PAPPAS - John Deweys Ethics PDF

John Dewey’s Ethics
Democracy as Experience
Gregory fernando Pappas

JOHN DEWEY’S ETHICS
AMERICAN
PHILOSOPHY
John J. Stuhr, editor
editorial board
Susan Bordo
Vincent Colapietro
John Lachs
Noëlle McAfee
Cheyney Ryan
Richard Shusterman
JOHN DEWEY’S
ETHICS
DEMOCRACY AS EXPERIENCE
Gregory Fernando Pappas
Indiana University Press

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Pappas, Gregory Fernando, date

John Dewey’s ethics : democracy as experience / Gregory Fernando Pappas.
p. cm. — (American philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
isbn-13: 978-0-253-35140-1 (cloth : alk. paper)
isbn-13: 978-0-253-21979-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Dewey, John, 1859–1952—Ethics. I. Title.
b945.d44p37 2008
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2007046929
1 2 3 4 5 13 12 11 10 09 08
Para Beatriz, John, y Fema
CONTENTS
Preface xi
List of Abbreviations xv
introduction 1
PART ONE
moral theory and experience
one
Experience as Method 17
two
Moral Theory and Moral Practice 43
three
The Normative Standpoint of Pragmatism 71
contents
PART T WO
dewey’s view of moral experience
four
Morality as Experience 81
five
The ‘‘What’’ of Moral Experience 88
six
The ‘‘How’’ of Moral Experience 121
seven
Character and Conduct: Dewey and the Great Divide in Ethics 129
eight
Present Activity and the Meaning of Moral Life 146
nine
Conclusion: The Need for a Recovery of Moral Philosophy 156
viii
contents
PART THREE
the ideal moral life
ten
The Intelligent, Aesthetic, and Democratic Way of Life 165
eleven
The Ideal Moral Self 185
twelve
Democracy as the Ideal Moral Community 217
thirteen
A Philosophical Justification of Democracy 260
conclusion 300
Notes 309
Bibliography 327
Index 335
ix
PREFACE
It is one of the delights of authorship that one can publicly express one’s
gratitude to those who helped along the way. And this book is to a large
extent the product of my very fortunate interaction with many people at
di√erent stages of my inquiry. I am grateful to my dear colleague John J.
McDermott for his advice and support throughout the years, and for
stressing the importance of living aesthetically. I learned how to approach
pragmatism from my friend and mentor, Douglas Browning, to whom I
owe my deepest gratitude. As a teacher, Browning’s radical approach to the
classical American pragmatists is to try to read them as openly, honestly,
and empathetically as possible; in other words, we must try to understand
their philosophies on their own terms. A text is, of course, subject to a
plurality of reasonable interpretations, but too many philosophers cannot
help but read their own theoretical commitments into the text. In doing
so, many have missed Dewey’s radical reconstruction of philosophy. In
particular, Browning tirelessly insists that we must pay attention to what
Dewey himself tells us in regard to the proper way of engaging in philo-
sophical inquiry.
The message from Dewey is clear. The practical stance of everyday life
xi
preface
has been neglected in philosophy when it should be the primary focal

point for philosophical inquiry. The legitimate starting and ending point
for any philosophical investigation is our own everyday, concrete experi-
ence, that is, nothing more or less than that which appears, rough-and-
tumble as it usually does, in our lives from day to day. This book grew as a
project to make sense of what Dewey wrote about moral life, keeping in
mind his commitment to starting with everyday experience. But I also
wanted to make explicit Dewey’s most fundamental moral commitments
or ideals and explore whether they cohere with and are supported by his
philosophy. I quickly realized that given the organic character of Dewey’s
thought, and the centrality of his moral commitments throughout his life,
that it would be di≈cult to write a book on Dewey’s ethics without also
writing a book about his entire philosophy. I dealt with this tension by
aiming at a comprehensive interpretation of John Dewey’s moral philoso-
phy that also provides further support for a particular interpretation of his
entire philosophy. Dewey’s philosophy is an e√ort to establish the reason-
ableness of a certain vision about how to live. For Dewey, democracy is
part of a general moral outlook about how to engage in life. These were
my working assumptions throughout this inquiry.
In my e√orts to provide a full-blown exposition of Dewey’s moral
philosophy I benefited from reading the important work of Jim Gouin-
lock, Todd Lekan, Jennifer Welchman, and Steven Fesmire on di√erent
aspects of Dewey’s ethics. I am also grateful to them for their criticisms,
suggestions, and encouragement to complete my project. Many people
kindly agreed to read parts or early versions of the evolving manuscript
and provided useful suggestions. David Hildebrand read an early draft of
the manuscript; Todd Lekan, Bill Myers, and Shannon Sullivan wrote
detailed comments about the entire manuscript; Steven Fesmire helped
me formulate what distinguished Dewey’s ethics from that of others; and
Derrick Darby and Vincent Colapietro helped me think through revisions
of some key points of the final manuscript. Thanks to them all.
Thanks to Colin Koopman, Robert Kane, and Robert Talisse for their
comments and help on the chapters about democracy. Everyone at In-
diana University Press has been splendid, especially Dee Mortensen, Rob-
ert A. Crouch, and John Stuhr. I appreciated their many suggestions
throughout the process of bringing the book to press. The conferences of
the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy and my gradu-
ate seminars at Texas A&M have been great opportunities to try out my
ideas. Thanks to Jim Garrison, Raymond Boisvert, James Campbell, Doug
Anderson, John Shook, John Capps, Tom Burke, Judith Green, Bill Gavin,
Patrick Dooley, and my graduate philosophy students (too many to men-
xii
preface
tion) for asking such good questions. Special thanks are owed to the late
Ralph Sleeper, Tom Alexander, my former dear colleague Larry Hickman,
Michael Eldridge, Peter Hare, Jorge Gracia, and Charlene Seigfried for
their encouragement over a long period and the example they set. I am
indebted to Ronald Chichester, who painstakingly worked through many
chapters to improve the prose. I am extremely grateful to my parents, John
and Fema, and my wife, Beatriz, for being unending sources of patience,
support, care, and advice. What good fortune to have them in my life!
I am also happy to acknowledge institutional support I received. A
Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship from the National Research
Council (Sept 1991–May 1992) allowed me to conduct the initial research
for this book. Research at the Dewey Center at Southern Illinois University
was kindly facilitated by Larry Hickman and his sta√. And a 1998–1999
Faculty Development Leave from Texas A&M University let me devote
myself fully to writing this book.
Portions of part 1 are drawn from my ‘‘Dewey’s Ethics: Morality as
Experience,’’ in Reading Dewey: Interpretive Essays for a Postmodern Gen-
eration, ed. Larry A. Hickman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1998), 100–123; ‘‘New Directions and Uses in the Reconstruction of John
Dewey’s Ethics,’’ in In Dewey’s Wake: Unfinished Work of Pragmatic Recon-
struction, ed. William J. Gavin (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York
Press, 2002), 41–62; and ‘‘Dewey’s Moral Theory: Experience as Method,’’
Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 33, no. 3 (1997): 520–556. Por-
tions of part 2 are drawn from my ‘‘To Be or To Do: John Dewey and the
Great Divide in Ethics,’’ History of Philosophy Quarterly 14, no. 4 (1997):
447–468; and ‘‘Dewey and Feminism: The A√ective and Relationships in
Dewey’s Ethics,’’ Hypatia 8, no. 2 (1993): 78–95. And portions of part 3 are
drawn from my ‘‘Open-mindedness and Courage: Complementary Vir-
tues of Pragmatism,’’ Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 32, no. 2
(1996): 316–335. I am grateful to the editors and publishers of these books
and journals for permission to reprint material here. I also gratefully
acknowledge the Banco de Mexico for permission to use Diego Rivera’s
‘‘Retrato de John Dewey’’ on the book cover.
xiii
A B B R E V I AT I O N S
Citations of John Dewey’s works are to the thirty-seven volume critical

edition published by Southern Illinois University Press under the editor-
ship of Jo Ann Boydston. Citations give text abbreviation, series abbrevia-
tion, followed by volume number and page number.
Series abbreviations for The Collected Works:
EW The Early Works (1882–1898)
MW The Middle Works (1899–1924)
LW The Later Works (1925–1953)
xv
JOHN DEWEY’S ETHICS
Introduction
I n this book, I present the first comprehensive interpretation of John

Dewey’s original and revolutionary moral philosophy.∞ Dewey had a cohe-
sive and coherent ethics developed in many writings that spanned his long
career. It is a moral philosophy that provides answers to questions raised
by moral agents in the midst of living, such as: How should we live? How
should we approach moral problems and reach moral judgments? And:
How should we settle moral disagreement? Dewey wanted to provide
better answers to these moral questions than had traditional ethical the-
ory. Achieving this goal required that he critically engage tradition at
a fundamental level by examining common starting assumptions about
moral experience and how to do ethics. This is one reason why it is
impossible to place Dewey’s ethics in traditional pigeonholes.≤ The up-
shot, as I will argue, is an alternative normative and positive view, one that
is both plausible and compelling. Dewey’s moral philosophy is also the key
to understanding the rest of his philosophy, in particular, his conception
and defense of democracy.
∞
john dewey’s ethics
Dewey’s Reconstruction of Moral Philosophy

In the second half of the twentieth century, modern moral theory came
under attack. Many consider G. E. M. Anscombe’s 1958 essay ‘‘Modern
Moral Philosophy’’ as marking the beginning of this critique. Before then,
however, Dewey had already embarked on a criticism of the philosophical
assumptions that had characterized ethical theory since Kant and Mill.
The linguistic turn at the beginning of the twentieth century was hardly a
radical turn from these assumptions. Dewey’s reconstructive proposal for
ethical theory is not, however, that we must stop doing moral philosophy
‘‘until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology’’≥ or that we need to
return exclusively to the concerns that today define virtue ethics. Dewey
proposes instead that philosophers must make an honest e√ort to take, as
a proper starting point, moral experience as it is experienced. Hence, my
task is first to make explicit what this starting point amounts to (part 1),
and then to show its consequences and implications for ethics. Dewey’s
view of moral life (part 2) and his normative ethics (part 3) are the upshot
of this new starting point.
Dewey proposes that in moral life, duty, virtue, and the good have
their irreducible and proper place. We need not choose between deontol-
ogy, virtue ethics, and consequentialism. Dewey includes and reconciles
ideas about moral life that, from the point of view of these other theories,
may seem incompatible. Dewey’s insights are attractive in light of today’s
growing awareness of the reductionistic and myopic character of modern
ethics. However, the challenge today is to present an inclusive and pluralis-
tic account of moral life that is both unified and coherent. Dewey’s ethics
is not the result of ad hoc moves, nor is it a matter of adding together the
insights of others. Instead, it is an ethics that is the result of a reconstruc-
tion that abandons the assumptions that have forced us to take sides, and
it is one that reveals a moral life that is rich and complex.
Dewey once explained that the radical empiricism he shared with
William James yielded two kinds of contributions for philosophy. One
contribution is to provide answers to old problems, while the other ad-
vances philosophy by undercutting the genuineness of certain problems.∂
Dewey felt that there are questions insu≈ciently grounded in everyday
moral experience that continue to be divisive among philosophers. There
are also other questions, he thought, whose legitimacy is based on the as-
sumption that there are no alternatives to extreme options. Dewey under-
cuts these kinds of questions in order to clear the way for his own answers
to legitimate traditional questions, and he proposes and defends new tasks
for ethical theory.
≤
introduction
In presenting Dewey’s rich account of moral experience, I will high-

light both the di√erences and the continuities between Dewey’s thought
and the assumptions of mainstream ethical theory. If there is more em-
phasis on the di√erences, it is only because I believe that we have yet to
appreciate the distinctiveness of Dewey’s ethical thought, and how it de-
parts from traditional alternatives. Dewey reconstructs traditional con-
ceptions of the moral self, of deliberation and of moral problems. He
points to dimensions of moral life that tend to be overlooked and under-
valued in much modern ethical thought, but that are increasingly of inter-
est in contemporary ethical theory. Moreover, a growing body of research
in social psychology and cognitive science has begun to o√er an alternate
picture of moral judgment and of moral deliberation that is very much
like Dewey’s. For example, Mark Johnson claims that: ‘‘The issue of the
role of feelings in thought is one area in which cooperative cognitive
science is perhaps only recently catching up with the early arguments of
James and Dewey.’’∑ A comprehensive reconstruction of Dewey’s ethics is
needed so that it can be used to revitalize ethical theory.
A full engagement of Dewey in mainstream moral debates is beyond
the scope of this book. I weigh in on some of the most important contem-
porary debates, but I limit such discussions in order to maintain the focus
and unity of the whole. I hope that my comments about contemporary
debates will be su≈ciently provocative to encourage those who are famil-
iar with mainstream ethics to engage Dewey and to take his ethics se-
riously. I also hope that what I have done in this regard is enough to assist
or to inspire other Deweyans to pursue this line of inquiry further than I
have. There needs to be a more detailed consideration of the arguments
and views in current moral theory from a Deweyan perspective. My pres-
ent project, however, issues a warning: we must not become so eager to
become part of the mainstream philosophical dialogue that we compro-
mise Dewey’s unique and most worthwhile contributions. The Dewey
who is worth reconstructing is often the one who calls into question the
basic assumptions that ground present debates. A selective reconsidera-
tion of Dewey’s ethics fails to represent the more radical Dewey and may
amount to a failure to use his approach in the most productive way.
In many cases, to understand Dewey’s ethics requires that we divest
ourselves of traditional pictures and look at things from a new angle. This
is not easy. I will try to help the reader by explicitly contrasting Dewey to
philosophers who take more traditional approaches. Sometimes, however,
contrast is not enough. One has to count on the reader to consult his or
her own experience. In fact, as a philosopher Dewey did not just appeal to
arguments; his denotative method often implied an invitation of the fol-
≥
lowing sort: ‘‘If you want to understand and verify what I am talking
about, please try to put aside for the moment all of the theories of moral
life that you know, and instead consult your everyday, gross, and crude
experience of moral decisions and problems.’’
Three Facets of Dewey’s Ethics

Providing a unifying account of Dewey’s moral philosophy requires that I
show how his contributions to ethics are interrelated. His contributions
result from a larger inquiry grounded on the same core commitments,
and are not just a collection of disparate philosophical insights about
morality. Dewey’s ethics cannot be understood in isolation from the larger
fabric of the whole of his philosophy, and his ethics cannot be judged or
appreciated from the standpoint of assumptions that are foreign to his
wider philosophy. The holistic character of his philosophy should not be
considered a weakness; on the contrary, it is something that Dewey shares
with great ethical thinkers like Kant and Aristotle.
Moreover, Dewey’s ethics is the key to understanding his wider phi-
losophy. He had a lifelong preoccupation with democracy, which for him
was a moral ideal. Dewey also wrote that his
choice of intelligence as the preferred method of action implies, like

every choice, a definitive moral outlook. The scope of this choice is so
inclusive that the implication outlines, when followed out, an entire
ethical and social philosophy. (LW 8:101)
Dewey, however, did not consolidate his ideas about moral philosophy in
any single work. The few books in which Dewey focused explicitly on ethics
were textbooks and syllabi, written primarily for classroom work and not
intended to be systematic theoretical formulations. It would have been
fitting for him to write one more revision of his 1932 edition of Ethics (with
James Hayden Tufts), not as a textbook, but as a more comprehensive and
definitive rendition of his moral thought in light of the philosophical
commitments that distinguished his philosophical outlook. The present
book is the one that Dewey should have written on his moral philosophy.
In my e√ort to bring Dewey’s scattered contributions to moral philos-
ophy into a cohesive moral vision, I borrow from all phases of his work to
find the best formulations of his theses. My presentation of Dewey’s ethics
will not be chronological. Dewey’s ideas about ethics, just as his ideas
about other subjects, underwent gradual but continual reconstruction
during the seventy-one years that constituted his public career.∏ Although
these modifications are important, they are not substantial or drastic
∂
introduction
enough to support a sharp distinction between an early and a late Dewey.

It is more accurate to say that Dewey developed his views about moral
experience early in his career, and that he then tended to revise his think-
ing as the implications of his views became apparent and as he felt the
need to present his case in deeper detail or broader scope.π There is a
gradual shift from an ethics of self-realization to a mature pluralistic ethics
that came as a result of acquiring a better phenomenological sensitivity to
moral experience.∫ In his ethics and his more general philosophy, Dewey
was increasingly faithful to his early commitment to a radical empiricism,
that is, to a description of how experience is experienced in all of its
complexity and details.Ω His later ethical writings reveal a more acute
awareness of the pluralism in moral experience, of the indeterminacies
and elements of novelty in situations, of the importance of the a√ective or
qualitative, and of the social and instrumental nature of our character.∞≠
The works that best represent Dewey’s mature treatment of ethics are:
Democracy and Education (1916); Reconstruction in Philosophy (1920); Hu-
man Nature and Conduct (1922); ‘‘Three Independent Factors in Morals’’
(1930); and Ethics (1932).
Unlike many contemporary approaches to ethics, Dewey’s moral
thought does not rest on a set of postulates and arguments that constitute
a formal ethical system. Instead, he criticizes the tradition while simulta-
neously o√ering the reader a hypothetical account of moral experience
and proposing commitments that he sometimes left unstated. Neverthe-
less, in presenting Dewey’s ethics, one must have a focus and a principle of
organization, and this book is so organized.
I explain Dewey’s views in three parts. Each of the book’s three parts
corresponds to a di√erent area of moral philosophy and a corresponding
aspect of Dewey’s ethics:
∞) Meta-theory or Method of Inquiry: a critical stand on the limits,
nature, problems, and function of the type of inquiry that takes
our moral experience as its subject matter;
≤) Descriptive Ethics or Metaphysics of Morals: a treatment of the
generic traits and components of moral experience; and
≥) Normative Ethics: a constructive, though not explicitly articu-
lated, proposal regarding how we should live, that is, how to inter-
act in morally problematic situations.
These facets of Dewey’s ethics are found intertwined throughout his
writings. His philosophical investigations into each of these areas led him
to continuously develop, modify, and refine the others. Should each part
be read in the order presented? I think one will find it easier to under-
∑
stand, or even embrace, Dewey’s normative proposals (part 3) once one

has dispelled the kind of theoretical skepticism that is encountered at the
meta-ethical level (part 1), and once one appreciates Dewey’s view of our
moral experience (part 2). The lessons learned from the first two parts
strike me as fundamental to avoid misunderstandings about the nature
and the limitation of Dewey’s proposals outlined in part 3. Nevertheless,
each part is su≈ciently independent that readers can start with the mate-
rial about the aspects of Dewey’s ethics they find most interesting, and
only then return to the book’s other parts. For example, those more
interested in moral education and democracy, and who are already famil-
iar with Dewey’s most basic methodological and philosophical assump-
tions, may want to begin with part 3.
Although all the parts of this book are important to my overarching
aim, there is an obvious emphasis on the normative in Dewey’s thought.
Dewey’s philosophy is an e√ort to establish the reasonableness of a certain
vision about how to live. This normative emphasis is in accord with the
same reconstructive spirit of Dewey’s ethics, and with his view that philos-
ophies embody ‘‘not colorless intellectual readings of reality, but men’s
most passionate desires and hopes, their basic beliefs about the sort of life
to be lived ’’ (MW 11:44, my emphasis). Skepticism in regard to norma-
tive ethical theory is common in the contemporary intellectual climate.
Many believe that recent global events, such as 9/11, have made us more
aware of ‘‘the ineliminable diversity of moral convictions among the peo-
ple’s of the earth.’’∞∞ Joseph Margolis claims that these events ‘‘lend an
unexpected legitimacy to questioning whether what we call ethics or moral
philosophy may not, after all, be deeply and terribly wrongheaded.’’∞≤
Normative ethics is also not something that most people associate with
pragmatism. Instead, pragmatism is associated with ethical skepticism and
ethical relativism. For example, Richard Posner thinks that pragmatism’s
skepticism about moral ideals is worth reconstructing. For Posner, prag-
matism means ‘‘practical and business-like, ‘no-nonsense,’ disdainful of
abstract theory and intellectual pretension, [and] contemptuous of moral-
izers and utopian dreamers.’’∞≥ On the other hand, pragmatic arguments
against moral absolutes, or against fixed and final ends, have led many to
be concerned about the moral consequences of pragmatism. In the words
of Je√rey Stout,
[P]ragmatism, so its critics say, leads to unwelcome consequences in

ethics and may even contribute to the collapse of all we hold dear. . . . Is
not pragmatism itself an expression of modernist decadence, what a
MacIntyre might call emotivism American style? Doesn’t it induce in its
∏
introduction
adherents a kind of moral aphasia, an inability to talk back in the face of

generalized tyranny? Can any moral language worthy of use survive for
more than a moment if defended primarily in pragmatic terms?∞∂
Although Louis Menand’s thesis that ‘‘pragmatism arose out of disillu-

sionment with postures of moral certitude’’∞∑ is true, pragmatists also had
a disgust for postures of moral skepticism, moral relativism, and the evils
of moral anarchy. In fact, the more I read Dewey’s ethics, the more I
became convinced that his ethics arose out of disillusionment with ex-
tremist postures and the inability to appreciate any possibility of moving
beyond them in moral life. Is the only alternative to the moral certainty
provided by absolutism the absence of any basis to come to reasonable and
objective moral judgments in a situation? If there is no ultimate criterion
of right and wrong, then is anything at all allowed? If one is committed to
a pluralistic democratic society, then must one embrace complete neutral-
ity or relativism in regard to moral issues? In the end, I was convinced that
a careful consideration of Dewey’s ethics and his views on moral expe-
rience would serve to debunk the assumptions that have led many to
extremism in morality and the conclusion that ‘‘as a general philoso-
phy, pragmatism does not seem to o√er a guide to life’s perplexity.’’∞∏
Such a consideration requires nothing less than a full-blown exposition of
Dewey’s moral philosophy and this is what prompted my inquiry into
Dewey’s moral thought.
The tarnished reputation of pragmatism in ethics is, in part, a conse-
quence of the selective overuse of the critical tools of pragmatism without
adoption or acknowledgment of the positive commitments that grounded
them. I not only unearth and reconstruct these positive normative pro-
posals, but I also show that they are compatible with Dewey’s contextual-
ism and with his severe criticism of traditional normative ethical theories.
The challenge for a pragmatist ethical theory today, as I see it, is not just to
be critical and edifying, but to provide an ethics su≈ciently robust to be
taken seriously as something that may assist us in moral life.
Dewey’s Ethics and His Philosophy of

Experience and Democracy
Dewey’s ethics is the key to his entire philosophy. It is essential for under-
standing how his empiricism led him to a radical turn in philosophy, one
that recognizes the importance of the present, context, and the qualitative.
Dewey stood traditional ethics—which takes reasoning, justification, and
judgments as matters of working downward from rules to situations—
π
on its head. In contrast to traditional ethics, Dewey took what is local,

unique, qualitative, and ine√able as starting points and as the basis of what
is universal and cognitive. At the very least, a fuller appreciation of Dew-
ey’s ethics may serve to correct interpretations of Dewey that overempha-
size pragmatism’s concern for instruments, the cognitive, and the future.
Indeed, a comprehensive treatment of Dewey’s moral theory reveals a
more balanced picture of Dewey’s overall thought than is often assumed.
For example, there is a common tension today among Deweyans who
locate the center of gravity of Dewey’s corpus in Art as Experience (and
who thus downplay the role of science), and those who locate it in his
Logic and instrumentalism. From the standpoint of Dewey’s ethics, these
two views seem one-sided and reinforce the contemporary polarization
between science and art that Dewey considered detrimental to the lessons
that can be learned from each for a balanced moral life. He wrote,
Surely there is no more significant question before the world than this
question of the possibility and method of reconciliation of the attitudes
of practical science and contemplative aesthetic appreciation. Without
the former, man will be the sport and victim of natural forces which he
cannot use or control. Without the latter, mankind might become a race
of economic monsters, restlessly driving hard bargains with nature and
with one another, bored with leisure or capable of putting it to use only
in ostentatious display and extravagant dissipation. Like other moral
questions, this matter is social and even political. (MW 12:152–153)
In this book, I argue that the intelligent and aesthetic are mutually depen-
dent aspects or qualifications of a single normative moral vision. They are
integral aspects of Dewey’s ideal self and democratic community.
Dewey’s ethics is crucial for understanding his socio-political thought.
In spite of the fact that Dewey referred to democracy as a moral ideal,
commentators and critics often segregate Dewey’s views on democracy
from his moral thought on the assumption that his views on politics and
social thought can be understood on their own. What would happen if
instead we treated Dewey’s view of democracy as an extension of his ethics?
This is my venture in part 3. I will consider Dewey’s democratic ideal from
the standpoint of his ethics rather than from the context of the history of
American Liberalism or socio-political theory. This approach yields defi-
nite benefits worth mentioning in this introduction.
It is common today to find extensive criticisms of formalistic and
procedural visions of democracy. Cornel West, for example, has recently
argued that ‘‘to focus solely on electoral politics as the site of democratic
life is myopic. Such a focus fails to appreciate the crucial role of the
∫
introduction
underlying moral commitments and visions and fortifications of the soul

that empower and inspire a democratic way of living in the world.’’∞π
Scholars have recently recognized how much more substantive Dewey’s
view of democracy is than the prevalent political notions of democracy. As
Robert Westbrook says, ‘‘Whereas Dewey called for the shaping of a dem-
ocratic character and the creation of a democratic culture . . . other liberals
have moved to strip democracy of its positive, substantive claims in order
to render it a purely negative, procedural doctrine.’’∞∫ But the most di≈-
cult and necessary task for Deweyans is to provide some convincing sub-
stance and depth to the notion that democracy is a way of life. I be-
lieve that the required resources are found in Dewey’s ethics. It is in
Dewey’s ethics that we find the particular virtues, relationships, and expe-
riences that make his view of democracy substantive. In fact, understand-
ing Dewey’s views of democracy from the standpoint of his ethics reveals a
much more radical view of democracy than often assumed.
Dewey’s ethics is also a resource for answering the recent skeptical
challenges regarding the justification of democracy, especially if we sur-
render belief in natural rights and a fixed human nature. This challenge
has even been posed by pragmatists such as Richard Rorty who argues that
we must abandon, once and for all, the notion that we can provide a
philosophical justification for democracy. The character of justification
available to a pragmatist for her democratic hopes and inspirations can-
not be discussed independently of her view of moral experience, ideals,
and judgments. It is, however, amazing and disturbing how many of Dew-
ey’s critics and sympathizers continue to presuppose that, though his
politics is grounded in his ethics, his ethics contains an ultimate crite-
rion for all value judgments. Furthermore, they presuppose that self-
realization, human fulfillment, or growth is the good that is provided by
democracy; they maintain, in other words, that Dewey is committed to
some form of consequentialism or a teleological view.∞Ω Yet I intend to
show how Dewey’s criticism of these views is unequivocal, and that his
ethics has the resources to provide a very di√erent way of establishing the
reasonableness of democracy.
Perhaps the most important benefit that comes from reassessing
Dewey’s ethics is its capacity to shed light on our contemporary situation.
As Hilary Putnam has recently written,
I believe that Dewey’s perceptive and realistic refusal to reduce ethics to

a single biological trait (such as sympathy) or to any single concern or
to any one rule or system of rules, coupled, as it was, with his insistence
that nonetheless intelligence—situated intelligence—is both possible and
Ω
necessary in the resolution of political and ethical problems, makes him

particularly relevant to our time.≤≠
The continued relevance of Dewey’s ethics may be because the condi-

tions that we are today unhappy with are very similar to the conditions
with which Dewey was himself discontent. It is remarkable how our moral
practice today su√ers from the same types of problems that Dewey experi-
enced and that grounded his inquiries in ethics. Moral anarchy and the
moral rigidity of absolutism are for many the only viable options. Today,
morality is still conceived and practiced as an area of our experience that is
somewhat remote or separated from our daily a√airs. Moral values and
concerns are not organically integrated in the decisions and operations of
our business transactions and institutions. We still su√er from the same
dualisms that lead to extremism and polarization. Dewey’s notion of an
ideal self and community continues to be appealing as a source of direc-
tion and hope in our fragmented and pluralistic society.
Dewey seems prophetic at times about the problems that a world like
ours would have to face, especially if we care about democracy. We have
found new situations in which the values implicit in democracy seem in
conflict. How do we reconcile freedom and tolerance with equality, frater-
nity, and order? The struggle for a more democratic world is far from over.
Even in societies with a political democracy there is a growing concern
about the deterioration of public discourse and of communal bonds, and
the transformation of citizens into apathetic consumers. We are learning,
as Dewey once told us, that conditions for genuine democracy are not just
political. As Mark Malloch Brown, administrator of the United Nations
Development Programme, concluded after the launch of their report, ‘‘the
international cheerleaders for democracy have underestimated what it
takes to build a functioning, properly rooted democracy.’’≤∞ We are also
learning that a democratic way of life is not something that can be forced,
exported, or implanted. As journalist Steven Erlanger says, reflecting on
recent e√orts at democratization around the world,
Democracy, in other words, grows out of a nation’s history and experi-

ences. It can’t be inserted like a silicone implant or put on like a new hat.
Nor can it be imposed, even by the most well meaning or well armed.
Democracy can be nurtured, even fertilized. But one need only read a
few pages of Churchill’s ‘‘History of English-Speaking Peoples’’ to realize
how tender a plant it is, and how aberrant.≤≤
With this, history has validated a central tenet of Dewey’s ethics: moral
amelioration or democratization must grow from within, and, while it is
∞≠
introduction
not altogether under anyone’s control, we can inquire about the indirect
conditions by which a better moral life may grow. In this book, I present
the philosophical underpinnings of this humble but positive tenet.
The Centrality of Experience in Dewey’s Philosophy

This book is informed by, and intends to provide further support for, a
particular interpretation of Dewey’s entire philosophy. The notion of lived
experience goes to the heart of Dewey’s philosophy, where this implies
both: A) a method of doing philosophy; and B) a commitment or faith
that grounded his philosophical project and ideals. I agree with Thomas
Alexander that Dewey’s 1905 essay, ‘‘The Postulate of Immediate Em-
piricism,’’ ‘‘is one of the most radical and revolutionary pieces Dewey
wrote.’’≤≥ In that essay, Dewey explicitly and firmly allies himself with the
radical empiricism of William James, or with what he later characterized
in Experience and Nature as the ‘‘empirical denotative method.’’ To be
empirical in philosophy, however, is not to be scientific but instead to take
experience as the starting point. If this notion is di≈cult to understand, it
is only because of problems with the word ‘experience’. To take experience
as the starting point is simply to begin where we are, not with a theory, but
with what is pre-theoretically given in the midst of our lives. To be em-
pirical in Dewey’s sense is to be a contextualist, but the ultimate context is
the stream of unique and qualitative situations that make up our lives.
Dewey’s experience-centric approach runs counter to the neopragmatist
disregard for experience≤∂ and to the narrow interpretation of pragmatism
as an instrumentalist method to determine the meaning of concepts, such
as truth.≤∑ My interpretation of Dewey also goes against attempts to get at
the heart of Dewey’s philosophy by looking for some first thesis that he is
trying to prove or to build upon. As Douglas Browning explains, the
starting point of everyday experience has not received in Deweyan schol-
arship the attention it deserves.
Understanding John Dewey’s comprehensive and, in its details, daunt-

ingly complex philosophy requires taking account of his view of the
three essential phases of experience, namely, (1) the starting point in
everyday experience of all of our attempts to enhance the meaning of
our lives, (2) the process of the experiential transformation of such
experience, and (3) the experience of consummatory achievement.
Though much has been written about the last two phases and many
scholars have centered their interpretations of Dewey on one or both of
them, the first phase has been too often neglected. This is unfortunate,
since Dewey’s notion of experience, which is the key to grasping the
∞∞
import of each of these phases, is initially shaped at the starting point

and carried forward from it.≤∏
Centering one’s interpretation of Dewey on the starting point is not

only justified by a careful reading of Dewey’s texts, but it also has virtues
for us today. First, it provides the basis by which we may criticize or revise
Dewey’s account and conclusions. We must be open to the possibility that
some of his views may not fit experience as we find it today. Second, it
allows us to construct a more inclusive or comprehensive understanding
of Dewey. Scholars have disagreed in their formulation of the core project
that drove Dewey’s philosophical e√orts. Is it, as Michael Eldridge has
claimed, to ‘‘intelligize practice’’? Is it, as suggested by Larry Hickman,
to expand our understanding and appropriate use of technology? Is it, as
Robert Westbrook has proposed, to re-define democracy? Or is it to rec-
ognize the aesthetic dimension of experience, as claimed by Thomas Alex-
ander?≤π I would argue that these characterizations point to capacities
of the starting point of everyday experience. All of them are correct about
Dewey’s ideal, but they are only parts of one cohesive vision that is
grounded on a concern and commitment to experience. Dewey’s ideal self
and community are important in his answer to the question of how to live
in light of a certain view of experience and under certain problematic
conditions that characterize present existence.
Dewey was troubled by philosophers’ disregard for experience, not
only as a method of investigation or starting point, but for much deeper
reasons. Experience, as a source of meaning and guidance, has been dis-
regarded in philosophy. However, the problem extends beyond philoso-
phy. There are complex and perhaps di√erent historical reasons why,
during Dewey’s time and still today, people have failed to rely on and
explore the possibilities for meaning and amelioration present in con-
crete, everyday life. But insofar as philosophy helps perpetuate this prob-
lem, criticism is needed to remove the obstacles, such as dualism, that keep
us from trying Dewey’s more promising direction. Of particular impor-
tance for Dewey is the fact that philosophy has continued to oscillate
between extremes.
If there is one general concern that pervades Dewey’s philosophy, it is
one of ameliorating the quality of present experience by its own resources.
It is true that Dewey wanted to inquire into the deeper possibilities of
democracy, to find an alternative to moral absolutism and subjectivism, to
procure a more organic relation between art, technology, business, and
the sciences, and to extend the method of intelligence to all aspects of
life. But these are all tasks promulgated by Dewey’s underlying but very
∞≤
introduction
personal faith in experience. That is, for me, the ultimate glue of Dewey’s
vision. This insight highlights the importance of the mystical experience
in Dewey’s personal life where he felt suddenly that ‘‘everything that’s
here is here, and you can just lie back on it.’’≤∫ As Robert Westbrook
correctly points out, Dewey ‘‘would never lose touch with this feeling,
though his interpretation of its meaning and implications would change
dramatically.’’≤Ω
Dewey’s philosophy is committed to finding, articulating, and testing
the better and worse ways in which we can lie back on life. His philosophy
is saturated with hypotheses about those interactions and ways of par-
ticipating in situational, everyday life that are key to its capacity to regu-
late, ameliorate, educate, and enrich itself with meaning without the need
for something antecedent, supernatural, or external to itself. Intelligent
inquiry and the creation and appreciation of art are, for instance, two
modes in which we can find the way to guide the course of experience to
greater depth of meaning by its own resources.
I will argue that to lie back on lived experience in a way that makes the
process self-regulative requires the cultivation of a balance between virtues
typically associated with experimentation, intelligence, and democracy. I
will emphasize the importance of a pre-reflective, qualitatively felt present
situation as not only the starting point but the ultimate source of guidance
in moral life.≥≠ The pre-reflective is not only the background, but also the
normative basis of our inquiries. To dismiss the qualitative is to dismiss
context, which is for Dewey the root of all philosophical evils.
∞≥
PART ONE
Moral Theory and Experience
one
Experience as Method
It is commonly claimed that Dewey, like other theorists in the twentieth

century, sought an empirical grounding for ethics. This is true, but it is not
illuminating unless Dewey’s own brand of empiricism and his views about
experience as method are made clear.
Although Dewey published the second edition of his Ethics in 1932,
there is not in this text an explicit recognition or explanation of how the
philosophical empiricism that he was committed to and that received its
final articulation in the first chapters of Experience and Nature bears upon
his philosophical inquiries and conclusions about morality. Dewey’s criti-
cism of traditional ethical theory presupposed a methodology, and it was
informed by the systematic mistakes that he detected in other areas of
philosophy.
We must first ask what one could mean by the claim that an ethical
theory or inquiry, such as Dewey’s, is empirical. A survey of the literature
on this issue suggests the following possible tenets:
∞) It is an ethics that adopts the subject matter, concepts, results, and
judgments of the natural sciences (i.e., a science of morality);
≤) It is an ethics that has as its starting point social psychology and
∞π
evolutionary naturalism (i.e., one based on scientific truths or

standpoints);
≥) It is an ethics that is like science in certain methodological respects
(i.e., one modeled upon science);
∂) It is an ethics that is informed by the natural sciences; and
∑) It is an ethics that, like other empirical inquiries in philosophy,
relies on experience as method. It takes moral experience as its
starting point.
Many of the misdirected criticisms of Dewey’s ethics have assumed

that he held tenet (1). Dewey’s defenders rightly point out that this is a
caricature of his view.∞ One cannot take Dewey’s remarks about a ‘‘science
of ethics’’ at face value. Dewey cannot be identified with a naturalistic
reduction of moral judgments to scientific statements or with any scientis-
tic approach to morality. I suspect that many of the scientistic interpreta-
tions of Dewey’s ethics originate from confusing Dewey’s suggestions that
we must apply the methods of science to the problems of morality with
applying the methods of science to ethical theory. These are entirely dif-
ferent maneuvers and Dewey did not endorse the latter.
Tenet (2) is a more recent interpretation.≤ Dewey had a tendency to
describe everyday experience by using biological and psychological terms.
This successfully sidelined the modern view of the self as a subject or
spectator of an antecedent reality, but it misleadingly suggests that Dewey
is a philosopher who adopts a scientific outlook upon things or who starts
with theoretical truths given by the sciences. The pragmatists certainly
were influenced by Darwin and evolutionary naturalism, and they saw
these and other developments in the sciences (at the turn of the twentieth
century) as providing an indirect validation of their philosophical views.
But this is di√erent than claiming that pragmatism, in particular, their
view of moral experience, is based on or presupposes the truth of Darwin-
ism or any other evolutionary theory.
There is also no doubt that Dewey had a social psychology that influ-
enced his ethics, but its conclusions were not the starting point of his
ethics. Psychology is a type of inquiry that, however useful and important,
is limited by the purposes, methods, and selectivity particular to the sci-
ences.≥ Dewey spent many years reading and criticizing extant psychologi-
cal theories because he thought they were based on problematic dualisms.
This was important to Dewey because educational practices in his day
were based on these psychologies, and he thus had to engage them for his
criticisms to be e√ective. Dewey was, however, clear on the di√erences
between philosophy and psychology as inquiries.
∞∫
experience as method
Instead of the narrow view assumed by tenets (1) and (2), commenta-
tors and defenders of Dewey’s ethics point out that tenets (3) and (4)
better convey the sense in which Dewey’s ethics is empirical. Tenet (4)
postulates an ethics that is constantly nurtured and informed by the re-
sults of scientific inquiries. The moral philosopher is accordingly more
interdisciplinary than is typical. Compared to tenet (4), tenet (3) seems to
make a stronger claim about the relation between science and ethics. An
empirical ethics is one that adopts the general method of inquiry of the sci-
ences. For example, Dewey did not see why the conclusions of moral phi-
losophy could not be as hypothesis-driven as those of the sciences. Recent
scholars have insisted that to appreciate that this was Dewey’s view we
must first understand what he meant by science or the scientific method.
Jennifer Welchman, for example, claims that if one carefully studies Dew-
ey’s conception of the nature of science, one finds that he thought that
‘‘every scientist acts in accordance with procedural rules’’∂ that can be
experimentally confirmed. This indicates at least one respect in which
ethics can be like science. ‘‘Commitment to such rules, Dewey holds, is the
essence of science. It is in this respect that he believes ethical theory ought
to become scientific.’’∑ If ethics is to advance it should ‘‘construct pro-
cedures for inquiries analogous to those used in the physical sciences.’’∏
For James Campbell, it is the ‘‘scientific attitude’’ and the communal
(‘‘public’’) aspect of science that attracted Dewey to the notion of ‘‘ethics
as a moral science.’’π
I do not wish to question tenets (3) and (4) as Deweyan theses, or the
above claims by Dewey scholars. However, I think there are limitations to
this way of proceeding if one wants to understand both Dewey and the
notion of an empirical ethics. Although the association of empiricism
with science is not totally unwarranted, I question the fruitfulness of
ascribing tenet (3) to Dewey for a full understanding of his radical recon-
struction of moral philosophy. Dewey scholars should not assume that we
must demonstrate the respects in which ethics can be like science on the
assumption that a failure to do so will scuttle our claims to have articu-
lated an empirical ethics. This is especially so if ethics is a subject within
philosophy. Dewey had a well-developed view of what it means for an area
of philosophy to be empirical, and it is this that is appealed to in tenet (5),
a view compatible with, but not reducible to, tenet (3). Indeed, Dewey’s
thoughts about empirical philosophy are independent of how he con-
ceived the relation between philosophy and science.∫
Dewey used science as an analogy or as a paradigm, and advocated in
ethics a method analogous to scientific inquiry. At the time, the analogy
with science was important for Dewey because it served the function of
∞Ω
emphasizing ‘‘the continuity of ethical with other forms of experience’’

(MW 8:35). Unfortunately, analogies have their limits and can outlive their
usefulness. In fact, some have recently argued that art or aesthetic experi-
ence is a better analogy for understanding Dewey’s ethics. This is the
approach of Steven Fesmire in John Dewey and Moral Imagination: Prag-
matism in Ethics, and it is a welcome corrective to the scientistic views of
Dewey’s ethics. In the process of emphasizing what has been wrongly
ignored by scientistic views of Dewey’s ethics, however, Fesmire may have
overstated the case on behalf of an aesthetic reading of Dewey’s ethics.Ω For
one does not need to choose between an aesthetic and scientific view of
Dewey’s ethics, nor indeed for his overall philosophy. Dewey used science
and art as metaphors by which to understand moral experience without
committing himself to a reduction of morality to art or science. This is not
a widely appreciated point.
Instead of deciding whether the science or art analogy is better, I want
to move beyond them (in some sense, before them) to focus on Dewey’s
commitments to an empirical philosophical method and how this yields
the kind of ethics it did. It was his commitment to a di√erent starting
point in philosophical inquiry that led him to provide one of the most
devastating and systematic critiques of modern moral theory, and a radi-
cally new account of moral experience.
Experience as the Starting Point

Dewey’s early insistence in making ethics scientific is part of his more
general and lifelong aim to base philosophy in lived experience or to take
experience as the starting point. Early on he characterized the empiricist’s
way of philosophizing in terms of a postulate, that is, the ‘‘postulate of
immediate empiricism.’’ This is the hypothesis that ‘‘things—anything,
everything, in the ordinary or non-technical use of the term ‘thing’—are
what they are experienced as’’ (MW 3:158). A genuine empiricism in phi-
losophy entails that, no matter how abstract and remote our philosophical
speculations might turn out, we need to start and end with directly experi-
enced subject matter. For Dewey, then, experience is a ‘‘starting point and
terminal point, as setting problems and as testing proposed solutions’’ (LW
1:14, my emphasis). This turn toward everyday lived experienced is the
most important philosophical inheritance we have received from Dewey.
This method would not be so important to Dewey if most philoso-
phizing had been done from this empirical postulate and attitude. For the
most part, however, the starting point in philosophy has been theoretical
≤≠
abstractions (or as Dewey says, ‘‘reflective products’’), rather than primary

experience, that is, everyday experience as it is found, present and given.
Even modern empiricism has not been radical (or empirical) enough to
distinguish a theory about experience from experience as it is experienced.
In general, experience in modern philosophy has been understood as the
content of consciousness, that is, of a knowing subject who is a spectator to
an antecedent world or object. But this is a picture that we may employ
when we adopt a theoretical point of view; it is not, however, how we expe-
rience our everyday life from a pre-theoretical and engaged point of view.
Modern philosophers tend to start their inquiries with the feature of events
qua known and not as they are experienced in their robust and raw char-
acter. We cannot ignore the crudities of life just because they are crude.
Dewey’s moral philosophy is revolutionary because he tries to avoid
all the mistaken theoretical starting points and begins with moral experi-
ence as it is lived. However, before considering what this means, we must
first address some possible misunderstandings and questions about the
sort of empirical method Dewey proposed.
Does not the above postulate assume the very naïve philosophical
view that there are givens independent of theories that we can appeal to as
a neutral court of appeal? Alasdair MacIntyre has recently claimed that
‘‘we need to avoid the error of supposing that there are facts of the moral
life completely independent of and apart from theory-laden characteriza-
tion of those facts.’’∞≠ If all facts of experience are theory-laden (and the
given is a myth), then it seems that Dewey’s empiricism, particularly his
appeal to a primary experience—that is, to things as they are present and
given in our everyday practical life—is at best problematic.
But Dewey recognizes that there are no hard or neutral givens. A
central tenet of his philosophy is that ‘‘selective emphasis, with accom-
panying omission and rejection, is the heart-beat of mental life’’ (LW 1:31).
We can distinguish two possible ways in which selectivity (or interpreta-
tion) is part of experiencing—pre-theoretically and theoretically—but for
Dewey neither one renders futile the e√ort to be empirical.
Experience can be theory-laden. This means that either a theory we
hold determines what counts as a fact or our selection of facts from the
total field of experience is determined by our interest in confirming or
disconfirming a theory we already hold. A recognition of this kind of
selectivity lets us question the naïve idea that empirical theories are mere
transcripts of independent and brute matters of fact. Although Dewey
recognizes this kind of selectivity, he hardly thinks it follows that all expe-
rience is theory-laden and that, therefore, any appeal to primary experi-
≤∞
ence is problematic. Contemporary philosophers who think otherwise

must hold an extended sense of what counts as a theory or believe that in
the course of everyday life we all look at the world through a theory. To
begin philosophy in the midstream of our lives is not even to begin within a
body of beliefs, as is sometimes assumed by epistemologists. Theories and
beliefs are in our lives.
Primary experience is not, however, pure experience in the sense of
something that we could access if we were able to divest ourselves of our
conceptual and cultural baggage.∞∞ There is pre-theoretical selectivity be-
cause as social and cultural organisms we always confront a situation with
a character (set of habits, emotions, beliefs) that to a certain extent deter-
mines the content of what is non-reflectively given and present. We grow
up in a certain society with a certain language and in the process we
acquire conceptual and perceptual habits that may determine what we
directly experience. Nevertheless, we do experience things in their gross
qualitative givenness in a situation. We must be faithful to this lived expe-
rience regardless of how this given might be conditioned by one’s charac-
ter and one’s historical cultural context. The extent of this conditioning is
an open question and not critical to the use of the method.
The empirical method, hence, provides a basis for continuous criti-
cism and evaluation of theories. A philosopher proceeds empirically when
her theoretical selectivity is guided by what is pre-theoretically given. If we
can appeal to our description of what is directly experienced, then we can
appeal to something outside of our theories. To be clear, that which is
immediately or directly experienced is not, for Dewey, just sense percep-
tion, as is presupposed by some modern theories of knowledge. Instead,
we immediately experience things, others, anticipations, relations, nov-
elty, location, flow, qualities, and so on in the midstream of our everyday
engagements. For Dewey, the pre-theoretical (i.e., primary experience) is
the more primitive level because it encompasses the theoretical and be-
cause it is where things are present in their brute and direct qualitative
givenness and thereness. We need to begin and end experientially guided
inquiries on this level.
There is a sense, then, in which there are moral facts independent of
theory. For there is no reason to think that everything that is experienced
as moral in our everyday lives is determined by a theory. This is not to
deny that it is di≈cult to be empirically minded in philosophy. There is,
for example, the problem of designating the experiential subject matter to
be studied without using or assuming a theory. This is a di≈cult task
because one often comes to a subject matter with pre-conceived theoreti-
≤≤
cal assumptions and with certain theoretical demands and interests. Yet
the fact that many or most philosophers become trapped in their theories
does not mean that this is inevitable, and it is not su≈cient to demonstrate
that the philosophical e√ort to be truthful to experience is futile.
Dewey’s form of empiricism is not the kind that many would like.
One cannot object that although the method o√ers a way of evaluating
and testing theoretical hypothesis it cannot guarantee that they will corre-
spond to the nature of things, or in the case of moral theory to a moral
reality outside of experience. For this objection assumes a mysterious
ontological gap between experience and reality that is ruled out by Dew-
ey’s postulate. On the other hand, the complaint might be that while it
gives us an extra-theoretical check on our theories it does not provide us
with freedom from our historical circumstances. The extent to which our
primary experience is conditioned by our culture or place in history is a
source of anxiety to those who would like to have the assurance that what
they experience is unspoiled by their circumstances. Dewey did not expe-
rience this anxiety because he did not even understand what this last sense
of freedom could mean.
However, Dewey’s denial of pure experience does not mean that he
held the theory that our starting point is always inside a language, a cul-
ture, or a socioeconomic system. He would be skeptical of any theory that
claimed that our primary experience is determined (or conditioned) by
one single cohesive factor such as one’s historical period, culture, race,
class, or biological makeup. These are all reductionistic and, as such, non-
empirical theories that overlook the complexity and heterogeneity of fac-
tors and interactions that are the conditions for human experience. We do
not experience ourselves as inside (or as trapped in) our subjectivity,
language, or anything else. The notion, for example, that one’s culture or
social class solely determines moral experience is itself a theory, rather
than what we experience when we have moral experiences.
Dewey’s appeal to primary experience is not a disguised appeal to the
status quo. On the contrary, the purpose is to encourage criticism. Philos-
ophy as criticism relies on subjecting the more refined reflective products
of our inquiry to the test of primary experience. But philosophy can also
subject to criticism what, at any time, is taken as primary experience. This
is done either by arguing that it is not really primary or by unveiling
factors (e.g., historical-cultural beliefs) that condition our experience in
an unwanted way. We start where we are, in the midst of our pre-reflective
and immediate qualitative experiences. These experiences change and are
transformed by inquiry but we must return to them as our guide. If we
≤≥
have prejudices or stereotypes that distort our immediate experience, then

we should find this out through inquiry, the criticism of others, and
further experiences. There is no privileged theoretical or objective stand-
point—the God’s-eye view—for us to take.
In other words, experience as method relies on what is experienced;
and what is experienced not only changes but can be modified and im-
proved by the same method. Nevertheless, e√ective criticism and modi-
fication of what we experience needs to begin with what we do in fact
experience in our ordinary practical situations. What we cannot do, how-
ever, is simultaneously subject all our primary experience to criticism.
Reflective criticism always takes place in the non-cognitive context of a
situation that cannot be transcended.
Neither is the appeal to experience a disguised form of foundational-
ism. Experience as method is not experience as a foundation. Since Des-
cartes, the latter has been understood as a fixed and particular subject
matter that we can (as subjects or spectators) gaze at and provide the
unshakable grounds of our philosophies. Yet for Dewey, this is a theo-
retical conception of experience. Experience cannot be a foundation be-
cause we are in experience as agents in situations. As Douglas Browning
explains,
Day after day we find ourselves within an integral part of those ever-
changing and always unique situations that constitute our lives and
mark out their shifting horizons. Each of us is bound within this situa-
tional stream, a stream which is never at rest, always in transit. We
cannot stop it or freeze it even for a second; we cannot view it from
without or find some external point of leverage from which we might
alter the direction of its flow. We are not mere subjects for whom our
situations are objects to be observed; we are agents in our situations, in
our arenas of action, and part of what transpires there is our own doing.
Now, this stream of situations in our lives is precisely that to which
Dewey refers by the term ‘experience’.∞≤
Hence, in a certain sense, experience is always our starting point (and

for that matter middle and end point) for we cannot get away from it. The
choice is not between starting in or outside of experience but between
ways of proceeding within it. The di√erence between adopting an empiri-
cal method of inquiry or not is ultimately the choice between a≈rming or
denying the character of things as they are presented to us in our everyday
lives. To be an empiricist is to live by the naïve and crude sort of realism
that a≈rms that what is real is whatever is denotatively found. It is to go by
≤∂
how things present themselves and not by how we want them to be. It is
‘‘accepting what is found in good faith and without discount’’ (LW 1:372),
and to settle issues by ‘‘finding and pointing to the things in the concrete
contexts in which they present themselves’’ (LW 1:377).
Dewey’s empirical method has significant implications about the re-
sources and limits of philosophical inquiry and criticism. Argumentation
and logical rigor continue to be important, but there is also the require-
ment of adequacy to experience, a requirement that introduces a way of
evaluating philosophical hypotheses that can be both a strength and lia-
bility of pragmatism. Dewey rejects commonplace assumptions in ethics
because they are not based in his everyday primary experience, and he
doubts that they are a part of the primary experience of other ethical
theorists. This is a good reason for Dewey to reject entire views, even when
they are impeccably well argued and meet all possible objections. This,
however, is a liability because it opens the pragmatist to the charge of
seeming to be shallow, dismissive, and begging questions in her confronta-
tion with alternative views.
How can anyone be certain that one is beginning with things as they
are experienced and not with reflective products or theoretical presup-
positions? There is no certainty here and Dewey provides no infallible
method by which one can guarantee success in the empirical method he
proposes. All one can do is be alert to purposes that might distort or
mislead, such as holding on to a theory too zealously. Others might also
keep us on alert. This is why the empiricist method requires that one’s
results be tested by the results and lived experience of others. One can
guide others to circumstances that would let them test one’s own results;
but suggesting that others have certain experiences is not the same as
providing a reason or an argument in their defense. It does, however, open
our hypothesis to the criticism of others.
Dewey also suggests that it would help if we keep the term ‘experience’
in philosophy as a reminder of our method. This will remind one to run a
never-ending check of one’s philosophy both with one’s day-to-day expe-
riences and with the results of other philosophers. Even more helpful is
the suggestion that we learn from the experience of other philosophers. To
study other philosophers’ mistakes might prevent one from making those
same mistakes and avoid false starts of a particular, that is, non-empirical,
kind. Dewey very helpfully summarizes the general and systematic kinds
of mistakes made by non-empirical philosophers, and it will be helpful to
consider them before continuing to disclose the proper starting point for
ethical theory.
≤∑
The Philosophical Fallacy

