I had a really good conversation with someone in the department (I think you might be able to guess who) about all the problems with the class: the taking of ‘american’ to stand in for U.S. philosophy, the singling out of ‘pragmatism’ as representative of all that philosophy (like, why wouldn’t a class on U.S. philosophy read Ayn Rand or, even, Adorno? what are the material means that this comes to be synonymous with ‘pragmatism’), and just the general overwhelming liberalism that in no way gets explained in the texts. Like, both Addams and Dewey are like “only democratic means can achieve democratic ends” and, like....why? What’s the justification? And what do we do when we live in a society where class interests prevent democratic participation and a strong ideological current exists to claim that this is democracy? Or with all the emphasis on ‘what’s true in philosophy is what is most effective’ in pragmatism, how do you not deal with questions of what ends we actually want? There’s just so much going on here, and most of it is bad. And it’s bad in a way that is frustrating (like you said) because it seems so close to saying something that could almost be useful, but then just veers headfirst into singing songs in the interests of the bourgeoisie. It’s so annoying.
