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Pragmatism, Spirituality
and Society
Border Crossings,
Transformations and
Planetary Realizations
Edited by
Ananta Kumar Giri
Pragmatism, Spirituality and Society
Ananta Kumar Giri
Editor

Pragmatism,
Spirituality
and Society
Border Crossings, Transformations
and Planetary Realizations
Editor
Ananta Kumar Giri
Madras Institute of Development Studies
Chennai, India

ISBN 978-981-15-7101-5 ISBN 978-981-15-7102-2 (eBook)


https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7102-2

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with
respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been
made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps
and institutional affiliations.

Cover illustration: Maram_shutterstock.com

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Singapore Pte Ltd.
The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore
189721, Singapore
For Margaret Chatterjee, Vincent Sheen and Francis X. Clooney
Foreword

Pragmatism has fallen on bad days. As commonly used in our time, the
term tends to stand for a down-to-earth outlook, for a pliant accommo-
dation to “the way things are”—or the way things are assumed to be in a
given context. The only yardstick accepted by devotees of pragmatism is
hard-nosed compliance with factual conditions, a compliance which alone
can insure success of one’s chosen aims. What is bypassed by this stance is
the plethora of possibilities which can be pursued in response to prevailing
conditions. What is completely sidelined is the ethical quality of a chosen
course of action—a neglect which rules out of order any concern with
spirituality and creative human imagination.
The decay of pragmatism just described is the result of many factors,
above all the rise of “scientism” and “positivism” during the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries. What is commonly meant by positivism is the
exclusive reliance on factually ascertained knowledge, a reliance which
necessarily shuns any kind of “negativity” as well as any form of world-
transcendence (and self-transcendence). In a similar way, what is meant
by scientism is the elevation of factual knowledge to an all—embracive
worldview bordering on a metaphysical creed or dogma. Seen in this light,
scientism is clearly very different from modern science which is predicated
on sober inquiry and questioning. Taken as serious inquiry in the latter
sense, science has no trouble in being compatible with a non-positivist
imagination and even spirituality.

vii
viii FOREWORD

Once stripped of its positivist and scientistic overlays, it is not hard to


recover the genuine meaning of pragmatism, and thereby also its impor-
tant historical significance. The crucial redeeming feature of pragmatism
is its connection with practice or praxis, as distinguished from cogni-
tive observation or neutral knowledge. This connection was a constitu-
tive ingredient in the work of Aristotle who explicitly treated social and
political inquiry as a part of “practical philosophy,” that is, the philos-
ophy of human practice. Importantly, practice in his work was not just
a random activism or instrumentalism but rather an active orientation
toward “goodness” seen as an ethical, comprehensive standard. Equally
important was his conception of human being as a self-transcending
agent capable of fashioning a political community (polis ) anchored in
social justice. Aristotle’s influence on the development of social and polit-
ical thought (in the West) has been enormous. In the aftermath of the
“Enlightenment,” this influence can still be detected in Hegel’s polit-
ical philosophy who viewed the “state” (Staat ) as the embodiment of
an ethical idea and all citizens as the participants in the formulated and
steady transformation of this idea.
In more recent times, however, pragmatism in its genuine sense is
associated most directly with the work of John Dewey whose concep-
tion of participatory agency was indebted equally to Aristotle’s “prac-
tical philosophy” and to Hegel’s comprehensive social idealism. With the
former, he viewed theorizing not as the search for abstract formulas but
as an “inquiry” which, rooted in everyday experience, seeks to distill
the purpose of human conduct. With Hegel he was linked through his
endorsement of a shared normative standard of social life. One point
where Dewey moved resolutely beyond both of his precursors was in his
commitment to democracy seen as a public space open to the free and
equal participation of all citizens. He is rightly considered one of the fore-
most mentors of modern, secular and, post-secular (or spiritual) democ-
racy. As he wrote in one of his early essays on the topic: “Democracy is
a social, that is to say, an ethical conception, and upon its ethical signif-
icance is based its significance as governmental. Democracy is a form of
government only because it is a form of moral and spiritual association”
(Dewey 1969; also Dallmayr 2010). This statement could and should still
be viewed as the guiding motto of democratic citizens everywhere.
Dewey’s pointer to spiritual dimension of democracy points to the spir-
itual dimension of practice and pragmatism as well. The present volume
FOREWORD ix

