Supplement to Final Class Fall 2021 For Hauptli’s MSC Course  “Plato vs Dewey”

    Copyright © 2021 Bruce W. Hauptli

I. Introduction For Today—Whose “Faith,” “Faith In What, & Why “Faith?”

Does he think that all human beings have this “faith?”  Clearly not!  His unending “historical” looks at Western civilization make it clear that his views of inquiry, metaphysics, human nature, and valuation are not the views found previously in our civilization. 

Does he think that everyone today (either his or our time) have this faith?  Again, clearly not!  He talks about earlier America and current America and how there are “robber barrons” “fascists”,” Marxists,” and other view which disparage democracy and “commoners’ views, as Westbrook points out, Dewey completely understood that many American social theorists believed that

…widespread political participation was not only not a necessary feature of democracy, it was also not a desirable feature.  They argued that increased political participation by incompetent citizens might undermine the stability of liberal-democratic regimes by unleashing irrational passions and encouraging demagoguery, thereby destroying the peacefuI competition of responsible elites which was at the heart of a realistic democracy.  Widespread apathy was thus seen by some as a functional feature of an effective democratic polity.  Participatory ideals were useful primarily for purposes of legitimation and for ensuring elite responsibility but were not to be taken seriously as ideals.^[1] 

Dewey explicitly and forcefully rejected such views and championed a moral democracy which required his “common faith” that we can life of free inquiry which is pursued in a social setting of similarly-minded individuals.  When this faith is present individuality can prosper and democracy can exist.  Living an “associated” life with others which conforms to such a model involves a moral commitment to oneself and to others which instantiates a democracy.  As he says in his “Creative Democracy—The Task Before Us:”

I did not invent this faith.  I acquired it from my surroundings as far as those surroundings were animated by the democratic spirit.  For what is the faith in democracy in role of consultation, of conference, of persuasion, of discussion, in formation of public opinion, which in the long run is self-corrective, except faith in the capacity of the intelligence of the common man to respond with commonsense to the free play of facts and ideas which are secured by effective guarantees of free inquiry, free assembly and free communication.  I am willing to leave to upholders of totalitarian states of the right and the left the view that faith in the capacities of intelligence is utopian.  For the faith is so deeply embedded in the methods which are intrinsic to democracy that when a professed democrat denies the faith he convicts himself of treachery to his profession.^[2] 

When Dewey says “Democracy is a way of life controlled by a working faith in the possibilities of human nature.  Belief in the Common Man is a familiar article in the democratic creed,”^[3] he is neither availing himself of an “appeal to faith” nor referencing some “established creed.”  Instead he is [optimistically, even in light of the Fascist and Communist challenges of the day--1939] maintaining that democratic government can provide for a moral social order which is not in the service of any external authority, but instead fosters both individual and social development.  For Dewey the chief obstacle for such a life arises when groups of individuals (examples: castes, classes, races, sexes, material wealth groupings, or “cultural wealth” groupings) isolate themselves from one another and seek to exploit others.  Against these divisive forces, as we have seen, Dewey marshals his “faith”—one he did not invent, but acquired from his cultural surroundings:

Is it just his “fellow travelers” who have this “faith?”  Is it “common” enough for him?  Again, no!  He wants to maintain many have inherited it from their enculturation, few have it on the basis of having “reflectively inquired” into it.  Here arises his distinction between “wants,’ ”desires,” and “values,” on the one hand and “valuations” and ideals” on the other hand.  His claim that this “faith” is necessary for democracy arises out of such critical reflection,” as does democracy’s status as an “ideal!” 

II. An Important Criticism of Dewey:

Critics of Dewey from George Santayana [1925] to Richard Rorty [1982] have maintained there is an inconsistency between Dewey’s “naturalistic methodologies” and his presumed “basic principles,” or “unrecognized metaphysical commitments.”[4]  Whether we are considering his discussions of the process of inquiry (whether ordinary, scientific, or moral”) his view that there are no fixed starting points, first principles, unchanging essences, or final truths or goods seems undercut by his view that the world and human experience are plastic, unchanging and “natural” rather than “transcendental”).  His rejection of Greek philosophy, Roman Christian thought, Medieval theological views, rationalism, empiricism, and idealism, all ae motivated by his pragmatic instrumentalism,  Yet this requires a specific take upon the changing world, human nature and naturalism—one which seems to go beyond what his methodology would legitimate. 

     The same inconsistency seems to arise in his metaphysics where his criticism of dualism, essentialism, foundationalism, transcendentalism, and other metaphysical commitments and advocacy of a naturalistic orientation seem to leave similarly leave him with a commitment beyond what his preferred methodology would legitimate. 

     Similarly in value theory, his rejection of teleology, final causation, and transcendentalism and advocacy of a naturalistic view of human nature, consummatory experience, valuation, and ideals seems to promote a fixed and unchanging view unsupported by his naturalistic commitments and his “faith.” 

     In our last class a version of this sort of critique emerged in our discussion.  We will look at it more carefully today as it is an excellent example of what I called an “internal philosophical critique.” 

     While Rorty discusses, and substantially agrees with the criticism mentioned above, in his “Globalization, the Politics of Identity and Social Hope” [1999] he also maintains that:

willingness to accept the liberal goal of maximal room for individual variation, however, is facilitated by a consensus that there is no source of authority other than the free agreement of human beings.  This consensus, in turn, is facilitated by the adoption of philosophical views about reason and truth of the sort which are nowdays thought of as symptoms of ‘postmodern scepticism’ but which I think of as just good old American pragmatism. 

  The core of Dewey’s thought was an insistence that nothing—not the Will of God, not the Intrinsic Nature of Reality, not the Moral Law—can take precedence over the result of agreement freely reached by members of a democratic community.  The pragmatist claim that truth is not correspondence to the intrinsic nature of something that exists independently of our choice of linguistic descriptions is another expression of this insistence.^[5] 

     Of course, there are other, “external,” critiques we must note and consider:

most notably, for purposes of our class, Plato’s view of the ideal state/individual and his criticism of democracy

the view that democracy is only “better than the other forms of government which humans have come up with,” but this does not make it “ideal” 

the view that democracy is good because it allows for the nonviolent changing of rulers when citizens are unhappy (a view which does not need to be committed to a “Deweyan faith,” a view that democracy is good, that it promotes human progress or development—indeed it is compatible with a view that human nature is fundamentally corrupt (and allows for “throwing the bums” when their corruption becomes intolerable (but has no promise that these bums would be replaced by “better” rulers)

the above mentioned criticism offered by “social elites” which holds that democracy must be guided by the highly educated—for example John Stuart Mill believed that highly educated citizens should have more votes than lesser educated individuals (who, presumably, would have more votes than uneducated individuals)

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