Pragmatism, Nation, and Race: Community in the Age of Empire

Pragmatism has been called "the chief glory of our country's intellectual tradition" by its supporters and "a dog's dinner" by its detractors. While acknowledging pragmatism's direct ties to American imperialism and expansionism, Chad Kautzer, Eduardo Mendieta, and the contributors to this volume consider the role pragmatism plays, for better or worse, in current discussions of nationalism, war, race, and community. What can pragmatism contribute to understandings of a diverse nation? How can we reconcile pragmatism's history with recent changes in the country's racial and ethnic makeup? How does pragmatism help to explain American values and institutions and fit them into new national and multinational settings? The answers to these questions reveal pragmatism's role in helping to nourish the fundamental ideas, politics, and culture of contemporary America.

"This collection on American philosophy, American identity, and race will undoubtedly make a substantive contribution to the literature and it will be well received by scholars and teachers of many disciplines." --José Medina, Vanderbilt University

"Pragmatism, Nation, and Race is an anthology that is as rare as it is important. Its essays cohere so seamlessly that the work reads more like a transcript of a single conversation than fourteen voices speaking to related themes.... This work offers such clear illuminations of fundamental concepts and current problems that it is an essential text for any scholar of pragmatism, critical race theory, post-colonialism, or American politics.... No matter your views on pragmatism, foreign policy, or America's status as an empire, a democracy, or both, parts of this work will irk you, others will uplift you, but every part will reward you." --Teachers College Record, February 16, 2010 Indiana University Press Indiana University Press Indiana University Press

Pragmatism's engagement with contemporary American issues

Chad Kautzer is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado Denver.

Eduardo Mendieta is Professor of Philosophy at Stony Brook University. He is editor of Latin American Philosophy (IUP, 2003).

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Community in the Age of Empire

Chad Kautzer and Eduardo Mendieta

Part 1. Transformative Communities and Enlarged Loyalties

1. When Philosophy Paints Its Blue on Gray: Irony and the Pragmatist Enlightenment

Robert Brandom

2. The Unexamined Frontier: Dewey, Pragmatism, and America Enlarged

David H. Kim

3. Pragmatism and Solidarity with the Past

Max Pensky

4. Mead on Cosmopolitanism, Sympathy, and War

Mitch Aboulafia

5. Deliberating about the Past: Decentering Deliberative Democracy

James Bohman

Part 2. The Racial Nation

6. Race, Nation, and Nation-State: Tocqueville on (U.S.) American Democracy

Lucius T. Outlaw, Jr.

7. William James on Nation and Race

Harvey Cormier

8. Race, Culture, and Black Self-Determination

Tommie Shelby

9. Prophetic Vision and Trash Talkin': Pragmatism, Feminism, and Racial Privilege

Shannon Sullivan

Part 3. The Tragedy and Comedy of Empire

10. The Unpredictable American Empire

Richard Rorty

11. Transcending the "Gory Cradle of Humanity": War, Loyalty, and Civic Action in Royce and James

Eduardo Mendieta

12. Pragmatism and War

Robert Westbrook

13. Laughter against Hubris: A Preemptive Strike

Cynthia Willett

Interview with Cornel West, Conducted by Eduardo Mendieta

Bibliography

List of Contributors

Index