SEEKERS, SEARCHERS: MLY writes an incisive reply to that Jonah Goldberg column about pragmatism:

Re the G-file on “pragmatism” : When I read it I thought that Goldberg seems not to be attacking pragmatism, but to be making a pragmatic case against utilitarianism. That is, I read his remarks to be saying something like:

“Don’t teach people that the reason to ban murder is economic efficiency, because then fewer people will observe the ban on murder, and that would be inefficient.”

Goldberg seems not to be attacking pragmatism, but instead to be making a pragmatic case against utilitarianism. That is, I read his remarks to be saying something like:

“Don’t teach people that the reason to ban murder is economic efficiency, because then fewer people will observe the ban on murder, and that would be inefficient.”

And on a related note, I thought that last sentence could logically precede the statement “It’s more efficient to have society live by a lie.”

Then I read two posts on Gideon’s blog that seem to support my interpretation. And from what little I’ve read of William James (just The Varieties of Religious Experience), Posner, and Holmes (only a few opinions and a few selections of The Common Law), I agree more with the long post on Gideon’s blog for Friday, January 7, 2005. Worth checking out, I think.

I should admit right now that I have neither time nor inclination to re-read the JG piece. I liked the one-liners (that bit about calling politicians Aristotelian [by the way, Aristo’s lack the extremist-sublime that characterizes Plato–if you like Aristotle, why don’t you email me with an explanation, since right now I pretty much think of Aristotelians as people who won’t admit to their parents that Plato is the Bomb–anyway–]) and the bit about “the fat is the best part.” I will say that, in my strong and perhaps strenuous reading, Jonah is not merely saying, “Self-interest doesn’t produce conventional morality, a.k.a. the Prudent Predator exists.” He’s actually making–I hope–the more intriguing statement, “We humans are not only interest-seeking missiles. We’re also truth-seeking missiles. We want to know that what we do is not merely efficacious but right. And this desire both implies and rightly finds some true object outside itself.” That final clause–that belief that our human demand for disinterested truth is not an evolutionary trick–is what I’ve called the nuptial meaning of the mind. Introspection discovers that the self is not enough.

So I guess all I’m saying is that if I were Jonah, that’s what I’d mean if I said the cute things he says about pragmatism. If he means something else, that’s unfortunate, but it doesn’t make his riffs on the insufficiency of pragmatism for satisfying the human heart any less powerful. It just means he doesn’t take the human heart seriously enough.

Thoughts?