Pragmatic Inquiry and Social Conflict: A Critical Reconstruction of Dewey's
 
Model of Democracy
 
«Pragmatic Inquiry and Social Conflict: A Critical Reconstruction of Dewey's Model of
 
Democracy»
 

 
by Marion Smiley
 

Source:  
PRAXIS International (PRAXIS International), issue: 4 / 1989, pages: 365­380, on www.ceeol.com.
 

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 Praxis International 365

PRAGMATIC INQUIRY AND

SOCIAL CONFLICT: A CRITICAL
RECONSTRUCTION OF DEWEY’S
MODEL OF DEMOCRACY

Marion Smiley

Philosophical pragmatism offers a promising refuge for those who seek to escape
the difficulties associated with foundationalist theories of politics. Yet, for many
social and political theorists, the price of that refuge appears to be the loss of a
critical edge. How, they ask, can pragmatists move beyond the status quo if they
are obliged to develop their evaluative criteria out of social and political practice?
Richard Rorty, perhaps the best known among contemporary pragmatists, does
not help them reconcile their non-foundationalism with a critical politics.1 Indeed,
Rorty himself argues not only that pragmatists cannot move beyond the status quo,
but that they need not feel compelled to do so. “Responsible pragmatists need
only convince society that loyalty to itself is morality enough”: they need only
embellish “our” beliefs and “our” values – beliefs and values that enable us to
say “We do not do this sort of thing.”2
Are pragmatists obliged to accept Rorty’s ethnocentrism? Can they do anything
other than embellish “our” beliefs and “our” values? I argue throughout what
follows that pragmatists can move beyond the status quo and that Rorty’s own
ethnocentrism falls apart once we acknowledge two facts about social reality. One
is that society is not, as Rorty suggests, characterized by a shared set of beliefs
and emotions, but rather by a series of conflicting values and over-lapping loyalties.
The other is that no individual can ever simply “embellish”– or “read off ” –
our social practices without altering them in some fashion. While the absence of
an over-arching “We” renders Rorty’s ethnocentrism unworkable, the dynamics
of interpretation suggest that even Rorty may participate in the social practices
off of which he “reads.”
What would it mean for Rorty or any other pragmatist to move beyond the status
quo? How could he or she do so without resorting to foundationalist principles?
I try to answer both questions below by reconstructing John Dewey’s theory of
democracy as a form of social and political inquiry. I suggest that although Dewey’s
arguments are often fuzzy and characterized by an overzealous and generally
misplaced faith in science and technology, they provide us with a variety of
important insights into the ways in which we interpret and re-interpret our traditional
beliefs and values. I attempt to uncover and develop these insights by making explicit
the extent to which Dewey’s own success in generating new values depends not
on his scientific theory of pragmatism, but on this pragmatic re-interpretation of
a society unbounded by communal ties.

Praxis International 9:4 January 1990 0260-8448

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366 Praxis International

The essay thus has three major aims. The first is to save Dewey from the
conservative interpretations of him now put forth by Rorty and his followers.3
The second is to show that while Dewey is not able to generate new values out
of scientific inquiry, he is able to generate such values out of a more purely political
analysis of 20th Century America. The third aim is to re-construct Dewey’s political
analysis of 20th Century America, along with his model of democracy, as the basis
of a critical/political theory of pragmatism that is capable of moving beyond the
status quo.4

I
While Dewey may be enamored of scientific methodology, he does not, as several
of his critics suggest, place scientific methodology at the center of his political
theory.5 Instead, he starts out with an analysis of those “actual tensions, needs,
troubles” that plague modern individuals.6 Dewey argues that all of these troubles
– ranging from urban poverty to psychological unrest – have their source in the fact
that we as modern individuals have lost control over both ourselves and our social
and physical environment. Likewise, he makes clear that if we want to regain control
over both ourselves and our social and political environment, we will have to do two
things. One is to develop a methodology that is “’self-consciously practical.” The
other is to employ this methodology in such a way that we are able to move beyond
those “stupid” practices associated with unregulated economic freedom.
Dewey argues in this context that modern economic practices appear to be
practical, but they are decidedly “not creative”; they are “stupid” – “a mere
seizure of opportunities which conditions afford.”7 Dewey’s concern is not only
to bring these practices under our control, but, in doing so, to move beyond them
in light of more “inclusive interests than are represented by each separately.”8
How do we know what our “inclusive interests” are? Dewey appears to be of
two minds here. On the one hand, he talks about our “inclusive interests” as part
of the democratic process. On the other hand, he argues that these interests can
be discovered only through scientific inquiry.
Dewey often speaks about democracy and scientific inquiry as if they were one
and the same thing. Nevertheless, in the end, he finds it necessary to choose between
the two as the source of our evaluation criteria. Not surprisingly, he chooses
scientific inquiry over the democratic process. But he does not leave politics behind
altogether. As we shall see, he incorporates various aspects of the political process
into his ostensibly scientific discovery of “new individualism.” By doing so, he
effectively moves beyond his own theory of scientific inquiry and provides the
basis for a more viable model of social and political change.
Dewey’s own theory of scientific inquiry is more complex and subtle than is
often supposed. While he conceives of scientific inquiry and democracy as closely
related, he does not set out to develop a political theory of scientific inquiry. On
the contrary, he reminds us over and over again that scientific inquiry is “strictly
impersonal” as a methodology and as a body of knowledge. Scientific inquiry
“adapts itself passively” and “with equal impartiality” to the problems which
it is called upon to solve.9 Likewise, democracy is not a set of power relations,
but rather a condition of the free exchange of scientific discoveries.
 Praxis International 367

