Pragmatism and Radical Democracy
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigate the relation between the renewal of interest in pragmatism and the recent attempts to develop radical democratic alternatives to political liberalism, and suggest that pragmaticism makes a distinctive contribution to the theory and practice of radical democracy.
Abstract: This paper suggests that pragmatism makes a distinctive contribution to the theory and practice of radical democracy. It investigates the relation ship between the renewal of interest in pragmatism and the recent attempts to develop radical democratic alternatives to political liberalism. With particular reference to the contemporary critical social theory of Habermas and Honneth, the paper outlines key dimensions of the civic republican, deliberative democratic and reflexive cooperative reconstructions of John Dewey's conception of democracy. These reconstructions are shown to have explicated important pragmatist insights concerning public participation in civic associations, the discursive practices of deliberation, and the cooperative organization of the division of labour. However, it is argued that each of these reconstructions pre suppose some facet of the additional pragmatist understanding of the creativity of action and that the most distinctive contributions of pragmatism to radical demo...
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TL;DR: In this article, a critical examination of democratic theory and its implications for the civic education roles and contributions of teachers, adult educators, community development practitioners, and community organizers is presented.
Abstract: Course Description In this course, we will explore the question of the actual and potential connections between democracy and education. Our focus of attention will be placed on a critical examination of democratic theory and its implications for the civic education roles and contributions of teachers, adult educators, community development practitioners, and community organizers. We will survey and deal critically with a range of competing conceptions of democracy, variously described as classical, republican, liberal, radical, marxist, neomarxist, pragmatist, feminist, populist, pluralist, postmodern, and/or participatory. Using narrative inquiry as a means for illuminating and interpreting contemporary practice, we will analyze the implications of different conceptions of democracy for the practical work of civic education.
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TL;DR: The Metaphysical Club as discussed by the authors was an informal group that met in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1872 to talk about ideas, and the one thing we know that came out of it was an idea - an idea about ideas.
Abstract: A riveting, original book about the creation of the modern American mind. The Metaphysical Club was an informal group that met in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1872, to talk about ideas. Its members included Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., founder of modern jurisprudence; William James, the father of modern American psychology; and Charles Sanders Peirce, logician, scientist, and the founder of semiotics. The Club was probably in existence for about nine months. No records were kept. The one thing we know that came out of it was an idea - an idea about ideas. This book is the story of that idea. Holmes, James, and Peirce all believed that ideas are not things "out there" waiting to be discovered but are tools people invent - like knives and forks and microchips - to make their way in the world. They thought that ideas are produced not by individuals, but by groups of individuals - that ideas are social. They do not develop according to some inner logic of their own but are entirely dependent - like germs - on their human carriers and environment. And they thought that the survival of any idea depends not on its immutability but on its adaptability. 'The Metaphysical Club' is written in the spirit of this idea about ideas. It is not a history of philosophy but an absorbing narrative about personalities and social history, a story about America. It begins with the American Civil War and ends with World War I. This is a book about the evolution of the American mind during the crucial period that formed the world we now inhabit.
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31 Dec 2011
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors refer to the events of the past four-fifths of a century, a period that covers more than half of its national life in its present form.
Abstract: Under present circumstances I cannot hope to conceal the fact that I have managed to exist eighty years. Mention of the fact may suggest to you a more important fact – namely, that events of the utmost significance for the destiny of this country have taken place during the past four-fifths of a century a period that covers more than half of its national life in its present form. For obvious reasons I shall not attempt a summary of even the more important of these events. I refer here to them because of their bearing upon the issue to which this country committed itself when the nation took shape – the creation of democracy, an issue which is now as urgent as it was a hundred and fifty years ago when the most experienced and wisest men of the country gathered to take stock of conditions and to create the political structure of a self-governing society.
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TL;DR: The study of instincts on the one side and of the motor character of human conduct upon the other has given us a different picture of human nature from that which a dogmatic doctrine of the soul and an intellectualistic psychology presented to an earlier generation.
Abstract: The study of instincts on the one side and of the motor character of human conduct upon the other has given us a different picture of human nature from that which a dogmatic doctrine of the soul and an intellectualistic psychology presented to an earlier generation. The instincts even in the lower animal forms have lost their rigidity. They are found to be subject to modification by experience, and the nature of the animal is found to be not a bundle of instincts but an organization within which these congenital habits function to bring about complex acts-acts which are in many cases the result of instincts which have modified each other. Thus new activities arise which are not the simple expression of bare instincts. A striking illustration of this is found in play, especially among young animal forms, in which the hostile instinct is modified and held in check by the others that dominate the social life of the animals. Again the care which the parent form gives to the infant animal admits of hostile features which, however, do not attain the full expression of attack and destruction usually involved in the instinct from which they arise. Nor is this merging and interaction of such divergent instinctive acts a process of alternate
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