Practical Posthumanism in the Philosophy of John Lachs
Phillip McReynolds
UNC Charlotte
1. Introduction
According to Carey Wolfe, the term “posthumanism” has been around since
the 1990s though its roots go back at least to the work of Norbert Weiner and the of
others in cybernetics that is associated with the Macy Conferences during the 1940s
and 1950s (Wolfe 2010, xii and Hayles 1999, 50-75). Like its fellow “post”,
postmodernism, posthumanism suffers from some confusion regarding its
relationship to the –ism that it modifies.1 According to different interpretations, the
posthuman is variously what comes after the human, a return to a viewpoint that
precedes the rise of humanism, or an interruption of the humanist temporal
narrative in such a way that one can no longer coherently speak of a before or an
after to humanism. In any case a common thread among various posthumanisms has
been the idea that something called humanism (again, which could mean many
different things) is more or less problematic and should be at least modified or,
perhaps abandoned, if possible.2 Recent developments in the physical sciences have
strengthened interest in this idea, in particular planetary climate change and the
advent of what has come to be known as the Anthropocene. Coined in the year 2000
by Crutzen and Stoermer, the term “Anthropocene” underlines the fact that recently,
perhaps for the first time, human beings have become a geophysical force of nature
on par with other non-human forces that have likewise transformed the biosphere
to such an extent that they have left planetary-scale imprints in the geological
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record (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000). As a result, the problem of scale introduced by
this idea seems to threaten humanism by challenging traditional conceptions of
human agency, disturbing the once seemingly sharp lines between humans/nonhumans and living/non-living, and troubling a human-centered orientation toward
history and time.3
John Lachs has been thinking and writing about human nature(s), human
beings, and being human for quite some time now and his work bears upon issues
many of the key issues that posthumanist literature seeks to address. Lachs’s
position with regard to humanism is at once extremely thoughtful, highly nuanced,
difficult to place exclusively in one school or another, and, above all, extremely
practical. In this paper I identify tendencies in his thought that place him closer to
what we might call a classically humanist position. I also point out positions he
articulates that lend support to something like posthumanism, or that tend to raise
doubts about the viability of some humanist claims and commitments. Finally, I
raise the question of the degree to which Lachs’s mature philosophy as found in his
Stoic Pragmatism (2012) is committed to anything like a humanism or could be
conceived as a kind of posthumanism. My conclusions are mixed though in the end I
think that Lachs’s proposals move toward a kind of posthumanism even as he
embraces a variety of limited, practical humanism. His commitment to humanism is
pragmatic and his definition of the human is nominalistic. The stoic aspects of his
philosophy allow for a double perspective regarding the significance of human
beings that squares with that of posthumanism while offering a corrective to
classical pragmatism regarding the nature of human limitations. Additionally, if
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there is any value to be found in posthumanism, I argue that Lachs’s philosophy
serves the important function of bringing what can seem like relatively abstract
academic discussions down to earth, thus maximizing that value from a practical
point of view.
2. Lachs’s Humanism
Lachs identifies himself, at least in some respects, as a pragmatist, and as
such, his philosophical interests and methods are broadly humanistic. This is
because pragmatism, at least in many incarnations, is a self-consciously, even
proudly, humanist philosophy. Dewey provides a good example of this tendency. He
gets called a humanist often enough, at any rate. John Shook writes, for example,
that, “Among twentieth-century humanists, none stands higher than John Dewey”
(2010, p. 18). Paul Kurtz similarly writes, “Dewey is probably the most important
humanist philosopher that the United States has thus far produced,” (1992, p. 16).
Sydney Ratner helpfully spells out in some detail what humanism means in this
context:
As I see it, Dewey’s distinctive place in the long sweep of the history of
philosophy rests on his unique concern for sustained inquiry into the origins,
import, and consequences of all problems in their proposed solutions in
terms of the life and the destiny of human beings as individuals. (1954, 81)
What does it mean, however, to say that Dewey or other pragmatists tend to be
humanists?
