American and European Values
American and European Values:
Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives
Edited by
Matthew Caleb Flamm, John Lachs,
and Krzysztof Piotr Skowroñski
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
American and European Values: Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives,
Edited by Matthew Caleb Flamm, John Lachs, and Krzysztof Piotr Skowroñski
This book first published 2008 by
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
15 Angerton Gardens, Newcastle, NE5 2JA, UK
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Copyright © 2008 by Matthew Caleb Flamm, John Lachs, and Krzysztof Piotr Skowroñski and
contributors
All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
ISBN (10): 1-84718-500-2, ISBN (13): 9781847185006
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction ............................................................................................... vii
Part I: Philosophy of Culture
From Enemies to Peaceful Neighbors ......................................................... 2
John Lachs
Responsibility in the European and American Tradition............................. 9
Zenona Maria Nowak
Truth and Truthfulness as a Value in America and Europe....................... 17
Tadeusz Olewicz
Russian Values and America ..................................................................... 26
Jan Krasicki
The Perils of Cross-Cultural Interpretation: Dos Passos, Sartre,
and the Dilemma of the “Tin Saint” .......................................................... 36
Matthew Caleb Flamm
Part II: Thinkers
Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz as a Forerunner of Internal Realism.................... 52
Adam Grobler
A Spaniard in New England: Santayana’s In-Betweenness....................... 58
Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński
Tocqueville or Emerson............................................................................. 78
Antonio Lastra
Truth in Progress: The Value of The Facts-and-Feelings Connection
in William James ....................................................................................... 90
Rosa Maria Calcaterra
vi
Table of Contents
Eric Voeglin and American Conservatism .............................................. 106
Wacław Grzybowski
Royce’s Pragmatic and Idealistic American Business Ethics .................... 113
Jason Bell
Wittgenstein, Dewey, and the Possibility of Religion ............................. 128
Michael P. Hodges and Scott F. Aikin
Nietzsche and American Culture: The “Uneasiness of Modernity”
and the Destiny of Europe ....................................................................... 150
Sergio Franzese
The Primacy of Value in Max Scheler and American Pragmatism ......... 164
Kenneth W. Stikkers
Part III: Movements and Trends
Normative Sciences: A Pragmatic View ................................................. 176
Giovanni Maddalena
Intuitionistic Background of European Pragmatism................................ 185
Krzysztof Rotter
Globalization and Our Values ................................................................. 192
Celal Türer
Ecological Values and Liberal Democracy ............................................. 207
Grzegorz Francuz
The Modes of Dialogue Language, Dialogue, and Meaning
in Russian Semiotics and American Pragmatism .................................... 217
Leszek Koczanowicz
Dimensions and Responsibilities of the European Union........................ 233
Adam Chmielewski
Contributors............................................................................................. 248
Index........................................................................................................ 253
INTRODUCTION
The theme uniting the present volume of scholars could not be more
contemporary. Profound and ongoing cultural exchange is taking place
between North America and Europe. There is of course much debate as to
whether or to what extent such exchange is one-sidedly American, and if
so, whether such global “Americanization” is generally good, bad, or
neutrally (and so fatally) a necessity of history.1 While this debate is more
immediately taken up in contexts of political and social debate, stimulating
contributions from economists, political scientists, and sociologists,
philosophers and their scholars have typically remained on its periphery.
Yet, as is clear from the essays that follow much can be gained from a
frank and open interchange between American and European philosophy
scholars on the encounters between their cultural values.
Most of the essays here originated as presentations for an international
gathering of scholars in June of 2005 at Opole University, Poland,
organized by the present volume’s co-editor and contributor Krzysztof
Piotr Skowroński, who was inspired, supported, and encouraged in that by
our third co-editor and contributor John Lachs. The conference title,
“American and European Values: A Philosophical Rapprochement”
conveys the intent of cordially bringing together a group of different
cultural-philosophic perspectives, but this for the purpose, notably, of
discussing a topic that frequently yields less than cordial responses from
its discussants. For this reason the present volume, and by all accounts the
occasion which provided the source of its contents, owes its congenial
1
For a consideration of the question from the standpoint of the French, see: The
French Challenge: Adapting to Globalization, by Philip H. Gordon and Sophie
Meunier (Brookings Institution Press, 2001). For a consideration from the
American perspective see: Karl Moore and Alan Rugman. “Does Globalization
Wear Mickey Mouse Ears?” Across the Board. Vol. 40, Issue 1 (Jan/Feb): 11-12.
Journalist Thomas Friedman stimulated the debate as it is characterized in the title
of the Moore/Rugman article in a now-frequently quoted passage from The Lexus
and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization (Anchor, 2000): “globalization
has a distinctly American face: It wears Mickey Mouse ears, it eats Big Macs, it
drinks Coke or Pepsi and it does its computing on an IBM or Apple laptop, using
Windows 98, with an Intel Pentium II processor and a network link from Cisco
Systems.” (Page 309).
viii
Introduction
spirit to the aforesaid co-editor, who graciously accepts my preferred
Americanization: Chris Skowroński. Since my privileged acquaintance
with Chris, just a few years at the present writing, I have continually been
impressed by his devotion to the task of bringing into conversation
clashing cultural perspectives, and the uses he makes of American
philosophy and international politics to quicken that conversation.
At first this devotion is disquieting to the American temperament. It is
as everyone knows bad manners to discuss politics and religion at the
American dinner table. (The present writer first had his version of these
American manners jarred five years ago in a Galway bar, whereupon
entering, a grizzled regular immediately accosted him with the icecrushing question: What do you think of President Bush!) But current and
ongoing cultural-global change demands increasingly that Americans be
willing to partake of the open, and sometimes incendiary dinner-time
dialogue that, by way of comparison, occurs in European social spaces.
American and other philosophy scholars are fortunate to have received an
invitation to such a dialogue from Professor Skowroński, and I am happily
privileged both to participate and aid in the delivery of its fruits.
Questions concerning values said to be peculiar to specific cultural
perspectives require confession of authorial origins. What makes the
present volume exciting is its confluence of cultural perspectives. Of the
twenty-one contributors, six are situated in the middle-United States, ten
come from Polish universities, three from Italy, one from Spain, and one
from Turkey. This truly international makeup of contributors enlivens the
book’s theme in surprising, and frequently edifying ways.
