Practical Posthumanism in the Philosophy of John Lachs

Phillip McReynoldsUNC Charlotte

1. Introduction

According to Carey Wolfe, the term “posthumanism” has been around since

the 1990s though its roots go back at least to the work of Norbert Weiner and the of

others in cybernetics that is associated with the Macy Conferences during the 1940s

and 1950s (Wolfe 2010, xii and Hayles 1999, 50-75). Like its fellow “post”,

postmodernism, posthumanism suffers from some confusion regarding its

relationship to the –ism that it modifies.1 According to different interpretations, the

posthuman is variously what comes after the human, a return to a viewpoint that

precedes the rise of humanism, or an interruption of the humanist temporal

narrative in such a way that one can no longer coherently speak of a before or an

after to humanism. In any case a common thread among various posthumanisms has

been the idea that something called humanism (again, which could mean many

different things) is more or less problematic and should be at least modified or,

perhaps abandoned, if possible.2 Recent developments in the physical sciences have

strengthened interest in this idea, in particular planetary climate change and the

advent of what has come to be known as the Anthropocene. Coined in the year 2000

by Crutzen and Stoermer, the term “Anthropocene” underlines the fact that recently,

perhaps for the first time, human beings have become a geophysical force of nature

on par with other non-human forces that have likewise transformed the biosphere

to such an extent that they have left planetary-scale imprints in the geological

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record (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000). As a result, the problem of scale introduced by

this idea seems to threaten humanism by challenging traditional conceptions of

human agency, disturbing the once seemingly sharp lines between humans/non-

humans and living/non-living, and troubling a human-centered orientation toward

history and time.3

John Lachs has been thinking and writing about human nature(s), human

beings, and being human for quite some time now and his work bears upon issues

many of the key issues that posthumanist literature seeks to address. Lachs’s

position with regard to humanism is at once extremely thoughtful, highly nuanced,

difficult to place exclusively in one school or another, and, above all, extremely

practical. In this paper I identify tendencies in his thought that place him closer to

what we might call a classically humanist position. I also point out positions he

articulates that lend support to something like posthumanism, or that tend to raise

doubts about the viability of some humanist claims and commitments. Finally, I

raise the question of the degree to which Lachs’s mature philosophy as found in his

Stoic Pragmatism (2012) is committed to anything like a humanism or could be

conceived as a kind of posthumanism. My conclusions are mixed though in the end I

think that Lachs’s proposals move toward a kind of posthumanism even as he

embraces a variety of limited, practical humanism. His commitment to humanism is

pragmatic and his definition of the human is nominalistic. The stoic aspects of his

philosophy allow for a double perspective regarding the significance of human

beings that squares with that of posthumanism while offering a corrective to

classical pragmatism regarding the nature of human limitations. Additionally, if

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there is any value to be found in posthumanism, I argue that Lachs’s philosophy

serves the important function of bringing what can seem like relatively abstract

academic discussions down to earth, thus maximizing that value from a practical

point of view.

2. Lachs’s Humanism

Lachs identifies himself, at least in some respects, as a pragmatist, and as

such, his philosophical interests and methods are broadly humanistic. This is

because pragmatism, at least in many incarnations, is a self-consciously, even

proudly, humanist philosophy. Dewey provides a good example of this tendency. He

gets called a humanist often enough, at any rate. John Shook writes, for example,

that, “Among twentieth-century humanists, none stands higher than John Dewey”

(2010, p. 18). Paul Kurtz similarly writes, “Dewey is probably the most important

humanist philosopher that the United States has thus far produced,” (1992, p. 16).

Sydney Ratner helpfully spells out in some detail what humanism means in this

context:

As I see it, Dewey’s distinctive place in the long sweep of the history of

philosophy rests on his unique concern for sustained inquiry into the origins,

import, and consequences of all problems in their proposed solutions in

terms of the life and the destiny of human beings as individuals. (1954, 81)

What does it mean, however, to say that Dewey or other pragmatists tend to be

humanists?

F.S.C. Schiller said, “Pragmatism…is in reality only the application of

Humanism to the theory of knowledge,” (Schiller 1912, xxv). If we view the rise of

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Renaissance humanism as the displacement of the centrality of divine authority in

discovering truth, we can see that there is some plausibility to this view. For the

pragmatists, we cannot look to some antecedent, external authority in order to learn

what the world is like. Rather, we must begin with human experience and reap

whatever satisfactions we might gain from “merely human” (rather than

transcendent) truths.4 However, starting with human experience means taking

seriously human values and interests that give rise to and are expressed in our

various quests for knowledge. As such, for the pragmatists, the centrality of human

agency (and human limitations) in epistemological matters goes hand in hand with a

focus on human, rather than nonhuman, values and interests, such as those of God,

angels, or perhaps other species.

