Pragmatism, Spirituality and Society: Border Crossings, Transformations and Planetary Realizations

375 Pages·2021·4.533 MB·English

by  Ananta Kumar Giri

Pragmatism, Spirituality
and Society
Border Crossings,
Transformations and
Planetary Realizations
Edited by
Ananta Kumar Giri
Pragmatism, Spirituality and Society
Ananta Kumar Giri
Editor
Pragmatism,
Spirituality
and Society
Border Crossings, Transformations
and Planetary Realizations
Editor
Ananta Kumar Giri
Madras Institute of Development Studies
Chennai, India
ISBN 978-981-15-7101-5 ISBN 978-981-15-7102-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7102-2
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For Margaret Chatterjee, Vincent Sheen and Francis X. Clooney
Foreword
Pragmatism has fallen on bad days. As commonly used in our time, the
term tends to stand for a down-to-earth outlook, for a pliant accommo-
dationto “the waythings are”—orthe way things areassumedto beina
given context. The only yardstick accepted by devotees of pragmatism is
hard-nosedcompliancewithfactualconditions,acompliancewhichalone
caninsuresuccessofone’schosenaims.Whatisbypassedbythisstanceis
theplethoraofpossibilitieswhichcanbepursuedinresponsetoprevailing
conditions. What is completely sidelined is the ethical quality of a chosen
course of action—a neglect which rules out of order any concern with
spirituality and creative human imagination.
The decay of pragmatism just described is the result of many factors,
above all the rise of “scientism” and “positivism” during the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries. What is commonly meant by positivism is the
exclusive reliance on factually ascertained knowledge, a reliance which
necessarily shuns any kind of “negativity” as well as any form of world-
transcendence (and self-transcendence). In a similar way, what is meant
by scientism is the elevation of factual knowledge to an all—embracive
worldviewborderingonametaphysicalcreedordogma.Seeninthislight,
scientismisclearlyverydifferentfrommodernsciencewhichispredicated
on sober inquiry and questioning. Taken as serious inquiry in the latter
sense, science has no trouble in being compatible with a non-positivist
imagination and even spirituality.
vii
viii FOREWORD
Once stripped of its positivist and scientistic overlays, it is not hard to
recover the genuine meaning of pragmatism, and thereby also its impor-
tant historical significance. The crucial redeeming feature of pragmatism
is its connection with practice or praxis, as distinguished from cogni-
tive observation or neutral knowledge. This connection was a constitu-
tive ingredient in the work of Aristotle who explicitly treated social and
political inquiry as a part of “practical philosophy,” that is, the philos-
ophy of human practice. Importantly, practice in his work was not just
a random activism or instrumentalism but rather an active orientation
toward “goodness” seen as an ethical, comprehensive standard. Equally
important was his conception of human being as a self-transcending
agent capable of fashioning a political community (polis) anchored in
socialjustice.Aristotle’sinfluenceonthedevelopmentofsocialandpolit-
ical thought (in the West) has been enormous. In the aftermath of the
“Enlightenment,” this influence can still be detected in Hegel’s polit-
ical philosophy who viewed the “state” (Staat) as the embodiment of
an ethical idea and all citizens as the participants in the formulated and
steady transformation of this idea.
In more recent times, however, pragmatism in its genuine sense is
associated most directly with the work of John Dewey whose concep-
tion of participatory agency was indebted equally to Aristotle’s “prac-
tical philosophy” and to Hegel’s comprehensive social idealism. With the
former, he viewed theorizing not as the search for abstract formulas but
as an “inquiry” which, rooted in everyday experience, seeks to distill
the purpose of human conduct. With Hegel he was linked through his
endorsement of a shared normative standard of social life. One point
where Dewey moved resolutely beyond both of his precursors was in his
commitment to democracy seen as a public space open to the free and
equalparticipationofallcitizens.Heisrightlyconsideredoneofthefore-
most mentors of modern, secular and, post-secular (or spiritual) democ-
racy. As he wrote in one of his early essays on the topic: “Democracy is
a social, that is to say, an ethical conception, and upon its ethical signif-
icance is based its significance as governmental. Democracy is a form of
government only because it is a form of moral and spiritual association”
(Dewey1969;alsoDallmayr2010).Thisstatementcouldandshouldstill
be viewed as the guiding motto of democratic citizens everywhere.
Dewey’spointertospiritualdimensionofdemocracypointstothespir-
itual dimension of practice and pragmatism as well. The present volume
