Notes

Introduction

1	Kant introduced the concept of “radical evil” into philosophy. For a discussion of what Kant meant by radical evil, see Bernstein 2002: ch. 1.
2	See also Giorgio Agamden’s (1999) perceptive discussion of the Muselmann.
3	Christopher R. Browning sums up the judgment of many historians when he writes: “I consider Arendt’s concept of the ‘banality of evil’ a very important insight for understanding many of the perpetrators of the Holocaust, but not Eichmann himself. Arendt was fooled by Eichmann’s strategy of self-representation in part because there were so many perpetrators of the kind he was pretending to be” (2003: 3–4).

Chapter 1 The Clash of Mentalities: The Craving for Absolutes versus Pragmatic Fallibilism

1	See Putnam’s (2002) critique of the fact/value dichotomy.
2	See Menand’s discussion of the debates about cultural pluralism (2001: ch. 14). “Pluralisms.”
3	I discuss the “myth of the framework” in my 1983, and “engaged pluralism” in the appendix, “Pragmatism and the Healing of Wounds,” in my 1991.

Chapter 2 The Anticipations and Legacy of Pragmatic Fallibilism

1	See the exchange between Taylor and Habermas in Gutman 1994.
2	See Habermas’s remarks about the influence of pragmatism on his thinking in the postscript to Aboulafia et la. 2002. Alan Ryan, in his illuminating study of John Dewey discusses the revival of a Deweyan style of philosophy. He claims that Taylor “is for the most part a Deweyean without knowing it” (Ryan 1995: 361). Taylor has written perceptively about William James. See his 2002 and also his essay “What is Pragmatism?” in Benhabib and Fraser 2004.
3	See Bernstein 1992 and Dickstein 1998.
4	The best-known contemporary philosopher to identify with the pragmatic tradition is Richard Rorty. He enjoys a wide readership among humanistic scholars, even though many “professional” analytic philosophers think he has abandoned “serious” rigorous thinking. But, unlike James, Holmes, and Dewey, he does not have the influence that they enjoyed among a much wider public.

Chapter 3 Moral Certainty and Passionate Commitment

1	For an account of Niebuhr’s criticism of Dewey and Dewey’s response, see Rice 1993; Westbrook 1991; and Diggins 1995. See also Cornel West’s interview with Eduardo Mendieta (2004); and Sidney Hook, “The Moral Vision of Reinhold Niebuhr,” in Hook 1974.
2	Two essays are especially relevant for understanding the pragmatic sense of tragedy and evil: the title essay, “Pragmatism and the Tragic Sense of Life” (1960), and “Intelligence and Evil in Human History” (1947).
3	In his article, “How Bush Really Won,” Mark Danner analyzes Bush’s speeches about the “War on Terror” during the presidential campaign: “In a few blunt lines Bush has subsumed everything else beneath the preeminent shining banner of the war on terror, and subsumed that war beneath his own reputation for forthrightness, decisiveness, and strength. And he has identified uncertainty, hesitation, vacillation – even the sort of nitpicking that would seek to separate the war in Iraq from the war on terror – as not mistaken or foolish but dangerous. ‘Relentless’ . . . ‘Steadfast’ . . . ‘Determined’: these words came fast and strong, again and again. And then the climatic line: ‘We will fight the terrorists across the globe so we do not have to fight them here at home!” (2005: 50).
4	William James introduced the distinction between “the tough-minded” and “the tender-minded” into philosophical discussion. He claimed that pragmatism “can satisfy both kinds of demand.” See “The Present Dilemma in Philosophy” in James 1977.
5	Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., stresses the importance of the distinction between a “preventive war” and a “preemptive war.” Given the dispute attached to the idea of a “preventive” war, the Bush administration prefers to talk about “preemptive” war, and too many have followed its example. The distinction between “preemptive” and “preventive” is well worth preserving. It is the distinction between legality and illegality. “Preemptive” war refers to a direct, immediate, specific threat that must be crushed at once; in the words of the Department of Defense manual, “an attack initiated on the basis of incontrovertible evidence that an enemy attack is imminent.” “Preventive” war refers to potential, future, therefore speculative threats. (Schlesinger 2004: 23). The Iraqi war a preventive war, not a preemptive war.
6	Richard Rorty quotes these remarks by Isaiah Berlin in his 1989: 46. Despite some of my disagreements with Rorty’s version of pragmatism, he is one of the most forceful and eloquent defenders of pragmatic fallibilism.

