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Dewey and Posner on Pragmatism and Moral Progress
RichardRortyt
The EditorsofThe University of Chicago Law Review wish
to acknowledgethe passingofProfessorRorty while this
articlewas beingpreparedforpress.We offer our condolences
to his family,friends,and colleagues.
I was greatly honored to be asked to give the Dewey Lecture, and
very happy to have an occasion to revisit my old university. I entered
the so-called "Hutchins College" in 1946, and left the University of
Chicago with an MA in philosophy six years later. Those were the
richest and most stimulating years of my intellectual life.
When I came to Chicago, John Dewey was still alive, but his influence
had waned. In those days, the best students in the University
were sitting at the feet of Leo Strauss, who taught them that Plato had
been magnificently right and Dewey dangerously wrong. "Utility and
truth," Strauss wrote, "are two entirely different things."'
In recent decades, pragmatism has made a comeback. Judge
Richard Posner has been one of the leaders of this revival. I have
learned a great deal from Judge Posner's books, and share his overall
philosophical outlook. But we still disagree on certain issues. I shall
argue in this lecture that on one of those issues-the question of
whether the modem West has made moral 'progress-Dewey would
have been on my side.
Strauss was not the first German to be dismissive about pragmatism.
Georg Simmel described it as "what the Americans were able to
get out of [Friedrich] Nietzsche."2 Simmel was wrong if he thought
t Richard Rorty is the author of Truthand Progress(Cambridge 1998) and, most recently,
of Philosophyas CulturalPolitics(Cambridge 2007). He taught philosophy at Wellesley, Princeton,
Virginia, and Stanford, from which he retired in 2005. This Essay was originally presented as
the John Dewey Lecture at The University of Chicago Law School on April 10, 2006.
1 Leo Strauss, NaturalRight and History 6 (Chicago 1953).
2 Rudolf Pannwitz, Erinnerungenan Simmel von Rudolf Pannwitz, in Kurt Gassen and
Michael Landmann, eds, Buch des Dankesan Georg Simmel: Briefe, Erinnerungen,Bibliographie
230,240 (Duncker and Humblot 1958) ("Ober den Pragmatismus sprach er [Simmel] einmal-in
The University of ChicagoLaw Review
that William James and Dewey got their ideas from Nietzsche, but he
was right that their views overlapped his. All three wanted us to stop
asking metaphysical questions about the nature of reality and about
the nature of human beings. But James and Dewey were better than
Nietzsche at formulating a coherent antimetaphysical outlook.
Nietzsche is notorious for his vacillations. He wavers between
criticizing the very idea of objective truth and proclaiming that his
own views are objectively true and everybody else's objectively false.
On one page he tells us that "[w]e simply lack any organ for knowledge,
for 'truth': we 'know' (or believe or imagine) just as much as may
be useful in the-interests of the human herd, the species."3 But a few
pages earlier he had said that "even we ... godless anti-metaphysicians
still take our fire, too, from the flame lit by a faith that is thousands of
years old ... the faith of Plato ... that truth is divine."4
At his best, however, Nietzsche explicitly rejected the scienceworship
that still links much of twenty-first century analytic philosophy
to nineteenth-century positivism. When he says "there are no
facts, only interpretations,"5 and seems willing to admit that this goes
for his own assertions as well, he edges closer to the more coherent
position that James and Dewey adopted. Both of these philosophers
would have agreed with Nietzsche that "[a] 'scientific' interpretation
of the world ... might therefore still be one of the most stupid of all
possible interpretations ... one of the poorest in meaning."6 Unfortunately,
however, passages like that one are offset by Nietzsche's bursts
of positivisitic braggadocio, as when he writes, "long live physics! And
even more so that which compels us to turn to physics -our honesty!"7
The American pragmatists did consistently what Nietzsche did
only occasionally and halfheartedly: they abandoned positivism's attempt
to elevate science above the rest of culture. They treated the
quarrel between Platonic immaterialism and Democritean materialism,
as well as all other metaphysical disputes, as irrelevant to practice
and thus not worth discussing. Pragmatists substitute the question
ein paar SAtzen-absch5tzig: es ware nur, was die Amerikaner sich aus Nietzsche geholt hdtten.").
