3
The Sources of Cultural Pluralism By Seymour W. ltzkoff Jay Wissot, in “John Dewey, Horace Meyer Kallen and Cultural Pluralism” (Educa- tional Theory, Spring 1975), has done well to show the wider intellectual influences on Horace Kallen, especially his indebtedness to William James. He takes issue with a statement in my book, Cultural Pluralism and American Education, as a means of developing the Kallen-James tie and severing the philosophical views of Kallen on individuality and pluralism from Dewey’s perspectives.’ He quotes: “The most eloquent statements of the pluralist position came from Horace Kallen and I. B. Berkson. Taking much of their philosophical inspiration from the progressive intellec- tual temper of their times, they attempted to bring the spirit and even the letter of Dewey’s philosophy to bear on this issue in which they were personally involved.”* Wissot further cites my view of Dewey’s ambivalence towards the issue of unifica- tion and pluralism as a thesis that “is presented as a failing shared by Kallen, who, in the author’s words, ‘based his own perspective on pluralism on the instrumentalism of Dewey.’ ’I3 This last quote is torn from context and thus is given a distorted meaning. The full sentence in my book, which refers to Dewey’s ambivalence, reads: “It is this ambivalence that failed Kallen and Berkson, each of whom in a sense based his own perspective on pluralism on the instrumentalism of Dewey.’I4 Wissot accepts the fact of Dewey’s influence on Kallen. but still argues that “ltzkoff’s position . . .exalts Dewey‘s impact above that of all ~thers.”~This is a strong statement about my position, since I did not delve into Kallen’s intellectual back- ground. It was not my main concern in outlining his views on cultural pluralism. My concern was to show that the subsequent lack of impact on social and educational problems of the theme of cultural pluralism owed much to a failure of the leading social philosophy of that era (that of John Dewey) to account intellectually for pluralism. Further, my argument was that Kallen’s explicit promulgation of cultural pluralism, while a brave and forthright advocacy, was fatally afflicted by its overall absorption into the intellectual milieu of Dewey and progressivism. My argument is similar for the pluralist views of I. 6. Berkson, who was even more explicitly influenced by, and yet at odds with, many major tenets in the Deweyan position; see for example his The ldeal and the Community.6 Of greater concern is Wissot’s perhaps unintentional, yet overstated separation of Kallen from Dewey, his wrenching out of perspective the contextual circumstances that brought these thinkers into intellectual contact and interaction. Few thinkers in New York City in the decades after Dewey’s arrival at Columbia in 1904 could remain aloof from his orbit. Morton White has amply demonstrated this fact in his Social Thought in America.7 And certainly, what Kallen had experienced earlier with regard to immigrant life in Boston was multiplied a hundredfold in New York City. It was in New York that the great debate waged hot and heavy over the cultural integrity of the immigrants, between the various nationalistic, melting pot, and autonomy groups. Dewey was involved in these discussions and inevitably the younger Kallen as well as the even younger Berkson were drawn in.* It should be emphasized that it was Dewey who attempted to put the pragmatic view of knowledge and science into the service of social practice, and not the older, more intellectually aloof William James. I Seymour W. ltzkoff is a Professor of Education and Child Study at Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts. 1. Seymour W. Itzkoff, Cultural Pluralism and American Education (Scranton, Pennsyl- vania: Intext, 1969). 2. lbid., p. 45. 3. Jay Wissot, “John Dewey, Horace Meyer Kallen and Cultural Pluralism,’’ Educational Theory, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Spring 1975), p. 186. 4. Itzkoff, op. cit., p. 62. 5. Wissot, op. cit., p. 187, emphasis added. 6. Isaac B. Berkson, The ldeal and the Community (New York: Harper & Row, 1958). 7. Morton White, Social Thought in America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957). 8. Isaac B. Berkson, Theories of Americanization (New York: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1920). 23 1 VOLUME 26, NUMBER 2

The Sources of Cultural Pluralism

Embed Size (px)

