[This blog is amid a series of postings that
aims to share with the reader a history of the nation – albeit highly summary
in nature – from the perspective of a dialectic struggle. That is the struggle between a cultural
perspective that emphasizes more communal and cooperative ideals of federalism
and the individualistic perspective of the natural rights construct.
The general argument this blog has made is that
federalism enjoyed the dominant cultural position in the US until World War II,
and after a short transition, the natural rights view has been dominant. Whether one perspective is dominant or the
other; whichever it is, that fact has a profound impact on the teaching of civics
in American classrooms.]
The last posting gave the reader a thumbnail
summary of the Progressive and New Deal eras and attempted to make the point
that between the two, Americans expressed an adoption of a consumerist view
toward governance. And as one takes this
shift into account, one can readily see a move away from federal relationships
between and among Americans and their government to a natural rights view in defining
those relationships.
They – many of them – ceased seeing themselves
as mutual partners of the polity to that of consumers of governmental services. This shift has proven to be fundamental and
highly consequential. To understand its significance
or implication, one needs to have some understanding as to why it was motivated
to happen. And for that, while not
offering a complete account, one needs to revisit the 1800s.
Of all things, a biological discovery seems to
have had an inordinate influence on changing America’s view of all social
relationships including political ones.
With Charles Darwin’s publication of On the Origin of Species,
the basic religious, theological assumptions of Americans came to be seriously
questioned.
While among typical Americans, the book became a
subject of humor (common images of monkey relatives); among intellectuals, it
became immersed in serious questioning of various topics and issues. Is there a god? Is there free will? Is life just a material reality deprived of any
spiritual importance or existence? If
current life is the product of a long, evolving process, what does that mean in
terms of how old the earth is? All of
these questions brought biblical accounts into question.
Allen C. Guelzo[1]
brings his readers a short, but insightful summary of how intellectuals reacted
to this 1859 book. He identifies those
who initially took on these concerns.
The interested reader can look up those intellectuals – mostly
theologians – who led in this questioning.
They include Crawford Howell Toy, Horace Bushnell, Henry Ward Beecher,
Charles Augustus Briggs, and Walter Rauschenbusch. Here is a snippet of Guelzo’s description:
[With
the backdrop of the rise of corporate power], [f]or the 22 million people who
inhabited American cities, crowding into festering tenements, there was
precious little in the way of public community or organic society.
But to Social Darwinists [i.e., the social
application of Darwin’s ideas], … that was not a problem because there were no
mystic, spiritual ties to bind families and communities together; and to the
great captains of Gilded Age industry, this was just what nature had
ordained. When William H. Vanderbilt was
asked by an incredulous reporter about what the public would say about his most
recent corporate shenanigans, he replied, “The public be damned.”[2]
But
Guelzo places the bulk of his account on the work and life of William James. Beyond providing a review of James’ family
background – an interesting and telling story – Guelzo highlights this
intellectual’s contribution to this ongoing reaction to Darwin. And in this, one needs to mention the
influence of Charles Sanders Peirce.
Here is a rundown of his, James’, main points.
To
begin, there might be free will or not, but if one believes there is, that is
enough to give one a positive sense of oneself.
With that, one can function with confidence as one meets his/her
challenges or opportunities. As a result,
one enjoys a sense of freedom and a – at least – perceived moral life. And these ideas encouraged James to pick up
the study of the mind – what would become known as psychology – which at the
time had not even been named.
This
interest seemed to grow from his studies in theology and philosophy. And, in turn, both of those fields were based
on introspection or the study, in fancy language, of one’s consciousness, an
outgrowth of self-absorption. And at the
same time, from abroad, an interest in psychology was taking root in Germany
but not from a spiritual angle. There,
the study zeroed in on how stimulation affected mental and physical capacities.
Another
source from abroad was what this blog has referred to before, the “common-sense”
philosophy from Scotland. There, such
writers as Alexander Bain and John Stuart Mill reconceptualized thinking as merely
ideas about things as opposed to perceived moral qualities of moral objects. This was more in line with Darwin’s
description of survival as a battle within a physical environment sans any
outer-world forces or qualities.
All
of this suggested that psychology could and should be a legitimate physical
science and subjected to scientific methods of measuring variables or factors
and attempting to make predictable conclusions about a world in which survival
of the fittest is studied.
Finally,
in 1890, James had his hefty work, Principles of Psychology, published. And in that work, one finds the influence of
another thinker – one featured earlier in this blog – Jonathan Edwards. Guelzo describes this as follows,
…
the Principles were actually at some moment reminiscent of a great many
of Edwards’s approaches and ideas. James
argued that minds were not assemblies of independent faculties that met like a committee
for thinking, but more like a stream of consciousness. “Consciousness, then, does not appear to
itself chopped up in bits,” James wrote.
“No state of consciousness is permanent or independent like a ‘faculty’. Instead, consciousness is always generating
novelties and appropriating and fusing all kinds of experience.” The ultimate purpose served by this stream of
consciousness was evolutionary. The
mind, James argued, was an organ, evolved for a use, which was to ensure
survival.[3]
And that consciousness can be analogized as a
stage upon which a variety of options is reviewed and evaluated as one
considers what to do. Under such a view,
one can entertain the idea of a complex – not an all-or-nothing – sphere of choice.
The possibility of entertaining novelties
undermined the notion of a simple, calculating mind that merely figured out
rewards or benefits and punishments or costs.
And, in that, life is a succession of encountering things, not as
stagnant realities, but in things becoming or “in the making.”
With that, this blog will give the reader a bit
of time to consider the worth of James’ contribution. There is still more to report from his work,
but one, at this point, might project where this is going and how federalist
values and beliefs might be challenged in some ways and enhanced in others. Either way, what remains, to this blogger, is
a bit surprising. The next posting will
conclude this William James presentation.
[1] Allen C. Guelzo, The American Mind, Part II – a transcript book – (Chantilly, VA: The Teaching Company/The Great Courses, 2005). For a more detailed account of James and other pragmatists, see Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2001).
[2]
Guelzo, The American Mind, Part II, 118-119.
[3] Ibid., 129.
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