Chapter 4 Evil and the Corruption of Democratic Politics

1	Peter Singer observes that “Bush’s tendency to see the world in terms of good and evil is especially striking. He has spoken about evil in 319 separate speeches, or about 30 percent of all the speeches he gave between the time he took office and June 16, 2003. In these speeches he uses the word ‘evil’ as a noun far more than he uses it as an adjective – 914 noun uses as against 182 adjectival uses. Only twenty-four times, in all these occasions on which Bush talks of evil, does he use it as an adjective to describe what people do – that is, to judge acts and deeds. This suggests that Bush is not thinking about evil deeds, or even evil people, nearly as often as he is thinking about evil as a thing, or a force, something that has real existence apart from the cruel, callous, brutal, and selfish acts of which human beings are capable” (2004:2).
2	My discussion of Arendt’s conception of politics is based upon my earlier discussions of Arendt in my 1983 and 1996.
3	See my discussion of radical evil and the banality of evil in my 1996.
4	Arendt consistently used masculine nouns and pronouns when referring to human beings. But we should not forget that it is only relatively recently that women have been allowed to participate in political life.
5	See Arendt’s discussion of power, strength, authority, and violence in “On Violence,” in her 1972: 143ff. She describes power as follows: “Power corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert. Power is never the property of an individual; it belongs to a group and remains in existence only so long as the group keeps together. When we say of somebody that he is ‘in power’ we actually refer to his being empowered by a certain number of people to act in their name. The moment the group, from which the power originated to begin with (potestas in populo, without a people or group there is no power) disappears, ‘his power’ also vanishes.”
6	I have been stressing the overlap between Arendt and the pragmatic conception of democratic politics, especially in regard to what they perceive as the danger of introducing absolute good and evil into politics. But there are also some striking differences. Arendt thought that the type of politics she describes is limited to the few – to a political elite – although she insisted that everyone ought to have the opportunity to enter into the political sphere. This is why she preferred – as did the Founding Fathers – to speak about the Republic. The checks and balances of republican government were intended to prevent the excesses of unrestrained democracy. Dewey had a much greater faith in the “common man,” and the potential of all individuals to participate in democratic politics. Furthermore, Dewey would never accept the sharp distinction that Arendt draws between “the social” and “the political.” For a critique of Arendt’s distinction, see my article, “Rethinking the Social and the Political,” in my 1986.
7	In his press conference on Sept. 16, 2001, President Bush said: “This is a new kind of – a new kind of evil. And the American people are beginning to understand. This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while.” Muslims around the world were incensed with this reference to a “crusade.” Bush soon stopped speaking about a “crusade” against evil and terrorism.
8	When Schmitt speaks of “liberalism,” he is not using the expression as it is commonly used today in the United States, as the name of a political orientation that is distinguished from and opposed to “conservatism.” Rather, he is referring to the classical doctrine of liberalism that emphasizes individual rights and the alleged neutrality of the state in the protection of these rights. Liberalism in this sense has its roots in the philosophy of John Locke (although Schmitt thinks that it can be traced back to Hobbes). The United States is Schmitt’s preeminent example of liberal society in the twentieth century – and the target of his harshest criticism.
9	Schmitt insists on enmity as the basic human (political) condition, but rarely seeks to justify this claim. Heinrich Meier, one of the most insightful German scholars of Schmitt, persuasively argues that Schmitt’s understanding of “the political” is rooted in his political theology. Meier also provides a perceptive analysis of the changes in the several editions of The Concept of the Political, which he interprets as responses in hidden dialogue with Leo Strauss. See Meier 1995 and 1998. For an analysis of Schmitt that challenges some of Meier’s claims, see Scheuerman. See also McCormick 1997.
10	There are right and left Schmittians. There are those who (selectively) appeal to Schmitt to explain and “justify” the “War on Terror,” and those who (selectively) appeal to Schmitt to condemn the “War on Terror” as a disastrous total war “justified” by hypocritical universal moral principles of good and evil. For differing accounts of the use of Schmitt by the right and the left, see Lilla 1997 and Wolfe 2004.