Indeed, one of the most distinctive features of pragmatism as a philosophical

tradition is its commitment to addressing problems embedded within the bounds of

human experience and human history. As Steven Fesmire has observed, ethics for

Dewey is fundamentally related to the idea of the human, insofar as it is defined as

“the art of helping people to live richer, more responsive, and more emotionally

engaged life" (2004, 43). Compare this with Lachs’s own statement about his

philosophy in Stoic Pragmatism: “Stoic pragmatists are committed to making life

better until their powers are overwhelmed…[Stoic Pragmatism] invites us to live

long and well” (2012: 1-2). “Life” here, I think clearly, means human life, insofar as

the “us” being invited are creatures who are capable of understanding and applying

the insights of stoic pragmatism.

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Part of the pragmatists’ rationale for relating philosophical questions to the

arena of human lives, aims, and interests involves a desire to avoid positing

anything as ontologically basic and, more importantly, a demand that philosophy

produce practical results. These two issues are intimately connected. Pragmatism is

not a positivism for the sake of being a positivism.5 Rather, it avoids ontology (when

it can)—or engages exclusively in what Larry Hickman calls “low-rise” metaphysics

(2015)—because ontology is so easy to get lost in, forgetting the practical problems

that gave rise to the philosophical conundrums in the first place. Lachs, as we shall

see, similarly wants to avoid unproductive ontological disputes and the reason for

this is the same: we need to make informed choices in order to improve life.6 Thus,

for pragmatists like Lachs, the idea of “the human” plays an important role in

“earthing” the philosophical enterprise—that is, “keeping its feet on the ground”—if

not grounding it per se. The basic orientation of classical pragmatism has been

toward our (human) communities, as they exist today, or perhaps in the relative

near term, an orientation that links pragmatism to its enlightenment and post-

enlightenment philosophical progenitors.7 I think Lachs shares this basic orientation

with other pragmatists given what he has had to say about human nature(s), human

beings, being human, and the importance of this category for living good lives. In

these broad ways—understanding that human knowledge must be related to and

certified by human experience and taking as a central focus the amelioration of

human existence—pragmatists tend to be humanists and, in this respect, so is John

Lachs.

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But humanism has tended to mean something more than just exhibiting a

focus on human needs and interests. Consider the idea of human rights as expressed

in the United Nations’ Declaration of Human Rights:

Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable

rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom,

justice and peace in the world…All human beings are born free and equal in

dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should

act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. (UN 1948)

The document goes on to assert a number of rights that every human being has

simply because they are human. Implicit in this view is the idea that “all members of

the human family” possess a dignity and inherent worth simply in virtue of being

human beings. Now, the declaration doesn’t explicitly claim that non-humans don’t

possess dignity and self worth nor does it propose that we treat nonhumans

“inhumanely”. However, it is a humanistic document by singling human beings out

for a particular sort of treatment in virtue of their humanness. This is a second

aspect of humanism that we find in many of the pragmatists including Lachs.

It is worth attending to the practicality of this document. Although its

declarative language suggests that it is stating objective facts about human beings—

that they possess reason and conscience, that they are born free and equal in dignity

and rights—it is actually asserting that they should be treated as if they have these

things and are born in these ways. After all, many human beings are not actually

born free, and, unfortunately in practice, too many are not treated equally or

afforded much dignity at all. If all human beings were equal in rights in actual

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practice there would be no need for the document. On this interpretation,8 the

declaration is neither a statement of objective reality nor is it a categorical

imperative. Rather, the declaration is a hypothetical imperative. It begins by

asserting that the recognition of these things is “the foundation of freedom, justice,

and peace in the world”. If we want to pursue these human goals, we should treat

humans as if they had inherent dignity and value by respecting their rights in the

prescribed ways. In short, the humanism of the UN Declaration is a practical

humanism: It is neither an empirical claim about the way the world is nor an

ontological claim about the deep nature of the reality of humanness but a proposal

for achieving certain ends, specifically, promoting human freedom, justice, and

peace in the world.

