II.

Existence as Precarious and As Stable:

In this Chapter, Dewey identifies the two most fundamental characteristics of existence (nature):

precariousness, and stability. He contends that previous philosophers fell into errors because

they overemphasized one and/or ignored the other. In addition, he contends that every existence

is an event (cf., p. 71).

The Text:

41 “A feature of existence which is emphasized by cultural phenomena is the precarious and

perilous.”

-42 “...the world of empirical things includes the uncertain, unpredictable, uncontrollable, and

hazardous.”

-44 The use of “instruments and theories” mitigates the dangerous and changing character of the

world, but they do not render the world secure and regular.

-46-47 “Variant philosophies may be looked at as different ways of supplying recipes for

denying to the universe the character of contingency which it possesses so integrally that its

denial leaves the reflecting mind without a clew, and puts subsequent philosophizing at the

mercy of temperament, interest and local surroundings.”

-47 “We live in a world which is an impressive and irresistible mixture of sufficiencies, tight

completnesses, order, recurrences which make possible prediction and control, and singularities,

ambiguities, uncertain possibilities, processes going on to consequences as yet indeterminate.

They are mixed not mechanically but vitally like the wheat and tares of the parable. We may

recognize them separately but we cannot divide them, for unlike the wheat and the tares they

grow from the same root” (cf., pp. 54, 69, and 75).

--The parable is in The Bible [“Matthew” 13:25].

--48-49 Aristotle, for example, did not pay sufficient attention to contingency and the cost was

great. [p. 49:] “With slight exaggeration, it may be said that the thoroughgoing way in which

Aristotle defined, distinguished and classified rest and movement, the finished and the

incomplete, the actual and potential, did more to fix the tradition, the genteel tradition one is

tempted to add, which identifies the fixed and regular with reality of Being and the changing and

hazardous with deficiency of Being than ever was accomplished by those who took the shorter

path of asserting that change is illusory.”

--50 “...the philosophies of flux also indicate the intensity of the craving for the sure and fixed.

They have deified change by making it universal, regular, sure.” He discusses, on pp. 50-51,

Hegel, Bergson, and Romanticism.

-54 Where philosophers “rend asunder” the stable and precarious, they then have the problem of

joining them (or explaining away one or the other). The fallacy of selective emphasis yields

many of the “problems” of traditional philosophy (cf., p. 59).

62 “The union of the hazardous and the stable, of the incomplete and the recurrent, is the

condition of all experienced satisfaction as truly as of our predicaments and problems. While it

is the source of ignorance, error and failure of expectation, it is the source of the delight which

fulfillments bring.” Here Dewey draws our attention to both “problems” and “consummations!”

- “For if there were nothing in the way, if there were no deviations and resistances, fulfillment

would be at once, and in so being would fulfill nothing, but merely be. It would not be in

connection with desire or satisfaction. Moreover when a fulfillment comes and is pronounced

good, it is judged good, distinguished and asserted, simply because it is in jeopardy, because it

occurs amid indifferent and divergent things.” To this argument, the following and one on p. 69

should also be added.

-62-63 “Better objects when brought into existence are existent not ideal; they retain ideal quality

only retrospectively as commemorative of issue from prior conflict and prospectively, in contrast

with forces which make for their destruction. Water thus slakes thirst, or a conclusion that solves

a problem have ideal character as long as thirst or problem persists in a way which qualifies the

result. But water that is not a satisfaction of need has no more ideal quality than water running

through pipes into a reservoir; a solution ceases to be a solution and becomes a bare incident of

existence when its antecedent generating conditions of doubt, ambiguity and search are lost from
its context. While the precarious nature of existence is indeed the source of all trouble, it is also

an indispensable condition of ideality, becoming a sufficient condition when conjoined with the

regular and assured.”

--64-65 Similarly, necessity requires contingency. “A world that was all necessity would not be

a world of necessity; it would just be.” [65] “The stable and recurrent is needed for the

fulfillment of the possible; the doubtful can be settled only through its adaptation to stable

objects. The necessary is always necessary for, not necessary in and of itself; it is conditioned by

the contingent....”

--67 “A philosophy which accepts the denotative or empirical method accepts at full value the

fact that reflective thinking transforms confusion, ambiguity and discrepancy into illumination,

definiteness and consistency. But it also points to the contextual situation in which thinking

occurs. It notes that the starting point is the actually problematic, and that the problematic phase

resides in some actual and specifiable situation.”

-69 “But the interests of empirical and denotative method and of naturalistic metaphysics wholly

coincide. The world must actually be such as to generate ignorance and inquiry; doubt and

hypothesis, trial and temporal conclusions; the latter being such that they develop out of

existences which while wholly “real” are not as satisfactory, as good, or as significant, as those

into which they are eventually re-organized. The ultimate evidence of genuine hazard,

contingency, irregularity and indeterminateness in nature is thus found in the occurrence of

thinking....”
--Note: Dewey’s critique of “traditional philosophers” is that they “reify” and “selectively

emphasize”—that they develop a mistaken metaphysics. But note that his instrumental theory of

inquiry is a fallibilistic theory” which avoids looking for fixity, finality, or absolutes. This leads

one to wonder, however: Isn’t Dewey making just the mistake he cautions against, then, when he

maintains that “precariousness and stability” are “general characteristics” of reality?” As we

look at his views in greater depth, then, we will have to look to see whether his experimentalism

(or epistemological naturalism, or instrumentalistic pragmatism) can consistently offer the sort of

metaphysical theory which he advances—in short, while he claims here that “the interests of

empirical and denotative method and of naturalistic metaphysics wholly coincide,” we must look

to see whether this is the case.[8]

71 “Every existence is an event.”