Dewey requires of scientific inquiry that it become part of our social and political
life. But he does not want to enhance or concentrate the powers of a scientific
class. On the contrary, he makes clear that
[a] class of experts is invariably so removed from common interests as to become
a class with private interests and private knowledge, which in social matters is not
knowledge at all.10

Dewey argues that instead of enhancing the power of a scientific class, we need
to develop a scientific approach to life among the citizenry as a whole, an approach
that he refers to simply as “intelligence”: “We must introduce intelligence into
society at large, the observation of consequences as consequences, in connection
with the acts from which they proceed.”11
While Dewey recommends that social and political theorists, and the population
at large, appropriate the methodology of the physical sciences, he does not want
to turn social and political theory into a purely physical science.12 Indeed, he goes
as far as to castigate the physical sciences for not taking values into consideration.
At present, the application of physical science is rather to human concerns than in
them. That is, it is external, made in the interests of its consequences for a possessive
and acquisitive class . . . The glorification of ‚pure science‘ under such conditions
is a rationalization of an escape; . . . a shirking of responsibility.13

Dewey’s approach to pragmatism requires that we develop a social/physical

science to be applied in, rather than to, human concerns. He argues that if we
are ever going to be able to bring about social and political change, we will have
to assess our discoveries in the physical world according to our social and political
values. Likewise, we will have to assess social and political values according to
their worldly consequences. How, according to Dewey, can we accomplish both
tasks within scientific inquiry? What sort of evaluative criteria will we have to
invoke? Dewey attempts to answer both questions by articulating the relationship
between scientific inquiry, on the one hand, and means-ends rationality, on the other.
Dewey argues in the Logic that if we want to integrate our beliefs about the
physical world with our beliefs about values – and, in doing so, clean up sordid
slums, free men and women from the drudgery of factory work, restore the
ecological system and bring about world peace – we will have to integrate our
conception of means with our conception of ends. Among other things, we will
have to begin viewing means as a source of our values and our values not as
independent ends, but as ends-in-view or hypotheses. Dewey makes clear that only
when we view means as a source of our values and our values as hypotheses will
we be able to develop new ends that are realizable in practice.
[W]hen ends are treated as hypotheses, new results are experienced, while the lauded
immutability of external ideals and norms is in itself a denial of the possibility of
development and improvement.14
Unfortunately, the sort of ends-in-view that are susceptible to experimentation
do not appear to be the sort that enable us to choose between conflicting social
and political practices. In other words, they do not appear to be associated with
evaluative criteria. Rather, they look more like consequences. And indeed, Dewey
368 Praxis International

refers to ends as consequences in several places. For instance, in his criticism

of current social judgments, Dewey writes that such judgments “exclude ends
(consequences) from the field of inquiry.”15 Likewise, in his discussion of scien-
tific judgment, he writes that “judgment which is actually judgment institutes
consequences (ends) in strict conjugate relation to each other.”16
Dewey tries to defend his conflation of ends/values and consequences by arguing
that values are consequences that have been deemed valuable in the past. But, as
generations of Dewey critics have pointed out, Dewey’s argument here is hopelessly
circular.17 How, then, does he appear able in other places, notably in his more
explicitly political works, to generate values out of what he calls scientific inquiry?
I argue below that he does so not by relying on an objective means-ends analysis,
but by symbolically reinterpreting the boundaries of our community in such a way
that we choose to pursue more “intelligent” ends in the first place.
Dewey does not himself distinguish between scientific inquiry and symbolic
interpretation. (Indeed, as we shall see, he treats the two as part of an integrated
process.) Nor does he make explicit that he has developed new economic values
by symbolically reinterpreting the boundaries of our community. Instead, he
contends that he has developed these values merely by looking to the means by
which our ends-in-view can be realized. Likewise, he contends that in rejecting
unregulated economic activity, he has shown not that the aims and values of old
individualism are petty in and of themselves, but that these aims and values “are
almost inconceivably petty in comparison with the means now at our command.”18
The means that Dewey has in mind here are those associated with modern tech-
nology. To employ modern technology for the purposes of private pecuniary
gain is petty, Dewey writes, because “modern technology has so much more to
offer.”19
Dewey assumes here that we can discover the potentiality of technology without
reference to our own particular ends. But no set of institutions has a specific potential
built into it; and even if we could find one that did we would not be able to conclude
automatically that its potential was worth realizing. Dewey has to have a particular
end in mind before he can show that private pecuniary gain is petty in comparison
with the potential of technology. And indeed, we see Dewey making the nature
of that end explicit in his contention that employment of technology for purposes
of private pecuniary gain is petty because it “can do so much more, it can liberate
imagination and endeavor for the sake of making corporate society contribute to
the free culture of its members.”20
The end that Dewey has in mind here is a new form of individualism, one based
not on selfish, pecuniary gain, but rather on definite social relationships and publicly
acknowledged functions. From the standpoint of the individual, new individualism
entails “taking responsibility for communal projects and integrating oneself into
the larger whole.” From the standpoint of the community, it entails the “liberation
of individual potentially in harmony with the interests and goods of all.”21
Dewey contends in Individualism: Old and New that he can generate both aspects
of new individualism out of a scientific inquiry into the economic and technological
means at our disposal.
But once we examine Dewey’s actual arguments, we see that he has instead
smuggled both aspects of new individualism back into the economic and technological
 Praxis International 369

