This chapter provides an introduction to American pragmatism as an ethical tradition with educational ramifications. The chapter first explains the origins of pragmatism and accounts for the primary features of pragmatist ethics. It then profiles the ethical views and educational bearings of two classical pragmatists: William James and John Dewey, and the most prominent neopragmatist, Richard Rorty. The chapter shows how pragmatism, from its nineteenth-century origins to its contemporary iterations, approaches education as integral to the ethical and political cultivation of a vibrant, pluralistic, democratic culture. Its philosophical orientation – away from the fixed and timeless and toward the contingent and contextualized – conceives of humans as active but fallible agents pursuing knowledge to address the concrete problems of their communities. Despite their differences, James, Dewey, and Rorty recognized the need to foster individual habits and collective sensibilities that center our moral imaginations, sympathetic attachments to others, and our situatedness in concrete social and natural environments.

I argue that Either/Or contains a proposal for philosophy of science, and in particular, about the ultimate goal of science (i.e., the ideal epistemic state). Whereas the Cartesian-Hegelian tradition conceived of the ideal state as one of detached reflection – that is, “seeing the world as it is in itself” – the characters in Part I of Either/Or reveal this ideal as leading to practical absurdity. In contrast, Kierkegaard suggests that the ideal state consists in the achievement of equilibrium between the “spectator” and “actor” aspects of the human being. Kierkegaard’s proposal thus sets the stage for Niels Bohr’s “epistemological lesson of quantum theory.”

The moral foundations of crisis response seem simple: responders save lives, reduce human suffering, and pursue a lofty societal goal. Yet, crises often produce morally complicated situations as well. Crisis organizations have adopted norms, which help responders to work in complex moral contexts, but these norms cause moral distress when responders do not fully agree with them. Responders can choose to deviate from the norms and follow their inner moral convictions instead. This will not remove the moral complexities of their work though. Rather, it means that crisis professionals have to resolve moral dilemmas on their own and bear the full weight of moral responsibility. The moral dilemma for responders concerns this tension between following organizational norms and their own convictions. In response, crisis organizations could pursue an ethical culture by promoting organizational deliberation on moral questions in crisis operations. Creating an ethical culture allows for an open, flexible attitude by enabling active dialogue and collective reflection on moral dilemmas in crises. It facilitates a confrontation with the inevitable moral discomforts of crisis response.

The third chapter draws upon the procedures of ordinary language philosophy discussed in Chapter 2 to offer a critique of contemporary democratic theory. A significant point of contention between deliberative and agonistic democratic theorists is over the purpose of political argumentation. While deliberative democrats maintain that the goal of political debate is to reach agreement, many agonistic democratic theorists claim that arguments can foster relations of adversarial respect. This chapter demonstrates how the deliberative versus agonistic democracy debate is operating at cross-purposes. Behind this debate is the skeptical concern that if political argumentation cannot come to an agreement, then the enterprise is either irrational or prone to relativism. Drawing upon Cavell’s insight that human understanding rests upon agreement in forms of life, I examine how democratic discourse involves agreements at two levels: at the level of opinions and at the level of the discourse itself. This chapter clarifies what is at stake in the deliberative-agonistic democratic theory debate. Cavell helps us reimagine democracy by fostering a culture in which minority communities do not have to phrase their grievances within the language of hegemonic cultures.

Cicero’s De Officiis is the only surviving extended Stoic-style treatment of practical deliberation, offering guidance on what counts as well-judged decision-making. This chapter explores two questions raised by this feature of the work: (1) what is the general form of Stoic thinking on valid practical deliberation? (2) how far does Cicero’s De Officiis reflect the Stoic view of deliberation? On the first question, after considering recent scholarly discussions which stress the importance for Stoic deliberation of gaining advantages (‘preferable indifferents’), the chapter highlights the relevance for Stoic thought of a modern virtue ethical treatment of deliberation, which stresses the criterial role of virtue. On the second question, the chapter brings out how the structure and argumentation of De Officiis reflect the Stoic conception of deliberation, as presented here (that is, as centred on virtue).