Dewey thought that the general failure to be empirical in philosophy
amounted to a failure to acknowledge primary experience as the non-
cognitive context of philosophical inquiry. Philosophers often denied the
practical experiential context of their own investigations and took the
products of their inquiries to replace experience as it is lived. Philosophers
have not only failed to let their own inquiries be guided by and returned
to context but they have also defended notions of thinking as devoid of
all context. Hence, Dewey concludes that ‘‘the most pervasive fallacy of
philosophic thinking goes back to neglect of context’’ (LW 6:5). This gen-
eral failure was so common in philosophy that he calls it ‘‘the philosophi-
cal fallacy’’ (LW 1:51).
The philosophical fallacy became Dewey’s main tool of criticism in
di√erent areas of philosophy, and he discovered many di√erent ways that
philosophers made the same fundamental mistake. But he never clearly
set forth in a systematic way the various formulations and versions of
the fallacy. I will sort out four di√erent versions of the fallacy and show
how they generate the truncated view of experience inherited by non-
empirical ethics.
t h e a n a ly t i c fa l l a c y
Analysis is a process where we discriminate some particulars or elements

within a context. Of course, what gives the particulars their connection
and continuity is the context itself. Philosophers commit the analytic
fallacy when the results of an analysis are interpreted as complete in them-
selves apart from any context. ‘‘It is found whenever the distinctions or
elements that are discriminated are treated as if they where final and self-
su≈cient’’ (LW 6:7).
Though Dewey refers to this fallacy as one of analysis, it is not limited
in its application to a specific phase of inquiry. The key to this fallacy is
that the rich and concrete context from which distinctions are abstracted
is forgotten and the results of inquiry are given a status that they do not
and should not have. The conclusions of inquiry are not only treated as
final and self-su≈cient, but they are sometimes elevated, ontologized, or,
as Dewey said, given ‘‘antecedent existence.’’∞≥
As result of their analyses, philosophers have dissected the world
in many ways: mind and body, reason and passion, subject and ob-
ject. There is nothing wrong with these dissections per se, but the con-
≤∏
crete non-cognitive integral contexts from which things were dissected

are often forgotten. With these dissections in hand, philosophical prob-
lems are then invented that center on how to reconcile features that are
actually experienced as part of a unified and integral whole. This fallacy
is responsible for the atomistic, dualistic, and subjective view of expe-
rience. Instead of starting with the integrated unity and unanalyzed to-
tality found in a situation, modern philosophy begins with ontological
gaps (dualisms), and functional distinctions that regulate primary expe-
rience are taken as the starting point of philosophical inquiry, that is,
as primary.
t h e fa l l a c y o f u n l i m i t e d u n i v e r s a l i z at i o n
Another common way for philosophers to ignore context and elevate the
conclusions of their inquiries is to give them unlimited application. This
occurs when they ignore the fact that conclusions arise out of limiting
conditions set by the contextual situation of particular inquiries. Philoso-
phers are prone to this fallacy because they often try to formulate theories
about truth, good, reality, or the absolute writ large. In many instances,
one ‘‘converts abstraction from specific context into abstraction from all
contexts whatsoever’’ (LW 6:16). Philosophers tend to absolutize or uni-
versalize their conclusions because they ignore the fact that philosophical
inquiry always occurs against a temporal and spatial background that is
not subject as a whole to reflection.
t h e fa l l a c y o f s e l e c t i v e e m p h a s i s
The fallacy of selective emphasis occurs when the philosopher forgets or
overlooks selectivity and the purposes of selection that are part of the
context of a particular inquiry. The most common consequence and sign
of this is that non-empirical philosophers do not ascribe reality to what-
ever is left out of, or not selected in, their inquiries. Hence, whatever has
value in some specific context and for some particular purpose determines
what is real. But this is to confuse good or useful traits with ‘‘fixed traits of
real being’’ (LW 1:33). Because philosophers cherish simplicity, certainty,
and permanence, they convert these traits into real features of the world;
meanwhile, uncertainty, change, and ambiguity are taken as phenomenal,
subjective, or as lacking reality. According to Dewey, however, all that
happens is equally real though perhaps not of equal worth. If one is
empirical one recognizes that primary experience has precarious elements
as well as stable ones.
≤π
i n t e l l e c t ua l i s m
Intellectualism might be thought of as a combination of the aforemen-
tioned fallacies. But it is so pervasive in the history of non-empirical
philosophy that it should be considered a separate fallacy. Philosophers
have always favored cognitive objects. The problem arises when, as a
consequence of her cognitive bias, the philosopher deems unimportant or
unreal whatever is non-cognitive or pre-cognitive. The consequence of in-
tellectualism in philosophy has been a certain narrow view of experience,
namely, that all experience is a mode of knowing. The concept of experi-
ence that is at the heart of traditional epistemology assumes something
like an intellectualist postulate: things really are what they are known to
be. Therefore, we have to possess knowledge in order to reveal reality, and
whatever is ultimately real has to have the characteristics of an object of
knowledge.
If things are what they are experienced as, then there are many other
ways in which we experience things than as objects of knowledge. In fact,
we have a qualitative appreciation of our surroundings that precedes,
underlies, and cannot be reduced to knowledge. Our intellectual activities
always operate within the more general context of the world as encoun-
tered, lived, enjoyed, and su√ered by humans. In primary experience
‘‘things are objects to be treated, used, acted upon and with, enjoyed and
endured, even more than things to be known. They are things had before
they are things cognized’’ (LW 1:27–28). The qualitative character of expe-
rience is not something merely subjective, but rather a trait of existence.
‘‘The world in which we immediately live, that in which we strive, succeed,
and are defeated is preeminently a qualitative world’’ (LW 5:243).
Intellectualism is so predominant in moral theory that it operates in
subtle ways in accounts and debates about moral realism, moral problems,
moral relationships, and moral deliberation. For Dewey, even if the out-
come of moral deliberation might be called moral knowledge, it nonethe-
less arises out of a context of non-cognitively experienced moral subject
matter. As I will argue, even the process of moral deliberation itself is not
purely cognitive; moreover, I will even claim that for Dewey the most
important instrumentalities of moral life are not the usual cognitive pow-
ers associated with moral knowledge. This is not to deny the importance
of knowledge, for knowledge is one mode of experience that can make a
significant di√erence in primary moral experience. However, a pragmatist
is ready to argue against a reductionism of moral life to the cognitive.
Dewey knew that his philosophical views would not be understood
≤∫
by philosophers who are ‘‘wedded to the idea that there is no experi-

enced material outside the field of discourse’’ (LW 14:33). He became, for
instance, frustrated with Bertrand Russell for ‘‘not been able to follow
the distinction I make between the immediately had material of non-
cognitively experienced situations and the material of cognition—a dis-
tinction without which my view cannot be understood’’ (LW 14:32–33).
Against the common tendency by philosophers to assume the ubiquity of
theory and knowledge in experience, Dewey insisted that ‘‘the universe of
experience surrounds and regulates the universe of discourse’’ (LW 12:74).
Today this intellectualist tendency continues by those who assume that
everything in our everyday experience is mediated by language. This total-
izing picture of language all the way down is assumed even by neo-
pragmatists. I will argue that this linguistic bias is a costly one in ethical
theory.
In sum, Dewey’s reconstruction in ethics is a diagnosis of how these

fallacies are endemic to non-empirical approaches to morality. They be-
came his tools of criticism. The consequences of the philosophical fallacy
are philosophical theories that, though simple, coherent, and cohesive, are
far from being adequate to the complexity and richness of everyday expe-
rience. This is probably more true in morality than in any other area of
philosophy. In ethical theory the temptation is to provide a self-serving
characterization of moral life, one that gives theory the apparent power to
resolve moral problems. This is done by reducing our moral experience to
one or a few categories or elements. ‘‘Whatever may be the di√erences
which separate moral theories, all postulate one single principle as an
explanation of moral life’’ (LW 5:280). This continues today to be the basis
for distinguishing among ethical theories. Dale Jamieson explains.
Di√erent theories take di√erent categories as primary. For example,

utilitarianism takes the goodness of outcomes as primary, and from this
derives accounts of the rightness of actions and the virtuousness of
agents. Deontology, on the other hand, takes the rightness of actions as
primary and either derives from this accounts of other categories that it
takes to be morally relevant, or supplements it with accounts of other
categories.∞∂
Theorists who debate each other tend to ignore the fact that in con-
crete moral experience neither the good nor the right is reducible to the
other. Ethical theorists have neglected the non-cognitive, pluralistic, and
incommensurable aspects of moral life because they are of no use in
≤Ω
constructing a theoretically coherent system that can presumably provide

solutions to moral problems. The results are reductionism and simplifica-
tion. These might be considered virtues in academic circles but they are
usually vices when it comes to making decisions in our moral lives. In-
deed, the most elegant, coherent, simple, and philosophically puzzle-
solving theory might be the most unhelpful theory for assisting anyone in
his or her moral life. Dewey observed that ‘‘one cause for the ine≈cacy of
moral philosophies has been that in their zeal for a unitary view they have
oversimplified the moral life’’ (LW: 5:288). Moral theory will continue to
be inept in throwing light upon the actual predicaments of moral conduct
as long as it continues to ignore ‘‘the elements of uncertainty and of
conflict in any situation which can properly be called moral’’ (LW 5:279).
Dewey was critical of the formalism and abstraction of Hegelian and
Kantian ethical theories, whose reductionism and oversimplification is
driven by the desire to construct a moral theory as a rational system, that
is, a self-contained system of ideas.∞∑ Jim Gouinlock has recently shown
how John Rawls is also part of the tradition of constructing ethical theo-
ries that are concerned with internal consistency and coherence at the
expense of o√ering robust accounts of our complex moral lives. Gouin-
lock says, ‘‘Rawls is the most famous and influential exemplar of this
reductive and prejudicial mode of thought. The many tributes paid to him
are testimony to the weakness of philosophers for seemingly self-su≈cient
system of ideas.’’∞∏
The empirically inclined ethicist wants her theory to be in accord with
concrete moral experience, a desire that does not by itself guarantee suc-
cess. Dewey praised utilitarians for their empirical spirit and insistence
‘‘upon getting away from vague generalities, and down to the specific and
concrete’’ (MW 12:183). Yet utilitarians, too, never questioned the idea of a
fixed end and assumed a view of moral deliberation that does not conform
to anyone’s experience. It is almost as if they thought they were being
empirical simply because they were suspicious of reason and appealed
instead to quantifiable moral subject matter (units of pleasure and pain).
There are undoubtedly misconceptions about signs of concreteness and
about what counts as an empirical methodology in ethics; however, the
fact that contemporary ethics is more linguistic, historical, or scientific is
no guarantee that it is empirical.
I have, so far, considered what Dewey meant by an empirical method
in philosophy. But what does this method entail for philosophical in-
quiries that take morality as their subject matter? What does it mean to
begin with moral experience? How should an empirical account of moral
life proceed? The first task is designation.
≥≠
Designating the Subject Matter:

Moral Situations as the Starting Point
In Experience and Nature Dewey calls the empirical way of doing phi-
losophy the ‘‘denotative method,’’ where denotation is the phase of an
empirical inquiry where we are concerned to designate (as free from
theoretical presuppositions as possible) the experiential (had) subject
matter for which we can provide di√erent and even competing descrip-
tions and theories. Thus, our empirical inquiry about morality must be-
gin by a rough and tentative designation or denotation of moral experi-
ence from within the broader context of our everyday life and activities.
Once we designate the subject matter, we then engage in inquiry proper
which may include constructing theories and developing concepts. That,
of course, is not the end of inquiry, for we must then take the results of
that inquiry ‘‘as a path pointing and leading back to something in primary
experience’’ (LW1:17). This looping back is essential and it never ends as
long as there are new experiences that may require a revision of our
theories.
Notice how di√erent this is from an ethical theory that starts with a
definition of morality, or aims to arrive at one, that clearly demarcates
moral from non-moral domains. Definitions can be useful, but in philos-
ophy they are often expected to articulate an essence or some definitive
criteria of relevance to the issue at hand. The attempt to pre-theoretically
designate the subject matter, that is, to point in a certain direction, may be
more successful if some general, even vague or crude, description of moral
experience is part of the task. But this is not easy. One must be careful to
designate the subject matter in a way that does not beg the question in
favor of one’s ethical theory or theoretical preconceptions. A philosopher
must make an honest e√ort to designate what is moral based on that
which is experienced as moral. If we are truthful to concrete experiences,
moral experiences are had and they are experiences just as distinctive as
friendly conversations or the enjoyment of music.
To individuals in their everyday pre-theoretical interactions, many
things are experienced as having a predominantly moral cast, quality, or
character. We need to start by pointing out and describing the experiences
that we have in such situations instead of starting with theoretical defini-
tions of morality. It is also important in ethics not to confuse this empiri-
cal task with designating correct moral conduct. To be able to designate
and describe moral experience, one must have the minimal sensitivity
to experience the di√erence between, for example, moral and aesthetic
qualities, rather than to be in the possession of knowledge of what is right
≥∞
and wrong. Dewey’s descriptions of moral experience are thus totally

meaningless to individuals who are devoid of moral sensitivity. This en-
tails a methodological commitment to take seriously how things are pre-
sented within moral life rather than from an external theoretical stand-
point. I will say more on this later.
Can we be certain that everyone engaged in this sort of philosophical
inquiry will be pointing to the same experiences? No, but this is not a good
reason to portray moral experience as subjective or to prefer some other
method. How much agreement there will be among philosophers in the
tasks of designation and description is an open and empirical issue.
In locating moral experience (as a distinctive mode of experience) one
is faced with the di≈culty that the term ‘experience’ has been associated
in philosophy with consciousness or subjective phenomena. For Dewey,
however, experience is simply a person’s practical life, that is, ‘‘the life he
has led and undergone in a world of persons and things’’ (LW 1:369). As
inclusive as this is, we always experience the world in a situational context.
What is truly given at any time in experience is the context of a unique
situation. In fact, to say that we are in experience or that ‘‘individuals live
in a world means, in the concrete, that they live in a series of situations’’
(LW 13:25).
Although the notion of a situation is crucial to locate moral experi-
ence, it is not su≈cient to distinguish moral experience from other modes
of experience. Is there a way to distinguish moral experience from the rest
of experience without committing oneself to its absolute separation from
other modes of experience? Although for Dewey there is no area of our
experience that is exclusively or essentially moral, he designates situations
as predominantly moral when they have the pervasive quality of demand-
ing of the agent that she discover what she morally ought to do among
conflicting moral forces or demands. As philosophers we might step back
from, and reflect on, the unique situations that are experienced as having a
moral component and design theories about our moral life. Those unique
moral situations, however, remain the primitive contexts of moral experi-
ence, that is, of our moral practices and activities. This is the experiential
subject matter to be studied, described, and appealed to in order to test
our theoretical accounts. The basis for distinguishing morality from other
dimensions or modes of experience is the subject matter, problems, and
pervasive quality of certain situations. There is no criterion that is ante-
cedent to the sheer givenness of these experiences.
Moral problems are, of course, not all there is to moral life. Most
situations are fairly well settled, and we plod along in our daily lives,
trusting our habits (rightly so, for the most part) to get us through.
≥≤
Occasionally, though, we find ourselves in a problematic situation, only

some of which are morally problematic. Dewey’s hypothesis in ‘‘Three
Independent Factors in Morals’’ is that they are morally problematic be-
cause we are troubled either about what is the good, the dutiful, or the
virtuous thing to do. Often, however, the problem is that each of these
moral demands points in irreconcilable directions. If we find the right
thing to do through inquiry, it is that which reconstructs a situation from
being morally problematic to being determinate or solved.
In part 2 I will consider in much greater detail Dewey’s view of moral
life, but from this initial description it is already clear how di√erent is
Dewey’s starting point from that of most ethical theorists. Moral theories
have been classified according to whether they take good (teleological-
consequentialist), virtue (virtue ethics), or duty (deontological theories)
as their central category or source of moral justification. However, to
abstract one factor or feature of situations which are experienced as mor-
ally problematic, and then to make that factor supreme or exclusive to
morality is to commit what Dewey called the philosophical fallacy. To be
empirical requires that we come to terms with the fact that good, virtue,
and duty are all irreducible features without a common denominator or a
set hierarchy among them. Simply put, living morally is a messier and
more complicated a√air than moral theorists are willing to recognize.
Ethical Theory and the Theoretical Starting Point

Debates among opposing schools in modern philosophy share a view of
experience which is the result of starting philosophical inquiry by adopt-
ing a theoretical standpoint instead of with how life is experienced by
engaged agents in the midst of life. Dewey calls this standpoint the ‘‘spec-
tator view,’’ and more recently Douglas Browning has called it the ‘‘theo-
retical point of view.’’ Here is how Browning describes it,
taking the theoretical point of view is something you and I often do. As
agents, i.e., as engaged, interactive participants within an immediately
experienced arena of practical, daily a√airs, we frequently find it helpful
to assume the role, take on the guise, of a disengaged and disinterested
observer who is no longer caught up in the rough and tumble of that
arena, but withdrawn from it and merely observes it or some area of
interest within it from an objectifying distance.∞π
The theoretical standpoint is sometimes di≈cult to detect, since it is not

a matter of assuming certain theoretical propositions but of implicitly
adopting a certain outlook from which we construct our moral theories.
≥≥
R. M. Hare, for example, is very explicit about adopting the theoretical

standpoint as his starting point. He says,
Let us imagine a society that has as yet done no moral philosophy. . . .

And then let us suppose that someone does start such an inquiry. What
sort of theory is he likely to come up with? The facts about moral
thinking which will most obviously confront him are facts about intu-
itive moral thinking. He will observe that people do react in consistent
ways, in their verbal and other behaviour, to certain actions in certain
situations.∞∫
Notice how Hare is inviting us to take a theoretical-detached-external

standpoint on morality as the subject matter of philosophical investiga-
tion. For Hare, the philosopher must start by noticing that there are
people in the world who use moral terms in a certain way. The philoso-
pher must start from the same standpoint of the sciences, that is, of the
anthropologist or sociologist. The situations in which the philosopher has
had moral experiences or has used moral language are relevant, but a
description of them as they are experienced seems irrelevant or distracting
from the broader theoretical standpoint we need to take. Why should we
favor the detached theoretical standpoint? This is important because ob-
serving and studying how people use moral terms from this standpoint
looks di√erent than when we are ourselves in the midst of living these
situations. When I am in a morally problematic situation moral terms are
employed but there is a lot more going on than the use of moral language.
In fact, awareness of my moral language as language is usually the last
thing in my mind, unless it is somehow relevant to the moral problems
that I am experiencing. For the most part, I am not initially confronted
with moral terms or questions, but rather find myself in the midst of what
I am immediately experiencing as a moral problem or as a situation where
I am experiencing that something, however vague, is morally wrong.
If from the involved participant’s standpoint an action in a particular
situation strikes us as immediately right or wrong (i.e., as having some
moral character), from a detached-theoretical one a philosopher simply
sees human beings having an experience that requires some theoretical
explanation. Some philosophers have called the engaged-standpoint inter-
nal or subjective, and the theoretical one objective. This not only begs the
question but it assumes a dualism. For Dewey and José Ortega y Gasset,
the primacy of the engaged standpoint is based on the fact that any inquiry
and its theoretical point of view is experienced as embedded in the more
everyday, practical point of view. Here is how Douglas Browning explains
why the practical is primary for Dewey,
≥∂
Theorizing and indeed linguisticizing are, for him, critically important

phases in inquiry. But, of course, he also insists that the starting point for
inquiry, its motivating context throughout its course, and its consum-
mation are found in the lived experience of being in a situation in which
I, as agent, participate and interact. It is a consequent of this that the
theoretical point of view is parasitical upon the more everyday, practical
point of view; it derives its focus, its motivation, and its very signifi-
cance from that down-home, flesh-and-bones course of daily a√airs that
Dewey had the temerity to label experience.∞Ω
In what way has the theoretical standpoint been favored in ethics?

What are some of the most common versions of this starting point and
what are its consequences? The theoretical standpoint is what led modern
philosophers to start with dualisms. Dewey appreciated how in ethics the
modern dualisms between the mind/body, inner/outer, subject/object,
and so on had their counterpart in the assumed dichotomies between
self/act, doer/deed, character/conduct, fact/value. The counterpart to the
Cartesian starting point in ethics is to begin with the isolated subject who
has a purely cognitive apprehension of moral truths. These modern di-
chotomies have in turn generated a number of false dilemmas and debates
that I will discuss in this book, such as subjectivism vs. objectivism, ego-
ism vs. altruism, and an ethics of character or virtue vs. an ethics of act
(duty and rules). Dualistic starting points do not do justice to the integral
character of our concrete moral experience as it is experienced. In a prag-
matist ethics the distinctions that can be made within moral life are fea-
tures of an irreducible whole (of the ongoing unanalyzed unity of a situa-
tion) distinguished by reflection rather than existential dichotomies.
For those philosophers who favor the theoretical standpoint of sci-
ence, their starting point in ethics is a natural world with natural proper-
ties but without values. From this standpoint, the only moral facts with
which she is confronted is that humans are animals that claim to have
moral and aesthetic experiences. These facts must be explained in ways
that square both with our scientific starting point and the goals of scien-
tific inquiry. Dewey would have no problem with this approach so long as
it is recognized for what it is, namely, an inquiry restricted by the methods
and goals of science. The problem comes when the philosopher goes a step
further and privileges the results of such inquiries in a way that simulta-
neously denigrates the moral experiences we have in the midst of moral
life. This is precisely what scientistic philosophers do when, for instance,
they conclude that moral behavior is nothing but action guided by the
evolutionary goal of spreading one’s genes, that is, this is the real reason
why we behave morally.
≥∑
In his well-known paper, ‘‘The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical The-

ories,’’ Michael Stocker argues that modern ethical theories recommend a
kind of disharmony between reasons and motives.≤≠ The theoretical rea-
sons pro√ered for why right acts are right (e.g., because they maximize
utility or are in accord with a universal duty) are at odds with the actual
motives of moral agents when they do what is right. With some of these
theories it is best if reasons and motives are kept separate, for it is some-
times desirable for an agent to be motivated by thoughts that have little to
do with the truth about why her acts are the right ones to perform. Stocker
finds this disturbing, but he fails to provide an adequate or full diagnosis
of the root of the problem.≤∞ The problem is methodological. The gap
between reasons and motives is a consequence of the more fundamental
gap in these theories between the theoretical standpoint and the practical-
engaged one. Modern ethical theorists have assumed that we must deter-
mine what makes right act right by stepping outside how things appear
from the motivating situational context in which we act. It is only because
theorists have favored the detached theoretical standpoint that their de-
scriptions of moral life are at odds with how we experience moral life. For
Dewey, the consequences of this starting point are more severe than just
schizophrenia.
What is most problematic about the theoretical starting point in ethi-
cal theory is that it has ended up ‘‘rendering the things in ordinary experi-
ence more opaque than they were before, . . . depriving them of having
in ‘reality’ even the significance they had previously seemed to have’’
(LW 1:18). J. L. Mackie has, for example, claimed that although most
people (in their primary moral experience) claim to be pointing to some-
thing objective when making moral judgments, they are in error.≤≤ From a
theoretical standpoint the objectivity of moral qualities we experience
seems false, or as Mackie puts it, ‘‘queer.’’ According to R. M. Hare, those
who are unable to rise above the everyday habitual engagement (what he
calls the ‘‘intuitive level’’) may never be able to ascertain the naïveté of
their realism about colors and all moral qualities.≤≥ Hare thinks we are
fortunate animals because in spite of our limitations (we cannot be the
ideal observer-prescribers) we are able to take the reflective distance of the
theoretical standpoint at the ‘‘critical level.’’ This is fortuitous because at
this level we realize that our immediate partiality or moral concern for
friends is actually nothing more than a habitual but useful emotional
disposition that pays o√ from a rational consequentialist standpoint. For
Hare, it is a good thing that people have the immediate experience (or
should I say ‘‘appearance’’?) of feeling a special obligation to particular
others; but it is only when they take the critical standpoint that they
≥∏
become aware of the real reasons why they should care or take their
experienced obligations seriously. For instance, here is what Hare says
about the experienced moral bond (partiality) in the mother-child rela-
tion, ‘‘If we ascend to the critical level and ask why it ought to be, the
answer is fairly obvious. If mothers had the propensity to care equally for
all the people in the world, it is unlikely that children would be as well
provided for even as they are.’’≤∂ So, we are all lucky that mothers are
duped into feeling they have a special obligation to their children because
they are their children! It is only a small step from this view to the view
that all of our moral experiences are nothing but a useful fiction to propa-
gate our genes. Whether it is Platonism, cultural relativism, or scientism, a
theoretical standpoint that explains away the reality of our immediate
moral experiences is often present.
The abstraction of a thinking rational subject in a value-less world is a
common theoretical starting point implicit in a variety of ethical theories.
It is discernible in those positions that assume that our moral principles or
our desires are the sources of our moral experiences and, therefore, that
morality is a human projection upon nature. It is in views that assume
that ethical theory must provide rational reasons that would convince an
imaginary skeptic to be moral or to take morality seriously.≤∑ In such
views, it is as if to be rational (usually defined as pursuing one’s self-
interest or following the rules of logic) is primary, while all else (especially
moral value) is questionable and must be derived from this imaginary
standpoint. For Dewey, this is not to start with moral experience as it is
had because we start in a morally value-laden world. Morality is no more
in need of justification or legitimacy than the existence of the external
world. Morality is just as basic, natural, and given as rationality (in any of
its possible meanings). There is no more need to show that morality is
rational than a need to show that rationality is moral.
Another common theoretical starting point in ethical theory is to
locate morality in moral norms that are prior to, or exist across, situations.
Moral theory, according to this view, must start with the fact that agents
and communities inherit general moral principles and standards. This is
the reason why we experience moral demands and the possession of such
principles and standards determines right from wrong in a particular
situation. Moral problems are in e√ect a matter of deciding what follows
from a general criterion of right and wrong, or it is the conflict between
di√erent standards or criteria. Moral disagreement among individuals is
thus a disagreement about moral norms. The task of ethical theory is to
bring to our conscious attention the norms at work in our actions and
judgments. It must validate (i.e., seek a rational basis for) the moral stan-
≥π
dards that ordinary moral agents take for granted. This is the theoretical
view of moral experience that is assumed in debates between di√erent
forms of objectivism and relativism.
The relativist holds that moral judgments are justified only relative to
standards accepted by a person or the social group to which she belongs.≤∏
Objectivists take this as a challenge. Morality is not just a matter of our
upbringing, group mores, or desires; there must be some basic criterion of
right and wrong. There are a variety of objectivist views in ethics accord-
ing to what is proposed as the criterion. For example, what is right is
determined by:
a) what any rational person has good reason to accept or what
would be agreed upon by hypothetical contractors under ideal
conditions;
b) what is self-evident according to one’s moral sense;
c) what can be expected to produce more good than bad conse-
quences;
d) what is deducible from the commands of divine authority, a cate-
gorical imperative, the concept of the rational agent, or human
nature (or flourishing).
These are all objective standards insofar as they presuppose an objective
standpoint, that is, a standpoint outside of the historically contingent
standards of any particular individual, society, or culture. And they are
proposed as the rational basis to evaluate or criticize these relative stan-
dards. Relativism, of course, denies the existence of such a God’s-eye view
of things. Instead, we find ourselves in life with inherited and historically
contingent moral standards, and no external perspective from which we
can subject them to criticism.
From Dewey’s standpoint this debate goes on without questioning the
notion that moral norms are the locus and source of morality, and that
their application is what accounts for moral problems, deliberation, and
judgment. This is, at best, a theoretical explanation of moral life, one that
leaves out the concrete context where standards are found (an instance of
the analytic fallacy). It is only when standards are examined, imagined,
and discussed in abstracto, that is, apart from their role in morally prob-
lematic situations, that they seem to be in need of some philosophical
justification. This, Dewey would claim, is an example of how philosophers
with an a priori commitment to a particular view about our relation to
general norms are concerned with problems of their own creation. As I
will argue later, moral judgments are not derivable by applying a criterion
≥∫
of right conduct; in fact, if there are general moral standards they receive
their normative force from particular judgments in situations.
Because of the linguistic turn in twentieth-century philosophy, the
theoretical starting point became linguistic. It is common in ethical theory
to take discrete moral terms, predicates, judgments, and propositions as
the starting point of philosophical investigations. Starting with moral
language seems more concrete and empirical than beginning with meta-
physics, understood as the postulation of the existence of mysterious and
supersensible moral values. This starting point commits the philosopher
to an attempt to derive or explain the rest of our moral experience by
‘‘expos[ing] the logic of moral concepts’’≤π or by discerning the meaning of
moral words. Ethical theories are tested by checking whether they square
‘‘with the facts of linguistic behaviour’’ or with (predictions of ) ‘‘what the
ordinary man would treat as self-contradictory.’’≤∫
Moral theories that begin with an analysis of moral terms or the
moral properties of particular actions su√er from the same problem that
the modern view of experience as a composite of atomistic simples does,
namely, that it cannot adequately account for relations. Indeed, our moral
lives seem like a disconnected series of atomistically isolated acts, and
two propositions in moral reasoning seem disconnected when the results
of ethical analysis are taken as self-su≈cient. In part 2, I will claim that
these and other problems do not arise when one takes the lived context
of our moral problems and deliberations seriously. One commits the
philosophical fallacy when one abstracts moral terms and moral judg-
ments out of their contexts and tries to acontextually set their meaning, or
when one begins with the assumption that there are some propositions
that are inherently moral.≤Ω An analysis of our ordinary moral language is
not su≈cient to account for the richness and complexity of our moral
experience.
The legalistic character of modern ethics goes hand in hand with its
linguistic bias. This bias colors or determines the descriptions of every
aspect of moral life. Moral problems are nothing but the conflict between
principles or rules that can be stated, revised or re-written. Moral judg-
ments are treated as statements or propositions that are the result of the
process of moral deliberation which has the same linear character as
reading a text. In other words, it is assumed that we ought to reach
justified moral judgments by following the same logical order of reading.
The linguistic starting point in ethics is usually accompanied by the
same intellectualist starting point of traditional epistemology. It is as-
sumed that to start with moral experience is to start with moral language
≥Ω
in the form of propositions about right and wrong (i.e., the beliefs of
common morality). As W. D. Ross says,
My starting point [is] the existence of what is commonly called the
moral consciousness; and by this I mean the existence of a large body of
beliefs and convictions to the e√ect that there are certain kinds of acts
that ought to be done.≥≠
Similarly, as Bernard Williams claims, ‘‘Ethical theories, with their

concern for tests, tend to start from just one aspect of ethical experience,
beliefs.’’≥∞ Ethics must therefore start with epistemology. Moral disagree-
ment is the conflict between beliefs and moral judgments that are them-
selves propositions standing somewhere between a subject and the world.
Hence, the key philosophical problems in ethics are: how do we know that
moral claims and judgments are true of false? Are they capable of being
derived from our knowledge of facts about the world or are they just mere
exclamations or commands? These two questions are the key issues in the
meta-ethical debates between cognitivists, emotivists, naturalists, and in-
tuitionists.≥≤ Dewey questions the theoretical starting point that usually
gives legitimacy to these questions. As I will discuss in more detail, moral
judgments are not propositions. They are experienced as acts or assertions
that emerge in the context of (and as the result of ) a particular qualitative
inquiry. The question of their warrant and evaluation cannot be discussed
independently of a situation.
The linguistic outlook or bias is so taken for granted in philosophy
that even a neopragmatist like Hilary Putnam, who criticizes traditional
ethics (from a Deweyan perspective), still seems caught up in it. He claims,
for instance, that the traditional metaphysical sources of objectivity in
ethics need to be replaced by ‘‘the objectivity of discourse.’’≥≥ His Deweyan
criticism of traditional ethics amounts to the charge that they have a
narrow and monistic ‘‘vocabulary.’’≥∂ Putnam is in favor of a more plu-
ralistic ethics but he may be inadvertently endorsing the same reduction of
moral experience to moral language that is endemic to the tradition.
From Dewey’s standpoint, the problem with the linguistic starting
point, or starting with moral beliefs in ethics, is that it leaves too much
out. If all there is to our moral lives is moral discourse, what ultimately
guides our moral deliberations other than yet more discourse or some
absolute external standard? The failure to recognize the non-cognitive
situational context of moral discourse has impeded understanding of
Dewey’s views about the ultimate source of guidance in moral life. Even
Deweyans often leave this out of their presentation of his view. Dewey,
however, is clear: leaving out the non-cognitive situational context is to
∂≠
leave out ‘‘that which is the controlling factor in my entire view, namely
the function of a problematic situation in regulating as well as evoking
inquiry’’ (LW 14:44).
I have been assuming that empiricism in ethics entails contextualism,
but not every contextualist position is thereby concrete and empirical.
Moral philosophers like Alasdair MacIntyre have suggested that the rele-
vant contexts for the understanding of moral terms are the moral vocabu-
laries operative in large social and historical structures and practices. But
an inquiry about moral life that begins with and comes back to shared and
cohesive ‘‘moral languages’’ or a ‘‘network of shared moral laws’’≥∑ is not
committed to an experiential starting point. For even if these refined
theoretical products explain why people experience what they experience,
they are not what agents experience in primitive experiential situations.
Cultural, historical, and sociological explanations of morality are perhaps
better theories than universalist or Platonic ones, but they remain theories
nonetheless.
For Dewey, radical empiricism in ethics entails a radical contextual-
ism, by which he meant that each situation constitutes a unique context
and while it is lived (as a process), that is all there is to moral life. Accounts
of our moral life that ignore this, and begin with the assumption of
absolutes across time and history, are adopting a God’s-eye point of view
that neglects the situational context of both our investigation and our
morality. There is no standing outside where we are.
The starting point of inquiry is the most important issue in ethical
theory because one’s understanding of moral notions and of moral expe-
rience is conditioned by one’s starting point. Dewey thought that moral
experience included virtues, rules, obligations, ends and all other notions
posited by moral theorists as exclusively moral. This inclusiveness was a
result of taking moral situations as the primary context and discerning
which notions were operative there, rather than making the moral notions
themselves primary.
Dewey wondered about ‘‘how much of distraction and dissipation in
life, and how much of its hard and narrow rigidity is the outcome of man’s
failure to realize that each situation has its own unique end and that the
whole personality should be concerned with it?’’ (MW 12:176). And he
hoped that attention to moral experience as it is experienced would lead to
a shift in ethical thought toward situations as the center of gravity of moral
endeavor. He insisted that moral philosophy must quit seeking ends or
standards that were over and above unique morally problematic situa-
tions. The resolution of each morally problematic situation was, he be-
lieved, the goal of morality. The tendency to absolutize or universalize in
∂∞
ethics by providing theories of the good was a failure to see that any
meaningful quest for the good is tied to a particular inquiry within the
unique context of a morally problematic situation. He said, ‘‘while there is
no single end, there also are not as many as there are specific situations
that require amelioration’’ (MW 12:174–175). In other words, each con-
crete morally problematic situation has its own immanent end and mean-
ing, and should not be thought of as a mere means to other, even con-
tingent or historically situated, overarching ends.
In sum, any adequate examination of Dewey’s ethical vision needs to
begin and take as central the notion of a situation. The situation’s impor-
tance has to be understood as a consequence of Dewey’s commitment to a
philosophical empiricism. Moral experience is experienced as something
that is neither subjective nor merely inter-subjective. We begin where we
are, in a situation as participants, rather than as inhabitants of a culture,
conceptual scheme, or our society’s norms. Moral situations became the
most inclusive category or concept in Dewey’s ethics. The categories and
elements that are part of moral experience (such as character, conduct,
principles, relationships, and habits) are features or traits of lived situa-
tions, not antecedent to them. Ideals are part of the means available in the
process of ameliorating a situation. Virtues are habits operative in and
integral to situations, not means to abstract notions of human flourishing.
Even Dewey’s philosophical speculations about how to live (the subject of
part 3) were nothing more than proposals about how to engage in present
situations.
Does the radical character of Dewey’s contextualism preclude the
possibility of theorizing about moral life? If philosophical inquiry is itself
embedded in situations as unique, complex, and changing pre-reflective
contexts, can moral theory perform the functions it has traditionally per-
formed? What is left of moral theory after all the methodological mistakes
are avoided? The acknowledgment of context and the abandonment of a
God’s-eye view have led contemporary skeptics to consider futile the am-
bitions of traditional ethical theory. In the next chapter, I turn to the claim
that Dewey’s skepticism about moral theory is based on a situation ethics
and on an alternative conception of the proper function of moral theory.
∂≤
two
Moral Theory and Moral Practice
What passes for ‘‘ethics’’ oscillates between sermonizing, moralizing of

an edifying emotional type, and somewhat remote dialectics on abstract
theoretical points. . . . It must be admitted that those who have worked it
[morality] most successfully have done so indirectly. They have ap-
proached the mine not as moralists but as novelists, dramatists, poets, or
as reformers, philanthropists, and statesmen. The contributions which
they have made have found their way, however, into common life rather
than into moral theory. (LW 2:398–399)
Moral Theory and the Quest for Rules

D ewey would agree with contemporary anti-theorists about the shallow-
ness and sterility of most normative ethics. For centuries, philosophers
have tried to formulate theories to assist and illuminate moral practice.
What is seldom questioned is the notion that this is best achieved by
seeking the underlying criteria, decision procedure, or antecedent moral
rules by which individuals distinguish right from wrong. Dewey thought
this theoretical approach to the task wrongheaded because of its flawed
∂≥
assumptions about morality and the role of theoretical intelligence. The

subject matter of ethics is moral practice, that is, conduct in a situation
where one has to decide what one ought to do. Dewey saw early on that
conduct is ‘‘absolutely individualized . . . there is no such thing as conduct
in general; conduct is what and where and when and how to the last inch’’
(EW 3:98). This raises the following issue for the moral philosopher: can
there be ethical theory if theory is by its very nature general and abstract,
while moral conduct and what one ought to do in a situation are always
unique, concrete, and individual? Philosophers can avoid or resolve the
tension expressed within this question in a variety of ways.
One could bring moral practice closer to theory by denying that
practice is as concrete and individual as it seems. Hence, the belief that
moral actions are unique and contextually particular, although not illu-
sory, is nonetheless the result of ignorance or of remaining at the level of
appearances. On such a view, moral reality is ultimately constituted by
general or universal laws that can be represented within our theories. This
rationalistic view resolves the tension, but only by reducing actions to laws
in a way that denies that there is a real tension. A more empirically minded
response to the disconnect between moral theory and practice would be to
claim that our theories must do a better job of representing the individual
character of our moral practice; in other words, we should work toward
ethical theories that reflect the concreteness and particularity of moral
practice. On this view, the tension is the result of the inadequacy of our
current theories. This should not discourage the e√ort to find a theory
that, for example, has a su≈ciently large set of rules that covers and
exhausts the particularity of our moral lives. But it is doubtful that the
uniqueness of each situation can be captured by a set of rules, no matter
how exhaustive. If rules are always general how can they be faithful to or
fully capture the uniqueness and novelty of every situation? One might
reply that a rule-based view need not capture uniqueness, but rather that it
have enough particularity to be able to make particular moral decisions.
The assumption here is that whatever residuum of uniqueness is not
captured by our rules is not important or irrelevant. But this is precisely
what needs to be proven.
The view that ethical theories can determine the right action prior to
and across situations is an overestimation due in part to an oversimpli-
fied view of moral experience pro√ered by those in the grips of the
philosophical fallacy. No one could raise any serious doubts about the
feasibility and importance of constructing ethical theories for moral de-
cision if, for example, any of the following were true of our concrete
moral life:
∂∂
moral theory and moral practice
∞) Morality is a set of self-su≈cient universal values or rules. Moral

judgments are things deduced from a hierarchy of universal prin-
ciples or fixed criteria.
≤) All moral values are commensurable with respect to a single stan-
dard. There is a hidden unity behind the apparent conflicting
kinds of moral ends and demands. There is one right answer to
every moral conflict or dilemma.
≥) Features that contribute to making an action right in one situation
necessarily contribute to making action right in any situation in
which this feature appears.
But neither Dewey’s moral experience nor mine accords with (1), (2),
or (3). This is not to imply that moral experience is chaotic. There are
stabilities and uniformities in moral life, but they are not of the kind
or degree assumed by many. Moral theorists have the tendency to forget
the non-cognitive complexity, plurality, incommensurability, raggedness,
changeability, and uniqueness that characterize our primary moral expe-
rience. These are the features of moral life that almost make them re-
calcitrant to any kind of theoretical formulation. One might even claim
that in virtue of its (lack of ?) structure, moral life is anti-theoretical.
Dewey’s avoidance of intellectualism led him to the view that rules or
any propositional knowledge are only a part of the actual material of indi-
vidual moral deliberation. In fact, the qualitative, emotional, and non-
cognitive aspects are more important to moral life than any propositional
object of knowledge. Moral judgments are not deduced from rules but
are derived from an imaginative-a√ective exploration of one’s situation.
Moral agents do not distinguish right from wrong by reference to a fixed
or evolving criterion. Aside from these views about moral deliberation
(which will be considered in part 2), Dewey had serious doubts that a
morality based on a set of comprehensive and fixed rules was a workable
possibility.
Even if we could somehow come up with a substantial number of
sound moral rules, it is questionable to what extent they would be su≈-
cient to guide our lives given that it assumes that we have secured ourselves
from the flexibility of individual intelligence and sensitivity to context. For
how would we know which individual situations are cases where a par-
ticular rule applies? In discussing the rule of honesty, for example, Dewey
asks ‘‘what bell would ring, what signal would be given, to indicate that
just this case is the appropriate case for the application of the rule of
honest dealing?’’ (LW 7:276). And even if we could answer this question,
we would legitimately wonder ‘‘what course in detail the rule calls for?’’
∂∑
(LW 7:276). The notion that an ethical theory can provide a set of rules (or
even a set of virtues) by which we can automatically make the right moral
decisions is naïve. Even if we could come up with such a set, Dewey
thought that the kind of moral life that would follow or that is suggested
by this kind of ethical inquiry would be a good enough reason to reject
such a project. Instead, he thinks there are at least three dangers of this
way of conceiving our moral life,
∞) ‘‘It tends to magnify the letter of morality at the expense of its spirit’’
(LW 7:277). When what matters is mere conformity with a rule, the
moral experts are those who are able to describe a situation so that it
fits under a rule. Hence, for some, morals can become a device to
sanction their amoral pursuits.
≤) It is a formalistic and legalistic view of conduct that usually centers
on avoiding the punishment that comes from a failure to follow
rules; and, as Dewey observed, ‘‘any scheme of morals is defective
which puts the question of avoiding punishment in the foreground
of attention’’ (LW 7:278).
≥) It ‘‘tends to deprive moral life of freedom and spontaneity and to
reduce it to a more or less anxious and servile conformity to exter-
nally imposed rules’’ (LW 7:278). It ‘‘puts the center of moral gravity
outside the concrete processes of living’’ (LW 7:278).
It should be evident from these concerns that the spirit, tone, and
general quality of our moral activities are just as important to Dewey as
the content of morality. Morality is not just a matter of determining what
is right or wrong, but of how we appreciate and engage ourselves in the
moral tasks presented to us. This is a distinctive feature of his ethics that I
will stress in the remainder of this work. He was concerned that a rule-
bound morality would result in casuistries that would ‘‘destroy the grace
and play of life by making conduct mechanical’’ (EW 3:155). A rule ethics
encourages a non-aesthetic way of life; but central to Dewey’s vision is
a concern for an aesthetic moral life, a claim that I will explore at a
later point.
Dewey’s Situation Ethics

Dewey’s criticisms of ethical theory had a reconstructive aim, one de-
signed to reorient moral theory in a more concrete and contextual direc-
tion. He advocated a contextual approach to moral decision making that
may be termed situational.∞ This contextualism can be expressed in a
negative or positive way according to what it denies or a≈rms. It denies
∂∏
that moral judgments that do not follow rules are thereby arbitrary; and it
a≈rms that reasonable moral judgments come from intelligently explor-
ing and assessing the situation in its qualitative uniqueness. In order to
evaluate an action or to adjudicate conflicts among possible actions or
obligations in concrete circumstances we must rely on the qualitative
context rather than on some meta-rule, criteria, or fixed procedure. Al-
though we make moral judgments and decisions on the basis of the con-
crete and unique situations that are experienced, this approach is not
usually embraced as a method, that is, as a general approach to moral
decision making. It does not have the order, definiteness and security
provided by following prefabricated rules or adopting a universal decision
procedure or criteria. Yet Dewey embraced it as a method. Instead of
trying to come up with comprehensive theories that provide answers or
decision-making procedures, he believed that we should attend to the
particular, the qualitative, and the unique equipped with the best habits of
reflection, imagination, and sensitivity available, that is, with what he
sometimes called moral intelligence. What we morally ought to do in a
situation should be determined by being true to the situation as it is
experienced. A moral judgment is a decision about what action the pres-
ent situation morally calls for, and this can only be determined by immer-
sion in the situation. He thought that this would carry into the moral
sphere the experiential way of doing philosophy more generally, that is, by
being guided by what is qualitatively found in experience. Any theory that
pretends to provide theoretical answers to moral quandaries prior to ac-
tual situations cannot be empirical, for it simply overlooks the experi-
enced uniqueness of each situation and how the moral relevance of any
feature can vary depending on the situation.
To claim that a certain sort of action is always right, or to establish
rules about what is or is not right under all conditions, is to neglect
context; for whether a feature of an action counts as a moral reason to do
it is dependent on the context. The adoption of this kind of contextualism
in morality is the same as that operative in artistic production and appre-
ciation. For instance, whether a stroke of green in a painting contributes
to the beauty of a painting depends on what other colors and lines are
present; indeed, a brushstroke of green that beautifies one painting may be
what ruins another.
Dewey’s contextualism thus entails that there is something wrong-
headed about the abortion debate if that debate is only about which value
or principle is always overriding. In other words, a moral contextualist is
neither pro-life nor pro-choice insofar as both entail a commitment to a
value, obligation, or principle that is absolute. A contextualist could make
∂π
an empirical claim that, in most situations, the life of the fetus trumps the
woman’s choice, but this is irrelevant to determining the rightness or
wrongness of each case.≤
The notion that deliberation and judgment should ultimately be
guided by context is not new. Aristotle and W. D. Ross held a similar kind
of contextualism.≥ However, the contextualism of those thinkers is only
operative at the level of making particular moral judgments since their
ethical views assume, at some other level, fixed moral truths. Dewey’s
contextualism is more radical for it is a thoroughgoing contextualism, one
where no general rule or principle can escape its relativity to context.
Dewey does not cling to any moral absolute; nor does he guarantee that
with the most able use of intelligent reflection on the facts at hand we
will succeed or be certain that we are doing the right thing. There is
no right answer that fits every situation, but neither should we assume
that every situation has one right answer. Many morally problematic sit-
uations are experienced as having several possible good or better answers.
The idea that actions such as promise-keeping, killing, lying, and adul-
tery are sometimes right and sometimes wrong depending on the situa-
tion and independent of a priori criteria or rules is uncomfortable for
those who seek a fixed ethical standard. Can an ethics be so flexible with-
out losing its credibility? Before considering this issue, we should guard
Dewey against some misinterpretations of his position.
Dewey’s situation ethics is not the narrowly individualistic view that
one must decide for oneself according to one’s own standards or feelings
of right and wrong. Communal inquiry about shared moral problems is
important, but it, too, should be sensitive to each particular context. Even
for individual decision makers, Dewey is prescribing a way of interacting
in a situation, rather than leaving decision making up to subjective moral
introspection or some faculty of moral intuition. Moreover, Dewey is not
endorsing an absolute particularism, where there is a radical discontinuity
between situations and nothing of decision making importance is carried
forward to new situations. On the contrary, lessons from previous experi-
ences are part of one’s present situational resources because we inherit and
learn the appropriate response to situations from the evolving practices
and institutions in which we participate.∂ We do this from habit and
without much conscious e√ort. Dewey, therefore, does not hold the view
that one should abandon all precedent, that we should come to a situation
empty-handed and with a neutral or impartial attitude toward what is
right or wrong. The abandonment of ready-made standards is consistent
with a strong presumption against actions such as killing and lying. For
∂∫
Dewey there is a choice between ‘‘throwing away rules previously devel-

oped and sticking obstinately by them’’ (MW 14:165). What is needed is to
take rules as principles.
Principles
Dewey’s distinction between principles and rules is not based on a di√er-
ence in their contents but in the way we appropriate our inherited moral
knowledge. Principles, as he uses the term, are not fixed or universal
maxims that prescribe and determine what an agent ought to do. They are
instead inherited instrumentalities for analyzing individual and unique
situations. Dewey is willing to accept and adopt, say, the golden rule, but
only as part of the tools of analysis that one might draw upon to consider
what is morally relevant and to make a decision in a particular situation.
Dewey explains:
The Golden Rule gives me absolutely no knowledge, of itself, of what

should I do. The question of what in this case I should do in order to do
as I would has still to be resolved, though the Golden Rule be a thousand
times my maxim. . . . [The Golden Rule] is a most marvelous tool of
analysis; it helps me hew straight and fine in clearing out this jungle of
relations of practice. (EW 3:100–101)
Similarly, he takes Kant’s moral imperative as a useful device for moral

deliberation, as a safeguard against intrusive tendencies in a situation, but
not as an absolute test or indicator of what is morally correct.∑
There are principles because there are stabilities in experience. Al-
though situations are unique, they can be similar in many respects. This
makes it possible for experience to be intellectually cumulative, that is, for
general ideas to develop. Principles are general moral ideas in the sense of
proposing generic conditions and relations to be met under circumstances
of a certain kind. They are general and frequently valid maxims, but their
validity ultimately depends upon their applicability to a situation; they
alone have no normative force.
We can rely on principles because we can learn, and we can learn
because there is continuity in experience. ‘‘Principles are empirical gen-
eralizations from the ways in which previous judgments of conduct have
practically worked out’’ (MW 14:165). Without principles we lack the back-
ground knowledge that could help us in particular situations. They are
part of the stable resources needed to confront the more precarious and
novel elements of experience.
∂Ω
What is the appeal of a morality based on a fixed antecedent standard?