F.S.C. Schiller said, “Pragmatism…is in reality only the application of
Humanism to the theory of knowledge,” (Schiller 1912, xxv). If we view the rise of
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Renaissance humanism as the displacement of the centrality of divine authority in
discovering truth, we can see that there is some plausibility to this view. For the
pragmatists, we cannot look to some antecedent, external authority in order to learn
what the world is like. Rather, we must begin with human experience and reap
whatever satisfactions we might gain from “merely human” (rather than
transcendent) truths.4 However, starting with human experience means taking
seriously human values and interests that give rise to and are expressed in our
various quests for knowledge. As such, for the pragmatists, the centrality of human
agency (and human limitations) in epistemological matters goes hand in hand with a
focus on human, rather than nonhuman, values and interests, such as those of God,
angels, or perhaps other species.
Indeed, one of the most distinctive features of pragmatism as a philosophical
tradition is its commitment to addressing problems embedded within the bounds of
human experience and human history. As Steven Fesmire has observed, ethics for
Dewey is fundamentally related to the idea of the human, insofar as it is defined as
“the art of helping people to live richer, more responsive, and more emotionally
engaged life" (2004, 43). Compare this with Lachs’s own statement about his
philosophy in Stoic Pragmatism: “Stoic pragmatists are committed to making life
better until their powers are overwhelmed…[Stoic Pragmatism] invites us to live
long and well” (2012: 1-2). “Life” here, I think clearly, means human life, insofar as
the “us” being invited are creatures who are capable of understanding and applying
the insights of stoic pragmatism.
4
Part of the pragmatists’ rationale for relating philosophical questions to the
arena of human lives, aims, and interests involves a desire to avoid positing
anything as ontologically basic and, more importantly, a demand that philosophy
produce practical results. These two issues are intimately connected. Pragmatism is
not a positivism for the sake of being a positivism.5 Rather, it avoids ontology (when
it can)—or engages exclusively in what Larry Hickman calls “low-rise” metaphysics
(2015)—because ontology is so easy to get lost in, forgetting the practical problems
that gave rise to the philosophical conundrums in the first place. Lachs, as we shall
see, similarly wants to avoid unproductive ontological disputes and the reason for
this is the same: we need to make informed choices in order to improve life.6 Thus,
for pragmatists like Lachs, the idea of “the human” plays an important role in
“earthing” the philosophical enterprise—that is, “keeping its feet on the ground”—if
not grounding it per se. The basic orientation of classical pragmatism has been
toward our (human) communities, as they exist today, or perhaps in the relative
near term, an orientation that links pragmatism to its enlightenment and postenlightenment philosophical progenitors.7 I think Lachs shares this basic orientation
with other pragmatists given what he has had to say about human nature(s), human
beings, being human, and the importance of this category for living good lives. In
these broad ways—understanding that human knowledge must be related to and
certified by human experience and taking as a central focus the amelioration of
human existence—pragmatists tend to be humanists and, in this respect, so is John
Lachs.
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But humanism has tended to mean something more than just exhibiting a
focus on human needs and interests. Consider the idea of human rights as expressed
in the United Nations’ Declaration of Human Rights:
Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable
rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom,
justice and peace in the world…All human beings are born free and equal in
dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should
act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. (UN 1948)
The document goes on to assert a number of rights that every human being has
simply because they are human. Implicit in this view is the idea that “all members of
the human family” possess a dignity and inherent worth simply in virtue of being
human beings. Now, the declaration doesn’t explicitly claim that non-humans don’t
possess dignity and self worth nor does it propose that we treat nonhumans
“inhumanely”. However, it is a humanistic document by singling human beings out
for a particular sort of treatment in virtue of their humanness. This is a second
aspect of humanism that we find in many of the pragmatists including Lachs.
It is worth attending to the practicality of this document. Although its
declarative language suggests that it is stating objective facts about human beings—
that they possess reason and conscience, that they are born free and equal in dignity
and rights—it is actually asserting that they should be treated as if they have these
things and are born in these ways. After all, many human beings are not actually
born free, and, unfortunately in practice, too many are not treated equally or
afforded much dignity at all. If all human beings were equal in rights in actual
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practice there would be no need for the document. On this interpretation,8 the
declaration is neither a statement of objective reality nor is it a categorical
imperative. Rather, the declaration is a hypothetical imperative. It begins by
asserting that the recognition of these things is “the foundation of freedom, justice,
and peace in the world”. If we want to pursue these human goals, we should treat
humans as if they had inherent dignity and value by respecting their rights in the
prescribed ways. In short, the humanism of the UN Declaration is a practical
humanism: It is neither an empirical claim about the way the world is nor an
ontological claim about the deep nature of the reality of humanness but a proposal
for achieving certain ends, specifically, promoting human freedom, justice, and
peace in the world.
