Instrumental, Aesthetic, and Pedagogical Aspects
of Lewis Hahn’s Contextualist Vision
Michael W. Allen
[Author’s Note: This paper was presented at a conference, "The World in Perspective," held on September 25 and 26, 1998, in honor of Lewis Hahn’s ninetieth birthday. I was very honored then and am still honored to have expressed the respect and affection of the graduate students of Southern Illinois University on this occasion. I would like to thank Lewis Hahn, Thomas Alexander, Janet Handy, Martin Coleman, Larry Hickman, Ken Stikkers, and other participants of the conference for helpful comments. This paper was also presented at the 1999 meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy. I would like to thank Beth Singer for chairing the session and both her and participants for helpful comments.]
*****
"The health of the eye
seems to demand a horizon.
We are never tired,
so long as we can see far enough."
--Emerson, "Nature"
[1]I have chosen some lines from Emerson as my head text, some which I think well describe the relationship between Hahn’s good health and the fecundity of his philosophical vision.
A deep spirit of philosophical openness resonates through Lewis Hahn’s philosophical writings and three published interviews.
[2] Such openness is the main focus of this paper. In his essay, "Of Shoes and Ships and Sealing Wax, and Cabbages and Kings," Hahn claims that the categories utilized by contextualists such as himself "encourage comparisons between views."[3] He claims, "my point is that the very notion of instruments forces the contextualist to consider alternatives and to inquire about means of improving his own conceptual instruments."[4] He intimates that such openness extends beyond mere exercise of good will or principle of charity. If his insistence is taken seriously, and I suggest that it must be, then we must infer that Hahn feels himself also so obligated. Said differently, although perhaps no one is better characterized as possessing natural good will and a principle of charity than is Lewis Hahn, the philosopher is forced where the man simply acts. The notion of such a force or obligation, I suggest, is one means of appreciating the unity of Hahn’s considered philosophical position of contextualism.The issue I wish to pursue in this paper, therefore, is two-fold. First, in Hahn’s view, why is the contextualist "forced" to consider improvements for, and alternatives to, his or her view? Second, how does the contextualist, in Hahn’s view, go about the actual business of improving his or her categories and considering alternatives?
I The Contextualist’s Obligation: Improvement and Consideration
of Alternatives
The contextualist’s obligation has something integral to do with instrumentalism, namely that his or her categories function, in Hahn’s words, as "conceptual instruments for classifying, interpreting, or ordering the entire range of facts."
[5] It might be said that all such instruments, the categories included, simply function better when their method of use is reviewed periodically. Likewise, it might be said that alternative uses for one’s current categories or even complete alternatives to one’s categories, when considered as live options, are simply more productive instrumentally. But why is the contextualist forced or obligated to engage in such practices by the very nature of his or her choice of philosophical tools? Hahn illustrates two responses through his writings, both of which assume core principles of contextualism.A Improvement
Hahn’s first response concerns the nature of the categories themselves, namely what they are and what they are intended to achieve. It is significant that Hahn opens his essay by examining the status and sufficiency of his own contextualist categories. In broad terms, his inquiry is analysis. But part of the clue to the contextualist obligation resides in the fact that analysis functions quite differently for contextualism than it does for much of traditional philosophy. Hahn claims,
we never reach ultimate elements, and there is no such thing as the analysis of anything, for the texture of an event may be exhibited in any number of different ways, depending upon the purpose of the analysis or the nature of the problem generating it.
The contextualist universe is devoid of ultimacy and the static conception of nature proposed by many traditional philosophical views. Partially for the sake of navigation through such a dynamic landscape, human beings abbreviate the flow for convenience by constructing categories. Such construction, therefore, is always purposive, toward some end. The categories are themselves, therefore, not "ultimate elements." Hahn is cognizant of Dewey’s claim in Experience and Nature that "It is natural to men to take that which is of chief value to them at the time as the real. Reality and superior value are equated."
[7] In short, the categories are always in the making, as is the remainder of the contextualist universe.It would be a mistake to assume, therefore, that analysis of the categories is a process independent of their very formation. In an important sense, without analysis there would be no categories in the first place. Throughout his analysis, Hahn continually draws attention to the connection between analysis and formation of the categories. He claims in many places that the analyst must make interpretive choices, ones that will, in the end, determine what specific categories are formed in the first place.
