All of the things said of Abraham Lincoln, by Abraham Lincoln, for Abraham Lincoln in the January 5 post have been said of, by and for Barack Obama. There is yet something else. Obama is a "pragmatist," pragmatism being the only home-grown American philosophy, a product of post-Civil War thought and the intellectual creation of, among others, Captain Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., 20th Massachusetts Volunteers Regiment. Lincoln was the proto-pragmatist.
Pragmatism explains everything, except what a man should die for, wrote Louis Menand. That is, at the moral core of pragmatism there is no, or an insufficient, "there there." Take the following:
"'Slavery has always been wrong' is a true statement."
Pragmatist philosophers were split on that one. Richard Rorty, the most prominent late-20th century pragmatist, responding to a feminist critique, wrote, in a footnote, as I recall, that yes, he and pragmatists could agree that that statement was true. Other pragmatists however did not agree. They argued, as pragmatists do, that a statement can not be considered true as there is no Truth, there is no meta-philosophical referent that verifies truth, there is only the utility of a practice and how can that statement be true when slavery has been utilized throughout man's history and, in America, as recently as 150 years ago. And is mentioned in the Constitution. The dissenting pragmatists argument was more consistent with pragmatic thought than Rorty's footnote.
But wait. Why couldn't Rorty, and I, and non-pragmatists, point to Abraham Lincoln's moral opposition to slavery and how the Great Emancipator carried the day and retort that there was evidence that "slavery has always been wrong" was true then as it is now? Because, among other reasons, Lincoln, the proto-pragmatist, did not let morality, even on slavery, dictate his public policy as president. Just like Obama.
Image: Obama in the Oval Office. He moved a bust of Churchill out, and one of Lincoln in.