Lachs’s work exhibits a similarly practical humanism. Being human is an
example of what Lachs has called a “choice-inclusive fact” (1990, 30). “Such
judgment calls,” he says,
bring our purposes and values into play. This makes it sensible to ask what
good it does to sort creatures into the single, uniform category of humans.
(1990, 305)
In answer to this question, he writes,
…saying that someone is human conveys less about what they are like than
about how we are to treat them. The humanity of a being is not a fact
discovered but a status conferred. It means, among other things, that if found
hurt or ill, it is to be taken to a doctor, not a vet. As a signal to us, moreover,
that it is to be taken for help instead of being discarded or being allowed to
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bleed to death by the highway, it exposes us to blame and perhaps even legal
action if we fail. (1990, 305-306, emphasis mine)
Although Lachs believes that there is a background of facts against which we confer
this status—more about that later—identifying someone as human is not a valueneutral fact about the world but something that we do in pursuit of certain ends.
Note the similarity between Lachs’s ends and those sought by the UN
Declaration. Lachs writes,
Establishing effective signals of this sort in relation to a broad range of
individuals constitutes a grand but late achievement in history. The idea of
expanding the compass of humanity, and with it caring, beyond the tribe or
beyond the confines of beings narrowly like us, is the foundation of decency
and the guaranty of at least the possibility of a happy life. Being classed with
humans endows individuals with rights and dignity. (1990, 306, emphasis
mine)
People don’t naturally have rights and dignity (though we sometimes speak as if
they do). (I use “naturally” here in the way that it is often used, in order to provide
seemingly objective cover for what is a political judgment.)9 Rather, identifying
people as human endows them with rights and dignity, which is a good thing to do
because it “is the foundation of decency and the guaranty of at least the possibility of
a happy life.” Given all this I think that one can say of John Lachs, that he’s practically
a humanist.
3. Posthumanist Features of Lachs’s Philosophy
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And yet there are a number of significant aspects to his thinking about
humans and nonhumans that we might call posthumanist. One of these aspects
derives from pragmatism, which, in spite of its humanist heritage and associations
can be thought of as a proto-posthumanism in some respects.
As I have already outlined, in its refusal to look to superhuman realities for
truth pragmatism shows itself as an offspring of enlightenment humanism. In fact,
however, pragmatism has a dual lineage, with one line of descent emerging from
enlightenment and post-enlightenment humanism and the other from evolutionary
theory, the latter qualifying the former. As such, pragmatism is a naturalized
humanism. The human is not seen as apart from nature but as a part of nature.10
One thing that evolutionary theory contributes to pragmatism is fallibilism. Whereas
other enlightenment philosophies tended to view human reason as unlimited,11
pragmatism recognizes the human being as an evolved creature with an intellect
that is grounded in and limited by its evolutionary history. In this way pragmatism
avoids the optimistic highs of enlightenment thinkers such as Rousseau, the sense of
inevitable progress found in post-enlightenment thinkers such as Hegel and
Spencer, and the pessimistic lows of some anti-enlightenment philosophies. In place
of these pragmatism opts for its own homely brand of humanistic meliorism,
content to try to make human life better, not perfect (James 138). I’ll have more to
say about this later with respect to Lachs’s stoic pragmatism and the ways in which
its sense of human limitations (and how to respond to them) put it farther than
classical pragmatism along the road to a practical posthumanism. In any case,
classical pragmatism is an evolutionary humanism, stressing continuities between
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nature and culture and, at times, even between the human and the non-human,12 in
spite of its anthropocentrism. Thus, insofar as it tends to deemphasize radical
dichotomies including those between the human and the non-human, pragmatism is
already on its way toward being a posthumanist philosophy even as it has tended to
be associated with humanism.
