Recent Western Philosophy IV: Pragmatism (James, Dewey) and Post-Modernism (Nietzsche, Rorty, Levinas)

The last two blocks of Unit 6 are pragmatism and post-modernism. William James and John Dewey made meaning and truth matters of practical consequence and inquiry; James studied religious experience and Dewey rethought religion and education. Under "Post-Modernism" the syllabus places Nietzsche's critique of the Enlightenment, will to power and genealogy of morality, Richard Rorty's critique of representationalism and his edifying philosophy, and Emmanuel Levinas's ethics as first philosophy. Three items need correcting: "Genealogy of Moral" is Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals (1887); "Immanuel Levinas" is Emmanuel Levinas; and Nietzsche and Levinas are not usually called post-modernists themselves, though both are major sources for post-modern thought, which is how the syllabus uses the heading. NET Education treats pragmatism for its theory of schooling; here the focus is its theory of meaning and truth.

1. William James: pragmatic theories of meaning and truth, and religious experience

Pragmatism began with C. S. Peirce's maxim in "How to Make Our Ideas Clear" (1878): our conception of an object is our conception of its practical effects. William James (1842–1910) popularised and broadened it in Pragmatism (1907). The pragmatic method settles metaphysical disputes by asking what practical difference it would make if one view rather than the other were true; if none, the dispute is idle. James's example is the squirrel on a tree trunk circled by a man: whether the man "goes round" the squirrel depends on what practical sense of "going round" is meant.

  • Pragmatic theory of truth: "True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot." Truth is not a static copy-relation but something that "happens to an idea": it becomes true, is made true by events. "The true is only the expedient in the way of our thinking", expedient "in the long run and on the whole"; a true idea has "cash-value" in experience.
  • The Will to Believe (1896): where an option between hypotheses is live, forced and momentous and cannot be decided on intellectual grounds, as with religious belief, we have the right to let our passional nature decide.
  • The Varieties of Religious Experience (Gifford Lectures, Edinburgh, 1901–02) defines religion as "the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine". It contrasts the healthy-minded and the "sick soul" who needs to be "twice-born", and gives four marks of mystical states: ineffability, noetic quality, transiency and passivity. Religious experience is to be judged "by its fruits, not by its roots".

2. John Dewey: truth, a common faith and education

  • Concept of truth: Dewey's instrumentalism treats ideas as tools for resolving problematic situations. Inquiry is "the controlled or directed transformation of an indeterminate situation" into a unified one (Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, 1938), and Dewey preferred "warranted assertibility" to "truth" for what successful inquiry yields, since every conclusion remains open to further inquiry.
  • A Common Faith (1934) distinguishes "religion", a body of beliefs and institutions tied to the supernatural, from "the religious", a quality of experience that unifies the self around ideal ends. Dewey would free the religious from religions. "God" can be used for the active relation between the ideal and the actual, the unity of ideal ends that stir us to desire and action.
  • Education: in Democracy and Education (1916) and Experience and Education (1938), education is growth and "the reconstruction or reorganization of experience"; it is not preparation for life but life itself. Learning happens through doing and solving real problems, the school should be a miniature democratic community, and the aim is the capacity for further growth, which makes education and democracy inseparable.

3. Nietzsche: critique of the Enlightenment, will to power and the genealogy of morals

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) attacked the Enlightenment's faith in reason, progress, universal morality and objective truth as a secularised continuation of Christian faith. In The Gay Science (1882, §125) a madman announces that "God is dead... and we have killed him": the belief that grounded European values has collapsed, and with it the moral and metaphysical systems built on it, though Europe has not yet understood this. Against the idea of a view from nowhere he offers perspectivism: "there are no facts, only interpretations", and knowledge is always from some perspective and in the service of some form of life.

