Wisdom is not acquired by learning philosophy or adopting religion. Although these actions may contribute to our ability to cope, adapt, and create meaning in our life, they do not, in and of themselves, make us wiser. Wisdom requires perspectival flexibility and contextualism in addition to knowledge. A pragmatic humanistic stance can help us widen our perspective when exploring other cultures, philosophies, and religions. When we hold our individual truth lightly, we can participate in the truths of others and not feel compelled to establish any absolute truth.
Pragmatic Humanism is an intellectual stance that allows us to learn from the wisdom acquired by mankind over time, as well as to learn from our current global diversity. Through the flexibility and openness of an intellect based in pragmatic humanism, we can advance our personal wisdom, integrate the wisdom of others, and do so without the interference of ascertaining absolute Truth. Pragmatic Humanism is a perspective based on an understanding of truth as relative, but not irrational.
Richard Rorty describes truth from a pragmatic perspective, where truth and values are in a continual recursive dialogue with cultural norms. Classical humanism described a fundamental human nature that one should strive to attain. Rorty prefers to view humanism as tied to an evolving of human nature, a nature that cannot be completely specified. Human nature is indeterminate and reveals itself recursively with an unfolding in the future, shaped by culture and history. As a pragmatist, Rorty will consider the end result as determining the value of a given choice or belief structure.
According to Rorty, in making this shift we must not act from convenience, but begin to act from what will lead to even more convenience for us in the future. We would be guided in making choices that pragmatically lead to human flourishing. The exact nature of human flourishing is a created event in one’s own life and is reflected in our shared history and culture.
Human beings are continually creating a culture, a culture that in turn re-creates us. Through this ever-expanding process of creation, there emerges the ultimate possibility of ideal human flourishing. This recursive creative process replaces the age-old tension of nature and nurture by challenging the fundamental distinction between the person and environment. As human beings we exist in the world and we create the world. Through this recursive process we evolve and advance. We are not nature, we are not nurture, and we are not a combination of the two; humanness is an embedded condition that evolves.
What is best for us to do is not determined from abstract truths or logical philosophical analysis, but what is best for us now as based on what is better for us in our future. Although this perspective is ethnocentric, it does not include promoting one ethnocentricity over any other. However, this relativism is not absolute; there are truths that are more adaptive in a given normative cultural context than other possible truths.
Truth emerges for each of us by asking, “does this move me towards the better me?” The better self includes understanding how our biases and values have been shaped by socio-cultural norms and psychobiological constraints. This is a personal ethnography within, which I struggle to look upon myself in as broad a context as possible. The broadest stance possible requires exposure to other ways of thinking outside of our familiar normative environment. Exploring philosophy, religion, and culture not our own with an open mindedness, will help us develop this broad perspective from which to assess our own normative truths.
The better “me” does not emerge from the mere passage of time or the mere perfecting of established psycho-behavioral patterns. Self-reflection with perspective can begin to reveal the trajectory towards the better me, a continually asymptotic striving for excellence towards flourishing, of Arête toward Eudaimonia.