This relates to a second key idea that pragmatism adopted in response to
evolutionary theory, which is the idea that there are no fixed, natural species. There
are two central aspects to this idea. The first is, of course, that species change over
time. Some species go extinct and others emerge to take their place. One important
implication of this discovery is that not only have humans not always existed but
also that one day they will cease to exist. Thus pragmatism takes change to be the
norm and not some sort of exception within a perfect universe that must be
explained away. The second aspect that evolution contributed to pragmatism is that
because one species can evolve into another, the idea of a “species” is a relatively
arbitrary marker (or a marker for certain purposes) that groups together a set of
creatures over a period of time for purposes of classification. Lachs takes this view
quite seriously and it has important implications for his views regarding humanness
and human nature. He writes that
searching for the discrete, immutable forms of species of living organisms,
including humans, seems neither necessary nor appropriate over a hundred
years after the general acceptance of the theory of evolution. For Darwin and
his followers established the continuity of life forms on the planet,
developing an account of how changes in the germ plasm and subsequent
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reproductive success lead to the emergence of novel groups of beings. (1997,
298)
It is significant from the point of view of thinking about humanism and
posthumanism that Lachs, as a pragmatist, understands all concepts—including that
of the human—as tools rather than objective states of affairs or mirrors of an
antecedent reality. Pulling no punches he says that “species are made, not found”
(1997, 299) and doesn’t hesitate to apply this principle to the idea of a human
species:
What is true of classifying living organisms in general is true also of
classifying humans. The conception of a human species is pieced together out
of characteristics observed in large populations of individuals. No single
feature or invariable set of traits is necessary and sufficient for someone to
be declared a human being. Such pronouncements result from complex
judgments made on the basis of considering candidates with regard to
dozens of features. (303)
As such, whether we call something human or nonhuman is fundamentally a matter
of choice, a choice, Lachs cautions, that must be made responsibly (303).
What is remarkable about this is how far, I think, Lachs goes beyond the
classical pragmatists in taking a posthumanist perspective. Whereas the idea of the
human forms a kind of unexamined backdrop to ethical considerations for the
pragmatists, Lachs is willing to place the very idea of the human in question, and to
entertain most if not all comers as candidates for humanity, an idea that seems not to
have occurred to the classical pragmatists.
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One should perhaps not fault the classical pragmatists for not throwing the
door open to questioning what it might mean to be a human being as wide as Lachs
has insofar as Lachs has had the benefit of hindsight regarding a rather rapid pace of
technological and political development. Technology has created issues where
perhaps none existed during the time that Peirce, James, and Dewey were working,
as is to be expected. Lachs notes, referring to contentious issues in biomedical
ethics, that, “The decision about where to draw the line between the living and the
dead, for example, is now being made through the political process,” (1990, 31).
Developments in computer technology have also influenced Lachs in ways that
might have seemed fanciful to the classical pragmatists.13 Regarding prospects of
artificial intelligence, he writes,
It is unproductive to ask whether human beings might not, after all, be
machines, and how complex a machine would have to be in order to it to be
or become a human being. These are not matters of objective fact, of how
things are. They are, instead, matters of conscious or unconscious human
decision. The proper question to ask, accordingly, is concerning the
circumstances that would have to obtain in order for us to decide that, for
purposes of classification, the obvious differences between human beings
and machines can be overlooked. (1990, 34)
In urging us to look to consequences, Lachs is thoroughly pragmatic even as he
moves beyond the pragmatists in the scope of his thought. Lachs considers whether
some machines might be considered human by asking after what similarities
between machines (candidate-humans) and (stipulated) humans would have to
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entail such that the consequences of not making such an assignment would inspire
our moral outrage. As a pragmatist, he looks to the consequences of such an
assignment in order to evaluate it (1990, 34-35). Lachs even considers the question
of the monstrous in evaluating who or what might or might not be considered
human or fully human, fitting in quite easily with many of the posthumanists’
interest in monsters and the monstrous.14
As I have argued, in making these moves and being open to these
possibilities, Lachs is forwarding the project of pragmatism rather than breaking
with it. When he says that “we must…see our attempts to classify living beings as
variable, optional ways of ordering the wilderness of facts” (1997, 303), I hear more
than a hint of William James’ belief in a pluralistic universe coupled with a very
Deweyan interest in considering what practical effects such a belief actually have in
the knock-about world.