Lachs’s work exhibits a similarly practical humanism. Being human is an

example of what Lachs has called a “choice-inclusive fact” (1990, 30). “Such

judgment calls,” he says,

bring our purposes and values into play. This makes it sensible to ask what

good it does to sort creatures into the single, uniform category of humans.

(1990, 305)

In answer to this question, he writes,

…saying that someone is human conveys less about what they are like than

about how we are to treat them. The humanity of a being is not a fact

discovered but a status conferred. It means, among other things, that if found

hurt or ill, it is to be taken to a doctor, not a vet. As a signal to us, moreover,

that it is to be taken for help instead of being discarded or being allowed to

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bleed to death by the highway, it exposes us to blame and perhaps even legal

action if we fail. (1990, 305-306, emphasis mine)

Although Lachs believes that there is a background of facts against which we confer

this status—more about that later—identifying someone as human is not a value-

neutral fact about the world but something that we do in pursuit of certain ends.

Note the similarity between Lachs’s ends and those sought by the UN

Declaration. Lachs writes,

Establishing effective signals of this sort in relation to a broad range of

individuals constitutes a grand but late achievement in history. The idea of

expanding the compass of humanity, and with it caring, beyond the tribe or

beyond the confines of beings narrowly like us, is the foundation of decency

and the guaranty of at least the possibility of a happy life. Being classed with

humans endows individuals with rights and dignity. (1990, 306, emphasis

mine)

People don’t naturally have rights and dignity (though we sometimes speak as if

they do). (I use “naturally” here in the way that it is often used, in order to provide

seemingly objective cover for what is a political judgment.)9 Rather, identifying

people as human endows them with rights and dignity, which is a good thing to do

because it “is the foundation of decency and the guaranty of at least the possibility of

a happy life.” Given all this I think that one can say of John Lachs, that he’s practically

a humanist.

3. Posthumanist Features of Lachs’s Philosophy

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And yet there are a number of significant aspects to his thinking about

humans and nonhumans that we might call posthumanist. One of these aspects

derives from pragmatism, which, in spite of its humanist heritage and associations

can be thought of as a proto-posthumanism in some respects.

As I have already outlined, in its refusal to look to superhuman realities for

truth pragmatism shows itself as an offspring of enlightenment humanism. In fact,

however, pragmatism has a dual lineage, with one line of descent emerging from

enlightenment and post-enlightenment humanism and the other from evolutionary

theory, the latter qualifying the former. As such, pragmatism is a naturalized

humanism. The human is not seen as apart from nature but as a part of nature.10 One

thing that evolutionary theory contributes to pragmatism is fallibilism. Whereas

other enlightenment philosophies tended to view human reason as unlimited,11

pragmatism recognizes the human being as an evolved creature with an intellect

that is grounded in and limited by its evolutionary history. In this way pragmatism

avoids the optimistic highs of enlightenment thinkers such as Rousseau, the sense of

inevitable progress found in post-enlightenment thinkers such as Hegel and

Spencer, and the pessimistic lows of some anti-enlightenment philosophies. In place

of these pragmatism opts for its own homely brand of humanistic meliorism,

content to try to make human life better, not perfect (James 138). I’ll have more to

say about this later with respect to Lachs’s stoic pragmatism and the ways in which

its sense of human limitations (and how to respond to them) put it farther than

classical pragmatism along the road to a practical posthumanism. In any case,

classical pragmatism is an evolutionary humanism, stressing continuities between

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nature and culture and, at times, even between the human and the non-human,12 in

spite of its anthropocentrism. Thus, insofar as it tends to deemphasize radical

dichotomies including those between the human and the non-human, pragmatism is

already on its way toward being a posthumanist philosophy even as it has tended to

be associated with humanism.

This relates to a second key idea that pragmatism adopted in response to

evolutionary theory, which is the idea that there are no fixed, natural species. There

are two central aspects to this idea. The first is, of course, that species change over

time. Some species go extinct and others emerge to take their place. One important

implication of this discovery is that not only have humans not always existed but

also that one day they will cease to exist. Thus pragmatism takes change to be the

norm and not some sort of exception within a perfect universe that must be

explained away. The second aspect that evolution contributed to pragmatism is that

because one species can evolve into another, the idea of a “species” is a relatively

arbitrary marker (or a marker for certain purposes) that groups together a set of

creatures over a period of time for purposes of classification. Lachs takes this view

quite seriously and it has important implications for his views regarding humanness

and human nature. He writes that

searching for the discrete, immutable forms of species of living organisms,

including humans, seems neither necessary nor appropriate over a hundred

years after the general acceptance of the theory of evolution. For Darwin and

his followers established the continuity of life forms on the planet,

developing an account of how changes in the germ plasm and subsequent

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reproductive success lead to the emergence of novel groups of beings. (1997,

