Pragmatism and Practical Criticism (Disambiguation)

Why We Need Disambiguation

Because literary theory is frequently connected to larger schools of philosophy, and because some theories are easily confused, here’s a little background on two very different theories that are not as related as their names appear. First we’ll do pragmatism, a comprehensive philosophy, then practical criticism, a specific literary method, then we’ll see how the two do or do not connect to a specific research question.

Pragmatism

William James, whom you may remember from a Psych 101 class or associate as the brother of novelist Henry James, helped found a school of philosophy called pragmatism. This is around the turn of the 20^th century in America.

Pragmatism puts a problem (philosophical or otherwise) up to a test: it traces “the practical consequences (the difference it would practically make to anyone)…and if no practical difference whatever is found, then the alternatives mean practically the same thing, and all dispute is idle” (Wheeler 76).  James put it this way: “There can be no difference anywhere that doesn’t make a difference elsewhere.”

Pragmatists seek to “expose the absolutes” (in ways that link them to traditional empiricists and later to Derrida’s deconstruction), and “transform any remaining content—for example, theories or results—into methods and instruments for further reflection and interpretation, for more work or play” (Wheeler 78). To the pragmatist, truth for its own sake doesn’t matter if it doesn’t matter to a human. Pragmatists connect ideas back to people and shoot down ideas that turn out to not matter.

Those absolute, exposed theories, according to James in his Pragmatism, “become instruments, not answers to enigmas, in which we can rest. We don’t lie back upon them, we move forward, and, on occasion, make nature over again by their aid” (31–32).

Ironically, the school of pragmatic philosophy is not very pragmatic itself. That is, the theory is only understood through interpretation of inflated and abstract thought. But it can be solidly linked to more specific literary theories, like Romanticism and Deconstruction, because all “three movements have all acted as various reactions against the extreme rationalist systems of philosophical and literary predecessors in each century” (Wheeler xi).

Practical Criticism

Practical Criticism is a little more applicable, especially as a literary theory. It started with T.S. Eliot’s emphasis on the poem as its own thing, disconnected from author, time period, context, etc. A Cambridge literary scholar named I.A. Richards took Eliot’s concept and ran with it in a work called Practical Criticism, published in 1924. “In a still fascinating experiment Richards withheld all extra-textual information…and asked students to respond to poems that were thus completely stripped of their context… We are now so familiar with this that it is difficult to imagine how revolutionary Richards’s experiment once was” (Bertens 15).

Richards primarily focused his criticism on poetry, partly because he, like Matthew Arnold, saw poetry as the cure for human disconnection in the modern world. But practical criticism can be (and is, in many college English classrooms) applied to any type of literary text. Bertens explains some of the theory’s benefits: “Because of this exclusively textual orientation, it was an ideal programme for teasing out all the opposites—thoughts versus feeling, seriousness versus high spirits, resignation versus anger, and so on—that for Richards (following Eliot) were reconciled and transcended in poetry, often through the use of irony” (17).

Application to Awe

There are quite a few ways to tie each of these theories to awe. The pragmatism project might praise the study of awe because it can pass its test of practical consequences. Rather than solely existing as an abstract theory, awe is something humans feel and “experience” (loaded word for pragmatists), and thereby awe matters. James would not, of course, passively “lie back” on awe, but awe could be a pragmatic enough concept that he could make nature over again with its aid. We might all go about making nature over again with awe.

On the more expressly literary note, the reader’s sense of awe could be enhanced by the method of practical criticism. The strong opposites that Bertens lists above can each be awesome emotions that would likely be put into focus as the poem (or other awe-inspiring text) was examined on its own. Also, there seems to be some opposition between the terror of awe and the elation of awe that could be better understood through the practical criticism lens. For example, if a poem inspired terror, its reader could analyze that poem using practical criticism to shed light on that terror and its opposing emotion.

Application to Literature

Obviously, this all applies quite well to my research on Awe vs. Pragmatism. By confirming and better understanding pragmatism as a philosophical school of thought, I have found a space where awe and pragmatism coexist quite peacefully. Awe stands up to the philosophically pragmatic mind because awe passes the pragmatist’s test of connection to humans/the real world/non-abstractness. Although awe is abstract and is frequently discussed as such, it is readily tied back to human emotion and generally impacts humans for good.

That being said, pragmatism exists as a concept outside James’s philosophical musings. When pragmatism is considered as dealing with things sensibly and realistically, neither James’s philosophy nor awe as an abstract musing hold up as well.  

I have also benefitted from my brief exploration of practical criticism, if only to set the record straight on my definitions—just because pragmatism and practicality are often linked as synonyms does not mean that their respective philosophical and literary theories are so connected.

Works Cited 

Bertens, Hans. Literary Theory: The Basics. London: Routledge, 2001. Print.

Wheeler, Kathleen M. Romanticism, Pragmatism, and Deconstruction. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993. Print.