Rescuing Dewey

Rescuing Dewey
Essays in Pragmatic Naturalism
Peter T. Manicas
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Manicas, Peter T.
Rescuing Dewey : essays in pragmatic naturalism / Peter T. Manicas.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7391-2515-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-7391-2515-X (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Dewey, John, 1859-1952. I. Title.
B945.D44M27 2008
191dc22 2008018082
eISBN-13: 978-0-7391-3020-9
eISBN-10: 0-7391-3020-X
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v
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction xi
PART I PRAGMATISM AND SCIENCE
1 Pragmatic Philosophy of Science and the Charge of Scientism 3
2 John Dewey and American Psychology 35
3 John Dewey and American Social Science 63
4 Culture and Nature 81
PART II NOT ANOTHER EPISTEMOLOGY
5 Naturalism and Subjectivism: Philosophy for the Future? 101
6 Naturalizing Epistemology: Reconstructing Philosophy 119
PART III DEMOCRACY
7 American Democracy: A New Spirit in the World 143
8 John Dewey: Anarchism and the Political State 187
9 Philosophy and Politics: A Historical Approach to
Marx and Dewey 211
10 John Dewey and the Problem of Justice 237
11 Liberalisms Discontent: America in Search of a Past That
Never Was 251
Contents
PART IV WHY NOT DEWEY?
12 The Evasion of Philosophy 273
13 Democratic Hope 283
14 Analytic Pragmatism 287
15 Postmodern Pragmatism 295
Bibliography 305
Index 315
About the Author 323
vi Contents
vii
The original place and time of presentation and/or publication is indicated be-
low. I am grateful to each of the editors and publishers for their permission to
reprint.
Chapter 1, Pragmatic Philosophy of Science and the Charge of Scientism,
was read as part of an invited panel, American Philosophical Association,
Boston, December 1986, and appeared in The Transactions of the Charles S.
Peirce Society, Vol. XXIV, No. 4 (Spring 1988), pp. 179222.
Chapter 2, John Dewey and American Psychology, Journal for the Theory
of Social Behavior, Vol. 32, No. 3 (September 2002), pp. 26794.
Chapter 3, John Dewey and American Social Science, in Larry Hickman (ed.),
Reading Dewey (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), pp. 4362.
Chapter 4, Culture and Nature, was the Patrick Romanell Lecture, Ameri-
can Philosophical Association, Portland, March 27, 1992, published in Pro-
ceedings of the American Philosophical Association, Vol. 66, No. 3 (1992),
pp. 5976.
Chapter 5, Naturalism and Subjectivism, read at the conference, The Future
of Realism in the American Tradition of Pragmatic Naturalism, University of
Buffalo, October 2022, 2000. The essay appeared in John Shook, (ed.),
Pragmatic Naturalism and Realism (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books,
2003), pp. 79106.
Acknowledgements
Chapter 6, Naturalizing Epistemology: Reconstructing Philosophy, in John
J. Stuhr (ed.), Philosophy and the Reconstruction of Culture: Pragmatic Es-
says after John Dewey (Albany: SUNY Press, 1992), pp. 15174.
Chapter 7, American Democracy: ANew Spirit in the World, Chapter 13 of
War and Democracy (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), pp. 33878.
Chapter 8, John Dewey: Anarchism and the Political State, read at the an-
nual meetings of the Society for the Advancement of Philosophy, Villanova
University, Spring 1980, and appearing in Transactions of the Charles S.
Peirce Society, Vol. 18 (Spring 1982), pp. 13358. Reprinted in J. E. Tiles
(ed.), John Dewey: Critical Assessments, Vol. II (London and New York:
Routledge, 1992), pp. 40729.
Chapter 9, Philosophy and Politics: A Historical Approach to Marx and
Dewey, originally, Deweys Critique of Marxism, Society for the Ad-
vancement of American Philosophy, American Philosophical Association,
Eastern Division, New York, December 28, l984, and appeared in W. J. Gavin
(ed.), Context over Foundation: Dewey and Marx (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1988),
pp. 14775.
Chapter 10, John Dewey and the Problem of Justice, Journal of Value In-
quiry, Vol. 15 (1981), pp. 27991. Reprinted in J. E. Tiles (ed.), John Dewey:
Critical Assessments, Vol. III (London and New York: Routledge, 1992),
pp. 40729.
Chapter 11, Liberalisms Discontent: America in Search for a Past That
Never Was, read at a panel discussion Midwest Political Science Associa-
tion, Chicago, April 1998.
Chapter 12, The Evasion of Philosophy, Review of Cornel West, The Amer-
ican Evasion of Philosophy, Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society,
Vol. XXVl, No. 3 (Summer 1990), pp. 37384.
Chapter 13, Democratic Hope, Review of Robert B. Westbrook, Demo-
cratic Hope: Pragmatism and the Politics of Truth, in Perspectives on Poli-
tics, American Political Science Association, Vol. 4, No. 2 (June 2006),
pp. 37375.
Chapter 14, Analytic Pragmatism, Review of Mathew Festenstein, Prag-
matism and Political Theory: From Dewey to Rorty (Chicago: University of
viii Acknowledgements
Chicago Press, 1997), Transactions of the Charles Peirce Society, Vol.
XXXV, No. 1 (Winter 1999), pp. 20314.
Chapter 15, Postmodern Pragmatism, Review of Baert, Philosophy of the
Social Sciences: Towards Pragmatism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005), forth-
coming in Journal of Critical Realism.
Acknowledgements ix
xi
There may be no philosopher who has provoked more books and articles than
John Dewey, who, of course, may also have set a record in producing books
and articles. (The Collected Works, now complete, number some thirty-seven
volumes.) One wonders if anyone has read all of it. Indeed, one strategy, per-
haps too frequently adopted, is to ignore all the critical literature and try to
stick to his published textssometimes, not even to all of them! Nor, it may
be supposed, is any philosopher less in need of rescuing. He has been the
subject of several biographies, including two excellent recent biographies and
his name continues to reappear in all sorts of contexts. Moreover, Deweys
many critics ranged pretty much across the philosophical spectrum and, to be
sure, there were plenty of sympathetic philosophers who responded to these
critics. But the guiding idea in this volume is not to try to rescue Dewey from
his critics (although that is sometimes also a consequence), but to rescue
Dewey from his friends.
The friends that he needs rescuing from fall into two main groups. On the
one hand, there are those who either play down or ignore the implications of
Deweys naturalism. For these philosophers, his version of pragmatism broke
new ground precisely because it overcame the fundamental impasses of tradi-
tional metaphysics. Viewed from the perspective of academic philosophy,
these philosophers have labored hard to preserve and extend Deweys prag-
matism as an original and distinct American philosophy. While still marginal
in the academy, they have made many important contributions. Prominent in
this group are philosophers who speak of Deweys metaphysics of experi-
ence.
1
For these philosophers, Jamess radical empiricism is often taken as
Deweys point of departure. These philosophers see rightly that Dewey re-
jected atomistic empiricist versions of experience and that, for him, experience
Introduction
was rich and informing, and included not only relations of all sorts, but both
doings and sufferings. But as Tiles has recently remarked, while Dewey
insisted that in his Experience and Nature, he sought to provide an empirical
naturalism or a naturalistic empiricism, he saw also that many philosophers
would find these expressions to be oxymoronic, like talking of a round
square.
These philosophers take seriously the problem set out by Kant and hold,
not without reason, that Dewey is suspicious of metaphysics in Kants sense:
claims about that which is not in experience. The problem here, as Ralph Bar-
ton Perry saw, was the slip into philosophical idealism. He argued: It would
appear that while Dewey . . . rescues reality from dependence on intellect, he
is satisfied to leave it in the grasp of more universal experience which is a
matter of functions and habits, of active adjustments and re-adjustments, of
coordinations and activities, rather than of states of consciousness (Perry,
1955: 315). Some defenders of Dewey would, I think, also be satisfied. Perry
was not, of course, since he persisted that a thoroughgoing realism must as-
sert independence not only of thought, but any variety whatsoever of experi-
ence, whether it be perception, feeling, or even the instinctive response of the
organism to its environment (315).
2
There was something radical and important about insisting on the rejection
of a subject/object dichotomy but on the usual terms, if existence is re-
stricted to what can be experienced, it is hard to see how idealism is to be
avoided. There is an alternative, a form of critical realism, which makes
Kants thing-in-itself knowable. That is, the causes of our experience cannot
themselves be in experience. There is a real tension in Dewey on this, a ten-
sion examined in several of the papers in this volume. On the present view,
the critical point is that, for Dewey, contrary to modern epistemology, the
problem of the external world was not a problemfor good reason; but even
so, there remained not only the question of the causal role of an independently
existing nature, but as part of this, the causal role of the theoretical entities of
science. For the whole of Deweys long life, positivism was surely the un-
challenged view on such matters (Manicas, 1989), and while recent pragmatic
philosophies of science were not particularly influenced by Dewey, they have
helped to promote the idea that Dewey could be enlisted in their cause. Thus,
pragmatic philosophy of science rejects realism as an untenable and un-
necessary metaphysical commitment. But this seems inconsistent with the ac-
tual practices of the successful sciences (Manicas, 2006). Thus, while it may
seem obvious, we can only explain the rusting of iron if we have a theory that
postulates the independent existence of Fe and which details the process
called oxidation.
xii Introduction
Similarly, while it is clear that Dewey was a powerful advocate of the
method of intelligence, and that plainly, the practices of the sciences were
pertinent to seeing what was involved in this, these philosophers have tended
to be uncritical of what might somewhat anachronistically be called Deweys
philosophy of science. Partly because Dewey wrote no explicit philosophy of
science and partly because these philosophers have been rightly suspicious of
Vienna-inspired Anglo-American philosophy of science, they have paid al-
most no attention to Deweys originalbut confusingtheory of science, in-
cluding his vision of its role and relation in society. This is an important la-
cunae from the present point of view. Dewey is rightly associated with
science and scientific method, but neither idea can be taken for granted.
For example, as Dewey made clear: the social sciences need to function in a
democratic society, but as he insisted, the prime condition of a democrati-
cally organized public is a kind of knowledge and insight which does not yet
exist (Dewey, 1954: 166; my emphasis). Quest for Certainty (1929) is hardly
the key text for getting a handle on Deweys theory of science. As it turns out,
Experience and Nature (1934), Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (1938), and
many disparate essays are both far richer and much more clearly provide the
main outlines of his distinctive views on the critical issues in philosophy of
science.
These philosophers also see American pragmatism and especially Dewey
as creating an image of America which made him a critical player in what
has been termed the reformist left. These writers may acknowledge
Deweys vision of a democratic society, but hold that, for him, problems in
American society could be corrected using the institutions of constitutional
democracy: elect the right politicians and enact the right laws. Thus, he is
seen as left-liberal who puts his trust in American exceptionalism: the history
of the United States was moving progressively toward a distinct American vi-
sion. While it is true that Dewey rejected an insurrectionary politics and was
no fire-eating leftist, his analysis of the present was radical in the sense that
it went straight to the roots. This put his politics close to Marxs in critical
ways. The interpretation of Dewey as a left-reformist is best articulated by the
second group of Deweys friends.
Rorty and those who follow him constitute this second group of friends
from whom Dewey needs rescuing. Again, speaking from the point of view
of academic philosophy, these philosophers are typically Anglo-American
analytic philosophers. While their style of philosophy has somewhat waned,
it is fair to say that they continue to dominate academic philosophy in the
United States, if less so in other places. A good deal of recent Dewey schol-
arship falls into this mode.
Introduction xiii
Rorty, of course, is key here. Himself a well-established analytic philoso-
pher, his discovery of Dewey led him to a more general attack on the claims
of philosophy. He was correct to insist that epistemology is a modern sub-
discipline of philosophy generated by the problem of legitimating the claims
of the new science (Rorty, 1979). And given this understanding of the history
of Western philosophy, he was correct also to see strong parallels between
Nietzsche, James, Heidegger, Derrida, and Foucault. Thus, contemporary
textualism, the idea that there is nothing but texts parallels the idealist no-
tion that there is nothing but ideas (Rorty, 1982: 139). But there is, he insists,
a critical difference between current textualism and classical idealism. In re-
pudiating the tradition, textualists rejected the framework that allow for epis-
temology and ontology. Thus, unlike idealists (or naturalists or materialists)
so-called postmodern writers reject the idea that what is important is not
whether what we believe is true, but what vocabulary we use. Finally, then,
for Rorty, pragmatism joins postmodern thinking in repudiating metaphysical
argument between idealist/naturalists and the epistemological idea of truth as
correspondence with reality. But if Dewey was committed to naturalism,
there would seem to be no escaping ontological commitmentsincluding a
naturalistic account of consciousness. Similarly, philosophical realistsas
most ordinary people, believe that true means correspondence with reality.
But even if one assents that we can have no unmediated access to reality as it
is itself, it does not follow that we cannot discriminate between true and false.
Indeed, it is a scandal to think otherwise.
Rorty sees problems with postmodernist moves to escape traditional phi-
losophy. But he sees also that Dewey does not exactly fit his larger picture. In
agreement with Santayana, Rorty insists that Deweys efforts at a naturalis-
tic metaphysics betrays a recurrent flaw in Deweys work: his habit of an-
nouncing a bold new positive program when all he offers, and all he needs to
offer, is criticism of the tradition (1982: 78). To be sure, Dewey does offer
a bold new positive programa naturalistic metaphysics with epistemol-
ogy replaced by his version of logic (Sleeper, 1986). And he needed to do
this because he could not step out of history and argue, as Rorty does, that
knowledge and truth are pseudo problems that will go away once we abandon
the claims of philosophy. Indeed, it is quite one thing to try to convince us
that warranted assertability could replace truth, understood as certainty,
and quite another to say that, for pragmatists, there are no constraints on in-
quiry save conversational onesno wholesale constraints derived from the
nature of objects, or the mind, or of language, but only those retail constraints
provided by the remarks of our fellow-inquirers (1982: 165). Worse, the
Socratic virtueswillingness to talk, to listen to other people, to weigh
the consequences of actions on other peopleare simply moral virtues. . . .
xiv Introduction
The pragmatists tell us that the conversations which it is our moral duty to
continue is merely our project, the Europeans intellectual form of life (1982:
172).
As several of essays in both Part I and Part II try to make clear, there are,
for Dewey, considerable constraints on inquiry, beginning with a taken-for-
granted independently existing nature, our embeddedness in it, our history
and indeed, those ongoing institutional arrangements which often make im-
possible the required conversation. Thus, the inquiry which produced mo-
lecular chemistry as we now understand it very much depended both on the
nature of the independently existing world and the practices which show that,
as Peirce argued, there is a preferred mode of fixing belief about it. Similarly,
our embeddedness in nature and history both enables and constrains us in ac-
tion. Thus, for example, as Part III tries to show, there are good reasons to be-
lieve that Dewey was fully aware that there were enormous obstacles to hav-
ing the kind of knowledge that he thought was essential to a democratic
society and a humane life.
The writer who is the inspiration for the main thrust of most of the essays
in this volume is Ralph W. Sleeper, my former colleague at Queens College.
His wonderful The Necessity of Pragmatism (1986) provides a systematic ef-
fort to respond to both sets of the friends of Dewey. The reader might notice
here that for many years four members of the Queens department had contin-
uing conversation about Dewey and, more generally, about pragmatism.
These include John J. McDermott, Jack B. Noone, and Eugene Fontinell. Our
conversations never lacked passion but never approached violence.
Because Deweys thought was both rich and provocative, it is hoped that
the essays of this volume, written over a period of some twenty-five years,
provide a contemporary refocusing of current problems, both philosophical
and political. The essays are easily organized under four main headings.
PART I: PRAGMATISM AND SCIENCE
David Hollinger has rightly argued that the critical role played by the prag-
matists was to find and articulate a way of life consistent with what they
and contemporaries variously perceived as the implications of modern sci-
ence (Hollinger, 1985: 93). Part I finds a deep irony in this. It is widely held,
by friends and enemies, that the pragmatists succeeded. On this interpreta-
tion, the pragmatists adopted an instrumentalist view of science in which
successful prediction and control-vindicated inquiry. By subordinating all in-
quiry to practical ends, they could show that a belief was warranted only in-
sofar as it was scientific. Finally, they could then vindicate a culture whose
Introduction xv
social motor was science. But there is a deep irony in this: As Chapter 1,
Pragmatic Philosophy of Science and the Charge of Scientism, tries to
show, this victory was pyrrhic: In this chapter, I argue that the foregoing in-
terpretation is a stunning distortion and that the pragmatists failed utterly in
their quest to set a new course for a scientific civilization. Not only were
the forces at work resistant to their criticisms, but their fundamental insights,
in a paradoxical inversion, became absorbed in distorted forms. This was es-
pecially critical as regards psychology and the social sciencesas Chapters
2 and 3 try to show.
By looking at the views of Peirce as well as James, we can see more clearly
Deweys distinctive and original response. Chapter 1 provides, as well, a gen-
eral introduction to themes and issues taken up in subsequent chapters and
parts of the volume. Thus, Chapter 2 turns to Deweys relation to the history
of American psychology and argues that contrary to much established opin-
ion, not only did Dewey have no influence in the path taken, but that as early
as 1896, he marked out a path which today offers considerable promise for a
genuinely scientific psychology.
The key is a proper understanding of his much ignored and when noticed,
misunderstood, ideas on logic, understood by him as the theory of inquiry. It
not only points the way to a powerful conception of an ecological psychol-
ogy, but as Part II argues, it is at the heart of Deweys rejection of traditional
epistemology.
It is striking here that his enemies, for example, Bertrand Russell, found it
to be a confused mess and that most of his friends have paid no attention to
it. Striking here also is the fact that the two most recent and otherwise very
useful overall accounts of Dewey, Robert Westbrooks John Dewey and
American Democracy (1991) and Alan Ryans John Dewey and the High Tide
of American Liberalism (1995), almost entirely ignore it. Ryan, surely a com-
petent philosopher of science, refers to the Logic as vast and somewhat baf-
fling (309). Following on the excellent work of Tom Burke (1994), Chapter
2 develops the central role and key ideas of the Logic as the critical part of
the misunderstanding of Deweys relation to psychology as a science. I con-
clude by arguing that, versus the dominant Cartesian varieties associated
with a good deal of what is termed cognitive science, the Logic provides
excellent philosophical ground for an ecological psychology. Thus, as Burke
writes, in contrast with a classical empiricist view of perception (involving
so-called sense data, sense impression, stimulations or nerve endings, irrita-
tions of body surfaces, and so forth), ecological psychology emphasizes a dif-
ferent array of theoretical concepts; one being the concept of invariants and
another the concept of affordances . . . (1994: 84). The pertinence of these
ideas for a critical realist theory of science are picked up in Chapter 5.
xvi Introduction
Chapters 3 and 4 extend the argument to the social sciences. From the per-
spective of naturalism, Dewey could easily respond to the fundamental prob-
lems of the social sciences, but especially the series of invidious dualisms:
subjectivism/objectivism, agency/structure, nature/culture, the idiographic,
and the nomothetic. In this context, of special note, is his usually ignored or
misunderstood theory of meaning, a theory shared by his Chicago colleague,
G. H. Mead. But while there is an independently existing external world, it is
striking that as social forms do not exist independently of the beliefs and ac-
tions of situated agents, only a naturalism can escape the poles of subjec-
tivism and materialism.
PART II: NOT ANOTHER EPISTEMOLOGY
This part picks up another central theme raised in Chapter 1, the central po-
sition in Deweys naturalism of his remarkable and much ignored Logic:
The Theory of Inquiry (1938), which, as he insisted, was not another epis-
temology. Chapter 5 considers the broader context of naturalism and
subjectivism, and seeks to locate Dewey in this context. Chapter 6 as-
sumes the main thrust of the Logic, and considers critically some compet-
ing efforts at naturalistic epistemology, including the work of Quine,
Rescher, and Laudan.
Two problems stand out. First, all of the many varieties of contemporary
analytic epistemology share in what can be termed an epistemological in-
dividualism. This is a legacy of ruggedly antiecological individualistic tra-
ditional epistemology, a legacy which, it is critical to emphasize, also pro-
foundly affects a great deal of work in current cognitive psychology
(Chapter 2).
Quine, whose version of naturalistic epistemology has nothing in com-
mon with Deweys, despite suggestions to the contrary, gives an exemplary
characterization of epistemological individualism: Thus:
This human subject is accorded a certain experimentally controlled inputcertain
patterns of irradiation in certain frequencies, for instanceand in the fullness of
time the subject delivers as output a description of the three-dimensional external
world and its history (Quine, 1969: 77).
It is hardly clear how we get from patterns of irradiation to concepts, or
whether, finally, the output which is a description of the three-dimensional
external world can be established as true. The same problems arise for those
who identify themselves as pursuing alternative epistemologies. Internal-
ists and reliabilists like William Lycan and Alvin Goldman, but also
Introduction xvii
externalists and naturalists of various stripes, for example, Hilary Korn-
blith and Philip Kitcher. On these views, the social is not denied; but it enters
only as regards either the explanation of false belief or the social organiza-
tion of knowledgewith Robert K. Merton identified as having authored
the most important twentieth century work. Remarkably, no attention is
paid to the important work in recent sociology of science, including here
work by the so-called strong program, and work by Latour, Pickering, Hack-
ing, and many others.
I said that there are two problems. Even we acknowledge the role of the so-
cial in perception and understanding, it is hardly clear whether we can, fol-
lowing Dewey, simply ignore the problem of Pyrhonian skepticism. The
problem is not justifying the existence of an external world, or whether that
world is structured in some fashion or other, but whether, given the natura-
listic equivalence of the knowledge of different cultures, we can justify
claims to even warranted belief while at the same time avoiding either circu-
larity or dogmatism. Thus, can we say that when the Karam utters
I see a kobity now he is wrong, that what he sees is really a cassowary?
Quines version of naturalistic epistemology, as well as most traditional epis-
temology, either assume that some privileged beliefs are true or they assume
that something vaguely identified as science yields truth. In Chapter 6, at
least in the spirit of Dewey, we consider three pragmatic approaches to the
problem of privileging the claims of science without circularity or dogma-
tism. I suggest that instead of seeking to warrant pragmatically assertions or
methods, we take practices as our point of departure. This provides a far more
plausible, even if modest, outcome.
PART III: DEMOCRACY
There is perhaps no term so badly abused as democracy. Originally, of
course, it meant (literally) that the people rule. While not all those living in
Athens were citizens, citizens actually met and made decisions, which af-
fected them all. When the U.S. Constitution convinced the world that the peo-
ple could be sovereign and still be entirely excluded from participation in
decision-makingexactly as Madison made clear, liberal republics became
democracies.
3
With this move, not only did capitalism become consistent
with democracy, it became the ideal arrangement! Peoples democracies
accepted Aristotle dictumand Madisons, that if the demos who are poor
achieved power, they would abolish private property as contrary to their in-
terests. The peoples democracies could be one-party states as long as they
made the effort to realize the democratic value of equality. After all, as Mar-
xviii Introduction
shall Tito liked to point out, since the people did not rule in either the (now
gone) Yugoslavian state or in the United States, the difference was really only
one party as against two!
The problem of democracy in the era of the modern nation-state was bril-
liantly posed in the 1920s in a remarkable debate between Dewey and Walter
Lippmann who argued that in the United States, tweedle-dum and tweedle-
dee best characterized our party system. The debate, considered in Chapter 7,
remains of profound relevance especially given the nearly complete capitula-
tion to the idea that there is no alternative to the liberal capitalist democra-
cies of the advanced industrial societies. Dewey surely thought otherwise.
The occasion for this debate was World War I. But it is critical to notice
that the war changed the minds of both parties and that war remains the gen-
erally unacknowledged problem for democracy in the modern world. That
is, until the Great War, Deweys perception of American democracy was
largely uncritical and we cannot begin to understand him on the subject of de-
mocracy until we locate his maturing ideas against the background of the war
and of the writings of Walter Lippmann. Chapter 7 attempts an analytical/
historical consideration of the conditions and content of this debate.
Briefly, Dewey fully grasped the power of Lippmanns brilliant critique,
but he could not accept Lippmanns solution. Lippmann made two funda-
mental moves. First, he insisted that the citizen cannot know what is happen-
ing or what ought to happen, and even if they could, there is a structured in-
capacity to constitute any sort of coherent public opinion. Only mystical
democrats could believe that the people had a will and that this waseven
could beactually realized.
But Lippmann was not threatened by this outcome, since he also insisted
that the critical question of government was not whether citizens actually
participated, or whether it sought and realized the will of the people, but
whether it is producing a certain minimum of health, of decent housing, of
material necessities, of education, of freedom, of pleasures, of beauty (1954:
19697). Accordingly, the essence of popular government, notwithstanding
tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee, is a choice between supporting the Ins when
things are going well and supporting the Outs when they seem to be going
badly (126).
The capacity to throw the bums out does give a minimum of accounta-
bility and this should not be discounted,
4
but Lippmanns criteria are empty
of rational content. If the citizen is to appraise the success or failure of a
regime in power, then she has to make impossible counterfactual judgments
and to find some way for these to congeal into a coherent majority vote. Lipp-
mann gave a host of reasons why, under present institutional arrangements,
this is impossible. But if so, there is simply no rational ground for applying
Introduction xix
Lippmanns criteria. What indeed is minimum of health or freedom and
how can one know if the Outs would have done better? Lippmann fell back
on a thoroughly elitist version of his argument regarding science. Gradually
. . . the more enlightened directing minds have called in experts who were
trained, or had trained themselves, to make parts of this Great Society intelli-
gible to those who manage it (370). Though these enlightened directing
minds knew that they needed help, they were slow to call in the social sci-
entist (371). Lippmann hopes that the lesson has been learned. What is
needed, he opines, is presidential leadership responsive to the best of social
scientific knowledge!
5
This is an unembarrassed technocratic solution to the problem of democ-
racy. But, obviously, it assumes that experts can have the requisite knowl-
edge, and it still confronts the problem of assessing counterfactuals. More-
over, even assuming that experts make no mistakes, actions have
consequences that generally cannot be undone. War is surely the most obvi-
ous instance.
Perhaps the recent Bush dominance of American politics is the best and
worst case for Lippmann. The capacity to throw the bums out is a test of
democracy, but we need to see clearly what democracy thus amounts to.
Put aside the fact that mechanisms of opinion formation allow those with
huge sums of money to manipulate the opinions of citizens. Put aside also that
it is relatively easy to disenfranchise voters, that there are serious problems
with the electoral system, including the electoral college and the U.S. system
of representation. Put aside also that, as we more recently have discovered,
with electronic voting, there is no way to know if the results of voting using
the new electronic technologies are even truthful!
6
In the midterm election of 2006, it seems clear enough that American vot-
ers did repudiate at least some of the policies of President Bush and the Re-
publican controlled Congress. But not only is there no way to weigh the rel-
ative importance of the many policies adopted (and rejected) and to identify
some coherent alternatives, but these decisions and their consequences have
inalterably reshaped the world. While this is always the case, decisions are
not all equally monumental. The most obvious case is the war in Iraq where
the consequences include the death of thousands, the waste of billions of dol-
lars, a civil war, and likely the promotion of global terrorism. By January
2007, it seemed that the clear message of the voter on the war in Iraq could
be ignored. Indeed, confirming Lippmann on tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee,
the leaders of the Democratic Party comfortably took positions remarkably
similar to those of the sitting President! Moreover, there is already an argu-
ment about which of the Presidents legacies will be more important: the war,
the inattention to the environment, the attack on the division of powers and
xx Introduction
civil liberties, the huge deficit or the stunning decline in Americas standing
in the world.
Indeed, the main argument for self-determination is precisely that if inter-
dependent persons must live with decisions that affect them all they must
have a hand in making them.
7
But Dewey went further. For him, the problem
of democracy and social science were intimately connected. Lippmann and
the technocrats failed to realize that experts could indeed provide infor-
mation, but policy needs also a clear idea of the present situation of persons
and of goals to be pursued. That is, generating coherent policy that affects the
lives of interdependent individuals requires the direct participation of these
individuals. Lippmann earlier had it right: The scientific spirit is the disci-
pline of democracy, the escape from drift, the outlook of the free man (1961:
151). But this requires not experts but a democratic social science. As Dewey
insisted, what is required is the perfecting of the means and ways of com-
municating meanings so that genuinely shared interest in the consequences of
interdependent activities may inform desire and effort and thereby direct ac-
tion (1954: 155). A public which satisfied this goal would still make mis-
takes and would still suffer the consequences of these; but they would be, at
least, their mistakes.
Dewey recognized full well that the conditions for realizing a democratic
social science that could constitute a public required radical change in exist-
ing institutions. And this was not merely a change in our electoral politics
important as these may be, but a change that acknowledged that in capital-
ism, decisions of major social importance are legitimately made by persons
entirely unaccountable to the electorate. If democracy means that persons
have a say in determining the conditions of their everyday lives, then de-
mocracy required some form of socialism. Dewey was never clear about
how socialism was to be institutionalized, and there is evidence that he be-
lieved, wrongly on my view of the matter, that the difference and choice be-
tween a socialism that is public and one that is capitalist regarded a choice
between markets versus planning.
8
But however that may be, the problem of
realizing democracy pushed him to what is easily read as an anarchist vi-
sion!
9
Chapter 8 considers this by looking carefully at what Dewey actually
said against the background of actual anarchist thought. Yet, at the same
time, Alan Ryan observes rightly: He was not a fire-eating leftist, and never
became one (1995: 117).
Unfortunately, not only was anarchism a dirty word by the time Dewey
wrote The Public and Its ProblemsSacco and Vanzetti were executed in
1921 for their beliefs even though the charges against them were unproven, but
the leftism of the day was inevitably connected to Bolshevism and a
version of Marx which was rooted in Engels (Manicas, 2000) and in the 2nd
Introduction xxi
International, and, subsequently, with what became the standard, but also con-
testable version of Lenin (Lewin, 2005). Indeed, it is absolutely crucial to no-
tice that Dewey had read little of Marx and that his anticommunism was
squarely directed at the Stalinism that had solidified in the 1930s. Similarly, a
very different reading of Marx became possible only in the 1930s with the
publication for the first time of the early writings of Marx (in German), the
complete German Ideology and The Grundrisse. Chapter 9 offers an historical
reading of Marx and Dewey and shows that understanding Dewey requires
posing his thought against the Stalinist version of Marxism/Leninism.
Dewey had no patience with the pseudoscience of a vulgar dialectical or his-
torical materialismmostly for good reasons, even if this leaves open the
question of whether as Chapter 9 argues, some other version of Marx was eas-
ily compatible with Dewey and whether some patent shortcomings in Deweys
analysis might be filled with some pertinent Marx. It is acknowledged by a
number of important writers that Dewey and Marx shared fundamental philo-
sophical premises, but it is not always noticed that they also shared in their vi-
sion of a good society and in thinking that a gradualist politics need not be
antirevolutionary (Chapter 9).
10
The point, more generally, is that Dewey tried
to find a politics between liberals who insisted on parliamentary means but
who saw no need for radical change in the existing social structure, and the
scientistic, eschatological and insurrectionary versions of the Marxists. The
problem remainsassuring the continuing relevance of Dewey.
Finally, then, Dewey would insist that a politics without vision is merely
unprincipled opportunism. But Deweys vision of democracy is not merely an
abstraction. As a practice and a process in which action is informed by a
recognition of our inevitable interdependencies, it is a realizable ideal. As
Rousseau, Marx, and Dewey saw, interdependency is inevitable, and interde-
pendency does establish the conditions of injustice and tyranny. But democ-
racy is its only solution. There are no assurances, to be sure, but as Emma
Goldman observed The night cannot last forever.
The final two chapters of Part III consider Deweys political theory in con-
trast to three more recent and influential interventions. The publication of
John Rawlss A Theory of Justice (1971) generated a veritable industry. For
the first time in a very long time, here was a philosopher doing normative po-
litical theory. Rawls articulated a liberal theory which had a New Deal look
about it, progressive without being radical. It was quickly responded to by
Rawlss Harvard colleague Robert Nozik. His book, Anarchy, State and
Utopia (1974) was a criticism of Rawls from the Libertarian Right. It earned
him a cover in the New York Times Magazine.
It is critical to notice that neither Rawls nor Nozick had much to say about
democracy. Rawls assumed some form of representative regime and (with
xxii Introduction
J. S. Mill) even defended plural voting. While democracy is not indexed in
Rawlss book, Nozick surely went further. After acknowledging that democ-
racy is the idea that people have a right to a say in the decisions that impor-
tantly affect their lives, Nozick asserted, remarkably: After we exclude
from consideration the decisions which others have a right to make and the
actions which would aggress against me, steal from me, and so on, . . . it is
not clear that there are any decisions remaining about which even to raise the
question (1974: 270). For both, accordingly, justice was the key concept.
Dewey is quite the opposite. As argued in Chapter 10, if one surveys the
voluminous writings of Dewey, the first thing that one notices is the relative
inattention paid by Dewey to the problem of justice. Altogether, there are per-
haps not more than a dozen pages of sustained discussions devoted explicitly
to the topic. These discussions are little gems, and they offer what are, I think,
fatal criticisms of the liberal theories of both Rawls and Nozick. This, too, is
generally ignored.
Dewey, always concrete and historical, recognized that what we call lib-
eral democracy emerged at a specific time and place in world history, that it
did not have democracy as one of its goals, and that while it celebrated the
autonomous individuala prerequisite for the ideology of market capitalism,
it offered a false picture of individuals and their relations. Not only were per-
sons social beings, deeply interdependent and encumbered (to borrow a
term from Sandel), but the control of the social environment which is fur-
nished by the institution of property makes the idea of equal freedom in lib-
eral democracies a pure absurdity (Dewey, 1954: 271).
It is not that Dewey did not care about justice. Rather, he insisted that de-
mocracy was the primary problem and that because the fundamental assump-
tions of associated life were misconceived by liberal theories, it disvalued de-
mocracy. Liberal theory thus shares with Lippmann the idea that
participation was not an issue and that as long as the quality of everyday
life was as good as could be expected, all was well enough. For liberal the-
ory, securing political and civil rights, some measure of opportunity for all,
unimpeded markets and private property was all that democracy demanded.
It is striking that when, in 1928, Dewey traveled to the New Soviet Union,
he observed: I was certainly not prepared for what I saw; it came as a
shock (LW, Vol. 3: 217). For him, the experiment had two goals. First,
there was what had concerned Lippmannsecurity against want and illness,
and for health, recreation and a degree of material ease. The other was the
familiar democratic ideals, familiar in words at leastof liberty, equality
and brotherhood. The hope was that both will be more completely realized
in a social regime based on voluntary cooperation, on conjoint workers con-
trol and management of industry, with an accompanying abolition of private
Introduction xxiii
property as a fixed institution (LW, Vol. 3: 244). Dewey soon enough came
to see that the experiment which, under the prevailing conditions, could not
have succeeded, had turned to disaster (Manicas, 1989, Chapter 11). Since
then we have been left with the idea, inherited from Wilson and currently pur-
sued by Bush, that making the world safe for democracy really means mak-
ing the world safe for liberal capitalism.
Apart from Marxist criticisms of liberal theory, there is a currently fash-
ionable critique of rights-based liberalism often termed, republican-
communitarianism. It is clear enough that Rawls and Nozick (along with
Flathman, Dworkin, Feinberg, Gewirth, Sen, and many others) are, despite
differences, rights-based liberals. The other side is a much less clear group
and might include any number of diverse writers who have criticized liberal
philosophy and promoted some version or other of community, including
Dewey, Hannah Arendt, Robert Paul Wolff, Charles Taylor, Roberto Man-
giabera Unger, Michael Walzer, Carol Gould, Hannah Pitkin, Amitai Etzioni,
and some others. The relation to democracy of these writers is also very di-
verse. But republican-communitarism is well represented by Michael
Sandels, Democracys Discontent: American in Search of a Public Philoso-
phy (1996), discussed in Chapter 11. Of particular interest here is Sandels ef-
fort to link his views to those of Dewey.
There are two related features of Sandels position. First, he claims to
have a version of self-rule and secondthe heart of his critique of
liberalismthe real problem of government is not securing liberal justice
as defined by either Rawls or Nozick, but the cultivation of civic virtue.
To be a citizen requires a sense of belonging, the existence of a moral
bond with the community whose fate is at stake. On this view, govern-
ments have legitimate concerns with soulcraft, what he elsewhere calls
the formative project.
Sandel is quite right, of course, to say that Dewey was a critic of liberal in-
dividualism, but Dewey called for radical version of the alternative, not as in
Sandel, a reactionary version of encumbered selves who, like Robert E.
Lee, concluded that his obligation to Virginia (and to the institution of slav-
ery) was not merely of sentimental import, but had moral force (Sandel,
1996: 15). For Dewey, community was essential, but for him, in contrast to
Sandel, it was grounded on recognition of interdependence not on blood,
habit, religion, or language. Similarly, Sandel seeks to capture the essential
ingredient of democracy by speaking of self-rule, but in sharp contrast to
Dewey, there is simply no attention paid to what this means institutionally.
One wishes that he had read Lippmann, or more lately, Robert Dahl. This
absence is explained, in part at least, by his distorted view of American his-
torya history that, as noted, was well understood by Dewey and Lippmann.
xxiv Introduction
Worse, perhaps, for Dewey, in contrast to Sandel, the problem of American
democracy was not moral but institutional and structural: In conditions of
alienation, publics cannot exist.
PART IV: WHY NOT DEWEY?
The problem of American democracy is well understood by Cornel West in
his important The American Evasion of Philosophy (1989), discussed in
Chapter 12. In the spirit of Rorty, he wishes that Dewey had been a more
consistent historicist pragmatist, instead as I would have it, a more consis-
tent naturalist, exactly in Marxs sense. West, sympathetic to Marxian ideas,
sees the radical and unfinished character of Deweys emancipatory project.
While one may have some misgivings about both his account of Emerson and
his efforts at tapping American cultural materials, his critical reflections on
the failure of Deweys project are especially provocative and suggest the deep
reasons for what remains an unsolved dilemma: How to be both radical and
committed to democratic processes.
A useful comparison to Wests book is Robert Westbrooks Democratic
Hope: Pragmatism and the Politics of Truth (2005), discussed in Chapter 13.
On his version, Dewey neither evaded nor transformed philosophy. Rather
he holds that Dewey should be read as offering an epistemological defense of
democracy, something which he recognizes Dewey did not do. For West-
brook, the argument has been filled in by the recent pragmatisms of Putnam
and Misak. But the project is both alien to Dewey and, in contrast to his well
informed book (1991), ignores the arguments that Dewey actually did make
(see above).
Westbrook admits that he gave Deweys logic short shrift and he en-
dorses Kloppenbergs view that Dewey was taking the challenge of con-
structing a democratic political culture on the quicksand of instrumentalist
logic (2005: 177). This is half-right: the Logic was the ground of his vision
of a democratic culture, but one needs to overcome a good deal of the philo-
sophical tradition before one can see that it can hardly be characterized as
quicksand.
Similarly, Westbrooks suggestion that Dewey never leaves the populism
of late nineteenth-century producer-republicanism is a fairly typical criti-
cism that fails to account for the changes in his views following the Great
War. While Deweys socialism contradicted all actually existing socialisms,
it was fully consistent with Marxs idea that producers in capitalist society
are alienated, that neither wage workers nor independent producers on the
Jeffersonian model, are capable of what Marx termed, free production.
Introduction xxv
Again, one must see that Deweys critique was not nostalgic, but radical in
just the ways that Marx would have endorsed.
The temptation to assist Dewey by constructing arguments which he
lacked is the central task of Festensteins Pragmatism and Political Theory
(1997), discussed in Chapter 14. Like Westbrook, Festenstein writes solidly
within the tradition of Anglo-American analytic philosophy and, viewed
through these lens, he finds fatal problems in Deweys naturalistic ethical
framework (62, 99, 145). He concludes that Dewey had a scientistic hope for
a physics of problem-solving (45) and that his empirical theory of valuation
seems to rest on the possibility of a prior science of problems and their reso-
lution, which does not exist (44). But inquiry, as Dewey understood it, was
not some prior science of problem solving. It was the only defensible way
to address all problems, scientific and otherwise. Dewey did not, of course,
embrace the prevailing fact/value dichotomy and he often spoke of alleged
scientific social inquiry. The following text neatly sums up a theme which
he pursued throughout his long life.
The sociologist, like the psychologist, often presents himself as a camp follower
of genuine science and philosophy, picking up scraps here and there and piecing
them together in somewhat aimless fashion. . . . But social ethics is the change
from inquiring into the nature of value in general to an inquiry of the particular
values which ought to be realized in the life of everyone, and of the conditions
which shall render possible this realization (Early Works, Vol. 5: 23).
Chapter 15, the final chapter, rejoins the question of Dewey and social sci-
ence and argues that the currently fashonable postmodern reading of prag-
matic social science will not do. So why not Dewey?
NOTES
1. As Sleeper (1986) remarks, we need to resist the almost universal habit of
taking for granted that experience is the subject matter of [Deweys] metaphysics
(1986: 6).
2. Perrys version of direct realism is, to be sure, untenable. See Shook, Deweys
Empirical Theory of Knowledge and Reality. But see Roy Wood Sellars Material-
ism and Human Knowing, in R. W. Sellars, V. J. McGill, and Marvin Farber (eds.),
Philosophy for the Future (New York: Macmillan, 1949).
3. See my War and Democracy, especially Parts I and III. Lippmann and Dewey
well understood the consequences of this shift in the meaning of democracy. Lipp-
mann wrote: the fiction that the United States is a democracy owes to the victory of
Thomas Jefferson. . . . It is a fair guess that if everyone had always regarded the Con-
stitution as did the authors of it, the Constitution would have been violently over-
xxvi Introduction
thrown, because loyalty to the Constitution and loyalty to democracy would have
seemed incompatible (Lippmann, 1954: 284). Dewey, who was never a mystical
democrat, offered similar sentiments.
4. Most Americans believe, it seems, that one has a democracy if there are free
elections, but free elections require political and civil liberties and it is these, not free
elections that mark the important difference between tyrannies and non-
tyrannies. For this reason, as well, liberalism is often confused with democracy. See
Part IV.
5. Rorty remarks: Even someone like myself, whose admiration for John Dewey
is almost unlimited, cannot take seriously his defense of participatory democracy
against Walter Lippmans insistence on the need for expertise (1998: 104). Compare
Westbrooks very useful Epilogue (1991) and his later account in Democratic Hope
(Chapter 14 below) which seems, at least, to capitulate to a Rortyean problematic.
6. While they have been under attack by the Bush regime, political and civil lib-
erties are not yet utterly compromised. People can still inquire, speak out, and orga-
nize, even if this has little effect on policy. Accordingly, if democracy in the United
States (as elsewhere) is profoundly constrained, the United States is not a tyranny.
7. There is, of course, absolutely no democracy as regards what is hypocritically
called the community of nations. See Deweys remarkable and much misunder-
stood efforts in the campaign to outlaw war (Chapter 8).
8. It is easy enough to show that centralized planning, Soviet style, cannot be the-
oretically sustained and is disastrous practically. As Mandel, for example, sees, one
must assume the whole of general equilibrium theory. But there are fatal objections to
this theoryas argued by Hayekians among many others. There are variant forms of
market socialism, but surely a vision to be pursued was laid out in the much ignored
essay by Diane Elson, Market Socialism or Socialism of the Market (1988).
9. Once we are clear about misconceptions of anarchist politics including the idea
that anarchists were terrorists and utopian in the worst sense, there is nothing prepos-
terous about seeing Dewey as an anarchist. At the time of the Pullman strike, he wrote
to Alice Dewey that he had realized how anarchistic (to use the current term here)
our ideas and especially feelings are (quoted by Westbrook, Democratic Hope: 86).
See also Hooks extremely useful account of the Marxian theory of the state. Hook
(1933) distinguishes society, government, and state, and argues that where the
government represents the needs and interests of the entire community, it does not
need [the state] special and coercive force behind it (214). Hence, for Marxists, if de-
mocracy is to prevail, the state must be smashed. Indeed, Lenins State and Revo-
lution (1905) is an anarchist tract and a proper reading of What Is to be Done and
of the period from the October Revolution to Lenins death, shows that while Lenin
made many mistakes, including, for example, destroying the Constituent Assembly,
he never wavered in his defense of the soviets, the most democratic of the institutions
in the evolving USSR (Lewin, 2005).
10. During the much-misunderstood period following the abdication of the Kaiser,
the revolutionary goals of Social Democracy, as understood by Marx, Engels and the
revisionists were betrayed by SPD leadership. After this betrayal, with the help of
Bolshevik revolutionary practice, Social Democracy was redefined as consistent with
Introduction xxvii
a capitalism with a human face. Similarly, the highly restricted choices of the
Bolsheviks in Russia generated a very distorted view of socialism. See Manicas, War
and Democracy (1989), Chapters 11 and 12. In both the German and Soviet case, the
critical question is: could it have been otherwise? As Hook insisted, following
both Marx and Engels, to be a socialist, one had to be a democrat. In our Orwellian
world, the meanings of anarchism, socialism, and democracy are thoroughly
corrupted.
xxviii Introduction
Part One
PRAGMATISM AND SCIENCE
3
INTRODUCTION
By the turn of the century, it was clear to William James, Thorstein Veblen,
and John Dewey that science was giving its tone to modern culture. But for
them, the consequences were more than uncertain. The most well known ad-
vocates of science, Spencer, Clifford, Huxley, and others, were not only de-
fending agnosticism and positivism, but a view in which science was to
be immunized from the biases and interests of human communities. James,
Veblen, and Dewey were anything but enthusiastic about the situation as they
saw it. Indeed, Jamess criticisms hinged on ideas about the foundations of
science which were completely novel, and Veblen and Dewey were clearest
in seeing that science was being shaped by changes in industry and in the
economic organization of society. Science, pretender to transcendent au-
thority, was becoming industrialized, technocratic.
David Hollinger has rightly argued that the critical role played by the prag-
matists in American culture was to find and articulate a way of life consistent
with what they and their contemporaries variously perceived as the implications
of modern science (Hollinger, 1985: 93).
l
It is widely held, by friends and ene-
mies, that they succeeded. On this interpretation, the pragmatists adopted a view
of science in which successful prediction and control vindicated inquiry. By sub-
ordinating all inquiry to practical ends, they could show that a belief was war-
ranted only insofar as it was scientific. Finally, they could then vindicate a cul-
ture whose social motor was science.
2
In what follows, I suggest that the
foregoing interpretation is a stunning distortion and that the pragmatists failed
utterly in their quest to set a new course for a scientific civilization. Not only
were the forces at work resistant to their criticisms, but their fundamental in-
sights, in a paradoxical inversion, became absorbed in distorted forms.
Chapter One
Pragmatic Philosophy of Science
and the Charge of Scientism
But they were not entirely blameless. The problem is not merely that the
language they employed, including, of course, the term pragmatism itself,
made it easy to misunderstand their viewsalthough this was certainly true.
3
Rather the problem was deeper. In particular, it regarded pragmatist views of
the nature of philosophy and its relation to science. While the pragmatists
were correct in seeing themselves as innovators, and while, finally, they may
well have agreed on less than they disagreed, they did not wholly escape pre-
vailing antimetaphysical attitudes. Indeed, the nature of their commitment to
experience made it easy to distort the nature of their commitment to practice.
If I am correct, the deep problem in pragmatist thought is the turn away from
the epistemological question, explicitly taken by Dewey. The troubles be-
gin with Peirces verificationism and are enormously exacerbated by Jamess
shift from the philosophy of his Principles to his radical empiricism. The dif-
ficulties in getting a handle on Deweys philosophy can hardly be overstated.
My treatment, which relies heavily on R. W. Sleepers recent and important
study (1986), is but a sketch. In Sleepers useful terms, if I am correct,
Deweys logic of experience and metaphysics of existence made his nat-
uralism precarious and incomplete, a feature of his philosophy noticed, for
example, by Woodbridge and Santayana. For me, his logic of experience
needed what his metaphysics of existence would not allow, an indirect real-
ism which affirmed that there is a causally efficacious nonexperienceable
world sufficiently structured to be inferentially knowable. Peirce struggled
with the idea, and surely in Principles, James had held to such a view. But for
reasons that I try to make clear, James and then Dewey supposed that it could
be dispensed with. Spurred on by an emerging consensus over the nature of
science, Peirces doubt-belief theory of inquiry allowed Dewey to dissolve
both the problem of the external world and the mind/body problem. For
him, there was no problem of knowledge (berhaupt), even if there were par-
ticular and concrete questions which cried for resolution, questions which
persistent inquiry could answer. This meant, on Deweys view, how might the
methods of science be turned to human use? Yet, if as a consequence of the
turn away from the epistemological legacy of modern philosophy, the idea of
science which he assumed had positivist elements, then it became easy to see
pragmatism as a technocratic philosophy.
4
The story I have suggested is com-
plicated, of course, and this essay must be considered but a sketch.
PEIRCES PRAGMATISM
As everyone knows, what came to be called pragmatism was first set out
by Peirce in two remarkable essays published in Popular Science Monthly in
4 Chapter One
18771878. In the first, The Fixation of Belief, he put forward his genuinely
original doubt-belief theory of inquiry, what I shall take to be the core of
pragmatism.
5
Insisting that that sole object of inquiry is the settlement of
opinionnot as the tradition had held, the securing of truth, and that belief
is of the nature of a habit, he offered that of the possible modes of fixing be-
lief, while all do have their merits, the method of science had, finally, to be
the one we must chose. Unlike tenacity, but like authority, it is consistent
with the fact that humans are social beings. On the other hand, while the
method of science can give us a clear logical conscience, as with all that we
cherish, it costs us dear. The other methods, indeed, are psychologically
satisfying and easy. The a priori method, e.g., allows the action of natural
preferences to be unimpeded and under their influences lets people con-
versing together and regarding matters in different lights, gradually develop
beliefs in harmony with natural causes (Peirce, 1950: 105)Peirces version
of philosophy as conversation. Similarly, the method of authority is not only
propelled by our natural feelings of sympathy and fellowship, but, striking
a skeptical note, if for the mass of mankind it is their highest impulse to be
intellectual slaves, then slaves they ought to remain.
6
Nevertheless, as with
the mate one has selected, one must work and fight for the method of sci-
ence, never complaining that there are blows to take, hoping that there may
be as many and as hard to give . . . (112). Why this effort? Exactly because
the method of science alone presents any distinction of a right and a wrong
way (1089). Its fundamental hypothesis is that
there are real things, whose characters are entirely independent of our opinions
about them; these realities affect our senses according to regular laws, and,
though our sensations are as different as our relations to objects, yet, by taking
advantage of the laws of perception, we can ascertain by reasoning how things
really are . . . (l078).
I want to emphasize that (1) for Peirce, the doubt-belief theory rules out the
question of the existence of an external world as a skeptical question, even
if versions of realism and idealism remained open questions. That is, nei-
ther solipsism nor the problem of other minds can be taken seriously. Peirce
cannot prove that there is something which affects or might affect every
[one], but upon which our thinking has no effect. Yet there is no reason
that a genuine doubt should arise in the practice of the method; indeed, no-
body . . . can really doubt there are realities, or, if he did, doubt would not be
a source of dissatisfaction (Peirce, 1950: 108). (2) We can know how things
really are even if the effects of reality on us are necessarily as various as
are individual conditions. We can because we can assume that there are reg-
ular laws involved in our transacting with real things. As Peirce later
Pragmatic Philosophy of Science and the Charge of Scientism 5
makes clear, this guarantees that given infinite time, there will be agreement
on the part of all inquirers. Finally (3), not only does everybody use the
method, hesitating only when he does not know when to apply it, but sci-
entific investigation has had the most wonderful triumphs in the way of set-
tling opinion (108). More generally, then, I am suggesting that the doubt-
belief theory is a psychosocialand thus scientifictheory of belief, but that
Peirce aims to provide a philosophical defense of a particular method of fix-
ing belief, the scientific method, the foundations for which are in common
sense. To put the matter briefly (if cryptically), Peirce recasts the epistemo-
logical problem by accepting the Kantian insulation against skepticism,
but by rejecting Kants transcendental move.
7
This enormously rich beginning was followed by How to Make Our Ideas
Clear, the essay which contains Peirces famous pragmatic maxim. Usu-
ally read as the earliestand clearest!expression of the operationalist
theory of meaning, the essay addressed a problem which a host of writers had
begun to address: the distinctive character of the terms of science. Peirce, and
of course, James and Dewey, began their inquiries at just the time that a host
of philosopher/physicists were producing books and articles in what we
would now call the philosophy of science. These included G. R. Kirchoff,
Wilhelm Ostwald, Ludwig Boltzmann, Hermann Helmholtz, his pupil, Hein-
rich Hertz, Ernst Mach, W. K. Clifford and his student, Karl Pearson, Henri
Poincar, and Pierre Duhem. These men all spoke with enormous authority
exactly because, by then, science was rapidly becoming an evident force in
the daily lives of people. Moreover, all of these men have been called posi-
tivists in that, following Kant, they held, first, that scientific explanation
must eschew appeal to what in principle is beyond experience, that to do so
takes one into metaphysics, and second, following Berkeley and Hume, that
laws of nature, are but empirical invariances.
8
This thesis was related to the
first, and, as we shall see, it was a critical one.
In his Analytic Mechanics, then, Kirchoff had said that we understand the
effect of force, but do not understand what force is. Peirce found this self-
contradictory: the idea which the word force excites in our minds has no
other function than to affect our actions, and these actions can have no refer-
ence to force otherwise than through its effects (Peirce, 1950: 129). It surely
seems here that, as Ostwald and Mach argued, force is not some mysterious
power but is nothing other than its sensible effects. Peirce illustrated his
famous principle by asking if one could say of a diamond that had been crys-
talized in the midst of a cushion of cotton and had remained there until it was
burned up, whether it was really hard? He responded confidently the ques-
tion of what would occur under circumstances which do not actually arise is
not a question of fact, but only of the most perspicuous arrangement of them.
6 Chapter One
We know that Peirce came to see that his initial attempt to reconcile realism
and phenomenalism, the characteristic drift of positivist philosophies of sci-
ence, founded on the assumption that nothing is possible which is not actual
or will not become actual. The issue was not merely whether unscratched dia-
monds are hard, but more generally, there was the question of that Reality
which he had posited as so essential to the method of science. When Peirce ap-
plied his principle to the meaning of the real, he was led, as everyone knows,
to assert that the opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who
investigate is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this
opinion is the real (133). Against himself, he asked whether this was consis-
tent with the definition given in his fixation essay? Did it not, in idealist fash-
ion, make the characters of the real depend upon what is ultimately thought
about them. He answered that reality is independent, not necessarily of
thought in general, but only of what you or I or any finite number of men may
think about it (133). Murray Murphey was surely correct to conclude:
In Peirces system, the infinite future plays the part of the philosophers stone;
it transforms possibility into actuality without compromising either the inex-
haustibility of the possible or the limitations of the actual. On the one hand, the
real must be a permanent and inexhaustible possibility of sensation; on the other,
it must be wholly cognized (1961: 16970).
But if the real is to provide a constraint on current belief adequate for epis-
temic purposes, will this do?
In The Monist of 1905, he returned to these problems. In the first of two es-
says, he made clear that instead of merely jeering at metaphysics, like other
prope-positivists, the pragmaticist extracts from it a precious essence, which
will serve to give life to cosmology and physics (Peirce, 1950: 192). This
precious essence was his scholastic realismand precious it indeed was.
But if pragmatism was prope-positivist, what did this mean? He began
the essay with an anecdote about an experimentalist. He wrote:
If you talk to him as Mr. Balfour talked not long ago to the British Association
saying that the physicist . . . seeks something deeper than the laws connecting
possible objects of experience, that his object is physical reality unrevealed
in experiments, and that the existence of such non-experienceable reality is the
unalterable faith of science . . . you will find the experimentalist mind to be
color-blind (182).
Although the phrase, unrevealed in experiments, is more problematic than
may appear, this could have been written by Ostwald or Mach, Poincar or
Pearson: Science aims at discovering laws which connect possible objects of
Pragmatic Philosophy of Science and the Charge of Scientism 7
experience, where this means, laws of invariance between phenomena. But in
that same essay, Peirce was as emphatic about his scholastic realism as he was
emphatic about what for him was the real novelty of the new pragmatic the-
ory: its recognition of an inseparable connection between rational cognition
and rational purpose, the connection which James will be so pleased to
develop.
Whatever Peirce intended by his scholastic realism, it is clear enough to
see that it is inconsistent with all the positivisms, Comtes, Mills, Machs, or
later Vienna varieties. While for Peirce, there was no nonexperienceable
realityin this he agreed with Kant and the positivists, there are real ob-
jects that are general, among the number being the modes of determination of
existent singulars. The article of 1878 had either glossed over this point as
unsuited to the public there addressed or, he noted, perhaps the author
wavered in his own mind (215). In that essay, he had written: it would be
merely a question of nomenclature whether that diamond should be said to
have been hard or not. This is, he now writes, no doubt true, except for the
abominable falsehood in the word merely, implying that symbols are un-
real. Nomenclature involves classification, he continued, and classifica-
tion is true or false. Thus, the generals to which it refers are either reals
. . . or figments (215). In this case, the generals are real: There are dia-
monds and anything which is really a diamond is really hard because being
hard is an inseparable property of at least some of those other properties
which make a diamond what it really is. It must be hard. He wrote:
Being a diamond, it was a mass of pure carbon, in the form of a more or less
transparent crystal . . . it could be found to be insoluble, very highly refractive,
showing under radium rays . . . a peculiar bluish phosphorescence, having as
high a specific gravity as realgar . . . and giving off during its combustion less
heat than any other form of carbon would have done. From some of these prop-
erties hardness is believed to be inseparable. For like it they bespeak the high
polemerization of the molecule (219).
The point must not be missed. On positivist versions, laws of nature are
construed as universal conditionals of the form (x) (Fx Gx) where
is suitably interpreted. That is, a law is construed as a contingent rela-
tionship between the extensions of its terms, all Fs are Gs. But on
Peirces view of the matter, a law expresses a nomic relationship between
properties, between F-ness and G-ness, properties to which we refer with
corresponding abstract terms.
9
The reality of the diamond is expressed in
the truth of general conditional propositions, but these are not construed
in a Humean fashion, for as Peirce saw (and Kant before him), on such a
view, science is not possible.
8 Chapter One
In an unpublished manuscript, Laws of Nature and Hume (1901),
Peirces criticism of Hume (and the Humeans) is decisive. He writes:
. . . we do not say that the alternation of day and night is necessary, because it
depends upon the circumstance that the earth continually rotates. But we do say
that by virtue of gravity every body near the surface of the earth must be con-
tinually receiving a component downward acceleration. . . . Nor do Hume or his
followers dream of denying that. But what they mean when they say there is not
necessity in gravitation is that every event which gravitation formulates is
in reality totally independent of every other; just as Hume supposes the differ-
ent instances of induction to be independent evidences. One stones falling
has no real connection with anothers fall. . . . The objection to Humes concep-
tion of a Law of Nature is that it supposes the universe to be utterly unintelligi-
ble, while, in truth, the only warrant for any hypothesis must be that it renders
phenomena intelligible (Peirce, 1950: 310).
Abduction leads us to conclude that gravity is a structural property of all bod-
ies; hence, d 1/2 at
2
is a law. It is a contingent fact that the world is con-
stituted such that gravity is true of all bodies and it is a contingent fact that
some particular body be near the earth, but if the theory is true, then that body
must be continually receiving a component downward acceleration; in free-
fall, it must fall as 1/2 at.
2
Science needs real connectedness; but such con-
nectedness is not the product of constitutive features of the mind, as Kant had
it. Connectedness is in the mind-independent world. It is thus that for Peirce,
there are objective possibilities, unactualized, but real.
Plainly, I cannot here do any sort of justice to Peirces complicated and
ingenious philosophy of science. Murray Murphey has, I think, caught its
most fundamental premises in his account of the material aspects of
Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness. Briefly, Firstness and Secondness in-
volve, critically, a psychological theory of perception. The phenomenal
suchness of a percept, Firstness is a product of unconscious inferences of
neural stimulias Helmholtz had argued. Secondness is the stubbornness
or compulsory character of sensation. Thirdness, then, is lawfulness. As
Peirce wrote:
Whatever is subject to law is capable of representation by a sign of which that
law is the meaning, and whatever is subject to law is itself a sign of the law to
which it is subject. It is in this sense that Thirdness is at once the category of law
and of rationality and intelligibility (Quoted by Flower and Murphey, 1977:
604).
Since the pragmatic theory of meaning holds that what a thing means is sim-
ply what habits it involves, and since habits are themselves analyzable as
Pragmatic Philosophy of Science and the Charge of Scientism 9
conditionals supporting expectationsrealistically understoodwe can see
how critical is Peirces anti-Humean concept of law.
There are all sorts of questions that might be asked here, not least
whether, in whole or in part, Peirces philosophy of science can be sus-
tained? I forego the temptation to engage this question. Instead, I merely
emphasize that Peirce packed a great deal of empirical science into his the-
ory of knowledge and that because all of the usual categories, positivist,
realist, idealist, fit his thought, none of them did. He did deny with the pos-
itivist that there was a nonexperienceable reality, a consequence of his
ingenious, if unsuccessful, effort to combine realism and phenomenalism.
No doubt this fostered confusion. Moreover, like them, he offered a verifi-
cationist theory of meaning, but unlike them, he tied this to a psycho-
social theory of belief and a strong version of lawfulness, a version which
was undergirded by his scholastic realism. His conditionals were not ex-
hausted by the material conditionals of later verificationist theories. For
Peirce, Thirdness was a critical ontological category guaranteeing his
semiotic. The ideologists of scientific method liked the operationist
part of the story and at least in part because so much of Peirces work was
unpublished, the very complicated metaphysics that sustained it was ig-
nored. Aided and abetted by the loose language of Jamess Pragmatism,
the former came to fit neatly into the Weltanschauung of the times, initiat-
ing the myth of Peirce, the seminal American pragmatist cum positivist.
James and Dewey each found different things in Peirce, but it is fair to say
that they both liked what Peirce saw to be the genuine novelty of prag-
matism, namely, the inseparable connection between rational cognition
and rational purpose. Although James had arrived at a similar notion at
about the same time as Peirce, it found its most developed expression in
Jamess Principles of Psychology (1890).
10
JAMESS PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
Jamess Principles is perhaps one of the two or three greatest books in the his-
tory of psychology. Yet contrary to the conventional wisdom, it had practi-
cally no influence on the development of American psychology. It would take
another essay to begin to show this, but since the problem is germane to the
present argument, something needs to be said. (For a fuller account, see
Chapter 2.)
We can notice, first, that Principles was published when the subject matter
and method of psychology as a science were still very much unsettled (Man-
icas, 1987, Chapter 9). For example, was psychology concerned with the
10 Chapter One
laws of the mind (as in Mill, Bain, the later Wundt)? Or with giving a neu-
rophysiological account of the phenomenon of mind, including the physiol-
ogy of sensation and the genesis of reasoning (as for example, in Helmholtz
or Spencer)? What was its relation to logic (as in Venn or Lotze)? Or per-
haps the task of psychology was practical, in behavior? Was its concern
the generalized, normal human adult mind or the psychology of individual
differences? And finally, what of its methods? Was introspection part of ex-
perimental psychology, independent of it, or to be completely rejected?
James offered, modestly and misleadingly, that the originality of his Prin-
ciples consisted in its strictly positivist point of view (James, 1981, Vol. 1:
6). It is important first to see what James did not mean by this.
He was clear that the results of scientific inquiry were in no way the imme-
diate results of experience nor were scientific objects restricted to what is
found in experience. Thus, the essence of things for science is not to be what
they seem, but to be atoms and molecules moving to and from each other ac-
cording to strange laws. . . . What we experience, what comes before us, is a
chaos of fragmentary impressions interrupting each other; what we think is an
abstract system of hypothetical data and laws (1981, Vol. 2: 123031).
Plainly, we do something with what comes before us. But there are two
aspects of this. There is first what we all do if we are to have coherent expe-
rience, if we are to convert the chaos of fragmentary impressions to a grasp
of the habitudes of concrete things. The grasp of these, the proximate laws
of nature, for example, that heat melts ice and salt preserves meat, form an
enormous part of human wisdom. These empirical truths are practical.
Indeed, they are indispensable to the continued reproduction of human com-
munities. In Jamess view, getting an understanding of how we come to have
such knowledge was the first problem for a scientific psychology. But there
is, as well, what as scientists we do: The effort to explain these proximate
laws by means of theories that, for example, speak of polemerization or grav-
itation. For James, such theories have an entirely different aim and ground.
The popular notion that Science is forced on the mind ab extra, and that
our interests have nothing to do with its constructions, is utterly absurd. But
James emphatically denied that the interest, which generates science is
practical. Picking up a theme he had advanced in The Sentiment of Ratio-
nality, he insisted that the craving to believe that the things of the world be-
long to kinds which are related by an inward rationality together, is the par-
ent of Science as well as of sentimental philosophy. Moreover, the original
investigator always preserves a healthy sense of how plastic the materials are
in his hands (1260).
Scientific inquiry might yield technologies, but James was clear that this
was neither its motivation nor its vindicationa point that Veblen put to such
Pragmatic Philosophy of Science and the Charge of Scientism 11
good work in his The Place of Science in Modern Civilization. In contrast
to the proximate laws of nature, scientific theories are abstract systems of
laws. They have to harmonize with the proximate laws of nature, yet they
are tested not in the course of everyday experience, but in artificial experi-
ments in the laboratory. James seems to see that, in order to set up an ex-
periment, we need to conjecture that there is some unobservable mecha-
nism whose processes have predicted effects. We contrive the experiment,
then, so as to eliminate conditions that, in uncontrolled common experience,
would interfere with its uncomplicated operation. That is, experience, in
Baconian fashion, does not engender the inner relations. Rather, in ex-
perimentation, we generate experiences that give us evidence of the reality
postulated by the theory.
11
Accordingly, what is pertinent to defining success will differ as well. Prac-
tical purposes offer practical tests; the interests of theoretic rationality, the
constructions which bring a strong feeling of ease, peace, rest, the lively
relief which comes with rational comprehension, answer to the aesthetic
Principle of Ease (James, 1978: 35), what Veblen termed, the test of dra-
matic consistency.
In Principles, Jamess selected example is a long text from Helmholtzs
Die Efhaltung der Kraft. Helmholtz had it right: Theoretical science tries to
discover the unknown causes of processes from their visible effects; tries to
understand them by the law of causality. . . . The ultimate goal of theoretical
physics is to find the last unchanging causes of the processes of nature
(1981, Vol. 2: 1261).
12
To be sure, James gave this a novel twist: What makes the assumption [of
unchanging causes] scientific and not merely poetic, what makes a
Helmholtz and his kin discoverers, is that the things of Nature turn out to act
as if they were of the kind assumed (1261). Over metaphysics, aesthetics,
and moral philosophy, science has an advantage:
Though natures materials lend themselves slowly and discouragingly to our
translation of them into ethical forms; but more readily into aesthetic forms; to
translation into scientific forms they lend themselves with relative ease and
completeness. The translation, it is true, will probably never be ended. The per-
ceptive order does not give way, nor the right conceptive substitute for it arise
at our bare word of command. It is often a deadly fight (1981, Vol. 2: 1236).
This is perhaps the basis of Jamess most profound ethical claim, repeated in
many different formulations, that the inmost nature of . . . reality is congenial
to powers which [we] possess. Moreover, saying that the translation . . . will
probably never be ended suggests that James would reject, as I think he should,
the Peircean notion that in the end, there will be some one true description that
12 Chapter One
is the product of persistent inquiry. Indeed, this would seem to be the case, as
well, as regards ethical and aesthetic matters. Yet, the belief that there are atoms
and molecules moving to and from each other according to strange laws is a be-
lief about the nature of a hidden reality. Indeed, in his notes for the 1879 The
Sentiment of Rationality, there is a brilliant argument for the pragmatic perti-
nence of the idea of a nonexperienceable reality. James says:
The principle of pragmatism which allows for all assumptions to be of iden-
tical value so long as they equally save the appearances will of course be satis-
fied by this empiricist explanation . . . [viz., as according to Mill, that no mys-
terious outness needs to be postulated]. But common sense is not assuaged.
She says, yes, I get all the particulars, am cheated out of none of my expecta-
tions. And yet the principle of intelligibility is gone. Real outness makes every-
thing simple as the day, but the troops of ideas marching and falling perpetually
into order, which you now ask me to adopt, have no reason in themtheir
whole existence is de facto and not de jure (James, 1978: 374).
Nevertheless, if British phenomenalism did not suffice, neither could he ac-
cept a more beyond the actual as it functioned in Spencer and Kant. Ap-
pealing to Peirces arguments, he first notes that most scientific readers of
Spencer wholly fail to catch the destructive import of his theory. . . . They are
willing to believe with the Master that the deepest reality is the absolutely ir-
rational, because that reality is unknowable, but few of them ultimately real-
ize that the knowable of their philosophy forms a world of Chance pure and
simple (1978: 369). Spencers unknowable cannot function to give order,
since to do this it must be known to have properties which could explain the
orderliness of experience. It was thus that the plus ultra in many philoso-
phiesin Mr. Spencers and in Kants, e.g., the noumenon is a dog in the
manger, it does nothing for us itself but merely stands and blasts with its
breath the actual (371).
James was haunted by the apparent intractability of making sense of a re-
lation between outer and inner, between mental facts and facts in the
world independent of mind. At this point at least, none of the inherited forms
of phenomenalism would suffice. Moreover, so as to be clear, they did not
suffice not because, or only because, of flaws in the associationist treatment
of the connectedness of experience, but because the troops of ideas . . . have
no reason in them. James agreed here with Peirce that the real could not be
reduced to the actual: There are still other forces at work in the mind which
lead it to suppose something over and above the mere actuality of things.
These include the sense of futurity, the power of expectation and our moral
judgments, which also involve [. . .] the notion of something related to the
instant representation and yet lying beyond its mere actuality (36970).
Pragmatic Philosophy of Science and the Charge of Scientism 13
The Sentiment of Rationality is important in another way. In holding
that conceptions, kinds are teleological instruments, serving the needs
of theoretic rationality, he hinted at an utterly novel solution to some
age-old problems, problems given a full-blown naturalistic treatment in
Principles in the chapters on conception (7), reasoning (22), and necessary
truths (28).
On this view, classification, judging, and predicating presuppose a rather
intricate system of necessary and immutable ideal truths of comparison. The
empiricists are wrong in supposing that necessary truths are merely the re-
sult of experience or as Spencer had it, of mere paths of frequent associ-
ation which outer stimuli . . . ploughed into the brain. But the a priorists are
also wrong since the eternal verities which our mind lays hold of do not
necessarily themselves lay hold on extra-mental being, nor have they, as Kant
pretended later, a legislating character even for all possible experience.
Rooted in the inner forces which make the brain grow, and therefore not
transcendental, they can be given a wholly naturalistic explanation. More-
over, psychology shows that classification is functional in the sense that es-
sential attributes are nothing more than abstracted properties which serve in-
ference. While universals need not be grounded in reality, if we are to
think at all, they are nevertheless indispensable.
It is not surprising, accordingly, that if Mill et al. begin with a clear nom-
inalist note, they are sure to end with a grating rattle which sounds very like
universalia in re, if not ante rem (James, 1978: 49). As Peirce had already
insisted, if particulars are wholly independent, inference is impossible. But
on Jamess view, Peirces generals did not need to have ontological status,
either ante rem or in re. The only meaning of essence is teleological . . . clas-
sification and conception are purely teleological weapons of the mind (1981,
II: 961).
Yet it is critical to see also that Jamess pragmatic account presupposes
as he seesthat there are relatively enduring things, that the world which
is independent of mind is not Heraclitean: This world might be a world in
which all things differed, and in which what properties there were were ulti-
mate and had not farther predicates. Fortunately, our world plays right into
logics hands. Some of the things . . . are of the same kind as other things;
some of them remain always of the kind which they once were; and some of
the properties of them cohere indissolubly and are always found together
(1981, II: 124647). That is, as Peirce had insisted, the objects of the ex-
ternal world have some character or other, even though they need not be
self-identifying to be cognized. If they are not self-identifying, however, the
way they got identified can be largely a function of human purposes, generi-
cally understood. H
2
O is not more deeply and truly the essence of water
14 Chapter One
than it is a solvent of sugar or a slaker of thirstsince it is all of these
things with equal reality (II, p. 961, note). Still, for scientific purposes, H
2
O
is primary, exactly because the scientific interest in the interest of theoretic
rationality. The foregoing shows, I believe, that James offered a powerful
philosophy of science that was not vulnerable to the difficulties in Peirces
more speculative view. And it was not a positivism: All ages have their in-
tellectual populace. That of our own day prides itself particularly on its love
of Science and Facts and its contempt for all metaphysics (1978: 56). Posi-
tivists fool themselves if they suppose that they dispense with metaphysics.
Indeed, Metaphysics of some sort there must be. The only alternative is be-
tween the good Metaphysics of clear-headed Philosophy and the trashy Meta-
physics of vulgar Positivism (57).
13
Jamess philosophy of science was no
trashy metaphysics of vulgar Positivism. Yet, James prefaced Principles by
insisting that in writing it, he had adopted a strictly positivist point of view.
If I am correct, the nature of Jamess positivism is centrally connected to
the problem acknowledged by James, that Principles was confusingly a psy-
chology and an epistemology.
PSYCHOLOGY OR NATURALIZED EPISTEMOLOGY?
James insisted that a psychology which takes the natural science point of
view, must assume as data (a) mental states of humans (experience), (b)
physical things and states in a spatio-temporal environment, and (c) knowl-
edge by humans of things of type (b) (1981, Vol. 1: 6, 184). But he also as-
serted that the relation of knowing is the most mysterious thing in the
world, that if we ask how one thing can know another we are led into the
heart of Erkenntnisstheorie and metaphysics (1981, I: 212). A moments
consideration will show, however, that if the latter is true, there are some se-
rious problems for psychology as a science. Indeed, it was the fear of meta-
physics which had led Mill, for example, to restrict psychology to investiga-
tion of mental states,
14
just as it led the behaviorists to redefine the goals of a
scientific psychology. James nevertheless insisted that while psychology was
the Science of Mental Life, this necessarily committed the psychologist to
investigation of not just its phenomena, e.g., consciousness and the stream
of thought, but to investigation of its conditions, physiologically and in the
outer world.
15
Similarly, while he seems to deny that psychology, approached from the
natural science point of view, needs to solve the mind/body problem, he at-
tacked materialism, spiritualism, parallelism, and epiphenomenalism. For
him, mental phenomena are not only conditioned a parte ante by bodily
Pragmatic Philosophy of Science and the Charge of Scientism 15
process, but they lead to them a parte post (I: 18). That is, although brain ac-
tivity is a necessary causal condition for mental phenomena, for James, it
seemed obvious that mental phenomena were themselves irreducibly real and
had causal efficacy. Not only do they lead to actsof course the most fa-
miliar of truthsbut mental states occasion . . . changes in the calibre of
blood vessels . . . or processes more subtle still, in glands and viscera. His
emergent naturalism recurs throughout Principles. The following brilliantly
suggests his notion of this:
What happens in the brain after experience has done its utmost is what happens
in every material mass which has been fashioned by an outward force. . . . The
fashioning from without brings the elements into collocations, which set new in-
ternal forces free to exert their effects in turn. And the random irradiations and
resettlements of our ideas, which supervene upon experience, and constitute our
free mental play, are due entirely to those secondary internal processes, which
vary enormously from brain to brain. . . . The higher thought-processes owe
their being to causes which correspond far more to the sourings and fermenta-
tions of dough, the setting of mortar, or the subsidence of sediments in mixtures
than to the manipulations by which these physical aggregates came to be com-
pounded (II: 123435).
James was not, however, clear on how such a nonreductive naturalistic re-
sponse to the mind/body problem had to be worked out.
16
Indeed, one might
say that the Cartesian (ontically dualist) formulations which also occur in
Principles suggest more than unclarity, that they reveal tensions not resolved
in Jamess own mind. Jamess 1894 Presidential address to the American Psy-
chological Association, The Knowing of Things Together (1978: 7189)
was a clear step in the resolution of the tensions of the Principles. In that es-
say, he considered a host of theories in response to the psychological problem
of the nature of the synthetic unity of consciousness and concluded that for
various reasons, none of the theories can be accepted. But what of his own
view in the Principles? He there had proposed to simply eliminate from psy-
chology considered as a natural science the whole business of ascertaining
how we come to know things together or to know them at all (1978: 87, my
emphasis). That we do know things, sometimes singly and sometimes to-
gether, is a fact. That states of consciousness are the vehicle of knowledge,
and depend on brain states, are two other facts. At that time he supposed that
a natural science of psychology might legitimately confine itself to tracing
the functional variations of these three sorts of fact (1978: 87).
It was precisely, then, in his claim that a science had to restrict itself to
functional variations between facts that James was a positivist. For de-
spite texts that suggest the opposite, for example, his willingness to counte-
16 Chapter One
nance Helmholtz on the search for hidden causes, he more generally seems to
agree with the positivists that all talk about causes as productive powers is
metaphysical. Science aims at functional variations.
The point is critical. The clearest statement is in Volume I, of Principles, in
his criticism of the automation theory. James insisted the whole question
of interaction and influence between things is a metaphysical question. . . . It
is truly hard enough to imagine the idea of a beefsteak binding two mole-
cules together; but since Humes time it has been equally hard to imagine
anything binding them together (1981, I: 140). The problem is not merely
mind and matter as different stuffs, but of the causal interactions between
molecules constituting a beefsteak! The whole idea of binding, he wrote,
is a mystery, the first step towards the solution of which is to clear scholas-
tic rubbish out of the way. It was true that popular science talks of forces,
attractions or affinities as binding the molecules, but while such words
may be used to abbreviate discourse, clear science [Mach, Pearson, Ost-
wald!] . . . has no use for the conceptions, and is satisfied when she can ex-
press in simple laws the bare space-relations of the molecules as functions
of each other and of time (1981, I: 140).
The automatists pull the pall over the psychic half of the subject only . . .
and say that that causation is unintelligible, whilst in the same breath one
dogmatizes about material causation as if Hume, Kant, and Lotze had never
been born (I: 140). James insists that one must be either impartially naif or
impartially critical, either pull the pall over the whole business or admit
both physical and psychic causation: If the latter, the reconstruction must be
thorough-going or metaphysical, and will probably preserve the common-
sense view that ideas are forces, in some translatable form. But Psychology is
a mere natural science, accepting certain terms uncritically as her data, and
stopping short of metaphysical construction (I: 141).
He had defined psychology as the Science of Mental Life, both of its
phenomena and their conditions, and as he says many, many times, he is
interested in ascertaining all sorts of conditionsof, e.g., memory, I: 17;
of discrimination, I: 49498; of thinking that what we believe is real, II:
91735, etc. But not only is he never bashful about employing causal lan-
guage and in implying that it is explanatoryno scientist is!but one may
reasonably wonder what are the conditions for something existing or hap-
pening if, taken together, they are not its causes and do not explain? More-
over, it was clear to James, even if amazingly missed by so many, that one
cannot experience the causes of experience. Indeed, there had to be com-
plicated causal relations between the three sorts of facts involved in
knowing. Even the spiritualist and the associationist are cerebralists
since they must admit, certain peculiarities in the way of working of their
Pragmatic Philosophy of Science and the Charge of Scientism 17
own favorite principles are explicable only by the fact that the brain laws
are a codeterminant of the result (I: 18, my emphasis).
Nevertheless, for good historical reasons, James, like Spencer, remained
trapped in the idea that scientific causation was merely empirical invari-
ance. But if so, then if he were consistent, psychology, as James had de-
fined it, was not likely to achieve its goals. It is true that one begins
naively, by taking for granted that people have minds, that there is a
physical world and that people have knowledge of it, but if one then re-
fuses to consider how, one is surely not going to explain perception, con-
ception, reasoning, learning, memory, or anything else. On the positivist
view, of course, explanation is either subsumption (deduction, inclusion in
a class already known) or it is metaphysicalappealing to occult
forces, substances, powers.
17
James offered no deductions and he
produced no empirical invariances between the three sorts of facts, be-
tween, for example, the experience of red tomato, some discharge of neu-
rons and some thing in the external world. Indeed, exactly because an
enormous number of very different kinds of causal mechanisms are in-
volved in my experiencing red tomatoare codeterminant of the re-
sultit is hard to see how this could be possible! On the other hand, when
in terms of conditions, he did propose an explanation, for example, of
memory, he was then well on his way to that thorough-going, meta-
physical reconstruction which would have been at least part of naturalis-
tic epistemology. An excellent example of this tension is Jamess discus-
sion of memory. The reader has been led to believe that he is getting some
explanations, but just before James concludes his brilliant account, he
asserts:
Aword, in closing, about the metaphysics involved in remembering. According
to the assumptions of this book, thoughts accompany the brains workings, and
those thoughts are cognitive of realities. The whole creation is one, which we
can only write down empirically, confessing that no glimmer of explanation of
it is yet in sight. That brains should give rise to knowing consciousness at all,
this is the one mystery, which always returns, no matter of what sort the con-
sciousness or of what sort the knowledge may be (1981, I: 647).
It is a remarkable fact, but nonetheless a fact, that positivist assumptions
about causality and lawfulness are adequate to a scientific psychology, which
denies that it is the Science of Mental life, both of its phenomena and their
conditions. By taking prediction and control as its theoretical (sic) goal,
such a psychology avoids the troublesome metaphysics of mind/body, and
of knowledge and reality. Or better, as James had it, it assumes the trashy
Metaphysics of vulgar Positivism.
18 Chapter One
RADICAL EMPIRICISM
By the 1894 Knowing of Things Together, James became convinced . . .
that no conventional restrictions can keep metaphysical and so-called episte-
mological inquiries out of the psychology books (1978: 88). But this did not
lead him in the direction of a metaphysical reconstruction, which would have
allowed a full-blown nonreductive, physiological psychology replete with
physical and psychic causation as a replacement for some of the central prob-
lems of traditional epistemology. It led him, instead, to radical empiricism,
as John McDermott rightly says, to a novel metaphysics of experience.
This then is the heart of the problem. Was it possible to have both a phys-
iological psychology, which displaced traditional epistemology and a meta-
physics of experience, or indeed, are the two ideas at the bottom inconsistent?
From the beginning, James had sought to transform empiricism. As
Hollinger says, his previous efforts had been in work which James himself
called practical and psychological. Thus, the idea that relations as well as
particulars come to us as part of a single stream was offered in response to
both associationist psychology and to neo-Kantian alternatives. As I have
suggested, this attack was fully consistent with the indirect realism of Princi-
ples. Still, the problem of the relation of knower to known and of mind to
body haunted James. He made the break with radical empiricism. It seems
that, originally, radical empiricism was, for James, merely a name of an
attitude. But increasingly he came to think of it as the name for a technical
position in epistemology and metaphysics, a doctrine that allowed him to
overcome the limitations of conventional empiricisms and to dispense with
the inclusive mind of the idealists. Nothing could be clearer, I believe, than
that James overcame with the new doctrine of pure experience what, for him,
were ultimately invidious dualisms in his own psychology. What, in Princi-
ples, he had called the most mysterious thing in the world was now, re-
markably, fully intelligible.
18
If we start with the supposition that there was only one primal stuff or material
of the world, a stuff of which everything is composed, and if we call that stuff
pure experience, then knowing can easily be explained as a particular sort of
relation towards one another into which portions of pure experience may enter
(1978: 4, my emphasis).
Yet I do not see how to square radical empiricism with any vision of an indi-
rect realism. Thus the well-known postulate of radical empiricism asserts:
. . . the only things that shall be debateable among philosophers shall be things
definable in terms drawn from experience. Things of an unexperienceable
Pragmatic Philosophy of Science and the Charge of Scientism 19
nature may exist ad libitum, but they form no part of the material for philosophic
debate.
If what is not definable in terms drawn from experience cannot be a matter
of rational debate, it is hard to see how this is not a phenomenalism.
19
One might hold here that this takes James too strictly or that it reads James
in the light of developments in epistemology and the philosophy of science
with which he had little concern. Why, for example, hold James to the logi-
cians sense of definable in terms drawn from experience?
There is, I believe, an important case to be made here. James as a philoso-
pher was a popular writer whose concerns far outran the concerns of the
professional community (including the present writer!), who now struggle to
get straight his epistemology and metaphysics. James could applaud
Mach and influence Russell, but the James who left the psychological labo-
ratory was ambivalently an epistemologist and a trenchant cultural critic.
As Hollinger has argued, especially did James fear that his contemporary in-
tellectuals were forming a culturally destructive idea of what it meant to be
scientific(Hollinger, 1985: 5).
20
Thus, the tragic irony: Because his scien-
tific psychology seemed to him to involve an invidious dualism, James opted
for an innovative metaphysics of experience. This theory, he hoped, gave log-
ical rights to those too tender to give up religion, but too tough to give up
science. But unnoticed was the fact that this theory also undercut the theory
of science he so brilliantly sketched in Principles. Because it has been diffi-
cult not to read radical empiricism as a phenomenalism, Jamess pragmatism
was plagued by an incipient subjectivism, and by the collapse of realism into
actualism, the problem which haunted Peirce, and if I am correct, haunted
Dewey, as well. The issue is not, so as to be clear here, the status of
essences or universals, for Jamess own psychological account of these is
fully consistent with his own earlier indirect realism. Nor does it regard
Jamess lifelong criticism of the correspondence theory of truth, for rejection
of it is also consistent with forms of indirect realism. Jamess most penetrat-
ing text on this score is his very early Remarks on Spencers Definition of
Mind as Correspondence. James there wrote:
the knower is not simply a mirror floating with no foot-hold anywhere, and pas-
sively reflecting an order that he comes upon and finds simply existing. The
knower is an actor, and co-efficient of truth on one side, whilst on the other he reg-
isters the truth, which he helps to create. Mental interests, hypotheses, postulates,
so far as they are bases for human actionaction which to great extent transforms
the worldhelp to make the truth which they declare. . . . The only objective cri-
terion of reality is coerciveness, in the long run, over thought. Objective facts,
Spencers outward relations, are real only because they coerce sensation (1978: 21).
20 Chapter One
But if this is true, as I think it is, then outward relations are real enough,
even though all we can experience are the effects of a world which is never
experienced as it is in itself. This means that no sense can be made of test-
ing truth by correspondence; but it means as well that as James had as-
sented, the world contains relatively enduring things which exist in-
dependently of us, and that these are the objects at the object end of the
subject/object dichotomy. From the point of view of science, these are the
theoretized objects of physical science, just as so much in Principles sug-
gested. Accordingly, foundationalist epistemology can give way to a natu-
ralized epistemology in which a critical part of the story will be showing
how, for example, theorized photons, being emitted from things not in ex-
perience affect our retina, and how, through some very complicated causal
process, things in the outer world become the things of ordinary ex-
perience.
21
That is, either we admit the existence and causal powers of pho-
tons which are in principle not definable in terms drawn from experience,
or as radical empiricists, we merely accept, unexplained, the de facto relat-
edness of experience.
22
DEWEYS REJECTION OF TRADITIONAL EPISTEMOLOGY
This is, if I am correct, another way of saying, as John Smith said of Dewey,
that the essence of his well-known rejection of the epistemological problem
was his unwillingness to countenance that there was a theoretical subject/
object problem, that in effect all attempts at making knowledge itself intel-
ligible are greeted by pointing out that science is a fact and that is the end of
the matter (Smith, 1970: 2). Dewey was right in rejecting the spectator the-
ory of knowledgethe kernal of pragmatic cognition, and right also in in-
sisting that inquiry had a biological and a social matrixas Peirce had
seen. His theory of inquiry was a naturalist epistemology, but it was incom-
plete because he finally rejected the problem of an external world and the
mind/body problem as nonproblems. (See Chapter 5.)
Dewey did, of course, struggle with these problems, from his explicitly ide-
alist beginnings until perhaps the exhaustion of the heated realist controver-
sies at the end of the second decade of the last century. As Sleeper has con-
vincingly demonstrated, Dewey generated an entirely novel metaphysics,
rejecting both classical realism, even as that had lingered in the thought of
Peirce, and the Jamesian metaphysics of experience. Neverthless, in my view,
Deweys rejection of traditional epistemology was insufficiently radical; in-
deed, it was conservative insofar as his metaphysics of existence satisfied
Kantian strictures about metaphysics.
Pragmatic Philosophy of Science and the Charge of Scientism 21
The issue of realism was particularly bothersome since critics of pragma-
tism persistently said that it was an idealism. Consider but these few transi-
tional texts: In Reality as Experience (1906), he offered, cautiously, that
early realityreality which lacked conscious organisms, is at any and
every point on its way to experience (MW, Vol. 3: 102). The answer could
hardly be satisfactory. One might admit that if minded beings had not arrived
on the scene, there could be no knowledge of early reality, but surely this re-
ality would still have existed independently? In The Realism of Pragma-
tism, (1905) he wrote that ideas, sensations, mental states, are, in their cog-
nitive significance, media of so adjusting things to one another, that they
become representative of one another. When this is accomplished, they drop
out; and things are present to the agent in the most naively realistic fashion
(MW, Vol. 3: 153). His defense of a kind of operational naive realism recurs
in The Postulate of Immediate Empiricism (1905), where he asserts: Im-
mediate empiricism postulates that thingsanything, in the ordinary or non-
technical use of the term thingare what they are experienced as (MW,
Vol. 3: 158). In Experience and Objective Idealism (1906), he defended the
empiricism of (absolute) idealism but rejected its rationalism, the idea that
thought or reason provides objectivity to sensory data. But he left open
what did. It was thus that R. B. Perry was happy to accept Deweys rescue of
reality from dependence on intellect, but was not happy that Dewey was
satisfied to leave it in the grasp of that more universal experience which is
a matter of functions and habit, of active adjustments and readjustments, of
coordinations and activities, rather than states of consciousness. For Perry,
a thoroughgoing realism must assert independence not only of thought, but
of any variety whatsoever of experiencing, whether it be perception, feeling,
or even the instinctive response of the organism to its environment (Perry,
1912: 32324).