The book is divided into three sections. The first section, “Philosophy
of Culture,” gathers essays discussing philosophic intersections and
encounters between North American and European sensibilities that have
varying consequences for the development of culture. John Lachs begins
with a sage and provocative inquiry into the worthwhile question of what
turns humans from “Enemies into Peaceful Neighbors.” He highlights the
simple importance of domestic affluence and prosperity to curbing the
often unavoidable impetus to violence between nations whose borders
rattle with fleeing and invading feet. Zenona Maria Nowak carefully
analyzes the concept of responsibility in American and European thought,
tracing their roots from a divergence of principled frameworks (roughly
“pragmatist versus Catholic”), to a contemporary conglomeration of
sentiments bespeaking our increasingly global, pluralistic context.
Tadeusz Olewicz proceeds with refreshing frankness to lay out the
different conceptions of truth demarcating American and European
sensibilities, observing in the former a comparatively less “dogmatic,”
American and European Values
ix
flexible, welfare-based conception. He turns over various consequences of
these contrasted senses of truth, particularly the demands each conception
place on various interpreters of human behavior, and also the important
differences each conception makes for social orders. Jan Krasicki delivers
a fascinating comparative analysis of “Russian Values and America,”
arguing for the deeply Platonistic character of the former, and conveying
the Russian impressions of the more or less pragmatic character of the
latter. Krasicki provocatively observes: “A Russian perceives the world
in terms of extreme categories, as antinomies and opposites… [and at the
same time] In the eyes of Russians, Western and American societies
gravitating towards uniformization and atomization of life, towards the
idolatry of Progress, sentence themselves to emaciation and atomization,
and gradual self-destruction.” The present author concludes the section
with a consideration of the “perils of cross-cultural interpretation”
reflected in Jean-Paul Sartre’s interpretations of the work of twentieth
century novelist John Dos Passos.
I argue that while Sartre’s
interpretations provoke and suggest much that is revealing of various
aspects of the political-cultural climate of his and Dos Passos’s time, they
reveal more of the French philosopher’s own values, and fail to capture
what is centrally American about the novelist’s thinking.
The second section of the book is arranged according to contributors
framing their considerations more directly around specific thinkers who
bring American and European values into conversation. Adam Grobler
provides an analysis of an important thinker likely unknown to
Westerners, Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, a twentieth century Polish
philosopher characterized by the author as a “forerunner of internal
realism.” Ajdukiewicz (1890-1963) made many original contributions to
formal logic and as Grobler shows, was in his own way a pioneer of the
kind of conceptual realism found in such pragmatist-analysts as Hilary
Putnam and W.V.O. Quine. Aforementioned co-editor Chris Skowroński
presents a revealing examination of the cultural “In-Betweenness” of
twentieth century American philosopher George Santayana (1863-1952).
Skowroński considers the varying categorizations scholars have given
Santayana’s philosophy, interestingly determined by the scholar’s own
national identities, and provides his own view that Santayana is best
understood as a “Spanish-American philosopher.” Antonio Lastra
presents an enlightening analysis of the uses that Emerson makes of the
European sensibilities spoken for by Alexis de Tocqueville. He offers the
startling, yet highly plausible observation that Emerson’s philosophy
“could be understood…as a way of using all the means of culture
produced by Europe against the very European civilization that
x
Introduction
Tocqueville spoke for…” Rosa Maria Calcattera provides an original
interpretation of William James’s pragmatism. She recognizes the
convergences and divergences of James’s pragmatism with Peirce’s
formative version, and provides interesting recommendations for a means
of amplifying James’s view via the work of Finnish philosopher, Georg
Henrik von Wright (1916-2003), also known to be the successor and
estate-executor of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Wacław Grzybowski examines
the relationship between the thinking of German political philosopher Eric
Voegelin and American conservatism. He highlights the “rule of
discernment” in American conservative responses to Voegelin that links
America’s path of development up with that of larger Western culture.
Jason Bell considers an under-appreciated aspect of the thinking of
classical American philosopher Josiah Royce, his “pragmatic business
ethics.” He employs Royce’s rich analysis of the business character in
American culture as a means of engaging various European criticisms of
the same. We are pleased then to include a previously published paper by
Michael Hodges and Scott Aikin, kindly permitted by the publishers of
Journal of Speculative Philosophy, titled “Wittgenstein, Dewey, and the
Possibility of Religion” (originally appearing in Volume 20, Number 1,
2006: pg’s 1-19). Hodges and Aikin deploy an integrated notion of
religious sentiment inspired by the interpretive frameworks of the two
title-philosophers as a means of resolving a dilemma that is real for those
who have simultaneously serious “religious” and “naturalist” tendencies.
Sergio Franzese provides a probing and challenging consideration of the
intersections of Nietzsche’s thinking and the meaning of American culture
in the scheme of world civilization. At first, Franzese recognizes, it might
be presumed that Nietzsche has no explicit view of the subject, but when
one attends to the leitmotif of his thinking, the question of Europe, much
can be gleaned regarding the subject in question. Kenneth W. Stikkers
completes the second section by offering an original and persuasive crosscomparison of German phenomenologist Max Scheler (1874-1928) and
American pragmatism. Stikkers delineates both the convergences of
Scheler’s and American pragmatist’s notion of value, and some aspects of
each philosophy that offer resources lacking in the other.
The third and final section of the book is framed around various
“movements and trends” that meaningfully bring American and European
values into dialogue.
Giovanni Maddalena poses the provocative
question: “Why should European culture welcome American pragmatism
at the beginning of this century?” Maddalena proceeds in elaboration of
the answer that American pragmatism can aid in “the theoretical
conception of normative sciences.” The author’s point of focus is the
American and European Values
xi
founder of classical pragmatism, C.S. Peirce whose thinking Maddalena
impressively brings into dialogue with a range of modern European
thinkers. Krzysztof Rotter provides an analysis of the “Intuitionistic
Background of European Pragmatism.” Rotter gives a fascinating account
of the ways in which intuitionism allowed a favorable reception of
pragmatist doctrine, especially throughout the second half of the twentieth
century. Celal Türer considers the topic of globalization, meticulously
turning over the layers of meaning implied in the term. He applies this
conceptual analysis to the challenges facing his native Turkey, exploring
the problem of globalization and Turkish culture as one involving the
“internalization of universal values.” Grzegorz Francuz examines the very
contemporary issue of “Ecological Values and Liberal Democracy.” He
probes the relationships between environmentalist developments and
democratic orders, deferring for the meaning of the latter to the
authoritative thinking of John Rawls, and soberly concluding that
“environmental values can be reconciled with democracy as long as green
philosophy and environmental movements concentrate on pragmatic issues
instead of focusing on comprehensive and metaphysical doctrines of
nature.”