explores the spiritual dimensions of pragmatism as well as pragmatic aspect


of spirituality and hope this would inspire renewal and transformation of
both pragmatism and spirituality which is a call of our times.

Fred Dallmayr
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, USA

References
Dallmayr, Fred. 2010. Democratic Action and Experience: Dewey’s ‘Holistic’
Pragmatism. In The Promise of Democracy: Political Agency and Transforma-
tion, ed. Fred Dallmayr, 43–65. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Dewey, John. 1969. The Ethics of Democracy. In John Dewey: The Early Works,
1882–1898, vol. 1, ed. George E. Astelle et al., 236–240. Carbondale, IL:
Southern Illinois University.
Preface

Life is a manifold journey with paths, destinies and destinations–known


and unknown. Both our pathways, destinies and destinations have
multiple roots and routes in our practices, practical living as well as their
spiritual bases and horizons. Pragmatism, Spirituality and Society: Border
Crossings, Transformations and Planetary Realizations engages itself with
our experience of living which includes both our practice and different
pragmatic trajectories as well as their spiritual bases and aspirations. It
deals with the theme of pragmatism as a movement of thinking emerging
from USA with pioneering thinkers and savants such as Charles S. Peirce,
William James, and John Dewey and opens pragmatism to varieties of
cross-cultural conversations and co-realizations. It strives to explore spir-
itual dimension of pragmatism and pragmatic and practical dimension of
spirituality. In carrying out such mutual opening, critique, and transfor-
mations, this volume strives to make both pragmatism and spirituality
part of a larger conversation of and on not only with human kind but
also with life kind where it includes all beings and not only humans. It
opens American pragmatism to cross-cultural conversations for example
exploring pathways of mutual transformations between American pragma-
tism and pragmatic and spiritual pathways from other philosophical and
spiritual traditions such as Confucianism, Buddhism, Yoga, and Tantra. It
opens both pragmatism and spirituality to rooted and routed planetary
conversations where we converse with our roots and across routes in a
spirit of mutual learning and transformations. This makes our thought and

xi
xii PREFACE

lives part of our connected planetary existence going beyond valorized


closures of many kinds such as Euro-American triumphalism, ethnocen-
trism, and anthropocentrism. Planetary realizations refer to processes of
realizing in thought and practice that we all belong to our planet are chil-
dren of Mother Earth and our thinking and practice embodies this realiza-
tion. By opening pragmatism and spirituality to border-crossing conversa-
tions, Pragmatism, Spirituality and Society helps us realize both planetary
conversations and planetary realizations.
In our life’s journey sometimes a conversation for a moment can lead to
long-term explorations. In February 2010, I was speaking with my dear
friend Makarand—Professor Makarand Paranjape teaching at Jawaharlal
Nehru University and presently Director of Indian Institute of Advanced
Study, Shimla—during the annual Dialogue of Humanity Symposium held
at Fireflies Intercultural Ashram, Bangalore. Makarand told me that he
is coming to Pondicherry University next month to join a seminar on
“Re-Reading Sri Aurobindo.” I became interested in this and wrote to
Professor V. Muraleedharan, the-then Professor of English of Pondicherry
University and the Director of the Seminar. Professor Mauraleedharan
kindly welcomed me to present a paper in this and while preparing for
this seminar, I re-read Sri Aurobindo’s Human Cycles and found Sri
Aurobindo’s reference to the call of a higher pragmatism, a nobler kind of
pragmatism in this. This inspired me to present a paper on “Sri Aurobindo
and Spiritual Pragmatism” in this seminar in Pondicherry University in
March 2010. After this I co-nurtured an international seminar on “Prag-
matism and Spirituality” at Acharya Institute of Management, Bangalore
which was jointly supported by Acharya Institute of Management and
Indus Business Academy, Bangalore. After this I had initiated one more
session of this dialogue in Indus Business Academy, Bangalore in 2012
and then had organized an international seminar on this theme in 2016 at
Indus Business Academy, Bangalore jointly organized by Madras Institute
of Development Studies and Indus Business Academy and supported by a
grant from Indian Council of Social Science Research. The present volume
emerges from these dialogues and papers presented in these forums. Some
of the papers in this volume were published in a special issue on this theme
in 3D: IBA Journal of Management in 2014.
It is with joy and gratitude that we offer Pragmatism, Spirituality and
Society to interested scholars and humanity after almost a decade of our
strivings. I thank Professors Makarand Paranjape and V. Muraleedharan
for their initial interest and support. I thank Professors V. Byra Reddy
PREFACE xiii