I owe my knowledge of this passage to Wolf Lepenies.
3 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science§ 354 at 300 (Vintage 1974) (Walter Kaufmann, trans).
4 Id § 344 at 283.
5 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power:An Attempted TransvaluationofAll Values, Book
III, in Oscar Levy,ed, 15 The Complete Works ofFriedrichNietzsche 3, § 481 at 12 (Gordon 1974)
(Anthony M. Ludovici, trans) ("[F]acts are precisely what is lacking, all that exists consists of
interpretations.We cannot establish any fact 'in itself: it may even be nonsense to desire to do
such a thing.").
6 Nietzsche, The Gay Science § 373 at 335 (cited in note 3).
7 Id § 335 at 266.
[74:915
Dewey and Posneron Pragmatismand MoralProgress
"which descriptions of the human situation are most useful for which
human purposes?" for the question "which description tells us what
that situation really is?"
Pragmatism puts natural science on all fours with politics and art.
It is one more source of suggestions about what to do with our lives.
We might, for example, colonize the planets of other stars. Or we
might tweak our genes, in order to give birth to Ubermenschen.Or we
might try to equalize the life-chances of rich children and poor children.
Or we might try to make our individual lives into works of art.
Dewey thought that we should not try to ground our choices among
alternatives such as these on knowledge of what human beings
"really" are. For, as he put it, the term "'reality' is a term of value or
choice."' Philosophy, he insisted, "is [not] in any sense whatever a form
of knowledge." It is, instead, "a social hope reduced to a working program
of action, a prophecy of the future."9
If you agree with Dewey, as I do, about what philosophy is good
for, you will see much of contemporary philosophy as a struggle between
the heirs of Immanuel Kant and the heirs of G.W.E Hegel. Present-day
neo-Kantians persist in trying to make philosophy into a
branch of knowledge. Contemporary neo-Hegelians hope to grasp the
present moment in thought, in order to formulate better prophecies of
better futures. Dewey praised Hegel for having recognized that "the
moral consciousness of the individual is but a phase in the process of
social organization."' His own way of doing moral philosophy was to
compare alternative programs of action, and alternative prophecies.
Dewey's legacy is, of course, ambiguous. There is considerable disagreement
among his admirers about what programs of action follow
from his pragmatism. Cheryl Misak and Robert Westbrook, for example,
claim that Dewey inferred from a pragmatist view of knowledge
to the need for deliberative democracy." Westbrook argues both that
"[p]ragmatist epistemology alone is enough to provide grounds for
8 John Dewey, Philosophyand Democracy, in Jo Ann Boydston, ed, 11 John Dewey: The
Middle Works,1899-1924 41,45 (Southern Illinois 1982).
9 Id at 43.
10 John Dewey, MoralPhilosophy,in Jo Ann Boydston, ed, 4 John Dewey: The EarlyWorks,
1882-1898 147 (Southern Illinois 1971).
1 See Cheryl Misak, Truth, Politics, Morality: Pragmatism and Deliberation 12-18
(Routledge 2000) (noting that Dewey's view that philosophers should demonstrate humility
coheres with an inclusive and egalitarian model of deliberative democracy); Robert B.Westbrook,
Democratic Hope: Pragmatism and the Politics of Truth 187-88 (Cornell 2005) (arguing that
Dewey's democratic thought supports the establishment of a "community of inquiry," broadly
characterized by debate, reason, and -recognition, and one that is fully compatible with deliberative
democracy).
2007]
The University of ChicagoLaw Review
criticism of those who refuse to open their beliefs to the widest possible
range of experience and inquiry,"'2 and that deliberative democracy
is the only form of government that can provide such openness."
As Westbrook ruefully remarks, "no pragmatist has worked
harder to break the link between pragmatism and deliberative democracy
than Richard Posner."1 I agree with Posner when he says that
"[t]he bridge [Dewey] tried to build between epistemic and political
democracy is too flimsy to carry heavy traffic."'5 Dewey's attempts to
build that bridge were, I think, half-hearted and spasmodic. As long as
he defined democracy merely as "a name for a life of free and enriching
communion,"" it was easy for him to argue that the cause of democracy
would be furthered if we abandoned both metaphysics and
the correspondence theory of truth. But one can praise such a life
without believing that the masses should have a larger role in forming
public policy. One can agree wholeheartedly with Dewey about the
nature of truth, knowledge, and inquiry, and nevertheless agree with
Posner that what he calls "our present system of elective aristocracy"
is the best we can do.
