Living in a Context of Difference: Exclusion, Assimilation, or Pluralism
In their book American Philosophy: From Wounded Knee to the Present, contemporary philosophers Erin McKenna and Scott Pratt identify “living in a context of difference” as the central philosophical issue in the history of the United States.
They credit W.E.B. Du Bois with having identified racial difference as one particular version of this general issue: “Du Bois once declared that the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line—the problem of the coexistence of differences that figure in our existence as members of communities” (p. 2).
For McKenna and Pratt, this continues to be the central philosophical problem in the United States and, perhaps globally, today: “From the perspective of the post-9/11 world, the formative problem continues to be the coexistence of difference” (p. 2).
As I already discussed, one possible response by hegemonic groups in contexts of difference is to force a dichotomy upon members of other groups: either assimilate or be excluded.
The alternative response is pluralism—differences among groups in moral values, philosophical ideals, religious beliefs, for instance, are real, but different groups, different peoples, can coexist and cooperate.
For McKenna and Pratt, there is an American pluralist tradition that can be traced historically either through the mainstream philosophical voices of classical pragmatist philosophers like Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, and through philosophically neglected voices such as Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Simon Pokagon, and many others.
In the case of the pragmatists, their pluralism resulted from the centrality that they gave to experience in their philosophies. McKenna and Pratt write: "For Peirce, James, and Dewey, philosophy worth the name began in response to experienced problems—situations marked by confusion, doubt, indeterminacy—and then returned to these problems, aiming to transform and reconstruct them in ways that allowed the inquirer to go forward to encounter still more experience" (p. 3).
Philosophy today, for instance, should arise from the need to solve actual problems that assail us—experienced problems, like hunger, inequality, poverty, war, fear of what is unknown to us or different from us. Dewey called these the problems of people, not of philosophers.
From our diverse experiences in different biological, social, cultural, and historical contexts arise plural values, ideals, concepts, practices, and so on. Such pluralism, however, is a source of experiential richness and well-being, not a problem to be solved by assimilation or oppressive exclusion.
Let me try to make this more concrete, in terms of actual experience, in subsequent entries.
Citations: Erin McKenna and Scott Pratt, American Philosophy: From Wounded Knee to the Present (London: Bloomsbury, 2015).
They credit W.E.B. Du Bois with having identified racial difference as one particular version of this general issue: “Du Bois once declared that the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line—the problem of the coexistence of differences that figure in our existence as members of communities” (p. 2).
For McKenna and Pratt, this continues to be the central philosophical problem in the United States and, perhaps globally, today: “From the perspective of the post-9/11 world, the formative problem continues to be the coexistence of difference” (p. 2).
As I already discussed, one possible response by hegemonic groups in contexts of difference is to force a dichotomy upon members of other groups: either assimilate or be excluded.
The alternative response is pluralism—differences among groups in moral values, philosophical ideals, religious beliefs, for instance, are real, but different groups, different peoples, can coexist and cooperate.
For McKenna and Pratt, there is an American pluralist tradition that can be traced historically either through the mainstream philosophical voices of classical pragmatist philosophers like Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, and through philosophically neglected voices such as Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Simon Pokagon, and many others.
In the case of the pragmatists, their pluralism resulted from the centrality that they gave to experience in their philosophies. McKenna and Pratt write: "For Peirce, James, and Dewey, philosophy worth the name began in response to experienced problems—situations marked by confusion, doubt, indeterminacy—and then returned to these problems, aiming to transform and reconstruct them in ways that allowed the inquirer to go forward to encounter still more experience" (p. 3).
Philosophy today, for instance, should arise from the need to solve actual problems that assail us—experienced problems, like hunger, inequality, poverty, war, fear of what is unknown to us or different from us. Dewey called these the problems of people, not of philosophers.
From our diverse experiences in different biological, social, cultural, and historical contexts arise plural values, ideals, concepts, practices, and so on. Such pluralism, however, is a source of experiential richness and well-being, not a problem to be solved by assimilation or oppressive exclusion.
Let me try to make this more concrete, in terms of actual experience, in subsequent entries.
Citations: Erin McKenna and Scott Pratt, American Philosophy: From Wounded Knee to the Present (London: Bloomsbury, 2015).
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| Ida B. Wells-Barnett |
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