Another way that Lachs, particularly in stoic pragmatism, moves beyond
other forms of pragmatism and approaches posthumanism is in his avoidance of
humanist chauvinism. This aspect of Lachs’s thought fits well with posthumanist
critiques of “human exceptionalism”—the practice of treating humans as better or
more worthy than other organisms based on some single or small set of qualities
that humans have but that other creatures supposedly lack. Lachs’s position has its
roots, I think, in Lachs’s fascination with ineffability, immediacy, and embodiment
and his impatience with the philosopher’s tendency to convert everything to
language. Although other pragmatists are “guilty” of human exceptionalism (see
Dewey on communication in Experience and Nature, for example, or even his various
13
references to “savages” and beasts”)15, Lachs’s lack of patience with this position
comes through clearly in his critique of Nicholas Rescher’s cognitive pragmatism.
Before moving onto the criticism, it is worth noting, briefly, one of Lachs’s
points of agreement with Rescher, which is a shared belief in the independent
existence of a world (2012, 64). Lachs’s non-essentialist realism is something that
one finds hints of in much writing that is labeled posthumanist (and that of related
movements like the new materialism). Those who hold these views share an
interest prying human language, thought, and culture from the center of the natural
universe and undoing some of the idealistic excesses of postmodernism and some
recent forms of pragmatism.
Rescher, according to Lachs, thinks very highly of human practices of inquiry
and communication. In fact, inquiry and communication form the basis for Rescher’s
curiously transcendental argument for the existence of an independently existing
world (2012, 66). Rescher thinks that what makes us human and sets us apart from
all other creatures is that we engage in inquiry and construct propositional
knowledge about the world. This may be true, but Lachs is not as impressed with
our distinctively human form of life as Rescher is. For Lachs, propositional
knowledge is an aspect of our human form of life, but only a small part of it.
As a brief aside, one indication that Lachs is navigating outside of the safe
waters of familiar humanism is the appearance of so much varied wildlife in his
works. Consider this characteristic example:
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Rescher is not satisfied with the sort of inquiry in which a bird might engage
in looking around for predators and the kind of communication common
among monkeys when they warn each other of danger. (2012, 66)
One could multiply examples of wildlife showing up and taking center stage in
Lachs’s philosophical texts. I think the birds and squirrels show up when they so—
which is often—for a very good reason: Lachs is simply not as impressed with the
human facility for complex communication as is Rescher. In Lachs’s view, to take
such a high view of human cognition as one finds in Rescher’s cognitive pragmatism
is to promote beyond all reasonableness what is, in the end, a relatively marginal
and uncommon aspect of human existence. This is an orientation that finds Lachs
well at home in the company of posthumanists. So much philosophy—because
philosophers like to talk—revolves around talk and forgets that we are animals,
with animal bodies that need to eat. Philosophers tend to place an inordinate
amount of focus on the human mind, which is only one part of the human being. (I
will hazard that Lachs developed this attitude toward the relative unimportance of
the mind during his ten years defending Santayana, as, he speculates, the world’s
only living epiphenomenalist.16) One can trace Lachs’s interest in animal bodies,
their needs, and satisfactions from Santayana, and he shares this interest with many
posthumanists. Lachs explains,
Stoic pragmatism takes human existence in all its nonintellectual complexity
as its datum and the quality of life it can secure as an indication of its value.
Although statable in propositional form, it points away from theory toward
15
action…Philosophy must deal with the whole human being, not only with the
mind. (2012, 71).