But there is another, closely related sense, in which the categories owe their existence to their use in the analysis of experience. Such analysis is not directed specifically toward the categories but rather directs the categories toward the analysis of experience. The latter form of analysis satisfies the pragmatic requirement that the categories actually work, that they can be used in the ways they were designed through the first form of analysis. Hahn suggests such a role for the categories in experience. He claims,
Perhaps the best answer to the question of whether they [the categories] afford illumination is to urge the questioner to place himself sympathetically within the framework of a world view and analyze some problematic area of experience in terms of its basic concepts and then see if this does not lead to a better understanding of this area.
There is a sense, therefore, in which the question of the sufficiency of the categories is only answered by bringing them to the test. No amount of analysis to design useful categories is sufficient without analysis of the categories through actual use in experience. There is no such thing as an instrument that is not brought to the test.
If the categories are not adequate for making sense of ever-increasing complexities in experience, they are discarded in favor of better ones. Said differently, every success in navigating experience via the categories necessitates the implicit attempt to invalidate them by exposing them to ever-greater challenges. An instrument whose function cannot be improved is no instrument. The contextualist is obligated to improve his or her categories, therefore, because the very nature of the categories demands it. The nature of the categories is function according to a specific purpose, such that without the function there is no category. It may even be said that the category is the function.
B Consideration of Alternatives
The second aspect of the contextualist’s obligation noted by Hahn is to consider alternatives, a concern reminiscent of James’ assertion that "Philosophic study means the habit of always seeing an alternative, ..."
[9] The response Hahn suggests also involves the first aspect of improvement of one’s categories. In many ways, the two notions cooperate together. It may even be that improvement of the categories proceeds exclusively through the consideration of alternatives. Improvement of the contextualist’s categories cannot be acquired without genuine alternatives to his or her view, for an alternative stands as a potential improvement to one’s current position. Moreover, Hahn maintains that "careful study of even inadequate views may contribute to a clearer understanding of things."[10] He echoes Dewey’s assertion in Art as Experience that the "live creature adopts its past; it can make friends with even its stupidities, using them as warnings that increase present wariness."[11] Improvement might be achieved by consideration of undesirable alternatives, whether actually realized or not.But there is also a stronger response. The contextualist is obligated to consider alternatives because to do otherwise would be inconsistent with a primary criterion of contextualism, namely to conduct analysis contextually Hahn claims that "the pursuit of comprehensive wisdom will be furthered by leaving open the possibility of more than one world view. This is better even than making contextualists of all philosophers!"
[12] In Deweyan terms, alternative views provide the cultural and intellectual context for contextualism, in the same way as an environment provides sustenance for an organism. Without the nutrition of an environment or context, in the form of alternatives to one’s own view, contextualism would perish in the same way that an organism does when alienated from its environment. Dewey claims that "analysis falsifies when its results are interpreted as complete in themselves apart from any context. And it seems to me that the fault found with analysis would be more correctly as well as more simply directed against the ignoring of context."[13] Formulating even one’s own philosophical position demands putting the world in context.But the context of Hahn’s contextualism, at least from its own perspective, is not comprised of a discrete collection of static worldviews. If the instrumentalism of Hahn’s contextualism cannot be considered mechanistic, neither can his philosophical worldview be considered a mere creature contained neutrally within a constellation of unrelated worldviews. Rather, contextualism is a "live creature" to quote Dewey, or, in Hahn’s terms, a "living philosophy." Contextualism is a living philosophy because its principles or categories are for application to, and improvement of, living situations, not for shelving in dusty stacks of abstract systems. Again, the contextualist maintains that his or her categories be brought continually to the test as a means of analyzing experience. One need search no further than The Library of Living Philosophers, and a variety of presentations given by Hahn at the Unitarian Fellowships of Carbondale, Illinois, and Waco, Texas, to find such a living application of Hahn’s contextualist categories.
[14]I began by suggesting that Hahn takes seriously his statement that the contextualist is forced to improve his or her categories and consider alternatives. Within his essays, he suggests, first, that the notion of improvement is required in virtue of the instrumental nature of the categories, and, second, that the notion of alternatives is required for contextualism to remain consistent with its primary criterion of context. As a third, related point, I suggested that the contextualist intends his or her principles to be applicable within the context of living, and not merely abstract, exchanges between philosophers. Having discussed the issue of why the contextualist is forced to improve his or her categories and consider alternatives, what remains, then, is a description of how Hahn suggests this is to be accomplished in practice.
II The Role of Creativity in Contextualism
If forced to select one term for Hahn to describe what James calls a philosopher’s "centre of vision," I would choose "creativity."
