Inconvenient truths: pluralism, pragmatism, and the need for civil disagreement

Environmental philosophers and ethicists who have advocated for “environmental pragmatism” have been right to insist on the importance of pluralism in environmental debates and on the utility of pragmatism in navigating them. But they have tended to rest their claims too heavily on the premise that consensus is a necessary, and readily achievable, condition of pragmatic thought and action. Recent developments within environmental studies and sciences (ESS) suggest a similar trend. What the pragmatist tradition requires, by contrast, is a commitment to the disagreement that necessarily accompanies ideological diversity and to the conservation of the conditions, structures, and institutions within which that disagreement can exist and even thrive. Ultimately, pragmatism prioritizes dissent as the basis for a healthy and rigorously democratic community. With environmental problems, this prerogative becomes even more pronounced, given their invariably complex social, political, and scientific dimensions, which require intellectually and ideologically diverse responses. Environmental discourse, education, and politics would benefit from the recognition that conflict among pluralistic constituencies, when considered through the lens of pragmatism, becomes not a problem to be solved but a fact to be lived with, and a tool to be used.