Leszek Koczanowicz emphasizes the importance of the
dialogical tradition, which he considers a species of anthropology, to bring
American pragmatism and Russian semiotics into conversation. He
highlights strikingly convergent aspects of the thinking of G.H. Mead
(1863-1931), L.S. Vygotsky (1896-1934), and Mikhail Bakhtin (18951975).
Adam Chmielewski offers ideal concluding reflections,
“Dimensions and Responsibilities of the European Union,” developing in
the tune of the vibrant present many of the book’s foregoing
considerations. He addresses with great candor and seriousness the
precarious situation of “Polish elites,” and their “unaccountably servile
[attitude] toward the American administration…outdone [by a
simultaneous] distrust of Europe.” He leaves (at least some) readers with
a hopeful reflection that “…historical politics may lose its battle with
political realism.”
The present writer would like to thank Rockford College’s Center for
Ethics and Entrepreneurship which through generous grant support has
permitted the requisite time for scholarship and editing work on this book.
Gratitude is also owed to Jennifer Anne Rea who helped a great deal with
the index and other important considerations regarding the book’s
organization and content. It is my sincere hope that, on behalf of my
fellow editors and contributors, readers will discover in this rich volume
many resources for reflection and direction towards a constructive
xii
Introduction
engagement with the very contemporary and pressing issues besetting
modern Americans and Europeans.
Matthew Caleb Flamm, Rockford, Illinois , February, 2008
PART I:
PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE
FROM ENEMIES TO PEACEFUL NEIGHBORS
JOHN LACHS
Normally, essays present the results of reflection or the solution to a
significant problem. In this paper, I will not follow that tradition. Instead, I
will engage in a search to understand a fascinating but deeply puzzling
phenomenon. The fact whose explanation I seek but have no confidence
that I possess is the striking divergence between how members of certain
nationalities and religions behave in the Old World and how they relate to
each other in the New. I want to examine a number of hypotheses
concerning what makes for the difference in order to get as clear as I can
about whether the changes are situational or due to some deeper
valuational transformation.
Members of some nations, ethnic groups and religions are mortal
enemies in the parts of the world that are their native homes. There are
historical reasons for the enmity between Pakistanis and Indians, Hutus
and Tutsis, and Serbs and Bosnians. The reasons, typically taking the form
of memories of ancient oppression, persecution and murder, exercise a
momentous hold on interactions among these people. The embers of
enduring hatred create conflagrations of violence again and again, and
each side to the conflict takes delight in waging war or at least inflicting
retaliatory cruelties on people who belong to the other.
Rival groups experience much more than distaste for each other: they
seek the destruction of their opponents. The struggles between Muslims
and Christians, Germans and the French, and Greeks and Turks display a
vicious stridency that is difficult to lay to rest. From time to time, people
show themselves prepared to undergo all manners of hardship to be able to
cause permanent grief to their enemies. The idea of leaving others be
seems not to occur to these people; on the contrary, periodically they
perceive a duty to exterminate those who belong to the wrong side.
Hegel’s depiction of the encounter of the bondsman and the lord is a good
example of this conceptual frame: seeing each other is enough for them to
prepare for a struggle to the death.
By comparison with this fury, the relation in America of Old World
antagonists is surprisingly tame. Traditional enemies live at peace with
American and European Values
3
each other, in many cases on the same street or in the same apartment
building. Genocidal tendencies remain in check and instead of laboring to
make others miserable, people endeavor to make themselves happy. Acts
of violence directed at people on account of their nationality, ethnic origin
or religion are rare. Aggression is controlled to such an extent that there is
hardly an attempt to deface the buildings and stores of antagonists.
I do not mean to suggest that America is free of prejudice and of racial,
religious and ethnic tensions. People in the United States, as everywhere,
have preferences some of which, though perhaps ill-considered, show
themselves, unacceptably, in how they treat others. Moreover, members of
some groups view individuals who belong to others with suspicion and
quiet hostility. But it is worth remarking that much of the nastiness tends
to remain attitudinal, with minimal behavioral outcomes. And the bulk of
the ill-feeling flows from long-standing residents of the country toward
newcomers, whatever their religion or ethnic background, who do not
understand the local language and customs. Traditional Old World
enemies live in relative peace with each other.
What accounts for this striking change of attitude and action attendant
on moving from Asia and Europe to North America? A number of
explanations may be proposed, and I want to explore the most plausible
among them. Probably, there are multiple causal factors at work, at least
some of which are obvious and relatively easy to identify. But I suspect
that there are also some more interesting and perhaps even surprising
influences to uncover.
Much of the violence and destruction of organized hatred occurs
through mob action. Crowds are easily mobilized in countries where there
are large numbers of people with the same beliefs and emotional triggers.
Demagogues can manipulate such masses, although fancied slights and
ancient grievances are enough by themselves to precipitate disastrous
consequences. Might the reason for peace in America be that members of
ethnic groups and aggressive religions lack the critical mass necessary for
violence?
This explanation is likely to be attractive to anyone who knows how
anger feeds on itself in crowds and how the mood of the mob can make
even sensible people act without concern for decency. In fact, however, it
does not stand scrutiny. As to religions, there are, for example, enough
Muslims and Hindus in the United States to create deadly clashes over
their differences. Members of ethnic groups tend to live in concentrated
areas where they vastly outnumber their antagonists. Since their traditional
enemies usually live only a block or two away, it would be easy for them
to start fights or at least to create significant nuisance. In any case, even
4
From Enemies to Peaceful Neighbors
one or a small number of people is enough to stir up a great deal of
trouble. The striking fact is that in the United States, at least on the whole
and in a systematic way, no such trouble is created.
