Noucentisme. The term expressed the project of the spirits of the noucents, the new century. The noucentista project was to be carried out mainly { 10 0 }

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in two aspects, one artistic and the other political. He himself described this new aesthetic as arbitrary. In it, he defended the existence of an aesthetic dimension—‘‘a residue’’—in the actions of man by which thought is creation and beauty is the revelation of truth. The political dimension, described as imperialist, can be considered interventionist, and was more a pedagogical ideal of social, cultural, and scientific renovation than an ideology. In January 1906 he began to contribute articles called ‘‘glosas’’ (glosses) to La Veu de Catalunya newspaper, which earned him great popularity in Catalan public opinion. The glosas, brief commentaries on contemporary affairs to which d’Ors added profound reflections through his rich and ingenious use of language, constitute one of the most effective instruments in the dissemination of his mission of renewal. D’Ors himself conceived the Glosario in its different stages as a single book in which thought faces the variety in the world, the place in which it is shown that philosophy is also a way of life. It is for this reason that the glosas, written daily and conditioned by the events of his biography, are the most genuine expression of his thought and the best means of perceiving the continuity in his cultural and philosophical project.2 In 1906 he accepted the post of Paris correspondent of La Veu de Catalunya. In Paris he attended many courses and seminars on philosophy and experimental psychology, as well as lectures by scientists and philosophers of the standing of Bergson, Boutroux, and Madame Curie. During this period he traveled to Germany and Italy to complete his education. In August 1908 he took part in the Third International Philosophy Conference held in Heidelberg, contributing two papers that would become the root of his philosophical thought: ‘‘The Residue in the Measure of Science by Action’’ and ‘‘Religio est libertas.’’ In these works he dialogues with the proposals of North American pragmatism on the limits of scientific knowledge. His presence at the congress, along with Boutroux, Croce, Vailati, Vossler, Schiller, and Royce, strengthened his philosophical vocation and introduced him to a community of intellectuals that debated, among other matters, the limits of experimental psychology, the theories of

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American pragmatism that were filtering through to Europe, and the vitalist thought of Bergson. When d’Ors returned to Barcelona in 1911 he published the key concepts of his postpragmatic intellectualism in his Glosario under the title ‘‘The Philosophy of the Man who Works and Plays.’’ These glosses constitute the index to the issues that would occupy him throughout his life. In 1914 he went to Madrid to sit for the competitive exam for the Chair of Superior Psychology at the University of Barcelona. He received only one vote in his favor, that of Jose´ Ortega y Gasset. The disappointment caused by his failure to be appointed to the Chair conditioned the rest of his professional career. He took no further public examinations. The outbreak of World War I and the way the conflict developed led to a certain isolation of d’Ors in Catalonia. Between 1915 and 1918 he occupied different posts in the Mancomunidad de Catalun˜a (Catalan Regional Council). In July 1921 he embarked on a journey to various universities in Latin America. When he returned to Spain he based himself in Madrid, abandoning Barcelona and the Catalan language as a result of his differences with the president of the Mancomunidad de Catalun˜a. The Spanish Civil War trapped him in Paris. He remained there until he could move to Pamplona in April 1937. He joined the Falange, resumed his Glosario in the newspaper Arriba Espan˜a, and contributed to the newspaper Jerarquı´a. He also aided the Nationalist side in the reorganization of cultural institutions. At the end of the war he returned to Madrid and purchased a house in the Calle Sacramento, which he used as a workplace as well as a home. He again frequented intellectual environments and social life. Thanks to his post at the Instituto de Espan˜a, d’Ors participated actively in Spanish cultural life and published some of his best-known books: Cezanne (1922), Tres horas en el museo del Prado (1926), and Lo barroco (1935).3 This last book won him acclaim as an international expert in aesthetics, cultural, and artistic criticism by establishing in a brilliant and systematic way his thoughts on the Baroque.4 In March 1943 d’Ors began to come closer to Catalonia by writing for La Vanguardia newspaper and with the 1944 purchase of a house

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with a hermitage dedicated to Saint Christopher in Villanueva y la Geltru´, which he established as his summer residence. At the age of sixty, he prepared El secreto de la filosofı´a (The Secret of Philosophy, 1947) and directed the publication of his glosas in volume form. In El secreto de la filosofı´a he brought together all the subjects that had concerned him since his youth and argued for methodological knowledge—the ‘‘Doctrine of Intelligence’’—capable of proposing an efficient philosophy open to life and enriched by personal and historic experience.5 In 1949 he again traveled to Italy, and in 1950 he went to Latin America, despite the first symptoms of deteriorating health. On September 25, 1954, a few days before his seventy-third birthday, he died in his home in Villanueva y la Geltru´. His book La ciencia de la cultura was published posthumously in 1964.6 The Reception of Pragmatism in the Work of Eugenio d’Ors Eugenio d’Ors frequently alludes in his work to his debt to pragmatism, and declares his aim to supersede it in his own philosophy, which he terms postpragmatic intellectualism.7 Around the beginning of the twentieth century pragmatism entered Europe, becoming the center of many philosophical debates and controversies. A curious blend of misunderstandings spread across the continent: on the one hand, pragmatism was taken to be a new theory of truth that defended the coincidence of truth with utility, while on the other hand it was understood as a theory of science capable of clarifying meaning through action. D’Ors was one of the thinkers in Spain who consciously included connections with the American philosophical world.8 Most of the references to the philosophy of pragmatism can be found in his writings between 1907 and 1910. In December 1907 he wrote in the glossary: ‘‘The whole world and especially the Anglo-Saxon world is thrilled by the new school, or better said, the new philosophical posture that pragmatism, initiated by the North Americans Sanders Peirce and William James, represents. This doctrine revolves around the wish that obeys the necessities already set out here concerning the need to

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integrate Sophia in Life. Its main principle lies in considering truth as an instrument of action and that, therefore, if on the one hand, everything that does not have an adequate relation with human practice is not interesting and must be abandoned, on the other hand, all that is useful must be true.’’9 In early 1908, defining his philosophical posture, he stood out for his connection with American pragmatism as well as for his links with the European representatives of this movement. ‘‘This philosophy of free will, this arbitrarism, as we have called it, represents a moral ideal of intervention and not of abstention, this is to say, an imperialist ethics and politics—an aesthetic ideal of norm and measure, that is, a classicism—a scientific ideal in which action is the test of truth, that is to say a pragmatic philosophy, with a great relation to that which, preached by some Peirce, some William James, some Schiller, nowadays shakes the conscience of the Saxon world and has already its Latin representation in the isolated efforts of some contemporary French thinkers, like my master Bergson, and in Leonardo, the small intellectual group from Florence.’’10 From 1907 and 1908 the most detailed information about the reception of pragmatism in the thought of d’Ors can be extracted from the two reports he wrote between 1908 and 1910 in Paris to justify a scholarship that the Council of Barcelona had given him to study methods of higher education in Europe.11 In the first report, titled ‘‘Report on the Criticism and Methods of Contemporary Science,’’ d’Ors prepared a general overview on the most important problems of the epistemology of the time to later establish measures capable of unifying results in all the sciences. In this report d’Ors makes a considerable effort to describe and order the most relevant epistemological theories at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. He refers to the conventionalism of E´douard Le Roy, Henti Poincare´, and Pierre Duhem; the mechanicism of Lord Kelvin; the empirical criticism of Richard Avenarius and Ernst Mach; the vitalism of Henri Bergson; and the pragmatism and philosophy of the ‘‘as if,’’ but he does not stop there. There emerges from his analysis what is without doubt his own claim to playing a part in the European philosophical tradition and his response to

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some of the matters on which philosophical debate focused in the first half of the twentieth century: Can scientific knowledge give a universal, satisfactory answer to some of the most radical questions facing humankind? How is life integrated into reason? Between 1909 and the end of 1910 he wrote the three parts that make up the second report. In the first part, titled ‘‘Methods of Higher Education: Mission in Paris,’’ d’Ors analyzes the teaching of logics and methodology in European higher education. The second part, ‘‘Papers for an Introduction to the Study of Logic,’’ contains two critical studies on pragmatism: one about the relation between art and science, and the other about religion and science. The text of this second part of the report consists of a manuscript introduction and a printed copy of ‘‘The Residue in the Measure of Science by Action’’ and of ‘‘Religio est libertas,’’ papers that d’Ors presented at the Third International Philosophy Conference that took place in Heidelberg. In the third part, ‘‘Papers for the Constitution of a Biological Logic,’’ d’Ors proposes a theory of knowledge capable of explaining the rational capacity of the human being without disregarding his dramatic-historical condition. He included ‘‘The Biological Formula of Logics,’’ a work he had presented at the Sixth Psychology Conference in Geneva in 1909. The three papers included in this second report serve as a guide to the intellectual path that d’Ors traveled to reach the original nucleus of his philosophical proposal: figurative thought or the philosophy of the seny, which was written in explicit dialogue with pragmatism. Alongside these references to pragmatism it is necessary to point out the presence in these reports of the Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology by J. M. D’Ors considered the dictionary of great use to his research. He used it fundamentally as a work of authorized reference for the definition of many of the terms that he studied—logic, epistemology—as well as for adding a relevant bibliography on each of the topics that appeared in the reports. The dictionary was also an indirect channel for the reception of pragmatism, since d’Ors used some of the entries written by C. S. Peirce. The almost literal transcription of the entry ‘‘Method and Methodology or Methodeutic’’

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that Peirce had written for Baldwin’s dictionary and that appears in the chapter of the report on the study of logic deserves special mention. In addition to the references that we can find in these reports, in the Spanish publication of ‘‘The Residue in the Measure of Science by Action’’ d’Ors added some explanatory notes to the text that he had read in Heidelberg. One of these notes reveals the knowledge that he had of the publications of the most representative philosophers of pragmatism and the introduction of pragmatism in the European world at the turn of the century: To the reader who is not a specialist, it would suffice to remember today that, firstly, the theses named pragmatist or pragmaticist, maintained with impact and success during recent years, link science to action in such a way that in the latter they want always to find the reason and measure of the former. (Bibliography: C. S. Peirce: Illustrations of the Logic of Science (Popular Science Monthly, 1870); How to Make our Ideas Clear 1878, published in the Revue Philosophique of the time); Art, Pragmatism, in Baldwin’s Dictionary, 1902. W. James: The Will to Believe, 1897; The Varieties of Religious Experience (translated into many languages); Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, 1907. J. Dewey: Studies in Logical Theory, 1903. Baldwin: The Limits of Pragmatism (Psychol. Review, 1904). F. C. S. Schiller: Personal Idealism, 1902; Humanism, 1907; Studies of Humanism, 1907 (French translation). Leonardo magazine, from Florence (between 1903 and 1907 directed by G. Papini). The contributions from Papini, Vailati and Calderoni in the Second Philosophy Conference (Geneva, 1904). The (especially important) discussion on pragmatism in the Third Philosophy Conference (Volume of the Conference, in print). Works that also may be consulted: Carlos Vaz Ferreira, Knowledge and Action, Montevideo, 1908, and my Glosari, 1907. Without being able to mention places and dates here, other authors on pragmatism that must be mentioned are Unamuno, whose Tres Ensayos, due to their Carlylian affiliation, have at times a strong pragmatist flavor, and other Spanish and South American writers.12

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Superseding Pragmatism Eugenio d’Ors defined his philosophical proposal as a postpragmatic intellectualism.13 By this term he wanted, on the one hand, to recover the classical meaning of the term intelligence—a concept involving reason and logic, and also taste, intuition, and experience—while on the other hand he wanted to admit that his thought was in debt to pragmatism even though it sought to overcome it in some aspects. In the gloss titled ‘‘pragmatism’’ (1907), d’Ors conveyed to his readers what separated him from that doctrine: ‘‘Just as they refuse systematic Logic, Construction, reducing themselves to an improvisatory metaphysics, I, by an indestructible aesthetic faith, profoundly trust in the effectiveness of constructions, and I find in their very harmony, in their beauty, more than in their utility, the profound fountain of their truth.’’14 In the research that produced the reports justifying the grant, d’Ors found that pragmatism considered science to be the result of the effects of action, of the continuous solving of problems that arise from the human being’s progress through life. He interpreted this discovery in a utilitarian way—one of the versions of pragmatism that had been introduced in Europe—and affirmed that the fundamental principle of pragmatism was to consider truth as an instrument of action, and therefore to consider all that is useful to be true. D’Ors interpreted this pragmatic intuition as a possible way of overcoming positivism and as a proposal to be taken into account when integrating reason and life—science and action. Even then, he voiced his desire for its improvement. D’Ors admitted that action was a criterion for truth since it recognized the existence of a utilitarian dimension in science, but he considered it insufficient to understand action only in these terms. In his work ‘‘The Residue in the Measure of Science by Action,’’ he showed that utilitarian action is not the only criterion for scientific activity and that when scientific methods and results are only measured by this means there is always a residue of an aesthetic nature. The residue is gratuitous, it appears without being foreseen,

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and is a product of what d’Ors called ‘‘curiosity’’: a logical instinct born from an overabundance of strength that is the fountain that generates innovative knowledge.15 The need to explain the residue of aesthetic nature in science forced d’Ors to expound his anthropological thought: the existence of an irreducible duality between ‘‘necessity’’ and ‘‘freedom’’ in the actions of man. For this he wrote the paper ‘‘Religio est libertas’’ and took as a starting point the idea of religion that William James proposed in Varieties of Religious Experience.16 In this work, d’Ors affirms that human actions always involve a more or less significant effort. Experience teaches that there is always a distance between an irreducible reality that is the subject that wants—that is, potential—and the thing that he wants that acts as a resistance or a necessity. Regarding the meaning of potential, d’Ors tells us that it is a reality that escapes discursive knowledge, and that can only be defined by means of exclusion, by opposition to the resistance. That is, the subject of the effort, known as freedom, is reached by the negation of all ‘‘conditionality.’’17 The duality found in people’s actions stems from the irreducible duality present in each human being. Actions contain a necessary dimension—work, and a free dimension—play. The necessary dimension responds to the effective dialogue—the acceptance of limits—between a potential and a resistance. The free dimension, play, is born from the capacity that freedom has to transcend necessity and generate novelty: ‘‘Science is ordered toward action, certainly. But action is not always utilitarian: sometimes it is work, sometimes it is play, that is to say, an aesthetic element, freedom. In all knowledge, in all science, there is a part that is work and a part that is play.’’18 The Orsian revision of pragmatism throws into relief the point that the presence of a necessary dimension and a free—gratuitous— dimension in science required a new epistemology capable of giving reason not only to the ‘‘necessary’’ elements in knowledge, but also to the ‘‘recreational’’ ones. This need led d’Ors to propose the restoration of intellectualism and the overcoming of pragmatism. With

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postpragmatic intellectualism he managed to integrate the rational elements of reality into a higher type of knowledge that would also include those elements that escape abstract reason but still form part of the reality of the human being. To explain this new logic, d’Ors wrote ‘‘The Biological Formula of Logics.’’ In it he sought to articulate logics—the cognitive capacity— and biology, affirming that the acquisition of concepts was a biological need for survival. The toxic stimuli ‘‘transformed by reason into concepts, that are non-toxic, give the individual a relative immunity to new attacks. This immunity constitutes ‘logic.’ ’’19 By making the cognitive capacity an organic function, he tried to naturalize logic. With all of this he managed to give a natural—biological— explanation to the rational capacity of the human being, and he also managed to explain that reason should not work like a machine since it exists in relation to time and circumstances, that is, to life itself. D’Ors also considered that the capacity of the human being to know reality could not be explained as the automatic execution of certain rules, but instead had to admit and explain how it is more or less possible to introduce within these processes a personal and flexible—new—way of carrying them out. The biological formula of logics was his way of integrating life in reason and not renounce the intuition that it was essential to recognize the subjective (personal) dimension in knowledge, that is, by not renouncing the intuition that it was necessary to propose a new way of thinking that would be capable of giving account of the importance of biographical, vital, and historical circumstances in knowledge. For d’Ors the overcoming of pragmatism consisted in the defense of a recreational origin for knowledge—science has an aesthetic dimension—and in the assertion that the articulation between reason and life cannot be attained by integrating reason into life, which is how d’Ors interpreted pragmatism, but rather the contrary. By integrating life into reason, a flexible reason capable of integrating elements of experience, taste, and intuition can exist alongside abstract knowledge. The development of these two ideas gave rise to what is known as the philosophy of the seny that d’Ors expounded in the

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‘‘Twelve Glosses of Philosophy’’ of La filosofı´a del hombre que trabaja y que juega, which would later be called ‘‘figurative thought,’’ the main thread of El secreto de la filosofı´a. Similarities Between d’Ors and Peirce There is a clear affinity between Eugenio d’Ors and the pragmatism of Charles S. Peirce in the interests that were the motives for their reflections and their ways of understanding and doing philosophy. Without doubt, the affinity comes from the historical context from which both ways of thinking came into being. Both authors responded critically to the legacy of Cartesian rationalism and the positivism at the end of the century by asking the same question: How can we integrate thought and life, reason and experience? This common starting point generated a great interest in the methodology and study of the processes of scientific research. The most significant affinities between these two ways of thinking can be grouped around four aspects. First, there is a coincidence in the social dimension of knowledge. While the solitude of the intellectual gives way to isolated and sterile thoughts that turn to stone in monologues, communication among intellectuals gives rise to thought. For d’Ors dialogue was the main source of thought: ‘‘Real dialogue starts where, by way of the expounded word, there is giving and there is receiving, and there is giving with a certain proportion, but without calculation, in sweet obedience to the sentiments of humanity, civility, curiosity; proportion and correspondence can flourish even in the dialogues between a master and his disciples. Just consider the Socratic dialogues.’’20 The isolated and solitary intellectual sleeps; the intellectual who dialogues or thinks creates and lives in collaboration: ‘‘Thought is always expression, creation, poetry. . . . Thought, that is a way of love, lives by the word, by society, by the company between men; by collaboration and communion, by the presence of each thinking man among the living or dead, by Culture.’’21 Second, aside from a constant preoccupation about this matter, we can recognize an affinity in the explanation that both thinkers gave

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to the question on the origin of creativity, that is, the question of how novelty is generated in thought. D’Ors answered this question by affirming that the existence of an instinct for logical play, called ‘‘curiosity,’’ that is capable of generating new explanations for truncated expectations or forecasts has many similarities to Peirce’s ‘‘abduction.’’ The third field of similarities can be found around the idea of the fallible character of scientific knowledge. D’Ors termed this irreducible characteristic of science ‘‘irony’’ and explained it by maintaining that the knowledge of science is always formulated by foreseeing and accepting future contradictions and revisions.22 Lastly, the connection between d’Ors and Peirce is shown in the theory of signification. As Jaime Nubiola has pointed out, the relation of signification is triadic for both d’Ors and Peirce. In words there is not only an external form and a generic meaning, but also a sense. Accordingly, words are symbolic realities or signs.23 Despite the existence of these similarities, d’Ors did not accept being considered a pragmatist. The main reason for this negation was the misunderstanding generated by the reception of pragmatism in Europe. The utilitarianism of James and the so-called humanism of Schiller caused d’Ors to assume that pragmatism was aligned with the vitalist romanticism of Bergson and a vulgar anti-intellectualist philosophy,24 which was just what d’Ors was trying to avoid by ordering life according to the criterion of the seny or figurative thought. In light of this misunderstanding d’Ors’s reluctance to be called a pragmatist proves reasonable, but at the same time it is also rational to say that, with the perspective afforded by the passage of time and the study of both thinkers, Eugenio d’Ors shares more with Pierce’s pragmatism than he himself could have admitted without betraying the understanding of that movement that reached Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century.

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pedro zulen and the reception of pragmatism in peru Pablo Quintanilla



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t the end of the nineteenth century, just after the end of the Pacific War that confronted Peruvians and Chileans, a generation of philosophers emerged in Peru that became interested in positivism. They were not greatly influenced by the first generation of European positivists such as Comte, but mainly by the second generation, especially by Herbert Spencer’s evolutionism. This was the first time that Peru produced a group of philosophers that shared an authentic interest in developing original views on contemporary philosophical issues, even applying them to Peru’s sociological and historical characteristics. It is true that in colonial times there were Peruvian philosophers that made original contributions to logic and metaphysics, such as Juan de Espinosa Medrano (1629–1688), known as el lunarejo, Jose´ de Acosta (1539–1600), and Isidoro de Celis, who died in 1787. These three were Roman Catholic clerics, but they were also philosophers who were concerned with thinking about philosophical problems in their own way. However, they were isolated { 11 2 }

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cases of original philosophers in a society such as the Virreinato del Peru´ in which intellectual life was devoted primarily to expanding both political and religious Spanish ideology. The emergence at the end of the nineteenth century of a large group of intellectuals that addressed philosophical issues in a fresh way was therefore an important event. This generation that embraced positivism included Manuel Gonza´lez Prada (1848–1918), Alejandro Deustua (1849–1945), Jorge Polar (1856–1932), Mariano H. Cornejo (1866–1942), Carlos Lisson (1868–1947), Javier Prado (1871–1921) and Manuel Vicente Villara´n (1873–1918). It is interesting that the first consolidated generation of Peruvian philosophers appeared at the end of a tragic and extremely devastating war, similar to the United States in the Civil War era and the origins of pragmatism. In the Peruvian case, positivism’s promise of order and progress was the main reason that these intellectuals embraced it. Like many Latin-American philosophers of the period, Peruvian philosophers believed that positivism was the key to scientific and technological progress on the one hand, and to a more rational organization of the nation’s political life on the other. They also thought that positivism was the way to eliminate the flaws inherent in the Spanish colonial system in such a way that the natural conclusion of positivism was intellectual independence from Spain. The main aspects of positivism they appreciated were its rejection of metaphysics, the development of science and technology, and the idea of a teleological progression in history that culminates in a rationally and scientifically organized society. These views, however, were not long-lived. At the beginning of the twentieth century most of these philosophers abandoned positivism and embraced views that entailed a separation from it. The most popular of these views was French Spiritualism, especially that of Henri Bergson, but also American pragmatism. ‘‘Spiritualism’’ was a general term, scarcely used today, that referred to a group of French philosophers led by Main de Biran and Bergson, who claimed the existence of a creative spiritual aspect in human beings that could not be reduced to physical realities. They rejected positivism’s historical determinism and privileged human free will. This group of philosophers

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was led mainly by Alejandro Deustua (1849–1945) and Mariano Iberico (1892–1974); other intellectuals who were considered spiritualists included Ricardo Dulanto, Humberto Borja Garcı´a, and Juan Francisco Elguera. The members of the generacio´n arielista, also known as generacio´n del novecientos, were also considered spiritualists, and included Jose´ de la Riva-Agu¨ero, the Garcı´a Caldero´n brothers Ventura and Francisco, Felipe Barreda y Laos, the scientist Hermilio Valdiza´n, and the Miro´-Quesada brothers. Some of these were also familiar with pragmatism. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the influence of pragmatism in Peru had two different sources: Bergson and William James, and Pedro Zulen’s writings on the origins of pragmatism and American neorealism. It is well known that Bergson and William James shared important philosophical views.1 Each attempted to overcome the Cartesian internalized conception of the mind by showing the intersubjective origin and nature of subjectivity as well as its practical nature; both were concerned with free will and determinism as one of the central problems in philosophy; and both had an anti-intellectualist conception of philosophy that privileged action and transformation over mere contemplation. However, although their views were similar in many aspects, these views were developed in a parallel way without mutual recognition until they began to influence each other directly. Bergson’s Essai sur les donne´es imme´diates de la conscience was published in 18892; James’s The Principles of Psychology appeared one year later.3 Bergson was already familiar with some of James’s psychological papers, such as ‘‘The Feeling of Effort’’ from 1880, and ‘‘What is an Emotion?’’ from 1884,4 but it was only after 1902 that their intellectual influences were mutual. On December 14 of the same year, James wrote to Bergson, informing him that he had read and enjoyed his Essai and including as a gift his Varieties of Religious Experience.5 In 1911 Bergson wrote the introduction to the French translation of James’s Pragmatism. In addition, Bergson and James often exchanged long letters. Thus when philosophers in Peru began to read Bergson at the beginning of the twentieth century, led by Alejandro Deustua, they were also being influenced by pragmatism.

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At the turn of the century Peruvian philosophers moved from Comte and Spencer to Bergson, James, and Nietzsche. These three philosophers shared an interest in overcoming positivism and scientism, although all three were very much influenced by Darwin’s theory of evolution. More important, they radically rejected the representational conception of knowledge that can be found in modern philosophy, and they put forward a pluralistic conception of knowledge and truth. They believed that to know something was not to represent it accurately, but to interpret and describe it in different ways according to the kind of objectives and life projects one has. A good example of how pragmatism influenced Peruvian philosophers, by way of Bergson, is this quote from Mariano Iberico’s El nuevo absoluto: ‘‘Bergson has proved that intellectual activity is essentially utilitarian and aimed at practice.’’6 Iberico was concerned with issues of aesthetics and philosophy of religion that were influenced by Bergson and James.7 Peruvian philosophers also experienced pragmatist influences from William James more directly. He was read and commented on by Javier Prado, Mariano Iberico, Jorge Polar, and Vı´ctor Andre´s Belau´nde. For instance, when Jorge Polar read The Varieties of Religious Experience, he was struck by James’s nonreductive pluralism. Polar himself cites this in his 1925 autobiographical book Confesio´n de un catedra´tico, written close to the end of his life in 1932.8 The second source of pragmatist influence in Peru at the beginning of the twentieth century was Pedro Zulen (1889–1925), the son of a Chinese immigrant from Canton and a Peruvian Creole woman. Thanks to a scholarship given by the Peruvian government he studied at Harvard from 1920 to 1922, becoming familiar with Josiah Royce, Peirce, and James. Zulen returned to Lima because he had contracted tuberculosis, the illness from which he died in 1924, but also because he was deeply committed to political activities in defense of Indians. In 1908 he participated in the creation of the Patronato Pro Indı´gena, and in 1909 in the creation of the Asociacio´n Pro Indı´gena. He published several papers and two books. The first book was La filosofı´a de lo inexpresable. Subtitled Bosquejo de una interpretacio´n y una crı´tica de la filosofı´a de Bergson,9 it presented Bergson’s views on language

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and knowledge. The second book was entitled Del neohegelianismo al neorealismo. Subtitled Estudio de las corrientes filoso´ficas en Inglaterra y los Estados Unidos desde la introduccio´n de Hegel hasta la actual reaccio´n neorrealista,10 it discussed the philosophical evolution that made pragmatism and the neorealist movement possible in England and the United States. However, long before his trip to Harvard in 1909, Zulen published a paper in which he upheld a notion of truth that is very close to Peirce’s.11 This paper shows Peirce’s early influence on Zulen. Zulen believes it is necessary to overcome the notion of conclusive and definitive truths in order to see truth as a process of continually getting closer to reality through the practical success of our hypotheses. In this way Zulen attempts to overcome both positivism, which he considers bankrupt, and spiritualism, which Zulen considers to be a beautiful dream but no more than a dream.12 Zulen regards abandoning the idea of absolute knowledge as necessary, and he considers it preferable to see philosophy and science as sharing means and ends, working together and progressing slowly, without attempting to be conclusive. These and other ideas held by Zulen clearly express Peircean fallibilistic views, as well as a version of direct realism. Peirce’s direct realism is prefigured in the debate held both in Britain and in the United States that occurred as a reaction to idealism in the early twentieth century. In France spiritualism appeared after positivism as a reaction to it. In a similar fashion, in Britain Spencer’s positivism was progressively abandoned and replaced by a form of idealism in the second half of the nineteenth century. This generation of British idealists included Francis Herbert Bradley, John McTaggart, Bernard Bosanquet, Thomas Hill Green, and Edward Caird. It was precisely against this idealist movement in which Bertrand Russell was educated that logical atomism reacted, led by Russell himself, George Edward Moore, and, more controversially, early Wittgenstein. It was against this kind of idealism that the neorealist movement reacted in Britain in the work of philosophers such as Thomas Case, John Cook Wilson, and Harold Arthur Prichard. In the United States the neorealist movement appeared at the beginning of the twentieth century with philosophers such as T. Marvin, William Pepperell

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Montague, F. B. Holt, E. G. Spaulding, Ralph Barton Perry, and W. B. Pitkin. Their aim was to overcome the idiosyncratic vagueness and imprecision of the idealistic philosophical style of argumentation and replace it with an integration of philosophical and scientific research. Zulen’s book Del neohegelianismo al neorealismo includes a reconstruction of these debates and an explanation of the origins of these philosophical schools. The book, however, is much more ambitious than it first appears. It is not only a history of ideas in the United States, but it also suggests a research program that was halted by Zulen’s much-too-early death. In La filosofı´a de lo inexpresable, Zulen criticizes Bergson mainly for upholding a conflictive tension between reason and intuition, as well as between science and philosophy. In Del neohegelianismo al neorealismo, on the other hand, he attempts to integrate those very notions and the different views that have been influential in his philosophical development. These views are mainly Bradley’s neo-Hegelianism, Royce’s neo-Hegelianism with pragmatist elements, and Peirce’s pragmatism. Zulen’s own view is a kind of idealism along the lines of Bradley and Royce, with pragmatist elements. In regard to James and Dewey, Zulen thinks that although they keep Peirce’s valuable intuitions, they lack the speculative metaphysical structure necessary for replacing the neo-Hegelian movement. Although Zulen criticizes James and Dewey, the presence of James’s psychology is ubiquitous, especially his idea of an intersubjective constitution of the self that is defined by its connections to other subjects and to the external world. For instance, Zulen states: Do we know what the Self in its depth is? What is my consciousness? . . . The Self exists only in relation to other people and other realities. My consciousness would be nothing or, better, I would have no consciousness of my consciousness if there were no other conscious people and if external reality didn’t present me with oppositions. The past, thus, means something for the future that exists outside myself. For me, therefore, nothing exists other than the aspect of my Self that is related to the world in which I live.13

The main question in Zulen’s book Del neohegelianismo al neorealismo concerns the nature of reality, which he regards as the central

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problem in philosophy.14 In the first chapter, ‘‘The English NeoHegelianism,’’ he describes in detail the introduction of German romanticism in England through Coleridge and Carlyle, and in the United States through Ralph Waldo Emerson. For Zulen, British neoHegelianism—especially Caird, Bradley, and Bosanquet—distances itself from empiricism in order to inherit from Kant the idea that Zulen subscribes to regarding the irreducibility of the mental to the physical. Zulen, however, rejects the notion of a thing in itself.15 The section devoted to neo-Hegelianism in the United States begins with a description of the School of St. Louis: H. C. Brockmeyer, William T. Harris, and Denton J. Zinder. Although they were not professional philosophers, they were among the first intellectuals in the United States to teach and translate into English the works of German idealism. In 1867 Harris founded the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, in which he published his research. Zulen believes that it was Harris and the School of St. Louis that made Peirce, Royce, and James possible. Although that is a controversial statement, it is true that Peirce started studying Kant and Royce by way of studying Hegel, which could have been motivated by the School of St. Louis. James, on the other hand, arrived at philosophy from psychology and was motivated by scientific interests. Zulen describes the conception of belief in Peirce, one of the fundamental conceptions of pragmatism, in the following way: ‘‘If we examine our lives deeply, we find that everything in us revolves around belief, that is, the fixation of thought. Thus, the activity of thought aims at nothing but a state of rest of thought. Since this state of rest of thought will be produced by active thought, this becomes a rule of action. But its application implies a new doubt and a new reflection, with which this belief, and this rule of action, is at the same time a state of rest and a starting point; it is thought that drives the conquest of the future.’’16 Although Zulen praises Peirce, he believes that James misunderstood Peirce and that neorealism does not really address the main questions about the nature of reality. However, Zulen’s way of addressing them clearly has a pragmatist trait:

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What is reality, then? Reality, Being, is a world of aims, the production of objectives, of individual actions.17 The idea is not representation, but a kind of action, an instrument, the paradigmatic instrument that the spirit has in order to penetrate reality, and transform it. The idea is will, it is a desired ideal, a creative energy that freely builds the world, like in the Fichtean conception, in order to give our ethical activity a world in which to act.18

Although Zulen’s intuitions are inspired by Peirce and Royce, and despite the fact that their value is precisely that they help us overcome the dichotomy between metaphysical realism and idealism, Zulen returns to idealistic positions with pragmatist traits. For instance, he states that: ‘‘object and idea are already in our conscience, because all intention to perform an action already encloses the general outline of the form that the act will become.’’19 Here it seems that Zulen is giving more importance to conscience in itself than to its relation to action. At the end of the book Zulen launches a new attack on neorealism. His main critique is that such a view is committed to naturalism, scientism, and behaviorism. Zulen makes some predictions about the future of philosophy. He believes that British idealism will succeed, whereas James and Dewey’s version of neorealism and pragmatism, will be ephemeral. It is clear that he was wrong on this point. British idealism vanished soon thereafter, and pragmatism transformed itself in many ways. Zulen’s views on Peirce, however, were quite accurate and his influence on Peruvian philosophy was ubiquitous; he is an important point of reference for the reception of Anglo-American philosophy in Peru.

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vaz ferreira as a pragmatist The Articulation of Science and Philosophy Paloma Pe´rez-Ilzarbe



T

he Uruguayan philosopher and educator Carlos Vaz Ferreira (1872–1958) was one of the first Hispanic readers of pragmatism. He introduced William James’s ideas to his country and critically revised them. In 1909 Vaz Ferreira published El pragmatismo, the first Spanish-language book devoted to pragmatism.1 This collection of lectures, given in 1908, was translated into French in 1914, thus giving Vaz’s ideas an international presence. Famously, Albert Einstein had the opportunity to read this translation, and in a letter to Vaz Ferreira he demonstrated a basic agreement with certain points.2 As stated in the first pages of the book, the pragmatism that Vaz considers and criticizes is the philosophy of William James since, according to Vaz Ferreira, James is ‘‘the most brilliant and popular supporter of the doctrine.’’3 Some years before, Vaz had written two other works devoted to James’s writings: Conocimiento y accio´n, after his reading of The Will to Believe; and En los ma´rgenes de ‘‘L’Experience Re´ligieuse’’ de William James, a collection of Vaz’s annotations to his reading of { 12 0 }

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the French translation of The Varieties of Religious Experience.4 In spite of the critical character of these three works, James was actually one of Vaz’s favorite philosophers; his presence in Vaz’s thought is recognized in several places. Vaz particularly praises chapter IX of The Principles of Psychology for a conception of thought of which he thoroughly approves.5 Unfortunately, despite the domestic reputation of Vaz Ferreira as both an original and solid thinker,6 his philosophy has remained relatively unknown outside the Spanish-speaking world. This is one of the reasons why Vaz’s connection to pragmatism may come as a surprise. The other reason is that Vaz actually refused to be called a pragmatist in the strict sense, but he underestimated how his thought was influenced by and in some ways advanced pragmatism. In spite of his criticism of some of James’s ideas and of pragmatism in general, Vaz Ferreira’s thought is very close to the problems and approaches characteristic of American pragmatism.7 After offering Vaz’s critical revision of James’s theory of truth, the book El pragmatismo ends with an appraisal of pragmatism, considered as a set of ‘‘tendencies.’’ Vaz distinguishes some good tendencies to which he utterly subscribes, some neutral tendencies that turn into bad ones only when they are badly applied, and some decidedly bad tendencies that he wants to resist in his own thought.8 The bad tendencies that Vaz identifies as common to the pragmatist movement are James’s devaluation of reason and his neglect of ideas that have no significant practical consequences. The neutral but dangerous tendencies are the introduction of emotion into theoretical questions, and the interest in the practical consequences of any theory. These are bad insofar as they block the recognition of nonrelative truth. Vaz Ferreira was concerned that pragmatism did not become a philosophy that encourages irrationalism and relativism. He therefore developed a conception of the relation between humans, language, reality, and knowledge that avoids these dangers. In his recognition of certain good tendencies of pragmatism, Vaz shows the deep agreement that underlies his disagreements with James. He lists: (1) the liberation of thought from the domination of

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language; (2) the preference for the concrete over the abstract; (3) the interest in the problems of lived human experience; and (4) the respectful attitude to ideas and emotions different from one’s own. Vaz Ferreira contrasts James’s pragmatism with J. S. Mill’s attitude, which Vaz considers ‘‘pragmatist’’ in some sense, but which he refuses to call by that term in the strict sense. This attitude finds a middle way between strict rationalism and irrationalism: ‘‘This is the right attitude. Reason is not everything: reason, completed by emotion and imagination, but never forced nor spoiled nor despised.’’9 This is in fact the core of Vaz’s own philosophy, namely: reason is not absolute, but it remains an indispensable tool for our relation to reality. It should thus be complemented by other nonrational dimensions of our interaction with the world, but never be eclipsed by them.10 The root of Vaz’s hostility to pragmatism is a response to James’s radical anti-intellectualist position, which he counteracts with a defense of reason as a valuable aid for penetrating reality. But the same balancing tendency can be found in the very founder of pragmatism, C. S. Peirce, who also denounces the anti-intellectualist tendencies in James. In this article I offer an outline of Vaz Ferreira’s moderate antiintellectualism, and then examine from this perspective a concrete subject very dear to pragmatism: the articulation of science and philosophy as complementary aspects of human knowledge. The aim of this introductory study is to show Vaz’s connection with the core of the pragmatist movement, and to provoke further inquiry into the vast and suggestive thought of Carlos Vaz Ferreira.11 Reality and Human Reason Vaz’s philosophy concerns the relation between human beings and reality. Humans are living, acting beings, and their activity must be carried out inside a vast and complex reality that exceeds their capacities to capture it. Human beings are equipped with a set of faculties by which they try to capture reality. Reality, however, always remains strange to the human mind, always radically different from any

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human apprehension of it.12 ‘‘In contrast to the anti-intellectualist and irrationalist reactions to the crisis of Positivism, Vaz wants a place for reason in human life, and a central one in the human understanding of reality. He is just very careful to not give reason the exclusive access to reality.’’ Reason has allowed us to construct some useful tools by which reality can be organized and controlled—at least to a certain extent. Logic and language are basic among these tools since they provide human beings with the capacity to systematize and classify the world. Vaz shares with James the idea that this organization and control are obtained at a high price: rational systems and classifications only divide the continuum, simplify the complex, and reduce to a handy size the unlimited, thus losing the richness of reality. Reason, in the strict sense, is rigid and static, whereas reality is flowing and moving. Counterbalancing the natural tendency of the human spirit to systematize—which is, of course, very fruitful when correctly applied— Vaz reminds us of the limits of any system. First, a system is not identical with the things that it sketches,13 and thus it can never substitute for the very reality that escapes it; second, systems cannot be applied to whatever reality we need to cope with since every concrete situation is unique, and thus we can never force reality into a preestablished schema. Two of the dangers of rationalism that Vaz Ferreira denounces again and again are: ‘‘transcendentalization’’—the ascription to reality of what belongs to our discourse on it, and ‘‘thinking by systems’’—the use of a preexisting formula instead of approaching every concrete problem in itself.14 These are very close to what Dewey called ‘‘the philosophical fallacy,’’15 when philosophers use the products of their inquiries to replace the richness of experience as it is lived. According to Vaz, these last dangers can be avoided if we reflect on the proper function and nature of reason. Systems and classifications are tools that should not be taken as a faithful picture of reality. Reality is continuous and gradual, whereas classifications divide it artificially. Language is a system that relies on classification: to attribute a predicate to a subject is to place this subject under a simplified schema. Again, this procedure has been shown

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to be very useful, but reality will always remain beyond any simplification. In several places Vaz Ferreira remarks on the difference between real things, which ‘‘are as they are,’’ and any human description of them.16 A linguistic formulation, however detailed and concrete it may be, is only a schematic representation of the real thing that one is trying to describe. The more general a representation is, the more imperfect it becomes. This is why when we speak of anything in general terms it almost unavoidably ends in a kaleidoscopic description of the thing, which can lead to the illusion that the thing itself is changing and deceiving. This is a danger that comes from the very nature of language, which is composed of rigid molds that are essentially inadequate to express the flowing reality. Again, humanity can learn—in fact, they are learning—to use language better and be aware that any linguistic expression is just an approximation.17 Rational systems and linguistic classifications have to be seen as instruments that are very useful as a guide for approaching reality, but very dangerous if taken as a substitute for it. Reason, if left on its own, tends to be caught in this trap. This is why Vaz Ferreira places a good deal of importance on the nonrational aspects in the human connection to reality, and to the cooperation between all human faculties—the strictly rational, and the ‘‘living’’ ones. Along the same lines as the ‘‘philosophers of life’’ that he takes as inspiration, especially Bergson, Vaz postulates a faculty that he sometimes calls racionalidad—in contrast with narrow views of ‘‘intelligence’’—that includes: ‘‘reason in the strict sense—the reasoning reason, plus the logical instinct, and also the resistance to already made ideas, the resistance to coming ideas, the resistance to suggestions, the resistance to imitation, and a number of further aptitudes and resistances: a number of faculties: some of reception, some others, I insist, of resistance, which form that capacity of critical sense, at the same time rational, instinctive, and also emotional.’’18 Against strict and narrow forms of rationalism, Vaz Ferreira is convinced that there are different ways to approach reality. In particular, he emphasizes the role played by the nonrational capacities in the

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construction of a plastic comprehension of the world. Thinking has aspects that exceed the strictly rational, and they should be allowed in a more adequate account of human knowledge. Vaz uses the word psiqueo to refer to that moment of thought in which the human spirit is not split and is able to apply all its capacities—rational and emotional—to the understanding of the world.19 This notion of psiqueo shows Vaz’s affinity for the ideas of William James and Henri Bergson. On one hand, Vaz’s term psiqueo approaches James’s idea of a ‘‘stream of thought,’’ since both are opposed to a discontinuous conception of thought that arises from a wrong identification of thought with language. Mental reality is flowing and continuous with no separate parts; thus it is not adequately expressed by ‘‘logical thinking, schema, nor language, schema of a schema.’’20 Vaz contrasts ‘‘thinking by words’’ and ‘‘really thinking.’’ Nonlinguistic thought is ‘‘more shapeless, but more plastic, and living and fermental.’’ When you are thinking with words you obtain ‘‘clarity, accuracy, completion, application,’’ but you also lose a great deal—‘‘spontaneity, sincerity, life and interest, fertility.’’21 The notion of psiqueo, similar to the Bergsonian ‘‘intuition,’’ arises from a similar dissatisfaction with the ability of the rational faculty to apprehend the richness of reality—in particular, of life. Human thought is moved not only by reason, but also by an extrarational force that is sometimes labeled as an instinct, sometimes as an intuitive contact with reality, and sometimes as a good sense that complements pure reason. This instinct is a condensation of experience and emotion that comes into play when reasoning alone is not sufficient—that is, in every matter that concerns real life, where ‘‘degree questions’’ are involved. When logical formulae are useless, we can rely on the controlling and equilibrating force of instinct that prevents fallacious systematizations by promoting instead the tendency to take many ideas into account. This is how empirical instinct, which for Vaz is a hyperlogical instinct, comes to complete, not to fight against, the purely logical aspects of our thinking and our discussions.22 The extra rational merges with the rational to achieve a better

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apprehension of reality. Vaz Ferreira labels his own position as razonablismo, a ‘‘rational attitude well widely understood,’’ that is, the attitude that sensibly combines rational elements with the emotional and instinctive.23 The Contrast Between Science and Philosophy: Levels of Rationality Vaz’s razonablismo can be illustrated by examining his treatment of the relation between science and philosophy as different but complementary modalities of thought.24 In this section I concentrate on the distinction of science and philosophy as corresponding to different levels of rationality. In the next section, I attend to their cooperation as moments of the same living thought. Vaz’s understanding of the role of reason in the human spirit implies the existence of a plurality of modes of knowledge, and also their distribution along several levels that correspond to different degrees of rationality. Any knowledge combines some rational elements with some extrarational ones, but not every knowledge combines them in the same manner. There is a wide range, from a rigid rational control to free play of extrarational forces, along which the different sciences are distributed. These sciences begin with mathematics and end with human sciences, and then the different depths of philosophical thinking, ranging from the more systematic to the more ‘‘living.’’ Vaz does not privilege any type of knowledge or inquiry in this arrangement since each of them has its own advantages and disadvantages. For example, his criticism of the sciences does not involve any dislike of them, but is only a denunciation of the narrowness of positivism and scientism in general, for which science is the only valid approach to reality.25 This overestimation of the sciences comes from the perception of a real advantage of scientific knowledge: precision. Precision is the reward of the sciences. Other modes of knowledge do not allow reason to be as precise and effective. Reason can be counterbalanced by the action of the extrarational forces, thus losing precision but gaining other values instead. When philosophy, envious of scientific success, looks for the same precision as that in the sciences,

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it is making a mistake. Philosophy does not need to imitate sciences in this respect because it has other privileges: the advantage of philosophy over the sciences is that it deals—with less precision but at the deepest level—with the vital problems that really concern human beings. Vaz Ferreira illustrates the different levels of knowledge, ranging from the more rational to the less rational and correspondingly from precision to confusion, using the sea as a metaphor: ‘‘We can represent human knowledge as a sea, the surface of which is very easy to see and describe. Under this surface, sight becomes, naturally, less and less clear; until, at a deep region, one cannot see any more: one can just half-see—and, at a deeper region, one will completely stop seeing.’’26 The systematic and clear character of the sciences is contrasted with the naturally less-rigid and less-transparent character of philosophy. Vaz writes about ‘‘thinking by systems’’ and ‘‘thinking by ideas to be taken into account’’ as two opposing states of mind that correspond to the ways of working of scientists and philosophers, respectively.27 The systematizing state of mind is characterized by the tendency to take an idea and make from it a fixed rule to be applied in every circumstance and to solve any kind of problem. This is the method that corresponds to the sciences, particularly mathematics and mechanics: there is a quest for general rules that can be applied to each particular case, with no need to renew reasoning for every problem we want to solve. This procedure can be applied when the object of study is not very complex—when a complete knowledge is possible, when a systematization of this knowledge is also possible, and when the things studied are strictly repeatable.28 It is easy to see that there are some areas of reality that do not admit this kind of simplified treatment, and are thus less apt to be studied scientifically. The opposite state of mind is characterized by the tendency to be open to ideas until one has had the opportunity to judge a concrete situation without preconceived notions and thus allowing greater free play of intelligence. This way of approaching reality is—or should be—the method characteristic of philosophy. This is one of the senses

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of ‘‘thinking better’’ that Vaz prescribes: one knows how to use thinking when one does not need the artificial help of a prefabricated system but is able to examine each particular case on its own. To thinkers, systems give an appearance or feeling of security, but they misrepresent the situation since systems tend to treat in a rigid and fixed way something that is actually fluid and multifaceted. They thus provide yes/no answers to living problems that actually require different degrees. This is simply intelligent thinking. Many problems in life have to be approached with a variety of ideas at the same time, taking them all into account, weighing them, and acting with sense. ‘‘A degree question cannot be solved in a geometrical way.’’29 To try and apply an already given system is to simply not think. Compared with the sciences, philosophy has a less-mediated contact with reality since it is able to abandon systems and fixed schemas and explores the things directly. As reason rewards sciences with precision, so the extrarational forces reward philosophy with a close touch with reality. In some places Vaz uses light as a metaphor for reality, and in apparent paradox he opposes light to clarity: he speaks about the ‘‘bright confusion’’ that reigns at the deepest levels in which any system loses its sense because the human spirit is in direct contact with reality. In contrast, the domain of the sciences in which everything is clear-cut is a realm of fictitious constructions: they gain clarity, but they lose the light of reality. When our intelligence focuses on a region—whatever—of knowledge, and carries out a thorough analysis, something happens that is similar to what happens when, after having observed with the naked eye, we are applying instruments of increasing capacity to any part of the sky. Where we previously had just seen some points of light in a precise location and of easy description, now other new points are appearing in hypergeometric progression; at the end, everything is a sort of bright confusion:—the more the light, the more the confusion—; and when we arrive there, systems have lost their sense long before, since they, like hydras and dragons and other heavenly myths, were but fictitious imaginary constructions, passing across the more visible points.30

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All sciences, no matter how successful and susceptible to practical application, are but limited instruments that can just offer a guide to reality, not a description of it. They are not mirrors that can reflect the real structure of the world. In fact, reality is not structured but fluid: this is the ontological basis of Vaz’s antipositivist idea of science. The rigidity of the scientific approach cannot be the only way of dealing with a plastic reality, and certainly it is not the best way. A good way will be as plastic and fluid as the things studied. This is why, finally, the contrast between sciences and philosophy can be characterized in terms of the solid versus the fluid. The difference between science and philosophy is that the former is a rigid structure built on a firm basis: systems and formulae that are applied to every particular case, and terms with a fixed meaning that are used at a definite plane of abstraction without further analysis. In contrast, philosophy is more fluid since it approaches reality in a more direct manner; that is, less delimited by fixed schemata. On the other hand, philosophy lacks a firm basis since any idea can be taken in many different degrees of abstraction, corresponding to different levels of analysis. Whereas science is a safe area, philosophy sacrifices safety for plasticity. Vaz prefers to understand philosophical thought in terms of ‘‘mental planes’’ rather than in terms of ‘‘theses.’’ A thesis is a verbal formulation that simplifies the situation that is being considered, but a single thesis can be thought at different mental planes, which are complex states of mind that combine with each other and give a more faithful approach to the real things. As can be expected, this has consequences concerning the notion of truth. A given verbal formulation can change its truth value when it is considered on different mental planes—that is, at different degrees of abstraction, depending on where one decides to stop the analysis of basic assumptions. Without being a relativist—‘‘not everything is plastic,’’ Vaz claims, against the extreme pluralism of James—Vaz considers that truth and falsity of verbal formulations are always relative to a degree of abstraction. Consequently, any discipline must make explicit its level of abstraction before it can state the truth or falsity of any sentence. But,

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again, the varieties of knowledge behave in different ways. In the sciences, the region of clarity, it is very easy to know the level of any claim since it is explicitly established from the beginning. In philosophy, the region of knowledge where one can just half-see, it is difficult to distinguish the different levels of abstraction. The unstoppable tendency to analyze deeper and deeper keeps philosophy constantly moving from one level to another. This explains the usual disagreement among philosophers since both the meaning of words and the level of abstraction change, and with them, imperceptibly, the truth value of almost any thesis.31 Having illustrated the many differences between science and philosophy, let us examine how for Vaz they can collaborate in the enterprise of achieving a better understanding of reality. Within the ocean of human knowledge, there are no clear dividing points: the movement from the surface to the deep is gradual and imperceptible. It is within this context that the continuum between science and philosophy makes full sense. Science and Philosophy: The Flowing Life of Human Thought For an adequate understanding of the relation between science and philosophy it is necessary to recall one of the Jamesian ideas that Vaz Ferreira admires: the conception of human thought as a ‘‘stream’’ that flows continually. From this perspective it is easy to understand Vaz’s mistrust of any system, and also his cautious attitude toward writing and books, which petrify the naturally flowing act of thinking.32 Although the idea of solidity has been used to characterize the scientific mode of thought, taking this image too literally opens up a sharp division between science and philosophy. This division is unreal since it forgets the role played by extrarational forces whose action gives a ‘‘plastic’’ character to any human thought. Using another well-known metaphor, Vaz Ferreira compares science with an iceberg in the middle of the ocean. This rich metaphor illustrates the contrast between science and philosophy by comparing a more solid thinking with a more fluid one, and makes the point

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that there is no strict separation between science and philosophy (‘‘in all its sides you find water, and if you go deeply into it anywhere, you will find water’’); moreover, science and philosophy are moments of the same stream of human knowledge (‘‘if you analyze any portion of the iceberg, it turns out to be made of the same water’’).33 If the spectrum of human knowledge is a continuum in which each type of knowledge delves deeper into reality without a break, then the limits between science and philosophy are not precise. The difference between science and philosophy is not of essence but of degree. It is a matter of levels of analysis. For example, a scientist studies movement using the notion of force; she then analyzes this notion of force, but assumes the sense data without analysis; further, she can analyze the data previously assumed; thus, inevitably and almost without realizing, she is approaching philosophy, and then progresses through deeper and deeper levels.34 Vaz Ferreira claims that if you begin thinking you cannot keep from going deeper: ‘‘Science emits philosophy.’’35 There is no frontier between science and philosophy. You can stop thinking for practical reasons, deciding to simply use the scientific tools without analyzing them. But if you do not stop, then thinking will gradually lead to philosophical problems. The mathematician when trying to clarify the notion of the infinite, the physicist when trying to clarify the notion of matter, the biologist when trying to clarify the notion of life— all are philosophizing. Some scientists are biased against philosophy and so seek to make ‘‘pure’’ science, but they cannot avoid considering the philosophical problems that science raises. The ideal relation between science and philosophy is one of cooperation. ‘‘Real science and real philosophy, in all their depth, work in continuity, not opposed but linked.’’36 Between ‘‘pure science’’ and ‘‘pure philosophy’’ there are some intermediate levels of knowledge that serve as passages that make collaboration easier. Scientists pass through these levels when they analyze beyond pure science, trying to clarify the notions that they use such as infinity, matter, and life. Philosophers also pass through these levels when they turn to science, looking for new subjects for discussion, such as the nature of time or

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the problem of indeterminism, raised by the development of sciences. Vaz affirms both that philosophy emanates from the sciences, and that philosophy excites and fertilizes them.37 Finally, the articulation of science and philosophy is a natural consequence of the unity of human knowledge. The scientific iceberg is made of the same water as the philosophical ocean: ‘‘Science is solidified Metaphysics.’’38 The solidity of science is an artificial one, the result of a decision to stop the analysis at a certain point and using certain data as if they were absolute. But actually, any ‘‘fact’’ hides many hypotheses; thus the apparently rigid is actually as plastic as any human knowledge. Vaz argues against the false opposition between humanities and sciences, which sometimes leads to a neglect of one or the other in education. Against both sides of this false opposition, Vaz claims: ‘‘Every knowledge is human, from Philosophy or History, to Mathematics or Biology, and every knowledge, in spite of the details of its specialization, not only should not be isolated, but cannot be isolated, without deficiency, degeneration, and damage.’’39 Science and philosophy are both legitimate and each has a place in the life of human thought. The sciences are the land of precision and systematization, and have been shown to be very useful concerning aspects of reality that can be captured in rigid molds. But reality does not reduce to systematization, and, happily, knowledge does not reduce to pure science. Against positivism, Vaz makes a convinced defense of metaphysics as ‘‘the highest form of the activity of human thought,’’ and rejects any attempt to make it ‘‘scientific’’: the place of philosophy in general and of metaphysics in particular is the land of the lack of precision. This is exactly the reason why philosophy can help science: as an artist that draws a first sketch and then blurs it with shadows, minimizing the initial rigidity, so philosophy counteracts the effects of rigid systems by establishing relations, making transitions, allowing for confusions, and so on.40 Vaz contrasts the accuracy of schemata with the depth of analysis, but keeps a place for both in human knowledge.

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Vaz Ferreira as a Pragmatist Vaz’s occasional enmity toward ‘‘pragmatism’’ is actually a reaction against James’s voluntarism and relativism. Vaz is concerned that James’s criticism of rational certitude leads to the opposite extreme. James’s recognition of the plasticity of the universe can also be taken to an extreme, to the denial of any stable truth. Again, Vaz proposes a middle way, what he sometimes calls a ‘‘good Pragmatism,’’ and sometimes ‘‘good Skepticism.’’41 In contrast with rationalism that is only satisfied with the certainty of strict reason, and also with the ‘‘bad Pragmatism’’ that reduces certainty to the force of will, he suggests a gradation in the confidence in our beliefs and admitting one’s own ignorance: ‘‘To know what we know, and at which level of abstraction we know it; to believe when we must believe, in the degree we should believe; to doubt when we must doubt, and graduate our assent with the accuracy that is within our reach; as for our ignorance, to try neither to veil it nor ever forget it; and, in this state of mind, to act in the direction we think good, by certainties or by probabilities, as suitable, without forcing the intelligence, in order not to damage this already very imperfect and fragile instrument—and without forcing the belief.’’42 This is utterly consonant with the spirit of classical pragmatism, which according to Jaime Nubiola has three central features: anti-Cartesianism, fallibilism, and pluralism.43 First, Vaz rejects modern rationalism and its by-product, scientism. He is aware of the limits of reason and so refuses the apparent dichotomies that it imposes on the subject matter of everyday experience. Instead of rigid divisions between opposing categories, Vaz discovers degrees and shades that make reality—and our understanding of it—less rigid and artificial. Science does not oppose philosophy, truth and falsity belong to sentences to a certain extent, reason allies with the nonrational depths of the mind, and knowledge is actually a wide spectrum from ignorance to certitude that passes through doubt and belief.44 Second, if the advancement of knowledge is not a story of triumphant accumulation of certainties but rather a story of finding our

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way through doubts and degrees of certitude, through ignorance and error, by attempts, self-corrections, and back to the drawing board, then Vaz advises constructing knowledge by successive approximations: a first attempt and a number of subsequent corrections. This is, of course, the method of sciences: sciences are essentially incomplete, growing, and uncertain. Perfectibility and progress define science, but this is also a characteristic of human knowledge in general. Vaz defends a ‘‘sincere pragmatism’’ that consists of a constant effort toward clarifying initial thoughts, correcting tentative solutions, and rectifying misleading attempts.45 Third, pluralism is a label that fits Vaz’s conception of knowledge very well: plurality of faculties that make up thinking in the wide sense, plurality of points of view that complement each other, plurality of opinions that should be confronted in order to get a plastic comprehension of the plastic reality. Cooperation and dialogue with other people and with oneself, as well as fallibilism and pluralism, are essential elements in the construction of knowledge. Vaz’s rejection of simplistic categories; his insistence on the value of doubt, contradiction, and error; and his cooperative conception of knowledge all point to truth as something always searched for and sometimes partially achieved.46 This is a pragmatist’s view of knowledge.