298)

It is significant from the point of view of thinking about humanism and

posthumanism that Lachs, as a pragmatist, understands all concepts—including that

of the human—as tools rather than objective states of affairs or mirrors of an

antecedent reality. Pulling no punches he says that “species are made, not found”

(1997, 299) and doesn’t hesitate to apply this principle to the idea of a human

species:

What is true of classifying living organisms in general is true also of

classifying humans. The conception of a human species is pieced together out

of characteristics observed in large populations of individuals. No single

feature or invariable set of traits is necessary and sufficient for someone to

be declared a human being. Such pronouncements result from complex

judgments made on the basis of considering candidates with regard to

dozens of features. (303)

As such, whether we call something human or nonhuman is fundamentally a matter

of choice, a choice, Lachs cautions, that must be made responsibly (303).

What is remarkable about this is how far, I think, Lachs goes beyond the

classical pragmatists in taking a posthumanist perspective. Whereas the idea of the

human forms a kind of unexamined backdrop to ethical considerations for the

pragmatists, Lachs is willing to place the very idea of the human in question, and to

entertain most if not all comers as candidates for humanity, an idea that seems not to

have occurred to the classical pragmatists.

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One should perhaps not fault the classical pragmatists for not throwing the

door open to questioning what it might mean to be a human being as wide as Lachs

has insofar as Lachs has had the benefit of hindsight regarding a rather rapid pace of

technological and political development. Technology has created issues where

perhaps none existed during the time that Peirce, James, and Dewey were working,

as is to be expected. Lachs notes, referring to contentious issues in biomedical

ethics, that, “The decision about where to draw the line between the living and the

dead, for example, is now being made through the political process,” (1990, 31).

Developments in computer technology have also influenced Lachs in ways that

might have seemed fanciful to the classical pragmatists.13 Regarding prospects of

artificial intelligence, he writes,

It is unproductive to ask whether human beings might not, after all, be

machines, and how complex a machine would have to be in order to it to be

or become a human being. These are not matters of objective fact, of how

things are. They are, instead, matters of conscious or unconscious human

decision. The proper question to ask, accordingly, is concerning the

circumstances that would have to obtain in order for us to decide that, for

purposes of classification, the obvious differences between human beings

and machines can be overlooked. (1990, 34)

In urging us to look to consequences, Lachs is thoroughly pragmatic even as he

moves beyond the pragmatists in the scope of his thought. Lachs considers whether

some machines might be considered human by asking after what similarities

between machines (candidate-humans) and (stipulated) humans would have to

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entail such that the consequences of not making such an assignment would inspire

our moral outrage. As a pragmatist, he looks to the consequences of such an

assignment in order to evaluate it (1990, 34-35). Lachs even considers the question

of the monstrous in evaluating who or what might or might not be considered

human or fully human, fitting in quite easily with many of the posthumanists’

interest in monsters and the monstrous.14

As I have argued, in making these moves and being open to these

possibilities, Lachs is forwarding the project of pragmatism rather than breaking

with it. When he says that “we must…see our attempts to classify living beings as

variable, optional ways of ordering the wilderness of facts” (1997, 303), I hear more

than a hint of William James’ belief in a pluralistic universe coupled with a very

Deweyan interest in considering what practical effects such a belief actually have in

the knock-about world.

Another way that Lachs, particularly in stoic pragmatism, moves beyond

other forms of pragmatism and approaches posthumanism is in his avoidance of

humanist chauvinism. This aspect of Lachs’s thought fits well with posthumanist

critiques of “human exceptionalism”—the practice of treating humans as better or

more worthy than other organisms based on some single or small set of qualities

that humans have but that other creatures supposedly lack. Lachs’s position has its

roots, I think, in Lachs’s fascination with ineffability, immediacy, and embodiment

and his impatience with the philosopher’s tendency to convert everything to

language. Although other pragmatists are “guilty” of human exceptionalism (see

Dewey on communication in Experience and Nature, for example, or even his various

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references to “savages” and beasts”)15, Lachs’s lack of patience with this position

comes through clearly in his critique of Nicholas Rescher’s cognitive pragmatism.

