Meliorism

Abstract: Meliorism, or philosophical hopefulness, has long been acknowledged to be a genuine influence on pragmatist philosophy. In recent years there has been a surge of interest in this idea as an increasing number of books and articles are calling attention to the role that hope plays in the pragmatist way of thinking.1 But despite this increase of interest in pragmatist meliorism and the near universal acknowl edgment that meliorism is somehow central to pragmatism, it remains to be spelled out exactly how meliorism contributes to pragmatism. I here undertake the project of explicating the philosophical significance of pragmatist meliorism. I understand pragmatism, and find it at its best, as a philosophical way of taking hope seriously. Pragmatism develops the philosophical resources of hope. One implication is that traditional philosophical categories look different when seen pragmatically, where they are inflected with, and interpreted through, hopeful ness. It is thus that traditional philosophical concepts?such as truth?are widely understood to be severely reconstructed by pragmatism. Yet the motivations for, and philosophical significance of, these reconstructions remain obscure so long as the meliorism at the heart of pragmatism is left unexplained. The purpose of this article is to show both that pragmatism is plausibly understood as hopeful philosophy and that this philosophical call to hopefulness is a good successor to the long-standing quests for certainty that have dominated philosophy throughout modernity.

Abstract: Acknowledgements Bibliography Introduction A note on the translations Part I. Metaphysics A. Creation B. Truth and Substance Part II: Mind, Body and Soul A. Souls and their nature B. The relationship between soul and body C. The fate of souls Part III. Free Will and Necessity A. The nature of free will B. Contingency and necessity Part IV: Science A. Matter and body B. The laws of nature C. Biology Part V. Law and Ethics A. Law B. Virtue C. Pleasure and happiness VI. Theology A. The existence of God B. Optimism and meliorism C. Sin and evil.

Abstract: Many teachers struggle to maintain or build hope among themselves and their students in today’s climate of high anxiety and low morale. This article describes and responds to those challenging conditions. It offers teachers and scholars of education a philosophically sophisticated and feasible understanding of hope. This notion of hope is grounded in pragmatism and grows out of the pragmatist commitment to meliorism. Hope is described as a way of living tied to specific contexts that brings together reflection and intelligent action alongside imagination and gratitude. Such hope is realistic and generative, rendering it well suited for teachers struggling in schools today. The article does account for some school conditions, including fatalism, passivity, and lack of persistent motivation, that pose obstacles for achieving pragmatist hope. The article closes by describing specific actions teachers can take to build and sustain hope in their schools, including developing supportive communities of inquiry, cultivating habits of hope among students, and practicing confirmation. Once dubbed the “discipline of hope” (Kohl, 1998), teaching is a career that both employs and cultivates hope and yet is also one increasingly entrenched in circumstances that quash hope. Teachers in many schools must balance difficult teaching conditions, including frustrations with student discipline, low pay, and inadequate resources (Liu & Meyer, 2005), while working hard to produce schools worthy of the increasingly popular title “schools of hope” (Brentwood High School: A school of hope, 2010; Guggenheim, 2010). Though links between schooling and hope seem to be more and more common, especially when made a part of public discourse through films like Waiting for Superman (Guggenheim, 2010) and The Lottery (Sackler, 2010), relatively little work has been done within recent scholarship on education to flesh out exactly what hope means in the context of schooling (notable contributions do include Duncan-Andrade, 2009; Edgoose, 2010; Giroux, 2006; B. Halpin, 2003; D. Halpin, 2003; Kohl, 1998; Post, 2006; Rielea, 2010). Teachers may struggle to sustain a vague sense of hope, while educators and researchers are unable to identify and provide a clear and useable notion of hope to guide them. Yet, Kathy Hytten, in her American Educational Studies Association 2009 presidential address, argued that one of the most important roles of scholars of education, especially within the foundations of education, is to cultivate hope within teachers (Hytten, 2010, p. 160). This article responds to the difficult, and sometimes hope-crushing, situations faced by teachers today as well as to the need for more sophisticated explanation within educational discourses about hope by offering teacher-educators and scholars of education a philosophical understanding of hope that can be usefully shared with and adopted by teachers. We begin by painting a picture of some of the challenges to hope faced by many teachers today. We then turn to defining hope in order to ascertain how a teacher can employ and live by hope even within these challenging circumstances. Recognizing that contemporary discourses of hope are often propelled by broad assumptions, we distinguish characteristics of hope, separating our definition from more naive or faulty notions. We argue that pragmatism offers the best and most useful understanding of hope.

Abstract: This article considers how rhetorical scholarship might proceed if it were to take the charge of pragmatic meliorism seriously. After discussing the notion of meliorism as employed by John Dewey, I argue that it would involve a radical reshaping of method in rhetorical theory, criticism, and pedagogy. Not all research must be meliorative, but research that is meliorative is characterized by an engagement with lived experience. With this characteristic in mind, I conclude by proposing four maxims that can guide melioristic work in rhetoric.