Epistemology and Pragmatic Idealism (Are You Kidding Me?)

     I can barely say epistemology and when I think of pragmatic idealism, my head starts spinning round and round like a whirling dervish. So, this little narrative is an attempt to talk about epistemology and pragmatic idealism  in terms that farmer Fred might understand; thank you in advance for your patience with me.

     How do you and I know what we know? Excuse me, how do we know what we know sounds like some sort of riddle or trick question to me. In our discussion Wednesday in class, we went through a whole mess of explanations and descriptions of how we might know what we know. I think we listed about five or six different items that all lend themselves to knowing what we know, the least of which (in my mind) was not intuition. But wait just a gal darned minute, my Unity friends have been teaching me to use my intuition since I first walked into a Unity church over 30 years ago. I was also told in Unity I could determine my own spiritual truth and not have to adopt some other person’s or religion’s truth. It seems to me then, that intuition may well be the most important aspect of epistemology. That is, if you took away intuition and you left the remainder of the “ other “  factors like Authority, Revelation, Scientific method,  and Tradition, we’d have one heck of a boring religion. It would all be about somebody else’s or some Traditional understanding of religious truth; now is that what you want? Of course, Authority can be applied to one’s own understanding, i.e. one’s (intuitive) understanding of truth principles. When we understand truth principles, we can then speak with Authority (for ourselves).

     I don’t know about you, but I was sold on Unity because I could take what was written in the Bible and I could take spiritual truths and interpret them myself.  I could literally do as it states in the third step of 12 step recovery, “find a God as I understood Him or Her,” not your God or your understandings, but mine, and one that works for me and that I am comfortable with. Well sir, maybe I’m missing something here, but when it comes to the EP word, I’m voting for Intuition. Okay, I’m out here on this tightrope all by myself, and I might well fall off, but then that’s the chance you have to take in the big leagues, and when I left traditional Christianity and turned myself into a Unitich, I voted for intuition. It may not be much, but it’s all I got.

    Now, with regard to Pragmatic Idealism, now isn’t that one beautiful phraseology.   Is pragmatic idealism a reference to the 4^th amendment to the U S Constitution? I have a difficult time in my mind linking pragmatism with idealism. To me it’s like linking   John Boehner to the Democratic Party. That dog just won’t hunt. To be honest, pragmatic idealism as a reflection of the Unity Movement might be better phrased as Idyllic idealism. Why don’t we just “fess up” and tell the truth. Unity is an idyllic alliteration of a band of Unitichs who call themselves “truth seekers”.  To suggest that there’s anything practical or pragmatic about Unity is like saying that George W was a genius, and he never told a falsehood. Call me weird or even radical, but I’m Ok that Unity is made up of idealistic hippies, who couldn’t balance our checkbooks even with a slide rule. The world needs us Unitichs to balance all of them “right wing” traditionalists who seem to have an answer for everything. Thank God for Unity. And thank God for Balance. (I just wish I had some.)