JOHN PATRICK DIGGINS
Pragmatism:
A Philosophy for Adults Only
Most Americans believe that the young need to go to school, not only to
learn about the world and to attain skills in order to prepare for an occu–
pation, but also to become ultimately good, responsible citizens. Yet
herewith a puzzle. Why do Americans accept in politics what they reject
in education? Office seekers are praised for behaving in expedient ways that
are objectionable when taught in the classroom. Adults can be practical,
studen ts should be ethical.
After almost every election one can count on seeing headlines
announcing that the winners were the realists. "Evolving From Ideology
Toward Pragmatism" was the title of one recent article in the daily press.
Another hailed the advent of "post-ideological, pragmatic politics."
Pragmatism, we are told, is about performance and results, facing practical
issues, and candidates behaving more as managers and tacticians than as
moralists and theoreticians. The challenge is not to educate the people as
to what they ought to do but to calculate what they will do on election
day. When pragmatism prevails in politics the distinction between the
Democrats and Republicans disappears along with party loyalty to an ide–
ology. Thus journalists praise President Clinton and Mayor Guiliani as
"both part of a new generation of politicians who are seen as problem–
solvers first and partisan operatives second."
Often the same Americans who praise pragmatism in politics are dis–
turbed to discover its meaning in education. In his best-selling
The Closing
of the American Mind,
the late Allan Bloom opened his book with the
observation: "There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of:
almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes,
that truth is relative." Bloom desired education to teach his beloved clas–
sical philosophers of antiquity and to raise such questions as "Who am I?"
and "What is Man?" His text sold like hotcakes in airports as well as book–
stores. But pragmatism regards such "ultimate" questions as "who" and
"what" as futile because unanswerable.
Another best-seller was William
J.
Bennett's
The Book
if
Virtues.
Its
author sought to have students appreciate such ideals as truth, value, the
inclination to obey the rules ofjustice, and moral character formed by rea-
