Deweys Great Community: Democracy as Ethical Ideal

Phillip Quintero #N00121290

GPHI6091

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This paper traces the philosophical insight and political critique that travel across the eras of Deweys work. Specifically, the reader of The Public and Its Problems stands much to gain from looking at the prior treatment of many of the same problems in the essay The Ethics of Democracy. The effect of such a project will be to approach a fuller understanding of the later work. An assessment of Dewey does not go far enough if we simply say that he is ultimately concerned with the reorganization of structural institutions. There are more obscured philosophical motivations at work beside the overt democratic political motives that are so palpable in the later thought. Rather, Deweys theoretical concept of democracywhat I will characterize as the ethical ideal of communityis doing the work of laying philosophical stakes in the later writings. It is this perspective from the earlier work that I hope to bring to the later. This, of course, doesnt mean we should devalue Deweys analysis of the relationship between actual structures of society and government. On the contrary, it is precisely his social and political workwhich amounts to both a critique and a defense of democracythat stands much to gain in light the philosophical underpinnings that led up to the later book. Bringing this light to bear is the project of this paper. I contend that both Deweys critique of the Liberalism of his time and his diagnosis presented in The Public and its Problems can be better understood by a reading of his conceptual treatment of society and democracy. By the end of this paper, I hope to have shown why democracy, for Dewey, is a name used not only for the actualized understanding of the inherent ethical dimension of political human

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association, but also for the political methodology needed to realize such association. In this way, Deweys notion of democracy is an excellent representative of the Pragmatic project as a whole. I will accordingly depict an interpretation of Deweys philosophical concept of democracy as a methodology and as ethical ideal. Through such an investigation I test Deweys account of the connection between his strong conception community and his diagnosis of modern democratic governance. Section I of the paper will assess Deweys diagnosis of democracy in both its popular formal iterations and its function as an actual system of political governance. Section II will uncover Deweys philosophical commitments to propose reading his concept of democracy as both ethical and ideal. Section III will read the conclusions of the first two sections into what Dewey has written about modern democracies.

I. Locating Deweys Project Diagnosis and Critique Deweys notion of democracy is radical, not in reference to a particular party perspective, but in the way that it cannot be reduced to a specific political ideology. He does not want to identify his project with what he perceives to be the status quo in either philosophy or politics. The idea that comes across from the article Democracy is Radical is that democracy must go down to the roots of political organization, including the political process; that the ends of freedom and individuality for all can be attained only by means that accord with those ends1. To show this, and in order to locate this project, I will examine the schools of thought that

1

Democracy is Radical (1937) source: The Essential Dewey, ed. Larry A. Hickman and Thomas M. Alexander. (Indiana University Press, 1998) v.1 338.

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Dewey critiques, and the shortcomings for which he ultimately rejects them. This should supply us with a kind of rubric with which to evaluate whether Deweys own theory can adequately respond to the problems he identifies. In this way I will attempt to first approach the idea negatively, by pulling an image out of his critique of political theory. Starting with Deweys early work, we can see that he rejects the idea of a social body as a mere mass of individuals. This liberal-individualist interpretation of human political behavior is equivalent to the destruction of society.2 This destruction is a result of the reification included in dealing with groups of people theoretically, as numerical aggregates3, which is that the nonsocial individual is an abstraction arrived at by imagining what man would be if all his human qualities were taken away.4 A philosophy like that of Hobbes5 struggles against a false problemit tries to bestow some rational order (or rationalization of apparent disorder) where associated activity is already a natural phenomenon. A problematic consequence of such abstraction is its reliance on some artificial construct to account for the actual existence of the social sphere. Dewey objects to the introduction of this

Ethics of Democracy (ED) in The Early Works of John Dewey 1882-1898. Ed. George Axtell and Jo Ann Boydston. (Southern Illinois University Press: Carbondale) v.1 232
3

Dewey refers to the work of Sir Henry Maine as a useful representative of all the political theories that consider democracy as the rule of the many, which he associates with Hobbes as well as with a misreading of Aristotle (ED 229).
4 5

ED 232

see Nature, Life and Body-Mind from Experience and Nature. Source: The Essential Dewey v.1 136.

