Thoughts on Pragmatism and Critical Theory
January 17, 2019 — Brad Venner
Weaving Two Left-Hegelian Threads
Outline of paper: Non-violent socialist revolution - an oxymoron MLK as an inheritor of the pragmatist tradition German critical theory and it’s encounter with American pragmatism Weaving “pragmatic” and “principled” non-violence together through discourse ethics
Non-violent socialist revolution - an oxymoron
Marxism and anarchism as two violent ideologies that arose from left hegelian thought
1871 Paris Commune as ‘blood soaked’
Bakunin as prescient critic of ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’
State socialism
MLK’s non-violent philosophy as a variety of pragmatism
From this viewpoint, there is a certain irony in distinguishing non-violence used strategically as “pragmatic non-violence”
Hegel->Peirce->Royce->Thurman->King
American pragmatism MLK as an inheritor of the left-Hegelian thought
Josiah Royce