This chapter offers a real-world engagement with a pragmatist approach to moral education. In this, the work of this chapter proceeds across multiple subsections. First, the intellectual tradition of pragmatism is described in a historical and conceptual context. Having established the tradition’s bedrock commitments and relationships, the chapter turns its focus to morality. By tracing the general contours of morality for the pragmatist, the chapter connects pragmatist morality to more general pragmatist concerns, indicating how these relate to notions of education and growth. The chapter then focuses on pragmatist moral education, demonstrating ways it might engage with present-day concerns and frustrations. The chapter asserts that pragmatism provides a useful approach to addressing moral education in the contemporary time. Finally, the chapter concludes by considering and responding to potential hesitations regarding its offered analyses.

Educating responsible moral agents is a central goal of democratic societies committed to the values of justice, equality, and the promotion of individuals’ well-being. How best to pursue the goal through formal schooling is, however, highly debated in moral education, due to reasonable disagreement on values and how to impart them. This chapter suggests that the core concepts of the capability approach provide an ethical framework which can fruitfully inform moral education. The approach’s core idea of evaluating individual well-being and the justice of society in terms of capability, or the substantive freedom to choose one’s valued life, together with the concept of agency and the importance of rational deliberation, set the ethical foundations for educating morally responsible citizens, who consider and treat other people as moral equals, care for social justice, and value their own and others’ well-being.

Individual decisions have to be aggregated to make group decisions. Markets aggregate decisions by consumers and producers into prices that might reflect social values. But markets allow and generate inequalities, and many aspects of human well-being and the environment do not have market prices. In large societies, direct voting on some policies is possible but most voting is for representatives who become part of a larger policy system. Deliberation is an ideal that underpins most justifications for democracy. It can be linked effectively to scientific assessments at the local to regional level. Ways to use deliberation at the national or global scales require further experimentation. In the United States, high levels of polarization challenge the idea of public deliberation. New technologies will create further challenges for sustainability decisions. Identifying strategies to move forward requires understanding variation in the public and drawing on strategies for nonviolent social change and conflict resolution.

In this chapter, I present Aristotle’s arguments in his books on Physics defending the claim that there is purposiveness in nature independent of thinking, foresight and deliberation. Hegel’s arguments for objective purposiveness are correctly understood only in light of those of Aristotle. In fact, I argue that the sense in which teleology is for Hegel the truth of mechanism (and, ultimately, of causality) is the sense in which, for Aristotle, final causes are the cause of ‘that which comes to be by nature’ and the cause of other kinds of causes (matter, efficient causes and even form) being where they are and having the effects that they eventually have. The chapter revises Aristotle’s understanding of this connection.

Debate and deliberation are two commonly promoted strategies for democratic education. Both strategies are designed to unearth different points of view and then engage in reason-giving and argumentation; in other words, they help students to recognize pluralism. When done well, both also model inquiry and deepen understanding about the issues being investigated. In this chapter, we discuss the theoretical justification for each and show how the adversarial aspect of debate engages a different set of democratic skills than the more collaborative approach of deliberation. These differences require teachers to make judgments about how best to use these strategies in the classroom. We conclude by addressing some critiques of these strategies and discuss how alternative discussion designs might overcome some of the limitations of deliberation and debate.

In order for democratic deliberative interactions in educational settings to fruitfully occur, certain favorable conditions must obtain. In this chapter, I chiefly concern myself with one of these putative conditions, namely that of school integration, believed by many liberal scholars to be necessary for consensus-building and legitimate decision-making. I provide a critical assessment of the belief that integration is a necessary facilitative condition for democratic deliberation in the classroom. I demonstrate that liberal versions of democratic deliberation predicated on this condition are puzzlingly inattentive both to the inevitability of segregation, as well as the inequities occasioned by “school integration.” I then move to probe the possibilities for democratic education in the absence of integration. I argue that neither the possibilities for deliberation nor the cultivation of civic virtue turn on an environment being “integrated.” Indeed, some kinds of segregation may be more conducive to fostering both deliberation and civic virtue.