Those who claim, in homage or disgust, that James’ pragmatism is simply an updated model of utilitarianism are deeply mistaken. Most notable on this point is Richard Rorty. On at least two occasions Rorty libels pragmatism and James, even though he is quite fond of both of them. In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature he claims that the pragmatists did “for science what the utilitarians had done for morality.” In an essay entitled, “Pragmatism as Romantic Polytheism,” included in what I consider to the best collection of recent work in pragmatism, The Revival of Pragmatism, Rorty follows up his claim with a direct claim about James. He writes: “James and Nietzsche did for the word ‘true’ what John Stuart Mill did for the word ‘right’.”
Rorty is mistaken on all three accounts; Mill, Nietzsche, and James. In regard to James, Rorty reveals his greatest hope for pragmatism that is, sadly, as I see it, a deep misinterpretation of James’ thought (and Dewey’s too, I might add). I should admit that this disaffection for Rorty began as purely visceral response but has been deeply augmented by reading bits and pieces of Hillary Putnam’s view of the matter. I think that the contrast we find between their two competing views in the collection I mentioned (Putnam’s essay is entitled, “Pragmatism and Realism”) is striking, and, of course, I fancy Putnam’s version over Rorty’s.
Rorty seems to think that the criterion of pragmatism, action, is the cash-out sort of thing that hinges on the whimsy of our belief. From this Rorty makes pragmatic reality, meaning, and truth a matter of personal selection. We see this in action in his essay, “On Heidegger’s Nazism,” in his moving collection of essays, Philosophy and Social Hope. Here he writes: “So for us Heidegger’s writings are not a conduit through which we can hear the voice of Being. Rather, they are a toolbox. They are the receptacle in which Heidegger deposited the tools that he invented at various times to accomplish one or another project.”
Here, Rorty’s (mis)understanding of pragmatism is clear. Flowing from his fetish of rejecting correspondence theories, or mirrors of nature, Rorty rightly identifies a similar rejection of metaphysics in James. What Rorty misses, however, is that for James there is metaphysics and then there is metaphysics, and James uses the two terms interchangeably.
Let us take James’ theory of consciousness as an example. In his essay Does Consciousness Exist?, James answers the titular questions as both yes and no. Such answers tend to be too cute or clever to take seriously, but with James, this is the only answer he could offer considering his complicated stance on metaphysics. If what we mean by consciousness is a Platonic substance that gives the world its form, then, no, consciousness does not exist. But, if what we mean is the flux of our thoughts and mind-events—our experience—then, yes, consciousness does exist. Because of this careful distinction, James can reject ethereal metaphysics and affirm phenomenological reality, which can function in way not altogether different from Plato’s ideas without their disconnected sense of being.
Rorty only seems to see the first sense of metaphysics, the one James rejects. On that rejection Rorty postulates the impossibility for there to be any governing reality for human experience. But this is clearly not the case. In one sense Rorty is right: Heidegger’s writings are tools; tools in the sense that they do not come from some kind of Being. But—and here is Rorty’s great mistake—for James, Heidegger’s writings also are not tools, they only say what they say, regardless of what we want to use them for. Also regardless of what the consequences happen to be.
There may be many reasons to reject pragmatism, but rejecting it on grounds that it is utilititarian, idealist, or ontologically relativistic are not any of them.
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