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d e w e y an d o r t e g a o n t h e st a r ti n g po i n t Douglas Browning



B

ergson maintained that at the heart of every great philosophy there pulses a simple and unique intuition of the way things are, a single point which its author attempts, ultimately unsuccessfully, to articulate and communicate to others. In this point is something simple, infinitely simple, so extraordinarily simple that the philosopher has never succeeded in saying it. And that is why he went on talking all his life . . . what he has accomplished, by a complication which provoked more complication, by developments heaped upon developments, has been to convey with an increasing approximation the simplicity of his original intuition. All the complexity of his doctrine, which would go on ad infinitum, is therefore only the incommensurability between his simple intuition and the means at his disposal for expressing it.1

I think there is something to this, though the purported incommensurability between intuition and articulation seems a bit strong. { 13 5 }

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What I would like to say is this. If the philosopher has a coherent philosophical vision and the ability to write clearly and appositely, he will, I think, be able to point us toward a certain distinctive slant, a bedrock starting point, which once grasped can serve as a key for unlocking our understanding of that vision. This distinctive starting point may or may not be identical to the simple intuition of which Bergson speaks, but if we read, intensively and with appropriate charity, what the philosopher has provided for us, we should be able to find it and to find it illuminating throughout the body of his work. This is the approach that I wish to take to John Dewey and to Jose´ Ortega y Gasset. What I hope to show is that, in spite of the difference in the vocabulary which each invokes to point to the starting point of his philosophical investigations, and in spite of the disparity in the detritus of their different philosophical backgrounds with which each is encumbered, their starting points are much the same. I want to show this for a reason. It seems to me that Bergson is right about two things at least: first, that what is at the root of a philosophical vision is something which, once we recognize it, we find to be surprisingly simple and, second, that so simple an item, perhaps because it lies at the root and must be depended upon and ‘‘viewed from’’ to understand that vision, is peculiarly resistant to being unearthed and unambiguously communicated to a philosophical audience. This is true of the starting point that I take Dewey and Ortega to share. And though I think that this starting point is adequately identified by each of these philosophers,2 I have been dismayed to find that many readers of their works have been deflected or diverted from its recognition and have consequently been misled in their understanding of what Dewey and Ortega go on to say in their further discussions.3 My reason, then, for rubbing Dewey and Ortega against each other is that one’s ability to surmount the apparent difficulty in grasping what is so simple and so bedrock in the one may be aided by bringing the other to bear. For the sake of simplicity I will center my discussion on Dewey and bring Ortega in at those points where I think his way of putting things might be helpful.

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I Dewey’s term for the starting point is ‘‘experience.’’ In the second edition of Experience and Nature (EN hereafter) that includes his most extensive discussion of it and to which I shall largely refer, he introduces that term by referring to ‘‘the importance of ‘experience’ as a starting point and terminal point, as setting problems and as testing proposed solutions.’’4 On the very next page, however, he makes the following remark: ‘‘This consideration of method may suitably begin with the contrast between gross, macroscopic, crude subjectmatters in primary experience and the refined, derived objects of reflection.’’5 Unfortunately, this introduction of the term ‘‘primary experience’’ has led many of his readers to assume that it is not experience per se but only one sort of experience that can serve as the starting point. There is an apparent ambiguity here. But we should note that the distinction drawn in this passage is not between two sorts of experience, the primary and the derived, but between two sorts of subject matter or, as he subsequently says, between two types of objects, and we should further note that the context for making the distinction (always a consideration of the greatest moment in reading Dewey) is a discussion of method, specifically, empirical method. Noting these facts allows us to see that the apparent ambiguity between treating the starting point merely as experience, on the one hand, and as primary experience, on the other, derives from his consideration of the role of experience in the carrying forward of inquiry, including all varieties of philosophical investigation. Experience at the starting point of an inquiry, in its initiating role of inquiry, is thus primary relative to that inquiry. The term ‘‘primary experience’’ does not, therefore, indicate a distinct stratum or category of experience but a role which experience occupies in our consideration of method. This is not to deny, of course, that in order to serve that role experience must have certain unique features, but it is just a piece of experience for all of that. Moreover, the functional distinction between primary experience and experience which accrues as reflective inquiry proceeds is functional in another sense, for the sort of experience

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which is found at the starting point of inquiry is of the same general sort found at its termination, given that terminal experience may well be the primary experience relative to some future reflective transformation. Now, these functional considerations would seem to indicate that, though that which is found at the starting point is simply experience (though, again, perhaps with certain unique features which fits it for that role), Dewey’s use of the term ‘‘primary experience’’ refers to such experience qua being in that role. In light of these considerations, I would like to introduce the notion of the bedrock of a philosophical vision or system. In Dewey’s philosophy the bedrock fact, the fact that we cannot go beneath or beyond, the root of all of his philosophy, so to speak, is simply experience. From an external point of view we may of course refer to such an item as the basic assumption of one’s entire philosophy, but from within that philosophy it is not something which the philosopher merely assumes to be true; it is not something to be captured by a proposition which the philosopher could treat as either provisional or certainly true. For Dewey, for example, anything that can be said about that bedrock is open to reconsideration, but the bedrock itself is presupposed by any such reconsideration. It is, as Ortega found himself forced to say in What Is Philosophy, ‘‘the basic datum of the Universe’’ and therefore ‘‘philosophy’s point of departure.’’6 It follows, then, that all philosophical investigations, whether phenomenological, speculative, theoretical, epistemological, aesthetic, ethical, metaphysical, or whatever, rests upon and depends upon that bedrock. You can’t squeeze your philosophical concern for reality, for example, out of anything else, as though there is another sort of fruit, another bedrock that can be introduced in the squeezing. It is for this reason that Dewey says in the first edition of EN that ‘‘we need the notion of experience to remind us that ‘reality’ includes whatever is denotatively found.’’7 And Ortega remarks in Some Lessons in Metaphysics: In fact, each of you now feels yourself here, listening to a lecture on metaphysics. Now this actual and indubitable fact belongs to

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a thing, or a reality, which is called your life. What is this—your life, our lives, the life of each one of us? It would appear to be something without importance, for science has never busied itself with this. Nevertheless, that reality, so neglected scientifically, proves to have the formidable condition that it contains for each one of us, all the rest of the realities, including the reality called science and the one called religion, in that science and religion are only two of the innumerable things that man creates in his own lifetime.8

So what is bedrock for Ortega is, as he says in Man and People, the ‘‘radical reality,’’ which he says is ‘‘only the life of each person, is only my life.’’ He goes on to say why he calls it ‘‘radical reality.’’ This inexorable genuineness of our life, the life, I repeat, of each one of us, this genuineness that is evident, indubitable, unquestionable to itself, is my first reason for calling our life ‘‘radical reality.’’ But there is a second reason. Calling it ‘‘radical reality’’ does not mean that it is the only reality, nor even the highest, worthiest or most sublime, nor yet the supreme reality, but simply that it is the root of all other realities, in the sense that they—any of them—in order to be reality to us must in some way make themselves present, or at least announce themselves, within the shaken confines of our own life. Hence this radical reality—my life—is so little ‘‘egoistic,’’ so far from ‘‘solipsistic,’’ that in essence it is the open area, the waiting stage, on which any other reality may manifest itself and celebrate its Pentecost.9

Now, I have two points to make about what is bedrock for Dewey and Ortega. First, I want to say that the distinction which I have drawn between what is bedrock and what is to be found at the starting point for each of these philosophers is merely functional; what is referred to as the starting point is nothing more than what can also be referred to as bedrock, though it is referred to under a description which specifies its initiating and grounding role in inquiry and thus serves to pick out a specific presence of that which is bedrock and to allow, therefore, our characterization of it as having certain roleproviding features.10 There is a point to using the term ‘‘starting

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point’’ in certain contexts when discussing these philosophers, namely, when it is important to bring out that all of their own philosophizing—and, indeed, on their view all philosophizing whatsoever—is initiated from and on this basis. And there is a point to using the term ‘‘bedrock,’’ namely, when it is important to emphasize that there is nothing more basic or more radical in their philosophical visions or systems than this, nothing in their metaphysics, their political philosophy, their epistemology, their methodology, and so on. The second point I want to make is this. What is bedrock and what is at the starting point for Ortega and Dewey is the same. What Dewey is designating as ‘‘experience’’ and ‘‘primary experience’’ is no different from what Ortega is designating as ‘‘my life’’ and ‘‘philosophy’s point of departure.’’ Of course, where Dewey takes us from this bedrock may turn out to be different from where Ortega takes us; certainly, what they focus upon and the language they use to present their conclusions will be different. Yet it is really quite remarkable how far they follow the same path and draw similar consequences. But these similarities and divergences are not the topic of my presentation. I am interested only in whether they designate the same bedrock item and I will restrain myself from following out their further characterizations and explanations except in those cases where it seems to me that they provide evidence of the sameness of the starting point.

II As an indication of how I shall limit my further discussion, let me distinguish three phases of discussion about the starting point which each of our philosophers might pursue. (1) There is, to begin with, the designation of a certain subject matter—that is, the identification of what it is that is being referred to under the names ‘‘experience’’ and ‘‘my life.’’ This phase will be my main concern and I will return to it in a moment.

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(2) Beyond this, there is the provision of a general characterization of that designated subject matter, a task which presupposes the designation and involves both (a) a reflective moving away from and looking back upon that subject matter and (b) the bringing of a putative characterization against it. Such characterization is, for Dewey, always provisional, though for Ortega it seems that usually, following his phenomenological bent, the first and most general characterizations are essential and unquestionable. For example, the catalogue of generic traits of experience, such as immediacy, interaction, and temporal quality, which are proposed by Dewey in EN—and which, by virtue of his general ontological hypothesis,11 he also proposes as the generic traits of existence—is of this general characterizing sort. For Ortega the ‘‘decisive attributes’’ of my life, as he calls them in Some Lessons in Metaphysics,12 are such general characteristics as its immediate presence, my finding myself in the world and occupied with the things and beings of the world, and the temporality of having continually to decide what we are going to be and do. When, however, we view our two philosophers’ claims about what is found at the starting point, we can arrange their characterizations between two poles. At the one pole, perhaps never securely occupied by any of their claims, lie those characterizations which are thought to be so intimately tied to what is at the starting point as to be definitive and beyond argument, though perhaps provisional for all that. Towards the other and more distant pole are distributed those generalizations and proposals which are thought to require support. Dewey’s appeal, for example, to the contextual or environmental dimension of experience would lie fairly close to the first pole, whereas his claim of the generic traits of the precarious and the stable would seem to move us a bit closer to the second. Similarly, Ortega’s specification of the circumstantiality of my life would seem to rest squarely at the first pole, while his claim of the generic character of perplexity would perhaps find its place towards the second. Now, given this distinction of what we may call, respectively, the near and the far poles of characterization, it is clear that, in our attempt to get

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a handle on what Dewey and Ortega are referring to as experience and my life, appeal to characterizations will be more reliable and less suspiciously question-begging the closer those characterizations lie towards the near pole. I will in a moment make such an appeal to two such items. (3) A third phase of an investigation of the subject matter is that of providing an explanation of it. This involves providing the sort of framework or theory within which questions of its provenance and progeny may be answered. Any such theory is by its nature hypothetical. Now, since explanation presupposes both the designation of the subject matter which it is about and a familiarity with that subject matter which may be provided, at least partially, by its characterization, it is question-begging to appeal to such a theory in attempting to designate or identify for another what the subject matter of that theory is or even to characterize it in a general way. This is clear because different theories may be offered for the same subject matter. In the case of attempting to identify the starting point for Dewey, therefore, it is counterproductive and spoiling to employ his theory that the starting point is brought about by a certain biologicalenvironmental disequilibrium, just as it was presumptive and distracting of Peirce in characterizing doubt in The Fixation of Belief to impose his theory that the starting point is initiated by the conflict of two beliefs in a situation where action is frustrated. Dewey is easily misread in this regard, for he often moves about among issues of designation, characterization, and explanation without clear warning to the reader. The reader is much less likely to be deflected from designation by theory in respect to Ortega, largely because he does not engage in much theorizing in discussing what he has in mind by using the phrase ‘‘my life,’’ being content with a more or less phenomenological description, but for this reason we must be on guard always against treating his characterizations as serving the function of designation. But now let me return to the task of identifying the starting point for Dewey without assuming his characterization of it or any of his theories about it. The problem is that we can’t do much but consider

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the range of terms he uses to refer to it. Actually, he does this in three ways. First, he uses various adjectives and modifying phrases to bring home its simple and immediate familiarity. Thus, he speaks in the second edition of EN of ‘‘crude, primary, experience,’’ ‘‘ordinary experience,’’ ‘‘ordinary life-experience,’’ ‘‘crude, everyday experience,’’ ‘‘first-hand experience,’’ ‘‘concrete experience,’’ ‘‘common experience,’’ ‘‘daily experience,’’ ‘‘experience in unsophisticated forms,’’ and in the first edition he speaks of ‘‘coarse and vital experience.’’13 A second device that he uses is to enumerate the sorts of things found in experience. He refers in the second edition of EN to ‘‘the things of raw experience’’ and that ‘‘stars, rocks, trees, and creeping things are the same material of experience’’ for both ‘‘the scientific man and the man in the street’’; he asks us to ‘‘return to things of crude or macroscopic experience—the sun, earth, plants and animals of common, every-day life’’; he celebrates the richness of primary experience by drawing our attention to ‘‘esthetic and moral traits’’ that are simply found there and, most poignantly, to the simple presence of ‘‘the phenomena of magic, myth, politics, painting, and penitentiaries.’’ In the first edition he had spoken of ‘‘the gross and compulsory things of our doings, enjoyments and sufferings.’’14 Of course, in enumerating such things, he is stepping to the border between designation and characterization, but his point in doing this is to direct our attention to what he has in mind by primary experience. The third way he directs our attention to his starting point, and in many respects the most revealing, is by employing alternative phrases that he takes to point to the same subject matter. Here his affinity with Ortega is most apparent, for his favored terms of reference are those having to do with life. Thus, in the second edition of EN he simply refers at one point to ‘‘daily life’’ and in the first edition he points to ‘‘the primary facts of life’’ and ‘‘the homely facts of daily existence.’’15 Dewey rewrote the first chapter of EN for the second edition because he felt that the earlier chapter failed to make clear to his readers what he took his starting point to be. But I suggest that, once we have the benefit of Ortega’s own language, the clearest clues

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to the starting point can be found in a few lines in the earlier version. The lines I have in mind are these: Too often, indeed, the professed empiricist only substitutes a dialectical development of some notion about experience for an analysis of experience as it is humanly lived.16 The excuse for saying obvious things is that much that now passes for empiricism is but a dialectical elaboration of data taken from physiology, so that it is necessary for any one, who seriously sets out to philosophize empirically, to recall to attention that he is talking about the sort of thing that the unsophisticated man calls experience, the life he has led and undergone in the world of persons and things. Otherwise we get a stenciled stereotype in two dimensions and in black and white instead of the solid and many colored play of activities and sufferings which is the philosopher’s real datum.17

The phrase ‘‘the life he has led and undergone in the world of persons and things’’ deserves special notice. In different respects it is both misleading and right on target. It is misleading insofar as it suggests that the real datum is the entire past life which I have led, for such a life, in its full extent, is neither present to me, as Ortega puts it, or immediately had, as Dewey puts it. The starting point can only be my experience, my life, as I am having it, living through it, finding it present to me now. But the phrase is right on target in its reference to my life and to the fact that in my life, in my primary experience, I am there with others, other things and other persons. Both Dewey and Ortega refer to this as ‘‘being in the world.’’ (And that is another infelicity, for though I am always in a situation, in a context or circumstance, it is gratuitous to call that surrounding a ‘‘world.’’ At their best neither Dewey nor Ortega insist on this.) III So far, I hope, so good. We have moved very close to seeing that the subject matter that Dewey takes as the starting point is the same as that which Ortega takes it to be. I will now attempt to support this

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conclusion by considering two characterizations of the starting point that are at or very close to the near pole and which are therefore taken by them to be definitive. This is, as I indicated earlier, a bit risky since no characterization can take the place of designation. But my object is and has been to make the case that the starting points for Dewey and Ortega are the same and that both elicit the same sorts of characterizations at the very start would seem to shore up that case. The first of these characterizations is that of circumstantiality or, as Dewey might put it, environing context. The following often-quoted passage from Ortega’s first book, Meditations on Quixote, published in 1914, is telling: ‘‘My natural exit toward the universe is through the mountain passes of the Guadarrama or the plain of Ontı´gola. This sector of circumstantial reality forms the other half of my person; only through it can I integrate myself and be fully myself. . . . I am myself plus my circumstance, and if I do not save it, I cannot save myself.’’18 Two things need to be emphasized about what Ortega tells us. First, my starting point does not consist of myself in isolation from my circumstance. I begin, in my life that is present to me, within a context that is there in my experience and my life. To say this is therefore to make quite clear that my experience of my starting point is from within; strictly speaking, I do not view the starting point from without, from some external vantage point that allows the whole to be displayed as a panorama. And this means, among other things, that any view I might take from within the starting point is selective and limited. Ortega’s phrase ‘‘my life’’ captures this point more precisely than the term ‘‘experience,’’ for whereas the traditional use of the term ‘‘experience’’ as found, for example, in Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume is intended to indicate something which can be set out before my reflective gaze, I can only think of myself as standing within my life. Second, this context includes others, even sometimes other human beings. At the starting point there is no problem of other minds or the existence of an external world; these things are there or, rather, they are there if they are found there. This is perhaps the toughest

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thing to catch on to in regard to Ortega and Dewey. Somehow, the tradition in philosophy has come to think of experience as subjective, as a sort of stuff or effluvia which is inside of me or somehow only of me. And somehow it seems quite obvious to the traditional philosopher that my life, being mine, is somehow private, impenetrable by the lives of others. But experience as Dewey is taking it is already experience with others. Whatever flights of reflective or speculative fancy you and I may engage in at this time in this room, we start by being together in this room, sitting, knocking about, thinking, and eventually leaving. Whether you like it or not, that is absolute bedrock. And, as Ortega is fond of saying, your being here, sitting, looking, scratching, and blinking is exactly and precisely and perhaps insignificantly your life. The second initial characterization of the starting point for Dewey and Ortega is that of the presence of two sorts of awareness of things that are found, inexorably, within experience and my life. Again, it is Ortega who makes the point most compellingly in Some Lessons in Metaphysics: Therefore—and for whatever we say in this course, this is decisive—there are two ways of becoming aware of something, of having something exist for me: one in which I become aware of the thing as separate and distinct, in which (let us put it this way) I take it before me as man to man, make it a precise and limited end and purpose of my becoming aware; and the other way in which the thing exists for me without my reflecting on it. Earlier, when I was carefully seeking precise words, I was not conscious of myself any more than of the bench or the armchair on which I sit; yet both I and the bench existed for me, were in some manner there in front of me. The proof of this is that if anyone had moved the bench, I would have noticed that something in my situation had changed, that something was not the same as it had been a minute before. This shows that in some way I was aware of the bench and its position, that in some manner I was relying on the bench. Similarly, when we go down the stairs we have no precise consciousness of each step, but we rely on all of them.

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Let us put this discovery which we have just made into two new technical terms—reparar, which is the same as what was traditionally called ‘‘being conscious of something,’’ and the simple contar con (count on, rely on, depend on), which expresses the effective presence, that existing for myself, which all the ingredients of my situation always possess.19

This distinction between reparar and contar con cuts across the distinction of me and my circumstance, for the me as well as various items in my circumstance may be present in my life only in the manner of contar con. Though Dewey relies upon this distinction, he tends to present it in two different contexts, namely, in discussing the focal awareness of selective emphasis and in discussing the distinction between focus and context. But that he assumes the distinction can hardly be doubted, as is clear from this passage in the Introduction to his Essays in Experimental Logic, which was published in 1916. Another trait of every res is that it has focus and context: brilliancy and obscurity, conspicuousness or apparency, and concealment or reserve, with a constant movement of redistribution. Movement about this axis persists, but what is in focus constantly changes. ‘‘Consciousness,’’ in other words, is only a very small and shifting portion of experience. The scope and content of the focused apparency have immediate dynamic connections with portions of experience not at the time obvious. The word which I have just written is momentarily focal; around it there shade off into vagueness my typewriter, the desk, the room, the building, the campus, the town, and so on. In the experience, and in it in such a way as to qualify even what is shiningly apparent, are all the physical features of the environment extending out into space no one can say how far, and all the habits and interests extending backward and forward in time, of the organism which uses the typewriter and which notes the written form of the word only as temporary focus in a vast and changing scene.20

Now it is my contention that both Ortega and Dewey conceive of their starting points as containing both the dimensions of circumstance or environing context, on the one hand, and the dimensions of nonfocal awareness or contar con, on the other. That Dewey did

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not extricate these different dimensions so clearly from each other, as Ortega did, merely supports my claim that rubbing Ortega up against Dewey can help us to understand what the latter is taking to be the starting point. IV Let me now close my discussion by attempting to identify various ways in which readers of Dewey have been diverted from recognition of his starting point. (I am, as I announced earlier, concentrating on Dewey, but these remarks apply as well, and sometimes more clearly, to Ortega.) In general, these false or distracting moves tend to fall into the three sorts of reflectively objectifying, purifying, and theoretically regimenting and reinterpreting the subject matter which Dewey refers to under the titles ‘‘experience,’’ ‘‘primary experience,’’ and ‘‘the starting point.’’ All of them derive from bringing to bear upon this subject matter some presupposition of how experience must be or some supposition of what Dewey must be talking about if we are to make sense of what he says. None of them take Dewey at his word. (1) There is, most commonly perhaps, the deflection of taking the only genuine starting point of philosophy and therefore of Dewey’s philosophy to be what is revealed by a distancing reflection upon and from outside our everyday experience. This is the Cartesian or phenomenological device of objectification, of beginning our philosophizing only after the epocheˆ has been performed. But of course such a move can take place only within experience as Dewey understands it and therefore only upon experience that is past and no longer immediately had. Within experience as it is lived, reflection can take place only as a manner of selective emphasis within a broader domain of experience, my life, and, however consuming such emphasis may appear to be, it serves only to bring into reflective focus, into awareness in the way of reparar, a limited portion of a larger and ongoing context of experience. The most obvious consequence of reflective objectification in the wholesale Cartesian fashion is that such a ‘‘bracketing out’’ of my primary and first-hand experience deprives it

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of its life, its being lived, and, especially, its being present and immediate to me in the manner of contar con. A less obvious consequence, perhaps, is that such objectification transforms the subject matter into a field of objective data within which the agent and, indeed, the reflecting subject does not and cannot appear. What results is that two dimensional, black and white ‘‘stenciled stereotype’’ of experience that Dewey warns us against. Of course, it is obvious to Dewey that even Descartes does not in fact start his philosophizing at that point; he starts in a situation which involves sitting in a chair, putting aside his cigar and coffee, telling his friends not to bother him for an hour or so, banking the fire, and so on. (2) Another manner of being diverted from the starting point for Dewey is that of mistaking him to be attempting a purification of our raw, everyday experience, to be attempting to get at some sort of ‘‘pure’’ or ‘‘primitive’’ experience which can be taken to underlie or be presupposed by our theory-laden or bias-infected perceptual judgments. But for Dewey we begin, as Peirce once pointed out, exactly where we are with the paraphernalia of rocks, books, automobiles, prejudices, and people already present. It may well be said of Bergson and of James that they were concerned, at least sometimes, to get at something earlier, more primitive, purer than ordinary experience, but this is not Dewey. The genetic story James tells of the infant’s experience of a great, blooming, buzzing confusion can be distracting in this way. Perhaps there was at some point in one’s development such an inchoate mess, but the point is that we, you and I, simply don’t begin in such a situation. However we got to where we are, we now have in our experience the everyday things in the relationships and shapes that we experience them to stand in. Let me dwell on James a moment. It might be thought that an illuminating path towards understanding what Dewey has in mind as the starting point would be to begin with James’s lengthy discussion of ‘‘the stream of thought’’ in The Principles of Psychology. And this is an approach not without merit. But it is dangerously misleading in two ways. I have already mentioned the first of these, namely, that invocation by James of an underlying stratum or foundation of our everyday

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experience that can only be seen as an attempt at a ‘‘purer’’ form of experience. But this ‘‘purification’’ move is at least partially motivated by a second and more subtle move, which is, though perhaps thoroughly Jamesian, quite un-Deweyan. The move is that of the ‘‘dethingification’’ of firsthand experience. In such experience as we have in our day-to-day lives we typically find, according to Dewey, that we move among and depend upon things which, as one might say, simply stand there, holding their own against us and our efforts. To put this matter bluntly, we experience such things as eggs, sidewalks, cardboard boxes, and waiters as persisting, as coming into our present and continuing through it. There is no issue here regarding whether such things really do persist or what account one can give of persistence or how one might explain why certain things appear to us as persisting. All that matters in experience as bedrock is that such things do make their appearance. In our experience we have such things in their being persistent contar con. Ortega’s celebration in Meditations on Quixote of this autonomy of the ‘‘thing’’ in one’s life is eloquent. It often happens in the pictures of Rembrandt that a humble white or gray cloth, a coarse household utensil is found wrapped in a luminous and radiant atmosphere, with which other painters surround only the heads of saints. It is as if he said to us in gentle admonition: ‘‘Blessed be things! Love them, love them!’’ Each thing is a fairy whose inner treasures are concealed beneath poor commonplace garments, a virgin who has to be loved to become fruitful.21 To ignore the fact that each thing has a character of its own and not what we wish to demand of it, is in my opinion the real capital sin, which I call a sin of the heart because it derives its nature from lack of love.22

Now, what we definitely do not find in our experience at the starting point is a succession of thing-stages that we somehow, perhaps by some subcutaneous process or algorithm, come to believe to constitute or add up to a genuine thing. One is free, of course, to propose such a theory of how we come to have the experience of things that

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we do, but no such theory is found either to accompany our experiences of things or to be presupposed by those experiences or our having of them. James says, however, that no thing stands there, persists, through the changing experience that constitutes my present; he maintains that, though I do indeed believe that such things appear, persist, and reappear, it is only the ‘‘object’’ of our sensation that can be ‘‘got twice.’’23 ‘‘No state,’’ he says, ‘‘once gone can recur and be identical with what it was before.’’24 We need not doubt this. But the point is that, to come to that conclusion, we must take the ‘‘psychologist’s point of view,’’ as James calls it, and view the passing show as a panorama within which its succeeding ‘‘states’’ can be compared. In taking this approach James is not merely moving towards the identification of a purer, inchoate stream of consciousness than we seem to find in everyday experience, but he is assuming as well an objectifying and distancing vantage point. My life as I live it among things that stand over against me and appear as being there in their own persisting right is thereby placed to the side. This is not to say that James did not recognize the danger. He did.25 But he did not overcome it in his discussion of the stream of thought. (3) This attempt at purifying Dewey’s notion of experience to divest it of its alien influences and built-in biases has its antinomy in the view that such influences and biases are precisely what constitutes the starting point. I would call this the ‘‘historicocultural boondoggle.’’ The idea is that Dewey, who is clearly alert to such a context, must mean that we begin in a historical and cultural setting which itself provides the starting point. But this is, first of all, a theory, perhaps even a good theory, but one by appeal to which we attempt to explain why we experience things as we do. We do not start, according to Dewey, by identifying our position in a cultural matrix, as though somehow that matrix is bedrock; rather, we start where we are, in the midst of our lives, and, when we find in our lives that it is expedient to consider why we have the experience of certain things as we do or have the beliefs that we do, we may build a picture of cultural, historical, familial, and other contextual influences. Of course, it is conceivable that as a result of our acceptance of any such theory we may

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come to experience things as having characteristics that we, without much reflection, see to be the result of ‘‘cultural funding.’’ Well, if we do, we do. And if we do experience things so, then that is where we begin. But to experience things that way and to start from that point is not to start from an assumed cultural or social position; it is to start from experience that, for whatever reason, is found to contain that assumption. Ortega makes the point. Radical reality is radical because it is only within it that such assumptions, theories, biases, or whatever arise. (4) A variation on this theoretical reinterpretation of the starting point, which if not for its puzzling prevalence would hardly be worth mentioning, is the proposal that we begin, not with experience, but with language. I would suggest that this proposal makes no sense. But the point I want to make is that Dewey cannot be saddled with any such view, for he would maintain that language, in any understanding of it, arises only within experience. ‘‘Experience’’ is just the appropriate word here, for it is encompassing and inclusive of language, culture, theory, biology, physiology, art, science, philosophy, and so on. Oddly enough, certain philosophers have actually maintained that, in using the term ‘‘experience,’’ Dewey could only responsibly have meant to indicate one’s language or (to broaden the notion of language to a point of vacuity) culture. Dewey himself in later years, perplexed and frustrated by the continuing misunderstanding of his use of the term ‘‘experience,’’ asserted that he would, if he were to write EN again, retitle it Culture and Nature and make the appropriate substitution of ‘‘culture’’ for ‘‘experience’’ throughout. Dewey’s frustration is understandable, but one can only imagine what amazing misunderstandings would have accrued had he used the term ‘‘culture’’ instead of ‘‘experience.’’ We can thank whatever gods there be that Dewey’s old age saved him from that infelicity. (5) The above ways of being distracted from the recognition of the Deweyan starting point exhibit a certain ingrained bias about what is at issue, as though Dewey did not quite understand what he was about. And they are easily identified and dismissed. A more subtle distraction derives from an explicit opposition to the naivete´ of both

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the purification approach and the substitution of a theory for the starting point. The proposal is that of taking experience to be something that is theory-laden from the bottom up. This is a distraction because it wants to construe experience, not as what we simply have or live through willy-nilly, but as something that from the start we must already understand to be theoretically constituted. The view is often put like this: we can neither prize theory off of our experience so as to leave us with a pure experiential given nor prize experience off of theory so as to leave us with pure theory (though it must be said that the latter point is seldom stressed). But, unfortunately, the view that experience is theory-laden is itself a theory. It is a theory about a certain subject matter and it is tested by its return to that subject matter. The insistent problem revealed here is that which is common to any attempt to begin with a theoretical picture; it is the mistake of trying to transform the starting point into a picture of the starting point. (6) A still more subtle distraction is to maintain that, even though it is a mistake to identify the starting point with the theoretical picture of it as theory-laden, it nonetheless remains true that the starting point contains theories, judgments, beliefs, and other such elements which, in the context of the experience as a whole, serve to affect its overall texture or quality. But the point to remember is that one’s experience at the starting point contains only that which is experienced as being there. If such items are not experienced as being there, either in the manner of reparar or contar con, then they simply are not there. This is not to say, of course, that for a theory, say, to be there in experience it must be experienced as a theory (that is, as something which falls under the title ‘‘theory’’). There is nothing necessarily spoiling in a describer’s labeling some item of experience as an X which from within that experience is perceived as being a Y; there may well be a point to that use of language in the description offered. What is spoiling is to insist that something X must be there when there is no Y in the experience that can be identified by a describer who stands outside of that experience as an X.

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It is instructive to bring Peirce into the discussion at this point, for though he anticipated Dewey’s starting point in many respects, there always remains in his presentation of it a feature which tended, I am inclined to think, to distract, not only later readers of Peirce, but Peirce himself from the bedrock at which he appears to be pointing. Here is one of his most famous comments on the starting point. ‘‘Philosophers of very diverse stripes propose that philosophy shall take its start from one or another state of mind in which no man, least of all the beginner in philosophy, actually is . . . But in truth, there is but one state of mind from which you can ‘‘set out,’’ namely, the very state of mind in which you actually find yourself at the time you do ‘‘set out’’—a state in which you are laden with an immense mass of cognition already formed, of which you cannot divest yourself if you would.’’26 The distracting feature here is Peirce’s inclusion in the starting point of ‘‘an immense mass of cognition already formed.’’ On one interpretation the remark is benign; it merely serves to point out that the beliefs, judgments, assumptions, or whatever of such cognitive stripe which we carry into our experience of doubt at the starting point of inquiry are incorrigibly there, a part of the experience itself. On another interpretation, however, the remark is theoretically spoiling in the by now all-too-familiar manner. However much our past cognitions may condition or influence our states of doubt, our starting points of inquiry, they are a part of our experience at that point only if they are experienced as being there, whatever might be the title or description they so appear under. What tends to deflect us from a proper appreciation of the starting point is the notion that they are always to be found there, as though we haven’t quite got the hang of the starting point unless we accept that assumption. (7) Finally, let me bring up a distraction that, though hardly the final sort that could be mentioned, has been popular in published criticisms of EN. One says this: ‘‘But Dewey, we can’t begin with experience, for it may be misleading, illusory, distorting of what is really in the world. There is only one place we can begin with confidence and honesty, and that is in the world itself.’’ Now it is hard to make

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good sense of this objection. But it does seem to rest upon some notion that experience, even as Dewey uses the term, can only be the effect in us of, or the response by us to, the world of real things out there. And I suppose that the real world out there is taken to be something apart from or distinct from the things which are there in experience. Often the Cartesian bifurcation of mind and matter, or some such, and its consequent hypostatization of mind as a receptacle are invoked to make this view seem respectable. It seems to me that this is not a very good theory and Dewey would agree, but, whether it is or not, it doesn’t speak to the issue. The issue is: What is the proper starting point for philosophical investigation? And the point is that, wherever one thinks we should start, we can’t start with the world. We can’t start with the world and we can’t test our theories by testing them against the world. Whatever we take to indicate or to provide evidence of a ‘‘real’’ world apart from experience must be found, can only be found, in experience. It must be found in the glass of Barrilito, the aroma of a good cigar, conversation among friends, hotel hallways, cats, thunderstorms, oak trees, and all of the brazen and all of the unpretentious things that we encounter and live among in our day-to-day lives.

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was risieri frondizi a hispanic pragmatist? Gregory Fernando Pappas



R

isieri Frondizi (1910–1983)1 was arguably the Latin American philosopher with the strongest personal ties to philosophy in North America. Although Frondizi studied with Francisco Romero in Argentina, his relation with North American philosophers was also key to his philosophical development. He won a scholarship to do advanced studies at Columbia University in New York, making him the first Argentine to study philosophy in the United States. Although his scholarship was for Columbia, he wanted to study at Harvard and this wish was granted. He entered Harvard and studied with pragmatist philosophers, such as C. I. Lewis, R. B. Perry, and especially A. N. Whitehead. Throughout his life Frondizi remained in constant dialogue with philosophers from all the Americas. He taught in Michigan, Venezuela, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, Texas, Illinois, and Argentina. Frondizi was concerned with the mutual ignorance between the two Americas in the field of philosophy.2 { 15 6 }

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Frondizi never wrote about the extent to which his philosophy was influenced by pragmatism or whether he could be considered a pragmatist. Nevertheless, was his philosophy consonant enough with the key or core philosophical insights of pragmatism to consider him an ally or part of the pragmatist family? Would it make sense to reinterpret the history of pragmatism in such a way that his philosophy is one more room that connects with the same pragmatist ‘‘corridor’’?3 Can his philosophy be considered a different branch of the same pragmatist tree? We cannot answer these questions without assuming an answer to another, more difficult question: What is pragmatism? I will take a stand on this question but must start with some qualifications. The recent scholarship about pragmatism is now in agreement about certain things. First, no one desires to come up with an account of pragmatism that does not do justice to the important differences among pragmatists. Second, nothing could be more antipragmatist than claiming that pragmatism is defined by an essence. Third, there is no common body of doctrine called pragmatism but there are some overlapping sets of themes and values that have been passed down through the generations of this historical family of philosophers. Nothing said so far is problematic, but it gets more polemical in the different accounts that have been given about the history of the development of pragmatism. In other words, what are the key philosophical insights that have been passed down through the generations? For instance, what is it that Dewey inherited from Peirce and James that provoked his own reconstruction of pragmatism? In any historical account of pragmatism some selectivity is unavoidable; this is one reason for disagreements about the nature of pragmatism. The classical pragmatists claimed that selectivity is not problematic so long as the philosopher is honest and explicit about it. It hardly follows from the fact of selectivity that any answer is as good as any other. I propose that any account of pragmatism must be based and defended on at least two grounds: (a) textual and historical

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evidence that pragmatists shared to some degree the philosophical insights claimed; and that (b) these philosophical insights are most worthy of resurrection or reconstruction. The second point is important and is usually the basis of selectivity. Disagreement about the nature of pragmatism cannot be resolved by merely appealing to the classic texts of the movement since even when we agree about what the classical pragmatist said, there is disagreement about other questions relevant to (b): What is the most significant contribution of pragmatism to the history of philosophy? What sets pragmatism apart from other philosophical movements? What is the difference that makes the most difference? In sum, in defending a view of the nature of pragmatism one must be ready to argue in terms of both what pragmatism has been and what it ought to be. The Nature of Pragmatism With this background in mind, I am ready to take a stand on the issue of the nature of pragmatism, one that will allow me to include Frondizi in the pragmatist family. Pragmatism is a revolutionary school of thought in the history of philosophy because it criticized the modern starting point and instead took experience as the proper starting point of any philosophical investigation. The key philosophical insight in the development and history of pragmatism is metaphilosophical—that is, about how to proceed in doing philosophy, about its proper starting point. According to pragmatism, underneath the debates among opposing schools in modern philosophy is a common starting point that resulted in a certain view of experience, which in turn led to artificial and irresolvable problems. The history of pragmatism can be understood as the history of criticism of a starting point that has been and continues to be favored in philosophy. With each new articulation of what this favored starting point comes to, there is the hope of sophistication in the detection and prevention of this ill in philosophy. Peirce called it ‘‘Cartesianism’’ because he saw it in Descartes;4 James detected the modern starting point in traditional empiricism and

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therefore calls for a more ‘‘radical’’ empiricism. But once you get to Dewey, the failure to come to terms with the proper starting point is considered so common in philosophy that he called it ‘‘the philosophical fallacy.’’ With Dewey there is a more general and appropriate diagnosis of the problem. The problem is that philosophers tend to favor starting with a theoretical view of things, in particular one in which we are subjects or spectators of a world to be known. Pragmatism proposes instead the ‘‘radical’’ idea that philosophy should start where we are—that is, in the midst of our concrete pretheoretical, practical, everyday experience, and continue to return to that for confirmation. If it were not for the fact that the word ‘‘practice’’ usually means a certain narrow aspect of experience, according to the pragmatist ‘‘practice’’ would be the adequate starting point. To be and to start in experience is to be engaged in a practical, agentive way and not from a theoretical stance, as in the ‘‘Cartesian’’ contemplation of the objects of consciousness. If pragmatism is to be associated with the ‘‘primacy of practice,’’ it is only because it holds the ‘‘primacy of experience’’ as the starting point, and not because it is committed to the importance of practical reasons or because it holds a certain theory of truth and meaning. Not all classical American pragmatists, however, articulated this issue of the starting point in a clear and explicit way. The excitement of a new discovery can sometimes get in the way of clarity and articulation of one’s breakthrough. Most of these pragmatists simply adopted the new starting point and proceeded to philosophize, as if to experiment with it, to see where it would take them, to see how old problems could be resolved or dissolved. John Dewey was perhaps the most explicit about the issue. Throughout his philosophical works he insisted, shouted, ‘‘Let’s pay attention to Experience! Experience is the key!’’ In spite of this, generations of scholars in pragmatism have either ignored or distorted the importance of Dewey’s insistence on taking experience seriously. No one is to blame for this more than the ‘‘neopragmatists,’’ who have dismissed the notion of experience without first making an honest effort to understand it.5

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The view of pragmatism as centered on experience as the starting point can be defended on the basis of the two grounds already suggested, but I will be more specific. This view of pragmatism is (a) supported by a generous, open, honest, and empathetic reading of the texts, in other words, from an effort to try to understand the pragmatists on their own terms; (b) the most inclusive interpretation in the sense that it serves to explain all other reasonable interpretations; (c) the one that makes pragmatism the most radical movement beyond modern philosophy and a promising or useful resource for criticism of current philosophizing. I do not have here the space to fully defend the first point. A text is, of course, subject to a plurality of reasonable interpretations, but too many philosophers cannot help but read their theoretical prejudices into the text. This has often happened with the pragmatists’ texts. In doing so, they have missed the pragmatists’ radical reconstruction of philosophy. Here I will focus on (b) and (c). I will rely on Frondizi’s philosophy for support, thereby providing a reason why I would welcome him to the pragmatists’ family or, at the very least, providing a reason why pragmatists today should read Frondizi. How many reasonable interpretations of pragmatism are there? Pragmatism is better understood as a ‘‘method’’ rather that a doctrine or a theory based on certain basic truths. There are, however, important disagreements among scholars about the method. One view that has become commonplace is the idea that pragmatism is nothing more than a method to determine meaning. The roots of this view are the English interpretations of pragmatism,6 but it has been revised and promulgated recently by either neopragmatists or scholars working in epistemology or philosophy of language. According to this account the history of pragmatism starts with Peirce’s ‘‘pragmatic maxim,’’ understood as a method to determine the meaning of concepts, as articulated in his 1878 essay ‘‘How to Make Our Ideas Clear.’’ William James merely expanded Pierce’s pragmatic maxim to broader moral and religious matters and to his ‘‘botched treatment

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of truth.’’7 Dewey reviewed this same method, plus elaborated on the fallibilism, the sociopolitical implications, and the nature of inquiry. Here is recent evidence that this story is becoming very common: ‘‘Pragmatism is considered first and foremost a doctrine of meaning.’’8 ‘‘Pragmatism is a philosophic school that originated in the late nineteenth century with Charles Sanders Peirce, who first stated the pragmatic maxim. It came to fruition in the early twentieth-century philosophies of William James and John Dewey. Most of the thinkers who describe themselves as pragmatists consider practical consequences or real effects to be vital components of both meaning and truth.’’9 The problem with this story is that it is a very narrow one, centered on philosophy of language and epistemology. In this story there is no mention of James’s radical empiricism or Dewey’s insistence to take experience as method. I have no doubt that one can provide enough textual evidence to support this interpretation, but it leaves out much that is powerful, fundamental, and radical about this philosophical tradition. The view of pragmatism as centered on experience is more inclusive and interesting. The pragmatic maxim about the meaning of concepts, while important, is just one of many other consequences of taking experience as the starting point. It follows from taking experience as method that the meaning of concepts (including ‘‘truth’’) must be cashed out in experiential terms and consequences. Early on Dewey characterized the starting point or method favored by pragmatism in terms of the ‘‘postulate of immediate empiricism.’’ This is the hypothesis that ‘‘things—anything, everything, in the ordinary or non-technical use of the term ‘thing’—are what they are experienced as. Hence, if one wishes to describe anything truly, his task is to tell what it is experienced as being’’ (MW 3:158). Hence the way a pragmatist finds out what ‘‘truth’’ or any other concept means is through experience—that is, by considering in their everyday life what it is ‘‘experienced as.’’ Because truth is experienced as something good that happens to our beliefs, James’s starting point in his inquiry about truth was the hypothesis that ‘‘the true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite, assignable reasons.’’10 It is debatable whether

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James ever developed a well-formulated or even well-thought-out theory of truth. In any case, whatever he had to say about truth and any other philosophical issue was usually more a consequence of a different metaphilosophy than a tradition. Even the commitment to fallibilism and pluralism, so often associated with pragmatism, is a consequence of taking experience as the starting point. One of the first things that strikes us about experience is that it is experienced as changing, open-ended, plural, and subject to possible improvement. The view of pragmatism centered on experience as the starting point is not only more inclusive (b above) but also the most radical and promising (c). It allows us to provide a full diagnosis of what went wrong with modern philosophy. It gives us today a powerful basis to criticize present debates. The pragmatism that is worth reconstructing is often the one that calls into question the basic assumptions that ground present debates (‘‘family quarrels’’). More important, it makes pragmatism a resource for criticizing or improving the hypothesis or conclusions of the classical pragmatists. We must be open to the possibility that some of their views may not fit experience as we find it today. In sum, pragmatism is put forth as presenting a difference that makes the most difference. It is in arguing on behalf of this claim that I find Frondizi useful. He argues that the issue of the starting point, the issue that I take to be central to understanding the contribution of pragmatism to the history of philosophy, is the difference in philosophy that makes the most difference. Scholars in pragmatism today can find in Frondizi interesting and resourceful arguments on why experience should be the starting point of philosophy. Let us present his arguments. Frondizi on Experience as the Proper Starting Point of Philosophy In 1956, Risieri Frondizi wrote in the preface to the second edition of his first book, El punto de partida del filosofar (1945), ‘‘After all these years my fundamental commitment continues to be that experience is the obligatory starting point and legitimate source of philosophical theories.’’11 Frondizi is not concerned with the history of pragmatism,

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but he addresses the issue of the starting point in ways that are clearer and more explicit than Dewey. In El punto de partida del filosofar, Frondizi provides an overall diagnosis of what went wrong with modern philosophy. If instead of starting with dualisms we were to start with the integrity of experience ‘‘the classical problems of how can a subject know or be in relation with an objective world would disappear.’’12 Modern empiricism had good intentions, but it started with a theory about experience and not experience as it is lived. Frondizi calls for philosophers to make the effort to put their theoretical presuppositions aside and rehearse a more genuine empiricism—that is, one in which ‘‘one does not leave out any sector of reality. To disclose being in its nakedness and fullness is the first objective of an integral empiricism.’’13 Similar to James and Dewey, Frondizi called his philosophy a ‘‘humanistic empiricism.’’14 Philosophy must ‘‘pay attention to things as they present themselves . . . and not as they are described by our theories.’’15 Frondizi gives three reasons why experience should be the starting point of philosophy: (a) Experience is the most immediate and neutral reality with respect to our philosophical theories. (b) Experience is the most radical reality in the sense of being the most inclusive, ultimate, and unavoidable-forced. (c) If philosophy wishes to be empirical and an inquiry that is fruitful and relevant to life, it must take experience as the constant, persistent, and reliable basis or source of evidence. (a) Experience is the only thing that is truly given and immediate. Experience is not a theoretical presupposition or construct or conclusion of an inquiry; instead, it is the ‘‘effective fact that we find in our search and what we are most immediately and directly acquainted with.’’16 How can one evaluate this sort of claim? Frondizi does not provide an argument to support it, but is this the sort of claim that requires an argument? He only appeals to philosophers to be honest

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about their experience, and simply asks philosophers to consider what things in their experience are truly given and immediate instead of constructed or the result of human projection onto the world. For Frondizi the answer is not thinking or the content of consciousness as Descartes believed, but lived experience. No philosopher has really started inside their consciousness, but in a particular given situation or event in which they are transacting with other things. The starting point is not a subject meeting an antecedent world of objects. Instead, the starting point consists of an ‘‘I’’ that is constituted by its active relation with objects. In fact, there is no ‘‘I’’ prior to this active interaction with objects, and its nature depends on them.17 It is worth mentioning that this is the starting point that led Frondizi to provide a theory of the self very similar to, and just as sophisticated as, that of pragmatist George H. Mead. Experience is a process constituted by my self, my activity, and the objects that this activity is concerned with. A general philosophy of experience must proceed to study each of these elements without making the mistake of forgetting that they are given as part of an indivisible totality. Frondizi embarked on this project that culminated in books about the self, value, and education. In The Nature of the Self: A Functional Interpretation, Frondizi provides a critical evaluation of the modern philosopher’s attempt to provide an adequate theory of the self. Modern philosophy seems to force us to choose between a substantial self and no self at all. The quarrel between atomism and substantialism is due to a nonempirical starting point where each concentrates on one aspect of the self to the exclusion of the other. Frondizi’s appeal to what is truly ‘‘given’’ or ‘‘immediate’’ may seem problematic today since there has been plenty of challenges to the ‘‘myth of the given.’’ Indeed, this is one of the reasons why some neopragmatists, including Richard Rorty and Robert Brandom, think the notion of experience should simply be cut out.18 But Frondizi does not mean that experience is ‘‘the given’’ in the sense of some foundational knowledge-type substratum, nor does he mean by it some ‘‘pure’’ experience in the sense of something behind or unaffected by human interpretation. Pragmatists of today wishing to defend the notion of experience as central to their philosophies can

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benefit from reading Frondizi. Frondizi clarifies that experience is not a ‘‘given’’ in the sense of a ‘‘ ‘fact’ antecedent or separated from any interpretation.’’19 But the denial of a ‘‘pure’’ starting point does not entail that there are no things that are given in our immediate experience of the world and that it is futile to proceed in our philosophical inquiry by attending to them. Dewey, as well as Frondizi, is clear about this. Dewey clarifies that the pragmatist’s appeal to immediate experience is not pure experience in the sense of something that we could get to if we could only divest ourselves of our conceptual and cultural ‘‘baggage.’’20 As social and cultural organisms we always confront a situation with a character (set of habits, emotions, beliefs) that to a certain extent determines the content of what is nonreflectively given and present in our lives. We grow up in a certain society with a language, and in the process we acquire conceptual and perceptual habits that can determine what we directly experience. Nevertheless, we do experience things in their gross qualitative ‘‘givenness’’ in a situation. It is to this lived experience that we have to be faithful, regardless of how this given might be conditioned by one’s character and one’s historical cultural context. The extent of this conditioning is an open question and not critical to the use of the method. If one is a genuine empiricist, all of our theories and all of our languages are tied inextricably to our experience, not pure experience but the qualitative contextual whole that each of our lived situations provides. Experience is also the appropriate starting point of an empirical philosophy because to make sense of its empirical character there must be a pretheoretical basis that can function as the neutral grounds to adjudicate or evaluate competing theories about experience. Frondizi explains, ‘‘The reality that we find cannot be the conclusion of a chain of our reasoning but what we immediately find as we live. . . . It will therefore be free from theoretical pressupositions and expectations since we do not wish to find in experience what we are imposing upon it, but what is really there.’’21 Without the possibility of appealing to something outside of our theories there is no

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basis to be empirical. This does not mean that it is easy to be empirical. We must be careful to avoid the temptation to describe everyday experience with the use of terms that pressupose the truth of our cherished theory. We must not confuse what we find with what we want to find in experience. (b) Modern philosophy assumes that philosophical inquiry takes place in and has as its starting point experience, understood as the subjective content of consciousness in the mind. The alternative to this subjective starting point is usually some ahistorical and objective ‘‘Archimedean standpoint’’ or ‘‘God’s-eye point of view.’’ Many postmodern philosophers take these two standpoints or starting points as illusory because philosophical inquiry is always in history, or in a culture, or in a language, or in a society. But according to Frondizi none of these contexts constitute the ultimate context that we are in when we philosophize. As Pierce insisted, ‘‘We start, where we are,’’ and that is always in a situation. All of the realities discussed by philosophers, including language, conceptual schemes, and culture, are in experience. Frondizi says, ‘‘Experience is the ultimate reality or fact since all other facts and forms of reality are found in experience as its elements and parts.’’22 This makes experience the most radical reality in the sense of being the most inclusive, ultimate, and unavoidableforced reality. Jose´ Ortega y Gasset makes the same point when he states that ‘‘my life’’ is ‘‘the root of all realities, in the sense that they—any of them—in order to be reality to us must in some way make themselves present, or at least announce themselves, within the shaken confines of our own life.’’23 The point here is not that there are no possible realities outside of experience, but that even if there were there is no way to come across them except through our experience of them. Philosophers cannot get outside of their ‘‘situatedness’’ (‘‘their skin’’). Experience is the starting point because that is where we start whether we like it or not, or whether we pretend to be starting elsewhere. In this respect Frondizi believes there is something

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forced or obligatory about experience. No philosopher has ever started outside of experience; this is why experience is ‘‘the obligatory point of reference of philosophical theory.’’24 In deciding on one’s metaphilosophy—that is, how to proceed in doing philosophy—the choice is not between starting in or outside of experience but between ways of proceeding within it. Experience is always our starting point (and, for that matter, middle and end point) because we cannot get away from it. The difference between being empirical or not in inquiry is ultimately the choice between affirming or denying the character of things as they are presented in our practical everyday lives. Philosophers have often denied the practical experiential context of their own investigations and took the products of their inquiries to replace experience as it is lived. Descartes was dishonest since he did not really start inside his mind. While he was going through the meditations he was in a room, in front of a fire, and with all the prejudices that he claimed to deny. The pretheoretical (i.e., what Dewey calls ‘‘primary experience’’) is the more ‘‘primitive’’ level because it encompasses the theoretical and because it is where things are present in their brute and direct qualitative ‘‘givenness’’ and ‘‘thereness.’’ It is this level that we need to start with and come back to in an experientially guided inquiry.

(c) Strictly speaking, when Frondizi and Dewey claim that experience is the starting point they also mean that it is the returning point. Otherwise, philosophy fails to be a respectable, productive, and empirical type of inquiry. Frondizi believes that returning to experience for further confirmation of one’s theoretical conclusions is necessary for philosophy to claim legitimacy as an inquiry that is relevant to our everyday life. The same reality in which our inquiries are embedded is also the source of guidance and evidence. It is because experience is changing that philosophers must never cease to return for further confirmation of their hypotheses. This constant return to experience

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is what prevents philosophy from becoming idle or arbitratry speculation. Frondizi explains that experience is ‘‘the reality that philosophers must always keep in sight, in order not to get lost in their created theoretical abstractions and problems.’’25 When philosophy takes as its starting point theoretical abstractions or dualisms, that are not part of anyone’s immediate experience, it usually ends up in irresoluble philosophical problems that are blocks to inquiry, or with conclusions that have little relevance to everyday life. Frondizi cannot possibly sound more fully in the spirit of pragmatism then when he states that philosophers must ‘‘return one more time to the starting point, they must try to reach and appeal to the reality that serves as support to their theoretical constructions,’’26 otherwise ‘‘philosophy will become a sterile intellectual game that is removed from or indifferent to the concerns and unavoidable problems of human life.’’27 In conclusion, in the philosophy of Frondizi we find clear and persuasive reasons why experience is the proper starting point for philosophy. If this view about the starting point is what is fundamental, revolutionary, and worth recovering about pragmatism, then why not include Frondizi as a Hispanic pragmatist, or at least as a close ally? One can argue that pragmatists are not the only ones in the history of philosophy that have defended or tried to live by the general metaphilosophical commitment to lived experience. This is an interesting and larger topic for further discussion. Nevertheless, one could argue that pragmatists stand out in the history of philosophy in their taking lived experience as the starting point, so much so that it is well justified to call someone a ‘‘pragmatist’’ or contributing to ‘‘the pragmatist tradition’’ if they adhere to this way of doing philosophy. I am aware that this has its dangers. A more inclusive approach is to use a label such as ‘‘philosophers of life’’ to include pragmatists as well as the Latin American philosophers, especially those influenced by Ortega y Gasset, that adopt the same general metaphilosophy. Regardless of what labels are appropriate, there is no doubt that those advancing pragmatism as a philosophy today can learn a great deal from reading Risieri Frondizi. Frondizi’s defense and description

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of experience is original and complementary to that of James and Dewey. If Frondizi’s work on the nature of the self and values is conducted from the same starting point of pragmatism, then it may be worthwhile to compare and contrast the resulting theories with those of the classical pragmatists. For example, a systematic and careful analysis and comparison between Frondizi and Dewey regarding values, or between Frondizi and Mead on the self, has not been done.28 I can only hope that this essay is a starting point for these further promising inquires. More important, if North American pragmatists and Latin American philosophers like Frondizi share the same metaphilosophical commitment, then this seems a very solid basis for the possibility of a new, genuine pan-American dialogue in philosophy.

