Vox Nova

24 Responses to ““Nothing is in more trouble on the planet today than the meaning of Democracy””

1. jonathanjones02 says:

   June 24, 2008 at 11:02 am

   It’s interesting how intellectuals once very important – Herbert Croly, John Dewey, Reinhold Niebuhr – seem lost to us today. All three were vital to the development of American leftism/progressivism. Their heirs are more activists than philosophers.
2. Mark DeFrancisis says:

   June 24, 2008 at 11:29 am

   There have been Richard Rorty and R. Bernstein in philosophy…
3. Gerald L. Campbell says:

   June 24, 2008 at 1:09 pm

   Poli,

   I very much appreciate this post. Thanks.
4. Kevin says:

   June 24, 2008 at 2:26 pm

   They are lost to us today, because Croly and Dewey were always lost in ephemeral man-made ideologies. If they are remembered at all, it will be for their hubris and self-centered revolt against ancient wisdom. Anthropologists will be more intrigued by the gullibility of their audience than for anything they ever did.
5. Policraticus says:

   June 24, 2008 at 5:33 pm

   Croly and Dewey were always lost in ephemeral man-made ideologies.

   How so? I find Dewey to be one of the most ideologically free philosophers I have ever read. I think this stems from his radical experiential starting point.

   If they are remembered at all, it will be for their hubris and self-centered revolt against ancient wisdom.

   Dewey revolted against ancient wisdom?

   Anthropologists will be more intrigued by the gullibility of their audience than for anything they ever did.

   Anthropologists are studying those who read Dewey?
6. Kevin says:

   June 24, 2008 at 8:11 pm

   Dewey’s pragmatism excluded God, making his school of thought highly impractical for ascertaining the Truth. His enshrinement of the scientific method, materialistic perspective, his quest for social leveling and naturalism would find him praising the social planners of the Soviet Union. If he’s not an ideologue, hard to imagine who then would qualify.

   Anthropologists will rightly wonder what caused such an epic social disequilibrium that would lead people to follow so many false prophets in their reckless revolt against God.

   As an aside here is Dewey on the Catholic Church’s school system;
   “‘It is essential that this basic issue be seen for what it is — namely, as the encouragement of a powerful reactionary world organization in the most vital realm of democratic life, with the resulting promulgation of principles inimical to democracy.”

   For more “wisdom” in the same vein as that quote, you might enjoy;
   http://www.amazon.com/American-Freedom-Catholic-Power-Blanshard/dp/0313246203
7. samrocha says:

   June 24, 2008 at 10:40 pm

   Kevin, you might do some reading before you go on trying to make this argument. Dewey’s pragmatism (although he never accepted the title) is NOT an “enshrinement of the scientific method, materialistic perspective, his quest for social leveling and naturalism.” Much to the disfourtune of his legacy, Sidney Hook’s neoconservative approach and Rorty’s postmodern one robbed much of the vitality of Dewey’s experimentalism that owes more to William James than to Charles Darwin. Reading Dewey’s later work on Experience (Exp & Nature, Ed. & Exp, and Art as Exp) should make this clear. As Poli noted, Dewey is a meticulously careful thinker who cannot be framed as an ideolgue or a fanatic of any kind. Yes, he does stand in a post-metaphyical position–but that its own is NOT the same as excluding God.
   In the end, Poli is right on this one and if interested I would offer some work I have stashed around on Dewey and James.

   Also, Dewey has not been lost. He is still studied rigorously by philosophers of education around the world, along with the efforts of the John Dewey Society in the promotion of further understanding his work. If anyone is at the APA Central Division meeting in Chicago every spring, they feature a wonderful lecture there every year.

   Pragmatism in general, as America’s only original contribution to philosophy, need to be taken seriously, I think. It has serious implications for the history of ideas and, more importantly, for the continuation of good ideas. Sadly it is mostly set aside for silly reasons. Anyone who can read a selection of reading from Peirce, James, and Dewey and not be compelled to give pragmatism another look is just crazy.

   BTW: POLI: You have McDermot as a teacher? Sweet!
8. Kevin says:

   June 24, 2008 at 10:53 pm

   Samrocha,
   Is that it?

