Research Tasks

We need to know more about Alice Dewey's knowledge of her grandfather's pragmatic philosophy, and, if she did have this knowledge, did she pass it along to Ann Dunham?  Alice, the daughter of Sabino and Edith Dewey, was named for her grandmother.  Sabino was the adopted son of John and Alice Dewey.

Clearly Barack Obama was influenced by Saul Alinsky and the latter was educated by the pragmatists in the Sociology Department at the University of Chicago.  (See the essay by Lawrence J. Engel, "Saul D. Alinsky and the Chicago School," The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 16.1 (2002): 50-66.)  But what sort of pragmatist, if he was one, was Alinsky, and is this what was transmitted to Obama?We need more than circumstantial evidence; we need an analysis of the ideas and practices that were passed from John Dewey and George Herbert Mead to the Chicago pragmatist sociologists to Alinsky and then to Obama.

The best effort to date to make the case for Obama as a pragmatist is Bart Schultz, "Obama's Political Philosophy: Pragmatism, Politics, and the University of Chicago," Philosophy of the Social Sciences  39 (2009): 127-173.  But this is not the last word.  Schultz's excellent essay needs to be subjected to careful examination.  Because it is sweeping in scope, detailed in exposition, filled with insight, and well argued, it should be attractive to critics.  Another reason it is not a case closer is that it does deal with the Alice Dewey question, nor does it subject the relationship of Obama to Alinsky and Alinsky to the Chicago pragmatists to the careful inquiry that is needed.

Clearly many of those asserting that Obama was a pragmatist, unlike Schultz, have a superficial understanding of pragmatism as mere expediency or concerned only with means and not ends.  We need to show, with reference to Obama and intellectual pragmatism, why this understanding is impoverished.

Elvin Lim argues that politicians are interested in getting themselves elected or re-elected and are thus pragmatic.  It is thus unhelpful to call Obama a pragmatist; so doing does not distinguish him from other politicians.  So one needs to show that Obama as a politician is both pragmatic and distinguishable from other politicians as a pragmatist.  In other words, what is the value of designating Obama as a pragmatist?

Many who are interested in American Philosophy, such as the members of the Society for the Study of American Philosophy, lament the failure of the discipline to engage in public philosophy, as was practiced by William James, Jane Addams, Josiah Royce, Morris Raphael Cohen, and John Dewey during the first part of the twentieth century.  If one could show the difference it makes to call Obama a pragmatist by making use of the philosophical resources afforded by the pragmatic tradition, then one would be able to show the value of philosophy for public life.  In other words, to identify Obama as a pragmatist and show the value of this for the public's understanding of Obama's politics would be an example of public philosophy.