Pragmatism and Faith: Selznick's Complex Commonwealth

ideas; instead, one could simply begin with a problem and analyze it in context. Alternatively, one could develop a general form of pragmatic analysis through engagement with specific problems; other recent works have pursued this course.8 Finally, one could do as Selznick has done: rein The Moral Commonwealth we see only the second half of that synthesis: the application of principles to examples. The derivation of principles from concrete and contextual attention to human experience occurs offstage; we have here only the summary version. 7. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1949. 8. See, e.g., Shiffrin, The First Amendment (cited in note 1); Martha C. Nussbaum, Love's Knowledge (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). This content downloaded from 157.55.39.215 on Wed, 31 Aug 2016 04:38:55 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Pragmatism and Faith 793 spond to general theories of morality with general arguments about the nature of human life. That course may be the most effective, given the enormous privilege and prestige that abstract theory still enjoys in the academy. In short, Selznick could characterize my critique thus: The Moral Commonwealth is a work of methodology. It does not purport seriously to apply that methodology to a range of problems, because one cannot do everything in one work. There will be time enough for that analysis later. Indeed, pragmatic analysis is never done. With each new day, we learn from experience. The critique, however, goes deeper than that characterization suggests, because we cannot assess Selznick's method apart from its application. Within Selznick's own framework of analysis, humans have access to no knowledge-methodological or otherwise-except by testing it against a range of problems. As a result, one cannot argue for the worth of a method before applying it, because only the application itself can demonstrate the worth. Pragmatic theory, by its own lights, must be deeply mired in the world of facts, history, and context. Precisely because we learn from experience, we will learn the value of pragmatism by using it in the course of our lives. A proof of pragmatism, in other words, must depend more on showing than on telling, more on the doing of pragmatism than on calling for the doing of pragmatism. The central feature of Selznick's pragmatism is its reliance on a naturalist ethics: The whole analysis hinges on use of the concepts "human needs" and "human nature." Yet Selznick's argument for the use of those concepts is essentially acontextual, rooted in hope rather than experience. As Selznick acknowledges, in the late 20th century, these concepts-especially human nature-have fallen into disrepute. Selznick believes that this rejection of "human nature" arises from a modernist conviction that culture and history, not biology, shape individuals (at 121-23). He does not recognize, however, that pragmatic prudence may have contributed to the rejection. Historically, theories of objective human needs and nature have too often been used for oppressive purposes. Perhaps most distinctively, they have been used to support gender essentialism,9 and Selznick himself toys with some such notion.1' Indeed, in Selznick's view, Enlightenment liberals adopted an understanding of human nature-composed primarily of reason and will-that eventually promoted the modem fragmentation of community (at 12-14). Selznick might argue that these examples are abuses, not proof that "human nature" and "human needs" are pernicious concepts in the abstract. The question, as always for Selznick, is one of degree. Human needs and 9. See, e.g., Elizabeth Spelman, Inessential Woman (Boston: Beacon Press, 1988); Angela Harris, "Race and Essentialism in Feminist Legal Theory," 42 Stan. L. Rev. 581 (1990). 10. See supra at -. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.215 on Wed, 31 Aug 2016 04:38:55 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 794 LAW AND SOCIAL INQUIRY nature may be defined too narrowly in the service of oppression, but that possibility is reason to reform the use of the concepts, not to reject them altogether (at 119-21). That argument, however, is essentially acontextual. Given the human proclivity to abuse concepts such as human needs and nature, it is at least possible that we should eschew them altogether, because the risks are greater than the benefits. The risk of essentialism is a commonplace in modem scholarship, and because of that risk, other communitarians have sought to avoid reliance on a theory of objective human needs." To avoid that risk, Selznick emphasizes that we should define human needs in as open-ended a way as possible (at 119-21). The concept should not generate answers; it should instead merely suggest a "posture" of analysis (at 27). But then the benefits of the concept come into question: It seems so vague that one wonders whether it really helps analysis at all. Instead, without recourse to any assertion of objective human needs, one could as usefully investigate the situational needs-without the risk of essentialism lurking in the background. Perhaps, as Selznick believes, the gains are greater than the risks in postulating universal human needs and nature. To make this determination, however, we need a close analysis of late 20th-century American culture and a broader analysis of the use of "human needs" across history. Despite his professed commitment to learning truth from human experience, Selznick offers no such analysis. He acknowledges that claims about an objective human nature are subject to abuse, but he then offers a hopeful assertion of faith that they need not be. In short, Selznick's approach to moral analysis may be useful and healthful, but to reach a view on it, we must see it done-and he has not done it. The Moral Commonwealth is more a work of ideas than of living. Pragmatism must arise from the real world for inspiration, and it must quickly return to the real world for proof; it must not tarry too long in the country of the abstract and the general. That intense engagement with fact, however, is inconsistent with the kind of broad-based work that Selznick plainly intended to write. In a work that tries to explain the nature of moral analysis, individuals, institutions, and communities, one simply must paint with a broad brush, rather than with a loving attention to particularity. In the end, it almost seems that Selznick remains devoted to the form of social theory done in the grand, old, high style: a comprehensive, exhaustive, magisterial tract on the whole of the human condition. The only way to compose such a work is to reduce complexity, to slight details and context, 11. See, e.g., Alasdair Macintyre, After Virtue 270 (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984) ("MacIntyre, After Virtue"); Michelman, 100 Harv. L. Rev. at 22 (cited in note 4); Drucilla Cornell, "Toward a Modern/Postmodern Reconstruction of Ethics," 133 U. Pa. L. Rev. 291, 360-68 (1985). This content downloaded from 157.55.39.215 on Wed, 31 Aug 2016 04:38:55 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Pragmatism and Faith 795 to concentrate thought into postulates-in short, to do all the things that Selznick urges us not to do. III. FAITH WITHOUT DOGMA