grounded in scientific understanding,nshe dealt with ethics in its relations tonpsychology and social science, to lawnand education, and to the larger socialnand intellectual context. Her courses innthe history of ethics preserved historicalninsights and approaches at a time whennAmerican philosophers had largelynabandoned historical perspectives.”nEdel’s own contribution, the first in thenvolume, can be considered a finelynrendered amplification of these points.nFor Edel, as for Flower, “the questionnis always whether appropriate choicesnhave been made, what values persistentlynmislead, which can be properlynentrenched.” But this lifelong effort ofnhusband and wife to narrow the gapnbetween fact and value, science andnideology, truth and error seems tonadvance the discussion of value analysisnwithout ever quite addressing the complexndualisms they purport to overcome.nNaturalists and pragmatists havenhad to struggle for a place in thenintellectual sun even more than thosenwho grab hold of one side of thendualism and hold on for dear life.nIt is a credit to the editors of thisnvolume that this anguishing status ofnpragmatism is displayed rather thannburied. The simple statement of Flower’snlebenswerke is nicely woven into anmosaic created by many hands. Tonthose for whom the naturalistic enterprisenstill has meaning (and I definitelyninclude myself amongst that number)nthe book will be a useful, as well as annenjoyable, volume: this particular glassnbeing much more than half-full. If anfew of the essays are bottom-of-thedrawernstuff, they are for the most partnfresh in content, nicely written, exhibitingnthe sort of concerns and preferencesnFlower has spent a lifetime cultivating.nSince this volume is co-editednby a sociologist as well as a philosopher,nit should be assessed as a contributionnto the philosophy of the social sciences,nno less than on strictly parochialngrounds. Indeed, it is the distinguishingnaspect of Flower’s work to call attentionnto mundane problems and realmsnas the sources of first principles. Suchnan emphasis on society writ small,nrather than on Nature or on Mind writnlarge, gives her writing a friendly accessibilitynthat disguises real sophistication.nThe choice of words in a subtitlenthat emphasizes “twentieth-centurynAmerica” is well taken, since BettynFlower, for all of her worldly concerns,nalways seems to express them as annative American radical — taking thenhighest ideals of the United States andnseeking to confront American realpolitiknwith those ideals. In this, she isnmore of a Platonist than a Deweyan —nbut who is to say that consistency is anparticularly American trait! For thatnreason, the quite decent if overly cautiousnapplication of Morgenthau’snmorally centered theory of the nationalninterest, written by Robert L. Simon,nstrikes me as the most anomalous papernin the volume, although by nonmeans lacking in either worth or interest.nIt is just that I have never heardnFlower make an appeal — not even thenmost limited one — to the nationalninterest in outlining either her politicalnpersuasions or the appropriate tasks ofna nobler American Republic.nThe five papers on pragmatism,nwritten by Robert Schwartz, Ralph W.nSleeper, Peter Manicas, Finbarr W.nO’Connor, and John J. McDermott,nsuggest that here is a festschrift honoringnJohn Dewey; all save the first evennhave Dewey in the title. In fact, thenmajor influence on Elizabeth Flowernwas Dewey, and if her work differs innits emphasis from that of Edel it isnprecisely in her insistence on the experientialn(as opposed to the structural)nframework in. which valuational discoursentakes place. The papers in thisnsegment vary from the brilliant — asnwith Robert Schwartz’s outstandingndissection of the failure of the pragmaticnenterprise to take hold despite itsnpopularity — to a surprisingly tendentiousnand, I must say, tedious paper onnDewey and the class struggle that wandersnover old turf loosely. Indeed,nDewey’s dislike of orthodoxy is wellnunderstood when contrasted withnManicas’ strange conclusion thatn”Lenin was, I think, correct when inn1902 he argued that ‘the only choicenis — either bourgeois or socialist ideology.’nThere is no middle course (fornmankind has not created a ‘third’ ideology).”nIt was precisely this sort ofnincipient fanaticism, however romantic,nanarchical, and well-intentioned,nthat Dewey found appalling. That henshould be castigated for attempting tonfind a “third ideology,” and failing, is ansad state of affairs that indicates farnmore the bankruptcy of Marxist “ideology”nthan the irrelevance of JohnnnnDewey’s “philosophy.”nI found the other papers on Dewey,nand particularly on those aspects of hisnwork that pertain to science and education,nquite sober and well reasoned.nThe paper on Thorstein Veblen properlynfits into this cluster, since herenMurray G. Murphey attempts to comparenand contrast, with great skill andncare, Veblen’s The Insistence of Workmanshipnwith the pragmatic traditionnin philosophy. Murphey shows hownVeblen moved to a collective, societalnimagery and away from the idea of thenindividual as being at the center of thenuniverse. Veblen’s understanding ofnthe history of culture as being equivalentnto the history of knowledge and hisncomprehension of the capacity of machinendiscipline to subvert the pecuniarynculture are handled with enormousnskill and understanding. In a curiousnway, Veblen was perhaps simply toonmuch the outsider in American culturento be overly identified with the assumptionsnand presumptions of that culture.nPossibly, we have here the answer tonRobert Schwartz’s problem: what evernhappened to pragmatism? It was not sonmuch defeated as overtaken by theninternationalization of the cultural andnphilosophical environment.nAt the fringes of this book are thensort of problems that positivism soughtnto erase, pragmatism aimed to makenexperiential, and naturalism sought tonpluralize — alas, with little success.nThus, in Joseph Margolis’ cleverly entitledn”Dirty Hands,” the problems ofnmoral responsibility and personal dilemmasnare raised in the context ofnprinciples, absolutes, the reality of goodnLIBERAL ARTSnIT’S ‘MISTER,’ NOTnCOMRADE’nMembers of the East German army andnborder guard are to go back to addressingneach other as “Mister” rather thann”Comrade,” the Defense Ministrynannounced Friday.nThe ruling replaces one established inn1956 with the founding of the EastnGerman army, for which the traditionalnCommunist or socialist form of addressncame into use.n—Agence France-Presse,nJanuary 5, 1990nMAY 1990/41n
January 1975April 21, 2022By The Archive
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