Is it possible, then, that peace is due to effective peacekeeping efforts?
There is no denying that police in the Old World sometimes look the other
way when ethnic or religious violence breaks out. Although America has
experienced severe racial inequities in law enforcement, violence against
ethnic and religious minorities is, on the whole, approached with a strong
and even hand. The police in major American cities would certainly not sit
back while bands fired by anger roughed up people and bombed churches,
mosques or synagogues. And timely, severe measure would undoubtedly
nip disturbances in the bud.
The interesting fact, however, is that large-scale police action just does
not seem to be needed. Apart from the hapless tough full of threats and
boasts or the occasional thug who tries to set fire to a synagogue, one sees
no attempt to incite ethnic or religious violence. And, interestingly, the
young or deranged perpetrators of such isolated attacks tend to be native
born Americans rather than members of some immigrant minority. The
police do not have much in the way of ethnic or religious mob action to
control.
Large-scale violence tends to be evoked or supported by politicians
and the press. Can the absence of these catalysts of conflict account for
relative ethnic and religious peace in America? This is a plausible line of
thought because politicians in the United States rarely get elected on a
platform of narrow ethnic or religious concerns. From time to time,
legislators are put in office at least in part because they are members of an
ethnic group or religion, even though the scope of their interests tends to
transcend such narrowing influences. And, indeed, there is no
concentration of media in the United States that is a match for the
nationalist publications bombarding the citizens of Old World countries.
Without continuing agitation and demagoguery, people tend to turn their
attention to pursuits other than harming their neighbors.
The last point rings true and surely constitutes one of the reasons for
peace among previously feuding people when they move to America. But
we live in a world of instant communication: telephones and the Internet
provide access for immigrants to their native lands, and in fact many of
them are in close contact with sentiments “at home.” Some immigrant
communities print their own newspapers, and many of the religious
leaders and senior opinion-makers who set the tone of these enclaves are
exclusivists or nationalists. So there is certainly enough leadership and
communication to whip immigrants into a fury. The remarkable fact is that
American and European Values
5
what would have been incendiary in the Old World falls on deaf ears in
the New; that Palestinians and Israelis kill each other in the Middle East
seems not to be a good enough reason for murderous clashes between
them in the United States.
This suggests another possible line of explanation. In some human
affairs, context is all. We know that turning out the lights is conducive to
sleep and thrusting a young man into a fraternity makes it probable that he
will drink. Living in a new country may well exercise the same sort of
influence on immigrants. It takes a while for them to learn the language
and the customs of their new society, but they quickly catch on to what is
clearly unacceptable. Systematic hate-mongering is just not a part of the
culture of America as it exists today: both the legal system and the
ordinary consciousness of people reject it as offensive. Newcomers might
therefore shelve their ethnic or religious aggressions to fall in line with
what their new home expects of them.
That some such process contributes to peace in America is difficult to
deny. The adoption of local customs occurs as a natural though not
inevitable consequence of immigration. But it does not happen
everywhere. Pakistanis in Britain and Algerians in France have failed to
adopt some vital customs of the larger culture. That raises the question of
what there is about American society that renders compliance with local
values attractive and likely. And that, in turn, points to the need for a more
substantive look at what America teaches its immigrants and makes
available to them. The current explanation accounts, therefore, for very
little if viewed in isolation from the broader issues I will discuss shortly.
What about the possibility that immigrants to the United States are
selected, or self-selected, for their non-violent tendencies? The
Immigration and Naturalization Service certainly does all it can to deny
entry to people who engage in ideologically motivated mayhem. Legal
immigrants tend to be professionals or at least somewhat educated people
who can be expected to know better than to create trouble. The political
refugees among them have experienced persecution, so they are at least
unlikely to want to visit it on others. The rest of them, entrepreneurs and
merchants, normally focus on making money, not on achieving national or
racial purity.
The events of 9/11 showed, however, that government screening is not
very successful. It cannot readily measure nationalist or religious fervor,
and it is ill-equipped to unmask well-constructed lies. Professionals are by
no means free of ideological commitments and many a person persecuted
for political beliefs can hardly wait to return the favor. There is ample
evidence that even business people, if brought up to hate a group of others,
6
From Enemies to Peaceful Neighbors
can be whipped into violent action. Selectivity in immigration may
account for a little of the differential in tension between the New and the
Old Worlds, but not for very much.
Perhaps we have not made much headway in accounting for the
difference we seek to explain because we have not looked more closely at
what immigration to America involves. To those who come to settle here,
the change is momentous and in some ways excruciating. The involutions
of the language, strange customs and the need to communicate with
neighbors who, though superficially friendly, yet seem deeply alien make
the first few months, even years, of life in the new land painful and
destabilizing. Like the last snow of winter, however, the misery hides new
growth: the habits and values of the Old World are slowly replaced with
the attitudes of the new community. Over a period of difficult years, the
immigrants become Americans—sometimes even without wanting or fully
knowing it.
The new values arise not through force or indoctrination but by doing
what others do and wanting the same things they have. Most immigrants
find America a land of hard work and intense desire. Hungarians who
arrived in New Jersey after the 1956 revolution were dismayed at the pace
of life in their new homeland and outraged at what was expected of them
in their jobs. Some of them grumbled that Soviet repression may have
been preferable to having to expend so much energy every day. Yet within
a few years, they were taking trips to Bermuda, saving money for houses
and working their hearts out to get promoted. They realized that devoted
labor brings results and that desires they would not have dared to frame in
their old homes could be readily satisfied with enough of their new
country’s money.
The economic system of the United States is a mighty engine of
persuasion. It attracts and engulfs people, making them do what they
would otherwise never think of in return for fulfilling their dreams. Those
who draw a sharp line between physical well-being and the higher
purposes of life seem not to understand the intimate connection between
the two. The comfort of owning a house is at once fulfillment of the
obligation to take care of one’s family. Saving money may seem miserly,
but it translates into the ability to educate one’s children. Grand financial
success serves as the foundation of promoting good causes and helping
those in need. Material means make miserable ends, but properly used
they are indispensable for accomplishing the good.