23
Deweys earliest writings on mind and body are patently dualist and, as in
his 1884 The New Psychology, he is at pains to deny that physiology can
give any sort of explanation of psychical events. Following Wundt, he was
at that time insisting that of itself, physiology has no value for psychol-
ogy (EW, Vol. 1). The justly famous Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology
(1896) has often been taken as Deweys solution to the mind/body problem.
But though it does mark a decisive break from his earlier dualism, its key fea-
ture is the way that Dewey preserves, in a biological setting, the teleology of
his earlier idealism. He firmly and rightly rejects mechanistic biology as in-
adequate to the facts, then generalizes this to include the psychical. To be
sure, the mechanistic view did assume that the sensation is an ambiguous
dweller on the borderland of soul and body, the idea (or central process) is
purely psychical, and the act (or movement) is purely physical, but it was no
22 Chapter One
answer to assert merely that the reflex arc formulation is neither physical (or
physiological) nor psychological: it is a mixed materialistic-spiritualist as-
sumption (EW, Vol. 5: 104).
Had Dewey been more critical of the new behaviorists in American psy-
chology, he would have seenand might have taught them, that his brilliant
critique of mechanism utterly undermined their research program. But in fact,
his easy functionalist solution to the ontological issue surely contributed to
the view, shared by all the behaviorists, here including Skinner, that mind/
body was a nonissue. (See Chapter 2.)
Finally, while there are texts that support the view that Dewey assumed that
psychology (along with sociology) had displaced traditional epistemology, he
seems not to have noticed that there were matters left unfinished, matters
which rightly puzzled his critics. Here is one example: . . . when a writer en-
deavors to take a frankly naturalistic, biological and moral attitude, and to ac-
count for knowledge on the basis of the place it occupies in such a reality, he
is treated as if his philosophy were only, after all, just another kind of episte-
mology. (See Part II of this volume.) For Dewey, of course, the root fallacy
of all epistemology was the failure to recognize that what is doubtful is not
the existence of the world but the validity of certain customary yet inferential
beliefs about things in it (MW, Vol. 8). Presumably, once this is admitted,
one ought to get on with the real questions of which inferred beliefs were
valida wholly scientific problem.
But it hardly satisfied his critics to treat them as if they failed to understand
that their problems were nonproblems and to assert that [pragmatism] occu-
pies a position of an emancipated empiricism or thoroughgoing naive real-
ism, that [it] is content to take its stand with science . . . [and] daily life
(MW, Vol. 10: 39). By doing this, Dewey simply took for granted both com-
mon sense and science and thus refused to acknowledge with Hume and
Kant, that there was a problem of knowledge, not merely of certain knowl-
edge, but of how we can at all connect subjectivity to the world.
Nevertheless, innocence once lost cannot be regained. Even if Dewey did
show that the skeptical objections of modern philosophy foundered on a mis-
construal of experience, there remained the problem of reconciling the re-
ality of the physical object of science with the richly qualitative object of or-
dinary experience. Dewey, who I quote here, called this problem factitious
(1960: 131). Yet however much the problem was unnatural, an artifact of
some accidental developments in the history of Western civilization, it was, if
unfortunately, a genuine theoretical problemas James surely would have
acknowledged. In the present view, the much heralded overcoming of subject
and object, the duality bequeathed by modern philosophy, is overcome only
by eliminating one or the other: reductive materialism (the naturalism of
Pragmatic Philosophy of Science and the Charge of Scientism 23
Rorty), or (basement) idealism, the metaphysics so frequently imputed to
Dewey.
24
The other alternative, recommended here, is to insist that even if
there is no duality between knower and cognized object, the famous ego-
centric predicament, there must be a duality between knower and that
world which exists independently of knowers. Indeed, it is just this that
makes possible that naturalized epistemology which James was so reluctant
to pursue, but which, if I am correct, Dewey took for granted.
DEWEYS PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
James and Dewey had rich doctrines of experience. There is no doubt of that.
Yet if I am correct, they became convinced, with Ostwald and Mach, and
later, as regards Dewey, with Bridgman, Schlick, and Carnap, that scientific
knowledge could dispense not only with essentially metaphysical causal
talk, but with talk of any nonexperienceable reality. But if so, both radical
and emancipated empiricism, can get only to positivist versions of science.
That is, James and Dewey had to give a thoroughgoing instrumentalist read-
ing to the theoretical terms of science and thus to accept the idea that an ex-
planation was subsumption, explanation and prediction were symmetrical.
Peirces How To Make Our Ideas Clear, now shorn of his realism, was,
of course, the original inspiration for the pragmatic treatment of theoretical
terms. Thus Dewey writes the resolution of objects and nature as a whole
into facts stated exclusively in terms of quantities which may be handled in
calculation . . . is a declaration that this is the effective way to think things
. . . to formulate their meanings. Conceptions are either to be defined oper-
ationally or they are purely dialectical inventions (1960: 118). Dewey as-
serts that most of Newtons analytical work would remain unchanged, if his
physical objects were dropped out and geometrical points were substituted
(11819). But this could only be so if, to quote Duhem, a physical theory is
not an explanation. It is a system of mathematical propositions, deduced from
a small number of mathematical principles, which aim to represent as simply,
as completely, and as exactly as possible a set of experimental laws.
Once Dewey assented to this, it was easy to waffle over the goals and vin-
dication of scientific theory. Did science aim at understanding or at prediction
and control? Was a theory valid if and only if it predicted? Dewey was
not, to be sure, alone in not seeing how critical these questions were. In fact,
he seems to have anticipated Ernest Nagels influential view that the differ-
ences between realist and instrumentalist construals of theory reduce to but a
conflict over preferred modes of speech (Nagel, 1961: 153). Yet, the differ-
ences are fundamentalas Hempels theoreticians dilemma shows
24 Chapter One
(Hempel, 1965). Thus, if theoretical terms serve their purpose and estab-
lish definite connections among observable phenomena, then they are un-
necessary. If, on the other hand, they lack such connections, then as but di-
alectical inventions, to use Deweys terms, they are surely unnecessary. As
Hempel came to see, however, the dilemma depends upon holding that the
sole purpose of a theory is to establish deductive connections among obser-
vation sentences. If this were the case, then theoretical terms would indeed
be unnecessary. But theory has other purposes. As Jamess Principles had in-
sisted, theory satisfies the interest of theoretic rationalityjust as had sen-
timental philosophy. Prediction and technical control is one thing, the satis-
faction that comes with understanding quite another. On the positivist view,
since explanation and prediction are symmetrical, this distinction is col-
lapsed; and if so, prediction and control can be taken to define sciencea
thoroughly technocratic view.
25
THEORETIC JUDGMENTS AND JUDGMENTS OF PRACTICE
Pragmatism had the burden that Americans could never accept that praktiche
and pragmatisch were, as Peirce said, as far apart as the two poles. When this
confusion is joined to some confusions over science, one easily produces the
characteristic misunderstanding of Deweys profound analysis of the logic of
judgments. By developing in an original way the pragmatic insight which had
linked rational cognition with rational purpose, Dewey tried to show that practi-
cal judgments answered to norms and conditions which made them as war-
rantable as theoretic judgments; but not because the justification of theoretical
judgments is that they have some practical use, but because all inquiry is con-
strained by similar conditions, the indeterminate situation in which inquiry be-
gins, the inherited materials with which it works, a reality which imposes its
own limits, and consequences which are produced by acting on hypotheses,
consequences whose pertinence will be a function of the rational purpose of the
inquiry. There could still be differences in practices aimed at satisfying theoretic
rationality and those aimed at solving practical problems. Fully following
Peirce and James, Dewey held that the peculiarity of scientific abstraction lies
in the degree of its freedom from particular existential adhesions and that in
scientific inquiry . . . meanings are related to one another on the ground of their
character as meanings, free from direct reference to the concern of a limited
group (1938: 119). It was not, that is, that scientific inquiry was freed of its ex-
istential conditions and purposes, for it was exactly the pragmatists point that no
inquiry was or could be. Rather, the words to emphasize in the foregoing are
particular and limited, just as Peirce would have insisted.
Pragmatic Philosophy of Science and the Charge of Scientism 25
SCIENCE AND CULTURE
Finally, there was Deweys well-known emphasis on science and scientific
method. It is a persistent theme of all the pragmatists that although knowledge
is fallible, inquiry has an integrity. Likewise, James and Dewey were em-
phatic that the world was responsive to human purposes, that inquiry could
change the world. But it was profoundly easy to miss the real force of this,
especially if, as I have been arguing, there was an incipient subjectivism and
idealism in pragmatist ontology, and in consequence, an inevitable instumen-
talism in their conceptions of science. But adding to this, as Hollinger points
out, it is a striking feature of the history of pragmatism that the detailed de-
velopment of Deweys pragmatic theory of inquiry, in his 1938 Logic, ap-
peared long after his more vague and question-begging pronouncements had
helped win for his reconstructionist vision a following greater than it has en-
joyed during the more than forty years since he did his best to justify it philo-
sophically (Hollinger, 1985: 98).
26
(See Chapter 5.)
Nevertheless, Dewey was sufficiently clear on other matters that are es-
sential. First, like Veblen, he believed that science was a critical part of the
problem now being faced by inhabitants of modern civilization. Unlike
Comte, Spencer and a host of nineteenth-century writers, Dewey did not hold
that as science gave us new knowledge, there would be continuous improve-
ment in human life. In an 1893 assessment of Renans The Future of Science,
Dewey endorsed Renans view that the definition of science . . . is to know
from the standpoint of humanity; its goal is such a sense of life as will enable
man to direct his conduct in relation to his fellows by intelligence and not by
chance. But he was sympathetic to Renans loss of faith in science, ac-
knowledging that the forty years since Renan wrote have not done much to
add to the human spirit and the human interpretation to the results of science;
they have gone to increase its technical and remote character. To be sure, he
affirmed that any lasting denial of dogmatic authority is impossible save as
science itself advances to that comprehensive synthesis which will allow it to
become a guide of conduct, a social motor (EW, Vol. 4: 12, 17). In this es-
say, he did not say what needed to happen if science was to become a social
motor for human progress. He returned to this theme in 1900, pointing out
that the anomaly of our present social life is obvious enough. He went on:
With tremendous increase in control of nature, in ability to utilize nature for the
indefinite expansion and multiplication of commodities for human use and sat-
isfaction, we find the actual realization of ends, the enjoyment of values grow-
ing unassured and precarious. At times it seems as if we were caught in a con-
tradiction; the more we multiply means, the less certain and general is the use
we are able to make of them (MW, Vol. 1: 76).
26 Chapter One
If science were to become a social motor for human progress, there was, as
Veblen was insisting, the need to gain knowledge of the conditions through
which possible values become actual in life. Lacking an understanding of the
causes of outcomes, we are at the mercy of habit, of haphazard, and hence
of force. Physical science had outdistanced human science. We have applied
intelligence to the control of nature but we have not put it to use to make
a human world, to structure society so that our technologies are used for the
realization of human values. (See Chapters 3 and 4)
Secondly, Dewey was also clear that the problem was essentially political.
When he wrote the foregoing words, the social sciences were just then be-
coming institutionalized as specialized disciplines, each struggling to
achieve that expertise which would make them authoritative in a civiliza-
tion being shaped by industrialized science (Manicas, 1987). Dewey and
Veblen agreed both on what was happening and why. Veblen was pessimistic
that much could be done. In his view, American social science could not help
but succumb to the temptations and atmosphere of the times. As he saw, it was
easy to reject the idea that social science was inquiry into the nature and
causes, the working and outcome of [the] institutional apparatus. Such in-
quiry was dangerous, since even if it should bear no colour of iconoclasm,
its outcome will disturb the habitual convictions and pre-conceptions on
which they rest. In the spirit of middle-class reform, social science could
concentrate on what ought to be done to improve conditions and to conserve
those usages and conventions that have by habit become imbedded in the re-
ceived scheme of use and wont, and so have been found to be good and right
(Veblen, 1957: 132). So as Veblen saw it, habit, the haphazard and force
were being reinforced by social science.
Dewey, always hopeful, believed that the new social sciences could be part
of the solution. Yet, in that early review of Renan, he had himself suggested
an analysis that could have been endorsed by a Marxist, just as it became the
point of departure of Veblens later trenchant analysis. Dewey wrote: Renan
does not seem to have realized sufficiently the dead weight of intrenched
class interests which resists all attempts of science to take practical form and
become a social motor (EW, Vol. 4: 17). (See Chapter 10.)
His most significant treatment of the critical issues is perhaps his 1927 The
Public and Its Problems. Dewey there offered a radical critique of the prob-
lem of democracy and concluded his account with a chapter entitled The
Problem of Method. He affirmed some characteristic Deweyan themes, e.g.,
the absolutist character of political philosophies and the diversion of
thought away from fruitful questions. In this context, he affirmed Veblens
point, that while we willingly spent money responding to results of bad
conditions, we needed to identify the causes of our problems. Forgetting his
Pragmatic Philosophy of Science and the Charge of Scientism 27
earlier insight, he argued that the reason for this anomaly was clear
enough: There is no conviction that the sciences of human nature are far
enough advanced to make public support of such activities worthwhile. Yet,
if on this issue he had been nearer to the truth earlier, there was a deeper prob-
lem. It was the problem of democracy, the problem of the public, the inca-
pacity of citizens to communicate freely, to overcome secrecy, prejudice,
bias, misrepresentation, and propaganda as well as sheer ignorance, to re-
place these by inquiry and publicity, and thence to act so as to overcome
present problems. This was the deep problem, since for Dewey, if social sci-
entific knowledge of the causes of our problems was the work of experts,
the problem of putting such knowledge to work so as to make possible values
actual in life, was the problem of the Democratic Community. If people were
unable to act intelligently, it was because they lacked the means. If people
were now incapable, it was because they were incapacitated by the conditions
of life, economic, political, and pedagogic.
27
Nor did people need to be ex-
perts: what is required is that they have the ability to judge of the bearing
of the knowledge supplied by others upon common concerns. It was in this
sense, indeed, that scientific method had to be the method of all, and it was
in this sense that it was part of the democratic mode of life. (See Chapter 8.)
Dewey tried desperately to convince us that we must apply science to life,
but even given the difficulties in his conception of science and even given his
frequent use of control metaphors, his commitment to democracy kept his
vision from being technocratic. (See Chapters 14 and 15.)
In this paper I have suggested that pragmatism was a novel and liberating
philosophy but that its fundamental insights became distorted as they became
absorbed. The epigones and enemies of American pragmatism have been
pleased to make it into the American philosophy of technocracy, celebrating
positivist science and bourgoise society. This is profoundly ironical. Al-
though, of course, there are very large differences in their philosophies, it
would be fairer to say that the project of the pragmatists, like Marxs, was to
assist us in de-alienating our increasing alienated world. (See Chapter 9.)
NOTES
1. The many revisions of my essay have profited from Hollingers work.
2. It is also customary to hold that Veblens essay was a direct critique of Dewey
and of pragmatic philosophy. This is symptomatic. Since Henry Waldgrave Stuarts
review of Veblens remarkable The Place of Science in Modern Civilization (1906),
Veblens idle curiosity has been widely interpreted as offered, as Diggins writes, in
opposition to both the Deweyite determination to make all knowledge expedient and
the Jamesian desire to allow man to believe what he wills to believe. But it is clear
28 Chapter One
enough that idle curiosity is a direct and acknowledged appropriation from James.
Moreover, Veblen put to work Deweys important reflex arc paper in his argument,
and as I argue below, Veblen and Dewey fully agreed that as science was part of the
problem, science was also part of the solution. As Diggins sees, Veblen is careful to
express great respect for John Dewey and William James, but he fails to see, oddly,
that this is exactly because Veblen is not attacking their pragmatism, but the already
persuasive technologism of American culture. For an example of the misunderstand-
ings on these critical points, see John Diggins, The Bard of Savagery: Thorstein
Veblen and Modern Social Theory (New York: Seabury Press, 1978): 30, 82f, and 182.
Perry Miller is more cautious. See his Introduction, American Thought, Civil War
to World War I (New York: Reinhart, 1954): xlviii. More recently, see Dorothy Ross,
American Social Science and the Idea of Progress, in Thomas L. Haskell (ed.), The
Authority of Experts (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984): 165 and Dorothy
Ross, The Origins of American Social Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1991).
3. Jamess 1907 Pragmatism contributed greatly to confusion here. It is, of course,
an exciting book which squarely faced the present dilemma of philosophy: Our
children . . . are almost born scientific. But our esteem for facts has not neutralized in
us all religiousness. It is itself almost religious. Yet, James let his language carry him
away, as Dewey was quick to point out. See Deweys review, What Pragmatism
Means by Practical (1908), The Middle Works, Vol. 4 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois
Press, 1977).
4. While it is not part of the present argument, if I am correct, Richard Rortys in-
terpretation of Dewey falls into the family of misinterpretations which stem from the
problem discussed in what follows. Versus Rorty, Sleeper is correct in seeing that (1)
Dewey did not try to overcome the tradition, but to transform it, and (2) Dewey did
not try to make everything scientific if by science, one means what Rorty means.
Deweys conception, as I argue, was faulty, but not quite as faulty as the one promoted
by Rorty and imputed to Dewey by him. Sleeper, John McDermott, and Abraham
Edel have considered Rortys views of pragmatism in the Winter 1985 issue of The
Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, Vol. XXI, No. 1. See also James Camp-
bells excellent treatment, Rortys Use of Dewey, Southern Journal of Philosophy,
XXII, No. Vol. 2 (Summer 1984).
5. More generally, the idea that there is an inseperable connection between ra-
tional cognition and rational purpose, is held by all the pragmatists. Remaining cita-
tions from Peirce are from P. P. Weiner (ed.), Values in a Universe of Chance (New
York: Doubleday, 1950).
6. The text looks elitist, of course, but this is doubtful. Not only must we accept
Peirces mix of irony and seriousness, but he was no doubt correct in judging both the
effectiveness of the method of authority and its psychology. Yet he may well be of-
fering here that, if we chose, we can all always use the scientific method. As I note be-
low, he says everybody uses the scientific method about a great many things. For
some interesting discussion, see Thomas L. Haskell, Professionalism versus Capi-
talism: R. H. Tawney, Emile Durkheim, and C. S. Peirce on the Disinterestedness of
Professional Communities, in Haskell (ed.), The Authority of Experts.
Pragmatic Philosophy of Science and the Charge of Scientism 29
7. See M. F. Burnyeat, The Skeptic in his Place and Time, in R. Rorty et al.
(eds.), Philosophy in History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). On the
present view, if Peirce recast the epistemological problem and refused the transcen-
dental move, Dewey, and James, in his radical empiricism, refused the transcenden-
tal move and the epistemological problem.
8. For discussion of these figures, see John Passmore, A Hundred Years of Phi-
losophy (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966), Chapter 14. My definition of positivism,
it should be noted, has two components. The label was not true of Helmholtz, nor
likely of Hertz, nor, as I shall argue, of Peirce or of James in Principles. An enor-
mously useful account of Helmholtz, pertinent to the present essay, is to be found in
M. Mandelbaum, History, Man and Reason (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1971).
9. See Fred I. Dretskes Laws of Nature, Philosophy of Science, Vol. 44 (1977).
If the properties are real and abstract, that is, sui generis real, we have a Platonism.
On the other hand, as Peirce also suggests, if they are but abstracted real properties of
complexes, we can have a far more modest realism.
10. See Elizabeth Flower, The Unity of Knowledge and Purpose in Jamess View
of Action, in W. R. Corti (ed.), The Philosophy of William James (Hamburg: Felix
Meiner, 1976).
11. Although it cannot be pursued here, the point is more fundamental than may
appear. Experiment, properly understood, implies that causal laws cannot be se-
quences of events and that causal laws continue to operate under open conditions,
when there are no empirical invariances. See Roy Bhaskar, A Realist Theory of Sci-
ence. 2nd Edition (Atlantic Highlands, N.J: Humanities Press, 1978): 3336.
12. There can be no doubt that Helmholtz had a realist view of causality. For ex-
ample, he wrote, the word Ursache (which I use here precisely and literally) means
that existent something (Bestehende) which lies hidden behind the changes we per-
ceive. It is the hidden but continuously existent basis of phenomena, (Selected Writ-
ings, Russell Kahl (ed.), (Middleton, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1971). See
especially 52126. Veblen concurred. Singling out Karl Pearson, he wrote: Those
eminent authorities who speak for a colorless mathematical formulation invariably
and necessarily fall back on the (essentially metaphysical) preconception of causation
as soon as they go into the actual work of scientific inquiry (The Place of Science in
Modern Civilization and Other Essays [New York: Russell and Russell, 1961]: 15).
And in a distinctly Jamesian formulation, he noted that the concept of causation is
recognized to be a metaphysical postulate, a matter of imputation, not of observation;
whereas it is claimed that scientific inquiry neither does not legitimately, nor, indeed,
currently make use a postulate more metaphysical than the concept of idle concomi-
tance of variation . . . (35). Dewey is much less clear, offering very positivist sound-
ing utterances. See Chapter 4.
13. Compare Joseph Margolis, Pragmatism without Foundations (Oxford and New
York: Basil Blackwell, 1986), esp. 1014; 28489.
14. Mill followed Comte in noting that states of mind are caused either by other
states of mind or by a state of the body (Mill, Logic, Bk. IV, ch. 4). This last was
physiology, since sensation always has for its proximate cause some affection of
the portion of our frame called the nervous system. The laws of the mind, then,
30 Chapter One
were 1aws regarding the succession of states of mindBritish associationism, as it
came to be called.
15. In the radically rewritten second edition of his Principles of Psychology
(1870), Spencer defended an indirect realism, which he called transfigured realism.
Spencer distinguished physiology, aestho-physiology, that is the discovery of
the connections between the data of consciousness and physiology and psychology.
. . . That which distinguishes Psychology from the sciences on which it rests [i.e.,
physiology and aestho-physiology] is, that each of its propositions takes account of
the connected internal phenomena (Jamess inner] and of the connected external
phenomena to which they refer (Jamess outer] [Apsychological proposition] is the
connection between these two connections (Spencer, Principles of Psychology, New
York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1950, I: 132). In his Remarks on Spencers Defini-
tion of Mind as Correspondence, James gave a devastating critique of Spencers
principle, the adjustment of inner to outer relations, a principle offered to explain
both life and the entire process of mental evolution. James argued that if the as-
certainment of outward fact is supposed to be the evolutionary task of organisms,
then the principle cannot be true: Mind, as we actually find it, contains all sorts of
lawsthose of logic, of fancy, of wit, of taste, decorum, beauty, morals, and so forth,
as well as perception of fact (8). But if correspondence is loosened to avoid ab-
surdity, the principle is quickly seen to be vacuous: Everything corresponds in some
way with everything else that co-exists in the same world with it (10). What James
seems not to have seen is that the flaw he correctly diagnosed was itself a result of
Spencers commitment to Humean causality, causes as empirical invariances.
Machs influential physiological psychology, it might here be mentioned, made the
same assumption. For discussion of Spencer and Mach on these critical themes, see
Manicas, History and Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Chapter 9.
16. Owen Flanagan Jr. has provided a reading of Principles along the lines of an
nonreductive neuropsychology in his The Science of the Mind (Cambridge: MIT
Press, 1984). See also my Whither Psychology? in J. Margolis, R. Harr, P. T. Man-
icas, and P. F. Secord (eds), Psychology: Designing the Discipline (Oxford: Basil
Blackwel1, 1986); Manicas, A History and Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Chap-
ters 2 and 14.
17. For evidence that James was sensitive to the problems about explanation which
had emerged at just this time, see his note for the Sentiment of Rationality, in Es-
says in Philosophy: 34041. Abrilliant summary of twenty-five years of debate on the
question is Pierre Duhems 1906 La Theories Physique; Son Object, Sa Structure
(translated as The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1954]). To explain, Duhem said, is to strip reality of the appear-
ances covering it like a veil. Explanations, accordingly, are always metaphysical. In
agreement with Ostwald and Mach, then, a physical theory is not an explanation. It
is a system of mathematical propositions, deduced from a small number of mathe-
matical principles, which aim to represent as simply, as completely, and as exactly as
possible a set of experimental laws (19).
18. See John J. McDermott, Introduction, Essays in Radical Empiricism,
The Works of William James (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976),
Pragmatic Philosophy of Science and the Charge of Scientism 31
and Gerald Myerss introduction to Jamess Principles of Psychology, Works: xixl.
Myers offers that James had set out to write a book that introduced psychology as a
natural science. . . . But the project forced him, he confessed, to operate with an as-
sumption that the philosopher in him seriously mistrusted (xiii).
19. See Gerald Myers, William James: His Life and Thought (New Haven, Conn.:
Yale University Press, 1986), Chapter 11. Myers comments, the view that physical
things are merely collections of sensations or sensible qualities (sometimes called
phenomenalism, sometimes Berkeleyan idealism) might be hard to defend on the du-
alist premise of Principles, but it fits neatly into the scheme of radical empiricism,
where everything is made of sensations or sensible qualities (319). Myers notes also
if we examine the eight essays that represent Jamess radical empiricism, we cannot
detect any effort to work out in technical detail the vague blueprint of pure experi-
ence (316). Myers suggests an explanation of this in citing Jamess view that
philosophies are only pictures of the world which have grown up in the minds of dif-
ferent individuals (317). Do pictures need philosophical argument? Or perhaps,
was James satisfied to leave this to epistemologists?
It is true that James denied, as per most phenomenalisms, that physical objects are
constructions from private particulars. See Edward H. Madden and Peter H. Hare,
Jamess View of Causality, in Corti (ed.), 1976: 113ff. It was thus that as James
said, radical empiricism has more affinities with natural realism than with the views
of Berkeley or Mill. . . . Yet, as Madden and Hare argue, Jamess commitment to the
privacy of the particulars of direct experience was fatal, exactly because he then could
not provide an adequate account of potentiality.
20. Dewey shared Hollingers view. In his own Development of American Prag-
matism, Dewey wrote, Peirce was above all a logician; whereas James was an ed-
ucator and a humanist and wished to force the general public to realize that certain
problems, certain philosophical debates, have a real importance for mankind, because
the beliefs which they bring into play lead to very different modes of conduct.
The premature narrowing of context, audience, discipline, and definition of prob-
lems in reading James has hermeneutic implications which are far more important
than one is likely to think.
21. The psychological story will be but part of the story because it will need to be
supplemented by a sociology of knowledge and a philosophical argument. See Chap-
ter 6. For the pertinence of sociology of knowledge to Deweys naturalistic episte-
mology, see Thelma Lavine, Naturalism and the Sociological Analysis of Knowl-
edge, in Y. H. Krikorian (ed.), Naturalism and the Human Spirit (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1944).
22. W. Donald Oliver remarks that in the world of pure experience there are no
mysteries. Once the distinction between mental and physical is expressed in terms of
two set of relations, no explanation need be sought for the occurrence of an item of
experience in the one or the other set of relations. Indeed, the very notion of expla-
nation is deprived of meaning, hence to seek one is to fail to understand the import of
Jamess radical empiricism (Jamess Cerebral Dichotomy, in Corti, 1976: 36).
One might hold, equally, that James wanted to keep the basis of the relatedness
of experience mysterious so as to make possible a source of order, which is non-
32 Chapter One
naturalistic. See Eugene Fontinell, Self, God and Immortality: A Jamesian Investiga-
tion (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986).
23. A useful volume in this regard is S. Morgenbesser (ed.), Dewey and His Crit-
ics (New York: Journal of Philosophy, 1977), esp. Sections II and III.
Sleeper argues that Dewey held to what he calls transactional realism, but sees
that Dewey seems unable to recognize that what bothers Woodbridge is the conclu-
sion that . . . real objects are not merely antecedent to being known, but antecedent to
being had in experience, antecedent to experience altogether (1986: 115).
24. The term basement idealist in reference to Dewey is T. V. Smiths, my
teacher at Syracuse.
25. Morgenbesser notes Dewey need not be interpreted to argue against a realist
view of the nature of theoretical entities, to argue against their reality. His argument
was rather that we can understand the significance and point of postulating theoreti-
cal entities or understand the role a theoretical term plays in a theory only if we un-
derstand the use to which the theory will be put and the specific problems to which it
is addressed (1977: xvi). This is substantially the interpretation I have offered of
James. While Dewey can be read in this way, Dewey sometimes seemed willing to
accept a straightforward instrumentalist view of theoretical terms.
We should note also here that to say this is not to say that Deweys philosophy of
logic or of language has much in common with recent empiricism. See Chapters 2
and 4.
26. Sleeper rightly puts the Logic in the center of his interpretation of Dewey and
shows that its ideas had antecedents as early as Deweys 1892 syllabus for Course
5. But, of course, Sleeper had the advantage of reading the Logic while Deweys
early followers did not. As Ernest Nagels near dismissal of the doctrines of the Logic
shows, by the time it was published, the philosophers could no longer welcome its
central messagewhen it was understood. See Nagels Introduction to the Carbon-
dale edition of Logic.
27. Although Dewey had considerable influence on public education in the United
States, the result was, for the most part, a caricature of his views. The appropriation
of Dewey by interests antithetic to his was possible, at least partly, because he failed
to communicate that his pragmatism was not, despite his protests, a scientism. One
example must suffice: When educationists began to seek professional status within
the university, the question arose, Is there a science of education? James, Royce, and
Dewey were clear in insisting that the answer was in the negative. But as Silberman
argues, most educationists ignored Deweys insistence that the study of education be
rooted in philosophy and the social sciences. Instead, teacher education alienated it-
self within the university and, in an orgy of empiricism, the survey became the foun-
dation on which the entire study of education and training of teachers was built
([Charles E. Silberman, Crisis in the Classroom, New York: Random House, 1970:
42829]). Thus, just as Dewey could be associated with Watsons behaviorism, edu-
cationists could absorb Dewey into their Taylorism and scientism.
Pragmatic Philosophy of Science and the Charge of Scientism 33
35
INTRODUCTION
John Dewey is always included as a critical player in the development of psy-
chology in America. But his relationship to this development is complicated
and, for this reasonand others, too, nearly always misunderstood. More-
over, there is a double irony in this.
First, it is often assumed that he played a significant role in the develop-
ment of behaviorist psychology, which quickly came to dominate American
psychology. In part, this depends upon the view, that as Boring put it, Amer-
ican psychology got its mind from Darwin and dealt with a mind in use,
and, as an experimental science, was to be pursued in terms already well
established in the biological sciences (1950: 553). It also depends on the as-
sumption, related to this, that Dewey gave Progressivism its voice that as
the twentieth century went on, psychologists would fulfill Deweys hopes.
Psychologists would increasingly move out into society, remaking its mis-
fits, its children, its schools, its governments, its businesses, its very psy-
che (Leahy, 1992: 277). Finally, the misunderstanding depends upon a dis-
tinctly positivist reading of pragmatism, the genuinely distinctive American
family of philosophies. Thus Hilgard writes of a conception of scientific
method that was continuous with the pragmatism of James and the instru-
mentalism of Dewey that continued to influence the nature of psycholog-
ical investigations in America even after Watson had dropped conscious-
ness in favor of behavioral measurement (Hilgard, 1987: 778). Dewey,
the functionalists, and the behaviorists resisted mind/body dualism and
focused in adaptive behavior. This allowed an easy collapse of the
Chapter Two
John Dewey and American Psychology
functionalism of James, and then of Dewey, into later versions of func-
tionalism, the characteristic American psychology and from there to later
operationalist versions of behaviorism.
Indeed, Dewey was powerfully influenced by Darwin and was a strong
advocate of experiment, and he often spoke not only of the mind in use
but also of control (Hickman, 1990). But while Dewey was a leading
voice in Progressive thought, it is easy to demonstrate that he was a stren-
uous critic of the sort of scientism so well expressed in the text cited from
Leahy. (And see Chapter 1.) And, it was easy but wrong to think that the
differences between positivism and variant forms of pragmatism were of lit-
tle importance to the idea of a scientific psychology. Dewey was com-
mitted to an empirical approach to mind and did reject dualist psychology,
but his instrumentalism was no positivism. Indeed, it is not difficult to
show that he played nearly no role in the development of mainstream Amer-
ican psychology. Part I of this essay addresses these confusions. It requires
providing a reconstruction of the development of American psychology, if
only in sketchy fashion, assaying what Dewey actually did and said, and
clarifying some key concepts.
What, then of the second irony? Although as I shall argue, Dewey had
great hopes for the new psychology, and early on in his career, he identi-
fied himself as a psychologist, but he subsequently abandoned psychology
and came to believe that it ill served what became his primary intellectual
goal, that philosophy must address not the problems of philosophy, but the
problems of humankind. While he continued to argue that the nature of all
objects of philosophical inquiry is to be fixed by finding out what experi-
ence has to say about them, instead of getting answers from scientific
psychology, problems he was interested in addressing would respond to a
new conception of inquiry, work which culminated in his 1938 Logic: The
Theory of Inquiry. This profound shift is missed primarily because Deweys
theory of inquiry is so fundamentally in opposition to the dominating logi-
cal empiricist theory of science, which had by then captured psychology,
that it was misunderstood and then ignored. The second irony then is this:
Having abandoned even the more refined forms of behaviorism, the cutting
edge of current work in psychology is so-called cognitive psychology. But,
remarkably, not only does Deweys Logic, misunderstood when it is not ig-
nored, give us prophetic insights into the most fruitful of these approaches,
an ecologically oriented, biologically grounded cognitive science, but
shows us decisively why symbolic AI (artificial intelligence) models
must fail. One wonders whether Dewey will be ill served once again? Part
II of this essay addresses these complicated issues.
36 Chapter Two
PART I: DEWEY AND THE ORIGINS OF
AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGY
The New Psychology
One of Deweys earliest essays was an examination of The New Psychology
(1884). Historians agree that the new psychology derived from Wilhelm
Wundt who founded the first psychological laboratory in 1879 and whose
Grndzge der physiologishe Psychologie (1st Edition, 1873) was an enormous
success. But Wundts psychology was complicated and offered many not always
clearly consistent strands. Drawing on all the recent advances in physiology,
neurology, and psycho-physics, Wundt seems to have put it all together: brain lo-
calization, sensory psychology, will, memory, and cognition. Moreover, in con-
trast to the reigning British tradition, mind was conceived as both active and uni-
tive. Thus apperception, a central idea, was a psychic mechanism, which gave
us the power of selective attention and discriminative judgment. Intro-
spection, which for Wundt was the foundation of psychology, licensed this
view. Third, for Wundt, mind also was social, an idea thoroughly developed in
his massive Volkerpsychologie (19001920). Finally, psychology earned its cre-
dential as a science (and not a branch of philosophy) because it was experi-
mental and because it disclaimed irrelevant metaphysical issues, e.g., the rela-
tion of mind and body. To be sure, this made problematic the question of the
relation of physiology to psychology, a question that still haunts inquiry.
1
The entirely new American universities provided ample opportunity to in-
stitutionalize the new, scientific psychology (Manicas, 1987: Chapter 10).
In short order, American psychology would pre-empt all others. By 1900,
some 42 psychology laboratories were established in American colleges and
universities; by 1926, there were 117. Of the first of these, 13 of the founders
had taken degrees with Wundt.
We get a clear picture of Deweys assessment of the high importance of the
new psychology, by looking at his essay, so entitled. Dewey first notes that
the new psychology is part of the new Zeitgeist of the new sciences, includ-
ing the advances in physiology, but Dewey sees a confusion. The common
view is that some or all the events of our mental life physically conditioned
upon certain nerve structures, and thereby explains these events. But, he in-
sists, nothing could be further from the truth (Early Writings, Vol. 1: 52).
According to Dewey, all the leading investigators clearly realize that expla-
nations of psychical events, in order to explain, must be psychical and not
physiological (52). Professor George Ladd was an exception. In Deweys re-
view of Ladds Elements of Physiological Psychology (1887), Ladd is
John Dewey and American Psychology 37
charged with holding to both the older opinion that physiological psychol-
ogy is the science of the relations of mind and body; of the correlations of the
physical and the psychical (EW, 1: 200) and to the new view, promoted by
Wundt, of physiological psychology as a method, whose end in not the par-
allelisms between the brain and consciousness, but the investigation of con-
sciousness itself by physical methods (200). This very well characterizes
nearly all the Wundtian inspired work then going on in America, for example,
as represented by the influential work of Deweys teacher at Johns Hopkins,
G. Stanley Hall, and of E. B. Titchener, fresh from his PhD under Wundt. It
was experimental but it relied heavily on introspection and its primary goal
was investigation of consciousness.
But, according to Dewey, advances in the biological sciences have had an-
other direct effect on the new psychology: To biology is due the conception
of organism. . . . In psychology this conception has led to the recognition of
mental life as an organic unitary process developing according to the laws of
all life, and not a theater for the exhibition of independent autonomous facul-
ties, or a rendezvous in which isolated, atomic sensations and ideas may
gather, hold external converse and the forever part (EW, I: 56).
This, of course, is directed at British-style associationist psychology, but as
part of this, Dewey, still the Hegelian, endorses an ecological conception and
the Wundtian premise that mind is social. Thus, the idea of environment is a
necessity to the idea of organism, and with the conception of environment
comes the impossibility of considering psychical life as an individual, iso-
lated thing, developing in vacuum (56).
But there is more. As a movement the new psychology has certain
general features: The chief characteristic distinguishing it from the old
psychology is undoubtedly rejection of a formal logic as a method and test.
The old psychologists almost without exception held to a nominalist logic
(EW, I: 58), a pronounced tendency especially among those who pro-
claimed that experience was the sole source of all knowledge (EW, I:
59). Hume destroyed all relations except as accidents and denied all
universality. But he did this on the basis of purely logical models, ab-
stract principles of difference and identity . . . put in the guise of psycho-
logical expression. The reaction to this, as in Kant, was to fall back on
certain ultimate, indecomposable, necessary first truths immediately
known through some mysterious faculty of mind. . . . Such intuitions are
not psychological; they are conceptions bodily imported from the logical
sphere (59). These ideas are, of course, familiar Deweyan themes, to be
rearticulated and developed in the remainder of his long lifeeven if, as
we shall see, they will have negligible impact on the psychology, which
comes after the new psychology.
38 Chapter Two
Deweys hopes for the new psychology were not restricted to psychol-
ogy only; he believed that it held enormous promise for philosophy itself. In
three essays published in 1884 and 1886, Dewey offered a redefinition of phi-
losophy and a new role for psychology: in the ordinary way of putting it, the
nature of all objects of philosophical inquiry is to be fixed by finding out what
experience has to say about them. And Psychology is the scientific and
systematic account of this experience (EW, I: 123). To be sure, not any
psychology will do. Deweys first effort was his 1886 Psychology, published
four years before Jamess Principles of Psychology.
Dewey intended the book to be an introductory text in psychology, but
wanted also that it be an introduction to philosophy. In his Preface, he re-
marks: How shall we make our psychology scientific and up to the times,
free from metaphysicswhich, however good in its place, is out of place in
a psychologyand at the same time make it an introduction to philosophy in
general? (EW, 2: 4). In good Wundtian fashion, the book covers all the char-
acteristic topics, but despite the disclaimer of the preface, the argument is
couched thoroughly within a Hegelian frame.
The ground for this was set in the three programmatic essays just men-
tioned. In Kant and Philosophic Method (1884), Dewey challenged the
method of intellectualism begun by Descartes (EW, I: 34) and he argues,
as before, that Humeans, avowedly empirical, distorted experience. Kants at-
tempted repair failed: Though the categories make experience, they make it
out of foreign material. . . . They constitute objects, but these objects are not
such in universal reference, but only to beings of like capacities of receptiv-
ity as ourselves. They respect not existence in itself, but ourselves as affected
by that existence (EW, I: 39). Again, the only conception adequate to ex-
perience as a whole is organism, a conception which Dewey found in
Hegels Logic (EW, 1: 42, 43).
The rationale for Absolute Idealism emerges more clearly in The Psycho-
logical Standpoint (1886). The fact that sensations exist before knowledge
and that knowledge come about by their organic registration and integration
is undisputed (EW, I: 127). If one accounts for this by something not in con-
sciousness, then it is not known and we have abandoned the psychological
standpoint for an ontological standpoint (EW, 1: 12829). But either this
matter is unknown, is a thing-in-itself . . . or is known, and then becomes one
set of the relations which in their completeness constitute mindwhen to ac-
count for mind from it is to assume as ultimate reality that which has exis-
tence only as substantiated by mind (EW, 1: 129).
The argument is straightforward: From the psychological standpoint the
relation of subject and object is one which exists within consciousness
(EW, 1: 131). Hence, materialism and all forms of dualism, as for example,
John Dewey and American Psychology 39
the Transfigured Realism of Spencer, all fail. But so too does Subjective
Idealism.
The essence of Subjective Idealism is that the subject, consciousness or mind,
which remains after the subject world has been subtracted, is that for which
after all this object world exists. Were this not sowere it admitted that this sub-
ject, mind, and the object, matter, are both but elements within, and both exist
for, consciousnesswe would be in the sphere of an eternal absolute con-
sciousness, who partial realization both the individual subject and the exter-
nal world are (EW, I: 135).
Similarly, in Psychology as Philosophic Method, Dewey writes: The rela-
tion of Psychology to Philosophy now stands, I suppose, something like this:
There is an absolute self-consciousness. The science of this is philosophy.
This absolute self-consciousness manifests itself in the knowing and acting of
individual men. The science of this manifestation, a phenomenology, is psy-
chology (EW, I: 136).
Before the century had ended, Dewey did become uncomfortable with his
Hegelianism, abandoning it for the variety of naturalism, which now so
strongly identifies him, but it is essential to see that while he abandoned
Hegel and psychology, he never did abandon the seminal psychological in-
sights that his Hegelianism afforded.
2
William James and the Problem of a Scientific Psychology
But before we pursue the divergence between Dewey and the development of
academic psychology, we need here to bring in the work of William James.
Along with Wundt, James is often credited as being one of the founders. As
with Wundt, Jamess psychology was complex, freely drawing from a wide
variety of sources and orientations. And like Wundtian psychology, it was
also to be rejected.
3
James himself played a role in this. Despite his extremely rich and
provocative beginning,
4
there were some genuine tensions in his account, ten-
sions which led him, ultimately to despair of the very idea of a scientific psy-
chology. The center of this was precisely the problem that had led Wundt and
Dewey to abandon physiology. In Jamess terms (in criticism of Spencer) if
there was no correspondence between inner and outer relations, then
the problem of knowledge was insoluble!
5
In his 1894 Presidential Address to the American Psychological Associa-
tion, The Knowing of Things Together, James returned to the problem of
the nature of synthetic unity of consciousness and concluded that none of
the available theories could be accepted. What of his own account in the Prin-
40 Chapter Two
ciples? He there had proposed to simply eliminate from psychology con-
sidered as a natural science the whole business of ascertaining how we come
to know things together or to know them at all (James, 1978: 87). As Dewey
had earlier also noted, That we do know things, sometimes singly and some-
times together, is a fact. That states of consciousness are the vehicle of knowl-
edge, and depend on brain states, are two other facts. At the time of the writ-
ing of the Principles, he believed that a natural science of psychology might
legitimately confine itself to tracing the functional variations of these three
sorts of fact. But he now believed that this was a dead-end. Remarkably, af-
ter struggling for some twelve years to write his great book, James concluded
that it was a loathsome, distended, tumified, bloated dropsical mass, testify-
ing to nothing but two facts: 1st, that there is no such thing as a science of
psychology, and 2nd, that W. J. is an incapable.
6
One must dismiss Jamess self-deprecation. But could he be right: There is
no such thing as a science of psychology? Well, at least not quite in the way
that either Dewey or James conceived it. The last piece of our account regards
the prior question: What would count for psychology to be a science?
Two things may immediately be said: It had to be experimental and it had
to be free of metaphysics. But what were to be the data of experiment? In-
deed, this could not be answered without first deciding what was to be in-
cluded as not metaphysical. Some experimental psychologists were interested
in establishing functional relations between physiological events and men-
tal events. As noted, this was essentially the position of Ladd and James, but
also of the earlier psycho-physicists, Fechner, for example, and of some of the
old psychologists, (e.g., Helmholtz and Spencer). Moreover, there was cur-
rently available a powerful argument that such inquiry was not metaphysical.
Ernst Mach, the eminent philosopher/physicist whose enormously influential
Analysis of Sensations (1883) provided a clear and forceful statement of a
positivistantimetaphysicaltheory of science which did this. He held
that sensations are the data of all science. Versus the metaphysicians, in-
cluding here Kant, and realist and dualist versions of Kant, Mach asserted:
For us, the world does not consist of mysterious entities which by their interac-
tion with another, equally mysterious entity the ego, produce sensations, which
alone are accessible. For us, colors, sounds, spaces, times, . . . . are provision-
ally the ultimate elements, whose connexion (sic) it is our business to investi-
gate (Mach, 1959: 29f.).
Since following Hume, causes are not productive powers, on this view of
science, scientific laws are merely connexions. As Comte (who both intro-
duced the term positivism and ably defined it) had argued, they are merely
invariant associations, taking the form, if this, then that. This idea was
John Dewey and American Psychology 41
powerfully propelled by Mach and his followers, including Karl Pearson and,
at just about the same time, by Francis Galton, the pioneer of a new psy-
chology in Great Britain (Boring, 1950: 482). Galton accepted the idea that
quantitative measurement is the mark of a science and following Adolph
Quetelet, applied the law of error to biological and psychological data, in-
cluding, of course, mental inheritance (Boring, 1950: 476). At this point,
experimental psychology and the psychology of individual differences,
which employed the new statistical methods, were developing independently
of each other. In the following decades, fully legitimated by a positivist the-
ory of science, these research programs would converge.
7
Or one could deny the explanatory relevance of physiology, as Dewey had
suggested, and argue, with Titchener, for an experimental science of con-
sciousness which included data gained by trained introspective experi-
menters. Titchener also was deeply influenced by Mach. Indeed, as Hilgard
says, because sensation was the unit out of which mental processes were
built, Titcheners position was called structuralism, with its emphasis on the
what of consciousness with somewhat less concern for the how or why (Hil-
gard, 1987: 7374). Attention to function would be the response to Titch-
eners structuralism.
Pragmatism and Functionalism
In all the standard histories, functionalism, the distinctive American psychol-
ogy figures heavily in the subsequent development. Moreover, the pragma-
tists figure heavily in the development of fumctionalism from its beginnings in
Chicago to its variant forms elsewhere (Boring, 1950: Chapter 22; Hilgard and
Bower, 1966: Chapter 10; Hilgard, 1987: 73103; Leahy, 1992: 28590; Ben-
jamin, 1988; Murray, 1983; Schultz, 1987).
8
The so-called functionalist school
included James Mark Baldwin, James McKeen Cattel, both trained by Wundt,
and James Rowland Angell, who did an MAunder Dewey and took on James as
his mentor at Harvard. In these histories, the pragmatists figure heavily in the
development of functionalism. While Hilgard regards James as the guiding
spirit, Boring remarks, it was the philosopher, John Dewey . . . who was the or-
ganizing principle behind the Chicago school of functional psychology (Bor-
ing, 1950: 539). Leahy holds that Deweys important but tediously written
mid-1890s papers furnished the central conceptions of Americas native psy-
chology, functionalism (Leahy, 1992: 281).
In these histories, the path from functionalism to behaviorism is less clear,
even if Dewey, as the mentor of Angell, Watsons dissertation supervisor and
the premier functionalist, remains in the fuzzy background. Boring could note
42 Chapter Two
that Watson was a functionalist (with a small f) but he could not tolerate for
long the requirement of the Chicago school that even the animal psychologist
must take time to translate (sic) positively observed behavior into the vague
terms of inferred consciousness (1950: 641). Indeed, with this not subtle era-
sure of differences between pragmatism and positivism, Boring could conclude
that [operationism] was there all along, recognized well before Percy Bridge-
man and Vienna positivism offered their putative advances over the views of
American psychologists. Similarly, Willard Day Jr. notes, in his otherwise very
helpful account (1998) of the antecedents of behaviorism, that James was . . .
concretely influential in the thinking of certain individuals who are important
in the history of behaviorism and goes on to name John Dewey and William
McDougall. But he provides no argument as to how these two figure in this his-
tory. Hilgard offers that it would be a mistake . . . to think of Deweys influ-
ence upon the psychology of learning as limited to the work of those who de-
veloped functional psychology within the laboratories (1966: 299). He sees
three additional lines: learning as the product of schoolroom practices, soci-
ological social psychology by way of Mead, and Deweys influence as a
philosopher carrying on the pragmatic tradition (300). In his later history, Hil-
gard notes that Dewey-inspired Chicago functionalism became, with E. L.
Thorndykes connectionism, a stimulus-response psychology. Thorndyke,
whose later work in educational psychology would cross paths with Dewey,
had begun his animal studies in William Jamess Cambridge basement and,
contestably, was already a behaviorist. His influential law of effect is also
termed functionalist. As Hilgard sees matters, although functionalism de-
clined as a recognizable school, it was destroyed by its own success, and in part
by the success of its intellectual progeny,behaviorism (Hilgard, 1987:
8788). Leahy sees functionalist controversy, especially as regards the mo-
tor theory of consciousness playing a key role. He offers that Thaddeus Bolton
(1902) integrated theoretical development since James, including the motor
theory of consciousness and Deweys account of the reflex arc, into a theory of
perception embodying the coming behaviorist psychology (Leahy, 1992: 286).
For Leahy, Angells APA Presidential address (1906) was a milestone on the
road to behavioralism (288). As Angell later concluded:
There is unquestionably a movement on foot in which interest is centered in the
results of conscious, rather than the processes themselves. This is particularly
true in animal psychology; it is only less true in human psychology. In those
cases interests in what may for lack of a better term be called behavior; and
the analysis of consciousness is primarily justified by the light it throws on be-
havior, rather than vice-versa (cited by Leahy, 1992: 305).
John Dewey and American Psychology 43
Boring was probably correct: Watson touched a match to this mixture, there
was an explosion, and behaviorism was left (Boring, 1950: 506). Watson
founded behaviorism because everything was ready for the founding. Other-
wise, it could not have been done (ibid.). With Watsons behaviorism, sci-
entific psychology had not only expunged all talk of consciousness but in-
deed, had become a technocratic science of prediction and control.
Considering stereotypes of American pragmatism, its talk of the cash
value of ideas, and Deweys association with Progressive political and social
theory, it is easy to understand the taken-for-granted role of Dewey in the de-
velopment of American psychology, especially when his remarkable 1896 es-
say, The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology is taken, remarkably, to be one
of the most important arguments for the functional attitude toward the inter-
actions (sic) between stimulus and response (Hilgard 1987: 81), and even
more remarkably, when we recall that in 1943, this paper was chosen as one
of the most important articles ever published in Psychological Review
(Leahy, 1992: 282).
The confusions will take some unpacking. First, it is hardly clear what
functionalism meant for those writers who got the label pinned on them.
The distinction and labels evidently came from Titchener who got the idea
from James (Boring, 1950: 542). Deweys orientation surely was function-
alist, but that term carries a host of meanings. For Dewey (as for James),
functionalism in psychology implied that there was an essential relation be-
tween cognition and purpose. Indeed, this idea may be taken to be a defining
idea of pragmatism. But more than this: For James and Dewey, it meant, as
with Wundt, that intentionality was the critical feature of minded behavior.
Finally, functionalism entailed that mechanism in biology will not suffice.
These come together, to be sure, in the remarkable essay on the reflex arc, to
be considered shortly.
But other senses were very much in the air. In addition to the mathemati-
cal sense of function, Boring offers that Angells 1906 paper to the APA is
useful in this regard. Angell distinguished three conceptions of functional
psychology. First, it may be regarded as a psychology of mental operations
in contrast to the psychology of mental elements (Boring 1950: 543, quoting
Angell). Second, it may be thought of as the psychology of the fundamen-
tal utilities of consciousness, in which mind is primarily engaged in medi-
ating between the environment and the needs of the organism (543). Finally,
there is a broader view of functional psychology as psychophysics, that is to
say, the psychology of the total mind-body organism. Such a view leaves psy-
chology room for the consideration of well-habituated acts, where conscious-
ness has almost or entirely lapsed (544). All three conceptions are open to
diverging interpretations, from a mentalism to a dualism to a radical behav-
44 Chapter Two
iorism. All, I think, would have made Dewey uncomfortable, even if the sec-
ond, at least, gives attention both to the purposiveness of mind and of the
relation of the needs of the organism in relation to its environment.
9
Deweys 1896 Essay on the Reflex Arc
But the critical point is the failure to recognize the philosophical background
and fundamental point of Deweys famous essay on the reflex arc. It is true
and important that between perhaps 1891 and 1903, with the Studies in Log-
ical Theory, Dewey had made a conversion to his distinctive version of natu-
ralism. But it is equally true and important that this was as naturalism, which
carried a huge Hegelian residue. Flower and Murphey say it well:
It is almost as if Dewey held off from naturalism until he should be able to in-
tegrate with it those aspects of idealism which he regarded as philosophically
important: the view of knowledge as organic and relational, the social character
of both self and knowledge, the unifying and purposive character of judgment.
Dewey could not bring together those features with naturalism as long as the
dominant model of the latter was atomistic . . . (1977: 820).
10
This was precisely the burden of the reflex arc essay. Dewey acknowledges
that the idea of a reflex arc has upon the whole come nearer to meeting the
demand for a general working hypothesis than any other concept (EW, Vol. 5:
96) and his essay is not intended to make a plea for what it replaced. But
the new account, best intentions notwithstanding, suffered from all the fea-
tures of the older account. The dualism between sensation and idea is re-
peated in the current dualism of peripheral and central structures and func-
tions; the older dualism of body and soul finds a distinct echo in the current
dualism of stimulus and response (96). Thus, the sensory stimulus is one
thing, the central activity, standing for the idea, is another thing, and the mo-
tor discharge, standing for the act proper, is a third. But if so, it is impossi-
ble to see how action can be thought-guided or how we can learn? Experience
shows not only that we do, but what is amiss: the reflex arc is not a patch-
work of disjointed parts, a mechanical conjunction of unallied processes. It
was not to be understood mechanically but functionally. Rather, it is a
comprehensive or organic unity (97). Dewey could now reject mechanism
and atomism from a fully naturalistic point of view.
Consider Jamess familiar child-candle example. First, contrary to the pre-
vailing view, it does not begin with a stimulus. The real beginning is an act
of seeing. This act stimulates another act, the reaching, but both are bound to-
gether, subordinate elements of a larger coordination so that the seeing
controls the reaching and the reaching, in turn, stimulates and controls the
John Dewey and American Psychology 45
seeing. It is now seeing-for-reaching purposes. At the next stage, there is
another sensorimotor coordination: Indeed, only because the heat-pain quale
enters into the same circuit of experience with the optical-ocular and muscu-
lar quales, does the child learn from the experience and get the ability to avoid
the experience in the future. The act has become not merely seeing, but see-
ing-of-a-light-that-means-pain-when-contact-occurs (98).
Dewey has given a description, a point of departure for a psychology. But
he has not given us a psychology. While for Dewey, intentionality is a funda-
mental feature of all learning, he surely has not given us an account which
provides the mechanisms for this.
11
Surely, it will be a very messy psychol-
ogy including as it does a revisioning of the role and relationships of the all-
critical elements. And it can be naturalistically implemented. But that is not
the point here. The point rather is that while subsequent S-R psychology
adopted the language of function, it failed utterly to take seriously Deweys
1896 criticisms, and continued, happily, with the development of an atom-
istic, mechanical and, ultimately, mindless psychology.
It is striking that Borings account of Deweys paper is both sympathetic
and generally accurate, but that he fails to see the consequences of Deweys
criticism for all later functional and behaviorist thinking. Instead, he remarks
Dewey was anticipating the position of Gestalt psychology and occupying
a position in the history of dynamic psychology (Boring, 1950: 554). Of per-
tinence here is Borings view that American psychology protested Wundt,
first with functionalism and then with behaviorism, while German psychol-
ogy protested and got Gestalten. Boring concludes, given everything else in
America as it was in 1920, the year of Jamess death, you could not have had
a protest against Wundt developing as Gestalt psychologynot there and not
then (1950: 643f). Nor indeed on the present argument, does it seem that
Deweys far more radical alternative protest could have been grasped and
taken seriously.
Others are even less clear as regards the radical character of Deweys po-
sition. Hilgard in assessing the very much later loss of hegemony of S-R psy-
chology, writes that some dissatisfaction with the stimulus-response concept
had been expressed as early as Deweys (1986) criticism of the reflex arc con-
cept and that Thurstone had reiterated some of Deweys points in 1923
against behaviorism (Hilgard, 1987: 224), but Hilgard does not reconsider
the opinion expressed earlier that this paper gave one of the important argu-
ments for the functional attitude (81). Given the flabbiness of the category
functionalist psychology, one might be tempted to hold, with Leahy, that
the ideas of reflex arc paper were the commonplaces of functionalism. But
the temptation should be resisted, especially since, more important, Leahy
goes on to conclude that Deweys formulation was centrally important to
46 Chapter Two
later American psychology (1992: 282). His grounds for this claim are of in-
terest. Dewey showed, he wrote, that psychology could dispense with an an
inaccessible ego and instead account for the control of perception and de-
cision in terms of coordinated, ever-changing adaptive behaviors (282). There
is a sense in which Dewey did show this, but unfortunately, nobody followed
his sort of solution. Indeed, in the effort to sustain a genuinely scientific
psychology, anything that hinted that mind was doing the coordinating
would be either eliminated, or as Boring had noted, made safe by appropriate
translation.
12
Scientism and Scientific Psychology
J. B. Watsons Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It (1913) is generally
taken to be the founding document. Watson had little patience for philosophy
and was a diligent experimenter. For him, the new psychology had pro-
duced no systematic body of knowledge (Boring, 1950: 642) and introspec-
tion was incapable of producing consensus on anything. It was more inter-
esting to study behavior for its own sake, describing it and noting its
functional use to the behaving organism (1950: 641). One could observe
discriminatory behavior in both animals and humans. All reference not
merely to will or attention could be dispensed with, but so too sensa-
tion and perception. All could be restated in terms of discriminatory re-
sponse. Imagery and feeling were another matter. Watson denied both.
13
In the ensuing years, stimulus will be employed to suit nearly any pur-
pose, from a physical input or physiological event to a situation or an in-
volved object with meaning encrusted on it (Boring, 1929: 586). All of this,
to be sure, was scientific defined exactly in positivist terms. By the 1930s,
Percy Bridgmans notion of an operational definition was absorbed by the
reigning logical positivism. Thus, propelled and legitimated by the wed-
ding of traditional Humean empiricism and the extensionalist logic of Prin-
cipia Mathematica, logical positivism could vindicate the so-called Age of
Theory. With intervening variables and hypothetical constructs, S-R psy-
chology could even offer gestures in the way of central processes (Koch,
1964). Indeed, it was during the heyday of the Age of Theory that the Psy-
chological Review applauded Deweys reflex-arc essay, exactly because it
seemed at least to allow for both central processes, as per Hull-Spence and
teleology, as per Tolman, of course, all properly operationalized.
14
If it
seems unlikely that the judges could have misunderstood Deweys paper, we
can note also that Watson fully admitted being perplexed by Dewey. Al-
though he had been drawn to Chicago to study with Dewey, in his autobiog-
raphy Watson wrote: I never knew what he was talking about then, and
John Dewey and American Psychology 47
unfortunately for me, I still dont know (cited by Fancher, 1979: 312; Robin-
son, 1981).
Philosophically grounded in nominalist logic and Humean empiricism,
psychology has become objective and instrumental with a vengeance.
And in that same 1913 programatic statement, having redefined experimen-
tal psychology in behaviorist terms, Watson could also see the future of
American psychology.
Those branches of psychology which have already partially withdrawn from the
parent, experimental psychology, and which are consequently less dependent
upon introspection are today in the most flourishing condition. Experimental
pedagogy, the psychology of drugs, the psychology of advertising, legal psy-
chology, the psychology of tests, and psychopathology are all vigorous growths
(Watson, 1963: 158).
It should be emphasized that it mattered less that introspection had been ex-
punged, but that atomism had prevailed, and that the theoretical (sic) goal
of scientific psychology had been transformed from an effort to understand
the mind in use to the prediction and control of behavior (Samuelson,
1979; Manicas, 1987; Danziger, 1990). We can see this most clearly in the
case of experimental pedagogy and the psychology of tests.
Although the tools were created in Europe, Boring is correct to argue, the
psychology of tests is essentially American. And, as Lewis Terman insisted,
it brought psychology down from the clouds and made it useful to men
(quoted by Samuelson, 1979: 106). Poor Dewey would be again credited, if
not directly, at least by innuendo.
15
In 1929, Boring was clear that it was the
functional psychology of G. Stanley Hall and Cattell that prepared the psy-
chological soil for tests and measurements, but as with educational psychol-
ogy, it was James and Dewey who provided its philosophical sanction (Bor-
ing, 1950: 570). Indeed, in the pages preceding this remark, Boring presumes
to have shown how this spirit of America was crystallized by Dewey and
Angell at Chicago (54546)!!
Similar confusions attend Deweys work in educational psychology, espe-
cially as that is often confounded with the work of his colleague at Columbia,
E. L. Thorndyke. Unfortunately, space forbids an extended discussion of
Deweys contributionsand the misunderstandings of them. Briefly, every-
one recognizes that Dewey emphasized intelligent problem solving, in
which each child solves the problems that are confronted by selecting appro-
priate materials and methods and by learning to adapt these materials and
methods to his or her needs (Hilgard, 1987: 674). This emphasis derived di-
rectly from insights already set out in his early psychological writings, and,
48 Chapter Two
of course, they were developed extensively in the work in experimental logic.
It is also recognized, remarkably perhaps, that his intellectual heritage of
Deweys views on education was a critical appropriation from European
thinkers, including Rousseau, Pestalozi, Froebel, and Herbart, particularly
the doctrine of interest, which he apparently permitted to cover also the
Herbartian concept of apperception (Hilgard, 1987: 674). Indeed, as Hilgard
appreciates, although both preached scientific method, in marked contrast
to Dewey, Thorndyke was conservative, aiming not at innovation in the
schools, but at quality control, a consequence of the fact that Thorndyke
was first of all an experimenter and measurer who valued data above all else
(671). This was a result, of course, of his version of functionalism,S-R
connectionism, and made him an ally of the more general movement in
testing. As Hilgard remarks: Largely as a consequence of Thorndykes in-
sistence on measurement of all aspects of education, supported by the promi-
nence that intelligence and achievement testing had received just before and
after World War I, the decade of the 1920s was one in which educational psy-
chology flourished (Hilgard, 1987: 682). But to repeat: this was emphati-
cally not an educational psychology that was in any sense Deweyan. To be
sure, adding to confusion, Deweys efforts at reform went in parallel to this
developmenteven if in fundamental ways, they were at odds.
The fundamental problem here, as with functionalism, is the flabbiness
as regards pragmatism, especially its relation to positivism. For example,
Boring is good on the early relation of psychology to Machist positivism, and
properly identifies the importance of 1930s positivism as regards behavior-
ism, but he makes no mention, in either edition of his influential books of
Dewey instrumentalism. Hilgard discusses positivism and pragmatism, but
is not at all clear, offering both that there are distinctions to be made among
various forms of positivism and pragmatism (Hilgard, 1987: 777) and that
the conception of scientific method of later behaviorism was continuous
with the pragmatism of James and the instrumentalism of Dewey (778).
Leahy links James to Mach and thence to the logical positivists who influ-
enced behaviorism (Leahy, 1992: 148), but omits reference here to Dewey.
Despite his welcome concern with the philosophy of science, Leahy pays no
attention to Deweys theory of inquiry nor to his views of science. More gen-
erally, for him, the dominant influence of pragmatism was its role in promot-
ing a scientistic Zeitgeist for America: American psychologists . . . offered a
science with pragmatic cash value. Pragmatism demanded that ideas be-
come true by making a difference in human conduct. For him, this entailed
that psychology be applied: adjustment, testing and control (Leahy, 1992:
342).
John Dewey and American Psychology 49
Dewey and Academic Psychology Part Ways
After the mid-1890s, Dewey wrote nearly nothing, which could be said to
find a place in the emerging discipline of American psychology.
16
Several re-
views give us some additional insight into why this was so. His 1898 review
of Baldwins Social and Ethical Interpretations of Mental Development offers
a critical distinction: between examining the individual from the standpoint
of psychical process and determining what of this is social, and examining
not the process but the content of the individuals experience to discover what
this has in common with others (EW, 5: 38586). For Dewey, the first belongs
to psychology, the second to sociology. Baldwin confuses these question be-
cause he falls into a trap: Both the individual and the society are taken as
given. Accordingly, when we want to know about the individual we are re-
ferred to society; when we want to know about society we are referred to the
individual (388).
17
This theme is elaborated in the address, The Need for Social Psychology
(MW, Vol. 10), given in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the APA in
1916. Ludy Benjamin (1988: 419) well captures the characteristic misunder-
standing of Deweys essay. He notes that the address, given shortly after Wat-
sons manifesto, linked behaviorism with the development of social psy-
chology in the service of social control.
18
This not only capitulates to myth,
but utterly misses Deweys central point. Arguing that anything which may
properly be called mind or intelligence is not an original possession but is a
consequence of the manifestation of instincts under the conditions supplied
by associated life (MW, 10: 59), Dewey endorses Tardes view that all psy-
chological phenomena can be divided into the physiological and the social,
and that when we have relegated elementary sensation and appetite to the for-
mer head, all that is left of our mental life is, our beliefs, ideas and desires,
falls within the scope of social psychology (MW, 10: 54).
Although both the application of statistical methods and the behav-
ioristic movement were just getting started, Benjamin would seem to have
been misled by Deweys optimistic belief that both would contribute to
what, he believed, was needed. Thus: Social phenomena are of a kind
which demand statistical mathematics and the behavioristic movement
transfers attention from vague generalities regarding social consciousness
and social mind to the specific processes of interaction which take place
among human beings (Dewey, MW, 10: 57). Indeed, Dewey (remarkably!)
foresees a great reflex wave from social psychology back into general psy-
chology (58). The net outcome of the newer type of psychological
method will then be an unexpected confirmation of the insight of Tarde
that what we call mind means essentially the working of certain beliefs
50 Chapter Two
and desires, and that these in the concretein the only sense in which mind
may be said to existare functions of associated behavior . . . (59). We
need to be clear that his suggestion that from the point of view of the psy-
chology of behavior all psychology is either biological or social psychol-
ogy (63), was both radical and unheard.
Deweys optimism regarding the future of psychology should have been
tempered. Indeed, just three years earlier, in a paper read at a joint session
of the American Philosophical and American Psychological Associations
on The Standpoint and Method of Psychology, he expressed fears about
the direction of the behavioristic movement. It was quite a thing to throw
out consciousness as private and open only to introspection. It was quite
another thing to throw out mind in the sense just noted. To conceive be-
havior exclusively in terms of the changes ongoing on within an organism
physically separate in space from other organisms is to continue that con-
ception of mind which Professor Perry has well termed, subcutaneous
(MW, 7: 54). His criticisms paralleled those made against S-R psychology:
In so far as behaviorists tend to ignore the social qualities of behavior,
they are perpetuating exactly the tradition against which they are nomi-
nally protesting (54).
So far as I can tell, Dewey explicitly discussed ongoing work in psychol-
ogy only twice more. In 1927, in his essay, Body and Mind (LW, Vol. 3),
he argued that in consequence of neglecting the development and historical
career of an individual, an account of the mechanism of a particular move-
ment of behavior is converted into an account of behavior itself and of be-
havior in its entirety (LW, 3: 33). The criticism may be broadened to take
in the whole reduction of mental phenomena to the stimulus-response type as
that reduction obtains in current psychological theory, even among those who
do not call themselves behaviorists (3: 3334, my emphasis).
By this time it was clear to Dewey that there was very little about academic
psychology that he could endorse. Already by 1903, he saw that what he
wanted to say did not need psychologyat least as it was then conceived, that
logic, articulated within a thoroughgoing naturalism was the way to go. Of
course, logic for Dewey did not mean what it meant for most. It was, as I
shall insist, a strong form of an ecological psychology.
We need not review the development of Deweys views on logic, which
includes not only the The Studies in Logical Theory (1903) and How
We Think (1911), but Human Nature and Conduct (1922) and Experience
and Nature (1926), along with a host of pertinent essays. Instead, we can
directly consider his 1938 Logic, the text, which is the culmination of this
development.
19
John Dewey and American Psychology 51
PART II : LOGIC AND THE NEW
COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
Principia Logic and Empiricist Epistemology
Logic for Dewey regarded the theory of inquiry and inquiry, for him, was
a problem-solving activity. In 1958, Allen Newell, Clifford Shaw, and Her-
bert A. Simon published The General Problem-Solver, a computer simu-
lation of human problem solving. This provoked an entirely new direction
for scientific psychology. Behaviorism in the form that Skinner had taken it
had utterly discounted central processes. Age of Theory S-R psychology,
from Hull-Spence to Tolman to Estes, had made gestures in the direction of
these, but with the new technologies, an entirely different approach was pos-
sible: an information-processing paradigm that has generality across artifi-
cial and natural problems-solving systems (Wagman, 1998: 11).
Remarkably, Deweys remarks in 1884 regarding his hopes for the the new
psychology expressed a prophetic caution: Would the new cognitive psy-
chology make mental life a theater for the exhibition of independent au-
tonomous faculties, or a rendezvous in which isolated, atomic sensations and
ideas may gather, hold external converse and then forever part? (EW, I: 56).
Indeed, would it, like the old psychology hold to a nominalist logic and
reinstitute formal logic as a method and test (I: 58). As with Hume, would it
proceed on the basis of purely logical models, abstract principles of differ-
ence and identity . . . put in the guise of psychological expression?
Amazing as it might seem, this is exactly what it did. And the reason for
this turns precisely on the question of whether we should or should not accept
the still dominant empiricist epistemology of which the logic of Russell and
Whitehead is an essential element. For Dewey logic is the theory of inquiry,
naturalistic envisaged. It is sufficiently general to explain the behaviors of
simple biological systems but also those of, say, a human scientific commu-
nity (Burke, 1994: 23). It was intended to replace epistemology as that had
been conceived. Nor was there a foundation of knowledge problem.
Logic or inquiry into inquiry was for him autonomous in that it was a
circular process which did not need foundations, either in epistemology,
metaphysics, or psychology. Indeed, it was the supposition that it did that had
forestalled an adequate understanding of knowing. In a wonderful under-
statement, he notes that a sound psychology may be a great advantage and
that unsound psychology has done great damage (LW, 12: 29).
For the standard view, logic is basically a formal theory of linguistic syn-
tax and insofar as true belief is a function of both the knowledge base and
the inference mechanisms, it plays an essential role in epistemology. In
sum, it is the aim of traditional epistemology to establish the grounds for dis-
52 Chapter Two
criminating beliefs as either true or false. Thus, the primary vehicle is the sen-
tence. Second, the problem of the knowledge-base takes the form of identify-
ing the proposition or meaning of a sentence with the information con-
veyed. Quine notes some epistemologists would catalog [the] alternatives
by introspection of sense data. Others, more naturalistically inclined, would
look to neural stimulation. Third, if logic is to be centrally concerned with
tracing truth conditions through the grammatical constructions, an artificial
grammar designed by logicians is bound to assign the truth functions a fun-
damental place among its constructions. . . . The simple sentences are got by
predication, and all further sentences are generated from these by negation,
conjunction, and existential quantification (Quine, 1970: 3536). That is,
standard logic is extensionalist logic. A consequence of this is the incapacity
to deal with intentionality or to provide a convincing analysis of causality and
of lawfulness.
20
Finally, empiricist epistemology is epistemologically indi-
vidualist in holding that there are beliefs for which social causes are wholly
irrelevant. (See Chapter 6.)
I specifically select Quine here to represent current empiricist epistemol-
ogy since the point to be made holds whether one is positivist, logical
empiricist (neo-positivist) or post-positivist, a la Quine, whether or not, that
is, one holds to a firm analytic/synthetic distinction, to a nonholist verifica-
tion theory of meaning or indeed, to one of the more recent varieties of
reliabilism, internalism, or externalism.
21
It can hardly be doubted
that the blossoming of AI was profoundly constrained by assumptions taken
uncritically from standard empiricist epistemology. Here is an early formu-
lation:
The human brain is an information-processing system whose memories hold in-
terrelated symbol structures and whose sensory and motor connections received
encoded symbols from the outside via sensory organs and send encoded sym-
bols to motor organs. It accomplishes its thinking by copying and reorganizing
symbols in memory, receiving and outputting symbols, and comparing symbol
structures for identify and difference.
22
And this depends upon logic. As Zenon Pylshyn argues, there is good reason
why computers can be described as processing knowledge. This good rea-
son, which owes, he says, to Hilbert, Gdel, Russell and Whitehead, and Tur-
ing and Church, was this:
Reasoning about meaningful thingsabout things in the world or in the
imaginationcould be carried out by a process that itself knew nothing of the
world or of meanings, did not know what thoughts were about . . .
The idea that logical inference can be carried out by a process of examining
meaningless symbols leads directly to the foundational assumption of cognitive
John Dewey and American Psychology 53
science, which is that thought is species of computing. . . . The bridge from for-
mal symbol manipulation to computing was completed in 1936 by the mathe-
matician Kurt Gdel who showed that anything that could be described in terms
of manipulations of symbols could be carried out by a simple machine (later
called a Turing machine), which became the defining property of reasoning and
later of intelligent action (Lepore and Pylshyn, 1999: 67).
For AI theory, the intelligent organism is a sentential automaton, whose be-
havior is the outcome of a sequence of mental states (beliefs that p, desire that
p, etc.) and the processing will be described in terms of the semantic and syn-
tactic relations among the content-specifying sentences (Churchland, 1980:
188; Wagman, 1998: 25). Accordingly, AI inquiry can proceed, not only in-
dependently of organism/environment relations, but independently of neuro-
physiology as well.
This paradigm has not, to be sure, proceeded without criticism.
23
An im-
portant challenge comes from the so-called connectionist or neural network
paradigm. This approach assumes that sensory, motor and, ultimately, cogni-
tive processes are explained in terms of inhibitory or excitatory connections
between nodes which differ in strength. The language of connectionism is
differential equations rather than mathematical logic (Wagman: 26). Abrain
model of the mind replaces the computer model of mind. Cognition is viewed
as the emergence of global states in a network of simpler components. In-
stead of symbols, meaning resides in these emergent global states. Instead of
processing information provided to mind by senses, minds create informa-
tion for their own uses (Varella, Thompson, and Rosch, 1991).
24
An Ecological Psychology?
It is clear that while the symbolic approach is wholly inconsistent with a
Deweyan approach, the connectionist approach is not inconsistent with such
an approach. I will round out this discussion with some brief remarks on this.
First, and critically, in connectionist theory,
there will be nothing that corresponds to the classical symbolic data-structures.
Instead, context-sensitive shifting coalitions of units will correspond to single
classical representations. . . . Since there are thus no neat analogues to the clas-
sical symbolic structures, the system cannot (not even tacitly) embody knowl-
edge of transition rules defined over these very structures (Clark, 1990: 297).
Put bluntly, the constraints on an intelligent problem-solving device are no
labels in the world, no external semantics, and no internal, unexplained ho-
munculus in the loop to provide meaning (Franklin, 1995: 301, explicating
54 Chapter Two
the work of Edelman, 1992). These constraints were all fully articulated and
defended by Dewey.
Second, as Dennett has argued, there is nothing in connectionist theory, nor
in Dewey, which forbids that human symbolic capacities are a recent addi-
tion, an evolutionary enhancement of mammalian cognitive architecture
(Dennett, 1991: 28). Finally, there is the question of whether attention to neu-
ral networks will be sufficient to glean an understanding of problem-solving
intelligence.
The early chapters of Deweys Logic set out the naturalistic basis for
logic in his sense, beginning with the obvious fact that when people in-
quire, they employ their eyes and ears, their hands and their brains and that
these organs, sensory, motor or central are biological (LW, 12: 30). Huge
chunks of this read as if they had come directly from his reflex arc essay. For
example, in decided contrast to the then current S-R theory, he wrote:
When the stimulus is recognized to be the tension in the total organic activity
(ultimately reducible to that between contact activities and those occasioned
through distance receptors), it is seen that the stimulus in its relationship to spe-
cial activities persists throughout the entire pursuit, although it changes its ac-
tual content at each stage of the chase. As the animal runs, specific sensory ex-
citations . . . alter every change of position . . . (LW, 12: 37).
That is, there is no way to disconnect seeing and acting, nor to disconnect
these from the situation which is changing as the consequences of acting.
Other passages sound like arguments in Human Nature and Conduct.
Habits are the basis of organic learning. According to the theory of independent
successive units of excitation-reaction, [both then current S-R and later learning
theory] habit formation can mean only the increasing fixation of certain ways of
behavior through repetition . . .
Developmental behavior shows, on the other hand, that in the higher orga-
nisms excitations are diffusely linked with reactions that the sequel is affected
by the state of the organism in relation to environment. In habit and learning the
linkage is tightened up not by sheer repetition but by the institution of effective
integration of organic-environing energiesthe consumatory close of activities
of exploration and search (38).
And:
Even the neuro-muscular structures of individuals are modified through the in-
fluence of the cultural environment upon the activities performed . . .
This modification of organic behavior in and by the cultural environment ac-
counts for, or rather is, the transformation of properties with which the present
John Dewey and American Psychology 55
discussion is concerned. . . . Any theory that rests upon a naturalistic postulate
must face the extraordinary differences that mark off the activities and achieve-
ments of human beings from those of other biological forms (49).
As Dewey rightly emphasized, while lower organisms are proficient problem-
solvers, there was no problem acknowledging that much human problem
solving does require symbols (and thus, linguistic capacities). But as he in-
sisted, it was an intellectualist fallacy to impose this on all problem-solving
activity. Moreover, as part of his powerful account of language, Dewey (and
Mead) insisted that the plateau of coordinated animal behavior is not irrele-
vant to communication at the linguistic level even if it cannot be reducible to
it. (See Chapter 4.)
As these quoted texts imply, Deweys approach is not psychologistic if
that means (as it usually does) that mental life is a theater for the exhibi-
tion of independent autonomous faculties, or a rendezvous in which isolated,
atomic sensations and ideas may gather, hold external converse and the for-
ever part (EW, I: 56). It is thus, if anything, an ecological psychology. As
Burke rightly notes, Deweys views compare to J. J. Gibsons theory of per-
ception, which stands in marked contrast to standard psychologistic theo-
ries. Ecological psychologists and Dewey share the view that perception is
not mediated by internal representational processes, which is not to hold that
it is not mediated by something. Perception is mediated, rather, by established
attunements to lawlike relations among ways of acting in the world, that is by
habits . . . (Burke, 1994: 93); and more generally: Perception and cogni-
tion in general do not happen somewhere up in the head, but rather they in-
volve an interactive information-processing mesh that cuts across a simplis-
tic organism/environment distinction (95). As cognitive scientist Stan
Franklin notes (following Skarda and Freeman, 1987; Edelman, 1992; and
Varela et al., 1996), information is created not from sensory input but from
structural coupling, the dynamical relations between subsumption architec-
ture, accomplished by competences, a series of incremental layers, each
layer connecting perception to action (Franklin, 1995).
25
As the foregoing suggests, not all-current connectionist inquiry would
seem able to deal with the problem initially posed by Deweys reflex-arch es-
say. As Hanson notes: Connectionist models have been fundamentally about
system-level brain accounts. And, indeed,
Without appreciating that commitment, it is hard to understand how a simpli-
fied neuron model and synaptic connectivity could be informative for actual
brain function. . . . It is a common experience in the neurosciences to discover
cells that behave in some orderly way without at the same time understanding
what their larger purpose might be in terms of system-level function, which in
56 Chapter Two
turn requires a deep understanding of the way cells interact and what emergent
properties might arise when millions of cells that code for spatial, temporal or
structural properties of the world begin to compute something (Hanson, 1999:
425).
Hanson is surely correct that this problem does not go away by measuring
more cells, measuring them more precisely or measuring the molecular prop-
erties of cells. But he is overly optimistic in supposing that the problem is suf-
ficiently addressed by a systems-level theory that takes into account some
simplified assumptions about systems of cells and simplified self-organizing
principles such as learning. That is, if Dewey is correct, we need to be talk-
ing about an intact organism with a brain, including, ultimately, an organism
with a mind in Deweys sense, acting in an environment.
26
This cannot be
simulated by a computer. But it might be simulated by a robot, which could
explore, work in, and communicate results of its ongoing activities in distant
planetary environments (Burke, 1994: 262). Burke offers that Deweys log-
ical theory cannot tell us how to build such a machine, but it does offer a
number of design principles which would, in his view, have to be treated as
fundamental, not as goals to be achieved later, once other preliminaries are
taken care of (263). Indeed, such an approach to AI and robotics is actually
not so foreign to work lately found in the cognitive science literature.
27
Fi-
nally, one might want to claim that
Whether or not Deweys theory of knowledge is acceptable in every detail, his
type of theory, namely, a naturalistic operation-based theory geared to explain-
ing problem solving in concrete contexts, is the only one which holds any prom-
ise for handling issues in the cognitive sciences which hinge on our knowing
what knowledge is (265).
This essay argued that there are two ironies as regards Deweys relation to the
discipline of psychology. The first regards the belief that his pragmatism in-
fluenced the development of psychology in America. The second irony then
is this: Having abandoned even the more refined forms of behaviorism, the
cutting edge of current work in psychology is so-called cognitive psychology.
But, remarkably, not only does Deweys Logic, misunderstood when it is not
ignored, give us prophetic insights into the most fruitful of these approaches,
an ecologically oriented, biologically grounded cognitive science, but shows
us decisively why symbolic AI models must fail. One wonders whethe
Dewey will be ill served once again? More generally, Deweys type of theory
would seem to be the only one that holds any promise for understanding the
remarkable capacities of sentiment beingsincluding homo sapiens.
John Dewey and American Psychology 57
NOTES
1. That Wundt ultimately divorced psychology from physiology is now generally
agreed. See my account, A History of the Philosophy of the Social Sciences (Oxford:
Basil Blackwell, 1987), 182f. which follows S. Diamond, Wundt before Leipzig, in
R. E. Reiber (ed.), Wilhelm Wundt and the Making of a Scientific Psychology (New
York: Plenum, 1980). In the last edition of the Grndzge, he wrote:
Of the two tasks that are . . . implied by the name of physiological psychologyone
methodological, relating to the use of experiment, the other amplificatory, relating to the
corporeal basis of mental lifeit is the former that is more essential to psychology itself,
while the latter has value chiefly with respect to the philosophic question about the unity
of life processes (quoted by Diamond, 1980: 169).
2. Flower and Murphey (1977) see rightly that his essay, The New Psychology,
reads like a preliminary comment for Experience and Nature and that armed with
post game wisdom, all the idealist works have the promise of the thoroughly nat-
uralistic direction of his pragmatism (820).
3. Hilgard refers to a Berlin newspaper account of the 1896 Third International
Congress of Psychology in Munich which described Wundt as the psychological
Pope of the Old World and James as the psychological Pope of the New World
(Hilgard, 1987: 37). He offers a useful comparison of the two and rightly concludes
also neither the psychology of Wundt nor the psychology of James persisted in
America in anything like their original forms (1987: 65).
4. Owen J. Flanagan, Jr. (1984) gives a sympathetic reading of Jamess Principles
as the first formulation of the naturalistic position in the philosophy of mind
(2324).
5. Spencers Transfigured Realism (developed in his Principles of Psychology,
first edition, 1855, and many thereafter) also had no influence in the development of
a scientific psychology for reasons similar to those that explain the rejection of Wundt
and James. Briefly, Spencer distinguished sharply between physiology, an objective
science and psychology whose data were subjective. But contrary to the mental-
ism of associationist (and Wundtian psychology), and to materialism, inquiry could
not be restricted to the laws of successive states of the mind. One needed also to know
how these were connected with changes in the central nervous system (inner rela-
tions) and then to the external environment (outer relations). He called this
aestho-physiology. Similar moves were made by Gustav Fechners Psychophysics
(1860). For Jamess decisive criticism of these, see Chapter 1, note 15, and my Mod-
est Realism, Experience and Evolution, in Roy Bhaskar (ed.), Harr and His Critics
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 2340.
6. Letter to Henry Holt, his publisher, May 1990, quoted from Ralph Barton Perry,
The Thought and Character of William James, Two Vols. (Boston: Little, Brown,
1935). Hilgard usefully discusses Gordon Allports 1943 article, The Productive
Paradoxes of William James. He sees six: the relation of mind and body, positivism
and phenomenology, the self, freedom and determinism, association and individual-
58 Chapter Two
ity. James, suggested Allport, did not make them productive by synthesizing his con-
tradictory views, at least not the Principles, but left them as unsolved paradoxes
(Hilgard, 1987: 59). Chapter 1, argued that radical empiricism was, ultimately,
Jamess preferred solution, a solution similar to the one offered by Mach. But this so-
lution similarly had no effect on the development of American psychology.
7. The history of the use of variable in psychological discourse was critical
here. See Kurt Danziger (1997: 16379). Causal relations (and hence lawfulness)
could now be construed extensionally, as relations of variables, or functions in
the mathematical sense.
8. There is now available a three volume collection, The Chicago School of Func-
tionalism, edited by John R. Shook (Bristol: Thoemes Press, 2001).
9. Dewey must take some responsibility. In his 1922/1925 Development of
American Pragmatism (LW, Vol. 2), he did associate pragmatism with behavior-
ism, but as the context makes clear, it was the idea that the brain was an organ for
the co-ordination of sense stimuli which led him to make the association.
Functionalism/mechanism are still unsettled issues. See the essays by Stephen Jay
Gould, Christopher Bourse, and William Wimsatt in Eliott Sober (ed.), Conceptual Is-
sues in Evolutionary Biology (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984).
10. On their view, the drift he reported in his autobiographical essay was an
eminently reasonable one in terms of the very new question of the relation of psy-
chological methods to philosophy (Flower and Murphey: 819). In addition to the
psychological articles, including several not discussed here, e.g., The Theory of
Emotion (1884, 1885), The Psychology of Infant Language (1894) and Interpre-
tation of the Savage Mind (1902), Flower and Murphey trace the drift also in the
revised Study of Ethics: A Syllabus (1894), propelled by Jamess Principles. The re-
vision, remarked Dewey, was in no sense a second edition. . . . On the contrary, [the
new studies] undertake a thorough examination of the process of active experience,
and a derivation from this analysis of the chief ethical types and crisistask , so far
as I know, not previously attempted (EW, 4: 221).
11. Mead was fully in agreement with the central issue. Similarly, in arguing
against both Wundt and Watson, his problem was precisely to explain mind and
meaning in terms consistent with Darwin. See Chapter 4.
12. That is, if behavior is not merely movement then it involves intentional de-
scriptions: reference to the object, goal or meaning that it has for the agent (Taylor,
1964; Margolis, 1985). As we now appreciate, efforts to eliminate intentionality (as
in Watson) or to operationalize it (as in Tolman), not only failed, but must fail.
Hilgard argues there is a family resemblance between Deweys position and Skin-
ners operant behavior, in which responses are coordinatd with the stimuli to which
they lead (Hilgard, 1966: 298 note). But, of course, Skinners reinforcers are vac-
uous. As Taylor writes: But although the property of having been reinforced is cer-
tainly a property of the object itself separate from other properties of size, shape, etc.,
it cannot as a stimulus property be separated. For in order for it to hold as a stimulus
property the animal has to recognize the object as that object which was in fact rein-
forced, one has to know some other description true of it beside simply that of hav-
ing been reinforced (Taylor, 1964: 133).
John Dewey and American Psychology 59
13. It is true that many were not attracted to the more extreme physicalism of Wat-
son. They could be experimentalists who, employing the standard S-R jargon could
deal with behavior ambiguously understood. (See Kurt Danziger, 1997, Chapter 9).
14. See Estes et al., 1954 and for a critique, S. Koch, 1964, Psychology and
Emerging Conceptions of Knowledge as Unity.
15. To my knowledge, Dewey never offered his views on the psychology of men-
tal tests. There is an 1889 review of Natural Inheritance, Galtons Statistical Meth-
ods, in which Dewey both encourages the use of the new techniques and notes its
limitations.
16. One might want to include Deweys Human Nature and Conduct (1922),
which attracted some attention from mainstream psychologists. But the combination
of Allports individualist social psychology, laboratory experimentation, for example,
as in Thurston (1928) and Freud was sufficient to marginalize Deweys book among
psychologists.
17. This, it may be noticed, is Deweys version of the rejection of what is now
termed, agent/structure dualism. (See Chapter 4.)
18. See also Leahys comments on this paper. [Dewey] offered his pragmaticist
conception of mind as a social creation as the proper foundation for an experimental
psychology. Since, on Deweys view mind was created by society, it could be delib-
erately molded by society, and psychology, the science of the mind, could take as its
goal, the scientific management of society (1992: 342).
19. The fundamental work has been done, by Tom Burke, in his groundbreaking,
Deweys New Logic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).
20. See my essay W. V. Quine (2004), and M.T. Turvey, R. E. Shaw, E. S. Reed,
and W. M. Mace, Ecological Laws of Perceiving and Acting: In Reply to Fodor and
Pylyshyn, Cognition Vol. 9 (1981): 237304.
21. See Susan Haack (1995) for the most thorough assessment of variants of an-
alytic epistemology.
22. Morton Wagman, Cognitive Science and the Mind-Body Problem (Westport,
Conn.: Praeger, 1998): 11, quoting J. A. Anderson, The Architecture of Cognition,
1983. In an earlier pertinent context, Dewey had wisely remarked, Those who are
concerned with symbolic logic do not always recognize the need for giving an ac-
count of the reference and function of symbols. . . . Any theory of logic has to take
some stand on the question of whether symbols are ready-made clothing for mean-
ings that subsist independently, or whether they are necessary conditions for the ex-
istence of meanings . . . (LW, 1938: 27). The former view neatly characterizes
symbolic AI theory, the latter idea is developed both in Deweys Experience and
Nature and in Meads Mind, Self and Society. (See Chapter 4.)
