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Freedom of expression is meaningless in a liberal society if it is seen as restricted to simply making one's views public. A more interesting perspective reconstructs it as involving action. The paper offers a reading of John Dewey according to which freedom of expression is a form of social action – if it is to be meaningful. Appeared in Pragmatist Perspectives, eds. Sami Pihlström and Henrik Rydenfeld. Acta Philosophica Fennica vol. 86. Helsinki: Societas Philosophica Fennica, 2009, p. 211-222.
Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society
Articulating a Sense of Powers. An Expressivist Reading of John Dewey's Theory of Social Movements2017 •
John Dewey's lectures delivered in China (1919-1920) provide us with a detailed analysis of the epistemic and normative dynamics of social struggles. Drawing on the notion of „act of expression“, by which Dewey refers to the articulation of our aims and emotional states, this paper offers a „expressivist“ interpretation of Dewey's view of social struggles. The interpretation gives a central role to the analysis of the learning process of the oppressed as involving the development of expressive capacities. By doing this, it aims both at illuminating important theoretical steps in Dewey's own argumentation and at indicating some implications for what I call a Deweyan understanding of social movements.
2015 •
John Dewey's concept of democracy has often been dismissed as "liberal" and as being unable to account for pluralism (Talisse 2007). I argue that this is a misconception which can be corrected if we analyze Dewey's understanding of democracy in its historical context. Following this approach, we find elements of a democratic conception in Dewey's thought that are profoundly radical and that can be read along the lines of an anarchist account of radical democracy as recently developed by David Graeber (2013). In January 1937 Dewey published a little-known essay with the title "Democracy Is Radical". In this article he develops the position that democracy is radical because it puts "primary emphasis upon the means by which [...] ends are to be fulfilled" (Dewey 1987, 298). Only a few months later Dewey became chairman of the Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Made against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials. His meetings with Trotsky in Mexico lead to a debate between the two thinkers on the role of means and ends for social transformation which seems to be almost forgotten now. Against Trotsky's account of a socialist revolution, Dewey again emphasized how means and ends are always closely connected. For social transformation this means that radical ends can only be reached through radical means: democracy. The paper wants to bring this historical context to attention because this can help us to understand Dewey's concept of radical democracy for what it was: an intervention into the debate on the role of democracy for the left. I will critically discuss and evaluate the radical nature of Dewey's concept of democracy and reconstruct the historical context of its origin. The paper will further develop and defend the thesis that Dewey's concept of democracy is radical insofar as it was intended against an orthodox Marxist understanding of revolution and social transformation. I will conclude by outlining how this rejection of orthodox Marxism brings Dewey close to an anarchist account of radical democracy as it was recently formulated by David Graeber (2013) and by highlighting the parallels between Dewey's and Graeber's concepts of radical democracy.
The Journal of Human Rights and Peace Studies
A Democratic Ideal for Troubled Times: John Dewey, Civic Action, and Peaceful Conflict Resolution2016 •
In an era defined by events that continuously shake Fukuyama's thesis according to which liberal democracy constitutes the end of History, there is a need for a democratic ideal which puts the role of civic action at the heart of its justification. In this article, I argue that John Dewey's democratic ideal understood as a matter of civic co-creation, where democratic pursuits are continually redefined by citizens through the solving communal problems – not set by History, once and for all – provides a valuable response to this need. To this end, the article reconsiders Deweyan democracy by: presenting it as a transformational process, in opposition to liberal democracy (1); discussing Dewey's conception of active citizenship as requiring more than mere political participation (2); articulating Dewey's democratic ideal as form of applied social intelligence (3); making explicit the pedagogical consequences of Deweyan democracy (4); interpreting it as a form of peaceful conflict resolution aiming at balance in inter-personal relationships (5).
Studies in Philosophy and Education
Deweyan Democracy, Neoliberalism, and Action Research2019 •
This article aims to establish a line of continuity between John Dewey’s democratic and educational ideals and the practice of action research, to justify that the latter affords an adequate means to enact Dewey’s ideals against the destructive challenges that neoliberalism poses to democracy today. This aim involves three ideas that will be developed in three corresponding sections. After the Introduction, the first section analyzes at length the main tenets of Dewey’s thoughts about democracy by emphasizing the role of the educational dimension. The article then approaches neoliberalism by focusing on one of its variants, New Public Management, and explains why the latter implies a direct erasure of Dewey’s ideals concerning democracy, individual growth, education, and social advancement. Finally, the third section turns to action research and its potential to encourage our societies to move closer to Dewey’s democratic ideals, and suggests that action research can begin to fill the gap that Dewey’s work left concerning the institutional dimension of democracy.
European Journal of American Studies
What Dewey Knew. The Public as Problem, Practice, and Art2020 •
This essay takes the present ‘post truth’ threat to democratic politics as an occasion to revisit John Dewey’s view of the public as a political actor that is both indispensible for the project of modern democracy and vulnerable to self-effacement. Drawing on a recent development in democratic theory—epistemic democracy—that is in part inspired by Dewey, I trace how Dewey’s relativist understanding of truth animates his views of the public as a political actor and of democracy as a “collective exercise in practical intelligence” (Festenstein). But in linking the epistemic thrust of Dewey’s political theory with his view of communication as art, I move beyond established understandings of epistemic democracy to argue that the aesthetic is assigned with a key role in collectively exercising the practical intelligence that both sustains democracy and moves it forward—and that epistemic democrats have overlooked so far.
Rorty invokes Dewey as the source of his pragmatist liberalism. This paper compares Rorty's position to Dewey's own views, to see how Dewey's radical liberalism evolved into Rorty's advocacy of "bourgeois liberalism" and to see whether we can arrive at a better pragmatist liberalism by playing their views off against each other. The paper probes the deeper philosophical roots of their different liberalisms in their different views on liberty, philosophical justification, self- realization, aesthetic unity, and means and ends. I conclude with a defense of cultural politics against Rorty's critique as one area for philosophers to realize Dewey's goal of participatory democracy.
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21st Quinquennial Congress of the International Musicological Society
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