Material means and what we might call spiritual ends are, in this way,
inseparable. The values underlying the pursuit of economic well-being are
this-worldly and non-ideological: they turn the mind away from
American and European Values
7
unproductive mischief and mayhem toward what others find constructive
enough to pay for. Some advocates of high culture heap scorn on
commercial life. They overlook the affirmation of human dignity through
freedom of contract that is its ground and the reduction of suffering
through plenty that is its product. They think it lamentable that people
embrace the values of physical satisfaction, forgetting that the choice is
free and that the goods of this world are essential to doing good in the
world.
Immigrants to America appropriate local ideas of success with
astonishing fervor. They work hard, seek advancement, buy cars and
houses, save money for their children and commit themselves to useful
civic labors. The premise behind such actions and values is social stability,
the expectation that possessions are secure and long-term plans can be
effective. This means that one can reasonably hope that next year will be
better than the last has been. Such hopes pervade American life and
structure, meaning and justification to what people do. The future thus
becomes an ever-present reality that offers rewards to the industrious. The
conviction that tensions can be defused, problems solved and every
product and human situation improved turns the mind away from grief
over the past and toward concrete steps of amelioration.
Recognition that human relations do not have to constitute a zero-sum
game is near the heart of American beliefs. Warfare, violence and
persecution are zero-sum activities in which some win and others lose,
perhaps everything. Commerce, cooperation and even friendly competition
are, by contrast, modes of action from which all participants can profit.
Tacitly or implicitly, immigrants adopt this stance or at least come to
believe that they can flourish. The consequent redirection of effort and
exhaustion of energy in productive actions may well explain why in
America immigrants lose interest in persecuting their neighbors.
The difference between past-directed retaliatory and future-directed
ameliorative activities plans a central role in American philosophy.
Pragmatists such as John Dewey and William James extol the value of
human actions focused on influencing the future, which alone is open to
improvement by our efforts. Even Royce, who recognizes the importance
of communities of memory, places them in the broader context of
communities of hope, suggesting that the negativities of the past must be
submerged in the cleansing improvements we can make from here on.
Such philosophical advice is a reflection of the broader culture, but has the
advantage of capturing in precise conceptual terms what is otherwise a
prevalent though unarticulated attitude.
8
From Enemies to Peaceful Neighbors
Is this attitude unique to the United States? It neither is nor has to be. It
pervades any nation that provides socio-political stability and the hope of
material improvement to its citizens. Prosperity undercuts the complex
causes of religious intolerance and nationalist fervor: envy and destructive
anger are less likely to gain a foothold among people who live well and
see a happy future than among those who are hungry and destitute of hope.
Even plausible but pernicious ideologies find it difficult to sprout roots
among individuals who have enough. The Old Testament speaks of a
promised land which, if already occupied by others, can become the
source of endless conflict. What people need instead is a land of promise,
of actualizable hope, which America has been for a long time, and other
nations are now becoming.
A united Europe in which cooperation and growing prosperity
eliminate borders and with them ethnic hatred, offers the possibility of
another America. Some Asian nations are also working hard to provide
opportunities for their citizens. Although affluence in a commercial world
brings with it the all the problems of over-consumption, there is in the end
no alternative solution to the problem of eradicating nationalist, ethnic and
religious violence. If my analysis of what makes immigrants to the New
World overcome their Old World hatreds is anywhere near right, we may
have uncovered the secret of what will make it unnecessary for people to
immigrate at all. They need hope in their own lands for a better life for
themselves but especially for their children.
RESPONSIBILITY IN THE EUROPEAN
AND AMERICAN TRADITION
ZENONA MARIA NOWAK
The world of a human being can be defined as the world of harmony
(neatness, order) which is broken only from time to time, the disturbance
coming either from the part of its constituent beings or originating from
the improper (bad) activities of man. Such a perception of human
existence has long predominated in European culture—practically from
antiquity until the end of the nineteenth century. But it is also possible to
see in the world mainly conflicts, fighting. This way of thinking seems to
be a characteristic of modern times. Since the result of a fight is always
ambivalent in nature (it results in good and evil, gain and loss, victory and
defeat, life and death), the world of a man must appear to be a world of
manifold threats, a world where man is exposed to various types of
dangers. Their origin might be independent of a man. These are dangers
which have been feared since time immemorial. However, nowadays there
are threats which man creates himself. It happens not only when he favors
his own profit (his own good) over the profit of the others, but also when
he excessively interferes with the natural habitat.1
The irresponsible actions of people have conferred upon the issue of
responsibility particularly high importance. Thus, we might venture to say
that responsibility has become the key notion of contemporary philosophy.
Moral responsibility is viewed as a source of rescue for an endangered
human existence, and through the prism of ‘moral responsibility’ the
human condition is analyzed. According to Schwartländer “[responsibility]
occupies in the common consciousness the place which, up till now, had
been taken by duty. The change of historic ethos has probably never has
been expressed so perspicuously as in this gradual narrowing and even
discrediting of the concept of duty, with the concomitant stress on, and
1
Vast achievements of contemporary science and technology can secure as much
good as evil for humans.
10
Responsibility in the European and American Tradition
radicalization of, the concept of responsibility”.2 In view of these
considerations, understanding and explicating responsibility is an object of
concern for those who care about the issue of the human condition, the
issue of effective and ethical action.
I argue that in explicating the category ‘responsibility’ we can discern
its two dimensions: objective and subjective. In the former dimension it is
defined by objective criteria, which are, in a sense, measurable. They can
be established on the basis of the many realms of science, such as
philosophy, sociology, economics, management, medicine, ecology, etc.,
which means that they can be given an objective content; and as a
consequence, the subject of responsibility can be defined. In such a
dimension, “responsibility is not a question of moral consciousness—it is
delimited by the very structure of events”.3 Thanks to this feature, the
subject of responsibility can be established regardless of whether people
want to assume it or avoid it. In particular, I mean here that the subject (a
group subject) might not be aware of the fact that, bearing in mind their
involvement in the chain of circumstances, something depends on them.
Of course, the lack of knowledge does not discharge an individual either
from legal or moral responsibility. Therefore we may assume that the
following thesis is neutral with respect to worldview and can be generally
accepted: A man is objectively responsible for the quality and conditions
of his living.