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t h e l a t i n o ch a r a c t e r o f american pragmatism Gregory Fernando Pappas



L

et me begin with an anecdote. Last fall I was teaching a class in American philosophy. After class a student from Colombia said to me, ‘‘La filosofia de James y Dewey me encanta, pero no puedo concebir que estos filosofos sean Americanos’’ (‘‘Professor, I love James’s and Dewey’s philosophy but I can’t think of them as American philosophers’’). Why, for someone acquainted with both American and Latin culture, is the philosophy of Dewey and James experienced as being (on the whole) more Latin than American? What could this mean? And does this experience not call into question the standard effort to present pragmatism as the intellectual reflection of American culture? Finding answers to these questions raises issues concerning philosophy, culture, and the relation between them. There is a history both of critics and of sympathizers trying to forge a connection between pragmatism and its native soil. Such critics as Bertrand Russell and George Santayana1 made use of this claim to dismiss, object to, or downplay pragmatism as a philosophy. They { 17 0 }

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selected certain undesirable traits or excesses of American culture, usually with the outcome that pragmatism appeared to be a shallow type of philosophy or some form of ‘‘industrial-utilitarianism.’’ Recent sympathizers, such as Patrick Romanell, Alan Ryan, and James Campbell, have relied on selecting certain values and aspirations of the ‘‘American Experience,’’ then claiming them as part of pragmatism as a philosophy.2 Both types of commentators share the assumption that pragmatism should be understood as a reflection or representation of North American society and culture. In this paper, I not only question this assumption, but I make the bolder claim that pragmatism is a philosophy that affirms and reflects values that are predominant and are cherished by Latin, not North American, culture. Let me begin my defense of this thesis by appealing to Dewey’s reflections on the relation between philosophy and culture. Philosophy and Culture Dewey never denied the significance of the fact that pragmatism was born on American soil. On the contrary, he argued against those who hold ‘‘a dogma of immaculate conception of philosophical systems . . . persons to whom it seems derogatory to link a body of philosophic ideas to the social life and culture of their epoch’’3 (LW, The Later Works 1925–53). For Dewey this is to neglect context, ‘‘the greatest single disaster which philosophic thinking can incur.’’4 The cultural context of a philosophy is ‘‘the implicit broad interpretation of life and the world’’ present in the practices and institutions of a society. Any significant philosophy, however, must do more than merely copy, mirror, or reflect the values and beliefs of its culture, social medium, and generation: ‘‘I doubt that any competent student of the history of thought would say that there has existed any philosophy which amounted to anything which was merely a formulated acquiescence in the immediately predominant traits of its day. Such things need no formulation, not even apologetics; they dominate and that is enough for them.’’5 There was never a philosopher who merited the name for simply glorifying the tendencies and characteristics of his social environment.6

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For Dewey, philosophy is criticism. It may be a criticism of the actual influential beliefs and values that underlie culture from the point of view of its possibilities: ‘‘All serious thinking combines in some proportion and perspective the actual and the possible, where actuality supplies contact and solidity while possibility furnishes the ideal upon which criticism rests and from which creative effort springs.’’7 Thus if there is something ‘‘American’’ about pragmatism, it is that it represents the possibilities of American life, not the actual America. However, what grounds are there for holding that there is something ‘‘Latin’’ about the critical perspective adopted by pragmatism? This is more controversial simply because I must assume rough and arguable generalizations about what is characteristically American and what is Latin. In my view, there is no reason why philosophers should not engage in such generalizations so long as they are cautious. In fact, throughout their writings Dewey and James continually made comparisons between the Anglo-Saxon type and mentality and that of other cultures. (After all, both were international travelers with cosmopolitan perspectives, and not your typical APA member.) Dewey understood perfectly well the marks of ‘‘Americanization’’ and its consequences: ‘‘I shall not deny the existence of these characteristics. . . . In the main these traits characterize American life and are already beginning to dominate that of other cultures.’’8 The Values and Vices of Anglo-Saxon and Latin Culture To further my thesis, I have used Dewey’s and James’s generalizations, the writings of Latin American philosophers, and my own experience to compile a rough and undoubtedly incomplete list of traits (page 174) that distinguish the Anglo-American culture from the Latin9 (‘‘From a Mexican Notebook,’’ LW 2:206–210, and ‘‘Imperialism Is Easy,’’ LW 3:158–162). Latin American philosophers who have written about this issue include Jose´ Enrique Rodo in Ariel (New York: Las Americas Pub. Co., 1967) and Jorge Manach in The Frontier (New York: Teachers College-Columbia University, 1975). By ‘‘my

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own experience’’ I mean the fact that I am a Puerto Rican who has been living in the United States for the last fifteen years; hence I consider myself someone who lives in between the two cultures. The two columns labeled ‘‘Traits or Values’’ are not intended as exclusive to each culture but as values that predominate—that is, they are considered positive and fundamental for the people living in that culture. There is no assumption here of a Latin or Anglo ‘‘essence.’’ The list is based on very general and hypothetical claims that are valid to the degree that such generalizations can be; that is, insofar as they include what is most frequent or typical. The items listed are accents of temperament and of conduct, and not exclusive modalities. For example, the Cuban philosopher Jorge Manach explains that ‘‘the fact that Anglo-Saxons are mainly volitional does not prevent them from harboring sentimentalism, even though they may try to hide it. Neither does the predominance of sensibility in Hispanic people signify a purely emotional aptitude.’’10 It is difficult to study, or even to identify, the fundamental traits of a culture unless they are expressed in an exaggerated way; as James said, ‘‘we learn most about a thing when we view it . . . in its most exaggerated form.’’11 The columns labeled ‘‘Vices’’ represent exaggerated manifestations of the traits valued by each culture that become vices due to excess or overemphasis. When members of either culture seek to criticize the other, they usually appeal to one or more of these vices. Dewey notes how much easier it is for one culture to appreciate the vices of the other rather than its own: ‘‘The Anglo-Saxon races have the habit of scoffing at the Latin races for what they regard as their levity and lack of seriousness in their moral attitude towards the world. It is a good thing to turn matters around and look at ourselves. The judgment which the Latin races pass upon the Anglo-Saxon is that they are hard, angular, and without the delicate susceptibility to attend to the needs of others; that they set up their mark and go at it roughshod, regardless of the feelings of others. If we call them light and frivolous, they call us hard, and coarse, and brutal.’’12 This is not the place for a detailed comparison between the lists of specific traits and vices. I am more concerned here with Dewey’s and

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Anglo Saxon

Latin Traits or Values

Success Quantity

Quality

Technique

Emotions

Organization

Appreciation

Individualism (self-sufficiency)

Relationships

Action-Practice

Loyalty

Efficiency

Slow tempo

Bigness

Particular

Change, novelty

Continuities

Classifications and rankings

Play-Celebration

Work

Present and past

Future

Vagueness

Planning

Redundancy

Precise and concise

Spontaneity Information

Vices Overorganization

Disorganization

Stress

Levity (lack of seriousness)

Mechanization

Over relaxed

Impersonality

Inefficiency

Impatience Unrest, hurry, breathlessness

Laziness

Undervaluing of tradition

Overvaluing of tradition

Overprevention of risk

Overenjoyment of the present

Drudgery, boredom, routine

No planning

Quantification

Idle playfulness

Loneliness

Suffocating common bonds

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James’s positions regarding them. Those who have claimed that pragmatism reflects American culture have appealed to one or more of the items on the Anglo-Saxon side. I will proceed to show why these claims are unsubstantiated and will argue instead that the emphasis in pragmatism is on traits or values on the Latin side. Pragmatism, Anglo Vices, and Latin Traits For some critics pragmatism is American because it is the philosophy that makes practice, action, work, success, the future, interest, and profit the end of life. In other words, it assumes a ‘‘utilitarian view of the mind.’’13 It is the view ‘‘that theory is simply an instrument for practice, and intelligence merely a help toward material survival.’’14 Santayana said about Dewey that ‘‘he is a devoted spokesman of the spirit of enterprise, of experiment, of modern industry . . . his philosophy is calculated to justify all the assumptions of American society.’’15 This sort of misunderstanding stems from taking such terms as ‘‘practical’’ and ‘‘instrumentalism’’ in a pecuniary and narrow sense. It is disappointing that many critics have made use of pragmatism to react to the exaggerations of American life without first making an honest effort to read the texts carefully and generously. Dewey said, ‘‘When an American critic says of instrumentalism that it regards ideas as mere servants which make for success in life, he only reacts, without reflection to the ordinary verbal associations of the word ‘instrumental,’ as many other have reacted in the same manner to the use of the word ‘practical.’ ’’16 James and Dewey tried to rectify or at least prevent such reactions and associations by explicitly qualifying what they meant by ‘‘practical’’ and ‘‘instrumental.’’ James indicated that his reference to the ‘‘practical’’ was a way of pointing to the concrete, particular, qualitative, and precognitive in experience.17 Dewey responded to views of pragmatism as a narrow instrumentalism (that treated thought as a mere means) by reminding us that pragmatism affirmed ‘‘the human and moral importance of thought and of its reflective operation in experience,’’18 as well as the continuity between means and ends. For Dewey, Russell’s assertion that

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‘‘pragmatism is the philosophical expression’’ of the American commercial and legalistic mentality was as absurd as saying that ‘‘English neorealism is a reflection of the aristocratic snobbery of the English; the tendency of French thought to dualism an expression of an alleged Gallic disposition to keep a mistress in addition to a wife.’’19 It was absurd because it portrayed pragmatism as a glorification of the very same American values and excesses that were the objects of its criticism. Dewey quoted James to make this point: ‘‘The man who wrote that ‘callousness to abstract justice is the sinister feature of U.S. civilization,’ that this callousness is a ‘symptom of the moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess SUCCESS,’ and that this worship ‘together with the squalid cash interpretation put upon the word success is our national disease’ was not consciously nor unconsciously engaged in an intellectual formulation of the spirit he abhorred.’’20 James was very explicit about what he regarded as the chief vice of American life: ‘‘that extraordinary idealization of ‘success’ in the mere outward sense of ‘getting there,’ and getting there on as big a scale as we can, which characterizes our present generation.’’21 Pragmatism, therefore, was far from being that glorification of action or of success for its own sake that has been regarded as a peculiar characteristic of American life.22 On the contrary, ‘‘it disapproves of those aspects of American life which make action an end in itself, and which conceive ends too narrowly and too ‘practically.’ ’’ Fundamental to pragmatism ‘‘is the idea that action and opportunity justify themselves only to the degree in which they render life more reasonable and increase its value.’’23 It is also false to say that pragmatism supported an American overemphasis on the future, since for pragmatism what is most important is the rendering of a more significant present—that is, the qualitative enrichment of present experience. Traditionally, moral philosophers had been looking for meaning, fulfillment, and satisfaction in the wrong places; for pragmatism the only place where meaning can be found is in present activity. ‘‘Growth of present action in shades and scope of meaning is the only good within our control, and the only one, accordingly, for which

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responsibility exists.’’24 ‘‘Everywhere the good, the fulfillment, the meaning of activity, resides in a present made possible by judging existing conditions in their connections.’’25 Dewey could be said to have taken a ‘‘Latin perspective’’ when he urged his readers to give up thinking of ‘‘some parts of this life as merely preparatory to other later stages of it’’26 and instead to aim at ‘‘fullest utilization of present resources, liberating and guiding capacities that are now urgent’’;27 ‘‘if we wished to transmute this generalization into a categorical imperative we should say: ‘so act as to increase the meaning of present experience.’ ’’28 Dewey and James were also critical of the American overemphasis on work at the expense of play. Dewey perceived American society as one in which the daily work activities of many were external and not an expression of themselves. Work becomes drudgery when it is taken as a mere means of survival, private gain, or getting ahead. Americans need to learn the value of play in order to secure aesthetic fulfillment in ordinary ways. In play there is a direct connection between means and ends; one is engaged in the present activity as if for its own sake. Play is free, plastic; it uses imagination and requires a serious absorption in one’s present task. Without play work degenerates into drudgery; it cannot achieve aesthetic quality. ‘‘Work which remains permeated with the play attitude is art in quality if not in conventional designation.’’29 Dewey’s view of life as playful learning rather than a preparation for adulthood (or as something that focuses on planning ahead) could be said to make him one of the most Latin of all philosophers. He would not deny that one can be too playful, but this was not where he saw the danger in American society. Pragmatism was by no means an intellectual justification for the view of the ‘‘American mind’’ that the ‘‘Will was deeper than Intellect.’’30 In fact, it tried to undermine the dualisms that would support the glorification of the will (or action) as something separated from the intellectual and the emotional. Moreover, if pragmatism has a notable emphasis, it is on the importance of the qualitative and emotional in all facets of our lives. For pragmatism, philosophy has overemphasized the executive and intellectual capacities of moral

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character at the expense of the imaginative and the emotional. According to Dewey, ‘‘the feelings, in a certain sense, are the deepest things in a person’s character.’’31 About the importance of being emotionally sensitive in our moral life he said, ‘‘Nothing can make up for the absence of immediate sensitiveness; the insensitive person is callous, indifferent. Unless there is a direct, mainly unreflective appreciation of persons and deeds, the data for subsequent thought will be lacking or distorted. A person must feel the qualities of acts as one feels with the hands the qualities of roughness and smoothness.’’32 It is true that a strong passion can sometimes make us unreasonable. We are so absorbed that we allow no room for alternatives and are not sensitive to the complexity of the situation. Nevertheless, the conclusion is not that the emotional, passionate phase of action can be or should be eliminated on behalf of bloodless reason. More passions, not fewer, are the answer. ‘‘To check the influence of hate there must be sympathy, while to rationalize sympathy there are needed emotions of curiosity.’’33 As an American moral educator, Dewey believed that the neglect of the aesthetic and affective factors (‘‘direct sensitiveness’’) is ‘‘the greatest deficiency in our educational systems with respect to character building.’’34 In this regard he thought that there was something that Americans could learn from Latin culture and societies: ‘‘It is a fact, that in their educational systems, both in the school and in the family, there is much more attention paid to the training of feelings, especially in this matter of delicacy, or response to the state of mind of others.’’35 Dewey was also critical of the kind of individualism that has been portrayed as characteristically American. He criticized the notion of the antecedent and self-sufficient individual who needs to be left alone; for him the individual is social. However, by ‘‘social’’ he did not mean the abstraction of society-as-a-whole (or a social group). For both Mead and Dewey, the heart of the social is found in face-toface interaction, in particular and unique relationships among individuals. The conditions for a better moral life are created by improving relationships in the classroom, the workplace, and the household. Dewey pleaded for the revitalization of local associations as a necessary condition for the great community.

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In its deepest and richest sense a community must always remain a matter of face-to-face intercourse:36 ‘‘I am inclined to believe that the heart and final guarantee of democracy is in free gatherings of neighbors on the street corner . . . and in gatherings of friends in the living rooms of houses and apartments.’’37 In other words, Dewey hoped that America would learn to value the more direct, particular, and intimate forms of association that are already valued by Latin cultures. It should be noted that when Dewey visited Mexico he was impressed by how ‘‘the entire family works together’’ in the creation of works of art.38 Does pragmatism reflect the Anglo-American attitude toward life? According to Patrick Romanell in The Making of the Mexican Mind, pragmatism is the intellectual expression of the American ‘‘epic sense of life,’’ which he contrasts with the Ibero-American ‘‘tragic sense of life’’: pragmatism ‘‘is, in essence, the philosophy of human achievement. In other words, it is the theoretical expression of the epic sense of life. As an epic celebrates the life of achievement in action, so pragmatism defends the same way of life in theory.’’39 This is, again, a misunderstanding of pragmatism as a glorification of action or will, but Romanell does set up an interesting contrast. Does pragmatism center on the epic rather than the tragic? There is no sense in denying that human effort and achievement are an integral part of the pragmatist’s view of experience, but I would argue that the emphasis is on an existentialist-vitalist tragic sense of life. Consider what Romanell means by the term ‘‘tragic.’’ ‘‘The substance of the tragic is not, as the traditional theory of tragedy maintains, the conflict between good and evil. . . . The stuff that all strictly tragic situations are made of is, rather, the subtler conflict between goods, as the greatest tragedies of the world make manifest.’’40 Dewey would not only agree with this view of the tragic, but he held one of the most tragic views of moral life in the history of moral philosophy. Let us briefly consider why. Dewey criticized the tendency in moral theory to conceive a moral problem as a conflict between a few commensurable factors or variables. If behind every moral problem there are commensurable denominators or only one basic kind of moral consideration (e.g., good,

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duty, or virtue), then the uncertainty and conflict found in moral problems that so agonize moral agents cannot be as acute as they seem. But Dewey disagreed. He proposed that what is experienced in moral problems is the conflict of radically independent factors or moral forces. Hence, for Dewey, moral problems are extremely acute and can be said in many cases to border on the tragic. As he explains, ‘‘The essence of the situation is an internal and intrinsic conflict; the necessity for judgment and for choice come from the fact that one has to manage forces with no common denominator.’’41 He acknowledges that we often associate moral struggle with situations where there is a conflict ‘‘between a good which is clear to him and something else which attracts him but he knows to be wrong.’’42 But this is a different kind of struggle from that which he takes to be paradigmatic of moral problems. The paradigmatic struggle is ‘‘between values each of which is an undoubted good in its place but which now get in each other’s way.’’43 The nature of the uncertainty and conflict proper to these two kinds of moral struggle makes them different. In the first kind, the problem is ‘‘How can I get myself to do what is morally right?’’ or ‘‘What means should we employ to minimize this evil and make that good prevail?’’ It is assumed that what is morally right to do in this situation has been settled, that it is not problematic; it is a question as to the best means for achieving an antecedent nonproblematic end. In the second kind of moral struggle, however, there is genuine uncertainty and conflict as to the morally correct thing to do because incompatible courses of action are experienced as morally justified or as making forceful claims on the agent.44 These ‘‘variables’’ or ‘‘factors’’ are good, duty, and virtue. Once moral inquiry is initiated, the experienced ‘‘moral tension’’ may be eased or it may not. It is thus clear that Dewey’s faith in the instrumentalities of experience was tempered by an honest realization that our moral life is tragic, and that ‘‘when all is said and done, the fundamentally hazardous character of the world is not seriously modified, much less eliminated.’’45 Romannell should rather have considered Dewey’s

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philosophy as the theoretical expression of the Ibero-American, not the Anglo-American, sense of life. The points addressed so far concern the spirit and content of pragmatism as a philosophy. One might also consider whether in their philosophical and writing style these philosophers reflected American traits. In this regard, it strikes me as obvious that in James’s and Dewey’s writings, one does not find any noticeable effort to be efficient, concise, nonredundant, systematic, organized, or precise. While I do not mean to say that they fail altogether to exhibit these traits, in comparison to contemporary analytic (Anglo-Saxon!) philosophers they appear chaotic, inefficient, and redundant. It should also be obvious to anyone who has read James and Dewey without prejudice that they celebrated vagueness and spontaneity, that they avoided an overemphasis on classifications, rankings, and compartmentalizations.46 Pragmatism and the Balance of America I wish to address more directly my main thesis. Dewey and James would agree that the traits I am calling Anglo-Saxon are all good things. Their philosophies, however, are opposed to the exaggeration and narrow interpretation of these traits as they are exhibited in everyday American life.47 Sometimes their opposition is evident in their philosophical efforts to redefine these traits in such a way as to not exclude what I am calling Latin traits (Dewey in regard to individualism, for example). But most of the time they simply engage in powerful, bold, and unprecedented defenses of the reality and value of these ‘‘Latin’’ traits. They argue against the devaluation of the affective, the aesthetic, play, concrete relationships, the tragic, the vague, and the precarious. We find in their philosophies a thoughtful appreciation of how and why these things are essential to our lives. It is almost as if the aim of these philosophers was to balance America, as if they thought that something could be learned from the culture that originated south of the Rio Grande. No doubt Dewey and James would have objected to the excesses to which Latin culture is prone. The Latin traits can be overemphasized and the corresponding vices are

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as bad, if not worse, than Anglo-Saxon ones. Nevertheless, as philosophers sensitive to their environment they emphasized the Latin traits, the ones that needed to be emphasized in North America.48 Dewey believed that the Anglo-Saxon exaggerations (vices) were transitional: ‘‘We are still in an early stage. . . . Anything that is at most but a hundred years old has hardly had time to disclose its meaning in the slow process of human history.’’49 I am sorry to say that the unbalanced America that Dewey and James criticized still exists. It is still the case that organization, efficiency, and getting ahead at all costs are predominant values, and that many people are lonely. Americans are spending more time at work than they did twenty years ago. In fact, America is the only high-tech (industrial) society for which it is true that the more it progresses financially and technologically, the more people work. To make things worse, it is a country in which, while obsessed with the value of work, many people find themselves performing meaningless work. Quantification is still the standard in many aspects of American life. For many Americans better communication means only faster communication and with more people. America continues to be a restless place where one must protect oneself from waiters in restaurants who are ready to remove one’s plate if one is not eating. There seems to be no time to rest or to savor the consummations of life. James’s essay ‘‘The Gospel of Relaxation’’ is as relevant today as it was ninety-eight years ago.50 We Americans are creatures who tend to feel lazy and guilty if we are not productive. We invented the word ‘‘stress,’’ and are now spreading it around the world (our number-one export after Big Macs). Toward a Latinization of America But let me offer some hope. There are two related events that may affect the character of America and result in a more balanced culture. One is a demographic change, the other a change in the attitude and role of those Americans who are Hispanic (or Latinos). The first is almost a fait accompli. Demographics are changing rapidly. More than at any other time in history, the United States is being influenced by Latin culture. This country, once dominated by Europeans,

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is fast becoming one in which Europeans are in the minority. This demographic shift could be called the ‘‘browning of America.’’ It is likely to create unprecedented problems, especially when the fastest growing ethnic group in America is also becoming the poorest. It remains an open question whether these Americans will ever participate as they should in the political process. There is no doubt, however, that they are leaving their mark in unprecedented ways. In their daily interaction with other Americans they are transforming American culture, redefining what it means to be an American. In The Hispanic Condition Ilan Stavans claims that in America we are experiencing a silent revolution created by Hispanic Americans. These Americans have decided to no longer live quietly and defensively at the margins; they are transforming the culture of America from within. According to Stavans, ‘‘we are currently witnessing a double-faceted phenomenon: Hispanization of the United States, and Anglocization of Hispanics.’’51 One important cause of this change is that the new generations of Latinos in the United States have decided to embrace their ambiguous identity in an unprecedented way. The new Latina, while recognizing her ties to her siblings south of the Rio Grande, is also saying that she is as American as John Wayne. For the new Latino, living as a hybrid (or ‘‘inhabiting the hyphen’’) no longer causes an identity crisis or lack of self-esteem. As Stavans says, ‘‘The hyphen as an acceptable in-between is now in fashion. . . . Indeed, divided we stand without a sense of guilt. Gringolandia, after all, is our ambivalent, schizophrenic hogar.’’52 Let me clarify what I am suggesting. I am not claiming that the gradual ‘‘browning’’ or ‘‘Latinization’’ of America is the solution to the excesses of American life. Moreover, there is no guarantee that this will contribute to a more balanced America. The outcome may be a worse situation, given that the cultures that are coming into contact (that is, what has to be balanced) seem to be almost in opposition. Dewey was keenly aware of this. In his notes on Mexico, he wrote: ‘‘The contact of a people having an industrialized, AngloSaxon psychology with a people of Latin psychology is charged with high explosives.’’53 In comparing the ‘‘Anglo-American institutional

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psychology’’ and the ‘‘Spanish-Latin temper,’’ he said, ‘‘The two mix no better than oil and water, and unfortunately there is no great disposition to discover and use any emulgent.’’54 One must also worry about the human tendency to try to correct an excess with the opposite excess. America is no better off if it simply replaces its present excesses with those that characterize Latin culture. Dewey would agree that what is needed is an intelligent, piecemeal transformation coming from within. This ‘‘from within’’ is important. It is a mistake born of ignorance to suppose that the ‘‘Latinization of America’’ is coming from the outside, that is, from south of the Rio Grande. Latin culture has always been part of America, but it has remained dormant or at the margins. As we begin a new century, the new frontier and challenge of America will be to achieve a complementary and enriching integration between its Anglo and its Latin sides. In conclusion, if I am correct in my cultural characterizations and in my assessment of pragmatism, then many things can be explained. The reaction of my Colombian student (and why, perhaps, we are both attracted to American philosophy) makes sense. We may even be able to explain why American philosophy is not the mainstream philosophy of America. Perhaps analytic philosophy simply fits better with the obsessive America that Dewey and James criticized. Meanwhile, I am afraid that the rest of the world (including Latin America) continues to dismiss pragmatism as a characteristically ‘‘American’’ product—that is, as a positivistic, narrow form of utilitarianism. If it is true, as Stavans has suggested, that America as we know it is going to be transformed in a more Latin direction, then I have argued that this is a change that James and Dewey would have gladly welcomed. This transformation may also mean that pragmatism as a philosophy has a future in America. Only then will it be uncontroversial to claim that pragmatism is the characteristic product of American life.55

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leopoldo zea, stanley cavell , and t he s e d u c t i o n of ‘‘american ’’ philosophy Carlos Alberto Sanchez



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n The Making of the Mexican Mind, Patrick Romanell writes, The secret imaginative background of American philosophy is, on the one hand, the tragic sense of life rooted in Latin American existentialism and, on the other, the epic sense of life rooted in Anglo-American pragmatism. However distinct these two philosophies of the good life may be . . . they complement each other and share a common faith, namely, a humanistic attitude towards life, together with an heroic conception of man.1

Romanell is optimistic that the virtues of Latin American existentialism and Anglo-American pragmatism are enough for an adequate reconstruction of an American philosophical tradition. While it is fair to conceive American philosophy, including both the Hispanic and the Anglo tradition, as defending ‘‘a humanistic attitude towards life, together with an heroic conception of man,’’ this conception says little about the uniquely ‘‘American’’ aspects of this philosophy.2 Similarly, referring to Latin American philosophy as ‘‘existentialism’’ or { 18 5 }

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equating American philosophy with ‘‘pragmatism,’’ as it is usually done, misses what is most original to philosophy in the Americas. One finds in Stanley Cavell’s reflections on Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau the strongest indication that (North) American philosophy cannot be entirely captured within the parameters of pragmatism. Likewise, it is in the Mexican philosopher Leopoldo Zea’s historicist account of Latin American philosophy that one encounters a thinking that is beyond mere existentialism. The purpose of this essay is to highlight some remarkable similarities between Cavell’s and Zea’s views on the constitution, manifestation, and understanding of ‘‘American’’ philosophy. We understand American philosophy—loosely following Cavell’s and Zea’s lead—as the product of an involved reflection on the American circumstance, a circumstance conditioned by the discovery, colonization, and nationalization of the Americas, together with the American people’s heroic desire to connect, continuously and urgently, with themselves and their destiny as Americans. This rather broad depiction of American philosophy is gathered from Cavell’s and Zea’s efforts to show that what they imagine as American philosophy is really philosophy. To this end, they make claims that evoke a ‘‘circumstantialist,’’ and indeed pluralistic, position on the nature of the philosophical. Cavell, for instance, flirts with a circumstantialist or a perspectival philosophical approach, when he writes: ‘‘It is hard to imagine anything more offensive to our pride of intellectual cosmopolitanism than such a call to nativism, or ethnocentrism. One cause of this offense, I should guess, is that it says again that philosophy is not a science, which is the cosmopolitan, anyway international, means of communication. But a complimentary cause is that it asks us to consider what it is native to us to do, and what is native to philosophy, to thinking.’’3 We find this thought in Zea’s 1952 essay ‘‘Philosophy as Commitment’’: ‘‘We fear that if we take off the pompous veil of universality that refers to everything in general but to nothing in particular [a todo se refiere pero que a noda sen˜ala en concreto], nothing will remain of us but a supposed impotence.’’4 As to what Cavell calls ‘‘nativism,’’

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Zea writes elsewhere: ‘‘When the Latin American thinker asks himself whether there is an original Latin American [philosophy], he does so only in relation to what the word ‘original’ means in its widest acceptance: place of origin.’’5 Indeed, what is ‘‘offensive’’ about both Cavell and Zea is their acceptance of ‘‘such a call to nativism,’’ to origins, offensive because Philosophy (with a capital P) ought not to begin or end with the circumstances, which Philosophy tells us can be relative and accidental. But, as I will show, both Cavell and Zea defend their offense by revealing the virtues of native or original thinking in spite of the grandiose desires of universal philosophy.6 Cavell’s Circumstantialism What is meant by the term ‘‘circumstantialism’’? The Spanish philosopher Jose´ Ortega y Gasset is the best-known exponent of this doctrine. In his Meditations on Quixote of 1914, Ortega writes: ‘‘Man reaches his full capacity when he acquires complete consciousness of his circumstances. Through them he communicates with the universe,’’ thus ‘‘the re-absorption of circumstance is the concrete destiny of man.’’7 A circumstantialist approach to philosophical thinking, to philosophy, would thus emphasize the significance of either (1) the circumstances in which a particular thinking takes place, or (2) the manner in which the circumstances are absorbed by the thinking in question. An ancillary claim of this chapter is that Cavell is preoccupied with both (1) and (2). Cavell has been instrumental in the induction of Emerson and Thoreau into America’s philosophical pantheon, one that boasts figures such as James, Royce, Mead, and Peirce. It has not been an easy task. Because of their unphilosophical credentials, Cavell has had to convince the philosophical establishment that Emerson’s and Thoreau’s thinking is indeed philosophy. To do this, however, he has been forced to claim that Emerson and Thoreau were not just philosophers but American philosophers thinking and expressing a uniquely American philosophy, as Emerson and Thoreau claimed. Consequently, in the process, Cavell’s own reflections on Emerson and

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Thoreau evince the American philosophy that he has been forced to defend. Always elusive, Cavell avoids spelling out any criteria for an American philosophy. In The Senses of Walden, a work dedicated to unearthing the eccentricities of Thoreau’s hermetic text, Cavell is forced to ask: ‘‘Why has America never expressed itself philosophically? Or has it—in the metaphysical riot of its greatest literature? Has the impulse to philosophical speculation been absorbed, or exhausted, by speculation in territory, as in such thoughts as Manifest Destiny? Or are such questions not really intelligible?’’8 These questions are not rhetorical or by any means unintelligible. Has America been so obsessed with wealth, growth, conquest, and other positive interests that it has forgone its opportunity to express itself philosophically? The answer is no. In fact, Thoreau’s Walden presents itself as an instance where an American concern, such as building a home by Walden Pond or tending the soil, gives birth to philosophical speculation. Here is a case of the circumstances’ being absorbed by philosophical thinking, rather than philosophical thinking’s being absorbed or exhausted by the circumstance—for example, a concern with nation building. Thus Cavell imagines American philosophy as a lived experience, arising from an engagement with a set of uniquely American circumstances, those he finds in Walden. But just as philosophical thinking bursts forth from one’s circumstance, it must necessarily return to that circumstance so as to vindicate—or emancipate—the thinker, the writer, or the laborer from the guilt of tying philosophical thoughts down to particular (not universal) concerns. Hence Cavell writes, ‘‘All our fields await emancipation—geography and places, literature and neighborhood, epistemology and eyes, anatomy and hands, metaphysics and cities.’’9 Why would ‘‘all our fields,’’ including philosophy and medicine, await emancipation? The simple answer has already been suggested: Philosophy and medicine must arise and conform to the American circumstance. Just as a disease native to the American frontier would require an antidote capable of curing

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that particular disease, the idea is that the American existential condition likewise requires a form of philosophical thinking capable of addressing that particular condition. Hence considering the circumstances when thinking of America’s philosophical, medical, or literary future is already the liberating step. American philosophy would thus be a liberating, emancipating philosophy, freeing the American mind from ancient (European) vices: vices that include a preference for the map over the field (place and geography), the novel over its characters (literature and neighborhood), universal structures of experience over what one actually experiences (epistemology and eyes), science over practice (anatomy and hands), and abstraction over the everyday (metaphysics and cities). The suggestion here is that philosophy must return to the everyday, to the cities; this is what Cavell realizes ‘‘is most offensive to philosophy.’’10 In The Senses of Walden, Cavell is engaged with an American writer whose immersion in the soil and spirit of America represents the undeniable relatedness of being human with that human’s circumstance. It is, undeniably, philosophy. The reason for rejecting Thoreau’s visions as philosophical could be due to something one could call America’s inferiority complex. Cavell notes, ‘‘American culture never really believed in its capacity to produce anything of permanent value—except itself. So it forever over praises and undervalues its achievements.’’11 The suggestion is that historically America’s relative newness is to blame for its habit of overemphasizing and devaluing its creations, especially its literature and philosophy. Thus Cavell insists that America take a second hard look—like the hard look taken by Thoreau and Emerson—and hear its own voice, its ‘‘serious speech’’12 that expresses its most characteristic convictions. Cavell makes this call again in the essay ‘‘An Emerson Mood,’’ pointing out the American tendency to undervalue our native philosophical insights, what he calls ‘‘visions.’’ He states, ‘‘Our philosophies, or visions [do not believe in each other], which is why the ideal of a pluralism of philosophy, however well meant, is so often an empty hope.’’13 Philosophical pluralism is an ‘‘empty hope’’ because we are incapable of measuring our philosophical contribution with

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our own, so to speak, American measure. Cavell’s call is to have our philosophical and our nonphilosophical visions ‘‘believe in each other.’’ How can they, however, if we ourselves are conflicted as to what mood qualifies as a philosophical mood, especially when compared on an alien (i.e., European) standard? Cavell hints at a resolution to this question by equating philosophy with vision. America as ‘‘the land of the future,’’ as Hegel termed it, is a land of visions, of visionaries. These visions are uniquely American because they relate to the future and destiny of the nations of the ‘‘new’’ continent. Indeed, where else could one find visionaries but in a land lacking a sense of place on the historical stage? Zea, as we will see, shares a similar intuition, proclaiming: ‘‘We feel as bastards who profit from goods to which they have no right. We feel as if we are wearing someone else’s clothes: they are too big for our size.’’14 Reading Cavell, one notes an echo of urgency—or is it desperation?—perhaps grounded on the notion that America has always expressed its vision in the process of its discovery and its continual reinvention. But this sense of urgency is also present in Thoreau. Cavell quotes a passage from Walden: ‘‘I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as a chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up.’’15 Cavell goes on to say that Thoreau’s use of this ‘‘archetype of American folklore,’’16 the chanticleer, is meant as an allusion to philosophy’s own archetypes, as with Socrates’ rooster. We can also say that for Thoreau the bothersome crow of the rooster is meant to shock his neighbors into wakefulness. Indeed, Cavell writes: ‘‘The purity of the Chanticleer’s prophesy is that he can speak only to waken and to warn.’’17 This statement reminds one of Marx, who writes, ‘‘So as to give them courage, we must teach the people to be shocked by themselves.’’18 Thus the crow of the rooster is philosophy itself, while the rooster is Thoreau. One could argue that Cavell is pointing to a raison d’eˆtre of American philosophy in its native or original version, namely to instill in its audience a sense of urgency, a need for internal or external change. ‘‘It is a matter of taking back to yourself,’’ writes Cavell, ‘‘an

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authority [that] you have been compelled to invest elsewhere.’’19 Indeed, we will see how this sentiment is at the core of Zea’s thinking. Zea’s ‘‘Latin American’’ Philosophy Philosophers in Latin America have struggled for centuries to secure a place for their culture and their philosophy in the annals of universal history. Thus blanketing Latin American philosophy as an existentialism, as Romanell does, reinforces the view that philosophy in Latin America cannot be anything but an imitation of European ideas. Such is the view of Augusto Salazar Bondy, who writes, ‘‘To review the process of Hispanic American philosophy is to relate the passing of Western philosophy through our countries, or to narrate European philosophy in Hispanic America.’’20 As Bondy sees it, the fact that philosophers exist in Latin America does not justify the statement that there is a Latin American philosophy.21 Zea disagrees. Zea’s position is straightforward: The simple act of reflecting on the Latin American experience is enough to give rise to a uniquely Latin American philosophy. This claim is made on circumstantialist grounds—as in Cavell—but it does not imply that Latin American philosophy will be relativistic. On the contrary, it will have universal aspirations. As with Cavell’s Thoreau, Latin American philosopher will aspire to heroic heights. Zea writes, ‘‘One must attempt to do purely and simply philosophy, because what is Latin American will arise by itself. Simply by being Latin American, philosophers will create a Latin American philosophy in spite of their own efforts at depersonalization. Any attempt to the contrary will be anything but philosophy.’’22 Ultimately, Latin American philosophy is justified sub specie circumstantiarum, as Ortega suggests. But more than that, visionaries such as Thoreau, Emerson, Cavell, Zea, and even Bondy are model representatives of that philosophy, which is necessarily original or native to the Americas. But what are the Latin American circumstances? In his critique of Zea, Bondy puts it best: ‘‘The decisive factor in our Hispanic America is underdevelopment, the dependency and bonds of domination,

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with the peculiar qualities that allow us to define it as a historical phenomenon. . . . Our thought is [thus] defective and inauthentic owing to our society and our culture.’’23 Underdevelopment as a historical phenomenon, dependency, and domination characterize the Latin American circumstance, and necessarily the Latin American individual. Zea describes this individual as ‘‘truncated, divided, cut off . . . diminished, reduced, and for the same reason, inferior, insufficient, resentful.’’24 Hence the question: How is philosophy to arise from such a ‘‘defective and inauthentic’’ cultural situation? Zea believes that these circumstances are precisely the only circumstances in which philosophy in Latin America can originate. Zea’s recommendation is to ‘‘accept’’ the past, or Latin America’s historical underdevelopment and dependency, to own up to it so as to—to use a Hegelian term—sublate it. The sublation would constitute a change in perspective and with it a new possibility for existence. ‘‘The adapting of our projects to our reality would necessarily change the horizon of our possibilities,’’ writes Zea. ‘‘With this change,’’ he continues, ‘‘another mode of our being would be made manifest.’’25 In Zea, philosophy’s purpose is to awaken and inspire, to motivate humanity in general and Latin Americans in particular. However, this requires a reconnection with the reality of America, a reality rooted in the violence of conquest and colonization. This reality must be confronted and assumed so that it can be overcome; it is a matter of, as Cavell puts it, ‘‘taking back to yourself the authority’’ (op. cit.). The inability to learn from the past in an act of taking back the authority is at the heart of the spiritual and material underdevelopment of the Latin American nations. Zea puts it thus: ‘‘The cause of our frustration has been our failure to respond to our reality. By not assuming it we have negated all of its possibilities. By not adapting our projects to it we have left many of its possibilities unrealized [ineditas]. . . . Of this failure we [Americans] are responsible; recognizing this will be one of the first steps toward our vindication.’’26 This passage conjures up images in Walden in which we see Thoreau responding to his reality, adapting to its meteorology, and vindicating himself as he sits down to write. This ability for vindication is

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what the Latin American lacks. Reality, including the violence of conquest and colonization, the birth and fall of nations, and everything constitutive of the Latin American circumstance, is clouded in borrowed idealisms incapable of flourishing in the soil of the Americas. For history to reveal America’s authentic possibilities for the future, the past (reality) must first be assumed and adapted. Zea observes: ‘‘We know we are heirs to two great cultures, those same cultures that we are willing to undervalue . . . the Spanish and the Aztec. An inheritance that we feel more like a weight [lastre] than as an asset [ayuda].’’27 Once this inheritance is accepted, what philosophers might envision in a land of possibilities is occasion for hope. Ultimately, the means to actualize these possibilities lie in communication, community, and dialogue. Conclusion: Encounters The way to bring about a change in America’s negative or passive evaluation of itself is education, which ought to shock and awaken. Cavell writes in ‘‘An Emerson Mood’’: ‘‘The first step in attending to our education is to observe the strangeness of our lives, our estrangement from ourselves, the lack of necessity in what we profess to be necessary. The second step is to grasp the true necessity of human strangeness as such.’’28 To be educated one must first bear witness to the uncanny, the contingent; what follows is education as the mechanism that reveals the possibilities of existence. Philosophy’s task is to make both of these steps possible: to awaken and to educate. But if this is philosophy’s task, then it is necessary that philosophy absorb the circumstance. Both Cavell and Zea share the view that philosophy does not have one beginning somewhere in Thales’s olive orchards, but that it can begin again, continuously originate, as long as there are thinkers to think the difficult thoughts. Their aim is to recover this encounter between the thinker and the thought as philosophy, but particularly as an American philosophy. The struggle begins with recovering one’s sense of place in America, which requires confronting that lack of confidence in our

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own thoughts that characterizes America’s historical consciousness. Cavell observes, for instance, that ‘‘America’s best writers have offered one another the shock of recognition but not the faith of friendship. . . . Perhaps this is why, or it is because, their voices seem to destroy one another. So they destroy one another for us. How is a tradition to come out of that?’’29 Cavell’s point is this: the American circumstance is not conducive to the creation of an authentic philosophical tradition since the voices that speak philosophy do not hear themselves, and in not being heard, perish. Cavell’s is a call for community, participation, friendship, and a recognition that is less shocking. Zea makes a somewhat similar point. Latin American voices destroy each other but not because they do not hear each other, rather, because what they hear is a faint echo of a stronger voice. ‘‘Our being,’’ writes Zea, ‘‘is felt as something that necessarily needs completion with something outside itself, but that nevertheless belongs to it or has belonged to it.’’30 What nevertheless belongs to the being of the Latin American is the presence of the European. However, through centuries of oppression, beginning with conquest and colonialization, this presence marginalized both Latin Americans and their ideas so that in the present condition of underdevelopment and dependency they find themselves ontologically and historically incomplete. Likewise, Cavell acknowledges America’s marginal circumstance in The Senses of Walden: ‘‘No one’s occasions are exactly those of another, but our conditions of improvement are the same, especially our outsideness and, hence, the world’s presence to us.’’31 Indeed, by virtue of being the new world, by being the land of visionaries, and the land of invention, America is outside, marginal. But both Zea and Cavell are optimistic. While the histories of North and South America tell a radically different experience, Cavell’s observation stands: our condition of improvement is the same. As the land of the future, America can and will express itself, and will do so from its own condition of outsidedness, underdevelopment, marginality, and incompleteness. I cannot put it better than Zea, who states

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that philosophy ‘‘must ensure the participation of a native-born American who . . . plays a part in the development of a culture that he considers to be his own. This is primarily the concern of an individual who wants to be more than an echo of a given culture, but rather a person who wishes to participate in it.’’32

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pragmatic p luralism , multiculturalism , and t he new h ispanic Jose´ Medina



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ow that cultural differences have come under suspicion with ethnic profiling, now that a postracial and postethnic American identity is often invoked, now that the process of globalization is countered with the affirmation of national identities and indigenous races and ethnicities, now more than ever, a pragmatic reconstruction of the place of ethnic diversity and multiculturalism in our lives is needed. Drawing on American and Latin American philosophers such as John Dewey, Alain Locke, and Jose´ Martı´, my essay will articulate a thoroughgoing pluralistic view of ethnic identity in general and of Hispanic identity in particular. I will argue that the best way of elucidating ethnic experiences and identities without relying on essentialist assumptions is offered by a radical pluralism that we can find in the pragmatist tradition. This radical pluralism understands ethnic identity as intrinsically heterogeneous, that is, as necessarily containing inner diversity. In this pluralistic view, the unity of ethnic groups is conceived as ‘‘a unity through diversity’’ (Locke’s phrase), { 19 9 }

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and ethnic solidarity is genealogically explained as being made out of differences (not in spite of them, sacrificing them, or erasing them). I will examine the critical power of this pluralistic view and how it can help us solve the problems that multicultural societies face today. In particular, I will focus on a central challenge that cultural diversity raises in the post-colonial and globalized world of the twenty-first century, namely: how to recognize and respect cultural differences without exoticism or commoditization, that is, without contributing to their marginalization or subjecting them to the homogenizing forces of a global market. Dewey, Locke, and Martı´ are of one mind in arguing that ethnic and racial groups must acquire their own voices, exercise critical control over the products of their own agency, and enjoy the freedom and necessary resources for self-expression and cultural self-affirmation. The pragmatist view of diversity they propose offers an account of how the critical reconstruction of collective experience can lead to the empowerment of ethnic and racial groups, and of how it can promote and facilitate the open dialogue and mutual understanding between cultures and races. The empowerment of the diverse ethnic and racial groups that compose a multicultural society and the genuine and continuing dialogue between them are the preconditions for justice and equality and for the flourishing of all the members of such a society. The pluralistic model of diversity that I derive from the pragmatist tradition suggests that the development and expression of the identity of ethnic and racial groups involves a double dialogue: an intracultural dialogue of all voices within the group in question; and an intercultural dialogue between groups in which they articulate their identity vis-a`-vis each other. In the first place, the pluralistic articulation of a cultural identity requires an intracultural dialogue of an open plurality of voices (as many as possible). Through this dialogue the members of a culture can produce a multivocal articulation of their multiple problems, needs, values, ideals, and illusions. But this dialogue needs to be supplemented with another one that goes beyond the members of the group. For indeed, no group—no matter how

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powerful or hegemonic—can fully comprehend the problems it faces and fully determine its own future independently of other groups. So an intercultural dialogue between the cultural group in question and other groups with which its existence is entangled is also necessary. I will argue that we need to keep cultural dialogues as open as possible, without constraining and disciplining their constitutive diversity, that is, the plurality and heterogeneity of their voices. In other words, we need to keep our dialogues polyphonic. We have to be prepared to fight homogenizing tendencies that erase differences as well as normalizing tendencies that make certain articulations of identity mainstream and relegate other identity formations to the margins. Radical Pragmatism and the Critical Reconstruction of Collective Experience Dewey argues that, to be effective, philosophical criticism must ‘‘make our desires, our strivings and our ideals . . . articulate’’ and provide the ‘‘experiential knowledge’’ required ‘‘to bring them about’’ (1988, 312). Dewey describes this critical articulation of ideals and reconstruction of experience as an ‘‘inquiry into conditions and consequences’’ (ibid.). This inquiry is both backward- and forwardlooking: It involves the critical examination of the conditions of experience, which includes an inspection of its history, of what led up to it; but it also involves an exploration of the potentialities of experience, that is, a critical investigation of the future, of the different possibilities that are open (or can be opened) in one’s experience. So the reconstruction of experience involves a two-fold task: the genealogical task of mastering the determinations of the past as they affect or condition one’s present; and the projective task of opening up possibilities and exploring one’s future. It is important to note that both of these reconstructive tasks are highly creative: they involve creative processes of seeing connections and possibilities in one’s experience.1 It is also important to keep in mind the engaged and interested nature of these tasks: it is the function of orienting action that structures all our reconstructive efforts. These reconstructive efforts, whether gene-

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alogical or projective, are supposed to provide direction and guidance for one’s agency and their value lies in their experiential consequences. When critical reconstruction is applied to the collective experiences of racial and ethnic groups, it involves an assessment of their present situation through a critical examination and evaluation of their history and their future. But the point of directing our reconstructive efforts toward the collective experiences of groups may not be immediately obvious. What are the benefits of exploring a common past and a common future through philosophical criticism? There are two main benefits that the critical reconstruction of collective experience has to offer to racial and ethnic groups. In the first place, this reconstruction can facilitate the group’s self-understanding. Through a genealogical reconstruction of their past and a projective exploration of their future, the members of a group can construct their own self-image. But the attainment of self-understanding and the construction of a self-image are not ends in themselves; they are required for self-mastery, that is, for taking control of one’s agency. I will use the rubric of self-empowerment to refer to this constellation of benefits (the production of self-understanding and self-mastery) facilitated by the reconstruction of collective experience. In the second place, a genealogical and projective reconstruction is not simply valuable for the members of a group in isolation from other groups; it helps to clarify and improve interrelations among groups and, therefore, it can promote and facilitate their mutual understanding and communication. The crucial significance of these benefits cannot be overemphasized, for the betterment of the common life of different racial and ethnic groups is of paramount importance in today’s globalized world. I will refer to this constellation of benefits as the facilitation of intercultural understanding and communication. Both constellations of benefits that the critical reconstruction of collective experience can afford are discussed in Alain Locke’s introduction to The New Negro,2 which appeared in 1925 (the same year as Dewey’s Experience and Nature). There Locke argued that American Negroes had reached a crucial point in their development

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as a group, namely, a point where their self-empowerment becomes possible and their relations with other groups can be improved. As the opening remarks of The New Negro make clear, the selfempowerment of a group requires self-understanding, that is, that the members of the group be able to grasp their own determinations and potentialities. In this sense, the reconstruction of collective experience can be thought of as a response to the philosophical demand for self-knowledge, as answering a social version of ‘‘Know Thyself’’ as ‘‘Know Thy Community.’’ Just as the individual must know herself in order to acquire self-mastery, the members of a group must also know the determinations and potentialities of their common experience so that they can take control of their destiny. Both for the individual and for the group, the acquisition of self-mastery calls for a constant effort toward self-transformation and self-knowledge. It is important to note that the self-knowledge that is required for selfmastery cannot be attained by means of a passive cognition, by simply inspecting what is already there. It requires creativity and agency. It involves making and seeing connections in one’s actions and in one’s life. It is a kind of knowledge that cannot be assimilated to the conception of knowledge as a mirror that merely reflects what is already there. This Deweyan approach to self-knowledge is clearly present in Locke’s description of self-knowledge as a task and a challenge for the New Negro. According to Locke, the Negro’s self-image should not be taken as a given; it is not simply what the members of the group happen to think of themselves, for this unreconstructed self-understanding is bound to include the internalization of images that others cast on them and it is likely to be uncritically informed by cliche´s, stereotypes, and prejudices. What Locke calls the ‘‘Old Negro’’ is precisely the composite sketch formed by those images projected onto the Negro by those outside his group. This imposed selfimage (often presented as the true identity of the Negro) should be resisted and unmasked as a fiction: ‘‘The Old Negro has long become more of a myth than a man’’; ‘‘a creature of moral debate and historical controversy’’; ‘‘a stock figure perpetuated as a historical fiction’’;

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‘‘more of a formula than a human being’’; ‘‘a social bogey or a social burden’’ (1925, 3). Locke’s distinction between the Old Negro and the New Negro is a distinction between a self-image imposed from the outside and a self-image that results from the agency of the members of the group themselves. In this way Locke draws a sharp contrast between an unreconstructed and a reconstructed self-image. The Old Negro has no agency; he is a disempowered (and disempowering) fictional figure. Locke describes him as someone talked about who has no voice of his own (‘‘a something to be argued about, condemned or defended, to be ‘kept down’, or ‘in his place’, or ‘helped up’, to be worried with or worried over, harassed or patronized’’; 1925, 3). To overcome this imposed self-image, Negroes face the task of finding a voice of their own. The fulfillment of this task requires changes in the material conditions of life as well as changes in the group’s self-expression. Locke argues that crucial material changes of American society (industrialization, mass migration, and class diversification) have made possible a radical transformation of the collective identity of the Negro. He describes the ‘‘metamorphosis’’ from the Old Negro to the New Negro as follows: ‘‘By shedding the old chrysalis of the Negro problem we are achieving something like a spiritual emancipation. Until recently, lacking self-understanding, we have been almost as much a problem to ourselves as we still are to others. But the decade that found us with a problem has left us with a task’’ (1925, 4; my emphasis). This ‘‘spiritual emancipation’’ consists in becoming a subject and taking control of one’s agency by breaking free from the ‘‘inner grip of prejudice’’ and acquiring self-knowledge. The self-knowledge and spiritual emancipation of a group require more than simply compiling ready-made images; they require that the members of the group have experience in common and own this experience by becoming conscious and critical of it. As Locke puts it: ‘‘Hitherto American Negroes have been a race more in name than in fact, or to be exact, more in sentiment than in experience. The chief bond between them has been that of a common condition rather than a common consciousness; a problem in common rather than a life in common. In Harlem, Negro

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life is seizing upon its first chances for group expression and selfdetermination. It is—or promises to be—a race capital’’ (1925, 7; my emphasis). In Locke’s view, group unity and solidarity are achieved through common experience and the critical reconstruction of this experience. Herein lies the special significance of Harlem, which Locke considers to be the cradle of the New Negro. In the first place, in Harlem Negroes find a cultural space where they can share experiences and pursue common ideals: they find ‘‘a common area of contact and interaction’’; ‘‘their greatest experience has been finding one another’’ in this common space (1925, 6–7). Locke emphasizes that the cultural richness of Harlem resides in its diversity. Harlem is not a monolithic space, but an effervescent arena of interaction of different cultural forces. This suggests that a group’s need for common and unified experience does not require the suppression or erasure of the inner diversity of the group; and that, therefore, the task of finding a distinctive voice for the group should be understood as the task of engaging in a vibrant dialogue of congruous and complementary voices. This pluralist insight is elaborated in Locke’s idea of ‘‘unity through diversity’’ (see his essay under that title in Harris 1991, 133–38).3 In the second place, the self-empowerment of a group requires not simply having experiences in common, but also and more important, owning these common experiences, that is, appropriating them in a selfconscious and critical way. Locke contends that the critical articulation of the collective experience of Negroes is the duty of ‘‘an enlightened minority’’: the artists and intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance. What makes these ‘‘enlightened minds’’ special is that they have been able to overcome prejudice and have taken a leadership role in the self-expression of the group. This intellectual elite constitutes ‘‘the advance-guard of the African peoples’’ and has ‘‘the mission of rehabilitating the race in world esteem’’ (1925, 14).4 The artists and intellectuals of Harlem make a special contribution to the ‘‘spiritual Coming of Age’’ of the Negro race by giving expression to ‘‘the growing group consciousness of the dark-peoples’’ and by ‘‘gradually learning their common interests’’ (1925, 14 and 16). Locke

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describes Harlem as one of ‘‘those nascent centers of folk-expression and self-determination which are playing a creative part in the world today’’; in his view, ‘‘Harlem has the same role to play for the New Negro as Dublin has had for the New Ireland or Prague for the New Czechoslovakia’’ (1925, 7). Locke recognizes that the life and experience of the Harlem Negro is indeed very peculiar, since it takes place in one of the largest and most cosmopolitan metropolises of one of the most industrialized nations. How can the Negro life of Harlem be representative for all American Negroes (urban and rural, rich and poor, Northerner and Southerner), let alone for all African peoples around the globe? Locke answers: ‘‘Harlem, I grant you, isn’t typical—but it is significant, it is prophetic’’ (1925, 7). Harlem Negroes can play the role of leaders of the race because they have become self-conscious of their experience and they have begun to take control of their agency. In my interpretation of Locke’s view, what makes Harlem’s cultural life special (‘‘significant’’ and ‘‘prophetic’’) is that it can offer exemplars of reconstructed experience. These exemplars can be appropriated in different ways by peoples of African descent in the light of their specific contexts and histories. This critical appropriation of experience requires the genealogical and projective reconstruction discussed above. Locke only makes a few remarks about genealogical reconstruction in his references to history and tradition. But he is much more explicit about the projective side of the reconstruction of the Negro experience. He repeatedly emphasizes the need of ‘‘clarifying . . . our common vision of the social tasks ahead’’ so that ‘‘public opinion cannot continue to paternalize’’ the Negro, and he can move ‘‘forward under the control largely of his own objectives’’ (1925, 10). It is the duty of Harlem artists and intellectuals such as Locke himself to give explicit articulation to these objectives. In his discussion of the New Negro’s objectives Locke distinguishes between ‘‘those of his outer life’’ (that is, his life in common with members of other groups) and ‘‘those of his inner life’’ (that is, his life as a member of the group). The Negro’s objectives in his ‘‘outer life’’ are ‘‘none other than the ideals of American institutions and de-

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mocracy’’ (1925, 10). But although these ideals are the same as those of other Americans, the Negro’s experience enriches them and contributes to a ‘‘new social understanding’’ and a ‘‘new democracy.’’ On the other hand, Locke remarks, the objectives of the Negro’s ‘‘inner life’’ are ‘‘yet in the process of formation’’ because so far the efforts have been directed toward a negative task, namely: the ‘‘attempt to repair a damaged group psychology and reshape a warped social perspective’’ (1925, 10). But Locke emphasizes that the New Negro is finally rising ‘‘from social disillusionment to race pride, from the sense of social debt to the responsibilities of social contribution’’ and his new ‘‘creed’’ is ‘‘the belief in the efficacy of collective support, in race cooperation’’ (1925, 11). This recently gained self-respect has been achieved by the New Negro by taking pride in ‘‘his artistic endowments and cultural contributions, past and prospective’’ (1925, 15). In this process of emancipation and self-empowerment Negroes have thus focused on the cultural objectives of self-expression and self-determination: ‘‘Whatever the general effect, the present generation will have added the motives of self-expression and spiritual development to the old and still unfinished task of making material headway and progress’’ (1925, 15–16). What we have seen so far should be sufficient (I hope) to establish that Locke’s account of the self-empowerment of the New Negro exhibits the essential features of the Deweyan model of reconstruction of collective experience. But does this account cast a favorable light on the Deweyan model? Locke’s account is certainly rich and inspiring, but it is also pregnant with problems. I will briefly discuss what I consider to be the two central problems for Locke’s account. In addressing these problems, I hope to show that the account does exemplify the virtues of the Deweyan model of reconstruction and can be used as a paradigm for the self-empowerment of other racial and ethnic groups. Problems and Advantages of the Reconstructive Model The first problem that arises for the reconstructive model of collective identity I have articulated through Locke is that it seems to be open

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to the charge of elitism. I grant that occasionally Locke does seem to put too much faith in elites: for instance, with his claim that ‘‘the carefully maintained contacts of the enlightened minorities of . . . race groups’’ is ‘‘the only safeguard for mass relations’’ (1925, 9)—as if such contacts could not hide the segregation of the masses. I don’t want to dispute the elitist flavor of Locke’s discussion. But I do want to make clear that Locke’s view of leadership, at its core, is not elitist. When Locke prepared the New Negro for publication he still supported Du Bois’ notion of the Talented Tenth, but as his social views became more radical, his thought grew out of this notion. In the New Negro, under the influence of Du Bois’ humanist view,5 he thought of leaders as organic intellectuals, that is, as community representatives and activists who can regenerate the life of the group. These leaders are not different and apart from ordinary men and women; they are themselves part of the mass, and they don’t have a static position or a fixed relation to the rest of the group. Far from forgetting the masses, Locke talks about the common man frequently and assigns a crucial role to ordinary people in the transformation of the race. According to Locke’s account, the conditions for the possibility of self-empowerment become available to the Negro race precisely because ‘‘a transformed and transforming psychology permeates the masses’’ (1925, 7). The ultimate criterion of success for this process of self-transformation is the self-empowerment of all the members of the racial group (and not just of a particular portion of it). But although the transformation of the masses is the condition for the possibility and for the success of the empowerment of the entire race, one can still object that the process of transformation itself is elitist if the masses are treated as the passive material of the process of change, which is itself controlled by an intelligentsia or ‘‘a thinking few.’’6 But nothing could be more antithetical to Locke’s view than the idea that common men and women form a passive and uncritical mass that can only be led: ‘‘In a real sense it is the rank and file who are leading, and the leaders who are following’’ (1925, 7). In Locke’s view, leaders follow the path already traveled by ordinary men and women; their role is to facilitate their journey; and, therefore, they should be as

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vigilant to the behavior of the masses as the masses should be critical of the behavior of their leaders.7 So, for Locke, ordinary men and women are not just indispensable components in the self-transformation of the race; they are actually the real agents of that transformation. As he puts it, ‘‘it is the ‘man farthest down’ who is most active in getting up’’; and, therefore, it is a mistake to think that leaders are simply ‘‘reading into the stirrings of a sleeping giant the dreams of an agitator’’; it is ‘‘the migrating peasant’’ who is in control of the process of change (1925, 7). The issue of leadership is indeed a vexed question for any philosophy of race and ethnicity. Many questions concerning the role and status that leaders should have in racial and ethnic groups (as representatives, as educators, as role models, as intellectual guides who shape the opinion and sensibility of the group, and so on) still remain unanswered. There is no room here for a discussion of these questions, but I hope to have shown that there is nothing in Locke’s view that is intrinsically elitist and that precludes a democratic and egalitarian answer to these questions. The second problem that arises for Locke’s view concerns the notion of a cultural capital, on which Locke’s account of the New Negro’s self-empowerment rests. This notion has come under attack in the recent literature on race and ethnicity, which has accumulated different versions of the objection that the idea of a cultural capital as the possession of a racial or ethnic group is intrinsically exclusionary and oppressive. This objection arises for any account of race or ethnicity that appeals to a common cultural heritage of the group. In fact, some have argued that the very notions of ‘‘race’’ and ‘‘ethnicity’’ are intrinsically exclusionary and oppressive because their use preserves social injustices that are inscribed in them, rigidly separates individuals into groups, and implicitly legitimates the differential access to cultural and material resources. This is the view defended by David Hollinger in Postethnic America.8 According to Hollinger’s postethnic perspective, cultural objects, ideals, and institutions belong to mankind and not to any group in particular, and to claim otherwise is inherently oppressive because it tacitly justifies certain

