Pragmatism is an important philosophical movement originating in the USA in late nineteenth century in the works of the American polymath Charles Sanders Peirce and subsequently developed by pioneers such as William James and John Dewey which has influenced ways of thinking and practice in the last one hundred fifty years in the USA, Europe, and many parts of the world. In the works of early American pragmatists such as Peirce, James, and Dewey pragmatism was part of a much more wider and global conversations such as Peirce dialoguing with both Christianity and Buddhism, William James with Swami Vivekananda from India, and John Dewey visiting China in 1919 and engaging with Chinese philosophical traditions. But this was not cultivated further in the work of later day American pragmatists such as Richard Rorty who did not continue this engagement with social and philosophical issues from other traditions and parts of the world. Pragmatism here seems to have become insular as evidenced in the tile of one of Rorty’s book, Achieving our Country (Rorty 1998; also see Balslev 1991). But pragmatism is part of not only achieving our country but what Fred Dallmayr calls Achieving our World in the process of rethinking, broadening, deepening, and transforming our visions of practice, pragmatism, word, and the world (Dallmayr 2001). Pragmatism from the very beginning was always concerned with the higher and deeper dimensions of quality of practice, society, and life which resonated with a spiritual dimension of practice and pragmatism in an open way without being narrowly confined to conventional idols of religion, science, and secularism. Our book, Pragmatism, Spirituality and Society: Border Crossing, Transformations and Planetary Realizations explores some of these issues. It engages with pragmatism as part of conversations across multiple philosophical and cultural traditions. This is part of a vision and practice of planetary conversations and planetary realizations where we converse across borders and realize that we belong to our planet and learn together going beyond ethnocentrism, Euro-American centrism, and other entrenched closures.

The book begins with the Part I of the book. It begins with the essay by Ananta Kumar Giri, “Pragmatism and Spirituality: New Horizons of Theory and Practice and the Calling of Planetary Conversations.” Giri discusses border-crossing dialogues between American pragmatism and critical thought in continental Europe as in the works of Karl-Otto Apel and Jurgen Habermas which has led to the field of Kantian pragmatism. Giri strives to deepen and broaden this dialogue to Indian and Chinese philosophical and spiritual traditions. He also tries to rethink the conventional pragmatic approaches to language, self, and society by exploring its spiritual dimension. He engages with Sri Aurobindo, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein and explores spiritual dimension in their engagement with and reconstruction of language, self, and society. Giri also cultivates the vision and practice of mystical pragmatics by engaging with the works and lives of Meister Eckhart, Sri Ramakrishna, and Swami Vivekananda. Giri’s essay is followed by Piet Strydom’s “Pragmatism, Geist and the Question of Form: From a Critical Theory Perspective,” in which Strydom looks at the genealogy of pragmatism in the Kantian/Left Hegelian tradition and discusses the works of Charles Sanders Peirce, John Dewey, and C. Wright Mills. Strydom approaches the word “spirituality” from a broader conceptual perspective and here approaches the word Spirit from a multilingual perspective. Here what Strydom writes deserves our careful consideration:

When the word ‘spirit’ is approached from a multilingual perspective, particularly considering the Germanic Geist, it quickly becomes apparent that it cannot be confined exclusively to religion or religious belief, but has to be broadened to cover also the human spirit / mind. In turn, however, the latter cannot simply be understood as something metaphysical, since it has to be acknowledged that its embodiment is of central importance and that it thus has a natural history. This implies that the embodied spirit / mind and form are, if not coeval and coextensive, actually closely related to one another.

In his essay, Strydom also deals with the question of form as it relates to both pragmatism and Geist and argues how form has simultaneously sociocultural roots as well as roots in nature. He then explores the reality and manifestation of Geist-infused form. He also explores the significance of the human spirit/mind as form in “holding open the abundant potentialities for realising an appropriate human world—something sorely required today for problem-solving and world-creation. For Strydom, both pragmatism and critical theory calls for spirited and minded subjects.” Strydom also relates this calling of minded and spirited subject formation to realization of infinity in our lives. Strydom thus writes:

Finally, then, it may be submitted that to be committed and reflexively oriented from within practical situations toward the structuring and regulatory efficacy of the cognitive order as rendered possible by its infinite unconditioned potentialities would be tantamount to being ‘spiritual’ in the best sense of the word – both spirited and minded. On this we shall have to count to solve the pressing problems of our time and to create a sustainable and justifiable human world for ‘spiritual’ subjects whose dignity, rights and vulnerability are secured by democratic and cosmopolitan means on an ecological and planetary scale.