[15] Hahn claims that contextualists "hold that to create is to grow and help others to grow. Thus for contextualists creation aims at human growth." [16] Creativity is an endeavor required of human beings in order to navigate and meliorate the often tragic complexities of an unfinished, process universe. Creative activity, therefore, is antithetical to the "Quest for Certainty." Hahn claims,our world is not one whose evolution is finished and in which everything is all cut and dried but rather is a world in the making, one still in process of becoming, and, accordingly, one in which there is room for constructive, creative endeavors to make portions of the world better. Such a world is filled with unexpected novelties, risks, struggles, real losses, and genuine gains but one in which creative vision and imagination can help make a difference.
Moreover, Hahn’s notion of creativity provides the impetus underlying formation and improvement of the contextualist’s categories in the first place. Without human creativity and the purposes it engenders, there would be no need for either categories or in fact instrumentality. Creativity is also a deeply organic and therefore distinctly human affair. The actual business of improving one’s categories and considering alternatives, when undertaken against the unfolding backdrop of the human condition, insures that instrumentalism does not yield to mechanism. Mechanism possesses a naive, or straight-line, not a creative, notion of purpose.
[18] In its adoption of both instrumentalism and organicity, Hahn’s contextualism is, again, a "living philosophy."Hahn’s notion of creativity unifies the first and second halves of this paper. He discusses two major forms of creative growth in the paper entitled, "Creating: Solving Problems and Experiencing Afresh." Given the preceding suggestion that the instrumentalism of contextualism depends upon creativity, the two forms of creativity discussed by Hahn can be seen to underlie, respectively, the two obligations of the contextualist. This would mean, I suggest, that the primary obligation of the contextualist is to be creative.
[19]The first form of creativity suggested by Hahn is growth "through reflective inquiry to solve problems."
[20] Primarily Deweyan in nature, Hahn says that reflective inquiry is a "program of action for bringing intelligence into a situation" or a way of "resolving doubts or indeterminacies."[21] He goes on to claim that "An immense amount of the world’s work depends upon how creative we are in solving problems and how widely we apply the method of reflective inquiry."[22] But it can also be argued that the contextualist’s categories are intended to accomplish similar goals. What are the categories if not tools for the solution of concrete problems through reflective inquiry? Improvement of one’s categories amounts to creative problem-solving. I suggest that the contextualist’s obligation to improve his or her categories is accomplished in practice through the creative growth of reflective inquiry.The second form of creative growth suggested by Hahn is through "taking in the qualities of things, or experiencing afresh."
[23] Hahn suggests that whereas the first form of growth concerns the sciences primarily, the second concerns the arts and humanities. In contrast to the creativity of reflective inquiry, the "primary stress" of the second form of creative growth is "not upon instruments, identifying for use, and solving problems but rather upon perception and appreciation of the qualities characterizing things, or aesthetic perception."[24] In claiming that the second contextualist obligation to consider alternatives relies upon the creativity of "experiencing afresh," I need to discuss remarks made by Hahn in various places about the role of the artist. What is required is a synthesis of such remarks with conclusions from the preceding discussion. I wish to focus, for the remainder of the paper, upon the relationship I see between the second form of creativity and the second obligation of the contextualist.Hahn suggests in various places that aesthetics plays a major role in making us aware of the novelties of context. He claims,
Poets, for example, cultivate sensitivity to sights, sounds, and feelings, and they have developed techniques for breaking up our habits, or putting them in a context which helps us to see, feel, and experience the qualities of our world. Happily, moreover, one need not be a genius to be creative in this way, for we can learn from artists how to experience things afresh and report on the qualities as they appear from our unique vantage point.
Aesthetics allows us to undergo experience in a novel fashion, making us aware of aspects of our experience normally neglected or forgotten by "putting them" in a context conducive to expression of their aesthetic qualities. For Hahn, the artist is skilled at making observers consider things "afresh," or in an alternative manner. In short, the artist’s sense of creativity, for Hahn, compels us to consider alternatives. As such, the same sense of creativity is shared by the contextualist who abides by his or her obligation to consider alternatives.
The common function of aesthetics and the philosophy of contextualism is to focus attention upon, and make use of, the inherently contextual aspect of experience. Such creativity manifests itself in contextualism primarily in the assumption that the nature of context demands that no issue receives complete treatment from any single point of view. The ability of the contextualist to consider alternative worldviews depends upon the ability to place one’s own views within a wider context, to appreciate the novelty with which his or her views are imbued in virtue of participating in world culture. Such a sense of creativity reworks and to some extent makes novel one’s own context and worldview through inclusion of novel cultural products. Hahn might well ask, as does Thoreau, "How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book!"