Dewey diagnosed the quest for fixed rules and ideals in morality as a
counterpart to the general quest for certainty that characterizes modern
epistemology. Just as it has been assumed that without certainty there is no
knowledge, in ethics it has been assumed that ‘‘absence of immutably fixed
and universally applicable ready-made principles is equivalent to moral
chaos’’ (MW 14:164). This is what I will henceforward refer to as the
either/or dilemma: Either there is an absolute standard of value or we
cannot judge or measure any value. The choice between the fixity of moral
rules and moral chaos assumes that experience is either a fixed-block or a
spontaneous flux. This ignores the fact that an alternative to fixity in
habits or principles is change and continuity of growth. Principles can
provide continuity, yet nonetheless evolve. It is possible to take seriously
the moral knowledge we have inherited from our families, culture, and
personal history, yet refuse to give up the kind of flexibility entailed by
Dewey’s situation ethics. Again, flexibility in our moral lives is needed not
because of human limitations with respect to an antecedent moral truth,
but because of the reality of change and novelty, that is, because ‘‘life is a
moving a√air in which old moral truth ceases to apply’’ (MW 14:164).
Dewey thought it was possible and commendable to educate children to
become committed to some valuable traditional moral principles, but at
the same time to prepare them to be able to modify and apply these
principles to complex and changing conditions. The burden of proof is on
those who believe the either/or dilemma to show why this is not possible.
Principles are not independent entities capable of generating and
sustaining their own status as principles. Their vitality and ability to be of
use across situations depend in part on whether agents make a mechanical
or an artistic use of them. We can preserve the life and spirit of a moral
idea (to use a neutral term between principle and rule) as much as we can
convert it into a petrification that is experienced merely as an external
command or rule. When moral ideas degenerate into external rules they
lose their capacity to assist us in our moral lives, for they become obstacles
to a fresh exploration of a morally problematic situation. Dewey thinks we
can avoid this if in our use of moral ideas we take as our model the way an
artist uses her tools. ‘‘In the supreme art of life the tools must be less
mechanical; more depends upon the skill of the artist in their manipula-
tion, but they are none the less useful’’ (EW 3:101). We can avoid the
mechanical (non-artistic) use of moral ideas if we continuously reflect
upon them in light of present experience. That is, to ensure that rules are
used as principles su√used with life and spirit, they have to be a√ected by
intelligence. In reference to the golden rule, Dewey writes:
∑≠
That it, or any other rule, may be a workable tool, that it may really give
aid in a specific case, it must have life and spirit. We cannot give it life
and spirit necessary to make it other than a cramped and cramping
petrification except through the continued free play of intelligence upon
it. (EW 3:101–102)
In short, Dewey does not deny the importance of having, using, and
carrying forward our inherited moral knowledge in the form of princi-
ples, ideals, and habits. But he believes that principles, etc., will lose their
vitality and instrumental capacity the more they are absolutized, that is,
when one does not continue to reexamine them in light of present condi-
tions. Thus, the best way to show respect for a moral idea is to subject it to
continuous reflective criticism.
What truth-telling, what honesty, what patience, what self-respect are

changes with every added insight into the relations of men and things. It
is only the breath of intelligence blowing through such rules that keeps
them from the petrification which awaits all barren idealities. (EW 3:103)
From this brief consideration of Dewey’s view about the status and
role of principles we have unveiled assumptions of central importance to
his moral philosophy, ones that I will further explore in this study. They
are assumptions about how we should engage ourselves as agents in moral
experience and deliberation. The notion that the non-artistic use of moral
ideas is what transforms them into useless and powerless tools in our
moral life suggests important postulates of Dewey’s moral philosophy. To
anticipate a bit, Dewey’s situational approach is inspired by, and assumes,
the possibility of a moral life that is aesthetic in its mode of engagement.
Furthermore, Dewey’s thoughts about principles give us a clue about one
important function of intelligence in his moral philosophy, namely, that
intelligence constitutes the set of habits that can keep morality from de-
generating into an unaesthetic activity that is externally imposed upon
us. This is the way in which ‘‘moral life is protected from falling into
formalism and rigid repetition. It is rendered flexible, vital, growing’’
(MW 12:180).
Dewey and Moral Particularism

Is Dewey’s commitment to contextualism compatible with his emphasis
on the importance of principles? There are philosophers today who would
argue that a commitment to principles and contextualism generates an
uneasy and problematic tension. Moral particularists have argued that
∑∞
contextualism in ethics entails that the search for moral principles in

moral theory is misguided. The most radical versions hold that there is no
need for moral principles; more moderate versions of contextualism claim
that, although there are some principles, they are insu≈cient to guide
moral deliberation and judgment. A brief comparison between Dewey
and recent moral particularists will help clarify how distinctive Dewey’s
contextualism is and how he would answer common objections.
The moral particularist understands principles to be rules that estab-
lish some necessary connection between features of an action and their
moral value. W. D. Ross may have been a contextualist in moral verdict
(i.e., in deciding between competing principles) but his reliance on prin-
ciples assumed that ‘‘if a feature counts in favor of action in one case, then
necessarily it counts in favor in any case in which it appears.’’∏ Does the
fact than an act is illegal, unjust, or a lie always count as a reason against
doing it? Are there universal right-making features of an act? Is the va-
lence of promise-breaking negative across all possible cases? The strongest
possible case against the generalist (that is, those who defend this last
assumption) holds instead that every reason is somehow altered with
every change of context. This seems too strong a thesis, even for Jonathan
Dancy, a moral particularist who sees no need for principles in ethics.
Dancy prefers instead to state his position as the view that ‘‘all reasons are
capable of being altered by changes in context.’’π Dancy allows for the
possibility of a few invariant reasons across cases but he does not take this
to be enough to validate generalism. He says,
perhaps I will have to admit that not all reasons are sensitive to context
in this way—that there are a privileged few, including probably the
intentional inflicting of undeserved pain, which necessarily constitute
the same sort of reason wherever they occur. If so, I will have lost a battle
but won the war. For the main aim of my particularist position is to
break the stranglehold of a certain conception of how moral reasons
function—the generalist conception under which what is a moral reason
in one situation is necessarily the same reason wherever it occurs.
Generalism, he concludes, is false as a view about what are the ‘‘rational

constraints on moral thought and action.’’∫
There is much about this recent moral particularist scholarship that
resembles and provides further support to Dewey’s ethics. Moral par-
ticularists seem to be committed to the sort of attention to the particu-
larity of moral situations that Dewey stressed. There are, however, impor-
tant di√erences between Dewey and the moral particularists.
First, although Dewey would agree with Dancy that ‘‘all reasons are
∑≤
capable of being altered by changes in context,’’ this follows not only from
Dewey’s contextualism but also from his metaphysical stance that nothing
in the universe is immune to change. The denial of this sort of necessity
(invariance) does not mean, however, that there are no stable and per-
sistent correlations between features of an action and their valence or
rightness. Dewey would be suspicious of the options (absolute invari-
ance and variance) assumed in this debate. The more interesting issue is
whether ethical theory is capable of formulating, or should even try to
formulate, what these stable correlations (between actions and their va-
lence) are at any particular time. Dewey did not rule this out as a possible
task of ethical theory in terms of principles, but he believed that principles
were things that already function, and that perhaps function best, in the
deliberations of particular agents who have inherited a moral tradition.
This raises another noteworthy di√erence.
Principles are, for Dewey, something broader and more embedded in
our ordinary moral a√airs than the sort of intellectual or theoretical rule
that concern particularists. Their rejection or dislike of principles is based
on an overly theoretical conception of principles as propositions in a
theory that specify how non-moral features are tied to moral ones in a
situation. Since principles are, as Dewey believes, tools of analysis of an
engaged moral agent, they need not have the sort of restricted proposi-
tional form assumed by the particularist. In other words, particularists are
able to undermine the function and importance of principles simply be-
cause what they have in mind by principle is not part of anyone’s moral
experience.
The most important di√erence between Dewey and recent particular-
ists is the ultimate context that is appealed to in the grounding of moral
judgments. Dewey’s particularism starts with and takes particular situa-
tions as the ultimate contexts of our moral deliberations, rather than as a
holism of reasons. Dancy joins the ethical tradition he attacks in assuming
that ethical theory must start with the abstraction of reasons in relation to
each other in someone’s moral deliberation. His concern is with ‘‘the
nature of rationality’’ and with ‘‘holistic logic.’’Ω For Dewey, this way of
proceeding in ethics assumes a theoretical starting point that leaves out the
lived situational context that ultimately guides inquiry and in which peo-
ple’s reasons for action are found. In this Dancy is no di√erent from
traditional logicians who concern themselves with reasoning (the universe
of discourse), as if this is all there is to inquiry, and as if the context in
which reasoning occurs (universe of experience) is irrelevant to what
guides the process of reasoning. For Dewey, as I will later discuss, there is
a direct qualitative appreciation (judgment) of the situation as a whole
∑≥
that precedes and guides the survey of how reasons relate to each other
in inquiry.
In the introduction to his new book, Ethics without Principles, Dancy
acknowledges that there is more to moral life than moral thought when he
says, ‘‘The book I have written is about how to understand the way in
which reasons work, and deals largely with theories about reasons rather
than life. As you can see, I would like to have been able to write the other
book, the one about life, but this one is all I could manage.’’∞≠ This philo-
sophical bracketing of moral thinking from moral life (experience) is the
sort of starting point that Dewey was against. One cannot understand the
way in which reasons work in moral deliberation without an account of
moral experience. In isolating moral deliberation from moral experience,
Dancy leaves out the context that was so important for Dewey and that set
constraints that could help Dancy confront the charge of moral laxity
raised by generalists.
For the generalist, the particularist’s morality is lax because it fails to
propose an account of how guidance in moral deliberation is possible
without the guidance provided by principles. The particularist does well
to respond that ‘‘there can be fully particular constraints on action, and
the judgment that this action would be wrong is surely just such a thing.
Constraints do not need to be general constraints, any more than reasons
need to be general reasons.’’∞∞ From Dewey’s point of view, there is no need
to choose between the general constraints (i.e., the regulative function
provided by principles) and the more particular constraints found in a
situation. In most situations, it is precisely the interplay between princi-
ples (that represent funded experience) and the new and unique particu-
lars that makes serious thinking di≈cult. More importantly, both the
general and the particular are ultimately within and guided by something
that is more particular than the reasons appealed to by the particularist,
namely, a problematic situation. There are situations in which the weight
of precedent or the need to be consistent is such that to insist on the
particulars reflects a serious lack of sensitivity to the situation. In the end,
it is the particular situation that demands a certain response from me,
rather than the particular moral reasons or generalizations (i.e., rules).
Sometimes, morality requires that we make a similar choice in a similar
situation; but when this is so, it is because of what the particular situation
requires, not because of what morality in general requires.
Dancy questions the assumption (of generalists) that without the
moral sti√ening provided by a principle-based ethics there is a serious
danger of backsliding in ethics or of making exceptions in our own favor.
Dewey is aware of the dangers of moral laxity and moral sti√ening; and
∑∂
both are best guarded against by the cultivation of our characters. It is

not clear, however, how the particularist can integrate virtues, as general
habits, into their view. They criticize generalists in assuming the notion of
the principled person as the model of a moral agent. Dancy claims, for
example, that if the principled person is one merely driven by principle
then this ‘‘will distort the relevance of relevant features by insisting on
filtering them through principles.’’∞≤ He is silent, however, about the sort
of character needed to attend with firm conviction case by case and with-
out distorting things in one’s own favor. Dewey, on the other hand, pres-
ents an alternative model to the generalist’s man of principle. This is the
model of the moral person that is aesthetically engaged in moral recon-
struction. The sort of character that is genuinely engaged in moral experi-
ence attends wholeheartedly to what each particular situation requires but
with the help, in part, of principles. I will have more to say about this later.
The most common objection against moral particularists is that, in
their zeal to reject generalism, they tend to go overboard in making the
particularities of a case wholly dominant. Dancy, for example, concludes
that ‘‘morality can get along perfectly well without principles.’’∞≥ Even if
one agrees with the particularist about the dangers of moral principles,
‘‘the particularist’s response of jettisoning such principles introduces dan-
gers that are far deeper.’’∞∂ Particularists are correct in suggesting that, with
moral wisdom, as with other aspects of our practical life, it is a matter of
directly exercising one’s ability to judge rather than simply following rules
(guidebooks, cookbooks, and primers). Yet, as Margaret Olivia Little has
recently warned, ‘‘In issuing this crucial corrective, though, particularists
must beware of committing the opposing sin.’’∞∑ Dewey would see this as
one more instance of the ‘‘common occurrence in the histories of theories
that an error at one extreme calls out a complementary error at the other
extreme’’ (LW 13:240). Particularists defend contextualism by opposing
themselves to what they call generalists and by rejecting principles. In
contrast, Dewey called for a reconstruction in our understanding of moral
generality and its function. Principles are part of the particular resources
found in a particular situation. The alternative to the traditional view of
morality that puts principles right at the center is one that puts situations
at the center (which includes principles). There is no need to advocate the
overthrow of generalities, abstractions, or theories. Even the most morally
wise among us needs from time to time to depend on judgments about
what tends to be morally relevant. What makes someone morally wise or
unwise is how they rely on generalities. What must be dethroned are not
moral generalizations per se but a way of using them that discourages
moral sensitivity and precludes the genuine exercise of moral judgment.
∑∑
Contextualism and the ‘‘Thinness’’ Challenge

Is Dewey’s appeal to principles a satisfactory response to those concerned
that his ethics is too flexible? Is taking certain rules as principles the way to
avoid both moral absolutism and its opposite extreme? I suspect that those
philosophers who lie at both sides of the either/or dilemma are likely to
see in Dewey a position diametrically opposed to their own. The moral
anarchist, who thinks that morality is a matter of arbitrary taste, would
think of Dewey as a disguised absolutist, someone who is unwilling to
accept the consequences of change and of the historical-cultural origin of
our principles and morality. On the other hand, the absolutist would
probably consider Dewey’s way of taking moral precepts seriously as being
insu≈ciently serious and as leading sooner or later to taking morality
as something disposable. Dewey is aware that for many, ‘‘the hypothesis
that each moral situation is unique and that consequently general moral
principles are instrumental to developing the individualized meaning of
situations is declared to be anarchic. It is said to be ethical atomism’’
(MW 14:167). The absolutist would argue, for example, that undesirable
consequences follow if one takes the rule ‘‘you should not kill’’ as some-
thing that is only applicable and valid if the situation demands it (i.e., as a
principle). For how can one be said to honor a rule when one is ready to
break it if this is what the situation calls for? How on Dewey’s view do we
avoid countenancing the person who rationalizes an act of wrongdoing,
such as killing, by claiming that for her ‘‘you should not kill’’ is merely a
principle?
There is no need to be an absolutist or a moral anarchist to raise some
serious challenges to Dewey’s contextualism. One need not hold such
extreme views to raise the following two objections. It seems to be an
ethics that (1) cannot rule as morally impermissible actions that are re-
garded as evidently wrong by most morally sensitive people, and (2) it is so
thin that it is no help, that is, there is little substantial recommendation in
terms of how to live, and how to steer in between the extremes that he
criticizes (absolutism and relativism). Let’s consider each one of these
objections.
It is now customary in philosophy to test ethical theories by the use of
counterexamples. If properly applying a proposed criterion of right con-
duct in a situation leads to prescribing what is obviously morally wrong
then so much the worse for the ethical theory. We cannot, however, apply
this test to Dewey’s ethics since his assumes no criterion. In fact, it is
precisely the denial of the need for such a criterion that defines his view.
Nevertheless, can his ethics rule that actions such as torturing children for
∑∏
fun are anything but wrong? If it cannot, then one may argue that there is
something wrong with his view.
It does follow, according to Dewey’s view, that it is possible for there
to be a situation where torturing children for fun is morally permissible.
Openness to this possibility, however, does not mean that in a concrete
situation this action stands somehow on an equal basis with others, and
Dewey would not have condoned the torture of children. Is there any
genuine doubt that the presumption against torturing children for fun is
so strong that it is hardly ever the subject of conscious deliberation? That
does not make it immune to criticism, nor does it suggest that its stabil-
ity and validity are independent of particular situations. It can be sub-
ject to evaluation and doubt in a situation, no matter how unlikely this
may seem. Although it is hard to imagine a situation where torturing
children for fun is morally permissible, it is clear that a Deweyan, fully
committed to the openness entailed by contextualism, must bite the bullet
and take this as evidence of the limits of our imagination.∞∏ There could be
unique factors in a situation that may well change the moral quality of an
act that has always been wrong. Does biting the bullet undermine the
credibility or validity of Dewey’s ethics? This would be to assume that an
ethics without any absolute prohibitions couldn’t be valid or helpful to
moral life. Why?
This brings us to the second possible objection. If his ethics cannot
rule out certain actions as wrong (by providing a fixed criterion of right or
wrong) then one may question what good it is. If all that Dewey can tell us
is that we should take certain purported rules as principles, then this does
not help us avoid the dangers of moral absolutism and moral licentious-
ness that much. One hopes that Dewey’s moral thought proposes some-
thing more substantial than the advice to stay away from standard moral
theories and theorists. This in e√ect points to a challenge to any recon-
struction of Dewey’s ethics. The challenge is to present an ethics thin
enough not to fall into another absolutist ethical system but thick enough
to be taken seriously as an ethics that, in some indirect way, can at least
illuminate moral practice. It is di≈cult for a contextualist who abandons
the traditional pretensions of theory, as did Dewey, to make normative
suggestions without compromising its openness to context.
The apparent thinness of Dewey’s ethics has troubled both critics and
sympathizers. C. I. Lewis, Sidney Hook, and more recently, Robert West-
brook and Hilary Putnam agree with Dewey that we must abandon the
quest for some ultimate external, fixed, and absolute standard or criteria.
But they all agree that there must be some other type of standard, other-
wise Dewey’s philosophy would be in trouble.
∑π
C. I. Lewis found Dewey’s remarks that experience can regulate itself

vague and problematic. He asked,
But is it not the case that we must ourselves bring to experience the
ultimate criterion and touchstone of the good; that otherwise experience
could no more teach us what is good than it can teach the blind man
what things are red?∞π
Pragmatism fails to give an adequate answer to the question about what

guides us in experience. Lewis continues,
Before one embarks upon the practical and empirical problem of realiz-
ing the valuable or constructing the good, is it not essential that one
should be able to recognize it when disclosed . . . ? . . . [C]an experience
determine the nature, essence, criteria of goodness?∞∫
Sidney Hook and Robert Westbrook are concerned that Dewey did not say
enough to meet this sort of challenge. Even if there are no fixed ends for
Dewey, what criteria do we use to evaluate the success of our ends in
view?∞Ω Even if there is no foundationalist-type of justification for democ-
racy, Dewey must have assumed a criterion that made this way of life
better than others.≤≠ Many scholars have tried to reconstruct Dewey’s
thought on the subject of criteria. These attempts strike me as either too
thin or too thick because they miss something fundamental in Dewey’s
philosophy. Those that are too thick attribute to Dewey some criterion of
goodness, even if it is not a fixed and external one. The usual candidates
here are some goal or consequence, like growth or flourishing. They are
too thick in the sense that they attribute to Dewey the sort of normative
substance that goes against the contextualist and pluralistic character of
his ethics. As I will argue, there is no criterion or standard of the good of
any kind in Dewey’s ethics.
Other e√orts have been too thin; in particular, those that have ac-
knowledged that even if there is no single standard in his philosophy,
Dewey trusted that the plural standards that we have inherited from our
previous experience and community will provide us with enough guid-
ance. In other words, the past, in the form of principles and the lessons of
previous inquiries, set present constraints. Putnam, for example, thinks
that Dewey’s answer to the question ‘‘By what criteria do we decide that
some valuations are warranted?’’ is that ‘‘we always bring a large stock of
valuations and descriptions’’ that we can rely on and ‘‘there are some good
things that we have learned from inquiry in general’’≤∞ that can be applied.
These last e√orts are in the right direction. Yet they are too thin
∑∫
because there is for Dewey more to say about the moral guidance that he
thinks we can discern in present experience. Even if some constraints are
set by our previous experiences, it does not help us determine how we
should guide ourselves in the use of these resources or in their criticism.
Dewey’s advice has to be more than that we follow the best principles
available. And there is more to intelligence than applying standards of
inquiry learned from experience.
Both of these interpretations or defenses of Dewey miss one of the
most important, radical, and unique aspects of his philosophy. The notion
that moral discourse depends only on its own evolving criteria or stan-
dards to guide itself misses the point that there is more to morality than
moral discourse. In particular, there is the qualitative situational context;
and far from being a mere background consideration, the context is what
ultimately guides morality. Dewey has much to say regarding how we can
best equip ourselves to rely on this guidance.
To adequately answer the charge of thinness requires that we take into
consideration how thick Dewey’s account is. As I will argue later, Dewey
o√ers normative prescriptions; there are, in other words, better and worse
ways of approaching moral problems and our moral relationships. In
moral deliberation there is more to rely on than principles in coming to
judgments about right and wrong; in particular, there is a qualitative
context that, if we are equipped with the proper dispositions, can guide us.
I will present Dewey’s ethics as committed to certain dispositions, a cer-
tain character and community. One must not, however, expect to find in
Dewey instructions that if followed will guarantee moral conduct or that
will determine who is or is not acting morally or immorally. He does not
o√er any guarantee that even if we follow his advice we will stay within the
bounds of moral decency or avoid relativism. This is not the function of
an ethical theory. What, then, is the function of an ethical theory once one
has abandoned the traditional expectations about ethical theory? Is there
any legitimate role left for an ethical theory? Let’s now consider these
questions as a prologue to my presentation of the more substantive aspects
of Dewey’s ethical theory.
The Function of Moral Theory

Skepticism in regard to ethical theory is common in the contemporary
intellectual climate. Bernard Williams, for example, has argued that ‘‘phi-
losophy should not try to produce ethical theory.’’≤≤ For him the specula-
tive kind of reflection involved in moral theory is harmful to moral prac-
tice because it tends to destroy knowledge at the practical level of specific
∑Ω
moral decisions. On the other hand, there are philosophers who have tried
to save ethics by claiming that the mistake lies in thinking that ethical
theory has anything to do with aiding moral conduct. Ethical theory
should be done exclusively for the sake of theoretical understanding or to
solve the theoretical problems of philosophers. In other words, only meta-
ethics or general and abstract theoretical speculations for theoretical pur-
poses are possible. Dewey was sensitive to both of these extreme views but
never thought we had to choose between them. For Dewey, there is an
alternative which lies between divorcing ethical theory completely from
moral practice and the pretensions of some normative ethical theories to
dictate our moral conduct. The key to seeing this alternative lies in having
an adequate empirical conception of what a theory is.
In an early essay Dewey explains the functional relation between the-
ory and practice by using the example of an engineer building a tunnel.
No matter how many times the engineer has constructed similar tunnels,
what she is building is not a tunnel in general. ‘‘It is a tunnel having its
own special end and called for by its own set of circumstances’’ (EW 3:156).
However, because similar tunnels have been built under functionally simi-
lar circumstances one may develop theories or techniques that, because
of their generality, can function as tools of analysis for particular cases.
Hence, the general character of theories is not a limitation but the key to
their possible functional importance for practice. To be sure, not all of the
theoretical resources available to the engineer have the same kind of in-
strumental value. The most immediate ready at hand tools are principles
or rules of thumb that provide a suggestion as to what to do when one is
building this kind of tunnel. An engineer might also have a very general
theory about the nature of the materials used to make the tunnel. Even if
this theory makes no reference to the practice of building tunnels, it is not
entirely divorced from or irrelevant to that practice.
In general, Dewey claims that theory cannot be divorced from the
context of practice; for theory arises from, is informed by, and a√ects
practice. It is true that theoretical moral inquiry has its own theoreti-
cal problems, very di√erent in nature from the concrete moral conflicts
that are the origin of personal moral deliberation. However, theoretical
inquiry is not the quest for a ‘‘foundation for moral activity in something
beyond that activity itself ’’ (EW 3:94). To think otherwise is to com-
mit the philosophical fallacy. For Dewey, moral philosophy is invari-
ably and inevitably enmeshed in a particular context, that is, it is a func-
tion of and within moral life. The refined conclusions (i.e., secondary
products) of moral theory are, like the theoretical resources of the engi-
neer, instrumentalities by which we might be able to indirectly assist or
∏≠
illuminate the decisions and problems encountered in primary moral

experience. When theory is conceived as something within practice it
becomes a part of the available means for the intelligent amelioration of
practice. ‘‘Theory located within progressive practice instead of reigning
statically supreme over it, means practice itself made responsible to intel-
ligence’’ (MW 4:48).
The conception of moral theory as somehow existing outside or above
the context of moral practice is the source of recent skepticism about
theory. Bernard Williams, for example, criticizes the history of moral
philosophy for its futile attempt to find an ‘‘Archimedean point.’’≤≥ This is
the place from which (1) one can objectively evaluate competing answers
to how to live; or (2) one can discover universal criteria of right or wrong
action; or (3) where one can argue that anyone (even the moral skeptic or
anarchist) has reasons to live an ethical life. Indeed, traditional ethical
theory usually assumes that to have a normative ethics is to have a philo-
sophical answer to these issues. For Williams, as Susan Wolf explains, we
must come to terms with the fact that our ‘‘point of view, even in philo-
sophical reflection, is inevitably from here, and not from ‘a mid-air posi-
tion’. ’’≤∂ This should deflate significantly our expectations in regard to
what moral theory can do for moral practice. Williams asserts the Dew-
eyan thesis that ethical theories ‘‘still have to start from somewhere, and
the only starting point left is ethical experience itself ’’;≤∑ but unlike Dewey,
he doesn’t derive constructive implications from the conception of theory
within moral practice.≤∏
t h e e m p i r i c a l - i n s t r u m e n ta l c o n c e p t i o n
o f m o r a l t h e o ry
For Dewey the view that moral theory is both in and for moral life has
important implications regarding how to evaluate ethical theories and
their most productive functions. The most straightforward of these is that
one cannot determine what an adequate ethical theory is without consid-
ering what kind of ethical theory is better for our moral lives. In other
words, the worth of a theory is determined not only in terms of its intellec-
tual consistency and coherence or its explanatory power, but also in terms
of its instrumental and ameliorative powers in the context of practice.
This allows us to propose hypotheses about when, and in what form,
moral theory helps and when it hinders moral practice. Of course, any
suggestion in this regard is ultimately an empirical claim, one that has to
be tested in the moral lives of agents, remains open for future inquiry, and
should be evaluated in light of the particular theories available at any given
∏∞
time. Dewey’s own evaluation of some of the ethical theories of his time
led him to some general hypotheses about this issue.
Dewey believed that our moral lives are better served if ethical theory
becomes empirical. As we have seen this means primarily that ethics must
take morally problematic situations in their qualitative uniqueness as the
start and end point of inquiry, and avoid the adoption of any kind of axi-
omatic first principles. No ethical theory is final. It must have a dynamic,
open, and learning relation with respect to the practice out of which it
arises and within which it is embedded. However, one might accept the
general claim that empirical theories are better than non-empirical ones
and still remain skeptical about the point of ethical theory. For it is not
clear what role there is left for ethics, once one gives up its traditional goals.
Does this mean that philosophers should redirect their concern with the-
ory to a more direct and exclusive concern with specific practical prob-
lems, as in what is today called applied ethics? This issue needs to be
considered in order to avoid saddling a Deweyan approach to ethics with a
narrow kind of instrumentalism about moral theory.
Ethical theory is not necessarily made more practical simply by hav-
ing as its direct end a desire to be practical. In philosophy, just as in
science, a constant fixation and concern with practical problems and ends
could undermine practical e√ectiveness. One might argue that productive
inquiry requires a division of labor where there are individuals who are
directly involved in doing theory for theory’s own sake. This is not to deny
that there are excesses and dangers that result when intellectuals are so
committed to their theories that they forget the place of theory within the
context of moral practice. The failure to be empirical is perhaps the result
of being seduced by one’s interest as a theorist.
If the function of moral theory is to assist our moral practice, then the
operations and selectivity of a theorist should be guided by purposes that
enhance this function. However, the temptation of the ethical theorist is to
guide her selectivity by theoretical or academic purposes that are irrele-
vant, secondary, or even counterproductive to the improvement of moral
practice. For instance, selecting only those features of moral life that can
be quantified, universalized, or made commensurable in terms of a theory
is not in the best interest of morality as a lived practice. Moral theories are
bad tools if they suggest that the complexity, uncertainty, and incommen-
surability that we experience in our moral lives are illusory. One is more
likely to direct the changes in experience intelligently if one is faithful to its
present traits.
Does ethics become more practical by limiting itself to applied ethics,
that is, if it addresses particular problems instead of the usual general ones?
∏≤
One cannot assume that the non-practical character of a philosophy is

proportional to how comprehensive, general, and speculative it is. In
conceiving of theories as tools, there is room for specialized tools as well as
for tools that have a wide range of application and reference, and either
one can be an obstacle or an aid to moral practice. Hence, philosophy can-
not be disregarded as a speculative waste of time simply because it is con-
cerned with formulating hypotheses of wide applicability. Of course, this is
not to deny the futility of philosophical inquiries that are so abstract as to
be completely detached from everyday moral experience. From a practical
point of view, the problem with these inquiries is not that they are abstract
or general per se, but rather that they usually reify their theoretical abstrac-
tions over aspects of ordinary experience. Dewey was aware of this com-
mon misunderstanding about pragmatism. He corrected C. I. Lewis once
on this issue,
Abstraction is the heart of thought; there is no way—other than accident

—to control and enrich concrete experience except through an inter-
mediate flight of thought with conceptions, relations, abstracta. What I
regret is the tendency to erect the abstractions into complete and self-
subsistent things, or into a kind of superior Being. (LW 7:216)
Here Dewey’s view can be contrasted to that of Bernard Williams. Wil-

liams contrasts the thickness of ethical terms and the deliberations of
concrete moral agents with the thinness of ethical theories. Williams be-
lieves that ethical theory can be discredited because it ‘‘looks charac-
teristically for considerations that are very general and have as little dis-
tinctive content as possible.’’≤π For Dewey, the problem with the abstract
and general categories of traditional ethical theories is not that they are
thin or general, but that these reflective products are used to discredit,
ignore, and replace the richness of concrete moral experience. The im-
plication is that so long as ethical theorists recognize that our actual
ethical lives are richer, more variegated, and thicker than our theoretical
articulations, an ethical theory can be thin and speculative without under-
mining its legitimate instrumental function.
I do not want to suggest the equally implausible view that the degree
of abstractness and generality or specificity of an ethical theory is totally
irrelevant to its instrumental possibilities. It would be futile to try to lay
out any universal and fixed rule about this issue; accordingly, Dewey
proposes a general rule of thumb or vague hypothesis in this matter. He
claims that the kind of ethical theory that is adequate and capable of
functioning as a tool for our moral life has to avoid becoming either so
general as to be abstract or so specific as to replace the particularity of our
∏≥
lived experience. In other words, ethical theories and rules can become
bad tools when they are either too abstract or too specific. In one of his
early ethical writings, Dewey wrote,
The di≈culty, then, is to find the place intermediate between a theory

general to the point of abstractness, a theory which provides help to
action, and a theory which attempts to further action, but does so at the
expense of its spontaneity and breadth. I do not know of any theory,
however, which is quite consistent to either point of view. (EW 3:155)
This is a claim that can be understood in terms of both the descriptive and
the normative functions of ethical theories. A metaphysics of morals (as
an empirical description of moral experience) is undesirable when it con-
sists of excessively abstract generalities that ‘‘remain remote from contact
with actual experience’’ (EW 3:159). Yet a metaphysics that can illuminate
practice cannot be too specific. Dewey’s reference to an empirical meta-
physics as a ‘‘ground map of the province of criticism’’ provides a useful
analogy to make this point (LW 1:309). A map can be general to the point
of becoming a useless abstraction. On the other hand, a map that pretends
to capture the uniqueness of the streets we travel or that tells us where to
go becomes a bad tool. Furthermore, the fact that a map cannot have this
kind of precision is hardly a good excuse for not using or making maps.
Dewey uses this argument to support the construction and use of moral
theory.
Ethical theories can become so abstract and general that they are of no
use to moral practice; but the general character of theory is a precondition
for it to inform and be informed by practice. It makes possible a dynamic
relation between theory and practice where ‘‘the former enlarges, releases
and gives significance to the latter; while practice supplies theory with its
materials and with the test and check which keep it sincere and vital’’
(LW 2:58). Ethical theory can also be a tool for moral education. Like our
best maps, it can orient us, but we must do our own traveling and learn-
ing. In both aesthetics and ethics a philosopher should be more concerned
with a survey of the subject matter than with making judgments for
others. ‘‘Then his surveys may be of assistance in the direct experience of
others, as a survey of a country is of help to the one who travels through it,
while dicta about worth operate to limit personal experience’’ (LW 10:313).
In sum, the alternative to either an ethical theory that stands totally
aloof or one that pretends to lay down in advance fixed rules is an empiri-
cal theory concerned with the generic in moral experience, and that o√ers
only indirect assistance to moral practice. These seem, so far, to be rather
formal or methodological conditions of a theory. The type of theory that
∏∂
meets these conditions cannot solve moral problems. It cannot adopt the
kind of standpoint where it convinces a moral skeptic that it is rational to
be moral; and it cannot provide a rational proof that Hitler’s conduct was
wrong. Is there anything it can do? What sort of indirect assistance can be
proposed? If one wishes to confront the skeptic about the possibilities of
ethical theory once its traditional pretensions are abandoned, it is neces-
sary to suggest some specific positive functions that a Deweyan ethics can
perform. There are at least two. An ethical theory can function as a tool of
criticism, and it can propose hypotheses about the conditions for living a
better moral life.
Ethical Theory as Criticism

Philosophy is criticism for Dewey, and reflective criticism always takes
place in the non-cognitive context of a situation that cannot be tran-
scended. Nevertheless, e√ective criticism needs to begin with what we
experience, and its point is to enhance, assist, and transform present
experience. Let’s consider how this entails a positive function or potential
for ethical theory. Although too much reflective criticism might some-
times be harmful to moral practice, Dewey understood that without it, the
quality (spirit and life) of our moral life su√ers. Moral ideals degenerate
into petrifications or mechanical rules when they are not subject to reflec-
tive criticism in light of present experience. It might be argued that, even if
an examined life is better than an unexamined one, it does not follow that
theoretical reflection is worthwhile or has a useful function in moral life.
There is some truth to this, but theoretical reflection can provide a wider
and broader perspective that is sometimes needed for e√ective criticism.
This is why Dewey calls philosophy ‘‘criticism of criticism.’’ To be sure,
wider and broader does not mean or imply outside.
Dewey declared as illusory the notion of ethical theory as performing
criticism from an outside privileged standpoint, but he never doubted the
possibility of criticism from within. This is the possibility that seems to be
ruled out or ignored by recent skeptics of theory, such as Richard Rorty
and Bernard Williams. This has left them in an awkward position. For
many have questioned whether the narrow role they have left for philo-
sophical reflection is su≈cient to engage (or make possible) the kind of
social criticism and reflective moral life to which they seem to be com-
mitted. In e√ect, their repudiation of ethical theorizing is interpreted as a
moral conservatism, insofar as it seems to imply that we should leave
moral practice as it is. To be sure, Dewey did not hold the view that ethical
theory is necessary for a reflective moral life; however, he hoped that, once
∏∑
reconstructed, it would be a potentially useful resource for such a life. This

was a resource he used in his criticism of traditional moral philosophy and
of the society and times in which he lived. The theoretical use of intel-
ligence cannot make contextual decisions, but it might be able to under-
mine misleading assumptions and beliefs that are often operative in such
contexts.
There are two di√erent tasks for moral theory as a tool of criticism:
the descriptive and the normative. The descriptive function is to provide a
generic but faithful description of the generic traits of moral experience
(the subject matter of part 2 of this book). The point is not to provide a
picture of how things really are, but to provide a basis for reconstructing
traditional notions of character, moral deliberation, and moral problems
that usually presuppose dualisms. These dualisms are not mere intellec-
tual problems; rather, they reflect or reinforce ways of conceiving moral
life that are obstacles for the present amelioration of our moral experi-
ence. Furthermore, the descriptive-metaphysical task is an important pre-
condition and basis for making any criticism of positive proposals about
how to live. Dewey said, ‘‘The more sure one is that the world which
encompasses human life is of such and such a character (no matter what
his definition), the more one is committed to try to direct the conduct of
life, that of others as well as himself, upon the basis of the character
assigned to the world’’ (LW 1:309).
But descriptive criticism from the point of view of how things are can
be complemented by normative criticism from the point of view of how
things should be. ‘‘No just or pertinent criticism in its negative phase can
possibly be made, however, except upon the basis of a heightened appre-
ciation of the positive goods which human experience has achieved and
o√ers’’ (LW 1:308). Hence, a moral theory can also articulate and make
explicit a moral ideal (the subject matter of part 3) that can be used to
criticize present beliefs and institutions. This also makes such an ideal
both available and subject to criticism. This is the only way we can pre-
serve the life and spirit of a worthwhile ideal, and this is what Dewey tried
to do in regard to democracy. Still, there is bound to be some skepticism
about the adoption of such a traditional notion as that of ideals by a
pragmatist. How can this be compatible with the commitment to a situa-
tional contextualism?
Pragmatism recognizes the reality and necessary role of ideals in
human life. They are ‘‘as natural to man as his aches and his clothes’’
(LW 1:312). They are real because potentialities and possibilities are part of
experience. They are not made out of subjective matter, nor do they come
from a Platonic heaven; they are active instrumentalities in experience.
∏∏
William James said that ideals ‘‘ought to aim at the transformation of

reality—no less.’’≤∫ For the pragmatist, ideals are ends but they are not ends
in themselves, that is, ends that are not also means. They are not fixed or
final ends, and they are subject to refinement or change. They are not states
of ultimate repose, nor do they have antecedent existence. Dewey put this
eloquently when he said, ‘‘Men do not shoot because targets exist, but they
set up targets in order that throwing and shooting may be more e√ective
and significant’’ (MW 14:156). Most of our ideals, like democracy, are
inherited as possibilities from tradition. Our creative task is to use ideals to
modify actual conditions, and to reconstruct ideals to fit the actual situa-
tion. In other words, both the actual and the ideal are open to modification
and improvement by an experimental and continuous process.
Ideals can be distinguished from other ends by their inclusivity. In an
ideal, constructive imagination puts together into a coherent whole values
that have been previously experienced. Every ideal, Dewey says, ‘‘projects
in a securer and wider and fuller form some good which has been pre-
viously experienced in a precarious, accidental, fleeting way’’ for the pur-
poses of criticism. (MW 14:20) So, for example, by projecting the positive
traits of actual forms of community life into an ideal, we can use the ideal
to criticize undesirable features of our community and suggest improve-
ment. Ideals serve as a ‘‘basis for criticism of institutions as they exist and
of plans of betterment’’ (LW 7:349).
It is dangerous for ethical theory to take the formulation of ideals as
its major task. Dewey warned us that ‘‘the trouble with ideals of remote
perfection is that they tend to make us negligent of the significance of the
special situations in which we have to act’’ (LW 7:273). However, a prag-
matic understanding of the proper function of ideals makes the commit-
ment to an ideal compatible with the commitment to the amelioration of
present situations. For neither one of these commitments is a mere end for
the other. Projected ideals and goals give a general direction; they provide
an additional continuity from situation to situation in that our present
e√orts are served by an ideal. But ideals are also served and informed by
their application. We can set up ideals in order to improve our actual
conditions, but they do not demarcate the absolute limits of improve-
ment, for they are themselves subject to constant improvement. Ideals give
coherence and stability to our lives, but of a mobile sort, that is, the ideal
itself unfolds and expands. Ideals can also become idle and impotent
fantasies if we consider them independently of the means of their realiza-
tion. It is through an explicit articulation and evaluation of ideals in terms
of concrete existential requirements and the means of their realization
that we can begin making ideals relevant and e√ective.
∏π
In today’s intellectual environment the philosophical articulation of

an ideal seems like a gratuitous theoretical and speculative indulgence. For
Dewey, ideals are integral parts of any worthwhile philosophy. The con-
temporary resistance to associating philosophy with moral ideals is due to
the neglect of the contextual nature of all philosophical reflection, and is
based on the assumption that philosophy is just a ‘‘form of knowledge’’
(LW 6:43). Dewey pleads that we should return to the original meaning of
philosophy as love of wisdom, that is, as involving moral concern or
commitment. The present professional view of philosophy does not let us
think of philosophers as intellectuals with a sense of a better kind of life to
lead, or as those who use ‘‘the best knowledge and the best intellectual
methods available in their day’’ for its articulation and support, and to
persuade themselves and others of its reasonableness. (LW 6:44) One main
premise of this work is that Dewey was just this kind of intellectual. By
Dewey’s standards most philosophers today lack the imagination and the
boldness to propose ideals as tools for present amelioration and criticism.
The last chapters of this book are my e√orts to put together into a co-
herent whole Dewey’s moral vision in terms of ideal character, relation-
ships, communication, and community. I propose a hypothesis to be
tested and modified by its means and application.
Ethical Theory as Inquiry into Conditions

Dewey hoped that ethical theory would shift its concern from trying to
make decisions for individuals and reducing moral experience to abstrac-
tions, to the study of the conditions of these experiences and their better-
ment. The persistent attempt by ethicists to lay down rules or universal
criteria is a misuse of intelligence and needs to be replaced by e√orts to
‘‘devote themselves to studying the conditions and e√ects of the changing
situations in which men actually live’’ (MW 3:57).
Inquiry into conditions in ethics assumes a conception of ethical
theory within practice. It assumes that this kind of theory will be mean-
ingful only to those who have had moral experiences. For those of us who
are immersed within moral life, convincing an imaginary radical skeptic is
at best secondary to inquiring into the conditions for improving experi-
ences we already have.
The general inquiry about what would enhance or what would be
obstacles to moral life can take many forms. Insofar as there are economic,
biological, or cultural conditions to moral experience it may be appropri-
ate to consult di√erent disciplines. In moral philosophy, however, we can
make an important functional distinction in a situation between the way
∏∫
of experiencing and what is experienced, that is, between method and

subject matter. This needs to be done without abandoning the notion of a
situation as the locus of moral experience.
The recognition that what is experienced is not independent of what
we bring to a situation (e.g., our habits) was a great modern discovery.
However, instead of using it to regulate the course of experience, philoso-
phers have used it to defend the reduction of experience to experiencing,
that is, to subjectivism. Experiencing has no existence apart from the
subject matter experienced. We can distinguish the enjoyment from the
objects enjoyed but ‘‘we do not enjoy enjoyments, but persons, scenes,
deeds, works of art . . .’’ (LW 15:80). For Dewey, the purpose of this func-
tional distinction is to provide some control over the direction or quality
of our moral experience. The concern with conditions in morality is an
attention to method, understood as the habits, character, or ways of life
that determine how to interact with and participate in situations. Given
the uniqueness of our characters, each one of us has unique ways of
interacting in situations, but we can also distinguish generic ways. For
example, approaching a situation with openness is a generic trait even
though each one of us is open in a di√erent way. Moreover, we can dis-
tinguish di√erent levels of generality in how we interact in situations, for
example, habits as particular ways of interacting, and character as a com-
plex unity that defines how an organism interacts. We can even move to
another level and speak of a way of life as a shared general way of interact-
ing. These are abstract but very useful distinctions that I will rely on in
presenting Dewey’s views in the following chapters.
There are good reasons why ethics so understood should focus on
character. In Dewey’s ethics character and habits are central, but not
because they have ontological or epistemological primacy. They should
be the foremost concern of moral reflection and theory simply because
habits are the most controllable factor we have among all the factors that
come to determine the direction and moral quality of experience.
Principles (as empirical generalizations) and ideals (as comprehensive
ends-in-view) are important resources at the foreground of moral inquiry.
Habits determine to some extent our basic moral sensitivities in morally
problematic situations and our way of thinking through them. Aristotle
was right in emphasizing the importance of cultivating moral habits. I will
argue that, for Dewey, the most important instrumentalities for morality,
the cardinal virtues, are the traits of character that can improve moral
habits and, more importantly, better assist us in determining what moral-
ity requires in particular situations. Dewey’s contextualism thus advances
a view about which habits are better in confronting moral situations, even
∏Ω
if it does not prescribe beforehand what to do in these situations. Moral

anarchy and chaos are not avoided by fixing moral rules, but by the proper
cultivation of character. The kind of character we should develop is thus
for Dewey a more important consideration than what decision procedure
we should adopt. Character, however, is not under our direct control. You
can no more transform (ameliorate) character by teaching the right rules
of conduct than you can produce democracy by preaching its virtues.
Ethical theory needs to come to terms with the indirect and uncertain
aspects of its prescriptions. The transformation of character can be a
slow and arduous process requiring the indirect change of environmental
conditions.
π≠
three
The Normative Standpoint of Pragmatism
‘‘How Should We Live?’’