But though Posner and I agree on this matter, we disagree about
another issue. As good neo-Hegelians, we both view the moral consciousness
of the individual as a matter of internalized social norms. I
think that our norms are better than those of our ancestors. Posner,
however, rejects the idea that we have made moral progress. I see this
rejection as a relapse from the true pragmatist faith into positivistic
science-worship.
Towards the beginning of his book, The Problematicsof Moral
and Legal Theory, Posner defines "morality" as "the set of duties to
others ... that are supposed to check our merely self-interested, emotional,
or sentimental reactions to serious questions of human conduct.""
He goes on to say that "[t]he genuineness of morality as a sys-
12 Westbrook, DemocraticHope at 197 (cited in note 11).
13 Id at 200 ("For one might reasonably suppose that only the demand for more democracy
will insure that we do not get less democracy or even no democracy at all.").
14 Id at 189.
15 Richard A. Posner, Law, Pragmatism,andDemocracy 113 (Harvard 2003).
16 John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems,in Jo Ann Boydston, ed, 2 John Dewey: The
LaterWorks 1925-1953 235,350 (Southern Illinois 1984).
17 Richard A. Posner, The ProblematicsofMoralandLegal Theory 4 (Belknap 1999).
[74:915
2007] Dewey and Posneron Pragmatismand MoralProgress 919
tem of social control is not in question.""lR But since systems of social
control are obviously local, he argues, so are moralities.
Posner admits "[t]here are a handful of rudimentary principles of
social cooperation -such as don't lie all the time ... that may be common
to all human societies."' 9But these, he says, "are too abstract to be
criterial."' To get guides to action, genuine checks to self-interest, you
need thicker notions than those used to state these abstract principles.
As Posner says, "what counts [for example] as murder, or as bribery,
varies enormously from society to society."'" So, he continues,
"[m]eaningful moral realism is therefore out, and a form ... of moral
relativism is in."" Furthermore, "[m]oral principles that claim universality
can usually be better understood as just the fancy dress of
workaday social norms that vary from society to society.""
Up to this point, Posner and Dewey are pretty much in accord.
Dewey's early reaction against both John Calvin and Kant left him
very suspicious of universal moral principles. He says, for example:
"Ready-made rules available at a moment's notice for settling any
kind of moral difficulty ... have been the chief object of the ambition
of moralists. In the much less complicated and less changing matters
of bodily health such pretensions are known as quackery."' '
One searches in yain through Dewey's work for the sort of abstract
principles offered by Kant, John Stuart Mill, John Rawls, and
Jirgen Habermas, and indeed for anything that can happily be described
as "a moral theory." Dewey might well have agreed with Posner
that "academic moralism is incapable of contributing significantly
to the resolution of moral or legal issues.""
But it is less clear that Dewey would have inferred, as Posner
does, from moral realism being out to moral relativism being in. It
depends, obviously, on what you mean by "moral relativism." If you
mean merely that, as Posner puts it, "our modem beliefs concerning
cruelty and inequality are contingent, rather than being the emanations
of a universal law,"2 6 then both Hegel and Dewey will count as
18 Id.
19 Id at 6.
20 Id.
21 Id.
22 Id.
23 Id.
24 John Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct,in Jo Ann Boydston, ed, 14 JohnDewey: The
Middle Works, 1899-1924 1,164 (Southern Illinois 1983).
25 Posner, Problematicsat 30 (cited in note 17).
26 Id at 19-20.
The Universityof ChicagoLaw Review
relativists. So, for that matter, will Rawls. For in this sense moral relativism
is merely the denial that knowledge of something transcultural-something
like the will of God or the dictates of pure practical
reason-can help us decide between competing systems of social control.
But when Posner goes on to say that "[i]t is provincial to say that
'we are right about slavery, for example, and the Greeks wrong,"' 7
I
think Dewey would demur. He would be startled by Posner's claim
that "[t]he relativity of morals implies that there is no moral progress
in any sense flattering to the residents of wealthy modern nations."