developments that he is ostensibly exploring. Recall how Dewey presents the

economic and technological developments of the 20th Century. He begins by
pointing out how spatial options made possible by a frontier ethos have been
obliterated by the rise of modern technology. He then goes on to suggest that the
rise of modern technology has in turn created a “new-found connectedness” and
relations that “verge upon the collective and corporate.”22 According to Dewey,
what we need to do now is to develop a moral culture to support these collective
and corporate economic relations.
Not surprisingly, the culture that Dewey himself develops is both collective and
corporate. But is it, as Dewey suggests, the result of an objective means-ends
analysis? On the one hand, Dewey does appear to have developed the values of
new individualism out of a scientific inquiry into the means at our disposal, i.e.
modern technology. On the other hand, his scientific inquiry is far less objective
than he assumes. Among other things, he has chosen to characterize modern
technology not as a set of physical relations, but as a set of social relations that
“verge upon the collective and corporate.” While such a characterization is not
“wrong,” it does involve choosing among a variety of possible interpretations
of modern technology, many of which speak to the potential for a hierarchical (or
even a totalitarian) ordering of society, rather than to collectivism.
The question becomes how, if at all, Dewey can sustain his own characterization
of modern technology as potentially corporate and collective. As we have seen,
he cannot contend that he has generated the values of new individualism out of
an objective means-ends analysis. But neither does he have to fall back on founda-
tionalist principles or concede pure arbitrariness. Indeed, as I suggest in the next
section, Dewey might be able to generate the values of new individualism out of
a pragmatic means-ends analysis by showing how these values help us address
the “actual tensions, needs, troubles” that confront 20th Century Americans in
their daily lives.

II
While Dewey’s particular interpretation of modern technology may not be purely
objective, it is, according to Dewey, practical. Dewey tries to show throughout
Individualism: Old and New why a more communally oriented form of individualism
is necessary to the health and well-being of 20th century Americans.
The unrest, irritation and hurry that are so marked in American life are inevitable
accompaniments of a situation in which individuals do not find support and content-
ment in the fact that they are sustaining and sustained members of a social whole.
They are evidence, psychologically, of abnormality . . . and acute maladjustment.23

Indeed, Dewey continues, 20th century Americans are so acutely maladjusted

that we need to come up with a “deep-seated cause’’ for their maladjustment. Dewey
himself locates such a cause in the breakdown of smaller, local communities in
a technological society.
Loyalties which once held individuals, which gave them support, direction and unity
of outlook in life, have well-nigh disappeared. In consequence, individuals are
confused and bewildered. Indeed, it would be difficult to find in history an epoch as
370 Praxis International

lacking in solid and assured objects of belief and approved ends of action as in the
present.24

Here we encounter a somewhat different conception of an individual’s loss of

control than we did before. In the sections of Individualism: Old and New previously
cited, Dewey focused on the relationship between material and cultural progress
and argued that individuals cannot take control until their ideals are brought into
harmony with the realities of the age in which they act. Here Dewey focuses on
the ability of an individual to understand what he or she is doing. He argues that the
tragedy of the ‘lost individual’ is due to the fact that while individuals are now caught
up in a vast complex of associations, there is no harmonious and coherent reflection
of the import of these connections in the imaginative and emotional outlook on
life.25

A “unified mind” can come into being only when “conscious intent and
consummation are in harmony with consequences actually affected.”26 In other
words, individuals can understand what they are doing only when they have available
to them a sense of those consequences that connect their activities with the rest
of the world. (Such an analysis “expresses conditions so psychologically assured
that it may be termed a law of mental integrity.”)27
Dewey argues that only an integrated community – what he calls a “public”
– can supply the symbols necessary for an understanding of the interconnections
between individuals and society. Only a public can give to individuals a sense of
those consequences that connect their activities with the rest of the world. A public
is not merely a group of individuals or a set of institutions. It is also, and most
importantly, the acknowledgment of a particular configuration of consequences:
an association in which “ever-expanding and intricately ramifying consequences
of associated activity are known in the fullest sense of that word.”28
Dewey contrasts the public with the private in several ways, underscoring the
extent to which the public is necessary not only for the sake of a “unified mind,’’
but also for he sake of collective control. At the beginning of “Chapter 1: Search
For a Public,” Dewey draws the line between the private and the public on the
basis of the extent and scope of particular consequences. He argues that the public,
as distinct from the private, embraces “consequences of acts which are so important
as to need control.”29
Unfortunately, Dewey never makes explicit just how important consequences
have to be in order to be deemed in need of control. As a result, we are never
able to grasp the exact boundaries of Dewey’s public. In Part III, I supply criteria
of importance that might enable us to discern these boundaries. Suffice it to point
out here that Dewey does not feel compelled to supply such criteria himself. Instead,
he goes on to stress the importance of consciousness and acknowledgment to both
our understanding of a public and our generation of evaluative criteria. According
to Dewey, a public is not merely an external configuration of consequences. It
is also a mindset, a sense shared among members of a community that particular
states of affairs are the consequences of our actions and that these consequences
are in need of control.
Not surprisingly, Dewey’s choice to conceive of a public in terms of acknowledged
consequences – rather than, say, in terms of emotional or affective ties – enables him
 Praxis International 371

to carve out an important place for scientific inquiry. Indeed, since the purpose
of scientific inquiry is to trace the consequences of individual and collective
behavior, scientific inquiry cannot help but be useful in the creation of a public,
a public which, Dewey admits, looks very much like a community of scientists.30
Several questions remain, though. First of all, how do we know, on the basis of
scientific inquiry, which consequences are “so important as to need control”?
Second, how could the acknowledgment of these consequences lead us to develop
“projected purposes and prospective goods”? And finally, how could these purposes
and goods enable us to reject old practices and develop new ones?
As I have already suggested, Dewey never responds directly to the first question,
although he does remark in another context that consequences are often “suffered
before they are perceived” and are often “suffered so deeply as to require intelligent
perception.”31 In response to the second question, Dewey writes that when
individuals become conscious of the consequences of their conjoint activity, their
conjoint activity takes on a new value and they are led to develop a new “common
interest.”
Recognition of evil consequences brings about a common interest which requires
for its maintenance certain measures and rules, together with the selection of certain
persons as their guardians, interpreters and, if need be, their executors.32