The functional distinction between experiencing—the how—and the
subject matter experienced—the what—allows a pragmatist to recover the
normative ethical issue of how one should live in a way that is consistent
with her philosophical approach. The normative issue is about how one
should interact in moral situations, rather than the one expressed by the
question, ‘‘What is the good life?’’ Whereas the latter usually assumes an
Archimedean point of view, the former merely assumes that our par-
ticipation is one of the conditions of moral experience and that it can be
evaluated. In order to have control in the direction and quality of our lives
we can discriminate between how we should live (or between acceptable
ways of life) and our circumstances, even if, concretely speaking, there is
no ideal way of life independent of concrete living. This means that a
philosophical investigation of this question starts from where we are.
The question is not how we, as human beings or as beings with a human
nature considered independently of present actual experience (i.e., of
time, culture, and history), should lead our lives. In the context of experi-
π∞
ence the question that requires an answer is a matter of choice, rather than
idle speculation; for it needs to be answered in terms of what our present
living∞ options are, where we are, and what we can do. The issue is a
momentous and forced one because we are not subjects who can stand
outside the course of events; participation or engagement of some form or
another is unavoidable. The only choice available to us is between modes
of participation. As Dewey says, ‘‘one cannot escape the problem of how to
engage in life, since in any case he must engage in it some way or another—
or else quit and get out’’ (MW 14:58). This does not mean that we are
trapped—unless we presuppose a non-relational, non-contextual notion
of ourselves. However, it does mean that the question about how we
should live cannot be answered once and for all; there is no final rest-
ing place, and no final answer, because our options and conditions can
change. But this is not a good enough reason to neglect the question.
Therefore the pragmatic approach has to be tentative.
It might be objected that once one gives up the Archimedean stand-
point one also has to give up the normative task of being concerned with
how one should live, since there is no justifiable and non-arbitrary stand-
point from which to judge this issue. Richard Rorty claims that a pragma-
tist needs to admit that there is ‘‘no ahistorical standpoint from which to
endorse the habits of modern democracies he wishes to praise,’’ that there
is no ‘‘demonstration of the ‘objective’ superiority of our way of life over
all other alternatives.’’≤ For Rorty, the alternative to an ahistorical objective
justification is not despair, but solidarity. We need to learn to be ‘‘ethno-
centric’’ and to ‘‘privilege our own group, even though there can be no
noncircular justification for doing so.’’≥ Since it is idle to want to stand
outside our particular community and look down at it from a more
universal standpoint, we should cultivate the desire to stand by our tradi-
tional liberal habits and hopes simply because they are ours. In the end,
Rorty recommends a blind solidarity that merely justifies the status quo;
in so doing, he places us in a false dilemma.
Dewey rejects the choice between ahistorical objectivity and solidar-
ity, and thus rejects Rorty’s dilemma. We do not have to stand outside
experience or assume a God’s-eye point of view in order to assess the
options available to us. Neither is there a field of experience that provides
all the considerations relevant to the evaluation of a mode of participation
in experience. We can use past experience and our knowledge of actual
conditions in order to evaluate our options. We need to start from where
we are, but we can also learn from where we have been. The options we
have today are not strictly the same as the ones our ancestors had, but
neither are they so di√erent that learning from past experience is impos-
π≤
t h e n o r m at i v e s ta n d p o i n t o f p r a g m at i s m
sible. Moreover, philosophers can generate hypotheses about which gen-

eral ways of interacting in situations are better in light of the generic traits
of present experience. Even if experience is fairly hospitable and tolerant
to all types of character and ways of life, it might not lend itself equally to
all ideals. For example, if change, novelty, and risk are traits of moral
experience, can we not use this understanding to develop a hypothesis
about what dispositions it would be better for one to have? Is it outlandish
to claim that in a world of change, novelty and risk, one disposed to meet
new demands, to embrace novel situations, and to be capable of constant
readjustment will fare better than one with a fixed and static character? If
moral experience is irreducibly plural in the sense that neither the right
nor the good are reducible to each other, then we ought to pay attention to
that fact instead of trying to live as if this plurality is illusory or as if an
ultimate moral category exists.
I will demonstrate the thickness of Dewey’s ethics in terms of the
general and tentative proposals about how one should interact in situa-
tions; indeed, this is the only sense in which his ethics can be called
normative. A proposal about how best to approach moral problems and
engage in moral situations should be distinguished from the traditional
ethical tasks of providing the answer to moral problems or of proposing
a mechanical decision procedure by which we can solve all problems. Such
methodological proposals are not universal or fixed prescriptions but
rather are instruments at the disposal of persons already caught up in
moral life. This weaker or more humble task can be as normative as the
commandments of some ethical theories. There is a di√erence between a
theory that states what one should do and one that recommends in a very
general and tentative way how one can live a better life. Whereas the
content of the first kind consists of rules, formulas or imperatives, the
latter claims only general proposals that must ultimately be tested in the
lives of individuals. In short, ethical inquiry can propose hypotheses about
dispositions and instrumentalities that can assist individual reflection and
are likely to improve or enhance moral life. These proposals are hypothe-
ses of the form, ‘‘if you cultivate x you are likely to be better prepared to
meet the demands of morality than if you do not.’’
If a Deweyan ethics can be normative in this humble sense, how can
we evaluate the adequacy of such a view? We cannot test its adequacy via
the usual use of counterexamples, for example, by considering whether it
is able to judge as immoral the actions of someone like Hitler. Instead, it
has to be the sort of philosophical inquiry that if successful provides good
philosophical reasons why something is worth trying, and is presented
with enough specificity to know when it is being tried. For Dewey, the
π≥
most controlled environment for testing his hypotheses was the class-
room; this is why he thought that moral theory and moral education were
interdependent.
Dewey was fully committed to democracy as a moral ideal, that is, as a
tool that provides some guidance without being the normative basis of all
values, or without telling us what to do in a particular situation. Neverthe-
less, I will argue in the last part of this book that a reconsideration of
Dewey’s view on democracy in light of his ethics discloses an even thicker
description of democracy, one that goes beyond the vague commitments
of Deweyans to notions like social intelligence, communal inquiry, and
growth. Democracy is part of a general moral outlook toward the world
and others. It is not merely a type of social procedure or mode of public
deliberation; moreover, Dewey’s defense of democracy as a way of life is
not made from an Archimedean standpoint. He merely wants to win the
consent of people who are already committed to certain values and who
are challenged by certain concrete problems. Why must the only rea-
sonable justification of democracy be the one that convinces an imagi-
nary rational agent or a radical moral skeptic under ideal conditions?
This again assumes a very questionable starting point for a philosophy of
democracy.
The task of eliciting and articulating the thickness of Dewey’s ethics in
terms of the two general theoretical tasks just described will occupy us for
the remainder of this study. But to some extent I have already begun. For I
have unveiled Dewey’s methodological commitments and hinted at some
moral commitments behind his skepticism of traditional ethical theories.
I have already indicated that his anti-theoretical views and his notion of
principles cannot be understood independently of other assumptions that
are part of his moral vision, for example, the function of intelligence and
the artistic use of moral ideas. I will further explore the meaning and
implications of these assumptions and the commitments they presuppose.
But before moving into broad hypotheses about our moral lives I think it
is important to reiterate why any adequate unfolding or examination of
Dewey’s ethical vision needs to begin and take as central the notion of a
situation.
For Dewey, in our moral life we are always in a situation. His norma-
tive proposals, no matter how general or abstract they might seem, are
about how to participate in situations. Furthermore, if we wanted to
summarize most of what Dewey’s moral vision proposes, we could say that
his moral philosophy encourages us to live by and for a situation. In other
words, a concrete situation should be the means and end of morality. Let’s
begin to explore what this means.
π∂
Faith in Experience: The Situation as

the Means and End of Morality
I have claimed that in the issue of moral decision making Dewey espoused
a situation ethics. This position is based on a contextualist view about how
acts acquire a moral cast or quality, and it is supported by Dewey’s views
about the relation between theory and practice. But there is a more impor-
tant positive commitment that underlies and supports this view. The sug-
gestion that we try a fresh and wholehearted use of intelligence for each
situation that requires amelioration, instead of appealing to external au-
thority or to ready-made rules, assumes a positive trust in the possibili-
ties and instrumentalities available in a situation. Dewey claims, in other
words, that the situation is not only the end but also the means of moral
endeavor. Hence, a morally problematic situation can achieve its end
through its own means.
This is an instance of Dewey’s faith in experience or nature,∂ a com-
mitment central to his philosophical vision. This is the idea that we do not
have to look for guidance outside of experience because experience con-
tains the resources for its own transformation. In Logic: The Theory of
Inquiry (LW 12), Dewey presents the bold hypothesis that logical forms
arise in the course of inquiry, a hypothesis very similar to that in his ethics
about moral norms, standards, principles, and ideals. They ‘‘arise out of
ordinary transactions; they are not imposed upon them from on high or
from any external and a priori source . . . they regulate the proper conduct
of the activities out of which they develop’’ (LW 12:106). Moral norms
grow out of, and exert their normative force from, the moral inquiries that
occur in the stream of situations that constitute our moral life. Their
function is to transform indeterminate situations, that is, to help us with
moral problems. Other resources available to an agent in a morally prob-
lematic situation are principles, ideals, and habits; more importantly, the
qualitative context itself (in which we experience problems) can guide us,
provided we are ready to listen.
Dewey’s faith in experience is implicit in his advocacy for the kind of
philosophical empiricism explained earlier, and he gave reasons for pre-
ferring his method to a non-empirical method in philosophy. For in-
stance, the non-empirical method provides no test or verification for its
conclusions, and it generates problems that are abstract, artificial, and act
as ‘‘blocks to inquiry, blind alleys’’ (LW 1:17). But, more importantly, non-
empirical philosophies ‘‘cast a cloud over the things of ordinary experi-
ence’’ (LW 1:40) and ‘‘obscure the potentialities of daily experience for joy
and self-regulation’’ (LW 1:41). Hence, in proposing a method in philoso-
π∑
phy he was suggesting more than the adoption of a formal procedure or a

way of solving or dissolving problems in philosophy. He makes this clear
when he prefaces the text of Experience and Nature with ‘‘If what is written
in these pages has no other result than creating and promoting a respect
for concrete human experience and its potentialities, I shall be content’’
(LW 1:41). The pragmatist’s concern with experience is not parasitic on a
prior concern with knowledge, as it is with the traditional empiricist; on
the contrary, the pragmatist is concerned with knowledge only insofar as
it is a means to enhance our lived present experience.
Dewey’s work on metaphysics, logic, epistemology, aesthetics, ethics,
and philosophy of religion a≈rms the potential of ordinary experience
(concrete life) to be the source of amelioration, admiration, and inspira-
tion. His metaphysics reminds philosophers that the tangled, complex,
gross, macroscopic, and crude things we find in everyday life are real, for
example, vagueness, ugliness, fantasies, headaches, illusions, spark plugs, a
conversation with a friend, parties, diseases, stones, food, tragedy, a con-
flict with a roommate, a joke, playing backgammon with friends, measles,
and marbles. His aesthetics is a philosophical reintegration of the aesthetic
with everyday life that is, in e√ect, a celebration of lived experience. I will
argue that his ethics is an a≈rmation of morality as experience. Dewey
a≈rmed a ‘‘confidence in the directive powers that inhere in experience, if
men have but the wit and courage to follow them’’ (LW 1:5), and thought
that otherworldly and subjectivist views of morality are contrary to this
a≈rmation. This is the basis of his faith in inquiry, intelligence, education,
and democracy.
If there is today a lack of confidence in experience or in moral theory
it is because we have had exaggerated and naïve expectations about our
own capacities within nature. Because we cannot get what we want from
lived experience with little e√ort and with the desired level of certainty, we
have decided to rebel against it, either by trying to stand outside or above
the context of our particular lived moral experience (as in many forms of
objectivism), or by assuming that our moral ideals are protected from the
course of natural events because they reside in the realm of our own
human creations. The alternative to the traditional quest for certainty and
an Archimedean objective standpoint is not that we are just humans talk-
ing to each other, trapped in our own language, culture, history, and
inherited standards. Dewey’s faith lay between these extremes.
Men move between extremes. They conceive of themselves as gods, or

feign a powerful and cunning god as an ally who bends the world to do
their bidding and meet their wishes. Disillusionized, they disown the
π∏
world that disappoints them; and hugging ideals to themselves as their

own possession, stand in haughty aloofness apart from the hard course
of events that pays so little heed to our hopes and aspirations. (LW 1:314)
Dewey was not naïve. He believed that the course of events in nature
and the quality of our moral life is not altogether under our control, but
he didn’t see this as a good reason to abandon an inquiry into what
di√erence we can make. Dewey found it childish to abandon that which is
in our power on the ground that we lack total control.
We know that though the universe slay us still we may trust, for our lot is
one with whatever is good in existence. We know that such thought and
e√ort is one condition of the coming into existence of the better. As far
as we are concerned it is the only condition, for it alone is in our power.
To ask more than this is childish; but to ask less is a recreance no less
egotistic, involving no less a cutting of ourselves from the universe than
does the expectation that it meet and satisfy our every wish. (LW 1:314)
These passages assume a very delicate balance that is key to Dewey’s vision.
Dewey presents us with a ‘‘doctrine of humility’’ but also of ‘‘direction’’
(LW 1:373). He recognizes that we can only operate in a piecemeal fashion
and from where we are. The way to rely on (lie back upon) lived experience
is to rely on what is directly experienced. This requires that we open and
trust our eyes, ears, and thoughts; but it must not be naïve, it is not a blind
trust. We are no longer naïve, for example, about how undesirable racial
or class-based prejudices can condition our immediate moral experience.
We cannot question everything at once but we must nonetheless try to
question. Dewey says, ‘‘An empirical philosophy is in any case a kind of
intellectual disrobing. . . . We cannot achieve recovery of primitive naïveté.
But there is a cultivated naïveté of eye, ear, and thought’’ (LW 1:40).
Cultivated naïveté requires both trust and criticism. As I discuss in later
chapters, the ideal is the balance between receptivity (appreciation) and
criticism. We must be ready to doubt, but we must do so for the sake of
cultivating our immediate experience. What we need to do in moral edu-
cation is to foster the set of habits by which students can acquire cultivated
naïveté instead of becoming absolutist or skeptics.
To summarize, I have suggested that Dewey’s situation ethics is unin-
telligible apart from certain positive assumptions and commitments that I
have been slowly revealing. The most important is his faith in experience
and his commitment to taking the situation as the end and means of
morality. We need to unfold Dewey’s moral vision, for not just any moral
life is consistent with these commitments. To anticipate what lies ahead:
ππ
Dewey’s hypothesis is that the moral task of ameliorating the concrete,

specific, and present situations that we are presented with might best be
accomplished by e√orts to participate in our moral lives in an intelligent,
aesthetic, and democratic way. These three adverbial characterizations are
general and related ways of describing Dewey’s proposal of a better moral
life, rather than three di√erent and isolated aspects. A Deweyan moral life
can maintain its own integrity without the support and guidance of fixed
and external foundations, and it can sustain itself without falling into
the dangerous extremes presupposed by what I have called the either/or
dilemma.
To fully understand why this is Dewey’s hypothesis, and in order to
examine its plausibility, I need to more robustly and precisely characterize
the kind of moral life Dewey proposed. I will do this in part 3, in terms of
habits, traits of character, relationships, and general ways of interacting in
communication and community. But his normative proposals were based
on his view of moral experience. Therefore, I will turn first to how Dewey
reconstructed traditional moral notions and provided a radical but more
empirically adequate description of the generic traits and elements of
moral life.
π∫
PART TWO
Dewey’s View of Moral Experience
four
Morality as Experience
Among Dewey’s most important contributions to moral thought are his

criticisms of the assumptions of traditional ethical theory by means of a
descriptive account of the generic traits and components of moral experi-
ence. Dewey’s ethics is a promising and refreshing alternative to some of
the narrow and reductionistic views about moral experience that domi-
nate the history of moral philosophy. It points to dimensions of the moral
life that tend to be overlooked and undervalued in much of modern
ethical thought. His view of moral life is a result of his philosophical
empiricism and is motivated by an e√ort to recover the notion of morality
as experience.
The Alienation of Morality from Experience

Dewey argued that there is no area of our experience that has su√ered
more from distortion and misleading conceptions than moral experience.
And among the most troublesome misconceptions has been the reifica-
tion of morality into something that is separate from ordinary experience
or nature. It has been cut o√ from lived experience and placed in an extra-
∫∞
experiential or subjective-human realm of its own. As Jerome Schneewind

argues, modern moral philosophy arose as a reaction to the ‘‘traditional
assumption that morality must come from some authoritative source
outside of human nature.’’∞ The result of this reaction to tradition has
been that it often turns morality into something merely human (in a
subject or community) and not part of nature. Morality is thus either
something externally imposed on human beings, or something internal
that originates in them.
This understanding of morality, which has dominated Western cul-
ture, has been fostered in large part by the dualisms (such as that between
fact and value) that have been assumed and nurtured by traditional phi-
losophy. As a part of his goal of reconstructing traditional philosophy,
Dewey attempted to heal these conceptual fissures. Just as he objected to
the ‘‘museum conception of art’’ (LW 10:12) that isolates the arts from
lived experience, Dewey warned against separating morality from rela-
tionships in the workplace, from the technical-scientific use of intelli-
gence, from the material orientation of the business world, and from our
natural biological drives and desires. If Dewey sometimes seems almost to
conflate morals with science, industry or politics, it is because he wanted
to ‘‘bring morals to earth, and if they still aspire to heaven it is to the
heaven of this earth’’ (MW 14:16).
This persistent separation of morals from experience is one of the
ways in which men and women seek to escape responsibility for their
actions. If morality is perceived as something external or added to the
material-natural realm of industrial and economic relations, then the
instrumentalities of technology, science, and business are not properly
perceived as tools that can be taken up and used to improve unsatisfactory
moral conditions. This is a costly mistake because it diverts intelligence
from the concrete situations where moral demands are encountered. If the
continuity between morals and the rest of experience were acknowledged,
however, then a fuller range of resources would become available for
moral action.
In order to recover morality from objective but otherworldly views,
on the one hand, and arbitrary subjectivist views on the other, Dewey en-
gaged in a critical re-description of moral experience. He worked through
the one-sidedness and vicious abstractions of past moral philosophy in an
attempt to construct a view that was more adequate to actual moral expe-
rience. In these moral re-descriptions, Dewey had two concerns that may
seem to be incompatible. Can he pursue the task of describing what is
distinctively moral without undermining his concern not to separate mo-
rality from everything else in experience? There is no inconsistency. Al-
∫≤
morality as experience
though there are continuities, rather than dualisms, in experience, this

does not mean that di√erences do not exist, nor does it mean that philoso-
phers should abandon e√orts to di√erentiate morality from the other
areas of life. However intertwined morality may be in our everyday a√airs,
morality is experienced as di√erent from, for example, the aesthetic or the
religious. Because Dewey was so concerned to overcome the dualisms that
separate morality from experience he took every opportunity to empha-
size the continuities rather than the di√erences. Nevertheless, Dewey had
no patience for reductionist theories that insist on ‘‘trying to explain away
the distinctive traits of any type of experience’’ (MW 3:35).
How can a philosophical empiricism avoid conceiving of morality as a
general and invariant phenomenon while remaining faithful to its partic-
ularity and context sensitivity? Dewey did not address this question ex-
plicitly but what he writes about other types of experiences is helpful here.
If we are to discriminate between di√erent modes of experience, we can do
it in terms of the features that are predominant, controlling, or focal in a
situation. For example, Dewey claims that ‘‘in a distinctively aesthetic
experience, characteristics that are subdued in other experiences are dom-
inant; those that are subordinate are controlling’’ (LW 10:62). Science, art,
and morality are concerned with di√erent materials and initiated by dif-
ferent problems even if there are continuities and they share general meth-
ods and traits. There are no clear and fixed boundaries between what is
and is not moral experience, but it does not follow that the distinction
between moral experience and other kinds of experience is meaningless or
that it is an arbitrary and futile endeavor to discern these distinctions. We
all encounter situations in which moral qualities are dominant and which
we experience as moral. This was Dewey’s starting point, and a description
of these situations was the basis of his criticism and reconstruction of
traditional notions of character, self, moral deliberation, principles, and
moral problems.
A description of the generic traits of situations in everyday experience
as it is lived became the basis of Dewey’s metaphysics, thought of as a map
of criticism. This map fits our moral, intellectual, and artistic activities
because it is generic, that is, it omits the diverse and specific manifesta-
tions experience can take. Dewey’s ethics is a generalized description or
map of our moral experience. This map is generic in relation to individual
and unique moral experiences, but it is specific relative to the more gen-
eral ground map of Experience and Nature. My presentation of Dewey’s
map begins with two generic traits of lived experience that are often
missing in traditional accounts of moral life, namely, the social and the
qualitative. In the next several chapters, I provide some of the finer details
∫≥
of Dewey’s map of moral life: chapter 5 is about moral deliberation and

the specific problems, materials, operations, and phases that are dominant
or central in those situations that we typically experience as moral; and
chapters 6 and 7 are concerned with the role of habits, the self, character,
and conduct in moral life.
Moral Experience as Social and Qualitative

Dewey thought that traditional ethics had become bankrupt because it
begins with an isolated subject or self that has a purely cognitive ap-
prehension of moral truths. This is problematic because it begins with an
abstraction that ignores the social (transactive) and a√ective (qualitative)
character of moral experience. In Dewey’s ethics relationships are not
conceived as secondary or derivative. ‘‘Morals are as much a matter of
interaction of a person with his social environment as walking is an inter-
action of legs with a physical environment’’ (MW 14:219). There are occa-
sions where we need to distinguish our self from our relationships, but it
would be a vicious abstraction, an instance of the philosophical fallacy, to
completely separate the self from these transactions and to claim that the
self is metaphysically prior such relations. Indeed, the self lives through
and by social relations. An individual has qualities and potentialities but
these are not fixed or antecedent to its interactions. In fact, ‘‘the qualities
of things associated are displayed only in association, since in interactions
alone are potentialities released and actualized’’ (LW 3:41).
Morality is social, but this does not mean that it is not also personal
or that, in Dewey’s ethics, the individual is secondary. On the contrary, he
claims that ‘‘morals are personal because they spring from personal in-
sight, judgment, and choice’’ (LW 7:317), and his normative moral vision is
based on a faith in individuals. But the character of an individual cannot
be separated from the quality of his or her associations, and individuals
become acquainted with and competent in moral activity through their
participation in a community. As Todd Lekan has recently argued, ‘‘[t]he
pragmatist approach maintains that morality is more analogous to non-
moral practical skills and arts like medicine, cookery, and baseball than
has been acknowledge by most of the tradition of moral philosophy.’’≤ We
acquire shared ways to be sensitive to moral considerations and how to
respond to them, ways that are neither fixed nor necessarily controlling of
our individual response to situations. They are revisable under new cir-
cumstances, and even when individuals embody shared ways of acting,
they are expressed di√erently according to our individuality.
The subject matter of moral experience is also qualitative. This stands
∫∂
in sharp contrast to the predominant intellectualist readings of morality.

The intellectualist holds that only if moral traits are objects of knowledge
are they candidates to be part of reality. In other words, moral quality is
part of the world only if it is justified or accounted for in the same way we
account for our knowledge of physics. The problem of validating morals
and the debate about moral realism become epistemological problems
centered on questions about how we come to know moral values. But for
Dewey, moral qualities, traits, or values are experienced; and insofar as
they are experienced, they exist. Moral qualities require a perceiver, but
they are not in consciousness; they are rather found in situations and
reveal aspects of nature. Dewey’s commitment to a version of moral real-
ism is clear. He wrote,
Instead of presenting that kind of mechanic naturalism that is bound to

deny the ‘‘reality’’ of the qualities which are the raw material of the values
with which morals is concerned, I have repeatedly insisted that our
theory of Nature be framed on the basis of giving full credence to these
qualities just as they present themselves (LW 14:63). If experience actu-
ally presents aesthetic and moral traits, then these traits may also be
supposed to reach down into nature, and to testify to something that be-
longs to nature as truly as does the mechanical structure attributed to it
in physical science (LW 1:13–14). Aesthetic and moral experiences reveal
traits of real things as truly as does intellectual experience. (LW 1:27)
To be sure, this is a di√erent sort of realism than the typical variety where
moral properties exist independently of an agent’s participation in a moral
situation. Rather, moral qualities, such as those that we call good or right,
are experienced and judged as objective features of a situation, even if
further inquiry might change this or if there is disagreement about their
presence.
This sort of realism is consistent with Dewey’s contextualism. Moral
qualities and moral decisions are context-dependent and have their home
and meaning in a particular situation. This is true of all qualities. Color
and sound are not qualities appreciated or discriminated in isolation, or
self-su≈cient elements that can be used to explain complex cases of sense
perception. The situational context as a scene of action is what is experi-
enced, where what we are directly concerned with becomes focal and
meaningful because of that implicit field. ‘‘When objects or qualities are
cognitively apprehended, they are viewed in reference to the exigencies of
the perceived field in which they occur’’ (LW 12:153). Hence, the rightness,
goodness, or moral necessity of an act is ‘‘not one property it possesses in
and of itself, in the isolation of non-relatedness’’ (LW 14:77). It is true that
∫∑
moral qualities are not the subject matter of scientific inquiry. But the fact
that moral qualities are not quantifiable or subject to predictive control
does not imply that they are not real and important in the context of a
morally problematic situation. This is the fallacy committed by recent
naturalists who reject the notion that moral qualities are natural.≥
In philosophy, the word ‘quality’ is usually associated with either
some abstract metaphysical property or some subjective phenomena, as in
emotivism. With Dewey, however, it simply points to our pre-theoretical
and pre-cognitive experience in the world. A qualitative world of persons
and things is the most basic and inclusive context where one finds lan-
guage, knowledge, and all of our more discursive activities, philosophy
included. ‘‘A universe of experience is the precondition of a universe of
discourse’’ (LW 12:74).
The world of everyday experience also has tertiary qualities, that is,
qualities that pervade all the parts of a whole. The quality that pervades a
situation is what demarcates it as a situation. A situation is a ‘‘complex
existence that is held together in spite of its internal complexity by the fact
that it is dominated and characterized throughout by a single quality’’
(LW 5:246). To say that a quality pervades a situation is to say that the
quality runs through every aspect and detail of a situation, gives meaning
to each aspect, and binds them all together. ‘‘If the situation experienced is
that of being lost in a forest, the quality of being lost permeates and a√ects
every detail that is observed and thought of ’’ (LW 12:203). This is relevant
to the issue of designating what is moral in experience. Moral qualities
should not be limited to single acts or agents. A situation may be experi-
enced as predominantly moral, that is, as having the pervasive quality of
demanding that one find out what one morally ought to do. When a felt
moral perplexity controls and pervades the development of a situation, we
can designate the situation and its corresponding inquiry as moral.
Although morality and art have traditionally been associated with the
qualitative, serious thought and inquiry have not. This is because modern
notions of thought neglect or downplay the importance of the qualitative.
As a consequence, morality and art are disregarded as thought-less and
arbitrary. In contrast, for Dewey, all thought is qualitative thought. Situa-
tions that demand reconstruction through inquiry are situations that are
qualitatively experienced as unsettled, confused, and indeterminate. The
transformation of the pervasive quality of this sort of situation is, in e√ect,
the general function of any inquiry. This is not a subjective transforma-
tion. Situations in their qualitative immediacy and uniqueness are pri-
mary and prior to any distinction between subject and object. Dewey
explains: ‘‘according to my theory, while the initial problematic situation
∫∏
and the final transformed resolved situation are equally immediately qual-
itative, no situation is subjective nor involves a subject and object relation’’
(LW 5:70). More importantly, ‘‘the immediate existence of quality, and of
dominant and pervasive quality, is the background, the point of depar-
ture, and the regulative principle of all thinking’’ (LW 5:261, my emphasis).
In my general characterization of moral life as a qualitative and social
process, I have not mentioned the elements, phases, and operations that
are experienced as an integral part of this process. In the next chapter, I
turn my attention to some of the finer and functional distinctions that can
be articulated about moral experience.
∫π
five
The ‘‘What’’ of Moral Experience
One of the broadest functional distinctions that can be made about lived
experience is that between the subject matter experienced—what is expe-
rienced—and the experiencing of it—how it is experienced.∞ How we par-
ticipate in morally problematic situations is one of the key features of such
situations. In the next chapter, I will consider the function of habits and
character in moral experience, that is, the how. In other words, I will
distinguish our moral attitudes and dispositions from the moral situations
in which they are operative. But I will first consider what occurs during
the course of morally problematic situations. What are the generic traits
and phases of these kinds of processes?
For Dewey, life is neither a homogeneous flux nor a succession of
disconnected (atomistic) moments. It is ‘‘a thing of histories, each with its
own plot, its own inception and movement towards its close’’ (LW 10:43).
Each of these histories is a situation that begins with a disruption from the
fluidity provided by our habits. From this initial phase we usually move to
an intermediate phase in which we try to transform the unsettledness. In
this second phase, we might engage in inquiry as a series of doings and
undergoings with our environment. If successful, we arrive at a final phase
∫∫
t h e ‘‘w h a t’’ o f m o r a l e x p e r i e n c e
of consummation where we establish a new equilibrium and a situation

that is experienced as settled and determinate.
This general rhythm and pattern of experience adequately fits moral
life. The life of a moral agent is one of being recurrently faced with
decisions between conflicting moral forces or demands. These breaks in
the flow of everyday life are situations that have the pervasive quality of
being morally unsettled, confused, and indeterminate. The agent finds
herself in a morally problematic situation that provokes the agent to en-
gage in a process of moral deliberation, until she arrives at a judgment that
results in a choice. It is in light of this process that Dewey provided novel
and provocative reconstructions of the traditional notions of moral delib-
eration, value judgments, principles, and moral problems. I now turn to
each of these matters.
The Nature of Moral Problems

According to the methodological commitments outlined in part 1, a radical
empiricist approach to the nature of moral problems seeks a hypothetical-
general but faithful pre-theoretical description of what moral problems are
experienced as rather than an essence or a definition (i.e., necessary and
su≈cient conditions) of moral problems.≤ We do not, after all, experience
moral problems in general. The problem of abortion, for example, can only
be an abstract way of making reference to all the situations where a moral
agent has to make a certain kind of moral decision. If, despite their unique-
ness, moral problems are experienced as having traits in common (generic
traits), then one can proceed to specify what they are.
Dewey thought that standard moral theories, regardless of their dif-
ferences, usually shared a view of moral problems which was far removed
from how they are immediately experienced. The root of the problem is
that traditional accounts of moral problems rest on mistaken theoretical
assumptions about experience in general, assumptions that are the result
of a failure to be empirical, that is, the result of committing the philo-
sophical fallacy. I will now consider some of the most common traditional
assumptions about moral problems and how Dewey’s empiricism led him
to propose a more adequate and rich conception of the actual experiences
that initiate moral deliberation.
are moral problems problems of knowledge?

When I am experiencing a moral problem it is more accurate to say that I
am su√ering a moral problem than to say that I know I am having a moral
∫Ω
problem. This is not merely a verbal distinction; it points to di√erent

kinds of experiences.≥ Confusion results when, in the grips of a philosoph-
ical prejudice like intellectualism, one tries to reduce all experiences to
knowledge claims.
A moral problem is something ‘‘had or experienced before it can be
stated or set forth; but it is had as an immediate quality of the whole
situation’’ (LW 5:249). Even if there is a point during a moral experience at
which one wants to know what is right, that question occurs in a context
that is initially experienced as immediately indeterminate regarding what
should be done. The fluidity of everyday life is blocked and experienced as
a unique ambiguity, confusion, disharmony, conflict, or pain that per-
vades one’s situation. This indeterminate situation is a precondition for
the more reflective phases that follow, during which one discursively in-
quires about the problem and figures out ‘‘what sort of action the situa-
tion demands in order that it may receive a satisfactory objective recon-
struction’’ (LW 12:163).
Consider how di√erent this account is from standard ones in moral
theory. The most common account of the nature of moral problems
begins with the assumption that they arise out of a conflict between ob-
jects of knowledge, that is, moral problems are about beliefs, propositions,
rules, principles, values, or units of utility. Even if in hindsight a reflective
analysis of a moral problem is carried out in these terms, can one honestly
claim that what is directly experienced during the inception of a moral
problem is a conflict between these refined abstractions? Just as when I
experience a chair I do not experience a collection of sense data, so too
when I experience a moral problem I do not experience a conflict of units
of utility or a conflict of propositions.
When moral problems are reduced to knowledge problems, moral
deliberation is conceived in terms of the standard philosophical models of
knowledge or reasoning. If, for example, I am trying to decide if I should
keep my promise, is this simply a matter of examining logical relations
between factual beliefs and moral principles within my belief system? If
moral problems arise out of indeterminate situations as non-cognitive
experiences, then this has methodological implications about how to solve
such problems. To be an empiricist in solving them requires that one be
guided by the irreducible, concrete quale of the indeterminate situation
that is su√ered and that initiated inquiry. One fails to adopt an empirical
attitude if one restricts one’s data for moral deliberation to knowledge-
facts or rules and disregards everything else as subjective and therefore
irrelevant to a moral problem. How a moral problem is experienced and
how it is felt are essential parts of the empirical data we have for its own
Ω≠
transformation or rectification. For example, the extent to which I feel

torn between keeping my promise to a friend and helping a stranger in
need helps me determine what is relevant in reaching my decision. More-
over, the best qualitative indications that a problem has been resolved is
when it is no longer su√ered—not when we have acquired a certain knowl-
edge or have met some antecedent formal criteria.
are moral problems subjective?

The modern fallacy in philosophy which reduces experience to experienc-
ing (set against an antecedent reality) is responsible for the view that
moral problems are nothing more than the mind state of a confused
subject who is ignorant about the right thing to do. Meanwhile, moral
reality remains stable and unproblematic, waiting to be discovered. Suc-
cessful moral inquiry moves from a confused subjective state to one that
corresponds to the way things really are. According to this view,
there is no situation which is problematic. There is only a person who is

in a state of subjective moral uncertainty or ignorance. His business, in
that case, is not to judge the objective situation in order to determine
what course of action is required in order that it may be transformed
into one that is morally satisfactory and right, but simply to come into
intellectual possession of a predetermined end-in-itself. (LW 12:169–170)
Imagine a situation in which I am first frightened by a noise at the

window and then after further investigation I find out that the noise is
the shade tapping against the window.∂ A traditional view of experience
would describe this situation as one where we move from the original
fright as an imperfect-illusory-subjective cognitive state to one where we
are face-to-face with reality. Dewey claimed that this is a distorted descrip-
tion of what we actually experience. When experienced, the frightening
noise is as real as the eventual knowledge-experience of the cause of the
noise. ‘‘Empirically that noise is fearsome, it really is, not merely phe-
nomenally or subjectively so. That is what it is experienced as being’’
(MW 3:160). Insofar as the eventual experience is not misleading it is more
true, but this does not make it more real. Similarly, moral problems are
not experienced as internal or subjective. Insofar as a situation is experi-
enced as morally problematic then it really is problematic. This situation
might be transformed into one in which there is no longer a problem, but
the second, transformed situation is no more real than the first one. For
example, my initial experience of obligation to help a stranger is no less
real than my realization afterwards that she does not need my help.
Ω∞
One’s stance on this issue makes a di√erence. If moral problems are

subjective, epistemic problems, then resolving them requires that we find
out what is wrong with the experiencing subject, that is, what is the source
of his or her confusion and ignorance, for according to this view, moral
problems are only indications of our limitations as knowers. There is
some comfort in the idea that moral problems are only our problems and
are not constitutive of moral reality. Many want to believe that there is a
right answer to moral dilemmas, in other words, that moral reality is
uniform, stable, or in perpetual harmony, and that mistakes in moral
decisions are ‘‘due merely to a personal failure to reduce the present case to
the proper combination of old ones’’ (MW 13:12). For Dewey, this is a false
sense of comfort.
If we find moral problems that are experienced as irresolvable and
therefore tragic, then they are tragic and do not merely seem so. Their
resolution requires scrutiny and transformation of all the objective factors
(including ourselves) that are present in the transaction that constitute a
situation. We cannot always transform a morally su√ered problematic
situation into one that is completely determinate and unproblematic. But
this is not just a subjective problem caused by our human finitude; it is
the way things really are. For Dewey, it is better to accept that there
are tragedies than to flee from them by postulating an antecedent and
conflict-free moral reality. In moral life we are in the midst of real moral
conflicts and not in a phenomenal or subjective world. The moments
when we are torn between irreconcilable obligations are as revealing of
moral reality as the times when the right thing to do is obvious and
unquestionable.
The Pluralistic Character of Moral Experience

In ‘‘Three Independent Factors in Morals’’ (LW 5:279–288), Dewey criti-
cizes the tendency in moral theory to conceive moral problems as a con-
flict between a few commensurable factors or variables. This oversimplifi-
cation derives from a self-serving characterization of moral experience by
moral theorists and counts as an instance of the fallacy of selective em-
phasis. The casuistic power of a theory, that is, its ability to provide rules
for decision making, depends upon its ability to reduce moral problems to
a few commensurable elements, thereby facilitating decision making. But
moral philosophy will remain abstract and detached from moral life if it is
not critical of its own theoretical orientation.
Dewey argued that the history of moral philosophy is characterized by
a one-sidedness caused by philosophers who have abstracted one feature of
Ω≤
situations that are experienced as morally problematic, then have made

that factor supreme or exclusive. ‘‘Whatever may be the di√erences which
separate moral theories,’’ he wrote, ‘‘all [philosophers] postulate one sin-
gle principle as an explanation of moral life’’ (LW 5:280). Hence, moral
theories have been classified according to whether they take the good
(teleological-consequentialist theories), virtue (virtue ethics), or duty (de-
ontological theories) as their central category or source of moral justifica-
tion. But according to Dewey ‘‘each of these variables has a sound basis, but
because each has a di√erent origin and mode of operation, they can be at
cross purposes and exercise divergent forces in the formation of judgment’’
(LW 5:280). The category of ‘good’ points to that part of our moral life that
has to with our desires, wants, fulfillment and satisfactions; ‘duty’ with the
demands that are part of associated living; and ‘virtue’ with the approval of
conduct and character by others.
Good, virtue, and duty are all irreducible factors found intertwined
and in conflict in moral situations. Hence, moral problems are very acute
problems that border on the tragic. Dewey explains that ‘‘the essence of
the situation is an internal and intrinsic conflict; the necessity for judg-
ment and for choice come from the fact that one has to manage forces
with no common denominator’’ (LW 5:280). One often associates moral
struggle with situations where there is a conflict ‘‘between a good which is
clear to him and something else which attracts him but he knows to be
wrong’’ (LW 7:165), for instance, ‘‘the employee of a bank who is tempted
to embezzle funds’’ (LW 7:164). But this is a very di√erent kind of struggle
than the ones that Dewey takes as paradigmatic of moral problems.
In moral problems the struggle is often ‘‘between values each of which
is an undoubted good in its place but which now get in each other’s way’’
(LW 7:165). For instance, should I support my country in a war that could
benefit many but that nonetheless seems unjust? The elements of uncer-
tainty and conflict between these two kinds of moral struggles are dif-
ferent. In the first kind of situation, the problem is how I can get myself to
do what is morally right, or what means I should employ to minimize this
evil and make that good prevail. But it is assumed that the morally right
thing to do in that situation has been settled and is unproblematic. The
question foregrounded here is about the best means to an antecedent, non-
problematic end. But in the second kind of case there is genuine uncer-
tainty and conflict about what is the morally correct thing to do because
incompatible courses of action are experienced initially as morally justified
or as making a forceful claim upon the agent. Furthermore, each of these
claims may belong to a totally di√erent aspect of morality. My duty, my
desire for good consequences, and my regard for virtue are each distinct
Ω≥
and irreducible to the other even though one of them may end up becom-
ing more pressing in the particular situation. Once moral inquiry is initi-
ated, the experienced moral tension may or may not be eased.
Dewey’s ‘‘Three Independent Factors in Morals’’ is a centerpiece of his
moral thought. In a letter to Professor Horace S. Fries, Dewey acknowl-
edged that in his early works ‘‘I followed the tradition in making ends, the
good, the basic ideal,’’ but that by 1930 it became clear to him that he had
changed his view. His tripartite division of moral experience in this essay
prefigures, among other things, his 1932 Ethics, where he placed good,
duty, and virtue in separate chapters. It is clear in this essay how radical the
situational and pluralistic thrust of his moral philosophy is.∑ His situation
ethics is based on the view that each moral problem is unique and is usu-
ally constituted by an irreconcilable complexity. All three of the factors—
good, duty, and virtue—have something to contribute, but their respective
adherents in ethical theory have all latched on to one aspect of our moral
experience. Dewey was concerned that this singularity does not encourage
a generous survey of our moral problems. A narrow view of moral prob-
lems is responsible for the tendency in normative ethics to propose a
single right way to reason in ethics. For Dewey, an appreciation of the
nature of the conflicts that are the basis for moral theory and deliberation
protects us from false pretensions about the power of single factors to
resolve them. Dewey’s faith in the instrumentalities of experience was
tempered by the honest realization that the most intense moments of our
moral life are tragic.
Moral Deliberation
Moral deliberation is not something that happens within one’s mind. It is
experienced as an intermediate phase in the process of transforming a
morally problematic situation into one that is determinate. This does not
mean that it is a discrete and independent phase. In moral inquiry the
disruption that is felt as the engrossing whole that provoked it persists and
evolves in the background; in other words, we are still su√ering the prob-
lem even if the foreground or focus of attention is concerned with such
questions as: what is the problem? What resources do I have at my disposal
to settle this? How can I gather more evidence? To set up a problem that is
not guided by some genuinely felt doubt or perplexity ‘‘is to start on a
course of dead work’’ (LW 12:112). The overarching and final aim is to
determine what I ought to do among alternative courses of action. In
other words, the aim is choice as ‘‘the emergence of a unified preference
out of competing preferences’’ (MW 14:134).
Ω∂
Moral deliberation is in this respect no di√erent than any other in-

quiry that begins with ‘‘a forked-road situation, a situation which is
ambiguous, which presents a dilemma, which proposes alternatives’’
(MW 6:189). Dewey’s example is that of a man traveling in an unfamiliar
region who is trying to decide which road to take.
Having no sure knowledge to fall back upon, he is brought to a standstill

of hesitation and suspense. Which road is right? And how shall perplex-
ity be resolved? There are but two alternatives: he must either blindly
and arbitrarily take his course, trusting to luck for the outcome, or he
must discover grounds for the conclusion that a given road is right.
(MW 6:189)
The moral problems that initiate moral deliberation are, of course,

qualitatively di√erent and more complex than the situation of the per-
plexed traveler. In a morally problematic situation we find ourselves
with two or more actions that exert a di√erent moral force or demand
upon us. The gradual specification of the moral perplexity that has been
felt is the key to finding out what is the best possible solution. Figur-
ing out what the problem is requires that we get clear about what is in
conflict or tension. We can easily get this wrong. We start with some im-
mediate value judgment (valuing) about each of our conflicting options,
but we may have to change our judgment after reflection (valuation) and
a more careful survey of the situation. (I will consider later, in more
detail, the important relation between valuing and valuation.) For exam-
ple, what may first be experienced as a conflict between two duties may
later be found upon reflection to be a conflict between a duty and what
is good.
We do not, however, wait until we have a clear and definite for-
mulation of the problem to entertain and examine possible solutions. In
the midst of the ambiguity and uncertainty about what to do, we usually
start with vague suggestions about the right action even though we are
suspending a final judgment and are willing to revise this overall judg-
ment (hypothesis) as inquiry proceeds. The intellectual task is to discover
grounds for choosing one action over another in light of the present
situation. How do we do this? We rely on whatever stable elements we
can find.
In the suspense of uncertainty, we metaphorically climb a tree; we try to

find some standpoint from which we may survey additional facts and,
getting a more commanding view of the situation, may decide how the
facts stand related to one another. (MW 6:189)
Ω∑
The perplexed traveler relies on accumulated knowledge about similar