Before moving onto the criticism, it is worth noting, briefly, one of Lachs’s

points of agreement with Rescher, which is a shared belief in the independent

existence of a world (2012, 64). Lachs’s non-essentialist realism is something that

one finds hints of in much writing that is labeled posthumanist (and that of related

movements like the new materialism). Those who hold these views share an

interest prying human language, thought, and culture from the center of the natural

universe and undoing some of the idealistic excesses of postmodernism and some

recent forms of pragmatism.

Rescher, according to Lachs, thinks very highly of human practices of inquiry

and communication. In fact, inquiry and communication form the basis for Rescher’s

curiously transcendental argument for the existence of an independently existing

world (2012, 66). Rescher thinks that what makes us human and sets us apart from

all other creatures is that we engage in inquiry and construct propositional

knowledge about the world. This may be true, but Lachs is not as impressed with

our distinctively human form of life as Rescher is. For Lachs, propositional

knowledge is an aspect of our human form of life, but only a small part of it.

As a brief aside, one indication that Lachs is navigating outside of the safe

waters of familiar humanism is the appearance of so much varied wildlife in his

works. Consider this characteristic example:

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Rescher is not satisfied with the sort of inquiry in which a bird might engage

in looking around for predators and the kind of communication common

among monkeys when they warn each other of danger. (2012, 66)

One could multiply examples of wildlife showing up and taking center stage in

Lachs’s philosophical texts. I think the birds and squirrels show up when they so—

which is often—for a very good reason: Lachs is simply not as impressed with the

human facility for complex communication as is Rescher. In Lachs’s view, to take

such a high view of human cognition as one finds in Rescher’s cognitive pragmatism

is to promote beyond all reasonableness what is, in the end, a relatively marginal

and uncommon aspect of human existence. This is an orientation that finds Lachs

well at home in the company of posthumanists. So much philosophy—because

philosophers like to talk—revolves around talk and forgets that we are animals,

with animal bodies that need to eat. Philosophers tend to place an inordinate

amount of focus on the human mind, which is only one part of the human being. (I

will hazard that Lachs developed this attitude toward the relative unimportance of

the mind during his ten years defending Santayana, as, he speculates, the world’s

only living epiphenomenalist.16) One can trace Lachs’s interest in animal bodies,

their needs, and satisfactions from Santayana, and he shares this interest with many

posthumanists. Lachs explains,

Stoic pragmatism takes human existence in all its nonintellectual complexity

as its datum and the quality of life it can secure as an indication of its value.

Although statable in propositional form, it points away from theory toward

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action…Philosophy must deal with the whole human being, not only with the

mind. (2012, 71).

As we have seen, like posthumanists, Lachs seems to be interested in emphasizing

the continuities between humans and other animals that relate to the way that we

live in and through our common animal bodies. He writes, characteristically,

“Focusing on our social predicaments and on what we share with other animals…

enables us to develop a picture of human life in all its complexity” (2012, 71).17

A third way in which Lachs moves beyond the classical pragmatists toward

something like a posthumanism comes with the stoic correction that he applies to

classical pragmatism. Although Lachs does not accuse the classical pragmatists of

lacking a sense of the tragic as others have (and certainly the pragmatists were no

strangers to tragedy in their own lives), he does point out that they have very little

use for whatever they have very little use for. Even with tragedy and death, the

pragmatists seem to be interested only in what they can do with them, with how

they might be reconstructed into something in the future. Lachs observes that this

attitude, while potentially beneficial when there is something one can do about

one’s situation, is not appropriate to every situation. Here I think it is helpful to hear

Lachs in his own voice, and so I will quote him at length:

The stoic in stoic pragmatists reminds them of the contingency of life, the

vastness of the universe, the finitude of everything human, the tragic cost of

whatever we do, and the possibility that our efforts will be of no avail. Stoics

whisper “memento mori,” as religion used to but perhaps no longer does,

calling the attention of communities to the larger, historical cycles over

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which they exercise no control. Without a cosmic perspective, we cannot

present a just assessment of our situation. With this prospect clearly in mind,

we can never place ourselves at the center of the universe. Stoic detachment

is a powerful antidote to the hype that elevates science to the level of savior

and social effort above natural limits. (2012: 52).