Chapter 5 Evil and the Corruption of Religion

1	See Danner 2004. See also Steinfels 2004. Steinfels points out that “when Pope John Paul II weighed in on the question [of intrinsic evil] in his 1993 encyclical ‘The Splendor of Truth,’ the list of . . . actions he described as evil ‘in themselves, independently of circumstances’ included, along with genocide and slavery, ‘physical and mental torture.’”
2	Andrew Sullivan wrote this shortly before Alberto R. Gonzales was confirmed by the Senate to be the US Attorney-General by a vote of 60 (for) to 36 (against). Recently, there has been new evidence that foreign governments working secretly with the United States have been torturing prisoners captured by the Americans. This “outsourcing” of torture elicited a strong editorial from The New York Times. “What is going on here is not what supporters of the administration’s policies depict: an awful but necessary and skilled inquiry reserved for the worst terrorists, who hold secrets that could cost innocent lives. . . . This is about a system that was hastily conceived, ineptly formulated, incompetently administered and now out of control. It lowers the humanity of the people who practice it, and the citizens who condone it (“Self-Inflicted Wounds,” The New York Times, Feb. 15, 2005, A15).
3	See also the articles collected in Rosenbaum 2003, including my essay, “Pragmatism’s Common Faith.” See Stout 2004 for an illuminating and passionate defense of a pragmatic understanding of religion and democracy.
4	I am restricting my discussion to Protestant religious fundamentalism in the USA. Although the term originated in the USA, it is used today to identify a variety of religious movements, including Islamic fundamentalism. The most comprehensive study of fundamentalism in the world today is The Fundamentalism Project, a series of five volumes edited by Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby and published by the University of Chicago Press. Sponsored by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, these five volumes contain articles by an international group of leading religious scholars. For briefer studies of fundamentalism, see Bruce 2000, and Ruthven 2004.
5	Steve Bruce notes that there is a link between these two polar positions and the prevailing social climate. “In times of social crisis and economic depression, the more pessimistic premillennialist view tends to dominate. In periods of social optimism, such as that enjoyed by the USA in the first two decades of the twentieth century, the postmillennialist view tends to be more attractive” (Bruce 2000: 11).
6	José Casanova notes that during the Great Depression, “Evangelical Protestantism had ceased being a public civic religion . . . Along with the economy, religion was undergoing it own ‘depression.’ After the war, both religion and the economy underwent a typical cyclical revival, and the ‘Christianization’ of the American people continued apace, but the character of Christianity had changed. Religion had become increasingly privatized, and Protestantism had become just another denomination. The Protestant churches and other denominations could, and often did, still enter the public sphere. But they were no longer established there. They had to compete not only among themselves but, most important, with secular rivals” (Casanova 1994: 143).
7	Some commentators such as Martin E. Marty think that Protestant fundamentalism has now “peaked,” and that other Protestant groups such as the Pentecostals are rapidly growing in the USA and throughout the world.
8	See José Casanova’s illuminating analysis of Listen, America! (Casanova 1994: 150–4).
9	The New Christian Right includes more than Protestant conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists. It also includes a significant number of Catholic conservatives, who share many of the same domestic concerns as conservative Protestants, e.g. about abortion, homosexuality, single-sex marriage. The political significance of this Christian coalition is illustrated by what happened in Ohio in the 2004 presidential election. Ohio is a state that had suffered an economic downturn and extensive unemployment, and many pundits thought Kerry had a good chance of winning there. If John Kerry had received an additional 60,000 votes, he would have won Ohio’s twenty electoral votes and the national election. But the coalition of conservative Protestants and Catholics was largely responsible for Bush’s victory in Ohio. In addition to the conservative evangelical vote, Bush received 55 percent of the Catholic vote.