[26]For Hahn, the artist and the contextualist both aim at creative growth through a reworking of context. In their shared assumption that there is something to be done, both are pragmatically melioristic. Such meliorism is accomplished most notably through a shared pedagogical dimension present in Hahn’s discussions of both aesthetics and contextualism. In claiming that "we can learn from artists how to experience things afresh", he suggests that the artist’s sense of creative growth is contagious. That is, the artist not only reworks our context and therefore also our experience and worldview, but teaches us to do the same for ourselves. In teaching us, the artist makes artists of us as well. We acquire, at least in part, his or her heightened sensitivity to the contextual aspect of all experience.
But contextualism possesses the same pedagogical dimension that Hahn suggests of aesthetics. Contextualism maintains an intimate relationship between creative endeavors such as growth and education. Hahn claims that "growth and education are closely related. . . .Through communication we learn and teach how to make and remake ourselves and our environment."
[27] Education fosters the ability to consider alternatives by stressing the contextual relationships between different worldviews. Through awareness of such relationships, the student is enabled to meliorate experience through reconstruction or reworking of context. What is achieved is no mere constellation of discrete intellectual positions, but rather insight into the distinct, although relational, place one shares in context with other worldviews. Effecting change requires an ecological perspective, or insight into how a seemingly innocuous activity in one sphere might have dramatic consequences within many others. The teacher is as skilled in teaching the student to consider alternatives for himself or herself as the artist is at allowing observers to consider things "afresh" through his or her art.The shared pedagogical dimension of both aesthetics and contextualism assumes that the sense of creative growth associated with experiencing "afresh" is a social event which can be passed on to future generations. If Hahn possesses an aesthetic view of contextualism, he also possesses a contextual view of aesthetics. He writes,
there is something of quality in every event even though for successful habitual responses, there is often no time to take it in, but artists help us take it in and share it. In expressing our feelings, poets and other artists socialize our appreciations and help provide sympathetic understanding of both us and the community sharing our feelings.
Aesthetics functions to socialize our experience, creating a common context for both experiencing the reworking of context achieved by the artist, and for teaching the community to do the same. Aesthetics stands as an occasion for the community as a whole, not just isolated individuals, to change its sense of perspective and thereby consider alternatives. Aesthetics teaches the community, through the community, how to consider alternatives in the first place. For Hahn, again, the artist and the contextualist both put the world in context.
What emerges from Hahn’s distinction between the two forms of creative growth, namely through reflective inquiry and the ability to experience things afresh, is not a sharp division between the sciences and humanities. Rather, Hahn intends a cooperative, perhaps even reciprocal, relationship. While solution of some problems in our experience depends upon the creativity associated with reflective inquiry, solution of others depends upon the creativity of experiencing afresh. Maintaining continuity between the two forms of creativity assumes Dewey’s claim in Art as Experience that "The odd notion that an artist does not think and a scientific inquirer does nothing else is the result of converting a difference of tempo and emphasis into a difference in kind."
[29]If continuity is maintained between the two forms of creative growth, then continuity must also be maintained between the two obligations of the contextualist, fulfillment of which is made possible through the two forms of creative growth.
Perhaps the same relationship holds between the two forms of creativity that holds between the two obligations of the contextualist. If this is so, then consideration of alternatives and the creative growth of experiencing things afresh are both essential for improvement of one’s categories and the creative growth of reflective inquiry. Without alternatives, there is no possibility of being creative, or of improving our categories, our experiences, or for that matter any situation whatsoever. Without the ability to consider alternatives, improvement of one’s categories is impossible. Moreover, without the creativity to experience things afresh, the creativity of reflective inquiry is impossible.
[30]III Conclusion
In this essay I have attempted to answer two questions which emerge within the philosophical writings of Lewis Hahn, namely why and how the contextualist faces the two obligations of improving his or her categories and considering alternatives. Answering the question of why led me to consider Hahn’s suggestions on the nature of both the contextualist’s categories and the theory of contextualism itself. Answering the second question, of how the contextualist meets his or her two obligations, led me to synthesize Hahn’s remarks on contextualism and aesthetics, to the conclusion that a strong sense of continuity exists between them in Hahn’s philosophical thought. But the primary goal of this essay remains to recommend Hahn’s work to the philosophical community.
In closing, I suggest that few people have earned the level of professional and personal respect from their colleagues and students as has Lewis Hahn. Many thanks to him for his continued participation in the local, international, and university communities.