and Kiran Reddy of Acharya Institute of Management who kindly hosted


our dialogues. I thank Professor Subhash Sharma and friends in Indus
Business Academy, especially Mr. Manish Jain, CEO of IBA and Mr.
Ramamoorthy, Administrative Officer of IBA, for their continued support
for our dialogues and for hosting our seminars on this especially our 2016
international seminar. I thank Indian Council of Social Science Research
for financial support. I thank Professor Sashanka Bhide, the-then Director
of Madras Institute of Development Studies, for his support.
The book has been with the way for a long time and I thank all our
contributors for their kindness, generosity, and patience. I thank Professor
Fred Dallmayr for his Foreword to the volume and Professor Joseph
Prabhu for his Afterword. I am grateful to Sara Crowley Vigneau and
Connie Lie at Palgrave Macmillan for their kind support and encourage-
ment. I thank Justin Hewitson for his help in editing and for his kind
support and encouragement. I am grateful to Vishnu Varatharajan, my
friend and inspiring and dedicated co-traveler, for his kind help all through
out in finalizing this book.
We dedicate this volume to Margaret Chatterjee, Vincent Sheen, and
Francis Clooney. Margaret Chatterjee was a creative philosopher and
explored many issues in philosophy and our life worlds. She wrote insight-
fully about Gandhi, Sri Aurobindo, and many savants. She also wrote
poetry. Her many works such as Hinterlands and Horizons: Excursions
in Search of Amity, Gandhi and the Challenge of Religious Diversity: Reli-
gious Pluralism Revisited, Lifeworlds, Philosophy, and India Today, and
Life World and Ethics: Studies in Several Keys are deep inspirations for
us. What Chatterjee writes in her preface to Life World Ethics: Studies
in Several Keys are helpful in our journey with pragmatism, spirituality,
philosophy, and life:

Contemporary scholarship in the social sciences reveals fascinating


commonalities and dialogues in life worlds across the globe, while philoso-
phers strike me, as by and large, not yet drawing on the reservoir of the
material to the extent that they could. John Dewey’s advice that philoso-
phers should shift attention from their own technical problems to the prob-
lems of humankind is particularly pertinent in our times. (Chatterjee 2002,
2005a, b, 2007)

Vincent Sheen was a deep philosopher from China who taught many
years at University of Toronto. I met him in our RVP (Research in Values
xiv PREFACE