With increased awareness of the consequences of their conjoint activity, individuals

are led to develop shared purposes and standards which enable them to “secure
consequences which are liked and eliminate those which [they] find obnoxious.”
“Thus,” Dewey concludes, “perceptions can generate a common and critical
interest.”33
Presumably, they can do so only because we have already evaluated them, i.e.
decided which are “obnoxious” and which are worth pursuing. Dewey appears
able to avoid such an evaluation only by assuming that values and purposes are
themselves a product of “observation.” According to Dewey, observation of any
kind entails choice. In the case of social conflict, observation entails that we choose
between conflicting interests. It does so, Dewey argues, because of the role of
both symbolic interpretation and political community in scientific inquiry.
Dewey argues throughout the Public and Its Problems that when we observe
consequences, we interpret them through symbols. Symbols must be shared in
order to be understood. They must be shared within a “Great Community,” a
community that Dewey equates in this context with the “communication of
consequences symbolically interpreted.”34 As Dewey makes clear, we have not
yet achieved a Great Community: the “new age has no symbols consistent with
its activities.”35 Indeed,
the machine age has so enormously expanded, multiplied, intensified and complicated
the scope of indirect consequences, . . . that the resultant public cannot identify
itself.36

If the resultant public wants to identify itself, it will have to produce symbols
consonant with its activities. Once it does so, its members will be able to observe
consequences “productively,” i.e., they will be able to choose between conflicting
interests. Dewey is forced to argue here that the public, or a Great Society, is
372 Praxis International

both a necessary condition and the result of observation. On the one hand, he argues
that we cannot observe consequences productively until we achieve a Great Society.
On the other hand, he argues that a Great Society follows from our collective
observation of consequences. “Communication of the results of social inquiry is
the same thing as the formation of public opinion.”37
Below I suggest how Dewey might break out of the circle that he creates by
such an assumption. Suffice it to point out here that because Dewey finds it necessary
to interpret consequences symbolically in the first place, he cannot help but
merge scientific inquiry with public opinion. Both are then submitted as a conjoint
condition of political community. According to Dewey, “only when free social
inquiry is indissolubly wed to the art of full and moving communication will
community have its consummation.”38 For only then will individuals agree on
which consequences are to be controlled.
Dewey is not always consistent about the relationship between symbolic interpreta-
tion, scientific inquiry and political community, though. In particular, once he
begins to talk about the value of those consequences recognized by a community,
he finds it necessary to introduce aspects of public opinion and the democratic
process into scientific inquiry itself. Moreover, it is only because he does so that
he appears able to talk about scientific inquiry as generating a public of the sort
that he has in mind.
In the beginning, Dewey talks about consequences in the neutral way characteristic
of natural scientists: “We take our point of departure from the objective fact that
human acts have consequences and that some of these consequences are per-
ceived.”39 Likewise, what is important at this point about the consequences
perceived by members of a community is that they be perceived in the same way.
We see Dewey writing, for instance, that a Great Community is one in which
individuals “form their judgments and carry on their activity on the basis of public,
objective and shared consequences.”40
Later on, Dewey slips the evaluation of consequences into his conception of
community itself.
Whenever there is a conjoint activity whose consequences are appreciated by all
singular persons who take part in it, and where the realization of the good is such
as to effect an energetic desire and effort to sustain it in being just because it is a
good shared by all, there exists a community.41

Similarly, Dewey writes value into the symbols through which consequences
are interpreted by a community. He starts out talking about symbols in a relatively
objective fashion: events cannot be passed on from one individual to another, but
meanings may be shared by means of symbols. Wants and impulses are then attached
to those shared meanings and are thereby transformed into desires and purposes
which, since they implicate a common or mutually understood meaning, “present
new ties, converting a conjoint activity into a community of interest and
endeavor.”42 There is “thus generated what may be termed a general will and
social consciousness: desire and choice on the part of individuals in behalf of
activities that, by means of symbols, are communicable and shared by all con-
cerned.”43
How can Dewey talk about observation and a general interest together here if, as
 Praxis International 373

I have suggested, wants and needs and a general interest do not follow automatically
from perception? Two possibilities come to mind. Either consequences are
themselves value-laden as a result of the way in which we ascribe, i.e. symbolically
interpret, them. Or else Dewey introduces an external mechanism for deliberation
into his conception of a community of inquirers, a mechanism that enables indi-
viduals to attach value to particular consequences. Since, as we shall see, Dewey
makes a point of characterizing the public as a democracy, we might do well to
begin with the latter of these two possibilities, or, in other words, with the possibility
that political processes, and not scientific inquiry per se, enable Dewey to generate
evaluative criteria out of social conflict.
Dewey first refers to a public as a democracy in the continuation of a passage
already cited.
Whenever there is a conjoint activity whose consequences are appreciated by all
singular persons who take part in it, . . . there is insofar a community. The clear
consciousness of a communal life, in all its implications, constitutes the idea of a
democracy.44