I think Dewey would respond to Posner by saying:
Ofcourse our judgment of our own rightness is provincial. So are
all our judgments about anything. But why should the fact that
we use the criteria of our time and place to judge that we have
made progress cast doubt on that judgment? What other criteria
are available? If you mean simply that only nations as rich and
lucky as those of the modern West can get along without slaves,
you have a point. But why deny that our wealth and good fortune
have enabled us to become morally better?
Dewey thought that the contingency of our moral outlook, and its
dependence on material conditions, no more impugns our moral superiority
than Galileo's dependence on expensive new optical technology
impugned the Copernican theory of the heavens. We can no more
help thinking of ourselves as morally superior to our ancestors than
we can help believing modem astrophysics to be better than Aristotle's.
Mock-modesty about either intellectual or moral progress is an
example of what Charles S. Peirce called "make-believe doubt"29doubt
that has no effect on practice.
The line of argument I am attributing to Dewey marks the point
at which pragmatism and positivism diverge. Pragmatists of my persuasion
spend a lot of time doing what Posner disparagingly describes
as a "level[ing] down" of science.) We do this so that science will no
longer seem to tower over morality. Posner says of this strategy that it
"may succeed in equating scientific to moral inquiry at the semantic
27 Id at 19.
28 Id at23.
29 See Charles S. Peirce, Some Consequences of Four Incapacities,in Philip P Wiener, ed,
CharlesS. Peirce:Selected Writings 39, 40 (Dover 1958) (arguing, against Ren6 Descartes, that
"[w]e cannot begin with complete doubt.... [I]nitial skepticism will be a mere self-deception,
and not real doubt"). See also Charles S. Peirce, What PragmatismIs, in Wiener, ed, Selected
Writings 180,188-90 (describing radical doubt as "make-believe").
30 Posner, Problematicsat 18 (cited in note 17).
[74:915
Dewey and Posneron PragmatismandMoralProgress
level, but it leaves untouched the vast practical difference in the success
of these enterprises."3 I do not see any such difference. We in the
modern West know much more about right and wrong than we did
two centuries ago, just as we know much more about how nature
works. We have been equally successful in both morals and physics.To
be sure, we have more difficulty convincing people of our moral views
than of our scientific views, but this does not mean that the two differ
in something called "epistemic status."
I reject the notion of epistemic status because, like Thomas Kuhn
and Dewey, I see scientific inquiry as working in much the same way
as does moral and political inquiry. Posner, like the positivists, sees a
big difference. When Posner argues that moral philosophy is "epistemically
feeble"32 on the ground that "the criteria for pronouncing a
moral claim valid are given by the culture in which the claim is advanced,""'
Kuhnians like myself reply that the same argument would
show the epistemic feebleness of physics and biology.
In response to this line of argument, Posner says:
[E]ven if scientific realism is rejected in favor of the view that
science yields "objective" results only because scientists happen
to form a cohesive, like-minded community-even if, that is, we
accept the view that consensus is the only basis on which truth
claims can or should be accepted because consensus makes
"truth" rather than truth forcing consensus-moral theorists are
up against the brute fact that there is no consensus with regard to
moral principles from which answers to contested moral questions
might actually be derived."
Posner is claiming that, even if we give up the idea of "truth forcing
consensus," a crucial difference between science and morals remains. I
would make two points in reply. First, brute facts about the presence
or absence of consensus-whether about planetary orbits or about
sodomy-are to be explained sociologically rather than epistemologically.
To explain absence of consensus by "lack of cognitive status" is
like explaining a substance's failure to put you to sleep by its lack of
dormitive power.
Second, it does not matter whether we can get consensus on
moral principles as long as we can get it on practices. As I said earlier,
31 Id.
32 Id at 12.
33 Id at 8.
34 Id at 62-63.
20071
The Universityof Chicago Law Review
I agree with both Posner and Dewey that moral philosophy will never
come up with analogues of Newton's laws-principles that bear on
particular cases in the straightforward and uncontroversial way in
which physical theory bears on particular observable events. But that
asymmetry between physics and morality does nothing to impugn the
existence of moral progress. Our practices have changed for the better,
even if philosophers cannot agree on what principles "ground" these
improved practices.
