Email or shareIn his research into the impact of Pragmatism on American society at the turn of the last century, historian and NeoAmericanist editorial board member Professor Andrew Johnston invariably came across the path-breaking work of German sociologist Hans Joas. Although a preeminent social theorist of his own, and indeed perhaps one of the leading public intellectuals of his generation in contemporary Germany, Joas surprisingly began his career with an intellectual biography of the American philosopher and sociologist George Herbert Mead, one of the founders of Pragmatism. Mead’s early 20th century work on the social origins of the self, which depended on a complex theory of social interaction through the use of what he called “signifi cant symbols,” also made him a towering infl uence in 20th century American sociology despite having never published a major statement of his own theoretical premises. According to Johnston, the most notable aspect of Joas’s work was his determination to revive Mead’s reputation and, in particular, explore how Pragmatism and the sociology of the self might help infuse certain German schools of social theory with a healthy democratic bias. Wanting to know how he had come to Mead in particular, and just what he thought his own recent efforts at rehabilitating a trans-Atlantic dialogue of social theory might mean for both Germany and the United States, Johnston met with Joas in August 2006, while he was fi nishing a year as a Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg (Institute for Advanced Study) in Berlin. The following are exerts of their larger conversation on pragmatism, the transatlantic fl ow of ideas and American foreign policy/relations.
NeoAmericanist: What drew you initially as a sociologist to Mead and to pragmatism given the initially sceptical view of German intellectuals to the American Pragmatists a hundred years ago?
Joas: First, something had already changed in the German reception of pragmatism when I started mywork on Mead. My model for the book on Mead was Karl-Otto Apel’s work on Charles S. Peirce, it was originally not a book but it was two long introductions to a German edition of some writings by Peirce. And I still think that is fi rst rate what he wrote about Peirce and also the way he explained what is important and interesting and so on. Mead’s name appeared on the one hand in Habermas’ writing but he hadn’t said anything substantial about him. He had always just mentioned him in the sense of there is an idea of interactionism, see George Herbert Mead Mind, self, and society, and there was no real interpretation,
and he didn’t have any knowledge of Mead’s writings aside from Mind, self, and society. But Pragmatism was not only in Habermas but also in writings about socio-linguistics and that was a very fashionable topic at that time, at least in Germany. And so the name of Mead came up when I was a student in Berlin in 1971. I had the impression that on the one hand it was extremely good stuff, and on the other hand it [Mind, self, and society] was a very bad book. And it is of course a very bad book, because it was not written by him, it was taken from student notes. So the book is bad, but I developed the feeling that this man has something to say, and for that reason I started reading everything he had ever published. I had a different plan for my doctoral dissertation at that time, but at a certain point I realized that in each chapter I always referred to Mead in a positive way. So I changed my mind. Why not then write about him? That led to my fi rst stay in the United States.
There is a deeper layer also, about why I was really attracted by pragmatism: as a student I felt attracted to several very different intellectual traditions—Catholicism, social democracy, and German historical hermeneutics tradition. I still think all three are extremely important. But they all suffer from a common defi ciency, at least in their German versions, mainly a very skeptical attitude to or distance from the idea of democracy. I would really say that my basic intuition in 1971 was that by taking pragmatism seriously, you can rejuvenate and reformulate these three traditions, and bring them together and infuse them with a sort of democratic spirit. James allows you to be religious under modern conditions; he does not treat religion as a thing of the past that cannot play a role in an age of science, as many others in the social sciences have done.” You must bear in mind that democracy, not completely, but to a large extent came to Germany in the framework of re-education of Germans after the Second World War. And that means that from 1949 on—from the foundation of the West German states on—we had a democratic political system here, but I always say that I did not grow up in a democratic culture. I grew up in Bavaria, and I would say that Bavaria clearly has a completely pre-democratic culture in the 1950, the way they teach history to high school students, family structures, and all that. And that is what I meant when I said democratic culture became so extremely important for the 1968 movement and changes. And the third point of course, I would say that the German intellectual tradition has a lot to offer to the world in terms of these hermeneutic traditions, but because it was only applied to Bismarck, to big men in history, not to everybody, it was not really developed into a hermeneutic methodology for everyday life from micro-sociological problems, where for me that is important.
NeoAmericanist: You yourself are becoming an agent of the flow of ideas across the Atlantic, translating pragmatism for a German audience and presumably speaking to an American audience. Do you see problems in the transatlantic flow today?
Joas: Let’s distinguish different phases here. Phase one, prior to the First World War: Many Americans were studying in Germany, taking up important elements from German intellectual traditions, but on the German side, the idea was that the Americans came from, one would perhaps say today, a sort of third world country, and they had to learn, but we could not expect anything original from them. We give them something, but we cannot learn from them. And that is part of the explanation of the reception of pragmatism
before the First World War. It was either taken as nonsense, dangerous nonsense, a destruction of the sacred principle of truth, or as a sort of second hand version of Nietzsche, as Georg Simmel was alleged to have said.
As for William James, one would have to distinguish between different books by James. The negative reaction mostly refers to his book on pragmatism. There’s a very serious reception to his book The varieties of religious experience. And I think somebody should write something about all the important authors of the time who clearly read this, from Max Weber to Ludwig Wittgenstein to Martin Heidegger. Heidegger, as a student, wrote a review in a student newspaper of this book by James. Wittgenstein read it
too. And so it was very important for German intellectual development. The chapters in my book Pragmatism and social theory that deal with the reception of Pragmatism are restricted to those writings that are somehow presented as pragmatists. One would have to write an additional text if one wrote about those texts by James that do not present themselves as pragmatists. As for today, I have colleagues who have had strong relations with American intellectuals and so on for many years and who tell me that they are no longer interested in teaching at an American University, so there is a certain resentment growing here but I don’t share it. I don’t see major diffi culties for me personally.