   I gave you a quote of his that ran on the cover of an anti-Catholic screed inwhich calls the Catholic educational as “reactionary” and “inimical to democracy” and your response is give pragmatism another try. Why as a Catholic, would I want to?
9. Kevin says:

   June 24, 2008 at 11:08 pm

   Samrocha,
   To be fair, Dewey did not restrict his accusation of anti-democratic tendencies to Catholic schooling;

   “It is impossible to ignore the fact that historic Christianity has been committed to a separation of sheep and goats; the saved and the lost…I cannot understand how any realization of the democratic ideal as a vital moral and spiritual ideal in human affairs is possible without surrender of the conception of the basic division to which supernatural Christianity is committed .”
10. samrocha says:

    June 24, 2008 at 11:10 pm

    Kevin,

    I don’t think you should give it another try, I don’t think you’ve even begun to give “it” a try at all. And, moreover, where is that snippet from and what’s the context. Look I’m sure I can understand what he’s saying, he was skeptical of powerful “world organizations” — so were/are lts of people — even Catholics. To write him and pragmatism off because he (and poorly assumbed “it”) is critical of “Catholic Education” is quite weak minded. As a Catholic you might be interested in stuff like Truth, and, albeit ironically at times, if you are the development of pragamtism is a major player in that history. It’s roots are not in pragmatism itself, in fact of the three I mentioned only James kept the term, it is more rooted in “radical empiricism” which is oftentimes mistaken with some kind of materialism or instrumentalism, but read James’ Varieties of Religious Experience (that relies heavily on Catholic mystics) and you’ll be convinced otherwise. And then read selection from McDermotts wonderful reader selected from James Principles of Psychology and that foundation will create understanding of his Lowell Lectures on Pragmatism that opens by citing G.K. Chesterton. After all that then you might be able to understand Dewey’s project that he openly credits to James, especially his theory of experience. This all (by all the James part) was quite neat to other people including Wittegnstien, Scheler, Husserl… but of course you might just be more capable sticking with your cute little quote… real smart buddy.
11. jonathanjones02 says:

    June 24, 2008 at 11:24 pm

    sam,

    No question Dewey has had large influence over American educational theory – huge, actually. But I do think he has been lost as a grandfather to the early 20th Century American progressive project, the effort to use the instruments of the state for collective action. It strikes me as strange how little statists / progressives today talk about their past (perhaps because of the uncomfortable skeletons, like eugenics).
12. Kevin says:

    June 25, 2008 at 5:56 am

    Sam,
    I understand Dewey’s animus towards Christianity in general and the Catholic Church in particular, as each serves to reign in the designs of schemers, planners and ideologues.
    He also thought these religions; “now prevent . . . the religious quality of experience from coming to consciousness and finding the expression that is appropriate to present conditions, intellectual and moral”
    He, not the Church, possessed the needed wisdom. Hubris anyone?
    http://johndewey.shawnolson.net/johndewey/common_faith/
    http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/unitarians/dewey.html
13. Zippy says:

    June 25, 2008 at 6:45 am

    Quoth Dewey:
    I cannot understand how any realization of the democratic ideal as a vital moral and spiritual ideal in human affairs is possible without surrender of the conception of the basic division to which supernatural Christianity is committed.

    I tend to agree with Dewey here. So much the worse for ‘the democratic ideal as a vital moral and spiritual ideal in human affairs’.
14. Sam Rocha says:

    June 25, 2008 at 8:10 am

    Dewey on Experience (the crux of his theory), citing James, of course:

    “We begin by noting that ‘experience’ is what James called a double-barreled word… ‘Experience’ denotes the planted field, the sowed seeds, the reaped harvests, the changes of night and day, spring and autumn, wet and dry, heat and cold, that are observed, feared, longed for; it denotes the one who plants and reaps, who works and rejoices, hopes, fears, plans, invokes magic or chemistry to aid him, who is downcast or triumphant. It is ‘double-barreled’ in that it recognizes in its primary integrity no division between act and material, subject and object, but contains them both in an unanalyzed totality.”
15. Sam Rocha says:

    June 25, 2008 at 8:21 am

    Eugenics? I know James studied with Agasiz at Harvard for some time and even went Brazil with him, but as far as I know eugenics isn’t part of “these” progressives. The trouble I find in looking at the “progressive” movement is not a question of whether it was progressive or not, that is it is not an issue of parsing out its good and bad deeds. It actually being able to distinguish the individuals from the silly generality. In the case of the philosophical side, Russell and others found this hard to do and so pragmatism was nothing other than an endorsements of the fetishes and excesses of the “American Way.” This is a poor and unfair–flat out bad–reading of any of the American pragmatists from the progressive era. But the sad thing is that Rorty’s “toolbox” postmodern interpretation in “Phil. and the Mirror of Nat.”, that, in many ways, revived Dewey and James, also cast them in a very different shadow than their own text read independantly offer. This only made Russell and friends seem to be right about them in the first place.