Once Dewey establishes democracy as an ideal public, he goes on to fuse it with

democracy-as-process: the “political phase”45 of democracy. Since democracy
as an ideal is analogous to a scientific community, such a fusion enables Dewey
to talk about scientific observation as leading to the development of new evaluative
criteria. We get a hint of these criteria in Dewey’s discussion of the usefulness
of a democracy. He argues that democracy makes control possible in that it
renders the interest of the public “a more supreme guide and criterion of govern-
mental activity.” Likewise, democracy enables the public to “form and manifest
its purposes authoritatively.” And finally, democracy enables the public not
only to mediate between conflicting claims, but to do so “in the interests of
all.”46
Dewey’s last claim leads him into a discussion of the “problem of democracy,”
a problem that recognizes its source in conflicting interests and practices.
Of course, there are conflicting interests; otherwise there would be no social
problems. The problem of democracy is how conflicting claims are to be settled
in the interests of all – or at least of the great majority. The method of democracy
– insofar as it is that of organized intelligence – is to bring these conflicts out into
the open where their special claims can be seen and appraised, where they can be
discussed and judged in light of more inclusive interests than are represented by
each separately.47

By providing an institutional framework for observation, one in which particular

rules are followed (e.g. rules pertaining to equal representation and majority rule),
Dewey appears able to make good his claim that observation leads to the development
of new evaluative criteria. Moreover, by going on to equate such an institutional
framework with the ideal of a scientific community, Dewey also appears able to
retain his objective approach to the discovery of consequences. The question
becomes whether or not he can move back and forth so easily between his two
interpretations of a public – i.e. between his interpretation of a public as a democracy
and his interpretation of a public as a scientific community.
Dewey begins the Public and Its Problems with a discussion of publics in general.
374 Praxis International

Democracy, he argues, is one form that a public can take. By the end of Chapter 2,
though, he has come to the conclusion that democracy is the ideal of associated
life itself. “Regarded as an ideal, democracy is not an alternative to other principles
of associated life. It is the idea of community life itself.”48
While Dewey is willing to call the public, or a democracy, an ideal, he insists
that it is a factual ideal. “It is an ideal in the only intelligible sense of an ideal:
namely, the tendency and movement of something which exists carried to its final
limit, viewed and completed, perfected.”49 Since Dewey generally rejects values
not derived from practice, and chides others for talking about ideals in the first
place, it is of course very important to him that democracy be factual. As he himself
makes clear, “only when we start from a community as a fact, grasp that fact
in thought so as to clarify and embrace its constituent elements, we can reach an
ideal of democracy which is not utopian.”50
Clearly, Dewey does not live up to his own standards. The democratic community
with which he begins is nowhere near factual. Indeed, as Dewey himself makes
clear, since the democratic ideal does not yet exist, we will have to “borrow from
the method of science” to articulate its conditions.51 Among the conditions that
Dewey articulates are the freedom of social inquiry and the free distribution of
the results of inquiry. While these two conditions may indeed be more easily met
in a democracy than in any other form of government, they do not characterize
any factual democracies that we know about now. Moreover, even if they did,
their presence would not guarantee the development of standards conducive to the
“general interest.”
Dewey’s more substantive notion of democracy-as-process would appear to be
more promising. Unlike his ideal of democracy, democracy-as-process is clearly
factual. Moreover, it enables individuals to mediate between conflicting interests
and develop a more inclusive interpretation of the general good. But it does not
do so by embodying any scientific ideal. Rather, it operates politically in that it
provides us with a framework within which to express our individual interests,
interests that lead us to take particular consequences seriously and to develop ways
of promoting those consequences that are attractive and preventing those that are
“obnoxious.”
If Dewey were to take the political aspects of democracy into consideration,
he would have to acknowledge two things. First, although democracy may be
important to the discovery of consequences, and hence both to the solution of
communal problems and to the development of a communal identity, it cannot
be confused with a scientific community. As we have seen, democracies of the
sort that Dewey describes are characterized by a variety of purely political
phenomena, including, among other things, both the expression of personal interests
and the wielding of political power. Second, the boundaries within which personal
interests are expressed and political power wielded may play a much more important
role in our discovery of consequences than Dewey realizes.
Indeed, Dewey himself may be able to generate new values out of social inquiry
only because he consciously expands the membership of that group whose interests
count in our search for consequences. As we have seen, Dewey makes a point of
including in our public both members of the lower classes and citizens of other nations.
Hence, unlike those who continue to assume a localized political community, Dewey
 Praxis International 375

is able to discover that the consequences of unregulated economic activity are not
only increased productivity, but also poverty, slums, and international war. His
discovery presumes that concrete changes have taken place in the world. But such
changes are not sufficient conditions of his discovery. Necessary also is that he
has decided to take the interests of those suffering into consideration in the first place.
Dewey does not provide us with a theory of interests and consequences. Nor
could he do so without abandoning his more general arguments about the neutrality
of scientific method. But he does remark that our choice to take particular con-
sequences seriously is determined in part by the boundaries of our community,
or, in other words, by who belongs to our community and what their interests are.
No one can take into consideration all of the consequences of the acts he performs.
. . . He must limit attention and foresight to matters which, as we say, are distinctly
our own business. . . . The man of even the most generous outlook has to draw the
line somewhere, and he is forced to draw it according to whatever concerns those
closely associated with himself.52

