I think I mentioned that I'd picked up that book that included Quine's anti-pragmatist essay. I'd discussed that a couple of weeks ago. I managed to find it at a used book store for only $6. The book is Pragmatism: Its Sources and Prospects. It's somewhat interesting in a quite odd way since nearly all the claims about pragmatism in it seem wrong to me. Clearly that's the case with Quine. But while I've not thoroughly read the rest of the essays they seem wrong to me also. I even cringed when one author brought up the idea that pragmatism accepted "truth as useful." I don't claim to be an expert or even have read all the pragmatists. I tend to primarily focus on Peirce and to a far lesser extent James and Dewey. But that just seems wrong. However that's neither her nor there. What I wanted to quote was the opening paragraphs of the essay "Pragmatism and the Importance of Being Ernest" by Ernest Gellner, the essay that follows Quine's.
There is the oft quoted remark about the man who tried to be a philosopher, but cheerfulness kept breaking through.... What is less well known is the end of the story. He found a way out. He became a pragmatist. Thereafter, he was both a philosopher and cheerful.
A certain cheerfulness seems to be of the very essence of pragmatism, and is in effect one of its defining traits. Moreover, it seems to me a crucial error. It is not my wish to argue that a deep gloom is an absolute precondition of philosophical truth. Rather, a kind of pervasive Angst is a precondition of the correct formulation of the epistemic question. When it is absent, a missing of the point, a begging of the question, if not outright formal error, are the inescapable consequences.
It's an interesting question, especially since I've had friends describe me as a cheerful pessimist. (No doubt the Ubermensche in me laughing at all tragedies imagined or real) While I think that angst can be philosophically useful (depending upon how one takes the meaning of that term) I'm not sure it entails we ought always be in a mode of angst. I think angst can reveal something philosophically but I'm not sure it need only be revealed in angst.
"Pragmatism and the Importance of Being Ernest" by Ernest Gellner
Nice pun.
Well, it didn't seem to work for William James who suffered from bouts of depression.
All the same, I think Gellner might be on to something in the first part of his comment (that pragmatism goes with cheerfulness) but not so much with his second point (that cheerfulness is a crucial error). If it exists, the cheerfulness that goes with pragmatism does not stem from a lack of a pervasive Angst, but from coming to terms with that angst.
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