Posner has remarked that even Justice Scalia would now adjudge
the lash and the stocks to be cruel and unusual punishments, even
though they were not so regarded by those who drafted the Eighth
Amendment. Most of us, and probably Scalia as well, would agree that
this change constitutes moral progress. One can agree with Posner that
moral philosophy is of no help in providing the courts with reasons for
enjoining the use of the lash. But that is no reason to deny that our
judges have, like the rest of us, become better able to tell cruelty when
they see it.They do not need to be able to define it.
The advantage of pragmatism over positivism is that pragmatists
have no trouble with the idea that propositions such as "the stocks
and the lash are cruel punishments" and "there is nothing immoral
about sodomy" have recently been discovered to be true. They are
true, on a pragmatist view, in just the same way that it is true that
E = mc2.The fact that moralities are, among other things, local systems
of social control does no more to cast doubts on moral progress than
the fact that scientific breakthroughs are financed by people hoping
for improved technology casts on progress in the "hard" sciences.
A willingness to level down science in this way is, as I see it, the
biggest difference between pragmatism and positivism. Kuhn was one
of the best things that ever happened to pragmatism, for his work
helped us accept Dewey's suggestion that reasoning in morals is no different
from reasoning in science-a suggestion Posner explicitly rejects.
As I see it, Kuhn demythologized scientific theory-choice in the same
way that Posner has demythologized judicial decisionmaking.
Admittedly, however, leveling-down of this sort still looks fishy
both to common sense and to the majority of analytic philosophers.
This is because both are still tempted to say that if a sentence is true,
there must be something that makes it true. The physical world, they
continue, makes Newton's laws true, but it is not clear what makes
moral judgments true. So, the argument goes, perhaps the only value
[74:915
2007] Dewey and Posneron Pragmatismand MoralProgress 923
judgments that can be thought of as true are empirical predictions
about what means will best serve which ends. Posner seems to buy in
on this line of thought. He is quick to argue from what he calls "our
inability to reason about ends" to the conclusion that there is no such
thing as better apprehension of moral truth.
But pragmatists, at least those of my sect, do not think that anything-either
the physical world or the consensus of inquirers-makes
beliefs true. We have as little use for the notion of "what makes a true
sentence true" as we do for that of "what a true sentence corresponds
to." On our view, all consensus does is help us recognize moral truths.
We can cheerfully agree that truths-all kinds of truths-are eternal
and absolute. It was true before the foundations of the world were laid
both that 2 + 2 = 4 and that I should be wearing this particular tie today.
It was also true that the lash is, in the sense of the Eighth
Amendment, a cruel punishment. Eternal and absolute truth is the
only kind of truth there is, even though the only way we know what is
true is by reaching a consensus that may well prove transitory. All that
can be salvaged from the claim that truth is a product of consensus is
that finding out what other people believe is, most of the time, a good
way to decide what to believe oneself
But only most of the time. If consensus were all we ever had to go
on, there would never have been either scientific or moral progress.
We should have had neither Galilean mechanics nor the civil rights
movement. One of the features of science that Kuhn helped us appreciate
is that great leaps forward occur only when some imaginative
genius puts a new interpretation on familiar facts. Percy Bysshe Shelley's
Defense of Poetryhelped us realize that the same thing is true of
morality. As he put it, "Reason is to Imagination as the instrument to
the agent, as the body to the spirit, as the shadow to the substance."'"
Dewey endorsed this analogy, as well as Shelley's claim that
"[t]he great instrument of moral good is the imagination; and poetry
administers to the effect by acting upon the cause."'' He agreed with
Shelley that "[e]thical science arranges the elements which poetry has
created."37 Only the imagination can break through the crust of convention.
Galileo did for Aristotle's hylomorphic physics what Martin
35 Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defense of Poetry or Remarks Suggested by an Essay Entitled
"The FourAges of Poetry," in Donald H. Reiman and Sharon B. Powers, eds, Shelley's Poetry and
Prose480,480 (Norton 1977).
36 Id at 488.
37 Id at 487. For Dewey's thoughts concerning this passage, see John Dewey, Art and Civilization,
in Jo Ann Boydston, ed, 10 John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925-1953 329, 347-48, 350
(Southern Illinois 1987).