As we have seen, like posthumanists, Lachs seems to be interested in emphasizing
the continuities between humans and other animals that relate to the way that we
live in and through our common animal bodies. He writes, characteristically,
“Focusing on our social predicaments and on what we share with other
animals…enables us to develop a picture of human life in all its complexity” (2012,
71).17
A third way in which Lachs moves beyond the classical pragmatists toward
something like a posthumanism comes with the stoic correction that he applies to
classical pragmatism. Although Lachs does not accuse the classical pragmatists of
lacking a sense of the tragic as others have (and certainly the pragmatists were no
strangers to tragedy in their own lives), he does point out that they have very little
use for whatever they have very little use for. Even with tragedy and death, the
pragmatists seem to be interested only in what they can do with them, with how
they might be reconstructed into something in the future. Lachs observes that this
attitude, while potentially beneficial when there is something one can do about
one’s situation, is not appropriate to every situation. Here I think it is helpful to hear
Lachs in his own voice, and so I will quote him at length:
The stoic in stoic pragmatists reminds them of the contingency of life, the
vastness of the universe, the finitude of everything human, the tragic cost of
whatever we do, and the possibility that our efforts will be of no avail. Stoics
whisper “memento mori,” as religion used to but perhaps no longer does,
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calling the attention of communities to the larger, historical cycles over
which they exercise no control. Without a cosmic perspective, we cannot
present a just assessment of our situation. With this prospect clearly in mind,
we can never place ourselves at the center of the universe. Stoic detachment
is a powerful antidote to the hype that elevates science to the level of savior
and social effort above natural limits. (2012: 52).
It is this “cosmic perspective” that one finds not only in stoic pragmatism but also in
posthumanism that one finds it largely lacking in pragmatism. With the pragmatic
emphasis on making a difference there is very little attention to our human
limitations. Awareness of our limitations is, by contrast, fundamental to
posthumanism and it comes up, among other contexts, in that of the idea of
extinction.
As I have noted, pragmatism emerged, in part, as a response to Darwin’s
discovery of the process of evolution by natural selection. Extinction is, of course,
one of the fundamental features of Darwinian evolution. As such, one would think
that pragmatists would be comfortable with the idea of extinction. Indeed,
pragmatists (but not only pragmatists) are, perhaps, too comfortable with the idea
of extinction. As Claire Colebrook phrases the problem (though not addressing
pragmatism specifically),
…the uses of Darwin today…actually have the effect of reducing the force not
only of Darwinism but of another temporal event, extinction: not only have
we humanized the emergence of humans from deep time (by regarding
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evolution as being oriented towards adaptation), but we have also
domesticated the sense of the human end. (2011)
The trouble is that a humanistic perspective on evolution tends to see “life as
functional, oriented towards our types of complexity and order, and inevitably
leading towards the types of complexity exemplified by humans [emphasis added]
(2011).” To understand evolutionary processes strictly in terms of fitness, that is, in
terms of survival, is to miss their “decentering randomness and rogue temporalities
(2011).” Indeed, Peirce writes, “Almost everyone will now agree that the ultimate
good lies in the evolutionary process in some way” (1902). It is difficult to imagine
how Peirce might hold such a view without imagining the good as human in some
way. Whatever “good” evolution may bring it is likely to bring about something that
is probably unrecognizable as good from the point of view of our species as it exists
today. With Santayana, Lachs criticizes the notion that “we are ‘too good for
extinction,’ that what happens to ‘mere’ animals cannot happen to us” (2012, 57). In
recognizing “the contingency of life, the vastness of the universe, the finitude of
everything human, the tragic cost of whatever we do, and the possibility that our
efforts will be of no avail,” Lachs is on the same page with and might well be
considered one among posthumanists.
4. Practical Posthumanism
The Anthropocene presents us with a problem of scale in which human
activity appears as a mode of agency that appears to exceed individual or possibly
even communal control. The emergence of the Anthropocene suggests that
humanity is out of control and possibly that it cannot be controlled, or at least that
18
we might need to rethink our conventional, humanistic concept of agency which has
proved so useful in dealing with human beings and their effects upon “mediumsized dry goods” but that might not be so well geared to deal with human speciesaction in the age of the Anthropocene.18 For pragmatists, concepts are not fixed
representations of the world but are rather tools for dealing with it. When a concept
fails to fit the problematic situations that we face it is time to retool it or to replace it
with a better tool (concept). The problem with humanism in this context is that it is
a perspective that seems designed to render everything on a human scale. However,
with the emergence of the Anthropocene we find ourselves confronted with
temporal and spatial scales that break the human frame.
