Back to the Concrete: A Pragmatist Response to Oppression

• Authors: Donald Morse
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Pragmatism is a vital tool for society today, both because it addresses our more pressing social problems and because it advances beyond other available solutions. As a good deal of recent European philosophy has shown, as in the cases of Adorno and Agamben, for example, our social life is mediated by abstractions that oppress us. With its focus on the immediacy of experience, pragmatism enables us to overcome these abstractions and return to concrete life in a liberating way. I argue against Agamben, however, that the return to concrete life amounts to anarchism. I show that it leads to liberalism instead, along the lines laid out by Dewey in Liberalism and Social Action, in which freed individuality is compatible with the exercise of social intelligence and planning.

Keywords

EN

Pragmatism; continental philosophy; oppression; political philosophy

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Human Affairs
• Year: 2009
• Volume: 19
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 28-35

Dates

published

2009-06-01

online

2009-03-21

Contributors

author

Donald Morse

• Department of Philosophy, Webster University, St. Louis, MO 63119 USA

References

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Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/v10023-009-0017-9