NeoAmericanist: What do you find are the differences vis-à-vis higher education between Germany and the United States?
Joas: I don’t teach in the U.S. anymore, but there are enormous differences. The German university is in very bad shape at the moment and the University of Chicago is a fantastic university. Whenever I am there I am impressed by the quality of the students and the quality of the colleagues and the intensity of interdisciplinary intellectual life on this campus. I’ve taught in 5 other North American universities, so I think I can also compare that, from the universities I know well in North America, Chicago is the best. That doesn’t mean there cannot be better ones. There is no stratification in the German higher education system. There is more or less free admission and lowered standards. The Bologna Process will make things worse here. I am not against the Process, but it certainly does not help to raise academic standards. It’s more about formalizing studies, and to some extent democratizing them. What I hate is when I hear in the German debate that this is a sort of “Americanization” of German education, because it has nothing to do with at least this top layer of the American higher education system. It’s completely different.
NeoAmericanist: I was wondering if we could talk about Mead’s internationalism. At one point in your book you refer to him abandoning internationalism for the “sin of nationalism” when he supports Wilson in the First World War.
Joas: Mead was an internationalist in the sense of trying to overcome a system of competing Nation State. He was very much in favour of the League of Nations and I agree. I am very much in favour of international institutions, of peaceful confl ict resolutions—and of course one has to be realistic; one should not idealize things like the League of Nations or the United Nations but they are progress, in my eyes.
NeoAmericanist: But the fact that Mead moved so easily into the American war effort, not as a jingoist admittedly but as a fervent supporter of intervention—
Joas: That is a typical trap for all intellectuals who begin to identify a specific national cause with more universalist cause of internationalism which has a tradition in France, that is, since France is the country of human rights, I can be a French Nationalist, but by being a nationalist I am a universalist and this very soon of course leads to the neglect of, let’s say, the suffering of those who have just become the victims of the occupation of a Napoleonic army. I would say the same trap exists in the U.S. all the time. You have a whole spectrum here from people who really, honestly think that the strengthening of American power is an important factor for a universalist, justifi able foreign policy and confl ict resolution to those who just misuse the rhetoric of universal peace and so on for the sake of, now really, American nationalism in the narrow sense.
NeoAmericanist: In one of your books you talk about “prophetic individuals”—those who stand somehow outside of the social structure but represent what is about to happen. I think Mead believed that the U.S. was a national version of that kind of self, and therefore the only country that could bring that kind of change into the world. Dewey rationalized it by saying that all politics entailed the use of force implicitly or explicitly and therefore as long as we can avoid jingoistic excesses there’s nothing inherently wrong with using force
here. Are you more sympathetic with Randolph Bourne’s criticism of both of them?
Joas: It all depends on your concrete judgment about a specifi c constellation here. I am not against the idea that what I have called a universalist solution sometimes needs particular nations as leaders, as those who offer the military force necessary to enforce a certain peace settlement. Having lived in West Berlin for the largest part of my life, I’ve said “how can anybody deny that the United States foreign policy sometimes plays an important role in protecting this particular part of the world against communist takeover”? I, for
example, supported strongly the Kosovo intervention and thought that American foreign policy played a very positive role to end the Balkan Wars and later.
NeoAmericanist: But under UN auspices?
Joas: That’s a diffi cult question. I was involved in many public discussions and so on about these questions. In principle I would say of course you need a Security Council resolution, but to be realistic. If for example there is a genocide happening in Kosovo, and, if you say, but the Chinese will veto a position to intervene there, I would fi nd it morally justifi able to intervene without a Security Council resolution. Maybe we have to think about structural resolutions like abolishing the veto power. I do not think, for example that the war in Iraq is in any sense such a case. It’s very complex. The one level is the basic principles. The second level is to argue how exceptions from these principles can be justifiable. Procedures are not everything—in all moral questions it’s good to have [them], but you have to have a reflexive distance to them […] but this does not give you complete liberty to do what you want. You have to justify why you do not follow them […] I see the war in Iraq as a complete misuse of this ‘just war’ or whatever… you know as well as I do all of the reasons we were given. I did not believe in these reasons in the fi rst place.
NeoAmericanist: Do you see any hope for the United States’ transnational or universal, liberal or social democratic capabilities, or do you think that the persistence of conflict, the monopoly that the state has on violence, is really inhibiting the ability of even progressive intellectuals to think outside the “box” of the nation?
Joas: I’m not so pessimistic. I see certain tendencies in the U.S.—counter tendencies to the present. I see one of the major problems in the U.S. is that the largest part of the population is more or less completely uninformed about foreign policy matters—this has been described frequently since C. Wright Mills’ Power Elite. In America, foreign policy decisions are made by very isolated circles of foreign policy strategists and experts, so the main mechanism that produces trust in national leaders has nothing to do with these foreign policy questions. People in the United States may trust the president because they think we are religious, he is religious, so he’s probably a good guy, without any information about the actions he is taking…
NeoAmericanist: The people who lead in Washington—the Neo-conservative cluster—they present themselves as kind of militarized Wilsonians who brought morality back to foreign policy.
Joas: I disagree. I see Wilson as being completely different. Wilson is a crucial supporter for this idea of institutions and procedures for international conflict resolutions. Current American foreign policy has nothing to do with Wilson in that sense. Perhaps they have something to do with Wilson before he became such a supporter of such institutions and procedures, but certainly not with the Woodrow Wilson we all mean when we say “Wilson”.
Comments
Post new comment