and Philsophy) seminar at Shandong University, Jinnan in August 2018


where he presented an important paper on “Confucianism and Spiritu-
ality.” We all in this meeting were deeply enriched by his wisdom and
presence. I was in Toronto in November 2018 after taking part in the
Parliament of World Religions and was sad to hear about his sad passing
away. Our dedication is a humble tribute to this thinker and seeker.
Francis X Clooney, SJ is an inspiring student of inter-religious studies
and comparative theology. Frank teaches in the School of Divinity at
Harvard and was also the Director of Harvard Center for the Study of
World Religions. Frank is an inspiring scholar and seeker whose life and
works inspire us to find new relationships between practice and spiritu-
ality in our troubled worlds. Frank had hosted a presentation of mine on
this theme of pragmatism and spirituality at Center for World Religions
in November 2015. Frank’s many works such as The Future of Hindu
Christian Studies: A Theological Inquiry and Comparative Theology: Deep
Learning Across Religious Borders, help us in our journey. Here what
Frank writes in his preface to Comparative Theology help us in our journey:
“If we want to take diversity and religious commitment seriously, then
there is a need for comparative theology, a mode of inter-religious learning
particularly well-suited to the times in which we live” (Clooney 2011,
2017). Frank has worked with Mother Goddess traditions of Christianity
and India and what he writes in his Divine Mother, Blessed Mother:
Hindu Goddesses and the Virgin Mary are deeply challenging and needs
to be walked and meditated further with as in our book we have not
explored further transformational links among feminism, pragmatism, and
spirituality:

Goddess do not fit in easily with the established theological categories of


the Western traditions. Jews, Christians, and Muslims have for the most
part portrayed God as male and not-female, even at times going on to
assert that God in truth is beyond gender as constituted by physical char-
acteristics. We cannot help but notice that it is a Father who is beyond
gender, not a Mother; it is a Father, beyond Gender, who sends his Son,
and not His daughter, into the world, that Son, in turn takes birth as a
human male adn not a human female. The God who is beyond gender is
still called “God” and not “Goddess.”
If the divine reality is named and imaged predominantly in male terms
to the exclusion of female terms, our understanding of God will be trun-
cated. Although some men may find it comfortable to think that the divine
PREFACE xv

reality reflects the human image in ways that men find it potentially intel-
ligible, many women still find the female experiences and images, and by
the perception that their own gendered identity somehow makes them
unlike God as traditionally conceived in Christianity, as God, as Father, as
Son. If some men are satisfied while many women feel marginalized, we
all suffer, since we are left with a diminished set of experiences to draw
upon in imagining and addressing God. We are deprived of a whole set
of natural, cultural, and religious resources such as might otherwise enrich
our understanding of the divine Person. (Clooney 2005: 3–4)

This volume is a sequel to two volumes on Practical Spirituality and


Human Development that I have edited from Palgrave Macmillan—Prac-
tical Spirituality and Human Development: Transformations in Religions
and Societies (2018) and Practical Spirituality and Human Development:
Creative Experiments and Alternative Futures (2019). This is accom-
panied by a companion volume, Pragmatism, Spirituality and Society:
Consciousness, Freedom and Solidarity. These volumes taken together
strive to envision and practice spirituality, pragmatism, religion, and poli-
tics in new ways and help realize non-duality and non-injury in a world full
dualism and injuries. They also strive to create a world of beauty, dialogue,
and dignity in our world torn by ugliness, indignity, and monological
assertions of many kinds. I hope Pragmatism, Spirituality and Society:
Border Crossings, Transformations and Planetary Realizations help us in
living and thinking differently about and with pragmatism and spiritu-
ality and contribute to evolutionary transformations of self, conscious-
ness, society, and the world. As we move ahead and together with our
journey with pragmatism and spirituality as part of border-crossing walks
and meditation, planetary conversations, and planetary realizations, we
can walk and meditate with the following thoughts of S. Radhakrishnan
from his The Philosophy of Tagore, a traveller with spirituality and creative
practice:

God has put eternity into heart of man. When cultivated it introduces to
a higher world than the material. (Radhakrishna 1918: 13)

We can also possibly sing and dance with the following two poems:
xvi PREFACE

Logos: Co-Realizing Dance


Logos
Word
Spirit
World
Join us in our offering
Becomes Manifest in our Journey of Sincere Seeking
Sprouting Multitudes of
Co-Realizing Dancing. (Giri 2019: 148)

