Abstract
Pragmatism has been an important philosophical and sociocultural movement in the USA which has influenced our view of language, social reality and human condition. American pragmatism as cultivated by C.S. Pierce and John Dewey has influenced postwar continental philosophy in the works of seekers such as Karl Otto-Apel and Jürgen Habermas which has influenced our concepts of language and the human condition. In the works of Apel and Habermas, we see a mutual dialogue between American pragmatism and streams in continental philosophy namely Kant leading to what is called Kantian pragmatism which has opened up pragmatism to new realities and possibilities. This dialogue now needs to be broadened and needs to be part of what can be called planetary conversations. This can include dialogues with thinkers such as Sri Aurobindo and Heidegger who can help us realize the spiritual dimension of pragmatism. My essay charts the path of spiritual pragmatism which can help us rethink and transform the idea of the human in our posthuman landscape. It argues how spiritual pragmatism involves interpenetration of spiritual and material, immanent and transcendence, capability and transcendence. It also involves a transformation of anthropocentrism and a creative mutual interpenetration of human, nature and divine. Posthuman strives to go beyond the dualism of man and nonhuman, and in my essay, I argue how spiritual pragmatics can help us in overcoming these boundaries. The conventional representation of the posthuman mainly takes a technological turn, and it does not explore the challenge of divinization of the human. In my essay, I explore all the dimensions of the posthuman including humanization of the divine and divinization of the human.
This builds on my presentation at the conference, “Beyond the Human: Monsters, Mutants and Lonely Machines (or What?)” at Jawaharlal Nehru University, 20–22 February 2014.
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Notes
- 1.
When the First World War broke out, Wittgenstein left Cambridge University where he was studying to join the war as a foot soldier of Austro-Hungarian empire. But being in the war led to profound crises in his own life. Tolstoy’s Gospel in Brief was Wittgenstein’s saving grace as he stumbled upon this book in his journey in a small town in Poland (see Bartolf 2014). In her work, Wittgenstein: A Feminist Approach, Alessandra Tanesini also writes: “In 1914, Wittgenstein brought a copy of Tolstoy’s A Gospel in Brief which virtually kept him alive during the war years” (2004: 54).
- 2.
In this context, Dallmayr (2007) talks about an ‘Other Humanism’ beyond a ‘high tide of old-style humanism’ and embodying a ‘tentative resurgence of subdued, self-critical and non-Eurocentric (i.e., non-hegemonic) view of human.’
- 3.
Here, we must note that such a cutting off, as Des Gasper comments, was true of Descartes and his followers rather than Wordsworth and Goethe (personal communication).
- 4.
As Brier tells us, “Abduction is a concept Peirce invented as a supplement to induction and deduction. It is an advanced form of guessing at possible regularities that can explain surprising phenomena.”
- 5.
The following poem of the author also presents the work of tears in our lives for generation of commonality and solidarity:
Tear, Soul and Solidarity
Let me cry
My tear is
For soul and solidarity
My tear washes away my ego
Into an ocean of aspiration
An aspiration for mutualization
Gathering together for a soulful sociality
Evolution of a new humanity
Co-breathing and co-birthing a new divinity.
- 6.
Jan Peter Schouten tells us that once Ramakrishna saw a picture of Madonna in one Jadu Mallick’s country house and he was immediately moved by it. After this he also realized the presence of Jesus. Ramakrishna was also deeply moved by the Biblical story of Peter walking on water: “A picture of this scene was later hung on the wall of his quarters in the temple; it was the only image that was borrowed from the Christian tradition” (Schouten 2012: 87).
- 7.
Here, we can link to the creative work of Lois Holzman and her work on social therapy which builds upon Vygotsky’s concept of ‘zones of proximal development.’ In Holzman’s work on social therapy where participants speak and work with each other, being together constitutes a pragmatic field which also is a field of realization of each other’s potential. See Holzman (2008).
- 8.
I have explored the idea of meditative verbs of co-realizations in my book Sociology and Beyond: Windows and Horizons (see Giri 2012).
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Giri, A.K. (2016). Spiritual Pragmatism: New Pathways of Transformation for the Posthuman. In: Banerji, D., Paranjape, M. (eds) Critical Posthumanism and Planetary Futures . Springer, New Delhi. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-3637-5_14
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