Citation preview

Page 1: The Sources of Cultural Pluralism

The Sources of Cultural Pluralism By Seymour W. ltzkoff

Jay Wissot, in “John Dewey, Horace Meyer Kallen and Cultural Pluralism” (Educa- tional Theory, Spring 1975), has done well to show the wider intellectual influences on Horace Kallen, especially his indebtedness to William James. He takes issue with a statement in my book, Cultural Pluralism and American Education, as a means of developing the Kallen-James tie and severing the philosophical views of Kallen on individuality and pluralism from Dewey’s perspectives.’ He quotes: “The most eloquent statements of the pluralist position came from Horace Kallen and I. B. Berkson. Taking much of their philosophical inspiration from the progressive intellec- tual temper of their times, they attempted to bring the spirit and even the letter of Dewey’s philosophy to bear on this issue in which they were personally involved.”*

Wissot further cites my view of Dewey’s ambivalence towards the issue of unifica- tion and pluralism as a thesis that “is presented as a failing shared by Kallen, who, in the author’s words, ‘based his own perspective on pluralism on the instrumentalism of Dewey.’ ’I3 This last quote is torn from context and thus is given a distorted meaning. The full sentence in my book, which refers to Dewey’s ambivalence, reads: “It is this ambivalence that failed Kallen and Berkson, each of whom in a sense based his own perspective on pluralism on the instrumentalism of Dewey.’I4

Wissot accepts the fact of Dewey’s influence on Kallen. but still argues that “ltzkoff’s position . . .exalts Dewey‘s impact above that of all ~ t h e r s . ” ~ T h i s is a strong statement about my position, since I did not delve into Kallen’s intellectual back- ground. It was not my main concern i n outlining his views on cultural pluralism. My concern was to show that the subsequent lack of impact on social and educational problems of the theme of cultural pluralism owed much to a failure of the leading social philosophy of that era (that of John Dewey) to account intellectually for pluralism. Further, my argument was that Kallen’s explicit promulgation of cultural pluralism, while a brave and forthright advocacy, was fatally afflicted by its overall absorption into the intellectual milieu of Dewey and progressivism. My argument is similar for the pluralist views of I. 6 . Berkson, who was even more explicitly influenced by, and yet at odds with, many major tenets in the Deweyan position; see for example his The ldeal and the Community.6

Of greater concern is Wissot’s perhaps unintentional, yet overstated separation of Kallen from Dewey, his wrenching out of perspective the contextual circumstances that brought these thinkers into intellectual contact and interaction. Few thinkers in New York City in the decades after Dewey’s arrival at Columbia in 1904 could remain aloof from his orbit. Morton White has amply demonstrated this fact in his Social Thought in America.7 And certainly, what Kallen had experienced earlier with regard to immigrant life in Boston was multiplied a hundredfold in New York City. It was in New York that the great debate waged hot and heavy over the cultural integrity of the immigrants, between the various nationalistic, melting pot, and autonomy groups.

Dewey was involved in these discussions and inevitably the younger Kallen as well as the even younger Berkson were drawn in.* It should be emphasized that it was Dewey who attempted to put the pragmatic view of knowledge and science into the service of social practice, and not the older, more intellectually aloof William James. I

Seymour W. ltzkoff is a Professor of Education and Child Study at Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts.

1. Seymour W. Itzkoff, Cultural Pluralism and American Education (Scranton, Pennsyl- vania: Intext, 1969).

2. lbid., p. 45. 3. Jay Wissot, “John Dewey, Horace Meyer Kallen and Cultural Pluralism,’’ Educational

Theory, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Spring 1975), p. 186. 4. Itzkoff, op. cit., p. 62. 5. Wissot, op. cit., p. 187, emphasis added. 6. Isaac B. Berkson, The ldeal and the Community (New York: Harper & Row, 1958). 7. Morton White, Social Thought in America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957). 8. Isaac B. Berkson, Theories of Americanization (New York: Bureau of Publications,

Teachers College, Columbia University, 1920).

23 1 VOLUME 26, NUMBER 2

Page 2: The Sources of Cultural Pluralism

232 EDUCATIONAL THEORY

think it is because Dewey aimed for the possible application of highly abstract theories to immediate social and educational issues that his work became a revelation and therefore immensely powerful in its time.