Oh Supreme Beauty
Oh Supreme Beauty!
Pure Consciousness
Limitless Energy of
Care and Compassion
I walk with you in manifold paths of
Practical renunciation
Each moment is
A sadhana and struggle
With Love and Transformation. (Giri 2019: 123)

Children’s Day and Deepavali, Festival of Light Ananta Kumar Giri


November 14, 2020 Chennai, India

References
Chatterjee, Margaret. 2002. Hinterlands and Horizons: Excursions in Search of
Amity. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Chatterjee, Margaret. 2005a. Gandhi and the Challenge of Religious Diversity:
Religious Pluralism Revisited. Delhi and Chicago: Promilla & Co.
Chatterjee, Margaret. 2005b. Lifeworlds, Philosophy, and India Today. Shimla:
Indian Institute of Advanced Studies.
Chatterjee, Margaret. 2007. Lifeworld and Ethics: Studies in Several Keys.
Washington, DC: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy.
Clooney, Francis X. 2005. Divine Mother, Blessed Mother: Hindu Goddesses and
the Virgin Mary. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Clooney, Francis X. 2011. Comparative Theology: Deep Learning Across Religious
Borders. New York: Wiley-Blackwell.
PREFACE xvii

Clooney, Francis X. 2017. Future of Hindu-Christian Studies: A Theological


Inquiry. London: Routledge.
Giri, Ananta Kumar. 2019. Weaving New Hats: Our Half Birthdays. Delhi:
Studera.
Radhakrishnan, S. 1918. The Philosophy of Rabindra Nath Tagore. Delhi: Atlantic.
Contents

1 Pragmatism, Spirituality and Society: An Introduction


and an Invitation 1
Ananta Kumar Giri

Part I Pragmatism, Spirituality and Society: New


Horizons of Theory and Practice

2 Pragmatism and Spirituality: New Horizons


of Theory and Practice and the Calling of Planetary
Realizations 13
Ananta Kumar Giri

3 Pragmatism, Geist and the Question of Form: From


a Critical Theory Perspective 41
Piet Strydom

4 Naturalistic Spirituality, Religious Naturalism,


and Community Spirituality: A Broader Pragmatic
View 69
Jacquelyn Ann K. Kegley

xix
xx CONTENTS

5 Pragmatism and the “Changing of the Earth”:


Unifying Moral Impulse, Creative Instinct,
and Democratic Culture 95
Julie Mazzarella Geredien

6 Towards Spiritual Pragmatics: Reflections


from the Graveyards of Culture 123
Marcus Bussey

7 Mystical Pragmatics 145


Paul Hague

8 Pragmatism and Spirituality in Anthropological


Aesthetics 167
Janusz Barański

Part II Pragmatism and Spirituality: Border-Crossing


Adventures, Creative Experiments and New
Pathways of Planetary Realizations

9 Peirce’s Semiotic Pragmaticism and Buddhist


Soteriology: Steps Towards Modelling “Thought
Forms” of Signlessness 187
Alina Therese Lettner

10 Spiritual Pragmatism: William James, Sri Aurobindo


and Global Philosophy 221
Richard Hartz

11 William James’s Pragmatism and Some Aspects


of Roman Catholic Teaching 247
Edward Ulrich

12 Gandhi, Hegel and Freedom: Aufhebungen,


Pragmatism and Ideal Type Models 263
Johannes (Hans) I. Bakker
CONTENTS xxi

13 Cosmopolitan Nationalism, Spirituality and Spaces


in Rabindranath Tagore and Sri Aurobindo 285
Payel Chattopadhyay Mukherjee

14 Thought of Mahatma Gandhi: A Path-Breaking


Experience of Spiritual Pragmatism 305
Sanghamitra Patnaik

15 Pragmatism, Spirituality, and the Calling of a New


Democracy: The Populist Challenge and Ambedkar’s
Integration of Buddhism and Dewey 325
Kanchana Mahadevan