23. This is hardly the place to review this. For an excellent review, see Franklin,
1995. In addition to the various writings of Churchland, 1980, see Flanagan, 1984 and
Searle, 1992.
24. This approach has the much longer lineage going back to late nineteenth cen-
tury neurophysiological speculations underpinning associationist psychology.
Hebbs account (1949) is purely associationist and, in the form of simple vector dot
potentials, takes on the presumption of neuronal activations and synaptic potentials
60 Chapter Two
(Stephen Jose Hanson, Connectionist Neuroscience: Representational and Learning
Issues in Neuroscience, in Lepore and Pylyshyn (eds.), What Is Cognitive Science?:
404). McCulloch and Pitts (1943) offered a model of the brain as a specialized com-
puting device and Rosenblatt developed a perception-learning machine, the Percep-
tron, 1962.
AI inquiry (in contrast to natural intelligence) in the 1970s and 1980s over-
whelmed these beginnings which more lately have been rediscovered and have issued
in a variety of new efforts, including so-called hybrid symbolic, connectionist mod-
els.
25. See Rodney A. Brooks, Flesh and Machines (New York: Vintage, 2003). See
also his website: http://people.csail.mit.edu/brooks/. Brookss work is discussed in a
useful essay by Robin Marantz Henig, The Real Transformers, New York Times
Magazine,7 July 2007.
26. For an account of the limits of connectionism see Hans Radder, The World
Observed/The World Conceived (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006.
27. See the review by Judith Effken and Robert E. Shaw, Ecological Perspectives
on the New Artificial Intelligence, Ecological Psychology, Vol. 4 (1992): 24770.
See also references to Rodney A. Brooks and the review in Wagman (1998: 8395).
John Dewey and American Psychology 61
63
It has not been an easy matter to judge John Deweys relation to the social sci-
ences in America. Most writers have held that his influence was significant.
Some of these think that this influence was a good one; others are critical,
since for them it contributed to what is seen to be a technocratic version of
social science.
1
It is easy to infer what seems to have propelled this view:
Pragmatism was an important and culturally influential philosophical move-
ment in the United States Dewey was at Michigan and then at Chicago (with
G. H. Mead) at what was the crucial period in the genesis of the social sci-
ences in America; Dewey was distinctly interested in promoting a view which
incorporated science and the scientific frame of mind; hence, Deweys prag-
matism must have left its mark on American social science. Those who find
that this influence was salutary also believe, I think, that on the whole aca-
demic social science provides us with much needed knowledge.
2
Although the premises are all true, the argument doesnt work. It doesnt
mainly because the key ideas are mostly either mushy or ideological (or
both?). To see this, one must be clear not only about Deweys version of prag-
matism, still very much contested but also about the character of social sci-
ence in America. This last requires some concrete history governed by a
philosophically sophisticated understanding of science and its possible goals.
For me, what may be termed mainstream social science is generally a dis-
aster for substantially the reasons pointed to by Deweys erstwhile colleague,
Thorsten Veblen. Veblen insisted that social science had as its task, inquiry
into the nature and causes, the working and the outcome, of [the] institutional
apparatus.
3
Such inquiry need bear no colour of iconoclasm, since even if
it did not, its outcome will disturb the habitual convictions and preconcep-
tions upon which they rest. Instead, usages and conventions that have by
Chapter Three
John Dewey and
American Social Science
habit become embedded in the received scheme of use and wont, and so have
been found to be good and right are given scientific legitimation. The result
is a science of complaisant interpretations, apologies, and projected reme-
dies (1957: 136). Veblens objection, like mine and Deweys, is not that so-
cial scientists were reformers but rather that they were not good scientists.
As regards Dewey, we are just now, I think, beginning to get clearer about
his instrumentalism, despite the ill-conceived effort to appropriate it for post-
modernist purposes, and even if the two most recent full length accounts, one
by an historian, the other by a philosopher, say precious little of any use about
how it bears on Deweys conception of science, including social science.
4
In
this essay, accordingly, I want to develop Deweys scattered views on social
science, both as he came to understand what they had become, and what they
might be. Much of what he did say gave ample room for both misunder-
standing and misappropriation.
5
Still, there remains in Deweys philosophy
some untapped resources for reconstituting social science.
The Origins of Social Science in America
It is of considerable importance to notice that the modern disciplines of the so-
cial sciences are an American invention that European universities had nothing
like what we now take for granted as social science. Indeed, some of the disci-
plines were not part of European higher education until after World War II
when, as with so much else, Americanization became the order of the day.
6
America provided the nearly perfect conditions for the modern idea of the
social sciences.
7
There was, first of all, the social problem produced during
the Gilded Age by rapid industrialization, urbanization, and massive immi-
gration. Second, America had a weak state in the sense that it lacked both
significant state bureaucracies and a strong central government. This pro-
moted responses from civil society, but especially from the private colleges
and universities. Third, lacking a feudal past, America was bourgeois from
its beginnings: As Bledsoe put it, Americans lacked tradition as a source of
authority, but they did not lack science. Before Johns Hopkins became a
university in 1876, there were no universities in Americathe educational
upshot of the absence of a feudal past. Educational enterpreneurs could con-
vince the John D. Rockefellers, Carnegies, and Mellons that science was just
what was needed and that it could be produced with good effect in the new
institutions. Finally, as science had itself been industrialized, a group of Eu-
ropean philosopher/physicists had articulated a thoroughly positivist under-
standing of the successful sciences, from the practically irrelevant idea of
science as theoria, to a practically relevant productive and predictive in-
64 Chapter Three
strument whose ultimate vindication was its capacity to generate technologies
for the relief of mans estate.
Indeed, for the men (sic) in the institutions of higher learning, the prob-
lem was not class war, but ignorance. Social problems surely were no less
subject to scientific solutions than other problems. Moreover, since for
them there was nothing fundamentally wrong with Americas basic institu-
tions, these problems could be dealt with as technical questions in a piece-
meal, ameliorative fashion. But if social scientists were to be professional
with legitimate claims to authority and autonomy, they must mark out their
scientific territories, clear away all that was nonscientific, and establish their
own system of credentialing. What this meant was clear enough: It meant es-
tablishing distinct disciplines exactly in the terms which they believed any
true science must be constituted. The outcome, settled between the wars, was
the disciplines of the social sciences, as we know them today. This was, then,
the context in which Dewey reflected. Where, we may ask, did he fit in?
DEWEY AND THE ORIGINS OF ACADEMIC SOCIAL SCIENCE
Dewey said very little about the social sciences and although one finds
throughout the corpus references to science, one finds too little in the way of
a systematic account of science. Most of the terms descriptive of science and
in general use wereand arevague and uncritically employed: for exam-
ple, cause, law, theory, explanation, and experimental method. Dewey, like
most writers today could take these terms for granted even if, as I would in-
sist, one can get contradictory conceptions of science from different analyses
of them. This unclarity should not surprise us. What we now think of as an
important subdiscipline of philosophy, philosophy of science, emerged only
in the 1950s and it was only in the 1970s that there has been a genuine com-
petitor to the positivist interpretation of science.
Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, published in 1938, is surely the main excep-
tion to the overall absence of texts on Deweys theory of science. What is
there is very important, but there are many important questions which Dewey
did not address and, typically, he does not make much effort to place his ef-
fort in the context of other writers on science, Vienna positivism, for exam-
ple. When Logic was published, as Ralph Sleeper has argued, it was both ig-
nored and misunderstood, so thoroughgoing were entrenched assumptions
about logic and science. Moreover, by this time, systematic misunderstanding
of Dewey was also well entrenched.
8
Accordingly, it was not then and is not
now a genuine competitor for the received view.
John Dewey and American Social Science 65
At bottom is an ill-developed conception of science, which is distinctly
Deweyan. On the positivist, technocratic conception, the aim of science is
prediction and control. To achieve this one needs only confirmed regularities,
laws or lawlike statements. On this view, since they can be no part of science,
ends are given or assumed and the only question is means. Since it is not
within the realm of social science to decide on goals, the social scientist (qua
social scientist) is neutral regarding who his work serves.
For Dewey, none of the foregoing was true, but for reasons noted, is not an
easy matter to get a firm grip of Deweys alternative view. There is a sense in
which it is utterly unique, the consequence of his radical position in episte-
mology. His instrumentalism involves a rejection of the epistemological
problem, and thus of the fact/value dichotomy. It offered a unique concep-
tion of control and a confusing conception of the character of theory and of
the goals of science. I try to keep my account focused, as much as possible,
on what Dewey had to say about social science.
DEWEYS REJECTION OF THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEM
Modern philosophy, responding to the new science, has been haunted by the
epistemological problem, the problem of justifying true belief. As argued in
Chapters 1 and 2, Dewey rejected the assumptions, which generated the prob-
lem. Failure to see this has misled many otherwise astute commentators.
Dorothy Ross, for example, singles out Deweys (1897) lecture, The Signif-
icance of the Problem of Knowledge as a critical intervention on the side of
the technocrats. But this is far from being the case: Its thrust is against tradi-
tional foundationist epistemology: rationalist, sensationalist, and Kantian.
Dewey writes:
Knowledge can define the percept and elaborate the concept, but their union can
be found only in action. The experimental method of modern science, its erec-
tion into the ultimate mode of verification, is simply this fact obtaining recog-
nition (EW, Vol. 5: 21).
Contrary to the epistemologists, there is no problem of knowledge in gen-
eral: philosophy is not an original fountainhead of truth. And this means
that for answers to questions about how knowledge is possible we need
to look to psychology and social ethicsincluding in the latter term all
the related concrete social sciences, so far as they may give guidance to
conduct (22). Deweys project was to naturalize epistemology and moral
theory.
9
66 Chapter Three
Psychology is naught but the account of the way in which conscious life is . . .
progressively maintained and reorganized. Psychology is the attempt to state in
detail the machinery of the individual considered as the instrument and organ
through which social action operates (23).
Similarly,
The sociologist, like the psychologist, often presents himself as a camp follower
of genuine science and philosophy, picking up scraps here and there and piecing
them together in somewhat aimless fashion. . . . But social ethics represents the
attempt to translate philosophy from a general and therefore abstract method
into a working and specific method; it is the change from inquiring into the na-
ture of value in general to an inquiry of the particular values which ought to be
realized in the life of everyone, and of the conditions which shall render possi-
ble this realization (23).
This is the stunning research program for social science, stunningly ignored.
We need to be clear about this. Dewey believed, rightly, that a human sciences
could help us to understand ourselves: how we think and inquire and why,
when thinking and inquiry is successful, it is successful. They would give us
insight into what were our genuine interests and purposes and their relations,
and most obviously, they would give us an understanding of the obstacles in
present arrangements, which keep us from realizing our genuine interests and
purposes. The human sciences would be emancipating in exactly the sense
that they would clear away misconceptions about ourselves and our arrange-
ments and empower us to reconstruct the social world more in accordance
with our wants and aims.
Central to this project was the rejection of the bifurcation of fact and value,
a further consequence of the mistaken assumptions that had generated the
epistemological problem. In his Logic, Dewey argued that most current so-
cial inquiry was marked by the separation of theory and practice (LW, 12:
487). It is sound principle, Dewey says, that one should avoid making social
judgments on the ground of moral preconceptions, conceptions of what is
right and wrong, vicious and virtuous (489). But this is mistakenly converted
to the principle that one should make no evaluations about ends. These are,
accordingly, precluded from inquiry. But only recognition in both theory and
practice that ends to be attained (ends-in-view) are of the nature of hypothe-
ses and that hypotheses have to be formed and tested in strict correlativity
with existential conditions as means, can alter current habits of dealing with
social issues (491).
If one wants a ready current example, consider poverty. What indeed, are
the possible ends-in-view of current policy and what, accordingly, are the
John Dewey and American Social Science 67
existential conditions that are demanded for their satisfaction? It is easy to
deal here with high abstractions, getting people off welfare, getting peo-
ple to work, ensuring that people can acquire skills and knowledge which
will make them employable, and to leave up in the air, unexamined, the req-
uisite existential conditions. Although I cannot prove this here, I would in-
sist that the modern social sciences must take large measure of responsibility
for the shallowness of the usual understanding of problems like poverty and
crime.
10
Moreover, it is easy to assume that the problems which exist are already
definite in their main features, and if so, then inquiry could be aimed at find-
ing the best methods of solution. The result is that methods for resolving
problematic situations are proposed without any clear conception of the ma-
terial in which projects are to be applied and to take effect, with often a
worsening of the situation which generated the inquiry (LW, 12: 487). The
analogy between current modes of inquiry in social science and prescientific
medicine was apt. As Dewey noted elsewhere, such practice was a combina-
tion of empiricism and quackery: Without analysis, symptoms were re-
sponded to in terms of handed down remedies. Of course, these sometimes
worked. But as regards medicine at least, it is now recognized that choice of
remedial measures looking to restoration of health is haphazard until the con-
ditions which constitute the trouble or disease have been determined as com-
pletely and accurately as possible (488).
The poverty example again illustrates this: It is held that people are not
working and that present arrangements make them welfare-dependent. The
solution is obvious: eliminate welfare. But it does not take much to see that
the conditions which constitute the trouble begin with the absence of jobs
which would pay enough to take a family out of poverty and that one would
need here to be clear about a host of other attending steps and conditions to
make this possible.
The self-imposed constraints of allegedly scientific social inquiry also
explain the positivist penchant for fact-gathering. Dewey had attacked this
idea in his 1931 essay, Social Science and Social Control. Dewey offered
the existing limitations of social science (Deweys quotation marks) are
due mainly to unreasoning devotion to physical science as a model, and to a
misconception of physical science at that (LW, 6: 64). In Logic, Dewey held
that methods adopted in the professed name of social science are merely the
form of genuine science since they fail to observe the logical conditions
which in physical science give the techniques of observing and measuring
their standing and force (LW, 12: 492). There are many places where Dewey
assessed current social science as deficient. Moreover, it is surprising that the
foregoing explanation of the deficiency is overlooked by Ross and other writ-
68 Chapter Three
ers who accuse Dewey of contributing to scientism. In this essay (as in the
Logic), Dewey held: . . . [T]he facts of social fact-finding remain a mis-
cellaneous pile of meaningless items. Since their connections with human
wants and their effect on human values are neglected, there is nothing which
binds them together into an intelligible whole (LW, 6: 65).
Dewey was surely aware that his colleagues, among them Merriam at
Chicago and Ogburn at Columbia had by then established fact-gathering as the
goal of social science.
11
This was, of course, a main target of Robert Lynds
Knowledge for What? (1939), a book that was both very Deweyan and very
much out of the mainstream. Indeed, in a related section of Logic, Dewey de-
veloped an argument that C. W. Mills will pick up in his 1959 Sociological
Imagination. Dewey saw two one-sided distortions. The positivist school (his
term) singlemindedly directs itself as fact-findingwhat Mills had called ab-
stracted empiricism. But the opposing tendency places its entire emphasis on
conceptions (LW, 12: 497)what Mills called Grand Theory. Facts are sub-
sumed directly under principles, the latter being regarded as fixed norms that
decide the legitimacy or illegitimacy of existing phenomena and that prescribe
the end toward which endeavor should be directed (497).
There is another issue, part of his more general instrumentalist theory of in-
quiry that needs to be introduced if we are to have any hopes of grasping
Deweys thoughts on science.
INSTRUMENTALISM AND SCIENCE
Deweys commitments to scientific method, his persistent attacks on inquiry
detached from human concerns and his extensive use of technological
metaphors have caused enormous confusion, almost certainly because as
Dewey himself saw, modern science had not been the salvific force that it was
once hoped to be. (See Chapter 1.)
Surely the most far-reaching attempt to illuminate Deweys philosophy in
terms of technology is Larry Hickmans John Deweys Pragmatic Technol-
ogy (1990). It may be that Hickman goes too far in asserting that late in his
life, technology became a synonym for the very method of inquiry (1991: 1);
but Hickman wisely glosses Deweys instrumentalism by arguing that
Dewey goes beyond theory and beyond praxis to production: his concern is
with the making and testing of new entities including extra-organic tools as
well as goals and ideals (15). Science in this sense is a more refined and
developed form of all inquiry.
Thus, in Logic, Dewey insists, there is no sharp dividing line between
common sense and science. Gradually and by processes that are more or less
John Dewey and American Social Science 69
tortuous and originally unplanned, definite technical processes and instrumen-
talities [were] formed and transmitted. It was just these, which allowed for
control. Controlas Hickman says, a synonym for knowledgedoes not
refer to the subordination or domination of something. Rather, as Dewey
makes clear enough, control refers to our capacity to apply intelligence suc-
cessfully: to produce, adapt, adjust, accommodate, achieve, institute, identify,
order, discriminate, and to resolve problems in many other sorts of ways.
Control has been achieved when the problem, which generated inquiry, has
been resolved.
It is in this sense, also, that practical must be understood. These techni-
cal processes and instrumentalities then become the background of materi-
als and operations which we term science (LW, 12: 77). And, indeed,
Genuine scientific knowledge revived when inquiry adopted as part of its own
procedure and for its own purpose the previously disregarded instrumentalities
and procedures of productive workers. This adoption is the radical characteris-
tic of the experimental method of science (LW, 12: 99, 38889).
12
But this does entail a collapse of science into technology in the sense that all
inquiry has some immediate practical aim and surely not in the sense that we
can and should seek to dominate nature. All knowing is technological in the
sense that if the problematic situation is to be brought under control, lan-
guage, mathematics and/or artifacts of various kinds are required. Indeed,
more generally, this is consequence of Deweys attack on the spectator the-
ory of knowledge. But the difference between science and common sense is
exactly that while commonsense inquiry occurs for the sake of settlement of
some issue of use and enjoyment, scientific inquiry occurs for its own sake
(LW, 12: 6667).
Deweys position here is almost always overlooked. Dewey did not reject
the (Greek) idea that inquiry could be aimed solely at understanding. He re-
jected the bifurcation of theory and practice, the idea that one could under-
stand anything without tools and without experimental operations, involv-
ing definite techniques (LW, 12: 151, 420, 455). Of course, it would be hard
to deny that understanding may well promote the development of technolo-
giesa key feature of late nineteenth century industrialized science. This
leaves open the question of whether this was, as Dewey would sometimes at
least seem to suggest, the ultimate justification of science.
13
I want to say more about experimental operations, but we need here to
notice that the continuity between science and common sense creates a very
special burden for social science. Cultural conditions impact all inquirya
critical point for a sociology of science, but because the physical is rela-
tively independent of social issues, the influence of cultural conditions is
70 Chapter Three
indirect. For example, it is not possible . . . to separate nineteenth century
devotion to exclusively mechanical conceptions from the needs of industry of
that period. In social science, by contrast, prejudices of race, nationality,
class and sect play such an important role that their influence is seen by any
observer of the field (LW, 12: 482). It is, however, more than annoying to
notice that Dewey did not, as far as I can tell, say much about how such prej-
udices were influencing the social sciences.
SCIENTIFIC LAWS AND CAUSALITY
Critical to any understanding of science is the conception of law and causal-
ity. We can here briefly summarize the relevant conclusions of the previous
chapters of this volume. First, Dewey rejected the most characteristic, even
defining features of empiricist philosophy of science: that scientific laws are
formulations of uniform and unconditional sequences of events, and that
causality must be defined in terms of such sequences (LW, 12: 437). Of all the
doctrines, which currently inform mainstream social science, these are surely
the most pernicious. Once accepted, we are committed to an event ontology
and a regularity determinist view of the universe: Whenever this, then that. It
is then also easy to assume a covering law model of explanation, and thus to
hold also that prediction and explanation are symmetrical. One final conse-
quence is the inability to conceptualize agency: the fact that persons make
things happen. But as Dewey rightly sees, there are no such things as uni-
form sequences of events (LW, 12: 445).
Second, he argued, atoms and molecules show a selective bias in their in-
differences, affinities and repulsions to other events (LW, 1: 162). These se-
lective biases, he says, define their essence, a term Dewey used without
prejudicing his fully processual view of the universe. But since on a realist
view, the things of the universe are always related to other things, out-
comes are never guaranteed. Thus, iron as such exhibits characteristics of
bias or selective reactions, but iron as a genuine constituent of an organized
body acts so as to tend to maintain the type of activity of the organism to
which it belongs (195). In a living organism, it functions not to produce iron-
oxideas it would in a hingebut to contribute to metabolism.
Moreover such moves are quite consistent with his idea that commonsense
inquiry is continuous with advanced science. Dewey gives some examples:
A good rain will cause the seeds that have been planted to grow. The ex-
pectations are explained by the unscientific person by attributing a power
to rain. The empiricist disallows this, but content with an effort to establish
the validity of the expectations, he does not seek to understand the power.
John Dewey and American Social Science 71
Dewey sees, rightly, that from the standpoint of scientific inquiry, these ex-
pectations are but material of problems (LW, 12: 446). He may, however,
miss the main point. That is, if the scientific problem is to try to provide a
more refined regularity or to fill in ever-larger numbers of variables, then
he has succumbed to the regularity determinist conception.
14
On realist
grounds, the scientific problem is not, as positivists would have it, to close the
system in order to make better predictions. Rather the scientific problem is to
identify what it is about the nature of water and of seeds such that a good rain
will (ceteris paribus) cause the seeds to grow. One needs a theory about per-
tinent causal mechanisms, not a better analysis of the variables.
In Quest for Certainty, he argued against empiricist ontology, both of the
naive realist sort characteristic of Greek science and of modern sensationalist
versions. The experimental method, he writes, substitutes data for objects
(LW, 4: 79). By data is signified subject-matter for further interpretation;
something to be thought about. . . . Hot and cold, wet and dry, light and heavy,
instead of being self-evident matters with which to explain phenomenon,
were things to be investigated; they were effects, not causal principles (LW,
4: 80). Hot, for example, is surely an effect of what is a most complicated
causal nexus, a nexus that includes not only the properties of bodies, but
organisms.
Nevertheless, Deweys view needs to be distinguished from a scientific real-
ism, which holds that things have causal powers. For Dewey, causality is a
logical category, not an ontological one. For Dewey, the empiricist rightly ruled
out occult qualities, but then offered a hybrid notion which took from com-
monsense the idea of succession and from the science the idea of invariability of
conjunction. But the contents which are invariably related in a law are not
events, and . . . their relation is not one of sequence (LW, 12: 446). As a rejec-
tion of regularity determinism, this seems right. And while I do not think that
Deweys positive account of causality is satisfactory, his rejection of regularity
determinism was all that is needed to distinguish his views from the prevailing
positivisms in social science. This is generally missed.
For example, Ross (1991: 253) holds that Deweys Psychology and Social
Practice is another place where he endorses technocracy. Dewey argues that
the teacher has a psychological theory, like it or not. Teachers tell you that a
child is careless or inattentive in the same final way that they would tell you
that a piece of paper is white. But, insists Dewey,
it is only through some recognition of attention as a mechanism, some aware-
ness of the interplay of sensations, images and motor impulses which constitute
it as an objective fact that the teacher can deal effectively with attention as a
function (139).
72 Chapter Three
Deweys point is exactly that unless teachers have an understanding of the
student as a psychosocial being, all their efforts are bound to be misdirected,
ineffective, even destructive. It is only by understanding the psychological
mechanisms of attention, memory, cognition, and judgment and the social
mechanisms implicated in all experience and behavior that the teacher can
cultivate the powers of the student.
15
This is for Dewey a research program to
be satisfied. We are, he says, discussing the question of the role of psycho-
logical science in education only because we have as yet made so little head-
way (144).
Deweys use of the term mechanisms here is notable and suggests how
far he is from a regular determinist view. This is made even clearer in a 1918
essay entitled A New Social Science, one of the very few places where
Dewey explicitly discusses social science. (The Logic is the other notable
place.) Dewey argues against the idea, inherited from Comte and Spencer
and still currentthat the existing social order is the product of natural laws
which are expounded in a rational, scientific way (MW, 11: 89). Dewey in-
sists that World War I should finally have exposed this idea as myth: . . . The
war has revealed that our existing social situation is in effect the result of a
convergence of a large number of independently generated historic accidents
(90). Indeed,
Any science which pretends to be more than a description of the particular
forces which are at work and a descriptive tracing of the particular consequences
which they produce, which pretends to discover basic principles to which social
things conform, and inherent laws which explain them is, I repeat, sheer
mythology (90).
Dewey acknowledged radical contingency in the universe, a universe that
was both precarious and stable. There were uniformitiesa consequence of
selective biases and there were plenty of surprises, a consequence of the
open systematic character of the world. But such a metaphysic calls for a his-
torical and concrete social science. The description of particular forces at
work are the analogue of the selective biases discoverable by physical sci-
ence. The particular consequences which they produce are not guaranteed
in advance because the relations of such mechanisms are complex and his-
torically contingent. There are no general laws under which we can sub-
sume and thereby explain wars, revolutions or, for that matter, hurricanes or
the genesis of a species (Manicas, 2006, Chapter 5).
Dewey concludes this brief but rich essay by remarking, there is . . . an
immense amount of empirical subjectmatter contained within the confines of
existing social sciences. The only trouble is that it has been framed up and
John Dewey and American Social Science 73
betrayed by its mythical and apologetic setting (MW, 11: 91). He does not,
unfortunately, elaborate on this very pregnant idea.
DEWEY ON EXPERIMENTATION
Deweys views on experimentation certainly did not help clarify his position.
I noted that, for Dewey, one could not understand anything without experi-
mental operations, involving technique. There is, of course, a paradigm,
characteristic of the laboratory, but how far can this be extended? Along way
it seems.
16
Thus, he insists there is no ground whatever upon which a logi-
cal line can be drawn between the operations and techniques of experimenta-
tion in the natural sciences and the same operations and techniques employed
for distinctly practical purposes (LW, 12: 434). But what counts here as the
same operations and techniques? This text continues with what may be his
most general definition:
Experimentation is a form of doing and making. Application of conceptions and
hypotheses to existential matters through the medium of doing and making is an
intrinsic feature of scientific method (ibid).
17
As before, if this is a consequence of his general criticism of the spectator the-
ory of knowledge, there is no problem. On the other hand, Dewey did not, I
think, have a clear understanding of the laboratory experiment as it is actu-
ally practiced in the successful sciences and this allowed him to give the idea
a very extended sense. Only sometimes does he suggest that the main use of
an experiment is to test a well-articulated theory. On this realist view, the
idea, roughly, is to deduce what the theory entails and then to establish ex-
perimental closure to see if what was predicted by theory under closure
does, in fact, obtain.
18
But if we think of an experiment in this sense, as a situation in which a the-
ory of a mechanism is to be tested, then, as is very plain, this is never pos-
sible in social scienceputting it at a distinct disadvantage. This is not, how-
ever, what Dewey seems to have in mind when he speaks of experimenting in
social science. In the Logic, he remarks, every measure of policy put into op-
eration is, logically, and should be, actually, of the nature of an experiment
(LW, 12: 502; see also LW, 12: 486). Insofar as we should make the effort to
see as clearly as we can what consequences obtained after a policy was in-
troduced, there is good sense to this. We know, for example, that people didnt
stop drinking alcoholic beverages when prohibition was enforced. But this is
a test of a policy not of a theory of social behavior, exactly because, as Dewey
clearly recognized, there are always a host of connected and interacting
74 Chapter Three
processes involved which conjointly produced the actual outcomes. In this
case, as we now know, demand for alcohol was satisfied by illegal produc-
ers and distributors so that, if anything, the policy served to create crimi-
nalsincluding law enforcement officersand to deprive the society of any
effective control of the production and distribution of alcohol.
In his 1931 Social Science and Social Control, alluded to earlier, Dewey
did indeed sound technicist. He there offered that The Five-Year Plan of
Russia . . . whether noble or the reverse, has many of the traits of a social ex-
periment, for it is an attempt to obtain certain specified social results by the
use of specified definite measures, exercised under conditions of consider-
able, if not complete, control (LW, 6: 65). This is, in my mind, so much non-
sense: Despite totalitarian methods of control, the outcomes were, as they
must be, conjoint products of a myriad of interacting activities of which
some, at least, were directly contradictory to the intentions of the planners.
Here experiment, and control get Dewey into unnecessary difficulty.
The example raises, as well, the question of the relation of democracy to
social scientific knowledge. For the technocrats, one controls the condi-
tions and gets predictable results, and because experts have knowledge
that the masses lack, democracy must give way.
SOCIAL SCIENCE AND DEMOCRACY
It is easy enough to establish that World War I had a tremendous impact on
Dewey and that one of the consequences was his readiness to believe that the
war had brought forward the more conscious and extensive use of science
for communal purposes. (See Chapter 7.) It had made it customary to uti-
lize collective knowledge and skill of scientific experts of all kinds, organiz-
ing them for community ends. The warfare state, remarkably, had laid the
foundations for the Nationalist Liberalism, which became the political agenda
of Deweys associates at the The New Republic. But when Walter Lippman,
already persuaded of a technocratic version of social control, published his
Phantom Public in 1925, Dewey finally came to grips with the problem of
scientific knowledge and democracy.
In The Public and Its Problems (1927), Dewey agreed that there were a
host of technical questions which could be answered by experts: sanita-
tion, public health, healthful and adequate housing, transportation, planning
of cities, regulation and distribution of immigrants, selection and manage-
ment of personnel, right methods of instruction and preparation of competent
teachers, scientific adjustment of taxation, efficient management of funds
and so on (LW, 2: 313). But the idea that such knowledge was sufficient was
John Dewey and American Social Science 75
profoundly in error. Those who hold to such views ignore forces which have
to be composed and resolved before technical and specialized action can
come into play (LW, 2: 313). The problem is deep: It is in the first instance
the search for conditions under which the Great Society may become the
Great Community (327). The public is lost, eclipsed, inchoate, bewildered,
caught in a drift, which it cannot grasp and therefore cannot overcome. Lipp-
mann (and later C. W. Mills) was not wrong in diagnosing that the American
public was a mass, but he was wrong in thinking that social scientists should
now rule. Dewey was clear that such experts lacked the knowledge that was
needed. Indeed, the prime condition of a democratically organized public is
a kind of knowledge and insight which does not exist (339). Citizens needed
to understand what was happening and why. Some technical knowledge was
needed, to be sure, but in the absence of a widely shared understanding of the
forces at work, no democratic public could emerge.
Dewey is clearly correct in this analysis, but he is not as radical as he might
be in assigning the causes of this. I put aside here the problems of distribut-
ing the kind of knowledge which does not exist, for example, problems of
the corporate control of mass communication, and concentrate here on the
role of the social sciences themselves. In particular, while he acknowledges
the limits of the special sciences in generating such knowledge, he does not
seem to see that they contribute mightily to the mystification of what needs
to be known. Instead of illuminating and emancipating, too much contempo-
rary social science obscures and misleads.
Dewey gets his hands on some of the reasons for this. He notes that the
backwardness of social knowledge is marked in its division into independent
and insulated branches of learning (171).
19
But this is more than a mark of
its backwardness: It guarantees backwardness. It is not merely, as he says,
that there is lacking continuous cross-fertilization, but that fragmentation
prevents us from grasping causes and connections. Thus we are told that
poverty is a psychological or cultural problem: People lose initiative,
lack ambition, look for the easy way. The sociologist assumes that this is
fact (it is not!) and then tries to explain it. We are told the cause is the
breakdown of the family or welfare dependency. Moreover, our social sci-
entist can, without risk, ignore an economic or historical analysis. She can,
for example, altogether ignore the lack of decent-paying jobs and the reasons
for this. The reasons can be left to the economists who tell us that markets are
self-correcting and that, accordingly, a political analysis which calls for state
intervention is self-defeating.
Dewey notes also that specialized knowledge aims to be abstract which
practically means that it is not conceived in terms of its bearing on human
life (171). Plainly, the commitment to value-neutrality requires this. The up-
76 Chapter Three
shot, of course, is not value-neutrality, but as Veblen insisted, scientific legit-
imation of usages and conventions that have by habit become embedded in
the received scheme of use and wont, and so have been found to be good and
right. Social science happily conspires in persuading us that the poor have
only themselves to blame.
He argues forcefully that what counts as news in our daily papers is ren-
dered completely unintelligible in terms of its connections but fails to argue
that this tendency is reinforced by fact-gathering social science. He is cor-
rect that a genuine social science would manifest its reality in the daily press,
while learned books and articles supply and polish tools of inquiry (347), but
of course, it is precisely because we are not journalists but social scien-
tists that we write jargonized learned books and articles. As Lynd said, we
are either scholars or techniciansworking for whoever will pay the bill.
Finally, for all of Deweys interest in education, he makes no mention of
the disastrous consequences of current patterns of education in the social sci-
ences. Instead of cultivating what Mills called the sociological imagination,
we offer students textbooks, which guarantee disciplinary fragmentation,
empty abstractions and uncritical thought. Instead of seeking causes and in-
sisting on making connections, we require disciplinary integrity. Instead of
raising questions about habits embedded in the received scheme of things,
we seek relations of variables.
Dewey was surely on the right track when, as early as his essay on Renan
(see Chapter 1), he offered some reasons for these patterns of ideology and
disinformation. He then wrote that we do not yet appreciate the dead weight
of class interest which resists all attempts of science to take practical form
and become a social motor. I conclude by saying that we still do notitself
a function of the failure of the present practices of the social sciences.
NOTES
1. For evidence that Dewey is often charged with holding to a technocratic version
of psychology and the social sciences, see Chapters 1 and 2. As regards Dewey and
social science more generally, see, most recently, Dorothy Ross, The Origins of Amer-
ican Social Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). For Ross,
Deweys position was scientistic. See the note that follows.
2. Ross does not celebrate academic social science in America. She argues that it
is scientistic. [Scientism] was the result of a long-standing commitment perenni-
ally deferred, an effort to make good on the positivist claim that only natural science
provided certain knowledge and conferred the power of prediction and control. With
science now defined by its method, scientism demanded that the requirements of nat-
ural scientific method dominate the practice of social science (Ross, 1991: 390).
John Dewey and American Social Science 77
While I very much agree with Ross as regards much academic social science, her
explanation is very different than the one I offered in my History and Philosophy of
the Social Science (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987). She seems wrongly to assume
that the positivists provide a generally correct understanding of natural science. For
her, scientism arises only when the social sciences are constituted in positivist terms.
Ross seems to favor interpretative models available in history and cultural anthro-
pology or the generalizing and interpretative model offered by Max Weber (Ross,
1991: 473). I argued in my 1987 book that there was a third, realist alternative. It al-
lows us to incorporate the historical and hermeneutic and also to give social science
an emancipatory role. See also my A Realist Philosophy of Social Science (2006). I
suggest in what follows that Dewey seems to have stumbled toward a fourth alterna-
tive, neither positivist, realist nor interpretative.
3. Thorsten Veblen, The Higher Learning in America: A Memorandum on the Con-
duct of Universities by Businessmen (New York: Sagamore, 1957: 132). This was
written before World War I and published in 1918. It remains a wonderful account.
Indeed, things have changed little. Dewey and Veblen agreed on much but it is hard
to discern how the influences ran. Both had struggled with the views of Peirce.
4. See Robert B. Westbrook, John Dewey and American Democracy (Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, 1991) and Alan Ryan, John Dewey and the High Tide of
American Liberalism (New York: Norton, 1995). Westbrook and Ryan are helpful as
regards Deweys views on democracy and politics. It is a bit surprising that Ryan pays
so little attention to issues in the theory of science, given his interests. Ryan finds
Deweys Logic: The Theory of Inquiry somewhat baffing (1995: 309). This is a bit
remarkable (though not unusual) since this is the place where Dewey makes his most
fundamental assault on the conventional wisdom.
5. I think also that his influence was minimal even though many parties, often con-
flicting, were fond of drawing on him to suit their purposes. Early Chicago school soci-
ology has some Deweyan marks, but it too moved toward positivism. See Lester R.
Kurtz, Evaluating Chicago Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).
G. H. Mead, of course, was the direct influence on symbolic interactionism and Meads
relations to Dewey remains unclear. Symbolic interactionism, in any case, was always a
minor competitor to mainstream social science. Perhaps C. W. Mills, for all his unhappi-
ness with Deweyfor many of the right reasonsis the most Deweyan social scientist.
6. The most comprehensive comparative overview of the emergence of modern so-
cial science is P. Wagner, B. Wittrock, and R. Whiteley (eds.), Discourses on Society:
The Shaping of the Social Science Disciplines, Sociology of Sciences Yearbook, 1991
(Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1991).
7. See my account, A History and Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Chapter 11,
and Ross, Origins, Chapter 3.
8. See Ralph W. Sleeper, The Necessity of Pragmatism (New Haven, Conn.: Yale
University Press, 1986), especially Chapter 6, and Thomas Burke, Deweys New
Logic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).
9. For a very useful account of Deweys theory of inquiry as epistemology see,
H. S. Thayer, Objects of Knowledge, in John J. Stuhr (ed.), Philosophy and the Re-
construction of Culture (Albany: State University of New Press). (See Chapter 6.)
78 Chapter Three
10. See Stephen Steinberg, Turning Back (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995) and Her-
bert Gans, The War against the Poor (New York: Basic Books, 1995) for review and
criticism of the contribution of recent mainstream social science to this impoverish-
ment. More recently, see Alice OConnor, Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social
Policy, and the Poor in Twentieth Century History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 2001) and my brief essay, The Sociology of Poverty, in Encyclopedia of
Poverty (Beverly Hills and London: Sage, 2006).
11. In 1929, Herbert Hoover assembled a distinguished group of social scientists
to examine the feasibility of a national survey of social trends . . . to undertake the
researches and to make . . . a complete impartial examination of the facts. This was
funded by the Rockefeller foundation with support from the SSRC, one of Merriams
inspirations. Four years of work by hundreds of social scientists filled 1,600 pages of
quantitative research. The document called the Ogburn Report after its director,
William F. Ogburn of Columbia, may be taken to signal the full maturation of
American-style social science.
12. It is not altogether clear what Dewey has in mind here. He may assume that the
scientific revolution of the seventeenth century owed to incorporation of techniques
derived from the workshops of craftmen. But it has been argued by Koyre, Butter-
field, and Kuhn that as regards the development of the classical sciences: physics and
astronomy, the scientific revolution was not a consequence of new experimental tech-
niques, but of new ways of looking at old phenonena. Baconian experiments did,
later, give rise to a large number of newer scientific fields which had their roots in the
crafts and in alchemy. See Kuhn (1977).
13. Having abandoned the quest for foundations, Dewey had to justify science as
a mode of fixing belief pragmatically. But this need not give technology a privi-
leged position. For discussion, see Chapter 6.
14. He writes scientific inquiry proceeds by introducing qualifications. The
amount of arsenic has to be specified. . . . The conditions of the system into which it
is taken have to be determined. . . . The presence or absence of counteracting con-
ditions has to be taken into account . . . (LW, Vol. 12: 44647).
15. Dewey very early on insisted that all behavior and experience was social, but
he did not say much about what this meant or entailed. See Chapter 4. For some al-
ternative conceptions, see John Greenwood (ed.), The Mark of the Social (Rowman
and Littlefield, 1997).
16. In some places, he suggests that a mind experiment may be quite sufficient; in
others he seems at least to deny this. For example:
Experimental operations change existing conditions. Reasoning as such, can provide
means for effecting the change of conditions but by itself cannot effect it. Only execution
of existential operations directed by an idea in which ratiocination terminates can bring
about the re-ordering of environing conditions required to produce a settled and unified
situation (LW, 12: 121).
17. See also LW, 12: 458. As a consequence of his rejection of the spectator the-
ory of knowledge, it is clear that all inquiry requires experimentation for Dewey. He
John Dewey and American Social Science 79
says also that there are at least three needs satisfied by experimentation: the institu-
tion of data, the elimination of material that is irrelevant to the problem at hand, and
the generation of new existential materials.
He generally seems to have in mind something much like the methods that Mill
had provided in his Logic (LW, 12: 190). But sometimes, experiment seems to be ex-
ploratory in its aim (LW, 12: 317), close indeed to the Baconian idea of twisting the
tail of the lion.
18. For a systematic discussion of experiment see Roy Bhaskar, A Realist The-
ory of Science, 2nd Edition (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1978).
19. This feature of Deweys concern with the existing disciplines of social sci-
ence is rarely acknowledged. See also Logic (LW, 12: 5012).
80 Chapter Three
81
INTRODUCTION
My title intends to associate my effort with Deweys Experience and Nature,
better titled, he later thought, Culture and Nature. My main interest is to re-
consider naturalism in the light of recent debate in the philosophy of the so-
cial sciences. Since at least Dilthey, the question of a human science had been
very much contested. Could one hold, for example, that as there were physi-
cal laws, there was social laws? Could one argue that explanation proceeded
in terms of these, just as, presumably, it does in the physical sciences? Could
one hold that, even ideally speaking, the terms of the social sciences could be
reduced to terms in the physical language?
Indeed, antinaturalism could be defined as the view that epistemological
and ontological differences in the domains of nature and culture demand a
wholly different methodology. Beginning with the Kantian cleavage between
an empirical (phenomenal) realm subject to knowable law and an intelligible
realm where agents are free, late nineteenth-century thought dichotomized
eklaren (causal explanation) and verstehen (interpretative understanding), the
nomothetic and the idiographic, the domain of nature and the domain of his-
tory. For antinaturalists, then, even if the methods of the natural sciences are
apt for the investigation of nature, by virtue of the meaningful, linguistic, or
conceptual character of the human sciences, the methods of the human sci-
ences need to be toto coelo different. They require a hermeneutic, phenome-
nological approach.
Chapter Four
Culture and Nature
OBJECTIVE VS. SUBJECTIVE WELTANSCHAUUNGEN?
This bifurcation was the operative idea behind Maurice Natansons 1963
much used anthology, The Philosophy of the Social Sciences. In his forward,
Natanson wrote:
Two distinctly opposed philosophical attitudes are taken as polar positions un-
derlying the social sciences: let us, for want of satisfying alternatives, call them
objective and subjective Weltanschauungen (Natanson, 1963: viii).
As the book unfolds, sociologist and naturalist, George Lundberg is put
against Simmels neo-Kantianism, essays by Ernest Nagel and C. G. Hempel
on concept and theory formation in the social sciences are paired with one on
the same topic by Alfred Schtz, an essay by A. J. Ayer is juxtaposed with one
by Merleau-Ponty. But perhaps most striking was the exchange generated by
Thelma Lavines incisive essay, Note to Naturalists on the Human Spirit.
Lavine sharply criticized any naturalism that was content to be defined by
a principle of continuity of analysis conceived of in terms of experiment and
empirical verifiablity. . . . This amounted, she insisted, to forfeiting its sta-
tus as a positive, i.e., constructive philosophy (Natanson, 1963: 252). Natu-
ralists not only exaggerated experimentalism but they confused the method of
naturalism with methods stipulated by naturalism for inquiry into all types of
subject matter. Finally, Lavine charged that naturalists had thus far been able
to satisfy its new-found concern with the human spirit by recommending the
method of experimentation to the social sciences. By default, they had failed
to show that naturalisms were not, finally, materialisms. On her view, these
weaknesses could be overcome, but only if naturalists developed a naturalis-
tically reconstructed method of verstehen (254, 258).
Lavines essay brought sharp rebuttals from both Nagel and Natanson.
Nagel found that the difficulties she claims to find in current naturalism are
only doubtfully genuine; and the specific recommendation . . . of question-
able worth (262). Natanson much approved of Lavines criticism but found
that her recommendation was, finally, incoherent: To reinvoke naturalistic
criteria as correctives for a reconstructed naturalistic method is to take a step
forward and follow with a step back (282). For Natanson, since verstehen
was foundational, the way out was the transcension of naturalism in fa-
vor of a phenomenological standpoint (283). Indeed, after saying that W. I.
Thomas, Cooley, and Mead were all representatives of the phenomenologi-
cal standpoint, Natanson offered that this transcension could be achieved
by adopting the phenomenological stance of Edmund Husserl.
In what follows, I argue that both Nagel and Natanson were wrong and that
Lavine was correct. But to do this requires rejection of mainstream, empiri-
82 Chapter Four
cist, neopositivist philosophy of science, including especially its characteris-
tic philosophy of language and the (still dominating idea) that explanation
proceeds by subsumption under law. Instead, I draw on Dewey and recent
work in the realist philosophy of science.
1
In turn, I offer that in terms of this
view of science, a human science may be secured with a robust naturalism of
the sort defended by John Dewey and George Herbert Mead.
2
On the present
view, antinaturalisms thrive because, beginning with the debates of the last
decades of the nineteenth century, both sides of the argument have shared in
assumptions about both nature and culture and about what natural science is.
They still do.
NATURE AND CULTURE
Nature exists independently of human activity. Society (and, not trivially,
knowledge of nature) does not.
3
On the present view, society is best con-
strued as a relatively enduring ensemble of social relations, relatively en-
during because social relations are incarnate in the activities of persons
(Manicas, 2006; Giddens, 1984). There would be no society without hu-
man activity. There would be no human activity without culture, broadly,
everything which has meaning, including then, language and the total
range of material objects that are regularly used by people in mediating
both their social and their environmental actions (Byers, 1991: 3). Al-
though the activity-dependent character of society has implications for in-
quiry in the social sciences, this fact does not, emphatically, call for anti-
naturalism.
The philosophical basis for such a naturalistic (yet, nonreductive) view of
society is hinted at by Marx (especially in The German Ideology), and devel-
oped by G. H. Mead and Dewey. Alternativeand on the present view, badly
mistaken naturalismsare offered in the nineteenth-century positivist for-
mulations of Spencer, Haeckel, and Engels and in more recent eliminative
materialism.
4
For Dewey and Mead, life and mind are emergent evolutionary products;
but as Tiles has argued, it is critical to see that most theories under this ban-
ner amount to little more than dualism back from the laundry (Tiles, 1988:
49). Characteristically, it is acknowledged that life and mind evolved, but
then argued that mind is consciousness and that its contents are ideas (or in-
tentions), qualities directly known only to subjects. Within, then, this Carte-
sian framework, meaning and communication require either reductionist
strategies, for example, verificationism, behaviorism, or they remain miracu-
lous, at the very least wanting of some nonnaturalistic solution.
Culture and Nature 83
A fully naturalistic posture will not merely allow mind (culture, meaning
and society) an evolution from the sentient, but will reject what Dewey called
intellectualism, the two-fold error of operating with an incomplete (ab-
stracted) picture of what is to have [an] experience of seeing and recognizing,
and on the other hand, [imposing] on all experience, specifically sentient ex-
perience, a structure which is present only in sophisticated (cognitive) devel-
opments of sentience (Tiles, 1988: 55).
One cannot, I think, underestimate the hold of intellectualism on philoso-
phers, psychologists, and social scientists that seek an understanding of hu-
mans and society. Semantic theories of language, current cognitive science,
talk about the cultural system as in Parsonian-influence theory or more rad-
ically, in the cultural work of Geertz or his opposite, Lvi-Strauss, is anti-
naturalist, even platonist in this way. Similarly, the Parsonian conception of
the affective as providing only motivating, noncognitive role in action, recent
rational choice theory and the idea that all knowledge is discursive knowl-
edge each thrive on intellectualism.
For Dewey, three general plateaus are easilyand empirically
discerned, each of which incorporates the function and relations of those be-
low it, and is such that it cannot be understood in isolation from the level (or
levels) below it . . . (Tiles, 1988: 56). The first plateau is inanimate nature.
In strongly realist terms, Dewey writes atoms and molecules show a selec-
tive bias in their indifferences, affinities and repulsions, when exposed to
other events.
5
Following James in his Principles, Dewey argues that things
are defined by means of symbols that convey only their consequences with
respect to one another. Water in ordinary experience designates an essence
of something which has familiar bearings and uses in human life. . . . But H
2
O
gets away from these connnections, and embodies in its essence only instru-
mental efficacy in respect to things independent of human affairs (E&N:
160). In the foregoing terms, H
2
O represents a theoretical entity, real but not
empirical. For realist theory of science, things, both the things of ordi-
nary experience and the highly abstracted theoretical things of advanced sci-
ence, are metaphysical compounds. Ordinary table salt is a compound of
different kinds of molecules even while it is mostly NaCl. NaCl, of course, is
a theoretical entity, an item of the current ontology of science. Realist philos-
ophy of science is strongly naturalistic in holding that nature exists inde-
pendently of mind, even if the nature of nature is a scientific problem, to be
settled by inquiry.
6
In contrast to empiricisms, laws are not statements about empirical reg-
ularities but assertions about the dispositional powers of thingstheir se-
lective biassand these are understood as natural necessities, in Deweys
terms, essences. Theories are conceived as representations of enduring
84 Chapter Four
structures or mechanisms. On this view, theories have essential nonsentential
dimensions, what Harr termed imagined paramorphs, models of causal
mechanisms at work in the world.
7
The second general plateau, life, is distinguished by the way physico-
chemical energies are interconnected and operate. Animate bodies seek to
maintain a temporal pattern of activity . . . to utilize conserved consequences
of past activities so as to adapt subsequent changes to the needs of the inte-
gral system in which they belong. Thus, iron as such exhibits characteris-
tics of bias or selective reactions but iron as a genuine constituent of an or-
ganized body acts so as to tend to maintain the type of activity of the
organism to which it belongs (E&N: 192). In an organism, it functions not
to become iron-oxide (as it would in a hinge), but to contribute to metabo-
lism. As Dewey sees, how some element of a concrete composite behaves de-
pends upon its (theorized) dispositional properties, on how in the integrated
system, it is related to other things, and on how the composite is related to
things external to it. It is because ironFeis what it is that it has prop-
erties, which enable it to function differently in different relations. Compare
here hinges in New Mexico and Honolulu.
We experience patterns not invariances. Patterns are the result of relatively
stable configurations of causal mechanisms. Salt (usually) dissolves in water;
for human percipients, gold isalmost always appearsyellow; and to shift
the example to the domain of society, there is a strong positive correlation be-
tween poverty and one-on-one crime. Indeed, in terms of Deweys most ba-
sic metaphysical category, there is both precariousness and stability because
the world is not, as empiricists have it, a determined concatenation of con-
tingent events but a contingent concatenation of ensembles of complexly re-
lated natural necessities, a world of genuine change and novelty. The impli-
cations of this for a proper understanding of science are, without
exaggeration, simply enormous.
MEANING, MIND, AND SOCIETY
But if vitalism in biology is no longer persuasive, mind remains a problem,
not only in the persistent mind/body dualism (and epistemological individu-
alism) of most general psychology, but also in the social sciences, in what is,
effectively, a radical bifurcation of nature and culture. As Dewey says, upon
the whole, professed transcendentalists have been more aware than have pro-
fessed empiricists of the fact that language makes the difference between
brute and man. The trouble is, he continued, that they have lacked a nat-
uralistic conception of its origin and status (E&N: 140). For Dewey (and
Culture and Nature 85
Mead), society, meaning and mind are tightly linked and a genetic account is
indispensable if we are not to fall into the philosophic fallacy, the conver-
sion of eventual functions into antecedent existence. The fallacy converts
consequences of interactions of events into causes of the occurrence of these
consequences (200). As Dewey recognized, this fallacy is widespread, but
nowhere more vivid than in accounts of mind and of society. The former are
epistemologically individualist in positing as given, an available language,
beliefs expressed in this language and rationality independently of the social
relations, which generate these. Accounts of society are methodologically in-
dividualist in believing that social relations are not presupposed in action.
Deweys move, to shift the problem of mind to the problem of language,
sounds remarkably au courant. But his naturalistic account of its origin and
status has yet to be taken seriously. We can usefully supplement Deweys ac-
count with G. H. Meads.
Creatures that lack language nevertheless gesture. Thus the perception
by a dog that another is ready to attack becomes a stimulus . . . to change his
position or his own attitude. He has no sooner done this than the change of at-
titude . . . causes the first dog to change his attitude. We have here, Mead
notes, a conversation of gestures (Mead, 1967: 43). To be sure, it would be
an error to say these acts have meaning for the animals. Dewey and Mead in-
sist that meanings do not come into being without language and these crea-
tures lack language (Dewey, E&N: 212), On the other hand, as Tiles writes,
animals which do not already respond to each others behavior cannot re-
spond to each others intentions to produce modifications in their behavior
(Tiles, 1988: 89). The plateau of coordinated animal response is not irrelevant
to communication at the linguistic plateau even if it is not reducible to it. Con-
sider, then, a linguistically apt creature.
8
Gestures can become significant symbols. That is, vocal gestures can
arouse in an individual making them the response that they explicitly arouse,
or are supposed to arouse, in other individuals (Mead, 1934: 71). They can
come to stand for a particular act or response. Significant symbols are
meanings. Mead wrote that the difference between a gesture and a significant
symbol is that the individual is conscious of the meaning of his own ges-
ture. Indeed, Mead often refers to intentional acts, which entail an elaborate
mental process. David Rubenstein (1977: 212) calls this an inconsistency in
Mead and says that it was the reintroduction of the psychical entities he
tried to eliminate which invited interpretation of him as a phenomenologist.
But this (not uncharacteristic) reading is a huge error, in Deweys terms, a
straightforward product of the philosophic fallacy. Neither Dewey nor
Mead deny that persons are conscious or that they have intentions. Rather, it
is their claim that meaning cannot be explained in terms of intentions (or in-
86 Chapter Four
tentional objects, psychic or otherwise). Thus, if someone is to be taken as,
e.g., making a request, as Tiles writes:
he has to be taken to have responded to the object not as a stimulus but from the
standpoint of the [other]. And what establishes the possibility of thus adopting
the standpoint of the other is the recognition of the regularity of the relationship
holding between gesture and completed act (1988: 93).
These perceived regularities are the foundation of socially constructed lin-
guistic universals. In the absence of this plateau, meaning cannot be made in-
telligible. Thus, semantic theories that try to define meaning in terms of truth
conditions without acknowledging that linguistic acts (or their vehicles) pre-
suppose social activity fail to explain how a linguistic vehicle could get
meaning. They must, finally, either beg the question or postulate meanings.
It is also to deny nominalism, the dominating posture of Hume-inspired
empiricist philosophies of language. As consequences of social interactions,
which depend upon regularities that can become habitualized and standard-
ized, neither meaning nor essence is adventitious and arbitrary. Yet, as im-
portant, linguistic universals are not platonic entities or formulae, which pre-
scribe their application. By explaining meaning, Dewey can also account for
philosophys enduring fallacies regarding it: Thus, meanings that were dis-
covered to be indispensable to communication were treated as final and ulti-
mate in nature itself. Essences were hypostatized into original and constitu-
tive forms of all existencethe philosophic fallacy at work (E&N: 155).
There is no objection to talk about either meanings or essencesas long as
one fully appreciates them to be nothing more than relatively enduring social
products.
On the other hand, exactly because meanings (and essences) are grounded
in regularities of interaction and are the product of these, they are both ob-
jective and remain revisable. Thus, meaning is not a peculiar kind of thing,
a Platonic Idea, a subsisting concept or logical in a style which separates
logic from nature. For Dewey, meanings are rules for using and interpret-
ing things; interpretation being always an imputation of potentiality for some
consequence. As before, gestures depend upon expected outcomes that pre-
suppose the regularities of past experience. Accordingly, use is constrained,
neither adventitous nor arbitrary, but because in acting, agents decide, use
is revisable. In noting the scope and limits of application are ascertained ex-
perimentally [practically] in the process of application (E&N: 156). Dewey
anticipates what has come to be called a finitist conception of rules, the idea
that since there is no universal or natural scale for weighing similarity
against difference, the application of rules (including meaning-rules) are
Culture and Nature 87
contingent judgments by actors using materials at hand.
9
As I argue subse-
quently, the implications of seeing that meanings are both objective and re-
produced and transformed by practice are critical for social science.
EPISTEMOLOGICAL INDIVIDUALISM
The failure to see that meaning is to be found in transactions is propelled by
the failure to see that there is a radical difference between individuals with
minds and individual minds, the characteristic posture of epistemological
individualism. To avoid a solipsism of the present moment, epistemological
individualists need to hold that the experienced world is shared by individu-
als; but it is not a social product, this world needs to be the world of the naive
realist where things are, pretty much, as they appear. Thus, in the mind inde-
pendent world, there are red apples, even if we must learn to call them red
apples. If, however, we take modern physical science and the evidence of
history and anthropology seriously, we need to acknowledge that the capac-
ity to identify the most mundane things of experience requires, in addition to
our evolved natural capacities, a massive system of meaning which has been
historically, regionally, and locally bequeathed. Indeed, the failure to ac-
knowledge this would seem to be consequence of both intellectualism and
the conversion of eventual functions into antecedent causes. As Dewey
insists,
The whole history of science, art and morals proves that the mind that appears
in individuals is not as such individual mind. The former is in itself a system of
belief, recognitions, and ignorances, of acceptances and rejections, of expectan-
cies and appraisals of meanings, which have been instituted under the influence
of custom and tradition (E&N: 180).
A more esoteric example may make the point clearer and show also its rele-
vance to the present essay. According to Bulmer, the terminal taxa of the Karam
correspond very well with some 70 percent of the cases with species identified
by a scientific zoologist.
10
The cassowary is an instance of noncorrespondence.
Karam have the taxon yakt for birds and bats, but the cassowary in not placed
in this taxon. Instead, it appears in a special taxon, kobity, making it a non-
bird/non-bat. For Bulmer, this is an error explained by Karam willingness to al-
low culture to supercede objective biological facts. But on the present view,
what counts as an objective scientific fact depends upon practices which may
differ from culture to culture. If we think that Karam taxonomy is wrong, it is
because we have reason to think that the practice of science generates tax-
onomies, which better serve our purposes.
88 Chapter Four
It should be clear enough that the text just quoted from Dewey does not be-
tray an Hegelian, objective idealist prejudice. On such views, mind is severed
from natural existence and individuals merely participate in mind. Here I
refer you to the customary bifurcation of cultural system and social system,
to the standard notion of socialization wherein selves are empty vessels into
which meaning is poured, and to the normative determinism so characteristic
of mainstream sociology. The foregoing account of meanings gives us the
resources to hold that the idea of individuals with minds admits of a fully
naturalist interpretation. The difference between it and an idealist alternative,
unfortunately, is easily missed.
The idea of social super-mind is a philosophical nightmare because it
precludes agency. It makes agents merely bearers of cultural systems that,
in the last analysis, determine action. By contrast, for Mead and Dewey, be-
cause meanings are modes of natural interaction, culture is the continu-
ous evolving product of recognitions and ignorances, acceptances and re-
jections, and expectancies and appraisals that are themselves the medium
and product of conscious activity. Mind is social, not in the sense that
cultural meaning is intersubjectivebetween subjectivitiesbut in the
sense that meanings are public, in the world, and not (only or merely) in our
consciousness.
11
EMPIRICISM, PHENOMENOLOGY, AND ANTINATURALISM
Philosophical positions have never been irrelevant to the practice of social
sciencemost often, I am afraid, for ill. Attacks on empiricist philosophy of
science, beginning in the 1950s joined with phenomenological criticisms of
empiricist social science. Both were unsettling to the mainstream, dominated,
thenand still, if less so, by the objectivist Parsonian synthesis. But these
criticisms did not encourage a rethinking of naturalism in nonempiricist
terms. Rather, they encouraged antinaturalism. I must be brief.
The work of Schtz, no doubt, was critical. On the one hand, his work con-
tained many valuable insights, for example: that sociological constructs are
constructs of social constructions, that the stock of knowledge is held in
typfied form and dispersed, and that commonsense knowledge is a patch-
work in which clear and distinct experiences are intermingled with vague
conjectures; suppositions and prejudices cross well-proven evidences; mo-
tives, means and ends, as well as causes and effects, are strung together with-
out clear understanding of their real connections.
12
This contributed heavily
to undermining the Parsonian theory of action, including, critically, the still
standard theory of rationality.
13
Culture and Nature 89
Similarly, Schtzs idea, derived and extended from Husserl, of a life-
world which is the taken-for-granted beginning for inquiry (the epoch of
the natural attitude), was a strong solvent for the naive realism of main-
stream social science.
14
On the other hand, as Farber insisted, the life-world
fell like manna from heaven, as an unexpected answer to the prayer of per-
sons seeking an alternative to the worldview of a scientific philosophy, but for
whom the existentialist bill of linguistic fare [was] inpalatable (Farber, 1967:
122).
15
Even a mundane phenomenology could not (as Natanson agreed)
consistently be grounded in naturalism. The trouble was not that Schtz re-
mained committed to Husserls transcendental project, but that he retained, as
Giddens noted, the unbilical tie to the subjectivity of the ego. For Schtz
the social world is strictly speaking, my world (Giddens, 1976: 31). Schtz
did acknowledge that to study the social world, it was necessary to abandon
the strictly phenomenological method. But while he was comfortable to as-
sume the existence of the social world, not only did intersubjectivity remain,
philosophically, a problem, but the social world seemed, at least, to be noth-
ing more than a construction of consciousness. Put in other terms, it was dif-
ficult to see how to incorporate either the natural context or the relatively
enduring consequences of action into the account. Moreover, interpretative
social science was restricted to describing and clarifying what is thought
about the social world by those living it. This thoroughly descriptivist,
ethnographic orientation, even in the hands of sensitive inquirers, lost even
the hint of causal explanation and in consequence, any capacity for critique.
Finally, while Schtz often said that it was the aim of sociology to obtain or-
ganized knowledge about the world of cultural objects and social institu-
tionsleaving unclear what exactly this meant, the discovery of in order
to motives became central task for sociological explanation. That is, phe-
nomenology encouraged a highly psychologized notion of social science.
16
Garfinkel, a student of Parsons, seems to have begun with Schtz, and before
he was finished, offered a radical and powerful alternative to the Parsonian ac-
tion frame of reference. This included a strong emphasis on agency, and re-
jection of motive analysis in favor of inquiry into situated actions. This was
profoundly propelled by his generalized use of indexicality (indirectly owed
to Peirce) and by finitism (derived from Wittgenstein).
Garfinkel, however, was but ambivalently naturalistic. On some readings,
e.g., his principle of ethnomethodological indifference was not merely a
recommendation to bracket temporarily aspects of the empirical world, but
was converted into an ontological commitment wherein, as Giddens wrote,
social phenomena exist only in so far as lay actors classify or identify them
as existing (Giddens, 1976: 42)an intellectualist dip into voluntarism
and idealism. Moreover, like Schtz, Garfinkel was preoccuppied with the
90 Chapter Four
conditions of action, ignoring almost utterly the consequences of action, in-
tended and unintended. Thus, neither could he sustain an adequate notion of
social structure. While he acknowledged that actors had resources which were
the medium of their actions, his actors became so thoroughly disconnected
from their bodies and the larger preexisting contexts in which they acted that
these resources reduced to abstractly detached meaning-rules. In effect, his
intellectualism led him to ignore the fact that his agents were fleshly, inter-
ested actors contexted in a geographical environment and embedded in so-
cially sustained, but not always transparent social relations of power. Worse,
betrayed by epistemologically generated worries, he often suggested that
these meaning-rules were not about anything. As in current antirealisms,
participants could cooperatively reconstitute them at will.
By the 1970s, phenomenologically inspired social science remained on the
margin, but the unsatisfactory character of both mainstream and Marxist ap-
proaches was more than noticed. The response was cultural studies, in-
spired by the structuralism of Lvi-Strauss and Saussure and then, in response
to this, both poststructuralism and the hermeneutical approach of Clifford
Geertz, and, finally, by Marxists writers responding to Althusserian struc-
turalism.
17
Powerfully encouraged by the epistemological criticisms of em-
piricism, including here Kuhns ambivalent Structure of Scientific Revolution,
the work of Schtz, Garfinkel, and Erving Goffman, the hermeneutics of Ri-
coeur and Gadamer, and the more radical poststructuralism of Foucault and
Derrida, cultural studies betrayed a decided shift toward idealism. As Alexan-
der rightly pointed out,
Insofar as [sociological theory] seeks a purely hermeneutic analysisnot only
is there always cultural reference for every action but . . . there is only a cultural
reference. Every change in action, every source of stability, everything that
works for the good, everything that works for the badall must be explained in
terms of the search for meaning itself. Every culturalist theory is . . . a form of
sociological idealism (Alexander, 1987: 31112).
Nor did Marxists escape the drift toward idealismespecially those taken by
strong readings of Gramsci (a student of Croce) and by postmodernist episte-
mology.
18
The response, in my view, is neither a return to materialism, nor to
some pseudosolution that demands that we think dialectically about culture
and material life.
19
On the present view no such dialectic is possible be-
cause divorced of culture, material life is utterly empty. Here we are betrayed
by systematic ambiguity as regards the very idea of culture. At one time,
culture was used inclusively to refer to forms of life, to ensembles of mean-
ingful patterns of activity that included work, play, marriage, and worship.
Culture and Nature 91
More recent cultural studies, however, have conceived culture far more nar-
rowly, in terms of mentalitis, values, symbolic codes, signs, texts,
and discourses that are effectively, if not explicitly autonomous.
20
We need
to return to the older idea; but we need to do this, as already suggested, with
a strong agent centered naturalistic conception of mind and society. That is,
instead of supposing that meanings have independent existences, we need to
see them in contexts of action.
A NATURALISTIC ALTERNATIVE
More particularly, we move in the right direction by putting the insights of
Schtz and Garfinkel onto the naturalistic footing provided by Dewey and
Mead. As Rubenstein rightly said, it was a major motive of phenomeno-
logical and verstehen approaches to social science to describe action in
terms of mental components in order to combat the naturalistic inclination
to treat action and social phenomena in the same way one treats the mean-
ingless properties and events of nature. On the other hand, it was a major
motive of empiricists to argue, reliable knowledge cannot be established
about what is essentially private to the actor (Rubenstein, 1977: 232). But
if the foregoing is sound, there is no reason to be suspicious of an approach
that insists that the category of meaning is indispensable to the under-
standing of human behavior, and for the same reason, there is reason to be
suspicious of those philosophies of language which inform empiricist phi-
losophy of science. As work by Kuhn, Polanyi, and more recent sociology
of scientific knowledge make clear enough, the meaning of scientific terms
depends not on operational definitions and other semantic devices, but in
taking account of science as a social activity in the sense of Dewey and
Mead.
First, with Schtz, we can endorse verstehen and the idea that sociological
terms are constructions of what are already social constructions, what Gid-
dens has called the double hermeneutic. Social science (in contrast to the
physical sciences) is involved in theorizing and communicating about an al-
ready meaningful social world. But because verstehen is not some form of
empathetic understandingindeed, is a presupposition of any human activ-
ity, including, then the practices of natural science, social science requires no
special observational methods.
Second, pace Garfinkel, instead of a one-sided emphasis on action as
meaning, we can shift to action as praxis, as Giddens writes: the involve-
ment of actors with the practical realization of interests, including the mate-
rial transformation of nature through human activity (Giddens, 1976: 53). So
92 Chapter Four
construed, culture is not bifurcated from material activity, but is under-
stood as inseparable, substantively and analytically, from it.
21
Third, in consequence, all social research has a necessarily cultural,
ethnographic or anthropological aspect to it (Giddens, 1984: 1984). In
other terms, qualitative research is an indispensable component of social sci-
ence. This will be largely descriptive, even though, inevitably, it will be the-
oretically informed, and thus, not only is literary style not irrelevant to the ac-
curacy and communicability of such descriptions, but social scientists must
draw on the same sources of mutual knowledge drawn on by novelists and
journalists.
22
But, fourth, because meaning is not in the head, and experience is not
reducible to conscious contents, we need to distinguish practical knowledge
from discursive knowledge. That is, while the present view centers agency
and, unlike most mainstream and Marxist views, acknowledges that actors
have complex skills and knowledge which they employ in acting and inter-
acting, if we are to avoid the intellectualist fallacy, much of this knowledge is
not discursively available. As Bhaskar says, it is tacit and implicit, sponta-
neous and not reflective, a matter of know-how rather than know-that
(Bhaskar, 1986: 163). Accordingly, even if what is discursively available (or
made available) is true, acquiring knowledge of the beliefs of actors will not
be sufficient to establish an understanding of their social world. That is, even
a good ethnography must go well beyond what people think about their
world.
Of course, since social activity cannot be described at all unless the in-
quirer knows what actors know, accounts from actors are necessary and play
a critical role in enabling us to assess accounts offered inquirers. But indeed,
there is good reason to hold that beliefs discursively available are not always
true! While practical activity is skillful and intended, it does not require true
belief as regards the conditions of action. In part this is because action always
has an unintended consequence, viz., the reproduction and transformation of
the very conditions of action. We do make history but, as Marx insisted, not
with a plan and not with materials of our own choosing. Unacknowledged
conditions, unknown and unintended consequences, self-deception and other
obstacles limit our ability to cognize fully and accurately the social world
which our own actions sustain. Were it otherwise, there would hardly be a
point to human science.
This means, fifth, not only that social science can enlarge the understand-
ing of members, but by so doing, it can have a critical and emancipatory di-
mension. That is, because the domain of the social sciences comprises social
objects, e.g., institutions, social practices, and social relations which are the
product of social activity, and because this domain includes beliefs about
Culture and Nature 93
these activities, when these beliefs can be shown to be false, distorted or oth-
erwise inadequate, agents have grounds to change these social forms. Con-
sider the belief that males are superior. If this belief is constitutive of the re-
lations which define the nuclear family, then if (as women increasingly
appreciate!) this belief is false, people have good reasons for altering these
relationsas indeed, they have been doing! That is, eklaren, the effort to
explain how these forms have come to be and why people have the beliefs
they have is an essential part of the task of social science.
Sixth, such explanation is not via subsumption under law. On the present, re-
alist view, success in the theoretical sciences depends upon the capacity to ab-
stract a strata of the world and to identify, theoretically, causal mechanisms
within that strata. Such theory gives us an understanding. We gain, thus, an un-
derstanding of tensile strength by appeal to physical theory. But because the the-
oretical powers of things are never operating in a closed systemother causes
are always operating on themthere are patterns, but no invariant empirical reg-
ularities. Everything that happens is caused, but it is complexly caused, a func-
tion of the causal powers of the things of the world and their continuously chang-
ing relations and configurations. For example, one explains the collapse of a
landing gear by appeal to the tensile strength of the materials and a host of other
pertinent causes, including, perhaps, the historical effects of the maintenance
schedule and the decision to make an emergency landing on a field not hereto-
fore used by such aircraft. Because causal conjunctures are contingent, we are of-
ten in a position to explain something that happened when we could not have pre-
dicted it. Stellar mechanics is the worst possible paradigm for a science exactly
because, as regards the pertinent variables, the solar system is relatively closed.
Explanation in social science has the same form, involving, on the one
hand, the effort to identify the social mechanisms or structured processes be-
ing sustained by the activities of agents, and on the other, the effort to grasp,
concretely, the capacities which they have and the constraints to which they
are subject, what they know and understand, and, finally, the uses to which
they put their capacities and knowledge. Because all these are historically
variable, social science, in contrast to the most successful of the physical sci-
ences, is inevitably concrete and historicaland for the same reasons, it
could never be finished (Manicas, 2006).
For example, one begins to understand a capitalist society by identifying
the logic of capital. That is, given the (very different) resources made avail-
able by capitalist social relations, as a consequence of their actions, intended
and unintended, actors will promote a tendency toward overaccumulation. To
be sure, because between Japan and the United States, or between the United
States in 1929 and the United States today, there will be immense differences
in the concrete forms of these relations and their relation to other structured
94 Chapter Four
practices, there will be differences in the capacities, constraints, and forms of
knowledgeability between actors in these different times and places.
On the other hand, the tendency to overaccumulation will surely figure in
any account of the Great Depression, even if, as noted, any plausible account
will need to integrate a host of other processes, contingent events, and deci-
sions by persons, acting and interacting, as always, as cultural beings with be-
liefs and a range of meaningful material objects.
I conclude with what for me is the most important idea: The foregoing im-
plies that the antinaturalistic Kantian bifurcation of freedom and deter-
minism needs to be thoroughly rejected. The problem of human freedom,
naturalistically understood, is the problem of possessing the capacity to act in
realizing ones genuine interests; and this involves understanding the sources
of constraint and limitation, and then transforming these to needed, wanted
and empowering sources of determination. Indeed, it is to generate a social
science that would have satisfied Dewey.
NOTES
1. To be clear, the realism assumed here is not of the variety associated with Hilary
Putnam or Richard Boyd. It is, roughly, the policy realism of Rom Harr, an explicitly
pragmatic version of realism, still too little appreciated in the USA. See Rom Harr, The
Principles of Scientific Thinking (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970); Rom
Harr and Edward Madden, Causal Powers (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1975) and most
recently, Harr, Varieties of Realism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987). See also Roy
Bhaskar, A Realist Theory of Science, 2nd Edition (Brighton: Harvester, 1979) and The
Possibility of Naturalism (Brighton: Harvester, 1979), my A History and Philosophy of
the Social Sciences (Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell, 1987) and A Realist Phi-
losophy of Social Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
2. I say of the sort here since my interest is not primarily to represent either
Dewey or Mead. I use them to develop a position that is both naturalistic and realis-
tic. Although influenced by R.W. Sleepers defense of Dewey as a transactional re-
alist, I am not clear whether Dewey would be entirely happy with the sort of realism
defended here. See R. W. Sleeper, The Necessity of Pragmatism (New Haven, Conn.:
Yale University Press, 1986).
3. It is thus that naturalisms need to be committed to strong versions of the sociol-
ogy of knowledge. See P. T. Manicas and Alan Rosenberg, Naturalism, Epistemo-
logical Individualism and The Strong Programme in the Sociology of Knowledge,
Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior, Vol. 15 (March 1985). See Chapter 6.)
4. Thus Rortys physicalist idea that
every speech, thought, theory, poem, composition, and philosophy will turn out to be com-
pletely predictable in purely naturalistic terms. Some atoms-and-the-void account of
Culture and Nature 95
micro-processes within individual human beings will permit the prediction of every sound
or inscription which will be uttered (Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature
([Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979]: 387).
5. John Dewey, Experience and Nature, The Later Works, 19251953 (Carbon-
dale: Southern Illinois Press), hereafter E&N.
6. We need to distinguish philosophical ontology, what is presumed by inquiry,
from scientific ontology, the result of (ongoing) inquiry. See Roy Bhaskar, A Realist
Theory of Science.
7. See Harr, Principles of Scientific Thinking (1970) and Varieties of Realism,
(1986). On the present view, it is an error of considerable importance to think of the-
ories as interpreted deductive systems.
8. See Derek Bickerton, Language and Species (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1990) for a superb evolutionary account of the genesis of linguistic capacity.
9. The idea is also critical to Wittgenstein in the Philosophical Investigations, al-
though it may well be that Wittgensteins version is not entirely free of nominalist fan-
tasy. As we note below, finitism is a central part of Garfinkels theory of action. My
criticism of his use of the idea is that he ignores the powerful constraints of enduring
social relations, well recognized by Dewey and Mead.
10. I take this example from Barry Barnes, On the Conventional Character of
Knowledge and Cognition, Philosophy of the Social Sciences Vol. 11 (1981): 30333.
See R. Bulmer, Why Is the Cassowary Not a Bird? Man, Vol. 21 (1967): 425.
11. On the other hand, to say that mind is social is not deny the individuality of in-
dividuals with minds. Personality, selfhood, subjectivity are eventual functions that
emerge with complexly organized interactions, organic and social (E&N: 71). As
Dewey wrote:
Mind denotes the whole system of meanings as they are embodied in the workings of or-
ganic life; consciousness in a being with language evolves denotes awareness or percep-
tion of meanings. . . . The greater part of mind is only implicit in any conscious act or state;
the field of mindof operative meaningsis enormously wider than that of conscious-
ness. . . . Mind is, so to speak, structural, substantial, a constant background and fore-
ground; perceptive consciousness is process, a series of heres and now (247).
12. See John Heritage, Ethnomethodology, in A. Giddens and J. H. Turner (eds.)
Social Theory Today (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987): 230, quoting Schutz.
13. Roughly, actors are rational in the sense that they distinguish means and ends,
articulate consequences of alternative courses of action and assess their costs and ben-
efits. As rational, they optimize benefits and minimize costs. For some discussion, see
John Heritage, 1987.
14. More recently, of course, deconstruction has been an even more powerful
solvent.
15. It is some interest to note that Farber and Schtz were very close colleagues
during the early years of Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. Schtzs biog-
rapher writes: . . . it was the close connection and collaboration with Farber, more
than anything else, that was responsible for the early realization of Schtzs intention
96 Chapter Four
to establish contacts with American philosophers and find an opportunity to address
American philosophical audiences (Helmut R. Wagner, Alfred Schtz: An Intellec-
tual Biography, [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986]). One can give at least
Schtzs later writings a naturalistic reading.
Peter Hare reports that the archives of PPR show that Farber struggled hard to keep
the pages of the journal open.
16. Some avowed followers of Weber also often express what is at least a tension
here, between a psychologistic explanation of some act and a sociological explanation
of acts of that sort. Thus, one may need an in order to motive to explain why some
particular person commits a crime, but understanding what structures criminal be-
havior will require more and other than this. See my A Realist Philosophy of Social
Science (2006).
17. For a useful critical overviews, see Anthony Giddens, Structuralism, Post-
structuralism and the Production of Culture, in A. Giddens and J.H. Turner (eds.),
Social Theory Today (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987). For Geertz, see The Interpre-
tation of Culture (New York: Basic Books, 1973) and criticism by Jeffrey Alexander,
Twenty Lectures, Lectures 16 and 17. As regards Marxism, see Perry Anderson, Ar-
guments within English Marxism (London: Verso, 1980); Stuart Hall, Cultural Stud-
ies: Two Paradigms, in T. Bennett et al. (eds.) Culture, Ideology and Social Process
(Berkshire, UK: Open University Press, 1981). See also my The Rise and Fall of Sci-
entism, in William Outhwaite and Stephen P. Turner (eds), Handbook of Social Sci-
ence Methodology (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 2007). This essay includes discus-
sion of other critical figures including Bourdieu, Giddens, and Foucault.
18. On Gramsci, see Paul Piccone, Italian Marxism (Berkeley: University of Cal-
ifornia Press, 1983). A useful compendium is Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg
(eds.), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (Urbana and Chicago: University of
Illinois Press, 1988). As the editors note, as little as twenty years ago, it would have
been impossible to imagine such a project and such a volume (2). See especially the
essays by Gayatri Chakrovorty Spivak, Chantal Mouffe, and Ernesto Laclau.
19. The most powerful nonreductionist Marxisms come from Raymond Williams
and E. P. Thompson. On the present view, Williamss Marxism is far and away to be
preferred. Hall (Cultural Studies) quotes Thompson that the dialectical intercourse
between social being and social consciousnessor between culture and not culture
is at the heart of any comprehension of the historical process within the Marxist tra-
dition. . . . The tradition inherits a dialectic that is right but the particular mechanical
metaphor through which it is expressed is wrong. But it is hard to see how the di-
alect is right in the absence of clarity about what could be the right metaphor?
On the other hand, Thompson is quite correct to bring together the two elements
consciousness and conditionsaround the concept of experience.
For Williams, there is no interesting sense of dialectic. Indeed, it nowhere ap-
pears in his important book, Marxism and Literature (1977). Instead, Williams insists
that talk about base/superstructure, economy, culture, and then, problems
of determination and mediation are predicated on reifying abstractions. This is,
he insists, particularly ironic since Marxs central emphasis was on a conception
of productive activity in which labour and language, as practices, can be seen as
Culture and Nature 97
evolutionary and historically constitutive (33). As Hall says, disapprovingly,
Williams so totally absorbs definitions of experience into our ways of living, and
both into an indissoluble real material practice-in-general, as to obviate any distinc-
tion between culture and not-culture (26). This is, of course, very reminiscent of
Dewey.
20. As Roy DAndrade has remarked: When I was a graduate student, one imag-
ined people in a culture; ten years later culture was all in their heads (Andrade, A
Colloquy of Cultural Theorists, in Richard A. Schweder and Robert A. LeVine (eds.),
Culture Theory, [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987]: 7).
For a representative sample of work that puts culture all in their heads, see K. C.
Alexander and S. Seidman (eds.), Culture and Society (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1990). The conjunctive and in the title betrays the problem of much
recent work.
21. As Paul Willis has insisted, there is no question . . . of counterposing the cul-
tural with the productive or the real, as if the former had no actual constitutive role
in the basic social relations which govern the form of . . . society (in Alexander and
Seidman (eds.), Culture and Society: 84). Thus, the class relations of British prole-
tariat toward the end of the century and of jute workers in British India in this century
were fundamentally different. See Dipesh Chahkrabarty, Rethinking Working Class
History: Bengal, 18901940 (London: Verso, 1991). In a nutshell, the jute workers of
Bengal were wageworkers but were culturally not proletarian in Marxs sense.
22. Indeed, it is fair to say that as regards communicating an understanding of
cultural milieu, novelists and journalists often do a better job than do academic social
scientists!
98 Chapter Four
Part Two
NOT ANOTHER EPISTEMOLOGY
101
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE RECENT PAST
In order, eventually, to make some claims about realism and naturalism, I be-
gin with a view of philosophy and with a very brief sketch of the philosophy
of the recent past. For me, philosophical labels, like the term philosophy
itself, do not discriminate natural kinds. Accordingly, with Jonathan Ree, I
think of philosophy as part of literature and general history (Ree, 1988).
1
And
with Rorty, I think that we need to appeal to contingent arrangements to ex-
plain both what counts as philosophy and its problems and to understand
the meaning of philosophical terms of art in use at any given time and place
(Rorty, 1984). Even given some historical continuity in the use of some terms,
this implies that what counts a philosophical problem in one period needs not
be one in some other. The present period owes directly to contingent
arrangements in the late nineteenth centuryas I shall argue, and it is im-
portant to acknowledge this if we are to understand philosophys current sit-
uation. Rorty comments: We need to realize that the questions which the
contingent arrangements of the present time lead us to regard as the questions
are questions which may be better than whose which our ancestors asked,
but need not be the same. Of course, they may be better, but they may also
be worse.
I would not go so far as to say that there are no perennial philosophical
problems, but they are ethical and political. Dewey had something like this in
mind, I would guess, in urging philosophers to forego struggle with prob-
lems of philosophers for struggle with the problems of humans.
Many who are not recognized by anybodys canon as philosophers
have spoken, sometimes wisely, to my two perennial problems. But those
Chapter Five
Naturalism and Subjectivism:
Philosophy for the Future?
traditionally deemed philosophers have tended to provide a ground for their
views on questions in ethics and politics, generally metaphysics and some-
times an epistemology. Two further observations: First, recent philosophy
has tended to be antimetaphysical, and much more interested in epistemol-
ogy than in ethics or politics. In the limiting case characteristic of much
analytic philosophy, ethical and political claims are deemed, on episte-
mological grounds, noncognitive. I am especially interested in denying
this, but here I only assume that the arguments of naturalists like Dewey,
Abraham Edel, and Marvin Farber can be sustained. Second, by virtue of
this, it is not implausible to follow Farber and assert that the only serious
alternatives for philosophy are naturalismor alternatively, material-
ism, and subjectivismin his special senses.
2
Farber used materialism and naturalism interchangeably, having the ad-
vantage of flexibility and acknowledged, of course, that there are alternative
versions of both. He included as subjectivisms, all forms of idealism, in-
cluding absolute idealism and phenomenology, and various types of existen-
tial philosophy. But what is most striking about his dichotomy is the absence
of reference to positivism. We need some history.
IDEALISM
Mandelbaum argued that during the nineteenth century, there were only two
mainstreams of philosophical thought, each of which possessed a relatively
high degree of continuity, and each of which tended to deal with similar prob-
lems, although from opposed points of view (Mandelbaum, 1971: 5). The
problems regarded knowledge but especially the nature and role of sci-
ence. The two positions were metaphysical idealism and positivism. His
definition of idealism is useful: metaphysical idealism holds that within
natural human experience one can find the clue to an understanding of the ul-
timate nature of reality, and this clue is revealed through those traits which
distinguish man as a spiritual being (1971: 6). Epistemology, a new philo-
sophical discipline that derived from Kant, was the critical feature of the
forms of argument of idealism but as Mandelbaum argues, the movement was
part of a more general rebellion against the conceptions of man and nature
which characterized the Enlightenment (1971: 7). As in Kant, idealism was
motivated by distress that God, freedom, and immortality were being under-
mined by the new science. Neither the forms of argument nor the general
rebellion have gone away, even while, especially as regards the rebellion,
there are now at least two important anti-Enlightenment postures, premodern
theisms which, for the most part, are not defended by academic philosophers,
102 Chapter Five
and ethical nihilisms, aided and abetted both by positivist epistemology
and subjectivist postmodernisms, very much academic positions. But we
need to fill in positivism, and to get back to Farber, to define materialism and
naturalism.
POSITIVISM
The nineteenth-century battleground was over science and what it had to
say about man and nature. Positivisms and materialisms both stood on
sciencecritically, a very much-contested concept until very late in the
century. And both positivisms and materialisms were opposed to traditional
theologies. But it would be wrong to suppose that nineteenth-century posi-
tivisms were all materialisms.
3
Engels and then Lenin, who had an antiposi-
tivist conception of science, was closer to the truth in asserting that positivists
were each covert idealists.
Farbers dichotomy, of course, follows Engels who had argued that there
are but two great camps in philosophy: idealists and materialists. Those
who asserted the primacy of spirit to nature and, therefore, in the last instance,
assumed world creation in some form . . . comprised the camp of idealism.
The others, who regarded nature as primary, belong to the various schools of
materialism (Engels, 1935: 32). For Engels, the great basic question of all
philosophy, especially of modern philosophy, is that concerning the relation
of thinking to being. Engelss dichotomy was Lenins point of departure
against the Machists, and the entire cast of empiricist philosophers of
science of the period. In his infrequently read Materialism and Empirio-
criticism (1908), Lenin defended Engelss materialism against those bold
warriors, who proudly allude to the modern theory of knowledge, recent
philosophy (or recent positivism), the philosophy of the natural sciences
or even more boldly, the philosophy of natural science of the twentieth cen-
tury (Lenin, 1970: 7).
4
Lenin was quite correct to identify positivist theory
of science as hegemonic, to link it with modern theory of knowledge, and
to see that it rejected the realism of materialisms.
Mandelbaum well summarized the distinct feature of positive philosophy.
Since positivism confines all human knowledge to what has been experienced
or can be experienced, it claims that a science which has freed itself from meta-
physical preconceptions will restrict itself to discovering reliable correlations
within experience. . . . According to this view, a scientific explanation does not
involve appeal to any immanent forces nor to any transcendent entities; to ex-
plain a phenomena is to be able to subsume it under one or more laws of which
it is an instance (1971: 11.)
Naturalism and Subjectivism: Philosophy for the Future? 103
Positivists are manifestly empiricists, and it is easy enough to see how, as
Mandelbaum put it, the positivist interpretation of science even came to be
absorbed into the idealist tradition (11). As he notes in another place, com-
mon to all forms of idealism and phenomenalism is subjectivism, under-
stood as the idea that all we can know are the contents of consciousness (what
Rorty later referred to as the veil of ideas). If, then, reference to transcen-
dent reality is to be rejected and all knowledge is restricted to what is in ex-
perience, then what is to be gained by holding that the objects of experi-
ence exist independently of it? As Farber well said: the methodological
restriction of the objects of reality to a relationship with an experiencing sub-
jectthe subject-object limitationserves as a wheelhorse for idealistic ar-
guments at critical points (Farber, 1984: 130).
It is very critical to see also that causality figures hugely in the positivist
vision. What is rejected as causation, of course, is any sort of metaphysical
notion of causes as productive powers. Instead, we have a Humean concep-
tion of causality as an empirically available constant conjunction. Hence even
in the transfigured realism of Spencer, reality was unknowable exactly
because, on his empiricist premises, there was no way to get from objective
reality to experience. As Mandelbaum summarizes:
Science would be transcended and metaphysics would set in if one tried to form
any conception of how motions in the nerves produce sensations, or how com-
plex associations of ideas can lead to those efferent nerve-impulses which even-
tuate in action. To attempt to go beyond the verifiable correlations between these
utterly different types of concept would be to introduce notions, which it is not
in any way possible to verify within experience (1971: 304).
5
Accordingly, despite large differences between them, British empiricists,
for example, J. S. Mill, and Spencer, Kirchoff, Mach, Avenarius, Duhem,
and Poincar, and, of course, the logical positivists, logical empiricists,
neopositivists, and antirealists of today are all positivist (in Comtes
sense). Indeed, since their conception of science is perfectly comfortable
with the extensionalist logic of Whitehead and Russell, it came to define
logical positivism; and despite fatal challenges, remains the unquestioned
assumption of both most current discussions in epistemology and the phi-
losophy of science. Naturalists take their stand with science, but the crit-
ical point then is precisely how science is to be understood. To anticipate,
the naturalism (and realism), which I will defend, follows Rom Harr and
Ed Maddens groundbreaking, Causal Powers and Harrs revolutionary as-
sault on deductivism in the philosophy of science.
6
But before pursuing
this idea, we need to comment on the third nineteenth-century contender,
materialism.
104 Chapter Five
MATERIALISM
Although materialism was a widely held view in the eighteenth-century,
Mandelbaum notes that despite some confusion on this issue, there were
very few materialists in the nineteenth-century, and most of them were Ger-
man. The obvious materialism, and from the point of view of later global
philosophy, is, of course, Marxism. We can usefully begin with Mandel-
baums definition:
Taken in its broadest sense, materialism is only committed to holding that the
nature of that which is self-existent is material in character, there being no enti-
ties which exists independently of matter. Thus, in this sense, we would class as
a materialist anyone who accepts all of the following propositions: that there is
an independently existing world; that human beings, like all other objects, are
material entities; that the human mind does not exist as an entity distinct from
the human body; and that there is no God (nor any other non-human being)
whose mode of existence is not that of material entities (1971: 22).