  • Will to power: life itself is will to power, the drive of every living thing not merely to survive but to grow, to discharge its strength, to master and to shape (Beyond Good and Evil, 1886; Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 1883–85). Values are expressions of will to power, and the task is a "revaluation of all values", pointing towards the Übermensch as one who creates his own values, and the affirmation of life expressed in the thought of eternal recurrence.
  • On the Genealogy of Morals (1887), in three essays:
    (1) "Good and evil" against "good and bad": noble master morality called itself "good" and the base "bad"; slave morality, born of ressentiment, called the masters "evil" and itself "good", a "slave revolt in morality" that Nietzsche traces through priestly Judaism and Christianity.
    (2) Guilt and bad conscience originate in the creditor-debtor relation and in instincts turned inward when humans were enclosed in society.
    (3) The ascetic ideal gives suffering a meaning, since "man would rather will nothingness than not will".
⚠️ Genealogy is not a history of which morality is true
Nietzsche's genealogy asks about the origin and value of our values: under what conditions did people invent "good and evil", and what do these judgements themselves express? It is meant to unsettle the assumption that our morality is simply given. The syllabus's "Genealogy of Moral" is this book, On the Genealogy of Morals.

4. Rorty and Levinas

Richard Rorty (1931–2007) argued in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979) against representationalism, the picture of the mind as a great mirror containing representations of reality, some accurate and some not, which modern philosophy since Descartes, Locke and Kant has tried to inspect. Knowledge is not accurate representation but a matter of social practice, of what our peers let us say; justification is conversational, not a relation between mind and world. Epistemology as a foundational discipline that tells the other disciplines what counts as knowledge should therefore be abandoned, and with it the methodological ambition of philosophy.

In place of systematic philosophy, which builds foundations, Rorty commends edifying philosophy, which keeps the conversation of mankind going, questions received vocabularies and helps us become new people rather than getting things right; his heroes are the later Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Dewey. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989) develops the "liberal ironist", who knows her final vocabulary is contingent yet is committed to reducing cruelty.

Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995), a Lithuanian-born French philosopher trained by Husserl and Heidegger, argued in Totality and Infinity (1961) that Western philosophy has been a philosophy of the Same, reducing the other to categories of knowledge and being. Against this he made ethics first philosophy: prior to ontology and knowledge is the encounter with the face (visage) of the Other, which resists every attempt to comprehend or possess it and says, before any word, "you shall not kill". The relation is asymmetrical: I am responsible for the Other without reciprocity, infinitely, and this responsibility constitutes my subjectivity. Otherwise than Being (1974) radicalises the theme, and his essay "Ethics as First Philosophy" (1984) gives the syllabus's phrase.

ℹ️ Emmanuel, not Immanuel
The syllabus writes "Immanuel Levinas", probably by analogy with Immanuel Kant. The philosopher's name is Emmanuel Levinas (sometimes Lévinas). A matching question pairing "the face of the Other" or "ethics as first philosophy" with Kant is a distractor built on the same confusion.

Key takeaways

  • James: the pragmatic method (what practical difference does it make?); true ideas are those we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify; truth happens to an idea; the Will to Believe; Varieties (1901–02): four marks of mystical states, fruits not roots.
  • Dewey: instrumentalism, inquiry as transforming an indeterminate situation, warranted assertibility; A Common Faith: the religious against religion; education as growth and reconstruction of experience (Democracy and Education, 1916).
  • Nietzsche: God is dead (Gay Science §125); perspectivism; will to power and revaluation of values; On the Genealogy of Morals (1887): master and slave morality, ressentiment, bad conscience, the ascetic ideal.
  • Rorty: against the mind as mirror of nature (1979) and against epistemology as foundational method; edifying against systematic philosophy; the liberal ironist.
  • Emmanuel (not Immanuel) Levinas: ethics as first philosophy; the face of the Other commands "you shall not kill"; asymmetrical, infinite responsibility; Totality and Infinity (1961).

Practice questions (10)

Attempt each one before opening the answer. Every explanation names the tempting wrong option as well as the right one, because that is where marks are lost.

  1. "The true is only the expedient in the way of our thinking" is a statement of:

    1. William James
    2. John Dewey
    3. C. S. Peirce
    4. Richard Rorty
    Show answer

    Answer: A — William James

    James says this in Pragmatism (1907), adding "in the long run and on the whole". Peirce framed the pragmatic maxim about meaning, Dewey spoke of warranted assertibility, and Rorty rejected representationalism.