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exclusions, that is, it justifies that certain groups be prevented from enjoying cultural products and resources. Let me briefly discuss this critique of the notion of cultural capital in order to elucidate how critical reconstruction can contribute to the empowerment of a group without necessarily resulting in the disempowerment of other groups. The notion of cultural capital refers to the range of potentialities that have been (or can be) expressed and realized by the members of a group. These potentialities need to be uncovered and appropriated through a genealogical (and projective) reconstruction, for the members of the group are not automatically aware and in control of their cultural capital. Hollinger terms the appropriation of cultural products by a particular group ‘‘the will to descend,’’ which he characterizes as the illegitimate aspiration of ‘‘seeking empowerment through genealogy’’ (2000, 126). To show why this genealogical empowerment should be resisted, Hollinger takes as an example the democratic and egalitarian ideals of American culture. He asks rhetorically: ‘‘Are they not European?’’ (2000, 125). They are indeed but, he remarks, ‘‘it should not follow that Euro-Americans of today have a greater claim on these ideals than anyone else’’ (2000, 125–26). There are two important points to consider here. In the first place, note the sociopolitical aspects of the case that Hollinger offers for consideration. Hollinger’s choice of example is very revealing. This instance of ‘‘the will to descend’’ is unacceptable, among other things, because the group that seeks empowerment through genealogy already has all the power and, therefore, is using genealogy to legitimate its monopoly of power and to perpetuate an existing relation of domination. But would we say the same about the genealogical empowerment of disadvantaged groups that have not yet been allowed to enjoy and exploit the cultural products of their own agency? Whether or not the genealogical empowerment of a group is desirable depends on the context and the socioeconomic and political specifics of the case. The particular position of the group in question in relation to other groups is of paramount importance. However, Hollinger ignores this element entirely; and he goes on to argue that since the cultural appropriation of ideals and institutions is clearly wrong and exclusion-

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ary when done by Euro-Americans, it must also be so when done by other groups (regardless of their socioeconomic status and political power): ‘‘The will to descend has already been indulged, in a multitude of fields, to the benefit of Europeans and of white Americans. Correcting this need not mean cynically turning the tables and indulging this will on behalf of some other contemporary group’’ (2000, 127). But this is a fallacy. It doesn’t follow that genealogical empowerment is always wrong and exclusionary unless we assume that the value of such empowerment can be assessed independently of the conditions under which it takes place and the consequences of its achievement. But should we say the same thing about the genealogical empowerment of oppressed groups and their oppressors? The value of cultural appropriation is simply not the same for groups in a position of power and for groups that have been dispossessed of their own cultural agency. But in the second place, the key issue is whether cultural capital is claimed as the exclusive possession of a group, or as a cultural contribution of the group to society that can be used and enjoyed by other groups as well. If the appropriation of cultural products involves exclusivity, then it has the potential to be oppressive. Hollinger assumes that all instances of cultural appropriation are of this kind, but this is not necessarily the case. It is true that the language of ‘‘possession,’’ ‘‘capital,’’ ‘‘heritage,’’ and so on does have those exclusionary connotations. But claiming one’s cultural products as one’s own does not have to be done to the exclusion of others; claiming one’s heritage doesn’t have to be exclusionary if one is willing to share. It is certainly possible to call attention to the link between certain ideas, artifacts, styles, institutions, and so forth and the practices and traditions of one’s group, while offering these cultural products as contributions for the use and enjoyment of other groups in a multicultural society. This is indeed Locke’s view. Although he emphasizes the Negro’s cultural capital, Locke does not hold an exclusionary view. What he calls the ‘‘free-trade in culture’’ and ‘‘the principle of cultural reciprocity’’ (cf. Harris 1991, 206) are supposed to speak to Hollinger’s concern. In fact, Locke could have written the following passage as a rebuttal to

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Hollinger: ‘‘Culture-goods, once evolved, are no longer the exclusive property of the race or people that originate them. They belong to all who can use them; and belong most to those who can use them best. But for all the limitless exchange and transplanting of culture, it cannot be artificially manufactured; it grows. And so far as I can understand history, it is always a folk-product, with the form and flavor of a particular people and place, that is to say, for all its subsequent universality, culture has root and grows in that social soil which, for want of a better term, we call ‘race’ ’’ (Harris 1991, 206; my emphasis). Neglecting forms of cultural appropriation and self-affirmation that don’t involve exclusivity, Hollinger comes to the conclusion that the ethnic roots of our cultural products should be de-emphasized: ‘‘At issue is how much of our appreciation for a doctrine or a work of art or an institution should be based on its perceived ethno-racial ancestry. From a postethnic perspective, the answer is, not much’’ (2000, 127). In Hollinger’s view, the ethnic roots of cultural products do not play an active role in their appreciation and can become obstacles for their use and enjoyment; they are something accidental to be transcended, mainly negative (biased) aspects to be overcome. In this sense Hollinger refers to examples of cultural products that, despite the ethnic specificity of their origins, have become the universal patrimony of mankind: for example, the scientific and artistic achievements of Ancient Egypt. But the crucial mistake here is to think that one cannot make cultural products available universally and at the same time develop an appreciation for their ethnic ancestry, that we have to choose between these two things, that one can only be done at the expense of the other. This error gives plausibility to the claim that the cost of expanding the availability of cultural products is to detach them from their ethnic roots and to minimize the value of their ethnic aspects. But this is simply wrong. In fact, making cultural products available outside the cultural contexts in which they were developed, far from being incompatible with, actually requires an appreciation of their ethnic ancestry. Such an appreciation is a precondition for the full enjoyment and the responsible use of these products. The exploitation of cultural resources without the awareness and ap-

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preciation of their ethnic dimension is dangerous and irresponsible, for it amounts to being unwilling to control the oppressive consequences that such exploitation can have for the groups in which those resources originated. Hollinger’s claim that ‘‘Egypt, surely, belongs to us all, and so, too, does democracy’’ (2000, 128) is both right and wrong. It is correct insofar as it is a way of emphasizing the availability that these cultural products have (or should have). But it is incorrect insofar as it denies the different relationships or linkages that different groups have to these products. For better or for worse, cultural products and resources don’t belong to all of us equally. But this does not mean that we cannot all use them or enjoy them; we can, but we will do so differently. For better or for worse, the cultural history of a people is inscribed (in various ways) in the ideas, artifacts, and institutions that they produce. It is true that these ethnic ‘‘inscriptions’’ can become biases that have to be overcome. But in that case an appreciation for ethnic ancestry is all the more important if we want the overcoming of bias to be successful. And, of course, cultural ‘‘inscriptions’’ are not always burdens for social development and progress that have to be countered and lifted; they can be (and typically are) reservoirs of possibilities that can be exploited by many groups in many different ways (sometimes in old and customary ways, sometimes in novel and creative ways). In other words, ethnic ‘‘inscriptions’’ can be resources, indeed cultural capitals. This nonexclusionary view of cultural capital is grounded in Locke’s dialectical view of the development of ethnic and racial groups. In this view, given the relations of mutual dependence between groups, we cannot make sense of the development of each group independently of the others. Groups develop together; they become mutually enriched or impoverished in and through their interactions. The simultaneous formations and transformations of interrelated groups are forged in their interactions and mutual adjustments. (In Deweyan language, the formation of group identity is transactional.) Groups just cannot develop independently of one another: A self-professed isolationism makes the development of the

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group crucially dependent on a particular relation to and attitude toward other groups. Locke explicitly denounces the myth of social and racial separatism: ‘‘The fiction is that the life of the races is separate, and increasingly so. The fact is that they have touched too closely at the unfavorable and too lightly at the favorable levels’’ (1925, 9). Locke argues that the fiction of separatism is not only detrimental to the development of particular groups but also to the whole of society, for it renders impossible the realization of American democratic ideals: ‘‘Democracy itself is obstructed and stagnated to the extent that any of its channels are closed’’ (1925, 12). In Locke’s view, the development of the New Negro involves the development of new relations between racial and ethnic groups in America. This brings us to the second benefit that the critical reconstruction of collective experience can afford, namely: the facilitation of intercultural understanding and communication. Although Locke’s account of the reconstruction of Negro life focuses quite heavily on the self-empowerment of the group, he also emphasizes how this reconstruction can facilitate and promote the communication between groups and improve their mutual understanding. He emphasizes that the ‘‘new American attitude’’ that the New Negro is helping to create is characterized by a ‘‘closer understanding’’ of the different racial and ethnic groups that compose American society (1925, 10). This ‘‘new American attitude’’ is to be understood interactionally, that is, as maintained by the different racial and ethnic groups in their continued communication, cultural exchanges, and mutual understanding of their respective expressive and artistic agency. Now that Negro voices are heard, now that their cultural products become available to the whole of society, now that their artistic expressions find an audience, a set of ‘‘entirely new mutual attitudes’’ (1925, 8) becomes possible. It is important to note that this interactive and communicative view of the development of racial and ethnic groups in a multicultural society explores enabling conditions for the mutual enrichment of these groups, but it cannot provide a formula that guarantees success in interracial and interethnic relations. This view does not involve a naı¨ve optimism or deterministic meliorism. It sim-

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ply contends that mutual understanding makes it possible that groups support and enrich each other in their development. As Locke puts it: ‘‘It does not follow that if the Negro were better known, he would be better liked or better treated. But mutual understanding is basic for any subsequent cooperation and adjustment’’ (1925, 8–9). The mutual understanding of racial groups is a precondition, but not a guarantee, for the improvement of racial relations and for the pursuit of the progressive realization and fulfillment of American ideals. To conclude this section, I want to call attention to the fundamental significance of both the social and the dialectical aspects of the pragmatist view of identity that we can find in Dewey and in Locke. In its social dimension, this pragmatist view puts the emphasis on the interrelations between personal and collective identity,9 making clear that self-knowledge is a social task, that is, that to know oneself is to know others with whom one shares a common history, a cultural bond, and a reservoir of experience. Thus, on this social view, the injunction ‘‘know thyself’’ is translated into ‘‘know thy community.’’ But there is a further complication for, in its dialectical dimension, the pragmatist view tells us that group identities cannot be extricated from the interrelations among groups and, therefore, the collective identity of a group is crucially dependent on the identity of other groups. Thus in order to know one’s community one must know other communities as well, for one cannot fully understand the identity of a group without understanding the identity of other groups. With this dialectical twist, it becomes clear that the dictum ‘‘know thy community’’ presupposes the maxim ‘‘know thy neighbors (or neighboring communities).’’ The upshot is that, on this view, the quest for self-knowledge and self-mastery becomes a far-reaching exploration that goes beyond the parochial domains of one’s own experiences or the experiences of one’s group. This experiential exploration involves the reconstruction and critique of the collective experience of many groups; and it requires opening channels of interaction and paths of communication between these groups so as to facilitate their mutual understanding.

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An interesting account of the kind of experiential exploration that is required for self-knowledge and self-mastery can be found in the writings of Marı´a Lugones, a Latina philosopher whose views are very close to the social and dialectical model discussed here, even though she does not explicitly draw on the pragmatist tradition.10 Lugones (1989) argues that the quest for self-knowledge and self-mastery requires a playful and adventurous attitude, for such a quest is quite literally an expedition and those who participate in it must be explorers or travelers: They must explore new experiential domains or, as she puts it, ‘‘travel’’ to new ‘‘worlds’’ of experience that are foreign to them. She recommends ‘‘playfulness’’ and ‘‘world-traveling’’ as ways of overcoming the obstacles that block cross-cultural and cross-racial understanding. In her view, ‘‘world-traveling’’ involves the exploration of experiential contexts where identities different from ours flourish; and being ‘‘playful’’ involves having an experimentalist attitude with respect to one’s self and the ‘‘worlds’’ one inhabits. According to Lugones, through playful explorations we can develop a loving empathy toward those who are significantly different from ourselves, thus transforming our relationship with them and, at the same time, transforming and enlarging our own selves.11 The playful attitude required by these explorations involves being willing to take risks and being open to novelty and surprises (even destabilizing ones). It is revealing that in her description of this attitude she uses the concept of reconstruction. The playful attitude involves openness to surprise, openness to being a fool, openness to self-construction or reconstruction and to construction or reconstruction of the ‘‘worlds’’ we inhabit playfully. . . . In attempting to take a hold of oneself and of one’s relation to others in a particular ‘‘world,’’ one may study, examine and come to understand oneself. One may then see what the possibilities for play are for the being one is in that ‘‘world.’’ One may even decide to inhabit that self fully in order to understand it better and find its creative possibilities. (Lugones 1989, 17; emphasis added)

‘‘World-traveling’’ involves experimentation with life-experiences and the critical reconstruction of these experiences and of the self

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who has them. As described by Lugones, experimentation and reconstruction require that we explore new cultural contexts and become acquainted with the new forms of experience and the possibilities these contexts have to offer to our life. But it is important to note that this exploration and experimentation have important constraints and limitations. Cross-cultural traveling may not be always possible; we may find insurmountable obstacles along the way in our attempts at transcultural experimentation. For example, the constraints that our embodiment imposes on our identity become important obstacles when we try to travel across genders, sexualities, races, and ethnicities. In some cases our agency may be able to remove these obstacles, but in other cases it may not. And at any rate, even when cross-cultural traveling is possible, a genuine transcultural understanding may require more than playful experimentation; it may require a deep process of transformation at the personal and interpersonal level as well as at the level of the material conditions of existence. We have to acknowledge that there are always limits to the creative reconstruction of identities, as the pragmatist emphasis on context and historical constraints reminds us.12 I will conclude with a brief discussion of the social and political implications of the pragmatist approach to ethnicity developed in this essay. For this discussion I will focus on the account of Hispanic identity developed by the Cuban poet, philosopher, and political thinker Jose´ Martı´. The New Hispanic After constant waves of migration the Hispanic community has acquired a strong presence in the United States. It has already become the largest minority and the fastest growing, according to the Census Bureau, which projects that Hispanics will constitute almost a quarter of the U.S. population by the middle of the twenty-first century. Increasingly, Hispanics have acquired more socioeconomic freedoms and more opportunities for self-expression. There has been also an increasing interest in Hispanic culture by the rest of American soci-

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ety. And although Hispanic Americans have not yet produced a cultural movement comparable to the Harlem Renaissance, the socioeconomic and political conditions for the creation of the New Hispanic seem to be now available: Hispanics are now in a position to create their own images and take control of their cultural agency. As with the New Negro, the first stage in this process of cultural selfaffirmation is to do some repair work, that is, to fight the old images and prejudices that are imposed on Hispanics and constrain their development. The marginality of the Old Hispanic still weighs heavily in the mainstream perception of Hispanics in American society: Hispanics are still frequently perceived as foreigners and as sources of cheap labor, being all too often relegated to ‘‘those jobs Americans don’t want to do.’’ As Locke recognized, the ultimate success in overcoming a situation of oppression depends on the genuine and durable transformation of the material conditions of the life of the oppressed group. But an important aspect of the process of emancipation, which accompanies and facilitates the changes in the material conditions, is the cultural transformation through which the group understands, criticizes, and expresses itself, reworking the self-images already available to the group and creating new ones. My suggestion is that a philosophical voice that can help guide this process of cultural reconstruction and creation is that of Jose´ Martı´. It is my claim that in Martı´’s view of Latin America we can find the critical and reconstructive elements of the pragmatist approach to ethnic identity; and, I submit, he should be considered the Alain Locke of the New Hispanic.13 Since there is no space here for a full overview of Martı´’s account of Latin American identity, following the structure of my argument in this essay, I will focus on the following two parts of his account: his discussion of the conditions for the self-empowerment of Latin Americans, and his arguments for the need and importance of intercultural understanding and communication. In ‘‘Our America’’ (1891) Martı´ argues that the self-empowerment of Latin Americans requires critical self-understanding and creative agency, which are everywhere lacking in the Hispanic world. He repeatedly warns that until Latin Americans realize that they need and

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lack adequate knowledge and appreciation of who they are, they will not be able to find the path toward liberation and their situation of oppression will not change. According to Martı´, what stands in the way of the spiritual emancipation of Latin Americans is an induced self-hatred and distrust of their own potentialities. The other side of this negative self-image is the admiration and idealization of the European and the Yankee. As a result, what has characterized the cultural and political agency of Latin Americans is the imitation of foreign models. But, Martı´ remarks, ‘‘neither the European nor the Yankee could provide the key to the Spanish American riddle’’ (1999, 117). Latin Americans will have to find the key to this riddle by themselves; but they won’t find it until they repair their lack of self-knowledge and self-reliance and they overcome their imitative tendencies. In other words, the central task is to fight against the colonial mentality that survives in Latin American republics even after their independence: ‘‘The colony lives on the Republic’’ (1999, 116). It is this colonial mentality that is responsible for ‘‘the excessive influx of foreign ideas and formulas’’ and ‘‘the wicked and unpolitical disdain for the aboriginal race’’ (ibid.). From colonial times Latin Americans have inherited a negative and oppressive attitude toward ‘‘the indigenous’’: they ‘‘are ashamed of the mother who reared them, because she wears an Indian apron,’’ without realizing that ‘‘our America . . . will be saved by its Indians’’ (1999, 112). Martı´ underscores that it is imperative that Latin Americans become acquainted with their own history and that they develop a new appreciation for their indigenous customs and traditions. For it is only through self-knowledge and self-respect that they will be able to find the path to their own creative agency. In Martı´’s view, the key to the emancipation of Latin America (‘‘the key to the Spanish American riddle’’) is to be found in what he calls nature and creation. Martı´ characterizes as ‘‘natural’’ all those resources that can be found in one’s surroundings and the exploitation of these resources according to the needs and interests of the people. In Martı´’s writings the term ‘‘natural’’ is often used as synonymous with ‘‘consonant with one’s environment’’ or ‘‘faithful to

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one’s context.’’ As he uses the term, ‘‘nature’’ includes both human and material resources; its opposite is not culture, but artifice: The unnatural is what results from accepting images, ideas, and models that don’t fit the local reality. As Martı´ puts it: ‘‘The struggle is not between civilization and barbarity, but between false erudition and Nature’’ (1999, 113). In his view, it is very important that ‘‘the new Americans’’ are formed ‘‘in the direct study of nature’’ (1999, 118). They must study the natural elements of their own environments and learn to find themselves at home in their own cultural contexts. To achieve this, Martı´ argues, educational institutions must undergo transformation and pay attention to the local realities: ‘‘The European university must bow to the American university. Our Greece must take priority over the Greece which is not ours’’ (1999, 114). Martı´ describes the intellectual leader that the American university should aim to produce as ‘‘a new real man schooled for these real times in critical philosophy’’ (1999, 116). But the intellectual revolution that should take place at the level of the university is only one component in the wider process of transformation of the social institutions and media that educate the people: ‘‘Newspapers, universities, and schools should encourage the study of the country’s pertinent components’’ (1999, 114). Being in contact with the natural elements of one’s environment and being aware of the potentialities of one’s culture are the conditions of possibility for the form of genuine agency that Martı´ contrasts with imitation: what he calls creation. This is how he describes his faith in the youth of Latin America, a revolutionary generation that (he claims in 1891) begins to be in touch with their own past and identity and to be capable of creative agency: ‘‘The frock coats are still French, but thought begins to be American. The youth of America are rolling up their sleeves, digging their hands in the dough, and making it rise with the sweat of their brows. They realize that there is too much imitation, and that creation holds the key to salvation. ‘Create’ is the password of this generation’’ (1999, 117; emphasis added). In Martı´’s discussions of ‘‘nature’’ and ‘‘creation’’ we find a passionate defense of the thesis of local self-government. He emphasizes

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that the fundamental importance of this idea is due to the creative power that government and political leaders have: ‘‘In a new nation a government means a creator’’ (1999, 114). Given their especially powerful form of creative agency, it is crucial that political leaders study ‘‘nature’’ and acquire knowledge of and respect for their region’s history and ethnic diversity. On this depends the emancipation of Latin American republics: ‘‘Republics have paid with oppression for their inability to recognize the true elements of their countries, to derive from them the right kind of government. . . . To know one’s country and govern it with that knowledge is the only way to free it from tyranny’’ (1999, 113–14). Martı´ describes the ‘‘natural statesman’’ as the one who knows the natural elements of his nation and the needs and interests of its people. In his view, good self-government ‘‘is nothing more than the balance of the country’s natural elements’’ that makes it possible ‘‘to reach that desirable state where each man can attain self-realization’’ (1999, 113). This ‘‘balance of natural elements’’ can only be achieved through a critical reconstruction of the people’s experience. For, it is important to note, Martı´’s political view is not a mere celebration of whatever is local, indigenous, and consonant with the folk culture. As Martı´ puts it: ‘‘Nations should live in an atmosphere of self-criticism’’ (1999, 117). Martı´’s view of self-government and political emancipation has been characterized as a form of Bolivarism.14 And indeed it is Bolı´var who inspired Martı´’s idea that the path to liberation can only be found by those who know and respect the history of Latin America and the cultural diversity of its peoples. In ‘‘Simo´n Bolı´var’’ (1893) Martı´ argues that Latin America needs its own political leaders who can envision and develop original forms of government adequate to the complex and diverse realities of Latin American republics. In this piece (a speech in honor of Bolı´var delivered to the Latin American Literary Society of New York in 1893), Martı´ provides a balanced assessment of the Liberator, including both praise and critique. Although heavily influenced by Bolı´var, Martı´’s political views are far more pluralistic and contextualist. Martı´ explicitly argues against Bolı´var’s idea of uniting the Latin American ‘‘countries of the revolu-

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tion under a distant, central government,’’ and he defends a ‘‘multiheaded American revolution born of the desire for local self-government’’ (1999, 170). In Martı´’s pluralist and contextualist view, Latin America is composed of diverse local realities with different histories and ethnic roots. The question that immediately arises for this view is the following: Where does the unity of Latin Americans reside? If the peoples of Latin America exhibit such an irreducibly diverse range of ethnic characteristics and cultural agencies, how are they united? The first thing to note here is that the only unity that Martı´’s view of Latin America can offer is the kind of unity that is formed by heterogeneous elements, a unity that does not suppress or erase but in fact requires differences, a unity through diversity.15 But what constitutes this unity? According to Martı´, what unifies the diverse peoples of Latin America is a common experience that includes indigenous and colonial elements. The core of this common experience is the experience of oppression, of being oppressed and of fighting against oppression. Latin Americans are unified in the present by a shared past and a shared hope for the future. They find their roots in a set of interrelated indigenous and non-indigenous cultures that shared the experience of being under the yoke of a colonial power and came to form a common vision of emancipation and freedom. The unity of Latin Americans is, therefore, a political unity: They are unified by their common history of oppression and their common project of liberation. As Martı´ puts it: ‘‘The pressing need of Our America is to show itself as it is, one in spirit and intent, swift conquerors of a suffocating past, stained only by the enriching blood drawn from the scarves left upon us by our masters’’ (1999, 119). To carry out the project of liberation that unifies them, Latin Americans need to know who they are: They have to develop a critical self-understanding and claim an identity that is formed through their free agency. This quest for self-mastery and cultural self-affirmation involves two equally important tasks that complement and support each other. The first task has already been discussed: It is to get to know Our America in all its historical and ethnic diversity; that is, to

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acquire knowledge of the different local realities that compose Latin America. The second task is to get to know the neighboring nations and cultures that are in contact with Latin America and whose relations can have an impact on its free agency and affect its future. Martı´ writes: ‘‘Nations that do not know one another should quickly become acquainted’’ (1999, 111). The rationale for the task of knowing one’s neighbors involves two distinct points. The first one is the conceptual, dialectical point about identity examined above. As we saw, one’s identity is dialectically bound up with the identity of others; and this applies to collective identities as well as to the identities of individuals. Accordingly, knowing the collective identity of Latin Americans requires knowing the collective identity of non-Latin Americans. It is important for Hispanics to get to know the experience and identity of other ethnic groups in America that don’t share their history, customs, and traditions. In this sense Martı´ calls our attention to ‘‘the difference in origins, methods and interests between the two halves of the continent’’ (1999, 118); and he emphasizes the ‘‘risk’’ that this difference poses to Latin Americans given the differential power of the two halves of the continent. In particular, Martı´ claims that ‘‘Our America’s greatest danger’’ is its ‘‘formidable neighbor’’ (1999, 119), the United States, which is capable of blocking revolutions and undermining local self-governments. And this brings us to the second, political point contained in the rationale for knowing one’s neighbors. The dialectical point about the need of getting to know neighboring nations and cultures acquires a special political significance when it comes to power relations. This is why the need of knowing the United States is of special importance for Latin American republics. For after achieving independence from their colonizers, these republics live under the menace of another master, an even stronger superpower whose oppression has the potential to surpass in some respects that of the colonial power of previous centuries. This is the central thesis of ‘‘The Truth about the United States’’ (1894). In this essay Martı´ argues that ‘‘in Our America it is imperative to know the truth about the United States,’’ and that to know this truth and to spread

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it constitute the ‘‘duty’’ of any ‘‘good American who sees the continent’s peace and glory secure only in the frank and free development of its various native entities’’ (1999, 174). According to Martı´, ignorance of this truth is responsible for a superficial admiration and a harmful envy of the United States in Latin American republics. He warns that the ‘‘excessive love for the North’’ and the ‘‘vehement desire for progress’’ are based on false images and can become blind and self-destructive. Given these dangers, Martı´ argues that it is ‘‘urgent . . . to put before Our America the entire American truth, about the Saxon as well as the Latin, so that too much faith in foreign virtue will not weaken us in our formative years with an unmotivated and baneful distrust of what is ours’’ (1999, 175). To correct the lack of knowledge about the United States in the Hispanic world and to fight its damaging implications, he suggested the addition of a permanent section in the New York-based magazine Patria devoted to ‘‘Notes on the Unites States.’’ Martı´ repeatedly emphasizes the crucial importance of intercultural communication and mutual understanding between the Americas. The task for us Hispanics, he argues, is to repair not only our ignorance about foreign cultures but also their ignorance about our culture: We need to learn about the United States as much as they need to learn about us. Martı´ remarks that in the United States Hispanics are only known through cliche´s and inaccurate images that don’t come from the agency of Hispanics themselves. So, he argues, we Hispanics need to make ourselves known in our own terms, we need to dismiss misconceptions and prejudices about us so that ‘‘all the violence, discord, immorality and disorder’’ in the United States is no longer ‘‘blamed upon the peoples of Spanish America’’ (1999, 176). In other words (borrowed from Locke), we have to tear down the fiction of the Old Hispanic and introduce all Americans to the New Hispanic. Hispanics need to conquer their own cultural space. They need to conquer the freedom and opportunity to create their own self-image and to find their own voice in a genuine dialogue between equals with other ethnic groups in the Americas. Through the progressive acquisition of mutual understanding and the sharing of

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experiences it may be possible to create a common ground and even a common project between the Americas, eventually transcending the ‘‘us and them’’ dialectic altogether.16 Concluding Remarks I want to conclude by emphasizing the importance of Martı´’s suggestion of the political unity that the Americas can achieve through intercultural communication and understanding. This suggestion springs directly from the pragmatist approach to ethnicity discussed and defended here. While living in New York, Martı´ realized that the United States was becoming a microcosm of the Americas and that, within the United States, it was all the more important that different ethnic and racial groups17 come to understand each other and be able to maintain open lines of communication between them. The pragmatist view of ethnicity developed here offers an account of how the critical reconstruction of collective experience can lead to the empowerment of ethnic and racial groups, and it can promote and facilitate the open dialogue and mutual understanding between cultures and races in the Americas. Dewey, Locke, and Martı´ are of one mind in arguing that ethnic and racial groups must acquire their own voices, exercise critical control over the products of their own agency, and enjoy the freedom and necessary resources for self-expression and cultural self-affirmation. The empowerment of its diverse ethnic and racial groups and the genuine and continuing dialogue between them are the preconditions for a better America. The ideas and suggestions explored here also have validity beyond the American context. As a result of colonialism, globalization, and recent migration patterns, the multicultural aspects of societies across the globe have been enhanced, and the global community has itself become more interconnected and mutually dependent. We face today special multicultural opportunities and challenges: Globalization has created new opportunities for the communication and mutual enrichment of cultural groups across the globe, but it has also raised unprecedented challenges for preserving and empowering cultural

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minorities, which are especially vulnerable and exposed to the homogenizing tendencies of global markets and to the global injustices and disparities created and enhanced by these markets. Not only transnational institutions but also transnational cultural practices (artistic, academic, economic, political, and so on) are needed to respond properly to these challenges and opportunities. It is in this sense that it is of crucial importance today for individuals and groups to get to know themselves as they get to know the neighboring communities and cultures with which their lives are entangled. It is particularly important and urgent today to keep our global cultural dialogues polyphonic, fighting homogenizing and normalizing tendencies that erase or marginalize differences. This sense of importance and urgency is what the pragmatic pluralism articulated and defended here tries to convey.

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pragmatism , latino intercultural c i t i z e n s h i p, a n d th e t r a n s f o r m a t i o n of american democracy Jose´-Antonio Orosco



I

n his recent study of the interconnections between globalization and violence, Fear of Small Numbers, Arjun Appadurai draws a distinction between the civic and the political patriotism expressed by many immigrants living within the United States. Especially for those immigrants coming from the Global South, there is a sense of ‘‘surviving in a moral cocoon within the belly of the beast’’ when it comes to describing life in America.1 These immigrants, both legal and undocumented, treasure the idea of taking advantage of the freedoms and liberties that come with citizenship. Nonetheless, they feel contempt for the ‘‘American way of life’’ that they associate with crime, sexual immorality, political corruption, and racism against nonwhite people. They have patriotism for the political ideals of the United States, but are disgusted by its civic life, its popular culture, and the moral hypocrisy of its citizens. They love America, but don’t care much for Americans. Such conditions are ripe for frustration and political violence, according to Appadurai. { 22 7 }

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For over twenty years, the Latino Cultural Studies Working Group has tried to capture this sense of being within, yet not of, American society with its concept of ‘‘Latino cultural citizenship.’’ Drawing on ethnographies of Latino/a communities throughout the United States, Renato Rosaldo and William V. Flores structure the notion of cultural citizenship as ‘‘the right to be different (in terms of race, ethnicity, or native language) with respect to the norms of the dominant national community, without compromising one’s right to belong, in the sense of participating in the nation-state’s democratic processes.’’2 In places ranging from San Jose´ to Los Angeles, California to San Antonio, Texas to East Harlem, Latinos struggle to integrate themselves into major social, economic and political institutions, while at the same time trying to make room in the public sphere to maintain and honor their culture, language, and community values such as respeto (respect). In this essay I examine this connection between culture and democracy with an eye toward developing a foundation for American citizenship that is informed by the experiences of Latinos/as in the United States. I begin by surveying arguments from philosophers within the American pragmatist tradition that correlate the stability of a democratic political regime with the habits, tastes, and attitudes of a given people. These thinkers, namely Horace Kallen, Jane Addams, and John Dewey, have developed two models to conceptualize the relationship of immigrant communities to democratic citizenship and governance: cultural pluralism and multiculturalism. I intend to demonstrate that Latino cultural citizenship is a form of cultural pluralism and, as such, does not seek to transform liberal representative democracy in any deep, significant sense. We can see this when we hold up Latino cultural citizenship to the radical challenge posed by progressive thinkers, such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Martin Luther King Jr., who argued that social justice in the United States cannot be achieved unless we move beyond liberal multiculturalism, and the idea of what it means to be an American is altered to reflect the experiences of non-white peoples. I then propose to look at the movement of ‘‘interculturalism’’ among indigenous activists and intellectuals in Latin America as a model for understanding how Latino/a cultural

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sensibilities might transform American democracy. As a movement, interculturalism does not simply seek the assimilation or integration of nonwhite immigrants into the mainstream, but to activate a broader revolution of values and institutions that can ‘‘decolonize’’ the notion of social justice away from a liberal democratic emphasis. I maintain it might inform American civic and political life in such a way as to reduce the distance between the kinds of patriotism Appadurai elucidates in his study. Culture and Democracy Does culture matter to the functioning of a democratic political regime? Within democratic theory, the connection between the stability of democracy and a society’s social traditions, habits, attitudes, and manners can at least be traced back to the famous ‘‘Funeral Oration’’ as recounted by the historian Thucydides. The statesman Pericles describes the power and grandeur of ancient Athens as resting on the various character traits of its citizens—their courage, generosity, appreciation for beauty, and willingness to engage in deliberation and public affairs. Democracy is seen as the system of government that is most likely to allow these moral virtues to flourish in individuals.3 Numerous ancient sources reiterate the Athenian idea that a democratic society is a community designed to nurture the moral excellence of citizens by encouraging their habitual participation in institutions that express their self-determination and commitment to justice.4 More recently, John Dewey argued that democracy refers to more than just the periodic election of representatives, but is, in fact, ‘‘a way of life’’ which signifies ‘‘the possession and continued use of certain attitudes, forming personal character and determining desire and purpose in all the relations of life.’’5 For Dewey, a robust democratic regime depends on a citizenry that maintains a kind of civic faith in each other’s equality and intelligence, along with a basic dedication toward cooperating and learning from one another. Robert Putnam’s classic work on American community echoes Dewey. The efficacy

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and stability of democratic politics, Putnam argues, appears to be tied a society’s social capital—the thickness of a given society’s networks of voluntary association that build trust, cooperation, civic skills, and habits of public concern among citizens.6 For others, the connection between culture and democracy is much more specific and grounded in historical traditions. Samuel Huntington maintains that American democracy is built around the idea of an American creed that consists of the Protestant work ethic, individualism, an appreciation of liberty, the rule of law, and a devotion to English.7 This creed is the result of hundreds of years of Anglo-Protestant history that was transplanted to the New World and reaffirmed by new waves of immigrants. Political commentator Patrick Buchanan, however, denies that the principles of liberal democracy are enough to bind Americans together through political patriotism: ‘‘Democracy is not enough. If the culture dies, the country dies.’’8 He cites the example that prior to the Civil War, both the North and South subscribed to the same form of government, but it was their distinct cultures that drove them apart. For Buchanan, a rooted civic patriotism—‘‘Language, faith, culture, and history—and yes, birth, blood, and soil’’—constitute a nation.9 Immigrants of the sort reported by Appadurai are a direct threat to the well-being of the United States, according to neonativists such as Huntington and Buchanan, precisely because they misunderstand, and see themselves apart from, the culture that secures its political institutions. Refusing to assimilate into this common culture is not a benign way of life to which immigrants are entitled by some multicultural interpretation of fairness or equality. Instead, the neonativists hold that a concept such as Latino cultural citizenship is one that threatens the very unity of society by preventing people from literally being able to engage with one another in public dialogue about matters of common concern. Cultural Pluralism Horace Kallen would have recognized these nativist concerns against Latino cultural citizenship as part of what he called ‘‘the new racism.’’

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Writing in 1956, at the beginning of American desegregation efforts, Kallen believed that racism based on skin color was waning in the United States. However, racism based on culture was growing. This new racism claimed ‘‘that the American Idea and the American Way were hereditary to the Anglo-Saxon stock and to that stock only; that other stocks were incapable of producing them, learning them, and living them. If, then, America is to survive as a culture of creed and code, it can do so only so long as the chosen Anglo-Saxon race retains its integrity of flesh and spirit and freely sustains and defends their American expression against alien contamination.’’10 Kallen traced this viewpoint to what he called cultural monism. For the cultural monist, the idea of the ‘‘melting pot’’ ought to be the model for dealing with newcomers to American culture. Immigrants must conform to the native way of life, assimilate, and drop their foreign heritage: ‘‘The American man would be a blended man wherein all the later and lesser colors would be lost in the initial one.’’11 Cultural monism insists on this assimilation only because it maintains that the one native culture is superior to that of the newcomers. Thus, to demonstrate sincere loyalty to America, immigrants must give their ‘‘willing and obedient conformation’’ to American culture in ‘‘all the dimensions of the common life—civil, industrial, religious, aesthetic, intellectual.’’12 In a series of essays in The Nation magazine some forty years earlier, Kallen had suggested, in an argument that anticipates Charles Taylor’s politics of recognition, that cultural monism is immoral because it inflicts a kind of harm upon immigrants.13 The melting pot ideal insists that newcomers shed their old-world identities and cultures to be accepted. Kallen did not think that it was possible to erase one’s heritage so easily or without real loss. One’s family history and sense of place constitute a ‘‘psychophysical inheritance.’’ This inheritance deeply conditions how one interprets the social world and understands one’s own possibilities within it. Indeed, one’s own sense of happiness depends, in part, on how one has been brought up by family, friends, and neighbors to experience concrete joy, hope, and sadness: ‘‘Men may change their clothes, their politics, their wives,

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their religions, their philosophies, to a greater or lesser extent: they cannot change their grandfathers. Jews or Poles or Anglo-Saxons, would have to cease to be. The selfhood which is inalienable in them, and for the realization of which they require ‘‘inalienable’’ liberty, is ancestrally determined, and the happiness which they pursue has its form implied in ancestral endowment.’’14 For Kallen, expecting a person to assimilate is to force her to deny this rich symbolic background, one’s own familial and historical inheritance, and pretend to be less than a human person and more like a blank slate upon which American culture can begin to inscribe a new, and better, way of life. Thus, this lack of recognition constitutes what Taylor views as a kind of injustice against a person’s sense of dignity, and the imposition of American culture through nativist efforts or what Iris Young would call ‘‘cultural imperialism.’’15 In contrast to the logic of the melting pot, Kallen argued for the idea of cultural pluralism, which he felt was more consonant with the ideal of American democracy. The aim of our liberal democracy, he maintained, is to serve as an instrument for the liberation and protection of human capacities. One of these capacities is the ability to take on, articulate, and develop a cultural or ethnic identity as part of the project of the ‘‘pursuit of happiness.’’ Hence, instead of seeking to erase the culture of immigrants, American democracy ought to find a way to allow different cultural groups to retain their languages and to pursue their own unique ways of life, all the while cooperating through participation in the political and economic institutions of the nation. This would require, of course, that immigrants learn English as their public language, and become conversant with the political traditions of the United States. Yet, American culture would not replace their immigrant heritage or be understood as superior to their ways of life. Instead, it would be a new vocabulary and set of relations to allow multifarious groups to work together to build a community dedicated to helping one another realize their culturally defined capacities. Kallen compared this image of cultural pluralist democracy to an orchestra.

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As in an orchestra, every type of instrument has its specific timbre and tonality, founded in its substance and form; as every type has its appropriate theme and melody in the whole symphony, so in society each ethnic group is the natural instrument, its spirit and culture are its theme and melody, and the harmony and dissonances and discords of them all make the symphony of civilization, with this difference: a musical symphony is written before it is played; in the symphony of civilization the playing is the writing, so that there is nothing so fixed and inevitable about its progressions as in music, so that within the limits set by nature they may vary at will, and the range and variety of the harmonies may become wider and richer and more beautiful.16

In this ideal, Kallen blurs two very different forms of cultural pluralism in an uneasy balance.17 The first kind emphasizes nondiscrimination. It maintains that minority groups should be protected against discrimination and prejudice and be free to keep their heritage, consistent with the rights of others. However, the efforts to preserve minority culture should be private and not supported by the state. Clearly, Kallen rejected attempts to Americanize immigrants by public agencies and felt that they should be allowed to pursue their own cultural organizations and protect their language and traditions within American cities. The second kind of cultural pluralism emphasizes ‘‘group rights.’’ It maintains that the state has an obligation to enact measures that would protect or preserve minority cultures, such as by granting exclusive language rights, school curriculums, or regional autonomy to minority groups. By talking about democracy as a tool for the liberation of human capacities, Kallen seems to suggest that there is indeed a role for public agencies to play in helping minority individuals to keep alive their ‘‘psychophysical inheritance’’ that goes beyond merely protecting them against discrimination. Latino cultural citizenship bears quite a bit of resemblance to Kallen’s complex form of cultural pluralism. On the one hand, it seeks to affirm the membership of Latinos/as in American society and to protect them from discrimination. Renato Rosaldo and William Flores’s ethnographic work reveals that Latinos/as have developed a

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unique interpretative framework and vocabulary for understanding the prejudice and discrimination directed at them by dominant society. Latinos/as, therefore, seek to claim physical spaces such as neighborhoods, community centers, and parks where they can build ‘‘sacred places . . . that acquire a distinct Latino quality of life, a Latino flavor, un ambiente Latino.’’18 In such spaces, they create places where they can feel comfortable and safe to express their identities and cultural traditions and develop Latino/a sensibilities and aesthetics. Thus, the idea of Latino cultural citizenship strongly emphasizes the first kind of cultural pluralism: non-discrimination as part of the project for American society. Yet there also appears to be something like an element of pluralism for the group in Latino cultural citizenship, as well. Flores points out that the struggle for citizenship by minority groups in the United States has, in part, been a fight to include them in the body politic. But it has also been a struggle to assert new justice claims. Women, for instance, have struggled for full political enfranchisement, but along the way to gender equality have also developed new claims about the integrity of their reproductive choices and about the need to recognize protection from sexual harassment. Similarly, Flores argues, Latinos/as have asserted justice claims to bilingual education, ballots, and the ability to speak Spanish at the work place. Along the way, they have also asserted the claim to extend voting rights to undocumented immigrants on the grounds that ‘‘the undocumented are ‘members’ of Latino communities and should have the rights of any other such members.’’19 For example, some communities have extended limited voting rights to noncitizens so that they may vote in community school board elections to elect the officials who will be making decisions about the education of their children in public schools. Of course, not all Latinos/as defend rights for undocumented immigrants. Yet, Flores maintains that for many Latinos/as, these new rights are important because they believe that the harsh treatment of undocumented immigrants is a barometer of what is to come for the greater Latino/a population: ‘‘Each stricture against the undocumented diminishes the rights of all Latinos, because as a group Latinos are targeted. Border patrol officials make few distinctions

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between Latinos who are born here and those who are not. We are all suspect. This realization fuels the creation of a Latino consciousness. It coincides with a strong desire to create a distinct Latino social space and to claim rights as Latinos.’’20 As Latino cultural citizenship appears to be a version of cultural pluralism, it would appear to be susceptible to the same critiques. Michael Walzer argues that Kallen did an effective job in demonstrating the shortcomings of nativist thought, but his own proposals for a pluralistic public sphere reveal an ‘‘unexamined liberalism.’’21 In Walzer’s view, Kallen never explains the basis on which different groups will harmonize with one another politically or what exactly citizenship will require in a culturally pluralist state. Kallen’s contemporary, John Dewey, raised this concern to Kallen in a letter: I quite agree with your orchestra idea, but upon the condition we really get a symphony and not a lot of different instruments playing simultaneously. I never did care for the melting pot metaphor, but genuine assimilation to one another—not to Anglosaxondom—seems to be essential to America. That each cultural section should maintain its distinctive literary and artistic traditions seems to be most desirable, but in order that it might have more to contribute to others. I am not sure that you mean more than this, but there seems to be an implication of segregation geographical and otherwise. That we should recognize the segregation that undoubtedly exists is requisite, but in order that it may not be fastened upon us.22

Multiculturalism and Liberal Democracy Jane Addams echoed Kallen and Dewey’s concerns with the assimilationist message behind Americanization efforts, but her work sought to find some basis by which to harmonize a culturally pluralist state. In her 1908 essay on the treatment of immigrant children by public schools, Addams called it a ‘‘disservice’’ to immigrant students to teach them that the culture and practices of their parents, or of their former countries, are inferior to the way of life in the United States.23

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Such a method simply teaches the children to look upon their ancestors with derision and poorly prepares them for their adjustment to American society. Addams counseled that teachers instead ought to open immigrant children to the ‘‘beauty and charm’’ of the old country life and see how richly it compares with American life. She thought it important for children to see the similarities and the differences of human cultures and not try to rank them or reduce them to one another. Rather, the point of such study is to help the student develop a ‘‘universal standard’’ by which to view human communities.24 In another essay on Americanization, she recommends that our approach to immigrants should not be to instill American nationalism, but to get them to appreciate the diversity of our society and be able to appreciate human life ‘‘sub specie aeternitatis,’’ that is, from the standpoint of an eternal, God’s-eye view.25 Unlike Kallen’s cultural pluralism then, Addams’s approach might be called ‘‘multiculturalism.’’ Kallen seeks to have a society in which different cultures are recognized as distinct from one another, but those differences should not prevent cooperation for mutual political benefit. Addams, on the other hand, emphasizes that we not only should just recognize the diversity of cultures in American society, but seek to learn about them and become culturally competent in negotiating those differences, and even perhaps, in blending those differences together. Addams, for instance, encouraged different immigrant groups to attend each other’s cultural events at Hull House, a settlement house cofounded in 1889 by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates. In this way, groups can inform one another and learn to develop new ways of living together. Indeed, in her work Newer Ideals of Peace, Addams recommends studying the everyday life of immigrant groups in major American cities.26 In this way, we learn how cultures adjust to one another. She believed that new methods of conflict resolution and prosperity could develop out of the conversations between native citizens and immigrants, learning about each other’s history and how these narratives can be resources for new strategies and visions of American urban life. Ultimately, the point of such study is

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not to dwell on the differences, but to help cultivate a more ‘‘cosmopolitan’’ outlook that is not rooted in any one narrow nationalism or the limited provincialism of one culture, American or otherwise. Addam’s multiculturalism, while an improvement over cultural pluralism in theorizing the harmonizing relationships within a diverse society, is susceptible to another critique. Her multiculturalism is a surprisingly ‘‘unrooted’’ cosmopolitanism. Different cultures are not so much homes in which to dwell but springboards from which to leap into a kind of moral universalism, the God’s-eye perspective from which all human cultures can rightly be appreciated. Yet in between one’s parochial culture and the universal point of view lie many levels of association and systems of governance. For instance, lying between the Polish and Italian neighborhoods with which Addams was familiar and the cosmopolitan viewpoint come the state institutions of American liberal democracy. As Will Kymlicka and Wayne Norman point out, quite a bit of democratic theory simply takes for granted liberal representative democracy as the starting point for imagining the contours of civic life and responsibility.27 There is never any critical examination of liberal democratic institutions themselves since the activity for preserving minority groups is mostly non-governmental work, such as Hull House, occurring in what we might now call civil society. Kallen and Addams are no different in this sense—they never imagine alternatives to liberal representative democracy, but are instead concerned with how immigrant cultures can be best integrated into, and take their place within, an already existing system of governance (albeit one that is less dominated by white, Anglo cultural norms). Latino cultural citizenship is no different in this regard. Flores admits that the notion does not directly challenge liberal democracy or free market economic institutions.28 When he talks about Latino cultural citizenship redefining justice and claiming new rights, the examples he adduces involve expanding existing political rights, such as voting rights, to previously excluded groups, such as undocumented immigrants. Such a process fits the classical account of T. H. Marshall’s theory of evolving citizenship rights, and thus, rather than

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being critical of it or trying to redefine it in significant ways, Latino cultural citizenship is firmly situated within the tradition of liberal democratic rights discourse.29 The trouble with the cultural pluralist and multicultural paradigms relying on transformation within civil society is that they fail to take into account how pervasive state power can be in constraining the democratic possibilities of civic groups. As Walzer explains: ‘‘The state itself is unlike all other associations. It frames both civil society and occupies space within it. It fixes the boundary conditions and the basic rules of all associational activity (including political activity). . . . A democratic state, which is continuous with other associations, has at the same time greater say about their quality and vitality.’’30 For example, through various forms of regulatory, zoning, taxation, or immigration policies, the state can make it difficult for a civic group to offer services or organize immigrant communities. Additionally, not all civic groups are made equal. Some wield much more economic and political influence than others and can influence the state to further restrict the actions of immigrant communities. In such cases, civic groups that are not engaged in political networks with the state can be at a severe disadvantage, for they risk losing the protection that state agencies might have to offer. Again, Walzer points out: ‘‘For civil society, left to itself, generates radically unequal power relationships, which only the state can challenge.’’31 The Limits of Pluralism and Multiculturalism Some thinkers associated with the American pragmatist tradition point to a more insidious problem with simply taking liberal representative democracy and rights discourse for granted. They suggest that it may be difficult or impossible for some groups to express their justice claims within liberal rights discourse. Some minority group claims are precisely about trying to find room for values or traditions that are not usually addressed by liberal state institutions. W. E. B. Du Bois is best known for analyzing the phenomenon of ‘‘double consciousness’’—the sense of knowing oneself as a Black

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person and as an American citizen, and knowing how these identities are not easily reconcilable. Throughout most of his long life, Du Bois organized to achieve civic and political equality for African Americans and felt that the struggle for civil rights and full integration ought to be above the simple demand for Black economic self-sufficiency offered by figures such as Booker T. Washington. However, Du Bois was not content to imagine that the struggles of African Americans should end with integration into a liberal democratic state and a full extension of civil and political rights to Blacks. In a poignant essay in 1926, Du Bois writes: What is this thing we are after? . . . We want to be Americans, full fledged Americans, with all the rights of other American citizens. But is that all? Do we want simply to be Americans? Once in a while through all of us there flashes some clairvoyance, some clear idea, of what America really is. We who are dark can see America in a way that white Americans cannot. And seeing our country thus, are we satisfied with its present goals and ideals? . . . Pushed aside as we have been in America, there has come to us . . . a vision of what the world could be if it were really a beautiful world . . . a world where men know, where men create, where they realize themselves and where they enjoy life. It is that sort of a world we want to create for ourselves and for all America.32

Here Du Bois articulates a utopian vision that highlights certain values, such as knowledge, creative freedom, self-realization, and pleasure, as guiding principles for a restructuring of American institutions and the conception of citizenship. These are not meant to refer to abstract, universal ideals, but to ones that emanate from, and are informed by, the specific historical experiences of African Americans. This minority culture is to be the ground for a new interpretation of culture and national destiny, placed in the language of social goods and sentiments of life, not individual rights discourse.33 Similarly, Martin Luther King, Jr. is often taken to be calling for a multicultural society in which African Americans are integrated into mainstream culture and accorded the same rights as other citizens. In particular, his remarks in the 1963 ‘‘I Have a Dream’’ speech about

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judging people not on their skin color but by the ‘‘content of their character’’ give some the impression that King sought a completely colorblind society in which we all would see beyond the narrow provincialism of race and through the eyes of humanity. Yet King was clear that integration, for him, did not simply mean assimilation into the American cultural and political status quo. In one of his final works King wrote: ‘‘There is a need for a radical restructuring of the architecture of American society. . . . Let us, therefore, not think of our movement as one that seeks to integrate the Negro into all the existing values of American history. Let us be those creative dissenters who will call our beloved nation to a higher destiny, to a new plateau of compassion, to a more noble expression of humaneness.’’34 For King, American society needed to confront the structural injustices of racism, militarism, and materialism and, in his view, this would only happen by giving expression to the unique perspectives of the African American community. King made it clear that he did not think African Americans were inherently morally superior to whites, but he did think, like Du Bois, that the historical experience of the African American community had given it an ability to comprehend better the revolution of values needed to move the nation toward a kind of social justice beyond liberal multiculturalism: ‘‘After all, no other minority has been so constantly, brutally and deliberately exploited. But because of this very exploitation, Negroes bring a special spiritual and moral contribution to American life—a contribution without which America could not survive.’’35 King thought this history would guide changes in the way American citizenship is conceived to provide for ‘‘more effective participation in major decisions’’ as well as a redesign of major political and market institutions that would alter fundamental power imbalances in these systems.36 Unfortunately, King did not live long enough to provide more substance to this progressive challenge to liberal democratic multiculturalism, but he did indicate that social justice today would require envisioning alternatives to our notions of state institutions and citizenship.

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The Intercultural Alternative In The Idea of Latin America, Walter D. Mignolo charts the growth of a cultural and political movement that directly challenges cultural pluralism and multiculturalism. I argue that it might offer a model for conceptualizing the politics of a diverse society. In Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, interculturalism is the name given to the recent efforts of indigenous activists to create a political alternative to official state policies of bilingual education, or ethnic multiculturalism. For these activists, multiculturalism means that ‘‘hegemonic principles of knowledge, education, the concept of the state and government, political economy, morality, etc., are controlled by the state, and below the control of the state, people have ‘freedom’ to go with their ‘cultures’ as far as they do not challenge ‘the epistemic principles’ grounding politics, economy, and ethics as managed by the state.’’37 This point echoes those made by Kymlicka and Walzer that cultural pluralism and multiculturalism do not attempt to reorganize the state or economy but instead try to find ways to accommodate minority cultural expression within the confines of liberal democratic government. Interculturalism, like the aspirations of Du Bois or King, does not merely seek inclusion into already existing systems of governance, political rights, and cultural understandings. Rather, indigenous intellectuals and activists are trying to build the foundations for a ‘‘plurinational’’ state in which indigenous cosmology and languages exist alongside the mainstream European-based perspectives and are used as equally valid resources for the construction of new systems of state, economy, and culture. As Enrique Dussel notes, a pluri-national state ‘‘institutionalizes the lives of many nations,’’ meaning that new institutions and forms of politics must be created to represent the diversity of ethnic groups within one country.38 For instance, in some Latin American countries, new political and legal forums have been created that allow indigenous communities to promulgate laws, or conduct legal proceedings, according to their own traditions or their

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own understandings of democratic representation and procedure. The goal is not to build subaltern counterpublics that operate in the margins of liberal democratic society, but to engage indigenous and mainstream ways of thinking in transformative dialogue about what is needed to concretize the vision that King called for in his revolution of values. One of the more developed examples of this effort is the attempt by the Zapatista rebels to build an alternative system of government, called juntas de buen gobierno or ‘‘councils of good government,’’ in Zapatista-held territory in southern Mexico. The juntas are founded on indigenous principles of consensus decision making and they base economic distribution within these communities on ideas of reciprocity rather than on individual competition. These councils operate in different towns and villages and associate with one another in a larger federation called Caracoles or ‘‘snail shells.’’ As Mignolo points out, the Caracoles recreate a ‘‘cellular’’ association—a horizontal ordering of interconnected and reciprocal cells or nodes—that existed among some of the indigenous people of Latin America before the imposition by the Europeans of a hierarchal, or centralized, model of the state.39 Mignolo calls this Zapatista experiment a ‘‘counterstance’’: ‘‘It is more than an oppositional or resisting consciousness. It is a practice of disengaging and looking forward toward a future in which ‘other worlds are possible,’ as the World Social Forum has it, or ‘toward a world in which many worlds can co-exist’ as the Zapatistas have taught us to think.’’40 The point of building the Caracoles is not to try to create opportunities for direct democracy that can exist underneath, or be linked to, the federal Mexican government. Rather, the idea is to disengage from a system of governance that many indigenous communities find corrupt and unresponsive, and experiment with an alternative that recuperates their lost traditions, combining them with radical politics oriented toward a globalizing world.41 Put another way, the Zapatista effort might be called ‘‘decolonial’’—an attempt to loosen the grip of European ideals of state and society on the imagination of indigenous people and create working models of

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governance that find their origins in worldviews other than the dominant mainstream. Mignolo finds evidence of this decolonial imagination among U.S. Latino/a theorists, particularly the work of Chicana writer Gloria Anzaldu´a.42 Anzaldu´a’s work indicates that there are resources within Chicano/a culture for attempting an intercultural counterstance within the United States. I want to offer a couple of examples that might underscore such an effort. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Chicano civil rights leader Rodolfo ‘‘Corky’’ Gonzales advocated for community organizations that would allow Mexican Americans to have meaningful control of education, economic investment, and political representation within their own neighborhoods. He also called for public works programs that would reconfigure public housing and parks in Chicano/a barrios to reflect specific cultural attitudes toward communalism and family leisure.43 Gonzales was not alone among Chicano/a intellectuals in calling for the development of alternative democratic institutions that would work to express the particular justice claims of Mexican American communities in the Southwest.44 In addition, Devon Pena has detailed the preservation of indigenous and Spanish water conservation practices, antedating the American occupation of the Southwest, in Colorado and Northern New Mexico.45 In these areas, some Mexican American villages maintain communal decisionmaking systems about the distribution and use of irrigation water that were formally overridden in the late nineteenth century by the American legal system’s emphasis on individual property ownership and appropriation. Through a process of historical memory, some Latino/a communities in the Southwest continue practices that are conceptually at odds, though not technically illegal, with dominant American legal standards about water rights and land usage. These practices are about building ties of mutual trust and responsibility among water users, as well as inculcating an ethic of sustainable water usage, even when the dominant legal system could allow the community members to disregard the water commons if they so desired.

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Conclusion American pragmatism is a tradition that has rejected the simplistic model of the ‘‘melting pot’’ for understanding the relationship of immigrant communities to mainstream society. Instead, thinkers such as Kallen and Addams attempt to theorize ways in which immigrants might catalyze a new understanding of American democracy and citizenship, one that is more participatory and deliberative than the representative republic of the Framers. However, I have argued that within the pragmatist tradition, from thinkers such as Du Bois and King, comes a challenge to reconsider our commitment to liberal representative democracy and rights discourse in a manner that Kallen and Addams do not. These figures maintain that there are justice claims, emanating from the historical experience of oppressed minority communities, that cannot be expressed completely in terms of individual rights or through the chambers of parliamentary government. I indicate an alternative model for theorizing the relationship of minority communities to the mainstream that is more in the spirit of Du Bois’ and King’s ideals: interculturalism. This model suggests that immigrant and minority cultures not only organize within nongovernmental groups to nurture aspects of their culture and push for nondiscriminatory legislation, but also to consider ways to reconstitute institutions of governance and democratic community building. I have offered some examples which illustrate the existence of values and practices within Latino/a communities in the United States that attempt to raise issues of alternative public institutions, conceptions of public space, and communal decision making, and that might be useful resources for engaging the pragmatist imagination in rooting interculturalism in North American soil. My hope is that serious consideration of the intercultural challenge might reduce the distance between the civic and political patriotism that many new immigrants experience in the United States and thereby lessen the possibility of political violence that potentially attends such alienation.