It is this “cosmic perspective” that one finds not only in stoic pragmatism but also in

posthumanism that one finds it largely lacking in pragmatism. With the pragmatic

emphasis on making a difference there is very little attention to our human

limitations. Awareness of our limitations is, by contrast, fundamental to

posthumanism and it comes up, among other contexts, in that of the idea of

extinction.

As I have noted, pragmatism emerged, in part, as a response to Darwin’s

discovery of the process of evolution by natural selection. Extinction is, of course,

one of the fundamental features of Darwinian evolution. As such, one would think

that pragmatists would be comfortable with the idea of extinction. Indeed,

pragmatists (but not only pragmatists) are, perhaps, too comfortable with the idea

of extinction. As Claire Colebrook phrases the problem (though not addressing

pragmatism specifically),

…the uses of Darwin today…actually have the effect of reducing the force not

only of Darwinism but of another temporal event, extinction: not only have

we humanized the emergence of humans from deep time (by regarding

evolution as being oriented towards adaptation), but we have also

domesticated the sense of the human end. (2011)

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The trouble is that a humanistic perspective on evolution tends to see “life as

functional, oriented towards our types of complexity and order, and inevitably

leading towards the types of complexity exemplified by humans [emphasis added]

(2011).” To understand evolutionary processes strictly in terms of fitness, that is, in

terms of survival, is to miss their “decentering randomness and rogue temporalities

(2011).” Indeed, Peirce writes, “Almost everyone will now agree that the ultimate

good lies in the evolutionary process in some way” (1902). It is difficult to imagine

how Peirce might hold such a view without imagining the good as human in some

way. Whatever “good” evolution may bring it is likely to bring about something that

is probably unrecognizable as good from the point of view of our species as it exists

today. With Santayana, Lachs criticizes the notion that “we are ‘too good for

extinction,’ that what happens to ‘mere’ animals cannot happen to us” (2012, 57). In

recognizing “the contingency of life, the vastness of the universe, the finitude of

everything human, the tragic cost of whatever we do, and the possibility that our

efforts will be of no avail,” Lachs is on the same page with and might well be

considered one among posthumanists.

4. Practical Posthumanism

The Anthropocene presents us with a problem of scale in which human

activity appears as a mode of agency that appears to exceed individual or possibly

even communal control. The emergence of the Anthropocene suggests that

humanity is out of control and possibly that it cannot be controlled, or at least that

we might need to rethink our conventional, humanistic concept of agency which has

proved so useful in dealing with human beings and their effects upon “medium-

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sized dry goods” but that might not be so well geared to deal with human species-

action in the age of the Anthropocene.18 For pragmatists, concepts are not fixed

representations of the world but are rather tools for dealing with it. When a concept

fails to fit the problematic situations that we face it is time to retool it or to replace it

with a better tool (concept). The problem with humanism in this context is that it is

a perspective that seems designed to render everything on a human scale. However,

with the emergence of the Anthropocene we find ourselves confronted with

temporal and spatial scales that break the human frame.

Lachs’s stoic pragmatism provides a better sense of scale and the relative

important of human beings with respect to the earth and larger forces than we find

in the toolbox of the classical pragmatists. Lachs and the posthumanists share an

interest in taking seriously a cosmic perspective in which the ephemeral nature of

humanity as with all species is manifest, a perspective that seems all too relevant

today. As Claire Colebrook notes, “Darwinism was a thought event that placed

humanity within time, but the pulse of extinction awareness that is coming to the

fore in the twenty-first century adds the sense of an ending to the broader

awareness of the historical emergence of the human species,” (Colebrook, 2011).

Dipesh Chakrabarty observes that “History is no longer a human narrative, and

human narratives themselves seem to incorporate forces that are no longer human”

(Chakrabarty 2012, 1-2). Pragmatism, however, is firmly situated within human

history, a history that the appearance of the Anthropocene threatens to usurp. As

Colebrook notes, “While the human species – and all other species – face other

threats of extinction (including nuclear disaster, viral pandemic, global terrorism

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and systemic collapse), climate change has become the icon of the thorough event of

extinction” (Colebrook 2011). Climate change, it has been noted, is a slow-motion

catastrophe, a post-apocalypse.19 According to Srinivas Aravamudan, the

Anthropocene is Catachonistic, that is it “re-characterizes the past and the present

in terms of a future proclaimed as determinate but that is of course not yet fully

realized” (Aravamuda 2013, 8). It closes the open-endedness of the enlightenment

with the specter of species death, projectively imagined as embedded in a geological

stratum (Aravamunda 2013, pp. 9 and 12). As such, it runs directly counter to

Deweyan humanism. Dewey writes,

[What] humanism means to me…is an expansion, not a contraction, of human

life, an expansion in which nature and the science of nature are made the

willing servants of human good. (LW 5: 266)

Pragmatism isn’t geared (at present) to think or talk about annihilation, an

apocalypse without meaning or redemption. Dewey remarks at one point at

experiencing “obscure irritation” in the “apocalyptic flights” of the fiction of H.G.

