Pragmatism, Politics, and Perversity
Democracy and the American Party Battle
By (author) Joseph L. Esposito
Not available to order
Publication date:
14 June 2012Length of book:
390 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksISBN-13: 9780739173640
The political project of pragmatism has focused primarily on its defense of democracy as the best political system to maintain and improve human well-being over lifetimes and generations. Pragmatism Politics and Perversity: Democracy and the American Party Battle describes this project of Peirce, Dewey, Hook, and Rorty, and combines it with Charles Beard’s study of the party battle as the most determinative influence upon American democracy. The book updates and confirms Beard’s hypothesis that the history of the party battle is a chronicle of perverse schemes and self-inflicted wounds – the most salient to date being the American Civil War – because it reflects a ceaselessly disruptive contest over the creation of two largely incompatible political states: nation state and market state.
The book supports its thesis with detailed historical accounts of the formation of the Constitution and early federal judiciary, the sedition trials and political schemes of the 1790s, the frustration of market state Whigs to attract white working-class voters by exploiting their religious identities, the reckless machinations of Whig Republicans in precipitating a national crisis over a contrived threat of oligarchy and white slavery, and the ideological oscillations of the Supreme Court from market state to nation state jurisprudence and back again.
To reduce perversity in political rhetoric and free up pragmatic democratic practices, the book proposes a robust neo-Madisonian view of free speech, where political actors and their surrogates are not only free to speak and write, but are also obligated to explain, retract, and revise what they have said and written.
The book supports its thesis with detailed historical accounts of the formation of the Constitution and early federal judiciary, the sedition trials and political schemes of the 1790s, the frustration of market state Whigs to attract white working-class voters by exploiting their religious identities, the reckless machinations of Whig Republicans in precipitating a national crisis over a contrived threat of oligarchy and white slavery, and the ideological oscillations of the Supreme Court from market state to nation state jurisprudence and back again.
To reduce perversity in political rhetoric and free up pragmatic democratic practices, the book proposes a robust neo-Madisonian view of free speech, where political actors and their surrogates are not only free to speak and write, but are also obligated to explain, retract, and revise what they have said and written.
First, [Esposito] provides a theoretical overview of the philosophical tradition of pragmatism, and seeks to place historian Charles A. Beard's arguments about the economic circumstances of America's founding fathers squarely within this tradition. Second, he offers a novel--and idiosyncratic--interpretation of American history from the Revolution to Reconstruction as a battle among competing views of America as a commercial empire or a democratic republic. Finally, he argues for a normative update of free speech doctrines as necessarily requiring reasoned explanations....As a contribution to pragmatic and democratic theory, the book is successful; the author's call for a rejection of "passive free speech" in order to ward off "perverse politics" should be taken seriously. Recommended for specialized collections. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate and research collections.