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feminists were writing books on the subject, presumably because pragma–
tism led to pluralism, diversity, and an understanding that racial and gender
categories are little more than "social constructions." But academics have
yet to face the awkward fact that pragmatism can be, in the field of poli–
tics, expediency at the expense of integrity.
Bourne saw that a philosophy of adjustment could adapt itself to any–
thing and everything; Lippmann similarly saw that such a philosophy could
well spell the end of liberalism as an ideology of principled conviction.
The idea that a philosophy could validate itself with a "cash nexus" as its
criterion of knowledge played into the hands of politicians even when
they knew little of pragmatism as an anti-epistemological position. For
there is nothing in pragmatism that would preclude the politician from
using it in the service of power.
In contrast to the rationalist, advised James, the "pragmatist talk[s]
about truths in the plural, about their utility and satisfactoriness, about the
success with which they 'work.' " The pragmatist "account[s] of truths in
the plural" have "only this in common, that they pay." Does not the
philosopher have a duty to know truth as something other than our own
needs and interests? "Our obligation to seek truth is part of our general
obligation to do what pays. The payments true ideas bring are the sole why
of our duty to follow them. Identical ways exists in the case of health and
wealth." And politics, too.
Few philosophers have concerned themselves with the opportunistic
political implication of pragmatism.When pragmatism first came upon the
American scene at the end of the last century, it promised to free up our
thinking and save us from the rigidities of dogma and supposedly obsolete
systems of authority. Seeing truth as vanishing before the forces of change,
pragmatism's aim was not so much the goal of establishing truth as
responding to the vicissitudes of experience and thereby enabling us to
cope with events. It had repercussions in many disciplines.
In education, the shift was from substance to process, with students
instructed not in what to think but in how to think. In sociology, the shift
was from the "inner-directed" self to the "outer-directed" personality,
with students advised to regard their minds as social products. In econom–
ics, one saw a shift away from natural law, with students taught to
understand the price system as sustained by the circulation of money and
consumption of goods. In law, the shift was from intention to conse–
quences, with attorneys informing their clients of not necessarily what is
right or wrong but what they can and cannot get away with in the courts.
And in politics? The shift was from Aristotle to Vince Lombardi; not how
to govern and lead but how to run and win.