    Sorry I am spouting off so much, but I rarely engage in “this side” of my work on these catholic blogs… But my adviser is a Deweyan and close friend of Sidney Hook and Rorty (while they were alive) and much of my last several years has been spent pouring over James and Dewey and finding them quite fascinating. This past spring I gave a paper on a comparison of James and Jean-Luc Marion, and Marion was quite pleased to see pragmatism at a continental venue. He even went as far as to say he is glad he found it later in his life because it might have distracted him, he finds it so interesting… So even beyond the American scene there is much to be said about the potential for overlaps, so to speak.
16. Kevin says:

    June 25, 2008 at 8:44 am

    “There is but one sure road of access to truth — the road of patient, cooperative inquiry operating by means of observation, experiment, record and controlled reflection”
    John Dewey

    The problem with Dewey is he mistakes a preliminary guide to truth, as the best and only means to attain it. Leaving him, ho hum, as just another 20th Century rationalist and social engineer working in the narrow confines of his own restricted self-created system. His memory is preserved, I suppose by academicians, but in the end; “Has not God made the wisdom of the world foolish?”
17. jonathanjones02 says:

    June 25, 2008 at 8:47 am

    sam,

    That’s a good observation about distinguishing the individuals from generality. I will defer to your knowledge about Dewey. But from the first comment I am making a general point: it is curious how important threads of American political thought, such as his philosophical pragmatism, are detached from their leftist heirs. My suspicious mind is inclined to think that much of progressive history has gone down the memory hole because of its alliances with currently unfashionable ideas, such as Italian and German central planning and eugenics.
18. samrocha says:

    June 25, 2008 at 11:27 pm

    Kevin last response. Your platitudes fail to show any significant knowledge of Dewey or pragmatism, so your judgments bear the same condition. Read some books and get back to me…
19. Kevin says:

    June 26, 2008 at 8:34 am

    Sam,
    You seem to be the one unaware of some of his work, which is odd given your devotion to the man. I trust you are aware of his thoughts on education. And, if so, why would it surprise you that he held an institution that believes in Absolutes in such low regard.
    It is almost as if you try to reconcile your fondness for Dewey with your faith by maintaing a willfully ingnorant stance towards much of his work.

    You won’t like what Kimbal has to say (see johnathanjones’ post from Around the web) so avoid it.

    Frankly, if they ever made up a team consisting of Modernist All-Stars, Dewey would be a very solid complementary player to brighter stars like Nietzsche, Freud & Marx.
20. Sam Rocha says:

    June 26, 2008 at 10:23 am

    Nietzsche a Modernist All Star? wow, you don’t seem to know what you’re talking about. The reactions of pragmatism, phenomenology, Nietzsche, and its counterparts (existentialism, structuralism, post structuralism) are all reactions AGAINST modernism. Including in those distinctly post-metaphysical critiques are many Catholics.

    Right now the biggest (and best, in my opinion) is Jean-Luc Marion. Who is very post-metaphysical, indebted to Nietzsche, AND deeply invested in a renewal of philosophical discourse in the tradition of the ordo amoris. Read his wonderful book “God Without Being” and then try and tell my that this is an institution that believes in “absolutes,” in the simple way you put it.

    To be have little taste for “absolutes” is not NECESSARILY to be opposed to the Church or to not be a realist (if that dualism really matters). And, yes, I am very aware of Dewey’s work in education, my PhD will be in Philosophy of Education, and, in turn, I can confidently say that Dewey’s ideas about education, especially as put forth in Democracy and Education, can only be properly understood if you read Experience and Education and Experience and Nature after wards and Reconstruction in Philosophy before. All that, after ground yourself with the Jamesian psychology that influences his him early on.

