Pragmatism

I have noticed the word pragmatic in use more often recently. Perhaps that is because I have become more aware and interested in it. But I do think its usage has increased due to the difficult economic times we live in. It has been used to convey the idea that we should be patient and practical in how we approach these difficult times, that we should endeavor to seek practical and utilitarian solutions to our economic problems and not throw the baby out with the bath-water, so to speak. For instance, we shouldn’t be too hasty or heavy handed in dealing with the banks who caused the crisis, but instead take a balanced, practical approach so that we don’t further damage the industry out some sense of injustice or wanting revenge. Pragmatism is telling us that we should be cautious and realistic in how we deal with the financial institutions that failed us because, after all, we need them for our economic recovery.

Pragmatism is from the Greek meaning 'a doing' - action. However, pragmatism in today’s usage denotes more the sense of practicality than action. So how did pragmatism come to mean practicality from the original meaning of action? I think that the idea of practicality comes from one's experience, noting that one can’t have practice or experience without action or doing first.

It is not surprising that the philosophy of pragmatism emerged in first America, because from its start America was a nation of doers and plenty of activity. And when it came to governance, America’s government was the first to be openly active and engaged with its people, getting involved in nation and social building in a big way, through an active legal system and an educational curriculum that was relevant to the people. The first true experiment of democracy America embarked on could not have transpired without a sense of pragmatism, of compromise and cooperation among its founding members. This nation building and activism the American government and its people adopted certainly reflected the spirit of what the Greeks called pragma.

In "The Sociology of Philosophies" Randell Collins writes, "Pragmatism was the product of interaction between religious Idealism and the research sciences fostered by American university reform". (The university reform was provoked and by the new and appealing evolutionary theory of Darwin.) From this one can conclude that pragmatism was born as a means of bridging the growing divide between those who chose to remain religious - traditionalists, and those who chose to believe in evolution and science - modernists. To this day America remains a divided country, where a majority still don't believe in evolution. However, America's philosophy, pragmatism, is a philosophy of compromise and reconciliation. It is a philosophy that puts theory into practice - walks the talk, becoming an operational philosophy as John Dewy believed philosophy should be. Through deeds and action, this philosophy cultivated a middle, practical ground in law and education.

If pragmatism hadn't been invented America may have been torn apart by its contradictory camps of traditionalists and modernists, as it was by the Civil War. Instead, pragmatism laid the common ground on which differences could coexist. Ironically, the philosophy of pragmatism began to take root after the Civil War, perhaps as a spirited means of healing the rift that was exposed by the war. With pragmatism America invented its own truth, that people from all walks of life and beliefs can live together - a rationale that had never been tested before in human governance. And to this day that truth still binds together people who are not always like-minded. Pragmatism, in how it traverse the divide, is what makes the illusion of equality a reality.