Here is the Study Guide for Summer Institute in American Philosophy Works-In-Progress Session
University of Oregon, 11:00, 17 July, 2009:

There have been many blogs and articles over the last year or so regarding Barack Obama’s pragmatism.  Some of these are well-researched newspaper or magazine articles, some are well informed accounts by those who know Obama well, some are by SAAP members, and many are political opinion pieces decrying, being puzzled by or praising his pragmatism.  Generally, except for those who are puzzled, they have in mind a pragmatism of expediency (or more charitably, practical results) or post-partisanship (or anti-ideology), but some link him to the melioristic, experimental pragmatism of the classic American philosophers. 

I have collected and annotated some of these on this nascent website.   My next step is to analyze them in the hope that I can situate Obama’s pragmatism in relation to intellectual pragmatism.

My strategy is to exploit the interest in Obama to educate others and ourselves about pragmatism—and perhaps enhance it.  For the first time, to my knowledge, we have a prominent, well-regarded politician whose practice is avowedly pragmatic.  In good pragmatic fashion I would like to understand and perhaps reconstruct this “practice,” making it more intelligent. (The scare quotes indicate that we intellectuals would be re-making an intellectualized version of what Obama does.  I doubt that we will be given the opportunity to reconstruct his actual practice.)

Not only do I need help with the intellectual task, but I could also use assistance with developing the website as an archive and educational medium.

All the materials one needs for the session are on the website.  A good place to begin is with the statement by John Capps that he made at the end of the course he co-taught this spring.  Make sure and read Mitchell Aboulafia's 27 May 2009 post.

I have posted a very preliminary sketch of what kind of pragmatist Obama is and how he relates to the classic American pragmatists

Michael Eldridge
UNC Charlotte
meldridge@aya.yale.edu