    Look, I disagree strongly with Dewey on many points, and I am happy to talk about that. But to write him off altogether because a simplistic understanding of his work is silly. Kimbal won’t be the first to lambaste Dewey, lots of people have. The point is whether there is any merit to it. As with most thinkers when we take a close and careful look at their work, we find things of value and learn a lot. That is the pedagogical value of Dewey, philosophically, I think we can learn much more by just looking at James. But thats beside the point.

    At the same time this back and forth is very silly because I have raised many points that you gloss over in reasserting the same thing you said in the beginning. If you want to discuss this, you need to engage the point I put on the table. Otherwise I am just led to continue to believe that you don’t have sufficient idea of what your talking about, insofar as it is grounded in textual and contextual support.
21. Kevin says:

    June 26, 2008 at 11:42 am

    Sam,
    What is the point you’ve put on the table? His work on Experience?

    My point is; Dewey works are remarkably absent any spiritual basis; “I believe that this educational process has two sides-one psychological and one sociological; and that neither can be subordinated to the other or neglected without evil results following.” What? Such a description is both alien to the teachings of my faith, yet, now so commonplace, that I find it hard to find common ground, much less “Common Faith” with him.

    I think our modern educational system is devoted to the erasure of cultural memory, re-routing the pursuit of higher truths towards social indoctrination and the molding of students as docile consumers. Is it unfair to blame some of this on Dewey? I don’t think so, as many of his acolytes hail the current state of education as his crowning achievement. Or, maybe, like Robespierre, he was not fully aware of where things would lead.

    You may find merit and value in some of his work, but ultimately, you cannot deny that Dewey stands on the side of those waging a Permanent Revolution against the remaining vestiges of Christendom. As such, I take heart in his diminishing influence and look forward to building on top of the wreckage left by those who sought to make God in their own image.
22. Kevin says:

    June 26, 2008 at 12:24 pm

    Sam,
    Marion is engaging themes that have aroused great deal of interest in Catholic circles. You might find this blog of interest, as this priest has been all over it, though you might have to plow through a lot of text;
    http://robertaconnor.blogspot.com/
23. Sam Rocha says:

    June 26, 2008 at 12:52 pm

    “I think our modern educational system is devoted to the erasure of cultural memory, re-routing the pursuit of higher truths towards social indoctrination and the molding of students as docile consumers.”

    So do I. And I am highly critical of Dewey inconsistency in that regard. He seems to think that reform can “fix” a well-working system of socialization. BUT, in spite of this, Dewey offers much to a vision of a post-metaphysical philosophy grounded in an extensive–even to the realm of inifnite, to unnalyzed totality–sense of experience. He is also THE critic of this educational system, and his “followers” coopted his ideas lacking any philosophical understanding of his point. That the very reason he published his lectures given in 1938, Experience and Education, to attempt to correct those interpretations…

    But I’ve made many other points other than experience. It seems to be that you found some “dirt” on Dewey that makes you want to villanize him. If we did the same with Heidegger the Nazi (who JPII paid serious attention to) or Nietzsche the God-Killer (supposedly), we would be left with an impoverished and uncatholic understanding.

    Thankfully, many Catholics (including our current pope [see Deus Caritas Est]) don’t use the same methodology you do. You might want to clear up the issue of methodology, experience, post-metaphysics, defense on a charge lack of literacy support, and, above all, read James’ Varieties of Religious Experience to see if the foundation you’re assuming is really true.
24. Kevin says:

    June 26, 2008 at 1:47 pm

    Sam,
    Odd, I directly quote the man, point out that part of his legacy he is most known for by friend and foe alike, (which you even accept) and, yet; I’m guilty of throwing “dirt”. Suggesting he is more of a mixed bag than you initially let on.

    Ratzinger accepts Nietzsche’s work as a consequence of a relatvistic culture that turned it’s back on the reality of God and denies the existence of an objective moral universe. That’s far different than your response to Dewey, which appears as an endorsement at worse, or a synthesis, at best. If the latter, maybe you can expound on what part of Dewey you would like to jettison.

    I stand by my criticism; his project replaced the one, true God with a substitute of his own creation. The result was as one would expect. Feel free to pan for nuggets amongst the drek, but I’ll instead turn to those humble souls who bravely stumble towards Truth.