The subjective aspect of responsibility comprises consciousness and
the feeling of responsibility of the subject. Within these dimension,
responsibility is determined by personality factors, which are immeasurable. They depend on how an individual conceptualizes a good life, what
their expectations are, what their desires are and the possibilities of their
fulfillment, on moral and legal consciousness, understanding of rules and
regulations of social life. All this yields the result that—in contrast to
responsibility in the objective sense—different people delimit the
boundaries of their responsibility differently.
Responsibility also requires being open for the future; the things to
come must also matter. With the reservation that only the present (the
2
Johannes Schwartläder, ”Odpowiedzialność jako podstawowe pojęcie filozoficzne,
“[Responsibility as a Key Word of Philosophy], translated by Jacek Filek, Znak 10
(1995): 5. [Johannes Schwartläder, in: Handbuch philosophischer Grundbegriffe,
hrgs. Von H. Krings, H.M. Baumgartner und Ch. Wild, Studienausgabe Band 6,
München 1974.] All the translations from Polish sources are mine, ZMN.
3
Georg Picht, ”Pojęcie odpowiedzialności [The Concept of Responsibility],“
translated by K. Michalski,
Znak
1-2
(1979): 9. [“Der Begriff der
Verantwotung,“ in: Kirche und Staat. Festschrft für Hermann Kunst, Berlin 1967.]
American and European Values
11
current state of affairs) is important, responsibility boils down to the
catering for momentarily felt needs, to the sphere of pleasure and success.
Within the subjective dimension of responsibility we find the concept
of ‘honesty.’ If a man feels he is responsible for the occurrence ‘Z’ it
would be dishonest to avoid the responsibility. And this seems to be the
basic connotation of the concept of ‘honesty’—the actions compatible
with one’s beliefs and conscience. There are, however, other constituents
of the concept of honesty, which are chiefly defined by reference to the
kind of action and the realm in which such action is undertaken.
Honesty only gives us clues about how to behave (to be frank,
conscientious, helpful, not to appropriate somebody’s belongings, to keep
one’s promises, etc.) and what not to do. Honesty is not about choosing
one’s goal but only about conscientious application of a particular method
(means), meticulously obeying the specified rules of actions, the rules of
social justice included. It means that honestly one can do both good and
evil. Therefore the evaluation of a particular action within the categories
“just-unjust,“ “good-bad” is possible only when we perform it from the
point of view of the objective or consequences of an action. In other
words, the evaluation of honest behavior requires reference to other, more
fundamental (higher, universal, autotelic) values.
When, in what situation, can we say that a person is acting honestly
and at the same time, rightly, correctly? The answer to the question,
formulated in this way, is not simple. To a large extent, it depends on
whether we stand on the side of situationism or principalism. A radical
principalist should not have any doubts: since all moral standards are
unconditionally binding, you cannot justify dishonest conduct even if a
“little evil” in the form of breaking a ban (of a formal, technical,
competence norm) would provide for achieving a great good. No objective
can justify a ‘shortcut,’ employing means which are inherently bad,
dishonest. However, a situationist claims that you should calculate—if in a
given situation, a moral balance points to a considerable “profit” resulting
from sacrifice of honesty, if so, it is not only befitting and acceptable but
even recommendable.
Within the perspective of the objective responsibility of an honest
person, the main criterion of evaluating the effects of activities should not
be a particular interest or the interest of a group, but the welfare of
humanity, of the biosphere, the common good. However, the possibility
(or unavoidability) of a conflict in the realm of honesty (e.g. one cannot at
the same time comply with the contradictory stipulations or requirements)
and the conflict between honesty and responsibility or justice cannot be
ruled out.
12
Responsibility in the European and American Tradition
In the case of value conflict honesty is, and usually should be, subordinate to responsibility or justice. Usually it is easier in such situations to
remain honest than responsible. However, someone who decides to act
dishonestly in the name of higher values should be aware that great
responsibility is incumbent on him for the possible negative results of
betraying the principle of honesty.
Responsibility implicates two types of sanctions: legal and moral. In
the former sense responsibility is defined by the stipulations of laws.
However, moral responsibility is a complex relational issue. Its analysis
should involve objective dimension, i.e. the objective result of an activity
or the renouncing of the activity. It should also include an subjective
dimension, that is the awareness of the activity and its significance as well
as willingness (readiness) to assume the consequences of one’s actions
(one’s own actions or those of other people). It must be also noted at this
point that moral responsibility has two dimensions: negative, which means
the guilt for the wrongdoing; and the positive dimension—merits for the
multiplication of welfare.4
The concept of responsibility implies one more duality. It is connected
with the fact that on one hand the sense of responsibility might hinder
taking a decision, extinguishing the eagerness, which results from
realizing the risks involved in the possible outcomes of an undertaking,
but on the other hand, it can also spur actions.
Moral responsibility is a relation binding a man to others and to the
environment and values. It is a response to the call of values; the relation
of a human being to what is precious and important, what is of objective
value or what is considered as such. The stance of responsibility also
includes evaluating—we feel responsible for what is important,
significant, for what is of value. Therefore perceiving the world of values,
their hierarchy is a foundation of responsible relation to that reality. Hence
it can be expressed by means of taking on one’s shoulders the results of
the actions or refraining from acting, although it is expressed most fully by
acting. Accordingly, responsibility is a multidimensional object-subject
relation: somebody is responsible to somebody for something.
It is said that ‘responsibility is a burden’, that somebody ‘carries the
load of responsibility’, that one ‘assumes responsibility’, ‘takes on
responsibility’, etc. This type of collocations indicate a certain patency:
responsible people have it much harder than irresponsible people. It is no
small wonder that people tend to shed the burden of responsibility,
although the opposite tendency can also be noticed, namely the usurpation
4
Cf. Karl Jaspers, ”Problem winy,“ [The problem of fault] Etyka 17 (1979): 145206.