This is plainly Farbers sense and explains why naturalism and materialism
are usefully interchangeble. Thus, reductionist forms of materialism, as in
Ernest Haeckel, or Moleschott and Bchner, are easily distinguished from En-
gelss dialectical reading of scienceand even more important from the
present point of view from the nonreductionist naturalisms of Marx and
Dewey.
As important, the definition leaves open questions about the nature or char-
acter of the material world, including whether matter is a substance (as
per Descartes) or an underlying substratum (as per Locke). As is well
known, these positions are subject to Berkeleyan criticisms. But the nature or
character of the material world may be understood as an entirely scientific
question. If so, a realist and anti-positivist theory of science will be re-
quired. Materialisms, of course, are realisms in the first important sense that,
in contrast to idealisms which make reality mind-dependent, for the ma-
terialist, the world exists independently of minds, Gods included.
RESIDUAL PROBLEMS OF THE DEBATE OVER IDEALISM
As the twentieth century began, positivism had won the battle over the char-
acter of the physical sciences.
7
But the existential status of the external
world had not been resolved. It informs, of course, the problem articulation
of Moore and Russell, James and Dewey, and all the American realists (in
their several varieties), with variant forms of positivism confounding matters
Naturalism and Subjectivism: Philosophy for the Future? 105
further. I shall not attempt a review of the often-puerile debates that charac-
terize this battle and why it has been so difficult to be clear about the perti-
nent issues.
But I would insist that this debate is a philosophers problem in the sense
that first, the things that we see, hear, and touchand to a significant degree
also what we taste or smellappear as independent of our seeing, hearing, or
touching them (Mandelbaum, 1964: 222).
8
Only a philosopher could raise
questions about this. Second, we cannot doubt that we can learn from experi-
ences in this world, even if philosophy and science remain puzzled as to just
how this occurs. Thus, in no human community, however different, have per-
sons failed to make judgments about the resources and dangers of this world.
Papaya was identified as nourishing before there was any understanding of
metabolism, and cold was avoided before we understood the mechanisms.
But even more than this, only a philosopher could doubt that the modern nat-
ural sciences produce genuine knowledge of this world. I take it as funda-
mental not merely that nature exists independently of at least human experi-
ence, but that it is structured in some way independent of human inquiry and
that we can have some knowledge of it.
9
But this does not mean that debate between idealists and their opponents
left no residual problems. I find two, the one that motivates Farber and the
other, the paradigmatic philosophers problem (or nest of philosopherss
problems). I begin with the latter.
EPISTEMOLOGY:
THE PHILOSOPHERS PROBLEM PAR EXCELLENCE
Epistemological problems, either in traditional foundationist or in more re-
cent nonfoundationalist, analytic variations, are philosophers problems.
The discipline is of recent vintage, achieving self-consciousness only after
Kant, indeed, as part and parcel of the emergence of metaphysical idealism.
Since eighteenth-century thinkers did not distinguish science and philosophy,
in the Enlightenment vision of man and nature, metaphysics and physics were
not distinguishable. Thus Newton, Boyle, and Locke could assume that sci-
entific inference could offer evidence that there were nonperceivable, inde-
pendently existing objects, which could be known.
10
And since they worked
prior to the development of empiricist criticisms of causality, they could also
seek causal explanations of experience. Evidently, these could not be under-
stood as correlations of directly observed sequences.
After Kant, claims about knowing would preempt claims about being
(what Roy Bhaskar called the epistemic fallacy) leaving room only for an
106 Chapter Five
idealistic metaphysics or a positivism, including forms of Kantianism, phe-
nomenalism, naive realism, or doctrines of pure experience. And, as part of
this, despite struggles by Helmholtz, Spencer, and James (in his Principles),
science could offer nothing of interest about knowing. The question, How
is our knowledge possible? was, thereafter, nothing like the question: How
are telephones possible. As a philosophical problem, it could be answered in
either one of two ways: Either by taking a transcendental turn (phenome-
nology) or in terms of evidential relations between basic and nonbasic propo-
sitions (Rorty, 1979).
11
DEWEY AND THE EPISTEMOLOGY PROBLEM
There have been some modern philosophers who tried to avoid this regressive
pursuit. Indeed, one can argue that this is what is most distinctive about
American pragmatism, from Peirce to Dewey.
12
But none, including Dewey,
entirely escaped the Kantian epistemological problematic. This explains the
odd character of Peirces philosophy, Jamess shift to radical empiricism,
the frustrating debates that Dewey had with the American realists of various
sorts, his frustration with them, on grounds that he was not offering but an-
other epistemology, and the failure to see also that he was not offering just
another scientism. (See Chapter 1.)
Dewey was surely correct to reject the spectator theory of knowledge
and to deny the idea that truth was to be determined by its relation to the in-
dependently existing realitythe assumption of at least some realisms, and
he was correct in his effort to displace epistemology for inquiry into in-
quiry, comprehended as a practical, social activity which made science con-
tinuous with common sense. But his naturalism was burdened by his com-
mitment to experience. The problem was not, however, his defense of naive
realism or even his postulate or criterion of immediate empiricism (prop-
erly understood). Rather the problem was his unwillingness to accept a strong
version of scientific realism, necessary if I am correct, to carry out the pro-
gram of his groundbreaking and little understood Logic: The Theory of In-
quiry. And this amounts to saying that he could find no grounds on which to
assert that the thing-in-itself was knowable and causally pertinent.
Experience had been corrupted by the tradition, which gave us epistemol-
ogy. As John Shook points out, by the time he was ninety-one years old,
Dewey saw this. As a good empiricist, he had intended to liberate philoso-
phy from desiccated abstractions (a task also set by Marx). But experience
had become effectively identified with experiencing in the sense of the psy-
chological, and the psychological had become established as that which is
Naturalism and Subjectivism: Philosophy for the Future? 107
intrinsically psychical, mental, private. Accordingly, his insistence that ex-
perience also designates that what is experienced was a mere ideological
thundering in the Index for it ignored the ironical twist which made this use
of experience strange and incomprehensible (LW, 1: 362). If indeed
Deweys instrumentalism was an epistemology, then this move was strange
and incomprehensible exactly because it denied the starting point of the
epistemological problem. Either Dewey, like Moore in his famous refutation
of idealism, missed the point or he was a covert idealist, perhaps a Hegelian
of some sort.
13
There is nothing fatal about the postulate of immediate empiricism, that
thingsanything, everything, in the ordinary or non-technical use of the
term thingare what they are experienced as (MW, 3: 159). The postulate
not only allowed for, but required that we recognize that the experiences of
individuals may well differ, so if it is a horse which is to be described, or
the equus which is to be defined, then must the horse-trader, or the jockey, or
. . . the paleontologist tell us what the horse is which is experienced. These
accounts may differ, but none is privileged as real against others, which are
deemed phenomenal. For Dewey, it is clear that each account is from some
point of view and that the conditions necessary for understanding the differ-
ences as well as the agreements can be provided. This plainly will be a prob-
lem for psychology and the sociology of knowledgean inquiry demanded
by Deweys theory of knowledge and welcomed by me. But, presumably,
there is something independent of each of these experiences which is causally
pertinent to the having of themand, if so, why not independent of any-
bodys? And if not, why was this not an idealism? Indeed, on Deweys own
naturalistic premises, cats, bats, and beetles each have worlds which are en-
abled and constrained by their particular sensory (and mental) capacities.
14
NATURALISTIC EPISTEMOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC REALISM
Tom Burke is quite correct, I think, to argue that the naturalism of Deweys
Logic joins with the ecological psychology of J. J. Gibson (Burke, 1994:
8396). Burke summarizes:
In contrast with a classical empiricist view of perception (involving so-called,
sense data, sense impression, stimulations or nerve endings, irritations of body
surfaces, and so forth), ecological psychology emphasizes a different array of
theoretical concepts; one being the concept of invariants and another the con-
cept of affordances . . .
Ecological psychology treats the perceiving agent as a dynamic organism/
environment system, continually engaged in various sorts of actions designed
108 Chapter Five
for exploring the world and utilizing its resources. Controlled sampling of the
world gives evidence of possible uses of things (and of ways to orchestrate sub-
sequent actions) by virtue of the agents being attuned to lawlike relations which
involve stable associations of different sorts of possible experiences (84).
Now, my point is just this: the idea of invariantslawlike relations, and the
concept of affordancespossibilities as determined by invariants require a
realist theory of causal powers.
Affordances are dispositional properties of things, which refer to a things
powers construed as per Harr and Madden (1974) and Bunge (1970). It is to
assert a categorical referring to the nature (structure) of the thing and to ten-
dencies true of the thing by virtue of its nature. Dispositions manifest them-
selves (minimally) in pairs: salt dissolves in water, clay is molded with the
hands. Affordances are dispositions in an organism-populated world. As Tur-
vey et al. write: Possibilities for action, or more precisely, things with pos-
sibilities for action, are among the kinds of things that populate an animals
niche and are, contrary to received wisdom, things to be heard, or smelt, etc.
This is most easily seen with an example:
Sharks electrically detect things to eat and things that impede locomotion. . . .
An edible thing such as flatfish differs in ionic composition from the surround-
ing water, producing a bioelectric field partially modulated in the rhythm of the
living things respiratory movements. A flatfish that has buried in the sand will
be detectable by a shark swimming just above it. Reproducing the bioelectric
field of the flatfish artificially, by passing a current between two electrodes
buried in the sand, invites the same behavior. The shark digs tenaciously at the
source of the field departing from the site when the act fails to reveal an edible
thing. . . . Now there is no intelligible sense in which it can be claimed that the
source ought to have appeared edible if the sharks perception of affordances
were direct. In the niche of the shark, edible thing and electric field of, say,
type F are nomically related. To predicate of the shark (a) detects electrical
field of type F and (b) takes to be an edible thing is not to refer to two dif-
ferent states of affairs, one (viz. (b)) that is reached from the other (viz. (a)) by
an inference. Rather, it is to make reference to a single state of affairs of the
shark-niche system. The linking of (a) and (b) is not something that goes on in
the mind of the shark, as the Establishment would have it. The linking of (a)
and (b) is in the physics of an ecological world . . . (Turvey et al., 1981: 27677).
Dewey would, I think, strongly agree that ecological psychology picks up on
themes that he articulated, especially, in the Logic. And it is perfectly clear
that for Dewey, even perception is profoundly affected by the fact that hu-
mans are social beings, a fact which raises immense problems for empirical
psychology (Manicas and Secord, 1984). But we need to ask: How did
Naturalism and Subjectivism: Philosophy for the Future? 109
Dewey stand on what is now termed scientific realism? Unfortunately, as
with earlier realism debates, it is not perfectly clear what this implies. A
large part of the problem, moreover, turns on whether the claims mean to pro-
vide an account of the actual practices of the physical sciences, especially
physics, chemistry, biochemistry, and whether if they do, the accounts are
constrained by traditional epistemological assumptions, for example, as in
Quine, whose understanding of empirical and of logic (as extensional
and providing the canonical form of scientific sentences) gives his under-
standing of scientific realism a most distinctive empiricist caste (Mani-
cas, 2004). So as to be as clear as possible on my position, let me merely as-
sert one of Margoliss conclusions (as I understand them).
Margolis has argued convincingly, I think, that a strong form of scientific
realism need not be either foundationist or cognitivist as he explicates
these. To do this, one needs to assert ontic externalism, the view that the
world consists of some fixed totality of mind-independent objects, that the
question the way the world is makes sense relative to one conceptual theme
or another, and finally, that objectivity in the cognitive sense is only ob-
jectivity for us (Margolis, 1985: 285). Dewey would, I think, agree with all
three, even while taking what amounts to an antirealist position regarding un-
observables and even if he denies that causality is an ontological category.
We can notice, first, that Deweys prose leaves us with some questions on
the pertinent issues. This results, in part at least, from his willingness to in-
corporate into his own highly idiosyncratic theory of science, elements from
competing historical traditions, but especially empiricism and rational-
ism. Thus, it is clear enough that he was not a Humean (although Mill is
usually his target), that he joined nominalism and realism, and that he
supposed that one could settle most of the questions about inquiry, and, ac-
cordingly, about science, by paying close attention to the function of proposi-
tions in use in science.
He clearly rejected the regularity determinist ontology of events so char-
acteristic of Hume and positivism. For him, there are no such things as uni-
form sequences of events (LW, Vol. 12: 445) and hence scientific laws could
not be formulations of uniform and unconditional sequences of events (LW,
12: 437. This would seem to encourage the view that, for him, science assumed
an ontology of things. Similarly, in Experience and Nature, he held that
atoms and molecules show a selective bias in their indifferences, affinities and
repulsions . . . to other events (LW, 1: 162). Selective biases are surely ten-
dencies in the sense of Harr and Madden, and atoms, if not molecules, are
not observableat least as ordinarily understood.
On the other hand, he denies explicitly that causality is an ontological cat-
egory; for him, it is a logical category (in his special sense) and the term
110 Chapter Five
causal laws is, . . . in spite of its general use, a figure of speech, a case of
metonymy (LW, 12: 440). Indeed, he gave an account of what he took to be
the confusion regarding causality. There is, upon reflection, a qualitative
gap between gross qualitative objects (which are the objects of direct per-
ception), for example, the lighted match and the burning of the paper.
Forces were introduced to get over this difficulty. Thus, the match was
supposed to have a certain calorific power (LW, 12: 445). But the time
came when it was seen that forces by definition are such as to be incapable of
scientific observation. They were then ruled out of science. . . .
15
Then
there grew up the hybrid notion which took from common sense the idea of
succession and from science the idea of invariability of conjunction (LW, 12:
445). If Dewey is not a Humean, neither, it seems, would he accept the idea
that things have causal powers.
But if so, his alternative is anything but clear. It turns, I think, on his criti-
cal distinction between generic propositions and universal propositions.
Generic propositions, for example, sugar is sweet, iron rusts, are exis-
tential and (as with singular propositions, for example, this is sweet)
predicates represent potentialities which will be actualized when certain fur-
ther operations are performed . . . (LW, 12: 251). Universal propositions
for example, if a particle at rest is acted upon by a single moving particle,
then . . . (LW, 12: 254) and, ambiguously, sentences of the form, All A is
B (rendered as in modern logic as conditionals) lack existential import. They
are valid, if valid at all, because they express a necessary relation of ab-
stract characters (LW, 12: 255).
Ernest Nagel was correct, it seems, in saying that the function of
generic propositions is to organize perceptual materials . . . (LW, 12: xvi).
They are, accordingly, the heart of our commonsense understanding of na-
ture. The formulation just quoted suggests a reading of them as dispositions,
nonrealistically analyzed: If X is tasted, then if X is sugar, X will taste
sweet. But will be actualized (even ceteris paribus) suggests also that
there is some sort of necessity attached to them. If so, this is an odd mix. It
is easy to see how one could have natural necessity if generic proposi-
tions are analyzed realistically.
16
Universal propositions, by contrast, formulate necessary relations be-
tween abstract characters and their function in inquiry is to propose possi-
ble operations which, if carried out, might solve the problem under inquiry
(LW, 12: xvi). This, of course, grapples with the medieval problem of real-
ism/nominalism. Nagel quite understandably is puzzled by the putative ne-
cessity in such laws. Such necessity surely is not a priori for Dewey, even
while he terms the relation logical and definitional, nor does it seem
to square with standard logicist efforts (unsuccessful!) to discriminate
Naturalism and Subjectivism: Philosophy for the Future? 111
between accidental generalizations and laws. But neither does it represent
what Harr and Madden termed natural necessity, for this is ontological.
Dewey seems to think that the pertinent issues are resolved once we accept
that conceptual subject-matter is [to be] interpreted solely and wholly on the
ground of the function it performs on the conduct of inquiry (LW, 12: 462).
We can, he says, then reject as spurious an exclusive dichotomy between
conceptions [as] mere devices of practical convenience, or as descriptive
of something actually existing in the material dealt with (462). The former
is an instrumentalist reading; the latter, realist. And, of course, depending
on what they are devices for, they may be both descriptive and of prac-
tical convenience, perhaps useful also as guides to inquiry. But are these
conceptions descriptions? And if so, what are they descriptions of?
Dewey sees rightly that the notion of abstraction is part of the problem.
As he sees it, if conceptions are descriptions, abstract characters are ab-
stracted from existents in the sense of selective discrimination. But, he
insists, this is quite impossible as regards an abstract character as a scientific
conception. He gives an example: smoothness, as an instance of a scientific
conception, is not capable of observation and hence of selective discrimina-
tion (462). Hence, as scientific conceptions, such abstract characters are not
descriptions.
But the scientific realist, not bound by positivist predilections, will agree
that while abstraction is part of the problem, we should not be looking at
abstract characters at all, but at models of things as abstractions from the
real, concrete. We experience water as fluid and clear and capable of many
sorts of transactions. H
2
O, an abstraction, identifies the model for a molecule
of water, and molecular chemistry develops the theory, which explains these
powers. The model is not a fiction, but an abstracted real structure. Experi-
enced water is H
2
O but it is not only H
2
O. The water of immediate experience
does what it does by virtue of being H
2
O. Hence, ceteris paribus, because it
is NaCl, ordinary (experienced) table salt must dissolve in the water in my
boiling pot.
17
Perhaps Deweys account can be rescued, and perhaps it is sound as it
stands. John Shook
18
seems to bite the bullet. He has argued that while Dewey
allowed, the sciences should be permitted to postulate unexperienceable,
transcendent entities that permit scientific explanation of experienced
events, he also refuses to take a realistic stand towards such objects, while
Quine [e.g.,] encourages realism here. But if as he says, scientific theories
are used to guide inferences toward predictions, and universal propositions
function in science regardless of whether their terms actually refer to any-
thing at all, then as Mach, Poincar, and Duhem each insisted, why cling to
the idea that science seeks to explain? It is the core of realist theories of sci-
112 Chapter Five
ence that science explains and could not unless we accept that inquiry gives
us knowledge of the causal powers of the things, which exist independently
of us.
HUMAN PROBLEMS
I noted that there were two residual problems of the idealism/realism debate.
The second regards not philosophers problems, but problems of how we
should live. I want to support Deweys theory of inquiry as a naturalism be-
cause, as Farber insisted, there are only two ways to address these problems.
One is either a naturalist who holds that naturalist inquiry can answer these
questions or one is antinaturalist and denies this. Today, antinaturalism has
two main forms: the appeals to authority of traditional theology, and the sub-
jectivisms of positivism and postmodernist theory.
Our daily papers are filled with examples of the first.
19
But a central issue
is identified by Hare and Madden in their little book, Evil and the Concept of
God (1968). They argue that, however understood, evils should be eliminated
as far as humanly possible; but if indeed, they are not remediable, and if,
worse, they serve some theological values not obvious to us, then why make
the effort? Or as Parry writes in his short rejoinder to Father Clarks defense
of theism:
There is no need to blame Jupiter for the lightening, nor a jealous god for natu-
ral death. Violent homicide is indeed blameworthy, especially wholesale slaugh-
ter. Though the system is undoubtedly faulty, yet it operates only through in-
dividuals, who must be held morally responsible. The rulers of the world, on my
view, must be held primarily responsible for such horrors as burning civilians by
gas chambers, atom bombs, and napalm; and all of us are jointly responsible to
the extent that we support our rulers (Parry, 1968).
That this needs saying is, itself, shameful.
Positivisms accept science, but on its understanding of knowledge, science
becomes irrelevant to questions of morals and politics. So, for example, the
eminent Harvard zoologist, Stephen Jay Gould, argues that religion and
science are complementary: Science tries to document the factual charac-
ter of the natural world. . . . Religion, on the other hand, operates in the
equally important, but utterly different (my emphasis) realm of human pur-
poses, meanings and values. . . .
20
Postmodernisms deny nature and hold that sciencegenerally
misunderstoodis but one among many discourses, including, then, the
discourses of multiplied communities, faith, ethnic, and otherwise.
Naturalism and Subjectivism: Philosophy for the Future? 113
Like the New Age quest for a new inwardness with its metaphysical
dissolvent, Transcendental Individualism,
21
the postmodernist obliter-
ates objectivity and licenses equally whatever beliefs are shared by these
self-defined communities, however belief gets fixed. Moreover, positivism
and postmodernism are consistent with and propelled by capitalist am-
biance, flexible accumulation, and consumerism.
22
Marvin Farber had it
right:
The philosophical Pandoras box [of subjectivism] is one more fairy tale. . . . It
is, however, a fairy tale with sociohistorical linkage and consequences, for it is
an ingenious philosophy of renunciation that leaves the status quo unexamined
and unchallenged and that may even be accommodated to reactionary ideas
(1984: 130).
Dewey is pertinent here. But bringing me full circle back to Marvin Farber,
the naturalism of Marx is even more pertinent:
The great thing in Hegels Phenomenology . . . is simply that Hegel grasps the self-
creation of man as a process, objectification as loss of the object, as alienation and
transcendence of this alienation; that he thus grasps the nature of work, and com-
prehends objective man, authentic because actual, as the result of his own work.
The actual, active relation of man to himself as a species-being or the confirmation
of his species being as an actual, that is, human, being is only possible so far as he
really brings forth all his species-powerswhich in turn is only possible through
the collective effort of mankind, only as the result of history. . . .
We see here how a consistent naturalism or humanism is distinguished from
both idealism and materialism, as well and at the same time the unifying truth
of both. We also see that only naturalism is able to comprehend the act of world
history . . . (Marx, in Easton and Guddat 1967: 32125).
Evidently, although I would need at least another paper to elaborate these
most pregnant insights and to demonstrate their connection to alienation, the
problem of democracy and the analysis of capitalist society, nothing that I am
likely to say would add much to what is, by now, a rich and still relevant lit-
erature. (See Chapter 10.)
NOTES
1. In his review of the multivolume Dictionary of Eighteenth Century British
Philosophers, James Harris remarks: just as it is usually hard to distinguish philos-
ophy from science in the eighteenth century, then so also it is difficult to hold apart
science and theology for long. That is why, if the character and significance of their
114 Chapter Five
work is to be properly understood, men such as Hume and Reid have to be surrounded
by so many relatively obscure figures from disciplines which today have little or noth-
ing to do with philosophy. For the truth is that there are no purely philosophical ques-
tions in eighteenth century Britain (Times Literary Supplement, May 5, 2000). See
below as regards Locke, Boyle, and Newton.
2. Especially, Marvin Farber, Naturalism and Subjectivism (Springfield, Ill.:
Charles C. Thomas, 1959); The Search for an Alternative (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1984). The extraordinary volume, Philosophy for the Future (New
York: Macmillan Co., 1949) edited by Roy Wood Sellars, V. J. McGill, and Farber, was
on the reading list of Farbers marvelous lecture course, The Philosophy of the Re-
cent Past. A defense of materialism, the essays, many authored by the distinguished
list who contributed regularly to Science and Society, are remarkably pertinent.
3. Mandelbaum notes that the confusion persists despite explicit disavowals on the
part of Comte, Spencer, Bernard, Huxley, and Machand the positivists of the very
recent past.
4. Farber and I would agree with Lenins attack on the Machists, but it seems clear
that neither Engels nor Lenin provided a plausible answer to the question of the rela-
tion of thought to being: the reflection theory surely will not do. Nor, tragically in
my view, did either Engels or Lenin provide a convincing alternative philosophy of
science. I have discussed this, along with Engelss relation to competing materialisms,
in my Engelss Philosophy of Science, in Terrell Carver and Manfred Steger (eds.),
Engels after Marx (College Station: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000).
For a beautifully wrought criticism of logical positivismfrom a Marxist perspec-
tive, see V. J. McGill, An Evaluation of Logical Positivism, in Volume 1, Number
1 of Science and Society: A Marxian Quarterly (Fall 1936). Parry and Albert Blum-
berg are thanked by McGill who was, of course, a close associate of Farbers. See also
Lewis Feuers excellent account, The Development of Logical Empiricism, Science
and Society, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Summer 1941).
5. See my Modest Realism, Experience and Evolution, in Roy Bhaskar (ed.),
Harr and His Critics (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 2340, and the discussion of
James, Chapter 1, who was caught in the same dilemma. Mandelbaum notes, cor-
rectly, that having established that science had demonstrated that what we directly ex-
perience never gives us the characteristics of what exists independently of us, both
Spencer and Helmholtz reversed themselves and spoke as if it were a defect in
knowledge that we do not directly experience the world as it exists independently of
us (1971: 362). The solution, available to both, was to admit that transdiction, or in-
ference to what is in principle not experienceable is scientifically justified. McGill
gave a very similar argument, briefly that one cannot argue coherently from the causal
argument that sensations cannot be regarded as copies or direct representations of
. . . the material object (which McGill holds to be true) to either agnosticism or
phenomenalism (1936: 51).
6. See Causal Powers (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974); Principles of Scientific Thinking
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970). One should cite here also, Mario
Bunges infrequently noticed, Causality and Modern Science, First Edition, 1959
(New York: Dover, 1979) and Michael Scrivens essays in Minnesota Studies in the
Naturalism and Subjectivism: Philosophy for the Future? 115
Philosophy of Science. Parry is acknowledged by Harr and Madden. As noted, Bill
Parrys critique of extensionalist difficulties with entails and the contrary-to-fact
conditional was a lasting influence on me, but I do not remember whether he raised
this with particular reference to causality. See also Roderick Chisholm, The
Contrary-to-Fact Conditional, (1946), reprinted in Manicas (ed.), Logic as Philoso-
phy (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1971).
7. The story of the human or social sciences is different and more complicated.
See my A History and Philosophy of the Social Sciences (Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
19 87).
8. Mandelbaum notes that this, probably, catches the element of truth in Moores
famous refutation. In direct experience we are all realists and cannot avoid being so.
He insists, rightly, that this is only the beginning of an argument, for me, a philoso-
phers argument. Moreover, as part of this, it is not true that everything we experi-
ence exists precisely as we experience it (1964: 2).
9. As Farber many times insisted, the philosophical problem of existence . . .
arises when a method is adopted that does not proceed from the basic fact of experi-
ence, Phenomenology and Existence: Toward a Philosophy within Nature (New
York: Harper Torchbooks, 1967): 70. It is a methogenic problem. Indeed, the fact
of nondependent existence is basic of philosophical thought. Not to recognize that
fact is to incur the error of illicit ignorance . . . (72).
See also the work of another student of Farbers, Wilfred Sellars. But we should not
go as far as Sellars machorealism (Roy Bhaskars term) and argue that if the sci-
entific image is true, then the manifest image is false. See Science, Perception and
Reality (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963): 96. Farber might argue that Sel-
larss startling conclusion is also a methogenic result.
10. It is a serious error to read Boyle and Newton as positivists. Their corpus-
cularism depended on their perfect comfort with transdictive inferences: inference
to what lies beyond the scope of all possible experience (Mandelbaum, 1964: Chap-
ter 2).
11. See also his useful footnote on the historiography of philosophy (1979: 132).
12. As argued in Chapter 1, Peirce recast the epistemological problem by reject-
ing the transcendental move but by accepting the Kantian insulation against skep-
ticism. See also, Murray G. Murphey, The Development of Peirces Philosophy (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1961) and the essay by my former associate
at Buffalo, R.G. Meyers, Peirce on Cartesian Doubt, Transactions of the Charles S.
Peirce Society, Vol. 3 (1967).
13. See Kenneth R. Westphals excellent Hegels Epistemological Realism (Dor-
drecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989).
14. As Burke notes, we must distinguish operational perspectivity from subjec-
tivity. The former is impossible to avoid; the latter in a Deweyan frame is not the
starting point, but needs to be explained. See Tom Burke, Deweys New Logic: A Re-
ply to Russell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).
15. Perhaps it is unnecessary to note here that Dewey endorses this ruling out,
and that it was precisely this move which defines positivism and which burdened
Spencer, Helmholtz, and James.
116 Chapter Five
16. A power ascription can be analyzed as: X has the power to A means X can
do A, in the appropriate conditions, in virtue of its intrinsic nature (Harr and Mad-
den, 1974: 86). Empirical investigation is needed to fill in the italicized clause. This
will require theory and, as well, construction of a model, perhaps detailing the micro-
structure of the thing. See below. In contrast to nonrealist ascription, things have
powers even if never exercisedas was held by Peirce. See also Everett J. Nelsons
powerful The Category of Substance, in Sellars, McGill, and Farber, Philosophy for
the Future.
17. We need theory to fill in the CP clause, and we experiment to test the model.
See Roy Bhaskar, A Realist Theory of Science (Sussex: Harvester Press, 1978). If we
drop the CP clause, this becomes a tendency. On models, see Harr, Principles of
Scientific Thinking, esp. Chapter 2.
Derek Sayer has offered a reconstruction of Marxs theory of science along these
lines. Thus, Marx criticizes Ricardo and others as engaging in violent abstraction.
He summarizes:
It conveys the idea of precipitate abstraction from manifest phenomena to their
alleged essences, without the mechanisms by means of which the latter cause the
former to assume the forms they do being adequately specified; or, to use differ-
ent terminology, an idea of immediate identification of phenomena as supposed
instantiations of general laws, when in fact these laws operate only in mediate
fashion through a series of intervening links which the analysis ought to specify.
True abstract thinking . . . entails elaborating the mechanisms linking laws
and phenomena in such a way that their apparent divergence is consistently ex-
plained (Sayer, 1979: 12122).
See also the several essays in Craig Dilworth (ed.), Idealization IV: Intelligibility in
Science (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1992), including my essay, Intelligibility and Ideal-
ization: Marx and Weber and references therein.
18. In addition to his book, see the extended discussion in his unpublished paper,
Dewey and Quine on What There Is. The following quotations are from this man-
uscript, hopefully permitted by Shook.
19. Writing in the New York Times (June 19, 2000), the president of the Southern
Baptist Theological Seminary held that arguments over creation, womens roles, ho-
mosexuality, abortion, etc., are, for his 16 million parishioners, settled by the word
of God.
20. Quoted by Jerry A. Coyne, Is NOMAa No Mans Land? Times Literary Sup-
plement (June 9, 2000). Gould seems not have noticed that the idea that religion and
science complement one another is both factually false and founders on the as-
sumption that facts and values can be bifurcated. One may hope that the surveys are
flawed, but Coyne notes that nearly 50 percent of Americans believe that humans
were directly created by God within the past 100,000 years, and 40 percent think that
creationism should replace [not just be taught!] evolution in the biology classroom.
The New York Times helps this along when it publishes an essay by Richard Rothstein
(June 7, 2000), which argues that facts are only what we observe. Evolution is not
Naturalism and Subjectivism: Philosophy for the Future? 117
a fact: There could be other theories. Perhaps Rothstein took a course in philoso-
phy at one of our more distinguished institutions?
21. The term is Irving Kristols. See his excellent Faith a la Carte. Times Liter-
ary Supplement (May 26, 2000).
22. The best treatment is David Harveys, The Condition of Postmodernity (Ox-
ford: Basil Blackwell, 1987).
118 Chapter Five
119
INTRODUCTION
It is surely plausible to think of the histories of humankind as a series of dis-
continuous, and sometimes continuous, intersecting movements marked by
accidents, some benign, some fortuitous, and some disastrous. In this regard,
if nothing else, history is radically contingenteven if looking back, we can
often provide altogether satisfactory explanations of what happened and
why?
1
One such legacy is the intertwined conceptual and institutional lega-
cies of science and academic philosophy.
Yet not all is well as regards these. Dewey could lament that we had failed to
replace old habits of thought with more scientific ways. This was one aspect of
the reconstruction in philosophy for which he called. We wonder, not unrea-
sonably, whether the authority of science was but Western provincialism, the ra-
tionale for the imperialist obliteration of non-Western cultures. On the other
side, while Dewey was aware that science had been misappropriated and mis-
applied, he remained optimistic that this could be changed, that democratic
processes could be brought to bear on expert claims to authority. This, too, was
an aspect of his call for reconstruction. Yet, as above, Deweys hopes strike us
as naive. Wholly disjoined from experts, we stand in terror of their so carefully
considered decisions. What, heaven help us, will be the unintended conse-
quences of genetic engineering or the disaster of Iraq? If the nineteenth century
had Frankenstein, we have energy-obsessed Dr. Strangeloves.
This chapter pursues the idea of reconstructing philosophy; thus, if very in-
directly, of reconstructing culture. With Dewey as both guide and foil, the fo-
cus is on the implications of the current debate over the effort to naturalize
epistemology, that is, to study knowledge scientifically. Dewey was surely
Chapter Six
Naturalizing Epistemology:
Reconstructing Philosophy
correct that we need an alternative to dogmatism and to skepticism; but as
perhaps Dewey did not clearly see, we cannot take science for granted. Asec-
ond goal of this chapter, then, is to raise some questions both about current
scientific practices and our understanding of these.
THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEM
We can begin with Barry Strouds critique of Quines influential essay, Epis-
temology Naturalized.
2
Quine argues that naturalized epistemology is the
empirical study of a species of primates, or, in the particular case, of an indi-
vidual human subject in interaction with his environment (in Kornblith,
1985: 77). Thus:
This human subject is accorded a certain experimentally controlled imput
certain patterns of irradiation in certain frequencies, for instanceand in the full-
ness of time the subject delivers as output a description of the three-dimensional
external world and its history? (Kornblith, 1985: 77).
3
The story continues: we observe the subject as she interacts with her envi-
ronment. Given then that we know her environment and have an adequate
psychology, we then explain her output, seeing that, in the fullness of time,
what she says is true.
But, of course, the situation just described is not the situation of our natu-
ralizing epistemologist, since, of course, like our knower, she is (as every-
one!) utterly denied that independent, theory-neutral access to the world
which could be the only basis for determining whether inputs from it ever re-
sult in outputs which are true. Stroud concludes that Quine simply fails to ad-
dress what he takes to be the traditional question of epistemology: How do
we know that the external world is what anybody says it is?
This problem is not the problem of whether there is an external world or,
for that matter, whether it has some structure. As Peirce and Dewey insisted,
we can call into question any particular version of how the world is, but
Cartesian skepticism cannot be reasonably motivated.
4
But as the foregoing
seems at least to show, one can assume an external and structured world, the
method of science, and still ask if what is presumed to be known is known.
Dewey might add there that this problem presumes an absolute concep-
tion of reality.
5
On this (commonsensical) view, reality means reality as it is
independently of you and me, independently of what it is known as. My skep-
tic demands that we show that knowledge of this reality is possible. If the
only knowledge we can have is from some viewpoint, how can we know
whether itour or some otheris valid? That is, even given an absolute con-
120 Chapter Six
ception of reality, it would seem that we are forced to accept a relative con-
ception of knowledge. It may be, of course, that we can justify some view-
point. Perhaps (as I argue below) there are modes of fixing belief, which
should be preferred. Such a relationalism and fallibilism could then be con-
trasted to relativism: understood as the thesis that no viewpoint, no mode of
fixing belief, can claim privilege over any other.
It may be doubted that we need an absolute conception of reality. But we
surely doif we want to avoid relativism and to anchor our fallibilism.
6
Even
if we can privilege some mode of fixing belief, we will need to aspire to the
ideal of grasping the world as it is, independently of what you and I might
believe. The problem of historical knowledge is, perhaps, the clearest case.
We must acknowledge that we shall never have more than a fragment of the
possible evidence and that alternative histories are always possible. But
surely what transpired transpired independently of these. It is just this, which
grounds the limits of all perspectives and thus our fallibilism.
More, we need an absolute conception of reality if criticism and persuasion
is not to collapse into sophistry, to be merely a struggle to win opinion. As
rhetoricians know, truth-talk plays a vital role in argument, persuasion, and
criticism. Indeed, if we could dispense with the conception of an absolute
conception of reality, truth-talk might be dispensable, replaced by pragmatic
works/does not work or predicts/does not predict. Language (and theo-
ries about the world) are surely (our) tools for coping with our world; but for
social animals, they could not serve if they did not have a rhetorical function.
7
There is another form of answer to Stroud. We dont need independent ac-
cess to the world if we can assume there is a necessary connection between
some method, say, the method of science and truth. Thus, with persistent ap-
plication of our method, our (un-Peircean) individual, given a (Peircean) full-
ness of time, will arrive at truth. But even this act of faith does not help us.
Since we will always lack independent access, we can never know whether
we have arrived!
Here we can pause to consider, even if too briefly, an argument put forward
by Michael Friedman in his essay, Truth and Confirmation (Kornblith,
1985). He points out (rightly) that there is no necessary connection between
confirmation and truth and that what traditional philosophy of science has to
offer on the relation cannot be sustained.
8
In particular, he argues that if sci-
entific method (or any other) is to show that it achieves (or even approxi-
mates) truth, the Tarskian theory of truth (shared by all traditional candidates)
must be supplemented to include a causal theory of reference. Since our
methods cannot guarantee success, we have to know facts about the actual
world if we are to know which method is best; and we have to know facts
about the actual world to know even that any given method has any chance at
Naturalizing Epistemology: Reconstructing Philosophy 121
all of leading to truth! (Kornblith, 1985: 15556). To do this in a nonvi-
ciously circular way we need general laws connecting physics and psychol-
ogy [sic] with the theory of truth; and it is precisely this kind of generality
that a theory of reference tries to provide (161).
9
There are two fairly obvious objections. First, even given these laws, it is
by no means clear what scientific method is and thus what and how it is to be
tested (of which more below). But, second, as Friedman says, we lack utterly
such general laws. Worse, I believe that there is little reason to suppose that
such are possible. To anticipate, Friedmans program seems, at least, to fol-
low Quines in being committed to an epistemological individualism.
10
EPISTEMOLOGICAL INDIVIDUALISM
There are, I believe, about nine (or forty?) ways into this. One way is to ob-
serve that experience requires concepts and that most of our conceptsat
leastare social products. Thus, I cannot see a tree unless I have the con-
cept tree and this is surely learned in a social process.
11
The epistemological problem that is at issue here was surely propelled by
modern science, but contrary to what Quine (and Dewey) imply, acknowl-
edging this is no advantage for the naturalizing epistemologist. It is, indeed,
because of modern science that, as William James rightly saw (versus
Spencer), the epistemological problem is so intractable. Naive realism could
(and does!) sustain epistemological individualism: if you dont believe there
are red apples in the world, then just look and see! But if you take modern
physical science and Deweys views of experience seriously (as I think we
must), then it is a rather gigantic system of belief, recognition, and the rest,
which has been instituted under the influence of custom and tradition. Given
this, how can we be so confident that our beliefs correspond to a world that
exists independent of either you or me?
This does not mean that I am deluded in saying there is a red apple when
I see a red apple. That is not the issue. Plainly, science did not undermine our
ordinary ways of thinking and speaking. When a G. E. Moore says, I know
that there are red apples, and a neuroscientist says The experience of red
apples is the product of physical and biochemical transactions between some-
thing and us and the skeptic says, Nobody could know that there are red ap-
ples, the same words are being used differently (Stroud, 1985: 76). What
Moore and the rest of us say, even if true, is not decisive as regards either the
epistemological or the scientific investigation of knowledge.
We began with Quines psychological program; this is the appropriate
point to refer to recent sociology of knowledge, to the so-called strong pro-
122 Chapter Six
gram (Manicas and Rosenberg, 1985; 1988). Its key insight is what
Barry Barnes calls the naturalistic equivalence of the knowledge of different
cultures.
Naturalism . . . implies the most intensely serious concern with what is real.
. . . Everything of naturalistic significance would indicate that there is indeed
one world, one reality, out there; the source of our perceptions if not their to-
tal determinant [that is, though not their total determinant], the cause of our per-
ceptions being fulfilled or disappointed, of our endeavors succeeding or being
frustrated. But this reality should not be identified with any linguistic account of
it, or needless to say, with any way of perceiving it, or pictorial representation
of it. Reality is the source of our primitive causes, which, having been presup-
posed by our perceptual apparatus, produces changes in our knowledge and the
verbal representations of it which we possess. All cultures relate symmetrically
to this reality. Men [sic] in all cultures are capable of making reasonable re-
sponses to the causal inputs they receive from realitythat is, are capable of
learning. That the structure of our verbal knowledge does not thereby necessar-
ily converge upon a single form, isomorphous with what is real, should not sur-
prise us. Why should we ever expect this to be a property of our linguistic and
cognitive capacities? (Barnes, 1977: 25).
Because, like Quine, Barnes and Bloor take science seriously, they believe (a)
there is an independently existing world, but (b) they also believe with Dewey
that human cognition is always socially mediated. (See Chapter 4.)
The idea that knowledge of different cultures is naturalistically equivalent
is both a premise and a conclusion of strong program science.
12
Strong pro-
grammers are interested in understanding belief, and therefore, for scientific
purposes, beliefs which we think of as rationalincluding accordingly, those
which are fixed scientificallymust be treated as on the same footing as all
others.
13
The belief I see a Panda now involves language. Hence social con-
siderations are relevant. Just because our only access to a world is causal, and
epistemological individualism cannot be sustained, a naturalistic epistemol-
ogy interested in explaining knowledge must appeal to social facts. Not only
do these enter into concept formation (enormously complicating empirical
psychology), but we need to acknowledge that the problem of reproducing the
cognitive order could not possibly be explained without a sociological under-
standing of the relevant social mechanisms, for example, how belief is au-
thorized and stabilized.
On the other hand, because our best science implies that all we can have is
a representation of reality, and because there is no way to measure any repre-
sentation against reality-in-itself, we cannot escape a relationalism. But it
does not follow from this that all truth claims are equally good. At this point,
we can turn to Dewey.
Naturalizing Epistemology: Reconstructing Philosophy 123
DEWEYS PROGRAM
It is not perfectly clear what Dewey would say to a Karam defender of his
system of classification. Who here has the truth? He might say that the
question is badly posed. He might say that since true presupposes an ab-
solutist conception that is neither necessary nor possible, both are right.
Although the world is structured, it does not allow us to discriminate be-
tween contrary taxonomies. It does constrain these: Aculture could not, for
example, treat what we have identified as poisonous as foods, for their bi-
ology will not allow them to survive. But there is nonetheless plenty of
room for alternative and contrary schemes depending on a host of alterna-
tive contingent factors regarding beliefs about the gods, the good, etc. On
this view of the matter, there are too many truths and it is idle to suppose
that any can be privileged.
There is an attractive aspect to this move. Given that peoples have differ-
ent interests and different ideas about the gods and the good, we need to ac-
knowledge that they may very well be able to justify their beliefs about the
way the world ishowever strange these may seem to us. There is, unfortu-
nately, an unattractive aspect to this posture. Not only does it disavow an at-
tempt to give any special credence to the claims of science (perhaps not such
a bad thing?), but it disavows any effort to provide guidance about how we
ought to go about finding out what to believe, including here, lest we forget,
beliefs about what is good and right. I think that we can do better. So, too, did
Dewey.
DEWEYS NATURALIZING OF EPISTEMOLOGY
Dewey wrote that the methods of knowing practiced in daily life and science
are excluded from consideration in the philosophical theory of knowing
(MW, Vol. 10: 37). Presumably, the actual process of knowing; involves
operations of controlled observation, inference, reasoning, and testing.
While this seems true enough, it does not help us in the present instance.
Surely, Karam do all these things even as they are arriving at a different tax-
onomy than ours. Are the Karam going about the business of inquiry
wrongly? Perhaps what is needed is a more systematic attempt at discrimi-
nating the special features of successful knowing. Dewey set this as the goal
of inquiry into inquiry. Thus, he writes:
The position here taken holds that since every special case of knowledge is con-
stituted as the outcome of some special inquiry, the conception of knowledge as
124 Chapter Six
such can only be a generalization of the properties discovered to belong to con-
clusions which are outcomes of inquiry. Knowledge, as an abstract term, is a
name for the product of competent inquiries (LW, 12: 16).
That is, by examining the outcomes of inquiries, we can discover why these
are knowledge and, conjunctively, by examining inquiries we can discover
what makes for competence. As Dewey insisted: Through examination of
the relations which exist between means (methods) employed and conclu-
sions attained as their consequence, reasons are discovered why some meth-
ods succeed and other methods fail (LW, 12: 17).
It is important to see what this program is and is not. Not only was Dewey
not altogether clear regarding what is involved, but more troublesome, the
program does not neatly join with work being carried on today in philosophy,
psychology or sociology as they are generally practiced in todays academic
disciplines. Perhaps Dewey was off the mark, or perhaps the fault is with the
disciplinary division of labor.
INQUIRY INTO INQUIRY: I
It may be best to proceed indirectly and to begin by noting that Deweys pro-
gram is not akin to the psychologically oriented programs of Quine or, for ex-
ample, William Lycan (1988). Quine has not said very much about the sort of
psychology he assumes will explain how we know, but we may guess that it
is some sophisticated version of behaviorism. By contrast, Lycan is very clear
in his commitments to a Fodor/Dennett-inspired homuncularism, a currently
fashionable version of cognitive psychology.
14
But in either case, Quine, Lycan, and the psychologies they presume are
epistemologically individualistic and Deweys psychology was not. More-
over, these writers and the psychologies they want to include are committed
to a logical theory which Dewey found to be misdirected.
Throughout his career, from his brilliant essay on the reflex arc, through
the 1903 studies in experimental logic, to How We Think (1910), to his ill-
understood Logic, Dewey developed a naturalistic theory of inquiry that to-
tally went against the dominating and now taken-for-granted Frege-Russell
conception of logic.
15
In this view, logical relations hold between abstract
predicates and inference (deductive and inductive) depends on there being
some sort of objective relation between propositions.
16
Because this as-
sumption was a feature of what Dewey called intellectualism; he looked
at the matter entirely differently. As Thomas Burke says, Deweys concep-
tion of inquiry has to be understood not so much as cognitive problem
Naturalizing Epistemology: Reconstructing Philosophy 125
solving but more generally in terms of an adaptive stabilization propensity
of organism/environment relations.
17
This basic naturalistic starting point
led Dewey to totally refashion inference, propositional content,
kinds, and other critical terms in standard logical theory. Thus, as I un-
derstand Dewey, inference is fundamentally a way of handling informa-
tion, which does not require human language. The logicians concept of in-
ference is not, of course, to be abandoned; it is rather to be seen as a highly
useful abstraction, regimented for particular purposes.
18
This is hardly the place to develop the radical implications of Deweys re-
vision. Continuing along lines just suggested, one example will have to suf-
fice. Enormous effort in psychology has been directed at solving Menos par-
adox: If inputs require concepts to be meaningful, then concepts must
precede inputs as in nativism; but if concepts (to be at all useful in the real
world) require input for their content, then inputs must precede concepts
as in empiricism (either of the ontogenetic or phylogenetic variety).
19
For
example, behaviorist-learning theory needs to assume that the organism has
made the relevant abstraction if it is to be reinforced. But this assumes exactly
what needs to be explained. On the other hand, recent cognitive psychology,
by conceiving of mind as an information processing system, assumes that in-
formation comes sententially prepackaged, ready-made for use by the lin-
guistically apt learner.
If I am correct we can now identify three obstacles to an adequate under-
standing of knowing: a pervasive intellectualism, an epistemological individ-
ualism, and third, a pervasive assumption, shared by the main contending
views, that, as Kelly and Kreuger put it the only relations between contents
of cognitive states which makes a process involving those states a cognitive
process are the sorts of logical functions used in classical experiments(Kelly
and Kreuger, 1984: 64). But, of course, on the standard view of logic, logical
functions can hold only between abstract predicates. Menos dilemma is then
inescapeable! Indeed, until psychology breaks from those philosophical dog-
mas that have formed it, we shall not have an adequate psychology of learn-
ing, and we shall not naturalistically understand knowing. Deweys path, if I
am right, was the right one.
But even if we accept completely Deweys picture of inquiry (including a
host of details yet to be filled in), this would not, of itself, respond to the prob-
lem of judging between the belief systems of the Karam and the Western zo-
ologist. Presumably, Deweys account applies to both. If only the zoologist
gets it right, then something more is being assumed, likely that something
called the method of science privileges the findings of the zoologist. But we
have yet to see the argument for this.
126 Chapter Six
INQUIRY INTO INQUIRY: II
There is an entirely different program that is rightly construed as inquiry into
inquiry. Dewey offered (as we noted) that through examination of the rela-
tions which exist between means (methods) employed and conclusions at-
tained as their consequence, reasons are discovered why some methods suc-
ceed and other methods fail (LW, 12: 17). This might be understood as
meaning that the task is not only to frame theory which describes and ex-
plains the general feature of inquiry, but consistent with this, to consider em-
pirical science empirically. It might then be possible to generate warranted
methodological rules, thus satisfying the demand that we be able to judge be-
tween contrary beliefs and belief systems. This version of a naturalistic pro-
gram has had some recent advocates, among them, most outstandingly,
Nicholas Rescher and Larry Laudan. There are, I think, three main features,
which distinguish this approach.
First, the Deweyan inspiration is in the effort to avoid a vicious circularity
in which one either justifies outcomes by assuming that means are competent,
or warrants the means by assuming the truth of the outcomes. If as Rescher
puts it, justification is here an essentially two-way processits results legit-
imate the method as proper and appropriate, and the method justifies its re-
sults as correct then one needs either to break the circle or to show that it
is nonvicious (Rescher, 1975: 27).
Briefly, Rescher argues that any experiential justification of a truth crite-
rion must pull itself up by its own bootstrapsit needs factual inputs, but yet
factual inputs cannot at this stage already qualify as truths. To meet this
need, accordingly, Rescher appeals to truth candidates; data which are no
more truths than candidate-presidents are presidents . . . (28).
20
Rescher then
envisages a feed-back loop in which the reasonableness of the over-all
process . . . rests not only on the (external) element of success inherent in the
factor of pragmatic efficiency, but also on the (internal) factor of intrinsic co-
herence and the mutual support of self-substantiation that the various stages
of the whole are able to lend to one another (36).
Laudan offers what he calls a reticulated model of scientific rationality
which explicitly introduces values:
The reticulational approach shows that we can use our knowledge of the available
methods of inquiry as a tool for assessing the viability of proposed cognitive
claims. . . . Equally, the reticulated picture insists that our judgments about which
theories are sound can be played off against our explicit axiologies in order to re-
veal tensions between our implicit and explicit value structures (Laudan, 1984: 62).
Naturalizing Epistemology: Reconstructing Philosophy 127
For Laudan, fully in the spirit of Dewey, axiology, methodology, and factual
claims are inevitably intertwined in relations of mutual dependency (63).
Second, both writers (Rescher explicitly, Laudan implicitly) reject a thesis
(or propositional) pragmatism in which the problem is to vindicate particular
truth claims. Instead, they opt for a methodological pragmatism in which the
problem is to justify methods. Thus, pragmatic considerations are never
brought to bear on theses directly. The relationship becomes indirect and me-
diated; a specific knowledge claim is supported by reference to a method,
which in turn is supported on pragmatist lines (Rescher, 1975: 73). Beliefs
arrived at with warranted methods may very well be false. The aim, however,
is to find methods which are reliable in the sense that they answer to human
purposes, critically assessed.
Thesis pragmatism is highly vulnerable to a wholly idiosyncratic mode de-
termining what counts as warranted assertibility. This is, of course, a long-
standing objection to pragmatism. Methodological pragmatism offers hope
since beliefs are warranted only insofar as they are the outcome of an explicit
method that has been warranted independently of this or that particular belief.
As Rescher points out:
Considerations of the suitability and effectiveness of methods introduce an inher-
ently rational orientation, which serves to assure the logical properties. Moreover,
methods are intrinsically public, interpersonal, and communal. A method is not a
successful method unless its employment is generally effectiveotherwise we are
talking about a knack or skill rather than a method. A skill can only be shown, it
cannot be explained. . . . This line of thought indicates the fundamentally social di-
mension of methods. . . . They can be examined and evaluated in abstracto, with-
out any dependency on particular practitioners (Rescher, 1975; 73).
These are certainly desirable features of this program, even if as I shall sug-
gest, instead of methods, we are better advised to try to warrant practices. But
we should first notice that if the program carries, we will have escaped sub-
jectivism, we will have warranted our method and thus beliefs which are de-
termined by means of these methods, but we will not have secured truth. But,
of course, Deweys shift to warranted assertibility was a rejection of the
search for truth (understood, as always, in the absolutist sense).
21
EXCURSUS: TRUTH ABOUT THE WORLD
AND MORAL TRUTH
It will be important to notice the bearing of the foregoing on the question of
moral relativism. In my view, this is surely the most important of the trou-
128 Chapter Six
blesome questions raised by relativism. Plainly, I cannot pursue this here. Yet,
it seems to me that it is just here that the foregoing is most helpful. The rea-
son is clear enough. The skeptical objection forecloses the possibility of se-
curing a perspectively neutral truth about a world, which exists independently
of you and me. But since on naturalistic grounds, our ideas about what is good
and right are our ideas, the skeptical objection has no force. All that we need
as regards questions of the good and the right is warranted assertibility. More-
over, in this context, the public, interpersonal, and communal aspects are fun-
damental. While the effort to secure ever-inclusive representations of the ex-
ternal world cannot secure truth about it, the effort to secure ever-inclusive
goods is exactly what is called for as regards moral matters.
METHODOLOGICAL PRAGMATISM
There is a third aspect to methodological pragmatism. It presumes that an em-
pirical study of science will yield clarity about aims and methods, and that
there is a way to reflexively test methods against aims, once identified. As far
as I know, Laudan (and his associates), have been in the forefront of actually
engaging in such research.
22
But I think that on this count, there are some very
difficult problems.
First, there is the abstraction science. It is easy to suppose that although
there are manifest differences in the sciences, the term, science is mean-
ingful because the sciences share in goals, for example, prediction and
control, and/or because there is something called scientific method,
again, usually defined in terms of a series of abstractions about the forma-
tion, deductive elaboration, and testing of hypotheses. Dewey was, I be-
lieve, utterly uncritical in this.
23
Laudan acknowledges that goals do differ
and that, pertinent to this and to subject matter, methods (not merely tech-
niques) may vary. Still it would seem that an adequate empirical picture
would show some fundamental differences, not only in the sites and goals
of the practices of the sciences, but in their methods and standards as
well.
24
Consider first the idea of the goals of these practices. Even a cursory ex-
amination would show, I believe, that there are at least four fundamentally
different goals currently operative in the sciences.
1. Description: for example, ethnographic work in anthropology; quantita-
tive research in economics or demography; much geography; and taxo-
nomic work in botany and zoology (motivated, I believe, by very different
goals than the prescientific taxonomy of the Karam!).
Naturalizing Epistemology: Reconstructing Philosophy 129
2. Prediction and control: behavioral social science, most psychology, mete-
orology, the engineering sciences, and applied sciences.
3. Understanding: basic science, including work in space/time theory, quan-
tum mechanics, evolutionary theory, some (but surely the smallest part) of
theoretical work in psychology and the social sciences.
4. The explanation of concrete events: history and the historical sciences (in-
cluding here, some social science, some geology, some evolutionary biol-
ogy, some psychology).
It has been easy to collapse these cognitive goals. For example, by means of
the idea that the discovery of laws is the goal of science, it has been easy to
believe that explanation, understanding, and prediction are of a piece. But
while the point cannot be pursued here, it is easy to show that these are con-
ceptually, and in practice, distinct aims (Manicas, 2006). Empirical examina-
tion of practice would show, I believe, that those practices which aim at pre-
diction and control (implicitly or explicitly) offer nothing in the way of
understanding or in the explanation of concrete events. For example, behav-
iorist psychology gives no understanding of learning; and it cannot explain
the most elementary concrete act, for example, my response, fantastic, to
seeing Guernica for the first time. Butand this is not to be minimizedbe-
haviorist psychology has been an effective tool for manipulation and control.
But the point of this sketch is not to settle issues, but to raise questions for the
empirical program that I have called Inquiry into Inquiry: II Speaking now
within its frame of reference, if the goals are different, then we can expect the
methods to be different. For any particular goal, there still will be methods that
are most effective and suitable. And we can still endorse the basic Deweyan ef-
fort to self-referentially bootstrap. But not all these goals will be pertinent to the
problem with which we began. The skeptical objection is plainly irrelevant if
the aim is prediction and control. Moreover, it is very easy to justify science as
the preferred mode if prediction and control is the goal. Indeed, this is a major
motive for continuously attractive instrumentalist theories of science. If, how-
ever, one is interested in understanding or in explaining what happens, then in-
quiry into the practices of sciences with those aims will be pertinent. Laudan and
his colleagues look at the basic natural sciences (despite their antirealism). If
they had looked at most mainstream psychology, indeed at most mainstream so-
cial science, things would look very different.
But let us assume that the intention is to get an empirically well-grounded
picture of those practices that in fact (and not merely in intention) aim at giv-
ing an account of how the world is. Of course, it will not do, as Laudan has
himself so strenuously insisted, to accept those descriptions of science that
are written with manifest assumptions imported from Carnap or Popper, the
130 Chapter Six
two dominating traditions of twentieth-century philosophy of science. These
studies cannot count as tests because they are self-authenticating. Nor can we,
uncritically, accept what practitioners say are their methods (or for that mat-
ter, their standards and goals). As Einstein remarked, If you want to find out
anything from the theoretical physicists about the methods they use, I advise
you to stick closely to one principle: Dont listen to their words, fix your at-
tention on their deeds.
25
We have the best chance of getting some under-
standing about what they do if we can study activities directly. For standard
historiographical reasons, things get much more difficult when we consider
past practices. Indeed, in the face of these problems, there may be a tempta-
tion to assume methods and then to assume that they determine outcomes. We
then enter history less problematically, with an eye merely to these.
Laudans program risks this. Thus, he seems (at least) to begin with hy-
potheses regarding methodological rules that derive from philosophies of sci-
ence. The idea then is to enter into history and seek either confirmation or dis-
confirmation of these. But there are now two additional problems. First, if as
Laudan asserts, science changes, it is not clear how much generalizing will be
possible
26
and thus, to what degree we can regard conclusions drawn from
such inquiry as tests. For example, consider but the institutional differences
between Newtons scientific research and the big science of today. Assuming
(what is likely contrary to fact) that the goals are comparable, can we be
confident that abstracted methodological rules effective then would now be
effective?
Second, as recent studies surely show, agents making decisions in science
are complexly affected. Not only are they capable of self-delusion (like
everyone else), but rules, even if they are crisply formulated and form a con-
sistent set, need to be applied concretely. This is hardly to say that methods
are irrelevant. Rather it is to assent to Kuhns view, rejected by Laudan, that
methodological criteria rarely if ever determine choices between rival theo-
ries. As Kuhn (and strong program writers) have insisted, this is not to deny
rationality; it is to affirm that rationality is both changing (as Laudan admits)
and concrete, exactly in a more Deweyan sense that we cannot explain
choices by subsuming them under rules.
One thrust of my argument has been against philosophers (and those influ-
enced by these) who, despite the best intentions, have been unable to free
themselves from the shackles of traditional epistemology. Another thrust has
been to sympathize warmly with pragmatic approaches, but to suggest that
among the most outstanding of these, there are serious problems to be faced.
Before concluding, I summarize:
First, if we are to understand knowing naturalistically, we need to rethink,
in Deweyan terms, the psychology and logic of knowing. This will require, if
Naturalizing Epistemology: Reconstructing Philosophy 131
I am correct, some important changes in the mainstream practices of empiri-
cal psychology. (See Chapter 2)
Second, since knowledge is inescapeably a social product, we need to wel-
come the efforts of recent sociology of scientific knowledge. Our natural-
ism cannot be half-hearted. (See Chapter 4.)
Third, having achieved a better understanding of the production of
knowledge, if we are to seek warrant for beliefs (or to prescribe norms for
belief), we will need to embrace a Deweyan approach to the fact/value di-
chotomy. We need to acknowledge, straight out, as Sleeper puts it, that
since all judgment is practical . . . there is no gulf between intellectual and
practical judgment.
Fourth and finally, instead of trying to warrant methods, we will be better
advised to try to warrant practices. I conclude with a sketch of what I mean
by this.
THE WARRANTING OF PRACTICES
Practices are, roughly, ways of doing. Practices include the beliefs of practi-
tioners, the tools they use, their explicit goals, and much else besides. Prac-
tices are institutionalized (structured) activities, activities that presuppose
habits in Deweys sense, dispositions that carry the legacy of training and cus-
tom. The shift from methods to practices has consequences:
First, we will not be stymied if, as seems to be the case, much of what is
known by practitioners is not formulable in terms of rules, but is tacit, craft-
like, and learned at the side of experienced mentors. One learns how to use
the tools, not merely the instrumentation, but the special languages, for ex-
ample, the mathematics, and the standards for employing them. One learns
what counts, what are the pitfalls, what are the ongoing standards of ade-
quacy. Indeed, understanding these is precisely what would count as under-
standing a practice.
27
Second, the shift to practice allows us to acknowledge that structured ac-
tivities have unintended consequences. This includes not merely the uses to
which basic work can be put, but the potential that outcomes may be surpris-
ing and hence not subject to control, and that intentions may be frustrated and
transformed. Third, as part of the picture, we can include the real possibility
that actors engaged in a practice can have false consciousness: they may have
beliefs which are essential to the practice in the sense that if they have
believed otherwise, they would not do what they do, but these beliefs might
be false in the sense that actors may not fully understand just what they are
doing. For example, they may believe that they are Popperians or instrumen-
132 Chapter Six
talists when in fact they are not; they may believe that they are explaining
when they are merely controlling; they may believe that their research is un-
contaminated by interests foreign to their aims, etc.
Afourth advantage of this shift is that it allows us to incorporate as critical
the fact that scientific practices are enmeshed in, effecting and effected by, a
host of other practices: economic, educational, and political. Thus, the polit-
ical economy of big science is critically relevant to understanding how its
problems get defined and how it approaches and resolves them.
28
The issue is
not merely that the goals and methods of the practice of big science are not
autonomous, but that nonscientific factors are playing critical roles in consti-
tuting these practices.
Finally, we can be sensitive to the fact that scientific practices are very dif-
ferently constituted, not merely between and among disciplines, but across
time. Given this, a global defense of science may not be possible. On the
other hand, we do not need a global defense. We need only to learn by inquiry
what it is that makes a practice warrantable.
HARRS JUSTIFICATION OF
THEORETICAL/EXPERIMENTAL PHYSICS
With these considerations in mind, there is at least one recent work to which
we can point. Rom Harr is a trained physicist/philosopher who takes fully to
heart the idea that (a) we had best look at scientific practices; (b) that a de-
fense of practice in theoretical/experimental physics is not, tout court, a de-
fense of science or of scientific method; and (c) that such a defense must rec-
ognize the skeptical challenge with which we began. Plainly, this is not the
place to detail Harrs important work, but I believe that (with some minor
emendations), it is entirely congenial to the views of this chapter.
Begin with (c). Harr rejects what he calls truth realism; roughly that a
belief is true if and only if it corresponds to reality. Sensitive to arguments
from Hume to Laudan, he defends referential realism; roughly, the idea that
some of the substantive terms in a discourse denote or purport to denote be-
ings of various metaphysical categories such as substance, quality, or relation,
that exist independently of that discourse (Harr, 1986: 67). In terms of our
earlier discussion, not only is there an external world, but given what we
know, the most plausible causal theory of perception is Gibsonian. That is,
while one must concede that there could not be psychological laws which
explain how someone came to see a pencil, it does not follow that there could
not be psychological laws which explain how someone came to see long, thin
things, causal sequences, and other generic perceptibles (154). On this view,
Naturalizing Epistemology: Reconstructing Philosophy 133
these are natural affordances, possibilities of action ecologically offered to
naturally evolved species and found in the exploration of the ambient array.
But plainly, this story will not suffice to explain our relevant taxonomies
since, as above, Karam see (mediately) kobity and we see birds (or if we are
birdwatchers, we see cassowary).
We need to make room for the social component of knowledge. Harr ex-
ploits Dretskes explication of seeing that. . . . Thus,
1. S sees b.
2. The conditions under which S sees b are such that it would not look the
way it does look, say L, unless it were P.
3. S, believing 2, takes b to be P.
Here, b is a Gibsonian invariant; condition 2 introduces Ss corpus of prior
belief. That b is P is knowledge, but, plainly, it is relative to the corpus of
beliefs held by S, and there is no way to find some original, terminal, or foun-
dational belief! We have found a toehold on the world, but we have not se-
cured an absolutist conception of knowledge. Nor have we secured science.
We can imagine a discourse, Harr calls it Realm I discourse, which made
reference only to the states and relations of beings known in actual experience
(the heaven of empirical realisms!). Could such a discourse sustain a science?
No doubt, human communities have put considerable attention on classifying
beings in Realm I discourse, but as is now sufficiently clear, the boundaries
which serve to maintain discrete groupings in any human classificatory prac-
tice cannot be justified without reference to unobservable properties and
structures of the beings in question (179).
29
Harrs problem is now clear. Can he justify theoretical/ experimental
physics as a preferred mode of fixing belief about the external world?
Grasping fully the idea that the science we consume, so to speak, is the
final product of the complex interplay of social forces and cognitive and
material practices (and not the product of a logic engine), he argues that
one must acknowledge that scientific communities control their products
by the informal yet rigorous maintenance of a moral order (12). Indeed,
on Harrs view, a great deal of the best work by philosophers of science
is most usefully understood as sketching an ideal moral order, not an ideal
(or still less, real) epistemic order. On this reading, the (epistemic realist)
manifesto, Scientific statements should be taken as true or false by virtue
of the way the world is as a moral principle becomes: As scientists, that
is, members of a certain community, we should apportion our willingness
or reluctance to accept a claim as worthy . . . only to the extent that we sin-
cerely believe that it somehow reflects the way the world is. Similarly, the
134 Chapter Six
idea that we should seek falsification cannot be sustained as an epistemic
principle. But it has manifest merits as encapsulating moral injunctions:
for example, However much personal investment one has in a theory, one
should not ignore contrary evidence (90).
For Harr, then, facts are socially constructed, but not only are they
not constructed from whole cloth (the burden of referential realism), but to
the extent that the ideal moral order is functioning, then the results are to be
preferredon strict pragmatic grounds.
WHY WE ARE EPISTEMICALLY IN TROUBLE
Harr appeals to empirical studies of scientific practices to identify what, per-
tinent to the problem of knowledge, is distinctive of these and, then, why, ide-
ally speaking, they should be preferred. Speaking as a naturalizing episte-
mologist, this is all that we can demand. He does not, to be sure, say very
much about the social conditions that would seem to be requisite to sustain-
ing the ideal moral order. In general terms, these are the ideas that we famil-
iarly associate with Peirce and Dewey, critically, the ideas of publicity and ac-
cess.
30
But it is also clear that under conditions of industrialized science, it is
just these conditions that are now under threat.
Shoddy science becomes possible when published papers are not be-
ing read and thus not subjected to critical scrutiny.
31
But since they easily
become part of the construction of facts, how can we know what to trust?
Entrepreneurial science allows contractors to establish huge mission-
oriented, capital-intensive enterprises in which researchers lose all inde-
pendence and everyone else is denied access. Since these products are not
assessed by consensus, why should they be trusted? Runaway technol-
ogy can produce reckless science. Here ready access to millions of dol-
lars aimed at some specific technical power, for example, the manipulation
of genetic materials, can produce shoddy science now accompanied by the
risk of catastrophic consequences. Finally, there is dirty science in which
opportunities to fund research projects aimed at realizing understanding
are converted into technologies for state purposes of destruction, or con-
trol, or manipulation.
We thus come full circle. We are stuck with our history. With the invention
of modern philosophy as a discipline pretending not only autonomy but a
privileged role in the intellectual division of labor, philosophers unwittingly
conspired in mystifying a world in which science has played a profoundly im-
portant role. Seventy years after Deweys call for reconstruction, the need is,
if anything, even more urgent.
Naturalizing Epistemology: Reconstructing Philosophy 135
NOTES
1. I have made two efforts at this, in A History and Philosophy of the Social Sci-
ences (New York and Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987) and War and Democracy (New
York and Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989).
2. Quines 1969 essay and Strouds 1981 The Significance of Naturalized Episte-
mology are reprinted in Hilary Kornbliths influential anthology, Naturalizing Epis-
temology (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985), cited in what follows.
3. Quines picture, presumably, is that, in Carnapian fashion, our knower can con-
tinually revise C-functions or in Popperian fashion, she can continue indefinitely to
conceive hypothesis, which she tries to falsify. Note also the epistemological individ-
ualism. See below. These two programs in philosophy of science have been the most
influential epistemologies in our century, but, as Laudan observes in a wonderful
under-statement, they have run into technical difficulties which seem beyond their
resources to surmount (Progress or Rationality: The Prospects for Normative Nat-
uralism, American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 1 [January 1987]: 19).
4. See John Dewey, The Existence of the World as Logical Problem (Middle
Works, 8: 9495). Of course, there are other forms of skepticism. See, for example,
Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986):
71. J. E. Tiles, in Dewey (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1988), quotes Russells
complaint that Professor Dewey ignores all fundamental skepticism. To those who
are troubled by the question: Is knowledge possible at all? he has nothing to say
(14). Tiles retorts that this is not fair: what Dewey had to say was that the question
lacked foundation (14). But the question is ambiguous. Whether there is an exter-
nal world that is at least partly structured cannot be motivated. But whether knowl-
edge is possible, given our history, does have a point. See below.
5. See Tiles, Dewey: 7076, 11623, 12729. My account departs, however, from
Tiles (and from Dewey?). Holding to an absolute conception of reality does not com-
mit one to an absolute conception of knowledge. It is not my contention that we could
describe the world from no point of view. Knowing is necessarily a relation be-
tween a situated knower and the world. But unless being depends upon knowing,
this does not make whatever is at the object end either featureless or unknowable. On
the other hand, Dewey was correct to insist that objects of knowledge (the character
of things as known) were produced by inquiry. But because they are not produced
from whole cloth (either by individuals or groups!), the skeptical problem arises.
6. Fallibilism, according to Nagel in The View from Nowhere, holds that our beliefs
go beyond their grounds in ways that make it impossible to defend them against
doubt (68). Nagel here is defining skepticism, not fallibilism! It is hard to say how
much disagreement in epistemology turns on different usages.
Peirces limit conception of truth provides an anchor, but at a cost. See below.
Dewey seemed at least to subscribe to Peirces conception. See John Dewey, Logic:
The Theory of Inquiry (LW, 2: 345).
7. See David Bloor, Knowledge and Social Imagery (London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1974): 3233; Barry Barnes, Interests and the Growth of Knowledge
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977). In his Dewey, Tiles holds that Deweys
136 Chapter Six
fallibilism was secured by the idea that inquiries comprise a continuum and suggests
that Dewey was correct to de-emphasize Peirces limit theory (Tiles, 1988: 1068). I
doubt this. Where there is no doubt, there is no inquiry. But the limit notion of truth
does, at least, give the dissenter a rhetorical tack that is otherwise lacking.
8. Friedman offers what seem to me to be fatal objections to positivist views and
to those views, like Peirces, which seek to ensure a connection between confirmation
and truth by giving a special meaning to truth. This would include Popper and at least
some contemporary versions of instrumentalismperhaps Larry Laudan. As regards
the theory of reference, see my sketch of Harrs approach.
9. Notice that sociology is omitted. Presumably, what it has to offer is irrelevant
to epistemology?
10. Quine waffles on just what he is claiming. Susan Haack holds that Quine is
ambivalent between a reformist Modest Naturalism in which epistemology is an
integral part of empirical belief and a revolutionary Scientistic Naturalism ac-
cording to which epistemology is be conducted wholly within the natural sciences.
See her The Two Faces of Quines Naturalism, ms., n.d. On his more notorious am-
biguities regarding the validation of claims to knowledge, see Ken Geme, Episte-
mological vs. Causal Explanation in Quine, or Quine: Sic et Non, ms., n.d.
11. Another way into epistemological individualism is to observe (versus Quine)
there is no way (as far as we can know) to go from molecules upon our sensory sur-
faces to the rat perception of, e.g., an edible object, to the (linguistically modeled)
belief that there are red apples in the world. We return to this.
12. There are important differences between those doing sociology of science as
regards questions in philosophy, between (say) Barnes, Harry Collins, Steve Woolgar,
and Latour. Confusion over the claims of Barnes and Bloor is now joined by confu-
sion over these differences. See also the excellent more recent collection of essays ed-
ited by Andrew Pickering, Science as Practice and Culture (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1992).
13. Thus drawing the rage of philosophers. It is presumably one thing to explain irra-
tionally fixed belief by appeal to sociological facts; it is quite another thing to suppose
that rational belief needs these. Presumably, one must contrast my belief that some fig-
ure presently in my vision is the Virgin Mary with my belief that some figure presently
in my vision is a panda. Anthony Flew, now speaking for countless epistemological in-
dividualists, thinks that the former belief admits of a sociological explanation, but that if
it is being argued (and it is!) that intrusive, non-social, physiological, and biological
facts are not sufficient to explain this latter belief, then the view is manifestly prepos-
terous and in its implications, catastrophically obscurantist (Anthony Flew, A Strong
Programme for the Sociology of Belief, Inquiry, Vol. 25 [1982]: 36667).
14. According to Lycan, occurent beliefs are sentencelike representations stored
and played back in our brains (1988: 6). A belief, then, is epistemically justified if
and only if it is rated highly overall by the set of all-purpose, topic neutral canons of
theory-preference that would have been selected by Mother Nature for creatures of
our general sort . . . (160).
15. See Ralph W. Sleepers important The Necessity of Pragmatism (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986); and Thomas Burke, Dewey on Defeasibility, in
Naturalizing Epistemology: Reconstructing Philosophy 137
Situation Theory and Its Applications, eds. R. Cooper, K. Mukai, and J. Perry, (Stanford,
Calif.: CSLI Publications, 1990): 23368 and Chapter 2.
16. Confirmation theory is the skeleton in the closet of empiricist epistemologies
of this century. For some of the key papers, see P. T. Manicas, ed., Logic as Philoso-
phy (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1972).
17. As Burke writes:
The basic scenario is that a given organism/environmental system is constantly perform-
ing certain operations as a matter of course employing sensory mechanisms, scanning,
varying, probing, and otherwise moving about and altering things. Inquiry is initiated by
some unsettling perturbation. . . . None of this needs be deliberate: Deweys picture of
inquiry is supposed to describe general architectural and dynamic features of virtually any
constituent subsystem of living animals, characterizing the simplest cellular life-functions
as well as the most complex motor activities (1990: 236).
Classical epistemology is intellectualist in that it miscontrues experience and
then conflates having of an experience with knowledge. Experience is an affair of
the intercourse of a living being with its physical and social environment; it is not
primarily psychical; nor a knowledge affair; and it is pregnant with connexions
and full of inference (MW, 10: 6).
18. Compare Barnes and Bloor, Rationalism and the Sociology of Knowledge,
in Rationality and Relativism, eds. Hollis and Lukes (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982):
44. For a provocative treatment in the context of recent philosophy of mathematics,
see Mary Tiles, Mathematics and the Image of Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1991).
19. M. T. Turvey, R. E. Shaw, E. S. Reed, and W. M. Mace, Ecological Laws of Per-
ceiving and Acting: In Reply to Fodor and Pylyshyn Cognition, Vol. 9 (1981): 285. See
also W. B. Weimer, The Psychology of Inference and Expectations: Some Preliminary
Remarks, in Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, eds. G. R. Maxwell and A.
R. Anderson, Vol. 6 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1975).
20. See Guy Axtell, Logicism, Pragmatism and MetaScience, in Philosophy of
Science, (1990).
21. Of course, the pragmatist, rejecting the problem of knowledge berhaupt and
alive to differences in aims, cognitive and otherwise, is open to the possibility that dif-
ferent communities with different aims, cognitive and otherwise, might well be justi-
fied in their beliefs about the world. Thus, it is not clear that Karam methods, perhaps
informed by and tested against goals that, for example, emphasize harmony with the
natural world, are not justified.
22. Expanding on work in his Progress and Its Problems, Laudan has provided a
test of realist axiology and methodology in his Science and Values, Chapter 5. He
construes realism as a truth-realism and then argues that a great deal of what physi-
cists have believed to be true has been given up. Accordingly, realist methodological
advice cannot be historically vindicated. However, as Harr says, this conclusion is
vulnerable to a modest objection: While physicists perhaps have not been able to
keep their stock of deep fundamental theories unscathed by later developments, there
has been a continual refinement and growing repertoire of very plausible items of in-
138 Chapter Six
formation about many kinds of being whose existence can no longer be seriously
called into doubt (Varieties of Realism, Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell,
1987: 41). Indeed, once realism is construed as by Harr, not only can Laudans bul-
let be dodged but an excellent case for what Harr calls policy realism can be made:
If a substantive term seems to denote a being of certain natural kind (and some spe-
cial conditions are satisfied by the theory in which that term functions) it is worth set-
ting up a search for that being (59). That is, by including in their working vocabu-
lary a robust referring expression, there are features of theories which historical
experience shows are good bets for having anticipated experience . . . (60).
For other suggestions for rules worth testing, see Rachel Laudan, Larry Laudan,
and Arthur Donovan, Scrutinizing Science (Holland: Kluwer Academic Publishers,
1988).
23. Dewey inconsistently offered an instrumentalist theory of science in which
prediction and control were emphasized as the goals of the sciences. (See Chapter 1).
In his antirealism as regards theoretical terms, he shares much with my former col-
league, Larry Laudan. (See Chapter 5.)
24. Think of astrophysics at Princetons Advanced Institute and at Rome ARDC,
research in solid state physics at Stony Brook or at Roswell, N.M., DNA/RNA re-
search at Cold Spring Harbor and at Texas Medical Center; biochemists working at
Max Factor, or on bonding metals ions to antibodies at Scripps Clinic, or neurotrans-
mitters at the University of Hawaii; economists at the Bureau of Labor, the Ameri-
can Enterprise Institute, or Cambridge University, England; psychologists at Merrill
Lynch, in the social welfare services of the City of New York, at the New School for
Social Research, at MIT; unfunded anthropologists in Thailand and anthropologists
working for AID in Thailand. One could easily go on.
25. Quoted by G. Holton, Mach, Einstein, and the Search for Reality, in Ernst
Mach, Physicist and Philosopher, eds. R. S. Cohen and R. J. Seeger (Dordrecht: Rei-
del, 1970). The text is from Einsteins 1933 Herbert Spencer Lecture.
26. Feyerabend surely goes too far here. Harr points out that Feyerabend aims his
guns at the logicisms of the alleged inductive method and the fallibilism of Popper,
but this target is too restricted. More importantly as regards the present context, there
may be more than one but not indefinitely many contexts of enquiry, in each of which
different methodological and metaphysical principles, each cluster of which could be
taken as defining a scientific inquiry, could be rationally defended (Varieties of Re-
alism: 2425). This would, I think, still undermine Laudans program.
27. Compare, of course: Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge (London: Rout-
ledge and Kegan Paul, 1958); Jerome Ravetz, Scientific Knowledge and Its Social
Problems (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971).
28. Merely by way of illustration, what are we to make of the fact that sixty bil-
lion dollars was spent in the 1990s on a half-dozen projectsa space station, a hu-
man genome project, a supercollider. And what are we to make of the criticism that
big science has gone berserk, that good minds and a lot of money are going into
areas that are not relevant to American competitiveness, American technological
health, or even the balanced development of American science (New York Times,
Sunday, May 27, 1990: 1).
Naturalizing Epistemology: Reconstructing Philosophy 139
29. They will, for example, require dispositional attributions. The clearest exam-
ples are in everyday discriminations, for example, salt and sugar. But consider also
classifications of modern zoology, sustained (or not) by appeal to beliefs deriving
from neo-Darwinian theory (just as the Karam classifications are sustained [or not] by
appeal to beliefs which run past Realm I discourse).
30. See Deweys remarkable The Public and Its Problems (LW, 2) and Chapter 3.
Dewey pointed out that the conditions for assessing claims were, in general, being
eroded. Thirty years later, C. W. Mills picked up this theme: As experts constrained
dialogue, publics were being converted to masses.
31. The term shoddy science, the analysis, and the other categories that follow are
owed to Jerome Ravetz, Scientific Knowledge and Its Social Problems, Chapter 10.
140 Chapter Six
Part Three
DEMOCRACY
143
John Dewey believed that Americans were not an over-agile people
morally (Middle Works,Vol. X: 261).
1
Like many, then and since, he was
struck by the stunning turn in their attitudes toward the Great War in Europe.
Our remoteness from the immediate scene of international hatreds, the bad
after-taste of the Spanish American war, the contentment generated by success-
ful industrialization, the general humanitarianism of which political progres-
sivism was as much a symptom as social settlements, the gradual substitution of
calculating rationalism for the older romantic patriotism, all these and more had
created an American sense that war was the supreme stupidity (MW, X: 260).
When the Great War came, some managed the shift in attitude easily. It was,
in fact, depressing that so many who when war was actually declared merely
clumsily rolled their conscience out from under the imperative of Thou shalt
not kill till it settled under the imperative of Obey thy law, and this de-
spite the fact that they still saw the situation exactly as they had before
(MW, X: 263). For others, seeing the situation exactly as they had before, the
pacific moral impulse remained steady. Now a troublesome minority, Dewey
worried that they were being treated badly. Not yet clear that this was but a
tip of the iceberg, he wrote that they deserve something better that accusa-
tions, varying from pro-Germanism and the crime of Socialism to traitorous
disloyalty (MW, X: 61).
For others, a moral wrench had been necessary, a moral adjustment
which if not involving a tragedy of the inner life has been effected only with
some awkward trampling of what has been cherished as the finer flowers of
the soul. Indeed, Dewey could hardly believe [that] the turnover could have
been accomplished under a leadership less skillful than that of President
Chapter Seven
American Democracy:
A New Spirit in the World
Wilson, so far as he succeeded in creating the belief that just because the
moral impulse retained its full validity Germany must be defeated in order to
find full fruitionthe war to end all war.
Deweys view that it took the skillful leadership of Wilson must not be
taken lightly. It may be that few others could have so successfully fostered
the belief among Americans that by entering the war they could fulfill a
unique historical task. Moreover, in these passages, Dewey was not suggest-
ing that Wilson had created a false belief. On the contrary, right along Dewey
had been insisting that this is not merely a war of armies, this is a war of peo-
ples. Accordingly, there is no aspect of our lives to which this war does not
come home or which it does not touch. In his judgment, we ought not to be
neutral when the war comes home in one form or another and to talk of be-
ing neutral is to talk foolishness (MW, X: 158). There is, he insisted, such
a thing as interests being vitally affected without a vital interest being af-
fected (258).
Unlike most Americans, Dewey had convinced himself early on that the
United States had to be in the war. He was also confident that the Allies
would win the war. But he was not thoroughly convinced that the aims of
American entry would be realized. The United States could not enter the war
with full heart and soul though we join with unreserved energy. Not un-
til the almost impossible happens, he continued, not until the Allies are
fighting on our terms for our democracy and civilization, will that happen
(259; my emphasis).
That Dewey should himself have believed, with Wilson, that this war was
a great opportunity to further our democracy and civilization is stunning,
given what we now know. The texts quoted above are from Deweys In Time
of National Hesitation, written with relief that at last we were in it our-
selves. Dewey concluded this remarkable text by offering that the war has
shown that we are no longer a colony of any European nation nor of them all
collectively. We are, he continued, a new body and a new spirit in the
world (259). This was surely true. But as he later came to see, he had mis-
read that new spirit. Dewey did not then know that our democracy and
our civilization were not what he had thought them to be. He did not then
appreciate that this Great War would prove that the chauvinists, pacifists, in-
ternationalists, and cynics were correct. The new body would be a globally
powerful America, which would occupy its rightful place in what Dewey
was to call the war system.
In this chapter, the focus is on the role and thought of two of Americas
most important political philosophers and analysts, John Dewey and Walter
Lippmann. The idea is to use them to recover a critical moment and argument
in American history over democracy in the epoch of modern war. The perti-
144 Chapter Seven
nence of this moment to the present cannot, perhaps, be overstated. Dewey
and Lippmann played important roles as regards American entry into the war
and, in different ways, as regards the terms of the peace. Although little has
been made of this, for Dewey the war was a transforming experience. It
forced him to articulate a philosophy of democracy, which was profoundly
radical. Lippmann was not transformed; but the war forced him to become
clear on some critical themes, which he had previously left unclear. In the
process, the two of them came to share a diagnosis of the problems of Amer-
ican society, even if their prescriptions were leagues apart. Their positions on
science, government, mass society, democracy, and war say much about
America, before and after the Great War.
THE NEW REPUBLIC
The first Republic, of course, had been written by Plato. Reflecting on the
problem of war in his world, Plato had envisioned a radically reformed polis,
capable of dealing with both war and, of even greater importance, civil
strife (stasis). The second republic was that of Cicero, who, while approving
of empire, nonetheless wanted Rome to return to its more virtuous republican
days. The New Republic referred to in this part of the book, however, is
neither Athens nor Rome, but, with appropriate equivocation, the magazine
which was created in 1914 by Herbert Croly and funded by Willard Straight
and his wife, Dorothy. Straight was a Morgan banker and an arch-exponent
of American imperialism; Dorothy Straight was a Whitney with the benefits
of ample Standard Oil royalties. The young Walter Lippmannhe was but
four years out of Harvard College, the first president and founder of its So-
cialist Clubwas a key member of the magazines original staff. The much
older John Dewey, born in 1859, was an enthusiastic contributor. There were
a host of other notables who were close to the new magazine, including as an
editor, Walter Weyl, author of The New Democracy (1912) and Felix Frank-
furter, who was then teaching at Harvard Law School. Among the first con-
tributors were Van Wyck Brooks, the youthful author of Americas Coming of
Age (1915). Indeed, the list of early contributors reads like a whos who of
English-speaking intellectuals. More interesting, perhaps, Theodore Roo-
sevelt looked on the magazinewith the encouragement of its editorsas
his own personal stepping-stone back to the White House.
2
On the face of it, this array of personalities seems like a disparate group;
but they shared in thinking that the United States was to be a new republic.
Croly had been a Harvard philosophy student and had become instantly fa-
mous with his The Promise of American Life (1909), the perfect title for a new
American Democracy: A New Spirit in the World 145
vision of American liberalism, a nationalist liberalism which would give a
democratic meaning and purpose to the Hamiltonian tradition and method
(Forcey, 1961: 129). Croly had savaged the ]effersonians as individualists,
isolationists, and defenders of a bankrupt laissez-faire economic philosophy.
He had argued that Big Business was here to stay, but that with Big Govern-
ment and Big Labor, there were totally new possibilities. He had insisted that
this would call for strong leadershipthe answer to the devil-take-the-hind-
most individualism of the Jeffersonians (38). As Forcey notes, although
clouded by a certain horror of the former Rough Riders lusty militancy,
Croly had a deep and abiding admiration of Theodore Roosevelt (40). But
then there are always trade-offs in politics.
Lippmanns first book was his 1913 A Preface to Politics. It was an icono-
clastic book, influenced by Croly and by his old teachers at Harvard, William
James and especially Graham Wallas, the famous British Fabian and political
theorist. But the then fashionable Freud, along with Nietzsche and Sorel, were
even more in evidence. In the background, usually unnoticed, is Woodrow
Wilsons new theory of democracy.
Lippmann distinguished between routineers and inventors and argued
that government, dominated by routineers, had failed. The trusts had ap-
peared, labor was restless, vice seemed to be corrupting the vitality of the na-
tion. Statesmen had to do something (Lippmann, 1913: 35). Their training
was legal and therefore utterly inadequate. But it was all they had. As rou-
tineers, they panicked and reverted to ancient superstition. They forbade
the existence of evil by law. Lippmann insisted that what was needed was an
entirely different approach. It was necessary to put this restless, untamed en-
ergy to work. The impulses were like dynamite, capable of all sorts of uses.
Instead of tabooing our impulses, we must redirect them (4950). Accord-
ingly, the United States needed a real government that has power and serves
a want, and not a frame imposed upon men from on top (45).
But the United States was no Greek polis:
Plato and Aristotle thought in terms of ten thousand homogeneous villagers; we
have to think in terms of a hundred million people of all races and all traditions,
crossbred and inbred, subject to climates they have never lived in before,
plumped down on a continent in the midst of a strange civilization. . . . Nor can
we keep the problems within our borders. Whether we wish it or not we are in-
volved in the worlds problems, and all the winds of heaven blow through our
land (105).
In the face of this, improvements in knowledge seem meager indeed. What
is demanded is a different conception of government and different kind of
statesmen.
146 Chapter Seven
Princeton political scientist Woodrow Wilson had been concerned since the
1890s with leaderless govemment.
3
He was correct in arguing that the
American Founding Fathers, with genuine scientific enthusiasm, had fol-
lowed Montesquieu in yearning for equipoise and balance in a machinelike
system (Constitutional Government: 56). But on his view, if what had been
wrought by them had been good enough for their sons, it was not good
enough for the sons of their sons or, presumably, for their daughters either.
Sharply critical of a disjointed, hence incapacitated government, Wilson re-
sponded to the same currents that had moved Max Weber; but he seemed to
endorse what Weber had feared. Modern societies were mass societies, com-
plex and inchoate. Wilson offered that policywhere there is no absolute
and arbitrary ruler to do the choosing for the whole peoplemeans massed
opinion, and the forming of massed opinion is the whole art and mastery of
politics (Leaderless Government: 339).
This was truly a remarkable idea, pregnant with implications that Lipp-
mann was shortly to pursuewith a vengeance. Wilson argued that since the
president was the only official with a national mandate, he had this special
role. The air of German philosophy still present in America surely influenced
his next move. In a text that Hegel could have endorsed, he argued that lead-
ership is interpretation: The nation lay as it were unconscious of its unity
and purpose, and [the leader] called it to full consciousness. It could never
again be anything less than what he had said it was. It is at such moments and
in the mouths of such interpreters that nations spring from age to age in their
development (Constitutional Government: 21).