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fifteen

understanding immigration as lived personal experience Daniel Campos



T

he process of immigration is one of the most transformative phenomena in the Americas today. In its personal, social, political, and cultural dimensions, it affects the lives of individuals, communities, societies, and nations throughout the American continent.1 In this essay I attempt to give a philosophical account of the personal experience of immigration. I propose to examine the experience of South–North immigration in the Americas, with careful consideration of the reflections that some Anglo-and Latin American thinkers make possible for us regarding this issue. Charles S. Peirce’s philosophical account of the evolution of personality undergirds the conceptual structure of my exposition. Accordingly, I will describe the experience of immigrating as one in which individuals undergo deep transformations at the affective level of feeling, emotion, and sentiment (firstness), relations to people and places (secondness), and goals, aims, and objectives (thirdness as guiding telos) in their personal lives. Since I consider the view that one’s beliefs should be informed and evaluated by personal experience to be a hallmark of { 24 5 }

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American philosophy, I do appeal to my own experience, as well as to the writing of authors such as philosopher John McDermott and novelist Mario Benedetti, to flesh out this account. My purpose is to sketch an experiential account of the personal process of immigration that may be adequate to a variety of perspectives and individual experiences. At the very least, I aim to contribute another perspective to help us understand immigration as the lived personal experience of millions of people in the Americas today.

Personal Experience As a conceptual prelude, let me begin by stating that I will deploy here a specific notion of ‘‘personal experience’’ based on C. S. Peirce’s conception of personality. Thus by ‘‘personality’’ I will mean a real ‘‘coordination of ideas’’—that is, a coordination (1) of intense and spontaneous feelings, (2) of relations with others and with an environing reality, and (3) of constitutive and ever-evolving aims; in short, there are threefold ideas that are continuous with each other and that develop toward a general guiding purpose.2 In Peirce’s words: Personality is some kind of coo¨rdination or connection of ideas . . . . This personality, like any general idea, is not a thing to be apprehended in an instant. It has to be lived in time; nor can any finite time embrace it in all its fullness. Yet in each infinitesimal interval, it is present and living, though especially colored by the immediate feelings of that moment . . . . The word coordination implies . . . a teleological harmony in ideas, and in the case of personality this teleology is more than a mere purposive pursuit of a predeterminate end; it is a developmental teleology. This is personal character. A general idea, living and conscious now, it is already determinative of acts in the future to an extent to which it is not now conscious. This reference to the future is an essential element of personality. Were the ends of a person already explicit, there would be no room for development, for growth, for life; and consequently there would be no personality. The mere carrying out of predeterminate purposes is mechanical.3

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In the case of individuals, personality may be conceived along Peircean lines as developmental teleology—as directional, creative evolution—at least as a hypothesis. Our lives consist in the continuous, temporal specification of our individual personalities as each of us evolves toward his or her general ends; and as we live our lives, the very aims that provide directionality to our living evolve as well. But we must keep always in view that we live this personal evolution, at every moment of our lives, as intense and immediate feelings and as strongly active and reactive relations with our environing reality, including our homes, our places, our neighbors, our communities, and our societies. From this conceptual stance, which I hope to present in a far more concrete way in what follows, I will attempt to account next for the process of immigration as a personal living experience. Immigrating as Personal Search for a Balanced Stance The process of immigration, as personal experience, has three distinct but interrelated aspects—first, it has a felt quality, undergone at the level of intense and sometimes unconscious feelings and sensibility;4 second, it involves a series of reactions, sometimes in the form of shocking confrontations, with a new environing reality in which you must establish a new system of relations with strangers, with unknown people and places; and third, it involves a profound change, sometimes an outright disruption, in the general direction of your personal life, as guided by aims and aspirations. Let me put forth some exemplifying stories, initially not from major ‘‘borderlands’’ like Texas and the Southwest, nor from immigrant cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, or New York, but from the inconspicuous region of Central Pennsylvania. A few years ago, in the seemingly perfect social bubble of State College, Pennsylvania—a fairly affluent and completely standard college town, McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, Gap, and pizza joints included—two Mexican friends of mine, Sergio and Ame´rica, were approached by two visibly nervous and disoriented men in the parking lot of a local supermarket. The two men were also Mexican and decided to approach my friends

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when they heard Sergio and Ame´rica speaking Spanish. The men wanted to know where ‘‘el centro’’ (downtown) was. Puzzled by their question, my friends started inquiring what their situation was. The two men, it turned out, were migrant workers. They had entered into the United States ‘‘cruzando el cerro’’ (crossing the mountain), though naturally they would not say which mountain and with which coyote, and they had been brought to a job in the kitchen of a restaurant in State College. But they did not know where they were. The restaurant owner had contracted their ‘‘guide’’ to bring him two cooks. The owner paid a hiring fee to the guide, and the two men had had to pay the fee back with their labor. They slept in the back of the restaurant and were paid some wages for their kitchen work. They could leave only to do personal shopping in the commercial strip conveniently located near the restaurant. As it happened, the restaurant was also conveniently located near a beer shop. Though the restaurant owner had forbidden them to drink, from time to time they would buy a six-pack or two, hide the beer in the restaurant, and drink it after hours—a fine practice, until one fateful morning when the owner found them drunk and dismissed them, throwing them out into the street without pay. At this juncture, they walked along a commercial strip and approached my friends at a parking lot. Now, we can describe their threefold experiential situation at that moment as one of first, an intense emotional agitation—a combination of confusion, fear, and nervousness; second, a shocking confrontation with an inhospitable environment in which they could not get oriented, where they could not speak the language to approach other people, and where the majority of people were suspicious of any attempt by a stranger to converse with them; and third, a complete disruption of their personal aims, a rupture of the thread of their personal history that started in Mexico but that, out of economic necessity, brought them to search for a way to survive economically and, most probably, to help those families that they left in Mexico to survive. In this case the men found help. Sergio and Ame´rica brought them to the bus station where the men slept and

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my friends brought them food while they sought a solution. A couple of days later, finally, my friends bought them a pair of bus tickets and sent them with an address to Pittsburgh, where a local organization that supports immigrants would help them find jobs and living arrangements. Unfortunately we do not know how their story continues, but it is a familiar story, at least if you scratch beneath the surface of current North American society, even in places where seemingly everyone is affluent. I want to suggest that in situations where people undergo the three-tiered personal experience of immigration, a search also begins for a new balance at all three levels. Immigrants search for a personal balance with respect to the new individual, interpersonal, cultural, social, and political situation that they encounter. Let me try to parse out the three levels of this search, appealing this time to my own experience and the experience of persons close to me. General Aims I start at the third level, that of the general purposes that give direction to your life. When you immigrate, these general aims, the general vision or idea of what your life is to become and to mean, change. It is not just that your life seems to have taken an often unexpected turn; more fundamentally, it is that the constitutive ends of your personal life evolve. Sometimes this evolution can be close to a radical reconstitution of one’s personal ends. Some years ago as a graduate student at Penn State, I had the privilege of meeting and conversing with Rigoberta Menchu´, the indigenous Guatemalan woman and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize; her life is one that I hold close to my heart as a source of reflection. As a young woman she lived through the violence and pain inflicted on the Mayan people of Guatemala in the midst of a civil war.5 Rigoberta had to flee her country to be a political refugee in Mexico, where she undertook denouncing the abuses against indigenous people—some very close to her—that she had witnessed in Guatemala.6 Her courageous defense as an exile of the rights of indigenous peoples in Guatemala, which continues

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today in Latin America and elsewhere, became one of the constitutive ends of her life under violent and perilous circumstances. This sometimes traumatic reconstitution of the end of one’s personal life is the experience of exiles and immigrants who flee their lands for political reasons or dire economic circumstances. Having suffered the violent disruption of the general course of their lives, they have to reorient themselves and both discover in themselves and create in their lives the general vision that will direct their actions, whether this vision is a grand political project or the noble end of reuniting a family that economic need has split apart, that is, of putting your life in service of the well-being of your family. Sometimes, however, the evolution in general ends is more subtle. Immigrating can bring about a surprising change in the direction of your life that you nevertheless experience as a gradual redefinition of the idea of what your life is to become. In other words, the general telos that guides the evolution of your personal life finds a different shape, a new specification in your new situation as an immigrant. This is closer to my experience and, I would venture, to the experience of those friends close to me who have come to the United States as students. In my case, I came to the United States with the nominal purpose of studying mathematics on a scholarship and with the more general, but also more real, purpose of living an adventure. Believe it or not, moving from Costa Rica to central Arkansas—that entirely mysterious and unknown, at least to me, spot on the U.S. map—was an adventure at eighteen, and I had only the vaguest notion of a general purpose in all of that. After various turns of events along the years, it became clear to me that I had become not just a visiting student in the United States, not just a passing adventurer, an aspiring ‘‘saunterer’’ in the Thoreauvian sense,7 but an immigrant with a direction. It may seem strange to you that I would suddenly realize that I was an immigrant. Of course, one doesn’t just suddenly realize his legal status in a foreign country. What I mean is that I realized that the general ends of my life had evolved so as to make me an immigrant. When I arrived in the United States my vaguely conceived purpose

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was to study abroad for a few years, but that vaguely conceived purpose has evolved and acquired different, surprising specifications in my life over the years until I have come to envision a life as a teacher of philosophy in a foreign land. This is one of the constitutive ends of my personal life at this juncture, along with the aim of continuing and strengthening the friendships I have found in this country and that have given me a kind of family—at any rate, an interrelated system of ideas and affections that are a constitutive part of me as a person. Along with this placid vision, however, several questions of purpose arise that provoke the struggle to find a balance at the level of general aims. For instance, if I am to be a teacher, do I share the aims for education of the North American institutions at which I might teach? Do I share the aims that, in general, American students seem to have for their own education? As an immigrant, do I share the general vision of what our society should be, or at least the general vision that the majority of people in the United States seem to support? If not, should I confront it or conform to it? Immigrants who form families in the United States ask themselves, in one way or another, what they envision the aim of their children’s education to be. My intention is not to exhaust the possible questions and struggles that may arise, nor to suggest any specific answers. My intention is to illustrate how the evolution in the constitutive ends of an evolving personal history leads, in the case of the immigrant, to a search for a balanced stance with regard to the general aims of the communities. Relations to Place and to Other Persons As I mentioned earlier, the search for a new stance with respect to evolved personal ends is often subtle and gradual. I think, however, that you experience the process of immigrating most forcefully and consciously at the second level, that of relation, of action and reaction. There are two types of relations, also constitutive of personality, that are especially transformed by the process of immigration, namely relations to place and relations to other persons as individuals or as communities.

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One of the most profound aspects of immigrating can be the experience of severing the immediate, everyday ties to your particular place—to your countryside, neighborhood, town, or city—while establishing a new relation to a foreign place, a place that is strange to you but that you want to make your own, to make familiar.8 This is because your small town in Central America or your large city in South America or your fishing village in the Caribbean, for example, are not merely landscapes or cityscapes but, borrowing the term from John McDermott, ‘‘personscapes’’ in the sense of environing living contexts that are part of, and indeed continuous with, the persons living in them.9 The manifold ways in which you relate to your personscape—the ways in which you navigate your town or city, the key locations such as plazas, favorite cafe´s, marketplaces, churches, schools, or fu´tbol fields that make a place your home—are part of who you are. As McDermott also puts it, ‘‘deep in our psyche we are profoundly attached to [these] alleged lifeless forms.’’10 I grew up in San Jose´, a city surrounded by mountains in the Central Valley of Costa Rica. In San Jose´ I could usually look up and find the mountains, and I knew exactly which ones were located to the north, south, east, or west of the city. Whenever I visited an unfamiliar neighborhood or district I could thus orient myself by looking at the mountains and finding west. Moreover, whenever the bustle of my ill-planned city overwhelmed me, I could stare at the mountains for a few seconds to find a soothing blue landscape, and the city would seem more manageable and beautiful. Then I moved to central Arkansas. One thing about the central Arkansas landscape is that it seems flat when compared to Costa Rica. You can raise your eyes and you will find nothing but a long, distant horizon. One of the most noticeable experiences to me on first arriving was that I had lost my mountains, and with it, a way to find my bearings—physical and spiritual—in my place. I had to learn to make the new place my own; I had to establish a new relation, create my new personscape. This may be difficult, but it can also be one of the most revitalizing experiences for the immigrant. This has been the experience of many of my immigrant friends in New York City, who all seek to make the city their

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own place by finding the streets, markets, cafe´s, parks, and even park benches and single trees that make the city their own individual personscape. Even in my case, I came to enjoy the great, wide expanses of central Arkansas and the distant horizon left open to my sight. When the place became familiar, I discovered that the land was not completely flat, that it undulates, ever so slightly, requiring patience to recognize its silhouette, which is also soothing. The mountains, however, always lie deep in my psyche because when I moved to Happy Valley I was happy to find the old mountains of central Pennsylvania between the northern reaches of the Alleghenies and the Appalachians, and learn to find my bearings by way of them. In these successive migrations the experiential process of adjustment is again one of finding a balance in establishing relations with a new place. The immigrant can, of course, turn away from any personal relation to the new place simply because it is not the old, original place. But living this life of extreme rejection and imbalance drains the immigrant of vital energy; the immigrant then experiences the new place as confrontational or oppositional to him or her. But this extreme stance can sometimes be forced upon the immigrant. Regarding personal relations to place, for instance, a tremendous difficulty of immigrating to the United States today is that many of its small towns, suburbs, and cities are very resistant to becoming personscapes and are better described, I think, as ‘‘carscapes.’’ In many such locations there is no place, no downtown or uptown or wherever-in-town, to make your own, much less to create a community. For instance, because he needed to provide financial support for his family, a friend of mine is in the United States illegally. Because he has no legal papers he cannot get a driver’s license. His daily living is thus circumscribed to his dwelling and workplace in a small town in upstate New York. With his living arrangements so severely limited, he has no chance of establishing a vital relationship to his new place. It is extremely difficult for him, then, to not miss daily his small hometown in Uruguay. This is, of course, also a limiting experience for many North Americans, but I think the experience is especially dire for immigrants who are accustomed to living in personscapes with a rich web of social

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relations and who suddenly find themselves extremely isolated by the physical design of North American towns and cities. For my part, I had difficulty establishing a personal, intimate relationship to Searcy, Arkansas, because nobody ever walks in that town. Everyone drives. You can walk downtown and, on most occasions, you will be the only pedestrian. If you happen to be walking on a Saturday night, moreover, the locals will stare at you because you chose to walk, and not to ‘‘cruise’’ around town in a car or truck. You immediately feel like a stranger to the place. In this sense, McDermott’s vision of creating more and richer personscapes in the United States would improve the lives not only of North Americans but also of thousands of immigrants in its cities. It would become easier, I think, to turn your attention toward your new place and to make it your home; that is, to find a balanced stance in your relation to it. In turn, personal relations to individuals and communities are much more difficult to leave behind but at the same time much more rewarding to establish. For brevity of exposition I will only discuss the immigrant experience of establishing new interpersonal and communal relations. In this regard I find Octavio Paz’s description of what he calls the ‘‘dialectic of solitude’’ to be an appropriate description of this experience.11 Following Paz, we can understand by the term ‘‘solitude’’ the existential state of being severed from your places and communities of origin, of having the continuous thread of your personal history, including its intricate web of interpersonal, communal, and cultural relations, interrupted by extraneous circumstances. This is the solitude that the immigrant initially experiences when she leaves behind friends, family, and communities—when all those relationships, constitutive of her personality, become disrupted in one way or another—and when she is estranged from her geographical, cultural, and social traditions. This being her situation, however, the ‘‘dialectic of solitude’’ ensues as she attempts to reestablish ‘‘communion,’’ that is, to create new relations and to re-create the old ones. This dialectic is the experiential process of emerging from solitude—a state of alienation from our histories, origins, and traditions—into communion with others in a concrete present that is informed and

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shaped by those very histories and traditions, as well as by our new hopes and projects. The emergence from solitude to communion is possible by way of what Paz calls ‘‘poetry’’—the act of creating and recreating our bonds with others, with our communities, by way of love, religious, musical and theatrical performances, and community celebrations. According to Paz, ‘‘poetry’’ is the main act by which we come again into ‘‘communion.’’ This sense of ‘‘poetry’’ encompasses every creative act by which we forge our place and time, along with others, to transform it into our own here and now, into our own poietic, communal present.12 It is often through ‘‘poetry’’ that immigrants find an experiential thread that ties them to their origins and reorients them in the midst of a new environment. The experiences of immigrants in the United States today, including Latin American immigrants, provide many rich examples of these poietic acts directed at emerging from solitude into communion. Let me again turn to some inconspicuous instances. One Sunday afternoon during a recent summer, while sauntering about the streets of Eugene, Oregon, I happened upon a Latin market in a small city park. There were loudspeakers playing Caribbean music, mainly salsa and merengue, and a dance instructor taught the basic steps to Latin- and Anglo-American dancers alike. In several stands people sold crafts and foods from Peru, Ecuador, Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and other countries. South, Central, and North American families enjoyed the various foods for lunch while listening to the music. I was surprised to find this Sunday festival in Eugene, but I felt at home at once—something familiar, part of a regular Sunday stroll at home, was to be found in Oregon. I have run into similar food and music festivals in New York’s streets and city parks and in Columbus, Ohio, and you probably have seen them elsewhere, especially if you live in the Southwest or California. Such fiestas are poietic acts that aim at re-creating the relations to place and community that the immigrants left behind. They provide a way to come into communion with our people and cultures. But they are not only re-creations, they are also creations, acts that establish fresh relations to new places and communities. They allow the

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immigrants to share their musical, artistic, and culinary cultures with others, and in so doing, to establish new living ties with neighbors and hosts. These creative activities not only revitalize the immigrants, strengthening their ties to the old and the new communities at once, but they also transform the very places and communities where the immigrants now live and act. These transformations are conspicuous in, say, San Antonio, Los Angeles, or New York City today, but even if less noticeable, they are no less real and influential in Eugene or Columbus. For me, among the main sites of poietic communion the fu´tbol fields of central Pennsylvania were special. I played alongside immigrants, legal and illegal, not only from the Americas but also from all over the world. A special communal bond was created and re-created, constructed and strengthened every time we played together. There is a common link among, say, Latin Americans or among Africans in the way they kick or, better yet, attempt to ‘‘caress’’ the ball, and the way they move together, in the way they play and understand the game, just as there is a recognizable North American style. Some of the relations or reactions that take place in the fu´tbol fields can be quite oppositional and violent. On occasion I have played with allimmigrant teams when the opponents told us, in menacing and insulting terms, to ‘‘go back home,’’ not to mention being called by ethnic and racial slurs. And, I admit, we have sometimes responded by committing violent fouls. But I have also made some enduring and strong friendships, with immigrants and North Americans alike, on the fu´tbol fields, and so, at their best, these fields are sites of poietic communion. By mentioning both the violently oppositional and communally sympathetic relations that you can establish, for instance, as an immigrant playing fu´tbol in the United States, I want to exemplify the immigrant’s search for a balance between extreme opposition and extreme conformity in interpersonal and communal relations. It is not uncommon for foreign fu´tbol players to find fault with every aspect of North American soccer playing. Likewise, immigrants, individually and communally, sometimes strongly resist the culture and

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the people of the United States and reject any form of relation to them as much as possible. At the other extreme we can find individual immigrants or entire communities who strive to conform as much as possible to the culture and the forms of interpersonal and communal relations that they find in this country. At one extreme we might find immigrants who only seek to re-create the old relations, while at the other we find those who only seek to create entirely new relations. Of course, it may be impossible to stand squarely at either extreme. But again, I want to suggest that part of the immigrant’s experience is to search for her stance between extreme opposition and extreme conformity regarding the types of interpersonal and communal relationships that she wants to establish in her new cultural situation. I want to emphasize, then, that in terms of personal and communal relations the immigrant experience is not only to re-create the thread that links her to her original friends, family, community, and culture, but also to find a personal balance by creating new interpersonal, communal, and cultural relations. We can also understand this creative process in terms of the Uruguayan writer Mario Benedetti’s metaphor of constructing andamios or scaffolds.13 The construction of andamios consists of the personal and intimate process of finding ways to become inserted in a new sociocultural and interpersonal context in order to understand and be understood by others. This is the experience, for example, of an immigrant who learns to love the peculiarities of a new land- or cityscape, a new cuisine, or a new musical style, while bringing her own particularities with her— experiences as simple as learning from a friend how to listen to the blues while helping her to listen to calypso, or sharing a cup of Costa Rican coffee with a friend who might taste it while accepting a slice of peach cobbler from, say, her mother from Oklahoma who really knows how to bake a cobbler that tastes like a bite of Southern heaven. Often in those simple shared experiences the immigrant finds, one by one, the parts needed to construct a scaffold, that is, an intricate set of intimate relations to a new place, people, and culture

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that provide the necessary support to begin to construct a thriving life as an immigrant. Felt Quality: Feelings and Sensibility Finally, the examples of learning to listen to the blues or learning to taste an authentically Southern peach cobbler are suggestive of the first level of personal experience, namely, that of immediate feeling. A description of the personal experience of immigration must account for the felt quality of the process. Such a description would deserve a depth and attention that I cannot undertake in this preliminary discussion. And I would suggest that literature, whether poetry or fiction, is often superior to philosophy in actually describing the felt, spontaneous quality of experience. To actually try to understand the experience at this level, one may not do better than reading, for example, Oscar Hijuelos’s The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, which makes you feel how a melancholy songwriter and his intemperate and audacious singer-brother respectively live immigration as nostalgia for a woman lost back in Cuba and as the failure of having found and then lost the most beloved people while in search of the ‘‘American Dream.’’ Nevertheless, I would like to make some closing remarks about immigration as felt experience. A description at this level involves a distinction between feeling and sensibility. The experience of immigrating is charged with manifold and often disparate feelings: excitement, nervousness, fear, anger, satisfaction, hopefulness and so on—all are part of the felt emotional quality of the process. The possible qualities of personal experience at this level are as variegated as the characters and circumstances of immigrants, and so, for all practical purposes, they are impossible to exhaust descriptively. For any given person, however, there may be emotions that are prevalent at a given stage of the process, and here again the person may search for a balance, for the proper level to allow for one’s nervousness or excitement, for one’s fear or hopefulness, given the circumstances. It may be that what one seeks here is a just measure of self-control, perhaps in the Aristotelian sense of sophrosyne, with regard to one’s emotional state.

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More interestingly, though, the felt experience of immigration forces a subtle but important change in one’s sensibility over time. I mean this first as a literal evolution in one’s disposition to touch, smell, hear, see, or taste, in short, to experience new sensations. I already pointed out that learning to listen to the blues in southern Louisiana and Mississippi and coming to taste an authentic Oklahoma home-baked peach cobbler were constitutive elements of my fully experienced life as an immigrant. I could say the same of coming to love the smell of crisp autumn air ‘‘up North’’ and of a thick humid summer night ‘‘down South,’’ and so on. At this level, the experience could be poor if one turns one’s senses away from it, but it can be infinitely rich if one turns one’s senses toward the myriad new sensations to be had. Finally, by a change in sensibility over time I also mean an evolution in our ability to ‘‘sympathize,’’ literally to ‘‘feel with’’ other people whom at first you might not understand because of language or culture.14 I think, for example, of a retired Anglo-American miner from New Mexico who knew nothing about my world in Central America and about whom I knew nothing, until one day he asked me why I liked to eat corn tortillas like all the Mexican miners he once knew. I laughed and tried to explain to him the important place of corn in Mesoamerican culture, and we began a conversation. I learned that he lost his finger not in a mining accident but in World War II. I felt the cold he felt in his hands during those winters of war, blowing up ruined bridges in order to build new ones. And I heard the loudness of the explosions when he set off the charges of dynamite. At moments like these I, the immigrant, feel a balance, a rewarding equilibrium, as I turn my ‘‘sensible heart’’ toward a native from my new place and begin to ‘‘feel with him.’’ Jane Addams, in turn, writes of her experiences in trying to elicit this kind of sympathy for immigrants in her Twenty Years at Hull-House: ‘‘Sometimes we had a chance for championship; I recall one old man, fiercely American, who had reproached me because we had so many ‘foreign views’ on our walls, to whom I endeavored to set forth our hope that the pictures might afford a familiar island to the immigrants in a sea of

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new and strange impressions. The old settler guest, taken off his guard, replied, ‘I see; they feel as we did when we saw a Yankee notion from down East,’—thereby formulating the dim kinship between the pioneer and the immigrant.’’15 An additional, more systematic and philosophical account of the felt experience of the immigrant may be pursued as a special study in Peircean ‘‘affectivity’’—that dimension of human living experience in natural and social environments that encompasses feeling, emotion, sentiment, instinct, doubt, belief, and habit, among other affective elements.16 Many of the person’s affective dispositions or habits may be transformed by the experience of immigrating. Jane Addams often uses these kinds of terms in writing about the life of immigrants in Chicago in the early twentieth century. She writes, for instance, of a young Italian girl, Angelina, who seemed to be ashamed of her immigrant mother until she learned that her mother was ‘‘the best stickspindle spinner in America.’’17 Addams then tried to explain to Angelina that her mother’s ‘‘whole life had been spent in a secluded spot under the rule of traditional and narrowly localized observances, until her very religion clung to local sanctities—to the shrine before which she had always prayed, to the pavement and vaults of the low vaulted church—and then suddenly she was torn from it all and literally put out to sea, straight away from the solid habits of her religious and domestic life, and she now walked timidly but with poignant sensibility upon a new and strange shore.’’18 It is not accidentally, I would suggest, but rather in pragmatic terms that Addams writes of the woman’s disruption of habits, poignant sensibility, and overall affective experience. Addams is in fact concerned with eliciting the daughter’s sympathy for her mother’s life as an immigrant. This possibility of raising affective sympathy that leads to mutual understanding makes it worthwhile to attempt to describe the personal experience of the immigrant. What distinguishes this experience is the way in which personal transformation works at once at the level of aims, relations, and affections. However, this description is not meant to isolate the experience as unique, much less to reduce it to a set of necessary and sufficient conditions. On the contrary, my

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hope is that it may elicit a feeling of commonality, of shared living experience. I have tried here to do this from a particular philosophical angle, attempting a pragmatist approach by which the experiences described here function as indices that may point readers to similar possible experiences understandable to them. People who are not immigrants will probably be able to identify, in their own lives, experiences of transformation at the level of ends, relations, feelings, and sentiments that may be akin to those of the immigrant. If so, we may have an opportunity to evolve or grow in agape-like sympathy.

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sixteen

dewey and latina lesbians on the quest for p urity Gregory Fernando Pappas



Better it is for philosophy to err in active participation in the living struggles and issues of its own age and times, than to maintain an immune monastic impeccability. —John Dewey

I

f John Dewey were alive today, he would be interested in and supportive of one of the most radical and insightful groups of feminist thinkers at the end of the twentieth century: Latina Lesbian Women in the U.S.A. (LLWU). Latina lesbians are only one of many marginalized groups in U.S. society whose existence is problematic from a certain predominant metaphysical perspective. According to this perspective, to have a multiple identity or to be in between cultures, genders, or races is to be ambiguous, impure, and therefore inauthentic or anomalous. This perspective is more than an academic abstraction. It is deeply embedded in the ways we are taught to experience or conceive the world. This is evident from the fact that this view continues to be responsible for the identity crisis experienced by Latina lesbians and, in general, many hyphenated Hispanics in the United States, such as Mexican-Americans, Cuban-Americans, Newyo-Ricans, and TexaRicans like myself. Here I will provide a Deweyan criticism of this metaphysical perspective and compare it with some recent feminist { 26 2 }

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critiques, but first let me introduce the problem of identity as Latina lesbians have experienced it. The Identity Crisis of the ‘‘Impure’’ Since the 1980s we have witnessed the publication of a new genre: the autobiography of Latina lesbians. As Lourdes Torres explains, these works are subversive and thought provoking in more ways than one: ‘‘They challenge traditional notions about the genre of ‘autobiography’ through their form and their content. They subvert both Anglo and Latino patriarchal definitions of culture. They undermine linguistic norms by using a mixture of English, Spanish, and Spanglish. All address the question of the politics of multiple identities from a position which seeks to integrate ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, and language.’’1 These autobiographies reveal the experience of growing up with the constant pressure to define and identify themselves by exclusive categories that do not fit their lived experience. They feel pressured by ‘‘others’’ to choose between genders and cultures, otherwise they are ‘‘impure’’ or simply without an authentic gender or culture. Early in their lives, Latina lesbians learn that their existence is problematic. Their autobiographies are saturated with descriptions of their moments of identity crisis in terms of living in ambiguity, feeling contradictions and tensions in themselves: ‘‘They describe feeling great self-hatred, feeling marginalized, and without a center to grasp onto because each center asks them to or makes them feel that they must choose.’’2 Gloria Anzaldu´a, for example, has written about the problems of self-esteem and identity experienced by Chicanos in Borderlands: ‘‘We live a kind of dual identity—we do not identify with the Anglo-American cultural values and we do not totally identify with the Mexican cultural values. We are a synergy of two cultures with various degrees of Mexicanness or Angloness. I have so internalized the borderland conflict that sometimes I feel like one cancels out the other and we are zero, nothing, no one. A veces no soy nada ni nadie. Pero hasta cuando no lo soy, lo soy.’’3

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In diagnosing the crisis of identity experienced by Latina lesbians, one must avoid oversimplifications and reductionisms. First, I recognize that there are very important economic, psychological, political, and sociological dimensions of this general problem of identity that are beyond the scope of my inquiry. Moreover, it is not my intention to suggest that living in between genders is the same problem as living in between cultures. A more comprehensive and detailed analysis would have to consider the differences between gender and culture and how each is operative in the complex identity crisis experienced by Latina lesbians. What I instead wish to address in this essay is a philosophical aspect of the problem. Marı´a Lugones characterizes this aspect as ‘‘logical,’’ but I will characterize it from a Deweyan perspective as metaphysical or ontological. Contemporary Feminism and the ‘‘Logic of Purity’’ In ‘‘Purity, Impurity, and Separation,’’4 Lugones argues that Latina lesbians experience their existence as problematic in comparison with those who are conceived as ‘‘pure’’ because they have taken for granted a certain ‘‘logic of purity.’’ Lugones proposes that Latina lesbians (and the ‘‘impure’’ in general) must resist the logic and language of purity by first understanding it. This logic understands ‘‘separation as splitting,’’ as when the yolk of an egg is separated from the white: ‘‘If the operation has not been successful, a bit of yolk stains the white.’’5 According to this logic, what is multiple is internally separable; it is fragmented and thereby reducible to the units that compose it. This is the logic of the ‘‘lover of purity’’ that is used to deny legitimacy and exercise control over those who are impure. What is hybrid or in the middle seems ‘‘anomalous, deviant, ambiguous, impure’’6 unless it is a composite of elements that are homogeneous and unified. Lugones encourages Latina lesbians to think of themselves as embodying a rejection of the gender and cultural boundaries dictated by the logic of purity. They must reject the either/or option between masculine/feminine as well as the one between Latina/American: ‘‘We are outside the lover of purity’s pale,

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outside his conceptual framework. Even the attempt to split our selves into half man/half woman recognizes our impurity. In our own conception we defy splitting separation by mocking the purity of the man/woman dichotomy.’’7 But according to Lugones, there is an alternative way to conceptualize the multiplicity or hybridness of Latina lesbians, and of the ‘‘impure’’ in general. For this conceptualization she reminds us of what happens when an emulsion, like mayonnaise, curdles. The ingredients ‘‘coalesce toward oil or toward water, [and] most of the water becomes separate from most of the oil—it is instead, a matter of different degrees of coalescence. The same with mayonnaise; when it separates, you are left with yolky oil and oily yolk.’’8 Separation as ‘‘curdling’’ is the nature of mestizaje, the Spanish word used to describe the hybrid nature of the ‘‘impure.’’ If we accept the ‘‘logic of curdling,’’ then ‘‘the social world is complex and heterogeneous and each person is multiple, nonfragmented, embodied.’’9 This is how ‘‘curdled beings’’ can affirm their multiplicity without conceiving themselves as fragmented into pure parts. Accepting one logic or the other is of significant consequence, especially for those who conceive their identity and existence as in between genders and cultures. As Lugones writes: ‘‘When I think of my own people, the only people I can think of as my own are transitionals, liminals, border-dwellers, ‘world’-travelers, beings in the middle of either/or. They are people whose acts and thoughts curdle-separate. So as soon as I entertain the thought, I realize that separation into clean, tidy things and beings is not possible for me because it would be the death of myself as multiplicitous and a death of community with my own.’’10 Metaphysical Atomism and the Experience of the In-Between John Dewey did not write about the specific problems addressed by Lugones; nevertheless, his philosophy raises a very similar philosophical criticism of a long-standing tradition that has been used to validate any quest for purity. His criticism is, however, ‘‘metaphysical’’ in a sense that I believe to be consistent with and complementary to

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Lugones’s criticism. Metaphysics is the area of philosophy concerned with providing an account of reality, of ‘‘what there is.’’ This area of philosophy has traditionally been concerned with the reality of such things as tables, chairs, atoms, and platonic forms—but not of such things as cultures and genders. To claim that there can be metaphysics of the former things but not of culture assumes a metaphysics, one that I cannot find one good reason to accept.11 For Dewey metaphysics is not the esoteric-theoretic (‘‘other worldly’’) area of traditional philosophy that it is usually taken to be. According to his empirical naturalism, metaphysics is the most general possible description of experience as it is experienced. It is a ‘‘general map of existence’’ that can be a great tool for criticism in and outside of philosophy. Metaphysics has its origins and relevance in the ways in which concrete historical-biological-cultural human beings try to make sense of their everyday lives. To put it bluntly, anyone who guides his or her life according to a general view (or ‘‘map’’) of ‘‘what there is’’ in experience has a metaphysics. To have a metaphysics is not an intellectual luxury. Metaphysics is vital because it provides our basic orientation within the world, just like city maps do.12 Our divisions and classifications of the things of the world can be made in terms of the most general kinds of beings: inorganic, organic, material, spiritual. It is at this level that Dewey criticized the dualistic metaphysics of philosophical traditions. But even more specific ways of splitting up or mapping the world—such as in terms of cultures, races, and genders—presuppose a metaphysics13 so that, for example, to have a metaphysics of culture and gender is simply to assume a general view of how they coexist in the world. Where does one culture or gender end and another one begin? This is a more fundamental issue than the issue of what constitutes a culture or a gender. Whether they are social constructions or biologically determined categories, there is also the more general issue of their conceptualization in terms of their individuality and relation. For instance, if we adopt Dewey’s analogy of metaphysics as a ‘‘general map of existence,’’ we can ask where the border cultures are on the general landscape of all cultures. Are we to understand Mexican-American culture in the same way we

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conceive the physical border between nations? On our map of political nations, we do not recognize the border between two nations as some distinct third nation, that is, it does not have the same ontological status. Does it then make sense to talk about border cultures as being cultures or as having a distinctive existence in the landscape of all cultures? The same goes for gender. What are lesbians in relation to the man/woman map? The general issue that I am trying to focus on is the ontological status of being ‘‘in between’’ in a person’s most general classificatory scheme (map) of the world. In response to these questions, one may adopt an atomistic metaphysics. According to this metaphysical outlook, culture and gender designate discrete, pure, and atomistic wholes. A culture, for example, is a monolithic entity. To be in a culture, you must be either in one or in some other. This is the type of metaphysics that is presupposed in denying legitimate existence and hence the identity of Latina lesbians. To be ‘‘impure’’ or have dual identity means a lack of being. For the purposes of illustration, let us consider how this metaphysics would account for the cultural border embodied by Latina lesbians. From an atomistic perspective, if a border culture is really two cultures—that is, if it is where they meet—then it is not a culture. It seems, then, that a border culture is nothing more than a convenient way to talk about something that does not exist, or at least does not have the same sort of existence as other cultures. Ontologically speaking, the existence of the kind of single but dual identity claimed by border people seems to make no sense. They are nothing more than confused people who live in ambiguity and cannot make up their minds about what they want to be. From this perspective, the only way that Latina lesbians can validly claim that they are part of a genuine culture is if the term ‘‘border culture’’ designates something completely distinct and separate from the two other cultures from which it originates. This would mean, then, that perhaps the term ‘‘border’’ and the use of the hyphen (to name border people) is informative about the origins (causal conditions) of the new culture, but they are misleading if they are intended to somehow suggest a dual and impure identity or existence. In other words, a genuine Mexican-American culture would be neither Mexican nor American.

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However, this way of saving border people from illegitimacy requires that we deny features that are essential to their border-culture experience. Gloria Anzaldu´a and many other Mexican-American lesbians have claimed that they do experience themselves as being both Mexican and American. I believe things are even more complicated. In many cases, the experience of a triple identity has to be accounted for with regard to border cultures. Many people in border cultures identify themselves not only with the two cultures of origin but also with the creation of a new, distinctive culture that cannot be reduced to the original two. Lugones hints at the same sort of third identity in regard to gender. There is a distinctive character of lesbianism that goes beyond the masculine/feminine options: ‘‘The parody of masculine/feminine, the play with illusion that transcends gender boundaries, the ‘now you see ‘‘it’’ now you don’t’ magic tricks aimed at destroying the univocal character of the ‘it’ that we disdain with playful intention.’’14 From the point of view of a metaphysical atomism, we may opt to simply deny the complex experience of border or curdled people, or simply conclude that they are indeed very confused and schizophrenic people. However, there is an alternative. We can try to find out if, with a different metaphysics of culture, we can make sense of their experience. Since I follow Dewey in taking experience seriously, I explore this alternative. Dewey would say that we do not have to design or stipulate a new metaphysics to ‘‘save’’ the ‘‘poor’’ border people. The way they experience the world is, in fact, how things are. On the other hand, the view of cultures as pure, isolated, discrete, self-contained, atomistic wholes prior to their interaction is a false abstraction. This atomistic way of thinking about cultures is a consequence of a metaphysical tradition that Dewey criticized as not being based on experience. It is a philosophical tradition that regards ambiguity, vagueness, and continuities as not part of reality. But in Dewey’s ontological landscape, what is primary is the ongoing interactions of cultures with all of their raggedness and impurities. Cultures, just as with many other things

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in the world, have a center and fluctuating, indeterminate boundaries. These boundaries are fringes and are places of continuity and interaction between cultures. In this ‘‘spectrum view of cultures,’’ drawing a line where one culture ends and another begins might seem arbitrary, but admitting the reality of continuities does not make differences arbitrary. We cannot draw a discrete line between or come up with definite criteria for when night ends and the day begins, but who can say that there is no difference between night and day? If continuities are real, then being in between two cultures or genders is a real place to be. In a Deweyan map of cultures, there is a rich plurality of different cultures, and even though we can speak of a border culture in relation to the two others that frame it, there are no discrete borderlines. This accounts for the sense of continuity experienced by border people in relation to the two cultures from which they originate. But what about the claim of border people that they experience themselves as having a triple cultural identity? Dewey’s metaphysics can account for this sense of identity perfectly. A border culture can be more than a fuzzy area between two cultures. The border is where they ‘‘are,’’ but what makes them a distinctive culture is that they have created something new out of their dual identity. Dewey believed in emergence, that is, he believed that new kinds of things emerge in the course of time from the interaction between things. Moreover, what is new and distinctive is not reducible to its preconditions. Purple can be created by mixing red and blue, but it is not red or blue or red-blue—it is purple. To acknowledge triple identity in the case of border cultures is to acknowledge continuity and emergence. The border person can identify herself with both cultures; her relation to both cultures is an integral part of her identity. However, if something distinctive has emerged from the interaction of the two cultures, she can also claim that her culture is not reducible to them. The fact that not all border cultures can claim triple identity follows from the fact that something can be at the boundaries of other things without creating its own ‘‘center.’’ Indeed, it is not always true that at the place

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where different cultures meet, new and worthwhile things emerge. It all depends on the quality of the cultures’ interaction. The consequences of this metaphysics are significant. A culture or a language that tries to remain pure, isolated, and self-contained denies the kinds of interactions that can make it grow in new and enriching directions. Under a Deweyan metaphysics of culture, being in between cultures is not only a real place to be, but it is a dynamic place where new and exciting things can emerge. If more Hispanic Americans would adopt this way of conceiving cultures, they would begin to appreciate that being on the border is an opportunity and not a fall from grace. The Tejano music of South Texas or the Latin jazz from New York are two examples of the creativity that can emerge from the interaction of cultures at the border. These are the places where the new America is really growing. They are a counterexample to the notion that a culture is diluted when it comes into contact with others, and that this contact can only generate confusion, violence, anarchy, or moral decline. However, many Hispanic Americans, sometimes through no fault of their own, have failed to take their situation (their ‘‘being’’) as an opportunity. The causes of this failure are complex, but one thing that weighs them down is the sense that they have no being and identity of their own. My explanation of border identities has focused on culture, but there is no reason why it cannot be equally applied to gender. Many lesbians, including Lugones, believe that their identity is masculine and female without reducing it to the mere addition of both. This suggests that perhaps from the point of view of their gender, many Latina lesbians are ready to affirm a triple identity. Moreover, in striking conformity with the Deweyan appreciation of border status as an opportunity for experimentation and growth, Lugones invites other curdled beings like herself to appreciate their ambiguity as the source of creativity: ‘‘We can affirm the positive side of our being threatening as ambiguous. If it is ambiguous it is threatening because it is creative, changing, defiant of norms meant to subdue it.’’15

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Feminism, Pragmatism, and the Politics of Purity How is this Deweyan criticism of purity different from that of Lugones? Is there any way in which pragmatism and feminism can complement each other in dealing with the identity problems of curdled individuals? Can one derive from their criticism of purity any important lesson for philosophy in general? In both there is the notion that in order to resolve the problematic situation of the impure, we need to uncover an implicit way of conceiving them. However, Dewey would claim that what needs to be uncovered is a metaphysical outlook and not merely a ‘‘logic’’ or ‘‘language,’’ as suggested by Lugones. But this may well be simply a superficial difference in philosophical terminology, since what she means by ‘‘logic’’ seems as fundamental to our daily orientation as what Dewey meant by ‘‘metaphysics.’’ This is suggested by her contrast between the world of ‘‘the lover of purity’’ and that of the impure, and is even more striking in her claim that in the former ‘‘the fundamental assumption is that there is unity underlying multiplicity.’’16 In one way of looking at the world, cultural and gender boundaries are discrete lines of separation and those who claim to be in the middle are ‘‘anomalous, deviant, ambiguous, impure.’’17 Lugones’s description of how an emulsion curdles could well be the best metaphor to describe how, from the standpoint of a Deweyan metaphysics, there are continuities, ambiguities, and degrees—a ‘‘spectrum view.’’ Once we move beyond this difference in philosophical terminology, we can recognize that in both Lugones and Dewey there is a profound appreciation of the relation between metaphysics and politics. Metaphysics cannot be disregarded, as recommended by Richard Rorty. Philosophy is criticism, ‘‘criticism of the influential beliefs that underlie culture.’’18 This criticism can take different forms. Since metaphysical beliefs and theories are not things that emerge or function in a vacuum, we must discover how they are connected with the values and politics of lived experience. Dewey stated, ‘‘That which may be pretentiously unreal when it is formulated in metaphysical

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distinctions becomes intensely significant when connected with the drama of the struggle of social beliefs and ideals.’’19 But philosophy as criticism does not imply the end of metaphysics. On the contrary, one purpose of inquiring into an adequate ‘‘general map of existence’’ is to criticize those other maps that denigrate the existence and identity of many, for example, of the ‘‘impure.’’ Philosophers today should not only engage in metaphysics but also investigate the contemporary actualities or manifestations of the implicit traditional metaphysics that continues to affect our lives. This is what feminists like Lugones have accomplished, and in this respect their work can be regarded as a much-needed extension of Dewey’s philosophic thinking. Moreover, there is much that Deweyans can learn from Lugones in dealing with the problems of identity of curdled individuals and cultures. We need to inquire, as feminists have, into the actual political forces that perpetuate an erroneous metaphysics. Lugones provides an insightful analysis into the ‘‘politics of purity.’’ She claims that those in power ‘‘attempt to split everything impure, breaking it down into pure elements for the purposes of control.’’20 They control multiplicity by reducing it to unity through an act of splitting or fragmenting the selves of the impure: ‘‘What is multiple is understood as internally separable, divisible into what makes it one and the remainder.’’21 The lover of purity considers the ‘‘anomaly of being cultured and culturally multiplicitous’’22 as a threat or as ‘‘out of place’’ relative to some order of things. It is in their interest to devaluate ambiguity: ‘‘He shuns impurity, ambiguity, multiplicity as they threaten his own fiction.’’23 Lugones shows how the quest for purity is used in the quest for control. This control does not have to be something overtly constructed or planned by those who benefit from it. As long as curdled beings continue to assume or adopt the logic of purity, they make possible their own oppression and fragmentation. Control is exercised over all curdled beings because the same logic of purity demands ‘‘split-separation’’ and keeps the diversity of curdled beings from appreciating their continuities. Lugones explains, ‘‘They also attempt to split-separate us from others who are themselves curdled

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through the logic of marginalization. . . . We also become susceptible to being agents of the lover of purity in carrying out the oppression of other curdled beings, in constructing his made-to-order orderly world.’’24 Lugones’s call for action is to affirm mestizaje (multiplicity), that is, to defy ‘‘control through simultaneously asserting the impure . . . and rejecting fragmentation into pure parts.’’25 Furthermore, she considers the political unity of all curdled beings to be important. Lesbians are not the only transitionals, impure, ambiguous beings. ‘‘If we are to struggle against ‘our’ oppression, Latina Lesbian cannot be the name for a fragmented being. Our style cannot be outside the meaning of Latina and cannot be outside the meaning of Lesbian. So, our struggle, the struggle of lesbians, goes beyond lesbians as a group. If we understand our separation as curdle-separation, then we can rethink our relation to other curdled beings.’’26 Dewey would agree, but perhaps add that this is in effect a call for action for everyone since in more ways than one we are all ‘‘curdled.’’ The quest for purity, as well as the quest for certainty, is a dangerous and ludicrous quest.

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seventeen

dewey and mar tı´ Culture in Education Alejandro Strong



T

his chapter is a first step toward developing a theoretical framework for a culturally sensitive, experience-based pedagogy for the United States. Toward this aim, a comparison of Jose´ Martı´ and John Dewey is both useful and important. Dewey’s works on education are primary reading in education programs around the country, and innovators in alternative experience-based teaching are applying Dewey’s ideas today. Jose´ Martı´ shares many similarities with Dewey. Although Martı´ was Cuban, he spent a large portion of his life exiled in the United States. During this period he wrote extensively on social issues in the United States; U.S. education was one of his central concerns. Martı´’s writing offers a unique view on education within the states. Both Dewey and Martı´ espoused teaching methods that centered on optimizing the experience of students. Both were interested in the impact of education on free nations. The mapping of these common links will be important, but for now I wish to focus on a key difference between the two. Martı´ and Dewey took different positions on { 27 4 }

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cultural difference. My present purpose is to lay out the difference between their views on the place of cultural difference in education. In understanding the source of their respective positions on cultures, we can see the relationship between the theoretical framework we accept and our views on culture. I believe that Martı´’s philosophy offers us a better standpoint from which to deal with the diversity in today’s U.S. student population than that proposed by Dewey in Democracy and Education. By comparing Dewey and Martı´ I hope to show that since education is a cultural practice, the way a philosopher views differences between cultures will have a direct effect on the goals they set for education. I first consider how Dewey and Martı´ came to hold their positions by considering their views on purpose, ends, and goods. In this analysis I consider the influence of value claims made within each author’s writing. Martı´ argued both for a strong idea of nationalism based in cultural difference and for a humanism based in the flourishing of human nature. His view was based on a developmental account of human history in which value is judged not on progress but on a correspondence to nature, both particular and universal. He thought primarily in terms of cultures, describing specific groups and how they relate to and are distinct from other groups. In Dewey’s Democracy and Education the importance of cultural difference is subsumed by goals of assimilation. In this work, questions of diversity are understood in terms of cultural growth based on a progressive historical scale. In Dewey’s other works, cultural difference, when mentioned, appears to still be influenced by his singular progressive form of evaluation. Dewey thought primarily in terms of culture as a general human behavioral characteristic. A theory created around an idea of culture and one built around an idea of cultures will take significantly different positions on how to deal with issues of diversity. John Lachs’s ‘‘Human Natures’’ builds a similar distinction between talk of human nature and human natures. He calls for a movement for a discussion of human natures due to the benefits of talking meaningfully about actual differences. He

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does not wish this discussion of difference to ‘‘be permitted to obscure our similarities.’’1 In similar fashion, our theory of culture must consider cultures in their specificity and not just culture in general. By beginning with an examination of purposes and method, we see how deeply views on culture are ingrained in each author’s philosophy. For Dewey and Martı´, the method of education is related to the goal of education. In both we find a reciprocal interaction between method and purpose. However, each defined purpose in his own way. By tracing the relation of the individual and their environment in each author’s discussion of purpose, we begin to understand why they hold such different positions on the role of diversity in education. Dewey’s purpose or end in view is more than just results. In Democracy and Education Dewey contrasts an end with a result. In chapter 8, ‘‘Aim in Education,’’ Dewey defines a result as simply an effect; for example, when ‘‘the wind blows about the sands of the desert; the position of the grains is changed.’’2 This change does not lead to any form of fulfillment. To do so, it must be part of a distinct process. Furthermore, if one has the ‘‘imaginative foresight’’3 to know his end before it occurs, we may say that one possesses an aim.4 Purposes emerge in an individual’s interactions with their surroundings. The plans we make to enact our desires take into account the situations in which we live. Purpose is an intelligent and intentional attempt to order one’s situation. One’s purpose cannot be created out of nothing; it must match knowledge of the past and present along with anticipation of the future. In other words, purpose is something that is constructed or developed by individuals in their environment. Much like Dewey, Martı´ considered method and purpose to be necessarily connected. For Martı´, an individual taking part in an activity will move seamlessly between thinking of method and purpose. It is in reflection that we are able to separate them for examination. In some sense, when we reflect, purpose is simply method since it relates to the movement into the future. Likewise, method can be thought of as purpose since it deals with the more immediate now. Purpose is best understood as in the present; it is why you apply the methods you have chosen.

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If we look for the source of purpose, Martı´ differed from Dewey. Martı´ understood purpose as something discovered or inherited. Purpose is much less something desired than something we are stuck with. Dewey did not overlook this aspect of purpose. He referred to impulse as well as desire as the seed of purpose, but Martı´ placed a greater emphasis on the impositions of purposes by the context the individual is in. The strength of influence a context has on individuals is a central theme in Martı´’s writing. His account of the influence of context developed from his reading of Emerson. Context for Martı´ was nature, both in terms of our general nature and the specific natural situation in which people find themselves. In addition to viewing nature as the source of purpose, Martı´ also believed that the relationship between nature and purposes was a moral one. He saw nature as a moral context. When he wrote of teaching, he noted the importance of ‘‘relating some things to others and taking from every opinion all of its origins, uses, and derivations, and from every subject all of its lessons to humanity.’’5 Origins, uses, derivations, and lessons of humanity correspond to the four aspects of Martı´’s conception of nature: elements, essence, resource, and pure life. In learning to hear what nature, history, and our context have to tell us, we will find our purpose. We judge how good our purposes and goals are by their relation to nature. Instead of adopting such a natural teleology, Dewey considered the process of growth to be the source of the good. The purpose of growth is more growth and ‘‘the purpose of school education is to insure the continuation of education.’’6 But what makes growth good? In Democracy and Education the discussion of growth is connected to the idea of progress using the findings of anthropology. In this book Dewey’s idea of progress is a development from savages to high-level complex societies, or civilization. In Democracy and Education, social differentiation is viewed on an evaluative continuum. On this continuum, savage tribes are not as good as high-level societies. In other words, the United States is better than the Dinka of Southern Sudan.

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In savage communities, learning happens merely through ‘‘direct participation, constituting the indirect or incidental education,’’7 which he defined as the way in which a rat in a maze learns.8 It is not that savage minds are of a lesser quality; Dewey believed it was their social structures that limit the savage. He believed their cultural structures did nothing more than train by participation. Dewey considered one of the differences between savage tribes and higher societies to be the savage’s inability to control meanings in the natural world. He wrote, ‘‘The savage deals largely with crude stimuli,’’9 these being ‘‘natural forces and objects’’ that have not yet ‘‘been transformed into instrumentalities of action, into means of securing ends.’’10 For Dewey, it is not until societies become more advanced that a ‘‘progressive order is created.’’11 One may want to argue that Dewey is only describing a difference between the methods of tribes and civilization. However, by connecting method and ends and setting the end of teaching in a process that he believed only higher-level civilizations are capable of, Dewey’s claim becomes an evaluation. In addition, it seems to be one of the stronger evaluative claims that his method allows. In Democracy and Education, education is the tool by which progress is maintained: It is the business of the school environment to eliminate, so far as possible, the unworthy features of the existing environment from influence upon mental habitudes. It establishes a purified medium of action. Selection aims not only at simplifying but at weeding out what is undesirable. Every society gets encumbered with what is trivial, with dead wood from the past, and with what is positively perverse. . . . By selecting the best for its exclusive use, it strives to reinforce the power of this best. As a society becomes more enlightened, it realizes that it is responsible not to transmit and conserve the whole of its existing achievements, but only such as make for a better future society.12

When this enlightened society makes its decisions about what is ‘‘for a better future’’ or what is ‘‘undesirable,’’ on what is the decision based? If growth is the good, then it is by a measurement of growth

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that we will be able to point to our ‘‘undesirables.’’ The end of education Dewey promotes in Democracy and Education assumes that it is better to be a high-order society than a savage tribe. Let us return to Martı´ to see how his understanding of purpose applies to education. For Martı´, the purpose of education is to create a unity in difference. In Martı´’s work from the 1890s we find both monism and pluralism—not a shifting between the two, but the constant presence of both within experience. Their relation is seen both in his writings on politics and in those on education. In his articles we see two competing claims: first, ‘‘man’s nature is identical throughout the world’’; and second, ‘‘each nation has its own habits, they can become so ingrained to make it hard to live in another nation.’’13 Both must be considered of equal importance to the purpose of education for Martı´. In the movement toward monism we have ideas like that of ‘‘total teaching’’ mentioned above. Total teaching is based on relating and building toward ‘‘lessons to humanity.’’14 In addition, Martı´ argues that the purpose of education is not to fashion false divisions between different people. However, he worries about the actual differences between different groups of people, nations, or cultures: ‘‘Prolonged habits create in men and nations such modification in the expression and functions of nature that, without changing in the essentials, they come to make it impossible for a man of one region, with certain concepts of life and engaging in certain practices, to have the happiness of contentment and the success in his work characterized by a man of another region where concepts and life styles are different.’’15 For Martı´, ‘‘he who puts himself into compartments’’16 and not he who is actually different is left behind. Here Martı´ spoke against unfounded attempts to create difference. Even in his ethical claim to monism he left room for real difference. Real difference is the difference developed by human groups in the context of their natural environments. How does this pluralistic view of real difference translate into a goal for education? It is precisely this pluralistic view of education that was advanced in ‘‘Education and Nationality.’’ In this essay Martı´ inquired into the best way to educate children in a foreign country. His main concern was for Latin

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American children studying in the United States, both those who would again live in the country of their birth and those who would stay in the United States. In regard to both groups of students, Martı´ wrote, ‘‘The purpose of education is not to make a man unhappy because of the difficult and confused use of his alien soul in the country where he lives, and from which he lives, but to make him happy without robbing him—as his dissimilarity to the country would rob him—of the conditions of equality in the daily struggle with those who preserve the country’s soul.’’17 The school that best achieves this purpose is one in which ‘‘the skills of the North are acquired without the loss of our own virtues, character and nature.’’18 Education builds on both the student’s native culture and the culture of the United States. Martı´’s concern about cultural loss and assimilation to U.S. culture led him to warn Latin American parents in the United States that this type of school may be one of the only ones where it is safe to send their children. For Martı´, cultures are the particular way in which a people live out their natural function. They are developed within the natural environment of the group and by way of the actions of its members and other groups in its present and past. As a group’s expression of nature, cultures are the particular way in which the members of that culture understand the world. Culture is the source of both the purpose and the methods of its people. It is not just a cause or effect of these, but the context in which the natural world is given. In addition to bringing a group together, their culture is the source of their difference from other groups. When working within a single culture, Dewey shows a similar ability to meld monism and pluralism in his goals. Maximizing learning in the integrity of experience requires a careful balancing act. In his discussion of educational values in Democracy and Education, he asks a series of questions. The chapters that follow provide valuable analysis of how to ‘‘secure breadth of outlook without sacrificing efficiency of execution.’’19 Dewey’s education, however, is meant for a single ‘‘democratic social group.’’20 In this group the primary goal of education is to create unity so that different groups can work together for

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the benefit of the whole. He acknowledges that there may be social, racial, and class distinctions within this larger social group. He believes that a modern society is made up of many smaller societies. In the face of these differences education becomes an important tool for the larger ‘‘democratic social group’’ to integrate the smaller groups into it. Even the environment of the school is meant for ‘‘purifying and idealizing the existing social customs’’ of the democratic social group.21 I will not argue against the importance of attempting to unify a society. However, I am worried that Dewey’s progressive standpoint on culture caused him to call for a bad form of assimilation. For him, the judgment concerning which customs are to be continued is one of the characteristics that distinguish a civilization from a savage tribe. This becomes problematic when we compare distinct cultures that live within the same national boundaries. By location they should be part of the same democratic social group. Also, because Dewey grounds the ends of a group within the experience of its individuals, the ends of the ‘‘democratic social group’’ are the ends of majority groups within it that set their own ends. Cultural adaptation becomes cultural assimilation. Dewey’s analysis of society and culture in Democracy and Education tends to focus on the development of civilization, not on a comparison of cultures. We see only a definition of culture in the singular, ‘‘the capacity for constantly expanding the range and accuracy of one’s perception of meanings.’’22 His definition will change in his later works, but even these remain based on this singular analysis.23 In the above definition, culture is defined as the same movement that Dewey believes transpires between tribes and civilizations. Dewey thought civilization is culture. In turn, civilizing is the goal of education, which is ‘‘to enlarge and enrich the scope of experience, and to keep alert and effective the interest in intellectual progress.’’24 This is achieved by having science ‘‘taught so as to be an end in itself in the lives of students.’’ 25 Science is another reason why civilization is superior to tribes.