If Dewey were to explore the implications of his remarks here he would have
to acknowledge that consequences are not simply discovered, but are instead
ascribed, along with their valuation, by members of a particular community.
Likewise, he would have to admit that our ascription of consequences depends
not only on a causal analysis, but also on a set of more purely social assumptions
about “our business” and “what concerns those closely associated with us.” And
finally, he would have to acknowledge that there exists a variety of interpretations
of “our business” and hence a variety of different ways of understanding the
consequences that “our actions” have in the world.
The question becomes whether or not Dewey could acknowledge these three
things without leaving his concept of the public behind. I argue in the next and
final section of the essay not only that Dewey could acknowledge these three things,
but that if we were to do so ourselves, we could re-construct his notion of the
public in such a way as to understand how new values are generated out of social
and political conflict. I attempt throughout what follows to suggest what such a
re-construction might look like and how it might enable us to move beyond the
status quo as pragmatists.

III
As we have seen, Dewey talks about a public primarily in terms of both a configura-
tion of consequences and our consciousness of this configuration. But he also talks
about a public as a group of individuals. According to Dewey, a public includes
all of those who are affected by the consequences of actions to such an extent that
it is deemed necessary to have those consequences systematically cared for.53

Dewey never supplies us with criteria for deciding whether or not particular
consequences are serious enough to be placed under our “systematic care.” But
he does suggest that we are more likely to take consequences/suffering seriously
if we are “closely associated” with those suffering – or, in other words, if their
suffering is “our business” in the first place. How can we know whether or not the
376 Praxis International

suffering of others is “our business”? As pragmatists, we cannot rely on either

universal truths or foundationalist principles. Instead, we are forced to explore
“our” traditions and conventions.
But “our” traditions and conventions are not as easy to discover as contemporary
pragmatists suggest. Instead of finding a Rortyian consensus, we discover a plethora
of opinions not only about what “our” business is, but about who “we” are.
Likewise, instead of discovering the consequences of our actions, we are confronted
with a variety of interpretations. While some of us consider the poor and members
of other nations to be “closely associated” to us, others do not. Likewise, while
some of us do not consider their suffering to be a consequence of our actions,
others do. Since both sets of interpretations are based partly on subjective con-
siderations, we cannot choose among them objectively. But we can assert them
in such a way as to bring about social and political change.
Dewey himself appears to have accomplished three things by including the poor and
members of other nations in our community of interests. First of all, he appears to
have rendered their suffering “our business.‘‘ Second, he appears to have shown that
our economic system has more consequences than many of us now realize. Third, he
appears to have incorporated those suffering into our “public‘‘ (i.e. into that group
whose interests we take into consideration when tracing the consequences of our
actions). All three accomplishments necessitated that Dewey both develop an ex-
panded conception of community and convince us to accept that conception ourselves.
How did Dewey hope to convince us to accept his expanded conception of
community? As we have seen, he did not provide us with any ideal communal
boundaries. Nor did he instruct us on how we might discover such boundaries
ourselves. Instead, he proceeded to ascribe to us the very consequences that we
would have discovered if we had already accepted his expanded conception of
community. Dewey, recall, concentrated throughout his two major political works
on showing that 20th century America is no longer the group of local communities
that it once was. It is instead a “Great Society”, a society whose members are
“inextricably joined together” by virtue of the fact that all of their problems –
poverty, alienation and a loss of identity – are the consequences of a vast system
of technology that has yet to be controlled. He then went on to interpret this vast
system of technology as potentially collective and corporate. By doing so, he
managed not only to move back and forth between two otherwise significantly
different terms – a Great Society and a Great Community, but to re-enforce his
own assumptions about whose interests should be taken into consideration when
tracing the consequences of our actions.
Whether or not we ultimately accept Dewey’s expanded conception of community
depends on both the appropriateness of the symbols that he provides us with and
our own cultural, economic and personal interests in accepting or rejecting these
symbols. If, for example, we are willing to accept the appropriateness of Dewey’s
Great Community as a way of describing the technological developments of the
20th Century, then we may find ourselves including particular individuals in our
community that we would not otherwise have included. Likewise, once we include
these individuals in our community, and take their interests seriously, we may
be led to re-think the consequences of our actions and alter once again our conception
of communal boundaries.
 Praxis International 377