Lachs’s stoic pragmatism provides a better sense of scale and the relative
important of human beings with respect to the earth and larger forces than we find
in the toolbox of the classical pragmatists. Lachs and the posthumanists share an
interest in taking seriously a cosmic perspective in which the ephemeral nature of
humanity as with all species is manifest, a perspective that seems all too relevant
today. As Claire Colebrook notes, “Darwinism was a thought event that placed
humanity within time, but the pulse of extinction awareness that is coming to the
fore in the twenty-first century adds the sense of an ending to the broader
awareness of the historical emergence of the human species,” (Colebrook, 2011).
Dipesh Chakrabarty observes that “History is no longer a human narrative, and
human narratives themselves seem to incorporate forces that are no longer human”
(Chakrabarty 2012, 1-2). Pragmatism, however, is firmly situated within human
history, a history that the appearance of the Anthropocene threatens to usurp. As
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Colebrook notes, “While the human species – and all other species – face other
threats of extinction (including nuclear disaster, viral pandemic, global terrorism
and systemic collapse), climate change has become the icon of the thorough event of
extinction” (Colebrook 2011). Climate change, it has been noted, is a slow-motion
catastrophe, a post-apocalypse.19 According to Srinivas Aravamudan, the
Anthropocene is Catachonistic, that is it “re-characterizes the past and the present in
terms of a future proclaimed as determinate but that is of course not yet fully
realized” (Aravamuda 2013, 8). It closes the open-endedness of the enlightenment
with the specter of species death, projectively imagined as embedded in a geological
stratum (Aravamunda 2013, pp. 9 and 12). As such, it runs directly counter to
Deweyan humanism. Dewey writes,
[What] humanism means to me…is an expansion, not a contraction, of human
life, an expansion in which nature and the science of nature are made the
willing servants of human good. (LW 5: 266)
Pragmatism isn’t geared (at present) to think or talk about annihilation, an
apocalypse without meaning or redemption. Dewey remarks at one point at
experiencing “obscure irritation” in the “apocalyptic flights” of the fiction of H.G.
Wells (MW 10: 310). We find an antidote to this lack of preparedness to talk frankly
about our situation in stoic pragmatism as in posthumanism.
However, one might well ask how practical it is to think or talk about our
inevitable end even if (especially if) it appears to be approaching more quickly than
we had anticipated? It is here that Lachs’s response to Shelly’s “Ozymandias” is
instructive. Lachs paraphrases the poem thus,
20
Shelley’s point is that in the end nothing remains: the generations that come
after us forget our names, destroy our monuments, and lay waste to our
plans…What is the point of doing anything if it is all undone and the death of
everything precious leaves only a world of atoms moving in the dark? (2012,
58).
Lachs responds to this viewpoint by arguing that even if in the end all comes to
naught, this fact can do nothing to diminish the value that we experience now. He
argues “the possibility of distant disaster is an inadequate reason for ceasing our
efforts and failing to enjoy the moment” (2012, 59). Lachs can take this perspective
because of the double perspective that stoic pragmatism employs in the immanent
transcendence that Lachs learns from Santayana. In stoic pragmatism, together with
an extremely tough-minded acknowledgment of our finitude, we find a
consciousness of the timelessness of value. According to Lachs, if anything is ever of
value, it is always of value. This recognition is ultimately extremely practical insofar
as it gives us reason to work for value, to preserve it where we can, even if it will
inevitably pass away. Here, I think, Lachs brings a mature sense of limitation to
pragmatism while adding a hardheaded practicality to posthumanism.
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Semantics.” European Journal of Philosophy. 21(1): 1-16.
21
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23
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It is worth recalling that what Lyotard did not say was that postmodernism comes
after modernism. Rather, he said that in order to be a fully modern work, a word
must be postmodern in the sense that it aims to represent the unrepresentable. In
this way, the postmodern is the birth of the modern, according to Lyotard. See
Lyotard 1984.
2 For examples of posthumanist literature see, for example, Braidotti 2013, Haraway
1991, Hayles 1999, Pepperell 2009, and Wolfe 2010.