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kind of artificesuch as social contract6 or essentialist appeals to human natureto patch up the incongruity between individualist theories and the fact of human sociality. Of the latter he says, Appeal to a gregarious instinct to account for social arrangements is the outstanding example of the lazy fallacy. Here again, there is a commitment to the problems that come from society-as-mass perspectives. This mistaken viewpoint is also what drives these thinkers to their critiques of democracy. It is easy to see the connection here; To define democracy simply as the rule of the many, as sovereignty chopped up into mince meat, is to define it as abrogation of society, as society dissolved7. For Dewey, the idea of democracy as rule-by-nobody does not hold up without the individualist assumption. Deweys critique cuts even deeper than calling out this assumption. In-line with the antifoundationalism that pragmatism adheres to, Dewey is also wary of the way political theorists and philosophersacross intellectual epochsare concerned with finding a causal force with which to explain phenomena. Both Rousseauian appeal to instinct and Hobbesian materialism are focused on looking for such causal factors, a methodology opposed to pragmatisms focus on consequences. Dewey will later bring the same critique to bear on Marx. If we accept that Deweys own theory can be read not in terms of causal forces, but in light of a commitment to the importance of consequences, it becomes more tenable to follow his

6

He speaks of the Social Contract on ED 231

Ibid.

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alternative theory. Of course, it would be several years before Dewey developed his pragmatism, and so we will leave that insight for later in this paper. At this stage in his intellectual development, it should be apparent enough that the early Dewey was firmly in the grasp of his Hegelian influences. His rejection of a non-social individual, and the language of articulation and generality show the role idealism had in forming his philosophical perspective. It is hard to ignore that Hegel likened the State to an organism in a way that shares principles of Deweys critique of individualistic-liberal political theories. If, as I suggest, this perspective remains influential in Deweys work even as he later moved away from idealism, then it is here that we can identify where the later Dewey is beholden to history. Dewey later makes problems of largescale democratic states the subject of diagnosis, but stops short of Hegels project of assessing the ideal state8.

II In the previous section I have examined one of Deweys earliest and most basic philosophical commitmentsthat man is essentially a social being9, and the way this commitment informs any subsequent theory of political society. In order, then, not to fall into the shortcomings of a political theory that fails to understand prepolitical human sociality, Deweys project must be to propose an alternative concept that is in line with this premise.

8 As we will see later on, the state cannot be an ideal for Deweyit is the expression of the

ideal of community.
9

ED 232

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Dewey must provide us with both an alternative description of an essentially social political community and political system, as he will stand by no reduction between the two10. I argue however that, for Dewey, democracy is the answer for both.

Democracy as Organic Society and the Problem of the Common Will If this be so [that society in its unified and structural character is the fact of the case], and if democracy be a form of society, it not only does have, but must have, a common will; for it is this unity of will which makes it an organism. A state represents men so far as they have become organically related to one another, or are possessed of a unity of purpose and interest.11 In one sense, in this early formulation Dewey lays plain his theory of democracy. To simplify the argument: a) Sociality is a fact of human existence, b) A theory of society that is true to this premise will must be an organic one, c) Organic society has a common will, and d) democracy is the formal, actual instance of the common will of a human community (the organism of both the real political community and institutions of the state). As I read Ethics of Democracy, premise (a) is very simply a fact for Dewey. This premise is borne of the problems he sees with individualist political philosophy and of the extent to which he is influenced by Hegel. This is the subject of section I of this paper. I will now move on to (b), the notion of society as

Dewey seems to anticipate what Habermas will later characterize as the difference between system and lifeworld. Deweys own preoccupations about democracy moving away from community are well captured by what Habermas calls the colonization of the lifeworld.
10
11

ED 232

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organism. The introduction of the organism into Ethics of Democracy is a little abrupt. Dewey uses it already as a working concept, a way of talking about political communities. I take it that he expects his reader will, as he does, adopt this particular usage from Hegel12 and from what he describes as the whole drift of political theory since the abstract natural right philosophy of the French Revolution towards the conception that society is an organism, and government an expression of its organic nature. 13 At times the idea of society-as-organism is part and parcel of human sociality. It is no help to Dewey, however, if we read his argument as an abstract positing of essential human connectedness that translates to the essential wholeness of a social group. This uncharitable reading would suspect Dewey of dealing in tautologies. The fact is that some work must be done to get us from (a) to (b). At other moments such work is evident, such as in the quote opening this section of the paper, where an organism is constituted by possession of a unity of will. At least we can conclude that there is something about human associated action by virtue of which it is an organic societysomething electrons, for instance, do not have. That being said, I find this section of The Ethics of Democracy to be rather unhelpful. Fortunately, in the next 39 years, by the publication of The Public and Its Problems, Dewey

12 13

See Hothos addition to 263 in Hegels Philosophy of Right.