situations, but must carefully scrutinize what is before him to find evi-
dence to help him test a hypothesis that will ultimately help him decide
between roads. He reasons to figure out the implications of some of his
hypotheses, but his survey is also imaginative and emotionally laden. In
any case, his final judgment is not merely a deductive derivation from
some rule about what makes a road the best road.
If Dewey is right about the level of uncertainty and incommensura-
bility that characterizes morally problematic situations, then the moral
agent seems to face a more di≈cult task than that of the perplexed traveler.
If, for example, an agent is torn between a good brought by her breaking
her promise and a duty to keep her promise, then how can she weigh these
incommensurable and forceful claims and reach a reasonable context-
sensitive judgment? Where does she begin? What possible stable resources
are available to an agent in a morally problematic situation?
We must first avoid the abstraction of the moral agent who comes to a
situation morally neutral or impartial with respect to all her options.
When one is in a problematic situation, it is not the case that all logically
possible solutions are considered or stand on an equal level. Dewey ex-
plains that in most situations initial suggestions spontaneously occur to
us, but there is nothing mysterious or arbitrary about this. It is what
happens to an organism with habits funded by previous experience. ‘‘We
do not approach any problem with a wholly naïve or virgin mind; we
approach it with certain acquired habitual modes of understanding, with
a certain store of previously evolved meanings or at least of experiences
from which meanings may be educed’’ (LW 8:214–215). The initial sugges-
tions that spontaneously occur to a mature moral agent or to those who
have encountered similar situations are probably a better starting point
than those of the immature and inexperienced. But the origins of the
suggestions that arise in deliberation are not as important as the ability to
test their pertinence to the problem at hand. Initial suggestions must also
be developed into hypotheses that lead to further judgments. Let’s con-
sider what particular operations a moral agent can rely on in order to
examine, criticize, improve, and modify her moral judgments.
In any process of inquiry we can make a functional distinction be-
tween phases of doing and undergoing as well as phases of analysis and
synthesis. How these phases a√ect each other is the key to understanding
how inquiry is a cumulative undertaking that guides itself to some final
judgment. Analysis is what we do when inquiry is centered on making
some finer discrimination of the parts that make up our problematic
situation. Synthesis takes place when we are concerned with weighing
Ω∏
how the parts contribute to making an overall judgment. These are mutu-
ally dependent phases throughout the di√erent stages of moral inquiry.
Reaching a hypothesis about the nature of the conflict is itself an act of
synthesis from the more particular analysis of what the competing moral
demands are in a situation and what particular features of the situation
contribute to their rightness. Any tentative proposal about the nature of
the problem provokes in turn an examination (analysis) of possible solu-
tions that issues in a tentative overall judgment (synthesis) about the best
solution; this may then guide further analyses and surveys of new aspects
of the situation. The final judgment about what we ought to do is a
synthesis that results from the analysis of the situation as a whole, but it is
only the final step in a series of tentative overall judgments that have
occurred throughout the entire process of deliberation.
This same process can be also described in terms of the phases of
doing and undergoing in an experimental learning process. The conse-
quences of di√erent operations in the situation are perceived (appreci-
ated) in order to guide subsequent ones. What we take to be the right
course of action at any point in inquiry guides our survey of what we take
to be the settled features, the facts, of the case (through observation or
recollection of similar cases); this, in turn, may generate new suggestions
and revisions of our judgment, which may in turn lead us to survey
di√erent aspects of the situation. In this process principles and habits have
the function of bringing previous experience to bear. Reasoning provides
us with the inferences needed to go beyond what we have, or it helps us
elaborate our suppositions in light of other beliefs. Imagination in the
form of a dramatic rehearsal helps us survey and test our options. Let’s
consider in some more detail some of these complex and interdependent
operations and resources.
I explained the function of principles in Dewey’s ethics in chapter 2.
In the arts, cooking, or morals we often rely on principles and habits that
are informed by previous experience in order to reach judgments. Princi-
ples may even help us with the task of deciding which facts are relevant in
coming to a decision; but even in these cases, we have to ultimately rely on
the guidance provided by the particular context of inquiry. For Dewey,
even in the case of judgments reached in a court of law, where there is an
explicit reliance on rules, ‘‘the quality of the problematic situation de-
termines which rules of the total system are selected’’ (LW 12:124, my
emphasis).
Judgment is required in deciding what principles apply. ‘‘There is no
label, on any given idea or principle, that says automatically, ‘Use me in
this situation’ ’’ (LW 8:215). Judgment is required to find out what features
Ωπ
of an action are morally relevant and which ones are a distraction. Princi-
ples can help but they are no substitute for the tact and discernment of a
good judge. No rules can replace the power to seize the significant factors
in a situation and the sensitivity to the quality of the problematic situation
that is being transformed.
Moral deliberation can also rely on ‘‘reasoning’’ (LW 12:115), such as
the examination of the implications of a proposed solution in light of its
logical relations with other beliefs or meanings. This can be useful in
developing and revising suggestions and considerations in such a way that
they can be more easily tested. Moral deliberation is not, however, a
deductive process. It is experimental insofar as the results of its operations
are tentative and subject to confirmation or frustration as inquiry pro-
ceeds. Experimental thinking is not the exclusive domain of the sciences.
The notion that empirical testing is the confrontation of ideas and hy-
potheses with the direct observation by the senses is a narrow form of
empiricism. In moral life, many times it is only after one acts upon a
choice (and judgment) that one can obtain the necessary confirmation or
disconfirmation for one’s choice. In fact, a judgment reached in a morally
problematic situation is not final for it is a doing that might provoke
further undergoings. Reaching a judgment about what to do is usually
followed by experiences that either o√er no resistance (a type of confirma-
tion) or that generate a new problematic situation.
There is, however, no reason why testing needs to take the form of an
overt experiment. For Dewey, the imagination plays a crucial role in the
exploration and testing of our options in a situation. This provides an
opportunity to have a preliminary test (trial) of our options in a morally
problematic situation without su√ering the consequences of acting upon
them. In deliberation, the competing possible lines of action that are
present in a morally problematic situation are tried out in an imaginative
drama that includes the agents involved, possible consequences, and im-
plications. Thus, Dewey often referred to moral deliberation as ‘‘a dra-
matic rehearsal’’ (MW 14:132). This is why he claims that what goes on
in moral deliberation is closer to ‘‘an actor engaged in drama’’ than to
a ‘‘clerk recording debit and credit items’’ (MW 14:139). Just as an actor en-
gaged in a drama, moral deliberation may require imaginary role-playing,
as well as taking seriously the standpoint or possible reaction of others.
For example, my imagination may be provoked by the following ques-
tions: What are possible scenarios (or stories) if I support the war? How
do they compare with the one of not supporting it and with regard to my
duties? What would an impartial moral judge think? What good would be
preserved or enhanced? How does the best-case scenario (in terms of
Ω∫
consequences to us) look from the standpoint of someone who cares

about virtue? Notice how in this imaginative exploration each of the
independent factors in morals—good, duty, and virtue—plays a role.
The fact that deliberation includes the actual or the imaginary judg-
ments of others and the principles we have inherited means that it is a
social, not a solipsistic, process. That there are individuals who can delib-
erate without engaging in an actual dialogue with particular others hardly
counts as evidence against this claim. For both Dewey and George H.
Mead, thinking is an internalization of communal dialogue.
In language and imagination we rehearse the responses of others just as

we dramatically enact other consequences. We foreknow how others
will act, and the foreknowledge is the beginning of judgment passed
on action. We know with them; there is conscience. An assembly is
formed within our breast which discusses and appraises proposed and
performed acts. The community without becomes a forum and tribunal
within, a judgment-seat of charges, assessments and exculpations. Our
thoughts of our own actions are saturated with the ideas that others
entertain about them, ideas which have been expressed not only in
explicit instruction but still more e√ectively in reaction to our acts.
(MW14:217, my emphasis)
If, in moral deliberation, imagination provides the dramas, then what

provides the standard by which the possible courses of action are evalu-
ated and tested? There is no perfect drama, or absolute standard, by which
all imaginative dramas are judged, nor is there a set of intellectual criteria
or rules (as in utilitarianism) by which one can choose one drama over
another. For Dewey, the view that evaluation is reached by applying some
set criteria of right or wrong (as the major premise in a practical syllo-
gism) is a theoretical or abstract explanation that we may devise after we
make actual judgments and decisions. But this is not how the most com-
petent moral agents experience these situations. This is the case not only
in morals but also in other areas of our practical lives where judgment is
required. Good trumpet players and cooks may formulate in a set of rules
or criteria the basis of their activities and decisions, but this is done for the
purposes of the novice and does not come into their experience.
It is worth comparing the above account of moral deliberation to
traditional ones in ethical theory. Dewey often contrasts his view of moral
deliberation with two other views. The rationalist-intuitionist view identi-
fies moral deliberation with a ‘‘separate non-natural faculty of moral
knowledge’’ (MW 14:131). The undesirable implication of this view is a
conception of morality as a separate and independent domain from our
ΩΩ
everyday life. Moral deliberation is conceived as a means by which we can

have access to a moral reality behind experience. According to this view,
the function of reflection is not creative or prospective; instead, its task is
merely to copy, reproduce, and apply antecedent-fixed moral values or
knowledge.
On the other hand, there are empirical views that claim moral delib-
eration is a mode of enlightened self-interested calculation, that is, ‘‘cal-
culating what is expedient’’ (MW 14:132). Dewey had many criticisms of
these views, views exemplified by utilitarianism. The notion that the func-
tion of deliberation is the calculation of future pleasures and pains is not
based on what agents usually do, or on what can reasonably be expected of
them. Dewey suspected that utilitarians confused the agreeable and dis-
agreeable reactions to foreseen events that are presented in imagination
with the calculation of future pleasures and pains. The former reactions
are part of the agent’s present situations, but future pleasure and pains are
not. Therefore, utilitarians ask us to predict what is dependent on a com-
plex set of contingent variables that are usually not subject to our control.
For Dewey, the function of deliberation is present rectification; it is
not about a distant future or about figuring out ‘‘where the most advan-
tage is to be procured. It is to resolve entanglements in existing activity . . .’’
(MW 14:139). Foresight of consequences is important in moral delibera-
tion but it is used ‘‘to appraise present proposed actions’’ (MW 14:143, my
emphasis). Even though we occasionally dwell on the e√ects of an action
on our future feelings, to make this the paradigm of all moral deliberation
is to make ‘‘an abnormal case the standard one’’ (MW 14:141). This is one
of many reasons why the classification of Dewey as a consequentialist is a
grave mistake. Dewey did emphasize consequences as a way to draw our
attention away from notions of deliberation that appeal to a priori stan-
dards, but this has been misinterpreted as presenting a view that centers
on maximizing good consequences as the goal or the standard. Later in life
Dewey became aware of this misunderstanding. Consequences, he says,
are important not as such or by themselves but in their function as tests

of ideas, principles, theories. It is possible that at times, in opposition to
ipse dixit intuitions and dogmatic assertion of absolute standards, I have
emphasized the importance of consequences so as to seem to make them
supreme in and of themselves. If so, I have departed from my proper
view, that of their use as tests of proposed ends and ideals. (LW 14:74)
Utilitarianism was the prime example of an intellectual movement af-

fected by the current money and business culture. ‘‘Its general spirit of
subordinating productive activity to the bare product was indirectly favor-
∞≠≠
able to the cause of an unadorned commercialism’’ (MW 12:184). It mod-

eled moral deliberation on the calculation of future profit and loss in
economic activity. This calculative model represents a narrow and limited
use of our deliberative capacities. Furthermore, the utilitarian’s instru-
mental view of reasoning does not allow for the evaluation of ends, which
is an important part of morality. Utilitarians should be praised for insist-
ing ‘‘upon getting away from vague generalities, and down to the specific
and concrete’’ (MW 12:183), but they never questioned the idea that moral
judgments must be based on some fixed criteria or final end. There is no
genuine moral doubt (‘‘no real and significant conflict,’’ MW 14:149) about
what to do when we know the end but are only puzzled about the best
means. Moral deliberation is experienced as a genuine search and discov-
ery, and it ‘‘is not an attempt to do away with this opposition of quality by
reducing it to one of amount’’ (MW 14:150).
Because of the intellectualist fallacy and the linguistic turn in philoso-
phy, moral judgments in ethical theory are often treated as, or simply
equated with, propositions that are the result of other propositions. This
process is conceived as one very similar to the linear process that occurs
when we read a text or when we read statements in an argument written in
a logic textbook. But for Dewey, a judgment is not a proposition,∏ a
judgment is a practical act, a≈rmation, or assertion that ‘‘in distinc-
tion from propositions which are singular, plural, generic and universal,
is individual, since it is concerned with unique qualitative situations’’
(LW 12: 283, my emphasis). As already noted, judgment and thought is
qualitative for Dewey. In his contextualism, the control and guidance
provided by context in inquiry is given by the underlying and pervasive
quality of a situation that is being transformed. It is not surprising, then,
that for Dewey art, far from being problematic, is in fact the paradigm of
all thinking. ‘‘Artistic thought is not however unique in this respect but
only shows an intensification of a characteristic of all thought’’ (LW 5:251–
252). What is presented in imagination in art and morality is judged by the
same means that we judge overt experiments: by our direct qualitative
experience. ‘‘In imagination as in fact we know a road only by what we see
as we travel on it. . . . in thought as well as in overt action, the objects
experienced in following a course of action attract, repel, satisfy, annoy,
promote and retard’’ (MW 14:134).
Dewey used science and art as metaphors to understand moral delib-
eration. This served the purpose of highlighting the continuity between
morality and other modes of experience, and it provided a description of
moral deliberation as an experimental, emotional, and imaginative pro-
cess. Dewey’s early concerns to reconcile ethics with experimental science
∞≠∞
led him to investigate the ways in which scientific inquiry and moral
inquiry can share a way, or general method, of forming and justifying
judgments. In his later works he came to rely more on an aesthetic model.
This is most evident in his description of moral deliberation as a transfor-
mation into a unified consummatory experience and in his emphasis on
the importance of the imagination and the emotions in this process. This
is the aspect of Dewey’s view on moral deliberation that seems most
radical, considering the predominance of sterile rationalistic accounts of
moral deliberation in the history of moral philosophy. It is also the most
promising, considering the recent developments in cognitive science on
the role of metaphor, imagination, and emotion.π
For Dewey, moral deliberation is not an intermediate phase where
one moves from a conflict of qualitative material to a process of cold
reasoning where qualities are transformed into quantities and proposi-
tions. Deliberation is not an intermediate phase where we close or sus-
pend our access to the qualitative world. On the contrary, it is an oppor-
tunity to widen and enrich our qualitative experience. The access to the
qualitative-richness of a situation is not limited to sense perception or
observation. The function of imagination is to amplify perception, to
open up the situation in ways that could assist us in coming to a judgment.
Imagination ‘‘elicits the possibilities that are interwoven within the texture
of the actual’’ (LW 10:348). It ‘‘puts before us objects which are not directly
or sensibly present, so that we then may react directly to these objects’’
(MW 14:139). The capacity to deliberate signifies the ability to take an
experienced conflict of possible actions and place them in an imaginative
field so that they can be judged in light of what is qualitatively revealed in
that field. Deliberation ‘‘is an attempt to uncover the conflict in its full
scope and bearing . . . to reveal qualitative incompatibilities by detecting
the di√erent courses to which they commit us’’ (MW 14:150). And deliber-
ation is not a phase of cool, detached inactivity or indi√erence. If there is
no unified extrovert response while we deliberate it is only because dif-
ferent aspects of the situation are pushing us in di√erent directions. Since
these tendencies toward action are present, though inhibited, during de-
liberation, the resulting choice ‘‘is not the emergence of preference out of
indi√erence’’ (MW 14:134). Hence, in Dewey there is no need to postulate
the will as a separate faculty which pushes the agent in the direction
dictated by deliberation.
It is also worth noticing how Dewey’s account of how judgments are
reached reverses the order assumed in many ethical theories. In these
theories the final verdict about our ‘‘actual duty’’ (to use W. D. Ross’s
term) in a situation is something that is derived after we have first analyzed
∞≠≤
and evaluated what are the competing prima facie principles in the situa-
tion. There is a final verdict for Dewey, but like the conclusion of any
inquiry, it is something that gradually emerges and is prior to its premises.
Dewey explains how formal conceptions of logic often give the wrong
impression about how we actually think.
We say of an experience of thinking that we reach or draw a conclusion.

Theoretical formulation of the process is often made in such terms as to
conceal e√ectually the similarity of ‘‘conclusion’’ to the consummating
phase of every developing integral experience. These formulations ap-
parently take their cue from the separate propositions that are premisses
and the proposition that is the conclusion as they appear on the printed
page. The impression is derived that there are first two independent and
ready-made entities that are then manipulated so as to give rise to a
third. In fact, in an experience of thinking, premisses emerge only as a
conclusion becomes manifest. (LW 10:45)
When we are in a morally problematic situation we start with some

immediate unreflective judgment about what is right. There is a direct
qualitative judgment that precedes the more definite recognition of what
particular features of the action contribute to its rightness. We engage in
analysis, survey, and reasoning in order to examine (test) or revise this
preliminary reaction. The initial impression comes first, it changes as
inquiry proceeds, and it serves to guide the subsequent phases of analysis
and discrimination. Dewey explains how all inquiry starts with a hunch or
impression but this is not something psychical or psychological. It is the
presence of a dominant quality in a situation as a whole.
To say I have a feeling or impression that so and so is the case is to note

that the quality in question is not yet resolved into determinate terms
and relations; it marks a conclusion without statement of the reasons for
it, the grounds upon which it rests. It is the first stage in the development
of explicit distinctions. All thought in every subject begins with just such
an unanalyzed whole. (LW 5:248–249)
In moral deliberation the search for the reasons that ground our
overall impression about what is right must involve a sincere survey of
how the relevant features that make up a situation are related, and it may
lead to assertions about what makes a particular action right or wrong.
Articulating in propositional form what traits or features of a situation
sustain one’s moral judgment is key to justifying ourselves to others and in
inviting them to consider for themselves the situation. In other words, it
facilitates a more communal inquiry. More importantly, the phase of
∞≠≥
reflective analysis in moral deliberation may lead to a change in the overall

qualitative judgment of what is right as inquiry proceeds.
In sum, deliberation is a process constituted by the same mutually
dependent phases of doing and undergoing of any experimental and artis-
tic process. The doing might involve acting to gather more evidence or the
active operations of recollection and exploration. There is undergoing in
the form of a constant receptivity to what is revealed by our doings or the
reactions of others engaged in the process. Receptivity to the underlying
and pervasive quality of the situation as it is being transformed is what
guides the direction of inquiry. This is, however, a very generic description
of the process. Moral deliberation is said to be specifically about moral
values. Let’s describe in more detail what goes on in moral deliberation in
terms of judgments of value.
Valuing and Valuation

Moral deliberation results in a moral judgment—a decision to act in one
way or another. But judgments are not static. They continue throughout
the entire deliberative process, and they are transformed as deliberation
proceeds. Within this process, Dewey distinguishes between the direct
judgments of value, valuing, and the reflective judgments, valuations. The
distinctions between valuing and valuation, between appreciation and
criticism, and between play and work have as their basis two of the basic
traits that appear in Experience and Nature: nature in its finalities (or
consummations) and in its relations. Natural existences in their imme-
diacy or qualitative existence have terminal qualities that are unique, un-
related, and final. Immediate and terminal quality is something had and
that can be pointed to, rather than known or captured in a description. An
object, event, or person either has the immediate and terminal quality it
has or it doesn’t; there is not much else that can be said about it qua having
immediate quality. However, relations are also part of experience, so that
any quality ‘‘may be referred to other things, it may be treated as an e√ect
or as a sign’’ (LW 1:82). The significance of these distinct traits for in-
quiry is that there are two ways in which one can judge or apprehend
anything in experience: in its immediacy (valuing) or in its relations to
other things in experience (valuation). Valuing is the direct, spontaneous,
and pre-cognitive operation where we appreciate something by its imme-
diate quality before it is subject to reflection. But once the value of some-
thing is reflectively considered it is being considered in light of its rela-
tions, that is, in its connections as a means or as a sign. To think ‘‘is to look
at a thing in its relations with other things’’ (LW 7:265). Reflection is
∞≠∂
comparative and attentive to conditions, relations of means and ends,

consequences, implications, and inferences. The reflective process of ar-
riving at this kind of judgment of value is called valuation.
About valuing, Dewey could have said that things have intrinsic quali-
ties and that some of these qualities are moral. But he was aware that in
philosophy intrinsic is usually associated with what is necessary, per-
manent, or universally belonging to a thing in virtue of its essence. But
when Dewey says a quality is intrinsic he means that the quality is experi-
enced as belonging to a thing as a ‘‘brute matter of space-time existence’’
(LW 15:43). In this sense, he said, ‘‘all qualities whatever are ‘intrinsic’
to the things they qualify at the time and place of the occurrence of the
latter—provided only the things in question do genuinely ‘have’ them’’
(LW 15:43). Hence, to claim that a particular act of promise keeping is
intrinsically good or obligatory is just to say that it is experienced as
having that quality at that specific time and place. In this sense, any
experienced non-problematic good is, as it were, an end in itself until the
occasion arises where a choice has to be made. Value comparisons and the
notion of better or worse acquire their meaning in the context of a par-
ticular situation where a choice needs to be made. ‘‘In the abstract or at
large, apart from the needs of a particular situation in which choice has to
be made, there is no such thing as degrees or order of value’’ (MW 9:248).
Since anything in experience exists in relation with some other thing,
it can always in principle be compared, used, and valued as a means
to something else. This is why there are no mere or essential ends-in-
themselves. This is the basis for Dewey’s criticism of the dualism of fixed
separation of means and ends in philosophy. Anything can be valuable
both as a means and as an end and there is a significant loss when we can
only appreciate something as a mere means. This is an important antidote
to misconceptions of Dewey as a narrow instrumentalist. Dewey held that
a thing’s instrumental capacity will be enhanced if it is (or has been)
previously appreciated on its own account. He explained that
If it is not, then when the time and place comes for it to be used as a
means or instrumentality, it will be just that much handicapped. Never
having been realized or appreciated for itself, one will miss something of
its capacity as resource for other ends. (MW 9:249)
Valuation emerges from valuing but they do not always converge. For
example, I might not immediately value recycling, although I come to
reflectively judge that it is a good practice. However, most of the situations
that Dewey has in mind when he makes the distinction between valuing
and valuation are those in which one of these judgments of value emerges,
∞≠∑
transforms, and is organically related to the other. When the terminal or

immediate quality of a thing is enhanced because a process of judging it in
its relations precedes it, then it acquires consummatory value. For exam-
ple, my e√ort to understand and explore the benefits of recycling may
actually transform my immediate experience of it.
Let’s consider an example about a controversial moral value. There
are people who claim to experience in an immediate way (valuing) homo-
sexual acts and persons as immoral, or at least with some negative moral
value. Among these people there may be disagreement about the particu-
lar moral value. For instance, are homosexual acts experienced as a vice, as
the violation of a duty, or as just bad? I am, however, someone who has yet
to experience any kind of negative moral value about homosexuality.
I will admit that, perhaps because I am heterosexual, I sometimes find
homosexual acts immediately repugnant but definitely not in a moral
sense.∫ I have yet to experience homosexuality with the same kind of
immediate negative moral value that I usually experience when witness-
ing acts of injustice or when people harm others for fun. This makes
me wonder if, perhaps, those who are against homosexuality on moral
grounds are just confusing two di√erent kinds of experiences. This gives
me hope that I can make them become aware that their negative valuing,
though real and genuine, is not of the moral kind. This may not be easy. It
is not as if I can defend, or present them with, some definite criteria about
what is and what is not a moral valuing. The best one can do when faced
with this sort of disagreement is to invite and assist the person in making a
sincere survey of their lived experiences and hope they will realize on their
own that there is a qualitative di√erence between their valuing experiences
about homosexuality and those other valuing experiences they have had in
their lives that are distinctively moral. This is no di√erent from the chal-
lenge of trying to make someone see that there is a qualitative di√erence
between their negative aesthetic valuing of a movie and their negative
moral valuing. We are all vulnerable to a failure to make or become aware
of more subtle but important discriminations about what we immediately
experience, but as Dewey says ‘‘Moral decline is on a par with the loss of
that ability to make delicate distinctions, with the blunting and hardening
of the capacity of discrimination’’ (LW 5:280).
Since I am a contextualist, I am open to the possibility that I will
experience the homosexuality of a person or of an act as either contribut-
ing to what is morally wrong or as being of negative moral value in a
situation. But contrary to some, I have yet to experience any recurrent or
meaningful connection between homosexuality and negative moral value.
Therefore, my disagreement with people who object to homosexuality on
∞≠∏
moral grounds is not just at the valuing level. As much as I have reflectively
considered the issue (i.e., engaged in valuation), I have yet to be convinced
that there is anything morally wrong with homosexuality. None of the
arguments o√ered by others or considered on my own have any validity. It
is possible that in some future reflective consideration of the issue I will
change my mind. If so, then it is also probable that I will also change my
valuing about homosexuality. A change in the contrary direction is also a
possibility. I may come to have new valuing experiences that may a√ect
significantly my valuation.
For Dewey, our valuing should be subject to constant and even in-
tense criticism, but critical reflection (inquiry) is not a contextless and
rationalistic process that can guide itself by logic and facts alone. My
critical reflections about homosexuality may end up changing my valuing,
but it starts, takes place, and is guided by whatever valuing experiences I
happen to have. In other words, valuation is not an impartial and rational
process that requires that the immediate valuings be bracketed or left
behind, perhaps because they are considered mere appearance or subjec-
tive. These valuings are not objects of knowledge (e.g., propositions) but
they function as initial data and are regulative as moral deliberation pro-
ceeds. (I discuss this further below.) And one does well to remember that
what is revealed from the valuing standpoint (from the practical engaged
point of view) is moral reality, rather than our inner moral feelings toward
actions. As Dewey says, ‘‘It is not experience which is experienced, but
nature—stones, plants, animals, diseases, health, temperature, electricity,
and so on’’ (LW 1:12). My valuing experience of an act of injustice as wrong
is about a value that I find in the same world where I also find plants and
stones. To dismiss the importance of valuing in inquiry because it is
merely subjective or a mere psychological reaction is to assume a dualism
or to presuppose the supremacy of the theoretical standpoint in revealing
what is real.
Dewey’s view on judgments of value has important implications about
the nature of moral disagreements and what resources are available to deal
with them. Suppose I am having a discussion with some who oppose
homosexuality on moral grounds. Let us assume (and this is not a small
assumption) that we are all fairly committed but open-minded individuals
infused with the Deweyan democratic spirit to genuinely learn from each
other (more about this in part 3). Each of us thinks that she is right, but we
are willing to be convinced otherwise about the moral value of homosex-
uality. My role in this communal inquiry is to try to convince others but, if
Dewey is right, the challenge takes a lot more than argumentation. I must,
of course, engage others as much as I can in serious reflective examination
∞≠π
of the issue. We should try to examine together possible arguments in favor

of or against homosexuality in light of their logical validity. We have seen,
however, that for Dewey, there is a lot more to deliberation than reasoning.
We could imaginatively consider a variety of actual and possible cases, that
is, construct a dramatic rehearsal. There may also be a legitimate role for
the use of stories, metaphors, and emotional appeals.
Dewey is not so naïve as to think that even in the best of circumstances
we will reach total agreement in our judgments. I am not even sure that
one can change someone else’s moral stand on issues so easily. But unless
the situation is one where an immediate consensus must be reached there
is no good reason to put so much emphasis on consensus as the outcome.
It would be significant enough if at the end of the communal inquiry both
parties recognized some of the weakness in their arguments. It would be
even better if both sides learned about some significant considerations
that they had overlooked in reaching their judgments. The parties in the
dialogue are learning even if no one convinces the other. Outcomes matter
and we want to convince others, but people often do not change their
minds about moral matters from one day to the next. It requires a longer
process of gestation where the objections and the new considerations
gradually make one less convinced about some moral issue. But if Dewey
is right, valuation is not enough. To significantly a√ect or change the stand
of someone on some moral issue requires more than changing their minds
(i.e., valuation). What good is it to have convinced someone intellectually
that there is no good argument against homosexuality if in their everyday
moral engagement they continue to immediately experience and value it
as always wrong (i.e., valuing)?
For Dewey, learning and deepening our appreciation of values re-
quires that there be a mutually a√ecting and beneficial relation between
valuing and valuation. This presupposes that one has the sort of character
that allows this to happen. There may be people whose valuings are usually
at odds with, or una√ected by, their more reflective valuations, in other
words, they are unable to learn and improve their value experiences. In
chapter 11 I will be concerned with what it takes to have the ideal sort of
character. But was Dewey naïve about the actual power of valuation to
a√ect valuing? Emotional or unconscious prejudices sometimes run so
deep that no amount or quality of reflection may make any di√erence.
Dewey can accept this possibility, but it is also important to mention that
he did not think the only way to change valuing is through valuation. As
much faith as he had in reflection, he recognized the power of changes in
one’s environment, that is, in the tools we use or our communal rituals, to
change valuing. These changes must still be subject to criticism and reflec-
∞≠∫
tion to be justified, but this opens the doors to more e√ective ways of
e√ecting moral change in our society than just dialogue or reflection.
Women have come to be experienced as the moral equals of men (valu-
ing), not just as a result of philosophical arguments that prove their moral
equality (valuation), but as an indirect result of a change in social and
economic conditions. The development of new technologies, such as birth
control, has facilitated the movement of women into certain social roles
that has, in turn, a√ected the valuings of men, that is, how men experience
women. Sometimes changes in environmental conditions are more ef-
fective than the best-argued objections to provoke the sort of criticism
that is needed to change people’s valuings. It could be argued, for example,
that it was not until Louis Braille worked out his basic 6-dot system for the
blind to communicate, read, and participate more fully in society that
many people reconsidered the immediate valuing of the blind as idiots or
as not deserving of the respect and dignity as other humans.Ω
In estimating the power of valuation over valuing in changing moral
judgments it makes a di√erence how one conceives the role of reasons and
arguments in moral deliberation. In the process of reflectively considering
the moral value of homosexuality we can exchange arguments, but is the
goal and hope of such an exchange that others will reach our conclusion
by making a logical inference from certain premises? We do not change
people’s judgments by this sort of process because this is not how reflective
judgments are reached. The way we can contribute and a√ect someone’s
reflective judgments of value is not by reasoning alone but by bringing up
considerations or reasons to which they have hitherto not fully attended.
Reasons are considerations to look for in the survey of one’s situation,
rather than premises in an argument. Arguments are important but they
are just one of the resources available to make others reexamine on their
own the subject matter to be judged. It is part of the method proposed by
Dewey to extend an invitation to others and provide the conditions by
which they can have the experiences that confirm or reject our assertions.
You may also contribute to someone’s dramatic rehearsal by provoking
him or her to consider similar cases or to adopt an imaginary impartial
standpoint. None of these resources may in the end be e√ective in a
particular communal inquiry, but Dewey’s view of what it takes to be
reflective about value is more heterogeneous and resourceful than the
anemic rationalistic conceptions of moral deliberation and intelligence
that predominate in ethical theory.
Dewey held that an organic relation between valuing and valuation
can lead to the kind of integration of means and ends present in artistic
activity. This is an ideal of human conduct that I will explore later, but it is
∞≠Ω
important to appreciate that it is the possibility of a dynamic and integra-

tive relation between valuing and valuation which explains why Dewey
believed that moral life is a process of creating or transforming value,
and not merely of accepting and living by given or former values. The
process by which valuings are subject to reflection (valuation) has as its
end an enhanced valuing or appreciation. In valuation ‘‘former goods are
subjected to judgment’’ but ‘‘the end of judgment is to reinstate some
immediate value’’ (MW 13:6). Here is how Dewey explains this transfor-
mative process:
The new value, dependent upon judgment, is, when it comes, as imme-
diate a good or bad as anything can be. But it is also an immediate value
of a plus sort. The prior judgment has a√ected the new good not merely
as its causal condition but by entering into its quality. The new good has
an added dimension of value. (MW 13:6)
Dewey emphasized the importance of valuation because in a pre-

carious world the relations of events in experience are important from the
point of view of control. Moreover, to acknowledge valuation is to recog-
nize that moral values can be subject to reflective criticism and are not
subjective or arbitrary. However, one must not underestimate the impor-
tance for Dewey of value that is immediately had and non-reflective.
Valuing is important because ‘‘the realm of immediate qualities contains
everything of worth and significance’’ (LW 1:94).
Criticism and reflection depend for their material resources upon the
problematic context that is immediately had, and upon prior direct appre-
ciations; but their ultimate function is to bring about qualitative transfor-
mation. ‘‘Appreciation, or taste, must supply the material for criticism,
while the worth of criticism is tested by its power to function in a new
appreciation which has enhancement, new depth, and range of meaning
because of the criticism’’ (MW 13:7, my emphasis). Criticism and reflec-
tion, the examined life, are important constituents of moral life because
they are capable of enriching its immediate quality and not because they
lead us to the Truth or to actualize some essence. This insight is crucial to
understanding his normative moral vision.
Before I consider in more detail the function of valuing and valuation
in the context of moral inquiry I must make some very general but impor-
tant qualifications.∞≠ Empiricism commits one to begin with ‘‘situations
having value-quality’’ (LW 2:73) and not with value as something indepen-
dent. Moreover, what we find in experience are not values as such; rather,
as Dewey observed,
∞∞≠
Speaking literally, there are no such things as values. . . . There are things,
all sorts of things, having the unique, the experienced, but indefinable,
quality of value. Values in the plural, or a value in the singular, is merely a
convenient abbreviation for an object, event, situation, res, possessing
the quality. (MW 15:20)
Value is an abstract and vague term that can be used to refer to

qualities beyond those that are moral, for example, aesthetic and pruden-
tial value, and even within the moral ones one can make some finer
discriminations. Dewey often adopted this manner of speaking because it
provided him the level of generality that he needed to assume in such
works as Experience and Nature and the Logic. It also served his purpose of
criticizing the theories of values that were current.∞∞ However, to take
Dewey’s theory of value, as it appears in such places as Theory of Valuation
(LW 13:189–254) and the chapter ‘‘The Construction of the Good’’ in The
Quest for Certainty (LW 4), as central or as good summaries of Dewey’s
mature moral thought is a mistake. These general and abstract discussions
about value leave out or do not do justice to what is explicitly recognized
in his 1930 essay ‘‘Three Independent Factors in Morals’’: that there are at
least three distinct and incommensurable qualities designated by moral
value. This pluralistic view of moral values will be taken for granted as we
proceed to consider the function of valuing and valuation in moral delib-
eration and the nature of the resolution of this process.
The Function of Valuing and

Valuation in Moral Deliberation
The distinction between valuing and valuation has to be understood in
terms of their function in the process of moral inquiry. Valuing and valua-
tion correspond to undergoing and doing phases that hold a mutually
supporting and e√ective relation in the process of transforming a morally
problematic situation.
Valuation arises because valuing turns problematic, that is, ‘‘experi-
ence raises the question whether the object in question is what our esteem
or disesteem took it to be’’ (LW 7:264). Therefore, it is not always the case
that ‘‘qualitative immediacy is subject to judgment’’ (LW 15:80). But once
doubt arises, valuing judgments provide the initial material for delibera-
tion. Although they are immediate and precede the more reflective opera-
tions of inquiry, we cannot assume ‘‘that they are always superficial and
immature’’ (LW 5:250). For when they proceed from a well-developed
character they are judgments funded by previous experience. Dewey ex-
∞∞∞
plains that ‘‘they may also sum up and integrate prolonged previous expe-
rience and training, and bring to a unified head the results of severe and
consecutive reflection’’ (LW 5:250). It is important to understand that in
making the distinction between valuing and valuation we are discriminat-
ing between phases of a continuous process.
If there is in direct valuing an element of recognition of the properties of

the thing or person valued as ground for prizing, esteeming, desiring,
liking, etc., then the di√erence between it and explicit evaluation is one
of emphasis and degree, not of fixed kinds. Ap-praising then represents a
more or less systematized development of what is already present in
prizing. (LW 15:105)
The move toward a more reflective judgment and phase of inquiry is not a
jump to a separate objective domain or to receiving the guidance of a
reality independent of experience. Instead, ‘‘when it is said that a thing
cognized is di√erent from an earlier non-cognitionally experienced thing,
the saying no more implies lack of continuity between the things, than the
obvious remark that a seed is di√erent than a flower’’ (MW 3:166). Valua-
tion (the flower) emerges from within the same initial valuing situation
that provoked it (the seed). An initial conflicting or disturbed valuing
experience evokes reflection (valuation) and guides the possible solutions
to be tried out. Any eventual correction or improvement of a present
experience comes from the same experience in need of reconstruction.
Dewey’s empiricism is committed to the view that ‘‘whatever gain in
clearness, in fullness, in trueness of context is experienced must grow
out of some element in the experience of this experienced as what it is’’
(MW 3:164). This became the basis of Dewey’s faith in experience. We
need to trust the potential of any present experience to carry the seed of its
own transformation. We detect and correct illusoriness ‘‘because the thing
experienced is real, having within its experienced reality elements whose
own mutual tension e√ects its reconstruction’’ (MW 3:164). If a moral
problem has a solution, it must emerge from guiding our inquiry by its
initial direct and unique problematic character. It is untrue that without
some external criteria of right and wrong we are lost and cannot trans-
form the situation.
This early insight was later refined and elaborated as Dewey became
more interested in the logic of artistic construction and appreciation. The
initial immediate experience of a work of art as good, for example, is
‘‘relatively dumb and inarticulate yet penetrating’’ (LW 5:249). It is neither
knowledge nor a mere state of a personal feeling, but it is an initial valuing
that serves as the reliable basis (the seed) to any subsequent reflective
∞∞≤
analysis that may or may not result in confirming, rejecting, or enhancing

the original valuing experience. In this process, we examine and some-
times make subtle discriminations about what makes that particular thing
aesthetically good; but to take these reflective discriminations as criteria or
determinants of its quality is to commit the philosophical fallacy. Granted,
analysis of why things are good may help me enhance my immediate
experience of their goodness, but what is primary and the ultimate test of
value is their immediate qualitative value. Dewey makes this clear in his
comments about art:
Upon subsequent analysis, we term the properties of a work of art by

such names as symmetry, harmony, rhythm, measure, and proportion.
These may, in some cases at least, be formulated mathematically. But the
apprehension of these formal relationships is not primary for either the
artist or the appreciative spectator. The subject-matter formulated by
these terms is primarily qualitative, and is apprehended qualitatively.
Without an independent qualitative apprehension, the characteristics of
a work of art can be translated into explicit harmonies, symmetries, etc.,
only in a way which substitutes mechanical formulae for esthetic quality.
(LW 5:251)
We have examined the nature of the transition between valuing and

valuation in moral inquiry, but what brings about the resolution? How do
we know we have arrived at a final judgment? It is no di√erent than in the
process of artistic production. In both moral and artistic activities the
agent is engaged in a process of continually shaping and reshaping (doing
and undergoing) until she qualitatively appreciates that the present prod-
uct (a course of action or a work of art) meets the demands presented by
the developing situation that has been explored. When this happens, the
experienced relation between one’s product and the context can be de-
scribed as one of fittingness or appropriateness to the situation. In other
words, the final judgment that ‘‘I ought to do X’’ is the qualitative appre-
ciation and assertion that, in light of the terrain imaginatively explored,
this is the act that is morally called for by the situation; it is not, however, a
deduction from propositions or an application of a universal criterion. To
acquire the habits capable of making these kinds of context-sensitive judg-
ments is to have practical wisdom (moral intelligence).
Notice what this entails. The qualitative instructions telling whether
one has come close to fulfillment in aesthetic and moral activity are
not to be found outside of the particular unique qualitative situation
that is experienced as needing transformation. ‘‘The making comes to an
end when its result is experienced as good—and that experience comes not
∞∞≥
by mere intellectual and outside judgment but in direct perception’’

(LW 10:56). In a morally problematic situation, there is no pre-established
formula, indicator, or criteria that we can rely on to discriminate which
act is called for by a particular situation or whether our inquiry is headed
in the wrong direction. The traditional quest in ethics and aesthetics for
some ultimate criteria of right and good neglects the fact that the situation
itself gives the agent a pervading qualitative sense of relevance and a
satisfactory closure during the process of reconstruction.
Let’s consider next a philosophical debate about value that is usually
based on neglecting the situational context that guides our judgments.
Value and the Objectivist-Subjectivist Debate

Are moral values objective? This issue is important because it seems that
a negative answer would commit us to the view that morality is not
something to be taken as seriously as other areas of experience. Dewey was
committed to defend the metaphysical and logical objectivity of moral-
ity on empirical grounds, but he was opposed to the sort of metaphysi-
cal realism ‘‘that locates ‘objectivity’ of value in ‘objects’ that are so-
called because of lack of any connection whatever with human behavior’’
(LW 15:63). On the other hand, he a≈rmed his ‘‘opposition to those views
which admit a human factor in values, but which interpret it in such a way
that the result is skeptical denial of the possibility of any genuine judg-
ments about them’’ (LW 15:63).
In the metaphysical or ontological understanding of the issue of objec-
tivity, objective is equated with what is real. But this presupposes the same
dualism that underlies the realism versus non-realism debates. Moral val-
ues are either out there in the objective world, understood as an antecedent
independent reality that we do not a√ect, or they are in our heads, under-
stood either as in a person or in their culture or society. We will not get
caught up in this issue if, as with Dewey, we start with the primacy of lived
situational experience rather than with this inner/outer picture.
Objectivity about moral values seems impossible if it requires that
there be a self outside the course of events that does not a√ect anything.
The self as an organism is one among other things transacting in a situa-
tion, and it therefore makes a di√erence to the qualities that emerge in
experience; this, however, does not mean that qualities ‘‘inhere exclusively
in the subject; or as posing the problem of a distortion of the real object by
a knower set over against the world’’ (MW 10:26). One can discern one’s
contribution to having certain experiences in an e√ort to study the condi-
tions of having them. ‘‘The ‘subjective’ factor (using the word to designate
∞∞∂
the operations of an acculturated organism) is, like ‘objective’ physical

subject-matter a condition of experience’’ (LW 14:199). That, for example,
one’s character is usually one of the conditions of what is qualitatively had
in valuing experiences does not warrant the conclusion that values are
subjective. To make this mistake is to commit the philosophical fallacy,
that is, the ‘‘conversion of a condition of an event into an inherent prop-
erty of the event itself ’’ (LW 15:75).
Of course, Dewey cannot hold the view that there can be universal
agreement about a fixed set of values regardless of who we are or what
characters we bring to situations. But this does not make him a subjectiv-
ist, though perhaps it makes him a kind of relativist: one who subscribes
to a relativism to situations and to the factors that come to constitute
them. However, this is an objective relativism in the sense that things
actually have the value-qualities we experience them as having.∞≤ Accord-
ing to the postulate of immediate empiricism, things are what they are
experienced as. Valuing judgments are experienced as qualities found in a
particular situation (as manifestations of nature∞≥) and not subjective
projections, the content of one’s consciousness, or the manifestation of
the culture to which one belongs. If I experience ‘‘x’’ as morally repugnant
in a particular context, then it is morally repugnant even if I later hypothe-
size that I would have experienced it di√erently had other attitudes been
operative or had I been some other person. Perhaps humans would not
experience acts of cruelty as wrong if they were not brought up in a certain
way, but this does not make these acts less wrong when they are experi-
enced as such. It is puzzling why anyone would find this sort of relativism
objectionable in morals but not in regard to other non-moral qualities.
For example, colors are also relative in the sense that we would not experi-
ence them if we did not bring into a perceptual situation certain optical
organs, and certain linguistic conventions regarding colors. But this is not
usually considered problematic, and we all admit that there can be genu-
ine disagreement about the color of things.
The reality of moral values has been considered problematic on other
grounds. John Mackie, for example, held that moral values couldn’t be
objective or ‘‘part of the fabric of the world’’ because if they were then they
would have to be very strange things, ‘‘queer’’ as he famously put it.∞∂ If
one starts with the assumption of a valueless world, then moral values as
qualities would indeed seem queer sorts of entities. From this metaphysi-
cal outlook all judgments of values are suspect and in need of an explana-
tion. Mackie explains it in terms of how humans project values onto the
world and learn to live with the deception that they are objective. Other
philosophers have accounted for value judgments in terms of how a sub-
∞∞∑
ject applies some criterion upon the more natural traits of things. In other
words, value qualities and judgments must supervene on or be derived
from the more objective traits of the world, otherwise the alternative
seems to be the sort of emotivism that makes value judgments mere
expressions of our subjective preferences.
For Dewey, of course, there is no need for an explanation. The only
thing queer about values is how anyone could question their existence, for,
insofar as ‘value’ is a term that points to what is directly and immediately
qualitative, everything is value-laden. In particular, moral judgments are
as natural and as descriptive of the objective world as any other judgment.
Moral qualities are not experienced as things added to a world that is
morally neutral.∞∑ This is, at best, a theory. To be sure, the fact that we find
ourselves in a qualitative world of moral value does not mean that, as
implied by some forms of objectivism, we can only copy what we find. As I
noted above, inquiry has the power to change what we directly perceive or
judge as valuable, but what has been transformed is the same objective
world of tables and chairs.
In general it is a favoritism toward objects of knowledge that has dis-
credited the objectivity and reality of moral experience. Contributing to
this is a particularly narrow conception of knowledge where science and
math are the models of objective discourse. This reflects deep-seated dual-
isms where science and art are polar opposites. On this view, art is clearly
subjective since it is concerned with expression and creation of values,
whereas science is the discovery of what is the case independently of human
values. Dewey explains how this picture makes moral values especially
problematic and how it generates the subjectivism versus objectivism
debate.
Between these two realms, one of intellectual objects without value and
the other of value-objects without intellect, there is an equivocal mid-
country in which moral objects are placed, with rival claimants striving
to annex them either to the region of purely immediate goods . . . or to
that of purely rational objects. (LW 1:304)
This general picture is based on misconceptions about science and

art, as well as of the general activities of discovery and creativity. It as-
sumes that we either discover the world as a passive spectator of an ante-
cedent reality or we construct it in the sense of inventing or making it out
of nothing. But discovery and creation are two mutually dependent phases
of any inquiry and are themselves multifaceted endeavors. Artistic activity
requires receptivity, paying close attention to the grain of things, and
discovering the qualities of the raw materials to be transformed. On the
∞∞∏
other hand, discovery requires selective searching and creative ingenuity.

