Various philosophical approaches have been gathered under the term “pragmatism.” As early as 1908, Arthur Lovejoy critically differentiated thirteen types of pragmatism, and at least as many variations of neopragmatism can be identified today.8 The lowest common denominator among these
variants may be the general and unquestioned thesis that practice takes precedence over theory. This fundamental thesis is shared not only by classic American pragmatism as well as current neopragmatism, but also by hermeneutic or constructivist-culturalist schools of thoughts that work with basic pragmatic elements. The preference for practice over theory can be explained more precisely as a conviction that “knowing how” is preferable to “knowing that”—that practice maintains explicatory priority over theory. But opinions are divided as to how practice should be more precisely defined, what status theory should have, and how exactly the preference of practice over theory should be understood. In the following, therefore, I will proceed from a more general conception of pragmatism, encompassing neopragmatism and classic pragmatism, and will attempt to name the commonalties of the various directions. In doing so, I will initially grant little importance to the differences between classic pragmatism and contemporary neopragmatism.9
For a more specific examination of the definition of the terms practice and theory in pragmatic philosophies, the differences between classic pragmatism (for which language was a topic but which had not yet encountered the linguistic turn) and neopragmatism, (which developed out of the linguistic turn and its postanalytic critical transformation), will become more important. An initial clarification of how pragmatism will be defined in this paper can be gained by examining more closely the reversal of the traditional relationship of theory and practice. This reversal is accompanied in all pragmatic theories by a problematizing and rejection of a so-called representationalism. The devaluation of “knowing that,” a type of knowledge claim traditionally at the center of philosophy, and the revaluation of the status of the practical “knowing how” is accompanied by a relinquishment of a privileged knowledge that enables and justifies the practice of all. One of the most fundamental characteristics of the various forms of pragmatic philosophy is, therefore, its antirepresentationalism.10Pragmatic criticism is
first directed against a representationalism characteristic of the rationalist and empirical approaches of modern philosophy—that is to say against a preferably mental, epistemological representationalism. Secondly, it is directed
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against a representationalism that has been influential even for currents of modern language philosophy, which is marked not by an image theory but by Kantian-constructivism. Because Kant insisted on the idea that a world that is independent from consciousness needs to be paired up with a form of regulatory epistemology that guarantees certainty and objectivity, his theory is regarded by pragmatism as representationalist. Pragmatism and neo- pragmatism, moreover, criticize Descartes and Locke as well as Kant for their representationalist concept of “knowing that.”
All forms of representationalism maintain that—as neopragmatists like Rorty and classic pragmatists such as Dewey emphasize repeatedly— the world, which is characterized by its independence from concepts, judgments, language, or spirit, is to be adequately imagined, represented, or structured by terms and judgments, signs, sentences, ideas, schemata, or concepts. This assumption leads to numerous problems, according to classic American pragmatism and neopragmatism, including further ontological obligations, e.g., toward directly or indirectly realistic or antirealistic assumptions about the material world; obligations concerning how to understand the nature of concepts, signs, ideas, or perceptions; as well as a correspondence theory of truth.
A further problem is the mentalistic vocabulary that is a necessary part of the representational concept, especially from Descartes to Hume. The world is divided here into objects and ideas of objects, into appearance and reality. It is the task of the “inner” world, the ideas and signs, to provide certainty for the statements about the “material” world. If representation through linguistic signs and ideas is to be successful, a further prerequisite for the verifying reference toward this inner representation is necessary. As opaque and mediated the access to the world appears on the one hand, so transparent should consciousness be for itself on the other. A privileged position for self-referentiality and transparent introspection is a necessary ingredient of representationalism. The other side of the coin of this “quest for certainty”11 is skepticism. Epistemological skepticism becomes a permanent
companion to an epistemology that struggles for certainty.12 From
the perspective of pragmatism, epistemological skepticism receives an intensification through the transcendental Kantian version of represen- tationalism—that is to say, through a strategy that, according to Kantian thought, proffers a certain knowledge against skepticism. The dual track of questioning that results from the Kantian approach—namely, regarding the transcendental vanishing point of the schematizing and formatting understanding on the one hand, and regarding the possibilities of getting beyond mere appearance (i.e., the limitations of the schematized) on the other—contains not just the danger of skepticism but also of relativism.
The pragmatic reaction to the—here only briefly sketched out—problem that is presented by representationalism is not an attempt to find a solution
Pragmatic Aspects of Hegel’s Thought 51 within the representational approach. Classic pragmatism and neopragmatism rather initiate a far-reaching and fundamental reorganization the result of which is that numerous problems of representational theories don’t occur in the first place.13 This reorganization pertains especially to the theoretical
relationship of the subject of classic epistemology to the world, that is to say the preference of theory over practice. A theoreticist understanding of philosophy and a representationalist approach to cognition are mutually dependent. Cognition is for representationalism always contemplative, it is only concerned with the “knowing that.” Dewey regards this claim for totality to which the theoretical and contemplative concept of cognition is bound as the “great intellectuallistic fallacy”14 that philosophy has repeatedly made
since the Greeks. Pragmatism changes the perspective entirely by refocusing attention on a practical-pragmatic relationship to the world. The “spectators’ theory of knowledge,”15as Dewey has called it, is abandoned in favor of the
engagement of the active subject with the world: “They are things had, before they are things cognized.”16Dewey’s classic pragmatism, according to
its own definition, thus contains not an epistemology but a theory of experience and knowledge that encompasses cognition and action. Cognition and knowledge are not an end in themselves but part of a goal-directed action: experience is a slice of the practice of action. We are not uninvolved spectators but involved agents who shape the world experimentally through a process of experiences, and recognize it for this purpose. Experience means here the occurrence of cognitive-reflexive self-referentiality, which becomes possible through controlled, experimental action.
