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The bases, limits, and values of pluralism: An engagement with William James.

This is pluralism, somewhat rhapsodically expressed. -William James IN ENGAGING with the pluralist theory of William James, I address a thinker for whom the contrast between pluralism and monism, as well as the arguments for each, was the focus of attention. The preponderance of James's arguments, certainly of his most intensely polemical formulations, is directed against the monistic theories of Hegel, of Bradley, and of other philosophical Idealists. He repeatedly attacked their metaphysics, their epistemologies, and especially their moral philosophies. Notwithstanding their centrality in his works, however, James's disputes with Idealists (or, as at intervals he labeled them, "intellectualists," "rationalists," and "tender-minded" thinkers) are not the primary focus of this essay. This is not because Idealism and related positions are no longer with us. Although declared moribund if not dead by Bertrand Russell and much of the "analytic" philosophy influenced by him, it lived and lives on in Collingwood and Oakeshott, and positions akin to it remain prominent in moral and political theory in various versions of wholism and communitarianism. Accordingly, the bearing of James's arguments on these views will be a concern in what follows. The great merit of James's thinking, however, is that he developed a theory of pluralism that is deeper and more complex than most of those current in social, political, and moral theory. He sought to understand how and why pluralities develop, what sustains or diminishes them, and why some of them should, and others of them should not, be valued. In part because he addressed the entire range of philosophical issues-cosmological, metaphysical, epistemological, moral, aesthetic, and religious-his pluralism is philosophically richer than most of the many versions of that theory. (It should be added that James had a strong interest in, and a receptive attitude toward, mysticism and various parapsychological phenomena such as the claimed experiences of mediums.) Thus his pluralist theory speaks quite directly to most of the issues that are currently being controverted under that rubric. Most important here, although James had no developed political theory (note the omission of that category in the foregoing list), his theorizing bears importantly on a number of much-disputed political issues. Moi-meme, je suis un pluraliste. But what does this mean? And when we have explained its meaning (no easy task given the diversity of views that are commonly gathered under this family resemblance term), why am I a pluralist? What are and what should be the commitments signaled by my self-identification as a pluralist? The present engagement with William James is a first step in addressing these questions. As per my title, I critically examine James's views concerning the bases, limits, and values of pluralism. I. THE BASES OF PLURALISM The sparest, the most minimal, version of James's claim to the undeniability of at least some pluralities, and hence the unavoidability of at least some acceptance of pluralism, is part of his argument against "hard" determinism. Pluralism "is not obliged to stand for any particular amount of plurality, for it triumphs over monism if the smallest morsel of disconnectedness is once found to exist. 'Ever not quite' is all it says [needs to say] to monism; while monism is obliged to prove that what pluralism asserts can in no amount whatever possibly be true-an infinitely more difficult task."2 Because it was essential to his argument for humanly produced novelties in experience, and also to his promotion of a "strenuous" life of action that seeks to ameliorate the human condition, James believed that pluralism in at least this minimal form is not only true but of great moral and political value. To deny it is either to sink into the torpor of deep pessimism (as with Schopenhauer) or to take flight (as with Leibniz) into an illusory empyrean of uncritical optimism. …