The Universityof ChicagoLaw Review
Luther King did for the Southern Way of Life. He dreamed up an alternative.
The attractiveness of that alternative gradually undermined
an old consensus and built up a new one.
Posner's label for people like King and Catharine MacKinnon is
"moral entrepreneur[]."" He is quite ready to acknowledge that if it
were not for people like these, we should still be sentencing criminals
to the lash, segregating the water fountains, and enforcing the antisodomy
laws. But his positivistic leanings are apparent from his description
of how these entrepreneurs do their work. Of MacKinnon he
writes: "Her influential version of radical feminism is not offered without
supporting arguments. But her influence is not due to the quality
of those arguments. It is due to her polemical skills, her singlemindedness,
[and] her passion."39 "Moral entrepreneurs," Posner tells us, "persuade,
but not with rational arguments.",* They use "techniques of
nonrational persuasion.""1
Posner's positivism takes another form when he tries to explain
the success of such entrepreneurs by saying that they are "like arbitrageurs
in the securities markets.... They spot the discrepancy between
the existing code and the changing environment and persuade the
society to adopt a new, more adaptive, code."2 I think that Dewey
would have found Posner's analogy with the arbitrageur misleading,
and perhaps a bit repellent. Posner (like his fellow economics fan, Karl
Marx) is distrustful of moral idealism. Dewey wallowed in it.
If we adopt Shelley's and Dewey's account of moral progress we
shall think of Martin Luther King, Betty Friedan, and the leaders of
the gay rights movement as helping to create, rather than as detecting,
a changed environment. They changed it by telling us, singlemindedly
and passionately, how human lives were being needlessly damaged by
cruel institutions. They incited social hope by proposing programs of
action, and by prophesying a better future. These so-called "nonrational"
methods worked. Posner's notion of "adaptation" seems to me
of no use when we try to explain why they worked.
Posner has set things up so that moral idealists cannot look good.
For if they try to avoid nonrational persuasion by appealing to abstract
principle, he (like Stanley Fish) will point out that they are ignoring
Ludwig Wittgenstein's point that no rule can determine its own
38 Posner, Problematicsat ix (cited in note 17).
39 Id at 43.
40 Id at ix.
41 Id at 42.
42 Id at 44.
[74:915
2007] Dewey and Posneron Pragmatismand MoralProgress 925
interpretation. Yet if the romantic idealists refrain from citing such
principles, Posner will tell them that they have abandoned rational
argumentation in favor of other, more dubious, polemical tactics.
Posner draws an invidious contrast between heroic figures like
Mill and Nietzsche, whom he admires, and such "modern moral philosophers"
as Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, Joseph Raz, and T.M. Scanlon,
about whom he is less enthusiastic.3 The latter, he says, are not "likely
source[s] of moral entrepreneurship."" But Posner, here again, is setting
things up so that Rawls and the like are damned no matter what
they do. The more unlike Nietzsche and MacKinnon these philosophers
are, the more useless. The more like them, the less rational.
Consider the following conundrum: is Posner's own attempt to
stigmatize various sorts of advocacy as "nonrational" an example of
rational argumentation or of polemical strategy? I have no idea how
to answer that question, and see no point in trying to do so. For I
would say about criteria of rationality what Posner says about moral
principles: they are "just the fancy dress of workaday social norms that
vary from society to society."5
In the sixteenth century it was only rational to test astrophysical
or biological theories against holy scripture. We can rightly claim to be
more rational than Copernicus's contemporaries if that means simply
that our beliefs about what to test against what-and, more generally,
of what is relevant to what-are true, whereas many of theirs were
false. Our social norms are indeed better than their social norms. But
there is no discipline called "epistemology" that can show this to be
the case. Our judgments of progress and of rationality will remain as
parochial as our judgments of everything else. Yet the parochial, historically-conditioned
character of justification is compatible with the
eternal and absolute character of truth.
What is the point of dividing the various tactics we use to persuade
our fellow citizens into the rational ones and the others? What
difference in practice, one can imagine Dewey asking, is this difference
supposed to make? Why hang on to the distinction between the
cognitive and the noncognitive that the logical positivists tried to enforce-the
distinction that philosophers such as Hilary Putnam and
Donald Davidson have done their best to discredit? The question of
43 Id at 5 ("The members of the family think that the kind of moral theorizing nowadays
considered rigorous in university circles has an important role to play in improving the moral
judgments and moral behavior of people.").