But how does pragmatism define practice and theory? A first differentiation in the concept of practice has to be made between a pragmatism that is oriented toward language practice and a pragmatism that thematizes the practice of language as well as of action. Language practice (e.g., Austin and Morris) partially considers the nonlinguistic practice of action, but does not regard it as a field for investigation itself and does not really consider it for the explanation of meaning. The second concept of practice, on the other hand, assumes that actions contribute in fundamental ways both in their linguistic and poietic form toward generating and determining the meaning of concepts as well as toward knowledge in general. For the second type, pragmatism with a comprehensive concept of practice, a further differentiation can be made that continues to define the understanding of practice for pragmatism. In the variant of classic pragmatism, especially Dewey, poietic and communicative action are understood as preceding and being foundational for theory. Questions regarding meaning appear here framed in an encompassing theory of knowledge. Even more important in relation to other variants of pragmatism is that practice is regarded as that for which theory is created in the first place. For this practice-supporting knowledge is interpreted in a strongly instrumentalized way according to the pattern of
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an ends-oriented mediating action. It is in this sense that Dewey’s determination of language as the “tool of tools”17should be understood; the
practice of this pragmatism is oriented towards making and producing. In a second variant of this pragmatism’s comprehensive concept of practice, the poietic or instrumental action is derived from the intersubjective linguistic practice of competent speakers, who execute the norms of utilizing and generating concepts. This is where I would situate the normative pragmatism of Robert Brandom and the theory of communicative action of Jürgen Habermas. Brandom himself has stressed this differentiation between a normative and an instrumental pragmatism.18 Unlike Brandom, who regards
the priority of the normative as fundamental, I will assume in the following that both directions, the normative and the instrumental, will have to be regarded as equally important.
What does the pragmatic understanding of theory look like? Here, too, we can differentiate between a pragmatic conception that gives theory the status of explaining the foundational structures or the functioning of practice, and one in which theory itself should be understood as instrumental and not as fundamental. The first type again gives theory a quasi- contemplative character, because it defines theory as the reconstruction of practice. I consider Brandom’s approach typical of this. As the title of his book Making it Explicit19makes clear, what he wants to emphasize is what
already occurs anyway: what he wants to reconstruct are the creativity and expressivity of reason and language. But the other variant of a strongly instrumentalized pragmatism demands a therapeutic and involved functioning of theory. In a thumbnail sketch of pragmatism, Dewey describes this as follows: “Pragmatism must take its own medicine. Cannot be a metaphysics in an old sense. Because, being itself a mode of knowledge, all its theories must be recognized to be only working hypotheses and experimental in quality. . . . Pragmatic value of free or pure theorizing. No progress possible without independent intellectual undertakings. Theory must, however, be a responsible division of labor and not usurp irresponsible sovereignty.”20The
instrumentalist understanding of theory includes the reflection of its own conditionality and function. In pragmatic philosophy according to Dewey, pure theorizing—the Platonic-Aristotelian “theoria”—is not completely abolished, but by being radically functionalized is made less powerful and deprived it of its foundational purpose.
From this briefly developed typology one problematic area in particular arises that needs to be addressed by the evolving pragmatic trend of thought. I will sketch out this question with regard to Hegel’s position, and in a third part of this essay will then propose a conception of this pragmatism by means of an interpretation of Hegel’s work. The differences between classic pragmatism and neopragmatism can be thematized in the relationship between action and language, action and knowledge. The latter relationship was at
Pragmatic Aspects of Hegel’s Thought 53 the center of classic pragmatism. Neopragmatism, which orients itself towards language philosophy, regards the practice of action—and with it technology, production, and the sociopolitical order—only implicitly in the framework of a theory of language.21 Hegel, as well as classic pragmatism, always considered
thinking and knowing as products of action and externalization and thus showed the possibility of an overlapping of concepts and poietic practice with what he called subjective, objective, and absolute spirit. Hegel establishes this relationship of knowledge and action in his Phenomenology of Spirit in the context of a theory of experience that is clearly antirepresentationalist in its critique of epistemology. Herein lies its proximity to the pragmatism of John Dewey, or rather it is here that Hegel’s strongest influence on Dewey can be shown. Let us neglect for the moment the implications of the metaphysical concept of absolute spirit and its related theoretical claim. If we interpret Hegel’s philosophy of spirit in a weaker sense, namely as the continuing reconstruction of our claims to truth and knowledge (that we have arrived at through intersubjectivity externalization, and practical action), then an extensive field of inquiry opens up for pragmatic philosophy.