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Concerning Dewey’s judgments regarding savage tribes and civilizations, we may want to say that this was a flaw of his time, the prevalent view in the social sciences of his day.26 Although this is a reason to not judge Dewey, I think we must seriously consider the effect of this dated view on both the goals and methods he employed in his pedagogy. We must be careful not to fall into the trap of using methods that presuppose a judgment of cultures based on an overvaluation of our own. When we take up a method developed out of Democracy and Education we must examine it to see if it has the same assimilative results. Analysis of difference may offer us a way to avoid falling into the above mistake. In their article ‘‘Students’ Multiple Worlds: Negotiating the Boundaries of Family, Peer, and Social Cultures,’’ educational theorists Patricia Phelan, Ann Locke Davidson, and Hanh Thanh Cao note a lack of research on the competing influence of different groups in which students are members.27 By moving from analyzing culture in general to an analysis of cultures and the interactions between them, philosophy may be able to develop a method that begins to correct for this lack of research. Martı´’s writing in the 1890s takes just such a perspective. In ‘‘Our America,’’ ‘‘My Race,’’ ‘‘The Truth About the United States,’’ and other essays from this time he developed a nonprogressive developmental account of cultures and races that took the differences between them to be of equal or greater political and educational importance than their similarities. As I stated in the introduction, my goal in bringing Martı´ and Dewey together was to develop a more culturally sensitive theory of education. Originally, my goal was to discover if a pedagogy built by combining Martı´ and Dewey’s philosophies would fill the void discussed in ‘‘Students’ Multiple Worlds.’’ My plan was to meld Dewey’s rich analysis of teaching methods with Martı´’s understanding of the role of cultures and national identity in education. However, as it became apparent how deeply intertwined their views of culture and method were, understanding the discrepancies between the two authors became paramount.

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This essay focuses on the greatest difference between Dewey and Martı´. To judge from this point alone would overlook the many important connections between the two. In my continued search for a theoretical basis for an experiential education that is culturally sensitive, the philosophies of both Martı´ and Dewey will play central roles in developing a philosophy of education that optimizes the experience of all students. But as I have tried to show here, it is Martı´’s understanding of cultures, purpose, and education that should be the conceptual framework for such a system of education. By considering cultures to be the source of our purpose, educators can be more sensitive to the complex interaction between our contexts and what makes our lives complete, meaningful, and flourishing.

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eighteen

d e w e y’ s an d fre ire ’s pe dago gies of recognition A Critique of Subtractive Schooling Kim Dı´az



Hey, we’re Mexican and American and proud of it! It’s just that nobody wants to let us be both—which is what we are. —High school student in Houston, Texas

A

critique of contemporary pedagogy in American schools as it relates to minority and immigrant students has been termed ‘‘subtractive schooling’’ by Angela Valenzuela. As the name indicates, subtractive schooling is a type of pedagogy that takes away or subtracts aspects of a student’s experience. I believe that this is a problem that should concern us, and I use John Dewey’s and Paulo Freire’s theories on pedagogy to argue why this is the case. This essay is informed by sociological research as well as Dewey’s and Freire’s theories on pedagogy. Freire’s incisive social criticism coupled with Dewey’s pragmatic sensibility can help us understand the nature of subtractive schooling and suggest what we must do in order to overcome it. I have divided the chapter into three main sections. The first section lays out what subtractive schooling is as well as its social consequences. The second section, based on the work of Freire, is a critique of subtractive schooling as oppressive to minority and immigrant students on two accounts: treating students as objects { 28 4 }

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rather than as subjects, and subtractive schooling as a process that teaches self-hatred. The third section is devoted to a critical analysis of subtractive schooling based on the pedagogy of Dewey. Here the criticism is that subtractive schooling undermines the experiences of minority and immigrant students and, because of this, it is detrimental to students’ development. Dewey and Freire worked with different students and in very different contexts, but their ideas about pedagogy complement each other remarkably well. Dewey worked with American children of grade-school age, while Freire worked with adult South American campesinos (peasants). The language Dewey and Freire use to express their thoughts is very different as well. Whereas Freire’s tenor draws our attention to the blatant oppression of one group by another, Dewey emphasizes the conditions that need to be present to overcome oppression. There are many parallels between Dewey’s and Freire’s theories on pedagogy; the main one that is developed here is the importance each places on the respect and recognition of the student’s experience as central for the student’s development. Both Dewey and Freire want students to become aware of themselves and their experience to draw from it the skills and creativity that will allow them to flourish. Before continuing with the rest of my analysis, it is necessary to articulate some arguments in favor of subtractive schooling as well as my own position. Richard Rodriguez believes it is best for children to learn to speak English as soon as possible, and to learn that they can have a public and a private identity.1 The public identity is to be expressed in English while the private identity (home/family) is to be expressed in Spanish. Rodriguez advocates the bifurcation of a person’s identity into public and private identities because he believes this is the best way to achieve upward mobility and admission into mainstream American culture. Given that immigrant children are now in the United States, it is simply best for them to learn English since they will need it to communicate and become members of the American community. Samuel Huntington also advocates subtractive schooling; his main concern is to protect the U.S. national identity,

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the English language, and American culture. Huntington believes that the United States is currently under threat of losing its national identity.2 Because of the large numbers of Mexican immigrants coming into the United States, more and more Spanish is being spoken in America, whose legitimate language is English. He ultimately believes that if Hispanics want to be part of the American community they must share American values and speak English. I agree that students in the American school system should learn English, and as many other languages as they are curious to learn, but also to retain the languages they already know and not think less of them because of the acquisition of new ones.

Subtractive Schooling It is a relatively well-known fact that most children of minority ethnic groups do not do as well academically as their Anglo counterparts.3 Dropout rates are highest among black and Latino students, and these students generally go on to take jobs that do not require a college education. Minority students tend to remain at the same socioeconomic status as their parents. Another interesting phenomenon is that first- and second-generation immigrants tend to have high levels of social success. In his book Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation, Alejandro Portes discusses how first and second generations are characterized by high levels of education and upward mobility.4 This success is not enjoyed by the third and subsequent generations, however, who have assimilated into the mainstream American culture. Angela Valenzuela uses the term ‘‘subtractive schooling’’ to describe the process of assimilation into mainstream American culture that immigrant students undergo in our American school system. Valenzuela’s book Subtractive Schooling: U.S.–Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring explains her research and findings.5 Her research takes place in Seguin High, a pseudonymous Houston high school in which the student population is largely Mexican American and recently arrived Mexican immigrant students.

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I am concerned here with the conclusions of her research. She tells us that subtractive schooling generates a monolingual, English-speaking ethnic minority that is no longer able to identify with Mexican culture and is also not equipped to do well in the American mainstream. Valenzuela concludes that subtractive schooling ‘‘divests Mexican youth of important social and cultural resources, leaving them progressively vulnerable to academic failure.’’6 She proposes that the ‘‘academic deficiencies’’ of U.S.-born students from lowincome communities are the symptoms of a schooling that subtracts cultural resources from them. In addition, schools are organized in ways that ‘‘fracture students’ cultural and ethnic identities’’; she thus holds subtractive schooling partly responsible for the generational decline in academic achievement that Portes points out in his research. Subtractive assimilation comes about because assimilation is not a neutral process, given that it negatively affects minorities. Valenzuela tells us that even bilingual education programs that were created to meet the linguistic needs of minority students are subtractive since these programs do not recognize nor reinforce the students’ native language skills and their cultural identity. She explains how ‘‘the organization of schooling has been historically implicated in the devaluation of the Spanish language, Mexico, Mexican culture and things Mexican.’’7 Valenzuela relates that many Mexican American students feel they are not in a position to criticize the U.S. public school system. Rather, they feel that they should be agradecidos, grateful for the opportunity to study in the United States. Valenzuela points out that this is a type of self-censorship, which is indicative of a deeper acceptance of the idea that the American culture and language are superior to their Spanish language and culture. The social consequences of subtractive schooling are negative for everyone involved. Teachers who are committed to helping their students are discouraged in their efforts ‘‘since [those] kids aren’t going anywhere anyway.’’8 This attitude among teachers communicates the feeling that Mexican students will drop out, that they are neither interested in school nor ambitious, that they will become another statistic, get pregnant and go on welfare, and that there is nothing that

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teachers can do about this situation since it is the students’ fault. Valenzuela concludes that instead of accepting any responsibility in the process of subtractive schooling, Seguin High’s teachers deflect their responsibility by pointing to the underachievement of cultures that do not value education. Valenzuela’s research is focused on Mexican immigrant and Mexican American youth, but the effects of subtractive schooling are also experienced by other minority students such as African Americans, Native Americans, and Puerto Ricans, to name a few, since their cultural identities become progressively subtracted and their languages and cultures are ‘‘construed as barriers to overcome.’’ Minority and immigrant students are not presented with the option of being bicultural or bilingual. As students assimilate and lose command of their native language, they also lose part of their ethnic identity and the ability to make and maintain relationships using their native language. Freire’s Critical Pedagogy Most of Freire’s work took place in South American countries where his method of critical pedagogy was implemented to teach adult literacy classes. The majority of his students were oppressed farm peasants who lived in feudal conditions. Freire’s method of critical pedagogy not only taught peasants how to read and write but, most important, they also learned about themselves and their reality. Freire’s critical pedagogy stands against the practice of subtractive schooling on two accounts. The first problem with subtractive schooling is that it makes students into objects instead of recognizing them as subjects. Second, assimilation through subtractive schooling causes self-hatred; Freire describes this as the process of internalizing the master. In regard to the first criticism, Freire’s critical pedagogy is opposed to what he calls the ‘‘banking concept of education’’ in which: ‘‘knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing.

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Projecting an absolute ignorance onto others, a characteristic of the ideology of oppression, negates education and knowledge as processes of inquiry.’’9 The banking concept of education sees students as empty vessels to be filled by the experience, generosity, and wisdom of the teacher. Freire considers this approach to pedagogy insulting, patronizing, and oppressive toward the students, who are regarded as ignorant objects that will be rescued by the gift of the teacher’s wisdom. Freire’s critical pedagogy is the practice of encouraging students to see themselves as subjects rather than as objects. He tells us that when his campesinos students first begin their literacy classes, many of them see themselves as passive objects to whom things occur. He writes that his students would tell him that they did not see a difference between farm animals and themselves, and when they did admit a difference it was that animals were better off because they were freer.10 In other words, these peasants felt much like animals or objects without any power to affect their present and future experiences. As part of the process of conscientizac¸a˜o, students become aware that they are not mere objects, but are t human beings, subjects, and the makers of their own history. Valenzuela tells us that the Seguin High School teachers see not only their minority and immigrant students as needing their help to overcome their cultural deficiencies but they also regard the students’ parents as standing in the way of their student’s success.11 Her point is that Seguin High teachers pride themselves in how well their students are doing with their English acquisition and education in spite of their culture. Insofar as teachers practice subtractive schooling and regard their students as people whose culture and language must first be undone in order to then start anew in English, they are patronizing and treating their students as objects instead of recognizing them for the human subjects that they are. Regarding Freire’s second critique of subtractive schooling— teaching self-hatred—when he writes about having the master inside Freire means that we have internalized the oppressor so that the oppressor need no longer be present for oppression to take place. Having internalized the master, we oppress ourselves. This takes place

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when we have bought into the dominant ideology. Two examples follow. The first is Freire’s own: ‘‘A sociologist friend of mine tells of a group of armed peasants in a Latin American country who recently took over a latifundium. For tactical reasons, they planned to hold the landowner as a hostage. But not one peasant had the courage to guard him; his very presence was terrifying. It is also possible that the act of opposing the boss provoked guilt feelings. In truth, the boss was ‘inside’ them.’’12 In spite of the fact that the peasants outnumbered the plantation owner, they had come to internalize the power of their master over them to such a degree that they became paralyzed in his presence. My second example involves a friend of mine who shared his mother’s experience growing up Mexican in Dallas. He tells me that his mom refused to teach her children Spanish because as a child she was beaten by her teachers when she was caught speaking Spanish at school. Today his Mexican mother believes everyone should speak English and she thinks little of her native language. This is a perfect example of self-hatred, what Freire states we experience when we internalize the oppressor. My friend’s mother no longer has to have her teachers beat her with a yardstick and tell her to speak English; the master inside controls her thinking, her behavior, and certainly her language. Richard Rodriguez argues that if Mexican immigrants want to preserve their Spanish language and heritage they should do so in the privacy of their homes, and that they should embrace the English language and the American identity publicly instead of acknowledging the child as bilingual or bicultural. I do not believe that having to hide aspects of their identity is healthy for a child’s sense of selfworth. This is analogous to being in the closet about their bicultural identity. Subtractive schooling does not enable students to realize their agency as subjects and makers of their own history. Instead, by subtracting the student’s native language and cultural experiences, subtractive schooling is an instrument of oppression and the subjection of one culture by another.

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Dewey: Recognition, Experience, and Growth In this section I argue that Deweyan pedagogy is opposed to subtractive schooling because subtractive schooling does not recognize the students’ experience, which is detrimental to their development as students and people. Subtractive schooling is also a practice that is opposed to Dewey’s description of America as a democratic and pluralistic community; this last argument addresses Huntington’s concern for the loss of what he believes is the American identity. In contrast to subtractive schooling, a central aspect of Dewey’s pedagogy is the recognition of the student’s experience as the source of creativity, curiosity, and development. The teacher’s role is to help students explore and foster their inclinations to promote healthy development into an adult. The loss of the student’s native language is not merely the loss of an ability to communicate in that language. The most harmful aspect of subtractive schooling is that the student loses the ability to form social relationships in the language lost. Assimilated students may understand Spanish, Korean, or Navajo when they hear their parents speak, but do not feel comfortable enough in the language to speak it themselves. For Dewey, the more and the more varied types of relationships that we have, the more opportunities we have for further education and enrichment. A whole world of relationships, possibilities, social networks, and experiences are lost to assimilated students because of subtractive schooling. Dewey believed pedagogy was the ability to learn from our experiences, to reconstruct them in order to enrich our present experience. The ability to think critically about our previous experiences helps us in dealing with the difficulties of later situations. By undermining the students’ experiences, subtractive schooling undermines the same source from which they are supposed to derive the capacity to deal with future problems. Dewey believed that the school setting was the place where children learned the American values of democracy and toleration. The lesson learned through subtractive schooling is anything but that of toleration since immigrant students learn that their

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language is inferior to English. Dewey explicitly argues against this situation, stating that the school ought to do ‘‘whatever is necessary to enable the child intelligently to recognize all his social relations and take part in sustaining them.’’13 Samuel Huntington believes that the United States has become what it is because of its Anglo-Protestant values. He observes that previous immigrant groups have assimilated American values and learned English, and have thus become American. Huntington argues that Hispanic immigrants, particularly those of Mexican descent, are not like previous immigrant groups. According to Huntington, Mexicans are not assimilating quickly enough; they want to maintain their values and language. This, he warns, will lead to the fracturing of the American identity. In order to articulate his argument, Huntington makes an important assumption, namely, that there is a fixed and unchanging American identity with a set of permanent values and characteristics. He fails to acknowledge that, historically, immigrant groups have both been affected by and have themselves contributed to the American identity and values. One such example is the Irish Catholic immigrants who came to the United States between 1820 and 1860. At the time the American identity was largely Anglo-Saxon and Protestant. The Irish immigrants did not assimilate into the native Protestant religion; rather, they kept some of their values (religion) and in turn changed the American identity without fracturing the United States into two groups. Furthermore, Huntington’s assumption also denies the historical fact that the American identity and values began to take shape before the Anglo-Protestant peoples and values became mainstream. Instead, he assumes that the Anglo-Protestant identity and values to which he belongs are indeed the legitimate, pervasive, and permanent characteristic of the United States. In his essay ‘‘Nationalizing Education,’’ Dewey reminds the reader that America is ‘‘interracial and international in its make-up,’’ and it is composed of a multitude of people who speak different languages, who have inherited different cultural traditions, and who cherish different values.14 Dewey is critical of the person who proclaims his Americanism loudly if this person assumes a special code or tradition

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to which other cultures must conform; he calls this person a ‘‘traitor to an American nationalism’’ and describes him/her as being ‘‘false to the spirit of America.’’15 Huntington is doing precisely what Dewey is critical of, namely adopting the Anglo-Saxon Protestant values as the one tradition to which other cultures must conform rather than acknowledging that America’s history is interracial and international in its make-up. Deweyan pedagogy encourages immigrant children to maintain their cultural heritage and language. Dewey saw nothing inherently wrong or threatening with the idea of being bicultural. In fact, he tells us that: the way to deal with hyphenism, is to welcome it . . . the point is to see that the hyphen connects instead of separates. And this means at least that our public schools shall teach each factor to respect every other, and shall take pains to enlighten all as to the great past contributions of every strain in our composite makeup. I wish our teaching of American history in the schools would take more account of the great waves of migration by which our land for over three centuries has been continuously built up, and make every pupil conscious of the rich breadth of our national make-up.16

Subtractive schooling does not welcome and does not encourage biculturalism or, as Dewey calls it, ‘‘hyphenism.’’ Minority students are not made to feel that they are contributing something of their culture to the national makeup; on the contrary, they are schooled into forgetting their culture. Dewey believed that nationalism becomes dangerous when one factor of the national makeup isolates itself, tries to keep itself intact, and ‘‘refuses to accept what other cultures have to offer.’’17 Also, to insist on a national character by assuming a particular type as defining what being American means is dangerous because it ossifies what is inherently changing: our identity. A nationalism that is exclusive is pernicious and contrary to the American values of pluralism and democracy. Dewey had an equally strong faith in democracy and education and believed that we could teach the democratic values of respect for

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people’s experience and tolerance in our schools. He writes, ‘‘Our nation and democracy are equivalent terms; that our democracy means amity and good will to all humanity (including those beyond our border) and equal opportunity for all within.’’18 Dewey believed that students should develop these values for the sake of communication and the growth of the community. For Dewey, the lesson was as important as the way in which the lesson was taught. Subtractive schooling teaches students that bigotry is an acceptable value in a ‘‘democratic’’ community. Furthermore, Dewey describes human beings as biological organisms in a social environment. He believed that humans do not so much interact with their environment but rather transact with it, and the environment with them. This transaction is emphasized because both the individual and the environment are continuously affecting each other, as opposed to engaging each other and then going back to their original conditions. Both the American culture and values and immigrant groups are affected by each other. Immigrants contribute to the American culture and values and they themselves are changed by this experience. The historical transactions that have taken place between the native and immigrant cultures show that the American identity is not something fixed and permanent as Huntington assumes, but rather an open-ended process of becoming. From a Deweyan perspective, one also has to question the public and private bifurcation of the student’s identity that Rodriguez recommends. Dewey was critical of the level of importance we attribute to dualisms, which are nothing more than the product of human reflection as we make helpful distinctions when describing aspects of our experience: ‘‘What has been completely divided in philosophical discourse into man and the world, inner and outer, self and not-self, subject and object, individual and social, private and public, etc., are in actuality parties in life-transactions. The philosophical ‘problem’ of how to get them together is artificial.’’19 Dewey believed that we make the mistake of granting these dualisms ontological status and this mistake has in turn led philosophers to become concerned with the artificial problem of how to explain their cohesiveness.

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Likewise, Rodriguez mistakenly assumes that because persons are bicultural or bilingual, they can leave half of their identity at home when going out in public. The ability to speak two languages (or more) is simply an aspect of their identity as a whole. A bicultural perspective is not something a person can turn on and off. Although the distinctions between different cultures are certainly helpful when describing our experiences, a bicultural perspective is a person’s life’s experience and is an integral part of that person. Conclusion My goal in this chapter has been to assess subtractive schooling using both Paulo Freire’s and John Dewey’s theories on pedagogy to point out the harmful effects subtractive schooling has on immigrant and minority students. I have argued that Valenzuela, Freire, and Dewey stress the need for schools to value students as they are, and that schools need to build from the current experiences of students. I believe a maintenance model of bilingual/bicultural education that maintains the student’s current language while adding English would be a better approach than subtracting the student’s native language and culture. Practically speaking, it is a shame that a child who is able to communicate in a language loses this ability because that language is dismissed as a barrier to overcome, since knowing how to communicate in different languages is a valuable skill. Dewey and Freire are helpful to us today as we think through the negative effects of subtractive schooling and come up with possible solutions. The transactions between the American culture and the immigrant groups and their cultures have resulted in the development of bicultural and bilingual people, which is consistent with Dewey’s model of democracy as a pluralistic community that thrives on contributions from everyone. Pedagogies based on both Freire and Dewey recognize the value of the bicultural experience of minority and immigrant students instead of attempting to do away with it. In closing, Valenzuela proposes that students learn about the ideological struggles that take place in our societies and how different institutions (the school institution being one of them) socialize its

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members. She believes that this would be the surest, best way to teach children that their experiences and their language are no better or worse than those of other people. Dewey suggests that our schools teach students about the contributions of immigrants to the U.S. makeup and history precisely so that we do not forget our history and the value of immigrant contributions to the national identity of the United States.

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nineteen

religiously binding the imperial self Classical Pragmatism’s Call and Liberation, Philosophy’s Response Alexander V. Stehn



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duardo Mendieta has made an important gesture toward what we might call ‘‘Continental American philosophy’’ by announcing his hope that a future generation of scholars will begin to ‘‘develop, mature, and conceive a greater America that includes all of its subcontinents,’’ so that ‘‘we will begin to think of Latin American and North American philosophies as chapters in a larger geopolitical and world-historical school of American philosophy from this hemisphere.’’1 Under this banner, which I believe unites many of the reflections that constitute this volume, my essay examines the ethical and political significance of religion in classical American pragmatism and contemporary Latin American liberation philosophy, as exemplified in the works of William James and Enrique Dussel respectively.2 These two American philosophical traditions share a metaphilosophy insofar as they take experience or life as both the fundamental point of departure and the necessary point of arrival for every philosophy worth its salt.3 This in turn leads both traditions to have democratic political leanings, since it is all of human { 29 7 }

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experience or life in general (rather than the experience or life of philosophers and other social or economic elite) that must be taken seriously theoretically in order to improve things practically. And when it comes to the majority of humanity (as opposed to the majority of contemporary philosophers), the empirical facts suggest that religious experiences, practices, and commitments continue to play a very important role in life.4 My essay begins by providing a broad vision of how William James’s Principles of Psychology and The Will to Believe were a twopronged attempt to revive the self whose foundations had collapsed after the U.S. Civil War during what many intellectual historians have called ‘‘the spiritual crisis of the Gilded age.’’5 Next, I explain how this revival was all too successful insofar as James inadvertently resurrected the imperial self, so that he was forced to adjust and develop his philosophy of religion in keeping with his anti-imperialism. James’s mature philosophy of religion (as found in The Varieties of Religious Experience and A Pluralistic Universe) therefore articulates a vision of the radically ethical saint religiously bound to a decidedly pluralistic universe as constituting ‘‘the moral equivalent of war’’ (VRE, 292).6 I evaluate James’s philosophy of religion by comparing it to Enrique Dussel’s psychological portrait of the imperialist ego, Dussel’s attempt to religiously bind this ego, and the more radical philosophy that results. While arguing that James’s pluralistic political commitments are imperiled by both his somewhat lopsided account of the self ’s religious expansion and the vagueness of his political vision, I suggest that Dussel’s philosophy of liberation better theorizes the religious contraction of the self as a necessary part of ethical and political life and goes on to offer a more concrete and radically democratic philosophy. My overarching aim is to show how Dussel’s liberation philosophy can help critically develop James’s pragmatist claim that religion might provide a force for widely and positively transforming our ethical and political lives.7

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Late Nineteenth-Century Tedium Vitae and the Self of The Principles of Psychology James’s Principles provides an account of the inner life of the individual that would soon come to lie at the center of the philosophy of religion articulated in Varieties. As George Cotkin has pointed out in a close contextual reading of James’s life and work, many people after the U.S. Civil War were plagued by feelings of (in the words of the time) ‘‘moral sea-sickness’’ and ‘‘religious weightlessness.’’8 Principles was written in a late nineteenth-century context when freedom of the will, individual possibility, and autonomy were all being called into question by the rise of scientism in an increasingly corporate, technocratic, and bureaucratic social order. Cotkin claims that people from James’s social class in particular felt ‘‘hemmed into a world of increasing bureaucracy and ease; they confronted what James would designate as the tedium vitae [weariness of life].’’9 Principles met this context squarely by laying the foundations of the self upon physiology, describing human behavior as a series of reflex arcs. James unabashedly wrote a ‘‘psychology without a soul’’ using mechanical similes and metaphors: the brain was ‘‘like the great commutating switch-board at a central telephone station’’ (PP, 38), habit was the ‘‘enormous fly-wheel of society’’ (PP, 125), and so on. James redrew the self as utterly contingent and immanent while openly admitting that it was not one but many. But even after resolutely facing these facts of selfhood in an increasingly scientific and industrial environment, James insisted that we could continue to speak of human agency. Reductionist, mechanical explanation only almost worked to explain human beings. It did not explain the way in which the stream of consciousness was owned and interested, selecting some things from the environment and ignoring others in order to create personal identity and sustain personal projects. No matter how muddled, the self was a felt center of interests, and contingent as the self might be, it felt its own power in shaping the reality it experienced. James’s individual had the power

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of positing an ideal organization of self and world and undertaking their realization through strenuous, heroic, and even warlike effort to escape from the tedium vitae. As Bennett Ramsey notes, ‘‘Mental functions became ‘weapons of the mind.’ Ideas were judged for their capacity to ‘draw blood.’ Self-power became the hero’s ability to stand his ground in a world of strenuous struggle and effort.’’10 Religion Unleashes the Strenuous Mood through The Will to Believe James took this heroic self and gave it a more explicitly religious mission in the essays that form The Will to Believe.11 Principles had already given those suffering from the tedium vitae the chance to be heroes again, but James now endowed this task with a clear religious significance: the heroic self had to willfully bind itself to its ideal self and its ideal world in order to realize them.12 In Cotkin’s words, The Will to Believe attempted to ‘‘expose the pretense of science, celebrate the ennobling powers of religious and moral belief, and combat both determinism and moral sea-sickness through an emphasis on voluntarism and heroic individualism as parts of historical and moral change.’’13 So not only did James restore the possibility for individual and social change, he placed them under the sign of God by arguing that there were good reasons for believing in the possibility that God needed our help, our ‘‘idealities and faithfulnesses,’’ to accomplish His own tasks and redeem the world (WB, 55). In fact, James even went on to speculate that God might ‘‘draw vital strength and increase of very being from our fidelity’’ (WB, 55). To summarize, the heroic religious task that James offered to his academic audience in The Will to Believe was to join God in saving oneself and the world at the same time through strenuous effort, thereby showing religious belief to be justified insofar as it proved uniquely capable of unleashing this effort and instilling life with meaning. While God’s existence was only a possibility and God’s metaphysical nature ultimately remained a mystery, the important thing was that the religious will to believe set free ‘‘every sort of energy and endurance, of courage and capacity’’ (WB, 161). In fact,

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James even went so far as to say that if there were no traditional or logical grounds for believing in God, ‘‘men would postulate one simply as a pretext for living hard, and getting out of the game of existence its keenest possibilities of zest’’ (WB, 161; italics added). Religion and the Imperialist Expansion of the United States Whether it had much to do with James or not, near the turn of the century the United States adopted God as just such a ‘‘pretext for living hard.’’14 Shortly after the publication of The Will to Believe, the aggressive imperial self stood wholly resurrected in the United States under the leadership of Theodore Roosevelt, who became governor of New York, then vice-president, and finally president of the United States after establishing himself as a war hero in the Spanish-American War of 1898. The line had blurred between imperialist logic claiming the superiority of Anglo-Saxondom and religious logic claiming the superiority of Christianity, and the United States began to confuse its ways with God’s ways as missionaries readied themselves to Christianize the globe in conjunction with its Americanization. Given that James’s psychological diagnosis of his (academic) culture had rested, above all, on a perceived lack of passion, he was initially hesitant to unequivocally denounce the way in which such expansion aroused the zeal of U.S. crowds. While he did make a clear stand against ‘‘war fever’’ and jingoism as early as the Venezuela Boundary Dispute of 1895–96, he initially saw the war to come against the Spanish in Cuba as something that would initiate the United States into the brotherhood of truly powerful and important nations while giving the United States a chance to show the world its goodness.15 While James would eventually become famous for his antiimperialism through his opposition to the U.S. government’s policies during and after the Spanish-American War, he initially chose to see only honorable intentions in the U.S. military crusade against the Spanish in Cuba, writing his brother Henry, ‘‘Not a soul thinks of conquest or wishes it.’’16 In short, although James was hard on ‘‘yellow journalism’’ from the start and consistently wary of the crowd and its mob mentality,

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he initially had a soft spot for the way in which individuals were effectively escaping the tedium vitae through an active devotion to some cause. The task for James thus became to figure out how all of this passionate energy could be turned toward good, peaceful causes rather than destructive, belligerent ones. Indeed, this eventually became the subject of his famous 1910 essay titled ‘‘The Moral Equivalent of War,’’17 but the original idea appears eight years earlier in Varieties during James’s discussion of the religious saint (VRE, 292).18 James’s discourse on saintliness, the climax of Varieties, was a direct attempt to maintain his own discourse of heroism and the importance of the individual, while precluding its imperial appropriation by religiously binding the self to the wider community of life to which we are generally blind.19 In effect, James reworked his psychological portrait of the self in Principles by binding this self to ‘‘a wider self from which saving experiences come’’ (VRE, 405), thereby religiously endowing the new self with bonds of sympathy and responsibility that the old self lacked. But before I go on to further examine James’s attempt to replace the imperialist with the saint, I would like to turn to Enrique Dussel’s insightful portrayal of the psychology of the imperial self that both he and James attempt to religiously bind. Enrique Dussel’s Analysis of the Ego Conquiro and Its Religious Inversion In the foreword to The Underside of Modernity, Enrique Dussel summarizes his philosophical practice as follows: ‘‘The Philosophy of Liberation that I practice, not only in Latin America, but also regarding all types of oppression on the planet . . . begins a dialogue with the hegemonic European-North American philosophical community . . . concerning eurocentrism and the invisibility of ‘economics’ that in turn prevent the development out of poverty of the greater part of humanity as a fundamental philosophical and ethical theme.’’20 As part of his commitment to center his philosophy upon the experience and reality of the world’s poor and oppressed, Dussel gives an alternative reconstruction of the birth of modern philosophy in terms that

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make colonialism part and parcel of the modern project rather than merely an unfortunate side-effect. While he does believe that his reinterpretation of modernity will enable us to begin to separate the ‘‘myth of modernity’’—which justifies violence and oppression against (post-)colonial subjects—from ‘‘modernity’s rational, emancipative concept,’’ we must first squarely face the fact that the philosophically solipsistic ego cogito (‘‘I think’’) of Rene´ Descartes cannot be so conveniently separated from the ethically solipsistic ego conquiro (‘‘I conquer’’) of Herna´n Corte´s. In his lectures delivered on the quincentennial anniversary of Columbus’s ‘‘discovery’’ of what would come to be called ‘‘America,’’ Dussel writes: ‘‘For the modern ego, the inhabitants of the land never appeared as Other, but as the possessions of the Same to be conquered, colonized, modernized, civilized, as if they were the modern ego’s material.’’21 Dussel also notes how this movement has been carried on (albeit in many different contexts) in perpetuity up to the present day (one only has to think of the irrational myth of the United States’ fundamental right to spread ‘‘freedom’’ across the globe under the Bush administration). Indeed, as we have just seen, the United States was coming into its own as a global imperial power just as James was launching pragmatism.22 Having successfully conquered and sequestered its own Native American population and having fulfilled its ‘‘manifest destiny’’ to annex most of the Southwestern United States from Mexico, the United States turned to conquering the peoples residing in Cuba, Guam, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and the Philippines. Dussel notes the paradoxical nature of the myth of modernity that underlies such actions: ‘‘While the conquest depicted itself as upholding the universal rights of modernity against barbarism, the indigenous peoples suffered the denial of their rights, civilization, culture, and gods. In brief, the Indians were victimized in the name of an innocent victim [Jesus Christ] and for the sake of universal rights. Modernity elaborated a myth of its own goodness, rationalized its violence as civilizing, and finally declared itself innocent of the assassination of the Other.’’23 In order to further explore the pathological psychology behind such horrific imperial actions, Dussel provides a

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phenomenology of the ego conquiro (‘‘I conquer’’) as preeminently embodied in the person of Herna´n Corte´s, who explicitly saw himself as Christendom’s new Constantine, conquering the new world under the sign of the cross. Rather than experiencing itself as bound to God, as being reduced in relation to the divine, the ego conquiro undertakes a movement of unlimited expansion, practically experiencing itself as God, as larger than all of the lesser forms of life beneath it, which it attempts to reduce to mere instruments of its own will. An analogous logic also applies at the level of the national(istic) ego, which sees the history of other nations as merely contributing to the unfolding of its own divine destiny (precisely the same mixture of imperialism and religion that we have seen in the case of the war fever stirred up by ‘‘yellow journalism’’ and capitalized on by Roosevelt in James’s time). In striking contrast, critical religious consciousness is reached on Dussel’s model through humility in the face of the Other and openness to the words of the Other. Such consciousness is religious insofar as it requires the faith that this is not just my world—that is, the belief that truly understanding the world requires my faithful acceptance of the Other and the Other’s world (even if this in turn opens the possibility for critical dialogue). More explicitly than James, Dussel contrasts the imperial religion of the conqueror, which is ultimately a fetishistic belief in one’s own superiority, with the genuinely ethical faith that responds to the fact that the lives of others revolve around their own centers of freedom that must be respected (the same fact that James claims we are all too blind to in his essay ‘‘On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings’’).24 As a rebuttal to Herna´n Corte´s’s imperial ego, Dussel therefore introduces Bartoleme´ de Las Casas, a Spanish Dominican priest famous for his religious defense of the rights of the indigenous peoples of America. Las Casas was so bold as to claim that neither European religion nor European civilization could be spread by the sword and that Europe’s violence against the indigenous peoples was utterly unjustified and unprovoked (the very same points that James makes about U.S. violence against the Filipinos).25

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The crucial thing to note here is that both Corte´s and Las Casas were heroically religious, even though the objects of their religious faiths could not have been any more different from one another. To put things in Jamesian terms, religion is uniquely powerful insofar as it is capable of inspiring the strenuous mood and unleashing ‘‘the energies of men,’’ but it is not necessarily good.26 Like James, Dussel ethically judges religion by its earthly fruits, but Dussel goes on to clearly distinguish between two fundamentally different modes of religious existence: fetishistic vs. liberatory.27 For example, the fetishistic faith of Corte´s (just like the fetishistic faith of Roosevelt) rests on a will to power that deafens its ears to the forms of life outside of its vision. Such a faith does not imbue life per se with meaning and purpose, but instead reserves these for only its own life (and the lives it chooses to recognize as worthy or valuable). While such a faith undoubtedly provides its own life with a meaning and purpose, it is fundamentally self-divinizing and destructive of other forms of life (as James suggests in ‘‘What Makes a Life Significant?’’).28 In contrast, the liberatory faith of Las Casas (like the faiths of James and Dussel) rests on a faith in the reality and value of the unseen inner lives of others. Such a faith has faith in its own finitude, its own fallibility, and is therefore marked by not just self-expansion but also self-contraction in the face of the Other and other ways of life. To further examine this self-expansion and self-contraction under the sway of religious faith, let us return to James’s discussion of saintliness in Varieties. James’s Ethical Saints: Reworking Asceticism to Counteract Human Blindness When historically contextualized, James’s portrait of saintliness can be read as an attempt to replace Roosevelt’s belligerently nationalistic vision of the war hero with the radically charitable vision of the saint, who provides a powerful yet peaceful method of heroically ameliorating self and society. While James had considered faith almost exclusively as an expansive mood in Principles and The Will to Believe,

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subsequent events revealed the need to pay considerably more attention to the ways in which faith involves a mood of contraction, and twice-born religion is the category that results. Rather than overlooking, downplaying, or simply denying the reality of evil in both the self and the world (as once-born religions do), twice-born religions promise deliverance from evil. But this deliverance in the form of rebirth or conversion first requires the recognition that things like sorrow, pain, and death are genuine parts of reality. Nonetheless, in the saintly form of twice-born religion that most interests James, this recognition yields not complacency but rather an active struggle against sorrow, pain, and death. So rather than decry the self-contractive ascetic impulse like Nietzsche, James insists that it must be productively rechanneled. Whereas the older monastic asceticism ‘‘terminated in the mere egotism of the individual, increasing his own perfection’’ (VRE, 290), James envisions the new ethical saint as a hopeful replacement for the warrior, the most ancient and venerable type of hero: ‘‘What we now need to discover in the social realm is the moral equivalent of war: something heroic that will speak to men as universally as war does, and yet will be as compatible with their spiritual selves as war has proved itself to be incompatible’’ (VRE, 292). James’s Principles had already shown how our sense of emotional intimacy with other parts of the universe naturally prompts actions of bodily, social, and spiritual ‘‘Self-seeking and Self-preservation’’ (PP, 293). In Varieties James continues to explain our behavior in this way, but he does so while dramatically widening the possible inclusivity of the self, so that even radical altruism appears in the guise of self-seeking. Indeed, the life of James’s ethical saint, who heroically struggles to bring the kingdom of heaven to earth in the form of peaceful prosperity for all, demonstrates that there are remarkably few limits on who or what can be possibly felt as genuine parts of one’s self. Unlike the imperial self, which expands by attempting to control the foreign forces that would otherwise bind it, James’s revamped religious self expands by freely submitting itself to a multitude of forces beyond itself, relinquishing rather than relishing control, losing its narrow ego to gain its wider self.29 In fact, it seems that James also considers

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the twice-born religious self to be the highest type because it has undergone a process of conversion in which it shifts from an autonomous, egoistic willfulness to a more relational and responsibly bound mode of being, allowing ideal and unseen forces outside of itself to guide its conduct. Religion thus performs a kind of miraculous practical function by bringing what would otherwise be remote intellectual ideas into the most intimate sphere of personal life as the ‘‘unseen’’ realm is felt to be a part (even the ultimate part) of reality. This feeling may in turn lead the faithful to ‘‘attain an altogether new level of spiritual vitality, a relatively heroic level, in which impossible things have become possible, and new energies and endurances are shown’’ (VRE, 196; italics added). According to James, then, the saints are crucial for social and political progress insofar as they are ‘‘impregnators of the world, vivifiers and animators of potentialities of goodness which but for them would lie forever dormant’’ (VRE, 285). In sum, James consistently claims that the ascetic ‘‘no, no’’ or contraction of the saintly self ought to be a means to being better able to say and do ‘‘yes, yes’’ as the saintly self expands to include the needs of the broader community of life in its own life through acts of charity. According to James there is nothing contradictory in principle about loving others (even one’s enemies) as oneself, and although history provides few nonapocryphal examples of such degrees of saintly charity, it could undoubtedly be radically transformative for self and society alike (VRE, 228–29). Religious experiences, practices, and commitments can make radical social and political arrangements that would otherwise seem impossible feel as if they were possible. Given both religion’s unmatched power to create this feeling and the necessity of this feeling as a precursor to creating the reality, we can see why James believes religion is such a valuable possession of humankind, not just for personal psychological reasons, but for social and political reasons as well. Essentially, James believes that religion is capable of saving many people from their unthinking acceptance of the status quo, which involves the sheer egoism of ‘‘looking out for number one’’ at worst or the tribal egotism of looking out ‘‘for me and mine’’ at best, into the service of the ideal of constructing wider,

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flourishing human communities as part of constructing a wider, flourishing self. In the life of the saint, self-help joins help of others under the sway of help from the power of the divine. James therefore implores his audience: ‘‘Let us be saints, then, if we can, whether or not we succeed visibly and temporally’’ (VRE, 299).30 In this audience-wide prescription, James lays bare his own faith in the relevance of saintliness to life, especially when we interpret his prescription in its historical context as an alternative to an ethics of domination and imperialism that was gaining (and has continued to gain) popular support. Despite James’s language of saintliness, that may be rather off-putting for contemporary readers, his exploration of sanctification as the process by which a person becomes radically ready and able to ethically respond to the demands of the ‘‘wider self’’ (understood as a dramatically extended social self) remains invaluable. James’s Hazy, Pluralistic Vision of the Universe as Republic As we have just seen, James consistently claims that the religious contraction of the self should always serve as a means to its subsequent expansion, so that not even the saint violates James’s claim that religion is ‘‘a monumental chapter in the history of human egoism’’ (VRE, 387). Even the most ethically charitable and politically radical service to others is rooted in self-interest, although religion may help one to feel that that rest of humanity or even the entire universe is a part of oneself! James further develops this theme in A Pluralistic Universe, arguing that ‘‘the vaster vistas which scientific evolutionism has opened, and the rising tide of social democratic ideals, have changed the type of our imagination,’’ leading people to believe that the divine must hold a ‘‘more organic and intimate’’ place in the universe (PU, 18). In the course of his discussion, James uses the word ‘‘intimacy’’ (or one of its derivatives) over fifty times, contrasting it with ‘‘foreignness’’ in his attempt to convince his audience to precursively trust rather than be wary of ‘‘the great universe whose children we are,’’ so that the world as a whole may slowly grow more intimate through our faith and effort (PU, 19).

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James pleads for the importance of complementing our sweeping, abstract, and conceptual knowledge of the universe with a more intimate knowledge—that is, a particular, concrete, and intuitive appreciation of its parts—in order to overcome what James had earlier referred to as ‘‘human blindness.’’ He writes, ‘‘The only way in which to apprehend reality’s thickness is either to experience it directly by being a part of reality one’s self, or to evoke it in imagination by sympathetically divining someone else’s inner life’’ (PU, 112). Carrying out this sympathetic method will help put us in touch with the ‘‘wider self from which saving experiences come’’ of Varieties: ‘‘What we conceptually identify ourselves with and say we are thinking of at any time is the centre; but our full self is the whole field, with all those indefinitely radiating subconscious possibilities of increase that we can only feel without conceiving, and can hardly begin to analyze’’ (PU, 130). Although James does not explicitly make the connection, he seems to be grasping toward what the mystic experiences and what the saint practices: the ultimate oneness of the community of life. But this is a very particular kind of intimate oneness: a onenessin-manyness. James’s great hope is that his philosophy will help convince people that only with their help ‘‘does foreignness get banished from our world, and far more so when we take the system of it pluralistically than when we take it monistically’’ (PU, 143; italics added). He explains: ‘‘Our ‘multiverse’ still makes a ‘universe’; for every part, tho it may not be in actual or immediate connexion, is nevertheless in some possible or mediated connexion, with every other part however remote, through the fact that each part hangs together with its very next neighbors in inextricable interfusion. The type of union, it is true, is different here from the monistic type of alleinheit. It is not a universal co-implication, or integration of all things durcheinander. It is what I call the strung-along type, the type of continuity, contiguity, or concatenation’’ (PU, 146–47). Basically, James is saying that intimacy requires both genuine unity and genuine plurality, both oneness and manyness. Or to put it another way, intimacy is a particular form of plurality. Returning to one of his favorite (though underdeveloped) metaphors, James tells us that the universe is ‘‘more like a federal republic than like an empire or a kingdom. However much may

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be collected, however much may report itself as present at any effective centre of consciousness or action, something else is self-governed and absent and unreduced to unity’’ (PU, 145). In a certain sense, James is simply stating the intellectually obvious: Every single thing is in some way (however remote) connected to or related with every other thing. But his statement quickly turns radical the moment that we begin to attempt to actively and sympathetically experience and practice these connections, as is demonstrated by the lives of the most charitable saints (think of Gandhi or Mother Theresa). Clearly, James’s viewpoint could underpin a radical political philosophy,31 but the worrisome thing is that his language may still lend itself to imperialistic appropriation. On James’s humanistic model, there is no escaping that we are largely (if not solely) responsible for ‘‘banishing’’ foreignness from the world. Of course, any careful reader of James’s texts would never mistake the way in which James suggests we ‘‘banish foreignness’’ (through radically charitable acts that effectively open our eyes to our deep and wide relations with other forms and ways of life) from the way in which a more imperialistic discourse would suggest we ‘‘banish foreignness’’ (through sheer military force, assimilation, and the like). Nonetheless, there is no question that James’s language is easily appropriated by imperialism, since the fastest way to achieve unity (though not genuine Jamesian intimacy) is to simply destroy or assimilate plurality. James’s vision is thus as beautiful as it is dangerous, as should becomes apparent the moment one thinks about what has usually happened historically when a given religion has decided that foreignness is the enemy to be rooted out. Dussel’s Tighter Religious Binding: Toward a Politics of Liberation Of course, at bottom this liability may simply go with the tremendous ideological power of the religious territory, and it would be foolish to claim that a vision is bad or wrong simply because bad people can interpret it in the wrong way. But I am also worried that James’s account of the religious saint so closely fits Dussel’s description of the

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ego conquiro as ‘‘an ego that just keeps on growing,’’32 especially since James’s account was developed during the very period in which the United States was beginning to take center stage as a global imperial power. Admittedly, there is a crucial difference between James’s ethical saint and Dussel’s imperial conqueror. The narrow ego of James’s ethical saint dies to allow the wider, religious self to commune with and participate in the entire community of life. In contrast, the narrow ego of Dussel’s imperialist conquers the wider world. So while both the saintly self and the imperialist self grow, they grow in vastly different ways. In James’s model, good growth is inseparable from painstakingly attempting to overcome the ‘‘certain blindness in human beings’’ by imaginatively and sympathetically putting oneself in the place of others, which requires faith in the reality and value of their inner lives.33 Nonetheless, while the self of James’s twice-born saint is transformed and dramatically widened, it is never decentered. We are thus left with a version of the exceedingly basic but perplexing philosophical question: ‘‘Is ethics ultimately rooted in self-interest (of a dramatically enlightened and widened self perhaps)? Or is ethics rooted in the cessation (even if only momentary) of self-interest?’’ James clearly leans toward the former, asking us to consider the religious and philosophical hypothesis that our ‘‘wider self’’ includes the entire universe and to join his ethical saints in attempting to let every other Other’s needs into our intimate sphere. In contrast, Dussel clearly opts for the latter, claiming that exteriority—‘‘the ambit whence other persons, as free and not conditioned by one’s own system and not as part of one’s own world, reveal themselves’’—is ‘‘the most important category for philosophy of liberation.’’34 Of course, the pragmatic principle offers us a method for tackling this dispute. What practical difference does it make to say that (metaphysically speaking) ethical life is rooted in a supremely enlightened and expansive being-for-self that includes the being-of-others as a part of its own life versus saying that (metaphysically speaking) ethical life is rooted in a supreme willingness to put being-for-self on hold in order to responsibly be-for-others? To be perfectly honest, I suspect that these two positions may ultimately boil down to a (no doubt

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important) difference in emphasis, since James never allows an ultimate identification of the self and the Other and Dussel never allows so much difference between self and Other for indifference to be a sensible option. But to try and get a better handle on the difference, let us consider a concrete case, that of hunger, for as Dussel reminds us, ‘‘All of this acquires practical reality when someone says, ‘I’m hungry!’ ’’35 If we were to pose Ralph Waldo Emerson’s question—‘‘Are they my poor?’’36 —to James’s ethical saint, the answer would be a resounding ‘‘Yes!’’ whereas it seems Dussel’s response would be something like, ‘‘No, the poor do not belong to me, but their poverty reveals my responsibility to them.’’ To oversimplify things a bit, James thinks that the ethical and political way forward is the Emersonian way, the way of identifying ourselves with the lives and needs of the other parts of the cosmos that in some mystical way are parts of ourselves,37 whereas Dussel thinks that the ethical and political way forward is the Levinasian way, the way of recognizing that the hungry, for instance, are not parts of our selves or our systems, but that nonetheless (if the language of ‘‘belonging to’’ is even appropriate), we belong to them.38 Undoubtedly, either way could be metaphysically or psychologically descriptive of what happens when an individual responds ethically to the existence of unjust hunger and poverty in the world. But as should be more or less obvious from the preceding discussion, James’s option is far easier for politicians like Roosevelt to appropriate in paternalistic or imperialistic ways, and may even at bottom be an expression of the ‘‘ontological expansion’’ endemic to James’s race, gender, and class.39 Dussel’s option, on the other hand, simply may not be psychologically motivating, especially for the exceedingly narrow selves of U.S. consumer culture. Of course, this may simply be all the more reason to tell the average U.S. consumer that he or she ought to become a ‘‘hostage’’ to the poor and the needy in hopes of interrupting an unthinking devotion to consumerism. In the end, where we place (and where we should place) the emphasis is inseparable from the concrete context from which we are asking the question.

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Both James and Dussel, insofar as they both reject any sort of ‘‘view from nowhere,’’ might be able to agree on this point. But what I think is easily more important than asking this question, which runs the risk of becoming an idle metaphysical dispute, is simply pointing out that James’s political vision of a pluralistic republic remains altogether too vague and abstract. While James made it very clear that he was against imperialism, it remains a lot less clear what he was for apart from vague references to ‘‘the reign of peace and the gradual advent of some sort of socialistic equilibrium’’ (ERM, 170). This is precisely where I think Dussel’s liberation philosophy could prove an invaluable resource for challenging and developing James’s philosophy of religion by providing it with more political content. For starters (and I do not have time to offer anything more than a start), we can take James’s discourse about ‘‘the unseen,’’ pair it with his talk of ‘‘human blindness,’’ and realize that a lot of what religion deals with in terms of ‘‘the unseen’’ is an undeniable economic and political reality. For Dussel, when it comes right down to it, there are concrete aspects of ‘‘the unseen’’ that James largely failed to analyze—for example, the way in which the oppressed are ‘‘unseen’’ by the eyes of the dominant political system or the way in which most people in the United States fail to see how our economic system depends upon the exploitation of the global poor. In short, Dussel can help us connect the dots James left between human blindness and the religious realm of the unseen. Likewise, Dussel’s careful attention to the differences between fetishistic and liberatory religion could help us vigilantly maintain the difference between the way in which neoliberalism in the United States and elsewhere often walks hand in hand with imperial and nationalistic theocracy and the way in which other forms of religious faith (the religious underpinnings of the civil rights movement are often taken as a paradigmatic case) make genuine contributions to social justice. As Dussel tells us, ‘‘To have an ethical conscious, one must be atheistic vis-a`-vis the fetishistic system and one must have respect for the other as other.’’40 Indeed, Dussel’s ongoing process of

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liberation is directly parallel to James’s ongoing process of sanctification: liberation is the process by which selves are freed from their bondage to oppressive forces just as sanctification is the process by which selves are ethically bound to other centers of freedom. Both processes may sound otherworldly, but for Dussel and James they are the earthly, ‘‘economic’’ processes by which self and society are progressively transformed. At bottom, the pragmatic point is that religion is tremendously powerful, potentially transformative, and that people will undoubtedly continue to use it. Dussel helps us to faithfully continue and confront James by asking: What will they use it for? As a way of maintaining their own blindness to injustice? Or as a way of being able to say with integrity, ‘‘I once was blind, but now I see’’?

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 introduction Gregory Fernando Pappas 1. In this book we are assuming the most inclusive understanding of the term ‘‘Hispanic’’ defended by Jorge Gracia in Hispanic/Latino Identity: A Philosophical Perspective (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000). Hispanics are ‘‘the group of people comprised by the inhabitants of the countries of the Iberian peninsula after 1492 and what were to become the colonies of those countries after the encounter between Iberia and America took place, and by the descendants of these people who live in other countries (e.g., the United States) but preserve some link to those people’’ (48). Consonant with pragmatism is the notion that there is no essence to either ‘‘Hispanics’’ or ‘‘pragmatism.’’ Loosely, pragmatism is a family of philosophers and ideas in the way that the Hispanic world is also a family (in Gracia’s sense). It will be obvious, however, in this introduction and in my other essays in this volume that I am assuming the well-documented and defended view that ‘‘lived experience’’ as the starting point of philosophical inquiry is key to the classical pragmatist (Peirce, James, and Dewey). For more on the present scholarly disagreements about the nature of pragmatism, see my review of A Companion to Pragmatism in Contemporary Pragmatism 4, no. 2 (December 2007). 2. Guillermo Hurtado, ‘‘Two Models of Latin American Philosophy,’’ Journal of Speculative Philosophy 20, no. 3: 212. 3. See the chapters on ‘‘Jane Addams’’ by Marilyn Fischer, ‘‘Feminism’’ by Shannon Sullivan, and ‘‘Alain Locke’’ by Leornard Harris in A Companion to Pragmatism, ed. John R. Shook and Joseph Margolis (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006). 4. Peter H. Hare, ‘‘Introduction, American Philosophy and the Hispanic World,’’ Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 24, no.1 (1998): 30. { 31 5 }

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5. See, for example, the remarkable work done at the Universidad of Navarra by the Grupo de Estudios Peirceanos (http://www.unav.es/gep/) directed by Jaime Nubiola. Ramon Castillo (UNED, Madrid) and Angel Faerna (Universidad de Castilla, Toledo) have translated many works of the classical pragmatists and published important books and articles that have advanced the understanding of pragmatism in the Hispanic world. See Ramon Castillo, ‘‘Derivas pragma´ticas,’’ introduction to Richard Bernstein, Filosofia y democracia: John Dewey (Barcelona: Herder, 2010); ‘‘¿Adio´s a la filosofı´a? Recuerdos de Rorty,’’ in La filosofı´a de Richard Rorty. Entre pragmatismo y relativismo, ed. J. J. Colomina and V. Raga (Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 2009); Angel Faerna, Introduccio´n a la teorı´a pragmatista del conocimiento (Madrid: Siglo XXI, 1996). 6. See, for example, http://www.pucsp.br/pos/filosofia/pragmatismo/ eventos/eventos.html. 7. John T. Graham, A Pragmatist Philosophy of Life in Ortega y Gasset (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1994), viii. 8. Izaskun Martı´nez, ‘‘William James y Miguel de Unamuno: Una nueva evaluacio´n de la recepcio´n del pensamiento pragmatista en Espan˜a,’’ Ph.D. diss., Universidad de Navarra, 2007; available at http://www.unav.es/gep/ TesisDoctorales/TesisMartinez.pdf. 9. See, for example, Ana Paola Romo’s recent study of Dewey’s influence on the Mexican educational system, ‘‘La educacio´n democra´tica en John Dewey: Una propuesta pedago´gica de transformacio´n social en Me´xico,’’ Ph.D. diss., Universidad de Navarra, 2006, 227–45; available online at http:// www.unav.es/gep/TesisDoctorales/TesisAPRomo.pdf. 10. Paulo Freire has acknowledged the influence of Dewey. On a comparison between them, see John Betz, ‘‘John Dewey and Paulo Freire,’’ Transactions of the Charles Peirce Society 28 (1992): 107–26. 11. Eduardo Mendieta, Latin American Philosophy: Currents, Issues, Debates (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), 5. chapter o ne john d ew ey i n sp a in a n d in s pa n ish a m eri c a Anto´n Donoso 1. Research for this study has been conducted over a period of almost forty years—in the United States (including the use of the Dewey Archives at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale), Spain, Mexico, and (as a Fulbright Lecturer, 1964) Argentina. My results have been presented in the following papers: ‘‘Dewey’s Influence in the Spanish World through Ortega’s

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Students’’ at the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy (1990); and in expanded form, ‘‘The Influence of John Dewey in Latin America’’ (including Brazil) at the session of the Society for Iberian and Latin American Thought at the Latin American Studies Association (1994). This chapter contains research beyond the 1994 contribution. 2. The earliest and still most complete study of Dewey’s influence in Spain and Latin America is by William W. Brickman, ‘‘John Dewey’s Foreign Reputation as an Educator’’ in School and Society 70 (1949): 257–65. Of its five pages of double-column text, no more than one column is devoted to Spain and Latin America. 3. The date 1900 is disputed by Jaime Nubiola (University of Navarra, Spain) in his unpublished presentation ‘‘Dewey’s Influence in Spain and Spanish America,’’ given at the international congress Democracy and Education in the XXIst Century: John Dewey’s Challenge and Influence, held at the University of Calabria (Cosenza, Italy), April 10–13, 2000, at which time the European John Dewey Society was inaugurated. I have not changed my contention because I have not had the opportunity to check Nubiola’s evidence, based as it is on the published translation of The School and Society, which has no date, but on a footnote to the 1915 translation of the first lecture only, published in ILE’s Boletı´n. If Nubiola is correct, he has done an excellent job of archival sleuthing (although he does not consider the possibility of more than one Spanish translation). What remains is to trace the source of the error as it appears in John Dewey, A Checklist of Translation, 1900–1967, compiled by Jo Ann Boydston and Robert L. Andresen (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969), xii, 40a, which also mistakenly attributes the translation to Lorenzo Luzuriaga (1889–1959), who would have been only eleven years old in 1900. I suspect that the source of the error is in Bibliografı´a espan˜ola (Madrid: Ministerio de Educacio´n Nacional, 1903–42). Thus, Japan would be the country where the first translation of Dewey appeared, not in 1900, when Dewey’s Outline of a Critical Theory of Ethics (1891) appeared in summary form with a commentary, but in 1901, when The School and Society appeared. 4. For the latest study of Spanish and Latin American Krausism by a longtime student of the movement, see O. Carlos Stroetzer, Karl Christian Friedrich Krause and His Influence in the Hispanic World (Cologne: Bo¨hlau Verlag, 1998). See also El krausismo y su influencia en Ame´rica Latina (Madrid: Fundacio´n Friedrick Ebert, 1989). 5. A. Kohler, ‘‘La democracia y la educacio´n de John Dewey,’’ Boletı´n de la Institucio´n Libre de Ensen˜anza 42 (1918): 72–74; Domingo Barne´s, ‘‘La

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pedagogı´a del pragmatismo,’’ ibid. 45 (1921): 72–74; Edouard Clapare`de, ‘‘La pedagogı´a de John Dewey,’’ 46 (1922): 353–61; and Domingo Barne´s, ‘‘La pedagogı´a de John Dewey,’’ ibid. 50 (1926): 238–47. 6. See Joaquı´n Xirau, Manuel B. Cossı´o y la educacio´n en Espan˜a (Mexico City: El Colegio de Me´xico, 1945), 79–80; Lorenzo Luzuriaga, La Institucio´n Libre de Ensen˜anza y la educacio´n en Espan˜a (Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires, 1957), 117; and Diccionario de Pedagogı´a, 3rd ed. (Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, 1966), 11–12, 94–95. 7. The 1908 data disputes the claim by Boydston that the first translation in all of Latin America appeared in Cuba in 1925. The evidence for the correction is in the Dewey Archives of the Morris Library at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale (Dewey Collection 102, boxes 74–76), in which are found the original typewritten copies in Spanish of the talks in honor of Dewey given at the University of Chile. On Labarca, see Catherine Manny Paul, ‘‘Amanda Labarca H., Educator of the Women of Chile: The Work and Writings of Amanda Labarca H. in the Field of Education in Chile, Their Importance and Their Value in the Progress of Education in Chile,’’ Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1967. On Molina, see Sandra B. Rosenthal, ‘‘News from Abroad,’’ Journal of Speculative Philosophy 3 (1989): 54–55, based on information provided by Iva´n Jaksic, a native-born Chilean. I wish to thank Jaksic for having sent me a copy of the original statement of information (of which the published version is only a portion) and for more information on Dewey’s influence in Chile (letter to author, August 17, 1989). For more on Molina, see Iva´n Jaksic, Academic Rebels in Chile: The Role of Philosophy in Higher Education and Politics (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989), and Solomon Lipp, Three Chilean Thinkers (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1975). 8. See Jorge Man˜ach, Dewey y el pensamiento americano (Madrid: Taurus Ediciones, 1959). For more on Varona, see William Rex Crawford, A Century of Latin American Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961), and the various essays in Homenaje a Enrique Jose´ Varona, en el centenario de su natalicio (Havana: Publicaciones del Ministerio de Educacio´n, Direccio´n de Cultura, 1951), especially the chapter by Alfredo M. Aguayo, ‘‘La pedagogı´a del Dr. Varona’’ (II, 342–53), and the chapter by Pedro Henrı´quez Uren˜a, ‘‘El Maestro de Cuba’’ (II, 471–75). Crawford’s overview of Varona is published in Spanish translation as the last essay (II, 476–82). 9. For Dewey’s impressions of Mexico, see ‘‘Church and State in Mexico,’’ New Republic (August 25, 1926); ‘‘Mexico’s Educational Renaissance,’’ ibid. (September 22, 1926); ‘‘From a Mexican Notebook,’’ ibid. (October 20,

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1926); and ‘‘Imperialism Is Easy,’’ ibid. (March 23, 1927). These were reprinted in Jo Ann Boydston, ed., John Dewey, The Later Works, 1925–1953 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984), 2:194–210 and 3:158– 62. Among other things, Dewey was impressed by the flourishing National University, which included a large number of women, and by its rector, who was interested in exchanging students with North American universities. He called Mexico’s efforts to found rural schools for the vast and illiterate populations (escuelas de accio´n) Mexico’s brightest spot. See Sergio Aguayo Quezada, Myths and (Mis)Perceptions: Changing U.S. Elite Visions of Mexico, trans. Julia´n Brody (San Diego: University of California, San Diego, Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, 1998). 10. Moise´s Sa´enz, ‘‘The Program of the Mexican Government,’’ in Some Mexican Problems (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1926), 78; in Spanish, ‘‘Renacimiento de la educacio´n mexicana: Doctrinas y hechos; Moise´s Sa´enz,’’ ch. 13 in Isidro Castillo, ed., Me´xico y su revolucio´n educativa, 2nd ed. (Mexico City: Acade´mica Mexicana de la Educacio´n, Editorial Pax-Mexico, 1968), 289. For other informative writings by Sa´enz, see Moise´s Sa´enz, ‘‘Mexico’’ in Educational Yearbook of the International Institute of Teachers College, Columbia University, 1927, ed. I. L. Kandel (New York: Teachers College Columbia Univ., 1928), 280–82; ‘‘New Aspects of Education in Mexico,’’ Bulletin of the Pan American Union 63 (1929): 861–82; and ‘‘El pueblo era la escuela y la escuela era el pueblo’’ in Vicente Fuentes Dı´az and Alberto Morales Jimı´nez, eds., Los grandes educadores mexicanos del siglo XX (Mexico City: Editorial Altiplano, 1969), 329–36. For the influence of American Protestantism, see Deborah J. Baldwin, Protestants and the Mexican Revolution: Missionaries, Ministry, and Social Changes (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990). For an overview, see Mary Kay Vaughn, ‘‘Action Pedagogy in Mexico in the 1920s’’ in The State, Education, and Social Class in Mexico, 1880–1928 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1982), 165–89. 11. Edmundo Correas, Sarmiento and the United States (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1961); Jose´ S. Campobassi, Ley 1420 (Buenos Aires: Gure, 1956), Laicismo y catolicismo en la educacio´n pu´blica argentina (Buenos Aires: Gure, 1961), and Ataque y defensa del laicismo escolar en la Argentina (Buenos Aires: Gure, 1964). 12. See Ricardo Nassif, ‘‘John Dewey,’’ Humanitas (Tucuma´n) 1 (1953): 417–19; Ricardo Nassif with Gustavo E. G. Cirigliano, En el centenario de John Dewey (Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de la Plata, 1961); and Horacio Flores, ‘‘Reflexiones crı´ticas: En torno a algunos aspectos del pensamiento pedago´gico de John Dewey,’’ Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones (San Luis) 2 (1952–53): 149–73.

