Pragmatism and the Tragic Sense of Life

Libertad en condiciones. A vueltas con Dewey y Lippmann

“…En 1922, en la reseña de Opinión Pública, Dewey no escatimó elogios hacia Lippmann y cuando expresó sus reservas lo hizo con su habitual respeto y serenidad. Sidney Hook dijo, no sin cierta sorna, que Dewey no llegó a ser un pensador mordaz porque no podía evitar ser una buena persona (Hook, [1952(Hook, [ ] 1974. Se equivocaba: el buen talante de Dewey nunca le privó de agudos razonamientos, por mucho que no se expresara agresivamente.…”

La dimensión religiosa de la vida cotidiana desde el proyecto filosófico de John Dewey

“…Lo que era desconocido o "invisible", aquello que era oscuro, indefinido o constituía un "misterio", ahora se devela, se vuelve visible. En este proceso de familiaridad con el mundo se alcanza una suerte de paz que, para Dewey, constituye el objetivo de la experiencia cualitativa, porque, según "creía, en un mundo en rápida transformación, el hombre debe encontrar paz en la acción" (Hook 1959(Hook 1014.…”

American Philosophy in Translation

“…However, Dewey has traditionally been criticized for his lack of attention to the tragic. While Sidney Hook (1974) -himself a Deweyan pragmatist -did acknowledge the inescapable tragedy resulting from the conflicts of moral ideals (42), Dewey scholars have debated over the resources of Deweyan pragmatism to do so. Saito criticizes readings that simply find Dewey guilty of naïve progressivism, but she also seems to believe that Deweyan pragmatism needs to be "reconstructed" in terms of (Cavell's) Emersonian perfectionism in order to genuinely account for the tragic dimension, and to overcome it (46-53).…”

“…Given Saito's willingness to think beyond the tragic, her book also seeks a kind of empowerment that (she thinks) is available in American philosophy. While pragmatism must acknowledge the "tragic sense of life" (chapter 3; seeHook 1974), there is no reason to remain stuck in the tragic human condition, as3 On recognition and acknowledgment in a pragmatist context of responding to experiences of suffering, see alsoKivistö and Pihlström 2016, as well as Pihlström 2020.4 A broader discussion of the "usefulness of useless knowledge" -beyond pragmatism -would also have been relevant here (seeFlexner 2017).…”