ED 232. Dewey echoes Hegel when he writes, Government is to the state what language is to thought; it not only communicates the purposes of the state, but in so doing gives them for the first time articulation and generality. (ED 230)

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found a vocabulary with which to clarify his position. Filling out what I see as a shortcoming in the real-world analysis of the young Dewey, he later writes: Conjoint, combined, associated action is a universal trait of the behavior of things. Such action has results. Some of the results of human collective action are perceived, that is, they are noted in such ways that they are taken account of. Then there arise purposes, plans, measures and means, to secure consequences which are liked and eliminate those which are found obnoxious. Thus perception generates a common interest; that is, those affected by the consequences are perforce concerned in conduct of all those who along with themselves share in bringing about the results Now follows the hypothesis. Those indirectly and seriously affected for good or for evil form a group distinctive enough to require recognition and a name. The name selected is the Public.14 This passage, in comparison with the earlier article, seems to demonstrate Deweys idealist beginnings tempered by the methodology of pragmatism. Gone is the language of manifestation and actual expression15. Instead, Deweys theory takes on the pragmatic characteristics of experimentalism and a commitment to facts and consequences. In this formulation, the premise is acknowledged to be a very basic assertion, and the unity that seems to be the basis for advocating democracy has shifted from the expression of a common will to the formation of a common interest. The argument for essential human sociality is much clearer in this passage. Dewey is not

14

Search for the Public from The Public and its Problems, source: The Essential Dewey, ed. Larry A. Hickman and Thomas M. Alexander. (Indiana University Press, 1998) v.1 292
15

ED 234

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relying on the language of idealism, but is rather making a more or less traditional ontological remarknamely, that things in the world are associated with one another. This formulation is much less contestable than the equivalent idea presented in the earlier article: here it applies to humans no less than to molecules. The whole of associated behavior when it occurs in humanity is the human world, it is society. The stakes laid out in The Ethics of Democracy are not compromised here, but the argument is much more focused under the new pragmatic formulation. So, too, the argument for society as organism gains clarity here. Whereas in Ethics of Democracy, the society-as-organism view was somehow related both to essential human sociality and to unity of will, here we can understand organism (or public) as a whole whose unity comes from common interest. Indeed, even the process by which this common interest is formed is a pragmatic one; it is through experimentalism that a society decides what consequences of associated or conjoint action are and are not in its favor. It through this tendency of intelligent beings that a public is formed. Dewey would agree with the position that a group of people is a community in the extent to which this formation process of common interest is successful. A community becomes a public thing in the extent to which the common interest extends beyond the people who are directly involved. Though the vocabulary of organism has largely given way to public, the entire point of view is not a radical departure from Ethics of Democracy. The public community is the sum of the organic association of the demos and its tendency or its ethos. This understanding of the

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public is an improvement on Deweys early theory of the organic form of society as actualized through the common will. It better fills the void left by his own critique of individualism. It is only in light of the tendency of a society to reflexively vet purposes, plans, measures and means that it begins to make sense for the early Dewey to say that [a vote] is a manifestation of some tendency of the social organism.16 This tendency, no longer conceived of as the manifestation of an ideal will, now takes on a character more akin to natural selection. The formation of common interest has a key difference with Darwins theory, however, in that as Dewey describes it, the formation process is intelligent. Humans can reflexively evaluate their own interests, unlike Dawkins selfish gene. 17 It is the ability of human association to take account of the consequences of collective actions that is now called out by Dewey as the grounding for community. This alone does not solve the problem, however. This generation of common interest through perception still has to be examined. Dewey, for instance, agreed with Walter Lippmann that the citizen of a large-scale society like the United States couldnt possess the nearomniscience required to have an intelligent perspective on every consequence of every action in which the public has a stake.18

16 ED 234 17 see Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene. Whereas Dawkins is dealing with theories of

biological evolution, Dewey is dealing with the development of human community, and I do not mean to suggest that Dawkins argument against intentional design applies in this case.
18 See Lippmann, Walter The Phantom Public, as well as the exchange between Dewey and

Lippmann on this subject.