3 On agency and time, see, for example, Latour 2014. On time and scale, see
Aravamudan 2013, Chakrabarty 2009, and Colebrook.
4 Bertrand Russell parodied this standpoint, at least as William James expressed it,
in a book called Transatlantic “Truth” (1907). Richard Rorty takes this
epistemological (and indeed ethical) humanism to its logical limit when he writes,
“As I see it, the whole point of pragmatism is to insist that we human beings are
answerable only to one another. We are answerable only to those who answer to
us—only to conversation partners. We are not responsible to the atoms or to God, at
least not until they start conversing with us” (2003). This interpretation of
pragmatism as humanism not only takes the extreme epistemological position that
there is nothing beyond human practices and conversations that can warrant our
truth claims but also is an example of the human chauvinism that I will criticize
later. Animals can’t talk and so we don’t bear any responsibility toward them.
5 For a thoughtful discussion of the relationship between pragmatism and
positivism see Pearce 2015.
6 See, for example, Lachs 1990, especially pp. 35-37. Lachs also reminds us that
“Metaphysics must…always remain in the service of ethics,” (Lachs 1997, 311).
7 Regarding pragmatism and Enlightenment see Brandom and Putnam.
8 Pablo Gilabert calls this the political or practical perspective in contrast to the
humanist or naturalist one, though I think the issue is more complicated than that
and, indeed, Gilabert argues that the two positions complement one another. See
Gilabert 2011.
9 On the political uses of “nature” see Latour 2004, especially pp. 1-8.
10 Dewey, for example, refuses any sort of absolute break between nature and
culture, which is to say, between the “natural” and the human, respectively. See LW
1.
1
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Of Rousseau Luc Ferry writes, “For him, history is not tradition, it is creation,
innovation, perfectibility,” (Ferry 1995, p. 10). See also pp. 8-9.
12 Digestion, Dewey says, is as much a matter of the food as the person who does the
digesting (MW 6: 115).
13 Moreover, as Lachs notes the consensus of who counts as human has expanded in
the twentieth century to a much greater degree than had occurred by the time the
classical pragmatists finished publishing. Whereas Dewey still refers to “savages”
from time to time (See McReynolds 2000), Lachs is able to note, “Little by little, we,
or influential groups among us, made decisions to overlook the differences due to
class, race, sex, religion, national origin, intelligence, drive and physical endowment,
and to treat a very broad selection of individuals as equally entitled to consideration
and respect.” (Lachs 1990, 36)
14 For Lachs, see, for example, Lachs 1997, pp. 304-305. For posthumanist literature
about monsters see, for example, Graham 2002.
15 LW 1: 132-161. There are more examples of Dewey’s references to “savages” than
there is space here to document. For just one example, see MW 12: 246. I have
documented and explored Dewey’s use of this term extensively in McReynolds 2000.
16 See Lachs 2012, p. 183.
17 Lachs’s emphasis on the limitations of our animal bodies accords with quite a lot
of posthumanism. However, there is one type of literature that is sometimes called
posthumanist but that is more commonly called “transhumanism” that is
diametrically opposed to this idea. In transhumanist literature, “the posthuman” is a
term that is sometimes used to refer to our state once we have transcended the
limitations of our animal bodies, either by uploading our minds into digital
computers, or by enhancing ourselves with various kinds of cybernetic or genetic
technologies. The mainstream of what I am calling posthumanism stands in
opposition to transhumanism. For examples of transhumanism see Moravec 1998
and Kurzweil. For a posthumanist critique of this view see Hayles 1999. In my view,
which I share with others, transhumanism is not posthumanism at all but a kind of
enlightenment humanism on steroids.
18 It is important to note that the advent of the Anthropocene moves ecological and
environmental debate well beyond ideas of sustainability, sustainable growth, and
so on since the idea of sustainability depends on the idea that humans can assert
control over their own agency in order to bring our interactions with and effects
upon the environment under rational control. Such control is exactly what the
Anthropocene throws into question. See Latour 2014.
19 Elana Gomel contrasts apocalypse with postapocalypse, writing “Postapocalypse
seems to be concerned not with the sharp moment of death but rather with the
interminable duration of dying.” See Gomel, 2000, p. 421.
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