Dewey’s view of scientific inquiry is one in which not even facts are given
in the sense of being antecedent to human interest or contextual purposes.
Similarly, in morality there is both discovery and creation of value; this
was implicit in my explanation of the dynamic relation between valuing
and valuation in moral inquiry.
Objectivity also has epistemological and logical aspects. The objec-
tivity of moral values has been questioned on the basis of their validity or
genuineness as judgments. How can moral values be objective if there is so
much disagreement about them and there is no Archimedean standpoint
from which to settle them?
Is there really more disagreement about moral values than there is
about other qualities in experience? This is an empirical issue. It is true
that the conditions for aesthetic and moral qualities, in comparison with
other qualities, are less stable and uniform, and that their apprehension
depends heavily on how the agent participates in a situation (i.e., as one of
its conditions). Dewey knew this. ‘‘In the case of aesthetic and moral
goods, the causal conditions which reflection reveals as determinants of
the good object are found to lie within organic constitution in greater
degree than is the case with objects of belief ’’ (LW 1:321). It is also true that
moral and aesthetic qualities cannot be measured, quantified, or subject to
predictive control. But this cannot be taken as evidence of the subjectiv-
ism and arbitrary character of these dimensions of our experience. From
Dewey’s point of view, it is to be expected that disagreement and change is
more common in moral and aesthetic matters. But this was not for him a
fall from grace, because he did not believe that morality should only be
taken seriously if moral values are universal and absolute. On the contrary,
the complexity of our moral and aesthetic experiences is a reason why we
must be more sensitive, careful, and thoughtful in our judgments and why
we must study their conditions.
More than the purported fact of disagreement, what seems to raise
doubts about the objectivity of morality is presumably the lack of any
objective means to resolve moral problems. As Sydney Hook observed,
‘‘The most common objection to naturalistic humanism is not that it has
no place for moral experience but that it has no place for an authoritative
moral experience.’’∞∏ If there is no authoritative Archimedean standpoint
and no criteria-based procedure to settle disagreements about morals,
then moral values are subjective. For Dewey this is a false dilemma. Dis-
agreements in morality can only be handled in the same way as other
disagreements in everyday experience. We can engage in a common in-
quiry that appeals to experience and that guides itself by the same prob-
∞∞π
lematic situation in which the disagreement is embedded. This, of course,

assumes that the people involved have some of the virtues (habits) needed
for this task. (I will have more to say about these virtues later.) In experi-
mental inquiry in science, art, and morals the general method is the same:
we try to change each other’s judgments (and are open to modify our own)
by consulting objective features of our situation. The key to guidance is a
closer attention to the situation and the use of our shared resources, rather
than any attempts to step outside of the situation. Reaching agreement
about general rules (e.g., about what usually makes actions right) may help
carry inquiry along in some cases, but this does not replace judgment,
which is unique and qualitative. Although there are more quantifiable
means to test hypotheses and resolve disagreements in science than in
morals, that does not make scientific thought less qualitative and morality
subjective. In science, art, and morals we can guide others toward having
experiences in a situation that can confirm or reject our hypotheses.
The opposition between objectivism and subjectivism in value theory
is one more instance of the ‘‘common occurrence in the histories of theo-
ries that an error at one extreme calls out a complementary error at the
other extreme’’ (LW 13:240). The subjectivist starts with the assumption of
isolated desires as sources of valuation; there is thus no way to test val-
ues, no possibility of intellectual control, and values become arbitrary.
In response to the subjectivist, a diametrically opposed theory is con-
structed, one in which values are ends-in-themselves or outside of experi-
ence. ‘‘This theory, in its endeavor to escape from the frying pan of dis-
ordered valuations, jumps into the fire of absolutism’’ (LW 3:241). From
Dewey’s standpoint, in spite of the opposition, the error is the same: both
assume the ‘‘same fundamental postulate of the isolation of valuation
from concrete empirical situations’’ (LW 13:241). Without the qualitative
context of a situation there is no basis in experience for control, guidance,
and experimentation in regard to values; we must either go outside of
experience for a standard or make values subjective. Subjectivism troubled
Dewey because it made criticism, appreciation, and cultivation in matters
of value arbitrary or absurd. But for Dewey ‘‘educated interest or taste is,
ultimately, supreme, the unum necessarium, in morals’’ (LW 2:76). And
‘‘The saying ‘De gustibus, non disputandum’ . . . is either just a maxim of
politeness or a stupid saying’’ (LW 2:95).
For the subjectivist, to be valued is to be enjoyed or desired. But
valuings are about things in the world and not mere reports of our internal
a√ective or appetitive states. Valuing judgments can become problematic,
and then become subject to objective criticism (i.e., valuation) without
having to appeal to anything outside of experience. Inquiry into relations
∞∞∫
and conditions is as applicable to valuings as it is to scientific matters. To be

sure, value judgments di√er from other judgments in their subject matter
and in the usual importance they have in directing conduct, but there is
nothing inherent in the nature of values that precludes them from the
general method of inquiry. Hence, intelligent and objective criticism of
existing values is possible even if it is always relative to what is available in
the particular situation, rather than from a God’s-eye point of view.
Today, one could argue that any proposal for objective means to
resolve moral disagreements is seriously challenged by the growing aware-
ness of how radical the disagreement is across the world. The ‘‘inelimi-
nable diversity of moral convictions among the peoples of the earth’’∞π
seems to support a cultural moral relativism. The cultural relativist is in a
better position than the subjectivist to propose a way to settle disagree-
ments. According to this view, moral judgments are not mere expressions
of our subjective preferences, but neither are they representations of an
antecedent reality. Instead, moral judgments are ultimately grounded in
the standards of a community. The existence of these standards provides a
su≈ciently stable basis to settle intra-cultural disagreements, thus rescu-
ing morality from the charge of arbitrariness. It is another matter whether
moral relativism has much to o√er when it comes to moral disagreement
across cultures or societies, especially when the moral relativist assumes
that moral incompatibilities between groups of humans are radical and
incommensurable. Some moral relativists, aware of this challenge, have
proposed ways to settle conflict that are coherent with their views. One
tactic is to suggest an objective way to deal with cross-cultural conflict that
is based on prudential reasons that the conflicting parties can accept.
According to Joseph Margolis, the best we can hope for is ‘‘to find what-
ever viable forms of practical tolerance may help us avoid the worst imag-
ined disasters.’’∞∫ The quest for neutral, non-moral grounds to resolve
irresolvable moral conflict among a plurality of moral traditions is com-
mon in the history of political liberalism. One could question the moral
neutrality of such proposals and the underlying assumption that humans
agree more on prudential than on moral grounds.
Is Dewey in a better position than the moral relativist to propose
something positive or promising that could settle radical moral disagree-
ments without presupposing cognitive privilege, as in traditional forms of
objectivism? One could argue that because of the way Dewey conceives of
moral disagreement, he has more resources to o√er. Many philosophers,
including objectivists and relativists, assume that moral disagreement is
an opposition or conflict between moral convictions or judgments as
norms or propositions that are either true or false. This starting point
∞∞Ω
determines the range of options available to ameliorate moral disagree-

ment because the inquiry centers on the plausibility of possible ways to
adjudicate between conflicting propositions or belief systems. Is there
something that makes moral propositions true or false outside of one’s
culturally inherited moral norms?
Since Dewey has an entirely di√erent starting point, moral disagree-
ment happens in a situation, so that even if people in moral disagreement
do not share beliefs, they share the situation of unique and particular
disagreement as something that is outside of discourse and without propo-
sitional content. If we start with moral conflict as a situation that is experi-
enced by participants as having the quality of radical disagreement, a
quality that is unique to each conflict, then that starting point opens the
possibility of more shared resources for amelioration. We thus start with
more to rely on than our moral beliefs and languages. Even if one cannot
convince others by arguments or test their convictions by reasoning, one
can guide others outside of the discourse to have certain experiences. This
is not a sure thing. Our experiences may still be very di√erent, but there is
also the possibility of guiding dialogue by the unique unsettling quality of
the situation of disagreement. For Dewey, if there is any hope to ameliorate
a situation, it must come from within the same indeterminate situation.
It is not my purpose here to demonstrate the superiority of Dewey’s
view to relativism or objectivism. Instead, my goal has been to show why
any full consideration of Dewey in ongoing debates in ethics must confront
the most basic assumptions about the nature of moral disagreements, judg-
ments, and the starting point of philosophical inquiry. As much as Dewey
shares with moral relativists, moral judgments for him are not derivations
from general norms of warrant, generated in the context of intersubjective
discourse. This would leave out situations, the concrete non-cognitive and
non-linguistic context in which these norms and discourse are found and
can be tested. ‘‘Any one who refuses to go outside the universe of dis-
course . . . has of course shut himself o√ from understanding what a
‘situation,’ as directly experienced subject-matter is’’ (LW 14:30–31). This is
why Dewey would be suspicious of the preoccupation of some neopragma-
tists with the norms of warrant within conceptual schemes.∞Ω As David
Hildebrand has recently argued, they share a ‘‘theoretical approach that
makes ‘language games’ or ‘conceptual schemes’ more basic to inquiry than
life or ‘situations.’ ’’≤≠ For Dewey, if there are norms of warrant, then
experienced situations are their ultimate measure. Our present formulas
are constrained, facilitated, and guided in unpredictable ways by a qualita-
tive world that never appears that way within discourse or inquiry. Inquiry
and judgment of better or worse are controlled by reference to a situation.
∞≤≠
six
The ‘‘How’’ of Moral Experience
W hat occurs in moral experience is a choice of conduct that arises out of

deliberation in the context of an evolving morally problematic situation. I
have given separate description of the phases within this process. First, I
considered the nature of the kinds of problems that disrupt the fluidity of
moral life, and then of the process of moral deliberation that issues in a
choice. However, a description of Dewey’s ground map of moral experi-
ence is incomplete without considering the role of the agent in the process
I have described. ‘‘No complete account of what is experienced, then, can
be given until we know how it is experienced, or the mode of experience
that enters into its formation’’ (LW 5:228). The agent is part of the context
and does not stand outside the process of reconstructing a situation.
Postulating a moral self that is outside the process and locating the process
as somehow within the mind of a self (subjectivism) are the causes of
many of the problems of moral philosophy. For Dewey, these problems are
dissolved if we begin with the self as a constitutive part of moral situations.
Dewey shared with George Herbert Mead the view that the self emerges
from a natural process of social interaction, but he focused more on describ-
ing the self as an organization of habits. All of our habits at any given time
∞≤∞
in the process of living constitute our characters. Character is the ‘‘working

interaction of habits’’ (MW 14:30), the ‘‘enduring unity of attitudes and
habits’’ (LW 7:258), that is expressed in the continuity of a series of acts.
This might seem like a narrow view of character, yet the pragmatist notion
of habit is a very rich one.
Habits
Through the process of socialization, an organism channels its impulses,
that is, it learns habits. Habits include not only one’s routine way of doing
things, but a broad spectrum of tendencies and dispositions, dominant
ways of acting, ways or modes of response, abilities, attitudes, sensitivities,
accessibilities, predilections, and aversions. ‘‘Habits are the fibre of charac-
ter, but there are habits of desire and imagination as well as of outer
action’’ (LW 9:187). Habit is a word that expresses ‘‘the kind of human
activity which is influenced by prior activity and in that sense acquired’’
(MW 14:31). However, when one develops a habit, what one has acquired
is not a possession within the confines of a self but a way of interacting
within a social and natural environment. Since some pre-existing associa-
tion is prior to any particular human being, many of our habits are com-
mon ways of feeling and believing, or what Dewey called ‘‘custom.’’∞
Habits have to be understood in terms of their function in the life-
process and in situations. They are the most basic instrumentalities of any
organism in its environment. Organisms depend on habits for sustenance,
control, and continuity. One trait common to human beings is that most
of our habits are not instinctive; they are instead acquired through our
constant interaction with an environment that is social and processive.
Our ability to acquire habits is due to the original plasticity of our nature.
Habits permit the everyday unreflective flow of action. The disruption
of a habit in meeting present conditions marks a state of crisis for an
organism. A morally problematic situation is in e√ect a disruption of the
fluid function of our habits, that is, a blockage of e√ective overt action. In
these situations, there is shock and confusion. Disruption of habits is
an occasion for deliberation, in other words, thinking or inquiry comes
about when habits no longer work. The outcome of this process is the
recovery of the same kind of stability, equilibrium, and fluidity of conduct
provided by previous habits in a stable environment. However, some
habits remain operative and stable through this process.
In a morally problematic situation, di√erent habits are operative at
di√erent levels depending on whether they are in the background or at the
foreground of our reflective awareness. The contextual background is
∞≤≤
t h e ‘‘h o w’’ o f m o r a l e x p e r i e n c e
temporal and spatial. It is temporal because what is present proceeds or is

a culmination of previous inquiries; there is, in other words, a narrative or
history. In the background we are usually carrying forward ways of inter-
pretation and observation that are part of a tradition or a culture. The
contextual background is also the contemporary spatial setting in which
thinking occurs. There are no exact boundaries that delineate the con-
textual scene or arena of a situation, but its vagueness does not imply that
it is unimportant. Dewey explained its importance with an analogy,
This contextual setting is vague, but it is no mere fringe. It has a solidity

and stability not found in the focal material of thinking. The latter
denotes the part of the road upon which the spot light is thrown. The
spatial context is the ground through which the road runs and for the
sake of which the road exists. It is this setting which gives import to the
road and to its consecutive illuminations. The path must be lighted if
one is not to lose his way; the remoter territory may be safely left in the
dark. (LW 6:13–14)
In a morally problematic situation, the inclusive situation does not

become the object of focal awareness, which is usually concerned with
what is unsettled. What is in the background in a situation might become
an object of thought, but the whole contextual background does not all
come into question at once. Hence, we need to abandon the Cartesian
illusion that we can doubt everything. We can only start where we are,
with all the moral beliefs and habits that we have inherited from our social
environment. This is not, however, a reason to despair. What may appear
to be a limitation is for Dewey a resource. Without the stable or settled
aspect of the background, we would not have the experiential resources to
think and reconstruct what is unsettled. ‘‘If everything were literally un-
settled at once, there would be nothing to which to tie those factors
that, being unsettled, are in the process of discovery and determination’’
(LW 6:12). The background habits in a situation are the ones we count on
because they provide the necessary stability to operate at the foreground
reconstruction of the habits that have been ruptured (at the more pre-
carious and shifting level of our experience). There are also the hab-
its of exploration and imagination that are needed to engage in a pro-
cess of moral deliberation that can issue in a resolution. In short, habits
are necessary and active instrumentalities by which we experience the
world. As Dewey said, ‘‘concrete habits do all the perceiving, recognition,
imagining, recalling, judging, conceiving, and reasoning that is done’’
(MW 14:124).
In Human Nature and Conduct, Dewey argues against the misconcep-
∞≤≥
tion that habits are essentially conservative. Habits can have the tendency
to become self-perpetuating and mechanical, but not all habit is the ‘‘en-
slavement to old ruts’’ (MW 14:48). There are habits that, though per-
sistent, can adapt themselves to new conditions. Dewey referred to these
flexible habits as ‘‘intelligent’’ or ‘‘artistic’’ (MW 14:52). Moreover, the
thinking capacities that are needed to reconstruct and reform habits that
are old ruts are themselves habits. An intelligent organism is capable of
modifying and improving her habits so that they can become relevant to
this and similar situations. With time, an intelligent organism not only
learns to adapt her habits to present situations, but also learns to learn; she
can, in other words, modify her present tools, but she can also create tools
to modify tools.
Situations and habits do not constitute separated isolated compart-
ments of experience. Habits are not formed in a vacuum and we cannot
think of them as an exclusive property of a self. Just as ‘‘breathing is an
a√air of the air as truly as of the lungs’’ (MW 9:15), habits require the
cooperation (interaction) of the organism and the environment. On the
other hand, situations are what they are and have their uniqueness be-
cause they are a result of the interaction (transaction) between the habits
and attitudes of the organism and its environment. There are two sides to
the relation (interaction) between our habits and the situations in which
they operate. With the attitudes and habits we bring from previous experi-
ence to a particular situation we a√ect the quality of the resulting situa-
tion, but these same attitudes and habits are also a√ected by the situation.
This ongoing, bi-directional process provides the basis for continuity in
the development of experience. But it also forms a continuity that, in a
certain sense, is educative or cumulative. In Dewey’s words,
The basic characteristic of habit is that every experience enacted and

undergone modifies the one who acts and undergoes, while this modifi-
cation a√ects, whether we wish it or not, the quality of subsequent expe-
riences (LW 13:18). Every experience a√ects for better or worse the atti-
tudes which help decide the quality of further experiences. (LW 13:20)
The fact that habits are the tools funded by previous experience makes
them one of the more dependable and stable aspects of our moral life.
Character as an Organic Whole

Habits interact not only with things in the environment, but also with
other habits. A habit is a trait of character, not to be thought of as an
isolated compartment, but rather as ‘‘one phase of an interpenetrated
∞≤∂
whole’’ (LW 7:258). The habits that constitute character are always opera-
tive, though some might be more overt than others depending on the
situation. That is, most of our conduct is an expression of the coordina-
tion of several habits, though occasionally one habit predominates.
There is continuity in conduct because of character. ‘‘Were it not for
the continued operation of all habits in every act, no such thing as charac-
ter could exist. There would be simply a bundle, an untied bundle at that,
of isolated acts’’ (MW 14:29). Character is not a fixed thing, but is in a
continuous process of transformation. ‘‘There is always in character the
possibility of change, of development.’’≤ The habits that are constitutive of
a character are not all plastic or persistent to the same degree. Those that
persist and resist change form the most stable aspects of our characters.
It is because of his organic model of character that Dewey resisted the
approach to ethics and to moral education that consists in listing and
cultivating a set of moral positive traits of character or virtues. He said,
The mere idea of a catalogue of di√erent virtues commits us to the
notion that virtues may be kept apart, pigeon-holed in water-tight com-
partments. In fact virtuous traits interpenetrate one another; this unity
is involved in the very idea of integrity of character. (LW 7:283)
Because of the relation of mutual dependence between the habits of a

concrete character, it is possible that a habit or virtue that is cultivated in
isolation can turn into a vice. For example, when temperance is cultivated
independently and in isolation, it can become a negative kind of inhibi-
tion. And when courage is taken as independent of achieving or maintain-
ing positive ends in conduct, ‘‘it shrinks to mere stoical and negative
resistance’’ (LW 7:116).
Dewey recognized the practical function of the language of virtues.
Habits are as a matter of fact evaluated as either positive (virtue) or
negative (vice) in the everyday approval and disapproval that takes place
in human relationships.≥ This is important as grounds for praise and
blame in moral development. Using traits of character to describe how
someone dispositionally responds, behaves, and interacts under certain
circumstances can serve other purposes, but a concrete character is not the
sum of its parts. Because of its unique history, circumstances, and inter-
actions among its habits, the total integration of the habits that make up a
character is unique. Hence, there can only be a very rough functional
sameness among characters. Although we classify and discriminate be-
tween people and virtues for instrumental purposes, one commits the
philosophical fallacy if one assumes that these classifications exhaust the
nature of individual persons.
∞≤∑
Another implication of Dewey’s notion of character is that we can no

longer establish the traditional fixed demarcation between the moral and
the non-moral virtues. If character is an interactive whole, then moral
conduct can never be the sole expression and operation of one, or one
kind of, habit. For example, how my stomach and eyes react to a morally
problematic situation might be as integral a part of moral inquiry as the
habit of remembering moral principles. Moral conduct is not guaranteed
simply by acquiring a specific set of moral habits and allowing those habits
to guide our lives. For instance, doing honest acts when they are morally
called for in a situation requires more than a general disposition to be
honest. It also requires all the thinking habits that help me determine
whether honesty is really called for in the situation, as well as all the other
habits in my character that are supportive of my individual actions. It is
precisely because many of our moral failures result from automatically
following moral habits that Dewey insisted on emphasizing the habits of
inquiry required to find out what a present morally problematic situation
calls for. He said:
Wide sympathy, keen sensitiveness, persistence in the face of the dis-

agreeable, balance of interest enabling us to undertake the work of anal-
ysis and decision intelligently are the distinctively moral traits—the vir-
tues of moral excellencies. (MW 12:173–174)
The virtues that are often considered to be distinctively moral in concrete

experience (e.g., sympathy, truthfulness) are virtues because they are inti-
mately connected with other habits. Hence, Dewey concluded that
To call them virtues in their isolation is like taking the skeleton for the
living body. The bones are certainly important, but their importance lies
in the fact that they support other organs of the body in such a way as to
make them capable of integrated e√ective activity. And the same is true
of the qualities of character which we specifically designate virtues. Mor-
als concern nothing less than the whole character. (MW 9:367)
For Dewey, if one considers the nature of intellectual activity, then this
opens the door to challenging the separation of the intellectual virtues
from the moral virtues within character. Such activity is not something
purely mental or the exercise of reason, but a social transaction, a certain
kind of communication. Therefore, intellectual activity cannot be sepa-
rated from the virtues that are usually labeled moral. While the canons of
deductive and inductive logic are integral to intellectual communication
in philosophy and in the sciences, traits of personal and social morality
∞≤∏
that make possible a democratic and cooperative process are also impor-
tant. Dewey was aware of the inseparability of moral values from our more
intellectual activities.∂ Philosophers such as Jürgen Habermas and Alan
Gewirth have also acknowledged this inseparability. Gewirth, for example,
says that without some ‘‘moral traits of character and social interaction,
the very operation of intellectual inquiry becomes impossible.’’∑
The distinction between and separation of moral and intellectual
virtues is counterproductive in moral education. With respect to the aims
of education, Dewey maintains that ‘‘no separation can be made between
impersonal, abstract principles of logic and moral qualities of character.
What is needed is to weave them into unity’’ (LW 8:139). More important
than education by ‘‘direct moral precept’’ (MW 6:388), that is, learning
moral rules or principles, is the indirect learning that comes from engag-
ing students in open, communal, and sensitive inquiry. The openness and
tolerance that I might encourage in my students by examining together
di√erent moral systems is of more moral importance than the informa-
tion they learn.
If character is an organic whole, then this opens the possibility of
being able to evaluate habits in terms of their interactive e√ect upon other
tendencies that one cherishes or in terms of how they contribute to the
whole character. Di√erent habits of a character might reinforce each other
or they might function at cross-purposes. There are persons who lack
integration, where di√erent habits or compartments of their character are
relatively isolated from each other. A specialized habit might endure and
become more e≈cient in its area of application in virtue of its relative
seclusion from others. But this confinement does not really work in a
world where one does not have control over one’s environment or in
situations that may call for other conflicting habits. The character that
allows for the mutual modification (interaction) among its habits opens
itself to the possibility of making readjustments that might resolve con-
flicts among habits and at the same time enrich the whole character.
To be sure, the hypothesis that it is better to have an integrated charac-
ter than one that is compartmentalized is not based on the assumption
that integrity or unity are worth achieving for their own sake. Character is
one of our most reliable tools in a situation. The integrative ideal signifies
the fullest and most productive use we can make of our characters in a
situation. I will return to Dewey’s conception of an ideal character in
part 3.
So far, I have described character in terms of its constitutive habits,
but it must also be understood in its relation to conduct and social en-
vironment. The specific reactions, habits, and dispositions that make up a
∞≤π
character are evoked, confirmed, nurtured under the influences of associ-

ated life. The quality of our characters is a√ected by our associations,
and the quality of our associations is a√ected by the characters partaking
in them.
Character is also said to be ‘‘whatever lies behind an act in the way of
deliberation and desire’’ (MW 5:188). A moral act involves choice and
therefore it is the expression of a formed and stable character. Character
and conduct designate two organic and inseparable elements in moral
experience. However, the distinction between character and conduct has
been the source of a fundamental dispute between moral theorists. Dewey
thought his view could overcome this divisive issue. I turn to this issue in
the next chapter.
∞≤∫
seven
Character and Conduct
Dewey and the Great Divide in Ethics
One important consequence of the resurgence of virtue ethics is a more

comprehensive way to classify ethical theories than the usual choice be-
tween deontological and consequentialist views. It has been assumed that
the great divide in ethics is between act-centered views, ethics of doing,
and character-centered views, ethics of being;∞ in other words, morality
should be conceived as a matter of doing good or being good. (I hereafter
use the expression ‘‘the divide issue’’ to describe this issue.) Though this
seems like an issue that has been recognized only in contemporary ethics,
John Dewey anticipated it and evaluated its legitimacy. Dewey under-
mines the grounds for the divide issue, and he proposes a way to move
beyond the debates between character-centered and act-centered ethics,
by having a di√erent starting point and metaphysics for his ethics. An
examination of this contemporary issue will reveal how inclusive but
radical Dewey’s view of moral life were, and spotlight his contemporary
relevance.
William Frankena explains the divide issue as ‘‘To be or to do, that is
the question. Should we construe morality as primarily a following of
certain principles or as primarily a cultivation of certain dispositions or
∞≤Ω
traits?’’≤ To answer this question philosophers have turned to two other

questions: (A) what is central to moral discourse, evaluation and justifica-
tion? and, (B) what is the primary concern or end of moral activity?
If the answers to (A) and (B) are that the moral self is primarily
concerned with what sort of person she ought to be, and that character
considerations are the primary source of moral justification in moral
discourse, then moral life is character-centered. This stands in contrast to
act-centered views where the primary concern and source of moral justifi-
cation is the moral rightness or goodness of our conduct. Let’s examine
the basis of this debate.
Moral Discourse as the Basis for the Divide Issue

Character-relevant discourse is about judgments of virtues and features of
the agent such as one’s ideals, dispositions, and motives. On the other
hand, conduct-relevant discourse is identified with moral judgments of
conduct based on features of the act, such as furthering certain ends or
complying with certain rules. On the basis of these two sorts of discourse
the divide issue admits of two di√erent formulations. The first assumes
the independence of each sort of discourse to the other or, in other words,
the autonomy of each. It then raises the question: which sort of discourse
represents the distinctively moral concern? The second formulation of the
issue assumes that both sorts of discourse are genuinely moral but that,
therefore, one must be more basic in some manner to the other. As I
explain below, Dewey rejects both of these approaches.
t h e au t o n o m y c l a i m
Dewey believed that both Kant and Mill based their ethical views on the
di√erences and divergences between judgments of character and judg-
ments of conduct in situations. Mill claims that one can get the same
objective good act from di√erent motives, even from bad ones. On the
other hand, Kant believes that the goodness of a good will does not de-
pend on the rightness of its actions. In general, the act theorist would
argue that, for example, an act can be judged dishonest or wrongful even if
it is performed by a person of honest character. Therefore, character has
nothing to do with morality. Meanwhile, the virtue theorist claims that
virtues, such as honesty, are independent of and cannot be reduced to
judgments or rules of good conduct.
Dewey of course acknowledged that there are times when we invert
our judgments of the doer and the deed, for example, an honest person
∞≥≠
character and conduct
can do a dishonest act. But the only way a philosopher can establish that
the moral goodness of a trait of character is somehow independent of the
assessment of the activities of that person is if she stipulates a narrow
definition of human action. For example, only if it is assumed that honesty
is a property of the inner confines of the self and not a tendency to interact
in a situation in a certain way, can one claim that the goodness of honesty
is independent of conduct. But, for Dewey, there is no basis in experience
for such a dualism and there is a good explanation for the disparities and
di√erences between judgments of character and those of conduct.
Character is a working interaction of habits. We cannot always accu-
rately assess the character of a person by assessing his or her conduct, even
after a long period of time. However, this is not because character is
something inner that may or may not cause external action, but simply
because there is no certainty about when our actions are expressions of
stable dispositions (habits) and when they are accidental reactions to an
undetermined number of contextual factors. Judging traits of character
can be di≈cult, uncertain, and complex but that does not mean that they
are other than tendencies to interact in a certain way in a situation—
habits. We cannot judge character without considering actual or possible
conduct.
But what about moral judgments of action? Are they not autonomous
from character-relevant discourse? This seems on its face more promising.
It is clear, for example, that sometimes one can judge an act to be honest
without considering the honesty of someone’s character. Moreover, many
ethical theories and moral traditions have made reference in their list of
moral precepts to acts, such as stealing and lying, regardless of who the
actor might be. Does it then follow, however, that moral judgments of
conduct as they are made in everyday moral experience can disregard the
agent and her character?
To what extent character-considerations of the agent are relevant to
the final moral judgment of an act is something that will depend on the
context, but they are a necessary part of that context. As Dewey noted,
‘‘intent is a normal part of a moral situation’’ (LW 7:167). In judging moral
conduct, one needs to consider if it is an expression of the self, that is, if it
embodies ‘‘the interest and motive of the self.’’≥ To be sure, Dewey makes
these claims not because he has or wishes to have a theory that centers on
character, but because he is a contextualist. To evaluate an act by taking
into account the actor is part of what is required in order to judge an act in
light of its concrete context. Of course, philosophers can always perform
the intellectual exercise of assessing acts in abstraction from their agents,
but there is no obvious reason why we should do this. Moreover, it is
∞≥∞
unclear why we should think that this is the way in which acts acquire their
moral cast in the concrete context of moral life.
In sum, Dewey holds that we can distinguish judgments of character
from judgments of conduct without assuming that they are about sepa-
rated domains of moral discourse or moral experience. On the contrary,
the way we make moral judgments suggests that character and conduct
are mutually dependent and inseparable facets of our moral experience.
Dewey claims that ‘‘There is no character excepting as manifested in con-
duct, there is no conduct excepting that which expresses character.’’∂
But even if the autonomy claim were true, this does not by itself pro-
vide support for making the divide issue a meaningful one. Why must one
decide which discourse represents the distinctively moral one? It seems
that only an unstated dualism would make one assume that character and
conduct cannot be brought together in an integrated view of moral life, or
that a moral agent cannot attend to both virtue and the moral goodness of
her actions without su√ering from a type of moral schizophrenia.
Perhaps aware that claims about autonomy are di≈cult to support,
recent philosophers have instead couched their centeredness claims in
terms of the primacy in morality, rather than in terms of exclusion. Let’s
briefly consider this recent way of arguing for the divide issue.
the basicness claim
Even if one cannot judge character without conduct (and vice versa) one
might still make the claim that one of these judgments must be basic.
There are two ways to understand this issue, neither of which is sound
from the point of view of Dewey’s ethics.
The issue of basicness has sometimes been understood as being about
which kind of judgment is susceptible to theoretical explanation and re-
duction by the other. For example, if virtues are reducible to moral rules
of conduct but not vice versa, then the latter are basic.∑ But in this way
of understanding the issue, it seems that what is basic is decided by how
good one is at performing conceptual reductions. This kind of reduction-
ism is indicative that perhaps the interest in ethical theory on the divide
issue arises out of a theoretical demand for conceptual economy and
elegance, and not because it has anything to do with anyone’s actual moral
experience.
Is there any way to make sense of the issue of basicness from the point
of view of moral agents making moral decisions? Which kind of judgment
is derivative to the other in terms of its justificatory role in moral delibera-
tion? This is a loaded question. In order to engage in debates that center
∞≥≤
on this issue one has to assume a certain model of moral reasoning and
justification. It reduces, without an argument, all morally relevant consid-
erations and judgments to two, that is, to act- and character-centered
ones. But the content of people’s actual moral deliberation is a lot richer
and more varied than proponents of both sides of the divide issue seem to
allow. More importantly, it assumes that either the inherent goodness of
certain types of character or the moral quality of certain kinds of actions
determined by some rule is the source of all moral justification and value.
The theoretical appeal of this assumption should be obvious. But Dewey
would argue that this is an oversimplification of moral experience. Moral
philosophy ‘‘should frankly recognize the impossibility of reducing all
the elements in moral situations to a single commensurable principle’’
(LW 5:288).
In Dewey’s contextualist view of moral justification, neither character-
judgments nor act-judgments have an inherent primacy or foundational
role in moral reasoning independent of the particular context of a situa-
tion. The relative weight of each judgment in coming to a final decision of
what one ought to do will depend on considerations of the unique and
specific features of the situation under consideration.
Being Good and Doing Good: Which Is the End of Morality?

If the defenders of the divide issue are not able to defend the meaning-
fulness of this issue by appeals to moral discourse and justification, they
might still reformulate the issue as a response to the following general
question: what is the primary end of moral activity? This question is
ambiguous. It might be asking about the primary concern of moral
agents when they are engaged in moral activity. But it could also be
about the theoretical issue of the ultimate end of morality. Let’s consider
both of these interpretations of the divide issue from a critical Deweyan
perspective.
Why must moral theorists decide if becoming a good character or
doing right actions is the end of our moral life? The demand to find out
which end is primary follows from what Dewey called the ‘‘doctrine of
fixed means and ends.’’∏ This is the view that in moral life there are fixed
means and ends, and that the task of the philosopher is to find out which
one is which. Hence, is moral conduct the means by which we express and
cultivate a good character (or the good life), or is it the end for which
virtues are the means? For Dewey this is not a meaningful issue because
the distinction between means and ends is a functional one. Doing good
and having a good character are two phases of moral life, and either one
∞≥≥
can be a means or an end relative to where we are in the process. Further-

more, and more importantly, this issue ignores the organic and mutually
dependent relation in moral life between the quality of our characters and
the quality of our actions. Let’s consider more closely this view.
For Dewey, the problem with moral theories that begin with (and
focus on) discrete acts or the qualities of agents is that they begin with an
abstraction from the concrete processional context where both character
and conduct acquire their quality and significance. Being good and having
a certain character, although by no means a guarantee that we will always
do good or do what ought to be done, does nonetheless increase our
chances. The good habits we bring to a situation are part of the means by
which we find out and do what is right. But it is also the case that it is only
by doing what we ought to do that we can improve our habits. This is
based on the important dynamic relation between habits and situations
already explained.
Moral life would not be educative and capable of improvement through
its own means if it were nothing more than the succession of isolated,
independent, and hermetically sealed situations or events. But there is
continuity and ‘‘every experience a√ects for better or for worse the atti-
tudes which help decide the quality of further experience’’ (LW 13:20). An
important implication of this for moral education is that the most impor-
tant learning a person can acquire in a situation is not information (or
rules), but the indirect cultivation of the habits that are going to a√ect the
quality of future situations. A growing, educative moral life requires both
improvements of the habits that will determine the quality of present
experience as well as improvement of the present experiences that will
determine the quality of our habits.
If there is an important relation between doing good and being good
in moral life, then why have philosophers insisted on separating and
taking sides between the goodness of our character and good conduct?
Dewey speculates that it is because of a quest for certainty which is not
content with any view that a≈rms a contingent relation. That a good will
tends to do good is insu≈cient for Kant; he therefore saves morality from
the vicissitudes of time and change by restricting it to the confines of the
will. On the other hand, utilitarians want morality to depend on an objec-
tive and certain calculation of pleasures and pains.
The relationship between character and conduct is not as tight as
many philosophers would want it. But for Dewey this is not a reason for
disappointment or to deny their relation. The disparities between being
and doing good count as evidence of the role of luck, accident, and con-
tingency in our moral lives. Having the virtues (or having the right sort of
∞≥∂
character) at any particular time is no guarantee that we are going to do

the right thing, but this is hardly a good reason not to cultivate virtue.
If Dewey is right about the relation between the quality of our charac-
ter and our conduct, then we cannot settle (or make meaningful) the issue
of whether morality is centered on character or conduct, and whether one
is the basis of the other. But perhaps we have misunderstood the divide
issue. Perhaps the issue is: what defines the concern of a moral agent qua
moral? Is it a concern to be the right sort of person (being) or to act
consistently with certain rules (doing)?
Which Is the Primary Concern of Moral Agents?

In considering this final formulation of the divide issue we could once
again raise the questions: why are they the only possibilities? And why are
they mutually exclusive? It seems that the easiest way to dismiss this issue is
simply to assert that there are plenty of moral agents in the world for
which becoming the right sort of person and acting consistently with
certain rules defines or is part of their moral concern in situations. Once
again, defenders of the divide issue are better o√ if they base their claim for
primacy or centeredness on comparing concerns rather than on excluding
them. This is in e√ect the tactic of many in contemporary virtue ethics.
The recent resurgence and interest in virtue ethics is a consequence of
the recognition that concerns about being are in some sense bigger or
more inclusive moral concerns than the narrow concerns about doing of
modern act-centered views. Furthermore, they have claimed that one’s
moral life must center on being because otherwise one su√ers the con-
stricted and alienating moral lives that are entailed by the act-centered
outlooks. We need to consider these arguments because they are the ones
used by virtue ethicists to support the importance and meaningfulness of
the divide issue.
Virtue ethicists have argued that concerns about being are more in-
clusive by comparing the question of act ethics, What is the right thing to
do? with questions such as, What sort of person should I be? or What is
the good life? They have claimed that the latter two questions must be
primary for an account of morality because they recur more frequently
and are of much broader scope. The issue of recurrence is an empirical
one, namely, that these questions become the object of conscious concern
in the lives of moral agents more often than do questions about actions.
Virtue ethicists argue that it is an error to center morality on moral
quandaries about what to do because moral problems so conceived only
occasionally occur in moral life. Louden, for example, says that
∞≥∑
Moral problems do not permeate every moment of our existence: occa-

sionally, we are unsure about what to do . . . but thankfully, such quan-
daries are the exception rather than the norm in day-to-day life. How-
ever, if the primary moral question is not what is the right thing to do in
a problematic situation? but what is a good life for a human being?
morality suddenly seems to invade all corners of life.π
This recurrence claim can be challenged on empirical grounds. Virtue

ethicists tend to underestimate how often moral agents experience moral
problems. In fact, it seems plausible to believe that the incidence of moral
problems increases with moral maturity since we become more morally
sensitive. In any case, this appeal to recurrence is hardly a good reason to
establish the primary question of morality. Should we decide the divide
issue on the basis of popularity? Our moral life could then just as well
center on a question that is asked every 50 years.
On the other hand, the issue of the primary question of morality
might be decided on the basis of scope. Here the virtue ethicist seems to
have a better argument. But this is only because the act theorist’s primary
question usually presupposes a narrow view of our moral life. According
to Dewey their narrowness is a consequence of assuming an atomistic view
of our moral experience. Act theorists conceive of our moral life as dis-
crete and isolated quandaries where the question What is the right thing to
do? is understood as an evaluation of a selfless act from the impartial or
impersonal point of view of a set of rules. If this is what is meant by this
question, then questions like, What should I be? or How should I live? are
better because they are more inclusive of important aspects of our moral
experience. But a better question in this sense does not make it the central
question of morality, nor does it entail that moral theory must give pri-
ority to being over doing.
Dewey was, in fact, suspicious about the alleged inclusivity or broad
conception of morality entertained by character-centered theorists. He
consistently argued against views of our moral life for which ‘‘moral good-
ness is identified in an exclusive way with virtue’’ (LW 7:285). This is not to
deny that virtue is important in moral deliberation. If what we do has
consequences for our character, in confirming and weakening habits, then
moral agents should be attuned to this. I will call this the virtue concern
since it is a central feature of virtue ethics. But moral concern is not
reducible to a concern with our characters, or with questions about the
nature of the good life. This is because the present or future state of our
character (or virtues) is not always relevant in moral situations. Some
decisions are more trivial than others with respect to the formation of our
∞≥∏
characters, but this does not mean that they cease to be moral decisions.
There are also situations where the virtue concern is overridden by other
moral considerations, situations in which one is aware that what one
morally ought to do might adversely a√ect one’s character. For Dewey
claimed that the virtue concern is only one among many other indepen-
dent and irreducible moral demands, such as duty and good, that charac-
terize morally problematic situations. None of these demands can claim
an inherent primacy over the others.
Virtue ethics may claim to have a broader scope in moral matters
because it is concerned with seemingly larger issues, such as the nature of
human flourishing and the good life, or how one should live, but it is not
thereby a richer or more inclusive view of morality. But perhaps the claim
of a broader scope is based on the context or standpoint from which these
questions are asked. Bernard Mayo, for example, explains the context of
‘‘What I ought to be’’ as ‘‘. . . where a man’s perplexity extends not merely
to a particular situation but to his whole way of living.’’∫ The assump-
tion seems to be that certain questions entail the abandonment of the
situationalist and particularistic thrust that has characterized act theory.
But there is nothing about the content or meaning of these questions
that make them transcend the particular contexts within which questions
about what action to undertake are asked. Even such far-reaching deci-
sions as ‘‘to be brave’’ or ‘‘to be a good human being’’ are as situation-
specific for Dewey as any other decision. They arise out of a particular
problematic situation and not from some wider standpoint or context.
Virtue ethics is a reaction to the act-theorist view of moral life as a
succession of isolated situations. For the virtue ethicist, the solution to this
atomistic conception of our moral life is to posit a moral self who is
primarily concerned with her life as a whole. This concern is meaningful
to Dewey, but it always takes place in a particular situation and for a self
that is in a process of continuous formation. Virtue ethics wants to recover
the sense of continuity in our moral lives but for this we do not have to
postulate one concern that pervades all moral situations or a standpoint
from which a growing self can survey her moral life as a whole. A stand-
point that is wide but nowhere in particular might be bigger but if it has
nothing to do with our concrete experience as moral agents it has nothing
to contribute to a rich conception of morality. What these two views share,
in spite of their opposition, is the theoretical starting point (discussed in
chapter 1) of gazing at atomistic actions or moral life as a unified whole.
From within moral life things are experienced di√erently.
Virtue ethics has taken advantage of the general disillusionment with
act theories in order to support their centrality claims. The appeal or
∞≥π
strength of the divide issue might not be based on a careful examination of

the issue on its own terms, but rather on the historical fact that character
theories have been conceived as the only alternative to act theories. Some-
times the issues that divide philosophers owe their legitimacy and liveli-
ness to the fact that no one has suggested an alternative view. If this is true,
then the divide issue will continue to be assumed in philosophical debates
as long as no alternative to the character- or act-centered views is pro-
posed. Dewey’s view is thus important because he proposes just such an
alternative, one that is richly detailed and true to our moral lives. This
makes Dewey’s ethics an alternative worth considering and developing.
What is peculiar about Dewey’s conception of moral life is that it
recovers the importance of character (and related concerns) without fall-
ing into the excesses and reductionism of contemporary virtue ethics. On
the other hand, it stresses the situational aspect of living morally without
falling into the atomistic view of our moral life detailed by act theorists. In
other words, it o√ers the possibility of an ethics that is neither a vir-
tue ethics nor an act-centered ethics, and it recovers the strengths of
both views.
On Dewey’s account, moral life is a series of continuous situations.
Morally problematic situations are the events where we gain focal aware-
ness of the moral dimension of experience. ‘‘The moral life has its centre
in the periods of suspended and postponed action, when the energy of the
individual is spent in recollection and foresight, in severe inquiry and
serious consideration of alternative aims’’ (MW 5:375). It is in this context
that we come to consider among other things the favorite considerations
of act-centered and character-centered ethics. When they are present in
a particular situation they are both instrumental to the more inclusive
moral concern: to find out what we morally ought to do. Therefore, if
morality is centered anywhere, it is on morally problematic situations.
Does taking situations as the starting point of ethical theory or as the end
of morality not entail a narrow or scaled-down view of moral experience?
On the contrary, Dewey thought that much of the reductionism and
oversimplification in contemporary moral theory was caused by a failure
to consider the complexity and richness of moral experiences as they are
had in unique situations. The history of moral philosophy is characterized
by one-sidedness because philosophers have abstracted one feature of
situations which are experienced as morally problematic, then made it
supreme or exclusive. But, for Dewey, good, virtue, and duty are all irre-
ducible features found intertwined in moral situations.
Moreover, the particularistic thrust of Dewey’s moral philosophy is
not incompatible with some of the broad and general concerns charac-
∞≥∫
teristic of virtue ethics. For, as I noted, our moral life is not merely a
succession of isolated situations; there is continuity and the possibility of
learning in our moral development. Moral ideals and character, for exam-
ple, have a place in Dewey’s ethics. However, he is able to incorporate these
concerns in his ethics without postulating abstract notions that are ante-
cedent to concrete situations. Ideals are part of the means of a situation.
Virtues are to be examined as habits operating in the context of situations
and not as means to abstract notions of human flourishing. Dewey would
even agree with virtue ethicists that moral theorists should concern them-
selves more with providing hypotheses about the traits of character that
might be worth cultivating than trying to construct rules of action. But
this does not mean that character is central to morality or that we should
make character and its flourishing the primary conscious aim of our
moral life. From time to time we need to reflect about our moral charac-
ter. However, to make the state of our character the moral end and every-
thing else the means to improving character is to elevate character as
antecedent to the context from which it emerges and has its importance.
For Dewey this is not only a philosophical mistake, but if put into practice,
can lead to one of the worst forms of moral life. Agent-centered views
encourage what he called ‘‘spiritual egotism,’’ that is, it produces people
who ‘‘are preoccupied with the state of their character, concerned for the
purity of their motives and goodness of their souls. The exultation of
conceit which sometimes accompanies this absorption can produce a cor-
rosive inhumanity which exceeds the possibilities of any other form of
selfishness’’ (MW 14:7).
Making the goodness of our character the conscious object of our
moral concern can in fact be counterproductive. Too much concern for
our character can become a distraction or block to fruitful character-
building activity. The best way to improve our moral characters is to
attend to what we ought to do in a particular situation. Dewey thought
that just as there is a hedonistic paradox, there is a moralistic paradox:
‘‘the way to get goodness is to cease to think of it—as something separate—
and to devote ourselves to the realization of the full value of the practical
situations in which we find ourselves’’ (MW 5:318).
We need to shift the emphasis in moral philosophy away from rules of
action. However, in Dewey this is done by shifting the emphasis toward
the concrete and unique situations of our moral experience and not to-
ward virtues and notions of the good or human flourishing. Does the
claim that the locus of our moral life is in situations where one has to
decide what one ought to do commit Dewey to an act-centered view? The
answer is ‘‘no’’ for several important reasons.
∞≥Ω
First, the reason why the question What ought I to do? is primary is
because in a morally problematic situation it is always a choice about a
particular course of conduct which is being considered. This does not
imply anything about giving inherent primacy to rules, standards, or any
act-centered type of evaluative commitment in making such decisions.
Furthermore, Dewey holds that among the legitimate and irreducible
moral demands considered in trying to answer or resolve a morally prob-
lematic situation is the state of one’s character (i.e., the virtue concern).
Third, and most important, Dewey’s particularism is a contextualism that
does not share with act-centered positions the atomistic view of acts and
of moral experience. His ethics begins with situations as individualized
contexts that, though unique, are continuous with each other in an open-
ended process. Acts are not contextless events or mere external e√ects of a
self. In fact, for Dewey moral conduct is an expression of the moral self.
This relation is so intimate and direct that, in a sense I will soon explain,
questions about what one ought to do are in e√ect also questions about
what one ought to be. But before turning to this view of moral conduct, I
must consider one more argument used by character theorists to defend
the view that one’s moral life must be centered on a concern with being.
Some recent ethicists have claimed that one’s moral theory and moral life
must be centered on character because otherwise one su√ers the con-
stricted and alienating moral life that is entailed by the act-centered con-
cern. Let’s examine the problem of alienation and consider if this warrants
the conclusion that moral philosophy should center on character and
whether Dewey’s ethics is susceptible to this problem.
The Problem of Alienation and the Moral Self

Character-centered views criticize modern act-centered views because
their abstract view of acts and rules tend to alienate concrete moral selves
from their acts. Bernard Williams, for example, has argued that utili-
tarianism’s regard for moral actions as merely ‘‘happenings outside one’s
moral self ’’ and their evaluation from an impartial and abstract point of
view ‘‘alienates one from one’s actions.’’Ω Utilitarianism fails to capture the
sense in which moral persons identify with their actions. The notion that
character is only, at best, a means to right conduct presupposes a distance
or separation between the moral self and its acts that is counterintuitive to
those who live meaningful moral lives.
Dewey agrees with this last criticism, but he does not think this entails
that morality should be agent-centered as Williams and other virtue theo-
rists seem to think. On the contrary, his diagnosis of the problem reveals
∞∂≠
that insofar as character views presuppose the same view of the moral self
as act views, they are susceptible to the same criticism. As Dewey sees it,
the problem is a consequence of starting ethical theory with a certain
theoretical conception of what it is to be a self in moral experience,
namely, the spectator view of the moral self.
For a moral self as a subject-spectator, conduct is an external conse-
quence of its deliberation, itself an inner cognitive process. Therefore, the
relation between the self and its conduct is, at best, one of cause and e√ect.
This is troublesome because the relation between a moral self and what
she does seems in moral experience to be more intimate, that is, moral
conduct is an expression of a moral self. In e√ect the spectator view of the
self alienates the moral self from its own activities. The implications about
alienation of this view are perhaps more evident in act-centered moral
theories, for they usually assume that acts are atomistic contextless events
subject to external demands, rules, duties, or principles, which hold no
special relation to the one who e√ects them.
What agent-centered views, such as that of Williams, overlook is that
their attempt to anchor morality in the agent (or character) might not
resolve the problem of alienation between the moral self and its acts. Can
the self genuinely identify with her actions if they are merely an outward
expression of some personal moral project or a mere means to achieving
virtue? Possessive attitudes toward an activity can be as alienating as im-
personal ones. Consider, for example, how alienating is the experience of
students who think of learning merely as a way of getting good grades or
becoming a good future professional. Virtue theorists assume an account
of moral reasoning that rests on a hypothetical imperative where the
antecedent is a desire to be a certain sort of person. In other words, the
condition for engaging in moral activity (finding and doing the right
thing) is an antecedent concern for one’s character. How is this better than
rules in regard to alienation? On both views my identification with what I
ought to do in a particular situation is mediated and conditional upon a
concern that is somewhat removed from the concrete and specific issue at
hand. Moral conduct is not a direct expression but only a consequence of
caring for something else.
If the only alternative to the abstract concern to abide by rules is the
exclusive concern to become the right sort of person, then alienation
seems like an unavoidable trait or danger of living morally. The problem
seems unavoidable as long as we assume a separation between the self and
its acts, and make one a means to the other. If there is in moral experience
a more intimate relation between the moral self and its acts, then the
problem of alienation is a further reason to reject the divide and its
∞∂∞
options. As Dewey noted, ‘‘The key to a correct theory of morality is

recognition of the essential unity of the self and its acts’’ (LW 7:288). The
noble intention of virtue ethics is to recover the personal character of
morality from modern rule theorists, but this does not have to be done by
reducing morality to a concern with one’s character. It can be done by
recognizing, as Dewey did, that moral conduct is a direct expression of a
moral self.
The Unity of the Moral Self and Its Acts