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13. See Miguel Pereya-Garcı´a Castro, ‘‘El principio de la actividad en John Dewey y en la Institucio´n Libre de Ensen˜anza: Un estudio comparado,’’ Revista Espan˜ola de Pedagogı´a 3 (1979): 79–94. For exiled graduates of the ILE in Mexico, see El exilio espan˜ol en Me´xico, 1939–1982 (Mexico City: Fondo de la Cultura Econo´mica, 1982). 14. Jose´ Gaos, ‘‘Pro´logo del traductor,’’ in John Dewey, La experiencia y la naturaleza (Mexico City: Fondo de la Cultura Econo´mica, 1948), ix. 15. For a recent view of a meeting of Latin and ‘‘Anglo-Saxon’’ philosophers—to some extent still like trying to mix oil and water—see Manuel Vargas, ‘‘Crossing the Borders of Philosophy: Some Thought on the 14th Interamerican Congress,’’ APA Newsletter on Hispanic/Latino Issues in Philosophy 99 (2000): 217–19. 16. For pre-Castro Cuba, see Ervin H. Epstein, ‘‘The Perils of Paternalism: The Imposition of Education on Cuba by the United States,’’ American Journal of Education 92 (1987): 1–23. For Castro’s Cuba, see (among the many studies) Martin Carnoy, ‘‘Educational Reform and Social Transformation in Cuba, 1959–1989’’ in Martin Carnoy and Joal Samoff, Education and Social Transformation in the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 153–208. For a recent Cuban view, see Elvira Martı´n Sabina (University of Havana), ‘‘Algunas experiencias del sistema educacional cubano en la bu´squeda de su pertinencia y calidad,’’ paper delivered at the XXII International Congress of Latin American Studies (2000). 17. Stanley D. Ivie, ‘‘A Comparison in Educational Philosophy: Jose´ Vasconcelos and John Dewey,’’ Comparative Educational Review 10 (1966): 404–17. 18. Oscar Romero, ‘‘¿Criticones? ¡No! Espı´ritu crı´tico, ¡Sı´!’’ in Monsen˜or Romero: El pueblo es mi profeta (San Salvador: Equipo de Educacio´n Maiz, 1984), 227. On Freire, see John Kalvelage, ‘‘Paulo Freire and Dewey’s Legacy,’’ Edcentric 27–28 (1974): 33–38; and John Betz, ‘‘John Dewey and Paulo Freire,’’ Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 28 (1992): 107–26. 19. For Dewey’s continuing relevance, see Emily Robinson, ‘‘Is Dewey’s Educational Vision Still Viable?’’ Review of Research 18 (1992): 335–81; Harriet K. Cuffaro, Experimenting with the World: John Dewey and the Early Childhood Classroom (New York: Teachers College Press, 1995); and Stephen M. Fishman and Lucille McCarthy, John Dewey and the Challenge of Classroom Practice (New York: Teachers College Press, 1998). For postanalytical philosophy of education, see Jerome A. Popp, Naturalizing Philosophy of Education: John Dewey and the Post-analytic Age (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1998).

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20. At the last World Congress of Philosophy (Boston 1998), the meeting of SILAT included a paper (still unpublished) by Gregory F. Pappas, ‘‘The Reception and Future Role of Dewey’s Philosophy in Iberoamerica,’’ inspired by an earlier draft of this study. Pappas also presented ‘‘The Reception and Future Role of John Dewey’s Philosophy in Latin America’’ at the XIVth Interamerican Congress in Mexico (1999), electronic version available at www.afm.org.mx/⬃afilomex/puebla99/compact. Finally, at the XXII Congress of the Latin American Studies Association (2000), a paper was presented by Diego A. von Vacano, ‘‘Between Idealism and Pragmatism: John Dewey in Mexico.’’ For the history of the founding of SILAT, see Anto´n Donoso, ‘‘The Society for Iberian and Latin American Thought (SILAT): An Interdisciplinary Project,’’ Los Ensayistas 1, no. 2 (1976): 38–42. SILAT now publishes a bulletin under the editorship of Oscar R. Martı´. chapter two pragmatism in brazil : john dewey a nd education Marcus Vinicius da Cunha and Debo´ra Cristina Garcia The present work is the result of research subsidized by National Board of Technological and Scientific Development (CNPq–Brazil) and by Foundation for Research Support of the State of Sa˜o Paulo (FAPESP–Brazil). 1. Jorge Nagle, Educac¸a˜o e sociedade na primeira repu´blica (Rio de Janeiro: DP&A, 2001). 2. Fernando de Azevedo, A cultura brasileira (Sa˜o Paulo: Melhoramentos, 1958), 3:179–80. 3. Ana Mae Barbosa, Recorte e colagem: Influeˆncias de John Dewey no ensino da arte no Brasil (Sa˜o Paulo: Autores Associados/Cortez, 1982), 52, 47. 4. Helena Bomeny, Os intelectuais da educac¸a˜o (Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar, 2003). 5. This compilation contained an introductory study titled ‘‘A pedagogia de Dewey’’ (The Pedagogy of Dewey), written by Teixeira. 6. These journals were published by the General Board of Education of the State of Sao Paulo, which was first run by Lourenc¸o Filho and then by Fernando de Azevedo. See Marcus Vinicius da Cunha, ‘‘John Dewey, The Other Face of the Brazilian New School,’’ Studies in Philosophy and Education 24 (2005): 455–70. 7. See Pedro Angelo Pagni, Anı´sio Teixeira: Experieˆncia reflexiva e projeto democra´tico (Petro´polis: Vozes, 2008). 8. Carlos Monarcha, ‘‘Lourenc¸o Filho e a Bibliotheca de Educac¸a˜o,’’ in Lourenc¸o Filho: Outros aspectos, mesma obra, ed. Carlos Monarcha (Campinas: Mercado de Letras, 1997).

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9. See Maria do Carmo Xavier, ed., Manifesto dos pioneiros da educac¸a˜o: Um legado educacional em debate (Rio de Janeiro: FGV, 2004); Cunha, ‘‘John Dewey.’’ 10. See Marcus Vinicius da Cunha and Viviane da Costa, ‘‘John Dewey, um comunista na Escola Nova Brasileira,’’ Histo´ria da Educac¸a˜o 24 (2002): 119–42, and Carlos Roberto Jamil Cury, Ideologia e educac¸a˜o brasileira: Cato´licos e liberais (Sa˜o Paulo: Cortez/Autores Associados, 1984). 11. The leaders of the Brazilian Communist Party denied the ‘‘communist’’ nature of the 1935 insurrection. Paschoal Lemme, Memo´rias (Sa˜o Paulo: Cortez, 1988), 2:231. 12. See Ce´lio da Cunha, Educac¸a˜o e autoritarismo no estado novo (Sa˜o Paulo: Cortez/Autores Associados, 1989); Rachel Gandini, Intelectuais, estado e educac¸a˜o: Revista brasileira de estudos pedago´gicos (1944–1952) (Campinas: Unicamp, 1995); Simon Schwartzman, Helena Bomeny, and Vanda Costa, Tempos de Capanema (Sa˜o Paulo: Paz e Terra/FGV, 2000). 13. Silve´rio Baia Horta, O Hino, o serma˜o e a ordem do dia: Regime autorita´rio e a educac¸a˜o no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: UFRJ, 1994), 174. 14. Cunha, Educac¸a˜o e autoritarismo, 148. See Manuel Bergstrom Lourenc¸o Filho, Tendeˆncias da educac¸a˜o brasileira (Sa˜o Paulo: Melhoramentos, 1940). 15. See Marcus Vinicius da Cunha, ‘‘A educac¸a˜o no perı´odo Kubitschek: Os centros de pesquisas do INEP,’’ Revista Brasileira de Estudos Pedago´gicos 72 (1991): 175–95; and Libaˆnia Nacif Xavier, O Brasil como laborato´rio: Educa¸ca˜o e cieˆncias sociais no projeto do Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Educacionais (Braganc¸a Paulista: EDUSF, 1999). 16. Jaime Abreu, ‘‘A Atualidade de John Dewey,’’ Revista Brasileira de Estudos Pedago´gicos 34 (1960): 8. 17. Jose´ Carlos Rothen, ‘‘O Instituto Nacional de Estudos Pedago´gicos: Uma leitura da RBEP,’’ Revista Brasileira de Estudos Pedago´gicos 86 (2005): 190. 18. On the history of INEP (today named Anı´sio Teixeira’s National Institute of Educational Studies and Research) and RBEP, see Gustavo Capanema, ‘‘Apresentac¸a˜o,’’ Revista Brasileira de Estudos Pedago´gicos 1 (1944): 3–4; ‘‘Editorial,’’ Revista Brasileira de Estudos Pedago´gicos 1 (1944): 5–6; Manuel Bergstrom Lourenc¸o Filho, ‘‘Antecedentes e primeiros tempos do INEP,’’ Revista Brasileira de Estudos Pedago´gicos 42 (1964): 8–17; Fernando de Azevedo, ‘‘Na pesquisa das raı´zes de uma instituic¸a˜o,’’ Revista Brasileira de Estudos Pedago´gicos 42 (1964): 18–26; Diana Vidal and Marilena Camargo, ‘‘A imprensa perio´dica e a pesquisa histo´rica: Estudos sobre o Boletim de Ins-

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truc¸a˜o Pu´blica e a Revista Brasileira de Estudos Pedago´gicos,’’ Revista Brasileira de Estudos Pedago´gicos 80 (1992): 81–92; Raquel Gandini, Intelectuais; and Andre´a Dantas, ‘‘A gesta˜o Lourenc¸o Filho no Instituto Nacional de Estudos Pedago´gicos e a Organizac¸a˜o da Revista Brasileira de Estudos Pedago´gicos: O impresso como dispositivo de assessoria te´cnica,’’ Educac¸a˜o em Foco 7 (2003): 153–72. 19. Teixeira’s body was found in an elevator shaft. At the time it was suspected that it was a political crime, but this was never confirmed. 20. See Imı´deo Ne´rici, Educac¸a˜o e tecnologia (Rio de Janeiro: Fundo de Cultura, 1973). 21. See Dermeval Saviani, Pedagogia histo´rico-crı´tica: Primeiras aproximac¸o˜es (Campinas: Autores Associados, 1991). 22. William James, Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (Charleston: BiblioBazaar, 2007), 36. chapter three charl es peirce and the hispanic worl d Jaime Nubiola An earlier version of this study was published with the title ‘‘C. S. Peirce and the Hispanic Philosophy of the Twentieth Century’’ in Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 24, no. 1 (1998): 31–49. The present text relies on new research published in Jaime Nubiola and Fernando Zalamea, Peirce y el mundo hispa´nico. Lo que C. S. Peirce dijo sobre Espan˜a y lo que el mundo hispa´nico ha dicho sobre Peirce (Pamplona: Eunsa, 2006). 1. See Eduardo Nicol, El problema de la filosofı´a hispa´nica (Madrid: Tecnos, 1961). 2. Jorge J. E. Gracia, ‘‘Hispanic Philosophy: Its Beginning and Golden Age,’’ Review of Metaphysics 46 (1993): 475–502. 3. See Jorge J. E. Gracia and Iva´n Jaksic, eds., Filosofı´a e identidad cultural en Ame´rica Latina (Caracas: Monte A´vila, 1983); Marcelo Dascal, ed., Cultural Relativism and Philosophy. North and Latin American Perspectives (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 3–6. 4. Gracia, ‘‘Hispanic Philosophy,’’ 482. 5. John Deely, ‘‘Vindicacio´n de la filosofı´a hispana: La semio´tica como restauracio´n de la cultura intelectual ibe´rica,’’ Revista de Filosofı´a 27 (1994): 319; see also Mauricio Beuchot, ‘‘La filosofı´a escola´stica en los orı´genes de la semio´tica de Peirce,’’ Analogı´a 2 (1991): 155–66. 6. References to Peirce’s works are as follows: CP refers to Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vols. 1–8, ed. C. Hartshorne, P. Weiss and

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A. W. Burks (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931–58); MS refers to The Charles S. Peirce Papers, 32 reels of the manuscripts housed in the Houghton Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Library, Photographic Service); N refers to Contributions to ‘‘The Nation,’’ vols. 1–4, ed. K. L. Ketner and J. E. Cook (Lubbock: Texas Tech Press, 1975–79); and W refers to Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition, vols. 1–5, ed. M. H. Fisch et al. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982–95). 7. For complete information on this journey, see Jaime Nubiola and Fernando Zalamea, Peirce y el mundo hispa´nico, 33–68. 8. C. S. Peirce, letter to The Sun, MS 325, 4, c.1907. 9. C. S. Peirce, letter to Sarah Mills Peirce, November 16, 1870; L 341 according to the Richard S. Robin, Annotated Catalogue of the Papers of Charles S. Peirce (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1967). 10. That letter is lost, but the Harvard Archives contains a telegram and the following letter of November 16, 1870, from Benjamin Peirce, who was then in Munich, to Joseph Winlock, Director of Harvard Observatory, informing him about Charles’s visit (UA V 630.12 Observatory Letters Received 1870–75, no. 48). 11. Charles S. Peirce, Reasoning and the Logic of Things. The Cambridge Conferences Lectures of 1898, ed. K. L. Ketner (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 284 n. 6; and MS 442. Peirce’s signature has recently been found in the book of visitors at the Alhambra. He was the only visitor to put his signature in the book on November 7. 12. In Peirce’s November 16 letter to his mother (L 341), he writes about his admiration of a statue of a half-reclining woman he saw in Madrid by an artist then living (probably The Nymph Eurydice by Sabino de Medina): ‘‘one of the most beautiful things I have seen.’’ In that letter Peirce also describes the three purchases he made in Spain: a blanket with gypsy embroidery to keep him warm on his railway journey, an old mother-of-pearl fan, and a dozen photographs of the best paintings he had seen. It is highly probable that Peirce went to France through the Basque Country since at this time Barcelona was under quarantine due to yellow fever. In fact, when he enumerates to his mother the eighteen different languages he had heard spoken in the course of his entire European journey, seventeen of which in places where they were habitually spoken, it was precisely the Basque language that was mentioned last. 13. This latter group directed by Professor Winlock, then head of Harvard Observatory, was made up of eleven Americans, two Englishmen, and a Spanish observer who joined them. They worked in collaboration with Cap-

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tain Cecilio Pujazo´n, director of the Observatorio de San Fernando (Ca´diz). The main site chosen was in an olive grove a mile to the North East of Jerez, near Seville. See F. J. Gonza´lez Gonza´lez, El Observatorio de San Fernando, 1831–1924 (Madrid: Ministerio de Defensa, 1992), 246. 14. Joseph Brent, Charles S. Peirce: A Life (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 80. 15. ‘‘Englishmen are generally so naively ignorant of what takes place in the great world of science (which does not centre in London, as they seem to imagine) that it is possible for a respectable man to publish a book there the existence of which depends on such ignorance as would disgrace him in Sicily or Spain’’ (N 1: 47, 1872). 16. Rulon Wells, ‘‘Peirce as an American’’ in Perspectives on Peirce, ed. Richard J. Bernstein (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1965), 19–21. 17. Brent, Charles S. Peirce, 99. 18. Peirce, N 2, 122, 1896. 19. Peirce, N 2, 196, 1899. 20. Jesu´s Cobo, Ventura Reyes Pro´sper (Badajoz: Departamento de Publicaciones Diputacio´n Provincial de Badajoz, 1991); Jesu´s Cobo and Jaime Nubiola, ‘‘The Spanish Mathematician Ventura Reyes Pro´sper and his connections with Charles S. Peirce and Christine Ladd-Franklin,’’ Arisbe: The Peirce Gateway, 2000, http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/aboutcsp/ nubiola/reyes.htm. 21. Charles S. Peirce, Historical Perspectives on Peirce’s Logic of Science: A History of Science, ed. C. Eisele (Berlin: Mouton, 1985), 27 and 597; Charles S. Peirce, The New Elements of Mathematics, vol. 3, ed. C. Eisele (The Hague: Mouton, 1976), 207 and 1135. See J. M. Lo´pez de Azcona, ‘‘Iba´n˜ez e Iba´n˜ez de Ibero, Carlos,’’ in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vol. 7, ed. C. G. Gillispie (New York: Scribner’s, 1981), 1–2. 22. On the biography of Petrus Hispanus, see Angel d’Ors, ‘‘Petrus Hispanus O. P., Auctor Summularum,’’ Vivarium 35 (1997): 21–71. 23. Peirce letter to Henry Cabot Lodge, 1898(?), L 254. 24. Peirce letter to James Mills Peirce, May 7, 1898, L 339. 25. For a discussion of Peirce’s prejudiced views, supposedly from within Peirce’s philosophy, see Daniel G. Campos, ‘‘Review of J. Nubiola and F. Zalamea, Peirce y el mundo hispa´nico,’’ Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 43 (2007): 795–801. 26. Paul Weiss, ‘‘Charles Sanders Peirce,’’ in Dictionary of American Biography, vol. 13, ed. D. Malone (New York: Charles Sons, 1934), 400. ‘‘Although it seems strange,’’ Reyes Pro´sper writes in his review, ‘‘his first name is in

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English and the second one in Spanish; I do not know why.’’ Ventura Reyes Pro´sper, ‘‘Charles Santiago Peirce y Oscar Howard Mitchell,’’ El Progreso Matema´tico 2 (1892): 173. 27. Jose´ Vericat, ‘‘Introduccio´n,’’ in C. S. Peirce, El hombre, un signo: (El pragmatismo de Peirce) (Barcelona: Crı´tica, 1988), 15. 28. Ventura Reyes Pro´sper, ‘‘Charles Santiago Peirce y Oscar Howard Mitchell,’’ El Progreso Matema´tico 2 (1892): 173. 29. Enciclopedia Universal llustrada Europeo-Americana, vol. 42 (Barcelona: Espasa, 1920), 1418; Ape´ndice, vol. 9 (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1933), 1326–39; Vicente Mun˜oz Delgado, ‘‘Notas para la historia de la lo´gica durante la Segunda Repu´blica Espan˜ola (1931–1939),’’ Religio´n y Cultura 26 (1980): 909–11. 30. http://www.unav.es/gep/Peirce-esp.html. 31. In order to complete this bibliographical list on Peirce in the Hispanic world the reader should read the wonderful exhaustive catalogue prepared by Fernando Zalamea, ‘‘Bibliografı´a Peirceana Hispa´nica (1883–2000),’’ in Peirce y el mundo hispa´nico, 167–366. 32. Richard Bernstein, ‘‘The Resurgence of Pragmatism,’’ Social Research 59 (1992): 813–40. 33. Cf. Christopher Hookway, Peirce (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985), 141; George H. von Wright, The Tree of Knowledge and Other Essays (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 41. 34. William James, ‘‘G. Papini and the Pragmatist Movement in Italy,’’ Journal of Philosophy 3 (1906): 337–41. For a recent general review see Giovanni Maddalena and Giovanni Tuzet, eds., I pragmatisti italiani tra alleati e nemici (Milan: Albo Versorio, 2007). 35. Pelayo H. Ferna´ndez, Miguel de Unamuno y William James. Un paralelo pragma´tico (Salamanca: CIADA, 1961), 118. 36. Izaskun Martı´nez, ‘‘William James y Miguel de Unamuno: Una nueva evaluacio´n de la recepcio´n del pensamiento pragmatista en Espan˜a’’ (Ph.D. diss., Universidad de Navarra, 2007); available at http://www.unav.es/gep/ TesisDoctorales/TesisMartinez.pdf. 37. John T. Graham, A Pragmatist Philosophy of Life in Ortega y Gasset (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1994), 145. 38. Ibid., 147–52. On the affinity between James and Ortega, see J. Barzun, A Stroll with William James (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 299. 39. Anto´n Donoso, ‘‘Review of Graham’s A Pragmatist Philosophy of Life in Ortega y Gasset,’’ Hispania 78 (1995): 499.

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40. Gregory F. Pappas, ‘‘Peirce y Ortega,’’ Anuario Filoso´fico 29 (1996): 1225–37. 41. Eugenio d’Ors, Glosari de Xenius, vol. II (Barcelona: Tallers Gra´fics Montserrat, 1915), 373–75. See Marta Torregrosa, ‘‘El pragmatismo en el pensamiento de Eugenio d’Ors,’’ Anuario Filoso´fico 40, no. 2 (2007): 373–87. 42. Eugenio d’Ors, El secreto de la filosofı´a (Barcelona: Iberia, 1947), 12. 43. Carlos Vaz Ferreira, El pragmatismo (Montevideo: Tipografı´a de la Escuela Nacional de Artes y Oficios, 1909); F. Zalamea, ‘‘Bibliografı´a Peirceana Hispa´nica (1883–2000),’’ in Peirce y el mundo hispa´nico, 210. 44. Carlos Vaz Ferreira, Tres filo´sofos de la vida. Nietzsche, James, Unamuno (Buenos Aires: Losada, 1965), 198. 45. Pedro Zulen, Del neohegelianismo al neorealismo: estudio de las corrientes filoso´ficas en Inglaterra y los Estados Unidos desde la introduccio´n de Hegel hasta la actual reaccio´n neorealista (Lima: Imprenta Lux de E. L. Castro, 1924). 46. Jose´ Ortega y Gasset, Obras Completas (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1946–47), vol. I, 119; vol. IV, 97 and 357–58. 47. See Tzvi Medin, Ortega y Gasset en la cultura hispanoamericana (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Econo´mica, 1994). 48. Agustı´n Basave, ‘‘Significacio´n y sentido del pragmatismo norteamericano,’’ Dianoia 18 (1972), 251–72. 49. Jane Duran, ‘‘Vasconcelos, pragmatism and the Philosophy of Me´xico,’’ APA Newsletter, Hispanic/Latino Issues in Philosophy I no. 1 (2001): 82–84; Ana Paola Romo, La educacio´n democra´tica en John Dewey: Una propuesta pedago´gica de transformacio´n social en Me´xico (Ph.D. diss., Universidad de Navarra, 2006), 227–45, available online at http://www.unav.es/ gep/TesisDoctorales/TesisAPRomo.pdf. 50. Ofelia Schutte, Cultural Identity and Social Liberation in Latin American Thought (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 32. 51. See Marta Torregrosa, ‘‘Peirce en el Diccionario de Filosofı´a de Jose´ Ferrater Mora,’’Anthropos 212 (2006): 183–85. 52. Jose´ Ferrater Mora, ‘‘Peirce’s Conception of Architectonic and Related Views,’’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 15 (1955): 351–59. ch apter fou r j o h n d e w e y an d t h e l e g a c y o f m e x i c a n p r a g m a t i s m in the united s tates Ruben Flores I thank the Institute for Historical Studies at the University of Texas at Austin and the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation for

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postgraduate fellowships that made possible the research and writing of this chapter. The University of Kansas allowed me time away from my teaching duties as well, for which I am grateful. Last, I wish to acknowledge the intellectual and moral support of Gregory F. Pappas, without whom this work would not have been possible. 1. Ramo´n E. Ruı´z, Mexico: The Challenge of Poverty and Illiteracy (San Marino, CA: The Huntington Library, 1961), 29. 2. See Ruiz’s discussion of Dewey’s role in postrevolutionary Mexico in chapter 2, ‘‘The Conservative Pioneers.’’ 3. Robert Westbrook, John Dewey and American Democracy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991). 4. See, for example, David L. Raby, Educacio´n y revolucio´n social en Me´xico (1921–1940) (Mexico City: SEP Setentas, 1974), 29–30, who argued that the rural schools of Mexico ‘‘contained the seeds of a radical change’’ in Mexican society. An earlier sympathetic portrayal of Dewey that predates even Ruı´z is George C. Booth, Mexico’s School-Made Society (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1941). 5. For an influential assessment of the scholarly transformations in the interpretation of the Mexican Revolution, see Gil Joseph and Daniel Nugent, eds., Everyday Forms of State Formation (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994). A good reference on the changing historiography of Mexican society in the realm of education and its relationship to the state is Luz Elena Galva´n and Susana Quintanilla, Historia de la educacio´n (Mexico City: Segundo Congreso Nacional de Investigacio´n Educativa, 1993). 6. See Mary Kay Vaughan, The State, Education, and Social Class in Mexico, 1880–1928 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1982) and Mary Kay Vaughan, Cultural Politics in Revolution: Teachers, Peasants, and Schools in Mexico, 1930–1940 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997). 7. Vaughan, The State, Education, and Social Class in Mexico, 1880–1928, 166. 8. John Dewey, The School and Society (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, 1896). Sa´enz’s Chicago address is reprinted as ‘‘Integrating Mexico through Education’’ in Moise´s Sa´enz and Herbert I. Priestly, Some Mexican Problems (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1926). 9. See John Dewey, Democracy and Education (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1916) and John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy (New York: H. Holt, 1920). 10. See John Dewey, Ethics (New York: H. Holt, 1908); John Dewey, The Public and its Problems (New York: H. Holt, 1920); John Dewey, Experience

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and Nature (New York: Norton, 1929); and John Dewey, Art as Experience (New York: Minton, Balch and Company, 1934). By way of contrast, Jessica Ching-Sze Wang has charted the use of Dewey’s texts by Chinese scholars after Dewey’s long encounter with China between 1919 and 1921. See Jessica Ching-Sze Wang, John Dewey in China: To Teach and to Learn (Albany: SUNY Press, 2007), 13. 11. It is worth noting that at the very time that scholars of Mexican history were transforming Dewey into an instrument of capital in the early 1980s, U.S.-based scholarship in the disciplines of history, philosophy, and literary criticism was circling back to the liberationist potential of Deweyan ethics after some forty years of decline. See David A. Hollinger, ‘‘The Problem of Pragmatism in American History,’’ Journal of American History LXVII (1980): 88–107; and James Kloppenberg, ‘‘Pragmatism: An Old Name for Some New Ways of Thinking,’’ Journal of American History 83 (June 1996): 100–38. 12. Jose´ Vasconcelos, La raza co´smica (Paris: Agencia Mundial de Librerı´a, 1925). 13. The best essay on Sa´enz remains John Britton, ‘‘Moise´s Sa´enz: nacionalista mexicano,’’ Estudios Mexicanos 22 (1972), though large gaps remain in Britton’s account of Sa´enz’s life. 14. On Dewey’s own construction of the dialectic between unity and pluralism, see, for example, James A. Good, A Search for Unity in Diversity: The ‘‘Permanent Hegelian Deposit’’ in the Philosophy of John Dewey (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006). 15. These include Moise´s Sa´enz, Carapa´n: Bosquejo de una experencia (Lima: Librerı´a e Imprenta Gil, 1936); and Moise´s Sa´enz, Me´xico integro (Lima: Imprenta Torres Aguirre, 1939). 16. John Dewey, ‘‘Mexico’s Educational Renaissance,’’ The New Republic 48 (22 September 1926): 116–18, emphasis in the original. The Secretarı´a de Educacio´n Pu´blica published Dewey’s essay as What Mr. John Dewey Thinks of the Educational Policies of Mexico (Mexico City: Talleres Gra´ficos de la Nacio´n, 1926). 17. For ease of reference, all quotes in the paragraph are from Dewey, ‘‘Mexico’s Educational Renaissance,’’ The New Republic: 116–18. 18. George I. Sanchez, Mexico: A Revolution by Education (New York: Viking, 1936), 106. 19. Loyd S. Tireman, ‘‘Mi Amigo el Hispano,’’ conference paper delivered at the Rural Conference of the Colorado State Teachers College, January 1932, on file at the General Education Board Archives, Tarrytown, New York,

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Folder 6361. The General Education Board Archives are hereafter cited as GEB. 20. John Dewey, Democracy and Education (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1916). Sanchez’s critique is contained in George I. Sanchez, ‘‘The Education of Bilinguals in a State School System,’’ Ph.D. diss., UC Berkeley (1934). 21. Sanchez, Mexico: A Revolution by Education. 22. Ibid., 38. 23. Ibid., 68 and 164–65. 24. John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy (New York: H. Holt, 1920). 25. Sanchez, Mexico, 186. 26. Ibid., 188–89. 27. Ibid., 95, emphasis mine. 28. Ibid., 134. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid., 95. 31. George I. Sanchez, ‘‘Educational Crisis in Mexico,’’ Butrava 6 (February 1942): 6–7. 32. George I. Sanchez, ‘‘Fundamental Problems in Education in Mexico,’’ The Educational Forum VII, No. 4 (1943): 321. 33. Oscar Handlin, John Dewey’s Challenge to Education: Historical Perspective on the Cultural Context (New York: Harper, 1959). 34. George I. Sanchez, as quoted in ‘‘Southwest Spanish-Americans Prepare to Challenge Power-Structure Forcing Second-Class Citizenship,’’ The Southwesterner, December 1966, on file in the Sanchez Vertical File, Center for Southwestern Research, University of New Mexico. 35. See, for example, George I. Sanchez, ‘‘Education in Mexico,’’ The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 208 (March 1940); Sanchez, ‘‘Mexico in Transition,’’ Proceedings of the Conference on Latin America in Social and Economic Transition (Albuquerque: UNM Press, 1943); Sanchez, ‘‘Education in Mexico,’’ Encyclopedia of Modern Education (New York: American Association on Indian Affairs, Inc., 1944); Sanchez, The Development of Higher Education in Mexico (New York: Kings Crown Press, 1944); Sanchez, Mexico (Boston: Ginn and Company, 1960). 36. Dewey profiled Missouri’s University School in John and Evelyn Dewey Schools of Tomorrow (New York: Dutton, 1915), chapter III, ‘‘Four Factors in Natural Growth.’’ 37. The outlines of Tireman’s career are distilled from the Loyd Tireman Papers, on file at the Center for Southwestern Research, University of New

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Mexico. See also Lynne Marie Getz, Schools of their Own: The Education of Hispanos in New Mexico, 1850–1940 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997). 38. See Loyd Tireman, The Rural Schools of Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1931). 39. Loyd Tireman to Leo Favrot, February 3, 1933, GEB 6362. 40. Tireman, The Rural Schools of Mexico. On its circulation to a nationwide audience see President Zimmerman to Leo Favrot, September 30, 1932, GEB 6359. 41. Ibid., 25. 42. Ibid., 11. 43. Tireman, ‘‘Mi Amigo el Hispano,’’ 11. 44. Frank Angel Jr., ‘‘Dr. Loyd S. Tireman and Public Education in New Mexico,’’ public address, November 13, 1959, recorded in Phi Delta Kappa Yearbook 1959–1960 (Albuquerque: Phi Delta Kappa, Beta Rho Chapter, 1960). Angel reported that the ‘‘U.S. Government’’ had financed Tireman’s trip, but in fact it had been funded by private foundation grants. 45. David A. Hollinger, ‘‘The Problem of Pragmatism in American History,’’ Journal of American History LXVII (1980): 88–107. 46. See, for example, Rafael Ramı´rez’s El o y la escuela de accio´n (Mexico City: SEP, 1924), which became a widely distributed primer of Deweyan theory in Mexico’s postrevolutionary educational system. 47. John Dewey, Experience and Education (New York: Macmillan, 1938). chapter five the n egl ected historical and phil osophical connection between jose´ ingenieros and r alph waldo emerson Manuela Alejandra Gomez 1. For more on the philosophy of Jose´ Ingenieros, see Manuela Gomez, Rediscovering the Philosophical Importance of Jose´ Ingenieros: A Bridge Between Two Worlds (Saarbrucken: VDM Verlag, 2008). The most important philosophical works of Jose´ Ingenieros are El hombre mediocre (Mexico City: Editorial Azteca, 1963), Hacia una moral sin dogmas (Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, 1947), and Las fuerzas morales (Buenos Aires: Rueda, 1950). Other useful sources on Jose´ Ingenieros are Sergio Bagu, La Vida Ejemplar de Jose´ Ingenieros (Buenos Aires: Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires, 1963); Gregorio Berman, Jose´ Ingenieros, el civilizador, el filosofo, el moralista (Buenos Aires: Editorial M. Gleizer, 1926); and Juan Mario Castellanos, Pensamiento revolucionario de Jose´ Ingenieros (San Jose´: Editorial Universitaria Centro Americana, Costa Rica, 1972).

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2. Robert D. Richardson Jr., Emerson: The Mind on Fire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). 3. Ingenieros, El hombre mediocre, 5. 4. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature (1836). chapter s ix the p ragmatism of eugenio d ’o r s Marta Torregrosa 1. See Marta Torregrosa, Filosofı´a y vida de Eugenio d’Ors (Pamplona: Eunsa, 2003). 2. Marta Torregrosa and Jaime Nubiola, ‘‘Eugenio d’Ors,’’ Enciclopedia de obras de filosofı´a, II (Barcelona: Herder, 2005), 1594. This publication contains a brief biographical approximation and an explanation of three of his fundamental works: el Glosario, La filosofı´a del hombre que trabaja y que juega, and El secreto de la filosofı´a. 3. Eugenio d’Ors, Cezzane (Barcelona: El acantilado, 1921–99); Tres horas en el museo del prado (Madrid: Tecnos, 1922–2004), y Lo barroco (Madrid: Tecnos–Alianza, 1935–2002). 4. Antonino Gonza´lez, ‘‘Eugenio d’Ors, nodo de tradicio´n este´tica y debate contempora´neo,’’ Nueva Revista 115 (2008): 117–30. 5. D’Ors, El secreto de la filosofı´a (Madrid: Tecnos, 1947–98). 6. D’Ors, La ciencia de la cultura (Madrid: Rialp, 1964). 7. See Marta Torregrosa, ‘‘El pragmatismo en el pensamiento de Eugenio d’Ors,’’ Anuario Filoso´fico XL/2 (2007): 373–87. 8. Jaime Nubiola, ‘‘C. S. Peirce and the Hispanic Philosophy of the Twentieth Century,’’ Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 1 (1998): 31–49. 9. Eugenio d’Ors, ‘‘Pragmatisme,’’ Glosari 1906–1907 (Barcelona: Quaderns Crema, 1996), 729–30. In Spanish in Eugenio d’Ors, Glosas. Pa´ginas del Glosari de Xenius (Madrid: Saturnino Calleja, 1920), 82. 10. D’Ors, ‘‘Habla Eugenio d’Ors,’’ La Catalun˜a (8 February 1908): 93. 11. The Reports, still unpublished, are written in Catalan and can be read in the Arxiu de la Diputacio´ de Barcelona, file number 2283. 12. D’Ors, ‘‘El residuo en la medida de la ciencia por la accio´n,’’ Boletı´n de la Institucio´n Libre de Ensen˜anza XXXIII, 591 (1909): 188. 13. D’Ors, ‘‘El nuevo intelectualismo,’’ La filosofı´a del hombre que trabaja y que juega (Madrid: Libertarias/Prodhufi, 1911, 1995), 62–63. 14. D’Ors, ‘‘Pragmatisme,’’ 729–30. 15. See Marta Torregrosa, ‘‘Eugenio d’Ors y la superacio´n del pragmatismo,’’ in Oceanografı´a de Xenius. Estudios crı´ticos en torno a Eugenio d’Ors,

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ed. Carlos X. Ardavı´n, Eloy E. Merino, and Xavier PLA (Barcelona: Reichenberger, 2005), 89–98. 16. In Spanish in Estudios Filoso´ficos. Religio est Libertas (Madrid: Cuadernos Literarios, 1925), 13. Some fragments of the work can be read in the book La filosofı´a del hombre que trabaja y que juega. 17. D’Ors, La filosofı´a del hombre, 74. 18. Ibid., 162. 19. Ibid., 109. 20. D’Ors, ‘‘De la amistad y del dia´logo,’’ Trilogı´a de la Residencia de Estudiante (Pamplona: Eunsa, 1914, 2000), 48. 21. Ibid. 22. D’Ors, ‘‘Diccionari filoso´fich porta´til,’’ Revista Catalana 1, no. 5 (11 November 1909): 72. 23. Jaime Nubiola, ‘‘Eugenio d’Ors: Una concepcio´n pragmatista del lenguaje,’’ Revista de Filosofı´a 13 (1995): 53–54. 24. D’Ors, La filosofı´a del hombre, 62. chapter seven pedro zul en and the reception of p ragmatism i n p eru Pablo Quintanilla 1. See C. Escajadillo, R. Orozco, and P. Quintanilla, Espiritualismo y pragmatismo. La filosofı´a peruana a comienzos del siglo XX (Lima: Fondo Editorial de la Pontificia Universidad Cato´lica del Peru´, forthcoming). Some of the ideas in this essay are argued more extensively in chapter 4, section 2 of that book. 2. See Henri Bergson, Essai sur les donne´es imme´diates de la consciente (Paris: Alcan, 1912). 3. William James, The Principles of Psychology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981). 4. See Ralph Barton Perry, The Thought and Character of William James (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1996). 5. See Henry James (ed.), The Letters of William James (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1920). 6. Mariano Iberico, El nuevo absoluto (Lima: Minerva, 1926), 14. 7. Mariano Iberico, Una filosofı´a este´tica (Lima: Sanmarti y Ca., 1920); El nuevo absoluto (Lima: Minerva, 1926); La unidad dividida (Lima: Compan˜´ıa de impresiones y publicidad, 1932); La aparicio´n. Ensayos sobre el ser y el aparecer (Lima: Imprenta Santa Marı´a, 1950); Estudio sobre la meta´fora (Lima: Casa de la Cultura, 1965). The translations of these texts into English are mine.

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8. Jorge Polar, Confesio´n de un catedra´tico (Arequipa: Tipografı´a Cuadros, 1928), 102–104. 9. Pedro Zulen, La filosofı´a de lo inexpresable. Bosquejo de una interpretacio´n y una crı´tica de la filosofı´a de Bergson (Lima: Sanmartı´, 1920). 10. Pedro Zulen, Del neohegelianismo al neorrealismo. Estudio de las corrientes filoso´ficas en Inglaterra y los Estados Unidos desde la introduccio´n de Hegel hasta la actual reaccio´n neorrealista (Lima: Lux, 1924). 11. ‘‘La filosofı´a del error,’’ Contempora´neos 1, no. 1 (1909): 9–11. The journal Contempora´neos lasted only a few issues and was published in Lima by Enrique Bustamente y Ballivia´n and Julio Alonso Herna´ndez. 12. See Pedro Zulen, ‘‘La crisis filoso´fica contempora´nea,’’ Contempora´neos 1, No. 3 (1909): 118. 13. Zulen, La filosofı´a de lo inexpresable, 42–43. 14. Ibid., 8. 15. Ibid., 12. 16. Ibid., 31. 17. Ibid., 39. 18. Ibid., 40. 19. Ibid., 41. chapter eight vaz ferreira a s a pragmatist : the a rticul ation of science a nd phil osophy Paloma Pere´z-Ilzarbe 1. Jaime Nubiola and Fernando Zalamea, Peirce y el mundo hispa´nico (Pamplona: Eunsa, 2006), 209–211. 2. A Spanish translation of Einstein’s notes on his visit to Montevideo and of the grateful letter he wrote to Vaz Ferreira after receiving the book can be found at http://fp.chasque.net/⬃relacion/0008/mundanalia.htm. The letter is reproduced in facsimile in Vaz Ferreira’s book Tres filo´sofos de la vida (Buenos Aires: Losada, 1965). 3. Carlos Vaz Ferreira, Conocimiento y Accio´n (Montevideo: Ca´mara de Representantes de la Repu´blica Oriental del Uruguay, 1963), 85–86. 4. Vaz’s works on James are reprinted in volume VIII of his collected works; C. Vaz Ferreira, Conocimiento y accio´n; and also in C. Vaz Ferreira, Tres filo´sofos de la vida. 5. For Vaz’s intellectual debt to James, see Jose´ Marı´a Romero Baro´, Filosofı´a y ciencia en Carlos Vaz Ferreira (Barcelona: Promociones y Publicaciones Universitarias, 1993), 63–75 and also 55–57; Daniel Malvasio, ‘‘Sobre el

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pragmatismo de William James en la o´ptica de Vaz Ferreira,’’ in Ensayos sobre Carlos Vaz Ferreira, comp. Miguel Andreoli (Montevideo: Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educacio´n, 1996), 217–25. See also Anı´bal del Campo, El problema de la creencia y el intelectualismo de Vaz Ferreira (Montevideo: Universidad de la Repu´blica, 1959). 6. Arturo Ardao describes him as the leading exponent of twentiethcentury Uruguayan philosophy; Arturo Ardao, La filosofı´a en el Uruguay en el siglo XX (Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Econo´mica, 1956), 45. 7. See Jaime Nubiola, ‘‘La bu´squeda de la verdad en la tradicio´n pragmatista,’’ To´picos 8–9 (2001): 183–96; Jaime Nubiola, ‘‘Pragmatismo y relativismo: Una defensa del pluralismo,’’ Themata. Revista de Filosofı´a 27 (2001): 49–57. 8. Vaz Ferreira, Conocimiento y accio´n, 175–87. 9. Ibid., 186. 10. Helena Costa´bile has studied Vaz’s ideas on the nature of reason and on the scope of reason as a tool for knowledge; Helena Costa´bile, ‘‘La idea de razo´n en Vaz Ferreira,’’ Anales de Ensen˜anza Secundaria 4 (1993). 11. As an introduction to the life and work of Carlos Vaz Ferreira, see Matilde Vaz Ferreira de Durruty, Recuerdos de mi padre. Los u´ltimos dı´as de mi padre (Montevideo: Monteverde, 1981); Sara Vaz Ferreira de Echevarrı´a, Carlos Vaz Ferreira. Vida, Obra, Personalidad (Montevideo: Divisio´n Publicaciones y Ediciones de la Universidad de la Repu´blica, 1984); Arturo Ardao, Introduccio´n a Vaz Ferreira (Montevideo: Barreiro y Ramos, 1961); Arthur Berndtson, ‘‘Vaz Ferreira, Carlos,’’ in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards (London and New York: Macmillan, 1967); M. Andreoli, comp., Ensayos sobre Carlos Vaz Ferreira (Montevideo: Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educacio´n, 1996); Oscar Brando, coord., El 900. Tomo I (Montevideo: Cal y Canto, 1999); Carlos Mato, Pensamiento uruguayo. La ´epoca de Carlos Vaz Ferreira (Montevideo: Fundacio´n de Cultura Universitaria, 1995); Jose´ Marı´a Romero Baro´, Carlos Vaz Ferreira (1872–1958) (Madrid: Ediciones del Orto, 1998). To go directly to Vaz Ferreira’s philosophy, Fermentario may be the work that better shows his style and concerns. Vaz’s collected works have been published in twenty-five volumes as a tribute by the Uruguayan government; a first edition appeared in 1957, then extended in 1963. A review of the first edition was written by Irving Louis Horowitz; ‘‘Carlos Vaz Ferreira: A Review of His Collected Works,’’ The Hispanic American Historical Review 40, no. 1 (1960): 63–69. 12. See H. Costa´bile, ‘‘La idea de razo´n en Vaz Ferreira.’’ 13. The word ‘‘thing’’ is also a schema of flowing reality, but Vaz allows himself to use it.

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14. See ‘‘Trascendentalizaciones matema´ticas ilegı´timas y falacias correlacionadas,’’ in Carlos Vaz Ferreira, Algunas conferencias sobre temas cientı´ficos, artı´sticos y sociales (Montevideo: Ca´mara de Representantes de la Repu´blica Oriental del Uruguay, 1963), 68–102; ‘‘Pensar por sistemas y pensar por ideas para tener en cuenta,’’ in C. Vaz Ferreira, Lo´gica viva (Montevideo: Ca´mara de Representantes de la Repu´blica Oriental del Uruguay, 1963), 154–85. 15. John Dewey, Experience and Nature, in Later Works of John Dewey, vol. 1, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1925), 51. 16. See, for example, ‘‘Psicologı´a y lo´gica de las clasificaciones, y falacias verbo-ideolo´gicas relacionadas’’ in Lo´gica viva, 230–42; ‘‘Un paralogismo de actualidad,’’ in Carlos Vaz Ferreira, Fermentario (Montevideo: Ca´mara de Representantes de la Repu´blica Oriental del Uruguay, 1963), 144–72. 17. See Arturo Ardao, ‘‘A propo´sito de lenguaje y pensamiento en Vaz Ferreira,’’ in Ensayos sobre Carlos Vaz Ferreira, comp. Miguel Andreoli (Montevideo: Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educacio´n, 1996), 13–33. 18. Carlos Vaz Ferreira, ‘‘La crisis actual del mundo desde un punto de vista racional,’’ in Algunas conferencias sobre temas cientı´ficos, artı´sticos y sociales, 149. 19. I know, though I have not had the opportunity to consult the work, that there is an interesting account on the notion of psiqueo in Mario Silva Garcı´a, En torno a la libertad y el determinismo (Montevideo: Edicio´n del Instituto Jung, 1989). 20. Vaz Ferreira, Fermentario, 199. 21. Ibid., 17. 22. See, for example, Vaz Ferreira, Lo´gica viva, 178–79. 23. Vaz Ferreira, Conocimiento y accio´n, 26, footnote. 24. The relation between science and philosophy in Carlos Vaz Ferreira has been studied in Arturo Ardao, ‘‘Ciencia y metafı´sica en Vaz Ferreira,’’ Revista de la Universidad de Me´xico 27, no. 4 (1972); J. M. Romero Baro´, Filosofı´a y ciencia en Carlos Vaz Ferreira; Paloma Pe´rez-Ilzarbe, ‘‘La bu´squeda de la verdad: filosofı´a y ciencias en Carlos Vaz Ferreira,’’ Anuario Filoso´fico 38, no. 3 (2005): 801–20. 25. See ‘‘Capı´tulo V. Carlos Vaz Ferreira y el final del positivismo en el Uruguay,’’ in Jose´ Marı´a Romero Baro´, El positivismo y su valoracio´n en Ame´rica (Barcelona: Promociones y Publicaciones Universitarias, 1989), 197– 215; and ‘‘Capı´tulo 6. Crı´tica de las ciencias y del positivismo,’’ in Jose´ Marı´a

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Romero Baro´, Filosofı´a y ciencia en Carlos Vaz Ferreira (Barcelona: Promociones y Publicaciones Universitarias, 1993), 189–216. 26. Vaz Ferreira, Lo´gica viva, 151. 27. Ibid., 154–85. 28. Ibid., 183–84. 29. Ibid., 175. 30. Vaz Ferreira, Fermentario, 153. 31. Carlos Vaz Ferreira, Los problemas de la libertad y los del determinismo (Montevideo: Ca´mara de Representantes de la Repu´blica Oriental del Uruguay, 1963), 19–20. 32. See, for example, C. Vaz Ferreira, Fermentario, 146. 33. Ibid., 137. 34. Vaz Ferreira, Los problemas de la libertad, 36. 35. Carlos Vaz Ferreira, ‘‘Trascendentalizaciones matema´ticas ilegı´timas y falacias correlacionadas,’’ in Algunas conferencias sobre temas cientı´ficos, artı´siticos y sociales, 69. 36. Vaz Ferreira, Fermentario, 222. 37. Carlos Vaz Ferreira, Sobre la ensen˜anza en nuestro paı´s (Montevideo: Ca´mara de Representantes de la Repu´blica Oriental del Uruguay, 1963), 268. 38. Vaz Ferreira, Fermentario, 137. 39. Vaz Ferreira, Sobre la ensen˜anza en nuestro paı´s, 268. In harmony with these ideas, Vaz fought to create a Faculty of Humanities and Sciences of which he was the dean for several years. 40. Vaz remarks on the clarifying function of philosophy with respect to any other form of knowledge: criticism and philosophical analysis have shown the correct way to use language, always distinguishing it from reality and thus noting the inadequacy of any verbal and conceptual schema. See C. Vaz Ferreira, Fermentario, 134, 164, 171, for example. 41. Vaz Ferreira, Conocimiento y accio´n, 32. 42. Ibid., 23. 43. Nubiola, ‘‘Pragmatism and Relativism.’’ 44. See Helena Costa´bile, ‘‘Razo´n y creencia en Vaz Ferreira.’’ 45. Vaz Ferreira, Fermentario, 30. 46. See Washington Lockhart, ‘‘Vaz Ferreira o el drama de la razo´n,’’ in El 900, ed. Oscar Brando (Montevideo: Cal y Canto, 1999), 1:320–23. c h a p t e r ni n e d e w e y an d o r t e g a o n t h e st a r t i n g p o i n t Douglas Browning 1. Henri Bergson, The Creative Mind, trans. Mabelle L. Andison (New York: Philosophical Library, 1946), 128.

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2. Dewey makes the shift from the traditional to his own starting point, fully at least, in his writings at the turn of the century. Reading Studies in Logical Theory (1903) today, we can recognize it. But not many of his readers saw it then. They saw that something was going on, but they could not quite grasp what it was. It becomes more and more obvious in the succeeding years and by 1916 in his introduction to Essays in Experimental Logic it is patent. Its definitive presentation is found in his writings from 1925 to 1930, from Experience and Nature to ‘‘Qualitative Thought.’’ With Ortega, the shift is apparent to us now on rereading Meditations on Quixote, which was published in 1914. Still, the new starting point lies pretty much behind the scenes, though informing his writings during the interim, until 1929, when in the lectures translated as What Is Philosophy it is made explicit. It was further elaborated in 1932–33 in the lectures translated much later under the title Some Lessons in Metaphysics. 3. In spite of this, recognition of this starting point, however novel it may be, should not be considered as something complicated or as requiring some arcane or mysterious source of illumination. It is incredibly simple, indeed so simple and so commonplace as to be grasped immediately without any theoretical or explanatory underpinnings. Why, then, has it been so elusive to the traditional philosopher? Well, seeing it involves something like a ‘‘gestalt shift.’’ Consider the simple example of the duck-rabbit shift made famous by Wittgenstein. One who sees the markings on the blackboard as a duck and is told that it is the picture of a rabbit may not at first be successful in seeing it so. One may even learn to describe the markings as a picture of a rabbit by identifying the duck’s bill as the ears of the rabbit, etc., and yet not see it as such. This is to say that language may be used to indicate and describe without there being any experiential shift. In fact, reliance upon the language may serve to hinder one’s seeing. It may make one think that, if he makes the effort and has the proper tools of description and reference, he can come to see it. Or he may come to think that there is nothing to see after all, that there is merely an alternative use of language at issue. Effort, especially linguistic effort, may be counterproductive. In the end, what one needs to do in order to see the rabbit is just look and then look again. But, now, if one does come to see it, then he simply sees it. Aha!! We can try to explain his earlier failure in this way: he was locked into recognizing a duck and that way of recognition kept interfering with the shift. Now something like this is, I think, the case with the shift from the traditional starting point to the Dewey-Ortega one, except at a much more radical level. When we do make the shift, there is nothing in doing so which is tricky or mystical; we simply

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see it. Aha! But the traditional approach is so insidious in its rootedness, so taken for granted, and so deeply tied up with reliance upon linguistic formulation that it continually deflects many philosophers from simply seeing what is so simple and straightforward. 4. John Dewey, The Later Works, vol. 1, Experience and Nature, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1981), 14. (Contains the first chapter of the first edition.) 5. Ibid., 15. 6. Jose´ Ortega y Gasset, What Is Philosophy? trans. Mildred Adams (New York: Norton, 1960), 199. 7. Dewey, Experience and Nature, 372. 8. Jose´ Ortega y Gasset, Some Lessons in Metaphysics, trans. Mildred Adams (New York: Norton, 1969), 34–35. 9. Jose´ Ortega y Gasset, Man and People, trans. Willard R. Trask (New York: Norton, 1957), 140. 10. There is a further complication that deserves mention. As a bedrock term ‘‘experience,’’ as well as ‘‘my life,’’ is a mass term as opposed to the count use of the term ‘‘starting point.’’ The count use is indicated by the fact that for each case of philosophical investigation or inquiry there is a starting point that is different from that of another case. We may then speak of starting points in the plural. Dewey is very insistent on this multiplicity of starting points, though he doesn’t adopt that term in the count sense. The point which I think he would like to make is that, though each inquiry begins from a different place in our experience, the starting point is what we have in experience as we find it and that experience in its generic sense divides itself up into those situations of experience in which we find ourselves. The point then is that the content of experience or my life is constantly changing but that one can never escape the experience that one is having and living through. Similarly, the water that I have now, this parcel, is nonetheless water. 11. Dewey states this hypothesis very clearly in Experience and Nature, 27: ‘‘Suppose, however, that we start with no presuppositions save that what is experienced, since it is a manifestation of nature, may, and indeed, must be used as testimony of the characteristics of natural events.’’ 12. Ortega y Gasset, Some Lessons in Metaphysics, 37–45. 13. Dewey, Experience and Nature, 15, 17, 18, 37, 40, 41, 41, 41, 47, 367. 14. Ibid., 15, 11, 16, 13, 27, 375. 15. Ibid., 18, 366. 16. Ibid., 367. My italics in the last phrase.