I discussed these issues with Horace Kallen in 1968. He spoke of the excitement of the pragmatic and functional approach .to social issues during that era. He also reiterated his belief in the perdurance of cultural pluralism as a social fact. To be fair, I must add that a colleague spoke to him several times in New York City a year or two later. He described a Kallen far more suspicious of Dewey and the latter’s latent Anglo-Saxon prejudices. This ambivalence by Kallen, at years distance, is un- derstandable. Dewey’s shadow was large on the American scene in those days, even given the great intellectual talents of Kallen or Berkson.

Berkson freely spoke to his many friends of his ambivalence towards Dewey’s philosophy. He was a student of Dewey and Kilpatrick at Columbia and yet may have had even more philosophical hesitations than Kallen. These certainly surfaced, in a powerful way, in his The ldeal and the C o r n r n ~ n i t y . ~ Yet in Berkson’s last book, Ethics, Politics, and Education, a strong instrumentalist influence still is clearly evident.lO This contagion was hard to avoid in that era.

On this point, let me make a final comment with regard to Dewey’s ambivalence on cultural pluralism and minorities. Clarence Karrier has found evidence of an assimilbtionist bent in Dewey’s report for the War Department with regard to the Polish minority.” And yet there is concern by Dewey that social life and the com- munities that are therein embodied necessitated that minorities must be allowed to exist. Perhaps we should be content to accept the fact that philosophers who remain open to experience inevitably must be ambivalent. It is easier on looking back on a long career to free oneself in retrospect of dominating ”great uncles” than it might have been in the real contexts of life.

Wissot raises an important philosophical issue in his article that should be examined, even if briefly. One of the main themes in this separation of Dewey and Kallen, it is argued, hinges on the nature of “individuality.” Wissot says Kallen sees the individual as “comparatively independent,” where Dewey is interpreted as absorb- ing individuals into aggregate wholes, reminiscent of the unities of Hegel. More specifically, Wissot states Kallen’s view on the individual as having a past as well as a future, the latter emphasized by Dewey. A distinctive and antithetical view of individu- ality is purported to exist between the two men. A close examination shows that Wissot’s argument here is strained.

For example, he quotes an early commemorative article on William James by Kallen, in which Kallen speaks of man and living things in nature: “All these unities are ‘not primary but secondary.’ They are habits of behaving which things develop toward each other in order that they may be together at This is typical of Kallen at his poetic best, but not essentially different from or opposed to Dewey’s concern about the absorptive unities of the industrial society. For example: “The Great Community in the sense of free and full intercommunication, is conceivable. But it can never possess all the qualities which mark a local community. It will do its final work in ordering the relations and enriching the experience of local as~ociations.”~3

Neither Dewey nor Kallen could conceive of a pluralism that did not envision individuals coming together to share values. it was a pluralism of communities. It is true, as Wissot points out, that Dewey looked forward more than he looked back in envisioning the evolution of community life. In contrast, Kallen appreciated more sensitively the depths of allegiance that exist in our traditional ethnic associations.

9. Berkson, The ldeal and the Community. 10. Isaac B. Berkson, Ethics, Politics, and Education (Eugene: University of Oregon Books,

11. Clarence J. Karier, Paul Violas, and Joel Spring, Roots of Crisis: American Education in

12. Wissot, op. cit., p. 189. 13. John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (Denver: Alan Swallow, 1927, 1954), p. 211,

1 968).

the Twentieth Century (Chicago: Rand McNally 8 Co., 1973), p. 92.

emphasis added.

SPRING 1976

Page 3: The Sources of Cultural Pluralism

CULTURAL PLURALISM 233

The two pluralisms depart not on the issue of individuality versus sociality, but on the fixity of ethnic allegiances in social evolution.

The difficulty for Kallen, as I attempted to note in my book, was that he had no alternative philosophical perspective that might explain his visceral “metaphysical” beliefs beyond James (I grant Wissot’s argument) or Dewey. In my book, I suggest an alternative direction for the theory of cultural pluralism, namely the symbolic views of Ernst Cassirer and Susanne Langer.I4 Ultimately, Kallen’s view of cultural pluralism lay fallow too long and faded from our consciousness. Wissot quotes Dewey on James. Perhaps with equal justice it might be applied to the student, Horace Kallen: “I can but feel that your plurality as it now stands is aesthetic rather than l0gical.”~5

14. Itzkoff, op. cit., Ch. 3. 15. Wissot, op. cit., p. 189.

VOLUME 26, NUMEER 2