The mode of interpretation that enables us to do so takes as central the same

three phenomena that Dewey uses to characterize his ideal public: a configuration
of consequences, our acknowledgment of these consequences, and our conception
of communal boundaries. But instead of viewing these three phenomena as aspects
of an ideal public, it views them as component parts of a more dynamic process
through which we construct and reconstruct the boundaries of our community.
By doing so, it enables us not only to avoid the logical difficulties associated with
Dewey’s own notion of the public, but to use the differences that exist among
us to generate a new sense of who “we” are and how far “our” actions extend
out into the world.
If we were to construe such a process analytically, we might be able to reconstruct
Dewey’s notion of the public as a model for explaining the dynamics of pragmatic
analysis. But we could not assume, as Dewey does, either the continual expansion
of our communal boundaries or the continual extension of our configuration of
consequences. For, our communal boundaries often shrink – when, for instance,
we exclude others from our sphere of concern. Likewise, when our communal
boundaries shrink, our ascription of consequences, and hence our conception of
the “public interest”, also diminishes in scope. By holding each other causally
responsible for fewer consequences than we did before, we make known that we
no longer feel “closely associated” with those suffering. Once their suffering ceases
to be considered “our business,” we are led in turn to exclude them from that
group whose suffering is “serious enough” to be placed under our systematic care.
Dewey himself was not able to incorporate either the expansion or the contraction
of communal boundaries into his theory of scientific inquiry. Nor was he able
to acknowledge the gaps that frequently develop between our conception of
communal boundaries and our configuration of consequences. For, instead of
developing a dynamic model of the public, he viewed the public as an ideal
configuration of consequences, a move necessitated, as we have seen, by his
objectivist conception of scientific inquiry. Once we replace Dewey’s objectivist
conception of scientific inquiry with one that takes the social and political aspects
of symbolic interpretation seriously, we can fully acknowledge – and explain –
the dialectical relationship that exists between our communal boundaries and our
discovery of “new” consequences.
We can do so, I have suggested, for essentially three reasons. First of all, we
have chosen to view the three aspects of Dewey’s public – consequences in need
of control, consciousness of these consequences and communal membership – as
separate aspects of a dynamic process. Second, within this process, we recognize
the existence of conflicting conceptions of both communal membership and causal
responsibility. And finally, we acknowledge that, as a result of these conflicts,
we often change our minds about who belongs to our community and how far
our actions extend out into the world.
Since such changes occur within our practice of ascribing consequences, we
do not have to rely on foundationalist principles to judge particular social and
political policies either “stupid” or “creative.” But we do have to interpret the
causal connections that develop around us. As Dewey himself makes clear, these
connections are often felt, rather than perceived. They are suffered, but they are
not “known.” For they have no symbols consonant with their being. If we want
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to make these connections known – and do so as pragmatists – we will have to

zero in on existing interpretations of our communal boundaries. Likewise, if, in
doing so, we want to bring about social and political change, we will have to take
into consideration both how these interpretations conflict and the sorts of symbols
that we might use to develop a greater sense of community.
Not surprisingly, the model of community that grounds our analysis has a variety
of features in common with Dewey’s notion of a public. Among other things, it
is negatively constructed on the basis of acknowledged consequences. Publics
develop and shift their boundaries in light of continual efforts to alleviate harm:
“Recognition of evil consequences brings about a common interest which requires
for its maintenance certain measures and rules.”54 By reconstructing our com-
munal boundaries in light of newly discovered evil consequences, we enable
ourselves not only to generate evaluative criteria out of social inquiry, but also
to solve practical problems.
Problem-solving in this context comes to entail both the development of a political
culture and structural change. As Dewey himself makes clear, mental and moral
beliefs change more slowly than outward conditions. If we are ever going to alleviate
harm, we will have to come up with a new set of political symbols, symbols that
both express and create a sense of communal purpose among us. Likewise, we
will have to develop new kinds of social and political institutions. “To form itself,
the public has to break existing social and political forms.”55 And finally, in
developing new forms, we will have to take into consideration and manipulate
the various sources of power in society that make such developments possible.
By so dynamizing Dewey’s model of a public – and placing it in a political,
as opposed to a scientific context – we inevitably alter Dewey’s general pragmatic
outlook. Although causal connections remain crucial to our analysis, we no longer
view the origins of harm as objectively discoverable. Rather, we recognize that
our ascription of consequences is conditioned not only by our causal analysis, but
by our conception of communal boundaries. Likewise, we recognize that while
problem-solving still entails developing ends that are compatible with our existing
means, it also entails developing ends that are compatible with more purely social
and political interests. Presumably, cases will arise similar to those that Dewey
cites – in which all of us are threatened by a universal harm (e.g. nuclear war).
But there will also be other cases (probably many more) in which some of us will
create harm for others. In these cases, those of us who trace consequences will
have to associate ourselves with a particular group and their particular interests.
Our analysis will thus become political in at least three senses. First of all, we
will have begun with an articulated (and perhaps expanded) conception of communal
boundaries. Second, in tracing the consequences of our actions, we will have
challenged existing conceptions of “our business”, as well as the structures of
power on which these conceptions are based. And third, in our effort to generate
evaluative criteria out of our causal analysis, we will have found it necessary to
give political symbols to the configuration of consequences that we “discover.”
By doing so, I have suggested, we might be able to alter our conception of communal
boundaries in such a way as to make the solution of our collective problems possible.
Thus, while we cannot assume either continual progress or the sort of control
that Dewey posits, we do not have to accept Rorty’s ethnocentrism as the price
 Praxis International 379

of our anti-foundationalism. For “our” beliefs and traditions do not form the seam-
less web that Rorty envisions. Nor do members of our community constitute Rorty’s
over-arching “We.” As Dewey’s political analysis suggests, our loyalties overlap
and our communal boundaries shift in ways that enable us to move beyond the status
quo through pragmatic inquiry. What I have tried to show above is how we might
reconstruct Dewey’s analysis as a way of generating new beliefs and traditions out
of an inquiry into who “we” are and how far “our’’ actions extend into the world.