FOREWORD ix
exploresthespiritualdimensionsofpragmatismaswellaspragmaticaspect
of spirituality and hope this would inspire renewal and transformation of
both pragmatism and spirituality which is a call of our times.
Fred Dallmayr
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, USA
References
Dallmayr, Fred. 2010. Democratic Action and Experience: Dewey’s ‘Holistic’
Pragmatism. In The Promise of Democracy: Political Agency and Transforma-
tion, ed. Fred Dallmayr, 43–65. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Dewey, John. 1969. The Ethics of Democracy. In John Dewey: The Early Works,
1882–1898, vol. 1, ed. George E. Astelle et al., 236–240. Carbondale, IL:
Southern Illinois University.
Preface
Life is a manifold journey with paths, destinies and destinations–known
and unknown. Both our pathways, destinies and destinations have
multiple roots and routes in our practices, practical living as well as their
spiritual bases and horizons. Pragmatism, Spirituality and Society: Border
Crossings,TransformationsandPlanetaryRealizations engagesitselfwith
our experience of living which includes both our practice and different
pragmatic trajectories as well as their spiritual bases and aspirations. It
dealswiththethemeofpragmatismasamovementofthinkingemerging
fromUSAwithpioneeringthinkersandsavantssuchasCharlesS.Peirce,
William James, and John Dewey and opens pragmatism to varieties of
cross-cultural conversations and co-realizations. It strives to explore spir-
itual dimension of pragmatism and pragmatic and practical dimension of
spirituality. In carrying out such mutual opening, critique, and transfor-
mations, this volume strives to make both pragmatism and spirituality
part of a larger conversation of and on not only with human kind but
also with life kind where it includes all beings and not only humans. It
opens American pragmatism to cross-cultural conversations for example
exploringpathwaysofmutualtransformationsbetweenAmericanpragma-
tism and pragmatic and spiritual pathways from other philosophical and
spiritualtraditionssuchasConfucianism,Buddhism,Yoga,andTantra.It
opens both pragmatism and spirituality to rooted and routed planetary
conversations where we converse with our roots and across routes in a
spiritofmutuallearningandtransformations.Thismakesourthoughtand
xi
xii PREFACE
lives part of our connected planetary existence going beyond valorized
closures of many kinds such as Euro-American triumphalism, ethnocen-
trism, and anthropocentrism. Planetary realizations refer to processes of
realizinginthoughtandpracticethatweallbelongtoourplanetarechil-
drenofMotherEarthandourthinkingandpracticeembodiesthisrealiza-
tion.Byopeningpragmatismandspiritualitytoborder-crossingconversa-
tions,Pragmatism,SpiritualityandSociety helpsusrealizebothplanetary
conversations and planetary realizations.
Inourlife’sjourneysometimesaconversationforamomentcanleadto
long-term explorations. In February 2010, I was speaking with my dear
friend Makarand—Professor Makarand Paranjape teaching at Jawaharlal
Nehru University and presently Director of Indian Institute of Advanced
Study,Shimla—duringtheannualDialogueofHumanitySymposiumheld
at Fireflies Intercultural Ashram, Bangalore. Makarand told me that he
is coming to Pondicherry University next month to join a seminar on
“Re-Reading Sri Aurobindo.” I became interested in this and wrote to
ProfessorV.Muraleedharan,the-thenProfessorofEnglishofPondicherry
University and the Director of the Seminar. Professor Mauraleedharan
kindly welcomed me to present a paper in this and while preparing for
this seminar, I re-read Sri Aurobindo’s Human Cycles and found Sri
Aurobindo’sreferencetothecallofahigherpragmatism,anoblerkindof
pragmatisminthis.Thisinspiredmetopresentapaperon“SriAurobindo
and Spiritual Pragmatism” in this seminar in Pondicherry University in
March 2010. After this I co-nurtured an international seminar on “Prag-
matism and Spirituality” at Acharya Institute of Management, Bangalore
which was jointly supported by Acharya Institute of Management and
Indus Business Academy, Bangalore. After this I had initiated one more
session of this dialogue in Indus Business Academy, Bangalore in 2012
andthenhadorganizedaninternationalseminaronthisthemein2016at
IndusBusinessAcademy,BangalorejointlyorganizedbyMadrasInstitute
ofDevelopmentStudiesandIndusBusinessAcademyandsupportedbya
grantfromIndianCouncilofSocialScienceResearch.Thepresentvolume
emergesfromthesedialoguesandpaperspresentedintheseforums.Some
ofthepapersinthisvolumewerepublishedinaspecialissueonthistheme
in 3D: IBA Journal of Management in 2014.
It is with joy and gratitude that we offer Pragmatism, Spirituality and
Society to interested scholars and humanity after almost a decade of our
strivings. I thank Professors Makarand Paranjape and V. Muraleedharan
for their initial interest and support. I thank Professors V. Byra Reddy