4
In A Preface to Politics, Lippmann fully shared in rejecting the machine
conception of government (Lippmann, 1913: 13). He insisted that the ob-
ject of democracy is not to imitate the rhythm of stars but to harness political
power to the nations need (21). Our choice, he maintained, lies between
a blind push and a deliberate leadership, between thwarting movements until
they master us, and domesticating them until they are answered (286). But
if Wilson had grasped what was needed, Lippmann was unsure about whether
Wilson could fill the bill. Woodrow Wilson has a talent which is [William
Jennings] Bryans chief defectthe scientific habit of holding facts in solu-
tion (1023). On the other hand, Wilson understands easily, but he does not
incarnate: he has never been part of the protest he speaks. You think of him
as a good counselor, as an excellent presiding officer. Roosevelt has
seemed to me the most effective, the most nearly complete. . . . He is a fore-
taste of a more advanced statesmanship (103). Indeed, Roosevelt in his
term did much to center government truly. For a time natural leadership and
nominal position coincided, and the administration became in a measure a
real sovereignty (23).
American Democracy: A New Spirit in the World 147
A Preface to Politics is surely criticism of traditionthe record and
machine-like imitation of the habits; that our ancestors createdand of the
traditional view of politics in a republic. Lippmann criticized the mystical
democrats who believe that an election expresses the will of the people, and
that that will is wise (115). Like Wilson, he was struggling to rearticulate
democracy for a complex mass society. But he stepped back from the
Nietzschean implications of the new language of masses and urged instead a
break-up of herd politics. What was needed, on his view, was a more robust
pluralism. Accordingly, he saw the reformation of party politics somewhat
differently from either Wilson or Max Weber. He condemned the rigidity of
the two-party system. For him, it ignores issues without settling them, dulls
and wastes the energies of active groups, and chokes off the protests which
should find a civilized expression in public life (262). And he appealed to
just those mechanisms, which Weber had rejected, saying that the initiative
and referendum will help (263).
Like Wilson, Lippmann wanted leadership and saw the leader as an inter-
preter; although for him the relation of leader to mass was more dialectical
than it had been for Wilson. Social movements had tendencies and energy,
but they needed an inventor if they were to be imbued with life (Lipp-
mann, 1913: 63). At the same time, to govern a democracy you have to ed-
ucate it: . . . contact with great masses of men reciprocates by educating the
leader. He was optimistic, indeed enthusiastic. In a rough way and with
many exceptions, democracy compels law to approximate human need
(116). Given all that he himself said, it is not clear what could possibly be the
mechanism for this.
Lippmanns second book, Drift and Mastery, published in 1914, represents
a decided shift. It carries forward some of the earlier themes, but in many
ways it is a more democratic book; and, with its enormous emphasis on the
application of science to politics, it is much closer to the vision which we now
associate with Dewey. Indeed, one is tempted to say that if James had ever
written a political book, it would have been Drift and Mastery! Both the title
and the main argument are Jamesian: A nation of uncritical drifters can
change only the form of tyranny, for like the Christians sword, democracy is
a weapon in the hands of those who have the courage and skill to wield it; in
all others it is a piece of junk (Lippmann, 1961: 16). The book begins with
the obvious drift of our time and gropes for the conditions of mastery (19).
What is this obvious drift? We have lost authority. We are emanci-
pated from an ordered world (111).
We are all of us immigrants in the industrial world, and we have no authority to
lean upon. We are an uprooted people, newly arrived, and nouveau riche. As a
148 Chapter Seven
nation we have all the vulgarity that goes with that, all the scattering of soul. The
modern man is not yet settled in this world. It is strange to him, terrifying, al-
luring, and incomprehensibly big. . . . We make love to ragtime and die for it.
We are blown hither and thither like litter before the wind. Our days are lumps
of undigested experience (118).
Worth emphasizing is the fact that for Lippmann, America is the modern
world, the land of immigrants and the land where all of us are immigrants
spiritually. Surely industrialization and urbanization are part of this; but of
themselves, they do not make a people modern. Americans, we are asked
to believe, are modern because they are the first people to acknowledge the
failure of all absolutes. The theme runs throughout the book: Our ancestors
thought they knew their way from birth through all eternity: we are puzzled
about the day after tomorrow. The guardianship of the master and the com-
fort of the priest have evaporated. The iconoclasts didnt free us. They
threw us into the water, and now we have to swim (112).
But this remarkable diagnosis, along with its existential tone, is Jame-
sian, in that it allows for the most characteristic of Jamesian themes: the pur-
posive effort to shape the environment, to make relations, to create and re-
create an unfinished world. Mastery, an ill-chosen word, is possible; but
we must be clear about what it means:
When we cultivate reflection by watching ourselves and the world outside us,
the thing we call science begins. We draw the hidden into the light of con-
sciousness, record it, compare phases of it, note its history, experiment, reflect
on error, and we find that our conscious life is no longer a trivial irridescence,
but a progressively powerful way of domesticating the brute.
This is what mastery means: the substitution of conscious intention for un-
conscious striving. . . . You cannot throw yourself blindly against unknown facts
and trust to luck that the result will be satisfactory (148).
This is a distinctly Jamesian view in which there is nothing inhuman about
the scientific attitude (158). By now the idea has all but been lost, a victim
of the distance of esoteric language, unintelligble to all but specialists, the im-
age of anonymous men in white coats experimenting, the modem magic of
technology and the Bomb. For James, as for Lippmann, there was nothing
about science properly understood which need make it inevitably hostile to
the variety of life (161), nothing putting the scientific attitude at odds with
impulse, intuition, imagination, creativity, or indeed, religious belief:
There have been hasty people who announced boldly that any interest in the im-
morality of the soul was unscientific. William James, in fact, was accused of
treason because he listened to mystics and indulged in physical research. Wasnt
American Democracy: A New Spirit in the World 149
he opening gates to superstition and obscurantism? It was an ignorant attack.
For the attitude of William James toward ghosts was the very opposite of
blind belief. He listened to evidence. No apostle of authority can find the least
comfort in that (161).
This was no scientism or positivism. Science was controlled inquiry; but, as
with Dewey, it was creative intelligence, purposive, and in the service of
human impulses. Neither was it a technologism.
5
Accordingly, it did not call for a technocracy. The method of a self-
governing people is to meet every issue with an affirmative proposal which
draws its strength from some latent promise (174). For Lippmann, mastery,
whether we like it or not, is an immense collaboration, in which all the prom-
ises of today will have their vote (75). Indeed, there is nothing accidental
. . . in the fact that democracy in politics is the twin-brother of scientific think-
ing. They had to come together. As absolutism falls, science arises. It is self-
government. . . . The scientific spirit is the discipline of democracy, the es-
cape from drift, the outlook of the free man (151). To be sure, Lippmann is
usefully unclear here as to exactly how the leadership which was so impor-
tant in Preface functions in this scheme of things; and as before, he is unclear
about the mechanisms which might join the scientific spirit with the machin-
ery of a democracy. Moreover, as he became clear, after the war, he also
changed his mind.
This vagueness, as well as certain other strands in the book, make it easy to
see a continuity which has thrown off more than one commentator. It also makes
it easy to see why the book could receive adulation from almost all sides. Lipp-
mann had not given up on Crolys notion that organized labor could be a coun-
tervailing power, to adopt Galbraiths term. To this he added the idea that con-
sumers would be a power to be reckoned with; but, more than that, in
anticipation of Adolf Berle, he argued that the real news about business . . . is
that it is being administered by men who are not profiteers (42). The estab-
lished magazines and newspapers, ready to accept Lippmanns deflation of so-
cialism and his celebration of Americas uniqueness could easily be enthusiastic.
So too could the women of America. In a chapter devoted exclusively to
the topic of the Womens Movement, Lippmann saw that there had to be
confusion and conflict within the movement, precisely because every step in
the womans movement is creative (123). Randolph Bourne, who was
shortly to lay blame for Americas entry into the war on the war intellectu-
als, said that he would have given his soul to have written Drift and Mastery.
And with much less good reason, even the revolutionary magazine, The
Masses, concerned perhaps with the good relations between Reed and Lipp-
mann, received it with warmth.
6
150 Chapter Seven
Drift and Mastery was a pragmatists political book and important; but it
was anything but Lippmanns last word on the topic under discussion. We
need first to see what, during this same period, the active, influential prag-
matist, John Dewey, was up to. For some time prior to the publication of Drift
and Mastery, Dewey had been insisting on the application of experimental
methods to social change, arguing that in crucial ways the problem of a bet-
ter society was a problem of knowledge. Yet the most striking thing about
Deweys thought up to World War I was the absence of a political philosophy.
Until that time, as an intellectual and a theorist, Dewey was a psychologist, a
moral philosopher, an educationist, a defender of his new instrumentalist
version of pragmatism, a philosopher engaged in philosophical problems
which, if they would touch the problems of men, had not yet issued a clear
vision of the good society.
7
One here suspects a kind of characteristic American innocence. Dewey,
reared in the town-meeting atmosphere of Vermont, had no reason to doubt
that if there were problems in America, the American way, erected on solid
foundations, was essentially sound. Of course, he had always been more than
a theorist. He had always been involved practically, in Chicago with the work
of Jane Addams and the experimental lab school at the University of Chicago,
and in New York, especially with the schools.
The Great War prompted Deweys first systematic political work, German
Philosophy and Politics (1915). But if the book was motivated by the war, it
was guided by Deweys conviction that there is a mutual relationship of phi-
losophy and practical social affairs (Dewey, 1915: 13). As the title suggests,
the book is an effort to grasp the German politics of World Policy by a
study of German philosophy, from the esoteric inquiries of Kants Critique of
Pure Reason to the philosophy of history, the state, and of war in the philos-
ophy of Hegel.
8
Both German philosophy and politics come off badly. Like
Marx, Dewey had been nurtured on Hegel, but had long since broken with
that tradition. So far as politics is concerned, German Philosophy and Politics
is Deweys German Ideology.
At the root of German politics, Dewey finds the two worlds of Kantian
philosophy and its subsequent correction by Hegel. Thus:
The division established between the outer realm, in which of course acts fall,
and the inner realm of consciousness explains what is otherwise so paradox-
ical to a foreigner in German writings: The constant assertion that Germany
brought to the world the conscious recognition of freedom coupled with the
assertion of the relative incompetency of the German folk en masse for po-
litical self-direction. To one saturated with the English tradition which iden-
tifies freedom with power to act upon ones ideas, to make ones purposes
American Democracy: A New Spirit in the World 151
effective in regulation of public affairs, the combination seems self-
contradictory. To the German it is natural. (34)
General Friedrich von Bernhardis frank and immodest Germany and the
Next War of 1912 is extensively quoted. Drawing on the Reformation and
Kant, Bernhardi had concluded: To no nation except the German has it been
given to enjoy in its inner self that which is given to mankind as a whole.
. . . It is this quality which especially fits us for leadership in the intellectual
domain and imposes upon us the obligation to maintain that position (quoted
by Dewey, 1915: 35, emphasis in the original). This was no metaphor, of
course. In this book, Bernhardi had called for the elimination of France (die
Ausschaltung Frankreichs), the foundation of a Central European federation
under German control, and the acquisition of new colonies.
In a masterful understatement, Dewey comments: Outside of Germany,
cavalry generals who employ philosophy to bring home practical lessons are,
I think, rare. Outside of Germany, it would be hard to find an audience where
an appeal for military preparedness would be reinforced by allusions to the
Critique of Pure Reason (35). Dewey does not stop at bashing German phi-
losophy, however. He draws more general conclusions. There is a real differ-
ence between a theory which is pinned down to belief in an Absolute beyond
history and behind experience, and one that is frankly experimental. For any
philosophy that is not consistently experimental will always traffic in ab-
solutes no matter in how disguised a form. In German political philosophy,
the traffic is without mask (89). America, unsurprisingly, is said to be ex-
perimental: America is too new to afford a foundation for an a priori philos-
ophy. . . . For our history is too obviously future (129). On the other hand,
our country is too big and too unformed . . . to enable us to trust to an em-
pirical philosophy of muddling along. . . . We must have system, constructive
method. . . . I cannot help but think that the present European situation forces
home the need for constructive planning (12930).
9
Indeed, there is a pressing need to clarify and guide our future endeavor;
but to do this, we need to articulate and consolidate the ideas to which our
social practice commits us (130). Current American social practices were
sound. They needed to be discerned so as to provide leverage on the future.
He allows himself one illustration: The present situation presents the spec-
tacle of the breakdown of the whole philosophy of Nationalism, political,
racial and cultural (130). The philosophy of isolated national sovereignty
will no longer suffice. But just for that reason, neither will those remedies
which were then in the air. Arbitration treaties, international judicial coun-
cils, schemes of international disarmament, peace funds and peace move-
ments are all well in their way. But the situation calls for more radical think-
152 Chapter Seven
ing (13031). There is an unacknowledged depth and width of human in-
tercourse, and this needs to be applied without and within our national life.
As to the remedies just mentioned, an international judicial tribunal will
break in the end upon the principle of national sovereignty (131).
For Dewey, political, racial, and cultural nationalism will take on an in-
creasing prominence and urgency during the next three years. We find the
theme in Democracy and Education, published in 1916. Because it is rich in
the philosophy and practice of education, readers usually fail to notice the un-
derlying tension created by Deweys insight into the problem of nationalist
and statist politics. He asks, Is it possible for an educational system to be
conducted by a national state and yet the full social ends of the educative
process not be restricted, constrained, and corrupted? (Dewey, 1966: 97).
The problem is plain enough. As Plato knew, no polity can escape from the
demands of creating citizens, and no educational system can escape from the
fact that to be a citizen is to value and honor the distinct features of the polity.
In Gernan Philosophy and Politics, Dewey had both applauded and con-
demned the German system of education: Germany is the modern state
which provides the greatest facilities for general ideas to take effect through
social inculcation. Its system of education is adapted to that end (1415).
Surely, American schools had to make Americans. But what was an Ameri-
can? The solution presented itself. If we are talking about education in and
for a democratic society, then it is possible for an educational system to be
conducted by a national state without a corruption or restriction of the full
social ends of the educative process. While the if was a big one, Dewey
did not yet have any doubts that education in America was in and for a dem-
ocratic society, and that in this regard America was leading the way.
Democracy and Education introduced a critical Deweyan distinction, that
between democracy as a mode of associated living and democracy as a
form of government. He had little to say about the latter except to notice that
the two ideas went hand in hand. Education in a political democracy has as
its aim sustaining and extending democracy as a mode of associated living,
of conjoint communicated experience. As a way of life, democracy was
the extension in space of the number of individuals who participate in an in-
terest so that each has to refer his own action to that of others, and to consider
the action of others to give point and direction to his own (87).
There was an unnoticed difficulty. Given the increasing depth and width
of human intercourse, it would seem that democracy as a way of living
would present an increasingly difficultperhaps even intractableproblem.
This surely was the conclusion Lippmann had already come to. It would, in-
deed, be the basis of Lippmanns incisive analysis of the postwar American
polity. But in 1916, at least, Dewey seems not to have been in the least
American Democracy: A New Spirit in the World 153
disturbed. He noted that there was definitely a widening of the area of shared
concerns. He concluded, optimistically, that these would break down the
barriers of class, race and national territory. Moreover, such widening was
not the product of deliberation and conscious effort. On the contrary, it was
the result of the development of modes of manufacture and commerce,
travel, migration and intercommunication which flowed from the command
of science over natural energy (87). Like Lippmann, he saw that all the
winds of heaven blow through our land; or, to adopt Graham Wallass influ-
ential term, that there was now a Great Society which was international and
interdependent. For Dewey, as for Marx and Engels in the Communist Mani-
festo, if for different reasons, the implications of this were entirely hopeful.
We can, no doubt, instantly agree with Dewey that these forces were giv-
ing rise to problems whose solutions were increasingly intractable to local in-
strumentalities; but it was far from clear that these forces were in fact gener-
ating the appropriate instrumentalities for their own solution. As he came to
appreciate, the problem of democracy was to provide ways whereby prob-
lems could be recognized as shared concerns and to provide the means and
the instruments for dealing with them as shared. In 1916 he seems still to have
been a victim of an element of that same German philosophy which had vic-
timized Marx. Just as Marx had supposed that capitalist modes of production
would destroy national boundaries, make for international proletarian soli-
darity, and politicize workers, so Dewey seems to have thought that the ma-
chine age, once hooked to genuine American experimentalism, would pro-
pel democracy as a way of life.
10
The United States, forced to invent, had invented well. The idea that the
Old World was just thatoldhad always been a feature of American
thought, to be sure. But the new psychology, new experimental philosophy,
new nationalism, new democracy, new freedom, and new internationalism of-
fered a new promise. When America entered the war, Wilson and the war in-
tellectuals were ready to commit Americans to a fight for our democracy
and our civilization.
11
ARMED NEUTRALITY, PREPAREDNESS, AND WAR
The editors of The New Republic were democratic nationalists, not demo-
cratic socialists. But, as Forcey comments, to be a nationalist amidst the car-
nage that followed Serajevo [sic], . . . was no longer so easy as it had been in
the innocent days that gave birth to the new liberalism (Forcey, 1961: 221).
This was especially difficult, since it was hard for anyone to imagine why
America should have entered the war.
154 Chapter Seven
We cannot here review the difficulties on this score faced by the New Re-
public nationalists, except to notice that, to begin with, they probably did bet-
ter than most of the violently partisan press (Forcey, 1961: 231). They
ridiculed the pacifists, to be sure, and on this they got ample assistance from
Dewey. In the January 1916 New Republic, Dewey offered the classic prag-
matist response to pacifism: Until pacifism puts its faith in constructive, in-
ventive intelligence instead of its appeal to emotions and in exhortation, the
disparate unorganized forces of the world will continue to develop outbreaks
of violence (MW, X: 214). In any caseand more fundamentallythe is-
sue of whether force was justified depended on the consequences. If war can-
not be shown to be the most economical method of securing the results
which are desirable with a minimum of undesirable results, it marks waste
and loss (MW: 21415). But plainly, it might be so shown.
12
The editors also resisted Roosevelts shrill calls for preparedness, asking,
reasonably, Preparedness for What? In this they also got considerable sup-
port from Dewey, who wrote a series of essays against the idea that compul-
sory military service would overcome the admitted defects in our educa-
tional system. Indeed,
when Mr. Roosevelt writes with as much vehemence about national aid to vo-
cational education, national aid to wipe out illiteracy, and national aid for
evening and continuing schools for our immigrants, as he now writes in behalf
of military service, I for one shall take him more seriously as an authority on the
educational advantages of setting-up exercises, firing guns and living in camp
(MW: 186).
But most striking, perhaps, are the Orwellian terms which the men of the New
Republic helped to create and promote as they moved closer and closer to
militancy. They called for differential neutrality. Their constructive radi-
calism became constructive patriotism. With the sinking of the Lusitania,
they called for a new kind of war, armed neutrality, forgetting that they
had only recently been telling Americans who sailed on British ships that they
did so at their own risk.
13
It was now perfectly justifiable for the United
States to use defensive convoys, confiscate German assets, and intern its ship-
ping. Wilsons actions showed that he appreciated that the option was not to
do nothing. Similarly, the New Republic men had been ecstatic when Wilson
called for Peace without Victory, believing, with good cause, that Wilson
had got the idea from them (Forcey, 1961: 36568). The only question was
whether Wilson really understood Aggressive Pacifism. It turned out that
he did.
Historians remain in disagreement over the explanation of Americas entry
into the Great War: whether, as American schoolbooks have it, the United
American Democracy: A New Spirit in the World 155
States (by which they must(?) mean the President and the Congress)
was forced into war,
14
whether there were deep causes having to do
with securing imperial interests, or whether, as Randolph Bourne had sug-
gested, it was the result of failure of some distinct aspects of the American
Weltanschauung.
However, there are some facts upon which everyone can agree. For one, as
Morison writes, No citizen of a neutral state lost his life as a result of the
British blockage, and all neutral cargoes seized were paid at war prices. On
the other hand, U-boat warfare took a toll of some 200 [actually 118] Amer-
ican lives on the high seas while America was still neutral (Morison, 1965:
851). And it is surely the case that the infamous Zimmerman telegram
15
was
critical as regards Wilsons final decisionwhether as the last straw or the
perfect excuse. Still, it is hardly self-evident that the German proposal of a
German-Mexican alliance was good reason to send troops 3,000 miles across
the Atlantic to France.
Nor could there be any doubt that some Wall Street interests were served
by war, and that many of their spokesmen, such as Teddy Roosevelt and
Willard Straight, wanted war. Still, unless we assume that Wilson was a dupe
for these interests, more needs to be said.
16
But however this may be, although it is often supposed that in the 1916
campaign Wilson was the peace candidate, this is very far from being the
truth. The slogan He kept us out of war was part of the campaign, to be
sure; but not only was no promise ever made that Wilson would continue to
keep the United States out of the war, but the importance of the slogan has
been magnified by Republicans who, retrospectively, like to believe that they
were right all along and that Wilson had played a game of duplicity (Paxson,
1966, I: 347). After all, nearly everyone was for peace, motherhood, and ap-
ple pie. Even those who, like the editors of the Chicago Tribune, were vigor-
ous in their support of Teddy Roosevelt were saying that preparedness was
the only hope for peace.
DOMESTIC POLITICS AND AMERICAS ENTRY
INTO THE GREAT WAR
We need here to look, if only briefly, at American domestic politics. By the
time of the 1912 presidential campaign, the Republican Party, whose right to
rule had scarcely been questioned since the Civil War, had collapsed into
open schism. The result had been the election of Wilson as a minority presi-
dent over William Howard Taft and Teddy Roosevelts splinter Progressive
Party candidacy. Wilsons presidency had not satisfied the Progressives, and
156 Chapter Seven
the war had not made things any easier for Wilson. For one thing, ethnic pol-
itics had taken on entirely new dimensions.
The census of 1910 showed some 91,972,266 Americans of whom
9,827,763 were Afro-Americans. Politicians could safely ignore them. Of
the remaining 82,144,503, 32,413,723 were foreign-born or had a foreign-
born parent, and 10,984,614 had either been born in Germany or Austro-
Hungary or had a parent who hadthat is, around one in eight. But there
were also 4,505,360 who were Irish-born or of Irish parentage. Displeased
with Wilsons policy of differential neutrality, they joined a chorus of anti-
British sentiment, which grew louder after the unsuccessful Irish Rebellion
at Eastertime of 1916. Wilson had never been happy with the hyphenated
movement, and he probably did as much as anyone to give currency to the
term. In his widely quoted May 1914 remarks at the unveiling of a statue in
memory of a revolutionary hero, he said impatiently: Some Americans need
hyphens in their names because only part of them has come over. But when
the whole man has come over, heart and thought and all, the hyphen drops
of its own weight out of his name (Paxson, 1966, I: 205). In his Leader-
less Government address to the Virginia Bar Association, an address which,
with appropriate changes, he evidently repeated many times, he was dis-
tressingly frank: We have the immemorial practice of the English race it-
self, to which we belong. Nowhere else has the pure strain of the nation
which planted the colonies and made the independent government under
which we live been kept so without taint or mixture as it has been in Virginia,
and hitherto in all the South (Public Papers: 337). Of course, Americans of
less pure strain could find little to attract them in Roosevelt either, an atti-
tude then shared by the big-shots in the Republican Party who were not
about to forgive Roosevelts recent, disastrous bolt of the party. Nonetheless,
Roosevelts hopes were decidedly boosted by the vocalif minority
preparedness sentiment.
When the Republicans met for their convention, there were those who
counted on a stampede for Roosevelt. This group almost certainly wanted war
and knew that Roosevelt would not disappoint them. When the movement to
Roosevelt did not materialize, efforts to seal the schism led, on the fourth day,
to the nomination of Charles Evans Hughes, who at least seemed electable.
Roosevelts well-publicized dislike of him, along with his ancestry, made him
a plausible friend of the Germans. Moreover, since he had said nothing to in-
dicate that he leaned toward the cause of the Allies, the Irish might go along
as well. So might Catholics and others who were angry with Wilsons con-
fused interventions in the Mexican civil war and pacifists and militarists un-
happy with armed neutrality. More than that, he might appeal to the Pro-
gressives, the hyphens, and the nonhyphens. After all, Hughes had been
American Democracy: A New Spirit in the World 157
one of the craftsmen of the movement (Paxson, 1966, I: 342), Dewey, writing
in the New Republic, seems to have got it right: Were one to judge from the
style of campaign undertaken by the Republican managers, one would conclude
that there are no issues in the present campaignunless the business of ousting
Mr. Wilson from the Presidency be called an issue (MW, X: 252). As Dewey
saw, Hughess undiluted Americanism was but the mask for a contradic-
tory medley.
17
Nevertheless, this perfectly clear perception of the nature of
American party politics seems not to have disturbed Dewey. Or at least, it did
not disturb him enough to deter him from saying, I find myself, along with
many others who have not been especially enthusiastic in the past about Mr. Wil-
son, warming up to him more and more every day (X: 253).
Worth noting, the Socialists did not even have a convention. For them a
mail primary was sufficient. Senator Bob La Follette optimistically prophe-
sied, in April 1916, the day is coming when the people, who always pay the
full price, are going to have the final say over their own destinies. . . . They
who do the fighting will do their own deciding (Quoted in Paxson, I: 274).
Wilsons campaign was a combination of exploiting undiluted American-
ism and a belated, energetic shift to progressivism. Jeremy A. OLearys
American Truth Society had been saying, reasonably, that Wilsons neu-
trality was fraudulent. Knowing that the group had been cultivated by Count
von Bernstorff, the German ambassador, Wilsons response to OLeary was
brief: I would feel deeply mortified to have you or anybody like you vote for
me. Since you have access to many disloyal Americans and I have not, I will
ask you to convey this message to them (Quoted in Paxson, I: 350). But that
was still not the end of the matter. The Democratic National Committee dis-
covered that Hughes had been in conference with OLearys group. With
good effect on the campaign, they accused Hughes of being in secret alliance
with disloyal hyphens. On the other side, Wilson nominated the notoriously
pro-labor Louis Brandeis to the Supreme Court; and in the few closing weeks
of the congressional session, a raft of Progressive measures, stemming from
presidential initiative, got passed: the Federal Farm Loan Act, the creation of
the United States Tariff Commission, an important new labor bill restricting
child labor, and the Adamson Act, a novel piece of legislation which had been
the favorite of railroad labor. Still, Wilson won only barely. In the electoral
college, the victor needed 266 out of 531 votes. With California still out,
Hughes had 254 and Wilson 264. The thirteen California electoral votes made
the difference. Paxson comments: Indeed, with a well-placed smile Hughes
might have won the needed four votes in a thousand from the opposition,
nearly half of them Republican at heart, but they had been snubbed (Paxson,
I: 363). The fact that Governor Johnson of California had combined the non-
Democratic vote to win in that state makes this a convincing argument.
18
158 Chapter Seven
Nevertheless, it had been clear enough to Lippmann that Wilson would be
a war president. Steel reports a summer 1916 interview granted to him by
Wilson, then strenuously cultivating Progressive support. After almost two
hours on domestic questions and benevolent neutrality, the discussion
turned to war. Steel writes:
Wilson knew what Lippmann wanted to hear. Neutrality, benevolent or other-
wise, Wilson said, was becoming more difficult. Let me show you what I
mean, he added, and dramatically pulled out a cable from the embassy in Berlin
predicting that the Germans would resume unrestricted submarine warfare after
the American elections in November. Its a terrible thing to carry around with
me. The implication was clear. When the Germans sank the Sussex five months
earlier, Wilson had said that he would break relations if they resumed unre-
stricted submarine warfare. Now he had to either back down or go to war.
Lippmann hurried back to New York to meet Croly and Straight. Now
well have to face it, Lippmann told them. What were electing is a war
President,not for the man who kept us out of war. And weve got to make up
our minds whether we want to go through the war with Hughes or with Wilson
(Steel, 1980: 1067).
We shall never know, of course, whether Hughes, too, would have been
forced into the warany more than we can be sure about Wilsons true mo-
tivations and beliefs either prior to the election or up to his call for war. His-
torically, these are of little consequence. Far more important is the fact that
up to the day on which Wilson delivered his stirring war message to Con-
gress, 2 April 1917, few Americans could have found any reason to enter the
war in Europe. Wilson himself offered but one reason, and that one reason,
ironically, had been a gift of the Russian Provisional Government just one
month before: We desire, he declared, no conquest, no dominion. We
are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. . . . America is privi-
leged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth.
The world must be made safe for democracy.
As important, surely, is the fact that he decided that America should go to
war, and that he could have decided otherwise. But this is not a statement that
Wilson had free will. Rather, unlike the similar judgment by Thucydides in
reference to the Spartans, it is to say that he could have decided otherwise
without in any obvious way compromising the interests of the United
States. Of course, this claim may be contested. One might argue, for exam-
ple, that a victorious Germany would have been a threat to the United States
and to its interests. It is hard to know what sense to make of this sort of de-
fense, especially in light of the fact that Germany was defeated and Hitler had
even greater aspirations than the Kaiser!
American Democracy: A New Spirit in the World 159
The German High Command had blundered disastrously in believing that
America was not disposed to enter the war and that therefore it could renew the
submarine campaign with impunity.
19
This gave Wilson all the justification
or excuse?he needed. To be sure, America could have adopted a consistently
neutral stance, could have abided by the principles of a neutral country under
international law, marked her ships appropriately, and engaged only in shipping
that was pacific. Wilson knew that he was within his authority in protecting
American rights at sea, even if that meant abandoning a consistently neutral
posture and, thus, encouraging war. But he preferred not to act upon general
implication (quoted in Paxson, I: 399). Nonetheless, his request for an imme-
diate bill arming merchant ships was blocked in committee by La Follette. On
Wilsons view, a little group of willful men representing no opinion but their
own, have rendered the great Government of the United States helpless and
contemptible (quoted in Paxson, I: 401). Indeed, this same little group of
willful men had been doggedly demanding a national referendum on war be-
fore any further step toward war be taken. We can only guess what its outcome
might have been. But there is no doubt that the Congress supported Wilson: the
declaration passed 82 to 6 in the Senate and 373 to 50 in the House. With less
good reason than the German Social Democrats, these men were not going to
be parties to a posture of cowardice which would make the United States look
helpless and contemptible.
Finally, and not to be overlooked, it is by no means clear that they did the
right thing in endorsing Wilsons war policy. They could not know, of course,
the consequences of the American entry; nor can we make any sort of sensi-
ble judgment about the consequences of that war had they acted otherwise.
But surely it was as clear then as now, that the proffered reason for war was,
at best, highly dubious.
THE NEW REPUBLIC?
Dewey was instantly distressed by official and unofficial responses to the ex-
igencies of war. In December 1917 he addressed a group at DeWitt Clinton
High School in New York City. Three teachers had been charged with disloy-
alty and suspended. Dewey saw that it was no coincidence that the three had
been active in promoting the new Teachers Union. There had been no trial,
no opportunity to present evidence or weigh testimony. It was, said Dewey,
an inquisition. He offered that he was pro-Ally; but to be so, it was not nec-
essary to be in favor of establishing Prussianism in New York City (MW,
X: 159). Repression justified by war was not a novelty in the liberal democ-
160 Chapter Seven
racies and had not been so in America. What was new was a new capacity to
use repression, now coupled with a fantastic new ability to obliterate the dis-
tinction between information and propaganda. It is not clear whether at
this time Croly, Lippmann, Dewey, or indeed anyone, appreciated this or its
implications or how far it would go. But as the repression increased, so did
the protest that issued from these men, especially from Dewey. The Espi-
onage Acts (1917) and the Sedition Act (1918), aided by Justice Holmess fa-
mous articulation of a clear and present danger, provided the legal
ground for slapping a ten-year jail sentence on Eugene Debbs for an anti-war
speech and for the mass indictment of the leaders of the IWW and others
equally protected by due process. The editors of the Masses went on trial;
an issue of Oswald Garrisons Nation was suppressed; the Jewish Daily For-
ward was threatened; and Simon Patten and Charles Beard joined the list of
academics who lost their posts. The atmosphere of suspicion resulted in the
withdrawal of the subsidy that had kept Bournes The Seven Arts in print.
Even the New Republic came under government surveillance until Georg
Creel, the chief of President Wilsons new propaganda bureau, the Commit-
tee of Public Information, pointed out to federal agents that the magazine was
a supporter of the Administration!
20
In order to satisfy the need for an authoritative agency for the dis-
semination of facts about the war, the Committee of Public Information
(CPI) had been created seven days after the declaration of war. It had no
congressional authority and was primarily supported out of the Presidents
fund. Its efforts were monumental. Not only did Creels office release the
news, which meant that it had control over what Americans learned about
the war; but, as Creel said, there was no medium of appeal that we did not
employ: films, posters, cartoons, prepared speeches, and widely distrib-
uted pamphlets. A sample of their titles gives the flavor: How the War
Came [sic] to America, The War Message, [Wilsons speech before Con-
gress] and the Facts [sic] Behind It, Why Working Men [sic] Support the
War, and the Official Bulletin, a novel experiment in government journal-
ism. In his summary Paxson concludes that the Wilson doctrine was the
doctrine of his CPI. It was elaborated in the war of pamphlets and was ex-
plained out of the history of the United States and of the world. It
was rationalized as a reasonable outgrowth of United States experience. It
was grounded in the ideas implicit in the phrase, a world safe for democ-
racy. (Paxson, II: 48). Plenty of people saw the films, read these tracts,
and passed on what they had read. Still more were influenced by the CPI
effort at disseminating information. The pieces of printed matter and
presentations number in the millions.
American Democracy: A New Spirit in the World 161
Moreover, with the Government providing the example, private organiza-
tions, especially hate mills like the National Security League, could go to
work. Seeing traitors everywhere, their strident, irresponsible publications at-
tacked liberals as traitors, especially those with Teutonic names, at the same
time giving the CPI a benign, centrist, responsible look.
The February Revolution in Russia had made Wilsons war for democracy
plausible, but the Bolshevik Revolution now gave the defenders of reaction
wonderful new fuel. Because it was quite impossible to get any clear picture
of what was happening in Russia; because, since at least the Haymarket
bombing, American WASPs had associated socialism with foreigners, es-
pecially Slavs and Jews; because, in turn, these were terrorists; because the
German High Command and German Social Democrats had chimed in with
the threat of Bolshevism, it was easy for Americans to believe whatever
they were told about the Russian Revolution. Lippmann, who surely knew
this, could observe that the people are shivering in their boots over Bolshe-
vism, and they are more afraid of Lenin than they ever were of the Kaiser.
He concluded by noticing what may be a characteristic trait of American cul-
ture in this century: We seem to be the most frightened lot of victors that the
world ever saw (quoted by Steel: 156). Nor have those truths about Rus-
sian history been erased.
The Red scare had by then begun. The Palmer raids and the mass deporta-
tions of dangerous Americanswithout trialmade previous efforts at re-
pression seem sweet. Lippmann had confessed to Colonel Rouse that he had
no doctrinaire belief in free speech, but that he could not be sanguine over
the hysteria. Dewey, who had been on platforms with many of the radicals,
including the deported anarchists Emma Goldman, and Alexander Berkman,
responded, in 1920, along with Roger Baldwin, Norman Thomas, and
Clarence Darrow, by forming the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
Dewey had insisted that Goldmans reputation as a dangerous woman was
built up by a conjunction of yellow-journalism and ill-advised police raids.
The trial of Sacco and Vanzetti, in 1921, propelled Dewey to the conviction
that the ACLU was anything but sufficient, a discovery that would motivate
his thought from then on.
But there were other unintended consequences of the war. One was the re-
alization of at least the main features of the New Republic image of a nation-
alist liberalism. Perhaps Dewey was in the best position to see this clearly. In
a remarkable essay entitled What Are We Fighting For? of June 1918, he
spelled it out. The war had brought forward the more conscious and exten-
sive use of science for communal purposes. It had made it customary to uti-
lize collective knowledge and skill of scientific experts of all kinds, organiz-
ing them for community ends. This was, he concluded prophetically, the
162 Chapter Seven
one phase of Prussianism . . . which is likely permanently to remain (XI:
9899). The warfare state had laid the foundations for the new liberalism!
Still, Prussianism was hardly a democratic image.
Further consequences of the war were the formation of large political
groupings (MW, XI: 99) and domestic integration within each unit (XI:
101). But this too seemed to propel democracy. Production for profit had
been subordinated to production for use. On Deweys view, the war has
. . . afforded an immense object lesson as to the absence of democracy in most
important phases of our national life, while it has also brought into existence
arrangements for facilitating democratic integrated control (XI: 102). It did
not matter what you called this, state socialism, state capitalism, social-
ization, or something else. The fact of deeper import was the creation of
instrumentalities for enforcing the public interest in all the agencies of mo-
dem production and exchange (MW: 102). This was the key. At this time,
Dewey surely believed that the instrumentalities of representative govern-
ment were being extended and that they could do the job. But he was incred-
ibly vague on the possible dangers.
He did not deny that the absorption of the means of production and dis-
tribution by government and the replacement of the present corporate em-
ploying and directive forces by a bureaucracy of officials led to centralized
government. Moreover, so far as the consequences of war assume this form,
it supplies another illustration of the main thesis of Herbert Spencer that a
centralized government has been built up by war necessities and that such a
state is necessarily militaristic (XI: 104). Dewey did not even comment on
the idea that such a state is necessarily militaristic. He seemed satisfied to
point out merely that
in Great Britain and this country, and apparently to a considerable degree even
in centralized Germany, the measures taken for enforcing the subordination of
private activity to public need and service has been successful only because they
have enlisted the voluntary cooperation of associations which have been formed
on a non-political, non-governmental basis (XI: 104).
The workplace too was being democratized: The wage-earner is more likely
to be interested in using his newly discovered power to increase his own share
of control in an industry than he is in transferring that control over to govern-
ment officials (MW: 105). Still, these words, published just as the workers
and soldiers councils in Russia had begun to solidify and just before a work-
ers revolution had come to Germany seemed hardly true of America.
Indeed, Randolph Bournes appraisal of the situation was very much closer
to the truth. In a series of articles published between June and October 1917,
American Democracy: A New Spirit in the World 163
Bourne had offered an extraordinary criticism of the war intellectuals, and
especially of Deweys New Republic articles.
21
Bourne had noted that for
war intellectuals, democracy remains an unanalysed term, useful as a call
to battle, not as an intellectual tool, turning up fresh sod for the changing fu-
ture (Bourne, 1919: 123). He asked, rhetorically, Is it the political democ-
racy of a plutocratic America that we are fighting for, or is it the social de-
mocracy of the new Russia? Which do our rulers really fear more, the menace
of Imperial Germany, or the liberating influence of a socialist Russia?
(12324).
To those of us who have taken Deweys philosophy almost as our Amer-
ican religion, he noted that it never occurred that values could be subordi-
nated to technique. He agreed that the young men in Belgium, the officers
training corps, the young men being sucked into the councils of Washington
and into war organization everywhere have among them a definite element,
upon whom Dewey, as veteran philosopher, might well bestow a papal bless-
ing (128). Liberal and enlightened, they had absorbed the secret of scien-
tific method as applied to political organization. Creative intelligence was
indeed lined up in the service of war technique.
We were instrumentalities, he admitted; but we had our private utopias
so clearly before our minds that the means fell always into its place as con-
tributory. You must have your vision and you must have your technique. The
practical effect of Deweys philosophy has evidently been to develop the
sense of the latter at the expense of the former (13031).
Bourne was a pragmatist. He began his essay Twilight of Idols by evok-
ing James and concluded by again evoking him:
A more skeptical, malicious, desperate, ironical mood may actually be the sign
of more stirring life fermenting in America today. It may be a sign of hope. That
thirst for more of the intellectual war and laughter that we find Nietzsche call
us to may bring us satisfactions that optimism-haunted philosophies could never
bring. Malcontentedness may be the beginning of promise. That is why I evoked
the spirit of WIlliam James, with its gay passion for ideas, and its freedom of
speculation, when I felt the slightly pedestrian gait into which the war had
brought pragmatism. It is the creative desire more than the creative intelligence
that we shall need if we are ever to fly (13839).
Bournes remarks are, perhaps, a confession of his rude awakening, not so
much to the traps and ambiguities of instrumentalism, but to the nature of
those nebulous ideals which so many had presumed to be instantiated in
American democracy. It would take Dewey a bit longer before he would get
clear on the critical issues. But, contrary to many of his later critics and
epigones, get clear he eventually did.
164 Chapter Seven
TWO INQUIRIES
As the war labored to an end, Lippmann and then Dewey had the chance to
be engaged in projects, which put their pragmatic philosophies to work. Lipp-
manns project was an enormous success; Deweys was not.
Colonel House, Wilsons powerful man for all seasons, initiated Lipp-
manns project in September 1917. So secret that it had no name, the group
which formed its directorate decided on the Inquiry.
22
The name, a mem-
ber noted, would be blind to the general public, but would serve to identify
it among the initiated(Steel, 1980: 128). The directorate included Sidney
Meses, Houses brother-in-law and a philosopher who was then president of
City College, David Hunter Miller, a law partner of Houses son-in-law, Gor-
don Auchincloss, Columbia historian James T. Shotwell, and geographer Isa-
iah Bowman. Eventually it came to number some 150 academic experts, in-
cluding Samuel Eliot Morison; but Lippmann was its general secretary and,
as it turned out, its motivating spirit. Evidently, Dewey was tempted by
Lippmann to head a Moscow branch, but in the end decided against the plan.
It is interesting to speculate on how that experience might have affected his
political philosophy.
The mandate of the inquiry was broad. It was to consist not only of a study
of the facts but of quiet negotiation, especially among the neutrals, so that
America could enter the peace conference as the leader of the great coalition
of forces (129). It was just at this time that the Bolsheviks published the se-
cret treaties. Because Wilson feared, rightly, that these would adversely affect
American public opinionhow would Wilson maintain the fiction that the
war was not an unholy alliance of bribes and rewards?he tried, but failed,
to prevent their publication in America. In consequence, there was an urgency
in Houses early December invitation to Lippmann to come to his home. Wil-
son had to disconnect himself from the manifest imperialism of his Allied
partners and to set out a peace of his own. The terms had to purge and
pacify the Allied cause and, at the same time, be so tempting to the German
people that they would reject their own leadership.
This rather incredible mandate was brilliantly managed by Lippmann. On
December 22, 1917, Lippmann presented House with a document entitled
The War Aims and Peace Terms It Suggests. The president got it on Christ-
mas Day. On January 2, Lippmann responded to requests for clarification
with a revised memorandum. Wilson accepted the recommendations, adding
six points of his own, and on January 8 he assembled Congress to offer them
his historic Fourteen Points. Lippmann was rightly exultant.
Deweys inquiry, by contrast, bore absolutely no fruit. It had been initiated
in the summer of 1918 by Albert Barnes, a self-made millionaire who had
American Democracy: A New Spirit in the World 165
been a student in Deweys social philosophy course at Columbia. Barnes had
asked Dewey whether he would like to come down to Philadelphia and at-
tempt to put his social theory into practice, to address a large group of Pol-
ish immigrants on questions of national identity and democratic pluralism. It
turned out that Philadelphia was just the starting place for the-ranging in-
quiry with direct pertinence to the terms of the peace.
Dewey and his graduate students quickly discovered that Poles in America
like other groups, presumablywere caught in a set of intractable dilemmas. By
virtue of their understandable affection for their own language and traditions,
they quickly became isolated, reinforcing their otherness versus the mainstream.
This prevented them, as the Handlins remark, from getting their fair share of
[Americas] rewards.
23
At the same time, it made them vulnerable to exploita-
tion and manipulation. As Dewey said, We discovered much fear and intimida-
tion in a certain part of the Polish population, much manipulation and exploita-
tion in another part, together with much criticism of leaders who they were
nominally following with much enthusiasm (MW, XI: 26061). To get at this
complex web of fear, manipulation and exploitation, and contradictory responses
to leadership, however, Dewey saw that it would be necessary to extend the
study to European and international relations.
The problem was focused by a forthcoming convention in Detroit, which
aimed to unite the Poles in America behind the faction of Ignace
Paderewski, the famous pianist and prospective first president of the new
Polish Republic. The United States had already set in motion its plans to
make Paderewskis group, exiled in Paris, the official representatives of
the Polish people. But Dewey quickly came to believe that this faction
was not terribly interested in democracy, that Paderewski represented a
tiny minority in his homeland, and that the leaders of the KONthe
acronym (from the Polish) of the Congress (or Committee) of National De-
fense which opposed Paderewskihad a far broader democratic base. The
Poles in America were being manipulated with the full, if unintended, co-
operation of American media and officialdom.
As to the European aspect, Dewey saw that the struggle went way back into
history. It was between a party whose chief policies were monarchical, re-
actionary and clerical and a party which was radical, often revolutionary and
socialistic, anticlerical and republican (XI: 262). This, of course, was the
characteristic form of struggle going on in all those nations which, through
no fault of their populations, had achieved neither modern, industrial civi-
lization nor, in consequence, republican institutions.
Neither side was especially favorable to the cause of the Jews but the
record of the Conservative Party is much the more aggressively anti-
Semitic. Similarly, both parties share the tendency among all Poles to
166 Chapter Seven
exaggerate territorial claims based upon events of past history, some of them
as old as the twelfth century. Still, Dewey continued, the conservative party
is the more imperialist and extreme, being Pan-Polish. Since the Russian
revolution particulary, the radical party has moderated its claims (XI: 262).
As to the American aspect, there existed an alliance between Polish clergy,
opposed to and admittedly afraid of Americanization, and the conservative
European faction. The radical group, on the other hand, had suffered contin-
uous accusations of pro-Germanism, anarchism, Bolshevism, and antidemoc-
racy, all this despite the fact that one of their leaders, General Pilsudski, was
then in a German prison, and that the adherents of K.O.N. in this country
have been officially expelled from the socialist party (XI: 293)! Indeed,
based upon his personal knowledge of the leadership, Dewey asserted that he
could not speak too strongly of the malicious campaign of insinuation, mis-
representation and personal attack carried on against the leaders of the
K.O.N. (XI: 294).
The problem, or better, the set of problems, which Dewey had diagnosed,
were anything but unique in domestic and international American politics.
They have reoccurred steadily, from World War I to the present. (Compare,
more recently, immigrant Salvadoreans, Vietnamese, and Iraqis.) The official
response to Deweys efforts is perhaps typical. Dewey tried desperately to get
his detailed seventy-five-page report into the hands of pertinent officials, and
eventually to House himself. Yet, although he finally managed this, he did not
have Lippmanns success. This is hardly surprising, for Dewey said nothing
that House wanted to hear. Indeed, House was later to write: He
[Paderewski] came as the spokesman of an ancient people whose wrongs and
sorrows had stirred the sympathies of the entire world. This artist, patriot, and
statesman awakened the Congress to do justice to his native land, and sought
to help make a great dream come true (quoted in XI: 406).
The great dream come true is summarized by the conservative historian
Paul Johnson: Of the beneficiaries of Versailles, Poland [the Paderewski fac-
tion?] was the greediest and the most bellicose, emerging in 1921, after three
years of fighting, twice as big as had been expected at the Peace Conference.
The Polish government had, of course, exploited Western fears of Bolshevism
and interests in a cordon sanitaire around Russia. But now, with the largest
minorities problem in Europe, with a third of her population treated as vir-
tual aliens, it would not be long before she maintained an enormous police
force, plus a numerous but ill-equipped standing army to defend her vast fron-
tiers (Johnson, 1985: 39).
There is no doubt that Deweys inquiry was, for him, a profoundly educa-
tive experience, perhaps, indeed, the decisive turning point as regards his
hopes for a more democratic world. Lippmanns direct experience in Europe
American Democracy: A New Spirit in the World 167
as a propagandist for the Military Intelligence Bureau had already given him
all the education he needed when, in Public Opinion, he returned to the topic
of democracy. But before turning to this Lippmann-Dewey argument, we
should look at another Lippmann-Dewey argument, this one regarding the
League of Nations and the campaign to outlaw war.
THE LEAGUE AND THE OUTLAWRY OF WAR
As Lippmann quickly saw, the Versailles Peace was a sham, whatever he
might at one time have hoped. With Allied troops on their way to intervene in
Russia, the Fourteen Points was a vehicle for constructing a cordon sanitaire
around Bolshevik Russia. Weve got no business taking part in unauthorized
civil war in Russia. Weve got no business either in law or morals or human-
ity trying to starve European Russia in the interests of Kolchak, Denikin and
the White Finns (quoted in Steel, 1980: 164).
Central Europe was balkanized; but millions of people, including Germans,
were forcibly put under alien rule. The reparations imposed on Germany were
contrary to anything Lippmann had expected, and the League of Nations, al-
though it was not a defense pact, incredibly excluded an unarmed Germany. For
the life of me I cant see peace in this document, he wrote (quoted in Steel,
1980: 158). Lippmann got it exactly right: Unless the bridges to moderate rad-
icalism are maintained, anarchy will follow. It was not just that American pol-
icy was illegal and immoral; it was also counterproductive. Now Lippmann
found himself saying things that no one wanted to hear.
But surely he had to share the blame. Like Dewey, he had contributed to
Wilsons ideological war politics, now so successful that those who were still
able to distinguish between reality and ideology were suspectif not accused
of downright disloyalty. Nor has it become easier since then to distinguish re-
ality from ideology. After a hostile Senate committee caught the administra-
tion in a host of highly dubious claims and outright lies, the Treaty, with its
provision for the League, might still have passed had Wilson, its creator, been
willing to compromise. In any case, it is clear that Europe got a League which
it did not want, and that Wilson, who seemed to believe throughout that the
League was as he said it was, was thoroughly discredited.
In Deweys first comments on the League, he was enthusiastic about the
idea of permanent international government whose powers shall be even
more executive and international than judicial (MW, XI: 138). In another es-
say, of November 1918, he had argued that the League was not, as he under-
stood it, merely to enforce peace. This betrayed the same logic of the old
military-political system. What distinguishes Wilson from the other states-
168 Chapter Seven
men of the epoch, he said, was his prompt recognition that, given the con-
ditions of modern life, no adequate defense and protection of the interests of
peace can be found except in a policy based upon positive cooperation for in-
terests which are so universal as to be mutual (XI: 128). This was not merely
a shared interest in peace, of course. Rather, it involved interests which grew
out of common everyday necessities, and which operated to meet the com-
monplace needs of everyday life with respect to food, labor, securing raw ma-
terials . . . and so on. He continued, An organization which grew out of
wants and met them would, once formed, become so indispensable that
speedily no one could imagine: the world getting on without it (XI: 129).
The idea had been important to Dewey since at least his German Philosophy
and Politics.
Dewey was surely correct about the limits to the idea that peace could be
enforced. But, as with his remarks regarding shared concerns in Democracy
and Education, because global interdependence had accelerated and mecha-
nisms were needed to respond to the new problems generated by inter-
dependence, were we to suppose that the League proposed by Wilson would
be such an instrument? Might we not suppose that sovereignty would stand
equally in the way of what Dewey had hoped for?
In another essay of the same month, he linked the League to the New
Diplomacy and argued that the question was whether the end of the war will
reverse the relative eclipse of democracy, whether the efforts of a nation
that entered the war to make the world safe for democracy will effect a trans-
formation of sentimental valuations. In particular, the question was whether
we continue with an unconscious adoption of the older morale of honor and
defense of status, or whether the democratic movement has the intellectual
courage to assert the moral meaning of industry, exchange and reciprocal ser-
vice (MW, XI: 132).
For sometime, Dewey was relatively silent in judging which of the two
roads had been taken. But by March 1920, he had decided. There is no use
in blinking the non-democratic foreign policy of the democratic nations of
France and Great Britain. Did Dewey forget to include the United States
here, or was this simply taken granted? He continued, The Versailles Con-
ference was not an untoward exceptional incident. It was a revelation of
standing realities (MW, XII: 5). Diplomacy is still the home of the exclu-
siveness, the privacy, the unchecked love of power and prestige, and one may
say the stupidity, characteristic of every oligarchy. Democracy has not
touched it (XII: 7). The distinction between peoples and governments was
important, but by 1923, he could write that the League of Nations is not a
League of Nations but of governments, and of the governments whose poli-
cies played a part in bringing on the war and that have no wish to change their
American Democracy: A New Spirit in the World 169
policies (MW, XV: 7980). Like Lippmann, he seems not to have remem-
bered that he was once an important soldier in the army of writers whose
words had served to obscure these important facts.
His whole posture had indeed changed. One shift regarded the little
understoodand now forgottencampaign to outlaw war.
24
The idea de-
rived from Salmon O. Levinson, and by 1923, in addition to Dewey, it had
picked up the support of Senator William Borah, Republican leader of the as-
sault on the League and sponsor of Senate Resolution 411 (introduced Feb-
ruary 14, 1923). Borahs Resolution had three parts: a universal treaty mak-
ing war a public crime, the creation of a code of international law of
peace, and the creation of a judicial substitute for war . . . in the form of an
international court (XV: xvi). At first blush, the idea seems incredibly naive
and utopian. To most of its critics, it also seemed impossible that its support-
ers could at the same time be such adamant opponents of the League and the
Hague World Court. Yet the idea was neither naive nor utopian; nor were its
supporters inconsistent. Indeed, the main idea is startlingly reasonable.
There is no such thing as an illegal war except the kind of war that
appears to most persons the most justifiable from the moral standpoint
internal wars of liberation (XV: 62).
25
In denying the sovereignty of an im-
perial power or the authority of a regime, a group or a people must make
themselves outlaws. But for a sovereign state in its relation to other states,
war is the most authorized method of settling disputes between nations
which are intense, the ultima ratio of states (54).
Yet we insist that individuals in conflict face some sort of mechanism for
nonviolent resolution, that they engage in some kind of negotiation adjudica-
tion. The point has nothing to do with the justice or injustice of a particular
war. The point is that by not making war illegal, we utterly abandon the idea
of nonviolent resolution of conflict. Nor is Dewey saying that a law making
war illegal, signed by all, will end war. Even given the heavy sanctions avail-
able to lawmakers within states, crime does not cease. Nor is Dewey saying
that the international mechanisms to be created should include coercive sanc-
tions. The measure is logicalnot merely formally logical but substantially
logical in its adherence to the idea that war is a crime (XV: 94). The use of
police power against an individual is not at all like its use against a nation.
The latter is war, no matter what name you give it. . . . You cannot coerce an
entire nation save by war. To outlaw war and in the same measure to provide
for war is to guarantee the perpetuation of the war system (XV: 94). This, of
course, is one of the implications of Deweys old objection to the League, one
which also applies to the court at The Hague. Both lack coercive sanctions.
Yet, incredibly, if one thinks about it, they operate under an international law
which sanctions recourse to war (XV: 96).
170 Chapter Seven
Nor is this a form of pacifism. It is not claimed that force is never to be
used or that nations should disarm. On the contrary, they may well have to
fight a war. It is to say, by contrast, that unless and until war is outlawed and
there are alternative mechanisms for settling disputes, we will not have taken
one single stride toward lasting peace. Indeed, all steps taken within the
war system are useless; for it is not a step we need, it is a right-about-face
(XV: 98).
The choice, then, is between political methods based upon a system which
legalizes war, and political methods which have as their basic principle that war
is a crime, so that when diplomacy and conferences cannot reach agreement the
dispute shall be submitted to a court (XV: 11920). But isnt this naive?
Consider the possibilities. Suppose that we choose the second alternative
and outlaw war and create an international tribunal. Then there are three al-
ternatives: first, issues are settled by the open inquiry of the court; second,
one party (or both) refuses to assent to the courts decision; or third, one party
(or both) refuses to even submit the dispute to the court. In the latter case,
then, assuming that there are mechanisms for publicity, it should be clear to
the people of the world, including the people of the nations involved, that the
party has no case, that the regimes rationale for war cannot stand up to the
public scrutiny. The refusal to submit to publicity indicts them. In the second
case, the world, including the people of the recalcitrant regime, can judge
who, if anybody, has right on their side. Dewey argues that the proposition to
outlaw war has never been put to the people of the world. If they do not want
war, they will respond. Similarly, if such a mechanism existed, the people
could decide whether they wanted the particular war, which they were being
asked to fight.
At the risk of pedantry, I have tried to make the foregoing absolutely clear.
But Walter Lippmann, surely one of the most perceptive men around, never
seemed to quite grasp what Dewey and the others had in mind. This is strik-
ing. Dewey

s position is open to criticism, of course; but Lippmann

s criti-
cisms are utterly off the mark. He argued, for example, that Deweys proposal
was a plan to enforce peace (XV: 405), that it committed people to a code
so radical that it destroys the patriotic code which they are accustomed to as-
sociate with their security and their national destiny, that nations could
never
.
agree on the code to which they would be bound (XV: 40910), that
any test would require an abrogation of sovereignty (XV: 411), that the ad-
vocates propose to continue to legalize all kinds of wars (XV: 412), that the
idea calls for the elimination of diplomacy and other voluntary mechanisms
of adjudication (XV: 414), and more.
Dewey fielded these objections in two essays in response to Lippmanns
polemic, and in each instance it was easy to show that Lippmann had been
American Democracy: A New Spirit in the World 171
mistaken, that he had distorted the text or missed the point.
26
The main ob-
jection to Deweys plan, of course, was that no government, not even in the
democracies, was willing to submit its foreign policy aims to anybodys
scrutiny, still less the scrutiny of its own people. It seems fair to say that Lipp-
mann simply took this for granted.
There was nothing wrong with Deweys logic, even if his position made
him a holdout for the new diplomacy. Perhaps he did not see that in this
world, vested interests were, if anything, more powerful than they ever had
been; that, if anything, people would have less say with regard to war than
ever in the past. By 1923 there was urgency in his posture. In his 1927 re-
sponse to Lippmanns mature views on democracy, he converted urgency into
radical analysis.
PUBLIC OPINION AND DEMOCRACY
It is no exaggeration to say that Lippmanns Public Opinion is one of the most
important books in modern democratic theory. Published in 1922, it is a mas-
terful account of the epistemology, conditions, and mechanisms of mass-
opinion formation in a modern mass society. It also includes a brilliant chap-
ter that annihilates the individualists image of democracy, of the
self-centered man and the self-contained community. As Dewey saw, the
only disappointing aspect of the book was Lippmann

s constructive sugges-
tions. In Public Opinion Lippmann did not draw the deep implications of his
analysis for democracy, although they were clear enough. He did this in his
Phantom Public of 1925. And this is the book that prompted Dewey to his
full-dress response, in The Public and Its Problems of 1927.
Part I of Public Opinion sets the parameters: The World Outside and Pic-
tures in Our Heads. Lippmann does not doubt that there is a World outside,
and that in some sense it is knowable. People in modern mass societies have
direct acquaintance with their milieus; but even the latter involve the se-
lection, the rearrangement, the tracing of patterns upon, the stylizing of, what
William James called the random irradiations and resettlements of our
ideas (Lippmann, 1954: 16). Knowing is through the medium of fictions.
But fictions are not lies. A fiction is a representation of the environment
which is in lesser or greater degree made by man himself. It may have al-
most any degree of fidelity, depending on its construction. The persistent
difficulty, he concludes, is to secure maps on which their own need, or
someone elses need, has not sketched in the coast of Bohemia (16). The
problem is that most people believe that they have a good map without hav-
ing any way to know this.
27
The materials of public opinion are the pic-
172 Chapter Seven
tures inside the heads . . . of themselves, of others, of their needs, purposes,
and relations. Those pictures which are acted on by groups of people, or by
an individual acting in the name of groups, are Public Opinion with capital
letters (19).
In successive chapters, Lippmann develops the mechanisms for the forma-
tion of public opinion. Part II, Approaches to the World Outside, has chap-
ters on censorship and privacy, contact and opportunity, time and atten-
tion, and speed, words and clearness. Members of modern mass societies
are not polis-dwellers directly engaged in a world where the causes and con-
sequences of acting can be used to check ones maps. Nor have they the time
or the opportunity to range across the spaces of indirect involvement. Always
subject to mediation by others, from the childhood books put into their hands
to the representations of the Official Bulletin, they have no way to discrimi-
nate among the representations set before them or to judge whether some-
ones need has not sketched in the coast of Bohemia on their map. More-
over, it has now become possible, when necessary, to create something that
might almost be called one public opinion all over America (47).
Lippmann gives a devastating account of the CPI and its unwitting con-
spirators in manipulation. He argues that the Committee drew in a host of
willing helpers, from the Boy Scouts who delivered the presidents anno-
tated addresses to doorsteps to the 600,000 teachers who received the fort-
nightly periodicals and passed on the information contained therein to
their pupils to Mr. Hoovers far reaching propaganda about food to the
Red Cross, the YMCA, the Salvation Army, and other groups who carried
out the campaigns. Largely voluntary, the Committees effort was insidi-
ous, an achievement which far outran the hopes of the small group who sat
at its center.
In Part III, Lippmann illuminates the overwhelming role of stereotypes in
forming thought. We see a bad man. We see a dewy mom, a blushing
maiden, a sainted priest, a humorless Englishman, a dangerous Red, a care-
free bohemian, a lazy Hindu, a wily Oriental, a dreaming Slav, a volatile
Irishman, a greedy Jew, a 100% American (11920). Taken as an ordered en-
semble, they provide a picture of a possible world to which we are adapted.
No wonder, Lippmann concludes, that any disturbance of the stereotypes
seems like an attack upon the foundation of the universe (95). Indeed, when
these are reproduced ad nauseam, in authoritative histories, magazines, sto-
ries, cartoons, movies, radio shows, television productions and more,their
grip is irresistible.
Part IV is an insiders account of the role and limits of newspapers. They
deal with news, not truth. The news does not tell you how the seed is ger-
minating in the ground, but it may tell you when the first sprout breaks
American Democracy: A New Spirit in the World 173
through the surface (341). Moreover, where there is a good machinery of
public record, statistics on crime, stock prices, election returns, and the like,
the modem news service is excellent. But where information is spasmodi-
cally recorded, unclear, explanatory, contestable, or hidden because of cen-
sorship or a tradition of privacy, the service fails.
Worse, news and truth are not the same. The function of news is to sig-
nalize an event, the function of truth is to light the hidden facts, to set them
in relation with each other, and make a picture of reality on which men can
act (358). The Press is like the beam of a searchlight that moves restlessly
about. . . . Men cannot do the work of the world by this light alone. And, crit-
ically, the press cannot do otherwise. The newspaper is neither a church nor
a school. It is a business. Indeed, the citizen will pay for his telephone, his
railroad rides, his motor car, his entertainment. But he does not pay openly
for his news (322). Unreported scandals by dry-goods merchants who ad-
vertise are not the problem. The real problem is that the readers of a news-
paper, unaccustomed to paying the costs of newsgathering, can be capitalized
only by turning them into circulation that can be sold to manufacturers and
merchants (324) Lippmann neatly summarized the point. He wrote: To get
advertisers [a paper] must get readers. To get readers it must defer to their
own experiences and prejudices as setting the standard; it must adapt itself to
sell newspapers (341). Dewey thought that Lippmann had given up too
quickly. But the problem is not the immorality of editors or publishers. It is
structural, a self-reproducing, closed, causal loop. Indeed, it may be a loop,
which is well nigh impossible to break!
Lippmann illustrates the mechanisms of the making of a common will
with a case study of the building of the Wilsonian picture of the Great War.
It joins all the previous themes and deserves a full airing here. We must
settle, however, for only its flavor. Well before the CPI geared up and well
before Wilsons dramatic congressional speech, the Republican candidate
Hughes unwittingly contributed. At the critical moment of the campaign of
1916 he did what was expected of him. He played politics. His first speech
set the tone. Lippmann summarizes it thus: On the non-contentious record,
the detail is overwhelming; on the issue everything is cloudy (210). What
cannot be compromised must be obliterated, when there is a question on
which we cannot all hope to get together, let us pretend that it does not ex-
ist (201). With regard to Wilson, the experiment of the Fourteen Points,
addressed to all the governments, allied, enemy, neutral, and to all the peo-
ples, would have been impossible without cable, radio, telegraph and
daily press (207). And there was the opportunity. By the end of 1917, the
earlier symbols of the war had become hackneyed, and had lost their power
to unify. Beneath the surface a wide schism was opening in each Allied
174 Chapter Seven
country (209). Moreover, the whole Allied cause had been put on the de-
fensive by the refusal to participate in Brest-Litovsk (210). Wilson filled
the gap. But, of course, the Fourteen Points served precisely because no
one risked a discussion. Indeed, on pain of exposing their roles, they could
not. The phrases, so pregnant with the underlying conflicts of the civilized
world, were accepted. They stood for opposing ideas, but they evoked a
common emotion (215).
Lippmann then turns to democracy. The never true, fanciful, democratic
image of the self-centered individual autonomously and directly con-
fronting the world as it makes no sense. Nor does the idea that the commu-
nity is self-contained, and that, accordingly, there is no unseen environ-
ment which escapes everyones direct and certain knowledge. We are not
polis-dwellers. We are a mass.
Yet Lippmann does not for a second pretend that the Founding Fathers
were democrats, mystical or otherwise. On the contrary, when they went to
Philadelphia in May 1787, ostensibly to revise the Articles of Confederation,
they were really in full reaction against the fundamental premise of Eigh-
teenth Century democracy (277). They were determined to offset as far as
they could the ideal of self-governing communities in self-contained envi-
ronments. The problem, as they saw it, was to restore government as against
democracy (278). To be sure, the American people came to believe that
their Constitution was a democratic instrument, and treated it as such. More-
over, they owe that fiction to the victory of Thomas Jefferson, and a great
conservative fiction it has been. . . . It is a fair guess that if everyone had al-
ways regarded the Constitution as did the authors of it, the Constitution would
have been violently overthrown, because loyalty to the Constitution and loy-
alty to democracy would have seemed incompatible (284). (See Manicas,
1989, Chapters 6, 7, and 8.)
What then is the upshot? What is the solution? One might guess here that
Lippmann believes that all is well, on the grounds that, mythology notwith-
standing, the people do not rule anyway. Representatives rule, and surely they
have good maps. But Lippmann thinks otherwise. Everywhere in the world,
he says, representative bodies are discredited. And there is a good reason: A
congress of representatives is essentially a group of blind men in a vast un-
known world (288). Indeed, for Lippmann, one of the preconditions of a
strong parliament can never be satisfied: There is no systematic, adequate,
and authorized way for Congress to know what is going on in the world. The
president tells Congress what he chooses to tell it (289).
Recurring now to his earlier views, he concludes that this is why the pres-
tige of presidents has grown in modern democracies. He seems to throw a
bouquet to the Congress, but it ends up being more like a crumb. He writes,
American Democracy: A New Spirit in the World 175
There is no need to question the value of expressing local opinions and ex-
changing them. Accordingly, Congress has a great value as the market-
place of a continental nation (288). But since the president, presiding over
a vast collection of bureaus and their agents, which report as well as act,
frames and directs policy, the congressional marketplace is effectively the
congressional talking shop!
Although it would appear that Lippmann did not know what Max Weber
had recently said on the subject, he has further limited the capacities of a rep-
resentative body and, without any apparent fear of the consequences, has cel-
ebrated the singular importance of leadership in the modern mass state. As an
American, he could still have special faith in experts. Predictably, this was the
entering wedge which allowed him to join knowledge and power.
As Dewey and the pragmatists had been saying all along, the problem of
the modern state was the problem of organized intelligence. Lippmann,
having forgotten his William James, now gives an unabashed elitist, techno-
cratic version of this. Gradually . . . the more enlightened directing minds
have called in experts who were trained, or had trained themselves, to make
parts of this Great Society intelligible to those who manage it (370). Though
these enlightened directing minds knew that they needed help, they were
slow to call in the social scientist (371). Lippmann hopes that the lesson has
been learned. What is needed is presidential leadership responsive to the best
of social scientific knowledge!
28
Lippmann ended Public Opinion by referring to Platos parable of the ship
at sea. In the first great encounter between reason and politics, the strategy
of reason was to retire in anger, leaving the world to Machiavelli (1954:
412). Whenever one makes an appeal to reason in politics, the parable recurs.
But Lippmanns answer is not the one just given. His answer is to combine
Plato and Machiavelli: Even if you assume with Plato that the true pilot
knows what is best for the ship, you have to recall that he is not so easy to
recognize, and that uncertainty leaves a large part of the crew unconvinced,
(413). Worse, during a crisis at sea there is no time to make each sailor an
expert judge of experts.
It would be altogether academic, then, to tell the pilot that the true remedy is,
for example, an education that will endow sailors with a better sense of evi-
dence. . . . In the crisis, the only advice is to use a gun, or make a speech, utter
a stirring slogan, offer a compromise, employ any quick means available to
quell the mutiny, the sense of evidence being what it is.
29
Indeed. By the time of the Phantom Public, Lippmann had groped his way to
a clearly articulated, novel conception of democracy. He could now insist that
the democratic ideal is a false ideal because it is unattainable, bad only in the
176 Chapter Seven
sense that it is bad for a fat man to try to be a ballet dancer (39). Things are
too complicated, too changing, too obscure, and too difficult; and ordinary
people simply have no time to get the information they need in order to make
intelligent judgments. Even if each person is equipped for 1925, this will not
equip him to master American problems ten years later. That is why the
usual appeal to education as the remedy for the incompetence of democracy
is so barren (26).
The individual man does not have opinions on all public affairs. He does not
know how to direct public affairs. He does not know what is happening, why it
is happening, what ought to happen. I cannot imagine how he could know, and
there is not the least reason for thinking, as mystical democrats have thought,
that the compounding of individual ignorances in masses of people can produce
a continuing directing voice in public affairs (39).
What, then, is democracy?
To support the Ins when things are going well; to support the Outs when they
seem to be going badly, this, in spite of all that has been said about tweedledum
and tweedledee, is the essence of popular government. Even the most intelligent
large public of which we have any experience must determine finally who shall
wield the organized power of the state, its army and its police, by a choice be-
tween Ins and Outs (126).
30
But is there, then, any important difference between democracy and dictator-
ship? A community where there is no choice [between Ins and Outs] does
not have popular government. It is subject to some form of dictatorship or it
is ruled by the intrigues of the politicians in the lobbies (126).
THE PUBLIC AND ITS PROBLEMS
Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee did not satisfy Dewey. Eleven incredible
years had separated Democracy and Education from The Public and Its Prob-
lems, Deweys direct response to Lippmann and almost certainly the best
twentieth- century defense of the idea of democracy. The distinction between
democracy as a way of living and democracy as a form of government re-
mained. However, not only had Dewey developed a critique of democracy as
a form of government, but, aided and abetted by Lippmann, he had come to
see that democracy as a way of life was not being fostered by the new inter-
dependencies and the new capacities of technological society. On the con-
trary, democracy as a mode of associated living was being profoundly under-
mined by these forces. Since the problem was deep, Dewey was driven to a
American Democracy: A New Spirit in the World 177
radical solution. Indeed, as Chapter 9, argues, Deweys version of democracy
is so strong that it bears little comparison to the very weak forms of what is
now called democracy. Dewey did not give up the simple and fundamental
idea that democracy requires that interdependent individuals must actually
participate in decisions that affect them all. Indeed, here comparison is best
made to some versions of anarchism (Chapter 8) and to the version of social-
ism sketched in the writings of Marx (Chapter 9). In sum, Dewey saw that he
had erred in supposing that the institutions created in the American Founding
were adequate to the new property relations, the new forms of commerce and
industry. These had indeed brought about the forms of democratic govern-
mentgeneral suffrage and executives and legislators chosen by majority
votebut these same forces have thrown huge barriers in the way of the re-
alization of democratic publics. Woodrow Wilsons new age of human re-
lationships has no political agencies worthy of it (Dewey, 1954: 109).
Lippmanns analysis of the mechanisms of the formation of public opinion
was surely not wrong; but in describing the public as a phantom, he drew
the wrong conclusions. As Dewey had it, The democratic public is inchoate
and unorganized; it is lost, eclipsed, confused, and bewildered.
There is a Great Society, but organized into a war system of states, individu-
als, who are impersonally dependent, commodified, alienated, and disem-
powered, are prevented from identifying themselves as members of publics:
Where extensive, enduring, intricate and serious indirect consequences of
the conjoint activity of comparatively few persons traverse the globe, the ab-
sence of publics is a catastrophe. Surely the Great War is a convincing re-
minder of the meaning of the Great Society (128).
The problem admitted no easy solutions; for surely it did not involve per-
fecting the institutions of political democracy. The old saying that the cure
for the ills of democracy is more democracy is not apt if it means that the evils
may be remedied by introducing more machinery of the same kind as that
which already exists, or by refining or perfecting that machinery (1954:
144). The problem was much deeper and concerned the disintegration of the
conditions for democracy as a way of life: the incapacity of interdependent
people even to perceive the consequences of combined action, still less to
perceive shared goods and to act on them.
Dewey is at pains to emphasize the role of knowledge and participation in
the constitution of democratic community. Although as individuals we are in-
terdependent, there is at present no way for the countless Is to become
we. Moreover, as Rousseau and then Marx had discerned, interdepen-
dence provides just the situation which makes it possible and worthwhile for
the stronger and abler to exploit others for their own ends, to keep others in a
state of subjection where they can be utilized as animated tools (115).
178 Chapter Seven
Community requires both communication and knowledge; but Lippmann
and the technocrats failed to realize that the kind of knowledge which is the
prime condition of a democratically organized public is a kind of knowledge
and insight which does not yet exist (166: my emphasis). For Dewey, such
knowledge is knowledge of the causes and consequences of activity; but it is
knowledge which funds experience by transforming needs and wants into
mutually understood ends, knowledge which can be used in the conscious di-
rection of conjoint activity.
War is surely the clearest case. It takes the combined energies of many,
and the sufferings of many, many more; but unless there is someonethe
philosopher-kingwho knows what all the rest cannot know, they have a
rightful claim to the requisite information and to being parties to the decision.
It is one thing to argue that the people lack the knowledge they need to make
a decision, quite another to argue that they cannot have it. In rejecting the
democratic ideal as a false ideal, Lippmann, like so many before and after
him, takes everything as it is and offers us, dangerously and naively, an un-
accountable technocracy. By contrast, Dewey refuses things as they are. He
is a democrat, and his vision is immense. Assuming that
The Great Society is to become a Great Community; a society in which the ever-
expanding and intricately ramifying consequences of associated activities shall
be known in the full sense of the word. . . . The highest and most difficult kind
of inquiry and subtle, delicate, vivid, and responsive art of communication must
take possession of the physical machinery of transmission and circulation and
breathe life into it. When the machine age has thus perfected its machinery it
will be a means of life and not its despotic master. Democracy will come into its
own, for democracy is the name for a life of free and enriching communion. It
had its seer in Walt Whitman. It will have its consummation when free social in-
quiry is dissolubly wedded to the art of full and moving communication (184).
This vision is Jeffersonian and cosmopolitan.
If today it seems utopian in a vicious sense, it is worth remembering that
not long ago, it seemed not only possible, but imminent! On the other hand,
Dewey remained hopeful that people could find one another and act for them-
selves. The Soviet Union provided a fatal test.
THE SOVIET UNION: DEWEY AND LIPPMANN
The year after the publication of The Public and Its Problems, Dewey visited
the Soviet Union. In a series of six articles published in the New Republic, he
offered his impressions (LW, Vol. 3). In the first, Leningrad Gives the Clue,
American Democracy: A New Spirit in the World 179
in terms reminiscent of Tocqueville, he wrote that he was inclined to think that
not only the present state of Communism (that of nonexistence in any literal
sense), but even its future is of less account than is the fact of this achieved rev-
olution of heart and mind, this liberation of a people to consciousness of them-
selves as a determining power in the shaping of their ultimate fate (204). The
spirit of democracy remained irresistible. Here, as throughout these essays,
Dewey notes right away that, given conventional beliefs about Bolshevism and
Bolshevik Russia, what he says may seem absurd.
In the second essay, ACountry in a State of Flux, he insists that anything
said about Russia must be dated, since Russia was, again, rapidly undergoing
change. From the World War, the blockade and the civil war, the govern-
ment did practically take over the management of co-operatives, even
while, as he remarks parenthetically, the legal forms of the cooperatives were
jealousy guarded. But, he reports, this state of affairs no longer exists: on
the contrary, the free and democratically conducted cooperative movement
has assumed a new vitalitysubject, of course, to control of prices by the
State (20910).
In the third, A New World in the Making, he writes of the sense of en-
ergy and vigor released by the Revolution . . . a sense of the planned con-
structive endeavor which the new regime is giving this liberated energy; and
he says, I certainly was not prepared for what I saw; it came as a shock
(217). And in his concluding essay, The Great Experiment and the Future,
he sees an experiment with two purposes:
The first and more immediate aim is to see whether human beings can have such
guarantees of security against want, illness, old age, and for health, recreation,
reasonable degree of material ease and comfort that they will not have to strug-
gle for purely personal acquisition and accumulation, without, in short, being
forced to undergo the strain of competitive struggle for personal profit. In its ul-
terior reaches, it is an experiment to discover whether the familiar democratic
idealsfamiliar in words, at leastof liberty, equality and brotherhood will not
be most completely realized in a social regime based on voluntary cooperation,
on conjoint workers control and management of industry, with an accompany-
ing abolition of private property as a fixed institutiona somewhat different
matter, of course, than the abolition of private possessions as such (244).
Dewey must have known that the Western democracies had played no
small role at a critical moment in 1918 in derailing the experiment. He had
gone to Russia almost indifferent to this. Now in language as strong as he can
find, he expressed his altered perception: I came away with the feeling that
the maintenance of barriers that prevent intercourse, knowledge and under-
standing is close to a crime against humanity (249).
180 Chapter Seven
In 1933, Lippmann also commented on the future of the Soviet Union. If
Deweys hopes for democracy were crushed by the experience of the Soviet
Union, Lippmanns understanding of this failure has perhaps not been sur-
passed. For Lippmann, while the Bolsheviks made errors, the existence of
powerful enemies was the decisive fact:
This is, I believe, a crucial point in any and every effort to understand the in-
wardness of the communist regime. The circumstance which compelled
Lenin to depart from the Marxian idea of controlling the economy organized
by capitalists, and to adopt the idea of organizing a new economy, was the
civil and international war which broke out in July 1918 and lasted until No-
vember 1920.
The proof is to be found in the fact that the two Five-Year Plans have had as
their primary objective the creation of heavy industries in the strategically in-
vulnerable part of Russia, and that to finance this industrial development the
Russian people have been subjected to years of forced privation. . . .
31
Of course, people are more afraid of Lenin than they ever were of the
Kaiser (quoted by Steel, 1980: 156). And, of course, as he had also so pow-
erfully argued, it had become easy to provide people maps, which satisfied
somebody elses need.
NOTES
1. Unless otherwise indicated, citations from Dewey are from John Dewey: The
Collected Works, Ann Boydston (ed.) (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illi-
nois University Press, 19761983), cited by volume and page numbers in parentheses
in the text.
2. The foregoing draws on Ronald Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Cen-
tury, Chapters 6 and 7, and Charles Forcey, The Crossroads of Liberalism: Cro/y,
Weyl, Lippmann and the Progressive Era, 19001925 (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1961), Chapter 5. The New Republic was to be radical without being socialis-
tic. How radical is arguable, of course. The magazine ran a deficit, except toward the
end of the war, when it was selling more than 40,000 copies. For four years, the
Straight subsidy ran to $100,000 per year.
3. This is the title of an oft-given speech and essay. Aversion may be found in Ray
Stannard Baker and William E. Dodd (eds.), The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson
(New York: Harper and Row, 1925). See also Wilsons very influential Congressional
Government: A Study in American Politics (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1885), which,
by 1900, was in its fifteenth edition; and his later Constitutional Government in the
United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1908). These are cited in the
text respectively as Leaderless Government, Congressional Government, and Con-
stitutional Government.
American Democracy: A New Spirit in the World 181
According to Wilson, we have in this country . . . no real leadership; because no
man is allowed to direct the course of Congress, and there is no way of governing the
country save through Congress which is supreme (ibid. 205).
Jeffrey K. Tulis has given an excellent account of Wilsons transformation of the
presidency. See his The Rhetorical Presidency (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1987). The Great War gave Wilson the chance to bring to realization his idea
that the systemic difficulties of mechanical government could be overcome by a
president who had the capacity to form mass opinion. See below.
4. The idea of the leader as interpreter has a distinguished German history. It
runs from Wilhelm von Humboldt to Hegel, Ranke, Droysen, Treitschke, Dilthey, and
Meinecke. The fundamental premise is well expressed by Ranke: No state ever ex-
isted without a spiritual basis and spiritual content. In power itself a spiritual essence
manifests itself. An original genius, which has a life of its own, fulfills conditions
more or less peculiar to itself. By means of interpretation, the historian discerns
this genius and thereby makes history intelligible; and the leader (Der Fhrer) who
expresses it becomes, as for Hegel, a World-Historical Individual. I have dis-
cussed these remarkable notions in my A History and Philosophy of the Social Sci-
ence: 8696, 11724.
On General von Bernhardis use of these ideas, see below. We do not need to be re-
minded here that these ideas also had a remarkable future in fascist and Nazi ideol-
ogy. See, e.g., Benito Mussolini, Fascism: Doctrine and Institutions (Rome: Ardita,
1935).
5. David Hollinger properly insists that James had an importantly distinct notion
of science and its relation to culture, a notion thoroughly grasped by Lippmann. See
Hollingers Science and Anarchy: Walter Lippmanns Drift and Mastery, American
Quarterly (1977), and idem William James and the Culture of Inquiry, Michigan
Quarterly Review (1981), both repr. in Hollinger, In the American Province (Bloom-
ington: Indiana University Press, 1985).
6. Reed and Lippmann, friends since Harvard, had been part of a group which had re-
cently put on a Madison Square pageant dramatizing the situation of striking IWWsilk-
workers in Paterson, New Jersey. But in Drift and Mastery, Lippmann had applauded
conservative unions and condemned the IWWas preferring revolt to solidarity and,
in practice, being ready to destroy a union for the sake of militancy (p. 62).
7. The 1908 Ethics, a collaboration with James H. Tufts, contains much social
philosophy and sensible social philosophy at that. Still, these parts were Tuftss con-
tribution. See my discussion, Chapter 10.
8. Dewey seems to have liked Marxs little joke which he cites in a note attached
to Hegels famous reference to the bird of Minerva which takes its flight only at the
close of day: Marx said of the historic schools of politics, law and economics that
to them, as Jehovah to Moses at Mt. Sinai, the divine showed but its posterior side
(ibid.: 110)!
9. The text is worth calling to the attention of critics of Dewey who say that
Deweys experimentalism kept him from insisting on the need for an inclusive plan.
The idea stayed with him throughout. But, like his associates at the New Republic, he
182 Chapter Seven
was no socialistat least until later. Accordingly, he waffled regarding the key fea-
tures of a constructive plan.
10. Dewey was reluctant to refer to the capitalist epoch by its name, preferring in-
stead machine age, industrial order, new forms of commerce and industry, and
so forth. This had some severe consequences, especially after his radical turn. See
Chapter 9.
11. For the early period in American culture, see Sacvan Berkovitch, The Ameri-
can Jeremiad (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978).
12. See also Deweys April 1916 essay for The International Journal of Ethics,
Force and Coercion (Middle Works, X: 24451). In terms of Deweys altogether
sensible moral posture, the pacifist case against World War I, of course, was much
stronger than it was against World War II.
13. In June 1915, the issue had brought about the resignation from Wilsons Cab-
inet of Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan. Bryan had wanted the United
States to bring all disputes between it and the thirty countries with which it had
treaties before an international commission. He wondered, moreover: Why should
an American citizen be permitted to involve the country in war by travelling upon a
belligerent ship when he knows that the ship will pass through a danger zone? Fi-
nally, he could not understand how American passenger ships were permitted to carry
cargoes of ammunition, a policy that plainly and provocatively threatened the ships
and encouraged war. Wilson would not submit the issue to impartial inquiry; nor
would he disclaim responsibility for the precipitous actions of private citizens. See
Bryans Letter of Resignation, in S. Cohen (ed.), Reform, War and Reaction:
19121932 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1972): 58.
14. Forcey, Crossroads: 26568. The conventional opinion regarding the Ameri-
can entry is ably represented by Samuel Eliot Morison, The Oxford History of the
American People: 85156. See also Frederic L. Paxson, American Democracy and the
World War, Three Volumes (repr. New York: Cooper Square, 1966).
15. In January 1917 Arthur Zimmermann, the German Foreign Minister, had sent
a telegram to Mexican president Carranza which had been intercepted by British in-
telligence. It read (in part):
We intend to begin unrestricted submarine warfare on the first of February. We shall en-
deavor in spite of this to keep the United States neutral. In the event of this not succeed-
ing, we make Mexico a proposal of an alliance on the following basis: make war together,
make peace together, generous financial support, and an understanding on our part that
Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.
Given the circumstances, the idea was hardly shocking. Not only was the United
States arming ships that carried munitions to Britain; but also if the United States were
to be in a full-scale war with Germany, then Germany would obviously hope for all
the help she could get. For anyone wanting war, of course, the note was a gift from
heaven. Wilson released it on 28 February and in April received a vote in favor of war.
See below.
American Democracy: A New Spirit in the World 183
16. It is certainly true that American foreign policy was imperialist. It had been so
from the beginning. But its imperialist designs had been confined to the Western
Hemisphere and, more recently, to the Pacific.
17. Ronald Steel quotes a spleen-filled passage from Lippmanns report of the
Republican convention. A piece of this gives the flavor:
I think that there were fifteen nominations plus the secondary orations. It was a nightmare,
a witches dance of idiocy and adult hypocrisy. . . . The incredible sordidness of the con-
vention passes all description. It was a gathering of insanitary callous men who blas-
phemed patriotism, made a mockery of Republican government and filled the air with sod-
den and scheming stupidity (Steele: 103).
Lippmann gives a brilliant analysis of Hughess speech in his Public Opinion. See
below.
18. The foregoing is influenced by Walter Karp, even though it departs from his ac-
count. See Walter Karp, The Politics of War: The Story of Two Wars Which Altered For-
ever the Political Life of the American Republic (18901920) (New York: Harper
Colophon, 1980). Karp argues: If the interests of the country or even the desire to win
the elections had shaped the policy of the Republican Party leaders, Wilsons diplomacy
would have provided a political target impossible to miss (216). No doubt it is true that
for the Republicans, straightforward warmongering was out of the question. It would
have brought not war, but political disaster to the agitators (220). Wilsons diplomacy,
he writes, had opened up the prospect for war, and war was what the Republican oli-
garchy wanted and needed (21617). But they wanted war to undo the deep damage
of the preceding ten years. As Bourne saw, they wanted war . . . because they saw in
war the opportunity to become the great captains of an industrial war machine and part-
ners, once again, in the governance of the country (219).
19. Commentators agree that the German High Command were completely confi-
dent that the U.S. government would not confound its plans, and that even if it chose
to do so, America would be unable to raise, train, and send much of a force. See Pax-
son, American Democracy, I: 394, and Fritz Fischer, Germanys War Aims in the First
World War: 307. These views were very much the product of German thinking about
the war-making capacity of democracies!
20. Since exclusion from the mails was near-equivalent for silencing, the Espi-
onage and Trading-with-the-Enemy Acts permitted Postmaster-General Burleson to
repress by administrative fiat (Paxson, American Democracy, II: 286). Not only did
second-class mail come under his autonomous purview, but he had the power to ex-
amine private correspondence as well. Even before the war had begun, the Attorney
General had developed a vast network of agents, law-enforcement officers, and vol-
untary coadjutors, who persistently prosecuted complaints, sometimes malicious,
sometimes hysterical, against accused saboteurs, and traitors. The Sedition Act
prescribed language that was disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive. It did not
take many successful prosecutions before Americans got the idea.
It is still very much worth reading George Creels enthusiastic How We Advertised
America (New York: Harper and Row, 1920).
184 Chapter Seven
21. Randolph Bourne, Untimely Papers (New York: Huebsch, 1919). These beau-
tiful essays, so Jamesianand Sartrean!in style and thrust, have been too soon for-
gotten. Page references are given in the text in parentheses.
22. See Lawrence E. Gelfand, The Inquiry: American Preparations for Peace,
19171919 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1963).
23. Dewey, Middle Works, vol. XI, contains the full materials on Deweys study of
Polish conditions, including a valuable note, presumably by Lillian and Oscar Han-
dlin, who introduce the volume.
24. Middle Works, vol. XV, contains all Deweys essays on the campaign to outlaw
war, along with Walter Lippmanns polemical rebuttal to Levinson and Dewey. Carl
Cohens introduction to the volume is also most useful.
25. After World War II, the United Nations made both war and imperialism illegal.
In terms of the UN code, wars of national liberation are the only legal wars. The up-
shot, not foreseen by Dewey and Levinson, was that thereafter there would be no de-
clared wars, only police actions sent to suppress national liberation movements!
26. See Lippmanns The Outlawry of War (XV: 40417) and Deweys rejoin-
ders: What Outlawry of War Is Not (XV: 11521) and War and a Code of Law
(XV: 12227). Sovereignty is not denied, since the state will decide whether to sub-
mit its claims and whether to abide by the judgment of the court. No third party ex-
ists to enforce decisions. No complicated code is required beyond the ordinary, vague
conventions governing international law. The plan hardly denies that diplomacy is
necessary for maintaining peace.
27. Dewey was later to make the point vividly:
Schooling in literacy is no substitute for the dispositions which were formerly provided by
direct experience of an educative quality. The void created by lack of relevant personal ex-
periences combines with the confusion produced by impact of multitudes of unrelated in-
cidents to create attitudes which are responsive to organized propaganda, hammering in
day after day, the same few and relatively simple beliefs asseverated to be the truths es-
sential to national welfare. (Freedom and Culture [New York: Capricorn, 1963], p. 46).
28. It is not irrelevant here that the social sciences as we now know them had just
then completed their institutionalization in the universities of America. See my A His-
tory and Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Part II. Perhaps thinking here of Veblens
critique of the social sciences, Lippmann writes that if so much social science is
apologetic rather than constructive, the explanation lies in the opportunities of social
science, not in capitalism (Public Opinion: 373). Lippmann, who usually sees the
pertinence of the fact that practices are influenced by conditions external to them,
clearly forgets this here.
29. Lippmanns unabashed Machiavellianism is also clear in the Phantom Public
(New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1925). There he writes:
We do know, as a matter of experience, that all the cards are not laid face up upon the
table. For however deep the personal prejudice of the statesmen in favor of truth as a
method, he is most certainly forced to treat truth as an element of policy. Insofar as he has
American Democracy: A New Spirit in the World 185
power to control the publication of truth, he manipulates it to what he considers the ne-
cessities of action, of bargaining, morale and prestige (158).