American and European Values
13
consisting in aiming at incapacitating somebody and assuming their
responsibilities—refusing somebody the right to be responsible. It is
usually connected with the lack of trust in somebody’s competence, both
in moral and vocational terms. It should be stressed at this point that no
one has a monopoly on responsibility, no one has an exclusive right in this
respect. “Moral responsibility is the most private and inalienable human
freedom and the most valuable human right. You cannot take it from
somebody, you cannot share it with others, you cannot give it to another,
gage it or give it to somebody for safekeeping”.5
Responsibility can have various motivations: theistic or atheistic,
individual or socio-centric, egoistic or altruistic. The question thus arises,
whether such justifications should be evaluated. Can we talk of the better
or worse in responsibility?
To understand the idiosyncratically American way of conceptualizing
responsibility, we must take into account the fact that in the preamble to
the American Declaration of Independence it is taken for granted that the
society is a collection of free individuals, aspiring for happiness, choosing
freely their own goals; that the strife for felicity, congruent with one’s own
picture of it, is an irrefutable right of every human being.
Since a man is free up till the boundary established by the freedom of
another, his fate is in his hands. Accordingly, the man bears responsibility
for his success, career, the choice of goals and their realization. If we
assume that the aims worth fulfilling are set in a sense objectively, (they
are worthy by themselves, indicated by the Absolute) then the appropriate
category for describing human condition would be the category of duty.
Such a situation obtains wherever we evoke the concept of absolute truth,
underlying goodness. For example, in Catholic ethics it is assumed,
following Thomas Aquinas (De Veritate, q. 17, a. 4.), that “the source of
the worthiness of conscience is always the truth: in the case of the
righteous conscience we are dealing with the objective truth, adopted by a
man; and, in the case of faulty conscience, we are dealing with something
which is subjectively mistaken for truth. However, we must not confuse
the erroneous subjective opinion of moral good with the objective truth,
which is shown to the human mind as a way to his goals. Nor are we
entitled to claim that a deed committed on the spur of righteous conscience
has the same value as a deed committed through following the judgment
of the faulty conscience.”6
5
Zygmunt Bauman, Etyka ponowoczesna [Postmodern Ethics], translated by
Janina Bauman and Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe
PWN, 1996): 341. [First published 1993 by Blackwell Publishers.]
6
John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, No. 63.
14
Responsibility in the European and American Tradition
The pragmatic perspective is radically different from the Thomistic
one.7 In pragmatism we are dealing not with the difference between the
objective truth and a subjective belief but with the difference between a
righteous choice (judgment), that is, one which enables the realization of
one’s goal and contributes to welfare (happiness) and a faulty,
dysfunctional judgment, where the action upon a belief turns out to be a
mishap.
Within Catholic ethics it might be of merit to say that the duty of a
man is to be guided by the objective (absolute) truth, the revealed truth
included. In practice it means to obey the norms which are external to an
individual, which are not instituted by the individual but they are given to
him (the individual discovers them). In pragmatism the proper term for
describing the reality of a man is “responsibility”. It implies accountability
for choices, for the consequences of one’s judgments (programs of acting),
which a man formulates on his own responsibility, led by the norms which
he also chooses on his own responsibility.
Pragmatism is consequentialism, i.e. a theoretical perspective, within
the framework of which it is assumed that the value of a deed, the moral
value included, is determined by its consequences, the fruits it bears. The
critics of such a stance, in turn, point to the fact that the evaluation of a
deed in the light of its consequences is not a feasible procedure. It is
impossible to foresee the future, we do not know what temporal
perspective to adopt, whether to take into account only direct results, and
there is the question of the results for whom. Nevertheless, everybody who
considers the problem of responsibility takes into account the consequences of actions or of renouncing such actions. However subject’s
intentions are taken into consideration by various authors to a differing
degree.
John Rawls claims that we are responsible for ourselves as individuals
existing in time and that is why we should be directed by reflexive
rationality. The risk undertaken by humans ought to be profitable. Even in
the case of the worst eventuality, which cannot be foreseen, a man can still
nourish the conviction that he did the right thing, it was not his fault, that
is, there was no way to get to a better plan .8
Freedom constitutes a self-evident condition of responsibility, which
implies both “the freedom from” and “the freedom to.” A man fully
7
I do not believe that American philosophy has no perspective other than
pragmatism, however, I consider pragmatism to be its most representative one.
8
Cf. John Rawls, Teoria sprawiedliwości [A Theory of Justice: § 64. Reflexive
Rationality], translated by M. Panufnik and J. Pasek and A. Romaniuk,
(Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 1994): 569-579.
American and European Values
15
defined, bound, pre-programmed and in the relevant sense incapacitated,
even if he had a sense of responsibility, would not be able to express it
actively.
In American culture freedom is highly ranked in the hierarchy of
values. The society saturated with pragmatic ideas is conceived of as a
society of free individuals, who nevertheless acquiesce to constraints on
individual conscience, when conscience allows actions threatening
democratic institutions. We can thus speak of social responsibility, i.e. the
responsibility for the existence and functioning of a community.9
J.P. Sartre’s concept of responsibility seems closest to the American
(pragmatic) stance. The point of departure for both concepts is the
assumption that man is a free being, but Sartre brought it to an extreme—
the man is freedom, which means that he does not have an essence or that
his essence is freedom. Absolute human responsibility can be considered a
completion (consequence) of his absolute freedom. “For every human
being everything occurs as if the whole humanity was watching his deeds
and was emulating them. Hence every man should ask himself: am I the
person who has the right to act in such a way so that humanity might
imitate my deeds? If such a question is not asked it means that the man
hides inner inquietude”.10 In both concepts the conviction of a man being
responsible for every deed, for every choice, decision, liaises thus with
ethical situationism, that is with the conviction that there are no moral
standards which apply unconditionally, because every case, every situation
is one of a kind, unrepeatable. There are no decisions which are always
valid, determined once and for ever.
Pragmatism was not the only ideological current that formed in opposition to the Platonic-Aristotelian tradition. Pragmatism has a lot in common
with the tenets of sophists, especially those of Protagoras. The revision of
Platonic-Aristotelian ideas and its conceptual schemata yielded such
philosophical currents as philosophy of life, philosophy of the dialogue,
existentialism, personalism, phenomenology. Such a context encompasses
attempts to replace the ethics of duty by the ethics of responsibility.
