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by Steven Fesmire (Author)
While complex global problems cry out for solutions devised with moral sensitivity and responsibility, a more common mentality tends to prevail, one that assumes those going the right way ("us") are endangered by others ("them") going the wrong way. Philosopher Steven Fesmire calls this approach "moral fundamentalism," the idea that only we have access to the right diagnosis and prescription to our problems. Moral fundamentalism causes us to oversimplify, neglect broader context, take refuge in dogmatic absolutes, ignore possibilities for common ground, assume privileged access to the right way to proceed, and shut off honest inquiry. Moral fundamentalism--exacerbated by social media silos--also makes the worst of native impulses toward social bonding and antagonism. This depletes social capital and makes it impossible to debate and achieve superordinate goals, such as public health, justice, security, sustainability, peace, and democracy.
Drawing from John Dewey's pluralistic and pragmatic approach, Fesmire develops an alternative to the oversimplification of moral fundamentalism and the arbitrariness of relativism. He proposes a "pragmatic pluralism" that can be applied to complex ethical, political, educational, and policy problems--without flattening variability among values or presuming that abstract theories determine what we ought to do. He argues that the single-right-way premise that logically underlies moral fundamentalism is both unwarranted and constrictive, and that grand philosophical quests for unifying principles can still be accommodated within a wider pluralistic approach. In an engaging style, Fesmire shows the reader a new perspective on the challenges and promises of democratic decision-making in societies that are struggling to grow beyond moral fundamentalism.Author Biography
Steven Fesmire is Professor of Philosophy and Department Chair of Philosophy & Religious Studies at Radford University, and 2022-2024 President of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy. He edited The Oxford Handbook of Dewey (Oxford University Press, 2019), and his books John Dewey and Moral Imagination: Pragmatism in Ethics (Indiana University Press, 2003) and Dewey (Routledge Press, 2015) won Choice "Outstanding Academic Title" awards. A 2009 Fulbright Scholar in Japan, Fesmire has previously taught at Middlebury College, Green Mountain College, Siena College, and East Tennessee State University. His public philosophy work has appeared in places such as Salon, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, and The Humanist.