Strydom’s essay is followed by Jacqueline Ann K. Kegley’s “Naturalistic Spirituality, Religious Naturalism, and Community Spirituality: A Broader Pragmatic View,” in which Kegley discusses the work of the pioneering American pragmatist Josiah Royce. Kegley explores the rich insights of Royce on spirituality and religion. These are explored first through an analysis of Royce’s Sources of Religious Insight, a phenomenological exploration of religious experience, an experience that has a natural history. A fundamental aspect of religious spirituality for Royce is self-transcendence and unification of individual meaning through loyalty to an ideal and connections with others in a community of loyalty. Royce’s religious naturalism is evident in his various writings on types of monotheism and his affirmation of a deity fully involved with and in the natural world. Royce’s The Problem of Christianity focuses on Christianity as a message about the progressive realization of the “Universal Community in and through the longings, the vicissitudes, the tragedies and triumphs of this process of the temporal world.” Royce expounded a naturalistic spirituality and a religious naturalism but in doing so, he expands our view of spirituality and religion, giving it a rich community flavor. Spirituality, for Royce, is about deep connection, meaning, and joy. It is about individual meaning and unification accomplished through loyalty to an ideal and connection with others in a community of loyalty. Joy is achieved through an attitude of love toward the universe and in reverence for Community as essential to pragmatism—a theme which resonates with Martin Luther King’s emphasis on creation of a beloved community. Kegley’s essay is followed by Julie Mazzarella Geredien “Pragmatism and the ‘Changing of the Earth’: Unifying Moral Impulse, Creative Instinct and Democratic Culture,” in which Geredien is concerned with creation of beloved community like Kegley and Rosiah. She discusses the work of John Dewey and others here and presents Dewey’s work in building community and resolving conflicts. For Geredien, pragmatism is concerned with healing deep conflicts. In a creative way, Geredien discusses Bahai perspective on change of Earth. She argues how we have to make creative link among moral impulse, creative instinct, and democratic culture. For Geredien, spiritual pragmatism “offers a path of thought and action through which moral impulses, creative instinct and democratic culture become increasingly united, thereby healing deep rifts and addressing serious systemic errors at the root of global problems today.”

Geredien’s essay is followed by Marcus Bussey’s “Towards Spiritual Pragmatics: Reflections from the Graveyards of Culture,” in which Bussey discusses pragmatism exploring the liminal realm of reality. As he writes, “There is something liminal about reality—and pragmatism acknowledges that condition by working the between that lies betwixt idea and action, aspiration and perspiration, hope and the quotidian. Such work requires a future-sense to come into play and that sense involves sensitivity to creative play and the possibilities inherent to our contexts when we take the lid off authority and throw away the rule book.” In his essay, Bussey makes a case for a poetics of possibility that is grounded in what he terms the “graveyard of culture.” He seeks to navigate this graveyard with a poet’s eye which involves both the heart and the head in formulating new and emergent futures. He builds his case via a series of reflections each beginning with a poem. Culture is the resource upon which this exploration rests and poets are deeply attuned to their cultures and mine them to offer spiritual insights into the human condition and also into the kind of resources available to us in the struggle to free ourselves from negative sentiments and narrow worldviews in order to genuinely engage in the work of creating a world—alive to mystery and possibility—that we would wish to be the inheritance of future generations. As Bussey notes, “All cultures have their graveyards—and their skeletons in cupboards. The poet, as a kind of Tantrica, picks their way carefully through the detritus of ages in the search for the old and deep that can be returned to the present.”

Busseys’ essay is followed by Paul Hague’s “Mystical Pragmatics: Harmonizing Evolutionary Convergence,” where Hague building on the works of Charles Sanders Peirce cultivates pathways of mystical pragmatics. For Hague, “mystical pragmatics is an intelligent way of collectively organizing our lives in harmony with the fundamental law of the Universe, which Heraclitus, the mystical philosopher of change, called the ‘Hidden Harmony’.” Hague’s essay is followed by Janusz Baranski’s “Pragmatism and Spirituality in Anthropological Perspective” in which Baranski discusses the works of Richard Schusterman, Clifford Geertz, and John Dewey in the field of anthropological aesthetics and how their work make a bridge between pragmatism and spirituality.

With these we come to the Second Part of our book “Pragmatism and Spirituality: Border-Crossing Adventures, Creative Experiments and New Pathways of Planetary Realizations.” This part brings pragmatism in conversations with many other traditions of thought and practice from around the world. This begins with the insightful essay of Alina Therese Lettner, “Peirce’s Semiotic Pragmaticism and Buddhist Soteriology: Steps Towards Modelling ‘Thought Forms’ of Signlessness.” In her essay, Lettner builds on Charles Sanders Peirce’s pragmaticist theory of thought-signs in order to further develop her semiotic model of thought forms with regard to the immediacy or “Firstness” of phenomenal forms of consciousness (S. vijñāṇa, P. viññāṇa). Setting out to clear the ground for the Buddhist soteriological modality of signlessness, she proposes to investigate the pragmatic enactment of “thought forms” as “life forms” through the Noble Eightfold Path and the context of Buddhist soteriology. Conventional sign processes like language and conceptual construction are modeled by her with regard to the “five aggregates” (S. pañcaskandha, P. -kkhandha) of empirical personality and put into the larger context of “dependent arising” (S. pratītyasamutpāda, P. paṭiccasamuppāda). In so doing she draws upon Peirce’s conception of semiosis for bringing into view the karmic conditioning and psychophysical embodiment of phenomenological events (dharmas) that in Buddhism are seen to operate without the assumption of a permanent self. Reconstructing Buddhist soteriology along the lines of Peirce’s semiotic pragmaticism, she thus arrives at a broad understanding of thought forms on the basis of various theoretical and methodological synergies that allow her to accommodate in her model the signless pragmatics of the Buddhist meditational path toward liberation.

