ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the pragmatist work of William James, particularly when modified by the insights of feminist and anti-racist thinkers, provides useful tools as people consider how best to live together in conditions of social polarization. James’s commitment to meliorism and problem-solving in nonideal conditions, and his insistence on epistemic humility informed both by the value of lives unlike our own and by a recognition of the need to modify our positions based on the emergence of new evidence, should be essential components of our efforts to navigate interactions and policy choices in this moment of crisis. The picture James paints in “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” of the world in which people must make moral choices is one that is fundamentally flawed. Additional empirical data on group polarization should complicate our understanding of and approach to impediments to more successful experiments in living.