30. Compare Robert A. Dahls important Preface to Democratic Theory (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1956). Dahl agreed with Lippmann that there is no way
for populations in democratic mass states to influence policy; yet he supposed that he
had shown that elections are a crucial device for controlling leaders, and thus that
the distinction between democracy and dictatorship still makes sense (13132). But
what, apart from what Lippmann says, can control leaders mean? It is true, I be-
lieve, that two-party representative systems are important in preserving hard-won
civil liberties, and that these are fundamental and not to be scorned. Nevertheless, we
should not confuse civil freedom with democracy. Compare Dewey, below.
31. Walter Lippmann, The Good Society (Boston: Little, Brown, 1936: ix). See
also Manicas, War and Democracy, Chapter 11. Indeed, in his 1936 book, Lippmann
provided convincing grounds that it was already evident that the world was mov-
ing toward a gigantic war.
186 Chapter Seven
187
INTRODUCTION
John Deweys social and political philosophy has been as much interpreted as
it has been praised and condemned. Thus, to merely illustrate the spectrum of
opinion, his philosophy of democracy has been called a Jeffersonian provin-
cialism, nostalgic and irrelevant, and a pluralist federalism fully pertinent to
the prevailing American political order. His theory of inquiry is construed as
essential to his social philosophy, as independent of it, and as inconsistent
with it. Finally, his basic philosophy is understood as an independent elabo-
ration of the best elements in Marxs thought and, remarkably, as the phi-
losophy of American imperialism.
1
Dewey is not altogether blameless. There are many strands in his thought,
sometimes conflicting strands. He is sometimes unclear, sometimes just
where one wants a clear statement most of all. But these are not the main
problems in coming to grips with Dewey as a social philosopher. Rather, most
of the difficulty derives from the style and range of his thought. This makes
it difficult, if not impossible, to associate him in a clear way with any of the
isms by which we tend to identify a political and social theory. And, in turn,
this makes him fair game for ideological purposes. Political writing, after all,
is itself a political act.
Dewey was, of course, both a liberal and a democrat, and he was not a
Marxist. Yet, as I shall argue, his liberalism and democratic philosophy were
decidedly radical, more socialist than libertarian, indeed, more anarchist than
communist or liberal. But let me not be misunderstood. Dewey was no anar-
chist (however amusing it is that Sidney Hook should have written that, in
looks at least, Dewey resembled a cross between a philosophical anarchist
Chapter Eight
John Dewey:
Anarchism and the Political State
and Robert Louis Stevenson). Dewey was not, for example, exactly clear on
the future role of the state and he seems to have had little taste for anarchist
direct actionhowever peaceful. I do not argue, accordingly, that he was
an anarchist without knowing it or that anarchism is itself so vague that his
thought, as he worked it out, is easily subsumed. Nevertheless, we can ad-
vance our understanding of Dewey and of the problems of political
philosophy, if we take a fresh look at his writings from the vantage point of
anarchism.
This will be the main aim of this paper. Still, there is a historical argument
to be made, an argument that seems to me to be very important, but which can
be but hinted at here. That is, not only is it not farfetched to juxtapose Dewey
and anarchism, but perhaps more fundamentally, on the present view, the First
World War and the period immediately following were crucial years for rad-
ical political thought. Dewey was caught up in this, and as Chapter 7 has ar-
gued, it left decided marks on his thought.
We need, perhaps, to be reminded that Dewey was twenty-seven when the
bomb was thrown at Haymarket Square (1886), already fifty-eight when the
Great War was coming to an end and the Bolshevik revolution erupted. Ac-
tive in public issues at least from his Chicago days (from 18941904), Dewey
nonetheless wrote no political philosophy until perhaps 1908, the several
chapters that he wrote as part of Ethics, with James H. Tufts. World War I
seems to have been critical for him as for many others.
In German Philosophy and Politics (1915), his first systematic political
work, Dewey traced the philosophic basis of patriotic statism in Germany and
concluded that the present situation presents the spectacle of the breakdown
of the whole philosophy of Nationalism, political, racial and cultural (GPP:
130).
2
Opening a theme to which he returned repeatedly, he attacked the idea
of national sovereignty and argued that the situation calls for a more rad-
ical thinking, more radical than arbitration, treaties, international judicial
councils, schemes of international disarmament, peace funds and peace
movements (130). Dewey was correct in calling for more radical thinking
of the problems, but unfortunately, he was entirely wrong if he hoped that sta-
tism was dead. As is well known, of course, Dewey supported the allied war
effort, as did Kropotkin and a host of other internationalists in the radical
parties of Europe. Indeed, patriotic statism and imperialist war had hardly run
its course.
In 1919, a host of radicals, including the anarchists Emma Goldman and
Alexander Berkman, became the victims of a virulent Americanism and were
deported. With Dewey, Norman Thomas, Clarence Darrow, Roger N. Bald-
win, and others as founders, the American Union Against Militarism became,
in 1920, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The Red Scare was by
188 Chapter Eight
now in full flower. Dewey had known Goldman and Berkman, having shared
platforms with them on several occasions. Baldwin has reported that she had
a very high regard for [Deweys] ideas, a view which, as I shall argue, is
hardly surprising given the coincidence of so many of their ideas. For his part,
Dewey found that Emma Goldmans reputation as a dangerous woman was
built up by a conjunction of yellow-journalism and ill-advised police raids
a fact which Dewey would find increasingly ominous as the decade pro-
ceded.
3
It was during this time, as Hook has noted, that Dewey made the
great turn and came to believe in the essential correctness of socialist diag-
noses of Americas ills.
4
The ACLU was hardly sufficient. The 1921 trial of the acknowledged an-
archists, Sacco and Vanzetti, and their subsequent execution in 1927for
their beliefs and not for the unproved charges against themhad a pro-
found effect on Dewey. As he saw it, the events had put America on trial.
5
Almost certainly, they forced him to considerably temper whatever opti-
mism he might have had regarding the use of intelligence in conditions
where emotions are so easily mobilized and manipulated in the service of
reactionary politics. As I shall develop, these considerations became an in-
creasingly important part of Deweys incisive analysis of the failures of
present arrangements.
In 1928, Dewey visited the Soviet Union and reported that his own an-
tecedent notionsor, if you will, prejudices, underwent their most complete
reversal (C&E, I: 425). Assessing the revolution as an experiment to dis-
cover whether the familiar democratic idealsfamiliar in words, at least
will not be most completely realized in a social regime based on voluntary co-
operation, on conjoint workers control and management of industry. . . .
Dewey concluded enthusiastically that its future is of less account than is the
fact of this achieved revolution of heart and mind, this liberation of a people
to consciousness of themselves as a determining power in the shaping of their
ultimate fate (380, 424).
Two key books were written during this period, The Public and Its Prob-
lems (1927) and Individualism Old and New (1929). But with the Great De-
pression and the failure of the existing major political parties to respond to the
challenge, Deweyas a radicalfaced a dilemma.
The socialist and anarchist radical traditions, reflective of their nineteenth-
century European roots, had always been revolutionary in the sense that rad-
ical social change was seen to involve a mass insurrection against the pre-
vailing order of things. But in contrast to socialists, communists, anarchists
and most American radicals of the 1920s and 1930s, Dewey saw no evidence
for this view. As he put it, I do not . . . hear the noises of an angry proletariat
(ION: 78). Butand this must be understoodit was not because they were
John Dewey: Anarchism and the Political State 189
drowned out by shouts of eagerness or adventurous opportunityhowever
much this was the official gospel of America. Rather, for Dewey, the murmurs
of discontent are drowned by the murmurs of lost opportunities, along with the
din of machinery, motor cars and speakeasies (78).
These are powerful metaphors and suggest an analysis, to be developed be-
low, which is far subtler than the ones offered by the mechanical formulas of
the periods revolutionaries. But if so, then Deweys question at this time was,
how to be radical and still be relevant? This question has always been espe-
cially difficult for Americans and it was so for Dewey. His own quandaries on
this score go some way, indeed, toward explaining his effortsultimately un-
successfulto generate (beginning in 1931) a genuine radical, mass-based,
third-party alternative. Although it may be now forgotten, Dewey was argu-
ing, by the 1929 writing of Individualism Old and New, that our presidential
elections are upon the whole determined by fear and that neither of the ma-
jor parties could be vehicles for radical changeeven if this change was to
be incrementally won. On the other hand, Dewey could not align himself un-
ambiguously with the Socialist Party either. Like the anarchists, the socialists
too were isolated.
6
Kropotkins sadly prophetic letter to Lenin, written in
1920, identified a significant reason, a reason that Dewey fully appreciated.
Kropotkin wrote: If the present situation continues, the very word social-
ism will turn into a curse . . . (Kropotkin, 1970: 337). Indeed, in one sense,
the problem of the present essay, and, I believe, still a problem of our time, is
to recover an idea: Dewey referred to it as the idea of democracy, but oth-
ers have called it socialism, and still others have called it anarchism. In
this regard, Deweys idea of democracy is neither a nostalgic ]effersonianism
nor a liberal pluralism. I shall argue that it is anarchist insofar as it contains:
(1) a view of an ideal, noncoercive, nonauthoritarian society;
(2) a criticism of existing society and its institutions, based on this antiau-
thoritarian ideal;
(3) a view of human nature that justifies the hope of significant progress to-
ward the ideal; and
(4) a strategy for change, involving immediate institution of noncoercive,
nonauthotitarian and decentralist alternatives.
7
Deweys Critique of Existing Society and His Vision of the
Good Society
In his most systematic work on the state, The Public and Its Problems
(1927), Dewey attempts a generic and empirical approach to the question,
What Is the State? Disavowing the utility of a series of traditional doctrines,
190 Chapter Eight
he argues that associated actiona universal traithas consequences, some-
times confined to those who directly share in the transaction and sometimes
not. When those indirectly and seriously affected . . . form a group, we can
speak of The Public (PP: 35). And when this public is organized and made
effective by means of representatives who care for its special interests,
then and in so far, we may speak of the state.
This analysis, made rich by Deweys knack for illustration and sometimes
brilliant but not immediately relevant asides, is both important and badly mis-
leading. The analysis is important because it allows us to see that no
two ages or places is there the same public (33). Moreover, it allows us
to see that State and Society are not the same, that in states, there are
governmentsagencies that represent individuals in society. Finally, it al-
lows us to see that a state is only as good as its public and that there is no
model pattern which makes a state a good or true state (45).
But the analysis is seriously misleading insofar as it leads us to think of
states as universal entities. Deweys concern, as a long footnote makes clear,
is with functions, not structures. He is thus quite ready to admit that the
state is a very modern institution. Yet, he insists, all history, or almost all,
records the exercise of analogous functions (6566, note 7). In a sense, of
course, this is true. The idea that special agencies and measures must be
formed if extensive and enduring consequences are to be attended to has a
general applicabilitydepending crucially on what is concretely meant by spe-
cial agencies and measures. But as Dewey sees, these special agencies and
the public that they represent are open to an almost infinite range of possibil-
ities. For better or for worse, state, government, even public is very mod-
ern terms with very definite modern connotations. Moreover, while we use the
term state to refer indiscriminately to any sort of political body, from primitive
clan organizations to poleis, to the Roman Empire, the word state properly de-
notes what are very modern political bodies. However great are the differences
between (modern) states, between, e.g., the Absolutist State which emerged in
the seventeenth century, contemporary capitalist or communist states, liberal
democratic states and totalitarian states, all of them are states in the quite clear
sense that they are legally defined entities claiming sovereignty and a monopoly
of legitimate force. Each circumscribes an extended territory and a very large
and heterogeneous population. Each has a centralized organizational apparatus
engaged in continuous administration and having both the authority and, es-
pecially in this century, the ability to dramatically affect the conditions of life of
its populationfor better or for worse.
Now Dewey recognized this. Not every association is a state or even has
state-like characteristics. At one extreme are associations which are too nar-
row and restricted in size to give rise to a public (39). Immediate contiguity,
John Dewey: Anarchism and the Political State 191
face to face relationships, has consequences which generate a community of
interests, a sharing of values, too direct and vital to occasion a need for polit-
ical organization (39). Indeed, within a community, the state is an imperti-
nence (41).
Villages and neighborhoods shade imperceptibly into a political public
(43) and there may or may not be agencies which are specifically its instru-
ment. Kropotkin could still refer to the Medieval commune and Dewey to the
early New England town. Further along the continuum of historical associa-
tions is perhaps the polis of the ancient world, where as Dewey says, much
of the intimacy of the vivid and prompt personal touch of the family endures
while there has been added the transforming aspiration of a varied, freer,
fuller life, whose issues are so momentous that in comparison the life of the
neighborhood is parochial and that of the household dull (44). Indeed, it was
hardly an accident that the idea of democracy was an invention of the polis
world (Manicas, 1989, Chapters 1 and 2).
Still of a very different sort, we can identify empires due to conquest
where political rule exists only in forced levies of taxes and soldiers; and in
which, though the word state may be used, the characteristic signs of a pub-
lic are notable for their absence (4344). Finally, as Dewey argues, but
which needs emphasis, for long periods of human history . . . the state is
hardly more than a shadow thrown upon the family and neighborhood by re-
mote personages. . . . It rules but it does not regulate. . . . The intimate and fa-
miliar propinquity group is not a social unity within an exclusive whole. It is,
for almost all purposes, society itself (4142).
These points are not peripheral to comprehending the problem of The Pub-
lic and Its Problems, even if Deweys effort to treat the state generically
tempts us to treat them as historical asides. As Kropotkin and others in the an-
archist tradition often argued, the state as we understand it, is a very modern
phenomenon. And there is nothing necessary about it. Moreover, as Dewey
and the anarchists saw, the development of the modern state meant also the
emergence of an entirely new organization for war, the obliteration of com-
munity and the suffocation of the personal and the intimate. Both were con-
cerned to address the questions and to offer analyses and programs in these
terms. But this need not be a nostalgic irrelevancyunless, of course, we un-
critically accept the framework assumptions of the modern state and then pro-
ceed to political inquiry.
Methodologically, Dewey was committed to a fully historical and contex-
tual mode of inquiry and he recognized that the problems of contemporary
political arrangements were not those of the past. Nor accordingly would past
solutions suffice. At the global level, Dewey deeply appreciated the problem
of the modern state. In Reconstruction in Philosophy (1920), he extended a
192 Chapter Eight
central theme of German Philosophy and Politics, and diagnosed the failure
of many schools of thought, varying even more widely in respect to method
and conclusion, [yet] agreed upon the final consummating position of the
state. . . . They do not question the unique and supreme position of the State
in the social hierarchy. Dewey concluded: Indeed, that conception has hard-
ened into unquestionable dogma under the title of sovereignty (RIP: 201).
But perhaps he put matters most graphically in his 1927 essay, Nationalism
and Its Fruits. He there wrote:
Patriotism, National Honor, National Interests and National Sovereignty are the
four foundation stones upon which the structure of the National State is erected.
It is no wonder that the windows of such a building are closed to the light of
heaven; that its inmates are fear, jealously, suspicion, and that War issues regu-
larly from its portals (C&E, II: 803).
Except for explicit anarchist thoughtand even then, not all of itno one
saw more clearly than Dewey that for the modern age, the State was not part
of the solution, but was, instead, an essential part of the problem.
The structural dynamics of interstate relations were not his only concern,
however, for there were effects on the relations within states. This is a funda-
mental concern of The Public and Its Problems, in particular as regards the
most progressive form of the modern statethe Democratic State. Although it
is often overlookedor downplayedDewey had no illusions about it. As in
many other places, he sharply distinguishes democracy as an idea or ideal and
democracy as a mode of government. On Deweys analysis, all states have gov-
ernments and all governments represent some public. But there are different
institutional arrangements by which governments exist and represent some
public. For Dewey, then, political democracy is a specified practice in select-
ing officials and regulating their conduct as officials (PP: 82). Dewey argued
that political democracy emerged at a specific period in the development of
the modern state and that it emerged as a kind of net consequence of a vast
multitude of responsive adjustments to a vast number of situations . . . (84).
Indeed, in no sense did Dewey succumb to the mystifying rationalizations of
liberal democratic political theoryto the idea, e.g., that democratic institu-
tions function so as to implement something called the will of the people.
He said:
Instead of individuals who in the privacy of their consciousness make choices
which are carried into effect by personal volition, there are citizens who have
the blessed opportunity to vote for a ticket of men mostly unknown to them, and
which is made up by an under-cover machine in a caucus whose operations con-
stitute a kind of political predestination (120).
John Dewey: Anarchism and the Political State 193
Political democracy, or better, modern political democracy, is a statist form
and, no doubt, it has consequential merits. But as Dewey writes, it is a means,
not for realizing the idea of democracy, but to counteract the forces that have
so largely determined the possession of rule by accidental and irrelevant fac-
tors and . . . to counteract the tendency to employ political power to serve pri-
vate instead of public ends (83). For Dewey, the full reality of political
democracy was not that painted by patriotic publicists, nor did it meet the
goals, limited as they were, which had brought it into existence. His indict-
ment was severe: In a word, the new forms of combined action due to the
modern economic regime control present policies, much as dynastic interests
controlled those of two centuries ago. They affect thinking and desire more
than did the interests which formerly moved the state (108).
Even more in the spirit of Marx and left anarchism, Dewey observed that
the fusion of political and economic liberalism, the attainment of political
rights and guarantees of private property which liberal democracy represents,
had emancipated the classes whose special interest they represented, rather
than human beings impartially (270). The text continues:
The notion that men are equally free to act if only the same legal arrangements
apply equally to allirrespective of differences in education, in command of
capital, and the control of the social environment which is furnished by the in-
stitution of propertyis a pure absurdity, as facts have demonstrated (271).
Deweys analysis of the Democratic State is radical and called for radical so-
lutions. In his terms, the problem was not with the instruments of the public,
but with the public itself. The public was inchoate and unorganized, lost,
eclipsed, confused, and bewildered. This theme, expressed in many
different ways and in many different places is at the basis of his radical cri-
tique of the political state.
In Individualism Old and New, he attacked the ideology of individualism,
repeating earlier indictments of its mythological character, and he spoke of
the lost individual, lost because while persons are now caught up in vast
complex of associations, there is no harmonious and coherent reflection of the
import of these connections into the imaginative and emotional outlook on
life. Blunted, if not impossible, is the give and take of participation, of a
sharing and significance of the integrating factors. Instead, we have con-
formity, a name for the absence of vital interplay; the arrest and benumbing
of communication (ION: 8586).
Moreover, here as in other places, Dewey attributes our rapacious nation-
alism to a situation in which corporateness has gone so far as to detach in-
dividuals from their old local ties and allegiances but not far enough to give
them a new center and order of life. While modern industry, technology and
194 Chapter Eight
commerce have created modern nations in their external form and armies
and navies exist to protect commerce, to make secure the control of raw ma-
terials, and to command markets, . . . the balked demand for genuine cooper-
ativeness and reciprocal solidarity in daily life finds an outlet in nationalistic
sentiment. Finally, if the simple duties of peace do not establish a common
life, the emotions are mobilized in the service of a war that will supply its
temporary simulation (6162). Indeed, the windows of our building are also
closed to the light of heaven.
In Freedom and Culture (1939), he spoke of a kind of molluscan organi-
zation, soft individuals within and a hard constrictive shell without (F&C:
160). In this text, the problem is put in terms of culture: The problem is to
know what kind of culture is so free in itself that it conceives and begets po-
litical freedom as its accompaniment and consequence (6). Dewey is clear
that present culture militates against such a consequence and that the situa-
tion calls emphatic attention to the need for face-to-face associations, whose
interactions with one another may offset if not control the dread impersonal-
ity of the sweep of present forces (159). Nevertheless, as John McDermott
has rightly noted, Dewey expresses deep reservations about the external
signs of progress, whether of material or intellectual accomplishment (Mc-
Dermott, 1973: 679). McDermott calls our attention to the following:
Schooling in literacy is no substitute for the dispositions, which were formerly
provided by direct experiences of an educative quality. The void created by lack
of relevant personal experiences combines with the confusion produced by im-
pact of multitudes of unrelated incidents to create attitudes which are responsive
to organized propaganda, hammering in day after day the same few and rela-
tively simple beliefs asseverated to be truths essential to national welfare
(F&C: 46).
But this problem, the problem of the public, was not for Dewey to be reduced
to that of private property and to the domination of politics by the modern
economic regime. To be sure, the philosophers of individualism predicted
truly when they asserted that the main business of government is to make
property interests secure (PP: 1089). Nevertheless, economic determin-
ism was not the whole story for Dewey. On the other hand, the problem was
not to be solved either by changes in the organization of government. The
problem lies deeper, he wrote. The search for the conditions under which
the public may find and express itself is necessarily precedent to any funda-
mental change in the machinery (146).
What, then, are the conditions that need to be brought into existence to re-
discover the public? According to Dewey, it is simply democracy. But we must
repeat, this doesnt mean, that the evils can be remedied by introducing more
John Dewey: Anarchism and the Political State 195
machinery of the same kind . . . or by refining and perfecting that machinery
(144). It means democracy in its generic social sense (147). Democracy here
refers to the idea of democracy, the idea of democracy as community. What
needs to be done is to identify the conditions of community and to bring them
into existence.
The identification of the idea of democracy and the idea of community may
be Deweys most characteristic doctrine. He seems to have arrived at it early
and to have never abandoned it. And he gave it a clear and special meaning.
Democracy and Education (1916) gives one of the better statements of de-
mocracy as more than a form of government and as primarily a mode of
associated living, of conjoint communicated experience (D&E: 87). Dewey
points out we cannot set up, out of our heads, something we regard as an
ideal society (83). The problem, rather, is to extract the desirable traits of
forms of community life which actually exist. . . . From two such traits,
Dewey derives a standard: How numerous and varied are the interests
which are consciously shared? and How full and free is the interplay with
other forms of association? (83).
8
These themes are more fully developed in The Public and Its Problems
where Dewey reasserts that regarded as an ideal, democracy is not an alter-
native to other principles of associated life. It is the idea of community itself
(PP: 148). Dewey is here at pains to emphasize the task of knowledge and
participation in the constitution of the democratic community. The complex-
ities and scope of indirect consequence had destroyed communities. Although
as individuals we are interdependent, community exists only when the con-
sequences of combined action are perceived and become an object of desire
and effort (151). It is then that a distinctive share in mutual action is con-
sciously asserted and claimed (152). It is then that I can become We.
Moreover, as Rousseau had already seen, interdependence provides just the
situation which makes it possible and worthwhile for the stronger and abler
to exploit others for their own ends to keep others in a state of subjection
where they can be utilized as animated tools (155).
But if as Dewey reads Rousseau, the solution is a return to the condition
of independence based on isolation, then asserts Dewey, it was hardly seri-
ously meant (155). The only possible solution is nevertheless indicated. It
is the perfecting of the means and ways of communication of meanings so
that genuinely shared interest in the consequences of interdependent activities
may inform desire and effort and thereby direct action (155). This too can
define the idea of democracy:
Wherever there is conjoint activity whose consequences are appreciated as good
by all singular persons who take part in it, and where the realization of the good
196 Chapter Eight
is such as to effect an energetic desire and effort to sustain it in being just be-
cause it is a good shared by all, there is insofar a community. The clear con-
sciousness of a communal life, in all its implications, constitutes the idea of de-
mocracy (149).
Community requires communication and it requires knowledge, but crucially,
the kind of knowledge which is the prime condition of a democratically or-
ganized public is a kind of knowledge and insight which does not yet exist
(166). For Dewey, such knowledge is a knowledge which is shared, which
funds experience with common meanings, transforms needs and wants into
mutually understood goals and which thereby consciously directs conjoint ac-
tivity. As it is, knowledge is merely technique: knowledge goes relatively
but little further than that of the competent skilled operator who manages a
machine. It suffices to employ the conditions that are before him. Skill en-
ables him to turn the flux of events this way or that in his neighborhood. It
gives him no control of the flux (166).
Dewey fully recognized, both as ideal and as possibility, that the idea of re-
turning to some barricaded and provincially defined context was miscon-
ceived. On the other hand, he persistently demanded that the basic and fun-
damental locus of life had to be the neighborly community. He asserted:
In its deepest and richest sense a community must always remain a matter of
face-to-face intercourse. . . . The Great Community, in the sense of free and full
communication is conceivable. But it can never possess all the qualities, which
mark a local community. It will do its final work in ordering the relations and
enriching the experience of local associations (211).
Indeed,
Whatever the future may have in store, one thing is certain. Unless local com-
munity life can be restored the public cannot adequately resolve its most urgent
problem: to find and identify itself (216).
For Dewey, deliberative participation in conjoint activity, the shared commu-
nication of goals and outcomes of that activity, the communication of mean-
ings that that presupposes, is generalizable to the Great Community, but in-
evitably, at an increasing degree of abstraction and dilution. If in its deepest
and richest sense a community must always remain a matter of face-to-face
intercoursefor there to be genuinely deliberative participation, immediate
recognition of shared meanings, and concrete satisfaction of purposes con-
sciously aimed atthen as one moves away from the local community,
community becomes increasingly shallow and more watery. On the other
John Dewey: Anarchism and the Political State 197
hand, at every increasingly inclusive level there must be some ordering and
some sharing.
This, however, is the anarchist image of the good society. Thus Martin
Buber:
The collectivity is not a warm, friendly gathering but a great link-up of eco-
nomic and political forces inimical to the play of romantic fancies, only under-
standable in terms of quantity, expressing itself in actions and effectsa thing
which an individual has to belong to with no intimacies of any kind but all the
time conscious of his energetic contribution . . .
An organic commonwealthand only such commonwealths can join to-
gether to form a shapely and articulated race of (persons)will never build it-
self up out of individuals but only out of small and ever small communities: a
nation is a community to the degree that it is community of communities.
9
There remains, however, a legitimate question and ambivalence in Dewey,
even given that his image of the Great Community and his criticism of exist-
ing societies is profoundly anarchistic. It is the question, whether and in what
sense, idea of government may be still relevant? There are two questions.
First, what constitutes an anarchist answer to this question? Second, what
seems to be Deweys answer?
Different anarchists have given different sorts of analyses of the relevant
issues, but it may be that the main tradition of anarchist thought is best de-
scribed not as anarchy, but as Buber put it, as anocracy ()
not absence of government but absence of domination. This cuts two
ways, meaning not only that nongovernmental forms of domination are to be
rejected, but also that nondominating government may be tolerated, in-
deed required. Anarchists are antistate insofar as we keep in mind that the
state is a particular kind of political entity that because of its nature con-
stricts and disallows democracy as a mode of life. Its institutions are inher-
ently structures of domination. But government is consistent with anar-
chist principles if by government one means roughly what the Greeks and
Rousseau had in mind; namely a commission or an employment which
servesnow to use Deweys extremely useful languageactive and articu-
lated publics. An articulated public could still use, might very well need,
agencies in this sense. Government, a modern word which in this context
must now be stripped of its modern connotations will not rule, and the hold-
ers of office will not be rulersif by that one means that they will not be
in a position to legitimately dominate those they represent. Indeed, as ar-
gued in Chapter 11, below, and extensively developed in my War and De-
mocracy (1989), these ideas were clearly articulated by many writers during
the so-called crisis period in the United States.
198 Chapter Eight
This position can be reposed in terms of the question of the legitimacy of
law and government.
10
Deweys stance in this regard is strikingly similar to
the one advanced by William Godwin in his classic Enquiry Concerning Po-
litical Justice (1793), perhaps the first systematic effort at anarchist theory.
Godwin began with a dialectical criticism of liberal political philosophy,
and especially with the familiar idea that obedience to and the authority of
government derive from contract. Finding unsurmountable difficulties in
this theory, Godwin shifts to a utilitarian ground and finds that justice is
the key. Three kinds of authority are distinguished: to ones judgment, to
specialized knowledge, and to sanctions. On this view, then, if a rule is
just, it should be complied withbut because one can see that the rule is
just, not because of some mythological contract. Similarly, for Dewey, the
question, Why should the will of rulers have more authority than that of
others? and Why should the latter submit? are spurious questions, the
dialectical consequence of . . . theories . . . which define the state in terms
of an antecedent causation . . . (PP: 53). Dewey was quite correct in hold-
ing that it was these sorts of theories that dominated modern political
thought. But in rejecting the very formulation of the question, Dewey came
preciously close to the anarchist Godwin.
Thus, the regulations and laws of the State are misconceived when they
are viewed as commands (53). Commands presuppose a commander. If so,
we can then ask the question, what gives the commander the right to com-
mand? What grounds my duty to him? For Dewey, however, laws are but in-
struments: the institution of conditions under which persons make their
arrangements with one another (54). They are a means of doing for a per-
son what otherwise only his own foresight, if thoroughly reasonable, could
do (56). Evidently, on this view, as Godwin had also insisted, rules are good
or bad only insofar as they are means for doing what reasonable people would
do and for assisting them in getting those things done. Their justification
needs nothing else. Indeed, it is the spurious theories of law and the state
which lead us to look elsewhere and which, ultimately, cause us to blindly fol-
low rules which are not so justified.
l1
Anarchism, a transliteration from the Greek, means literally without a
ruler and because in some contexts, in the absence of a rulera commander
or someone to give ordersthere is disorder, anarchy can also denote chaos.
Anarchists do not, of course, assume that this must be so and believe that
ideally at least, individuals can be self-governing. Indeed, they believe that
it is primarily the mystified complexity of the state, as Godwin puts it, the
craft and mystery of governing, the pernicious notion of an extensive ter-
ritory, the dreams of glory, empire and national greatness which prohibit
such self-governance. Even worse, it is the myth of popular sovereignty that,
John Dewey: Anarchism and the Political State 199
paradoxically, has so successfully propelled the mystification of the state.
Compare here Godwin and Dewey. First Godwin:
Too much stress has undoubtedly been laid upon the idea, as of a grand and
magnificent spectacle, of a nation deciding for itself upon some great public
principle, and of the highest magistracy yielding its claim when the general
voice has pronounced (Godwin, 1971: 115).
And Dewey:
The familiar eulogies of the spectacle of free men going to the polls to deter-
mine by their personal volitions the political forms under which they live is a
specimen of the tendency to take whatever is readily seen as the full reality of
the situation (PP: 101).
Dewey could no doubt agree with Godwin, that in his society, like Godwins,
too many revere too many established institutions and bad laws, that as su-
pernatural matters have progressively been left high and dry . . . the actuality
of religious taboos has more and more gathered about secular institutions, es-
pecially those connected with the nationalist state (PP: 170). Indeed, if
holy means that which is not to be approached nor touched, save with cere-
monial precautions and by specially anointed officials, then such things are
holy in contemporary political life (170).
David Wieck has perceptively observed that the values which Dewey
hoped to realize in a democracy . . . are realizable only in something ap-
proaching anarchy. But he may be correct in saying that about decentralism
. . . Dewey hadnt paid heed to Kropotkin.
12
Still, we may wonder. As early
as 1918, Dewey wrote that if we are to have a world safe for democracy and
a world in which democracy is safely anchored, the solution will be in the di-
rection of a federated world government and a variety of freely experiment-
ing and freely cooperating self-governing local, cultural and industrial
groups (C&E, II: 55960). Forty years and two world wars after he had
called for more radical thinking about the sovereign state, Dewey wrote (in
his 1946 Afterword to The Public and Its Problems) that the State is a myth.
He there offered as a working principle, the idea of Federation as distinct
from both isolation and imperial rule (255). Dewey did not, it seems, get
clear about what this might mean concretely. Nevertheless, if we take the
restoration of the local community as his point of departure, his vision is in-
deed powerful:
Territorial states and political boundaries will persist; but they will not be barri-
ers which impoverish experience by cutting man off from his fellows; they will
not be hard and fast divisions whereby external separation is converted into in-
200 Chapter Eight
ner jealousy, fear, suspicion and hostility. Competition will continue, but it will
be less rivalry for acquisition of material goods, and more emulation of local
groups to enrich direct experience with appreciatively enjoyed intellectual and
artistic wealth (PP: 217).
And the material basis for such a Great Community is within reach:
If the technological age can provide mankind with a firm and general basis of
material security, it will be absorbed into a human age (217).
Buber noted that the socialist idea points of necessity, even in Marx and
Lenin, to the organic construction of a new society out of little societies in-
wardly bound together by a common life and common work and their associ-
ations (Buber, 1949: 99). But how much more is it true that the main and
most distinctive themes in Deweys social philosophy pointof necessity
to such a vision?
In the next part, I will seek to reinforce the foregoing claim by arguing that
Dewey, along with the anarchists, parted ways with the Marxist-Leninists for ap-
proximately the same reasons and with approximately the same conclusions.
HUMAN NATURE AND THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL CHANGE
Deweys social and political philosophy is close to anarchism as regards his
view of social change. Both sharply contrast with Marxism in rejecting the
idea that a social revolution could be made by the few for the many and in
rejecting the idea that the proletariat must be the agent of an insurrectionary
revolution.
The anarchist, as Dewey, does not deny the existence of class division in
society and both affirm that a good society could not be class divided. But it
was a mistake, on both of their views, to suppose that progressive change
could have but one agent or that any one agent of change could be sufficient.
As Hook rightly pointed out, Dewey spoke of class struggles in their plural
form.
13
Anarchists tended to speak more vaguely of the people or the
masses. Marxists will insist, of course, that this offers a dubious politics.
The matter of insurrection is more complicated. In the first place, some an-
archists did believe in insurrection and in the use of such violence as had to
attend insurrection.
14
Bakunin saw this in apocalyptic terms; Kropotkin be-
lieved it to be unavoidable, but hoped that the violence could be kept to a
minimum. Tolstoi, at opposite poles from Bakunin, was consistently pacifist.
But more important, anarchists tended to be undoctrinaire about the problems
of revolutionary change, to orient programs to specific contexts and to
John Dewey: Anarchism and the Political State 201
emphasize pedagogic means. These emphases are, of course, wholly congen-
ial to Dewey.
The emphasis on pedagogic means was implied by the most characteristic
criticism by anarchists of Marxian politics. For the anarchist, there could be
no separation of the revolution process from the revolutionary goal. Thus,
Alexander Berkman:
It is only by growing to a true realization of their present position, by visualiz-
ing their possibilities and powers, by learning unity and cooperation, and prac-
ticing them, that the masses can attain freedom.
15
Or Gustav Landauer:
One can throw away a chair or destroy a pane of glass; but those are idle talk-
ers and credulous idolaters of words who regard the state as such a thing or as a
fetish that one can smash in order to destroy it. The state is a condition, a cer-
tain relationship among human beings, a mode of behavior between (people);
we destroy it by contracting other relationships, by behaving differently toward
one another. . . . We are the state, and we shall continue to be the state until we
have created institutions that form a real community and society of (persons).
16
All this could be Dewey. But especially noticeable are Deweys arguments,
which parallel and often supplement and enrich the anarchist position.
Most anarchists have not been so naive as to suppose that persons are nat-
urally good. Nor have they based their hopes or, more important, their pro-
grams on such a postulateeven if, unfortunately, they are too frequently
read that way. Some, for example, Landauer, were influenced by romanticism
and especially by Nietzsche. Others, for example, Kropotkin, were influenced
by the naturalism of Darwin. While I cannot here assess these different views
of human nature, there is little doubt that Dewey was deeply concerned with
the question and that his approach has considerable force.
Dewey did not think that human beings were naturally good, naturally in-
telligent, or naturally free, since as is well known, on his view, human im-
pulses and capacities were always realized socially. This meant that institu-
tional arrangements were decisive: Social arrangements are means of
creating individuals (RIP: 194).
But at the same time, Dewey did not find himself caught up in what he
called a vicious circle. For him, individuals, beginning from where they
were, could change themselves as they change society. As Arthur Lothstein
has rightly pointed out, Dewey dropped the self-enclosed metaphor of the cir-
cle for the dynamic and open-ended metaphor of the spiral. Dewey wrote, for
example:
202 Chapter Eight
We are not caught in a circle; we traverse a spiral in which social customs gen-
erate some consciousness of interdependencies, and this consciousness is em-
bodied in acts which in improving the environment generate new perceptions of
social ties, and so on forever (HNC, in McDermott: 721).
This was possible since, in Deweys terms, habits and customs could be de-
liberatively transformed. Habits, he argued, were the mainspring of human
action, and habits are formed for the most part under the influence of the cus-
toms of the group (PP: 119). We are never habitless, to be sure, but cus-
toms are nothing but the social grooves which are the result of previous ha-
bituations. At the social-psychological level, habits can be altered through
acting differently; and because custom and social structure are themselves in-
carnate in the repeated and multiplied acts of persons, acting differently
changes them too. Indeed, Dewey well sees that, in Giddenss terms, acting
differently creates new conditions as it changes our perceptions, beliefs, and
desires. And this means also that we need pertinent knowledge of the condi-
tions and consequences of our actions and we need to be clear about our
goals. (See Chapter 4.)
For Dewey, the problem was essentially pedagogic. Purposive and pro-
gressive change in society, however, has to be directed and there must be def-
inite goals in mind. Dewey was perfectly clear about this as regards educa-
tion: The conception of education as a social process and function has no
definite meaning, until we define the kind of society we have in mind (D&E:
97). And in Human Nature and Conduct as in many, many other places,
Dewey put great emphasis on educating the young:
the cold fact of the situation is that the chief means of continuous, graded eco-
nomical improvement and social rectification lies in utilizing the opportunities
of educating the young to modify prevailing types of thought and desire. The
young are not as yet as subject to the full impact of established customs (HNC:
127).
17
Dewey was optimistic in his assessment that the school could be the chief
means of social rectification. But on his own premises, the schoollike the
experimental anarchist communitywas not and could not be independent
and disconnected from the large society. It is inevitable, accordingly, that it
would tend to reproduce the habits and ideas of the larger society, since es-
pecially in the case of the schools, they depended for their existence on insti-
tutions interested explicitly in maintaining the status quo.
But the school was not the only place where changes could be wrought. In-
deed, in terms of Deweys theory, since all habits and all customs were
sustained by repeated activities, any of them could be changed by changing
John Dewey: Anarchism and the Political State 203
these acts that sustain them. Nevertheless, if the alteration of activities and
thence of habits and customs was not to issue in chaosinto merely a break-
down of the prevailing order of things, it had to be directed and unified, and
as with the schools, there had to be definite goals in mind. There are but two
alternatives. Either one imposed the change on individuals or one took ad-
vantage of opportunities to encourage and develop tendencies on the part of
those affected to make the changes themselves. The former route, of course,
is the method of revolutionary vanguard parties; the latter is the method of de-
mocracy. Indeed, knowledge is liberating insofar as understanding how we
participate in maintaining oppressive conditions gives us reasons to change
those conditions.
It is possible to discern in Deweys writings at least three powerful objec-
tions to the strategy of imposed change. First, and very generally, for Dewey,
if intelligence is to be brought to bear on progressive social change, not only
must we consider goals, but as well, we must consider the particular condi-
tions and particular context and assess the complex possible consequences of
possible strategies for change. Imposing change may produce the desired out-
come, but even if it does, it doesnt produce just that outcome. As Dewey
summarized the point:
Doctrines, whether proceeding from Mussolini or Marx, which assume that be-
cause certain ends are desirable therefore those ends and nothing else will result
from the use of force to attain them is but another example of the limitations put
on intelligence by any absolutist theory (PM: 139).
But Emma Goldmanwith some of the same doctrines clearly in mind,
would seem to concur heartily:
Anarchism is not . . . a theory of the future to be realized through divine inspi-
ration. It is a living force in the affairs of life, constantly creating new condi-
tions. The methods of anarchism therefore do not comprise an ironclad program
to be carried out under all circumstances. Methods must grow out of the eco-
nomic needs of each place and clime, and of the intellectual and temperamental
requirements of the individual. . . . Anarchism does not stand for military drill
and uniformity; it does, however, stand for the spirit of revolt, in whatever form,
against everything that hinders human growth (Goldman, 1969).
A second and related objection regards the difficultyif not impossibility
of all-at-once, totalist, attempts at change. Dewey concluded:
The revolutionary radical . . . overlooks the force of ingrained habits. He is right,
in my opinion, about the infinite plasticity of human nature. But he is wrong in
thinking that patterns of desire, belief and purpose do not have a force compa-
204 Chapter Eight
rable to the momentum of physical objects. . . . Habit, not original human na-
ture, keeps things moving most of the time (PM: 190).
Imposed change cannot be sustained because habits cannot be dramatically
altered. That is why revolutionary societies tend to revert to older ways of ac-
tivity, and worse, to reproduce the old structures but in new institutional
forms. Similarly, anarchists write of the preparation for the revolution to
anarchistic society and emphasize the pedagogic problem of changing
peoplea problem not solvable by divine inspiration, by violence and au-
thoritarian tactics. Such changes will take time and if they are to be sustained,
must be deeply rooted. This is suggested by the previous text quoted from
Emma Goldman; it reoccurs with a different emphasis in this earlier text, al-
most in the language of Dewey:
The true criterion of the practical . . . is not whether (some scheme) can keep in-
tact the wrong or foolish; rather is it whether the scheme has vitality enough to
leave the stagnant waters of the old, and build as well as sustain, new life (Gold-
man, 1969: 9).
I am suggesting here, of course, that anarchists do not have a utopic concep-
tion of social change, that they realize full well, that their ideal could not
come into existence by means of some totalist transformation, as Goldman
put it, through divine inspiration. The idea that anarchists must reject any-
thing short of their ideal as unjustifiable and therefore deserving of immedi-
ate destruction is not anarchism but nihilism. And this means that the new so-
cial forms, new habits and customs will be but painfully and slowly evolved.
Daniel Guerin, a contemporary French anarchist writer notes:
Proudhon, in the midst of the 1848 Revolution, wisely thought that it would
have been asking too much of his artisans to go, immediately, all the way to an-
archy. In default of his maximum program, he sketched out a minimum liber-
tarian program: progressive reduction in the power of the State, parallel devel-
opment of the power of the people from below. . . . It seems to be the more or
less conscious purpose of many contemporary socialists to seek out such a pro-
gram (Guerin, 1970: 550)
The anarchist, like Dewey, can have a vision of the good society without be-
ing lacking in programs. And if Dewey and the anarchists are correct, it is not
the doctrinaire revolutionaries who are practical, but as Goldman suggests,
those who seek programs which are vital enough to leave the stagnant wa-
ters of the old, and build as well as sustain new life.
It is hardly assumed here that the commitment of the anarchist traditionand
of Deweyto a revolutionary process consistent with genuine democracy
John Dewey: Anarchism and the Political State 205
settles any of the difficult questions which will still need to be asked, or that
Dewey and particular anarchist writers would necessarily or even likely agree
on particular plans of action. Indeed, there is a very great difference between
Deweys emphasis on the methods of political democracy and the anarchist em-
phasis on what is called direct action. However, as April Carter has correctly
pointed out, while direct action must be distinguished from constitutional and
parliamentary styles of activity on the one hand, and from guerilla warfare on
the other, not only do forms of direct action shade into parliamentary styles,
as, e.g., in sit-ins, strikes, and civil disobedience, but as well, they may be
best construed as a kind of crude and creative form of direct democracy. Inso-
far, accordingly, direct action may be entirely consistent with, indeed, a logical
implication of, Deweys social philosophy. As anarchists have often argued,
such tactics are essentially pedagogic because they are vehicles by which per-
sons learn and practice democratic participation (Carter, 1973).
Moreover, there may be considerable disagreement on whether the state is
itself to be used and if so how, whether, e.g., as some anarchists have argued,
one should entirely reject the vote, or political parties, whether one should
seek alternative and parallel forms or whether it is possible to effect progres-
sive change through existing structures.
18
Nor finally, need there be agreement on the prospects and probability of
change toward the ideal of democracy. Perhaps Dewey should here have the
last word:
The foundation of democracy is faith in the capacities of human nature; faith in
human intelligence and the power of pooled and cooperative experience. It is
not because these things are complete but that if given a show they will grow
and be able to generate progressively the wisdom needed to guide collective
again (D&EA: 402).
NOTES
1. C. Wright Mills, Sociology and Pragmatism (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1969): 44344, and more recently, Charles Frankel, John Deweys Social Phi-
losophy, New Studies in the Philosophy of John Dewey (Hanover, N.H.: University
Press of New England, 1977) found Deweys thought to be nostalgic. Alphonso I.
Damico, Individualism and Community, The Social and Political Thought of John
Dewey (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1978) discusses some of the liter-
ature relevant to pluralistic democracy and some of the problems regarding the re-
lation of Deweys theory of inquiry to his social philosophy. See also Mills on this
point: 31820 and Chapters 20 and 21. George Novack in Pragmatism versus Marx-
ism (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1975) cites Maurice Cornforth as one example of
the view that pragmatism, particularly in the form which Dewey has given it, is the
206 Chapter Eight
philosophy of American imperialism (275). Novack rejects this (silly) view even
though he finds that Sidney Hooks uneven political career, including his defense of
American imperialism, stems from pragmatisms promiscuousness (82). It was
Hook, of course, who attributed to Dewey the best elements of Marxs thought
(Reason, Social Myths and Democracy [New York, Harper Torchbooks, 1966]: 132).
2. References to Deweys writings will be indicated with abbreviated titles and
page numbers within parentheses. See below for abbreviations of Dewey texts cited.
3. Quotations from Baldwin are from Paul Avrich, The Modern School Move-
ment: Anarchism and Education in the United States (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1980: 38) from an interview with Baldwin.
4. Sidney Hook, John Dewey: An Intellectual Portrait (New York: John Day, 1939).
See also Arthur Lothsteins excellent dissertation, From Privacy to Praxis: The Case for
John Dewey as a Radical Social Philosopher, (New York: New York University Press,
1979, Chapter 4).
5. For a discussion of Deweys response to the trial and execution, see George
Dykhuizen, The Life and Mind of John Dewey, edited by Jo Ann Boydston (Carbon-
Dale: Southern Illinois Press, 1973).
6. See Frank A. Warren, An Alternative Vision (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1974). For Deweys analysis of the need for a third party, see Bingham and
Rodman (eds.), Challenge of the New Deal (Nashville: Falcon Press, 1934) which
reprints Deweys important Common Sense essay, Imperative Need for New Radical
Party. See James Campbells very useful account, in his dissertation, Pragmatism
and Reform: Social Reconstruction in the Thought of John Dewey and George Her-
bert Mead, (New York: SUNY, 1979).
7. The foregoing criteria for an anarchist social philosophy are quoted from John
P. Clark, What Is Anarchism? in Anarchism: Nomos XIX, edited by J. R. Pennock
and J. W. Chapman (New York: New York University Press, 1978): 13.
8. In this book, Dewey identifies the dire consequences of Identifying the civic
function of education with The State, and concludes that the very idea of national
sovereignty gives rise to a contradiction between the wider sphere of associated and
mutually helpful social life and the narrow sphere of exclusive and hence potentially
hostile pursuits and purposes (97).
9. Martin Buber, Paths in Utopia (Boston: Beacon Press, 1949): 42. This indis-
pensable little book may be the best single treatment of the dilemmas of the statist/
anarchist tensions, theoretical and practical, in the radical tradition. Buber and Dewey
have very much in common and, perhaps, not surprisingly; Bubers anarchism is
overlooked.
10. I have discussed the question of the legitimate state in The Death of the State
(New York: G. P. Putnams Sons, 1974), Chapter 2.
11. On this view, the problem of civil disobedience is misconceived, as Godwin,
Thoreauand Dewey, show. That is, whether in any given case, one should or should
not comply with a law depends upon its justness and the consequences of complying or
not. Cf. Deweys little essay, Conscience and Compulsion (in Characters and Events).
One should also note that Godwin, as most anarchist writers, conceives of the prob-
lem of coercive sanctions in straightforward consequentialist terms and argues that
John Dewey: Anarchism and the Political State 207
only at the limit of the anarchist ideal are they unjustifiable. Cf., for example, God-
win, 1971: Book VII.
12. The first text is from David Wieck, Anarchist Justice, in Nomos XIX: 235,
the second is from his review of Paul Goodmans Drawing the Line, Telos, No. 35
(Spring 1978).
13. Lothstein carefully examines the pertinent literature in his From Privacy to
Praxis, Chapter IV. He rescues Dewey from Deweys right-wing epigones and re-
sponds with force to some of Deweys more mechanically minded left critics. But
Lothstein is himself critical of Dewey.
14. This is as good a place as any to comment on the unfortunate association of an-
archism with terrorism. Terrorism must be distinguished from violence as such. Un-
derstood as the idea that acts of violence against individuals or groups: assassinations,
bombings, kidnappings, etc., are means of revolutionary change, terrorism has been
rejected by almost all anarchist writers, yet it is true that one can identify a period of
terrorist activity in several national histories. On this see, James Joll, The Anarchists
(New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1964) and Paul Avrich, The Russian Anarchists
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1967). The identification of anarchism
with terrorism has, of course, had enormous consequences and, no doubt, goes some
way toward explaining the discrediting of anarchism. For a perceptive account, see
Emma Goldman, The Psychology of Political Violence (1910), in Anarchism and
Other Essays (New York: Dover, 1969). Dewey, we should recall, argued that the
only question which can be raised about the justification of force is that of compara-
tive efficiency and economy of use and what is justly objected to as violence or un-
due coercion is a reliance upon wasteful and destructful means of accomplishing re-
sults (Force and Coercion (1916) in Characters and Events (II: 789).
15. Alexander Berkman, What Is a Communist Anarchist? with an Introduction by
Paul Avrich (New York: Dover, 1972), originally published as New and After: The
ABC of Communist Anarchism (1929). This is a very clear exposition of many of the
key points of difference between anarchism and (the prevailing) Marxism.
16. Quoted by Eugene Lunn, Prophet of Community: The Romantic Socialism of
Gustav Landauer (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975: 226, translated
from Schwache Stattsminner, Schwacheres Volk, (Der Sozialist June, 1910).
17. American anarchists also put enormous emphasis on educating the young. The
Spaniard, Francisco Ferrar, was a more direct influence on early twentieth-century ef-
forts, but the pertinence of Deweys view were fully recognized. For discussion, see
especially, Paul Avrich, The Modern School Movement. It is interesting to notice that
Dewey was not especially interested in educational experiments conducted within an-
archist colonies, although he did visit the Stelton Colony and school in Stelton, N.J.
On the other hand, many anarchists had little confidence in this route. Berkman said,
I myself . . . have little faith in colonies. You cannot build the new society that way
(quoted from Avrich: 306).
18. Much recent radical theory has come to the conclusion that in the advanced
capitalist states where liberal democracies exist, the only strategy to be pursued
consistent with a genuine socialismrequires an answer to this question:
208 Chapter Eight
How is it possible radically to transform the State in such a manner that the extension and
deepening of political freedoms and the institutions of representative democracy . . . are
combined with the unfurling of forms of direct democracy and the mushrooming of self-
management bodies? (Nicos Poulantzas, State, Power and Socialism [London: Verso,
1980]).
DEWEYS WRITINGS, CITED IN THIS CHAPTER
GPP: German Philosophy and Politics (New York: Henry Holt, 1915).
D&E: Democracy and Education (New York: Free Press, 1966, Enlarged Edition).
RIP: Reconstruction in Philosophy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957).
HNC: Human Nature and Conduct (New York: Henry Holt, 1922).
PP: The Public and Its Problems (Chicago: Swallow Press, 1954).
PF: Philosophies of Freedom, in R. J. Bernstein (ed.), Experience, Nature and Free-
dom (Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1960).
C&E: Characters and Events. Two Volumes, edited by Joseph Ratner (New York:
Henry Holt, 1929)
LSA: Liberalism and Social Action (New York: Capricorn, 1963).
ION: Individualism Old and New (New York: Capricorn, 1962).
F&C: Freedom and Culture (New York: Capricorn, 1963).
D&EA: Democracy and Educational Administration, in Joseph Ratner (ed.), Intel-
ligence and the Modern World (New York: Modern Library, 1939),
PM: Problems of Men (New York: Philosophical Library, 1946).
John Dewey: Anarchism and the Political State 209
211
If we begin with the political calamities of the last one hundred years and add,
as at least part consequence of these, the upheavals in philosophy, literature,
art and science, we can appreciate the present attractiveness of a political phi-
losophy without foundations: There is no truth; only an endless conversa-
tion in a self-sufficient linguistic realm which is totally disconnected from
any extra-linguistic realityif such there be. Because God is dead, human
nature has no content, and history is meaningless, the dream of creating a
new kind of human societythe dream of utopian and revolutionary modern
politicsis instead a nightmare. There is no knowable, objective, definable,
transmittable common good; there are only interests, not to be judged, still
less to be accommodated. There is no responsible politics which is not impo-
tent: Either we irresponsibly offer the masses ungrounded hope or, more re-
sponsibly, we reject the quest for glittering triumph, perhaps even im-
provement, and settle for the far more modest, though indispensable,
concern to prevent catastrophes. On this view of things, the belief that
everything is possible seems to have proved only that everything can be de-
stroyed, that efforts to escape from the grimness of the present into nostal-
gia for a still intact past, or into the anticipated oblivion of a better future, are
vain.
1
With Camus, anguishing over Algeria, we may wonder how one can
even write, knowing that what is said might provide an alibi for a Pol Pot or
a terrorist willing to throwor dropa bomb.
The alternatives would seem to be these: Either one knows what is good
and true, or one does not. If one does, then, must not one act on that knowl-
edge, even if, finally, it turns out that one is wrong? On the other hand, if one
does not know what is good and true, if perhaps there is no good and true,
then, must we not be unwilling to act in the name of the people, or history,
Chapter Nine
Philosophy and Politics: A Historical
Approach to Marx and Dewey
or of our ideals? Instead, is it not the case that our commitment must be but
to keep the conversation going?
2
As liberal, the antifoundationalist alternative has an appeal. Indeed, it is
just this that makes it a useful counterrevolutionary ideology. But the issue is
misformulated. It is not that there is no basis for human solidarityeven if
that basis is not to be discovered but created, or that there is no truth, even
if like solidarity, it too is a social product. Nor is violence, as such, the prob-
lem. Like inaction, it is sometimes justified and sometimes not justified. For,
unnoticed by the antifoundationalist is the possibility of a politics that needs
no foundations, a politics which does not guarantee success and does not pre-
suppose that some person or party has a truth not shared by those in whose
name they
.
act. Put in other terms, the problem of modern politics is less the
lack of foundations and more the absence of a genuinely democratic poli-
tics, a politics which aims at the creation of communities by the active par-
ticipation of interdependent individuals, a politics in which interests be-
come shared goods, a politics which insists that truth can only be our truth. In
what follows, I argue that Marx and Dewey offered versions of this. On this
view, we are sculptors or crafters, but we lack blueprints. On this view, we
are actors in history, but we canand mustwrite our own scripts.
RECOVERING MARX
Marx had some clear and definite ideas about democracy, ideas which remain
unrealized, but which cannot be dismissed as utopian or as youthful extrava-
gances or cynical subterfuge. Marx consistently held that participatory
democracy was the goal of revolutionary transformation, that what we call
modern democracy, though a form of alienated politics, was genuinely pro-
gressive, and finallyand most criticallythat there could
.
be no separation
of revolutionary means from revolutionary ends. While the issues are con-
tentious, I want to suggest that opposing views depend largely on an ahistor-
ical reading of important texts and events. Critical in this regard is the per-
sistent tendency to construe Marxs politics in terms of a misconstrual of the
differences between Marx and the anarchists and to be anachronistic as re-
gards later debates between revolutionary Marxists and social democrats.
3
MARXS ANALYSIS OF THE DEMOCRATIC STATE
Characteristically, Marxs point of departure was criticism of Hegel, but
while he rejected much in Hegel, he also found much of value. Hegel saw that
212 Chapter Nine
the French Revolution had raised the problem of sovereignty in a critical way
and that it was this problem with which history is now occupied, and whose
solution it has to work out in the future (Hegel, 1956: 452). The problem was
critical, because in the fully developed modern state the people could not be
sovereign. On Hegels view of the matter, the sovereignty of the people is
one of the confused notions based on the wild idea of the people. Taken
without its monarch and the articulation of the whole . . . the people is a form-
less mass and no longer a state (Hegel, 1952: 279).
In the fully developed modern state, there was a bifurcation of civil soci-
ety and the state. Individuals live private lives and relate anonymously. It was
thus that, unless articulated, the people are a formless mass. On the other
hand, the government, the king, parliament, the bureaucracy and the police
became the mode by which the whole was articulated and expressed. Fail-
ing to grasp the full force of the American solution to the problem of sov-
ereignty, Hegel opted for a reactionary solution, a constitutional monarchy.
Marx agreed fully with the Hegelian analysis of the bifurcation of civil so-
ciety and the state, but he saw also that the Americans had, in a remarkable
way, already solved the problem that Hegel believed had still to be solved.
That is, Marx saw that the fully realized modern state would be a democratic
state. The solution, however, required that in the fully realized modern state,
the alienation of individuals would be fully realized and at the same time fully
obscured. In the democratic state, every adult is a citizen with full civil and
political rights. Moreover, in virtue of the mechanisms of representative gov-
ernment, the people are sovereign. But for Marx the reality was otherwise:
Each citizen is an imagined member of an imagined sovereignty, divested of
his actual individual life and endowed with an unactual universality. In the
democratic state, liberators reduce citizenship, the political community, to a
mere means for preserving [the] so-called rights of man. But this means
man in his uncivilized and unsocial aspect, in his fortuitous existence and just
as he is, corrupted by the entire organization of our society, lost and alienated
from himself, oppressed by inhuman relations and elements (Easton and
Guddat, 1967: 22526, 231).
To say that in the democratic state individuals are uncivilized and
unsocial and that they have fortuitous existences is not to say that in-
dividuals are barbaric, or nasty or motivated by greedthough this may
also be true. It is to say rather that they live private lives, that they are iso-
lated, that they relate anonymously, that their situations are accidental
like their sex or race, and that while their powers are social, they are not
socially realized. This is the result of the entire organization of society,
but in particular of the market structure of bourgeois society and the alien-
ating structures of the modern state. As Thomas points out, the state
Philosophy and Politics: A Historical Approach to Marx and Dewey 213
becomes a fetishistic personification of political potential, very much as
the concept of capital designates the separation between the conditions of
labor and the producer. Both are the members of societys own real force
set up against them, opposed to them, and out of control (Thomas, 1980:
196). The people are sovereign but they have no power over the conditions
of their lives. As sovereigns in an illusory community, they are in reality
controlled by inhuman relations. A number of critical implications flow
from Marxs analysis.
First, the problem for Marx is first and last political, of what has to be done
and to happen if people are to gain control of the circumstancesnow alien-
atedwhich structure their lives. This problem was not to be solved econo-
mistically or by perfecting the instrumentalities of the democratic state. This
distinguished Marxs view from, e.g., Proudhon on the one hand, and on the
other, from republicans. Second, to achieve the goal is to overcome the dual-
ity of civil society and the state, and this means, as Marx writes, in true de-
mocracy, the political state disappears (untergeht). This view, of course, has
its Rousseauian intimations and suggests the critical point of comparison to
nineteenth-century anarchisms and social democrats. But third, in contrast to
anarchisms which share with Marx the idea that state power must be broken,
if this was to be achieved, it had to be achieved by an agency which did not
reflect the alienated relations of private property. As he wrote, it was the work
of a class with radical chains, a class in civil society that is not of civil soci-
ety, a class that is the dissolution of all classes, a sphere of society having a
universal character because of its universal suffering (Easton and Guddat,
1967: 26364).
These ideas lead directly to the 1848 Communist Manifesto where, recur-
ring to the Aristotelian lineage of the idea that democracy was class rule by
the poor, Marx and Engels write the first step in the revolution by the work-
ing class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to establish
democracy. In this democracy, to be sure, the political state has not disap-
peared, for as a statist form, this democracy was still a dictatorship, albeit
a dictatorship of the majority, the proletariat, against the minoritythe own-
ers of the means of production. It was thus that it was but a first step in the
revolution of the working class (McClellan, 1977: 237).
4
But it was the Paris Commune of 1871 which seems to have given Marx
a paradigm for what might be, a paradigm which, prefigured in actuality,
has earlier intimations of true democracy. As he said, the democracy of
the Commune was a historically new creation and the glorious harbin-
ger of a new society.
5
Still, it is vital to be clear about what Marx saw in it
and why also that, for him, it was a premature and finally unwise act of
heroism.
214 Chapter Nine
THE COMMUNE AND DEMOCRACY
For us, democracy refers to statist electoral politics and anarchism refers
either to a silly utopianism or to terrorist politics. If in the nineteenth century,
these terms had not yet been thoroughly appropriated by the enemies of rule
by the demos, it was already the case, as Marx noted, that it was generally
the fate of completely new historical creations to be mistaken for the coun-
terpart of older and even defunct forms of social life, to which they bear a cer-
tain likeness (Marx, 1971: 73). In what sense, then, was the Commune a
completely new historical creation?
On the one hand, it was anarchist in the sense that it broke state power. As
he wrote: The unity of the nation was not to be broken, but, on the contrary,
to be organized by the communal Constitution and to become a reality by the
destruction of the State power which claimed to be the embodiment of that
unity independent of, and superior to, the nation itself, from which it was but
a parasitic excrescence (73). But it was not anarchist in the sense of Stirner,
Proudhon, or Bakunin. Marx took these writers seriouslywith due cause
but because, on his view, they lacked an adequate understanding of political
economy, they were mistaken both as regards their vision of a good society
and as regards the means of attaining it. Putting the matter as briefly as pos-
sible, for Marx, anarchists were inverted statists. Since on their view the state
was the problem, once rid of it, all would be well. Because for them there was
little point in discriminating between forms of the state, transformative activ-
ity, whether the antirevolutionary activity of Proudhon or the conspiratorial
activity of Bakunin, had to wash its hands of the state. As Proudhon said, to
indulge in politics is to wash ones hand in dung (quoted by Thomas, 1980:
184).
Marx saw the matter very differently. His view of the Commune gives us a
start in seeing how. In the first place, the Commune was
a thoroughly expansive political form, while all previous forms of government
had been emphatically repressive. Its true secret was this. It was essentially a
working-class government, the product of the struggle of the producing against
the appropriating class . . . (Marx, 1971: 75).
We must be clear what this means. The Commune had fashioned the first
governmentthe word must be used gingerlywhich aimed at realizing
full control over the circumstances of life by ordinary citizens. It was in
this sense expansive in contrast to those forms that took for granted
the conditions of ordinary life. Even the best case, for example, the de-
mocracy of ancient Athens, took these for granted. Previous democracies,
Philosophy and Politics: A Historical Approach to Marx and Dewey 215
like nondemocracies, were repressive in that they aimed but to replace
the rule of one class for anotherwithout altering the alienating conditions
which called for class rule in the first place. For example, in the ancient
polis, politics regarded the struggle between rich and poor over deci-
sions of law and war, but the poor were not social revolutionaries in the
sense that they either did or could aim at reconstituting society. This idea,
which was owed to the French Revolution, regarded the perception, now
familiar largely through the thought of Hegel and of Marx that human his-
tory was radically unlike natural history in being the product of human ac-
tivity. For Marx this meant that
Communism differs from all previous movements in that it overturns the basis
of all earlier relations of production and intercourse, and for the first time con-
sciously treats all natural premises as the creatures of hitherto existing men,
strips them of their natural character and subjects them to the power of united
individuals (McClellan, 1977: 179).
Political democracy was a great step forward because it acknowledged the
sovereign people, but it was the final form of emancipation only within the
prevailing order of things.
Indeed, it was just for these reasons that the Commune could not have suc-
ceeded: Apart from the fact that this was merely the rising of a city under
exceptional circumstances, the majority of the Commune was in no way so-
cialist nor could it be (Marx, 1971: 293). The exceptional circumstances
which produced the Commune left the full machinery of the repressive
French State in place, and insofar, the Communards faced formidable odds.
But in addition, because the Communards were not organized, politically ac-
tive workers, their political capacities were undeveloped.
The problem was not that the Communards lacked revolutionary con-
sciousness, for they surely knew how to die on the barricades, nor was the
problem economistic, regarding their incapacity at the existing stage of eco-
nomic development to conquer scarcity, but that an alienated citizenry was in
no position to reabsorb their alienated social powers. They were still isolated,
private persons who, as not yet thoroughly interdependent, could not or-
ganize themselves so as to realize fully the powers that they had. As Edwards
says: the Communards belonged more to the past tradition of Paris revolu-
tionaries than presaging the industrial struggles of the future (Edwards,
1971: 360). As an alliance of artisans, of workers in craft industries, of petty
bourgeois shopkeepers and traders, it was impossible for them to overcome
the contradiction between public and private life, between general and par-
ticular interests. It was thus that with a modicum of common sense . . . [the
Commune] could have reached a compromise with Versailles useful to the
216 Chapter Nine
whole mass of the people the only thing that could have been reached at the
time (Marx, 1971: 293).
The anarchists saw and celebrated the fact that the Commune was not made
by the proletariat and was instead an alliance of the people, and they saw
and celebrated the spontaneity and disorganization that was a critical mark of
the Commune. But, for Marx, their failure to see that unless the Communards
were to have a long period for self-education in self-rulean impossibility in
the circumstances of Civil Warthe Commune had to fail.
Asecond point of comparison between Marxs understanding of the Com-
mune and anarchist thought regards the question of government. For us, ei-
ther there is a government or there is anarchyno authority, no coercive or-
ganization. The idea was surely reinforced by a great deal of anarchist
polemicsespecially in the nineteenth century, but the confusion is deeper,
depending on the eighteenth-century identification of rule with government.
In the ancient polis, there was, strictly speaking, no government; there was
rule by one, few or many. Political power was unmediated. In the modern
state, however, there are always governments, the executive, parliament, bu-
reaucracies and the police, and they always claim to represent the gov-
erned. It is easy then to suppose that the middle ground between self-rule
and rule by others is modern political democracy, representative govern-
ment. But for Marx (and Dewey, as we shall see), this was not the only al-
ternative. The institutional novelty of the Commune was in just this.
There would be functionaries of the people, agents in the strictest of
senses, and these would be under strict instructions from those whom they
represent. These functionaries would not be as in bourgeois democracy
merely authorized to rule those who elect them, but would be as ambassa-
dors or military commanders, responsible and revocable at the pleasure
of those who elected them. Sovereignty, as in Rousseau, would not be
alienated. Accordingly, it would not be illusory. As Marx wrote:
Instead of deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class
was to misrepresent the people in Parliament, universal suffrage was to serve the
people, constituted in Communes, as individual suffrage serves every other em-
ployer in the search for the workmen and managers in his business. And it is
well-known that companies, like individuals, in matters of real business gener-
ally know how to put the right man in the right place, and, if they once make a
mistake, to redress it promptly. On the other hand, nothing could be more for-
eign to the spirit of the Commune than to supersede universal suffrage by hier-
archic investiture (Marx, 1971: 73).
6
It is hard to know how to classify this arrangement. Is it a government with
power but no authority or with authority but no power? It would manage
Philosophy and Politics: A Historical Approach to Marx and Dewey 217
but it would be, like the police and the courtswhich are not to be abolished
elective, responsible, and revocable. We need to emphasize here that the re-
jection of bourgeois democracy did not involve the rejection of its patently
most critical democratic features: free elections, free communication, etc.
Marx never questioned their indispensability. His criticism, like Deweys,
was that democracy required something more, not something less. For Marx,
it meant a form of real participation consistent with government.
We should note also that Marxs analogy is nearly perfect. A company
could be operated by workmen and managers, and no one supposes that
the owner of the company has lost his sovereignty. It was but elitist propa-
ganda to believe that the same principles could not apply to a commune.
The only real question was whether a commune, like a company, could agree
on the goals of the association. This problem, of course, relates to the first
point regarding the question of whether the citzenry is or is not alienated.
Finally, as already suggested, we must not assume that a full-fledged de-
mocracy would be totalitarian, that the people ruling themselves would
trample personal freedom. As Aristotle and Madison both saw, this as-
sumption was warranted where personal freedom meant the rights of prop-
erty, freedom of the exploiters to exploit the exploited. Insofar as the Com-
mune was expansive and not repressive, it would be different from
previous democracies. It is true, of course, that Marx did mock liberal con-
stitutional theory and did not himself pay heed to the institutional problems
of true democracy, but it is clear that he profoundly valued personal free-
dom, saw, rightly, that only in community do the means exist for every in-
dividual to cultivate his talents in all directions, and assumed, optimistically,
that individuals in a community would act so that, in contrast to previous
forms, all would realize personal freedom. The absence of concern to insti-
tutional detail here stems from his commitment to a democratic politics, to his
repeated contention that no one could write scripts for othersstill less for
future others who will need to solve just those problems which they have.
7
It is also clear that if the unity of the nation was not to be broken, some
sort of federation was involved, and while this was not to be a federation of
small States, as dreamt of by Montesquieu and the Girondins, it is not clear
what Marx has in mind. There are, from Marxs point of view, two possible
objections to small States. First, if they are states, then they still embody an
alienated politics. Second, if they are small, the unity of the nation is bro-
ken. This second problem is critical, but it is hard to say whether, as he sug-
gests, the nation is the smallest unit for social production in the modern
world, or whether, perhaps as part of this, if we are to think of moving pro-
gressively toward the future and be realistic, we need, in a world of aggran-
dizing nation-states, to think in terms of nations?
218 Chapter Nine
The problem is resolvable, however, if we return Marxs discussion to its con-
text. Marxs conclusion, that had the Commune shown a modicum of common-
sense, it would have tried to reach a compromise with Versailles, powerfully
reinforces a host of evidence that Marxs politics were gradualist. This means, in
this context, that the best that one could have hoped for, in these circumstances,
was the best possible compromise consistent with the continuing existence of the
French State. To suppose that the Communards could have mapped out and re-
alized the future is the worst kind of utopian thinking.
MARXS GRADUALIST POLITICS
It may be doubted that Marxs politics were gradualist. But a gradualist poli-
tics is not necessarily reformist nor is it necessarily antirevolutionary. It is
a politics that seeks to realize what is at the time realizable. Marx surely
wanted society to be revolutionized and he surely also believed that, at the
right moment, a revolution would occur; but there is strong evidence that
Marx was never naive about the right moment and that, in contrast to
anarchist-inspired politics, he was always perfectly prepared to work within
the stateif it was a liberal democratic state.
8
Already against Stirner, he had argued, it is only in the mind of the ideol-
ogist that [the will to abolish competition and with it the state and law]
arises before conditions have developed far enough to make its production
possible (quoted by Thomas, 1980: 343). And to emphasize, the conditions
referred to are political, regarding the political capacities of the people whose
activities had sustained competition and law and the state. But perhaps
the clearest statement of his position is his speech, given upon resigning from
the Central Council of the Communist League:
The minority have substituted the dogmatic spirit for the critical, the idealist in-
terpretation of events for the materialist. Simple willpower, instead of the true
relations of things, has become the motive force of the revolution. While we say
to the working people, You will have to go through fifteen, twenty-five years
of civil wars, and wars between nations not only to change existing conditions
but to change yourselves and make yourselves worthy of political power, you
on the other hand, say We ought to get power at once, or else give up the fight.
. . . Just as the democrats make a fetish of the word people you make one of
the word proletariat. Like them, you substitute revolutionary phrases for rev-
olutionary action (quoted by Thomas: 331).
We can be reminded that, writing in 1852, he held that the carrying of
universal suffrage in England would . . . be a far more socialist measure than
Philosophy and Politics: A Historical Approach to Marx and Dewey 219
anything that has been honoured with that name on the continent. He con-
tinued, optimistically, that its inevitable result . . . [would be] the political
supremacy of the working class (345). And his mind had not changed, after
the Commune, when in 1871, he wrote that:
The ultimate object of the political movement of the working class is . . . the
conquest of political power for this class; and this naturally requires that the or-
ganization of the working class, an organization which arises from its economic
struggles, should previously reach a certain level of development. On the other
hand, however, every movement in which the working class as a class confronts
the ruling classes and tries to constrain them by pressure from without is a po-
litical movement. For instance, the attempt by strikes, etc., in a particular fac-
tory or even in a particular trade to compel individual capitalists to reduce the
working day, is a purely economic movement. On the other hand, the movement
to force through an eight-hour, etc., law is a political movement. And in this
way, out of the separate economic movements of the workers grows up every-
where a political movement, that is to say, a class movement, with the object of
enforcing its interests in a general form, in a form possessing general, socially
coercive force. While these movements presuppose a certain degree of previous
organization, they are in turn equally a means of developing this organization
(quoted by Thomas, 347).
9
THE REDEFINITION OF MARXIAN POLITICS
Events did not proceed, however, as Marx had thought they would. While, on
the one hand, industrialization in England and then in Germany did promote
an increasingly politicized labor movement, radicals were by no means able
to agree on either strategy or tactics. During his lifetime, Marx had had some
success in negotiating the differences and in maintaining the extraordinarily
diverse elements of the International on a course of gradualist change. But the
events which led to the effective demise of the First International (in 1872,
formally in 1876 in Philadelphia) were critical in the subsequent Internation-
alist movement, in Marxist politics, and in our retrospective understanding of
Marxs politics.
Oversimplifying a very complicated story, instead of being, as Thomas
puts it, a form of doctrine having some vague and, as far as Marx was con-
cerned, irksome appeal, anarchism became a movement having a consider-
able, and widespread, appeal across national boundaries (Thomas: 249). Be-
cause Marx wanted not merely that there should be a revolution, but that it be
the right sort of revolution, he fought the anarchists tooth and nail. He did not
fight them, if the foregoing is correct, because he believed in the state, or in
220 Chapter Nine
centralized authority, or worse, in a revolution made by revolutionaries in the
name of the people. For Marx, the First International and the Paris Commune
did in fact prefigure the future, yet the repression that the Paris Commune
provoked, itself a critical factor in the demise of the International, and Marxs
role in this collapse, had serious consequences. Instead of being a pluralist,
ideologically heterogeneous vehicle for the transformation of the interna-
tional order, subsequent Internationals were monolithic and ideologically
doctrinaire. Indeed, Marxs machinations versus Bakunin became the alibi for
this and at the same time confirmed as prophetic the anarchist suspicion
that Marx and Marxism were authoritarian, offering but a new version of ab-
solutist politics. Finally, failing to grasp what the Commune was and why it
failed, instead of being for radicals a premature glimmer into a historically
novel form of society, for some, because it lacked centralization and author-
ity, the Commune became an apocalyptic and hopelessly degenerative fit of
revolutionary madness. For others, it was the very model of revolution, of
the spontaneity of the masses. For many anarchists, the Commune proved
that revolution did not require a vanguard working class, still less, orga-
nization; or, quite oppositely, as in Bakunin and the Blanquists, it showed the
need for a conspiratorial revolutionary party to provide the match which
would light the fire of revolution.
But events continued to undermine Marxs hopes. The destruction of In-
ternationalism, of social democracy in Germany
10
and the collapse of Tsarist
Russia, all sparked by the World War, completed that redefinition of Marxist
politics that had begun with the violent end of the Commune. After the Bol-
shevik Revolution, Marxist struggles to transform society will rapidly col-
lapse into two poles, between a Blanquist-style demand for a revolutionary
conspiratorial vanguard of the working class aimed at smashing the state
and reformist social democracy, aimed not at a gradualist transformation of
the political conditions for revolution, but at winning economic concessions
from the capitalists.
11
By the turn of the century, it had already become clear to Marxists that
while economic development was creating the conditions for socialist pro-
duction, it was not creating a revolutionary consciousness among the work-
ers. Writing in his enormously influentialand often misunderstoodWhat
Is to be Done? (1902), Lenin noted that everyone agrees that it is neces-
sary to develop the political consciousness of the working class. The ques-
tion was, he continued, how is that to be done and what is required to do
it? For Lenin, economismthe effort to win economic concessionsand
terrorism have one common root, subservience to spontaniety. For Lenin,
both views presumed historical inevitability and were thus apolitical. While
as with Marx and the social democrats, the working class remained the
Philosophy and Politics: A Historical Approach to Marx and Dewey 221
center of a mass-based social revolution, Lenin insisted that we must go
among all classes of the population as theoreticians, as propagandists, as ag-
itators and as organizers; and while he protested against Blanquism and
against confining the political struggle to conspiracy, he also insisted that
this did not deny the need for a strong revolutionary organizationif the
workers were to be politicized (Lenin, 1966: 11219). But it was easy to read
this tract in the light of the Bolshevik Revolution and to hold that it had al-
ready set out the principles of socialist revolution, not as a movement of
workers, nor of workers allied with other classes, but of an authoritarian
organization of dedicated professional revolutionaries, a minority acting for
the workers.
12
It is exactly here, then, where we can begin our analysis of Deweys ver-
sion of a democratic politics. As we shall see, there are both strong parallels
and some critical differences.
DEWEYS VISION OF DEMOCRACY
AND HIS ANALYSIS OF THE DEMOCRATIC STATE
Dewey was born in 1859, the year that Marx published the Critique of Polit-
ical Economy, but Dewey did not turn explicitly to political philosophy until
his 1915 German Philosophy and Politics. Moreover, while it is well-known
that Dewey was a critic of Marxism, especially in his writings beginning in
the 1930s, Dewey could not at that time have read Marxs critique of Hegels
philosophy of state and the tracts on alienation, nor what we call the Grun-
drisse, nor even the critically important German Ideology. For Dewey, Marx-
ism was philosophically what may be called Second International Marx-
ism, a variant that was powerfully influenced by the monist philosophy of
history of Georgi Plekhanov. Politically, Marxism was, by that time, defined
largely by Leninby then understood as the promoter of the vanguard
Party. Deweys philosophical roots, of course, like Marxs, trace to Hegel
a fact of some importance; but his political sensitivities were shaped not by
the revolutions of 1848 or the Paris Commune, but by New England localism
and an understanding of this which in critical ways was Jeffersonian.
In German Philosophy and Politics, Dewey traced the philosophic basis of
patriotic statism in Germany and concluded, the present situation presents
the spectacle of the breakdown of the whole philosophy of Nationalism, po-
litical, racial and cultural. Dewey rejected the sufficiency of arbitration,
treaties, international judicial councils, schemes of international disarma-
ment, peace funds and peace movements. He called for more radical think-
ing of the problem (Dewey, 1915: 130). The problem of statist politics was
222 Chapter Nine
also present in Democracy and Education, published the next year. He asked:
Is it possible for an educational system to be conducted by a national state
and yet the full social ends of the educative process not be restricted, con-
strained, and corrupted? (97). Dewey thought that the answer could be yes,
if, to be sure, we were talking about education in and for a democratic soci-
ety. In Reconstruction in Philosophy (1920), he argued that despite wide dif-
ferences, political philosophies were agreed upon the final consummating
position of the state and he concluded that assumptions regarding the
unique and supreme position of the State in the social hierarchy had solid-
ified into dogma (201). Just as Marx had supposed that capitalist modes of in-
tercourse would destroy national boundaries, make for international proletar-
ian solidarity, and politicize workers, Dewey hoped that these forces would
propel democracy as a way of life.
13
But the critical eleven years that separated Democracy and Education and
The Public and Its Problems forced Dewey to different conclusions. Not only
had he developed a critique of democracy as a form of government, but also
it was now clear to him that democracy, as a way of life was not being fos-
tered by the new interdependencies and the new capacities of technological
society. On the contrary, democracy as a mode of associated living was being
profoundly undermined by these same forces.
In terms familiar to the anarchism of Gustave Landauer and Martin Buber,
Dewey argued that democracy was not an alternative to other principles of
associated life. It is the idea of community itself. Within a community, the
state is an impertinence.
Turning his attention to democracy as a form of government, Dewey ar-
gued that at best, political democracy represents an effort . . . to counteract
forces that so largely determined the possession of rule by accidental and ir-
relevant factors, and . . . an effort to counteract the tendency to employ polit-
ical power to serve private instead of public ends. But political democracy
had failed even to realize these limited goals. In a word, he concluded, the
new forms of combined action due to the modern economic regime controls
present policies, much as dynastic interests controlled those of two centuries
ago. They affect thinking and desire more than did the interests which for-
merly moved the state (Dewey, 1954).
14
The analysis compares easily to Marx, but especially insofar as it sug-
gests that the constraints on policies, as on thinking and desire, are struc-
turally rooted. Accordingly, the problem of constituting democracy as a
way of life had no easy solutions and regarded the incapacity of interde-
pendent people even to perceive the consequences of combined action,
still less to be able to perceive shared goods and to act on them: What,
then, was to be done?
Philosophy and Politics: A Historical Approach to Marx and Dewey 223
DEWEYS REJECTION OF CLASS POLITICS
Dewey visited the Soviet Union in 1928, the year after he published The Public
and Its Problems. In no sense was Dewey an ideological anti-Marxist. He had
assessed the Bolshevik revolution as an experiment to discover whether the fa-
miliar democratic idealsfamiliar in words at leastwill not be most com-
pletely realized in a social regime based on voluntary co-operation, on conjoint
workers control and management of industry. Dewey saw, it is clear, that so-
cialism was inconceivable without democracy and that, as the foregoing sug-
gests, democracy in its complete sense demanded socialism. Nevertheless, his
analysis of the democratic state made it plain to him, though not to the Marxists,
that in the United States, at least, proletarian revolution was not on the historical
agenda. For him, the critical issue was the very idea of class.
Agreat deal of what Dewey wrote during this period sounded like a Marxian
class analysis. In addition to what has already been noted, consider Individual-
ism Old and New. In that critical text, Dewey argued that the issue that Marx had
raised, the relation of the economic structure to political operationsis one that
actively persists. Indeed, he continues, it forms the only basis of present po-
litical questions. In the pages that follow, Dewey gives an account of the crisis
that could have come from Capital, Vol. III. He writes:
There are now, it is estimated, eight billions of surplus savings a year, and the
amount is increasing. Where is this capital to find its outlet? Diversion into the
stock market gives temporary relief, but the resulting inflation is a cure which
creates a new disease. If it goes into the expansion of industrial plants, how long
will it be before they, too, overproduce (Dewey, 1962: 8586).
There is in this text even a clear reference to the upshot of the Marxian labor
theory of value:
That the total earnings of eight million wage workers should be only four times
the amount of what the income-tax returns frankly call the unearned income
of . . . eleven thousand millionaires goes almost without notice (109).
Perhaps even more Marxist sounding is his claim that large and basic eco-
nomic currents cannot be ignored for any length of time, and they are work-
ing in one direction. Indeed, economic determinism is now a fact, not a the-
ory. His account concludes with a text that could have been written by
Engels:
There is a difference and a choice between a blind, chaotic and unplanned de-
terminism, issuing from business conducted for pecuniary profitthe anarchy
224 Chapter Nine
of capitalist productionand the determination of socially planned and ordered
development. It is the difference and the choice between a socialism that is pub-
lic and one that is capitalistic (119).
Finally, Dewey also sees the relation between this theoretically informed
analysis and the problem of the lost individual. We live, he writes, po-
litically from hand to mouth.
The various expressions of public control . . . have taken place sporadically and
in response to the pressure of distressed groups so large that their voting power
demanded attention. They have been improvised to meet special occasions.
They have not been adopted as parts of any general social policy (114).
It is clear enough
.
why this is the case. Under present arrangements, finan-
cial and industrial power, corporately organized, can deflect economic conse-
quences away from the advantage of the many to serve the privilege of the
few. The political parties themselves, the ostensible vehicles of mobilization
for change, have been eager accomplices in maintaining confusion and un-
reality (114).
This analysis, as pertinent today as when it was offered, is not untypical of
Dewey. It suggests that Deweys understanding of the political possibilities of
democratic politics in capitalist America was anything but naive, and that, in
important ways, it was close to Marxism. But for all this, there is evidence
that he sometimes lost sight of the critical issue. An instance is the book
which some have taken to be one of Deweys more radical political tracts,
Liberalism and Social Action, written in 1935. As is well known, Dewey there
insisted that
Liberalism must become radical, meaning by radical perception of the neces-
sity of thorough-going changes in the set-up of institutions and corresponding
activity to bring changes to pass (62).
Dewey emphatically rejected reform that dealt with this abuse and now that
without having a social goal based on an inclusive plan, but he was less clear
what that goal and plan was. One thing was clear: Dewey rejected Marxism,
but especially the idea of a struggle between classes, culminating in open
and violent warfare as being the method for production of radical social
change (78).
Dewey had a clear and adequate instrumentalist view of violence. In an-
other place he had written that what is justly objected to as violence or un-
due coercion is a reliance upon wasteful or destructful means of accomplish-
ing results (Dewey, 1929, Vol. II: 785). In Liberalism and Social Action,
Philosophy and Politics: A Historical Approach to Marx and Dewey 225
similarly, it was not violence as such that was the issue. He recognized, with
the Marxists, that force, rather than intelligence is built into the procedures
of the existing social system, and that even free expression will be tolerated
as long as it does not seem to menace in any way the status quo of society
(63, 64).
27
When it does, he wrote, the state will be quick to use official vio-
lence in the name of protecting the general welfare. Dewey had learned
from his experience with the Palmer raids and the tragedy of Sacco and
Vanzetti.
What then was his objection to the class war notion of the Marxists?
Dewey might have argued, though he did not, that the Marxist analysis was
substantially correct, but that for good historical reasons, the idea of struggle
between classes, culminating in open warfare, had to be rejected. The argu-
ment for this conclusion would be complicated, but it would be fully consis-
tent with Deweys own analysis of the democratic state.
In agreement with the anarchists of his day, for Dewey, the workers were
not to be agents of social change. It was not that there was no oppression and
inequality in America, that workers were not exploited, nor that they were
happy with their lot. One did not hear their angry voices, Dewey wrote, but
that was not because they were drowned out by shouts of eagerness for ad-
venturous opportunity. Rather, the murmurs of discontent are drowned by
the murmurs of lost opportunities, along with the din of machinery, motor
cars and speakeasies (1962: 7879). The metaphor, suggestive of the much
later writings of Marcuse or Foucault, was employed in the context of
Deweys brilliant analysis of America individualism. It was not roast beef, but
repressive needs, normalization, and atomization which had disinte-
grated class-consciousness.
As I argued, Marx knew that the struggle would be long and hard, but he
could not have anticipated the fantastic flexibility of capitalism in the liberal
democracies, and especially in America, the fragmenting effects of race and
ethnicity. In America, then, workers had become a politically useless cate-
gory. But if so, then, class struggle was, at its worse, a slogan for assuring
the faithful or, at its best, an abstraction at a different level of analysis.
The issue is complicated, but I must be brief. In Marxism, classes are not
defined by a set of empirically given characteristics, e.g., income, social sta-
tus, or occupation. Rather, class is a theoretical concept, grounded in the
central concept of mode of production. Marxs Capital provides a theoretical
and abstract account of the capitalist mode of production. Abstractly consid-
ered, there are but two classes, the owners of the means of production and
the producers of surplus value, the proletariat. This analysis, the core of
any Marxism, provides an understanding of capitalism as a mode of produc-
tion. It shows what problems need to be solved if it is to be reproduced
226 Chapter Nine
including thus an explanation of why capitalist relations need to be mystified,
the famous fetishism of commodities. It shows that capitalism is irra-
tional, that it is subject to periodic crises, and it gives an argument for so-
cialism by showing that as long as the means of production are not jointly
controlled, there is no way to end domination and alienationincluding the
alienated politics of the modern state.
But of course the real world is not just a mode of production. It is com-
prised of societies with modes of production. Like all others, societies with a
capitalist mode of production have state structures, churches, gender and
racial conflicts, schools, and mass media. They have housewives, profes-
sionals, civil servants, and all sorts of workers who are not proletarians
defined as producers of surplus value. But this means that Marxs projection
into the future of the effects of the capitalist mode of production could well
be wrongas, indeed, it was.
In the nineteenth century, it was still possible to keep things simple by
identifying the growing class of industrial workers with a growing and in-
creasingly organized proletariat, to suppose, as the Manifesto had it, that the
small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handi-
craftsmen and peasantsall these sink gradually into the proletariat. The
workers, now the immense majority, now organized, now pauperized,
would become a revolutionary class. But close as that had come to being
prophetic, just before World War I, that time had now passed. More generally,
then, since Marxist revolutionary class politics was predicated on the as-
sumption of global capitalist transformation, of increasing polarization and
immiseration, and on the consequent development of the political capacities
of organized workers, and since these had not obtained as Marx had hoped,
Marxists might well have abandoned the idea of proletarian revolution. The
problem, then would not be to find or make a revolutionary class, but as Hin-
dess writes, to mobilize effective support around socialist objectives out of
the forces, struggles and ideologies operative in particular societies.
15
The Marxists of the interwar period did not, of course, see this; nor, given
that their Marxism was the monocausal Marxism of the Second International,
was it surprising that Dewey would reject Marxist analysis.
He observed: according to the Marxians . . . the economic foundations of
society consist of two things, the forces of production on one side and, on the
other side, the social relations of production. Further, for Marxians, scien-
tific technology is part of the forces of production. It is dynamic while the so-
cial relations are static; they lag behind. Dewey here was ready to admit
that what was happening socially is the result of the combination of these
two factors, and thus it would seem that here, as above, Dewey had fully ap-
propriated the extremely influential Preface account of what came to be
Philosophy and Politics: A Historical Approach to Marx and Dewey 227
called historical materialism.
16
But Dewey then insisted that it was but a
truism to call this combination capitalism and to say that capitalism is the
cause of all the important changes that have occurred. On his view,
Colossal increase in productivity, the bringing together of men in cities and large
factories, the elimination of distance, the accumulation of capital, fixed and
liquidthese things would have come about, at a certain stage, no matter what
the established institutional system. They are the consequences of the new
means of technological production (1963: 81).
17
The text is a startlingly clear expression of technological determinism, but if
indeed, for orthodox Marxists, technology produces changes in the rela-
tions of production and thus explains the emergence of capitalism, Dewey
saw what they did not, that once one holds that technology directly defines
the labor process and, through this, the wider social relations, historical ma-
terialism entails that there need be little real difference between capitalism
and socialism!