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If nothing else, Dewey has left us with room for future projects. Indeed, he has successfully deepened the problem with his later analysis, and now it becomes clear what he meant when he previously wrote, Society, as a real whole, is the normal order19. Democracy realizes its ethical dimension when one takes the perspective that society is an organism capable of moderating its own interests. Democracy is the formal organization that allows the organism to carry out this function. Democratic structures of government carry the ethical validity that comes from allowing a society to secure consequences which are liked and eliminate those which are found obnoxious. This idea of democracy as the methodology of social emancipation shares a family resemblance with the project taken up by Habermas in The Theory of Discourse Ethics, and it seems to me perfectly appropriate to read Dewey as a kind of critical theory. Thus understood, it becomes clear what is at stake in something like the search for a Great Community. Structures of government in modern large-scale societies such as the United States are not sufficiently empowering of and informed by the tendency of an organic society to move collectively towards common interest. This is ironic, because democracy is supposed to be just thatgovernment by the community. He sees the problem in terms of a misunderstanding of what we are doing when we claim to operate on democratic principles. Modern democracy, as Dewey sees it, is increasingly moving towards the bureaucratic management of a fractured population riddled with disparate private interests. He advocates a return to understanding democracy as the formalized expression of community, of organic society. The Public and Its

19

ED 232

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Problems is largely about how social and political institutions need to be structured so that the actual democratic society can function more like the ideal one.

III It is in this spirit that Dewey makes his critique of modern democratic political systems, which are in some way not democratic. He points out; the conceptions and shibboleths which are traditionally associated with democracy take on a veridical and directive meaning only when they are construed as marks and traits of an association which realizes the defining characteristics of a community. 20 His treatment of the ideas of fraternity, liberty and equality illustrate the difference here. These shibboleths are seen to take on the pietism of an empty utopian ideal in, for instance, nationalist rhetoric. Politicians usually call on the pathos of notions like fraternity, liberty, and equality when extolling the laurels of their particular democratic institutions. They have been cited as justification for merely political agendas, even imperialistic ones. Dewey would have us take a critical look at these notions. Without insight as to how these concepts are characteristics of community, these ethical foundations become empty. Dewey has extracted from these concepts the actual conditions we consider desirable, and points out that they are aspects of ethical community life. He makes a neat comparison of the meaning of fraternity,

20 Search for the Great Community from

The Public and its Problems, source: The Essential

Dewey, v.1 295

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liberty and equality between their abstracted appropriations by political ideologues versus their character as ethical foundations of community: Abstract appropriation by individualist political theories

Community-based ideal

Denotes the unhampered share which each individual member A creed of mechanical identity which is false of the community has in the consequences of associated to the facts and impossible of realization. action. It is equitable because it is Efforts to maintain it is divisive of the vital Equality bonds which hold men together... the outcome measured only by need and is a mediocrity in which good is common only capacity to utilize, not by extraneous factors which deprive in the sense of being average an vulgar one in order that another may take and have It is more difficult to sever the idea of is another name for the brotherhood from that of a community, and conspicuously appreciated goods hence it is either practically ignored in the which accrue from an association Fraternity movements which identify democracy with in which all share, and which Individualism, or else it is a sentimentally gives direction to the conduct of appended tag each. That secure release and fulfillment of personal potentialities which rake place only in rich and manifold Independence of social ties, and ends in association with others: the power Liberty dissolution and anarchy. to be an individualized self making a distinctive contribution and enjoying in its own way the fruits of association. Figure 121

21

Ibid. (Quotations)

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These three words, when taken as presented under individualism are idols, whereas Dewey would have us see them as ideals, something to be striven for in the pursuit of community. We can see that what is missing, as it were, is exactly the communitarian characteristic that I have in the paper argued best represent Deweys notion of democracy. Deweys reading of these ideals of democracy restores a validity that its detractors would be remiss not to reconsider. As I read him, Dewey is a master of radical critique. His work often brings to the issues a perspective which brushes off rhetorical baggage to uncover the meaning that is often lost in the debate. He looks to the very root of democracy, community, and pulls out the ethical ideal that makes it compelling to think about in the first place. His analysis is able to access an ontological moment of beginning, of human history, providing archeological insights that are neither nostalgic nor dogmatic. This is the aspect of Deweys work that remains relevant to politics, philosophy, critical theory, pedagogy, and almost any other field where the conditions of life are under investigation.