Afterword 347

Index 351
Notes on Editor and Contributors

Editor

Ananta Kumar Giri is Professor at the Madras Institute of Develop-


ment Studies, Chennai, India. He has taught and done research in
many universities in India and abroad, including Aalborg University
(Denmark), Maison des sciences de l’homme, Paris (France), the Univer-
sity of Kentucky (USA), University of Freiburg & Humboldt Univer-
sity (Germany), Jagiellonian University (Poland), and Jawaharlal Nehru
University, New Delhi. He has an abiding interest in social movements
and cultural change, criticism, creativity and contemporary dialectics of
transformation, theories of self, culture and society, and creative streams
in education, philosophy, and literature. Dr. Giri has written and edited
around two dozen books in Odia and English, including Global Trans-
formations: Postmodernity and Beyond (1998); Sameekhya o Purodrusti
(Criticism and Vision of the Future, 1999); Patha Prantara Nrutattwa
(Anthropology of the Street Corner, 2000); Conversations and Transfor-
mations: Toward a New Ethics of Self and Society (2002); Self-Development
and Social Transformations? The Vision and Practice of Self-study Mobi-
lization of Swadhyaya (2008); Mochi o Darshanika (The Cobbler and
the Philosopher, 2009); Sociology and Beyond: Windows and Horizons
(2012), Knowledge and Human Liberation: Towards Planetary Realiza-
tions (2013); Philosophy and Anthropology: Border-Crossing and Transfor-
mations (co-edited with John Clammer, 2013); New Horizons of Human

xxiii
xxiv NOTES ON EDITOR AND CONTRIBUTORS

Development (editor, 2015); Pathways of Creative Research: Towards a


Festival of Dialogues (editor, 2017); Cultivating Pathways of Creative
Research: New Horizons of Transformative Practice and Collaborative
Imagination (editor, 2017); Research as Realization: Science, Spirituality
and Harmony (editor, 2017); Beyond Cosmopolitanism: Towards Plane-
tary Transformations (editor, 2017); The Aesthetics of Development; Art,
Culture and Social Transformations (co-editor, 2017); Beyond Sociology
(editor, 2018); Social Theory and Asian Dialogues: Cultivating Planetary
Conversations (editor, 2018); Practical Spirituality and Human Devel-
opment: Transformations in Religions and Societies (editor, 2018); Prac-
tical Spirituality and Human Development: Alternative Experiments for
Creative Futures (editor, 2019) and Transformative Harmony (editor,
2019); The Calling of Global Responsibility: New Initiatives in Justice,
Dialogues and Planetary Realizations (forthcoming); Pragmatism, Spir-
ituality and Society: New Pathways of Consciousness, Freedom and Soli-
darity (editor, forthcoming); Cross-Fertilizing Roots and Routes: Iden-
tities, Social Creativity, Cultural Regeneration and Planetary Realiza-
tions (editor, forthcoming); Roots, Routes and A New Awakening: Beyond
One and Many and Alternative Planetary Futures (editor, forthcoming);
Mahatma Gandhi and Sri Aurobindo (editor, forthcoming); Learning
the Art of Wholeness: Integral Education and Beyond (forthcoming); and
Cultivating Integral Development (forthcoming). Website: www.mids.ac.
in/ananta.htm.

Contributors

Professor Johannes (Hans) I. Bakker lectured at many conferences


and taught for more than forty years at four different universities and
retired from the University of Guelph. His work has focused on the epis-
temological approach associated with semiotics as seen through the lens
of Max Weber’s ideas concerning ideal types. His Neo-Weberian approach
stresses Ideal Type Models (ITMs) and he has recently spoken on that in
Dubrovnik and Prague. He guest edited a special issue of Sociological
Focus on Grounded Theory and has edited more than a dozen books.
His work on Max Weber’s ITM of “Patrimonialism” has been applied to
Indic Civilization in the Indonesian archipelago and his work on rural
sociology has involved the study of land tenure and rural development.
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