post 3

Rob Hoffman

(1) By the year 1841, most of my ancestors had actually already made it to this country. There were some who wouldn’t immigrate until around the turn of the century, but on a whole they had made it over from England, Ireland, and Germany already. That being said, neither I nor my family really knows enough about our own genealogy to say what exactly our ancestors were doing at that time. Speculation is certainly possible, but infallible knowledge is out of the question (Peirce would be so proud).

I know that I had some ancestors with the last name Hadaway living on the eastern shore of Maryland (if the term eastern shore is confusing, it is the part of Maryland located east of the Chesapeake Bay, next to Delaware). At a much later date they were still living roughly rural lives, so I think it would be fair to say that at this point they probably farmed. Along similar lines, I know that a group of my ancestors were also Pennsylvania Dutch.

The main thing that I took away from what little I could find out about what my relatives were probably up to at this point was that they were not the types to be interested in modern philosophy. Education was not a premium, and if confronted with the works of most modern European philosophers, my ancestors would likely have responded, “So what?” Their concerns were far more immediate and down-to-earth.

I suppose the fact that almost all Americans at this time came from such a background either in their own lifetime or from only a few generations ago might have been one of the guiding forces behind pragmatism. My ancestors would have been far more understanding and accepting of a philosophical system that argued for simplicity, utility, practicality, and the importance of common sense. Although it is unlikely that they were ever exposed directly to such thoughts, the indirect influence the thinkers had on them through the American culture probably helped to shape what made generations of my family boringly, quintessentially American.

(2) Perhaps the concept that stands out most in “Self-Reliance,” if not in the whole of Emerson’s philosophy, is the concept of conformity and nonconformity. Although Emerson is not exactly known for detail-oriented, technical work in philosophy, his statements in the area of conformity and nonconformity are especially direct and unequivocal. By his statement that “Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members” (Emerson 28), it should be apparent that he sees no value in fitting into society. To this effect he says, “Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist” (Emerson 28).

What Emerson is saying here has nothing to do with gender or biology. It has everything to do with realizing one’s full potential. Emerson clearly established that his only real criterion for whether or not a person was living fully was whether or not he or she was living in accordance with his or her nature. Trying to fit into society via a misplaced sense of conformity requires one to focus more on the opinions of others than on one’s own nature. Hence we arrive at the reasoning behind Emerson’s claim that nonconformity is essential for actualized individuals. This nonconformity was not rebellion for rebelliousness’ sake (although Emerson might not have been totally opposed to that), but rather a means of placing one outside of society’s ability to control and, as Emerson saw it, limit.

These ideas about nonconformity would be echoed throughout American philosophy for a century and a half. Thoreau repeated them in Civil Disobedience. They became the foundation for first-wave feminism, the Civil Rights movement, and the Gay Liberation movement. Emerson’s ideas supported every major social movement in American history, albeit mostly indirectly. Outside of the social sphere, however, the philosophical impact of these nonconformist ideas had only a minor impact. Nonconformity would not go on to become a major ethical system, and it clearly made no metaphysical, ontological, or epistemological ground.

A second concept that was important to Emerson’s philosophy which would also become an important issue over the course of time was the idea that although societies change, they do not improve. This idea might sound depressing, but it is not meant in that way. Although the change is not amelioration, it is not deterioration either. “It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other” (Emerson 38). According to Emerson’s view, human beings are virtually the same today as they were ten thousand years ago, and although there have been changes, they are all surface changes. On a whole and in the grand scheme of things, nothing ever gets better, and nothing ever gets worse.

This idea defies what has been a central Western belief since the Renaissance: namely, that we are capable of creating a better world. Since modern philosophy was in many ways a product of the Renaissance, it is also understandable why Emerson’s ideas defy most philosophers’ positions. Even the pragmatists, who generally disagreed with the European modernists, had a view of humanity and society that allowed for amelioration. In many ways, it was this view that justified the existence of pragmatism in the first place; one of the primary goals of the philosophical system was to improve conditions in the every day lives of human beings.

(3) One of the primary ways in which Peirce and the other pragmatists rejected rationalism and the methods of the rationalists was to disagree over the proper starting place for a philosophical system. For individuals such as Descartes and Spinoza, there was an inescapable need to find concepts that were unquestionably true and use them as the bases for all human knowledge. Given the way rationalism worked, without these foundations, no sure structure of knowledge could be built. Everything would fall apart if one assumption were found to be faulty.

There was no need for this type of foundation for the pragmatists. From the outset they had denied unquestionable truth, maintaining instead that all human knowledge was fallible. As such, there would be no sense in going back and trying to construct an edifice around the foundations they had established. Instead, they would simply begin wherever was convenient and attempt to work out a way to move forward from there. Their method of philosophy is said to resemble a map more than a blueprint (Stuhr 47). Implied in this analogy is pragmatism’s focus on progress and multiple possible routes. Despite the disavowal of any objectivity, pragmatism did not deny the ability to make clearer and better theories within what is subjectively, fallibly known. The map showed in which directions progress might be made, and if it turned out that one branch resulted in a dead end, there were always other paths that might be tried.

Semiotics, known commonly as the study of signs, is one of the more complicated and technical areas of philosophy. Peirce, with his pragmatist’s interest in psychology, saw semiotics as the only way in which human beings could interact with the world. Indeed, semiotics goes even further to be the only way in which humans can organize or utilize their consciousnesses. With his ideas about semiotics, Peirce was walking a fine line and narrowly avoided slipping down the slope toward relativism, nihilism, solipsism, and the various and sundry other philosophical concepts that are more designed to deny than affirm. This was not somewhere that Peirce wanted to be; it would be strangely hypocritical for a pragmatist to arrive at existentialist conclusions.

I already touched upon this briefly, but objectivity is viewed very differently by the pragmatists than it was by the modern philosophers of Europe. While objectivity was all-important for the rationalists, and it was even a concern for the empiricists, the pragmatists denied from the start that objectivity was necessary or even possible. Reflecting on the works of Darwin, Peirce became one of the first (if not the first) evolutionary psychologists; he examined epistemology through the lens of evolution. Evolution would not have trained us to have objective, “real” knowledge about world as it is, Peirce decided. Human beings are fallible, and as such anything and everything that we know and could ever know must be considered fallible.

This might seem to be destructive to studies of epistemology and philosophy of science, but Peirce and the pragmatists tried to find ways to make these areas of philosophy still matter in light of their views on objectivity. Although our knowledge is subjective and fallible, there is still room for us to make progress and achieve better insights and theories (one is tempted to call them truer, but that is a loaded word). As a trained scientist, he was inclined to point out that in science, we may never know a fact infallibly, but facts that are accurate predictors are still better facts than those that are not accurate predictors. The overarching theories we are working with might turn to be just as bogus as any particular fact, but until they do, we judge them from a functionalistic standpoint. This is reflected clearly in the very name of pragmatism; the greatest knowledge is the knowledge that works the best.