Notes
[1] Ralph Waldo Emerson, Selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Stephen E. Whicher (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1960), 27.
[2] For the interviews, see John M. Abbarno, "Interview of Lewis E. Hahn," The Journal of Value Inquiry 29 (1995): 255-268; Marilyn Davis, "Meeting of the Minds," Perspectives, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale (1998): 10-15; Michael W. Allen and Janet Elizabeth Handy, "The Living Philosopher: An Interview with Lewis Edwin Hahn on the Occasion of His Ninetieth Birthday," Kinesis vol. 25, no. 2 (Fall, 1998): 5-35.
[3] Lewis E. Hahn, "Of Shoes and Ships and Sealing Wax, and Cabbages and Kings," 8; Presidential Address for Southwestern Philosophical Society Conference at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, 1955.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid., 8.
[6] Lewis E. Hahn, "A Contextualist View of Experience and Ecological Responsibility," in Donald A. Crosby and Charley D. Hardwick, eds., Religious Experience and Ecological Responsibility (New York: Peter Lang, 1996), 176.
[7] John Dewey, The Later Works of John Dewey, 1925-1953, v. 1: 1925, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988), hereafter LW, 31.
[8] "Of Shoes and Ships," 12. For Dewey’s influence on Hahn, see "John Dewey and Our Time," Baylor Educator (Spring, 1978): 1-4, 14; "John Dewey’s World View," Religious Humanism, vol. 14, no. 1 (Winter, 1980): 32-37; for an unabridged and version of this essay, see "John Dewey’s World Hypothesis," in Lewis Hahn, Enhancing Cultural Interflow Between East and West: Collected Essays in Comparative Philosophy and Culture, ed. George C.H. Sun (Thomé Fang Institute, 1998); "Dewey’s View of Experience and Culture," in Two Centuries of Philosophy in America, ed. Peter Caws (Basil Blackwell, 1980), 167-173.
[9] William James, William James on Psychical Research, eds. Gardner Murphy and Robert O. Ballou (New York: The Viking Press, 1960), 256.
[10] Lewis E. Hahn, "Philosophy as Comprehensive Vision," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research vol. 22, no. 1 (1961): 16-25, 25.
[11] LW10: 23.
[12] "Of Shoes and Ships," 13.
[13] LW6: 6.
[14] Three such presentations are "Why Humanism?," "Confucius’ World View and Some American Outlooks," and "Coping with Change: A Philosophy of Life."
[15] William James, The Letters of William James, v.2, ed. Henry James (Boston: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1920), 355. James warns that "building up an author’s meaning out of separate texts leads nowhere, unless you have first grasped his centre of vision by an act of imagination."
[16] Lewis E. Hahn, "Creating: Solving Problems and Experiencing Afresh," 1; invited paper for Annual Meeting of Society for the Philosophy of Creativity, APA Eastern Division, 1983.
[17] CVC, 10.
[18] For a brief discussion of "naive" or "straight-line" instrumentalism, and critique of the assumption that all forms of instrumentalism are such, see Larry A. Hickman, John Dewey’s Pragmatic Technology (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1992), 12-14.
[19] More precisely, there is no clear distinction between contextualism as a philosophy of experience and the aesthetic sense of creativity upon which it is based. Compare Thomas Alexander’s claim that Dewey "had come to formulate in his concept of art and the aesthetic a central, ultimate response to the issues that motivated his philosophy as such." "The Art of Life: Dewey’s Aesthetics," in Reading Dewey: Interpretations for a Postmodern Generation (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998), 5. For Dewey, aesthetic experience is just genuine experience, in the same way that I claim the notion of creativity is inseparable from Hahn’s contextualism.
[20] "Creating: Solving Problems and Experiencing Afresh" 1.
[21] Ibid., 8.
[22] Ibid., 11.
[23] Ibid., 12.
[24] Ibid.
[25] "Philosophy as Comprehensive Vision," 17.
[26] Henry David Thoreau, Walden (New York: Airmont, 1965), 82.
[27] Lewis E. Hahn, "Enhancing Cultural Interflow between East and West," in Enhancing Cultural Interflow Between East and West, 39.
[28] "A Contextualist View of Experience and Ecological Responsibility," 10.
[29] LW10:21.
[30] Hahn claims that both forms of creative growth are "essential." He says that "So to restrict ourselves to either one of them is to lose a great deal and weaken our understanding of the world and our place in it." "Enhancing Cultural Interflow," 40.