18
Deweys concrete approach should have put him on guard. While he often
succumbs to the high abstraction, industrial society, he seems also to have
seen that the logic and consequences of the accumulation of capital was a fun-
damental cause of the way changes occurred in the West, of the particular ap-
plication of technologies and the particular distribution of wealth and re-
sources, that had capitalism been other than what it isand here we are
indebted to Marxtechnological production could surely have been differ-
ent. Putting the matter as briefly as possible, insofar as the relations of private
property define the accumulation of capital, the state is preferably liberal.
This means not just that private and public are bifurcated but that government
will be predictably limited in addressing problems thrown up by the process
of capital accumulation. At the very least, it must be constrained to activities
consistent with the maintenance of the system of private accumulation.
Deweys claim that the release of productivity is the product of coopera-
tively organized intelligence is correct. As Marxists point out, production is
socialized in capitalism. Moreover, if one wants the productivity associated
with industrial societies, there is no alternative to that. But Deweys idea that
coercion and oppression on a large scale exist because of the perpetuation
of old institutions and patterns not touched by scientific method is patently
fallacious. Indeed, in the text already quoted from Individualism Old and New,
he had it right: There is a difference and a choice between a blind, chaotic and
unplanned determinism, issuing from business conducted for pecuniary profit,
and the determination of a socially planned and ordered development, be-
tween a socialism that is public and one that is capitalistic. This difference,
of course, is exactly the extension of political democracy to the economy, the
228 Chapter Nine
elimination of the contradiction between socialized production and private ap-
propriation, and finally, as Marx insisted and Dewey surely seemed also to see,
the reappropriation of social powers by united individuals.
Once Dewey lost touch with the root of the problem, he could no longer of-
fer plausible solutions. In Liberalism and Social Action, he offered:
The question is whether force or intelligence is to be the method upon which we
consistently rely and to whose promotion we devote our energies. Insistence that
the use of force is inevitable limits the use of available intelligence. . . . There is
an undoubted objective clash of interests between finance-capitalism that con-
trols the means of production and whose profit is served by maintaining relative
scarcity, and idle workers and hungry consumers. But what generates violent
strife is failure to bring the conflict into the light of intelligence, where the con-
flicting interests can be adjudicated on behalf of the interests of the great ma-
jority (1963: 79, 80).
The argument is a bad argument for at least three reasons. First, Deweys ab-
solutist either/or, either force or intelligence, is unwarranted. No serious rev-
olutionary, not Marx, not Lenin, not even Bakunin, so tied his hands in the
way that Dewey suggests, even if, for them, violence was inevitable. One
would have supposed that Deweys fine understanding of the use of violence
by the state in defense of the status quo would have led him to the conclusion
that as regards radical social change, some violence would, at some point, be
necessary.
Second, whatever the difficulties of a Marxian analysis, Marxists were not
so foolish as to suppose that the lions, the finance capitalists, would sit down
with the lambs and adjudicate away their privileged power. The objective
clash of interests which Dewey rightly acknowledged was neither temporary
nor negotiable. Rooted in the capitalist system as such, it left the parties
locked in a death clutch.
19
Third, Dewey here presupposes that publics exist, for it is only then, as he
here implies, that cooperative intelligence can be a mode of social recon-
struction. Immediately after he condemns Marxists for a rigid logic, he
says: The experimentalist is one who would see to it that the method de-
pended upon by all in some degree in a democratic community can be fol-
lowed through to completion (80, my emphasis).
It will not be easy to explain Deweys continuing optimism that creative in-
telligence can be effective even where it so patently lacks institutions. It is eas-
ier to explain his decisive turn against Marxism. By 1928 at least, Dewey had
given up on the Socialist Party.
20
By this time, the Soviets had already severely
abused, perhaps irreparably, the idea of socialism. They would, in the years
coming, disillusion still more. As noted, Deweys notion of Marxism was
Philosophy and Politics: A Historical Approach to Marx and Dewey 229
essentially the Marxism of the Second International, a Marxism flawed in
more ways than one. In his 1939 Freedom and Culture, Dewey attacked Marx-
ism as unscientific on grounds that it had a monistic block-universe theory of
social causation. The monistic theory of history was a disaster: Social causa-
tion was plural and reciprocal. As I have suggested in this essay, the actual
course of history is the cluttered product of contingencies that no theory could
assimilate.
21
On the other hand, Deweylike the Marxistshad never him-
self been clear on the causal questions regarding capitalism, industrial society
and the modern state. If anything, he shared with them a tendency toward tech-
nological and economic determinism. Similarly, he was fully correct to charge
that no one was less scientific than the scientific Soviet Marxists: Scientific
method in operating with working hypotheses instead of with fixed and
final Truth is not forced to have an Inner Council to declare just what is the
Truth . . . (97). Finally, Marxists had all too often argued that capitalism was
the only evil and that therefore, once rid of it, all would be lovely. One would
have thought that the thirties proved otherwise.
Still, by 1939, Dewey had definitely shifted his emphasisif not worse.
After reminding his readers that he had from time to time pointed out the
harmful consequences the present regime of industry and finance had upon
the reality of democratic ends and methods, and that he had nothing to re-
tract, he went on to say that the Marxists were wrong in holding that gov-
ernment in the so-called democratic states is only the organ of a capitalist
class. Now if this meantas by then Marxists had supposedthat the state
could not be used by revolutionary socialists, then Dewey was surely correct.
But as I have argued, Marx would have agreed with Dewey here. Yet Dewey
seems to mean more than this:
the effect of constant criticism of governmental action; of more than one politi-
cal party in formulating rival policies; of frequent elections; of the discussion
and public education that attend majority rule, and above all the fact that polit-
ical action is but one factor in the interplay of a number of cultural factors, have
a value that critics of partial democracy have not realized (94).
Though admittedly partial, he was now prepared to defend what he took to
be a characteristic American looseness of cohesion and indefiniteness in di-
rection of action.
We take for granted the action of a number of diverse factors in producing any
social result. There are temporary waves of insistence upon this and that partic-
ular measure and aim. But there is enough democracy so that in time any one
tendency gets averaged up in interplay with other tendencies. An average pre-
sents qualities that are open to easy criticism. But as compared with the fanati-
230 Chapter Nine
cism generated by monistic ideas when they are put into operation, the averag-
ing of tendencies a movement toward the mean, is an achievement of splendor
(9495).
But from the fact that what happens in history is the product of complex mul-
tiple factors working in unpredictable ways, it did not follow that American
pluralist politics generated some splendid movement toward the mean,
that conflicting interests somehow get averaged up, that the equilibrium
in social affairs was desirable. Indeed, how pluralist could a politics be
when, as he had argued in 1927, the public was lost? Finally, it was true that
political action is but one factor, but does not this mean, as in 1929 he also
had seen, that in a capitalist society, this left a free hand for financial and in-
dustrial power, corporately organized?
Dewey could accept the criticism that much of our political democracy is
more formal than substantial, provided, he now insisted, it is placed in con-
trast with totalitarian political control. To be sure, one does not need a very
good society to compare well with Nazism and Stalinism. One might argue
here that the despair of politics, so characteristic of our day, had by then in-
fected Dewey and that, like Sidney Hook and later pragmatists, he was now
prepared to celebrate bourgeois democracy. But this would be most unfair to
Dewey.
Not only was he unflinching in his rejection of the new kind of Stoicism
which had gripped postwar Europe, but he was unflinching in his recognition
of the profoundly troubled situation and in his commitment to the idea that
things could be made bettera great deal better. As Lothstein writes:
The central point for Dewey was that while suffering and setback suffused the
total human endeavor, it was neither daemonic or unremitting. Rather suffering
and celebration . . . were experimental correlatives, happiness supervening upon
their conjoint and dialectical origination. Although nested in a radically contin-
gent and indeterminate world, our situation, Dewey argued, was not that of Sisy-
phus or Job, our fate sealed by divine fiat or historical obsolescence. He saw us
instead as freewheeling sculptors of meaning in a world bereft of ultimate guar-
antees, but open to experimental improvement.
22
Nor, despite his unflinching optimism, was it the case that Marx had ever-
expected miracles. There are, he once remarked, no ready-made utopias to
introduce par decret du people, and if so, then surely there were none to be
instituted by a vanguard party wreaking death in the name of the people. If
we are to be emancipated, we need to work out our own emancipation and
to pass through long struggles, through a series of historic processes, trans-
forming circumstances and [people].
Philosophy and Politics: A Historical Approach to Marx and Dewey 231
This returns us to the question of foundations. Whatever his blind spots,
Deweys was a politics that needed no foundations. While Marxists did find
a foundation for politics in an eschatological philosophy of history, I have ar-
gued that this is much less clear as regards Marx. But, however that may be,
what is now needed, it seems to me, is to renew the possibilities of democratic
politics which acknowledges the insights of Marx but yet strips Marxism of
the idea that history is on the side of emancipation. We need, that is, to com-
bine the best in Marx and Dewey.
The public, lost and eclipsed, has not been found. For those of us living in
a democratic state, finding it is the primary imperative. But how to do this?
Deweys answer might go as follows: Try, by taking advantage of any oppor-
tunity that presents itself, to bring into existence publics; try to give direct ex-
perience and educative quality by informing it; try to create from our atom-
ized relations incipient communities which can be fostered and enlarged, and
try to do this by identifying common goods which can call for active support
and participation. Of course, this is not to say much, even if, as I think, it is
true and important. Still, armed with a Marxist understanding of what is hap-
pening to us and why, it may be possible to take advantage of opportunities
and to try, as Dewey offered, to build some incipient but progressively grow-
ing democratic publics.
NOTES
1. Cf. Norman Jacobson, Pride and Solace: The Functions and Limits of Political
Theory: (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1978). Jacobsons book is perhaps
the most systematic effort to examine the implications of a foundation-less politics,
but his moral is equivocal. See my review, The Crisis of Contemporary Political
Theory, Interpretation, Vol. 9 (September 1981). The texts quoted are from Arendt,
as quoted by Jacobson, Chapter V, passim.
2. An antifoundationalist politics need not reflect despair. Rorty suggests a ver-
sion when he writes that we should be more willing than we are to celebrate bour-
geois capitalist society as the best polity actualized so far, while regretting that it
is irrelevant to most of the problems of most of the population of the planet,
Method, Social Science, Social Hope, in Consequences of Pragmatism (Min-
neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982: 210). But of course, ideological
certitude is an obvious feature of those American policies which, in the pursuit of
triumph in what can only be called a Holy War, are as limitless in their means as
any which Orwell, Camus or Arendt condemned. Indeed, bourgeois capitalist so-
ciety is not irrelevant to most of the problems of most of the population of the
planet exactly because it is a large part of the problem of these peopleswhether
the societies are capitalist miracles, e.g., Korea, or socialist disasters, e.g.,
Nicaragua.
232 Chapter Nine
3. An excellent contextual reading of Marxs politics is Alan Gilberts Marxs
Politics: Communists and Citizens (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press).
Gilbert, following a path marked by Michael Harrington (in his Socialism, New York:
Bantam, 1973), shows that Marx persistently altered his political strategies in the light
of experience and that he was no economic determinist, inflexibly committed to pat
formulasunlike most of his later epigones. Paul Thomass Karl Marx and the An-
archists (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980) is an indispensable account of
Marxs relations, ideologically and politically, to nineteenth-century anarchism. See
also his Alienated Politics, in Terence Ball et al. (eds.), After Marx: Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 1984). Martin Bubers Paths in Utopia (Boston: Beacon,
1949) remains valuable. Barry Hindess offers a crisp account of the critical debates
between Lenin, Kautsky, and Bernstein. Unfortunately, he does not discuss Rosa Lux-
emburg, who was perhaps closest to Marx on the critical issues. See Marxism and
Political Democracy, in Alan Hunt (ed.), Marxism and Democracy (London:
Lawrence and Wishart, 1980). On Luxemburg, see Norman Geras, The Legacy of
Rosa Luxemburg (London, NLB, 1976).
4. This is not to say that there are not difficulties and ambiguities in Marxs writ-
ings on the critical issues. An excellent treatment is Frederic L. Bender, The Ambi-
guities of Marxs Concepts of Proletarian Dictatorship and Transition to Commu-
nism, History of Political Thought, Vol. II (November 1981). See also, Harrington:
5460; Gilbert, Chapter VIII.
5. Karl Marx, The Civil War in France, in On the Paris Commune (Moscow:
Progress, 1971): 97. As Bender points out, Engels confirmed that for them, the Com-
mune was a new type of polity. In an 1875 letter to Bebel, Engels wrote: The whole
talk about the state should be dropped [from our partys statements] especially since
the Commune . . . was no longer a state in the proper sense of the word [because it
was a state in-the-process of dissolving]. . . . We would therefore propose to replace
state everywhere by Gemeinwesen, a good old German word which can very well
convey the meaning of the French word commune (cited by Bender: 549).
6. For an extended development of these ideas in the American Confederation pe-
riod, see my War and Democracy (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), Part V, and The
Foreclosure of Democracy in America, History of Political Thought, Vol. 9 (Spring
1988).
7. Of course, insofar as he ignored the very real dangers of usurpation of power
and violation of individual rights, Marx was, as Bender notes, to this extent respon-
sible for later vanguard interpretations.
8. Harrington, Thomas, and Gilbert each provides ample evidence on this critical
point.
9. See M. Levin, Marx and Working-Class Consciousness, History of Political
Thought, Vol. I (Autumn, 1980).
10. Cf. Carl E. Schorske, German Social Democracy, 19051917: The Develop-
ment of the Great Schism (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press), 1955 and
my War and Democracy, Chapters 11 and 12.
11. See F. Claudin, Democracy and Dictatorship in Lenin and Kautsky, New Left
Review, Vol. 107 (Nov./Dec. 1977).
Philosophy and Politics: A Historical Approach to Marx and Dewey 233
12. This is hardly the place to survey the literature on Lenin and Leninism. My
views are influenced by Roy Medvedev, Leninism and Western Socialism (London,
NLB, 1981); Stephen F. Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution (New York:
Knopf, 1974), Moshe Lewin, Lenins Last Struggle (New York: Vintage, 1970). See
also my War and Democracy, Chapter 11.
13. Compare, of course, Marx and Engels: National differences and antagonisms
between peoples are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the developments of
the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world-market, to uniformity in the
mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto (Communist
Manifesto, in McClellan: 235).
14. The most extensive treatment of Dewey as a vestibular anarchist, in the
American grain, is Arthur Lothsteins excellent From Privacy to Praxis: The Case
for John Dewey as a Radical American Philosopher, PhD Dissertation, NYU, 1979.
See also his Salving from the Dross: John Deweys AnarchoCommunalism, The
Philosophical Forum, Vol. 10 (Fall 1978).
15. Hindess argues that the series of critical debates between Kautsky, Lenin, and
Bernstein, from 1891 to World War I, are variations on a single theme, viz., where
to locate the boundaries for non-economic, non-class determinants of political life
and stop it from getting out of hand (37). Thus, while none of these writers was sim-
ply class-reductionist and while even Bernstein does not break completely with the
conception that the economy is ultimately determining, they differ enormously on
what and how much of what is political is not determined by the economy. But on
Hindesss view, the debate between them is irresolvable because there is no one gen-
eral mechanism of connection between politics and the economy that is characteristic
of capitalism as suchor for that matter, of particular historical phases of its devel-
opment (41). In other words, as in Marxs own political practice, political questions
must always be posed concretely, considering the particular details of the particular
society under consideration. A revisionist politics becomes plausible, then, at the
point where, in the liberal-democratic state, socialism is no longer primarily a class
issue.
16. The phrase historical materialism is not used by Marx at all. Engels first em-
ployed the term materialist conception of history in a review of Marx, Contribution
to the Critique of Political Economy that has the famous Preface that became the au-
thority for Second International versions of historical materialism. For a recent de-
fense of this view, see G. A. Cohen, Karl Marxs Theory of History: A Defense (New
York, Oxford University Press) and the critique by Andrew Levine and Eric Olin
Wright, Rationality and the Class Struggle, New Left Review, Vol. 123 (Sept./Oct.
1980).
17. Liberalism and Social Action: 81. In Individualism Old and New, Dewey had
chastized Marx for reasoning too much from psychological economic premises and
depending too little upon technological causes (102).
18. See Phillip Corrigan, Harvie Ramsay, and Derek Sayer, Socialist Construction
and Marxist Theory: Bolshevism and Its Critique (New York: Monthly Review,
1978); Marc Rakovski, Towards an East European Marxism (London: Allison and
Busby, 1978).
234 Chapter Nine
19. The expression is C. Wright Millss. Mills made a similar critique of Dewey in
his Sociology and Pragmatism (New York: Oxford, 1966).
20. See Dewey, The Need for a New Party, Who Might Make a New Party?
and Politics for a New Party, New Republic, Vol. 66 (1931); The Future of Radi-
cal Political Action, Nation, Vol. 136 (1933); The Imperative Need for a New Rad-
ical Party. Commonsense, Vol. II (1933). For a general account of the Socialist Party
and its relation to the Dewey-led League for Independent Political Action, see Frank
A. Warren, An Alternative Vision: The Socialist Party in the 1930s (Bloomington: In-
diana University Press, 1974), esp. Chapter V.
21. See my A Realist Philosophy of the Social Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2006).
22. Arthur Lothstein, From Privacy to Praxis, p. 80. Lothstein points out that the
criticism of a new kind of Stoicism, was made a month after Deweys eighty-eighth
birthday, in 1947. Dewey argued that on this view, existence reduces pretty well to
what the individual can make out of it on his own hook, and added, I think they are
reactions of people who are scared and have not the guts to face life (ibid., p. 60f.,
quoting from a letter to William Daniels, Letters of John Dewey to Robert V.
Daniels, 194650, Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. XX (OctoberDecember
1959).
Philosophy and Politics: A Historical Approach to Marx and Dewey 235
237
The problem of justice continues to be a topic of lively debate. The continu-
ing struggle over civil rights, our anguish over the war in Iraq and the so-
called war on terror, our continuing unease over the economy, immigration,
and the environment, skepticism regarding the system of criminal justice, and
doubts about our educational institutions identify the main historical forces
and problems which underlie the current discussion. The symptoms and is-
sues cover a very wide range: attacks on affirmative action, death penalty
legislation and attacks on the rights of the accused, profoundly exacerbated
by the war on terror, and, propelled by free market ideology, tax revolt and
cutbacks in education and social services.
At the level of social theory, John Rawlss A Theory of Justice, published
in 1971, generated a veritable industry. His difficult and highly praised book
seems to have arrived at exactly the right time, perhaps because it offered a
powerful statement and defense of what was probably mainstream liberal
thinking on justice. Rawlss theory is individualistic, but his recognition of
the least advantaged, coupled with his attention to what he called, pure
procedural justice, seemed to confirm our most basic intuitions about justice.
To be sure, there were immediate criticisms of some of the more vulnerable
arguments, but these received a greater response from the right than from the
left. Indeed, Robert Nozicks critical treatment in his 1974 Anarchy, State and
Utopia gave him a cover of the popular and liberal New York Times Magazine.
Not only was the presence there of a philosopher significant and unusual; but
he was there heralded as the most articulate of the new spokesmen of conser-
vative, individualistic thinking on justice. Indeed, as regards the current state
of opinion, Nozick, seems to have conquered Rawlss version of New Deal
Liberalism.
Chapter Ten
John Dewey
and the Problem of Justice
In this context, it may be useful to consider the writings of John Dewey,
Americas foremost social philosopher. And in this context, if one surveys the
voluminous writings of Dewey, writings which span over seven decades un-
til his death in 1952, the first thing that one notices is the relative inattention
paid by Dewey to the problem of justice. Altogether, there are perhaps not
more than a dozen pages of sustained discussions devoted explicitly to the
topic. These discussions are insightful and important, little gems, and in what
follows, it will be a pleasure to appeal to them. But the first task, really the
main task of this presentation, is to try to explain this apparent imbalance in
Deweys attention.
Deweys lack of discussion of the theory and problems of justice is not to
be explained by a failure to see problems, nor by an unwillingness to deal
with them at the theoretical or practical level. Indeed, the two most sub-
stantial discussions of justice were written during two periods of acute crisis
in our economy, during the 1890s and again, in 1932. Similarly, Deweys ac-
tive involvement in a host of public matters of social and political nature are
too well known to recite here. Several of these, e.g., the trial of Sacco and
Vanzetti, raised serious questions of justice.
1
There are, I believe, two sets of
reasons that do explain this imbalance. They are important and give us insight
into both our problems and Deweys unique strengths as a social philosopher.
One set of reasons specifically regards this stance. As a social philoso-
pher, Dewey was a writer who aimed not to write a social philosophya
doctrinebut who aimed rather to show how we must try to seek solution of
our social problems. The other set regards the very idea of justice. It seems to
me that Dewey, for various reasons to be detailed, sought to displace justice
as the central concept of social philosophy. However, for these same reasons,
he found himself using the term less and less, until ultimately he abandoned
it altogether. These two sets of reasons are definitely related, but it may nev-
ertheless be desirable to treat them more or less separately, taking the idea of
justice first.
TWO CONCEPTS OF JUSTICE
It is possible to show that there are two dominating conceptions of justice in
Western civilization. The first had its home and only full articulation in the an-
cient Greek polis.
2
Plato and Aristotle, of course, develop it with sophistication
and vigor. The other concept of justice was also first formulated in the ancient
Greek polis, in Periclean Athens. It is associated with the names of Democritus
and Protagoras. But this idea of justice did not come into its own until the mod-
ern period, with Hobbes and Locke, Kant, Hume, and nineteenth-century liberal
238 Chapter Ten
philosophy. We should call it the liberal concept of justice. It remains the domi-
nating concept in the West, and Rawls and his more conservative critics, despite
differences, stand in this tradition.
The liberal concept of justice favors atomistic metaphors and voluntary re-
lations, for example, the contract; it is conventionalistic, arguing that justice
and political society are artifacts deliberately and rationally constructed; it
is legalistic, emphasizing formal and procedural justice; it employs market
notions of distributive justice, presupposes scarcity and finally, it is harsh
and hard. As Hume put it, justice is the mean virtue.
By contrast, the PlatonicAristotelian notion of justice favors organic
metaphors and conceive of human relations and political society as natural;
it presupposes natural inequalities, emphasizes morality instead of law, and
thinks of justice very widely. As Aristotle said, it is the whole of virtue.
While this is not the place to develop this radical contrast, an illustration of
each concept may be helpful if only to fix our ideas.
Platos Republic aimed to answer the question: What is justice? For him, it
will be remembered, justice is a condition of the soul, a psychic harmony,
a prerequisite of just acts and, crucially, of well-being and happiness (eudai-
monia) itself. Parallel with this analysis, justice is a condition of the polis that
is itself thought of as an organic unity. Each element, class, or person, has
a task (ergon) which, when performed well, contributes to the well-being of
the totality. The four virtues, Wisdom, Courage, Temperance, and Justice are
each defined as functions of the social and psychic unities of society and self.
At the very opposite pole is Thomas Hobbes. Where men are in the natu-
ral condition, for Hobbes, there is neither justice nor injustice. The consen-
sually introduced mechanism of impersonal law that constitutes political so-
ciety also constitutes the very possibility of justice. Once done, natural equity
and justice is replaced by one principle, performance of the convenant. The
whole apparatus of customary rights and privileges is similarly reduced: To
each according to the agreements he has made.
To be sure, Hobbess theory was too extreme, too tough-minded. And no
doubt, subsequent versions of contract theory from Locke to Rawls re-
sponded with corrections and additions. Nevertheless, there is a clearly iden-
tifiable tradition that must be sharply separated from the earlier one.
Where then does Dewey stand as regards these two concepts and traditions
of justice? In the last analysis, Dewey could not accept either, even if he did
pull strongly toward the Greek.
In his Syllabus of 1884, Dewey noted in many respects, the discussions
of virtue in Plato and Aristotle are still unequaled. Indeed, following them,
if in his own novel fashion, he argued that that courage, temperance and
wisdom denote simply phases of every moral act and that the name is
John Dewey and the Problem of Justice 239
given according to the phase which, in a given case, happens to be domi-
nant. Justice, then, argues Dewey,
is the name for the deed in its entirety. . . . It is not another virtue, it is the sys-
tem of virtue, the organized doing: whose organic members are wisdom, the will
to know; courage, the impulse to reach; control, the acquired power to do. (EW,
Vol. 4: 363, 357).
As this text shows, Dewey is very, very Greek in holding that justice is the
virtue of a unity organically related, even if at the same time, Dewey re-
jected the faculty psychology which is generally imputed to Greek moral
philosophy. He is Greek, too, in couching virtue in terms of self-development
and self-realization, even if for him in contrast to the Greeks, the underlying
notion of human nature is open, dynamic, and changing; not closed, static,
and fixed.
3
Dewey and the Greeks agreed that persons were doers, exerting,
developing, and enjoying human powers and capacities and that the concern
for realization of these powers should be at the center of a moral and social
philosophy.
4
But if so, then justice could not be reduced to obedience to
law or to just desert. His text continues:
the current distinction between justice as penal, and justice as concrete recogni-
tion of positive merit by the share awarded an agent . . . is far too rigid. . . . Un-
consciously there is smuggled in the assumption that worth is static; that what a
man has done is somehow complete in itself, and serves to indicate his merit,
and therefore, the way he should be treated. Service is taken as some thing ren-
dered, not as a function . . . (EW, Vol. 4: 359).
The idea that worth is static and that deserts and entitlements are like
commodities, exchangeable as equivalents for things exactly characterizes
the market conception of justice, the dominant mode of modern thinking on
the subject. Dewey struggles in this text, as in others, to drive home the lim-
iting and incomplete nature of this framework for justice. He writes:
When it was said that the ordinary concept of desert concealed a momentous as-
sumption, it was meant that the whole dualism of justice and love is involved.
If justice be conceived as mere return to an individual of what he has done, if
his deed, in other words, be separated from his vital, developing self, and if,
therefore, the equivalent return ignore the profound and persistent presence of
self-hood in the deed, then it is true that justice is narrow in its sphere, harsh in
form, requiring to be supplemented by another virtue of larger outlook and freer
playGrace. But if justice be the returning to a man of the equivalent of his
deed, and if, in truth, the sole thing which equates the deed is self, then quite
otherwise. Love is justice brought to self-consciousness; justice with a full, in-
240 Chapter Ten
stead of a partial standard of value; justice with a dynamic, instead of a static,
scale of equivalency (361).
Our ordinary sense of justice is narrow, is harsh. Recognizing, though am-
bivalently and sometimes incoherently, that persons are dynamic selves relat-
ing humanly to one another and to the world, we think of justice as requiring
supplementation, by mercy, by kindness, by love. But surely that misleads as
well. It is not either justice or love. It is not justice or charityfrom caritas,
love. This accepts the dualism and allows us to paste over injustice with
gratuities. But how to overcome this dualism? Dewey had it right: Once we
reject the idea that deeds are things to be exchanged for equivalents, we
undermine the dualism, for then, it is possible to link the deed with the self.
But Dewey remains contaminated by the market theory of justice. Signifi-
cantly, he puts the matter conditionally: if justice be the returning to a person
of the equivalent of his deed. And he lets us muse as to whether he would
have preferred to deny the hypothesis altogether. But if we are to think of jus-
tice in these terms, and as moderns, it is hard to see how to do otherwise, then
for Dewey, at least at this point, let us try not to disconnect the deed from the
vital, changing self.
Dewey will return to these themes just twice more, in the Ethics written col-
laboratively with James Tufts, published originally in 1908 and then in substan-
tial revision in 1932. As in the earlier Syllabus, Dewey focuses on the notion that
justice is hard and harsh and he develops another dimension of this attitude.
Here, he argues that it comes from identifying justice with the working of some
fixed and abstract law . . . as if man was made for law, not law for man (MW,
Vol. 5: 373). Although pursuing this idea systematically would take us directly
into Deweys problem-centered and inquiry-oriented style of social philosophy,
we should pause here if only briefly to emphasize the pervasiveness of the no-
tion, as it bears on the problem of justice.
Dewey clearly saw that alongside the market conceptualization of justice
was another that derived ultimately from Kant. It put heavy emphasis on duty
and obligation and its most austere and rigorous form is captured by the Latin,
Fiat justitia, ruat coelum, let justice be done, let the heavens fall. Dewey
took this phrase as the title for a brief, popular essay written for the New Re-
public in 1971. Rejecting the legalism and formalism which so typically char-
acterizes moral discussions of justice, whether of war and international re-
lations, as in this case, or of race or sex, Dewey identified such ethics as
resolutely irrelevant to the circumstances of action and the conditions of
life (1929: 592). In another and earlier essay, entitled Nature and Reason in
Law (1914), Dewey pregnantly characterized the chief working difference
between moral philosophies in their application to law. It was, he argued,
John Dewey and the Problem of Justice 241
that some of them seek for an antecedent principle by which to decide; while
others recommend the consideration of the specific consequences that flow
from treating a specific situation this way or that, using the antecedent mate-
rials and rules as guides of intellectual analysis but not as norms of decision
(795). This text, we might note here, could well be the point of departure for
an extended analysis of the current debate over affirmative action programs
as, of course, it compresses an entire potential legal philosophy.
For Dewey, this methodological inversion explained in part the limiting
and narrowing conception of justice. And in the 1908 discussion, Dewey
again calls, optimistically, for the transformation of the conception of justice
so that it joins hands with love and sympathy (MW, Vol. 5: 37374).
But one can hardly be heartened by these remarks. The problem seems in-
escapable. The liberal notion of justice was liberating insofar as it made men
indiscriminately subject to impersonal law and insofar as it broke the basis of
privilege based on hereditary status, but Dewey saw early on that the lib-
eral notion was far too narrow, too rigid. So he struggled to enlarge it, to rem-
edy its partiality, to supplement it. And if we grant that love and sympathy are
the requisite supplementations, one may legitimately wonder how good a
merely just society or merely just person would be? For the Greek, this could
not be a question. With their notion of justice, the just man and the just soci-
ety had to be good. And, of course, if love and sympathy are the requisite sup-
plementations to our ordinary sense of justice, then one may legitimately
wonder how we are to proceed. Indeed, the deeper Dewey looked into the
problems and issues of liberal society, the more disjointed became the effort
to transform and widen liberal justice.
LIBERAL SOCIETY AND DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE
Dewey was never sanguine regarding the mechanisms of distribution in lib-
eral society. Still less was he mystified by the rhetoric of the current theories.
This may be brought out by considering Tuftss contribution to the collabora-
tive 1908 edition of their Ethics. Dewey must surely have endorsed the perti-
nent pages. Indeed, in the revision of 1932, it seems that Dewey himself
wrote the crucial Chapter 21 that restated the issues and reaffirmed their ear-
lier stance. We may look first at the earlier version, noting well the early date
of the text.
Characteristically, the locus of the critique is individualism. They begin
by arguing that if we take a purely formal view and make formal freedom
of contract the only criterion, then any price is fair which both parties agree
to (MW, Vol. 5: 475). This position, characteristic of Hobbes, and of classi-
242 Chapter Ten
cal and neoclassical political economy, is substantially the position argued for
by Nozick in the recent work cited earlier. Although the argument cannot be
developed here, Nozicks entitlement theory, while very much enriched by
detail and the sophistication of modern decision theory, is, I would argue,
subject quite precisely to Tuftss criticism. It is this: If the exchange is to be
fair, the parties to the bargain must be equal. But in a large part of the ex-
changes of business and services, the two parties are not equal.
5
In other
terms, where some must accept the conditions of the contract, formal free-
dom of contract is not a sufficient condition. In his 1932 statement of this
theory, Dewey characterizes it even more economically. Its motto is to each
what he can get through his ability, his shrewdness, his advantageous eco-
nomic position due to inherited wealth and every other factor that adds to his
bargaining power . . . Dewey rightly notes that this is the existing method
under capitalism (Dewey and Tufts, 1912: 454), as today, owners of baseball
teams, school boards, and the AMA tend to forget.
The take-advantage-of-your-bargaining-power theory of justice has an-
other, less rude, version. It is characterized by Dewey by the motto: To each
what he earns. This theory, plausible enough on its face, due perhaps to the
multitude of difficulties concealed in the notion of earn, does not, argues
Dewey, characterize capitalist distribution. But it must be rejected in any
case, since it cannot be realized. It cannot be realized because production is
social. The point is important but often misunderstood.
In producingtoasters, services, skills, or knowledgeindividuals em-
ploy knowledge, skills, and instruments that are the legacy of previous gen-
erations of workers. Moreover, and characteristically, productsincluding
knowledgeare jointly produced in the more obvious sense that they are
products of many hands and minds. Suppose, then, we take the Gross Na-
tional Product to represent the combined social productan entirely artificial
measure for the product we need to measure, but useful perhaps to fix our
ideas. The earning theory of distribution, then (like its sophisticated relative,
modern productivity theory), presupposes that it is possible to divide up the
GNP and assign to each individual exactly what is hers or his. No part of this
is to be shared on grounds that we cant disentangle our contribution; no part
is a residue earned by past labor and no part is earned by anyone. The prob-
lem here is not simply whether this division is fair, whether each receives a
just share, but whether, indeed, any coherent sense can be given to the idea
that respective contributions to the social product can be so disentangled. For
Dewey, rightly, it was obvious that they could not.
6
But this is not the end of the difficulties for the individualistic theories, for
as Dewey and Tufts write, they suffer from a serious moral failure. Achieve-
ment and failure, what one does contribute, or earn is a function of three
John Dewey and the Problem of Justice 243
things: heredity, social advantage and the socially produced conditions of
knowledge and environment and, finally, individual effort. It is not a matter
of individual effort alone. It is at this juncture that Rawlss influential theory
departs from traditional individualisms, for with Tufts and Dewey, Rawls
agrees that accidents of birththe good fortune to be born rich and hand-
someare not in themselves morally relevant. And indeed, if so, then one can
ask, as does Dewey and Tufts, If all men are accounted equal in the State,
why not in wealth? (Dewey and Tufts, 1932: 359).
It is perhaps here that the contrast in the orientation of Dewey and of Rawls
is most graphic and where, at the same time, Dewey reveals both his greatest
strength as a social philosopher and perhaps, as well, his greatest weakness.
Consider Rawlss response first. For Rawls, the family is the key problem
and, short of restructuring it, natural talents and social advantages will in-
evitably be rewarded. I think that it can easily be shown that Rawls gives up
too quickly here. Indeed, as we suggest, Dewey and Tufts have a more en-
couraging response. But Rawlss originality begins at exactly this point, for
his famous difference principle is meant precisely to justify inequalities
that, however they come about, had best not be removed. His argument is
quite straightforward. An egalitarian distribution would be inefficient but an
efficient system need not be just. It would be just, however, if social and eco-
nomic inequalities were arranged so that there was fair equality of opportu-
nity and, crucially, so that the least advantaged were better off than they
otherwise would have been. If Rawls is right, something looking very much
like our system is, in his terms, nearly just. To be sure, we have some way
to go in achieving fair equality of opportunitynotice that this still rewards
natural ability and that, for Rawls, the family remains (and will remain) a cru-
cial limitation even on this. Nevertheless, it is fair to say that, for Rawls, we
are doing perhaps as well as can be expected.
Tufts and Dewey take an entirely different tack. After evaluating the extant
theories, they offer, instead of their own theory, what they call a working
program. The gist of it is contained in a short paragraph:
Amans power is due (1) to physical heredity; (2) to social heredity . . .; and (3)
to his own efforts. Individualism may properly claim this third factor. It is just
to treat men unequally so far as their efforts are unequal. It is socially desirable
to give as much incentive as possible to the full development of everyones pow-
ers. But this very same reason demands that in the first two respects we treat
men as equally as possible (490).
This working program is radical since, ultimately, it means that no unequal
benefits should accrue to persons exclusively on the basis of their natural tal-
ents or on the basis of socially derived advantages. But it is a working pro-
244 Chapter Ten
gram in the sense that it leaves entirely open the means by which the ideal
is to be achieved. It does not demand radical revolution in order to achieve a
radical restructuring of society, even if the realization of the ideal would in-
volve a radical restructuring of society. And it does not insist on any particu-
lar ameliorative reforms, even if there are steps that could and should be
taken. And it is in this that Deweys greatest strength and weakness may be
revealed. For it is not at all easy to judge whether or not Dewey saw how rad-
ical the ideal was or how radical would the changes have to be to bring the
ideal into existence. In both the 1908 and the 1932 discussions, education
characteristically is emphasized as means. But conditions of food, labor, and
housing and the importance of private property are also identified. In the
later discussion, Dewey responded passionately to the notion that because per
capita income had increased greatlyshades of Rawls!it was foolish to
raise the question of distribution. Indeed, in direct contrast to Rawls, he ar-
gued that wealth, not income is the crucial variable: The individuals or cor-
porations that have great wealth undertake great enterprises. They control for
better or worse the wages and living conditions of great numbers (454).
7
These same sorts of criticisms are found in many of Deweys writings and
demonstrate that he was keenly aware of the bearing of the system of private
property not only on the problem of justice, but on the problem of freedom
and democracy as well.
8
Yet, many commentators have found grounds for ar-
guing that Dewey was naive in having unwarranted hopes for the efficacy of
education even as an ameliorative factor. This is probably so.
9
The backlash on affirmative action and ERA, the decisive, if inevitable
failures of poverty programs and efforts to guarantee equal education for all,
would indeed have been disheartening to Dewey. And as disheartening, per-
haps, is the renewed enthusiasm for what are really quite worn out individu-
alistic theories of justice. His own theory could be stated in a sentence, first
written in 1891: What is due the self is that it be treated as self (Dewey and
Tufts, 1932: 35). In the last analysis, Dewey preferred working programs over
theories. Indeed, this takes us to the final part of our account.
SOCIAL KNOWLEDGE AND SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY
It is another of the commonplaces of commentators on John Deweys thought
that he was preoccupied with method, indeed sometimes to the extent that con-
tent altogether seemed to dissolve.
10
This is not the place to examine all the dif-
ficult questions which attend this criticism, but as regards our particular prob-
lem, the problem of justice, I think that it must be said that Deweys social
philosophy does represent a departure from traditional social philosophies and
John Dewey and the Problem of Justice 245
that this shift is perhaps best construed as an orientation which displaced the
problem of justice as a substantive theoretical problem and replaced it with an
orientation which emphasized problems and ideas that connected more directly
to method and to practice.
This alternative point of departure in Deweys thought may be best ex-
pressed in Reconstruction in Philosophy (1920) although many texts confirm
the idea. Identifying three alternative social philosophies, the individualistic,
the socialist, and the organic, Dewey argued that all suffer from a common
defect.
They are all committed to the logic of general notions under which specific sit-
uations are to be brought. . . . They are general answers supposed to have uni-
versal meaning that covers and dominates all particulars. Hence, they do not as-
sist inquiry. They close it. They are not instrumentalities to be employed and
tested in clarifying concrete social difficulties. . . . The social philosopher,
dwelling in the region of his concepts, solves problems by showing relationships
of ideas, instead of by helping men solve problems in the concrete . . .(Dewey,
1948: 188, 192).
This is the touchstone idea of Deweys emphasis on inquiry, experi-
mentalism, and instrumentalism. Within Deweys frame, current debate on
justice would suffer from the same defects of abstraction, from the same ir-
relevance to the actual conditions of education, of work, and of association,
from the same aristocratic detachment that seems presupposed by the idea
that philosophers can solve human problems.
Deweys critics on the left are also correct, however, in judging that his
experimentalist and method-centered attitude left him vulnerable to two
alternativeand at bottom inconsistentsorts of readings.
On the one hand, Deweys efforts to shift the focus of social philosophy
away from doctrine led some to see Dewey as advocating an engineering
and scientistic conception of social philosophy and inquiry. This view, in-
spired by Deweys repeated assertion that social questions could be treated
scientifically and experimentally, meant for those readers something like
the sort of practice which presumably goes in laboratories manned by per-
sons in white coats and constrained by canons of efficiency and positive
control. On this viewtechnocratic and still fashionablea new breed of
social scientists would provide that expert knowledge that would speed-
ily solve concrete social problems. (See the account of Lippman, Chapter 7.)
In the last analysis, this reading cannot be sustained, even if Dewey did
give ample room for misconstrual. Perhaps his willingness and openness to
incorporate and encourage ideas that seemed congenial to him further con-
fused matters. One might mention here his long association with A. F. Bent-
246 Chapter Ten
ley and his attraction in the late 1920s to the operationist views of P. W.
Bridgman.
On the other hand, it led others to see Dewey as committed to a kind of un-
principled reformism, to a defense of patchwork suggestions as responses to
the outcropping of crisis. As argued in Chapter 9 above, Dewey was reformist
in his attitude, rejecting consistently the idea that societies could be intelli-
gently transformed by radical and revolutionary programs. His approach was
piecemeal, a call to deal amelioratively with concrete and particular prob-
lems. Thus, for him, Marxism was doctrinaire in offering sweeping gen-
eralizations and general solutions to general problems. Dewey was
surely sensitive to the problem of the unintended consequences of radical
change and to the ease with which progressive movements become appropri-
ated and distorted. But it must be said as well that while his ideals were rad-
ical, as we already noted, his appreciation of obstacles preventing their real-
ization was probably naive. Nevertheless, his reformism was hardly
unprincipled and his shift in focus was both sound and important. Indeed, I
believe that there is much to be learned from him on this score.
For Dewey, the problem of justice, as the problems of freedom and de-
mocracy, cannot be solved by experts or by philosophers. They could
only be solvedif that is still the right wordby people in the everyday
world in their doings and sufferings. Dewey seems to have grasped this and
that is why, in the last analysis, the content of his social philosophy seems
so thin and, finally, so painfully obvious. There are, it seems to me, but two
items in it: First, there is the idea that the level of action fixed by embodied
intelligence is always the important thing (Dewey, 1954: 166), and second,
the idea that democracy is a way of life, individual and social. These cru-
cially related ideas defined the limits of social philosophy. Movement in the
direction of their realization was movement toward an ideal in the only sense
of ideal that Dewey allowedthe tendency and movement of some thing
which exists carried to his final limit (148). As with justice, they identified
a working program and, crucially, a program that could be implemented
only by people in their individual and collective doings and sufferings.
This did not mean, for Dewey, that philosophy had nothing to do. Indeed,
there was a great deal to be said about both ideals and about their mode of re-
alization. The whole of Deweys extensive writings on methods of inquiry
and on education, both in and out of the school, issue in the idea of action
fixed by embodied intelligence. As Dewey saw it, the application of intel-
ligence to social problems meant not the application of new techniques by
experts, however defined, nor did it reduce to the application of an-
tecedently derived principles to concrete particular situations. Rather, the
canons had to be generated in inquiry and realized in practice. And this kind
John Dewey and the Problem of Justice 247
of social knowledge does not yet exist (166). The only possible solution,
he wrote, to the problems generated by interdependence require the perfect-
ing of the means and ways of communication of meanings so that genuine
shared interest in the consequences of interdependent activities may inform
desire and effort and thereby direct action (155). And as this text suggests,
this was both condition and consequence of democracy as a way of life, the
other guiding ideal of Deweys social philosophy. Accordingly, the whole of
his writings on democracy, community, freedom, and culture bear on this sec-
ond theme. Keeping this in mind allows us, finally, to grasp the full force of
this wonderful text: Philosophy recovers itself when it ceases to be a device
for dealing with the problems of philosophers and becomes a method, culti-
vated by philosophers, for dealing with the problem of men (McDermott,
1973: 95).
If it is philosophers who have the task of articulating and cultivating
these methods, it is people themselves who must employ them. Dewey was
insufficiently radical regarding the difficulties standing in the way of trans-
forming The Great Society into The Great Community, but he never fell
victim to pat solutions. He saw that we never begin anew, from scratch, from
nothing. We either1 sustain the inherited forms or we transform them, pur-
posefully and intelligently, whimsically and stupidly, coercively or coopera-
tively. Dewey put his faith in the possibility that action could be conjoint, pur-
poseful, and intelligent. He put the matter crisply in his 1919/20 lectures in
China. Responding to the question, Where should we start in reforming our
society? Dewey answered:
. . . we must start by reforming the component institutions of the society. Fami-
lies, schools, local governments, the central governmentall these must be re-
formed, but they must be reformed by the people who constitute them, working
as individualsin collaboration with other individuals, each accepting his own
responsibility. . . . Social progress is neither an accident nor a miracle; it is the
sum of efforts made by individuals whose actions are guided by intelligence
(Dewey, 1973: 6263).
But he also saw, as John J. McDermott has written, that if the responsibility
is ours and ours alone, the transformation of the processes and forms of liv-
ing is, at the same time, laced with chance (McDermott, 1973: xxi).
NOTES
1. See George Dykhuizen, The Life and Mind of John Dewey (Carbondale, IL:
Southern Illinois Press, 1973): 234.
248 Chapter Ten
2. See my Two Concepts of Justice, Journal of Chinese Philosophy, Vol. 4
(1977): 99121.
3. Cf. here, of course, Human Nature and Conduct (New York: Henry Holt,
1922).
4. C. B. Macpherson has argued that J. S. Mill tried to incorporate this funda-
mental feature of Greek Idealism into his liberalism, though the result was less than
satisfactory. See his Democratic Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973).
5. Dewey gives the same argument against classical individualism and free en-
terprise in his lectures in China. See John Dewey, Lectures in China, 19191920, ed-
ited and translated from the Chinese by Robert W. Clopton and Tsuin-Chen Ou (Hon-
olulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1973): 113.
6. It may be noted here that modern price theory employs the fiction that marginal
products are so divisible. This makes for quite a respectable mathematical theory, use-
ful as a praxiology. But it doesnt follow that a theory of justice that assumes the fic-
tion is intelligible. In this regard, Nozicks criticism of Rawls is interesting. Rawls
sees, if not clearly, that social cooperation does make a difference. By assuming that
marginal products can be disentangled, Nozick argues that Rawlss account of the
problem created by social cooperation is mistaken. Nozick does show, however,
that Rawlss individualism does not square with his view of social cooperation.
7. Rawls obliterates the distinction between income and wealth by inattention. He
persistently refers to income and wealth but never addresses the difference. Ac-
cordingly, for him it would seem to be unimportant.
8. See, for example, The Public and Its Problems (Chicago: Swallow Press,
1954): 1012, 107; Philosophies of Freedom, in R. J. Bernstein, ed., On Experi-
ence, Nature and Freedom (Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1960): 271; Liberalism
and Social Action, excerpted in John J. McDermott, ed., The Philosophy of John
Dewey (New York: G. P. Putnams Sons, 1973), two volumes, 648.
9. For example, R. J. Bernstein, Praxis and Action (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1971): 228; C. W. Mills, Sociology and Pragmatism (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1964): 333.
10. See, for example, Charles Frankel, Deweys Social Philosophy, in New Stud-
ies in the Philosophy of John Dewey, S. M. Cahn ed., (Hanover, N.H: University Press
of New England, 1977).
John Dewey and the Problem of Justice 249
251
One has to be impressed by the fact that Americas premier University con-
tinues to provide us with people who write brilliant, wise, elegant,
impressive, and refreshing books which it needs so desperately. As
democratic theorist Jane Mansbridge put it, Harvards Michael Sandels De-
mocracys Discontent: American in Search of a Public Philosophy (1996) is
bound to change the course of American historiography, political philosophy
and legal scholarship. George Will, not generally thought of as a theorist of
democracy, was equally enthusiastic. In his words, Sandels book is a think-
ing persons guide to the current rethinking of the role of government in
America.
Like Robert Nozicks Anarchy, State and Utopia (1974) that made him a
darling to the minimal government-free marketers who triumphed with Rea-
gan and Company, Sandels book is aimed at John Rawlss influential A The-
ory of Justice (1971). It seems well on its way to make him a darling of the
new republican-communitarians. I can only hope that some evangelical de-
fender of soulcraft does not come to capture the imagination of our deeply
troubled society.
But this gets well ahead of what I want to say. Sandels argument is subtle
and deceptive, even if, for me at least, it is a combination of bad philosophy,
bad sociology, bad history, and bad politics. I begin with the philosophy.
LIBERAL AND REPUBLICAN FREEDOM
There is a currently fashionable dichotomy between what George Kateb called
rights-based liberalism and American republican-communitarianism. It is
Chapter Eleven
Liberalisms Discontent: America in
Search of a Past That Never Was
clear enough that Rawls and Nozick (along with Flathman, Dworkin, Feinberg,
Gewirth, Sen, and many others) are, despite differences, rights-based liberals.
The other side is a much less clear bunch and might include any number of di-
verse writers who have criticized liberal philosophy and promoted some version
or other of community, including John Dewey, Hannah Arendt, Robert Paul
Wolff, Charles Taylor, Roberto Mangiabera Unger, Michael Walzer, Carol
Gould, Hannah Pitkin, Amitai Etzioni, and some others besides. The relation to
democracy of these writers is also very diverse.
Presumably, one of the notable achievements of Sandel have clarified this
argument, to show us both the limits of rights-based liberalism and that
there is a viable alternative well within the American tradition. His main dis-
tinction, accordingly, is between what he calls the procedural republicthe
version of liberalism by which we live (he offers that the label was sug-
gested by Judith Sklar) and republican theory. As regards the procedural re-
public, then:
Its central idea is that government should be neutral toward the moral and reli-
gious views its citizens espouse. Since people disagree about the best way to
live, governments should not affirm in law any particular vision of the good life.
Instead, it should provide a framework of rights that respects persons as free and
independent selves, capable of choosing their own values and ends. Since this
liberalism asserts the priority of fair procedures over particular ends, the public
life it informs may be called the procedural republic (Sandel, 1996: 4).
This is, of course, a fair statement of both Rawls and Nozick. It is less clear
that it abstracts correctly the prevailing public philosophy, but I pass on that
here. In sharp contrast to republican theory, as understood by Sandel, we
should emphasize that neither Rawls nor Nozick had much to say about de-
mocracy. Rawls assumed some form of representative regime and (with
Mill) even defended plural voting. While democracy is not even indexed in
Rawlss book, Nozick surely goes further. After acknowledging that democ-
racy is the idea that people have a right to a say in the decisions that impor-
tantly affect their lives, Nozick asserts, remarkably: After we exclude from
consideration the decisions which others have a right to make and the actions
which would aggress against me, steal from me, and so on, . . . it is not clear
that there are any decisions remaining about which even to raise the question
(Nozick, 1974: 270).
Both Rawls and Nozick do capture certain strands in the prevailing public
philosophy, but the differences between them are criticaland much of what
might be in this philosophy is not captured in the least. Thus, for example,
both positions are certainly too extreme for most Americans. Rawls is too
egalitarian; Nozick is too libertarian. Both Rawls and Nozick should be com-
252 Chapter Eleven
plemented for their refreshing reluctance to mostly ignore the critical idea of
democracy. As regards most Americans, it is true to say, I think, that democ-
racy is safely understood to be defined by free elections (period). Since nei-
ther Rawls nor Nozick reject this idea, their views are safely consistent with
the prevailing public philosophy.
Sandel acknowledges that the prevailing conception of liberal political the-
ory has its roots in Locke, Kant and Mill, but at the same time, he asserts that
it is a recent arrival, a development of the last forty or fifty years. Indeed,
it replaced a rival public philosophy, republican theory. This is characterized
as follows:
Central to republican theory is the idea that liberty depends on sharing in self-
government. This idea is not inconsistent with liberal freedom. Participating in
politics can be one among the ways people choose to pursue their ends. Ac-
cording to republican political theory, however, sharing in self-rule involves
something more. It means deliberating with fellow citizens about the common
good and helping to shape the destiny of the political community. But to delib-
erate well about the common good requires more than the capacity to choose
ones ends and to respect others rights to do the same. It requires knowledge of
public affairs and also a sense of belonging a concern for the whole, a moral
bond with the community whose fate is at stake. To share in self-rule therefore
requires that citizens possess, or come to acquire certain qualities of character,
or civic virtue (1996: 56).
Sandels emphasis on self-rule makes his version of republican theory look
like, of course, a version of democracy, but surprisingly absent in this char-
acterization is any critical sense of what self-rule might mean or what would
count as deliberating about the common good, or helping to shape the
destiny of the political community. His concern, manifestly, is certain qual-
ities of character essential to self-rule.
Indeed, there is nothing in the book that attends to the currently profound
structural limits on self-rule. Perhaps the best that he does on this score is to
endorse Tocquevilles potentially beautiful trivialization of democracy: Local
attachments enable citizens to practice the art of government in the small
sphere within [their] reach (314). Their reach may, of course, be pitiably
small. Ideally at least, the reach extends as the sphere extends (314). This
extension is also efficiently discussed: Presumably, civic capacities first
wakened in neighborhoods and town halls, churches and synagogues, trade
unions and social movements find broader expression (314). One need not
take a radical stance as regards self-rule to wonder about this suggestion. That
is, suppose that all decisions of major social importance are made by
either private corporations or governments dominated by two parties who
Liberalisms Discontent: America in Search of a Past That Never Was 253
fundamentally share a public philosophy? There would be no institutional
means to make even this broader expression felt. As long ago as 1925, Wal-
ter Lippmann pointed out that in spite of all that has been said about twee-
dledum and tweedledee, modern democracy was purely and simply a mat-
ter of choosing whether to support the Ins when things are going well, or to
support the Outs when they seem to be going badly. (See Chapter 7.)
Moreover, as regards knowledge of public affairs, Lippmann saw also
before televisionthat public opinion was manufactured, that, to shift the
metaphor, for the ordinary citizen, the problem was to secure maps on which
their own need, or someone elses need, has not sketched in the coast of Bo-
hemia. For Lippmann, even if they were so disposed, ordinary people (in-
cluding representative bodies which he called a group of blind men) can-
not get the information they need: what is happening, why it is happening,
what ought to happen. We are, as C. W. Mills was later to argue, a mass dom-
inated by mass media. In turn (as everybody knows, but cannot do anything
about), these are dominated by money, both because they need to sell their
products (and ads) and because they are owned by a handful of corporations.
This is, of course, but part of this story.
But if Sandel is not interested in looking at how citizens might effectively
participate in governance, he is deeply interested in looking at the qualities of
character, the civic virtue, which is required if citizens are to be self-ruled. In-
deed, his fundamental (almost exclusive) concern (as with Plato and, more re-
cently George Will), is that, contrary to liberals, government ought not to be
neutral (even if it could) and even more, that governments have legitimate
concerns with soulcraft, what he elsewhere calls the formative project.
His clearest statement of the content of civic virtue comes from George
Will. Sandell writes:
Unlike Falwell, who sought Americas salvation in a rebirth of Christian moral-
ity, Will sought to cultivate civic virtue, the dispositions, habits and mores on
which free government depends. By virtue he meant good citizenship, whose
principle components are moderation, social sympathy and willingness to sacri-
fice private desires for public ends (1996: 310).
Sandel, like Will, Etzioni and many other communitarians would seem to
have a theory of society in which problems can be solved by changing the
morals of persons. Perhaps it is assumed that until such time that people ac-
quire that civic virtue which is the prerequisite of self-rule, we need not worry
about either how people are to get the information they need, how to decon-
struct maps with the coastline of Bohemia drawn on them, or how to begin to
alter structures so that people can have the power to make decisions that im-
portantly affect their lives. I return to this in my last section.
254 Chapter Eleven
For Sandel, the formative project is both inescapable and carries risk
(321). Indeed, the task of forging a common citizenship among a vast and
disparate people invites more strenuous forms of soulcraft (319). One has to
be impressed with the ease by which he deflects this risk.
We may agree with him that the civic strand of freedom is not necessar-
ily exclusive or coercive, that it can sometimes find democratic, pluralist
expression (321, my emphasis). But first, as liberals have long insisted, the
key virtue in this regard is toleration, reveling in difference, a willingness as
equals to engage disagreement and conflict. Here, as with the question of en-
larging the sphere of self-rule, he seems guided by a faith similar to many of
those who take for granted the structures of global capitalism and defend the
currently fashionable idea of civil society. Sandel writes: Instead of col-
lapsing the space between persons, it fills the space with public institutions
that gather people together in various capacities, that both separate and relate
them (320). He offers no suggestions on how this might be possible. Nor
since he takes for granted both the modern state and global capitalism, it is
hardly clear what good this would do.
His notion that the state should not be morally neutral as regards morals
and religion and that it has a responsibility to cultivate civic virtue leads
him, inevitably, to some strikingly conservative conclusions. It is in these
concrete cases where we best get the flavor of the high abstraction, civic
virtue. He writes, e.g.:
What makes a religious belief worthy of respect is not its mode of acquisition
whether by choice, revelation, persuasion, or habituationbut its place in a
good life or, from a political point of view, its tendency to promote the habits
and dispositions that make good citizens (1996: 66).
What are these habits and dispositions? Uncritical obedience? Undying
commitment and loyalty? And what if believers have a prior obligation to
God or to one of his emissaries? Suppose that such an obligation does not pro-
mote moderation, social sympathy and a willingness to sacrifice private de-
sires for public ends, then what? The liberal can insist that such beliefs must
be tolerated, as liberals see, a difficult enough task in itself (321). While there
is no problem in justifying laws aimed at preventing harm to others, on
Sandels principles, is it within the legitimate province of the state to suppress
beliefs which do not promote moderation, social sympathy and a willingness
to suppress private desires for public ends. This includes, as we shall see, the
enforcement of morals as such.
Sandel notes that in Paris Adult Theater I v. Slaton, Chief Justice Burger
wrote as if embarrassed to acknowledge the moral objection to obscenity as
such, a reluctance that presumably, undercut the coherence of his argument.
Liberalisms Discontent: America in Search of a Past That Never Was 255
Thus, allowing the states to decide that commerce in obscenity may injure
the community as a whole begs the question whether communal injury can
consist in an offense against shared moral standards (1996: 77). Burger
opted for his form of argument perhaps because he had read H. L. A Harts
devastation of Lord Devlin. If the state can legislate for the sake of moral-
ity as such, then it can proscribe acts merely because they are sinful or
wrong. In the light of human history, what could make anyone think that
this is morally defensible?
Perhaps, however, if his principles are not liberal, his intuitions are. This
seems so in a number of instances. For example, he seems to think that sex-
ual relations between consenting adults, heterosexual or not, should not be
proscribed. But he is uncomfortable with a straightforward liberal defense of
this, substantially that people should be free to choose their intimate rela-
tions themselves, regardless of the virtue or popularity of the practices they
choose, so long as they do not harm others (104). He prefers, instead, the de-
cision in Griswold where the court affirmed certain values and ends. It then
articulated the virtues that homosexual intimacy may share with heterosex-
ual intimacy, as well as any distinctive virtues of its own: While homosexu-
als have no right to intimacy, family values justify it.
Indeed, in the same vein, Sandel is most unhappy with no-fault divorce.
By making dependence a dangerous thing, it burdens the practice of mar-
riage as a community in the constitutive sense (115). If so, why not compel
life long marriage under all conditions? In any case, blaming no fault divorce
for the grim statistics he quotes is just plain bad sociology. The problem is not
that the law affirmed the encumbered self, but the consequence of profound
structural problems in American society, coupled with a familiar inattention
to the rights of divorced women. If we want to support marriage, we ought,
at the very least, ensure that people have jobs that pay living wages and pro-
vide families and single mothers with child support, daycare, etc. Nor even
can we say that idea of no-fault was mistaken. There is nothing in that idea
that says the former partner should not be held responsible. If alimony is not
awarded and child support is not enforced, then we may suspect that patri-
archy is at work in our liberal courts and justice system.
One should not suppose that Sandel lacks arguments against liberals who
are reluctant to embrace the formative project. But they are frightfully lean
and implausible. What matters to the liberals, he writes (many times!), is not
the ends we choose, but our capacity to choose them. It is this that is most es-
sential to our personhood. What is wrong with this? Sandel offers that:
the philosophical difficulty lies in the liberal conception of citizens as freely
choosing, independent selves, unencumbered by moral or civic ties antecedent
256 Chapter Eleven
to choice. This vision cannot account for a wide range of moral and political ob-
ligations that we commonly recognize, such as obligations of loyalty or solidar-
ity. By insisting that we are bound only by ends and roles we choose for our-
selves, it denies that we can ever be claimed by ends we have not chosenends
given by nature or God, for example, or by our identities as members of fami-
lies, peoples, cultures, or traditions (1996: 322).
This describes the familiar moral philosophy of individualism. Still one
wonders about both the pertinent sociology which is being assumed and
whether liberals are necessarily individualist in this sense?
Sandel continually speaks of the liberal assumption that the self is unen-
cumbered. A self is unencumbered, presumably, if first, the person has no
obligations which are not voluntarily incurred and second, and more interest-
ing, persons have identities which are independent of roles, including being
members of [a] family or city or nation or people, as bearers of that history,
as citizens of this republic (1996: 14). But if so, it is not clear that it is pos-
sible for a self to be unencumbered and if so, surely liberalism must fail.
Consider obligations that presumably cannot be accommodated. Sandel
knows that liberals can and generally do acknowledge nonvoluntary natural
obligations, or obligations owed to persons just because they are persons.
Thus, one has no right to harm others. Similarly, liberals acknowledge special
obligations of (say) a parent to their children, just because they are voluntar-
ily incurred. Are there then other obligations, to the nation or to other cit-
izens of the republic, and what is their status? For Sandel, the liberal at-
tempt to construe all obligation in terms of duties universally owed or
obligations voluntarily incurred makes it difficult to account for civic obliga-
tions and other moral and political ties that we commonly recognize (14). It
is not clear what the difficulty is. Of course, liberals do deny that we have a
natural obligation to the political community in which we happen to live. As
is well known, the problem of legitimacy (of political right) was solved
in the modern period by liberals who insisted that only if citizens consent
are they obligated. So for this form of liberal theory, the obligation to the state
is not natural but voluntary. Most of us who have had problems with this
position have no problems with the idea of voluntarily incurred obligations,
but with the idea citizens consent. Since as Hume had insisted, if merely liv-
ing in state (tacit consent) is consent, then, trivially, everybody consents.
But this is not Sandels problem. Rather, he seems to think that because our
identities are tied up not only with our families and roles, but also with our
nation, obligations generated by these have presumptive moral force. It is
easy for liberals to make sense of the claim that duties of parenthood have pre-
sumptive moral force. What of our identities as Americans, or Christiansor
males or white men? So it is much less clear that we are to have sympathy
Liberalisms Discontent: America in Search of a Past That Never Was 257
for Robert E. Lee who opposed secession, but concluded that his obligation to
Virginia was not merely of sentimental import, but had moral force (15). Pre-
sumably, as in Lees case, this obligation could override any other obligations
he might have, including any obligation he might have to the Republic or to
resist the profoundly immoral institution of slavery. This is a dangerous doc-
trine: One might, not implausibly, compare here the obligations of an Eich-
mann or a Lt. Calley, a devout Christian, a jihadist, or member of the KKK?
Moreover as regards selves, his view is stunningly essentialist. One
would have thought that he would know that nations and the identities of per-
sons are not natural kinds, but are socially constructed from biographically
and historically available materials. This means, critically, that they are
changed by both intended and intended actions sometimes in morally pro-
gressive ways, sometimes not. The institutions of slavery might well have led
Robert E. Lee to abandoned his identity as a loyal Virginian and to identify
himself as a loyal American. The recent construction of Serbian identity had
led, of course, to ethnic cleansing, an incredibly vicious form of the forma-
tive project.
As regards unencumbered selves, one suspects that Sandel is unduly un-
der the influence of Rawls. One thus might hold that the persons in Rawlss
constructed original position are not encumbered selves. But of course
the point of that construction was precisely to deny that ones family, ethnic
group, gender, or roles in society were relevant to defining the principles of
justice. Rawlss social philosophy is cosmopolitan. Indeed, it was just here
that Rawls was at his most emancipating. Here was a liberal who showed that
the most liberal society in the world could not defend the fact that it was
the most unequal society in the world. Moreover, as Charles Beitz shows,
Rawlss theory is easily and plausibly extended to address global injustice.
1
As far as I can tell, inequality is not a concern of Sandel.
The idea, of course, of an encumbered self is implausible, but with the
exception of Kant (and possibly of Robert Nozick), who has held to it? Kant
badly confounded matters in bifurcating the phenomenal and the noumenal.
Presumably our phenomenal, flesh and blood, concrete, historically located
selves are encumbered. Our noumenal self, by contrast, is unencum-
bered. Our autonomy, accordingly, depended upon our capacities as ra-
tional beings to give law to ourselves. Sandel does not take on Kant. Nor
shall I (even if I think that his position is a disaster). What he does instead is
to speak of Kantian liberals (generally unnamed) and then to allow us to be-
lieve that all liberals are committed to a Kantian ontology. One may wish here
that he had been more careful. Indeed, one of the huge difficulties in the book
is a systematic ambiguity over whether Sandel is describing the Weltan-
schauung of the times and places in his book, or whether he is engaging nor-
258 Chapter Eleven
mative theory. Worse, he lacks utterly a conception of ideology: the idea that
certain philosophical theories may be articulating what are, or are to become,
widely held but false beliefs, beliefs which, in fact, are in the interest of the
powerful. This ambiguity immensely contributes to the usefulness of this
book as ideology. I return to this.
As noted, rights theorists all acknowledge nonvoluntary obligations, but
since they generally take a consequentialist position, they also insist that any
obligation may be overidden. Moreover, directly against Sandel, they can af-
firm that identities are tied up with relations and roles and still insist that
our personhood requires that we choose our endsnot God, not nature, not
the government. Personhood requires agency, but agency is not, as per Kant,
autonomyself-legislatingbut the capacity to choose such that given any
choice, one could have done otherwise.
2
Because we are always encumbered, our choices, including our choice of
ends, are always both enabled and constrained both by our biographies and
the social situation we find ourselves in. Liberals have not, it is true, gener-
ally noticed the stunning inequalities in what is enabled, nor that these in-
equalities are a straightforward consequence of socially constructed race,
class, and gender. Instead, they have tended to ignore enabling conditions and
to think that the only constraint is legal. Of course, this is major weakness of
most liberalism (partly addressed by Rawls). But this hardly calls for an aban-
donment of the idea that choosing ones ends is a fundamental value. Indeed,
one must fear freedomas in Plato, Durkheim, or Freud to think otherwise
(Manicas, 1974).
Similarly, just as he confounds autonomy and agency, Sandel trades on
the idea that the liberal is committed to what he calls the voluntarist concep-
tion of freedom. He writes, for example: The voluntarist conception of free-
dom that inspires this liberalism holds out a liberating vision, a promise of
agency that could be realized even under conditions of concentrated power
(Sandel, 1996: 278).
Again, agency is not the issue. Even if the choices are all grim, the capac-
ity to choose is the mark of agency. But Sandel is right that voluntarist or
contractual freedom is a central piece of liberal ideology. Nozick is the
surely best case. For him a choice is free if and only if it is voluntary. Achoice
is involuntary if and only if it is coerced, and as above, coercion is the threat
or use of violence, including legal coercion exercised by the state. Coercive
social relations just dont count. So, neither do the immense inequalities of
freedom that result from ones position in prevailing social relations. For
Nozick, if people have equal rights, then they are equally free (period).
Insofar as he recognizes positive rights, or rights that oblige others (in-
cluding especially the state) to do something to realize ones rights, Rawls
Liberalisms Discontent: America in Search of a Past That Never Was 259
would seem to see that freedom is very unequally distributed. Thus, rights
demanded by Fair Equality of Opportunity, for example, the right to a good
education, or those demanded by the Difference Principle, e.g., the right to in-
come greater than the worst off in any other system of distribution, imply
nonlegal constraints on freedom. But still trapped in liberal ideology, he also
asserts:
The inability to take advantage of ones rights and opportunities as a result of
poverty or ignorance, and a lack of means generally, is sometimes counted
among the constraints definitive of liberty. I shall not, however, say this, but
rather I shall think of these things as affecting the worth of liberty, the value of
the rights that the first principle allows (1971: 204).
But not all liberals are so whimsical about freedom. Perhaps the best (intu-
itively sensible, philosophically sound) definition of freedom was offered by
Joel Feinberg (1973). On this view, freedom is a capacity to do something,
have something or be someone. But capacities are defined by enabling factors
such as competencies and resources, and persons are constrained by hin-
drances and obstacles that prevent them from doing, having, or being. One
can choose to sleep under the bridge, but cannot choose to sleep at the Ritz-
Carlton if one lacks the required money. The idea of absolute freedom is both
incoherent and undesirable. But there are people with practically no freedom
in exactly the sense that ignorance and poverty have disenabled them. The
least of their problems is the coercive power of the state.
As, for example, Dewey well documented (Chapter 10), there are many
problems with variant versions of liberal political philosophy; but the idea
that there is a value in choosing our ends is not one of them. As I noted, one
huge problem of liberal theory is its incoherence in acknowledging both the
value of freedom and the equality of persons. It has thus persistently failed to
address the problem of inequalities of freedom. Another, not unrelated to this,
is the problem of democracy, to which I now turn.
REPUBLICAN FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY
The foregoing has given the gist of the Sandels moral philosophy. Most of
the book, however, is devoted to showing that the public philosophy that is
the alternative to the procedural republic was present at the Founding and that
it was replaced only recently. In what follows, I pursue two related themes.
First, it is a mistake to hold that one can understand the liberal strand in
American thought apart the civic republican strand. These were not indepen-
dent and merely consistent ideas: They were part and parcel of the same bun-
260 Chapter Eleven
dle of ideas as they emerged at a critical juncture in Americas past.
3
Sandels
distinction is artificial. Indeed, as the few examples adduced above suggest,
at every critical instance, in order to try to make his case, he holds that the au-
thors of his case examples are confused, or inconsistent, or that we must read
between the lines to see really what is being put forward.
4
It never seems to
occur to him that these interpretative difficulties are a function of the artifi-
ciality of his distinction. Worse, his distinction promotes a profoundly ideo-
logical understanding of the American past. This is my second major theme.
Sandel is both historically and philosophically uncritical regarding the idea of
democracy.
HISTORY AND IDEOLOGY
Sandel would have us believe that the Founding Fathers (or at least some im-
portant and leading set of them) had as among their goals a constitution which
promoted self-government, and that one of the key problems presented by
the so-called crisis period was the absence of the civic virtue required by cit-
izens (128). Throughout the nineteenth century, then, the civic ideal of vir-
tuous self-governing citizens was the dominant public philosophy in Amer-
ica. All of this is ideology in exactly the sense that these beliefs are false or
distorted, and are both critical to the reproduction of the status quo and serve
those who have power in America. I begin with the Founding.
There are three or four fundamental facts for us to keep in mind. First, the
War of Independence had converted farmers and mechanics, even the poorest
of them and even some slaves, into armed citizens who, remarkably, had de-
feated one the best professional armies in the world. The war for indepen-
dence was not likely to have had no impact on their political sensibilities. Ed-
mund Morgan summarizes the main points very well:
Had the southern plantations not shifted from free to slave labor, had the
planters continued to import masses of indentured servants and continued to
pour them into their own and other colonies a few years later as indigent free-
dom, then the picture of social mobility in the colonial period and of class con-
flict in the Revolution might have been quite different. The Minutemen of 1774
might have been truly a rabble in arms, ready to turn from fighting the British
to fighting their well-to-do neighbors. . . . But in the century between 1676 and
1776 the growth of slavery had curbed the growth of a free, depressed lower
class and correspondingly magnified the social and economic opportunities for
whites. It is perhaps the greatest irony of a Revolution fought in the cause of
freedom, a Revolution that indeed advanced the cause of freedom throughout
the world, that the men who carried it out were able to unite against British
Liberalisms Discontent: America in Search of a Past That Never Was 261
oppression because they had so completely and successfully oppressed the
largest segment of their own laboring population (Morgan, 1976: 182).
The analogies to Athens, well enough understood by a tradition that had fol-
lowed Aristotle, knew exactly what was at issue in this situation. Athens made
citizens of poor people in order to man the triremes. Would these American
citizens be the equivalent of what for Aristotle was a maritime mob (nau-
tikos ochlos)? Would they, as citizens, do what everyone knew all democra-
cies do? Would they attack the institutions of private property?
Indeed, it is quite impossible to underestimate the importance of Shays (lit-
tle!) rebellion in this regard, an event which took place four months after the de-
funct Annapolis convention and some three months before the historic meeting
at Philadelphia. Promoted by Massachusetts financial policies that had reaped
enormous profits for holders of state notesand had forced farmers into fore-
closure, it was, as the leading expert on finance for this period says, as surely
class legislation as any paper money bill (Ferguson, 1961: 245).
The trouble had begun in 1782 and accelerated. In the fall of 1786, farm-
ers began petitioning and obstructing the proceedings of county courts. Gov-
ernor Bowdoin clamped down, forbidding their assemblies as illegaleven
though, as I note next, they were using exactly the same methods as they had
used fifteen years earlier against British tyranny. When Shays led his group
of 1,100 on the arsenaltheir ultimate aims are unclear, Major General Shep-
herd fired a volley from his cannon. The crowd dispersed and was chased into
the snowy woods. No one was hurt. Fourteen captured leaders were sentenced
to death, but were later pardoned. Bowdoin lost the next election and the new
legislature acquiesced to the demands of the farmers.
Shays little rebellion did not involve the whole people of Massachusetts,
still less of New York and the rest of the Confederacy. But Jefferson, in Paris,
saw the importance of Shays little rebellion and concluded, rightly, that the
new Constitution was the result of overzealous reaction to . . . democracy.
The problem was not a lack of civic virtue, but of evident class legislation
to be remedied by democratic participation.
Second, the war unleashed democratic ideas. As colonial authority was col-
lapsed, it is sometimes said that the colonists had returned to a state of na-
ture. This was hardly the case. Yet, as Palmer emphasizes:
Governors, unable to control their assemblies, undertook to disband them, only to
see most of the members continue to meet as unauthorized congresses and associ-
ations; or conventions of counties unknown to law, choose delegates to such con-
gresses for provinces as a whole; or local people forcibly prevented the sitting of
law courts. . . . Violence spread, militias formed, and the Continental Congress
called into the existence a Continental army (Palmer, 1969, Vol. 2: 109).
262 Chapter Eleven
The first Congress had developed out of these extra-legal provincial con-
ventions and committees of correspondence. The idea was not to form a new
government but to institutionalize a common front for ongoing negotiations;
then after the fissure, to field an army. What needs to be emphasized here is
that despite huge wartime problems, the Confederation worked.
5
The peace
brought unique conditions and unique opportunities.
As Bailyn emphasized, even prior to the war, the American experience had
led the colonies to move in directions opposite from Britain. As he writes: the
Americans,
starting with seventeenth century assumptions, out of necessity . . . drifted back-
ward, as it were, toward the medieval forms of attorneyship in representation.
. . . The colonial town and counties . . . were largely autonomous, and they stood
to lose more than they were likely to gain from a loose acquiescence in the ac-
tion of central government (Bailyn, 1967: 164).
Localism, the aggrandizement of government in the legislative body
contrary to the teachings of Montesquieu and Harrington regarding balanced
governmentand a shift in the meaning of representation, were all signs of
what had been traditionally recognized as shifts toward democracy. The shift
in the idea of representation brings the foregoing together and takes us to the
heart of Sandels ideas regarding both self-rule and civic virtue.
A debate in Maryland in 1785 makes clear that during this period, Ameri-
cans articulated two distinct and incompatible meanings of the word repre-
sent. In one sense, a representative could be defined, as in Hobbes and
Locke, in terms of his authority. In this sense, as in Hobbes and Locke, we
consent and thus create his authority. Even if the representative is elected
(and he need not be), he acted for the people. By contrast a representative
could be conceived merely as an agent, a servant of the people, elected and
controlled by those he represents in the sense that he is instructed by them.
In this sense, the people retained their power. Sovereignty was, in this sense,
as Rousseau had insisted, inalienable.
6
The Maryland House of Delegates had acted in favor of an emission of
credit, legislation in favor of the debt-ridden farmers, but the Senate had refused
to ratify it. Did the people then have a right to instruct their representatives in the
upper house? The defenders of instruction held, rightly, that during the time
Maryland had been a colony, it was not denied, even by the Crown, that mem-
bers of the lower house, the House of Delegates, were bound by their instruc-
tions from the people. During British rule, of course, the people had no claims
on representatives on members of the upper house, since, of course, they were
appointed by the Crown. For Samuel Chase, the power to elect implied the
Liberalisms Discontent: America in Search of a Past That Never Was 263
power to instruct. If so, then the members of the upper house were also servants
of the people. But if so, as an opponent insisted:
Planters, Farmers, Parsons, Overseers, Lawyers, Constables, Petifoggers, Physi-
cians, Mechanicks, Shopkeepers, Merchants, Apprentices, Watchman, Barbers,
Beaux, Drayman, Porters, Labourers, Cobles and Cooks, all are to order the
honourable, the legislature of Maryland what they must do upon the most intri-
cate questions in government (Yawaza, 1975: 20).
But why, within Sandels frame, should anyone have supposed that these men
(sic) had the requisite civic virtue? Sandel might not deny this even if he is
unable to disengage himself from manifest ideology and to see what was at
issue. He writes:
What troubled the revolutionary leaders most of all [which revolutionary lead-
ers?] was the popular politics increasingly practiced in the state legislature.
They [the propertied elite?] had assumed that under republican government, a
natural aristocracy of merit and virtue would replace an artificial aristocracy
of heredity and patronage. But in the postrevolutionary state legislatures, the
best [sic] did not necessarily rule. . . . For republican leaders such as Madison,
this form of politics amounted to an excess of democracy, a perversion of re-
publican ideals. Rather than governing in a disinterested spirit in behalf of the
public good, these representatives of the people were all too representative
parochial, small-minded, and eager to serve the private interests of their con-
stituents (Sandel, 1996: 128, my emphasis).
This is quite an old story, surely as old as Aristotle, who, at least, made no
pretense of being a fan of democracy. As Madison more honestly argued, if
you let a majority rule, then since as Aristotle had pointed out, the majority
are always poor and they will rule in their interests. For Sandel and the anti-
democratic tradition behind him, better than to have the wealthy minority
rule. We are to suppose that they will govern in a disinterested spirit in be-
half of the public good.
The U.S. Constitution was a marvelous success, of course, even if it fore-
closed the possibility that America might have had a far stronger democracy.
But it was a huge success also in that, designed explicitly to undermine self-
rule, it came to be thought of as a democracyindeed, a democratic model
for the world (Manicas, 1988).
7
Although there is no space here to tell this story in an adequate way, three
facts seem central. First, as Gordon Wood has demonstrated, the biggest
stumbling block for the Nationalists was the problem of sovereignty. How
could there be one supreme legislature in each state and a federal government
that could make laws that superseded those of the individual states? The in-
264 Chapter Eleven
vention of the idea of the sovereign people, which, remarkably, was offered
as a solution to sidestepping the mandated ratification process, was a stunning
achievement. The existing law had required that the new document be re-
turned to state legislatures for approval. But it is almost certain that these bod-
ies would not have approved of it. In defense of the revolutionary act of by-
passing state legislatures, Madison offered what seemed to be an obvious
revolutionary justification: The people were, in fact, the fountain of all
power. . . . They could alter constitutions as they see as they please. . . . As
Wood argues, relocating sovereignty in the people by making them the
fountain of all power seemed to make sense of the entire system (Wood,
1969: 352). It is difficult, I think, to underestimate the ideological power of
this idea. Henceforth, governments could be democracies if power origi-
nated in or derived from the sovereign people.
Second, although this has been obfuscated since, it is clear that there were
plenty of people present at Philadelphia who had a clear grasp of the differ-
ence between the Confederacy under the Articles and the Virginia plan which
subsequently was adopted. Mason contended, for example, that under the
existing Confederacy, Cong[gress] represent[s] the States, not the people of
the States; [its] acts operate on States, not on individuals. The New Jersey
plan, which was rejected, would have responded to the real flaws in the Arti-
cles without in any way compromising this principled difference. Madison
and Hamilton will, of course, convince Americansincluding many legal
scholars (and likely also Sandel?) that in principle there was no difference.
Indeed, ironically, in his concluding chapter, Sandel sees, rightly, that the
hope for self-government lies not in relocating sovereignty but in dispersing
it (345). But it was precisely the problem of dispersed sovereignty that
so exercised the founding fathersexactly because it allowed for greater par-
ticipation by citizens.
The third fact relevant to the idea that a large state can be a democracy as
long as representatives are elected evokes a further irony. Sandel is right to
appeal to Jefferson as the most democratic of all Americas early leaders. As
regards the idea of representation, he always avoided the Federalist formula
of power originating or deriving from the people. He always spoke of
representatives as delegates, deputies, servants, functionaries or agents. Es-
pecially after he left office, he complained bitterly regarding the direction of
American politics, that the problem had begun in Philadelphia where the Fed-
eralists had endeavored to draw the cords of power as right as they could ob-
tain themindeed, as Madison had all but said in the 10th Federalist Pa-
perto lessen the dependence of the general functionaries, on their
constituents and to weaken the means of maintaining a steady equilibrium
which the majority of the convention had deemed salutary for both branches,
Liberalisms Discontent: America in Search of a Past That Never Was 265
general and local. Moreover, he was persistently localist, insisting that the
Montesquievian problem of size had been solved by the idea of layered fed-
erated jurisdictions from the local to the national.
8
Merrill Peterson has rightly remarked that men like Jefferson, deceived by
the French Revolution, . . . taught the people to think of their government as
a democracy rather than a balanced republic after Adamss vision. His rev-
olution of 1800 in the hotly ideological election of that year was critical in
this. His victory was, as he insisted, a revolution in the principles of our gov-
ernment as that of 1776 was in its form. It was, of course, nothing of the
kind. The victory of Jefferson, the first of a long series of republican victo-
ries, was a revolution in ideology.
Sandels unhistorical reading of the republican tradition prevents him
seeing any of these remarkable ironies. He writes:
Growing doubts about the prospect of civic virtue in the 1780s [growing paranoia
that institutional arrangements had unleashed democracy?] prompted two kinds of
responseone formative, the other procedural. The first sought, through education
and other means, to inculcate virtue more strenuously. The second sought, through
constitutional change, to render virtue less necessary (129).
The constitutional change that effectively disempowered citizens is quaintly
put:
The republican tradition taught that a certain distance between the people and
their government was unavoidable, even desirableprovided that distance was
filled with mediating institutions that gathered people together and equipped
them to share in self-rule (my emphasis).
Indeed, as his historical account of America from Jackson to Kennedy itself
decisively shows, once the new constitution was in place, virtue was not
rendered less necessary. It was rendered utterly unnecessary.
This is clearest in Sandels Chapter 6, Free labor versus Wage Labor. Al-
though he lacks the language to say it, Sandel sees in this chapter that the real
problem for his civic republicans was class: . . . they shared the long-
standing republican conviction that economic dependence is essential to citi-
zenship (169). But, of course, with industrial capitalism, if any sense was to
be made of the new arrangements, holding firm to this prejudice would have
been intolerable. So, ultimately, the debate over the meaning of free labor
would carry American political argument beyond the terms of republican
thought. . . . Wage labor is consistent with freedom, they would argue, not be-
cause it forms virtuous independent citizens but simply because it is volun-
tary, the product of agreement between employer and employee (171). On
266 Chapter Eleven
the one hand, this admission seems utterly inconsistent with this notion that
the formative project remained alive and well until recently. On the other,
that workers were free was not only a huge ideological victory but it was
perfectly consistent with both a Lockean liberalism in which everybody had
property: either in land and productive assets or in their labor, and with the
redefinition of democracy that had been wrought by the Americans. Hence-
forth, not only would capitalism be consistent with democracy, but also it
would come increasingly to be thought of as its ideal political form. With an
impotent sovereign people, class struggle could be submerged and deflected.
Much of this was clearly seen by John Dewey (Chapter 10). There is some
paradox in this also since it is easy to think that Sandel is broadly, at least, in
agreement with Dewey.
SANDEL AND DEMOCRACY
It is worthwhile perhaps to quote in full Sandels brief prcis of Deweys crit-
icism of political democracy in America. Sandel writes:
The philosopher John Dewey observed that the theory of freely choosing indi-
vidual self was framed at just the time when the individual was counting for
less in the direction of social affairs, at a time when mechanical forces and vast
impersonal organizations were determining the frame of things. . . . According
to Dewey, modern economic forces liberated the individual from traditional
communal ties, and so encouraged voluntarist self-understanding, but at the
same time disempowered individuals and local political units. The struggle for
emancipation from traditional communities was mistakenly identified with the
liberty of the individual as such; in the intensity of the struggle, associations and
institutions were condemned wholesale as foes of freedom save as they were
products of personal agreement and voluntary choice.
Meanwhile, mass suffrage reenforced (sic) the voluntarist self-image by mak-
ing it appear as if citizens held the power to shape social relations on the basis
of individual volition. Popular franchise and majority rule afforded the imagi-
nation of a picture of individuals in their untrammeled individual sovereign
making the state. But this concealed a deeper, harder reality. The spectacle of
free men going to the polls to determine by their personal volitions the politi-
cal forms under which they should live was an illusion (1996: 204).
It is clear enough what Sandel does share with Dewey. Both reject individu-
alistic liberalism. What are the differences?
First, Deweys critique of liberal ideology involves seeing that mass
suffrage was an essential part of the alienation of politics that people
came falsely to think that they lived in a democracy in which they were
Liberalisms Discontent: America in Search of a Past That Never Was 267
self-ruled. Dewey knew better. For him, the democratic state, ideologically
sustained by individualist philosophy, emerged, contrary to Sandel, for rea-
sons largely unrelated to the goal of realizing self-government. Dewey held,
perhaps optimistically, that it tried, at least, to counteract forces that . . .
largely determined the possession of rule by accidental and irrelevant fac-
tors, and tried, at least, to counteract the tendency to employ political power
to serve private instead of public ends (Dewey, 1954: 108). But he insisted
that it has failed even as regards these limited goals. Not only was the demo-
cratic state grasped and used to suit the desires of the new class of business-
men (Dewey, 1954: 96), but the very forms of political democracy them-
selves throw up huge barriers in the way of realization of democratic publics.
The constitution (despite Jefferson) had become sacred, private power had
been made invulnerable and public power had become firmly entrenched in
the hands of a ruling elite.
Second, Deweys operative theoretical term was publics, not civic virtue.
Dewey was not in the least interested in Sandels formative project, the states
obligation to produce citizens, to cultivate attitudes of disinterested public
spirit, to build up fellow-feeling and to articulate and promote common goals
and interests. The problem was quite otherwise: It concerned the disintegration,
wrought by economic forcesDeweys euphemism for capitalismof the
very conditions for democracy as a way of life, an idea which he sharply distin-
guished from the modern idea of political democracy.
For Dewey, the problem of the public is the present incapacity of interde-
pendent people even to perceive the consequences of combined action, still
less to act collectively regarding their collective interests regarding these con-
sequences. Dewey was in full agreement with Lippmanns trenchant analysis,
but refused to accept that nothing could be done. He was interested in com-
munity, but for him communities were constituted rationally, in terms of
the actively articulated goals of conjoint action (Manicas, 1974). Communi-
ties in his sense did not involve identity issues, nor were they constituted
emotively or ethnically. Nor surely were they the responsibility of a nonneu-
tral government seeking to enforce or reinforce values that they assumed
were essential to the nation. These sorts of communities were and are
shackles, destructive, and not emancipating. Indeed, the principles that pre-
sumably make them essential were rightly delegitimized by liberalism. Rem-
iniscent of Rousseaus scathing attack on Hobbes and Locke and Marxs
analysis of alienation, for Dewey:
Where there is conjoint activity whose consequences are appreciated as good by
all singular persons who take part in it, and where the realization the good is
such as to effect an energetic desire and effort to sustain it in being just because
268 Chapter Eleven
it is a good shared by all, there is insofar a community. The clear consciousness
of communal life, in all its implications, constitutes the idea of democracy
(Dewey, 1954: 149).
Dewey did not, to be sure, offer much in the way of positive help on how we
were to overcome those conditions that make impossible the emergence of
publics, but as should be clear, the problem is not moral; it is structural and
political. Here again we need to be careful in understanding Sandels remarks,
quoted earlier, regarding the idea that the hope for self-government is in dis-
persing sovereignty.
Sandel sees a moral defect in the cosmopolitan ethic (Sandel, 1996: 342).
Dewey did not. Dewey heaped nothing but scorn on the idea of the Nation
and of National Sovereignty, but he did this precisely because its claims were
fraudulent and because it served only to promote violence. He approved of a
multiplicity of communities and political bodies, but for him, this required a
cosmopolitian ethic, exactly because these communities were to be con-
structed on the basis of perceiving and collectively acting on the conse-
quences of conjoint activities.
Although this is hardly the space to develop the idea, since global capital-
ism is the main problem, building social movements internationally is now
the only strategy. As Dewey said, we already have a Great Society. What is
now sorely lacking is a Great Community.
NOTES
1. Charles Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1979).
2. The clause is important and is meant to undercut the old freedom/determinism
chestnut. To have agency, we must be free in the sense that whatever we do, we could
have done otherwise. That is even acts which are not voluntary in the sense that we
were coerced display agency. One can choose even if the only other choice is death.
But we must not confused agency with freedom. See below.
3. The point was made by Ian Shapiro in his excellent The Evolution of Rights in
Liberal Theory (1986). Sandel seems here to appropriate and extend a version of J. G.
A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment (1975). But a careful reading of Pococks last
chapter (XV) will show, I think, that he does not deny the view shared by Bernard Bai-
lyn, J. R. Pole, and Gordon Wood that, as he summarizes matters: in the period of the
making of the Constitution and the Federalist-Republican debate, the civic tradition
underwent a transforming crisis and was never the same again; Wood in particular
speaks of an end of classical politics (1975). Put in other terms, the Americans in-
vented modern democracy, surely the most successful version of liberalism to date.
Liberalisms Discontent: America in Search of a Past That Never Was 269
4. For other examples, see page 70, where he says of a Scalia Supreme Court ar-
gument: such decisions might seem at odds with the liberalism that asserts the pri-
ority of the right over the good. But . . . and p. 282, where he asserts that Johnsons
evocation of national community might seem to embrace the nationalizing tradition
of progressive reform . . . but. . . .
