John Dewey: Premier Philosopher of American Democracy

DeArmey, Michael H.

doi:10.1007/978-3-031-40426-9_15

Michael H. DeArmey²

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Abstract

No thinker has reflected more upon the virtues and weaknesses of American democracy than John Dewey. For more than fifty years, Dewey wrote about nearly every aspect of American democracy. Important criticisms of democracy, especially American democracy, were set forth by Henry Maine in his book, Popular Government, published in 1885, and are still worthy of assessment today. This book was the catalyst for several of Dewey’s essays, which are evaluated in this chapter. Dewey admired the U. S. Constitution but found fault in its lack of enabling or positive rights. As it stands, the Constitution on his view contains necessary but only negative rights (freedom from). The new Constitution repairs this fault.

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Notes

1.
Richard J. Bernstein, “Creative Democracy—The Task Still before Us.” American Journal of Theology and Philosophy (September 2000) volume 21, 215.
2.
Cited by Robert B. Westbrook, John Dewey and American Democracy (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1991), xiv. Henry Steele Commager, The American Mind (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950), 100.
3.
Cited by Westbrook, xiv. “Lyndon Johnson to James T. Farreli, Nov. 30, 1966,”
4.
Cited by Westbrook, xiv. Morris R. Cohen, American Thought: A Critical Sketch (Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press, 1954), 290.
5.
Westbrook, xvi.
6.
Ibid., xvii.
7.
The Living Thoughts of Thomas Jefferson, John Dewey editor (Premier/Fawcett Publishers, 1963).
8.
Ibid., 11.
9.
Ibid., 30.
10.
Henry Sumner Maine (1822–1888) was an historian of law, a professor of comparative law at Cambridge. Well-known for his study, Ancient Law (1861). He became Sir Henry Maine in 1871.
11.
Henry Sumner Maine, Popular Government (Indianapolis: (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc., 1976), 80. Originally published in London by John Murray in 1885.
12.
Popular Government, 87.
13.
Ibid., 104.
14.
Ibid., 111.
15.
Ibid., 112. Even in our day, 2019–2022, masses of people refuse to get a vaccination against the Covid virus, and wallow in ignorance of scientific research.
16.
Ibid., 114.
17.
Ibid., 115.
18.
Ibid., 205, Chancellor Kent is James Kent (1763–1847), jurist and author of Commentaries on American Law (4 volumes, 1826–1830). He is sometimes referred to as the American Blackstone.
19.
Ibid., 243.
20.
Ibid. 238–239.
21.
John Dewey, “Christianity and Democracy,” in John Dewey, The Early Works, 1882–1898 Jo Ann Boydston General Editor (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1971), 9. First published in Religious Thought at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor: Register Publishing Company, Inland Press, 1893), 60–69.
22.
John Dewey, “Philosophy and Democracy,” in John Dewey, Characters and Events, Volume 2, Joseph Ratner editor (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1929), 841–855. First published in the Chronicle, University of California, 21 (1919), 39–54.
23.
“Philosophy and Democracy,” Character and Events, Volume 2, 847.
24.
Ibid., 848.
25.
Ibid., 851.
26.
Ibid. These quotes do not imply that Dewey is a foundationalist. Of the many metaphysical views, democracy has a greater similarity to reality as open and in the making. Feudal kings and dukes went hand in hand with the Great Chain of Being, a view now discarded.
27.
Ibid., 854.
28.
Ibid., 855.
29.
Dewey, John (1976). “Creative democracy: The Task Before Us.” In J. Boydston editor, John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925–1953, Volume 14 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1976), 227. (Original work was published in 1939.)
30.
Ibid., 228
31.
John Dewey, “Philosophies of Freedom,” in John Dewey, Philosophy and Civilization (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1968), 274.
32.
Ibid., 279.
33.
Ibid., 283.
34.
John Dewey, “From Absolutism to Experimentalism,” in John Dewey, Later Works, Volume 5, Jo Ann Boydston editor (Carbondale, Illinois: University of Southern Illinois Press), 155.
35.
Ibid., 288.
36.
Ibid.
37.
Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), 56.
38.
R. Jeffrey Lustig, Corporate Liberalism: The Origins of Modern American Political Theory, 1890–1920. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 239.
39.
Samuel P. Huntington, American Politics: The Politics of Disharmony (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981.
40.
Thelma Z. Lavine, “Pragmatism and the Constitution in the Culture of Modernism.” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, XX (1984), 13–14.
41.
Ibid., 14–5.
42.
Ibid., 13.
43.
John Dewey, The Problems of Men (New York: Philosophical Library, 1946), 40. I presented a conference paper some years back, never submitted for publication: “The Myth of Dewey’s Anti-Constitutionalism.”
44.
John Dewey, Ethics 1908. The Middle Works of John Dewey, 1899–1925, Volume V, Jo Ann Boydston editor (Carbondale and Evanston: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978), 402.
45.
Ibid., 392; “basic and fundamental,” 396; “minimal…,” 418.
46.
Ibid., 392.
47.
Ethics, Revised Edition, 370.
48.
Ibid., 385.
49.
Bruce Aune, Rationalism, Empiricism, and Pragmatism (New York: Random House, 1970), 176.
50.
John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (Chicago: The Swallow Press, Inc., 1954), 213.
51.
Ibid., 211.
52.
John Herman Randall, Jr., Philosophy After Darwin. Chapters for The Career of Philosophy Volume III, and Other Essays. Edited by Beth J. Singer (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), 313.

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School of Humanities, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS, USA
Michael H. DeArmey

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DeArmey, M.H. (2023). John Dewey: Premier Philosopher of American Democracy. In: The Constitution of the United States Revised and Updated. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40426-9_15

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40426-9_15
Published: 07 November 2023
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-40425-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-40426-9
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