Pragmatism and Democratic Faith (original) (raw)

In this article I seek to elucidate the relationship between pragmatism and democratic faith through the writings of William James, John Dewey, and W. E. B. Du Bois. I advanced three claims, all of which when taken together, lays bare the conceptual and political work pragmatism does for us and those in the tradition of American political thought. My argument here, though ambitious, is threefold: First, that James and Dewey provided an orientation toward the social world that emphasized the role of risk, uncertainty, and the necessity of faith, thus undercutting the traditional attribution of metaphysical optimism; second, that Dewey, in particular, tied these themes to a view of democracy that envisioned “the people” or community as a malleable social category in which new descriptions of political life might be invested; and third, that the framework provided by James and Dewey helps elucidate Du Bois’s engagement with his fellows in his classic work of 1903, The Souls of Black Folk, and redirect our attention to the specific resources (i.e. rhetoric and emotions) he believed necessary for shaping “the people.”