5. We must ignore overwhelming historical evidence that the real crisis had
nothing to do with sovereignty, finance, or commerce, all of which could easily have
been solved. The problem was the drift toward democracy and Madison and many
others explicitly insisted. The bad name given to confederacies by the Americans con-
tinues to haunt otherwise intelligent people. For some discussion of this evidence, see
my War and Democracy (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989). The present movement to-
ward an European Union may overcome this prejudice.
6. We need to keep in mind the relevant numbers here. As Pole notes, the British
Parliament had one member for every 14,300 people, while in the colonies, there was
one for every 1,200. The total number of eligible voters in Pennsylvania was only
90,000. As the democrats insisted (including here, later, Jefferson), far more direct
control could have been expected.
7. One might argue that this was an entirely good thing on grounds that there is no
better institutional arrangement possible. But indeed, it is plain enough that even at
the time of the Convention, stronger versions were available and that, with Dewey, a
very strong version of democracy remains a fundamental ideal of politics.
8. But there is some doubt that even as the third president, he ever fully grasped
what the Constitution had wrought. There are many texts that support this (including
some of those mentioned here), but perhaps the most decisive is his Kentucky Reso-
lution of 1798 that is easily shown to be inconsistent with the Constitution. This was,
for this reason, a critical text for later secessionists. For a more thorough account of
Jeffersons role in the redefinition of democracy, see Chapter 8 of my War and De-
mocracy (1989).
270 Chapter Eleven
Part Four
WHY NOT DEWEY?
273
Classic American philosophers did not restrict themselves to the problem
of knowing the world; rather they sought to change itwithout the assistance
of Marxs inversion of Hegel. Nor could it be said that classic American phi-
losophy was academic, the province of professionals who earned their
pay by teaching epistemology to future teachers of philosophy and who
earned their promotions by writing to one another about c-functions and
private languages. While one can surely contest Cornel Wests claims about
the causal role of the writings of Richard Rorty in recovering this tradition
(West, 1989: 199), one can surely endorse the effort of Wests most impres-
sive book, under review here. Indeed, one hopes that its title will not dis-
courage potential readers. For West, it is precisely the evasion of philoso-
phy that makes the distinctly American philosophical tradition valuable. The
swerve from epistemology, initiated by Emerson on Wests view, is surely
not a wholesale rejection of philosophy. Rather, for West, the American
evasion offers a reconception of philosophy as a form of cultural criticism
that attempts to transform linguistic, social, cultural and political traditions
for the purpose of increasing the scope of individual development and demo-
cratic operations (230). Because West is not only manifestly in control of his
material, but, as well, because his is a distinct voice in this project, his book
deserves to be widely read.
West offers a geneaology of American pragmatism, from Emerson to its
coming of age with Peirce, James, and DeweyMead is omitted, perhaps
unjustifiablythence to its dilemma in the mid-twentieth century and its de-
cline and resurgence in the recent past and present. The chapter on the dilemma
of the midcentury pragmatic intellectual includes discussions of Sidney Hook,
W. E. B. DuBois, C. Wright Mills, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Lionel Trilling. West
Chapter Twelve
The Evasion of Philosophy
1
shows how Emersonian sensibilities and pragmatist progeny cut across the
modern, disciplinary division of knowledge (6) and, as important, he shows
how the results of this appropriation were so very different. Quine and Rorty
are the focus of the chapter on the decline and resurgence, though West recog-
nizes and credits a number of American philosophersJohn McDermott, John
Smith, Richard Bernstein, and Morton Whitewho continued to keep alive
the pragmatist tradition during the age of logical positivism (194). Although
his treatment of the geneaology of pragmatism is much influenced by Rorty,
West moves the argument to another level in his last chapter, Prophetic Prag-
matism: Cultural Criticism and Political Engagement. Using the work of
Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Michel Foucault, and Antonio Gramsci as foils,
West takes us back and forward to Dewey to his own sense of pragmatism as a
viable and energizing postmodern philosophy.
Wests understanding of Emerson not only begins his story; it provides
as well the driving force and thematic levers of the book, represented in the
tropes of power, provocation, and personality. Emerson is not a philoso-
pherhereafter quotation marks around philosopher are meant to convey
the restricted sense of the term. But he is more than a mediocre man of letters
or a meteoric man of lectures. While interpreters who make him a self-willed
escapee from the American genteel tradition, a purveyor of secular incarna-
tion, or a grand ideological synthesizer of American nature, the American self,
and the American destiny do yield insights, these readings hide his historical
perspective and seminal reflections on power (11). Indeed, West compares
him, perhaps remarkably, to his contemporary Marx. Like Marx, Emerson is a
died-in-the-wool romantic thinker who takes seriously the embodiment of
ideals within the real, the actualization of principles in the practical (10). Sim-
ilar to Marx, Emersons focus is the scope of human powers and the contin-
gency of human societies, in social scientific terms, the relation between pur-
posive subjects and prevailing structures . . . (10).
West goes quickly here, no doubt. Still, the comparison provokes. But like
Marx, Emerson was caught in his time and place. Thus, the Emersonian telos
is not simply a strategy to deny time, reject history, and usurp authority, but
is symptomatic of a deep desire to conceive time, history and authority as
commensurate with and parallel to the vast open spaces of untouched woods,
virgin lands, and haunting wilderness (19). West develops a deeper Emer-
sonian blindspot, one surely not disconnected from the Emersonian mythic
conception of the exceptional individual as America[n]. This blindspot is
racismin the American grain. West does not apologize for Emerson. Al-
though in his genealogy, the others cannot be so accused, it is surely also true
that only DuBois adequately grasped the degree to which black slavery has
impeded and distorted the Emersonian vision (147). Moreover, and not unre-
274 Chapter Twelve
lated, another Emersonian legacy has characterized American philosophers:
Emerson created a style which deploys a set of rhetorical strategies that at-
tempt to both legitimize and criticize America and like those who followed
him, American philosophers situated their projects within and among the re-
fined and reformist elements of the middle classthe emerging and evolving
class envisioned as the historical agent of the American religion (41).
Peirce, of course, was always on the margin of academic philosophy, but
given that, it is not clear whether one wants to say that he evaded the epis-
temological turn. As West appreciates, it might be better to say that he
triedwithout successto reject the challenge that modern philosophy had
posed. Of course, he did this in an entirely novel way, accepting Kantian
insulation against skepticism, but rejecting Kants transcendental move.
West is emphatic that Peirces technical writingswhat today still excite the
philosophersshould not be disconnected from his metaphysicsa kind
of Kantianism without things-in-themselvesfrom his concern with com-
munity, the basis of his belief-doubt theory of knowledge, and, more often
put aside, from his morally energized speculations on evolutionary love
the development of concrete reasonableness.
Peirce was not a verificationist, never scientistic. Although committed to
the method of science and a pragmatist, West can also quote him as writing
that a useless inquiry, provided it is a systematic one, is pretty much the
same thing as a scientific inquiry (46). Veblen was later to call the motiva-
tion for science idle curiousity, and no doubt influenced by Peirce, his
teacher at Hopkins, was among the first to see how much rising industrial so-
ciety had compromised this. James could join in this as well. On his view,
the craving to believe that the things in the world belong to kinds which are
related by an inward rationality together is the parent of Science as well as
sentimental philosophy (James, 1981, Vol. 2: 1260). Sciences aim, like
sentimental philosophy is intelligibility, not prediction and controlcon-
trary to the characteristic misreading of American pragmatism. Moreover,
like James, Peirce fell back on moral sentiment and instinctive action as an
alternative to a scientific ethics (West: 46).
For West, whereas Peirce applies Emersonian themes of contingency and
revisability to the scientific method, James extends them to our personal and
moral lives. The basic aim of the Jamesian popularization was to medi-
ate between the old and the newreligion and science, Gemeinschaft and
Gesellschaft, country and city, vocation and professionin order to lessen
the shock of the new educated middle class (55). We need not assume, of
course, that James intended to do this. Still, the point hits home. It wasnt
merely that his audience was the educated middle class but that, agreeing with
R. B. Perry, his distrust of the masses is undeniable (61). Indeed, although
The Evasion of Philosophy 275
we like to think that American writers are different, such distrust pervades
the literature of political philosophy. Dewey is surely the most outstanding
exception.
West concentrates on Pragmatism and the popular essays, for example, Is
Life Worth Living?, On a Certain Blindness . . . , and the seldom read,
The Social Value of the College-Bred. He but mentions Principles and does
not even allude to radical empiricism. But I would not quarrel with his ef-
fort to try to stealor insulate?James from the philosophers. As West
sees, academic philosophy had not yet become institutionalized in America
and as David Hollinger has pointed out, we err in failing to see that James was
not a academic philosopher, but an engaged intellectual for whom, as West
says, philosophy mediated essential rifts in the self (95). West concludes
that James was first and foremost a moralist obsessed with heroic energies
and reconciliatory strategies available to the individual (54) and that he was
much more attuned to the depths of evil in the world than Emerson. But
oddlygiven his interestsWest does not allude to Santayanas challenging
criticism that James held a false moralistic view of history. According to
Santayana, the war with Spain deeply upset James because he believed that
he had lost his country, when his country, just beginning to play its part in
the history of the world, appeared to ignore an ideal that he innocently ex-
pected would always guide it (Quoted by Myers, 1985: 43940). This is an
Emersonian residue which will plague even Deweyat least until the catas-
trophe of the Great War. See Chapter 8.
Dewey, properly, is the central figure of Wests account. Again, there are
two themes, the Deweyan evasion and the particular Deweyan slant as po-
litical and cultural critic. West holds that Dewey held ambiguously to a mod-
est view of philosophy as social and cultural criticism. It was ambiguous be-
cause he was attracted to Greek naturalism, especially after encountering
Woodbridge at Columbia. Coupled, then, with his allegiance to his profes-
sional identity and status, West argues, he was left uneasy with this more
modest view. Thus, those intent on simply incorporating Dewey into the tra-
dition of modern philosophy point out Deweys own descriptive metaphysi-
cal project in his classic work Experience and Nature (West: 94).
But if like James, his sensitivity to the modern epistemological problem did
preclude metaphysics in Kants sense, it need not preclude descriptive meta-
physics, the Aristotelian turn developed in Ralph Sleepers The Necessity of
Pragmatism (1986). But it may be also that Dewey remained within the prob-
lematic of modern epistemology. And if so, then he evaded it by ignoring it. As
John Smith has said, with Dewey, all attempts at making knowledge itself in-
telligible are greeted by pointing out that science is a fact and that is the end of
the matter (Smith, 1970: 52). The consequence, on my view, was disastrous.
276 Chapter Twelve
The problem was that although pragmatism was intended to be a new beginning,
displacing transcendental philosophy, Deweys doctrine of experience limited
him to an empirical realism and worse, perhaps to what often seemed to be an
empiricistif not positivistview of science. To be sure, as with James, Dewey
had a rich and contextual view of experience; but for all of that, it seems that he
remained within the Kantian strictures of an empirical realism. As argued in
Chapter 5, this hardly sufficed for his remarkable theory of inquiry, and it left
him vulnerable to all sorts of criticisms, including one made by West, for exam-
ple, that Art as Experience is shot through with an organic idealism unbecom-
ing a card-carrying pragmatist (95). Thus, while West, now following Rorty,
wishes that Dewey had been a more consistent historicist pragmatist, I wish
that he had been a more consistent naturalistindeed in nearly the sense that
was Marx in his criticism of Feuerbach. Like Marx, after diagnosing the dead-
ended path set by modern epistemology, Dewey lost patience with the problem,
well captured by the famous dichotomy of subject and object. Itself the legacy
of modern science, the dichotomy became not only the preoccupation of
philosophers, but unsurprisingly, the effort to overcome it produced the col-
lapse of one into the otherbehaviorism, structuralism eliminative mate-
rialism a la Rorty and on the other side, phenomenology, voluntarism,
methodological solipsismand more recently in anti-philosophical post-
modernist thought, the stunning dissolution of both object and subject. (See
Chapter 4) Dewey was anxious to avoid the epistemological problem, and
supposed that he could do this and still promote a roomy and nonreductive nat-
uralism. In this sense, then, he was not as anxious to evade philosophy as is
Rorty and as seems to be the case with West.
West is at his best when he writes as a social theorist. What he has to say
about Deweys social and political philosophy, and in the next chapter, his ac-
count of Hook, Mills, Niebuhr, DuBois, and Trilling is both penetrating and
important. West sees the radicalism of Dewey. Of course, Dewey shunned
confrontational politics and agitational social struggle. But his view was
radical in that his vision required fundamental transformations of American
institutions. Moreover, contrary to popular opinion, Deweys project never
really got off the ground (West: 107).
The point is important and too little appreciated. But Wests explanation of
Deweys failure will raise some eyebrows. He argues that Deweys project is
one of cultural transformation that envisions a future Emersonian and dem-
ocratic way of life that has the flavor of small-scale homogeneous communi-
ties. West seems not to object to this vision, usually dismissed as utopian.
Rather, he writes that Deweys project is problematic because his emphasis
on culture leads him to promote principally pedagogic and dialogical means
of social change and that despite, and maybe because of, his widespread
The Evasion of Philosophy 277
involvement in political organizations, groups, even third parties, Dewey
never did get over his Emersonian distrust of them (106). His project failed,
then, because his favored historical agentsthe professional and reformist
elements of the middle classwere seduced by two strong waves of thought
and action: managerial ideologies of corporate liberalism and bureaucratic
control, and Marxist ideologies of class struggle and party organization
(107).
It is easy to see the knot that West is trying to untie: What kind of politics
is possible given the peculiar American conditionespecially after the tragi-
cally quick failure of the Bolshevik project? Nonetheless, he seems not to no-
tice how much Dewey contributed to the managerial ideologies of corporate
liberalismespecially in his 1918 New Republic essays. (See Chapter 8.)
On the other hand, given that Dewey could never accept the Second Interna-
tional definition of class strugglefor altogether sensible reasonshe pro-
vides no evidence of his Emersonian mistrust of organization. The charge
that his favored historical agents were the most progressive elements of the
middle class was made by Mills, as West knows, and indeed, there is consid-
erable plausibility in this. Still, once one sees what Dewey, Eduard Bernstein,
Kautsky, and Lenin all saw, that proletarian revolutionary class-conscious-
ness was not on the historical agenda, and surely not in the United Sates, we
are left with some deep political questions that remain unsolved. (See Chap-
ter 10.) As Dewey diagnosed, the public is inchoate, eclipsed, lost; and he
was unsure how to find it. Dewey could surely endorse the coalition politics
that West rightly favors. Moreover, this politics is not more radical than
Deweys, nor, it seems to me, is it less dialogic.
West is also severe with Deweys failure to take the time to come to terms
with . . . Marxism. But he is not historical here. Not only was it not possible
for Dewey to have read the Paris manuscripts, the so-called Grundrisse and
the many, many unpublished letters, speeches, and essays, but the political
movements which defined Marxism were either the monocausal and teleolog-
ical Second International Marxisms which had failed or the Leninist version
which had succeeded but which, for hardly arguable historical reasons,
could not succeed in achieving its vision of democracy. West rightly sees that
Deweys deepest philosophical and political commitments were very close to
Marxs, although he seems unaware of some of the more recent
literature on this important topic. On the other hand, while West seems indif-
ferent to the point, in my mind, Dewey saw little difference between capital-
ism and other modern possibilities. Given recent events in the socialist world,
of course, many will say that Dewey was vindicated.
Although plainly it is not here possible to review his discussion in any sort
of detail, readers will find Wests accounts of Hook, Mills, DuBois, Niebuhr
278 Chapter Twelve
and Trilling especially gratifying. He might have added other figures to this
list, for example, Walter Lippmann. Still, these writers were profoundly prag-
matic thinkers and, excepting Trilling, they each had a confrontation with
Marxism. West negotiates this territory with unexpected sympathies. He cred-
its Hook with being the first original Marxist philosopher in America and
depending here on ones use of philosopher, this may be true. Surely his To-
wards an Understanding of Karl Marx (1933) was a landmark book. On the
other hand, Hooks ideological trajectory . . . portrays American pragmatism
in deep crisis (124). C. Wright Mills, he writes, understood this crisis bet-
ter than anyone else in America. Offering a creative misreading of Dewey,
Mills provided a powerful immanent critique of liberalism (127). But ac-
cording to West, Mills suffered from the limitations that he attributed to
Dewey: Not only does he focus on intellectual elites as primary historical
agents (131), but also he betrays a nostalgia for Emersons America (135).
As with the account of Dewey, I am doubtful of this.
Despite his turn to cold warrior, perhaps predictable given his World War I
chauvinism, Niebuhr comes off better than he did, for example, in the treat-
ment by Morton White. Because Niebuhrs Reformation theology accents
disaster just as much as development, for West, after him the Emersonian
theodicy of American pragmatism would never be the same (164). By ap-
propriating Matthew Arnold and Freud, Trilling, however, tried to salvage
American pragmatism by purging it of its Emersonian elements (164). In-
deed, with the New Left and black revolt, rock n roll, drugs and free love,
Trilling came to believe not only that pragmatism could not meet the crisis of
America, but that it fanned and fueled the crisis (178).
If an account of Trilling gives a kind of symmetry to this rich chapter, the
account of DuBois is indispensable to the book. We need to be reminded that
DuBois was, in his own words, a devoted follower of James, that he spent
two years at the University of Berlin (18921994) studying the historical
economists, Schmoller and Wagner, and was impressed by Treitschkes
heroic romantic nationalism. But more important, perhaps, West argues that
Du Boiss stay in Europe gave him, on the one hand, a way for looking at the
world as man and not simply from a racial and provincial outlook, and on
the other, it provided him with an outlet for his hostility toward America and
insight into its provinciality (140).
This was to make DuBois an original and creative voice in what is still a si-
lence. Thus, DuBois displays the blindnesses and silences in American prag-
matic reflections on individuality and democracy, and his Black Reconstruc-
tion (1935) is a seminal work because it examines the ways in which the
struggle for democracy was stifled at a critical period in American history from
the vantage point of the victims (including both black and white laborers)
The Evasion of Philosophy 279
(146). Like Dewey, DuBois had been energized by the Bolshevik Revolution
and like him, he had rejected the strategies of the Communist Party in the
United States. The revolution here would have to be a slow reasoned devel-
opment informed by the most intelligent body of American thought (146).
But unlike Dewey, his understanding of race and class gave him a deeper un-
derstanding of the impasses that had to be overcome, including, in Color and
Democracy: Colonies and Peace (1945), an excoriation of cold warriors as
handmaidens of the American imperial empire (148). His indictment by the
government for failure to register as agent for a foreign principle and conse-
quent vilification was all too graphic testimony of the deeply rooted American
capacity to lie to itself.
I have left little space to discuss what I believe is Wests weakest chapter,
his engagement with recent American pragmatic philosophers (in quotes).
His account of Quine suffers, on my view, from failure to appreciate Quines
rejection of the realist aspects of classic pragmatisms theory of science
(187). As must be clear from what has already been said, he is deeply critical
of Rortys incapacity to go beyond kicking the philosophic props from un-
der liberal bourgeois societies (206). He concludes that his viewpoint has
immense antiprofessional implications for the academy, a point of no small
importance, but on the macrosocietal level, there are no ethical or political
consequences of his pragmatism. This is a serious charge, of course.
In the final chapter, then, West sketches prophetic pragmatism, a post-
modern form of pragmatism that preserves its historicist sense and ge-
nealogical aims, accents both consequences and specific practices in the light
of a set of provisional and revisable theoretical frameworks while it resists
grand theories (209). His stance here is sound. Pragmatism was prematurely
postmodern in rejecting the quest for foundations. West exploits this, but is
unabashed in arguing that current practices become available to criticism in
the light of our best available theories. Although he rightly opposes the char-
acteristic Eurocentrism of Western social and philosophical theory, one may
be surprised that he so warmly embraces an American variant, especially one
that balances Emersonian optimistic theodicies with Niebuhrs project of
walking the tightrope between Promethean romanticism and Augustinian
pessimism (228). To be clear here, this is not to agree with those who see
no liberating potentialities in either religious experience or institutionalized
religionsEast and West. Consider here, for example, the Liberation Church
of Latin America or Lutheranism in the German Democratic Republic.
Rather, it is a question of whether prophetic pragmatism, a child of Protes-
tant Christianity wedded to left romanticism is as wideand perhaps as
coherentas Deweys less prophetic version?
280 Chapter Twelve
One must hope, with West, that philosophical thought in America has taken
a turn to what is best in it. Reservations included, there can be little doubt that
his book is a major contribution in the recovery of the Deweyan vision of
creative democracy. Indeed, in our deeply disillusioned world, The Ameri-
can Evasion of Philosophy is a stunning combination of scholarship, passion,
and sensitivity.
NOTES
1. Areview of Cornel West, The American Evasion of Philosophy (Madison: Uni-
versity of Wisconsin Press, 1989).
The Evasion of Philosophy 281
283
In this ambitious collection, Robert B. Westbrook aims to recover from philo-
sophical pragmatism, insightand hoperegarding the promise of democ-
racy. Following on his John Dewey and American Philosophy (1991), Dewey
is surely his main man. Part One, Pragmatism Old, offers as well, selective
critical discussions of Peirce and James. Part Two, Pragmatism New, treats
recent writers who have identified themselves with pragmatism, including
Hilary Putnam, Cheryl Misak, Cornel West, and Richard Posner. Rorty is the
main character in these accounts.
Indeed, it seems that the motivation for this volume is very much a matter
of Rortys influence in the rediscovery of pragmatism, but especially
Dewey. But this has its problems. Fundamentally, Rorty gets to set the con-
text for the discussion. In the case of Dewey this is especially troublesome,
not merely because Rortys pragmatism is far removed from Deweysas
Westbrook sees, but because any proper understanding of Dewey requires
that we acknowledge how radical was his effort to reconstruct philosophy.
Mainstream philosophy is still almost entirely unaware of this. This is doubly
ironical since rejection of the modern problem of epistemology was the one
feature which Rorty shared with Deweyeven if Rortys reconstruction
was much more in the form of destruction. As Sleeper well put the matter:
We must amend Rortys observation that Dewey was waiting at the end of
the dialectical road which analytic philosophy traveled by the observation
that Dewey was trying to block that road from its beginning (Sleeper, 1996:
5). Put simply, Dewey aimed to replace both epistemology and metaphysics
as these are conceived with a naturalistic logic of inquiry which amounted
to a wholesale attack on the philosophical uses of Russells logic and the en-
tire program of what became analytic philosophy. Failing to see what Dewey
Chapter Thirteen
Democratic Hope
1
was up to, these writers offer well-intentioned appeals to experimental
method, scientific communities, instrumentalist (sic) logic, and free in-
quiry. Indeed, one suspects that they would agree with Alan Ryans assess-
ment that Deweys Logic is vast and somewhat baffling (Ryan, 1995: 309).
The importance of this failure surfaces in what is the main concern of Dem-
ocratic Hope: that Rorty is wrong in claiming that the pragmatists and post-
modernists are distinguished by the Americans unjustifiable social hope and
ungroundable but vital sense of human solidarity (6). Presumably, episte-
mological grounds are available: the pragmatist low-profile conception of
truth and truth-apt character of moral and political beliefs (Westbrook,
2005: 196) provides a bridge between epistemic and deliberative de-
mocracy where persons engage one another not merely as citizens but as
pragmatists (239).
There are two problems. First, Westbrook sees that Dewey did not offer
any sort of argument for this bridge. But presumably the arguments of
Misak and Putman are arguments that Dewey could have made (180). Part of
the problem is that having rejected the skeptical challenge of traditional epis-
temology, he saw no need for such a bridge. But since his efforts were mis-
understood, academic philosophers can still feel a need to respond to skepti-
cisms, epistemic and moral. Dewey would not have been pleased with Rorty,
but he would not have been pleased either to see that mainstream academics,
despite good intentions, remain committed to the problems of philosophy.
There are, we may note, philosophers working well within a Deweyan frame
who are not engaged in Westbrooks book.
Indeed, one might insist that in todays very undemocratic world, it is at least
misleading to focus on an epistemological justification of democracy (176).
Of course, even the weakest forms of democracyliberal republicsre-
quire free speech and access to pertinent information, but Dewey would have
been puzzled by the idea that democratic hope is enabled by thinking of the in-
stitutions of radical democracy as engaged in a quest for truth. If anything, de-
mocracy is a quest for accountability, possible only with the active participation
of citizens. Indeed, the far more problematic relation between Deweys philoso-
phy of democracy and his theory of inquiry is whether, as C. Wright Mills
noticed, he too often optimistically supposed that the conditions which forbid
democracy could, in an undemocratic world, be overcome with persistent appli-
cation of the method of intelligence.
Second, Dewey had all sorts of arguments for the genuine problem of de-
mocracy, including the idea that citizens know best when the shoe pinches,
that participation is essential to growth, but most critically, agreeing with
Rousseau (and Marx) that since interdependence makes possible domination,
exploitation, and alienation, the only possible solution is the perfecting of
284 Chapter Thirteen
the means and ways of communication of meanings so that genuinely shared
interests in the consequences of interdependent activities may inform desire
and effort and thereby direct action. Of course, neither Marx nor Dewey of-
fered much direction about how this would look.
Still, for Dewey, democratic hope depends upon community as a fact and
with acknowledgement of the needs and capacities of persons living interde-
pendently. Of course, as he well recognized, the conditions that make de-
mocracy possible are not easily achievable; but given what we know, they are
not impossible.
Do these conditions include socialism? Westbrook has considerable sym-
pathy for American producer-republicanism, with its emphasis on the in-
dependence of yeoman farmers and skilled artisans (83). Indeed, for him,
the best of American radicalism has always marched under a petty bour-
geois banner (210). This assessment can surely be contested both as to
whether is represents the best of American radicalism and whether this was
Deweys position. Less contestably, he suggests also that Dewey would never
lose touch with the essential promise of producerism and that this explains
why he was such a peculiar socialist (98).
This perspective especially informs Chapter 5, Marrying Marxism, a chap-
ter that raises serious problems. While many pages would be necessary to en-
gage this discussion, the central issue regards the current pertinence, if any, of
both of two historically bankrupt visions: American producer-republicanism,
and a Marxism that still owes to its second International genesis. Dewey may
well have been nostalgic (again, as Mills argues), even if his arguments against
the Marxism of his day were penetrating. But if so, perhaps one needs to ex-
ploit the deep affinities between Marx and Dewey. Cornel West is on the right
track here whatever misgivings one might have regarding the prophetic di-
mensions of his thought.
NOTES
1. A review of Robert B. Westbrook, Democratic Hope: Pragmatism and the Pol-
itics of Truth (Ithaca, N.Y. and London: Cornell University of Press, 2005).
Democratic Hope 285
287
Depending what one is willing to assume, there are some importantly differ-
ent conclusions one might come to regarding the publication of Matthew Fes-
tensteins Pragmatism and Political Theory (1997). If one takes for granted
the current state of higher education, academic publishing, and mainstream
academic philosophy in America, one must conclude (with, for example,
Richard Bernstein) that it is a valuable addition to the literature. It is a well-
argued and informed examination of Deweys political theory and of three
theories that are offered as New Pragmatisms. For Festenstein, Dewey is
not the technocratic, bourgeois thinker that he is too often taken to be, nor a
hazy utopian, nor, as Richard Rorty would have it, is he a premature post-
modernist who having rejected metaphysical realism and representational
epistemology creates room only for unjustifiable hope, and an ungroundable
. . . sense of human solidarity. Rather, for Festenstein, Deweys political
philosophy must be understood against the background of his ethical, psy-
chological and metaphysical thought (1997:10). While this has been seen
before (Flower and Murphey, 1977; Tiles, 1988), the burden of Part I is to de-
velop, in a systematic way, the underpinnings of Deweys theory of democ-
racy. There is much that is sound here, including his careful reconstruction of
Deweys claims regarding the the objective character of human freedom and
its dependence upon a congruity of environment with human wants (22), and
perhaps especially his idea that our reasons for valuing the imperfect forms
of political democracy are not the same as our reasons for revering democ-
racy (80).
Part II considers the writings of Rorty, Habermas, and Hilary Putnam. Ac-
cording to Festenstein, the critical force of Deweys view derives from estab-
lishing some distance between his own conception of individuality and the
Chapter Fourteen
Analytic Pragmatism
1
beliefs and values which he thinks are still embodied in the practices and
thinking of his society (99). But, if Festenstein is right, Dewey cannot vin-
dicate this conception. Accordingly, his is simply a differing opinion about
those values and beliefs [and] not a critical vantage point which his fellow cit-
izens should themselves adopt (99). Rorty, of course, bites this bullet. Fes-
tensteins criticism of Rorty is careful and very much located within the con-
temporary philosophical debate. Habermas and Putnam, like Rorty, are
sensitive to a skeptical threat which is alien to Deweys thought (105) and
they offer reconstructions. Their response, flawed in ways different from
Deweys, is to construct a vantage point on different foundations from
Deweys teleological naturalism (105). Since Dewey looks good compared
to both Habermas and Putnam, partisans of pragmatism may like the out-
come, even if I have my doubts that they should. My doubts on this derive
from two sources, one is the question of whether Festenstein has caught
Deweys philosophical significance, the other from my unwillingness to
make the assumptions just identified. Let me, if briefly, start with this last.
Festensteins book would not be useful either to undergraduates or to the
general reader. His overriding concern is to argue, against the background of
the skeptical threat, that Dewey offers a plausible, if incomplete, philo-
sophical justification for his normative ethical and political theory. Moreover,
it is written in the argumentative style of analytic philosophy. Thus, there is
no concern for the historical or problem-context of Deweys work, for his cul-
tural or social significance, nor for more straightforward political matters:
what follows, perhaps, in the way of political institutions, practices, policies,
or even political vision, whether, e.g., liberal democracy has already given us
the last word. The book is abstract (and abstracted) theory, justified on the
perfectly plausible ground that extending to a past thinkers work a degree
of theoretical articulation which the texts themselves do not overtly display
may be a means of discovering what, if anything, can be learned from that
thinker (11).
The book is well-argued in the sense that philosophical argument is cur-
rently understood: it responds to arguments in the literature, tries to be
clear about implicit assumptions and the warrant of inferences, made or im-
plied. And it is dialectical in the sense that after all the objections and qual-
ifications are considered, one is never quite sure what the author wants us to
believe. Accordingly, the market for this book is restricted. Rorty identified
the pertinent group: first rate minds who are busy solving problems which
no non-philosopher recognizes as problems: problems which hook up with
nothing outside the discipline (Rorty, 1998: 129). I am not, to be sure, think-
ing of this as a marketing problem for the University of Chicago (and Polity)
Press. Rather it is meant to speak to what is happening in higher education, in
288 Chapter Fourteen
academic publishing and academic philosophy, and more generally in public
culture. Rortys criticism of philosophy and of the role of philosophers surely
gets a piece of this, even while Rorty is less interested in getting at the causes
of what we would agree is an increasingly dangerous situation.
2
Plainly, I cannot here treat this. Still one must notice that the mass media,
including academic publishing, and higher education are hostage to the
changing capitalist political economy and its imperatives.
3
In 1927, the pub-
lic was being eclipsed: Dewey brilliantly diagnosed the causes of this. Today,
the public is obliterated: mass media, as Marcuse saw, both numb our minds
and encourage irrelevant expression. The modern research university makes
its contribution. Despite the protests of Dewey and a few others, it would
not be long before disciplinary fragmentation would make its contribution to
the disintegration of intelligible experience, vision would be displaced by
techniquesometimes in the name of Dewey, and critical, humanistic
student-centered teaching and learning would take second place to the imper-
atives of research and publication. Philosophers and their students can read
the books of philosophers in order to discover (remarkably!) that neofascists
are wrong (to put it mildly) without implying that this judgment can be justi-
fied to them as they are, with the beliefs and values they hold. It is thus that
students are turned off, politically and otherwise, and that most of the stuff
produced for publication in academic departments, not merely in philosophy,
but in the humanities and social sciences is, intended or not, politically irrel-
evant (at its best?), or profoundly conservative.
4
I dont know what, these
days, is the break-even point for a book, nor how many people will eventu-
ally read this very solid book. But it need not be many. And do not misun-
derstand me: no irony is intended in saying that this is a very solid book. It
just isnt very Deweyan.
Festenstein writes that Rorty sees in Deweys pragmatism the rejection of the
concern with accounts and foundations slavishly (sic) displayed in his [Fes-
tensteins] approach. This is certainly true. According to Rorty, Dewey had two
sides: an enlightened and a retrograde half. Quoting Rorty: . . . in his
hedgehog life capacity as a philosopher, as opposed to his foxy capacity as
columnist, [Dewey] kept insisting that a new logic and a new metaphysics were
required if moral and political thought were to be rejuvenated (10). Rorty, of
course, can see little to recommend Deweys insistence on this, for Rorty, an un-
welcome residue of his commitment to philosophy. Dewey, obviously, saw it
otherwise: It was his goal to transform both the institutions of liberal democratic
America and the philosophical tradition that stood as an obstacle to this. Ac-
cordingly, Dewey did not abandon philosophy; he tried to transform it. The irony
here is this: Rorty approves of the foxy columnist who wrote marvelous analy-
ses and critiques of our institutions, but he chucked what in Dewey was most
Analytic Pragmatism 289
profoundand radical: his efforts to replace epistemology with a naturalistic
theory of inquiry. Festenstein wants to rescue Dewey from this selective read-
ing. But he does it without appreciating the radical force of Deweys new
logic and new metaphysics, which begins with a rejection of the slavish
concern with accounts and foundations.
5
There were, of course, skeptics before Descartes raised his questions. As
Rorty wrote, ancient Pyrrhonism was concerned to show that we could know
nothing with certainty and that it had been troubled principally by the prob-
lem of the criterionthe problem of validating procedures of inquiry while
avoiding either circularity or dogmatism. Descartes, Rorty suggests, thought
he solved this problem but in trying to do thiswith his doctrine of clear and
distinct ideas, he created a new kind of problem: the problem of getting
from inner space to outer spacethe problem of the external world which
became paradigmatic for modern philosophy (Rorty, 1979: 139). Rorty was
correct in arguing that since it was widely believed that something had to le-
gitimate the new science, epistemology became the core of the fairly recent
demarcation of philosophy and science. He is right also that metaphysics then
had to be something that emerged out of epistemology rather than vice versa.
This is part of our historythe Western tradition of philosophy and science.
Like it or not, we have it. (There are other traditions that do not.)
But given this history, it doesnt follow that we need to reproduce its problems
or as Rorty would seem to have it, to throw up our hands. Dewey did not. In-
stead, he tried to shift ground. For him, there was no problem of going from
inner space to outer space, so he had to redefine both experience and
metaphysics. Epistemology became inquiry; truth became warranted as-
sertability, and knowledge, he insisted, was best understood as the product of
competent inquiries in any domain. In effect, he agreed with that version of
Pyrrhonism that accepted that we could have no certain knowledge of anything
and that the genuine problem was the problem of validating procedures of in-
quiry while avoiding either circularity or dogmatism. While Festenstein some-
times seems to be close to seeing this, ultimately, I believe, he misses.
It is thus that he concludes that Dewey had a scientistic hope for a physics
of problem-solving (45) and that his empirical theory of valuation seems to
rest on the possibility of a prior science of problems and their resolution,
which does not exist (44). It is thus also that he finds serious, if not fatal,
problems in Deweys naturalistic ethical framework (62, 99, 145), and can
seriously offer us the neo-Kantian discourse ethics of Habermas and the
internal realism of Putnam as potential improvements.
Dewey surely did contribute to being misread, and this was due not merely
or mainly to his prose. Pragmatism, he insisted, occupies a position of an
emancipated empiricism or thoroughgoing nave realism. Accordingly, it
290 Chapter Fourteen
was content to take its stand with science and . . . [and] daily life (Middle
Writings, Vol. 10: 39). But innocence lost cannot be regained. Even if Dewey
did insist that objectivity did not require foundations (warranted asserta-
bility was sufficient), he could hardly satisfy modern philosophers with the
claim that he was content to take his stand with science and daily life without
leaving himself open to the charge of scientismand a naive one at that.
It is critical to notice first, that although Dewey was fully aware that sci-
ence was not the engine of human liberation it was so often thought to be
(Early Writings, Vol. 4: 16), he did not take the trouble to think of science in
the concrete terms his own approach should have required. Instead of think-
ing of the sciences as practices with different methods, goals, and relations to
the larger society, he spoke abstractly of science. Further, he had no phi-
losophy of science and much of what he says in this regard seems both naive
and positivist (Chapter 1). Finally, at least until the Logic, he spoke of sci-
entific method as pretty much equivalent to inquiry, and even to critical
intelligence. This was a disaster and encouraged the widespread view, well
put by Festenstein:
Deweys writings suggest several kinds of connections between the sciences and
ethical and political thought. . . . These included the thesis that there is some-
thing called the scientific method which is determinate and capable of ab-
straction from the intellectual and institutional context of the natural sciences;
the view that this method can and should be exploited by the developing human
sciences, and to some extent had already been taken up . . . ; and the commit-
ment to the use of the social sciences, and of scientific technology more gener-
ally, in addressing social problems (30).
But Deweys theory of inquiry is not some metaphysically neutral abstracted
scientific method (whatever that may be) and it is surely not the typical sort of
nonsense one still gets in introductions in textbooks with silly talk that, e.g., hy-
potheses are confirmed only insofar as they allow us to make good predic-
tions. While features of his theory of inquiry were suggested by what Dewey
took to be features of successful science, it was meant to replace the problems
of epistemology with a different set of questions. Thus:
[W]hen a writer endeavors to take a frankly naturalistic, biological and moral
atttitude, and to account for knowledge on the basis of the place it occupies in
such a reality, he is treated as if his philosophy were, after all, just another kind
of epistemology (Middle Works, Vol. 8).
Just as his metaphysics is new in that he refuses Kants transcendental
move, his logic, which flows from his metaphysics, is new in rejecting
Analytic Pragmatism 291
Russellian strictures in the theory of science. Burke summarizes the upshot of
this:
The complexity of Deweys logical theory as a whole is due to the fact that there
is more to consider than simply comparing sentences against facts. His focus on
inquiry and experience, his reformulation of the notion of facts in information-
theoretic terms, his relatively complicated taxonomy of propositions (as distinct,
moreover, from judgments), and so forth are all part of an attempt to explain (1)
what it means to say that a statement about how things are may or may nor cor-
respond to how things actually are, when at the same time, (2) it is not possible
to step back and treat this correspondence as if it were a matter of comparing the
statement against reality (Burke, 1994: 240).
Nor was Dewey scientistic in the sense that he assumed that the social sci-
ences should model themselves on the natural sciences, especially as they
were then understood. He regularly spoke of alleged scientific social in-
quiry and was often very critical of both the natural and the social sciences.
He offered, for example, that the existing limitations of social science
[Deweys quotation marks!] are due mainly to unreasoning devotion to phys-
ical science as a model, to a misconception of physical science at that (Later
Works, Vol. 6: 64). In another place, he notes that the backwardness of so-
cial knowledge is marked in its division into independent and insulated
branches of learning, and it is not conceived in terms of its bearing on hu-
man life (Later Works, Vol. 2: 2). Dewey was anything but a naive defender
of the fragmented, ideologically driven social sciences and he envisaged, it is
safe to say, a research program that has been stunningly ignored. As early as
1897, he had this to say:
The sociologist, like the psychologist, often presents himself as a camp follower
of genuine science and philosophy, picking up scraps here and there and piecing
them together in somewhat aimless fashion. . . . But social ethics represents the
attempt to translate philosophy from a general and therefore abstract method
into a working and specific method; it is the change from inquiring into the na-
ture of value in general to an inquiry of the particular values which ought to be
realized in the life of everyone, and of the conditions which shall render possi-
ble this realization (Early Works, Vol. 5: 23).
This well summarizes Deweys naturalistic philosophical project, dubiously
consistent with Festensteins idea that he assumed that there was some a
prior science of problems and their resolution, or that scientific technol-
ogy would be of any help in addressing social problems. Finally, as Dewey
well recognized, achieving the conditions that would render possible the re-
alization of these values is the problem of democracy. Despite the scientific
292 Chapter Fourteen
claims by experts, the prime condition of a democratically organized pub-
lic is a kind of knowledge and insight which does not yet exist.
It may be that Festensteins able book will further stimulate efforts to re-
store what is viable in Dewey. My fear is that it may do just the opposite.
NOTES
1. A review of Matthew Festenstein, Pragmatism and Political Theory: From
Dewey to Rorty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).
2. Rortys descriptions are trenchant. For example, he writes that one of the scari-
est social trends is illustrated by the fact that in 1979 kids from the top socioeconomic
quarter of American families were four times more likely to get a college degree than
those from the bottom quarter; now they are ten times more likely (86). Add to this
his further observation: Humanistic education may become what it was in Oxbridge
before the reforms of the 1870s: merely a turnstile for admission to the overclass
(135). Given his (implausible!) understanding of the reformist left, Rorty waffles in
trying to explain this, seeing on the one hand that the international, cosmopolitan
super-rich will make all the important decisions and on the other, berating the
Marxist left as either Stalinist stooges or apocalyptic revolutionaries. Missing here is
acknowledgement that only Marxists gave plausible analyses of what was happening.
While Rorty quite rightly puts weight on agency in historical change, he evidently
fails to see that in both his incarnations as a philosopher, he was a major contributor
to the disastrous outcome he describes.
3. See my Higher Education at the Brink (2000), The Social Sciences: Who
Needs Em (2003), and Globalization and Higher Education (2007).
4. Rorty is unduly hard on the Foucauldian academic left, whom, he says, is ex-
actly the sort of Left that the oligarchy dreams of: ALeft whose members are so busy
unmasking the present that they have no time to discuss what laws need to be passed
in order to create a better future (139). Were it only a matter of passing new laws!
5. Festenstein cites Sleepers 1960 intervention versus Morton White: Even
among those who have welcomed Deweys plan for putting ethics on a scientific ba-
sis there is a general tendency to focus upon the methodological implications of his
proposals and to neglect, the metaphysical perspective which accompanies them and
without which that plan seems inevitably to go awry (21). While this seems correct,
Sleeper 1960 may well have encouraged the reading Festenstein gives, a reading not
possible in Sleepers much later, Rortys Pragmatism: Afloat in Neuraths Boat, But
Why Adrift (Transactions of the Charles Peirce Society, Vol. 21 (1985): 920, and
his important The Necessity of Pragmatism (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University
Press, 1986) which shows the connection between Deweys theory of inquiry in the
Logic (1938) and his metaphysics of existence. That is, more than a naturalistic
ethic is at stake. Festenstein seems to believe that Ernest Nagel provides an adequate
understanding and assessment of Deweys Logic. For discussion, see Part II.
Analytic Pragmatism 293
295
Patrick Baert has written an ambitious and provocative book. He tells us that
he had two objectives. The first is to advance a new approach to [philosophy
of the social sciences] that is indebted to American pragmatism (Baert, 2005:
1). In brief, once foundationalism and naturalism are rejected, we can ac-
knowledge for social science a diversity of cognitive interests including
self-knowledge, and a pluralism of method. To my knowledge, this is an
entirely novel proposal, both in making self-knowledge an important goal of
research in the social sciences, and in seeking to ground this in pragmatism.
Anumber of writers, including, for example, Rescher (1975), Laudan (1984),
and perhaps one could count also Quine and Putnam, have provided at least
the rudiments of a pragmatic philosophy of science, but excepting perhaps
Margolis (1987), to my knowledge, no recent self-declared pragmatist has
looked specifically at the social sciences. Moreover, Baert recognizes that he
is jumping into a beehive of controversy over just what pragmatism is, a prob-
lem decidedly complicated by the intervention of Richard Rorty. It is true that
Rortys work has brought pragmatism back to the mainstream, but he has
been severely criticized by a wide variety of interpreters of American prag-
matism (for example, Sleeper, 1986; Margolis, 1986; Hickman, 1990; Bern-
stein, 1992; Stuhr, 2003).
The second goal is to present an advanced assessment of the main ap-
proaches in philosophy of social sciences. The book, he says, is written so that
it can be read in either way (2005: 1). The latter goal is provided by the first
five chapters. Those interested in his new approach can read chapters 6 and 7
and for those already familiar with pragmatism, only chapter 7, the concluding
chapter. But this is not to say that chapters 1 to 6 are irrelevant to the con-
cluding chapter (1). While the authors discussed in the first five chapter were
Chapter Fifteen
Postmodern Pragmatism
1
not chosen because they somehow fit into narrative that ultimately leads to-
wards [his] pragmatic view, his pragmatic proposal is partly based on a rejec-
tion of other strategies in the philosophy of the social sciences (3). Accordingly,
the topics and authors of the first five chapters were chosen because their per-
spectives are central in the philosophy of social sciences. Chapter 1 considers
Durkheims naturalism, Chapter 2 discusses Webers interpretative method,
Chapter 3, Poppers falsificationism, Chapter 4, critical realism, and Chap-
ter 5, the critical theory of the Frankfurt school, Chapter 6, Richard Rorty and
Pragmatism, then, provides the point of departure for Baerts concluding Chap-
ter 7, APragmatist Philosophy of the Social Sciences.
All of the first five chapters are of interest and each provides learned ex-
position and assessment of the positions under discussion. One might quarrel
with this or that point of interpretation, but this will not be the focus of the
present review. But if the individual chapters are useful, one might say that
the selection of topics and authors of the first five chapters does not in a help-
ful way allow us to identify the central perspectives in philosophy of social
science. To be sure, much depends on how one wants to cut the pie as regards
alternative positions. For example, Baert writes that Durkheims work stands
in an uneasy relation to positivism (13) and that indeed, Durkheim viewed
science as capable of delving beneath the surface and uncovering underlying
mechanisms that account for the observed regularities (15). If true then this
is squarely a realist position. Baerts account of Durkheim may be recom-
mended as a contribution to the literature on Durkheim, but my point here is
that since the still dominating philosophy of social science among sociolo-
gists is a version of positivism, this needs representation and comment. One
thinks here of Lundberg, Homans, or more recently, Jonathan Turner (1987).
2
Similarly, Weber was surely antipositivist and a key player in the Methoden-
streit, and as Baert rightly sees, he transcended the polarization between the
positivist idea of a nomothetic science and Diltheyan version of the human
sciences as ideographic. For him causal analysis and interpretation were
both essential and possible. Indeed, given his views of causation, it is not dif-
ficult to give a reading of Weber that makes him close to a realist position
(Manicas, 2006: 11525). Similarly, then, Weber may not be the best choice
to represent interpretative sociology, generally understood to be a distinctly
antinaturalist posture and still prominent in sociology and anthropology.
Among philosophers, one thinks here of Gadamer and Natanson, and among
social scientists, Geertz, any number of recent cultural anthropologists (Rabi-
now and Sullivan, 1987), and sociologists inspired by an antinaturalistic phe-
nomenological posture. Popper is an odd choice for all sorts of reasons, not
least because he wrote practically nothing in the philosophy of social science
and has left no legacy among social scientists. Indeed, there are plenty of
296 Chapter Fifteen
signs that his major contribution to the philosophy of history, the critique of
historicism (in his idiosyncratic sense) has still not penetrated the thinking
of many social scientists. The account of the Frankfurt school is both sound
and appropriate, but this ignores views that are closer to Marx and perhaps
more influential. One thinks here, for example of E. P. Thompson, Paul
Willis, Nancy Fraser, Mike Davis, and many others. Critical realism has
drawn on this wing of Marxism, so perhaps Baerts account of it is all that is
necessary here. His account of critical realism is generally sound but since I
share this view and Baert takes it to be an exemplary version of what he re-
jects, the reader has a fair point of departure. In any case, perhaps for Baert,
the selection of writers is not that important since it seems that the problem
with all the writers discussed in the first five chapters is their commitment to
either naturalism, understood as the search for a single scientific method
appropriate for the study of both the social and the natural realms (3) or to
foundationalism, understood as the effort to uncover unchanging founda-
tions of an all-embracing framework or science of the social (153). These are
the twin bogies which pragmatism allows us to exorcize.
My second problem is this: How well does Baert negotiate the thicket of
pragmatism? Baert notes that while his view is in line with recent contribu-
tions to pragmatism, specifically Rorty and Bernstein, I am not arguing that my
views are necessarily consistent with those expressed by earlier generations of
pragmatism (147). Rather, his proposal is inspired by neo-pragmatism rather
then derived from it. The gist of his argument, he continues, is perfectly con-
sistent with the philosophical outlook of neo-pragmatism (147). I think that it
is easy to show that his view is not consistent with Peirce, James, or Dewey but
will not labor the point here. Here agreeing with Bernstein, I conclude that
Rorty got Dewey entirely wrong. Baert, while seeing some serious problems in
Rorty, nevertheless thinks of pragmatism pretty much as Rorty does. The con-
cluding chapter very conveniently summarizes his proposal under six major
headings. It will be useful here, one hopes, to address these seriatum.
1. METHODOLOGICAL DIVERSITY
CHARACTERIZES SCIENCE (147)
As noted, Baert rejects what he terms naturalism, the search for a single sci-
entific method for the study of both the social and the natural sciences (3).
3
Drawing on Rorty he asserts that this search has failed (Baert: 13135). Agood
deal depends, of course, on what is to count as a single scientific method. Here
one must distinguish method as technique and method in the wider sense of
presupposing a philosophy of science, including an ontology and epistemology.
Postmodern Pragmatism 297
To be sure, astronomy does not employ experiments, ethnographers do not em-
ploy multiple regression, and surely there are differences between the practices
of the physical sciences and the practices of most social scientists: a straight-
forward consequence of differences in ontology: the social world is meaning-
ful and does not exist independently of the actions of persons. Thus, the phys-
ical scientist does not ask for the meaning of action of molecules; if human
action is to be explained, the social scientist must seek meaning (as Weber,
ethnographers, and critical realists emphasize). Similarly, for post-Kuhnian
epistemology, there is no algorithm that assures a scientific consensus (when
it is achieved), no logic of discovery or confirmation or as per Popper, logic
of falsification. Indeed, dispelling this myth was surely the major achieve-
ment both Kuhn and Feyerabend.
4
But it does not follow that the successful
sciences share nothing of importance, however different are their practices and
techniques (both across disciplines and historically within disciplines). At the
very least, the practices of the successful physical sciences have evolved
norms regarding inquiry that practitioners acknowledge, usually tacitly. Pub-
licity and consideration of evidence is one. Acknowledgement of a stubborn
reality and fallibilism is another. Thus, while the very powerful work in the so-
ciology of science gives us a deeper understanding the actual practices of the
sciences, few, if anyone, would go so far as to say that scientific practices are
indistinguishable methodologically from nonscientific practices (Pickering,
1992). Baerts view is especially ironical as regards the pragmatists. Peirce fa-
mously distinguished four methods of fixing belief and insisted that the
method of science, which by virtue of its acknowledgement that there is
something which affects or might affect any man is self-corrective and, ac-
cordingly, had to be preferredpragmatically. Similarly, Dewey put huge wait
on inquiry insisting that the successful sciences were successful because they
were in fact using the logic which for him not only characterized science,
but everyday intelligent problem solving. The classical pragmatists rejected
Kants transcendental move, but unlike Rorty, they sought a reconstruction of
philosophy, not a rejection of it. As we shall see, on this critical issue, Baert is
strongly pulled in the direction of Rorty.
2. THE SOCIAL SCIENCES GAIN
FROM METHODOLOGICAL PLURALISM (150)
For Baert there is a multitude of cognitive interests that underlie social re-
search and it is an error to reduce these to one: explanation, possibly pre-
diction (150). It is not clear to me what are these many cognitive interests
(which smacks more of Habermas than any pragmatist) or what the argument
298 Chapter Fifteen
here is. Is this, for example, an empirical claim? It is normative? As he says,
if prediction and control is the goal, then the value-free vocabulary of
naturalistic approaches will suffice. If, on the other hand, we want to treat
human beings as moral individuals, then surely antinaturalistic approaches
are called for (134). This seems to be, following Rorty, a very positivist view
of the matter, not shared by critical realists or Dewey. Rorty is clearly posi-
tivist. He sums up by offering two distinct requirements for the vocabu-
lary of the social sciences: (1) It should contain descriptions of situations
which facilitate their prediction and control, and (2) It should contain de-
scriptions which help one decide what to do (Rorty, 1982: 197). Rorty notes,
correctly, those who aim at prediction do very poorly. He might also have no-
ticed that not only does control require very little science (it requires
power), it too is limitedas regards persons, thank heaven, and as regards na-
ture, it is entirely absent when it comes to ensuring that nature will do our
bidding. The best we can do here is try to understand its dynamics, to avoid
disastrous intervention. and otherwise learn to cope.
It is not clear how much of Rortys summary Baert accepts, since most
obviously missing in Rortys account is the realist idea that the descriptions
have nothing to do with prediction and should aim at facilitating explana-
tion in the realist sense. That is, just as we understand why iron rusts because
we have molecular chemistry, we can understand why working-class kids get
working-class jobs. That is, we need an account of the beliefs and attitudes of
working-class kids (and their teachers and parents) that explains what they
do, and then an account that provides the conditions and consequences,
mostly unintended, of these actions. Indeed, only with such understanding
can we build technologies and/or intervene successfully. May we suppose that
along with prediction and control, methodological pluralism tolerates realist
goalsand others perhaps not identified? But we are entitled to ask which of
the identified goals bear pragmatic fruit? On this point, there would seem to
be deep disagreement between myself and Baert.
3. THE SPECTATOR THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
IS INAPPROPRIATE FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH (151)
The spectator theory of knowledge is, of course, Deweys term. It was
aimed at all epistemologies which fail to appreciate that knowing is an active
relation between the knower and the known, and that inquiry is constrained
by both the practical concern which generates it and the constraints imposed
by the environment in which the inquirer is situated.
5
In his demolition of
foundational epistemology, Rorty enlisted Dewey. But we need to notice that
Postmodern Pragmatism 299
not only did they have different purposes, but they began with very different
assumptions: Dewey assumed a philosophical naturalism and sought a recon-
struction of philosophy in which the spectator theory of knowledge was re-
placed by not another epistemology but with a naturalistic theory of
inquiryfinally elaborated in his generally ignored and misunderstood 1938
Logic. For Dewey, inquirers are always situated in space and time, confront a
material and historically produced social world, and are motivated to inquiry
to solve a problem. Indeed, it is this sense of practical which is shared by
all pragmatists. Knowledge, then, is simply the product of competent inquiry.
A Gods eye for the world is neither necessary nor possible. Thus, for exam-
ple, when known as Fe, iron enters into new relations for us.
6
Rorty, by con-
trast, wants to insist that the product of inquiry cannot be a representation of
a reality even though, for Dewey, it is the hard won product of controlled ex-
periment: the paradigm of an active effort to produce knowledge.
7
Similarly,
Rorty aims not at reconstruction, but thinks that the problems of philoso-
phy, including epistemology and ontology, disappear once we see that it is all
a matter of finding a vocabulary suitable for the purpose at handBaerts
main indebtedness to Rorty.
Thus, contemporary textualism, the idea that there are nothing but texts
parallels the idealist notion that there are nothing but ideas (Rorty, 1982:
139). But there is, he insists, a critical difference between current textualism
and classical idealism. In repudiating the tradition, textualists reject the
framework that allows for epistemology and ontology. Thus, unlike idealists
(or naturalists or materialists) so-called postmodern writers reject the idea
that what is important is not whether what we believe is true, but what vo-
cabulary we use. Finally, then, for Rorty, pragmatism joins postmodern
thinking in repudiating metaphysical argument between idealist/naturalists
and the epistemological idea of truth as correspondence with reality.
Baert has some misgivings with aspects of Rortys thoughtfor example,
his polemic against Marx and his politics, but finds that most of what Rorty
offers is convincing. Similarly Rorty sees that Dewey does not exactly fit his
larger picture. In agreement with Santayana, Rorty insists that Deweys ef-
forts at a naturalistic metaphysics betrays a recurrent flaw in Deweys
work: his habit of announcing a bold new positive program when all he of-
fers, and all he needs to offer, is criticism of the tradition (Rorty, 1982: 78).
To be sure, Dewey does offer a bold new positive programa naturalistic
metaphysics with epistemology replaced by his version of logic (Sleeper,
1986). And he needed to do this because he could not step out of history and
argue, as Rorty does, that knowledge and truth are pseudo problems that will
go away once we abandon the claims of philosophy. Indeed, it is quite one
thing to try to convince us that warranted assertability could replace
300 Chapter Fifteen
truth, understood as a certainty, and quite another to say that, for pragma-
tists, there are no constraints on inquiry save conversational onesno
wholesale constraints derived from the nature of objects, or the mind, or of
language, but only those retail constraints provided by the remarks of our
fellow-inquirers (Rorty, 1982: 165). Worse,
the Socratic virtueswillingness to talk, to listen to other people, to weigh the
consequences of actions on other peopleare simply moral virtues. . . . The prag-
matists tell us that the conversation which it is our moral duty to continue is merely
our project, the Europeans intellectual form of life (Rorty, 1982: 172).
Perhaps we can put aside this remarkable provincialism and consider more
broadly conversation as the key to successful outcomes.
4. SOCIAL RESEARCH IS A CONVERSATION (153)
This would seem to be the most obvious of the influences of Rorty on Baerts
project. Baert sees rightly that classical pragmatism rejected what is generally
termed foundationalism, the search for secure epistemic grounding of truth
claims. But there is a critical difference between what might be called the
situated objectivity defended by Deweywho as noted, agreed that there
could be no Gods eye view of the world and the position taken by Rorty. As
with metaphysical controversy that dissolves once we see that all that is nec-
essary is an appropriate vocabulary, relativism can similarly be evadednot
answered.
8
Once we rid ourselves of the Enlightenment framework, we
would no longer by haunted by spectors called relativism and irrational-
ism (Bernstein, 1992: 270). Instead of directly addressing this question,
Baert calls our attention to another sense of foundationalism, the effort to
uncover unchanging foundations of an all-embracing framework of science or
science of the social (153). Critical realists are the purest expression of
this, but it is true of Parsons structural functionalism, Giddenss structuration
theory (which I consider a version of realism), and the theories of Luhmann,
Habermas, and rational choice theory. These metatheories, like the search for
a method, presuppose both an epistemology and an ontology of science and,
for Rorty and Baert, they all fail.
Perhaps remarkably, a solution to both senses of foundationalism seems to
be found in the work of Richard Bernstein and what he called a dialogic en-
counter. Baert is clear on what he means:
In a dialogic encounter people do not wish to score points by exploiting the
weakness of others; they try to listen to them by understanding them in the
Postmodern Pragmatism 301
strongest way. They strengthen their own arguments so as to make them most
credible and to learn from them. Academic communication, then, becomes
more like a proper conversation, which encourages the participants to think dif-
ferently. The ultimate aim is not to defend or a refine a particular system but to
use academic conversation to enhance our imaginative faculties.
It would seem foolish to quarrel with the good manners of this good advice
even if it is a council of perfection. The more difficult question is how this
bears on the question of addressing deep differences in frameworks, between
say Giddens and Parsons, or rational choice theorists and critical theorists?
Indeed, having enhanced our imaginative faculties, are we now to say that
one can only be tolerant of differences since there is no true, correct, valid,
warranted, justified answer to the questions of epistemology and ontology?
Rorty at least would seem to be content to stop here. I am not clear where
Baert stands on this critical issue.
5. KNOWLEDGE AS ACTION (154)
As above, for Baert, the question of method depends in part at least on the
goals of research, but methodological questions cannot be reduced to ques-
tions of ontology (154). Accordingly, for him, there is nothing essential
about the social that compels the use of a particular method (154). One can
be generous here and agree that if prediction and control are our aims, per-
haps we can think of human action in the same way we think of the move-
ment of planets! But indeed, this seems like a reductio ad absurdum of the as-
sumed metaphysics! This is not merely a philosophical prejudice: the
empirical evidence shows it to be nonsense. Indeed, as Weber insisted, even
if a goal of science is to predict action, one needs verstehen to do this. As
he correctly saw, science is not likely to improve on our capacities to under-
stand and then to anticipate responses of others. Indeed these capacities are a
presupposition of social interaction.
6. SELF-UNDERSTANDING OPENS UP
ALTERNATIVE SCENARIOS (155)
A dialogic encounter has additional fruits. Baert recommends self-
knowledge as a worthy cognitive object for social science. Following
Gadamer, understanding ought be seen as an encounter, firstly, in which we
rely upon our cultural presuppositions to gain access to what in being stud-
ied, and secondly, through which we articulate and rearticulate the very same
302 Chapter Fifteen
presuppositions (155). To do this, we need to reject the idea that the right
interpretative method would allow us to touch upon the reality-out-there,
but we gain sensitivity to views not held by us (155). The third consequence
of the hermeneutic circle, so conceived, is that understanding is closely linked
to self-understanding. Baert concludes the volume with illustrations from
several ongoing research programs, including cultural anthropology, archae-
ology, and the genealogical work of Foucault.
Again, there is surely no complaint about social scientific efforts at self-
understanding. And no doubt encountering alien cultures and deconstructing
historical constructions can be a most useful means to this. On the other hand,
as Baert acknowledges, other genre: fiction, biography, narrative history, well
serve this aim, as of course, does travel. But more pertinent, the question
arises whether some forms of social science serve this role as part of a larger
goal: the possibility of human emancipation.
Baert notes that as regards self-understanding there is the emancipation ef-
fect. [E]ncountering difference may allow people to question some of their
deep-seated beliefs, to distinguish the necessary from the contingent, the es-
sential from historical specificity (156). But why stop here? Why not also ar-
gue that for exactly the same reasons, understanding the causal conditions and
consequences of action is also emancipating? This is, of course, a critical con-
sequence of realist social science. Indeed, it provides a sufficient ground for im-
manent critique, surely an important task for social science. That is, under-
standing why one believes what one believes and seeing that such belief is false
but essential to the reproduction of a practice, gives one good reason to chal-
lenge the practice. Baert gives a sympathetic reading of Foucault along these
lines. He might well have taken more seriously Bernsteins penetrating criti-
cism of Rorty and his powerful defense of immanent critique against all those
postmodern writers who, having dismissed philosophy, have lost all confidence
in the rational grounding of critique (Bernstein, 1992: 316).
NOTES
1. Areview of Patrick Baert, Philosophy of the Social Sciences: Towards Pragma-
tism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005).
2. Baert holds that most mainstream social research complies with the intricate
procedures suggested by the realist agenda and that it is simply not the case that
contemporary social researchers are satisfied with a mere recording of regularity con-
junctions; they look for mechanisms that account for how the regularities are brought
about (102). But as Calhoun writes (following Boudin), most of what passes as
causal analysis in the social sciences is in fact identification of more or less weak im-
plication between statistical variables (1998: 866). Moreover, it is easy to show that
Postmodern Pragmatism 303
the official position of most social researchers that the goal of science is to estab-
lish laws construed as regularities that then explain by subsumption. Here are one
or two examples: Frankfort Nachmias and Nachmias write: Ever since David Hume
. . . an application of the term explanation has been considered a matter of relating the
phenomena to be explained with other phenomena by means of general laws (1992:
10); Babbie writes: In large part research aims to find patterns of regularity in social
life (2004: 13). Even somebody like Jeffrey Alexander who, as a post-Kuhnian, re-
jects classic positivist epistemology would not say that there is no objective knowl-
edge in the social sciences, nor even that there is no possibility of successful predic-
tions or covering laws (1987: 20). To be sure, like Durkheim, researchers very often
let good sense get in the way, contradict themselves, and hint at causal mechanisms.
Perhaps this is what Baert had in mind.
3. Interpretation of Alfred Schtz as antinaturalistic is contestable, as is the under-
standing of work of the ethnomethodologists and perhaps also Goffman. See my The
Social Sciences since World War II: The Rise and Fall of Scientism, in William Out-
hwaite and Stephen P. Turner (eds.), Handbook of Social Science Methodology (Lon-
don: Sage).
4. Baert acknowledges that critical realism is a qualified naturalism in that while
it models social science on natural science, it insists on important differences between
the social and natural sciences (96). Similarly as regards Weber. Durkheims natural-
ism is unqualified and, as Schtz pointed out, it found expression in Parsons and those
who followed him. See my The Social Sciences since World War II: The Rise and
Fall of Scientism. As I noted earlier, there are unqualified antinaturalisms as well.
5. Versus logical empiricism, they displaced the logic of the logicians and un-
dermined positivist foundationist epistemology. Interesting in this regard is Baerts
claim that if as realists say, most systems are open, then most scientific explanations
cannot be properly justified philosophically (103). This surely seems like a hanker-
ing for justification that, as pragmatists insist, is neither available nor necessary.
6. Dewey writes: If we see that knowing is not the act of an outside spectator but
of a participator inside the natural and social scene, then the true object of knowledge
resides in the consequences of directed action. . . . For on this basis there will be as
many kinds of known objects as there are kinds of effectively conducted operations
of inquiry which result in the consequences intended (Quest for Certainty, 1960:
19697). This includes knowing that iron is Fe and will, ceteris paribus, oxidize.
7. The work of Hacking and Pickering is very Deweyan. Thus Hacking writes: The
theories of the laboratory sciences are not directly compared to the world; they persist
because they are true to the phenomena produced or even created by apparatus in the lab-
oratory and measured by instruments that we have engineered (1992: 30). See also Pick-
erings idea of the mangle of practice. Critical realists can, of course, share in this view.
The so-called correspondence theory of truth cannot, to be sure, provide a mode of es-
tablishing truth, even if true may still mean corresponds to the facts.
8. For criticism of Rortys effort here see, Richard J. Bernstein, The New Constel-
lation (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992): 27073.
304 Chapter Fifteen
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315
ACLU. See American Civil Liberties
Union
Addams, Jane, 151
Agency, 71, 89, 90, 93; in contrast to
autonomy, 259, 269n2
AI. See artificial intelligence
Alexander, Jeffrey, 91
Althusser, Louis, 91
American Civil Liberties Union
(ACLU), 162, 163, 169
anarchism, xxi, xxvii, 178, 188, 189;
199; as movement, 220, 214; and
nihilism, 205; and terror, 208n.14;
defined, 190; Dewey and, 195206.
See also community
anti-naturalism. See Social Science
Arendt, Hannah, xxiv, 260, 280
Aristotle, xvii, 146, 214, 218, 239, 262,
264
Angell, James Rowland, 42. 43, 44, 48
artificial Intelligence (AI), 53
Auchinclos, Gordon, 165,
Ayer, A. J., 83
Baert, Patrick, 295304, passim
Bain, Alexander, 11
Bakunin, Michael, 201, 215, 221, 229
Baldwin, Roger; and ACLU, 162, on
Emma Goldman, 189
Baldwin, James Mark, 42, 50
Barnes, Albert, 165
Barnes, Barry; on naturalism, 123
Bailyn, Bernard, 263
Beard, Charles, 161
behaviorism, 23, 35, 42, 43, 47, 49, 50,
51, 53, 57, 125, 277; and
intentionality, 59n12; Deweys role,
59n9; Skinners, 52; Watsons, 44
Beitz, Charles, 258
Benjamin, Ludy, 42; on Dewey, 50
Bentley, A. F. 246
Berkeley, Bishop, 6
Berkman, Alexander, 162, 188, 189, 202
Berle, Adophe, 150
Bernhardi, Friedrich von, 152
Bernstein, Eduard, 228
Bernstein, Richard, 274, 287, 295, 297,
3012
Bhaskar, Roy, 93, 106
Blanqui, Jerome, Adolphe, 222
Bloor, David, 123
Bolshevism; and Dewey, 180; and WWI
treaties 165; leftism associated with,
xxi; shivering in their boots over,
162, 167
Boltzmann, Ludwig, 6
Boring, E. G., 35, 42, 43, 44, 46, 47, 48,
49
Index
Borah, William, 170
Bourne, Randolph, 150, 156; critique of
Dewey, 16364
Boyle, Robert, 106
Brandeis, Louis, 158
Bridgeman, Percy 24, 43, 47, 247
Brooks, van Wyck, 145
Bryant, William Jennings, 147
Buber, Martin, 202, 223; on community,
198
Bchner, Friedich, 105
Bulmer, R., 88
Bunge, Mario 109
Burger, Justice William, 255
Burke, Tom, xvi: and Gibson, 56; on
Deweys Logic, 57, 108, 125, 292
Burnyeat, M. F.: on ancient skepticism,
30n7. See also skepticism
Bush, George, W., xx
Byers, Martin, 83
Camus, Albert, 211, 232
Carnap, Rudolf, 24, 130
Cattel, James McKeen, 42, 48
Carter, April, 206
causality, 7174, 109; and lawfulness,
53; as empirical invariance, 31n15,
104; as logical, 72; as ontological
category, 110; Deweys concept of,
72, 110, 111; Helmholtzs concept of,
30n12. See also positivism,
regularity determinism
Church, Alonzo, 53
Churchland, Patricia, 54
Clark, Andy, 54
Clifford, W. K., 3, 6
Committee of Public Information
(CPI), 161, 162; Lippmans account
of, 173
community, xxiv, 75, 197, 200, 202,
203, 252, 253, 256: democratic,
19698, 201, 229, 26869; great, 76,
179, 201, 248; illusory, 214; Marx
on, 218; rational, 268; state and, 192,
223
communism, xxii, 180, 216. See also
socialism
Communitarianism; republican, xxiv,
251
contract theory, 199, 239, 242, 243, 257
control, in Dewey, 70, 75
Cooley, T. H., 82
consciousness, false, 132
covering-law model of explanation, 71,
84, 7273, 94, 110. See also
positivism, regularity determinism
CPI. See committee of public safety
Croly, Herbert, 145, 146, 150, 159, 161
culture, 89, 9192, and nature, 8385,
9192; Marxist debate on, 97n19,
98n21. See also naturalism, John
Dewey
Davis, M., 297
Darwin, Charles, 35, 36, 202
Dennett, Daniel, 55
Derrida, Jacques, xiv, 91
Devlin, Lord, 256
democracy; and public opinion, 17277;
as primary political value, 24243;
bourgeois, 218, 231; Dahl, on,
186n30; Deweys critique of existing
form of, 19094; Deweys radical
vision of, xxi, 17779, 195201;
genesis of current understanding of,
xviii, 26167; Lippmans defense of
existing form of, xixxxi. 17577;
Marx on, 21419; Nozick on, 253;
Rawls on, 252; Sandel on, 26769.
See also anarchism
Determinism; assumes a closed system,
94; bifurcation of freedom and, 95,
269, n.2; economic, 195, 224, 230;
normative, 89; regularity, 72, 110;
technological 228. See also causality
Dewey, John, xixxviii, passim; account
of justice, 23945; and anarchism,
196201; and American psychology,
3840, 4247; and World War One,
14345, 16970; Bournes critique
of, 164; human nature, 2025;
316 Index
inquiry into Polish situation, 16568;
naturalism, 8195, passim;
naturalistic epistemology, 10813,
11928, 12935; outlaw of war,
16872; philosophy of science,
2425; rejection of Marxist class
analysis, 22431; rejection of
traditional epistemology, xviixxi,
2124, 1078; theory of language,
8688. See also Naturalism,
Democracy, Logic
Diggens, John; on Dewey and Veblen,
28n2; doubt-belief theory; as core of
pragmatism, 5; dissolves problem of
external world, 4, 5
Dretske, Fred, 134; on laws of nature,
30n9
Dubois, W. E. B., 272, 274, 277, 279
Duhem, Pierre, 6, 24, 104, 112; on
explanation in science, 31n17
Durkheim, Emile, 259, 296
Dworkin, Richard, xxiv, 252
ecological psychology, xvi, 52, 5457,
105, 108, 109
Edel, Abraham, 102
Edwards, Stewart, 216
Einstein, Albert, 131
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 273
Engels, Friedich, xxi, xxvii, 83, 105,
154, 214, 224; bifurcation of
idealism/materialism, 103
empiricism, 53, 53, 71, 89; abstracted,
69; and emancipated, and nave
realism, 2324, 290; Humean, xi, 47,
48; postulate of immediate, 22, 108;
radical, 1921, 107. See also
positivism
epistemic fallacy, 106, 107
epistemology; a new discipline, 102,
106; naturalized, 1519, 2122;
philosophers problem, par
excellence, 106; Deweys rejection
of, 12428
ethnic politics, 15758
Etzioni, A., xxiv, 252
experience, xii, 4, 11, 12, 14, 16, 18, 22;
beyond, 68, 10, 19, 20, 24, 104,
112; James on, 13, 20; concepts
necessary for, 11, 14, 132; corrupted
understanding of, 107, 108;
explaining, xii, 17, 21, 106; Humes
concept of, 39; logic of, 4. See also
Sleeper; Perrys critique of Deweys
view of, 24. See also realism
experiment, 11, 12, 7475, 79, n.6, 304,
n.7
fallibilism, 136, n.6. See also skepticism
Farber, Marvin, 90, 102, 104, 106, 113,
114
Fechner, August, 41
federalism, 200, 218, 266
Feinberg, Gerald, 252, 260
Festenstein, Matthew, xxvi, 28794
passim
Feyerabend, Paul, 298
Flathman, R. E., 252
Flower, Elizabeth, 45
Fontinell, Eugene, xv
Forcey, Charles, 146, 154
Foucault, Michel, xiv, 91, 226, 274,
303
foundationalism, 66, 289, 292, 295, 301
fourteen points, 165, 174
Franklin, S., 56
Frankfurter, Felix, 145
Friedman, Michael, 121
French revolution, 213, 216
Froebel, Friedrich, 49
Freud, Sigmund, 259
functionalism, 44, 45, 46, 59, n.8
Gadamer, Hans George, 91, 296, 302
Galbraith, John Kenneth 150
Galton, Sir Francis, 42
Garfinkel, Harold, 90
Geetz, Clifford, 84, 91, 296
Gewirth, Alan, 252
Gibson , J. J., 56, 108, 134
Index 317
Giddens, Anthony, 83, 90, 92, 93, 203,
302, 302
Goffman, Erving, 91
Goldmanm, Alvin, xvii
Goldman, Emma, xxii, 162, 188, 204,
205
Godwin, William, 199200
Gdel, Kurt, 53
Gould, Carol, xviv, 252
Gould, Stephen J., 113
Gramsci, Antonio, 272
Guerin, Daniel, 205
Habermas, Jrgen, 287
Hacking, Ian, xviii
Haeckel, Ernst, 105
Hall, G. S., 38, 48
Handlin, Oscar, 166
Hanson, S. J., 5657
Hare, Peter, 113
Harr, Rom, 85, 104, 112, 109;
justifying theoretical physics,
13335. See also realism
Harrington, James, 263
Hart, H. L. A. 256
Heideggar, Martin, xiv, 36
Hegel, G. W. F., 114, 147, 157, 21213,
216, 222, 273; influence on Dewey,
3940, 45, 89, 222; influence on
Marx, 114, 21213
Helmholtz, Herman, 6, 11, 107; account
of causality, 12, 30n12
Hempel, Carl, 24, 82
Herbart, Johan F., 49
Hertz, Heinrich, 6
Hilbert, David, 53
Hickman, Larry, 69, 295
Hilgard, Ernest, 35, 43, 4649
Hindess, Barry, 227
Hollinger, David, xv, 3, 19, 20, 26, 276
Homans, George, 286
Hook, Sidney, 187, 189, 2013, 231,
273, 277, 279
House, Colonel E. M., 165, 167
Hughes, Charles Evans, 157, 159
Hume, David, 23, 31, 38, 48, 52, 87,
104, 110, 133; and Dewey, 38; and
James, 17; and Peirce, 9; on consent,
257; on laws of nature, 6, 8, 41, 104;
on justice, 239. See also positivism,
empiricism, experience
Husserl, Edmund, 90
Huxley, Aldous, 3
idealism, 5, 3940, 89, 106, 300; and
current textualism, xiv, 300; and
materialism, 103, 114; as
subjectivism, 92; Deweys slip into,
xii, 277; defined, 1023; integrated
into naturalism, 45; Kantian
motivation of, 102; Moores
refutation of, 108; sociological
theorys slip toward, 91
individualism, 53, 86, 8089, 12224,
126
intellectualist fallacy, 56, 84, 93, 126
James, William, xi, xiv, xvi, 3, 49, 84,
122, 146, 164, 172, 176, 273, 297;
and Bourne, 164; and Lippmann,
148, 149, 172; critique of Spencer,
31n15, 40; not an academic
philosopher, 20, 32n20, 276;
philosophy of science, 1015;
positivist dilemma, 11, 1617, 18;
problem of a scientific psychology,
4045; psychologist or
epistemologist? 1518, 142;
radical empiricism, 1921, 107,
275
justice, xviii; Deweys account of,
23945; Deweys displacement of,
xxiii, 238; distributive, 242; two
concepts of, 238; the mean virtue,
239; the key concept in liberal
theory, xxiii, 237; the whole of
virtue, 239
Johnson, Paul, 167
Jefferson, Thomas, 175, 265; and Shays
rebellion, 262; on US Constitution,
318 Index
175, 276, 279n8; revolution of
1800, 266
Kant, Emanuel, 95, 102, 106, 151,
152, 241, 253; a priori, 38, 39;
bifurcation of freedom and
determinism, 95, 259;
metaphysics, xii, 6, 8, 21, 81, 151;
Peirce on noumena, 13; possibility
of science, 8; pragmatisms
rejection of the transcendental
move, 6, 298; problem of
knowledge, 23
Kateb, George, 251
Kelly, David, 126
Kitcher, Phillip, xviii
Kirchoff, G. R., 6
Koch, Sigmund, 47
Kornblith, H., xviii
Kropotkin, Prince Petr, 188, 190, 201
Kruger, Janet, 126
Kuhn, Thomas, 91, 92, 131, 288
Ladd, C., 41
La Follette, R. M., 158, 160
Landauer, Gustav, 202
Latour, Bruno, xviii
Laudan, Larry, xvii, 127, 139, 133, 295
Lavine, Thelma, 82
Leahy, T. H., 35, 36, 42, 43, 46, 49,
60n18
Lee, Robert E., xxiv, 258
Lenin, V. I., xxii, 181, 201, 229; Anti-
positivism, 103; smashing the state,
xxvii, n.9, 75, 144, 165, 168; what is
to be done, 22122, 278
Levinson, Samuel O., 170
Lvy-Strauss, Claude, 84, 91
Lippmann, Walter, xiv, xxiii, xxiv, 75,
144, 145, 150, 154, 158, 161, 169,
254; analysis of public opinion,
17277; and Wilson, 147, 159;
criticism of journalism, 17374;
criticism of US Constitution, 175;
fourteen points, 165; response to new
Soviet Union, 162, 168, 181; theory
of democracy, xix, xxiii, 17577
Logic; Standard, 52, 104, 110, 111,
12526, 283; Deweys, xvi, xvii,
xviii, 26, 36, 5257, 60n22, 65, 67,
68, 69, 73, 74, 107, 108, 109, 289,
291, 292; Burke on, 57, 108, 125,
292; Nagel on, 111; Ryan on, xvi,
284; Sleeper on, xiv, 33n26, 65, 300;
Westbrook on, xvi, xxv. See also
epistemology
Lothstein, Arthur, 202, 23
Lotze, R. H., 11, 17
Lusitana, 155
Locke, John, 105, 106, 238, 239, 253,
263, 267, 263, 268
Lundberg, George, 296
Lynd, Robert S. 69, 77
Mach, Ernst, 6, 7, 17, 24, 41, 112
Machiavelli, Nicolo, 176
Madden, Edward, 32, 109, 113
Madison, James, xvii, 218, 26465
Mandelbaum, Maurice, 102, 103, 104,
105, 106
Mansbridge, Jane, 251
Margolis, Joseph, 110, 295
Marx, Karl, xxi, 151, 268, 297, 300;
analysis of Paris Commune,
21519; and Dewey, xiii, xxii, xxvi,
28, 107, 222, 178, 194, 222, 224,
228, 230, 285; and Emerson, 274;
democratic state, 21214;
gradualism in politics, 21920;
great society, 154, 223; naturalism,
xxv, 83, 114, 277; politics
redefined, 22022; theory of
history, 93. See also historical
materialism
Marcuse, Herbert, 226, 289
materialism, xvii, 15, 39, 102, 103;
defined, 105; historical, xxii, 228,
234n16; reductive, 23, 82, 83, 277
McDermott, John, xv, 19, 29, 31n18,
195, 203, 248, 274
Index 319
Mead, George Herbert, xvii, 43, 63, 82,
83, 92, 273; account of language,
8687
metaphysics; fear of, 15, 39; in Kants
sense, xii, 276; of experience, xi, xvi
n1, 19, 20; of existence, 4, 21, 293;
not distinguishable from physics,
106; trashy, 51. See also idealism,
materialism, naturalism, positivism,
Sleeper
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 82
Merton, Robert K., xviii
Mill, John Stuart, xxiii, 8, 15, 253
Miller, David, H., 165
Miller, Perry, 29
Mills, C. Wright, 69, 76, 77, 254, 273,
277, 278, 279, 284, 285
mind, xiv, 17, 22, 35, 37, 39, 44, 45, 46,
51, 54, 83, 84, 209; -body problem,
4, 16, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 35, 85;
computer model of, 54, 126; social,
37, 38, 50, 8889, 96n11
Misak, Cherl, 283
Mises, Sidney, 165
Moleschott, Jacob, 195
Monson, S. E., 165
Montesquieu, Charles, Baron de, 147,
218, 263
Moore, G. E., 105, 108, 122
Morgan, Edmund. 261
Murphey, Murray, 7, 9, 45
Mussolini, Benito, 204
Nagel, Ernest, 24, 82, 111
Natanson, Maurice, 82, 296
natural necessity, 111, 112
naturalism, xvii, 45, 92, 102, 114, 123,
300; and realism, 107, 10813; and
sociology of knowledge, 123, 132;
James, 16; Marxs, 114; positivist
versions of, 83. See also Dewey,
social science
The New Republic, 14546, 16061
Newell, Alan, 52
Newton, Sir Isaac, 106
Niebuhr, Reinhold, 213, 277, 278, 279,
280
Nietszche, Fredric, xiv, 148, 164, 202
Noone, Jack B. xv
Nozick, Robert, xiv, xxii, 237, 243, 252,
253, 258. 259
Ostwald, 6, 7, 17, 24
pacifism, 155, 171, 201
Paderewski, Ignace, 166, 167
Palmer, R. R., 262
Paris commune, 21419
Parsons, Talcott, 84, 89
Parry, William, 113
Patten, Simon, 161
Pearson, Karl, 6, 7, 17, 42
Peterson, Merrill, 266
Peirce, Charles Sanders, xv, xvi, xvii, 4,
25, 107, 121, 135, 273, 275, 297,
298; criticism of Hume, 9; doubt-
belief theory, 4, 5; pragmatism,
420; realism vs. actualism, 9, 20
Perry, Ralph Barton, xii, xxvi, n2, 22,
51
Pestalozi, H., 49
phenomenalism, 7, 30, 32n19
phenomenology, 8183
philosophical fallacy, 86
Pickering, Andrew, xviii, 298
Plato, 145, 146, 153, 176, 238, 254, 257
Poincar, Henri, 7, 112
Polanyi, Michael, 92
Popper, Karl, 130, 296
Positivism, xii, 3, 6, 10, 11, 15, 24, 25,
41, 43, 47, 107, 113, 296; and
pragmatism, 28, 36, 49; logical
(Vienna), 47, 65, 204, 274; defined,
1034
Posner, Richard, 283
pragmatism, xi, xiii, xv, 13, 20, 23, 25,
26, 28, 107, 151, 164, 273, 279, 283,
297; a defining feature of, 44; and
functionalism, 42; and idealism, 22;
and science, xvxvii, 63; Jamess,
320 Index
20; methodological, 128, 12935;
new, 28384; postmodern, xiv, 280,
295304; prophetic, 274, 280
Proudhon, Pierre, 205, 214, 215
Putnam, Hillary, 283, 287, 295
Pylyshn, Zenon, 53
Quine, W. V. O., xvii, 119, 112, 120,
122, 125, 136n3, 274, 295
Rawls, John, xii, 237, 244, 252, 258
realism, 7, 1213, 7274, 84, 101, 103,
110, 111, 112, 287, 301; and
idealism, 5, 113; and naturalism,
107, 10813; and phenomenalism,
7, 10; and pragmatism, 22;
and actualism, 20; critical
(scientific, indirect) xii, 19, 20, 24,
40, 194, 107, 108, 110, 296, 297;
classical, 21; internal, 290; nave
(empirical), 22, 23, 90, 107, 123,
134, 277, 290; referential, 13335;
truth, 233; scholastic, 7, 8, 10;
policy, 13
red scare, 162
Ree, Jonathan, 101
Reed, E. S., 150
Relativism; and fallibilism, 121; and
irrationalism, 302; moral, 12829
Renan, Ernest, 26, 27, 77
representative government, 26364
Rescher, Nickolas, xvii, 12728, 295
revolution, 201, 2045. 219, 225, 242
Ricoeur, Paul, 92
Roosevelt, Theodore, 145, 146, 147,
155, 156, 157
Rorty, Richard, xiii, xiv, xvii, 24, 101,
273, 274, 277, 280, 283, 284,
28790, 296303
Ross, Dorothy, 66, 72
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, xii, 49, 178,
196, 217, 263, 268. 284
Rubenstein, David, 86, 92
Russell, Bertrand, xvi, 53, 105
Ryan, Alan, xvi, xxi
Sacco, Nicola, xxi, 162, 238
Sahlins, Marshall, xxii
Sandel, Michael, xxiv, 25177, passim
Santayana, George, 3, 300
Saussure, F., 91
Schlick, M., 24
Schtz, Alfred, 82, 89
Science: and culture, 2628; and
democracy, 27, 7577; and
pragmatism, xvxvi, 34; as
contested concept, xiii, 120;
disciplines of, 6466, 129, 291;
industrialized, 27; goals of, 25, 26,
27, 129, 291; method of, 5, 121,
124, 12629, 131, 292, 29798;
motivation for, 11; nineteenth
century battleground over, 103;
psychology as a, 4042;
reckless, entrepreneurial and
shoddy, 135; theoretical, 12,
13335. See also Peirce, James;
Dewey, John; Renan
scientism, 36, 47, 77, n.2, 150, 157,
246, 29192
Sen Amartya, xxiv, 252
Shaw, Clifford, 52
Shaw, R. E., 60n20
Shays rebellion, 262
Shook, John, xxvi, 107, 112
Shotwell, James T., 165
Simon, Herbert, 52
Skepticism, xviii, 120, 284, 28890;
Cartesian, 120; Pyhronian, xiv
Skinner, B. F., 23, 59n12, 13
Sklar, Judith, 252
Sleeper, Ralph W., xiv, xv, xxvi n.1, 3,
4, 21, 35n26, 65, 132, 276, 283,
293n5, 295, 300
social science; and democracy, xxi,
7577; anti-naturalism in, 81,
8990, 295394; Deweys critique
of, 6775, 222, 267; naturalistic,
8189
social change, 151, 189, 201, 2048,
225, 226, 229, 277
Index 321
socialism, xxi, xxiii, xxv, xxvii, 143,
158, 163, 178, 180, 189, 190, 205,
224, 225, 227, 228, 229, 285
sociology of knowledge, 12224, 298
Soviet Union, xxiii, 17981
Smith, John, 276
spectator theory, 74, 80n17, 107,
299300
Spencer, Herbert, 3, 11, 13, 73, 107, 163
state, 19193, 198, 201, and civil
society, 213. See also democracy
Stirner, Max, 219
Straight, Willard and Dorothy, 145, 156,
159
Stroud, Barry, 120
Stuhr, John, 295
Subjectivism, 20, 102, 104, 113, 114
Taylor, Charles, xxiv, 59n12, 252
textualism, xiv, 300
Thomas, Norman, 162, 188
Thomas, Paul, 213
Thomas, W. I., 83,
Thompson, E. P., 297
Thucydides, 159
Tiles, James, vii, 8384, 86, 87
Titchener, E. B., 38, 42
Tocqueville, Alexis de, 180, 253,
Tolstoi, Leo, 201
transduction, 115n4, 116n19
Trilling, Lionel, 273, 277
Truth: correspondence theory of, xiv,
2021, 302n7
Tufts, J. H., 188, 24142
Turing, Alan, 53
Turner, Jonathan, 296
Turvey, 60n20, 109
Unger, Roberto Mangabiera, 253, 274
U. S. Constitution, 26167, 270n5
Vanzetti, Bartolomeo, xxi, 162, 238
Veblen, Thorsten, 3, 27, 6364, 78n3,
275
Venn, J., 11
verstehen, 92
Wallas, Graham, 146, 154
Wagman, 52, 54
Walzer, Michael, xxiv, 252
War system, 16872
Weber, Max, 147, 148, 176, 292, 302
West, Cornel, xxv, 27382 passim
Westbrook, Robert B., xvi, xxv, xxvi,
78n4, 38386
Weyl, N., 145
White, Morton, 279
Wieck, David, 200
Will, George, 252, 254
Willis, Paul, 297
Wilson, Woodrow, 144, 147, 154, 165,
174, 178
Wolfe, R. P., xxiv, 252
Wood, Gordon, 264
Woodbridge, F. J. E., 3
World War I, xix, 73, 75, 143, 151, 155,
163, 178, 188,
Wundt, Wilhelm, 11, 22, 37, 58n1
322 Index
323
Peter T. Manicas, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Queens College,
CUNY, is currently director of interdisciplinary studies and professor of so-
ciology at the University of Hawaii at Ma
-
noa. He has published widely in the
philosophy of social science, American naturalism and pragmatism, and so-
cial and political philosophy. In addition to many articles published in range
of academic disciplines, his books include: The Death of the State (1974), A
History and Philosophy of the Social Sciences (1987), War and Democracy
(1989), Social Process in Hawaii: A Reader (2004), Globalization and
Higher Education (with Jaishree K. Odin, 2004) and more recently, A Realist
Philosophy of Social Science (2006).
About the Author