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17. Ibid., 368–69. My italics. 18. Jose´ Ortega y Gasset, Meditations on Quixote, trans. Evelyn Rugg and Diego Marı´n (New York: Norton, 1961), 145. 19. Ortega y Gasset, Some Lessons in Metaphysics, 48–49. 20. John Dewey, The Middle Works, vol. 10, Essays in Philosophy and Education, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985), 323. (Contains the Introduction to Essays in Experimental Logic.) 21. Ortega y Gasset, Meditations on Quixote, 32. 22. Ibid., 62. 23. William James, The Principles of Psychology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 225. 24. Ibid., 224. 25. In The Principles of Psychology, James remarks on this danger (195): ‘‘The great snare of the psychologist is the confusion of his own standpoint with that of the mental fact about which he is making his report. . . . The psychologist . . . stands outside of the mental state he speaks of. Both itself and its object are objects for him.’’ 26. Charles Sanders Peirce, The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vol. 5, Pragmatism and Pragmaticism, ed. C. Hartshorne and P. Weiss (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1935), 416. c h a p t e r te n w a s ri s i e r i f r o n d i z i a hi s p a n i c p r a g m a t i s t? Gregory Fernando Pappas 1. Only a few of Frondizi’s work have been translated. For more on Frondizi’s life, see my entry ‘‘Frondizi, Risieri (1910–1983)’’ in Dictionary of Modern Philosophers 1860–1960 (London: Thoemmes Press, 2005). 2. See Frondizi’s essay ‘‘Panaroma de la filosofia Latino Americana Contemporanea,’’ in Ensayos filoso´ficos (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Econo´mica, 1986), 81. 3. This is the famous corridor metaphor that James got from Papini, who likens pragmatism to a corridor with different rooms. 4. In a Monist article published in 1905, Peirce remarked: ‘‘Philosophers of very diverse stripes propose that philosophy shall start from one or another state of mind in which no man, least of all the beginner in philosophy, actually is. One proposes that you shall begin by doubting everything, and says that there is only one thing that you cannot doubt, as if doubting were ‘as easy as lying.’ Another proposes that we should begin by observing ‘the first impressions of sense.’. . . But in truth, there is but one state of mind

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from which you can ‘set out,’ namely, the very state of mind in which you actually find yourself at the time you do ‘set out’—a state in which you are laden with an immense mass of cognition already formed, of which you cannot divest yourself if you would’’ (CP5.416). 5. For a criticism of neopragmatism from the same point of view as this essay, see David Hildebrand, Beyond Realism and Antirealism (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2003). 6. See Ayer’s The Origins of Pragmatism (London: Macmillan, 1968). 7. Joseph Margolis, introduction to A Companion to Pragmatism (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 3. 8. Cornelis de Waal, On Pragmatism (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2007), preface, ii. 9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatism. 10. William James, Pragmatism (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1981), 37. 11. Risieri Frondizi, El punto de partida del filosofar, 12. This and the other quotes from this important first book of Frondizi are my translations. 12. Ibid., 102. 13. Ibid., 8. 14. Risieri Frondizi, ‘‘Bosquejo de mi filosofia: El empiricismo como humanismo,’’ in Ensayos Filosoficos. 15. Risieri Frondizi, El punto de partida del filosofar, 8. 16. Ibid., 51. 17. Ibid., 33. 18. See ‘‘The Spirit of Rorty Bound in the Feathers of David Lewis. An Interview with Robert Brandom,’’ http://foreninger.uio.no/filosofisk-supplement/index.php?intervju⳱brandom. 19. Risieri Frondizi, El punto de partida del filosofar, 49. 20. See LW 1:40. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid., 85. 23. Jose´ Ortega y Gasset, El hombre y la gente (Madrid: Revista de Occidente en Alianza Editorial, 1957), 47. 24. Risieri Frondizi, El punto de partida del filosofar, 12. 25. Ibid., 85. 26. Ibid., 8. 27. Ibid. 28. I expand on these points and provide further evidence that Frondizi shares the same view of experience as the pragmatist in ‘‘El punto de partida de la filosofı´a en Risieri Frondizi y el pragmatismo,’’ in Anuario Filoso´fico 40, no. 2 (2007).

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c h a p t e r el e v e n the l atino c haracter of american pragmatism Gregory Fernando Pappas 1. For Bertrand Russell’s criticism, see ‘‘As a European Sees It,’’ Freeman 4 (1922): 608–10. Dewey’s reply is found in ‘‘Pragmatic America’’ (MW 13:306–10). George Santayana’s criticism can be found in ‘‘The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy,’’ Santayana on America, ed. Richard Colton (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1968). Santayana provided very acute and perceptive characterizations of American life; sometimes, however, he seemed to be more concerned with supporting a certain historical interpretation of them than with providing an adequate description. It is disconcerting that he did not appreciate the non-American character of pragmatism in the sense explained in this paper. As I see it, the problem was that for some reason his understanding of Dewey was, at best, ‘‘half-hearted and short-winded’’ (to use his description of Dewey’s naturalism). 2. Alan Ryan agrees with Henry Commager (author of The American Mind) that Dewey was ‘‘the guide, the mentor, and the conscience of the American People’’ (John Dewey: The High Tide of American Liberalism [New York: Norton, 1995], 19). Throughout his book, Ryan portrays Dewey’s philosophy as satisfying deep American goals and desires. For example, he writes, ‘‘His views gratify a familiar American longing to unify opposites’’(329). James Campbell begins his Understanding John Dewey (Chicago: Open Court, 1995) by suggesting the affinities between John Dewey’s philosophy and the unique set of historical experiences of America, in particular the ‘‘frontier thesis’’ (see 2–7). 3. John Dewey, ‘‘Context and Thought’’ (LW 6:17). Citations of the works of John Dewey in this article refer to the critical edition published by Southern Illinois University Press. In the citations the initials of the series are followed by volume and page numbers. Abbreviations for the critical edition are: EW, The Early Works (1982–1898), and MW, The Middle Works (1899–1924). 4. Ibid., 11. 5. Dewey, ‘‘The Pragmatic Acquiescence’’ (LW 3:147). 6. Dewey, ‘‘The Development of American Pragmatism’’ (LW 2:6). 7. Dewey, ‘‘The Pragmatic Acquiescence’’ (LW 3:147). 8. Dewey, ‘‘Individualism, Old and New’’ (LW 5:53). 9. Besides the essays already mentioned, Dewey’s cultural comparisons can be found in ‘‘Pragmatic America’’ (MW 13:306–310), ‘‘Mexico’s Educational Renaissance’’ (LW 2:199–205).

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10. Jorge Manach, The Frontier (New York: Teachers College–Columbia University, 1975), 49. 11. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985) 40. 12. John Dewey, ‘‘Educational Lectures Before Brigham Young Academy’’ (LW 17:343). 13. George Santayana, ‘‘The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy,’’ 57. 14. Ibid., 56. 15. George Santayana, ‘‘Dewey’s Naturalist Metaphysics,’’ in Obiter Scripta, ed. Justus Buchler (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936), 216. 16. Dewey, ‘‘The Development of American Pragmatism’’ (LW 2:21). 17. See William James, The Meaning of Truth: A Sequel to Pragmatism (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1907), 209–11. 18. Dewey, ‘‘The Development of American Pragmatism’’ (LW 2:13); for a recent corrective of this narrow view of instrumentalism, see Larry Hickman’s John Dewey’s Pragmatic Technology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990). 19. Dewey, ‘‘Pragmatic America’’ (MW 13:307). 20. Ibid. 21. Quoted in Dewey’s ‘‘William James’ Morals and Julien Benda’s’’ (LW 15:26). 22. See Dewey, ‘‘The Development of American Pragmatism’’ (LW 2:19): pragmatism does not ‘‘aim to glorify the energy and love of action which the new conditions of American life exaggerated.’’ 23. Dewey, ‘‘The Development of American Pragmatism’’ (LW 2:19). 24. Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct (MW 14:194). 25. Ibid., 185. Pragmatism holds that ‘‘the future as well as the past can be a source of interest and consolation and give meaning to the present’’ (Dewey, ‘‘The Development of American Pragmatism’’ (LW 2:20)). Control of the future is a precious goal since we live in a precarious and changing world. However, ‘‘control of future living, such as it may turn out to be, is wholly dependent upon taking his present activity, seriously and devotedly, as an end, not as means’’ (Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct (MW 14:184), my emphasis). 26. Dewey, ‘‘Self-Realization as the Moral Ideal’’ (EW 4:50). 27. Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct (MW 14:185). Foresight, hindsight, and present observation are all done in the present for the present; ‘‘they are indispensable to a present liberation, an enriching growth of action’’(ibid., 182).

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28. Ibid., 196. 29. Dewey, Democracy and Education (MW 9:214). Dewey believed that in education we should carry ‘‘into work the elements of play’’ (ibid., 325). 30. George Santayana, ‘‘The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy,’’ 47. Santayana also says, ‘‘Hence the implicit American philosophy, which it is Dewey’s privilege to make explicit, involves behaviorism’’ (ibid., 218–19). 31. Dewey, ‘‘Educational Lectures Before Brigham Young Academy’’ (LW 17:344). 32. Dewey, Ethics (LW 7: 268–69). 33. Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct (MW 14:136); my emphasis. 34. Dewey, ‘‘Contributions to a Cyclopedia of Education’’ (MW 6:386). 35. Dewey, ‘‘Educational Lectures Before Brigham Young Academy’’ (LW 17:343–44). 36. Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (LW 2:367). 37. Dewey, ‘‘Creative Democracy-the Task Before Us’’ (LW 14:227). 38. Dewey, ‘‘From a Mexican Notebook’’ (LW 2:208). 39. Patrick Romanell, The Making of the Mexican Mind (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1952), 25. 40. Ibid., 22. 41. Dewey, ‘‘Three Independent Factors in Morals’’ (LW 5:280). 42. Dewey, Ethics (LW 7:165). 43. Ibid. Dewey’s example is of a ‘‘citizen of a nation which has just declared war on another country’’ (ibid, 64). She feels torn between the duty of loyalty toward her nation and her moral conviction that this war is wrong (unjust). 44. How many and what kinds of factors can we find in situations of intrinsic moral conflict? Dewey hypothesis was that ‘‘there are at least three independent variables in moral action. Each of these variables has a sound basis, but because each has a different origin and mode of operation, they can be at cross purposes and exercise divergent forces in the formation of judgment.’’ Dewey, ‘‘Three Independent Factors in Morals’’ (LW 5:280). 45. Dewey, Experience and Nature (LW 1:45). 46. About James, Dewey said, ‘‘There was nothing compartmentalized in his attitude’’ (‘‘William James’ Morals and Julien Benda’s,’’ LW 15:18), that there was in his writings a ‘‘profound love of variation, freshness, and spontaneity’’ (ibid., 26). 47. James and Dewey not only reacted against what they perceived as the excesses of the American scene, but they also offered thoughtful accounts of the problem. This issue is very complex, of course; its historical, sociological,

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and psychological dimensions would have to be explored in another essay. For Dewey, the root of American excess was deeply rooted in what he referred to as the ‘‘money culture’’ (see Individualism, Old and New, LW 5:55), whereas for James it was more a matter of perpetuating bad habits. 48. I admit that Dewey had his moments of overenthusiasm for technology and science, but he was also critical of the ‘‘immediate and intoxicating effect’’ that the discovery of technique has had in our culture. ‘‘What is called the American mentality is characterized by this discovery, and by the exaggerations that come with the abruptness of the discovery’’ (ibid., 55). In any case, we all know where Dewey’s heart was, that is, what really mattered to him in the end. 49. Ibid., 53. 50. William James’s ‘‘The Gospel of Relaxation’’ (1898) is in Talks to Teachers on Psychology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985). 51. Ilan Stavans, The Hispanic Condition (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 9. 52. Ibid., 14, 17–18. 53. Dewey, ‘‘From a Mexican Notebook’’ (LW 2:209). 54. Dewey, ‘‘Imperialism Is Easy’’ (LW 3:162). 55. I am indebted to John G. Pappas for his criticism and wisdom regarding cultural differences. chapter twelve l e o p o l d o z e a, s ta n l e y c a v e l l, a n d th e s e d u c t i o n of ‘ ‘american ’’ p h i l o s o p h y Carlos Alberto Sanchez 1. Patrick Romanell, The Making of the Mexican Mind: A Study in Recent Mexican Thought (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1952), 27. 2. Throughout this discussion I am assuming, of course, that qualifying philosophy as ‘‘American’’ is no more offensive then calling it German or French. This is a separate, albeit related, discussion that I do not wish to take up here. 3. Stanley Cavell, Emerson’s Transcendental Etudes (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 24. 4. Leopoldo Zea, La filosofı´a como compromiso y otros ensayos (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Econo´mica, 1952), 184. 5. Leopoldo Zea, The Role of the Americas in History, trans. Sonja Karsen (Westfield, MA: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1992), 4. 6. In fact, in 1945 Zea famously argued for this thesis in his work Towards an American Philosophy (En torno a una filosofı´a Americana). Of

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course, the critics were not far behind (most notably among them the Peruvian philosopher Augusto Salazar Bondy) in accusing Zea of forgetting the universal aspirations of philosophy in favor of a nationalistic form of ideological chauvinism. See Augusto Salazar Bondy, ¿Existe una filosofı´a de nuestra Ame´rica? (Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno, 1978). The same critique could be leveled against Stanley Cavell’s conception of ‘‘American’’ philosophy, a conception grounded on the idea that, to quote James Conant, ‘‘philosophy necessarily exists on a different cultural basis in America’’ (see Russell Goodman, ed., Contending with Stanley Cavell [New York: Oxford University Press, 2005], 62). I am, however, unaware that such a critique has been leveled, so there must be something right about Cavell’s argument. If so, what is it? What has Cavell done to convince his readers of the existence and possibility of an ‘‘American’’ philosophy that Zea did not do in his effort to convince his readers of the existence and possibility of a ‘‘Latin American’’ philosophy? This last question motivates the present essay. 7. Jose´ Ortega y Gasset, Meditations on Quijote, trans. Evelyn Rugg and Diego Marin (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 41–45. 8. Stanley Cavell, The Senses of Walden (New York: Viking Press, 1972), 32. 9. Ibid. 10. Cavell, Emerson’s Transcendental Etudes, 24. 11. Cavell, The Senses of Walden, 32–33. 12. Ibid., 33. 13. Cavell, Emerson’s Transcendental Etudes, 26. 14. Jorge J. E. Gracia, and Elizabeth Millan-Zaibert, eds., Latin American Philosophy in the 21st Century: The Human Conditions, Values, and the Search for Identity (New York: Prometheus Books, 2004), 222. 15. Cavell, The Senses of Walden, 35. 16. Ibid., 36. 17. Ibid., 38. 18. Karl Marx, Karl Marx Selected Writings, ed. David McLellan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 66. 19. Cavell, Emerson’s Transcendental Etudes, 31. 20. Gracia, Latin American Philosophy, 368. 21. This is, in fact, the general consensus among critics of Latin American philosophy. For examples of this critique, see Bondy’s early arguments; more recently, Jorge Gracia echoes Bondy’s complaint: ‘‘When Latin Americans look for philosophical views to adopt, or even criticize, they turn away from Latin America and pay attention rather to those European and North Amer-

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ican philosophers.’’ In Arlene Salles and Elizabeth Millan-Zaibert, eds., The Role of History in Latin American Philosophy: Contemporary Perspectives. (Albany: SUNY Press, 2006), 22. 22. Gracia, Latin American Philosophy, 368. 23. Ibid., 396. 24. Zea, Filosofı´a, 178. 25. Ibid., 191. 26. Ibid., 189. 27. Ibid., 186. 28. Cavell, Emerson’s Transcendental Etudes, 54. 29. Cavell, The Senses of Walden, 32. 30. Zea, Filosofı´a, 174. 31. Cavell, The Senses of Walden, 60. 32. Zea, The Role of the Americas, 4. chapter thirteen pragmatic p l ural ism, multiculturalism , and the new hispanic Jose´ Medina Portions of this essay are drawn from Jose´ Medina, ‘‘Pragmatism and Ethnicity: Critique, Reconstruction, and the New Hispanic,’’ Metaphilosophy 35 (1/2), 115–46. 1. To emphasize this, Dewey compares the critical task of the philosopher to that of the artist. See pp. 296–300 of Experience and Nature (in John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925–1953, Vol. 1: 1925 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988), and chapters 12–13 of Art as Experience (in John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925–1953, Vol. 10: 1933 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989). 2. A. Locke, The New Negro (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1925). 3. Locke’s pluralism denounces ‘‘the fallacy of the block conception of race as applied to the Negro peoples’’ (p. 169 in L. Harris, The Philosophy of Alain Locke: Harlem Renaissance and Beyond, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991). For a pluralist account of collective identity that emphasizes the differences as much as the commonalities between the members of a group, see J. Medina, ‘‘Identity Trouble: Disidentification and the Problem of Difference,’’ Philosophy and Social Criticism 29, no. 6 (2003): 655–80. 4. Shusterman explains this Lockean point as follows: ‘‘Esteem for the African American cultural tradition (its achievement and potential), will best be gained by putting a contemporary sample of its excellent artistic

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fruits on display, so that people can really feel its value in their own aesthetic experience.’’ R. Shusterman, Surface and Depth: Dialectics of Criticism and Culture (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002), 137. 5. In Du Bois’s humanist vision, leaders are educators and consciousness-raisers. See W. E. B. Du Bois, Writings (New York: Penguin, 1986). Like Locke’s, Du Bois’s view of leadership has been criticized as elitist. But for Du Bois, leaders are not a detached elite; they occupy an instrumental and dynamic position with respect to the group. It can even be argued that Du Bois understands leadership as a transitory position that must ultimately be transcended when its function is completed, when its educative and directive goals are reached, and all its potentialities exhausted (although new functions, goals, and potentialities can always arise from the changing conditions of life). For an interesting discussion of these issues see Joy James, Transcending the Talented Tenth (New York: Routledge, 1997). 6. This is an unfortunate phrase that Locke actually does use (cf. 1925, 4), but what he goes on to say makes clear that he does not conceive of the populace as composed of utterly uncritical and unthinking masses. 7. This point is reminiscent of Du Bois’s warning to the common man and woman not to follow their leaders uncritically. This warning is especially clear in Du Bois’s critique of the leadership of Booker T. Washington in ‘‘The Talented Tenth,’’ which involves not only a critique of Washington as a leader, but also, more important, a critique of his followers for not being critical of their leaders. 8. D. Hollinger, Postethnic America, rev. ed. (New York: Basic Books, 1997). 9. For a full discussion of the mutual relations of dependence and support between the individual and the community in Dewey’s philosophy, see part 3 of J. Stuhr, Genealogical Pragmatism: Philosophy, Experience, and Community (Albany: SUNY Press, 1997). 10. See M. Lugones, ‘‘Playfulness, ‘World-Traveling,’ and Loving Perception,’’ Hypatia 2 (1989): 3–19. 11. Here there appear the very important dangers of ‘‘ontological expansion’’ and the colonization of the psyche of others. For a discussion of these dangers see S. Sullivan, Revealing Whiteness: The Unconscious Habits of Racial Privilege (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006); and S. Sullivan and N. Tuana, eds., Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance (Albany: SUNY Press, 2007). 12. See R. Shusterman, Performing Live: Aesthetic Alternatives for the Ends of Art (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000).

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13. As Locke does in the New Negro, Martı´ talks about a collective identity that transcends national boundaries, a transnational identity shared by all Hispanic Americans. See J. Martı´, Jose´ Martı´ Reader: Writings on the Americas (New York: Ocean Press, 1999). However, while Locke’s principal target audience is composed of people of African descent living in the United States, in most of his essays Martı´ addresses mainly Hispanic peoples outside the United States. There are important problems for any ethnic notion of transnational identity and there are also specific problems concerning the notion of a pan-American identity for Hispanics (see Schutte 2000). Unfortunately, these problems are beyond the scope of this essay. For an approach that can shed light on these problems, see O. Schutte, ‘‘Negotiating Latina Identities,’’ in Hispanics/Latinos in the United Status: Ethnicity, Race, and Rights, ed. J. Gracia and P. De Greiff (New York: Routledge, 2000), 61–75. 14. See L. Zea, ‘‘Identity: A Philosophical Problem,’’ The Philosophical Forum 20 (1988): 33–42. 15. This Bolivarian idea of unity through diversity is at the core of contemporary accounts of Hispanic identity. See J. Gracia, Hispanic/Latino Identity: A Philosophical Perspective (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000); and also my ‘‘Identity Trouble’’ (2003). As discussed earlier, this is also an idea that we find in Locke. See Locke’s essay ‘‘Unity Through Diversity’’ in Harris, The Philosophy of Alain Locke, 133–38. 16. Although Martı´ paints a very dramatic picture of the implications of the mutual ignorance of the United States and Latin America, he nevertheless has an optimistic (perhaps too optimistic) vision of a common future for the Americas after these cognitive failures are repaired, a future without racial animosity, a future of equality and social justice based on intercultural understanding and respect. He writes: ‘‘The scorn of our formidable neighbor, who does not know us, is Our America’s greatest danger. And since the day of the visit is near, it is imperative that our neighbor knows us, and soon, so that it will not scorn us. Once it does know us, it will remove its hands out of respect. One must have faith in the best in men and distrust the worst’’ (Jose´ Martı´ Reader, 119). 17. It is important to note that Martı´ has a very negative concept of race that contrasts with his positive concept of ethnicity. He holds that racial distinctions are fictions artificially created out of ignorance and for the purpose of oppression: ‘‘To insist on racial divisions . . . is to place obstacles in the way of public and individual happiness, which can only be obtained by bringing people together as a nation’’ (Jose´ Martı´ Reader, 160). He argues, on the other hand, that ethnic distinctions are real and important, and that

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they can greatly contribute to the individual and collective development and self-realization of people. He warns us that ethnicity is often confused with race. For example, he says about ‘‘black men who proclaim their race’’ that ‘‘what they are really proclaiming is the spiritual identity that distinguishes one ethnic group from another’’ (Jose´ Martı´ Reader, 161). In ‘‘My Race’’ (1893) he argues for racial equality and contends that this equality will ultimately lead to the disappearance of racial distinctions. This is how he anticipates the thesis in ‘‘Our America’’: ‘‘There can be no racial animosity, because there are no races. The theorist and feeble thinkers string together and warm over the bookshelf races which the well-disposed observer and the fair-minded traveler vainly seek in the justice of Nature where man’s universal identity springs forth from triumphant love and the turbulent hunger for life. The soul, equal and eternal, emanates from bodies of different shapes and colors’’ (Jose´ Martı´ Reader, 119). chapter fourteen pragmatism , l atino i ntercul tural citizenship, and the transformation of american democracy Jose´-Antonio Orosco 1. Arjun Appadurai, Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Fear (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 122. 2. William Flores and Rina Benmayor, Latino Cultural Citizenship: Claiming Identity, Space, and Rights (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997), 57. 3. Mary Frances Williams, Ethics in Thucydides: The Ancient Simplicity (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1998), 125. 4. Philip Brook Manville, The Origins of Citizenship in Ancient Athens (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 43–54. 5. John Dewey, ‘‘Creative Democracy: The Task Before Us,’’ in John Dewey: The Political Writings, ed. Debra Morris and Ian Shapiro (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993), 241. 6. Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 236–49. 7. Samuel Huntington, Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004). 8. Patrick J. Buchanan, State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2006), 163. 9. Ibid., 162. 10. Horace M. Kallen, Cultural Pluralism and the American Idea: An Essay in Social Philosophy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1956), 82. 11. Ibid., 96.

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12. Ibid., 86. 13. Charles Taylor, ‘‘The Politics of Recognition.’’ In Multiculturalism, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 25–73. 14. Horace M. Kallen, ‘‘Democracy Versus the Melting Pot: A Study of American Nationality,’’ http://www.expo98.msu.edu/people/Kallen.htm. Accessed December 12, 2006. 15. Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990). 16. Kallen, ‘‘Democracy Versus the Melting Pot.’’ 17. See Will Kymlicka, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in The Rights of Minority Cultures, ed. Will Kymlicka (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 9–13. 18. Flores and Benmayor, Latino Cultural Citizenship, 262. 19. Ibid., 259. 20. Ibid., 261. 21. Michael Walzer, ‘‘Pluralism: A Political Perspective,’’ in Kymlicka, The Rights of Minority Cultures, 145. 22. Quoted in Robert Westbrook, John Dewey and American Democracy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), 213–14. 23. Jane Addams, ‘‘The Public School and the Immigrant Child,’’ in The Jane Addams Reader, ed. Jean Beth Elshtain (New York: Basic Books, 2002), 236. 24. Ibid., 236. 25. Jane Addams, ‘‘Americanization,’’ The Jane Addams Reader, 247. 26. Jane Addams, Newer Ideals of Peace (New York: Macmillan, 1907), 62–92. 27. Will Kymlicka and Wayne Norman, ‘‘Return of the Citizen: A Survey of Recent Work on Citizenship Theory,’’ in Theorizing Citizenship, ed. Ronald Beiner (Albany: State University Press of New York, 1995). 28. Flores and Benmayor, Latino Cultural Citizenship, 275. 29. T. H. Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950). 30. Michael Walzer, ‘‘A Better Vision: The Idea of Civil Society,’’ in The Civil Society Reader, ed. Virginia A. Hodgkinson and Michael Foley (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2003), 318. 31. Ibid., 318. 32. Quoted in Joel Olson, The Abolition of White Democracy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), 133. 33. In a manner similar to Du Bois, Richard Rorty suggests that liberal rights discourse is unable to provide a foundation for the kinds of solidarity America needs in order to build a society devoted to lessening arbitrary oppression and increasing sympathy among citizens. See ‘‘Looking

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Backward from the Year 2096,’’ in Richard Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope (London: Penguin, 1999), 243–51. 34. Martin Luther King Jr., Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), 157. 35. Martin Luther King Jr., ‘‘A Testament of Hope.’’ In A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., ed. James M. Washington (San Francisco: Harper, 1991), 317. 36. King, Where Do We Go From Here, 232. 37. Walter D. Mignolo, The Idea of Latin America (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 118. 38. Enrique Dussel, Beyond Philosophy: Ethics, History, Marxism, and Liberation Theology (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), 176. 39. Mignolo, The Idea of Latin America, 126. 40. Ibid., 139–40. 41. See Mihalis Mentinis, Zapatistas: The Chiapas Revolt and What it Means for Radical Politics (London: Pluto Press, 2006), 151–76. 42. Mignolo, The Idea of Latin America, 138. 43. See Rodolfo ‘‘Corky’’ Gonzales, ‘‘Arizona State University Speech,’’ in Message to Aztlan, ed. Antonio Esquibel (Houston: Arte Pu´blico, 2001), 35–55. 44. See Jose´-Antonio Orosco, ‘‘Neighborhood Democracy and Chicana/o Cultural Citizenship in Armando Rendon’s Chicano Manifesto,’’ Ethics, Place, and Environment 10, no. 2 (June 2007): 121–39. 45. Devon Pena, ‘‘Community Acequias in Colorado’s Rio Culbra Watershed: A Customary Commons in the Domain of Prior Appropriation,’’ University of Colorado Law Review 74, no. 2 (Spring 2003): 387–486. c h a p t e r fi f t e e n understanding immigration as lived personal experience Daniel Campos 1. I write of a single ‘‘American continent’’ to refer to North, Central— isthmian and insular—and South America, which are usually taken, in the United States, to be different continents. My conjecture is that the criterion of division in the United States is geological, since North and South America lie on different continental plates. For my purposes, however, it is more adequate to write of an ‘‘American continent,’’ since the process of South– North immigration is present throughout all of the ‘‘Americas.’’ 2. See C. S. Peirce, ‘‘The Law of Mind,’’ in The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 1:312–33.

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3. Ibid., 331. 4. I distinguish between feelings and sensibility toward the end of the essay. 5. See her biographical narrative in Rigoberta Menchu´, I, Rigoberta Menchu´: An Indian Woman in Guatemala, ed. Elisabeth Burgos-Debray, trans. Ann Wright (London: Verso, 1984). 6. I want to acknowledge that there may be important distinctions to be made regarding the experiences of forced immigration due to economic need or social conflict, voluntary immigration, temporary migration usually as economic labor, and political exile. However, I think these experiences have enough common features so as to appeal to them in my attempt to sketch a general account of the personal experience of immigration. 7. See Henry David Thoreau, ‘‘Walking,’’ in The Portable Thoreau, ed. Carl Bode (New York: Penguin, 1982), 592–630. 8. I think this applies to all migrations, including the migration from a rural to an urban setting within your own country, but our current interest is in international migration. 9. See John McDermott, ‘‘Glass Without Feet,’’ in Streams of Experience (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1986), 207–9. I am modifying McDermott’s use to some extent, because for him not all places are personscapes. Some of the cities in the North American Southwest, for example, are merely ‘‘glass without feet,’’ that is, not places in which human life is the crucial and vital organizing principle. 10. John McDermott, ‘‘Nature Nostalgia and the City,’’ in The Culture of Experience (New York: New York University Press, 1976), 198. 11. See Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude and Other Writings, trans. Lysander Kemp (New York: Grove Press, 1987), 195–212. 12. Ibid., 210–11. 13. See especially Mario Benedetti, Andamios (Mexico: Alfaguara, 1997), and Mario Benedetti, Geografı´as (Mexico: Alfaguara, 2002). 14. For Peirce’s ‘‘agapism’’—the doctrine that love, or ‘‘sympathy,’’ is really effective in the world—see his essay ‘‘Evolutionary Love’’ in The Essential Peirce, 352–71. 15. Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull-House, ed. Victoria Bissell Brown (New York: St. Martin’s, 1999), 87. 16. See Lara Trout, ‘‘Communal Inquiry and Social Justice: A Study of Peircean Affectivity’’ (Ph.D. diss., Pennsylvania State University, 2005). 17. Addams, Hull-House, 141. 18. Ibid.

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c h a p t e r si x t e e n dewey a nd l atina l esbians on the quest for purity Gregory Fernando Pappas 1. Lourdes Torres, ‘‘The Construction of the Self in U.S. Latina Autobiographies,’’ in Women, Knowledge, and Reality: Explorations in Feminist Philosophy, ed. Ann Garry and Marilyn Pearsall (New York: Routledge, 1996), 127–28. 2. Ibid., 132. 3. Gloria Anzaldu´a, Borderlands (San Francisco: Aunty Lute Books, 1991), 255. 4. Maria Lugones, ‘‘Purity, Impurity, and Separation,’’ Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 19, no. 2 (1994): 458–76. 5. Ibid., 458. 6. Ibid., 462. 7. Ibid., 476. 8. Ibid., 459. 9. Ibid., 463. 10. Ibid., 469. 11. I am adopting a particular understanding of metaphysics, one that was shared by the Hispanic philosopher Jose´ Ortega y Gasset and the American philosopher John Dewey. See Ortega’s Lessons in Metaphysics (New York: Norton, 1969) and John Dewey’s Experience and Nature, in John Dewey: Later Works, vol. 1, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Press, 1988). 12. For more on Dewey’s view of metaphysics and the usefulness of his map metaphor, see Boisvert’s essay ‘‘Dewey’s Metaphysics: Ground-Map of the Prototypically Real,’’ in Reading Dewey, ed. Larry Hickman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998). 13. One could believe that the ordinary gender and cultural distinctions we make are totally fanciful, arbitrary, subjective, or social constructs, but this would still assume a metaphysics. 14. Lugones, ‘‘Purity, Impurity, and Separation,’’ 462. 15. Ibid., 477. 16. Ibid., 463. 17. Ibid., 462. 18. John Dewey, ‘‘Context and Thought,’’ in Boydston, John Dewey: The Later Works, 6:19. 19. John Dewey, ‘‘Reconstruction in Philosophy’’ in ibid., 12:94. 20. Lugones, ‘‘Purity, Impurity, and Separation,’’ 460. 21. Ibid., 464.

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Ibid., 469. Ibid., 464. Ibid., 476. Ibid., 460. Ibid., 476. chapter seventeen dewey a nd mart ´ı : cul ture in education Alejandro Strong

1. John Lachs, ‘‘Human Natures,’’ in Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 63, no. 7 (June 1990): 29–39, 38. 2. John Dewey, Democracy and Education, in The Middle Works, 1889– 1924 vol. 9, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985), 107. 3. Ibid., 109. 4. In Experience and Education, Dewey gives a concise restatement in terms of purpose: ‘‘The formation of purpose is, then, a rather intellectual operation. It involves (1) observation of surrounding conditions; (2) knowledge of what has happened in similar situations in the past, a knowledge obtained partly by recollection and partly from the information, advice, and warning of those who have had a wider experience; and (3) judgment which puts together what is observed and what is recalled to see what they signify. A purpose differs from an original impulse and desire through its translation into a plan and method of action based on foresight of the consequences of acting under given observed conditions in a certain way.’’ John Dewey, Experience and Education (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1938), 68–69. 5. Jose´ Martı´, ‘‘Nationality and Education’’ in On Education, trans. Elinor Randall, ed. Philip S. Foner (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1979), 166. 6. Dewey, Democracy and Education, 56. 7. Ibid., 21. 8. Ibid., 17. 9. Ibid., 42. 10. Ibid., 43. Some contemporary anthropologists reject this position. By looking at ritual practices of nomadic people they have been able to discover complex meanings implemented even in physically undisturbed environments. The work of Peter Jordan and Tim Ingold in the field of material culture anthropology has tried to move the ways in which we compare cul-

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tures away from a savage to civilized-based progression. By rejecting Western standards as the basis of comparative anthropology, these authors believe we will be better able to see the actual practices of groups. Jordan and Ingold are seeking to develop a pluralistic nonprogressive method. See Tim Ingold, The Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill (London: Routledge, 2000). See also Peter Jordan, Material Culture and Sacred Landscapes: The Anthropology of the Siberian Khanty (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003). 11. Dewey, Democracy and Education, 24. 12. Ibid. 13. Martı´, ‘‘Nationality and Education,’’ 168–69. 14. Ibid., 166. 15. Ibid., 169. 16. Ibid., 193. 17. Ibid., 169. 18. Ibid., 170–71. 19. Dewey, Democracy and Education, 257. 20. Ibid., 258. 21. Ibid., 27. 22. Ibid., 130. 23. In ‘‘The Future of Philosophy,’’ John Dewey used the term ‘‘culture’’ to mean ‘‘dealing with the patterns of human relationships. It includes such objects as language, religion, industry, politics, fine arts, in so far as there is a common pattern running through them, rather than as so many separate and independent things’’ (Later Works 17:466–67). 24. Dewey, Democracy and Education, 248. 25. Ibid., 249. 26. I still think it is important to say that the view was wrong in 1916, even if we refrain from judging people who hold views characteristic of their time. 27. Patricia Phelan, Ann Locke Davidson, and Hanh Thanh Cao, ‘‘Students’ Multiple Worlds: Negotiating the Boundaries of Family, Peer, and School Cultures,’’ Anthropology and Education Quarterly 22, no. 3 (September 1991): 224–50. chapter eighteen d e w e y ’s a n d fr eir e’s p eda g og ies of r eco gn iti on : a critique of subtractive school ing Kim Dı´az 1. Richard Rodriguez, Hunger of Memory (New York: Bantam, 2004). 2. Samuel P. Huntington, ‘‘The Hispanic Challenge,’’ Foreign Policy 141 (March/April 2004): 30–45.

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3. ‘‘High School Drop out Rates,’’ Child Trends Data Bank, 2005. Retrieved February 3, 2008 (http://www.childtrendsdatabank.org). 4. Portes Alejandro and Rube´n G. Rumbaut, Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). 5. Angela Valenzuela, Subtractive Schooling: U.S.–Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring (Albany: State University of New York, 1999). 6. Ibid., 3. 7. Ibid., 26. 8. Comment made by a teacher at Seguin High School, Houston, Texas, to Angela Valenzuela. 9. Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Continuum, 2006), 72. 10. Ibid., 63. 11. Angela Valenzuela, ‘‘Reflections on the Subtractive Underpinnings of Education Research and Policy,’’ Journal of Teacher Education 53, no. 3 (2002): 235–41. 12. Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 64. 13. John Dewey, ‘‘The Moral Training Given by the School Community,’’ in The Essential Dewey, ed. Larry A. Hickman and Thomas M. Alexander (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 246–49. 14. John Dewey, ‘‘Nationalizing Education,’’ in ibid., 265–69. 15. Ibid., 266. 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid., 269. 19. John Dewey and Arthur F. Bentley, Knowing and the Known (Boston: Beacon Press, 1949), 276. chapter nineteen rel igiousl y b inding the imperial sel f: c l a s s i c a l pragmatism ’s c all and liberation, phil osophy ’ s res pon se Alexander V. Stehn 1. Eduardo Mendieta, Latin American Philosophy: Currents, Issues, Debates (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), 5. Of course, emphasis on the unity of ‘‘America’’—even when sincerely undertaken as a way to foster dialogue between the plurality of countries that constitute North, Central, and South America—inevitably carries with it two very substantial

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risks: (1) Inter-Americanism implicitly negates America’s indigenous populations, since the name ‘‘America’’ itself is of decidedly European and colonial origin. For a discussion of this ‘‘cover up,’’ see Walter D. Mignolo, The Idea of Latin America (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005), (2) Likewise, panAmerican projects threaten to obscure the substantial North–South power differential, often smuggling imperialism in under the guise of mutual interest and intimacy, as insightfully discussed in Sophia A. McClennen, ‘‘InterAmerican Studies or Imperial American Studies?,’’ Comparative American Studies 3, no. 4 (2005). These two dangers are nonetheless mitigated by the lack of widely recognizable alternatives to the term ‘‘America’’ at present and this volume’s self-conscious refusal of the dangerous but typical reduction of American philosophy (in the broadest, inter-American sense) to ‘‘American’’ philosophy (in the narrow, nationalistic sense). 2. Extending Mendieta’s insightful claim that philosophical reconstructions of pragmatism are always somehow linked to social and political reconstructions of America, I would like to suggest that this volume’s attempt to understand pragmatism in and through the Hispanic world thereby contributes its mite to a United States whose physical and intellectual borders alike are fundamentally permeable, a United States that is reciprocally (rather than imperially) constituted by its relations to the Hispanic world that lies both beyond and within the United States itself. 3. Here I am simply extending the scope of the claim for metaphilosophical common ground made by Gregory Pappas in Chapter 10 to cover the case of pragmatism and liberation philosophy. 4. According to a survey report released by the Pew Global Attitudes Project in 2002, 59 percent of people in the United States considered religion to be very important personally, the highest percentage of any ‘‘developed’’ nation surveyed. The majority of people in every Latin American country (with the exception of Argentina) also considered religion to be very important personally, ranging from 80 percent of people surveyed in Guatemala to 57 percent in Mexico. See The Pew Research Center, ‘‘Among Wealthy Nations . . . U.S. Stands Alone in Its Embrace of Religion,’’ http://peoplepress.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID⳱167. 5. William James, The Principles of Psychology, ed. Frederick Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis, 3 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981; henceforth PP); William James, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, ed. Frederick Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979; henceforth WB). See Bennett Ramsey, Submitting to Freedom:

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The Religious Vision of William James (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 6. 6. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, ed. Frederick Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985; henceforth VRE); William James, A Pluralistic Universe, ed. Frederick Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977; henceforth PU). 7. While I admittedly spend more time laying out James’s claims than Dussel’s claims in this essay, my hope is that the use of Dussel to critique and develop James performs a sufficient reversal of the imperialistic flow of power in which it is generally Latin America that needs to be challenged to develop along the lines of the United States. 8. George Cotkin, William James, Public Philosopher (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 72. 9. Ibid., 10. 10. Ramsey, Submitting to Freedom, 48–49. 11. While I am quickly telling the story of James’s work as a linear, chronological development for the sake of clarity and convenience, this should not be taken to mean that I am endorsing the traditional view that James’s thought follows clear lines of progressive development (from psychology, to religion, to philosophy proper), especially since such interpretations are often used to minimize the importance of James’s sustained interest in religion. Instead, I agree with James’s biographer Robert Richardson, who argues that James’s central concerns always had psychological, religious, and philosophical facets. See Robert D. Richardson, William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), 364. 12. It is the emphasis on binding that leads me to follow Bennett Ramsey in designating this activity as religious in the etymological sense of ‘‘to bind together.’’ 13. Cotkin, William James, 79. 14. To be fair to James, he tells us that The Will to Believe was written for academic audiences plagued by ‘‘too much questioning and too little active responsibility’’ (WB, 39). James admitted that if he ‘‘were addressing the Salvation Army or a miscellaneous popular crowd it would be a misuse of opportunity to preach the liberty of believing as I have in these pages preached’’ because ‘‘what mankind at large most lacks is criticism and caution, not faith’’ (WB, 7). 15. For more on James’s biography as it relates to the formation of his anti-imperialist stance, see the chapter titled ‘‘The Imperial Imperative’’ in Cotkin, William James, 123–51.

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16. For more on James’s anti-imperialism—the political issue on which he spent the most time, thought, and practical effort—see the section ‘‘James as Reformer’’ in Ralph Barton Perry, The Thought and Character of William James (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 1996), 242–52. For the quotation here, see Cotkin, William James, 133. 17. In William James, Essays in Religion and Morality, ed. Frederick Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 162–74. Henceforth ERM. 18. This essay is a partial attempt to remedy the fact that exceedingly little secondary literature on Varieties seriously considers that James composed it while firing off regular rejoinders to Roosevelt’s successful imperialistic appropriation of the discourse of heroism. James was particularly infuriated by the way in which Roosevelt’s 1899 speech titled ‘‘The Strenuous Life’’ appropriated James’s discourse while dramatically changing the ends to which strenuousness should be directed. 19. This blindness is, of course, the subject of ‘‘On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings,’’ published in 1899 shortly after he became a full-blooded anti-imperialist. In William James, Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life’s Ideals, ed. Frederick Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 132–49. Henceforth TT. We should also recall that the famous 1898 lecture that launched pragmatism, ‘‘Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results,’’ was delivered at Berkeley only a month after the ceasing of hostilities in the Spanish-American war. In William James, Pragmatism, ed. Frederick Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975), 255–74. All of which is to say that James’s pragmatism is bound up with his anti-imperialism, which in turn informs his philosophy of religion and pluralistic metaphysics. 20. Enrique Dussel, The Underside of Modernity: Apel, Ricoeur, Rorty, Taylor and the Philosophy of Liberation, trans. Eduardo Mendieta (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 1996), vii. 21. Enrique Dussel, The Invention of the Americas: Eclipse of ‘‘The Other’’ and the Myth of Modernity, trans. Michael D. Barber (New York: Continuum Publishing Company, 1995), 35. 22. Ironically, much of the international criticism of James’s pragmatism, which was launched in conjunction with his anti-imperialism, focused on pragmatism’s connection with imperialism. While not the focus of my essay, I would argue that the danger of James’s pragmatism is not its imperialism but rather the ease with which it is appropriated by an imperialist discourse.

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23. Dussel, The Invention of the Americas, 50. While Dussel concentrates in this book on the original conquest of the American continent and its Amerindian population, he insists that the same logic operates in the later age of global U.S. imperialism. James actually rails against the very same ‘‘civilizing’’ logic in ‘‘The Philippine Tangle’’ published in 1899: ‘‘We are to be missionaries of civilization, and to bear the white man’s burden, painful as it often is. We must sow our ideals, plant our order, impose our God. The individual lives are nothing. Our duty and our destiny call, and civilization must go on. Could there be a more damning indictment of that whole bloated idol termed ‘modern civilization’ than this amounts to?’’ William James, Essays, Comments, and Reviews, ed. Frederick Burkhardt and Ignas K. Skrupskelis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 157. Henceforth ECR. 24. James writes: ‘‘Now the blindness in human beings, of which this discourse will treat, is the blindness with which we all are afflicted in regard to the feelings of creatures and people different from ourselves’’ (TT, 132). 25. In ‘‘The Philippine Tangle,’’ James writes: ‘‘The issue is perfectly plain at last. We are cold-bloodedly, wantonly and abominably destroying the soul of a people who never did us an atom of harm in their lives’’ (ECR, 157). 26. While Varieties highlights the way that religion can be powerfully used for good purposes, James openly admits that it can also be used for evil ones: ‘‘By the very intensity of his fidelity to the paltry ideals with which an inferior intellect may inspire him, a saint can be even more objectionable and damnable than a superficial carnal man would be in the same situation’’ (VRE, 294–95). For James, then, the problem is not that zealous individuals like Roosevelt and his Rough Riders are too devoted or obedient to God, but rather that such a God, ‘‘full of partiality for his individual favorites,’’ is not ethically worthy of devotion or obedience (VRE, 277). 27. Dussel’s most sustained discussion of fetishistic vs. liberatory religion can be found in Enrique Dussel, ‘‘The Concept of Fetishism in Marx’s Thought (Elements for a General Marxist Theory of Religion),’’ Radical Philosophy Review 6, no. 1, 2 (2003): 1–28, 93–129. James implicitly draws something like this difference in Varieties, but he simplistically attributes almost all of ‘‘the basenesses so commonly charged to religion’s account’’ as stemming not from religion per se, but rather from ‘‘religion’s wicked practical partner, the spirit of corporate dominion’’ and ‘‘religion’s wicked intellectual partner, the spirit of dogmatic dominion’’ (VRE, 271). After all, one can be ethically faithful in a corporate context just as easily as one can be dangerously dogmatic in an individualistic context.

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28. The general thrust of this essay is that we ought to sensitize ourselves to the significance of the inner lives of others and that such sensitization marks ‘‘an increase of religious insight into life,’’ which in turn augments the ‘‘religion of democracy’’ (TT, 156). 29. I am borrowing this notion of religious submission from Ramsey, Submitting to Freedom. 30. James does go on to nuance his claim as follows: ‘‘Each of us must discover for himself the kind of religion and the amount of saintship which best comports with what he believes to be his powers and feels to be his truest mission and vocation. There are no successes to be guaranteed and no set orders to be given to individuals, so long as we follow the methods of empirical philosophy’’ (VRE, 299). We can see here how James remains an empiricist to the end insofar as he continues to judge saintliness by what he terms its ‘‘economic’’ fruits. 31. For a thoughtful working out of James’s radical pluralism by a political scientist, see Kennan Ferguson, William James: Politics in the Pluriverse (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007). 32. I translate this phrase from Dussel’s description of the yo conquisto (‘‘I conquer’’) as ‘‘un ego que continu´a creciendo’’ in a lecture titled ‘‘Filosofı´a Moderna y Filosofı´a Colonial’’ given at the Universidad Nacional Auto´noma de Me´xico on February 13, 2008. The ambiguity of the Spanish contains the tension I am trying elaborate insofar as the verb crecer can be rendered as ‘‘to grow’’ in a number of distinct senses: from ‘‘grow in size,’’ to ‘‘grow up,’’ to ‘‘develop,’’ to ‘‘evolve.’’ While Dussel clearly meant his description to have a negative connotation, I am fascinated by James’s attempt to develop an account of the growth of the ego in decidedly positive terms. 33. Dussel also suggests that we undertake this sort of faithful, imaginative, and sympathetic movement, especially in chapter 6 of The Invention of the Americas, which invites us ‘‘to change skins and to see through new eyes’’ in order to sympathetically imagine the European ‘‘discovery’’ of America as experienced by its indigenous peoples (74). 34. Enrique Dussel, Philosophy of Liberation, trans. Aquilina Martinez and Christine Morkovsky (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2003), 33, 40. 35. Ibid., 41. 36. Ralph Waldo Emerson, ‘‘Self-Reliance,’’ in The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Brooks Atkinson and Mary Oliver (New York: Modern Library, 2000), 132–53. 37. For a more detailed study of this expansive movement and an incisive analysis of its potential pitfalls, see Ramo´n del Castillo, ‘‘The Glass Prison:

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Emerson, James, and the Religion of the Individual,’’ in Fringes of Religious Experience Cross-Perspectives on William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience, ed. Sergio Franzese and Felicitas Kraemer, Process Thought, V. 12 (Frankfurt: Ontos, 2007). 38. To make this point, Dussel prefers Levinas’s term hostage to any language that might be construed as that of ownership: ‘‘The hostage is an innocent, just person who ‘witnesses’ the victim (the other). The victim suffers a traumatic action. The hostage suffers ‘for’ the other. . . . Out of his or her own satisfaction (i.e., the absence of need), the hostage responds to the victim.’’ Enrique Dussel, ‘‘ ‘Sensibility’ and ‘Otherness’ in Emmanuel Levinas,’’ Philosophy Today 43, no. 2 (1999): 126–27. 39. The term ‘‘ontological expansion’’ is borrowed from Shannon Sullivan, Revealing Whiteness: The Unconscious Habits of Racial Privilege (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006). It is but a new term for some old ways of thinking about James’s own social blindness that were first and most famously expressed by Max C. Otto, ‘‘On a Certain Blindness in William James,’’ Ethics 53, no. 3 (1943): 184–91. 40. Dussel, Philosophy of Liberation, 59.

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Contributors



Douglas Browning, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, resides in Georgetown, Texas. He has devoted most of his academic work and publications to metaphysics, ethics, and American philosophy. He is the author of numerous articles in philosophical journals, as well as of the books Act and Agent and Ontology and the Practical Arena. He has also published two books of poetry and several novels. Daniel Campos is Assistant Professor in the Philosophy Department at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. He holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from Pennsylvania State University (2005). His main research is in the philosophy of Charles S. Peirce, especially as the basis for a systematic account of creativity in human practices such as mathematics, science, and sport. Recent articles have appeared in Cognitio, Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, Perspectives on Science, and Synthese. Marcus Vinicius da Cunha is Professor of History and Philosophy of Education at University of Sa˜o Paulo (Ribeira˜o Preto, Brazil). He edited a special issue of Studies in Philosophy and Education about pragmatism in Latin America and published ‘‘Logic, Intelligence, and Education in Dewey and Piaget’’ in the book Pragmatism, Education, and Children, edited by M. Taylor, H. Schreier, and P. Ghiraldelli Jr. Kim Dı´az is a philosophy Ph.D. candidate at Texas A&M University. Her research consists of sociopolitical theory through the classical { 36 5 }

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American pragmatist and Latin American philosophical perspectives, immigration, pedagogy, and Eastern philosophy. She is currently working on examining the philosophical bases of cognitive behavioral therapy in stoicism and Buddhism. Anto´n Donoso is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at University of Detroit Mercy. His area of research is in Latin American philosophy and pragmatism, and his publications include Julian Marias (1982) and Jose´ Ortega y Gasset: A Bibliography of Secondary Sources (1986). Ruben Flores received his Ph.D. in U.S. and Mexican history from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2006. He is completing a book manuscript on the influence of postrevolutionary Mexican pragmatism on the integration campaigns of the U.S. public schools after World War II. In 2008–9, he was a visiting fellow at UT Austin’s Institute for Historical Studies. He is currently assistant professor of American studies at the University of Kansas. De´bora Cristina Garcia is a graduate in Pedagogy from the College of Philosophy, Sciences, and Letters of Ribeira˜o Preto (USP), an elementary school teacher, and a member of the Research Group ‘‘Rhetoric and Argumentation in Pedagogy,’’ Brasil (CNPq/USP). Manuela Alejandra Gomez is a philosophy instructor in El Paso, Texas. She is also a border journalist and photographer. She has several national and international awards for her work, in which she tries to capture the philosophical essence of social issues. She published the book Rediscovering the Philosophical Importance of Jose´ Ingenieros in 2008. She is a graduate of Texas A&M University. Jose´ Medina is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. He works primarily in Philosophy of Language and Social/ Political Philosophy, with a special focus on gender, race, ethnicity, Hispanic philosophy, and American philosophy. He is the author of

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Speaking from Elsewhere (2006), Language: Key Concepts in Philosophy (2005), and The Unity of Wittgenstein’s Philosophy (2002). Jaime Nubiola is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Navarra, Spain. His research is in the philosophy of Peirce, pragmatism, and the history of analytic philosophy. His publications include La renovacio´n pragmatista de la filosofı´a analı´tica (1994), El taller de la filosofı´a (1999), and co-authored with Fernando Zalamea, Peirce y el mundo hispa´nico (2006). In 1994 he launched the Grupo de Estudios Peirceanos to promote the study of C. S. Peirce and pragmatism. He is editor of Anuario Filosofico. Jose´-Antonio Orosco is associate professor of philosophy at Oregon State University in Corvallis, where he teaches classes in political and social philosophy and Latino/Latin American thought. He is also director of the Peace Studies program at OSU. His most recent book is Cesar Chavez and the Commonsense of Nonviolence (2008). Currently, he is working on a book dealing with American philosophy and immigration. Gregory Fernando Pappas works within the American pragmatist and Latin American traditions in ethics and social-political philosophy. He is the author of numerous articles on the philosophy of William James and John Dewey. His most recent book is John Dewey’s Ethics: Democracy as Experience (2008). He has been the recipient of a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship as well as the William James and the Latin American Thought prizes by the American Philosophical Association. He is the editor-in-chief of The Inter-American Journal of Philosophy. Paloma Pe´rez-Ilzarbe is Contracted Professor at the University of Navarra, Department of Philosophy. Her main field of research covers medieval logic, semantics, and epistemology. She also collaborates with the Peirce Studies Group at the University of Navarra, focusing on some twentieth-century Hispanic pragmatists. She is coeditor

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(with Jaime Nubiola) of the monograph issue Pragmatismo Hispa´nico (Anuario Filoso´fico XL/2) in 2007. Pablo Quintanilla is professor of Philosophy at Pontificia Universidad Cato´lica del Peru´. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Virginia and his M.A. at the University of London, King’s College. He has published, with Richard Antonio Orozco and Cesar Escajadillo, Pensamiento y accio´n. La filosofı´a peruana a comienzos del siglo XX (2009). He is editor of Ensayos de metafilosofı´a (2009). He also edited with Patricia Ruiz Bravo and Pepi Patron Desarrollo humano y libertades. Una perspectiva interdisciplinaria (2009). Carlos Alberto Sanchez is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at San Jose State University. He specializes in phenomenology and Mexican philosophy and has published papers in Continental Philosophy Review, Human Studies, Dissidences, and several anthologies. He is the Associate Editor of the APA Newsletter of Hispanic/Latino Issues in Philosophy. Alexander V. Stehn, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas–Pan American, received his Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University in 2010. His primary interests are in ethics, social and political philosophy, and the philosophy of religion, especially as they appear at the intersections between U.S.-American pragmatism and Latin American liberation philosophy. He is currently working on a book on the philosophical uses of religion in the Americas. Alejandro Strong received the M.A. in philosophy from Southern Illinois University Carbondale in 2007. He currently divides his time between graduate school at Southern Illinois University and working for Outward Bound’s Maine Land programs as a staff trainer, instructor, and course director. He is working on a dissertation on philosophy and climate change.

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Marta Torregrosa is a Professor at the School of Communication of the University of Navarra (Spain). She studies the philosophy of Eugenio d’Ors and communication theory. She has published articles in journals such as Anuario Filoso´fico, Zer, and Palabra clave. She is author of Filosofı´a y vida de Eugenio d’Ors (2003).

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american philosophy Douglas R. Anderson and Jude Jones, series editors



Kenneth Laine Ketner, ed., Peirce and Contemporary Thought: Philosophical Inquiries. Max H. Fisch, ed., Classic American Philosophers: Peirce, James, Royce, Santayana, Dewey, Whitehead, second edition. Introduction by Nathan Houser. John E. Smith, Experience and God, second edition. Vincent G. Potter, Peirce’s Philosophical Perspectives. Ed. by Vincent Colapietro. Richard E. Hart and Douglas R. Anderson, eds., Philosophy in Experience: American Philosophy in Transition. Vincent G. Potter, Charles S. Peirce: On Norms and Ideals, second edition. Introduction by Stanley M. Harrison. Vincent M. Colapietro, ed., Reason, Experience, and God: John E. Smith in Dialogue. Introduction by Merold Westphal. Robert J. O’Connell, S.J., William James on the Courage to Believe, second edition. Elizabeth M. Kraus, The Metaphysics of Experience: A Companion to Whitehead’s ‘‘Process and Reality,’’ second edition. Introduction by Robert C. Neville. Kenneth Westphal, ed., Pragmatism, Reason, and Norms: A Realistic Assessment—Essays in Critical Appreciation of Frederick L. Will. Beth J. Singer, Pragmatism, Rights, and Democracy. Eugene Fontinell, Self, God, and Immorality: A Jamesian Investigation. Roger Ward, Conversion in American Philosophy: Exploring the Practice of Transformation.

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Michael Epperson, Quantum Mechanics and the Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. Kory Sorrell, Representative Practices: Peirce, Pragmatism, and Feminist Epistemology. Naoko Saito, The Gleam of Light: Moral Perfectionism and Education in Dewey and Emerson. Josiah Royce, The Basic Writings of Josiah Royce. Douglas R. Anderson, Philosophy Americana: Making Philosophy at Home in American Culture. James Campbell and Richard E. Hart, eds., Experience as Philosophy: On the World of John J. McDermott. John J. McDermott, The Drama of Possibility: Experience as Philosophy of Culture. Edited by Douglas R. Anderson. Larry A. Hickman, Pragmatism as Post-Postmodernism: Lessons from John Dewey. Larry A. Hickman, Stefan Neubert, and Kersten Reich, eds., John Dewey Between Pragmatism and Constructivism. Dwayne A. Tunstall, Yes, But Not Quite: Encountering Josiah Royce’s Ethico-Religious Insight. Josiah Royce, Race Questions, Provincialism, and Other American Problems, Expanded Edition. Edited by Scott L. Pratt and Shannon Sullivan. Lara Trout, The Politics of Survival: Peirce, Affectivity, and Social Criticism. John R. Shook and James A. Good, John Dewey’s Philosophy of Spirit, with the 1897 Lecture on Hegel.

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