"Obama as a kind of philosopher president" like Adams, Jefferson, Madison, JQA, Lincoln & Wilson

[Pirate Smile]

In Writings of Obama, a Philosophy Is Unearthed


James T. Kloppenberg

When the Harvard historian James T. Kloppenberg decided to write about the influences that shaped President Obama’s view of the world, he interviewed the president’s former professors and classmates, combed through his books, essays, and speeches, and even read every article published during the three years Mr. Obama was involved with the Harvard Law Review (“a superb cure for insomnia,” Mr. Kloppenberg said). What he did not do was speak to President Obama.
“He would have had to deny every word,” Mr. Kloppenberg said with a smile. The reason, he explained, is his conclusion that President Obama is a true intellectual — a word that is frequently considered an epithet among populists with a robust suspicion of Ivy League elites.

In New York City last week to give a standing-room-only lecture about his forthcoming intellectual biography, “Reading Obama: Dreams, Hopes, and the American Political Tradition,” Mr. Kloppenberg explained that he sees Mr. Obama as a kind of philosopher president, a rare breed that can be found only a handful of times in American history.
“There’s John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and John Quincy Adams, then Abraham Lincoln and in the 20th century just Woodrow Wilson,” he said.

To Mr. Kloppenberg the philosophy that has guided President Obama most consistently is pragmatism, a uniquely American system of thought developed at the end of the 19th century by William James, John Dewey and Charles Sanders Peirce. It is a philosophy that grew up after Darwin published his theory of evolution and the Civil War reached its bloody end. More and more people were coming to believe that chance rather than providence guided human affairs, and that dogged certainty led to violence.
Pragmatism maintains that people are constantly devising and updating ideas to navigate the world in which they live; it embraces open-minded experimentation and continuing debate. “It is a philosophy for skeptics, not true believers,” Mr. Kloppenberg said.

Those who heard Mr. Kloppenberg present his argument at a conference on intellectual history at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center responded with prolonged applause. “The way he traced Obama’s intellectual influences was fascinating for us, given that Obama’s academic background seems so similar to ours,” said Andrew Hartman, a historian at Illinois State University who helped organize the conference.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/28/books/28klopp.html?_r=1&src=twt&twt=nytimes

[JuniperLea]

1. Intellect and academia need to go down, M**********R!

I can hear it now.

This is an incredible article! Well worth the full read!!

[Pirate Smile]

6. Teabaggers hate that stuff.

:)

[JNelson6563]

13. Well said.

On all points. :-)

Julie

[yurbud]

2. a true pragmatist would realize that for humanity to survive, our current financial elite

need to be removed from the levers of power permanently.

[Pirate Smile]

3. That sounds like a revolution in this country.

[Uzybone]

4. Very true. the only way that will happen is with blood....

The financial elite have never given up their grip on power without bloodshed.

[yurbud]

7. just like with commies in sovirt union, there will be a point when cops and troops

Realize that by defending those in power, they were hurting their own interests,and the first time they refuse to fight or break up as demonstration, it will be over for the current elite.

Something similar happened in venezuela with Chavez when we tried to have him overthrown. Enough of themilitary sided with the people instead of the wealthy coup plotters. That it was stopped. They were tired of being the bad guys in their own country's history.

[Pirate Smile]

8. Let me go out on a limb here and say - Obama is never going to satisfy you.

But I bet you already knew that. :)

[yurbud]

9. I would have been happy with more progressive domestic policy and less actively

oppressive foreign policy, even somewhere to the right of LBJ but left of Bill Clinton.

but thanks for repeating the talking point that some of us are unrealistic because we actually expected our elected representatives to represent those of us who voted for them.

[impik]

5. Too smart, too classy and simply too good for this country

No wonder they hates him.

[nofurylike]

10. K&R this is GREAT, Pirate Smile!! THANK YOU for posting it!! nt

[Tarheel_Dem]

11. What an excellent read. Thanks for posting it here. Rec. (nt)

[babylonsister]

12. RECOMMEND! nt

[KossackRealityCheck]

14. Keep in mind pragmatism isn't every day pragmatism

I saw this in the NYT this morning, and it's quite interesting. The scholar says that he is not talking about "vulgar pragmatism," which is something like being practical.

Pragmatism is a philosophy somewhat related to neo-Marxism. It's about how we learn. Richard Rorty and Cornell West are the two most prominent contemporary pragmatist philosophers.