Hi! I think, that Mumford, to whom Brooks refers, is quite close to the Isis: "“Life is not worth fighting for: bare life is worthless. Justice is worth fighting for, order is worth fighting for, culture ... .is worth fighting for: These universal principles and values give purpose and direction to human life.” That could be from an islamist hate-preaching: Your life is worthless, so be a suicide bomber and go to universalist(?) heaven. Brooks and Mumford are moral zealots and relativists who project that on the people who have deserved it the least. They intuitively know that they havent understood anything, the least the concept of universalism, and bark against those who have, because they are jealous.
Brooks
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Gesendet: Samstag, 11. Oktober 2014 um 20:38 Uhr
Von: "Gary Richmond" <gary.richm...@gmail.com>
An: Peirce-L <peirce-l@list.iupui.edu>
Betreff: [PEIRCE-L] "More Pragmatism, Not Less"
Von: "Gary Richmond" <gary.richm...@gmail.com>
An: Peirce-L <peirce-l@list.iupui.edu>
Betreff: [PEIRCE-L] "More Pragmatism, Not Less"
List,
Joseph Esposito responded to David Brooks' Oct.3 New York Times column, "The Problem with Pragmatism," with this letter to the editor today. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/11/opinion/more-pragmatism-not-less.html?ref=opinion
To the Editor:
David Brooks paints an all too convenient caricature of American pragmatism (“The Problem With Pragmatism,” column, Oct. 3). Even the slightest reading of Charles Peirce, William James, John Dewey and Sidney Hook will reveal pragmatists who were passionate about values as well as the means of realizing them in enduring democratic social institutions.
The problem the United States confronts in the Middle East is not paralysis or doubt but the adherence to many years of contradictory and self-defeating values and policies that will make matters worse. What is needed is more pragmatism, not less.
JOSEPH L. ESPOSITO
Tucson, Oct. 4, 2014
The writer is a lawyer, philosopher and former student of Sidney Hook.
' article, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/03/opinion/david-brooks-the-problem-with-pragmatism.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Ar%2C%7B%221%22%3A%22RI%3A10%22%7D which quotes heavily from some of Lewis Mumford's critiques of Liberalism, may have a different kind of Pragmatism in mind than that which Esposito points to, perhaps what Susan Haack in Evidence and Inquiry terms "vulgar Pragmatism"
(182-202) by which she means especially Richard Rorty's version. Apropos of the theme Brooks takes up, near the end of the chapter "Vulgar Pragmatism: An Unedifying Prospect," she quotes Peirce as writing: ". . . if I should ever tackle that excessively difficult problem, 'What is for the true interest of society?' I should feel that I stood in need of a great deal of help from the science of legitimate inferences. . ." (
op. cit.
201). Here, as everywhere, Peirce shows himself to be essentially a logician.
Best,
Gary
Gary Richmond
Philosophy and Critical Thinking
Communication Studies
LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
C 745
718 482-5690
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