Pragmatism Is Insufficient

I plan to share in due time some observations about the progressive politics which dominate today’s Democratic party and which many Republicans often — misguidedly, in my view — reject reflexively. Our current flavor of progressivism demands critique, but there is good to be harvested, too. It’s worth the effort to deconstruct our progressive politics a bit in order to sort fruits from thorns.

As a preliminary step, however, I need to reference a habit of thought broadly shared across the political spectrum. It permeates the air, infecting all of us in varying degrees. We take it for granted, not even noticing how it affects our ethical thinking. Before we can think beneficially about progressive politics, we need first to recognize that Americans have, for more than a century, been profoundly influenced by the philosophical school known as pragmatism. As we shall see down the road, it is no accident that pragmatism arose at the same time as our progressive era.

You may think of yourself as relatively more or less pragmatic than your friends. In that case, you’re likely using ‘pragmatic’ as a synonym for ‘practical,’ which is a trait to which my whole project aspires.

The philosophical pragmatism to which I point is a different thing. It is not merely about being practical. It is about how we recognize truth.

Pilate famously asked, “What is truth?” (John 18:38) I noted earlier that an unhealthy skepticism leads to the abyss of sophistry, in which we are self-authenticating monads for whom truth is whatever we choose to believe (“and who are you to deny my truth?”). Others identify truth as every perspicuous dot and tittle in Scripture. For the philosophical pragmatist, however, truth is, as John Dewey put it, that which has “warranted assertibility.” Or, more simply, truth is whatever works.

American grade schools indoctrinate children into philosophical pragmatism. Remember your first exposure to how a magnet attracts paper clips or how a few drops of citric acid turn red litmus blue? At the turn of the 20th century, pragmatists helpfully taught us to teach school children that we need not think truth is beyond our grasp, that we are warranted in asserting certain claims as true when our empirical testing validates them.

Yet it is a short leap from litmus learning to the generality that ‘the way we know a path is true is if it works.” If we can demonstrate that a path gets us from point A to point B, then the path works, and therefore must be affirmed as a true path. The end justifies the means.

This may be your own thinking. It may seem reasonable to you. If so, I want to challenge you by observing that “a path is true if it works” is antithetical to the most basic Christian claim: that our plumb line of truth — the concrete way we discover what constitutes humanity in its fullness — is the person of Jesus Christ. Our answer to Pilate’s question is that true paths follow His way (John 14:6).

My goal today is simply to point out that much of our ethical thinking — across the political spectrum — reflects this philosophical pragmatism rather than pressing beyond it to the fullness towards which Jesus summons us (John 14:27). Pragmatism allows us to justify our illiberal means of moving toward liberal ends. But the Christ on a cross shines light on our self-delusion (John 8:12).

In a recent post, I argued that the Obama administration abused executive branch power by short-circuiting our national deliberation over how best to assure the dignity of those afflicted with gender dysphoria. Localities are to be coerced into embracing the administration’s view without a voice in discerning its prudence. Some commentators defended the Obama administration by pointing to its liberal intent. In short, the noble end justifies the means. Pragmatism.

Both left and right exhibit this habit of thought. The previous administration, in a manner similar to the Kennedy administration’s in sending troops into Vietnam, justified the lamentable carnage of the Iraq invasion by pointing to the noble intent of liberating the Iraqi people. The end justifies the means. Pragmatism.

The problem with pragmatism for the Christian thinker, as theologian Stanley Hauerwas points out constantly, is that it is a means by which we justify our choices when it’s inconvenient to travel the way of Jesus. We pretend our decisions to coerce and dominate each other are warranted by love. We choose to hear Jesus’ imperative, “Love your neighbor as yourself!” as though he actually taught, “Love those you acknowledge as neighbors as yourself.”

Lin-Manuel Miranda mocks our self-delusion in his Broadway hit, Hamilton. With King George, we the people often sing — oblivious to the irony, “I will send a fully armed battalion to remind you of my love!” Pragmatism.

Pragmatism is a problem for the practical Christian. Like the Sirens, it seduces us, for it sounds reasonable. But pragmatism inevitably justifies a lower standard than charity.

There is much more that should be said, but this brief sketch will suffice for my purposes. I’ll refer to this background as I share observations about the promises and perils of our progressive politics.

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