  2. Which of the following is NOT one of James's four marks of mystical states?

    1. Ineffability
    2. Passivity
    3. Permanence
    4. Noetic quality
    Show answer

    Answer: C — Permanence

    The four marks are ineffability, noetic quality, transiency and passivity. Mystical states are transient, not permanent: James says they cannot be sustained for long.

  3. Dewey's A Common Faith distinguishes "religion" from:

    1. "The religious", a quality of experience unifying the self around ideal ends
    2. "Fideism", religion as a self-contained language-game
    3. "Faith", the leap made in the face of the absurd
    4. "Mysticism", experience marked by ineffability and passivity
    Show answer

    Answer: A — "The religious", a quality of experience unifying the self around ideal ends

    Dewey frees "the religious" quality of experience from supernaturalist "religions". Ineffability and passivity are James's marks of mysticism, the leap is Kierkegaard's and "Wittgensteinian fideism" is Nielsen's label.

  4. In Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals, slave morality originates in:

    1. The face of the Other
    2. The categorical imperative
    3. The calculus of pleasure and pain
    4. Ressentiment against the noble
    Show answer

    Answer: D — Ressentiment against the noble

    Slave morality is born when ressentiment "becomes creative and gives birth to values", naming the masters evil. The categorical imperative is Kant's, the hedonic calculus Bentham's and the face of the Other Levinas's.

  5. Rorty's term for philosophy that keeps the conversation going rather than laying foundations is:

    1. First philosophy
    2. Edifying philosophy
    3. Rigorous science
    4. Systematic philosophy
    Show answer

    Answer: B — Edifying philosophy

    Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature contrasts edifying philosophers (Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Dewey) with systematic ones who seek foundations. "First philosophy" is Levinas's title for ethics and "rigorous science" Husserl's ideal, both of the foundational kind Rorty questions.

  6. Assertion (A): Levinas holds that ethics is prior to ontology. Reason (R): For Levinas, the face of the Other makes a demand that precedes and resists every attempt to comprehend the Other within categories of being. Choose the correct option.

    1. Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A
    2. Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A
    3. A is true, but R is false
    4. A is false, but R is true
    Show answer

    Answer: A — Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A

    Both are true and R explains A. Because responsibility to the Other arises before, and cannot be reduced to, knowledge of what the Other is, ethics rather than ontology is first philosophy.

  7. Assertion (A): Nietzsche's announcement "God is dead" is a claim about the collapse of a belief that grounded European values. Reason (R): Nietzsche defended the Enlightenment's faith in universal reason and objective truth. Choose the correct option.

    1. Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A
    2. Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A
    3. A is true, but R is false
    4. A is false, but R is true
    Show answer

    Answer: C — A is true, but R is false

    A is true: the madman of The Gay Science §125 announces a cultural event whose consequences Europe has not yet grasped. R is false: Nietzsche attacked the Enlightenment's faith in reason and truth as a secular continuation of Christian faith.

  8. Which of the following are associated with John Dewey? Select all that apply.

    1. The will to believe
    2. A Common Faith
    3. Warranted assertibility
    4. Education as the reconstruction of experience
    Show answer

    Answer: B — A Common Faith; C — Warranted assertibility; D — Education as the reconstruction of experience

    Warranted assertibility, education as reconstruction of experience and A Common Faith are Dewey's. "The Will to Believe" (1896) is William James's essay.

  9. Which of the following are themes of Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals? Select all that apply.

    1. The origin of guilt in the creditor-debtor relation
    2. The "good and bad" of master morality against the "good and evil" of slave morality
    3. The critique of representationalism
    4. The meaning of ascetic ideals
    Show answer

    Answer: A — The origin of guilt in the creditor-debtor relation; B — The "good and bad" of master morality against the "good and evil" of slave morality; D — The meaning of ascetic ideals

    The three essays treat good and evil against good and bad, guilt and bad conscience (rooted in debt), and ascetic ideals. The critique of representationalism is Rorty's.

  10. How many marks of mystical states does William James list in The Varieties of Religious Experience? Type the number.

    Numerical answer — type the value.

    Show answer

    Answer: 4

    Four: ineffability and noetic quality, which he calls the two main marks, and transiency and passivity, which are "less sharply marked" but usually found.