In Dewey’s ethics there are at least three reasons why moral conduct is an
expression of the moral self: (1) because moral conduct is an expression of
intention; (2) because moral conduct reveals acquired character; and,
(3) because in some fundamental ontological sense what I do is what I am.
I will consider each of these in turn.
Moral conduct is an expression of the self since it is the manifestation
of an intended and voluntary choice. This is why the ‘‘self is more than a
cause of an act in the sense in which the match is a cause of a fire’’ (LW
7:287). The fire is not an expression of the match, not because the match
has no soul, but because it does not choose and has no intentions. More-
over, insofar as this response or choice is influenced or shaped by our
previous experiences, it is also expressive of the habits that have been
acquired by the self. Not all of our actions stem from acquired dispositions
to the same degree. But usually where there is a ‘‘formed and stable char-
acter,’’ a moral act is also an expression of that character, it ‘‘reveals the
existing self and it forms the future self ’’ (LW 7:287, my emphasis).
But there is a more fundamental sense in which moral conduct or
activity is the expression of the moral self: there is no ready-made self
prior to activity, therefore conduct is not something that can be separated
from what we are. This is not a form of behaviorism, as this would assume
the sort of mind and body dualism that is rejected by Dewey. From the
practical starting point the self is experienced as a participant in activity.
We sometimes reflectively establish a distance between our self and our
acts, and even make distinctions between our capacities as agents (i.e.,
characters) and the environment, but this is only because of a temporary
obstruction in our fluid and immediate identification with our acts. When
a person is engaged and absorbed in what she is doing, she is not con-
scious of her self as something apart from the activity; instead, ‘‘the self is
in what he is doing.’’∞≠
If the self is a spectator causing some outer action, then moral action is
for the self. That is, moral activity is instrumental to some end, purpose, or
∞∂≤
interest of the self, for example, the attainment or expression of virtue, the
maximization of happiness, or compliance with a universal duty. On this
assumption, self-realization and moral activity are usually conceived in
terms of getting something for the self. Hence, it is not surprising that one of
the predominant tendencies in the history of moral philosophy (e.g., that
of utilitarianism and virtue ethics) most criticized by Dewey was a pos-
sessive and acquisitive view of morality. He said whether it be pleasure or
getting happiness, or culture, or experience, enriched life, or more mo-

rality, or perfection for the being which is already in existence; it throws
the emphasis on the side of acquisition and of possession. I do not see
that it makes much di√erence what a man gets as long as you define
moral life from the standpoint of getting.∞∞
For Dewey, ‘‘morality consists in not degrading any required act into a
mere means towards an end lying outside itself, but in doing it for its own
sake, or, again, in doing it as self ’’ (EW 4:52). The alternative to the notion
of living morally for the self is living morally as the self. This means that
the self is directly identified with what she ought to do, that morality is
‘‘finding the self in the activity called for by the situation’’ (EW 4:51).
Morality, as Dewey understands it, is thus a matter of a being that is
doing. Therefore, although concerns about what one ought to do convey
that in a morally problematic situation it is always the choice of a particu-
lar course of conduct that is being considered, this is not something
independent from what an agent ought to be in that situation. Only an
agent view of the self implies the kind of identity between the self and its
acts that avoids the problem of alienation endemic to both character-
centered and act-centered views.
The notion of the self as a passive spectator that is moved to moral
activity by something outside itself ∞≤ has also led to narrow views of moral
motivation. When the unity of the self and its acts is not recognized, it is
assumed that concern for moral activity is either for the self or it is the
impartial and impersonal motivation of act-centered views. It is as if,
apart from wanting virtue or wanting to comply with rules, the moral self
would be indi√erent to each particular moral task. This mistake is avoided
by starting with the experience of concrete moral selves as they are genu-
inely engrossed in present moral activity instead of starting with abstrac-
tions. What is ruled out is that a self can be directly interested in or
concerned with present moral activity. But this is precisely the type of
moral self and engagement that Dewey describes as the model of having a
moral experience. Once again it will be useful to draw from the similarities
with art as experience.
∞∂≥
The moral self, like the genuine artist, while engaged in the process,
defines and identifies herself with what she does; there is no distinction
between herself and the activity (process). In the absence of this kind of
engagement and direct absorption in a situation, any other special com-
mitment to a value, ideal, or purposes can be a narrow and distracting
indulgence. It is like the artist who lets personal projects and agendas, such
as fame or the desire to become a better artist, get in the way of the artistic
process.
For Dewey, this model of the self needs to be studied and fostered in
moral education. He was concerned to undermine the divide issue be-
cause of its implications for moral education. The view that moral train-
ing in schools is a matter of discipline to act according to certain pre-
established rules of conduct, and the view that what is important is that
students have a good character or a good will were dangerous and one-
sided. The former produces characters that are so rigid and mechanical
that they lack the spirit of morality; the latter encourage characters who
limit their moral tasks to meaning well and perfecting their characters. For
Dewey, these alternatives reflect not only dualisms, but also a society
unable to encourage the optimal sort of engagement from individuals to
deal with moral problems.
What virtue ethics tries to recover is what might be called the personal
character of morality. But it has assumed that the way to recover from
legalistic and impartial models of morality is to shift the focus of ethics
away from problematic situations and toward character. But Dewey pro-
vides an alternative view that recovers the personal character of morality
and gives character its due without giving up the situational thrust of our
moral experience. The moral agent who is aesthetically engaged in present
moral activity has a direct personal identification with the specific con-
duct that is morally required of her in a situation. For this kind of self,
moral activity is a matter of self-expression and not an external imposition
(of obeying rules) or a matter of ‘‘getting’’ virtue (or any moral good). In
my account of the ideal self in part 3, I will discuss the characteristics of a
self capable of this sort of engagement.
In conclusion, in spite of similarities, it would be a mistake to regard
Dewey’s ethics as a form of virtue ethics. This mistake is costly since it
precludes the appreciation of the distinctive character of Dewey’s ethics.
His ethics is an alternative that avoids the atomistic view of acts, the
legalistic form of morality, and the neglect of the self and communal
context that characterizes many modern act-centered views. Dewey would
not deny that moral agents are or can be concerned with character consid-
erations (virtues, ideals, projects) and also with act considerations (rules,
∞∂∂
principles, consequences), but there is no reason to take either one as

defining the paradigm of moral engagement. In fact, both are instances of
a more general concern of a moral agent: to search and to choose what
each particular and unique morally problematic situation requires. For a
moral self, each situation presents a unique moral task, the execution of
which is its immanent end, even if its resolution happens to produce
wonderful instrumentalities for future experiences. Our moral life is com-
posed of situations with their own unique and meaningful development.
Hence, morality is more than following rules, but it is also more than a
quest for virtue.
One more feature of Dewey’s view of moral experience that is some-
times implicit in his criticisms of traditional views but that must be em-
phasized is how he places the locus of moral endeavor in present experi-
ence. Considering this final aspect of Dewey’s conception of moral life, as
well as the issue of meaning, will serve as a bridge to the more normative
aspects of his ethics considered in part 3.
∞∂∑
eight
Present Activity and
the Meaning of Moral Life
I n the history of moral philosophy, present moral activity has been taken
as a means to a future remote goal, virtue, happiness, a universal duty, or
the good life. Moral life has been conceived as a cumulative process where
present situations are important only to the extent that we can acquire
something from them, such as the goodness in our characters, happiness,
or compliance with a general rule. Several things can account for this
commonly shared assumption.
The view of moral life as acquisitive and product-oriented has been
supported by socio-economic practices. Dewey was alert to the close rela-
tion between, for example, utilitarianism and capitalist institutions which
subordinated ‘‘productive activity to the bare product’’ (MW 12:184).
Socio-economic conditions have contributed to the belief that satisfaction
and fulfillment are future possessions—products—that can be separated
from present productive activity. But Dewey also diagnosed how in philos-
ophy a mistaken notion of the self and of the temporal in experience
contributed to making these assumptions about moral life seem like com-
mon sense. Let’s first consider the issue of time.
The importance a philosopher might give to the present or to the
∞∂∏
present activity and the meaning of moral life
future in morality depends, in part, on her assumptions about time. The

notion of time as it is lived and experienced, and the notion of time as it is
surveyed from a spectator standpoint represent two di√erent starting
points of philosophical inquiry. The theoretical starting point for many
philosophers is the God’s-eye or bird’s-eye point of view, a view that
assumes that there is a non-temporal point of view from which we can
gaze at past, present, and future as relative points in a spatial continuum.
From this perspective the present is only an ephemeral point where we are
in relation to the past and the future. The present is, so to speak, that place
in the continuum that will be part of our past. While what counts as
present is constantly fading and shifting, the past has been written. Ac-
cording to this picture of time, the present cannot be the significant center
of reference for moral life; Dewey and proponents of process-oriented
views disagree.∞
According to the radical empiricist, this last view of time, although
useful for many purposes, is a picture or an account of things but not of
time as it is experienced. In a certain sense the only time that is experi-
enced is the present; the future is experienced as present possibilities and
anticipation, the past as present memories and instrumentalities. Hence,
the present is of the utmost importance. What one retains and what one
expects are used as guides in the present. Making an e√ort not to be
troubled about one’s past or worried about one’s future is for the sake of
one’s present. This is not to deny that in everyday life we are intellectually
concerned with the future. But this does not prove that we are all directly
aiming at controlling a distant future or that we should. As a matter of
fact, Dewey states,
thought about future happenings is the only way we can judge the
present; it is the only way to appraise its significance. Without such
projection, there can be no projects, no plan for administering present
energies, overcoming present obstacles. (MW 14:183)
Moral views that emphasize the present as a mere means to a remote

future lack a certain wisdom. After all, the present is what is most under
our control, while the future is not. Therefore, to subordinate the present
to the future ‘‘is to subject the comparatively secure to the precarious, [to]
exchange resources for liabilities’’ (MW 14:183). For Dewey this was ‘‘the
element of truth in Epicureanism’’ (MW 14:201). The problem with Epi-
cureanism lay in its ‘‘conception of what constitutes present good, not in
its emphasis upon satisfaction as the present’’ (MW 12:201).
But should we not make an e√ort to control the future? Is it not
prudent and even morally required to sacrifice present enjoyments for
∞∂π
future and more worthwhile ones? Dewey would agree that control of the
future is a precious goal, since we live in a precarious and changing world.
But it is incorrect to believe that the best way to achieve something is to
always directly aim at it. Even if we want future improvement and control
as a result of present action, this does not mean that we should thereby
directly aim our actions at securing future improvement. On the contrary,
there are reasons to believe that reflective overconcern with future im-
provement is the surest way not to attain it, because such overconcern
results in a halfhearted ‘‘attention to the full use of present resources in the
present situation’’ (MW 14:183), which is detrimental to any future state.
Dewey claimed that the surest means to attain anything in the future is ‘‘to
attend to the full possibilities of the present’’ (MW 14:183) and that ‘‘such
enrichment of the present for its own sake is the just heritage of childhood
and the best insurer of future growth’’ (LW 8:348). Dewey says,
control of future living, such as it may turn out to be, is wholly depen-
dent upon taking his present activity, seriously and devotedly, as an end,
not as means. (MW 14:184, my emphasis)
The necessity of subordinating the present to the future in morality

has also been supported by the modern separation between reason (and
its foresight) and present-focused impulses and desires that are presum-
ably the sources of moral temptation. Hence, to live for the present has
been associated with an immoral and self-indulgent life. However, Dewey
points out that
moralists have spent time and energy in showing what happens when
appetite, impulse, is indulged without reference to consequences and
reason. But they have mostly ignored the counterpart evils of an intel-
ligence that conceive ideals and goods which do not enter into present
impulse and habits. (MW 14:188, my emphasis)
Perhaps the most common modern assumption that conspires against

making present activity the locus of moral e√ort and meaning is the
spectator view of the self. For a self, as a fixed and isolated subject separated
from its acts, present activity is a mere external means for the self. This self
should be committed to present activity only to the extent required to
obtain what she needs for future use or to initiate powers that come from
within the self. From this point of view, halfhearted participation of the
self in present activity is not necessarily bad because the self is antecedent;
whereas too much involvement is dangerous because the self can lose itself
in activity and forget that the present is only a means. However, as already
∞∂∫
noted, Dewey’s view of the moral agent implies that the self cannot be
ontologically separated from present activity; moreover, it achieves self-
expression by being directly concerned and immersed in it.
Any consequentialist or teleological interpretation of Dewey’s ethics
ignores his attempt to shift the center of gravity of morality to concrete
present situations. Consequences and ends are, of course, important, but
they are only part of our present resources for present reconstruction. As
Dewey writes,
growth of present action in shades and scope of meaning is the only good
within our control, and the only one, accordingly, for which respon-
sibility exists. The rest is luck, fortune. And the tragedy of the moral
notions most insisted upon by the morally self-conscious is the relega-
tion of the only good which can fully engage thought, namely present
meaning of action, to the rank of an incident of a remote good, whether
that future good be defined as pleasure, or perfection, or salvation, or
attainment of virtuous character. (MW 14:194, my emphasis)
Views that have ‘‘made the present subservient to a rigid yet abstract
future’’ (MW 14:284) understand moral progress and growth in terms of
an approximation to a fixed and remote ideal or standard. One version of
this is when moral progress is conceived as a cumulative and linear pro-
gression toward a final ‘‘stable condition free from conflict and distur-
bance’’ (MW 14:285). These views interpret change and our present moral
struggles as signs of our human limitations, and as incentives to work
toward a world where these aspects of existence are diminished until we
reach moral stability, perfection, fulfillment, and completeness.
As Dewey sees it, the dogma of approximation runs counter to the
general pattern and rhythm of moral experience. Moral life does not have
this linear pattern. There is, of course, continuity and many instrumen-
talities are carried forward and improved, but moral life is ‘‘no uniform
uninterrupted march or flow. It is a thing of histories, each with its own
plot’’ (LW 10:42). Even when we talk as if our lives were a cohesive, on-
going story for us to make, we do so as a way of understanding and making
meaningful the present episode. We experience life as a continuous pro-
cess but not as a single, all-inclusive, and evolving situation. Furthermore,
it is wishful thinking to assume that moral life will become easier and
more secure with every solved moral problem and with every improve-
ment of character; this view assumes a uniform environment without the
possibility of unforeseen new problems. But every accomplishment—each
resolution of a morally problematic situation—introduces new conditions
that generate new and sometimes even more complex problems. Dewey
∞∂Ω
asks us to admit that ‘‘no matter what the present success in straightening
out di≈culties and harmonizing conflict, it is certain that problems will
recur in the future in a new form or in a di√erent plane’’ (MW 14:285).
New struggles and failures seem inevitable. The way toward a conflict-less,
trouble-free, stable, and final state of a√airs could only be achieved if it
were possible to go back to a state of primitive simplicity or to follow the
Buddhist’s renunciation of desire, action, and attainment.
It is not surprising that pessimism is one of the consequences of
conceiving of moral life as an approximation to moral stability and perfec-
tion. With such high expectations, one’s moral struggles to ameliorate
present situations seem to be in vain. For many, the only way to avoid
pessimism and to keep the dogma of approximation intact is to subscribe
to a form of transcendentalism where the desired trouble-free, stable con-
dition is found outside of space and time. That is, moral life is finite,
illusory, but perhaps a necessary evil and bridge to a transcendent moral
reality.
Dewey’s disagreement with this view is more than an empirical issue
about what moral life is or can o√er. Even if such an approximation to a
perfect and stable end were possible he would consider it almost inher-
ently unappealing, for he shared with William James the idea that an
existence without struggle lacks meaning. First, the concepts of success,
growth, and fulfillment would be unintelligible in a world completely
devoid of struggle and failure. More important, an existence without
struggle lacks meaning; it is a pointless and unbearable kind of existence.
For as James said, ‘‘need and struggle are what excite and inspire us; our
hour of triumph is what brings the void.’’≤ Dewey and James did not
understand how a trouble-free existence can be a source of moral aspira-
tion or motivation.
Even if we agree with Dewey’s criticisms of any final and future telos,
this does not mean that he has provided an alternative view that has
answered adequately all the important questions. How does his view avoid
pessimism? If all there is to moral life is the rhythmic pattern of unending
problems, then how is this any di√erent than the meaningless life of
Sisyphus repeatedly rolling the rock up the hill? What could be the point of
moral life if it is not cumulative, or if it ends up in nothing? Moreover, if
there is no final end or outcome to the present process, then how can we
judge the quality of the present process? How do we know if in the present
we are headed in the right direction? Let’s consider these issues since they
point to commitments that ground the normative vision I discuss in part 3.
Consider first how one is able to judge present experience without a
fixed and final standard. This objection is important because it suggests
∞∑≠
that Dewey might not be able to avoid the implication that in moral
experience there is no non-arbitrary way to determine better from worse.
This implication follows if one assumes that the quality of any present
process can be judged only by the quality of its future end-product. The
future is the only standard for the present. But Dewey was critical of this
commonly held assumption in the American school system and work-
place. Outcomes, especially quantifiable ones, are important but they do
not determine the quality of the present process. Present learning can be
directly experienced and judged as a meaningful and worthwhile experi-
ence regardless of what may come from it.
The apparent need for a future and fixed end to judge the present may
well be the result of having an abstract and narrow view of the resources
that are found in the present situation. But as Dewey notes, the present is
not a ‘‘sharp narrow knife-blade in time’’ (MW 14:194) and it includes not
only what is present to observation but also a complex of working habits,
memory, and foresight. To rely on present experience to judge its own
ongoing quality means that one needs to rely on character, inherited
moral principles, and present possibilities (including goals or ends-in-
view). Moreover, the present is a qualitative context that we can syn-
chronically rely on to determine better from worse. In other words, we
experience whether we are making progress during a moral problem as a
pervasive quality of the present situation without deliberately applying
some antecedent standard or criteria. Dewey claimed that if moving into
the better ‘‘cannot be told by qualities belonging to the moment of transi-
tion it can never be judged’’ (MW 14:195). He insisted that
there are plenty of negative elements, due to conflict, entanglement and

obscurity, in most situations of life, and we do not require a revelation of
some supreme perfection to inform us whether or no we are making
headway in present rectification. (MW 14:195)
Every situation has its own measure and quality of progress. (MW 14:195)
Once again, we cannot overestimate the importance of the qualitative in

Dewey’s ethics. The qualitative context is ‘‘the background, the point of
departure, and the regulative principle of all thinking’’ (LW 5:261). This is
why, as I later discuss, sensitivity to the pervasive quality of the situations
that demand moral reconstruction is a virtue. No matter how good our
knowledge-based resources (i.e., rules or criteria) are in a given situation,
without this sensitivity we are lost and without any sense of what is or is
not relevant to the problem at hand.
Dewey’s attempt to shift the emphasis in ethics to the present and to
∞∑∞
the quality of the process was motivated by a concern that if we do not give
the present its due attention, the quality and meaningfulness of life su√ers.
Criticism of moral theories that legitimize the separation of means and
ends and products and process is needed because these dualisms keep
individuals from living more meaningful moral lives. Product-oriented
views of morality overemphasize our acquisitive capacities at the expense
of the creative ones. If the best we can do with our present moral struggles
is endure them for the sake of some remote end, then present experience is
a mere means, and moral life is experienced as unaesthetic drudgery. This
is, in fact, how many in today’s complex conditions already experience
their daily lives. For Dewey there is another possibility: moral life can have
aesthetic quality. This is the possibility that I will explore in part 3. But
before turning explicitly to Dewey’s normative proposals, I will end this
chapter with a reminder about the kind of proposals we can expect and the
broadest commitments on which they are based.
There is in Dewey a general but clear prescription to give up thinking
of ‘‘some parts of this life as merely preparatory to other later stages of it’’
(EW 4:50) and to instead aim at the ‘‘fullest utilization of present resources,
liberating and guiding capacities that are now urgent’’ (MW 14:185, my
emphasis). This does not mean that we ought to rest on previous ac-
complishments. He says that ‘‘morality is a continuing process not a
fixed achievement. Morals mean growth of conduct in meaning . . .’’
(MW 14:194). To live fully in the present means that the past should be
used as a ‘‘storehouse of resources by which to move confidently forward’’
(LW 10:23). On the other hand, the future ‘‘consists of possibilities that are
felt as a possession of what is now and here’’ (LW 10:24). In short, fore-
sight, hindsight, and present observation are all done in the present for the
present. He said,
memory of the past, observation of the present, foresight of the future

are indispensable. But they are indispensable to a present liberation, an
enriching growth of action. (MW 14:182)
The quest for fixed and final ends ought to be replaced by an e√ort to
attend to the needs and possibilities within a unique and present situation
to the best of our abilities. At one point Dewey summarized his moral
outlook by saying,
if we wished to transmute this generalization into a categorical impera-

tive we should say: ‘‘so act as to increase the meaning of present experi-
ence.’’ But even then in order to get instruction about the concrete qual-
ity of such increased meaning we should have to run away from the law
∞∑≤
and study the needs and alternative possibilities lying within a unique
and localized situation. (MW 14:196, my emphasis)
This shift of focus toward present situations, and the rejection of

overarching ends, rules, absolute standards, and promises, cannot be sepa-
rated from Dewey’s faith in experience, that is, the hope that the same
present and unique situations that require amelioration can be the su≈-
cient source of both guidance and inspiration. He did not think that in
moral matters the potentialities of daily experience for self-regulation had
been su≈ciently tried. This makes his view susceptible to a number of
skeptical challenges. Even if one does not question the capacity of experi-
ence for self-amelioration, there is still the issue of finding this a su≈cient
source of inspiration. Is it a good enough reason to find moral life and its
hardships worth the trouble? Compared to the customary noble or cosmic
purposes attributed to morality, Dewey’s view does not o√er hope for a
final convergence or consummation. In fact, the sort of episodic character
of moral life seems like the meaningless life of Sisyphus. How is Dewey’s
view not one that leads to pessimism?
The Sisyphus analogy does not really fit Dewey’s view of moral life
simply because of the element of uniqueness in moral problems. In moral
life we never push the same rock up the same hill. In any case, the objec-
tion that relies on this analogy seems to beg the important question: why
would the absence of a final consummation make our present e√orts
pointless?
Dewey did not think his view was pessimistic. In fact, pessimism and
optimism struck him as ‘‘paralyzing doctrines’’ insofar as they are based on
a certainty that one will succeed or fail in the future. Instead, his view was
based on meliorism, that is, ‘‘the belief that the specific conditions which
exist at any moment, be they comparatively bad or comparatively good, in
any event may better’’ (MW 12:181). Dewey hoped that we would find, like
he did, something very positive, encouraging, and inspirational in the idea
that although we do not have complete knowledge of, or control over, the
course of events, we are nonetheless active participants in the making of an
unfinished world. Moreover, we may find intelligent ways of participating
that might make things better in some respects in a particular situation. We
do not a√ect or transform the world in general but rather only in the
particular and unique situations in which we find ourselves. Hence, ‘‘while
there is not a single end, there are also not as many as there are specific
situations that require amelioration’’ (MW 12:174–175).
Is this piecemeal, melioristic faith su≈cient to support and inspire the
e√orts required to confront the unavoidable moral struggles and prob-
∞∑≥
lems of life? For Dewey it was, but he would have to recognize that there
may be individuals who need more than the present meaningfulness of the
journey or struggle. Dewey would of course question whether the need for
more is grounded on prejudice or on a failure to give the present a chance.
But all he can do as a philosopher is argue that the faith that underlies his
moral vision is possible and reasonable. The activity of creating and re-
shaping present moral experience can be meaningful and of value without
the guarantee or hope of an independent and long-term final end. We do
not have to aspire to acquire something outside of experience in order to
make our melioristic e√orts meaningful or to engage in the creative pro-
cess of transforming existing situations. The present trouble, strife, mo-
notony, limitations, and su√ering in a situation can be su≈cient reasons
and motivation to pursue the task of reconstruction. Dewey said that
‘‘men have constructed a strange dream world when they have supposed
that without a fixed ideal of a remote good to inspire them, they have no
inducement to get relief from present troubles, no desires for liberation
from what oppresses’’ (MW 14:195). He would even argue that it is pre-
cisely the search for fixed, absolute, and final goods that is an obstacle to
e√ective amelioration. The pursuit of general fixed goods such as truth,
knowledge, health, and justice can make one overlook the specific, con-
crete, and unique situations where such goods are at stake. For ‘‘in declar-
ing that good is already realized in ultimate reality tends to make us gloss
over the evils that concretely exist’’ (MW 12:182). Dewey hoped that the
abandonment of the quest for universal and fixed rules and ends in morals
would enable us to employ all our resources and focus our ‘‘attention to
present troubles and possibilities’’ (MW 14:198). He would agree that our
e√orts to improve present conditions are and should be sometimes in-
spired and guided by ideals (e.g., the ideal of democracy). But he would
not understand why such ideals need to be fixed, final, or absolute. They
can be nothing more than present means of present amelioration.
Does this commit Dewey to meliorism as the end of moral life? I
would rather characterize it as a faith. If meliorism is an end, it would have
to be something so broad and general that it would elude a fixed determi-
nation of its content. Just as seeking health can only mean that one tries to
live healthily, so too does seeking meliorism mean living melioristically,
that is, doing our best to make things better. But what does this really come
to? If it presupposes any particular rule about what counts as making
things better, then there is not much di√erence between meliorism and any
other ethical view that presupposes a fixed standard. Consistency requires
that Dewey holds that ‘better’ is context dependent, that is, its meaning
depends on what particular problems and potentialities are present in a
∞∑∂
particular situation. Furthermore, the judgment that things are better is a

qualitative determination in and of the particular present situation.
Does the piecemeal and situational thrust of Dewey’s ethics entail un-
restrained licentiousness or irresponsibility? On the contrary, he thought
of it as a call for more work and responsibility than other ethical views. In
trying to redirect our e√orts toward what is specific and presently lived,
Dewey claimed that his view ‘‘does not destroy responsibility; it only
locates it’’ (MW 12:167, my emphasis). Neither did he believe that this shift
of focus entailed the end of ethical theory. Instead, there has to be a change
in its scope and intent.
Instead of looking for criteria and final solutions, ethics should be
concerned with method, that is, with how we can become better prepared
to obtain qualitative guidance in making good decisions in the di≈cult
and complex situations that we confront. Since certain habits and disposi-
tions are our main tools, as well as the most controllable factors we have,
we can hope for amelioration by encouraging certain virtues. Philosophi-
cal inquiry into the possible conditions for improvement is not the search
for the set of habits that will solve all our problems, or that will help
anyone in any situation. Nor is the task to find those dispositions and
attitudes that will lead us to the good life; rather, the task is to find those
which o√er some reliability for achieving a better life. There is no pre-
determined formula for a better life and it is not altogether under our
control. But these were not su≈cient reasons for Dewey to abandon his
melioristic faith.
∞∑∑
nine
Conclusion
The Need for a Recovery of Moral Philosophy
I have been presenting Dewey’s view by contrasting it with some of the

ways in which other moral theories that assume a theoretical starting
point have portrayed moral life. Dewey’s reconstructive approach gener-
ously builds on even the most blatant mistakes in philosophy. Indeed, he
considers non-empirical views as a source of instruction because even
‘‘the most fantastic views ever entertained by superstitious people had
some basis in experienced fact’’ (LW 1:357).
Rule-centered and act-centered ethics are based on the fact that we
can formulate and, to some extent, rely on moral generalizations in spite
of the uniqueness of our circumstances. However, such views take prin-
ciples as rules and thereby ignore the importance of flexibility and of non-
cognitive resources in a situation. Rule-centered ethics end up portraying
moral life as a mechanical or legalistic process, where morality is a system
of restrictions, constraints, impositions, or limitations in someone’s life.
In ‘‘negative morals,’’ as Dewey put it, the ‘‘practical emphasis falls upon
avoidance, escape of evil, upon not doing things, observing prohibitions’’
(MW 14:6).
Subjectivist and character-centered views, on the other hand, appreci-
∞∑∏
conclusion: the need for a recovery of moral philosophy
ate the personal and human aspect of morality, especially the fact that we
qua moral agents are ourselves a condition of moral experience. But by
committing the philosophical fallacy they have portrayed morality as a
self-centered endeavor or, worse, they have reduced moral experience to
the act of experiencing or to the content of consciousness.
Contemporary moral theories appreciate the linguistic, cultural, his-
torical, biological, and communal character of morality. From the stand-
point of Dewey’s ethics, this is a welcome trend, but it is not a significant
improvement on subjectivist views if it leads one to commit the philo-
sophical fallacy. Moral experience cannot be reduced to its conditions.
The view that moral life begins and ends inside a language, a conceptual
scheme, or a culture is a theoretical presupposition that is not supported
by life as it is lived considered from a practical, engaged standpoint. Fur-
thermore, such a narrow view tends to portray moral agents as trapped in
their own creations, without the possibility to test or judge specific moral
claims without begging the question. From this perspective, it seems as if
the only way to save morality from arbitrariness is to jump ‘‘into the fire of
absolutism’’ (LW 13:241).
Dewey thought that the history of ethics was dominated by family
quarrels and by the recurrent oscillation between extreme views, each
trying to compensate for what the other had failed to emphasize. Dewey
thought that there is a need for a recovery of moral philosophy. This
recovery requires the abandonment of certain common assumptions
about moral experience that are made by non-empirical philosophies. It is
helpful to contrast some of the assumptions in non-empirical philoso-
phies with Dewey’s view of moral experience.
∞) Many of the debates among ethical theories center on whether it is

certain acts, traits of character, rules, goals, motives, feelings, or
obligations that provide the basis for distinguishing morality from
other aspects of life. For Dewey, all of these elements are integral
to moral experience, since they are found in the context of a
situation. The basis for distinguishing morality from other dimen-
sions or modes of experience is the subject matter, problems, and
pervasive quality of certain situations. There is no criterion that is
antecedent to the sheer having of these experiences. Hence, in
principle, anything in experience can be experienced as having
moral significance and can also be continuous with other ways of
immediately experiencing the world (aesthetically, politically, re-
ligiously). The locus of moral experience is a present situation,
thought of as a qualitative whole that is susceptible to dramatic
∞∑π
structure, that is, one with patterns, rhythms, and phases. Situa-
tions are the ultimate context of our problems, inquiries, ideals,
and resources.
≤) Moral experience is not subjective. To describe moral experience is
not to describe the content of an agent’s consciousness. Further-
more, there is more to moral experience than what, at any given
time, is cognitively discerned and at the foreground of attention.
In the context of a morally problematic situation there is the fore-
ground where moral problems and inquiries are taking place, but
there is also the temporal and spatial background upon which we
rely and that we take for granted. Moral experience per se is not
knowledge, although knowing experiences are part of it.
≥) Many of the traditional polemics in moral theory start with a
dualism, for example, between subject and object, or character
and conduct. For Dewey, we can recognize the functional basis of
these distinctions while being faithful to the integrity of moral
experience. In fact, the distinction between what is experienced
and how it is experienced in a moral situation, or between conduct
and character, is important for an e√ective ethics.
∂) Many traditional views of moral experience start with the abstrac-
tion of an antecedent subject whose conduct is merely an external
e√ect. For Dewey, the moral self is an embodied and acculturated
agent with habits, and engaged in processes; moreover, the self is
inseparable but distinguishable from its relationships and acts.
When the moral agent is engrossed in moral reconstruction, con-
duct is an expression of the self, that is, there is a unity of the moral
self and its conduct.
∑) Moral deliberation is often conceived of as an inner cognitive
search for moral truths, or as reasoning with propositional con-
tent that centers on the application of antecedent rules to current
situations. For Dewey, however, moral deliberation is a qualita-
tive, experimental, social, and imaginative process that requires
operations to transform situations which carry their own seeds of
reconstruction.
∏) For Dewey, judgments are not propositions. In ethics, it is com-
monly assumed that the normativity or reasonableness of our
specific moral judgments is derived from a general standard of
appropriate conduct. Debates center on whether these general
standards are grounded in some ahistorical, objective standpoint,
or are rather the result of communal, intersubjective agreement.
For Dewey, this gets it backward and puts the emphasis in the
∞∑∫
wrong place. Judgments are individual acts and concerned with

a unique qualitative context. Rules, criteria, standards, and rea-
sons are instrumentalities that derive their validity from particular
moral judgments. The morally wise among us rely on these instru-
mentalities only when her habitual response to situations is not
su≈cient, or after a judgment in order to justify herself or to invite
others to consider for themselves the situation. Dewey’s bottom-
up view of moral experience has support from recent research in
social and cognitive psychology. According to Jennifer Wright,
In social psychology, a growing body of research has begun to o√er an

alternative picture of moral judgments, one in which moral agents en-
gage in moral judgments from the ‘‘bottom up’’ instead of the ‘‘top
down.’’ Such research suggests that moral judgments are primarily intui-
tive, ‘‘gut-level,’’ emotionally-guided evaluations. These evaluations ap-
pear to be able to both identify morally relevant issues and provide
insight into appropriate action without requiring explicit deliberation
or reference to moral principles. In fact, appeal to such principles, if it
occurs at all, happens (as in Kohlberg’s studies) only after the fact, when
moral agents are called upon to explain and/or justify judgments already
made. Thus, such research suggests that moral judgments and actions
are not typically guided by principles, but are in fact prior to them.∞
π) There is no general problem of value, in the sense of accounting

for the existence of values. We live and begin inquiry in a quali-
tative world, and the only problem for ethical theory is what
discriminations are worth making and what di√erence we can
make. Things are immediately experienced in their individuality
as well as in their relations. Moral values are more irreducibly
plural and complex than hoped for by ethical theorists. Duty,
good, and virtue have no common denominator, nor is there a
set hierarchy among them. There is nothing subjective or other-
worldly about moral qualities; they are as natural as any other
quality found in the same objective world of persons and things.
∫) The traditional view of moral experience has been a√ected by the
atomistic and monistic modern views of experience in general.
Because there are habits and continuities in moral experience,
the situationalist and particularistic thrust of Dewey’s view com-
mits him neither to an episodic atomistic pluralism—where our
moral life is a mere succession of isolated situations—nor to a
monistic view of moral life that assumes that there is standpoint
from which moral life can be gazed at as a unified whole.≤ There
∞∑Ω
is no unifying telos to moral life, but there is significant con-

tinuity and interaction to make the quality of habits, character,
and associations interdependent.
Ω) Morality is a mode of experience that is practical and concerned
with choice and self-expression; it is not, as it has been tradi-
tionally portrayed, a matter of passively getting, possessing, or
collecting antecedent knowledge or goodness. Instead, morality
is a creative, experimental, and prospective process which is per-
sonal without being subjective; and it is objective without pre-
supposing a God’s-eye view or fixed and universal standards.
∞≠) In the traditional view of moral experience, the present is just a
place in between the past and the future. For Dewey, moral life is
experienced as an open-ended and continuous process in which
the past and the future are integral to the present. Thus, ethics
must shift its attention to the quality of the present process in-
stead of to goals, consequences, or any criteria. Meaning and
guidance can be found in the present journey.
∞∞) Because of the philosophical fallacy that infers reality from supe-
rior value, philosophers deny the reality of one or more of the
following traits of moral experience: immediate quality, appre-
ciation, change, contingency, uniqueness, novelty, risk, and un-
certainty. They think that such traits are subjective, or a sign of
human limitations. On the other hand, they identify moral real-
ity and objectivity with the aspects of our moral life that are most
cognitive, stable, orderly, distinct, and explicit, namely, rules,
universals, quantifiable subject matter, and propositions (or any
object of knowledge). Dewey, in contrast, a≈rms the reality of
the former traits and shows that the only basis for the distinc-
tion between these traits and the traditionally favored traits is
functional. Moral experience is an intermixture of stable and
precarious elements and its direction is not altogether within
our control. Moral tragedy is likely, even with the best of re-
sources and intentions. Novelty and uniqueness are aspects of
every moral situation. Nevertheless, there are always stable ele-
ments upon which we can rely. The most stable elements are
habits, rather than rules or any of the discursive resources pre-
ferred by traditional theorists. Habits reside in the background of
a situation, but even they are not fixed and can change in their
application to concrete circumstances. What is stable, recurrent,
and relational in a situation can be said to be primarily from the
standpoint of control over the direction and quality of moral life.
∞∏≠
‘‘Standardizations, formulae, generalizations, principles, univer-

sals, have their place, but the place is that of being instrumental
to better approximation to what is unique and unrepeatable’’
(LW 1:90). Habits and principles are the means (though not the
sole means) by which we can enhance our experience of what is
unique, unrepeatable, local, qualitative, transitory, and ine√able.
In emphasizing these other traits of moral experience, Dewey
seems to be reversing the order of importance assumed by tradi-
tional moral philosophy. The reconstruction of each moral situa-
tion is more important than the knowledge of moral truths. ‘‘The
local is the ultimate standard and as near an absolute as exists’’
(LW 2:369).
Dewey’s departure from the traditional ways of conceiving moral life,
as well as his methodological commitments, entail a change in the tenor
and nature of the questions considered central to moral theory. The change
of scope toward present activity and concrete situations signifies that,
instead of asking about the human telos or the good life, the moral philoso-
pher should be concerned with an investigation into those conditions that
may improve and make meaningful present moral activity. What are these
conditions? Is there, in Dewey, any hypothesis about the ways of participat-
ing that might make things better in moral life? These are some of the issues
addressed in part 3.
∞∏∞
PART THREE
The Ideal Moral Life
ten
The Intelligent, Aesthetic, and
Democratic Way of Life
D ewey did not have a theory about the good life, a notion antithetical to
the pluralistic and contextualist thrust of his moral philosophy. Neverthe-
less, his ethics is unintelligible apart from some normative commitments
and hypotheses about the conditions and instrumentalities for a better
moral life. Dewey wanted us to give each moral situation the attention and
care that it deserves and to assume a positive trust in the possibilities and
instrumentalities available in a situation. The moral life that he envisioned
is one that relies on experience for direction, illumination, and motiva-
tion. He was not, however, always explicit about his ideal. I will be oc-
cupied, in the remainder of this book, with articulating in a coherent way
this normative vision. This chapter begins with the most general descrip-
tion of the kind of moral life that Dewey thought was worthwhile in light
of his preoccupation with the quality of present experience. Then, in the
last two chapters, I consider the kind of self and community that, accord-
ing to Dewey, are constitutive of such a life.
The broadest possible characterization of Dewey’s ideal is that he
advocates living a moral life that is intelligent, aesthetic, and democratic.
These three adjectives characterize mutually dependent aspects of a single
∞∏∑
moral vision, and they collectively describe a moral life that promises
to be the most meaningful and fruitful general form of engagement in
experience.
To say that a moral life has a dimension of intelligence is to say that
one who lives the moral life can educate herself (i.e., learn) and transform
morally problematic situations through her own moral resources. What
Dewey called ‘‘experimental intelligence’’ involves those habits of inquiry
by means of which hypotheses are tested and by means of which working
connections are found between old habits, customs, institutions, beliefs,
and new conditions. With respect to moral life, intelligence refers to a way
of reaching moral judgments and appropriating a moral tradition. Dewey
contrasts intelligence with the practice of guiding our lives by authority,
custom, coercive force, imitation, caprice, or drift. To live a reflective
moral life is not to live in accordance with reason but to have ‘‘the power
of using past experience to shape and transform future experience. It is
constructive and creative’’ (MW 11:346).
The aesthetic dimension of moral life refers to its qualitative aspect
and to the inherently meaningful forms of engagement exercised within it.
Moral reconstruction is undertaken in an aesthetic manner. Dewey con-
trasts the aesthetic with the mechanical, the fragmentary, the non-inte-
grated, and all other non-meaningful forms of engagement. To engage a
situation intelligently is to engage it aesthetically. It is in this way that
‘‘moral life is protected from falling into formalism and rigid repetition. It
is rendered flexible, vital, growing’’ (MW 12:180).
The democratic aspect of moral life means that living the moral life
involves a certain way of interacting with others, a certain kind of com-
munication and community. Dewey understands democracy as a form of
moral association in which a certain way of life is instituted in the relations
and interactions of its citizens. ‘‘It is primarily a mode of associated living,
of conjoint communicated experience’’ (MW 9:93). His notion of democ-
racy is an outgrowth of his ideas about moral experience, and the demo-
cratic way of life involves the intelligent and the aesthetic community.
Although an important part of my task is to show how the ideal moral
life is supported by and consistent with Dewey’s philosophical commit-
ments (e.g., his faith in experience) it would be wrong to suppose that this
ideal logically follows from them. To do this would be to neglect context
(i.e., commit the philosophical fallacy) and assume a view of ideals that is
foreign to Dewey’s philosophical outlook. Inquiry about how to live takes
place in the context of a felt discontent with present ways of living. Let’s
briefly consider the problematic context that generated and gives meaning
to Dewey’s ideal.
∞∏∏
t h e i n t e l l i g e n t, a e s t h e t i c , a n d d e m o c r at i c way o f l i f e
The Impoverished Character of Contemporary

Moral Experience
We live in a world where we are recurrently confronted with situations in
need of qualitative improvement. The problems, challenges, and demands
we find are always unique and particular, but we can nonetheless have a
general concern about how we are confronting and living in such situa-
tions. If Dewey had a general concern as an ethical thinker, it was about
how a complex array of contemporary problems and conditions have con-
tributed to the impoverished quality of moral experience. He was con-
cerned about the disoriented, uncontrolled, compartmentalized, rigidly
segregated, alienated, isolated, mechanical, superficial, drudgery-filled, ca-
pricious, arbitrary, and disintegrated character of contemporary life.
His opposition to dualisms or any of the traditional rigid separations
favored by philosophers was based on a practical concern that they rein-
force the compartmentalized lives we are living. About the rigid separa-
tions between what is intellectual, emotive, imaginative, and volitional,
Dewey says,
The result of these divisions has been the creation of a large number of
problems which in their technical aspect are the special concern of
philosophy, but which come home to every one in his actual life in the
segregation of the activities he carries on, the departmentalizing of life,
the pigeon-holing of interests. Between science’s sake, art for art’s sake,
business as usual or business for money-making, the relegation of reli-
gion to Sundays and holy-days, the turning over of politics to profes-
sional politicians, the professionalizing of sports, and so on, little room
is left for living, for the sake of living, a full, rich and free life. (LW 2:104)
Dewey was also troubled by the lack of meaningful and intelligent

engagement in human relations, and the way many attended to the unique
moral and social problems they faced. What passes for public deliberation
about shared problems is hardly e√ective in ameliorating these situations.
Although we must try to undermine the sources of moral evil in the world
and confront moral disagreement in a growing and pluralistic world, there
are better and worse ways to accomplish these tasks. Dewey was concerned
that the quest for certainty, in the midst of a precarious world, had led
many to adopt habits of thought that, though comforting, oversimplify
the problems they encountered. For instance, the habits of thinking in
terms of exclusive and dualistic categories such as good/evil and us/them,
as well as the quest for one easily definable source of all moral evils
and problems, work against democracy. The way that people attended to
∞∏π
moral situations was troublesome to Dewey because it meant that moral

possibilities remained dormant and unexplored, and that we have failed to
try to make the best out of experience. Dewey had a melioristic faith that a
more intelligent and qualitatively enriched moral and social life was pos-
sible under present conditions, and his posited ideal was an attempt to
point us in the right direction.
Dewey was not naïve about the complexity and plurality of contem-
porary conditions—educational, economic, and political—that would
have to be examined in order to adequately diagnose and ameliorate
individuals, relationships, and communities. He noticed, for example,
how formal education, with its emphasis on information, passivity, com-
partmentalization, and specialization, produced characters whose intel-
lectual and imaginative capacities are at odds with each other. Dewey was
worried about the dogmatism encouraged by many religious institutions.
He was also critical of the ways in which our economic system has a√ected
the quality of our interactions as well as encouraged habits and attitudes
that run contrary to the spirit of our moral life. Our society has also
accepted the sharp divisions (dualisms) that we live by—between ends and
means, morality and business, values and facts—as a matter of course.
This problem is aggravated by the fact that in a time of unprecedented
complexity and rapid change we experience the demand to integrate and
secure values that demand one’s loyalty but that seem in conflict or mutu-
ally exclusive. For example, how can one secure and adjust both freedom
and organization, or moral stability and openness, in today’s complex
conditions?
Dewey did not aim to provide a solution or a complete diagnosis of
these and other general problems, for his methodological commitments
demanded the avoidance of a fixed, final, or a single-minded approach.
Furthermore, there are dimensions of the problem that are way beyond
the scope of philosophy. But what can philosophy do? In part 1 I argued
that although Dewey was not naïve about the powers of philosophy, he
found significant uses in its general character and critical function. Philos-
ophy might not be able to fully solve situated and concrete problems, but
it could criticize methods, that is, detect or rectify mistakes in methodol-
ogy or inquiry when dealing with problems. Mistakes in method are
obstacles to e√ective amelioration. Therefore, the empirical philosopher
can warn theorists in di√erent fields about the dangers of intellectualism,
reductionism, dualisms, and other non-empirical vices. But, more impor-
tantly, philosophers have much to reconstruct and rectify within their
own discipline. Let’s consider why.
Even if philosophy has not created any of the problems above, it has
∞∏∫
helped to perpetuate them through erroneous intellectual validations.

Dewey thought that traditional moral philosophies provide support for
dualisms that can paralyze genuine e√orts at reconstruction. Moreover,
philosophers have obstructed the possibility of a better moral life because,
in one way or another, they have provided moral views that denigrated the
capacity of qualitative and situational everyday experience to guide and
rectify its own moral problems and challenges. In conceiving of morality
as either otherworldly or subjective, non-empirical philosophers ‘‘have
denied that common experience is capable of developing from within
itself methods which will secure direction for itself and will create inher-
ent standards of judgment and value’’ (LW 1:41).
Historically, morality is an area of our experience directed by the force
of custom or tradition. However, contemporary conditions—science, plu-
ralism, technological innovations, and new interactions among societies—
have undermined its stability. Conflicts between moral traditions have
created problematic situations where individuals and institutions can no
longer count on the absolute stability of custom. But the failure of custom
to guide us has been interpreted by philosophers either as evidence that
morality is subjective, or as a failure to recognize the true source of abso-
lute moral authority.
Philosophers concerned to protect the seriousness of morality have ap-
pealed to reason or rationality for the finality and immutability of custom.
‘‘Confusion ensues when appeal to rational principles is treated as if it were
merely a substitute for custom, transferring the authority of moral com-
mands from one source to another’’ (LW 7:166). Meanwhile many have
ignored that the source of the problem might not be custom per se but its
absolutistic and rigid character. If it is true that we are su√ering from laxity
of habit or unregulated impulsiveness, it is due to the fact that our moral
habits and principles have failed to grow and adapt to new experiences. In
other words, Dewey would say that morality has failed to grow guided by
the same kind of experimental intelligence operative in other areas of our
life. This is a mistake in general method or in how we should live and cope
with contingency, change, pluralism, indeterminacy, and uncertainty. The
implicit recommendations of traditional moral philosophy in regard to
these integral features of morality have been either to downplay them or
deny their reality (as in objectivism), or to a≈rm their reality by excluding
any stable basis, other than the present consensus of a community, to guide
us (as in relativism). Dewey criticizes these philosophical positions by
uncovering their assumptions and presenting an alternative ideal.
How we should approach or respond in general to the kinds of situa-
tions present in moral life is an important issue, one that can determine
∞∏Ω
the quality of present moral experience. This quality has su√ered in part
because of extremism in dealing with moral and social problems. To be
torn between the rigidity of absolutism and the laxity of relativism is to be
torn between qualitatively poor ways to live and conceive of moral life. By
Dewey’s lights, both alternatives reflect a general distrust in our everyday
moral experience and a failure to use the resources and potentialities of
experience.
Dewey sought to undermine the dualistic and otherwise mistaken
philosophical views that sanctioned the idea that we are stuck between
extreme options. He said, ‘‘The modern world has su√ered because in so
many matters philosophy has o√ered only an arbitrary choice between
hard and fast opposites’’ (MW 12:137). Philosophy as criticism is needed to
unearth these prejudices and to suggest better ways to live.
Philosophy and Extremism

In his Lectures on Ethics, 1900–1901 Dewey notes that most problems in
philosophy center on two categories that he believed ‘‘come up every-
where.’’∞ These categories are a family of oppositions. If we add to the
family of oppositions presented in this early text the many other ones that
appeared in Dewey’s later works, we get the following list:
A B
universal particular
necessity contingency
order spontaneity
permanence change
stable precarious
recurrent, dependable, common unique, novel
work play
means ends
relations, instrumental finalities
cognitive emotional
actual ideal
fact value
product process
social individual
interdependence independence
unity diversity
Notice how the items in each column are related in a loose but never-
theless meaningful way, as if they shared an underlying generic mode of
∞π≠
experience.≤ For Dewey, not all of the items in columns A and B are
conceptual abstractions, for many of them designate contrary tendencies
or generic traits that have to be dealt with in nearly every dimension of
experience. In fact, many of these traits became part of the ground map
of experience that he provided in Experience and Nature.≥ I will argue
that the relation between them is important to the philosophical issue of
how to live.
Typically, the philosopher takes the opposition of A and B as prob-
lematic. Hence, the task of inquiry for such a philosopher becomes one
of finding, once and for all, a way to theoretically overcome, reconcile,
downplay, or solve the oppositions by determining which side of the
opposition is ontologically primary. For example, the monism-versus-
pluralism debate assumes that all things are either interdependent or inde-
pendent. Universalists and nominalists assume either that particulars can
be explained by or reduced to universals, or the contrary. The absolutist-
versus-relativist debate usually assumes either that moral principles are
fixed or that anything goes. Dewey was concerned to diagnose why phi-
losophers tend toward these polemical extremes.
The fundamental mistake of the traditional philosopher is that she
misconstrues the nature of the concrete problems where A and B are in
tension, thus confusing a practical tension in actual situations with a
theoretical issue about what is real. This is the philosophical fallacy.∂ We
live in world that is a mixture of A and B, where we can distinguish them
without setting them dualistically apart. However, this does not mean they
coexist in some sort of pre-established harmony. The practical problem is
that A and B are sometimes in an undesirable tension in the context of a
problematic situation. The challenge is not to get rid of the tension but ‘‘to
find the limits or balance between these two things.’’∑ For example, in our
moral life there is a recurrent experienced tension between the stability
and order of our acquired habits (and principles), and new conditions, on
the other hand. But the practical problem, if taken for what it is, is not
how we should get rid of the opposition and tension. From the point of
view of the everyday person, the concrete problem is a matter of propor-
tion, that is, of determining how much flexibility should be allowed in
specific areas of our moral practice, or deciding what has to be changed
and what does not.
Philosophers have ended with extreme views because they have con-
fused matters of proportion with an abstract ontological problem. If
there were no opposition, the sides of the tension would lack mean-
ing and, more importantly, would lead to undesirable consequences. For
instance,
∞π∞
Identity without di√erence is a stagnation, permanence which does not

mean anything. Di√erence without identity gives absolute disintegration
and conflict; it does not mean anything either, because unrelated par-
ticulars cannot have any meaning.∏
For the ‘‘ordinary man,’’ as Dewey put it, it is of practical importance that
the balance between A and B should obtain. Dewey explained that
the ordinary man would say that you must not let one factor unduly
predominate over the other, that you get disintegration if you allow the
individualistic factor to go too far; you lose public spirit, the sense of
solidarity. . . . On the other hand, if you carry out authority too far you
get despotism, arrest of freedom of thought and action, and fossilization
of society.π
It is clear that Dewey uses the ordinary man to propose a normative thesis
that remained central to his philosophy: that we ought to seek an integra-
tive balance between A and B, and that wisdom usually lies in avoiding the
tempting simplicity of extreme philosophical views. Although even a short
acquaintance with his works would confirm this general thesis, he never
explicitly and systematically defends it. Instead, it is implicit in his treat-
ment of particular oppositions present in di√erent areas of philosophy.
Not enough attention has been given to balance as a normative notion in
Dewey. Balance is a feature of ideal activity, the ideal moral self, and the
ideal community.
Dewey’s Notion of Balance