Wells (MW 10: 310). We find an antidote to this lack of preparedness to talk frankly

about our situation in stoic pragmatism as in posthumanism.

However, one might well ask how practical it is to think or talk about our

inevitable end even if (especially if) it appears to be approaching more quickly than

we had anticipated? It is here that Lachs’s response to Shelly’s “Ozymandias” is

instructive. Lachs paraphrases the poem thus,

Shelley’s point is that in the end nothing remains: the generations that come

after us forget our names, destroy our monuments, and lay waste to our

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plans…What is the point of doing anything if it is all undone and the death of

everything precious leaves only a world of atoms moving in the dark? (2012,

58).

Lachs responds to this viewpoint by arguing that even if in the end all comes to

naught, this fact can do nothing to diminish the value that we experience now. He

argues “the possibility of distant disaster is an inadequate reason for ceasing our

efforts and failing to enjoy the moment” (2012, 59). Lachs can take this perspective

because of the double perspective that stoic pragmatism employs in the immanent

transcendence that Lachs learns from Santayana. In stoic pragmatism, together with

an extremely tough-minded acknowledgment of our finitude, we find a

consciousness of the timelessness of value. According to Lachs, if anything is ever of

value, it is always of value. This recognition is ultimately extremely practical insofar

as it gives us reason to work for value, to preserve it where we can, even if it will

inevitably pass away. Here, I think, Lachs brings a mature sense of limitation to

pragmatism while adding a hardheaded practicality to posthumanism.

References

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Braidotti, Rosi. 2013. The Posthuman. Polity Press.

Brandom, Robert. 2004. “The Pragmatist Enlightenment (and its Problematic Semantics.” European Journal of Philosophy. 21(1): 1-16.

Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2009. “The Climate of History: Four Theses.” Critical Inquiry 35(2): 197-222.

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-----. 2012. “Postcolonial studies and the Challenge of Climate Change.” New Literary History 43:1.

Colebrook, Claire. 2011. Extinction. NC: Open Humanities Press.

Crutzen, Paul and Eugene F. Stoermer. “The Anthropocene.” Global Change Newsletter 41.

Dewey, John. Middle Works (MW) and Later Works (LW). Jo Ann Boydston, Ed. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.

Ferry, Luc. 1995. The New Ecological Order, Carol Volk, trans. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press.

Fesmire, Steven. 2004. “Dewey and Animal Ethics.” In Animal Pragmatism: Rethinking Human-Nonhuman Relationships. Ed. Erin McKenna and Andrew Light. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Gilabert, Pablo. 2011. “Humanist and Political Perspectives on Human Rights.” Political Theory. 39(4): 439-467.

Gomel, Alana. 2000. “The Plague of Utopias: Pestilence and the Apocalyptic Body.” Twentieth Century Literature 46(4).

Graham, Elaine. 2002. Representations of the Post/Human: Monsters, Aliens and Others in Popular Culture. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Haraway, Donna. 1991. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York, Routledge.

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James, William. Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking in The Works of William James, Electronic Edition, Volume 1: Pragmatism.

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Lachs, John. 1990. “Human Natures.” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association. 63(7): 29-39.

-----. 1997. “Valuational Species.” The Review of Metaphysics. 51:2: 297-311.

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-----. 2014. “Agency at the Time of the Anthropocene.” New Literary History 45(1): 1-18.

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McReynolds, Phillip. 2000. John Dewey’s Science of Ethics. (Ph.D. Dissertation) Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University.

Moravec, Hans. 1998. Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.

Pearce, Trevor. 2015. “’Science Organized’: Positivism and the Metaphysical Club, 1865-1875.” Journal of the History of Ideas. 76: 441-465.

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Shook, John. 2010. “The Humanism of John Dewey.” Free Inquiry 30(3): 18-19.