44 Id at 80.
45 Id at 6. See also notes 19-23 and accompanying text.
The Universityof ChicagoLaw Review
whether it was rational to let Galilean mechanics undermine Christian
faith, or whether this was the result of passionate, irrational, Holbachian,
and Voltairean polemic, is not worth raising. Neither is the question
about whether the suffragettes achieved victory through the use
of reason or by virtue of their remarkable singlemindedness.
Consider Posner's claim that "[a]t its best, moral philosophy, like
literature, enriches; it neither proves nor edifies."'' What follows from
this? What does it matter whether we say, with Posner, that "moral
philosophers are poets and novelists manqu6'"" or instead say that
poets and novelists are amateur moral theorists? We know the sorts of
things that moral philosophers, poets, novelists, economists, and lawyers
have achieved. We know how they did it. We are in a position to
evaluate their contributions to culture and to consider how they might
best make further contributions.What purpose is served by separating
them into rational sheep and nonrational goats?
Posner seems to think that such separation is essential to doing
good sociology. Sociology, he tells us, is the "scholarly niche" that his
book on moral and legal theory occupies.48 He describes himself as
employing "Weberian insights concerning professionalization and its
alternatives, including charismatic moral entrepreneurship,, 9 and as
skeptical about "knowledge claims advanced by certain academic disciplines."'
Such skepticism, he says, "is a leitmotif of sociology.... [Sociologists]
insist that what is 'professed' may mask the pursuit of self-
interest.""
But adopting a Kuhnian view of scientific progress -replacing
epistemology with history and sociology of science-has not encouraged
skepticism about knowledge claims advanced by physicists. Nor
should it. It was only the invidious contrast between natural science
and the rest of culture, the contrast that was at the heart of positivism,
that made possible skepticism about moral entrepreneurs. From a
Kuhnian perspective, a Weberian sociology of suspicion looks like just
one more strategy employed by self-interested professionals hoping to
carve out a niche within the academy.
The main reason positivism still seems attractive and pragmatism
counterintuitive is the belief that criteria of rationality are more than
46 Id at 32.
47 Id.
48 Id at xiii.
49 Id.
50 Id.
51 Id.
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2007] Dewey and Posneron Pragmatismand MoralProgress 927
"just the fancy dress of workaday social norms."52 That conviction is
the legacy of passionate singleminded polemics composed by such
intellectual entrepreneurs as Ren6 Descartes, John Locke, and Kant.
These men tried to make the epithet "irrational" do the work previously
done by "un-Christian." Their strategy was to insist, implausibly
enough, that relations of relevance between propositions are noncontingent
and nonlocal; they taught that an innate faculty called "reason"
made such relations evident to any honest mind. We, their heirs,
are persuaded that thinking Genesis relevant to biology, or Leviticus
to morality, is evidence either of irrationality or of dishonesty.
Dewey and Kuhn tried to persuade us that criteria of relevance,
and thus of rationality, are social norms. Such norms have changed,
sometimes for the worse and sometimes for the better.They will keep
right on changing. But we shall never be able to prove that any given
change was a good or a bad one. To do so we would have to find an
Archimedean standpoint from which to compare our sentences with
the things that make them true or false. The pragmatist denial that
there is any such relation as "being made true by" amounts to denying
that we shall ever find such a standpoint.
I have been arguing in this lecture that Posner's refusal to admit
that we have made moral progress is a rhetorical gesture that can have
no bearing on practice. For moral progress is not an idea we can possibly
get out of our heads. Only the lingering influence of scienceworship
tempts us to try.The positivists agreed with Plato that to have
knowledge was to see things under the aspect of eternity, and they
then argued that only natural science could do that. But if we can
bring ourselves to give up that Platonic view of knowledge, we might
become willing to admit that doubts about moral progress are as
phony as doubts about the reality of electrons. Once Plato's attempt to
escape from time to eternity is abandoned, we are left with nothing
but the hope that we will look good to our future selves, and to future
generations. Dewey thought that hope was enough.
52 Id at 6.
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