Thread by @shengokai

@Helenreflects once posed a question about American Pragmatism that I've been pondering for a bit. Essentially it boils down to if American Pragmatism should be counted as a less commonly taught philosophy. My initial answer, as is normally the case, was "yes but..."

I don't think "American Pragmatism" as a sub-field is a less commonly taught philosophy, at least not in the same way that non-western, feminist, and other marginalized philosophies are treated as less commonly taught. American Pragmatism crops up in a variety of places.

For example, most "Philosophy of Education" courses engage Dewey at some point, and Dewey is a long time resident in many education syllabi in education departments. Specifically, Dewey's work on education and culture is often circulated as a grounding text on pedagogy.

Most philosophy departments have an "American Philosophy" course which is where pragmatism goes to die, if I'm being cynical about it. That said, if we get down into the weeds about it, the question becomes which pragmatists are being taught within American Pragmatism.

This is also a question of how "American Pragmatism" and "American Philosophy" are conflated within the discipline and who counts as either an "American Philosopher" or an "American Pragmatist." This is, naturally, an ongoing and bloody fight within the discipline.

This, I think, reframes the question. In my experience, the majority of the instruction in pragmatism that I've encountered is usually Peirce, Royce, Rorty, Putnam. Sometimes Brandom, Whitehead, Santayana end up taught within "American Philosophy" or "American Pragmatism."

I've also seen a more common relegation of James and Dewey to historical thinkers in Pragmatism, to draw a line from Peirce to contemporary and neopragmatists (which I think is a mistake), and the relegation of Addams to feminism or special topics courses (also a mistake.)

Putting that aside, the reason I'm pointing this out is because what is being taught under the auspices of "American Pragmatism" structures the perception of the field. That is, this is a question about American Pragmatism's identity as it emerges through instruction.

To be clear, there is a robust amount of contemporary pragmatist scholarship from a variety of pragmatist traditions; however, it is rare that this work is actually TAUGHT. This is an important distinction as what is researched may not be what is taught in classes.

Put another way, while there are a wide variety of contemporary deployments of pragmatism (e.x. Mark Johnson, neuropragmatism), these contemporary advances in pragmatism may not find their way into the classroom. Given the question is about teaching, I would change my answer.

Specifically, I would say some pragmatism falls under the LCT banner, e.x. Addams, DuBois, Dewey's Aesthetics, Whitehead and Emerson (as American Philosophers), and many contemporary pragmatists, while some pragmatism is fairly common place. I would also say this is intentional.

Further, there are few departments left where you could get a thorough training in Dewey, James, and Addams, and even fewer that engage DuBois as a pragmatist, and still fewer who engage contemporary pragmatism at the undergraduate level or not as a "special topics" course.

That said, I'd have to do a more thorough examination of how and what is being taught as "American Pragmatism" to shore up this claim, but from my anecdotal estimation, "strong" American departments are in the minority, much less departments with a Deweyan or Jamesian.

Maybe I could compel the APA or bribe someone to pay me to do a survey of "American Philosophy" and "American Pragmatism" courses within departments to get a phenomenological account of how American Pragmatism comes to "appear" in departments and the field.

Then again, that last bit is my own cynical approach: if we want to know "what" philosophy is, and what it might be, we might look at what we're teaching. Remember, the collective conduct of a community, even a sub-discipline, determines the shape of the community.

And, insofar as the "collective conduct" of philosophy is teaching and research, how and what we teach shapes the community of philosophers and what they research.

I could also be wrong.