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1 It is worth recalling that what Lyotard did not say was that postmodernism comes after modernism. Rather, he said that in order to be a fully modern work, a word must be postmodern in the sense that it aims to represent the unrepresentable. In this way, the postmodern is the birth of the modern, according to Lyotard. See Lyotard 1984.2 For examples of posthumanist literature see, for example, Braidotti 2013, Haraway 1991, Hayles 1999, Pepperell 2009, and Wolfe 2010.3 On agency and time, see, for example, Latour 2014. On time and scale, see Aravamudan 2013, Chakrabarty 2009, and Colebrook.4 Bertrand Russell parodied this standpoint, at least as William James expressed it, in a book called Transatlantic “Truth” (1907). Richard Rorty takes this epistemological (and indeed ethical) humanism to its logical limit when he writes, “As I see it, the whole point of pragmatism is to insist that we human beings are answerable only to one another. We are answerable only to those who answer to us—only to conversation partners. We are not responsible to the atoms or to God, at least not until they start conversing with us” (2003). This interpretation of pragmatism as humanism not only takes the extreme epistemological position that there is nothing beyond human practices and conversations that can warrant our truth claims but also is an example of the human chauvinism that I will criticize later. Animals can’t talk and so we don’t bear any responsibility toward them.5 For a thoughtful discussion of the relationship between pragmatism and positivism see Pearce 2015.6 See, for example, Lachs 1990, especially pp. 35-37. Lachs also reminds us that “Metaphysics must…always remain in the service of ethics,” (Lachs 1997, 311).7 Regarding pragmatism and Enlightenment see Brandom and Putnam.8 Pablo Gilabert calls this the political or practical perspective in contrast to the humanist or naturalist one, though I think the issue is more complicated than that and, indeed, Gilabert argues that the two positions complement one another. See Gilabert 2011.9 On the political uses of “nature” see Latour 2004, especially pp. 1-8.10 Dewey, for example, refuses any sort of absolute break between nature and culture, which is to say, between the “natural” and the human, respectively. See LW 1.11 Of Rousseau Luc Ferry writes, “For him, history is not tradition, it is creation, innovation, perfectibility,” (Ferry 1995, p. 10). See also pp. 8-9.12 Digestion, Dewey says, is as much a matter of the food as the person who does the digesting (MW 6: 115).13 Moreover, as Lachs notes the consensus of who counts as human has expanded in the twentieth century to a much greater degree than had occurred by the time the classical pragmatists finished publishing. Whereas Dewey still refers to “savages” from time to time (See McReynolds 2000), Lachs is able to note, “Little by little, we, or influential groups among us, made decisions to overlook the differences due to class, race, sex, religion, national origin, intelligence, drive and physical endowment, and to treat a very broad selection of individuals as equally entitled to consideration and respect.” (Lachs 1990, 36)14 For Lachs, see, for example, Lachs 1997, pp. 304-305. For posthumanist literature about monsters see, for example, Graham 2002.15 LW 1: 132-161. There are more examples of Dewey’s references to “savages” than there is space here to document. For just one example, see MW 12: 246. I have documented and explored Dewey’s use of this term extensively in McReynolds 2000.16 See Lachs 2012, p. 183.17 Lachs’s emphasis on the limitations of our animal bodies accords with quite a lot of posthumanism. However, there is one type of literature that is sometimes called posthumanist but that is more commonly called “transhumanism” that is diametrically opposed to this idea. In transhumanist literature, “the posthuman” is a term that is sometimes used to refer to our state once we have transcended the limitations of our animal bodies, either by uploading our

minds into digital computers, or by enhancing ourselves with various kinds of cybernetic or genetic technologies. The mainstream of what I am calling posthumanism stands in opposition to transhumanism. For examples of transhumanism see Moravec 1998 and Kurzweil. For a posthumanist critique of this view see Hayles 1999. In my view, which I share with others, transhumanism is not posthumanism at all but a kind of enlightenment humanism on steroids.18 It is important to note that the advent of the Anthropocene moves ecological and environmental debate well beyond ideas of sustainability, sustainable growth, and so on since the idea of sustainability depends on the idea that humans can assert control over their own agency in order to bring our interactions with and effects upon the environment under rational control. Such control is exactly what the Anthropocene throws into question. See Latour 2014.19 Elana Gomel contrasts apocalypse with postapocalypse, writing “Postapocalypse seems to be concerned not with the sharp moment of death but rather with the interminable duration of dying.” See Gomel, 2000, p. 421.