Representatives of such philosophical perspectives argue in various ways
that a man is a being, the essence of which, or one of essential features of,
is responsibility. According to Jacek Filek, a new ‘Archimedean point’ of
9
Cf. Richard Rorty, Obiektywność, relatywizm i prawda. Pisma filozoficzne. Tom I
[Objectivity, Relativism and Truth. Philosophical Paper. Volume I, part III],
translated by Janusz Margański, (Warszawa: Fundacja Aletheia, 1999): 270-272.
10
Jean Paul Sartre, 1995. Egzystencjalizm jest humanizmem, [L’existentialisme est
un humanisme], translated by Janusz Krajewski, (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo
Literackie MUZA SA, 1998): 28-29.
16
Responsibility in the European and American Tradition
the philosophy of man is the fact that “Cartesian (Descartes) formula,
founding the contemporary thought about the man, is being not only
reversed: ‘I am, hence I think’ instead of ‘I think therefore I am’ but,
additionally, ‘thinking’ has been replaced by ‘responding’: ‘I am therefore
I respond’”.11
Nowadays—not only in America but also in Europe—the predominant
conviction is that moral responsibility means responsibility before oneself,
before one’s conscience, and at the same time, responsibility before
everything I treasure, that is, before my values and before those people
whom I esteem. In the case of religious people the ultimate instance that
this leads to is the responsibility before the Creator (God, Absolute). In
both cultures it is assumed that responsibility requires encompassing with
one’s imagination, envisaging and realizing the outcomes of one’s actions,
that is the results of all undertakings in which we are directly or indirectly
involved, which can occur both in the short run and in the perspective of
that which is remote in time and space. However, there is no agreement as
to the main criterion of evaluating those results: whether it should be the
benefit of an individual, the benefit of a group, or maybe the welfare of the
whole humanity, biosphere, or the common good.
In practice, the limits of our responsibility depend on the real
capacities to define one’s fate, on the extent to which we are prepared to
act in such a way that the results do not turn against us. Good intentions
alone, however precious they are, might not be enough. What is also
needed in addition are qualifications, both vocational and moral.
11
Jacek Filek,. 1996. Ontologizacja odpowiedzialności [Ontologicalization of
Responsibility], (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Baran i Suszczyński, 1996): 7.
TRUTH AND TRUTHFULNESS AS A VALUE
IN AMERICA AND EUROPE
TADEUSZ OLEWICZ
American philosophy is an object of vivid interest among European
scholars. The most prominent contributors to the development of the
theory of truth in America are unquestionably Charles S. Peirce, William
James, John Dewey and Charles Morris1. However, I do not intend to
reconstruct philosophical debate concerning the concept of truth. My
purpose is not to claim but to question, to present a certain hypothesis
regarding the predominant differences between two cultures (American
and European), regarding truth as a value. My impression is that in Europe
we are more prone to treat truth in a dogmatic way, while in America
people seem to be more flexible in this respect. In the European
consciousness the prevailing conviction is that truth is the basis of all
goodness, of moral good. It seems that in the culture imbued with
pragmatic ideals the attitude towards truth is less fundamentalist: the truth
is supposed to contribute to welfare. To illustrate my hypothesis I chose
two phenomena, two problems which are both praxeological and ethical:
bluff and ingratiation.
As far as bluff is concerned, it seems to be a strategy commonly
resorted to in achieving goals, the gist of which is exaggeration, in other
words, departing from the truth (claiming or suggesting untruth).
According to the opinion of Albert Carr which he expressed in his famous
text published in the Harvard Business Review, the majority of people,
especially managers, for some time have felt coerced into performing
1
See for example: Charles S. Peirce, “The Fixation of Belief ,” Popular Science
Monthly 1877.; Charles S. Peirce, “How to Make Our Ideas Clear,” Popular
Science Monthly 1878.; Wiliam James, Pragmatism. A New Name for Some Old
Ways of Thinking. Popular Lectures on Philosophy. New York: Columbia
University, 1906.; Wiliam James, The Meaning of Truth. A sequel to
“Pragmatism”, Harvard College.; John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy, New
York 1920.; Charles Morris, The Pragmatic Movement in American Philosophy,
New York 1970.
18
Truth and Truthfulness as a Value in America and Europe
some sort of imposture.2 By consciously giving incomplete information,
by hiding some facts or exaggerating (bluffing), they try to convince their
interlocutor, to exert influence on them. It is generally thought that if
someone does not bluff, at least from time to time—if a person feels
obliged to tell the truth, the whole truth and only truth—such a person
deprives oneself of the possibility of obtaining gains which ensue from the
rules of the game. In other words, such people do not make good use of
their opportunities.
Bluffing appears to be equally popular both in Europe and in America.
The difference is that in Europe it is treated more shyly, with a greater
dose of disapproval. I surmise that this difference can be best evidenced by
the divergent attitudes to the game of poker—in Europe the esteem for
such abilities is not generally expressed, while in America, on the
contrary, it is overtly manifested.
Nevertheless, I will not analyze here in detail the complex
phenomenon of bluff (the variety of forms of bluffing) because I would
like to devote more attention to the ingratiation. Here I would like to
express my conviction that both in the theory of bluff and in the theory of
ingratiation the Americans remain ahead of the Europeans.
In the Platonic dialogue “Gorgias” Polus and Callicles advice Socrates
to master and apply the art of influencing people by means of words.
Otherwise, as Socrates himself admits, the fate in store for him might be
unpredictable. And indeed, it was so. Just because the philosopher
abhorred flattery and hypocrisy, and, instead of repenting before the
judges, he dared to criticize and “instruct” them, he was condemned.
The Socratic attitude of openness and his unconditioned incapability to
lie, regarding the compatibility of thoughts with their subject, was not well
received by ‘wide circles’ of his contemporaries. And nowadays? Do
people like to be instructed? Or do they prefer to be flattered? I argue that
those avid for compliments are the majority. If that is the case, they must
be gratified. Under no condition is criticizing allowed—this is what the
advisors (of people bent on succeeding) claim.
One of the most famous American experts Dale Carnegie, the author of
the bestseller on how to win friends and influenced people, authoritatively
settles the dispute: criticizing is of no avail because it forces one to adopt
defensive strategies and usually it makes people seek justifications.
2
Cf. Albert Carr, “Is business bluffing ethical?” Harvard Business Review” 46
(1968): 143-153.