NOTES

1. Rorty develops his general pragmatic approach in both Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature
(Princeton: 1979) and Consequences of Pragmatism (Minneapolis: 1982). His more recent works
on pragmatism include: ‘’Postmodernist Bourgeois Liberalism,” Journal of Philosophy 80 (1983),
pp. 583-589; “Habermas and Lyotard on Postmodernity,” Praxis International 4 (April 1984),
pp. 32-44; “Solidarity and Objectivity,” Nanzen Review of American Studies 6 (1984), pp. 1-19;
and “Science as Solidarity,’’ mimeo, paper presented at the Yale Legal Theory Workshop, November
1984; “The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy,” The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom,
ed. Merrill D. Peterson and Robert C. Vaughan (Cambridge, England: 1988), pp. 257-281;
Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (Cambridge, England: 1989).
Rorty expresses surprise in Contingency, Irony and Solidarity that others have characterized him
as conservative and tries to re-formulate his ethnocentrism by building on Wilfrid Sellar’s theory
of “we-intentions.” I argue in that while Sellar’s theory of “we-intentions” enables Rorty to provide
us with a richer understanding of ethnocentrism, it does not enable him to move beyond the
conservative implications of his earlier works.
2. Rorty, “Postmodernist Bourgeois Liberalism,” p. 585.
3. Rorty refers to Dewey as a postmodernist throughout his works. See in particular his essay
“Dewey’s Metaphysics” in Consequences of Pragmatism, pp. 72-89.
Richard Bernstein argues in a recent review of Rorty’s work that Rorty has obscured the truly
progressive nature of Dewey’s pragmatism. [“One Step Forward, Two Steps Backward,” Political
Theory 15 (November 1987), pp. 538-563.] Rorty responds to Bernstein’s criticism in the pages
that follow. [“Thugs and Theorists,” pp. 564-580.]
4. Since my ultimate goal is to reconstruct Dewey’s pragmatism, I diverge from the bulk of
research on Dewey in the field of political theory. Most contemporary scholars set out either to
explicate Dewey’s political theory from within or to place Dewey’s work in a larger theoretical
perspective. I rely on the best of these studies in my own reconstruction of Dewey’s theory of social
and political inquiry: Richard Bernstein, John Dewey (New York: 1966); William Brickman,
“Dewey’s Social and Political Commentary,” Guides to the Works of John Dewey, JoAnn Boydson,
ed.; Anthony Damico, Individuality and Community: the Social and Political Thought of John Dewey,
George Geiger, John Dewey in Perspective (New York: 1958); James Gouinlock, John Dewey’s
Philosophy of Value (New York: 1972); Timothy Kaufmann-Osborne, “The Liberal Science of
Community,” Journal of Politics 46 (1984), pp. 1142-65; George Novak, Pragmatism vs. Marxism;
John Smith, “The Value of Community: Dewey and Royce,” Southern Journal of Philosophy XIII
(1974); A. H. Somjee, The Political Theory of John Dewey (New York: 1968); H. S. Thayer,
Meaning and Action: A Critical History of Pragmatism (New York: 1968); and Morton White, Science
and Sentiment in America (New York: 1972).
5. For a very interesting discussion of the charge of scientism against Dewey and other
pragmatists, see: Peter Manicus, “Pragmatic Philosophy and the Charge of Scientism,” Transactions
of the Charles Pierce Society XXIII (1989), pp. 179-222.
6. John Dewey, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (New York: 1938), p. 499.
7. Dewey, Quest For Certainty (New York: 1960) [1929], p. 274.
8. Dewey, Liberalism and Social Action (New York: 1963) [1935], p. 70.
9. Dewey, Philosophy and Civilization (New York: 1963), p. 319.
10. Dewey, Public and Its Problems (New York: 1954) [1927], p. 207.
Although Dewey claims that he does not want to enhance the powers of a scientific class, he does
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not always remain consistent on this point. See, for example, his essays on scientific inquiry in
Problems of Men (New York: 1946).
11. Public and Its Problems, p. 12.
12. In Problems of Men, Dewey addresses such a suggestion directly: “I disdain any efforts to
reduce matters of conduct to forms compatible with those of physical science. . . . I do proclaim,
on the other hand, an identity of procedures.” (p. 212.)
13. Dewey, Public and Its Problems, p. 160.
14. Dewey, Logic, p. 497.
15. Dewey, ibid., p. 499.
16. ibid., p. 515.
17. For an extremely intelligent discussion of the various arguments that have surrounded Dewey’s
conflation of ends/values and consequences, see: Cheryl Noble, “A Common Misunderstanding
of Dewey on the Nature of Value Judgments,” Journal of Value Inquiry 12 (1978), pp. 53-63.
18. Individualism: Old and New, p. 81.
19. ibid., p. 82.
20. Dewey, Individualism: Old and New, p. 81.
21. ibid.
22. ibid., p. 84.
23. ibid., p. 51.
23. Dewey, ibid., p. 51.
24. ibid.
25. ibid., p. 57.
26. ibid., p. 54.
27. ibid.
28. Dewey, Public and Its Problems, p. 146.
29. ibid., p. 15.
30. Dewey folly acknowledges the structural similarities between the Great Community and a
scientific community. Indeed, he makes clear at the outset that because the Great Community does
not exist, we will have to “borrow from the spirit and method of science in order to articulate its
conditions.” (Public and Its Problems, p. 174.)
31. ibid., p. 131.
32. ibid., p. 139.
33. ibid., p. 34.
34. ibid.
35. ibid., p. 109.
36. ibid., p. 126.
37. ibid., p. 177.
38. ibid., p. 183.
39. ibid., p. 12.
40. ibid.
41. ibid., p. 149.
42. ibid., p. 153.
43. ibid.
44. ibid., p. 149.
45. Dewey argues that one must „distinguish between democracy as a social idea and political
democracy as a system of government.“ (ibid., p. 143).
46. ibid., pp. 44-45.
47. ibid., p. 45.
48. ibid., p. 59.
49. ibid., p. 58.
50. ibid., p. 59.
51. ibid., p. 52.
52. ibid.
53. ibid., p. 60.
54. ibid., p. 17.
55. ibid., p. 31.
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