Hi Andy,
Andy says:
"Certainly, my reading of Novack on pragmatism could be summarised as
"pragmatism is only an inch short of Marxism." While I think Pragmatism a
la Peirce or Dewey or Bridgman was certainly a great achievement, I have
always regarded both Marx and Vygotsky as qualitatively different from
Pragmatism."
I completely agree with you, Andy, that Marxism and Pragmatism are
qualitatively different. Is the metaphor of one being "an inch short" of
the other from Novack? Novack seemed to assess Dewey himself as on
occasion coming within an inch of materialism - Novack was careful to
attribute to Dewey his many scientific insights - but I am not so sure
Novack said Pragmatism as a philosophy was that close to dialectical
materialism. Perhaps my reading is off?
Speaking of George Novack, in Pragmatism Vs Marxism: An Appraisal of John
Dewey's philosophy, he quotes an amusing story and commentary on Mead told
by T.V. Smith in his 1962 book A Non-Existent Man: An Autobiography. In
the chapter The Instrumentalist Theory of Knowledge, Novack critiques
Dewey's approach to epistemology, the "all-important" question of "what is
the basis of knowledge," as one that "wobbled all over the lot, unable to
stay permanently in a single place." He says about Mead:
"Mead, Dewey's cothinker at Chicago, was no less equivocal on this prime
question. T.V. Smith writes: "Long after I had become a colleague
of Mead, I asked him one day at lunch, for instance, whether he thought
that there was anything existing before life came upon the scene. This
seemed to me to be a question to be answered plainly Yes or No, depending
upon one's drift toward Realism of Idealism. Mead answered the question at
great length. Or at least he seemed to think he did. I repeated the
question for a Yes-or-No answer. He answered it at greater length. I then
asked him plaintively to answer it so that I could understand his
answer. He seemed as puzzled at my perturbation as I at his
'equivocation.' I never did understand; and naturally enough, I came to
doubt whether he did.
[Novack is still quoting from Smith] "I took it that he was confused,
having left Idealism (Hegelianism) and not having arrived firmly at
anything else. This type of confusion, between the knower, or the knowing,
and the known, seemed so to dog the steps of the Pragmatists that I decided
they were all what I came to call 'basement-Idealists' rather than, with
Hegel, the 'attic' kind. They all seemed to me doubt - what I could not
doubt - that anything existed apart from some experience, and yet they
seemed unwilling to face the consequences of such a position. They wanted
to be Idealists without giving up the fruits of Realism. It made them
unhappy to be thus accused, but so they seemed to me" (A Non-Existent Man,
p48)."
Best,
- Steve
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