Lettner’s essay is followed by Richard Hartz’s “Spiritual Pragmatism: William James, Sri Aurobindo and Global Philosophy.” Hartz’s essay expands the framework for understanding philosophical pragmatism beyond the Euro-American context in which it is usually discussed. Starting from William James’s influential exposition, Hartz looks at the development of pragmatism in modern Indian thought as represented by the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo, who appears to have been familiar with some of James’s writings. He shows that Aurobindo’s Hegelian tendencies are counterbalanced by pronounced affinities with Jamesian pragmatism. Aurobindo refers specifically to James when commenting on a perceived narrowing of the distance between Western and Indian thought in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He comes closest to James when he speaks of a will to know, believe and be, by which we “create our own truth.” Aurobindo endorses the pragmatic rejection of theoretical knowledge divorced from practical application in the broadest sense. He agrees with James in placing at the center of his philosophy the question, “What is life eventually to make of itself?” The comparison of William James and Sri Aurobindo underlines the global relevance of philosophical pragmatism and suggests a promising direction for the revitalization of philosophy. Hartz’s essay is followed by Edward Ulrich’s who is in his essay “William James’s Pragmatism and Some Aspects of Roman Catholic Teaching” shows how the pragmatism of James is at odds with the traditional theological and philosophical approaches of the Catholic Church. The Church had insisted, since ancient times, that there is an objective and knowable order. Against the trends of modern philosophy, segments of the hierarchy of the Church, especially in the late nineteenth century, had promoted the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas as an example of how reason can plumb, with integrity, the mysteries of both the universe and God. In contrast to that, although not addressing James in any direct way, more innovative Catholic thinkers developed a version of Aquinas’ thought, known as “transcendental Thomism,” that gives a more foundational role to religious experience. That, in turn, made an impact. All in all, in the Church today, there is an increased emphasis on not simply arguing the validity of beliefs and doctrines, but showing their relevance and how they relate to human experience.

Ulrich’s essay is followed by Johannes (Hans) I. Bakker’s essay, “Gandhi, Hegel and Freedom: Aufhebungen, Pragmatism and Ideal Type Models” which engages with pragmatism, Gandhi and Hegel. He begins by making some comments on epistemology that are relevant to Pragmatism by going back to the epistemology of philosophical idealism. Idealism can be linked to the creation of the modern university as a center of intellectual “autonomy.” The basic point here is that to understand Gandhi, using words available in every day circumstances is not enough. Words and concepts like sublation used by Hegel are helpful here. Hegel’s use of this dialectical concept fits Gandhi’s philosophical conceptualization of political, economic and social change. Gandhi fought colonialism. For Bakker, we need to understand what the abstract concept of “colonialism” is before we can fully conceptualize the abstract concept of “postcolonailism.” For Bakker, we have to think in terms of a logic which involves an Aufhebung of subsumptive predicates. American pragmatism often does that, although it is not always obvious that there is a link between progressive left-Hegelianism and American Pragmatism. For Bakker, we must think about it as, metaphorically speaking, coffee without milk, or, to put it simply, “black coffee” as an “object.” It is much like Husserl’s epoche’. But Hegel is less static and more dynamic, more historically based which helps us understand both Gandhi and pragmatism as dynamic formations with self, society, culture, history, and the world.

Bakker’s essay is followed by Payel Chattopadhyay Mukherjee’s essay “Cosmopolitan Nationalism, Spirituality and Spaces in Rabindranath Tagore and Sri Aurobindo” which explores the notions of pragmatic spirituality through the spaces institutionalized by Sri Aurobindo and Rabindranath Tagore. She has argued that the abstractions of their philosophical spirituality could be realized within the materiality of the spaces. In her essay she also pertinently emphasizes that within these institutionalized spaces, spirituality was entwined with a kind of cosmopolitan nationalism that was aimed at practicing self-reliance and self-critiquing as a means of realizing the life-long engagement with the idea of freedom of mind, ingeniously associated with cultivating ideological and cultural independence. In doing so, she engages with Sri Aurobindo and Tagore’s pursuit of a kind of spirituality as an everyday experience, intersecting with the issues of nationalism, politics, education, freedom, and poetry. Chattopadhyay Mukherjee’s essay is followed by Sanghamitra Patnaik’s “Thoug...