Dewey’s qualitative, interactive, and processional interpretation of balance
must be distinguished from the customary, quantitative one. Quantitative
balance is the maintenance of a certain measurable proportion between
things. Usually the proportion is one of equality, that is, the same magni-
tude, quantity, degree, or worth. To seek this kind of balance requires that
we seek equal amounts of x and y. Here excesses and deficiencies are
measured and corrected by adding or subtracting accordingly. Balance in
this sense does not entail that the elements to be balanced must interact or
a√ect each other in any significant way; in fact, it does not require that the
elements in question coexist. One can achieve balance by a compensation
that takes place across time. An excess of x at time t can be balanced by a
deficiency of x (and perhaps an excess of y) at some other time. For
example, one might say ‘‘I am going to spend three days engaging in
excessive play, to compensate for the last two days of drudgery.’’ Dewey
∞π≤
entertained a rather di√erent conception of balance, informed by the

influence of biological and aesthetic models. Let’s consider how these
models contributed to a distinct notion of balance.∫
Although for Dewey the balance achieved in aesthetic experience is
the paradigm and highest expression of this notion in experience, it is a
development continuous with the basic balance we seek as biological or-
ganisms.Ω An organism’s life can be regarded as a continual rhythm of
disequilibrations and equilibrations. From Dewey’s generic descriptions
of this process we can abstract two features that are central to his general
notion of balance:
a) Balance is a relation between forces in opposition or tension.
b) Balance is an interactive process where these forces are trans-
formed in a tension-filled but reinforcing relation.
Balance in the life of an organism is something temporal and dynamic
that is not achieved for all time; it is, rather, like riding a bicycle: individ-
uals continuously correct tendencies to tilt excessively in one direction or
the other. The restoration of balance is not a return to a prior state of
balance. In fact, no particular balance is ever strictly speaking the same
balance. In the shift from imbalance to balance, there is a transformation
of the factors in opposition. Moreover, this transformation is not one in
which the factors are dissolved into a new, undi√erentiated unity, one
where there is no longer tension. There is instead an organic unity: ‘‘Or-
ganic unity must be interpreted in terms of the interaction, of actual
reinforcement between the parts, and not in terms of any one thing which
somehow includes all others.’’∞≠ This notion of balance as a unity where
tension is preserved is present in art. In art ‘‘equilibrium comes about not
mechanically and inertly but out of, and because of, tension’’ (LW 10:20).
But there is more to learn from art about balance:
c) Balance is excellence in proportion that is inseparable from rhythm.
d) Balance is a relation between elements of an organic whole that
avoids excess and deficiency.
In Art as Experience Dewey argues that since balance is ‘‘the equi-
librium of counteracting energies, [it] involves rhythm’’ (LW 10:183). The
inseparability of balance and rhythm is something that an artist under-
stands very well. The rhythm between the factors in tension a√ects the
quality of their balance. For example, if the factors recur without any
variation there might be balance but not the kind that is characteristic of
great works of art. Some balances are therefore better than others depend-
ing on their constitutive rhythms.
∞π≥
In the balance of an organic whole the parts are interdependent in

that what happens to one a√ects the other. This is true even when there is
an imbalance. When there is an excess of one of the parts there is also a
deficiency of some other part. Dewey explains this in works of art. ‘‘There
is no such thing as a force strong or weak, great or pretty, in itself. . . . To
say that one part of a painting, drama, or novel is too weak, means that
some related part is too strong—and vice versa’’ (LW 10:185). This is im-
portant for someone who seeks cues from experience about when balance
might be threatened or how to maintain it. The artist becomes aware that
he has introduced too much variation only when he experiences not
enough order. Not enough stability or order might be a sign that we are
being too flexible. What is sometimes referred to as the excessive indi-
vidualism of our American society is in fact experienced as a deficiency in
our communal bonds.
There are many possible relations between the elements that make up
an organic whole. One reason for preferring a one-sided, unbalanced
relation is that it is often assumed to be a sign of strength. There are works
of art that succeed in getting notice because of an ‘‘e√ort to get strength by
exaggeration of some one element,’’ but Dewey believes that ‘‘such works
do not wear . . . no real strength is displayed, the counteracting energies
being only pasteboard and plaster figures. The seeming strength of one
element is at the expense of weakness in other elements’’ (LW 10:185). The
problem with excesses is that they are usually accompanied by, or lead to,
deficiencies. Painters and writers have the problem of keeping one part
‘‘down’’ so that other parts can be kept ‘‘up.’’ This does not mean, though,
that all parts must remain equal, as required by the quantitative notion of
balance. In Dewey’s organic conception, a relative predominance of one
element over another is compatible with balance. But the strength or
excellence of this element must significantly take into account, be a√ected
and reinforced by, the other parts that make up the whole, even if they are
downplayed and in tension with it.
An excess or a deficiency is a problem that results from the relative
seclusion, confinement, oppression, and suppression of one element over
another in an organic whole. Therefore, balance is not the mean between
extremes as a fixed equidistant midpoint that we either attain else we are
out of balance. There is an indefinite number of ways in which one can
stay within the balance without falling into an extreme. The balance of a
bicycle rider is such that, at di√erent times, he can tilt to one side more
than to the other without falling down. In art, this is done on purpose.
The artist might add a touch of disorder to add emphasis, without falling
out of balance. She takes advantage of the room she has between extremes.
∞π∂
She does not know beforehand how much room she has, therefore she has
to rely on experimentation. Those who take more risk in artistic produc-
tion are those willing to test the limits, that is, to try to find out how much
of one element they can get away with without falling o√ balance. Dewey
thought that being able to achieve this dynamic variation within balance is
a mark of great works of art. ‘‘The greater the variation, the more interest-
ing the e√ect, provided order is maintained’’ (LW 10:169). This is balance
that is maintained in spite of changes in rhythm. In great works of art
there might be periods of relative predominance of disorder and novelty,
but they do not lead to chaos or confusion, that is, ‘‘it does not prevent a
cumulative carrying forward from one part to another’’ (LW 10:171).
Balance as the Ideal

A and B are generic traits, tendencies, or phases that we distinguish in
dealing with a tension-filled situation. We become fully aware of their
relation when experience turns problematic. In fact, the most generic
description of our most important problems in life is that they are about
the relation or proportion between A and B. Dewey explains that ‘‘the
significant problems of life and philosophy concern the rate and mode of
conjunction of the precarious and the assured. . . . On the cognitive side the
issue is largely that of measure, of the ratio one bears to others in the
situations of life. On the practical side, it is a question of the use made of
each, of turning each to best account’’ (LW 1:50).
Although eradicating the presence of A and B in experience is not
really an option, how to respond to them and relate them can be a matter
of choice. This issue would not be so important if it did not determine the
quality of our present experience. But Dewey claims that the overall qual-
ity of our lives depends on how we deal with, accommodate, and mutually
adapt these features.
Structure and process, substance and accident, matter and energy, per-
manence and flux, one and many, continuity and discreteness, order and
progress, law and liberty, uniformity and growth, tradition and innova-
tion, rational will and impelling desires, proof and discovery, the actual
and the possible, are names given to various phases of their conjunction,
and the issue of living depends upon the art with which these things are
adjusted to each other. (LW 1:67, my emphasis)
Hence, the traditional philosophical question of how to live is recon-

structed by Dewey as how to live in a world where A and B are present and
intermixed. This is not as simple as how to survive. In fact, our problem is
∞π∑
that as organisms we are not content with mere survival; we procure

things, for example, A and B, that do not automatically reinforce each
other but that seem necessary for meaning and quality of living. Dewey
explains, for example, that ‘‘the live creature demands order in his living
but he also demands novelty’’ (LW 10:171). ‘‘The organism craves variety as
well as order’’ (LW 10:173). But what can philosophy contribute to this
important issue and why did Dewey favor balance over relations of excess
or deficiency between A and B?
For Dewey, philosophy requires metaphysics, that is, disclosing the
general character of the world in which we live; but philosophy is also
about wisdom. ‘‘Love of wisdom is concerned with finding its impli-
cations for the conduct of life’’ (LW 1:50). It is in its capacity as wis-
dom that philosophy must take a stand on how to respond to these traits
of existence. In this respect Dewey thinks there is a basic split between
those philosophies that are life-a≈rming and those that are not. He said,
‘‘ultimately there are but two philosophies. One of them accepts life and
experience in all its uncertainty, mystery, doubt, and half-knowledge and
turns that experience upon itself to deepen and intensify its own qualities’’
(LW 10:41). We live in a world that constantly challenges us with tenden-
cies and traits that seem to point in irreconcilable directions. We can
either acknowledge and accept this while trying to make the best of it, or
we can turn our backs upon the world, disillusioned by the lack of a pre-
established balance. Dewey opts for the former. He stands on the pos-
sibility that with our e√orts an integrative balance between elements in
tension might be achieved. To take up the unavoidable tensions present in
experience as the resources by which a productive balanced relation could
be worked out requires a faith in experience. This does not mean that
Dewey believes that we will always find balance or that balance will always
be better than the alternatives. But neither is Dewey’s hope unfounded or
arbitrary wishful thinking. It is based on lived experience. He relies on the
following general hypothesis: the balance between A and B is the relation
that can make experience educative, enriching, and esthetic. Excess and
deficiency, on the other hand, characterize our most unfulfilling, mean-
ingless, and non-educative moments. These are lives that are, for example,
too mechanical or too random and chaotic, too easy, or too hard. ‘‘Only
persons who have been spoiled in early life like things always soft; persons
of vigor who prefer to live and who are not contented with subsisting find
the too easy repulsive. The di≈culty becomes objectionable only when
instead of challenging energy it overwhelms and blocks it’’ (LW 10:172).
People who live under extreme, wretched conditions so crave stability and
serenity that they might hold as ideal a life without struggle, di≈culties,
∞π∏
and pain. But Dewey would argue that this is not what they really want. A
life of too much struggle and challenges is undesirable, but so is a life
without enough challenges and struggle.
Dewey’s a≈rmation of the hypothesis that balance makes for a better
lived experience can be demonstrated by showing how balance is essential
to his descriptions of ideal activity in all of the di√erent dimensions of
human life. For example, in How We Think Dewey claims that ‘‘the best
thinking occurs when the easy and the di≈cult are duly proportioned to
each other’’ (LW 8:350). He also characterizes the extremes. ‘‘Too much
that is easy gives no ground for inquiry; too much that is hard renders
inquiry hopeless’’ (LW 8:350). However, nowhere is it clearer that the
notion of balance is ideal for Dewey than in his aesthetics and ethics. In
fact, art is his paradigm of balance. Art is the highest achievement of
experience. It represents the complete integrative balance of those tenden-
cies and generic traits of experience that philosophers have erected into
dualisms because they are in a tension-filled relation. ‘‘In art as experience,
actuality and possibility or ideality, the new and the old, objective material
and personal response . . . are integrated in an experience in which they are
all transfigured from the significance that belongs to them when isolated
in reflection’’ (LW 10:301). Moreover, Dewey holds that balance is key to
any human activity with aesthetic quality. The ideal moral life, in other
words, has aesthetic quality.
The Ideal of a Balanced Moral Life

Dewey lamented the unaesthetic character of most paradigms of morality.
Discontent with the mechanical and rigid conception of morality, with its
hopeless task of finding fixed rules and ideals in a changing and complex
world, can lead one to a di√erent unaesthetic extreme. One might decide
to live aimlessly, drifting according to external pressures, accepting as right
or wrong whatever might seem convenient at the moment.
Disillusionment with life and with morality would seem justified if we
could choose only between these two unaesthetic extremes. Both extremes
seem to assume that universality, stability, order (A traits) are irreconcil-
able with particularity, novelty, and change (B traits). For Dewey, there is
much we can learn in morality from art. Dewey said, ‘‘the assumption that
there are no alternatives between following ready-made rules and trusting
to native gifts, the inspiration of the moment and undirected ‘hard work,’ is
contradicted by the procedures of every art’’ (MW 9:178). In ideal moral
engagement one has to have the same kind of balanced flexibility of the
artist who uses acquired knowledge (stabilities) as a tool for present indi-
∞ππ
vidual creation. The extreme forms that our moral life can take are not
straw man philosophical positions to be dealt with only within philosophy
proper. They represent liabilities of living. For even if we might not be able
to point to any one who can be said to wholeheartedly embody these
extremes, they are two opposite tendencies our characters and community
can take if we do not attend to the di≈cult task of reflective moral life.
There is always the risk that acquired habits and any inherited or past moral
knowledge can become mechanized and rigid when they are taken as direct
guides to action. But there is also the risk that flexibility in moral matters
might descend into a lack of respect for any moral standard.
Perhaps these risks are more evident when we think about the moral
education of our children. No matter how true the moral principles are
which we wish to inculcate in our children, we should also be concerned
about how they are going to adopt and apply them to their unique circum-
stances. There is no guaranteed or simple method to prevent our children
from becoming either too flexible or too rigid and dogmatic in moral
matters. We can only hope to create the conditions which may enable
them to steer between undesirable extremes. Some of these conditions are
the habits of intelligence.
In his writings on philosophy of education Dewey describes the ideal
in terms of the balance between ‘‘the work attitude and the play attitude’’
(LW 8:347). He claims that, ‘‘To be playful and serious at the same time is
possible, and it defines the ideal mental condition’’ (LW 8:347). In morals,
just as in art and science, there should be a merging of playfulness with
seriousness. There is no intention on Dewey’s part to establish a dichot-
omy; as he says, ‘‘there is no distinction of exclusive periods of play activity
and work activity, but only one of emphasis’’ (MW 14:211). In play, one is
engaged in the present activity for its own sake, for ‘‘interest centers in
activity, without much reference to its outcome’’ (LW 8:346). Play is ‘‘free,
plastic,’’ imaginative, and requires a ‘‘serious absorption’’ in present ac-
tivity. The presence of play signifies tendencies of curiosity, flexibility, and
openness. In work, on the other hand, the direction of one’s interest is in
the product in which the activity terminates, therefore ‘‘the end holds
attention and controls the notice given to means’’ (LW 8:346).
When there is excess or deficiency of either play or work, or an isola-
tion of one from the other, the outcome is undesirable, that is, it is an
unaesthetic vice. On the side of play the vice is ‘‘fooling,’’ namely, ‘‘a series
of disconnected temporary overflows of energy dependent upon whim
and accident’’ (LW 8:346). Excessive playfulness becomes the kind of in-
dulgence that becomes an arbitrary and aimless fancy. The excessive flexi-
bility and openness in play can lead to dissipation or disintegration. On
∞π∫
the side of work the vice is drudgery. When work becomes drudgery,
activity that was ‘‘directed by accomplishment of a definite result’’ be-
comes activity ‘‘undergone as mere means by which to secure a result’’
(LW 10:283). In drudgery, the agent is not emotionally or imaginatively
involved in present activity, and it becomes routine and mechanical. An
exclusive interest in outcomes results in ‘‘activities in which the interest in
the outcome does not su√use the process of getting the result’’ (LW 8:346).
In drudgery, the present activity is taken as if it were a necessary evil.
When ends are external to the means, the process of doing loses all value
for the doer.
The occurrence of any of the above vices is often followed by the other.
For when there is excess or isolation on the side either of play or work, the
other develops in isolation. When most of our daily activities fail to engage
our emotions and imagination, the few opportunities for play usually
degenerate into aimless amusement, that is, there is a ‘‘recourse to abnor-
mal artificial excitations and stimulations’’ (MW 14:113). Hence, for Dewey,
a society where passive entertainment and drudgery are the predominant
modes of daily engagement is a sign of a problem. He also diagnosed that
in our product-oriented and class-structured society, social and economic
conditions tend to make ‘‘play into the idle excitement for the well-to-do,
and work into uncongenial labor for the poor’’ (MW 9:214).
But are there not things one has to do without the direct interest
characteristic of play? Of course, but ideally even in this kind of situation
work activity can be more than mere means. The alternative is that interest
in and appreciation of the value of the end su√uses and informs the
present means; in other words, a sense of its value is transferred to the
means. The process is appreciated as constitutive of the product. In ideal
work ‘‘activity is enriched by the sense that it leads somewhere’’; there is
‘‘interest in an activity as tending to a culmination’’ (LW 8:287). This is
di√erent from situations of drudgery where it is only the thought of
completion—to earn a reward or avoid punishment—that keeps you go-
ing. Artistic activity, again, is Dewey’s model: ‘‘Work which remains per-
meated with the play attitude is art—in quality if not in conventional
designation’’ (MW 9:214).
Dewey thought that moral philosophers had either conceived moral
activity as a playful, arbitrary, and subjective creation or tried to recover
the seriousness of morality at the expense of associating it with drudgery;
in other words, morality conceived of as a rigid and emotionally sterile
activity that subordinates the present, or that is based on externally im-
posed rules. He envisioned the possibility of a moral life with aesthetic
quality as one that achieves a balance between the tendencies and traits
∞πΩ
associated with play (i.e., B) and with work (i.e., A). This balance is also
the key to an intelligent moral life. Intelligence requires that the self or
community be capable of carrying forward the habits funded by previous
experience while keeping them open to modification; such is a society
capable of integrating means with ends. It must be creative but receptive,
unified but expansive, working but playful. This is our best hope for a
meaningful moral life that can maintain its own integrity without the
support or guidance of fixed and external (transcendental) foundations. A
moral life that is lived merely by finding the best means to fixed ends is
neither aesthetic nor intelligent.
Criticisms of Balance as Ideal

Let’s consider some arguments that can be used to discredit the notion
that wisdom lies in the balance between extremes. One easy but fallacious
way to argue in support of an extreme is to attack the opposing extreme on
the assumption that this is the only alternative. This kind of argument
usually relies on selecting from the historical evidence the most grotesque
or undesirable instances of A or B that one is trying to undermine; it is to
stereotype one side of the opposition with an unbalanced and extreme
instance of it. For example, those who oppose play in education narrowly
conceive of play as mere amusement. Those who argue against the role of
emotions in morality support their view by appealing to extreme cases in
which we are swayed and misled by strong emotions; emotions are here
thought of as impeding, rather than aiding, reasoning. Those opposed to
the role of communities in social and political thought are quick to point
out that communities have historically oppressed individuals.
If these arguments are persuasive in everyday life, it can only be
because a paucity of imagination or circumstances has prevented us from
conceiving alternatives beyond the available extremes. At best, they show
why one extreme is better than another, but not why a more balanced
situation might be a better option. To e√ectively argue against Dewey, the
extremist must give reasons why one-sidedness in regard to A and B is
better than balance. Let’s consider some possible arguments.
One might concede that in principle there could be instances where A
and B are reconcilable, that is, where one achieves a reinforcing relation
that constitutes balance. However, these situations are rare and in any case
ephemeral. They are so ephemeral, and achieved at such a high cost, that
for all practical purposes the e√ort to maintain a balanced integration and
avoid one-sidedness is, in the long run, impossible and counterproduc-
∞∫≠
tive. For one who sees the desirability of one extreme, the attempt to
introduce balance tends to lead further and further into the opposite and
undesired direction. For example, those who endorse freedom and spon-
taneity might claim that any attempt to add order or objective control to
our lives leads eventually to fixity, a clear threat to freedom. Therefore, if
we really care about freedom we need to be ready to pay the price of laxity
or anarchy, if that were to occur. In other words, there is no lasting
integration by which we can secure at the same time the values gained by
freedom and order. We live in world where we must make a tragic choice
between extremes. The quest for balance amounts to delaying or disguis-
ing the di≈cult choice that must be made; meanwhile, we are not able to
reap the full benefits of taking a one-sided, wholesale stance. Wisdom
requires that we make a practical choice regarding which of the elements
of the A-B opposition should be primordial.
We could extend this argument to the more general disputes about our
moral life. Those philosophers who describe our moral life primarily by
using A categories are perhaps concerned that allowing (or trying to
integrate) change, flexibility, and precariousness as features either of real-
ity or of our basic principles, character, morality, and society will even-
tually lead to decay, disorder, chaos, and anarchy. In other words, a de-
parture from immutable standards leads to a lack of fixity in habit and
principles. On the other hand, those who endorse B-traits are concerned
that the stability, commitment, and security characteristic of the opposite
extreme lead to conformity, stagnation, lack of creativity and spontaneity,
and all the possible evils that derive from self-righteousness. Notice that in
all of these arguments the notion of balance is undermined by a slippery
slope argument; in other words, attempts to balance opposing tendencies
eventually lead to a vice or failure. Therefore, since one cannot have the
best of both tendencies we should embrace one. In this debate, both sides
claim that any compromise or balance is deceptive or open to suspicion.
Dewey was in fact criticized from both sides. People at contrary extremes
perceived Dewey’s position as a disguised threat to their endorsed extreme.
One has to admit that each of the extremist philosophers in this
imaginary debate points to authentic concerns about the dangers of living
under their opponent’s assumptions. However, such slippery slope argu-
ments only show the risk and di≈culty involved in trying to keep a work-
able balance; they do not, however, prove that the possibility envisioned
by Dewey is unworkable. Of course, to add more flexibility to the moral
stabilities that we count on might lead to a chaotic and unprincipled
moral life, but this is not a good reason to adopt one-sidedness. On the
∞∫∞
contrary, for Dewey this is a reason to try to study the conditions by which
the kind of balanced relationship that he envisions might be achieved and
maintained.
As I have explained, balance is not something achieved for all time or
something antecedent to human e√ort and experimentation. Dewey can-
not claim to know that there will always be a workable and lasting balance
by which we can secure at any time the values gained by A and B respec-
tively. Moreover, there are many situations in which, even with our best
e√orts, we will fail to achieve balance and will have to embrace an extreme.
Dewey was not naïve. He was aware that his proposals were di≈cult to
implement. But he was not ready to assert that it was impossible or that we
must resign ourselves to a life of extremes.
One could argue that it is too much to ask that we make balance the
aim of all of our conduct. But making balance an ideal does not entail this.
The only kind of activity where balance is usually a conscious aim is art.
Art serves as a paradigm because in it we are concerned with balance and
rhythm for their own sake and enjoyment. The artist takes as her subject
matter and concern something that is implicitly present in all ideal ac-
tivity. But the fact that the achievement of balance outside the realm of art
is relegated to the background does not make it less important in those
activities. Most of moral life is directly concerned with unique, morally
problematic situations and there may well be situations where extreme
solutions are called for. To hold balance as an ideal is not to set it up as a
criterion, standard, or end of morally correct action. That is determined
by the particular context. Dewey only claims that a balance between our
doings and undergoings, means and ends, etc., is the optimal condition
for confronting morally problematic situations. Balance is key to a more
meaningful and enriching moral life, but it is not morality’s explicit end.
In fact, a moral agent who makes balance the direct conscious aim of all
her situations will likely preclude the sort of balance that Dewey thinks is
needed in attending wholeheartedly and intelligently to moral problems.
Indeed, even in art the artist usually achieves balance by attending directly
to materials and their relation, rather than by making balance the con-
scious end. A moral agent might make balance her conscious concern but
this is only when a serious imbalance is experienced and one is concerned
with improving one’s method or character (i.e., the ‘‘how’’ of experience),
such as when one has become too rigid in dealing with moral problems
and one wants to re-balance oneself. Similarly, in social and political
inquiry one is typically concerned with very specific social and political
problems. Balance becomes a direct and conscious issue only when, for
example, one experiences problems that indicate that one’s society is be-
∞∫≤
coming overly individualistic in its approach to problems. In these situa-

tions, one craves an opposing element, even though, properly understood,
what we really crave is more balance. Hence, we move between extremes
because we mistake the nature of the problem.
On the other hand, one might argue that what is objectionable about
Dewey’s view is that it is not demanding enough or su≈ciently ideal. If a
life of balance is one in which we try to avoid excellence or strength in any
one thing or aspect, then this seems to be a life that aims at mediocrity.
How can this be ideal? But we have seen that Dewey did not identify
balance with moderation. Not all instances of seeking strength or excel-
lence of one part undermine the balance of an organic whole. What is
crucial to Dewey’s notion of balance is that the counteracting parts have a
mutually supportive relation, not that they have equal weight. The person
who tries to be moderate by avoiding excellence in any aspect avoids the
risk of falling into an imbalance, but her life does not have the intense
tensions, remittances, and variations that Dewey considers ideal. The
positive basis for this ideal is the promise of a more enriched and mean-
ingful life, not merely the fear of extremes or the avoidance of certain risk.
One could still try to find an inconsistency in Dewey’s view. Is a
life that is always in balance not something monotonous? Isn’t this, by
Dewey’s own standards, undesirable? Should we not then consider a life
where we fall in and out of balance ideal? This would be the case if we
could easily attain and maintain balance, but Dewey’s prescriptions for
balance are conditional upon a certain view of the world. Imbalances do
not need to be sought; they are unavoidable in a world of constant change.
Balance is not a state of rest but a matter of correcting tendencies that push
us in di√erent directions. The risk of falling into imbalance is constant.
Situations require that we tilt to one direction rather than another. Our
desire to emphasize and excel also demands that we tilt. But, again, we
have no safeguard or antecedent prescriptions that can help us secure
balance or know when we have gone too far toward an extreme. For
example, how much emphasis on individuality can our society take be-
fore it falls into systematic anarchy and disintegration? How much order
should we impose in our classroom before it turns into a petrifying en-
vironment? On these and many other questions we have to rely, like the
good artist, on good judgment (practical wisdom) acquired through sen-
sitivity and experimentation.
Given Dewey’s notion of balance, his view of ideal activity is demand-
ing and challenging. Balance is not achieved by obtaining equal amounts
or by correcting excesses and deficiencies with mere addition or subtrac-
tion. His ideal is not achieved by compensating periods of excess with
∞∫≥
periods of deficiency (or vice versa). We tend to fall into this pattern
because while experiencing one excess its contrary seems desirable. The
desired excess might represent the direction toward which we should aim,
but we must not confuse direction with final aim. It is true that a life lived
as the alternation between extremes has rhythm and therefore might be
better than the monotony of living under one extreme. But Dewey hoped
we could do better. We can try to maintain a balance where there is
significant variation and rhythm, aware of the risk we are taking. Extrem-
ism is appealing because extremes are easily noticed and they seem to
represent a position of strength. But Dewey argued otherwise. It is when
we live within an extreme that we are the most vulnerable because we are
more likely to compensate by shifting to the opposite extreme.
In sum, Dewey’s view about balance is important to his philosophical
outlook. It sheds new light on the importance of undermining philosoph-
ical dualisms. Dualisms, more than just roadblocks to inquiry, are ob-
stacles to rehearsing in practice a more beneficial relation between oppos-
ing elements in experience. The consequences of dualisms are usually
seclusion, isolation, suppression, one-sidedness, excesses, and deficien-
cies. His task as a philosopher was to keep our options alive and open. As
long as we continue to believe that extremes exhaust our options we will
fail to try what he thought deserved to be tried.
Dewey’s ability to stand somewhere between apparent oppositions on
almost every issue has led to the view that he was the great American
unifier and reconciliator. Alan Ryan, for example, has recently claimed
that Dewey’s ‘‘views gratify a familiar American longing to unify op-
posites.’’∞∞ Although there is some truth to this, we must be clear about the
nature of Dewey’s solution or proposal regarding the oppositions that are
present in philosophy and experience. It is a simplification and misunder-
standing to suggest that he only sought to remove dualisms or that he
unified by dissolving tensions. Rather, he sought a more balanced relation
that relies on and a≈rms the tensions found in everyday experience.
Thus far, my characterization of Dewey’s ideal is too general for our
purposes. What in particular needs to be in balance in a moral life that is
aesthetic, intelligent, and democratic? What kind of self and community is
required? What specific habits are required in order to achieve the bal-
anced integration between doing and undergoing, play and work, needed
in morality? In the remainder of this book, I will provide a sketch of the
kind of moral self, virtues, relationships, and community that were con-
stitutive of Dewey’s moral ideal.
∞∫∂
eleven
The Ideal Moral Self
T he particularist thrust of Dewey’s moral philosophy is not incompatible

with the broad concerns of virtue ethicists. Philosophical hypotheses
about an ideal self and its virtues are no more than sophisticated ways of
preparing the agent for what each situation requires. Dewey resisted mak-
ing explicit claims about specific virtues even though it is obvious that he
prescribed a certain kind of moral character. This resistance is under-
standable given that his understanding of character discourages this kind
of compartmentalization. Nevertheless, Dewey found a number of dif-
ferent ways to describe the qualities that he thought were characteristic of
agents genuinely and creatively engrossed in present moral reconstruc-
tion. These di√erent descriptions complement each other. I will begin
with a specification of some of the general dispositions and sensitivities
needed in our moral life. Then, I will gradually move to a consideration of
how these elements are integrated in a certain kind of character, taking
part in certain kinds of relationships and communities.
∞∫∑
The Concept of a Virtue

A pragmatist approach to the virtues has to be contextual, instrumental,
pluralistic, and experimental. Recall that Dewey’s view of a positive trait of
character is tied to habits and their function in experience. Character is
our primary tool in situations. If virtues are positive traits of character,
then according to a pragmatic analysis the distinction between a virtue
and a vice is the distinction between a good tool and a bad tool. A virtue is
a functional disposition or habit in a character that, upon evaluation, is
positively appraised and therefore worth cultivating. But we cannot over-
stress the fact that the focus of the instrumentality of a virtue is the
concrete ongoing situations of life, that is, the more inclusive context of
experience. For a pragmatist view has to be distinguished from other
instrumental but contextless and fixed views about virtues, which usually
proceed by first postulating an a priori or overriding goal, end, or ideal for
all our dispositions (e.g., truth, the actualization of human nature, human
flourishing, or the good life), then comparing all dispositions in terms of
their capacity to reach these ends.
Furthermore, a pragmatic approach has to be distinguished from a
contextual but teleological view, such as that of Alasdair MacIntyre. The
predominant teleological views take the following general form: X is a
virtue if and only if it enables us to acquire, appropriate, or possess a good
of type Y. It seems to be a common fallacy to suppose that a tool is not a
good tool if it does not lead to the acquisition of some already established
good. But, as a matter of fact, we often cherish and preserve certain tools
without having any idea of the specific goods they will provide. We might
think of a disposition as a positive instrumentality simply because it helps
us remake other instrumentalities, or because it leads us to experiences of
a certain kind (e.g., aesthetic or moral). We might have learned that given
the contextual setting in which they might be used, they are likely to be
very productive. A pragmatist would argue that, given certain assump-
tions about the general traits of the concrete context in which dispositions
operate, one can construct a hypothesis about which general dispositions
are better than others. For even if experience is fairly hospitable to all
dispositions, it might not lend itself equally well to all of them.
A pragmatist approach also has to be pluralistic, in the sense that
there is no good reason why an evaluation of a disposition (as a virtue)
should be restricted to how it functions in some particular dimension of
our lives, or how it exclusively serves some end.
Finally, a pragmatic approach to the virtues has to be experimental in
the important sense that ultimately the only possible test of whether or not
∞∫∏
the ideal moral self
a disposition is a virtue is in acquiring it and incorporating it in a general

way of life. This last condition points, once again, to the fact that disposi-
tions are not in separate compartments but are concretely intertwined
with other dispositions to form character in someone’s life.
For a pragmatist there is no automatic criterion by which we can
distinguish, once and for all, a virtue from a vice. But the abandonment of
the notion of a single criterion does not entail that any disposition is as
good as any other or that there is no point in inquiring into reasons why
certain dispositions might be worth approving, cultivating, and trying
out. After all, the issue is a matter of forced choice. One can wait to arrive
at the single criterion if one likes, but meanwhile our characters are being
formed in one way or another.
For Dewey, openness, courage, sensitivity, conscientiousness, and
sympathy are virtues. This is not an exhaustive or fixed set but I believe an
explanation of their nature and relation is su≈cient to demonstrate the
thickness and organic coherence of Dewey’s moral vision. They are some
of the habits constitutive of an aesthetic, intelligent, and democratic way
of life. The reasonableness of this hypothesis is contingent upon the char-
acter of our moral experience. In other words, these habits would not be
virtues if experience was other than what it presently is.
Openness and Courage

Dewey had reasons indigenous to his moral philosophy to consider open-
mindedness and courage as complementary virtues. Moreover, the impor-
tance of these virtues becomes revitalized under his view of experience.
Let’s begin by illustrating how Dewey’s account of openness di√ers from
the usual philosophical accounts and defenses of this virtue that appeal to
the intrinsic value of traditional epistemological goals.
openness
Open-mindedness is a neglected virtue in moral philosophy. A probable
reason for this neglect is that too many epistemologists have kidnapped the
notion of open-mindedness and claimed it as a merely epistemic virtue.∞
This is a misconception that can prevent one from appreciating the moral
and social importance of this virtue for pragmatism. How specific can we
get in determining what open-mindedness is? It is uncontroversial to say
that it is the tendency or disposition to act open-mindedly. But how do we
determine if an act is of the open-minded kind? We cannot say without
circularity that such an act is just one which is performed by an open-
∞∫π
minded person. As a contextualist Dewey must claim that what does and
does not count as acting open-mindedly is ultimately determined by the
contextual features of a situation that cannot be specified by a set of
definite rules. Nevertheless, a contextualist approach does not preclude a
philosopher from delineating some general marks of paradigm cases. In
such an analysis, however, vagueness should be expected to rear its head.
For example, basic to open-mindedness is a willingness to revise or recon-
sider one’s views and commitments if necessary. But there is no exact
answer to the question of when we should expect an open-minded person
to revise her views or to retain them. Another reason why precision tends
to elude us is that openness seems to be a matter of degree. There is a
di√erence of openness between one who looks at objections only if they
arise and another who actively looks for weaknesses in his view; this is the
di√erence between one who welcomes new ideas when they arise, and
another who actively seeks new experiences.
Given the variety of forms open-mindedness takes, and since it is not
merely an intellectual trait, it is more appropriate to describe this virtue in
terms of a general attitude, one Dewey describes as an attitude of hospi-
tality toward the new. To be open is to be free from rigidity and fixity, but
‘‘it is something more active and positive than these words suggest. It is
very di√erent than empty-mindedness’’ (LW 8:136). It is a receptivity and
plasticity that comes from an active accessibility, from ‘‘alert curiosity and
spontaneous outreaching for the new’’ (LW 8:136).
Open-mindedness means a capacity to interact. It is to welcome new
experiences, but in the strong sense of a willingness to be a√ected by par-
ticipation with the new. As Dewey says, it is a ‘‘willingness to let experi-
ences accumulate and sink in and ripen’’ (MW 9:183). Openness is not just
letting the other person have her say but actively listening to her. Openness
is almost the contrary of a defensive attitude. In being open we become
exposed, susceptible, sensitive, and therefore vulnerable. Because open-
mindedness constitutes the lived rejection of absolutism, there is a pecu-
liar humility to the open-minded character, an implicit recognition of
one’s limitations and vulnerability. For a pragmatist, it points to a recogni-
tion of the precarious and open-ended character of experience.
Dewey had reasons to consider openness and courage habits worth
cultivating. They are virtues because (1) they are part of intelligence, un-
derstood as the concrete set of habits which make possible the ameliora-
tion of experience through its own means, and (2) a balance between these
dispositions is required for an aesthetic moral life, one that avoids the
extremes of moral absolutism and moral anarchy.
Recall that Dewey’s faith is that betterment might result if we do what
∞∫∫
is in our power. The power to improve the habits which interact with the
demands, possibilities, and enjoyments of present experience is under our
control. An intelligent organism has the capability to modify and improve
a disrupted habit so that it can become relevant to this and all similar
situations. With time, an intelligent organism not only learns to adapt her
habits to present situations but learns to learn; in other words, not only
can she modify her present tools, but she can create tools to modify tools.
However, the habits involved in the e√ort to readjust disturbed habits are
general and second-order habits of habits. Whereas first-order habits op-
erate and are applicable only at the level of the particular situation (they
are specialized tools), second-order habits are general in the sense that
they operate with respect to many kinds of situations.
A general name for the operation of second-order tools is intelligence.
When a pragmatist like Dewey refers to intelligence or experimental re-
flection, he is pointing to the workings of a very complex but concrete set
of habits and attitudes which make possible the ability to learn from and
reconstruct experience. Some of these habits are wholeheartedness, per-
sistence, sensitivity, single-mindedness, sympathetic curiosity, unbiased
responsiveness, sincerity, breadth of outlook, and balance of interest.≤ But
I want to claim that openness and courage are two of the most important
second-order dispositions of this ideal character.
The most important learning a person accomplishes in a situation is
not amassing information, but the cultivation of habits which are going to
a√ect the quality of future situations. A present experience can, for exam-
ple, promote the formation of secondary habits and attitudes that prevent
the enrichment of future experiences; for example, it might engender
callousness or a lack of sensitivity and responsiveness. Hence, as far as
moral education is concerned, the cultivation of secondary dispositions to
improve old habits is more important than teaching information or a set
of rules. But which dispositions are worth cultivating?
If the very existence of habit signifies a tendency toward recurrence
and self-preservation, then the ability to modify and improve old habits
requires, first of all, an openness, plasticity, or flexibility in the face of new
experiences. Without plasticity there would be a non-pedagogical fixity, a
self-imposed stability, which is not faithful to the precarious and changing
character of experience. But without an active, stable determination noth-
ing can be carried over to guide us and to be tested in subsequent experi-
ence; continuity and learning would be impossible. In terms of an ideal
character, it means that both open-mindedness and courage are comple-
mentary virtues. Openness makes a character flexible and adaptable when
a change of direction or modification in our beliefs and habits is called for.
∞∫Ω
Courage, on the other hand, is needed to stand by one’s convictions in

spite of our openness and the unavoidable presence of risk in experience.
But what is needed is not only their presence, but their balance. Dewey
holds that ‘‘convictions must be firm enough to evoke and justify action,
while also they are to be held in a way which permits the individual to
learn from his further experience’’ (LW 8:98). Too much or too little of
either habit is detrimental to learning and conducive to unaesthetic ex-
tremes. The person who is willing to modify her moral principles in the
face of any prima facie counterevidence is as ill-equipped for moral life as
one who remains committed to them no matter what.
For Dewey, a society, community, or character that is not averse to
change and that remains stable is a live option. He proposed the develop-
ment of the kind of character and community that is faithful to both the
stable and precarious traits of experience. With regard to character, we can
develop dispositions that not only accord with these traits but that turn
them into conditions for a self-regulative and self-educative moral life.
Two of the required dispositions for this are openness and courage. Of
course, we do not form these habits in a vacuum; certain social conditions
and environmental and communal activities make certain dispositions
possible. For example, open-mindedness requires engaging in activities
characterized by open communication. The experimental ideal character
can only flourish in a democratic environment and community. This
is why open-mindedness and courage are operative instrumentalities in
Dewey’s democratic ideal community, an ideal that I will consider further
in the last chapter.
To what extent do openness and courage acquire greater moral signif-
icance under pragmatic assumptions? Would they not be considered vir-
tues even if experience had a di√erent constitution than that assumed by
Dewey? Perhaps, but notions of courage and openness in many traditional
moral philosophies are lifeless because of the views of experience implicit
in these philosophies. When moral life is conceived as ‘‘primarily a knowl-
edge a√air’’ (MW 10:6), and as a passive representation of a finished world,
these virtues cease to be important. But if moral experience is ‘‘reaching
forward into the unknown’’ (MW 10:6), then there is a central role for
courage. Courage is needed for more than the few heroic moral acts we
will do in our life. Courage is needed at every step of the way for the
instability, indeterminacy, and uncertain possibilities inherent in every
moral situation. For Dewey, moral situations issue demands and o√er
possibilities that usually have no common denominator; and these situa-
tions involve a certain degree of uncertainty about the consequences of
our actions. But we must have the courage to choose and stand by our
∞Ω≠
choices, even if it means going against the moral authority of custom.

More importantly, courage is required to confront the vulnerability that
comes with being open.
What about openness? To what extent can openness be considered a
virtue under a traditional view of experience? In a fixed world where
experience is the subjective content of our consciousness, the flexibility of
our tools—habits and beliefs—provided by openness is useful only until
we have arrived at the fitting set of tools, the set that corresponds to or
copies an antecedent moral reality. Openness is needed to get to know
antecedent moral truths, that is, the way the world really is. On such a
view, an unstable and changing child is living in what unbeknownst to
him is a stable and fixed world. The child’s openness is a sign of insu≈-
ciency; he is open because he needs to grow; he lacks something. The
improvement of our habits and beliefs is measured in terms of an approxi-
mation to a state of a√airs where we are in harmony with the fixed truth or
the world. But, in principle, once this harmony is established we can once
and for all rest on this achievement, and flexibility and openness are no
longer virtues. On the contrary, they only become a threat to desired
stability. According to this view, openness is no longer required or valu-
able once children have become acquainted with moral truths. All that is
then required is the will to apply them to concrete circumstances.
However, if, as Dewey holds, what we morally ought to do can change
depending on what new aspects arise in each unique situation, then open-
ness is always required. We live in a world where what has been good
cannot be taken for granted—otherwise it can become bad. If experience is
open-ended and still in the making, openness is also an asset because we
are more at home in experience by virtue of it. For we have embodied in
our characters a feature that is a generic trait of moral experience. If
we habituate ourselves to a ‘‘hospitality toward the new,’’ then we wel-
come change and openness as features of the world, rather than just of
our minds.
In a world where there is novelty and risk, openness is one of the
dispositions that can give character the only kind of control possible in
such a world, namely, a flexible control. Openness is necessary for the kind
of productive character that welcomes untried situations and is capable of
constant readjustment. The best and only preparation for coping with
future experience is learning from present experience. To cultivate the
general disposition of openness is the only guarantee we have that we are
going to learn what there is to learn from each experience.
We are more familiar with the arguments against fixity because we
have probably had the opportunity to experience the results of such a
∞Ω∞
tendency. We know that times characterized by fixity result in periods

where there is lack of freshness, creativity, and originality. The observation
that somebody has settled down or is set in his ways has a negative con-
notation. But the worst criticism of fixity is that it produces characters
who are self-righteous and hold immutably to their views. The only argu-
ment for fixity of character is one that suggests that any lack of fixity can
lead to extremes that are more dangerous, for example, an irresponsible
moral relativism or skepticism. But such arguments usually assume that
openness is incompatible with a serious, stable commitment, and this is to
confuse open-mindedness with neutrality or with a laxity of character.
One might object that the pragmatist’s view about open-mindedness
and courage commits him to a narrow, instrumental view of virtues. But,
again, I have not claimed to have exhausted all the reasons why openness is
worth encouraging and cultivating. And there is no reason why the instru-
mental, pragmatist view of open-mindedness is limited to saying that it is
merely a good tool for dealing with moral problems, just as there is no
limit to the reasons we might value a tool. For example, we might even
enjoy its use and simple presence; we might want to claim that there is
something beautiful about somebody who is open-minded, or that it is
more pleasant or easier to live with someone who has this disposition.
What seems most plausible is the claim that openness enriches our lives in
a way that sti√ness and rigidity do not, for with increased openness usually
comes not only adaptability but increased susceptibility, sensitiveness,
responsiveness, and enjoyment. Openness is a condition of the ability to
learn to enjoy more things. It is a constitutive part of the aesthetic, intel-
ligent, and democratic way of life that was central to Dewey’s thought.
Sensitivity and Conscientiousness

Dewey’s paradigm of deliberation is one where its operations—such as
selection, observation, rejection, determining relevance, and experimen-
tation—are guided by the qualitative features of the situation as it is trans-
formed. In an earlier chapter, I noted how in this process pre-reflective
initial judgments (valuings) are reflectively judged (valuation) in light of
the present situation. This presupposes the operation of certain habits or
virtues. When in moral life valuings develop and become an expression of
a positive disposition or habit, it becomes or is part of a character that has
sensitivity. In the case of valuation it becomes thoughtfulness or conscien-
tiousness. For Dewey, a balanced relation between sensitivity and consci-
entiousness in a character is the best preparation one can have to meet the
∞Ω≤
moral demands of situations and to give direction to our moral life. Let’s
consider each of these virtues separately.
s e n s i t i v i t y a n d c u lt i vat e d a p p r e c i at i o n
In our initial confrontation with a morally problematic situation the emo-
tional direct and spontaneous response to situations is indispensable for
moral inquiry. The development of sensitivity to the felt problem that
evokes inquiry, as well as to the pervasive quality of the context of inquiry
as it is transformed, is our best preparation for obtaining qualitative guid-
ance from experience. Dewey wrote,
nothing can make up for the absence of immediate sensitiveness; the

insensitive person is callous, indi√erent. A person must feel the quali-
ties of acts as one feels with the hands the qualities of roughness and
smoothness. (LW 7:269)
Our more reflective valuations depend on sensitivity for their qualitative

material, but our sensitivity changes as it is a√ected by particular valua-
tions. Growth of character and education depend on the extent to which
there is this kind of nurturing relation between our present inquiries and
our cultivated appreciation or sensitivity. This is how we develop taste:
‘‘The formation of habits is a purely mechanical thing unless habits are
also tastes—habitual modes of preference and esteem, an e√ective sense of
excellence’’ (MW 9:244). Our more important habits are not skills, they
are tastes. For in developing taste we are forming the implicit standards
that will be operative in later experiences.
If the word [taste] be used in the sense of an appreciation at once

cultivated and active, one may say that the formation of taste is the chief
matter wherever values enter in, whether intellectual, aesthetic or moral.
(LW 4:209) The formation of a cultivated and e√ectively operative good
judgment or taste with respect to what is aesthetically admirable, intel-
lectually acceptable and morally approvable is the supreme task set to
human beings by the incidents of experience. (LW 4:209)
The ideal condition is one in which a character is immediately appreciative

of values approved by reflection. There is no better safeguard against the
temptations of immediate desire and urgent passion. Hence, ‘‘the need of
fostering at every opportunity direct enjoyment of the kind of goods reflec-
tion approves. To deny direct satisfaction any place in morals is simply to
weaken the moving force of the goods approved by thought’’ (LW 7:210).
∞Ω≥
In moral education Dewey stressed that learned standards and rules

are no substitute for firsthand vital appreciation of the moral quality of an
act. He distinguished between representative experience, which is an in-
direct experience that is dependent on signs, and direct experiences ‘‘in
which we take part vitally and at first hand’’ (MW 9:240). When the
representative and informative are overemphasized there is a danger for
‘‘the tendency of technique and other purely representative forms to en-
croach upon the sphere of direct appreciations’’ (MW 9:241). The capacity
to directly appreciate certain features that is built into character because
of previous direct experience is a more e√ective moral tool than moral
knowledge thought of as handed-down information. To know the abstract
proposition that ‘‘kindliness is usually a good thing’’ is di√erent from
being able to appreciate its truth firsthand in concrete situations. Dewey
said, ‘‘A youth who has had repeated experience of the full meaning of the
value of kindness toward others built into disposition has a measure of the
worth of generous treatment of others’’ (MW 9:243).
Dewey admired how the Greeks stressed the ‘‘exercise of the a√ections
and how aesthetic qualities were the ‘chief instruments’ ’’ to ‘‘create a
direct feeling of the beauty of the good’’ (MW 6:386). He lamented that we
had lost the aesthetic as a ‘‘moral force’’ and had failed to see the impor-
tance of ‘‘an acute and sensitive direct response’’ (MW 6:386). Moral
appreciation or sensitivity is, however, a habit that cannot be taught. The
best we can do in moral education is to provide the conditions for its
emergence by, for example, surrounding the child with the proper ac-
tivities and environments. Even artistic activities in schools might be more
consequential for encouraging the development of a morally sensitive
character than the study of moral maxims.
In sum, moral sensitivity is for Dewey a better guide to what is mor-
ally required in a situation than any set of moral rules. Through a cul-
tivated sensitivity we retain in a more organic and e√ective way the
lessons of past moral experiences. Our characters also determine our
qualitative access to the moral richness and depth of situations. Those
without moral sensitivity do not experience moral problems. This does
not make them fortunate; instead, they are handicapped by lacking a
dimension of experience that is as real as any other. There are, however,
limitations to relying exclusively or excessively on moral sensitivity in our
moral life.
Direct appreciations are partly dependent upon our upbringing, that
is, upon how our previous experiences have a√ected and funded our
receptive habits. The positive implications of this, for both Dewey and
Aristotle, are that ‘‘the immediate judgments of good and evil of a good
∞Ω∂
man are more to be trusted than many of the elaborately reasoned out
estimates of the inexperienced’’ (LW 7:266). But this also means that there
are some characters for whom ‘‘the warped and distorted might seem
natural’’ (LW 7:267). Moreover, even the best among us (i.e., the morally
good person) is fallible and subject to the unavoidable elements of novelty
and complexity in moral situations. Intuitive moral appraisals are ‘‘depen-
dable in the degree in which conditions and objects are fairly uniform and
recurrent. They do not work with equal sureness in the cases in which the
new and unfamiliar enters in’’ (LW 7:267). We cannot then rely exclusively
on our acquired sensitivity to meet the demands of morality.
Moreover, too much reliance upon our moral sensibilities can lead to
an unaesthetic moral life in which our habits do not change. Exclusive
trust in our immediate appreciation does not let us grow and learn from
new situations. As Dewey puts it, ‘‘extreme intuitionalism and extreme
conservatism often go together’’ (LW 7:267). In a world of change and
novelty, in which each situation is unique, our direct appreciations are
fallible even if they have a ‘‘presumption of correctness’’ (LW 7:267).
The limitations of the good and sensitive character can only be ame-
liorated by supplementing its immediate appreciations with a disposition
to engage in reflective valuations. ‘‘The direct valuing which accompanies
immediate sensitive responsiveness to acts has its complement and expan-
sion in valuations which are deliberate, reflective’’ (LW 7:271). In terms of
moral character this means that sensitivity should operate in a balanced
relation with ‘‘conscientiousness’’ (LW 7:271).
va l uat i o n a n d c o n s c i e n t i o u s n e s s
When moral valuation develops into a positive moral disposition it be-

comes conscientiousness.≥ Conscientiousness involves a thoughtful con-
cern, a disposition to reflectively seek relations and connections in the
sense of conditions, consequences, possibilities, and moral implications of
an act. It is ‘‘the habit of bringing intelligence to bear upon the analysis
of moral relations—the habit of considering what ought to be done’’
(EW 3:364). It is this willingness and readiness to evaluate our immediate
moral apprehensions that keeps the good character from falling into ruts.
The good character could rest on her oars if novelty, uniqueness, pre-
cariousness, complexity, and change were not generic traits of our moral
life. But since they are, and there are no ready-made rules that can tell us
when our immediate moral assessments should be subject to valuation, it
is important that we are rightly disposed. The conscientious character is
willing to reconstruct, revise, improve, and deliberate when readjustment
∞Ω∑
is required. This is a di√erent disposition than the excess, ‘‘overconscien-

tiousness,’’ which is a ‘‘constant anxiety as to whether one is really good or
not, a moral ‘self-consciousness’ which spells embarrassment, constraint
in action, morbid fear’’ (LW 7:272). We need to be reflective in moral life
because our actions occur in a context with relations and implications that
we sometimes do not apprehend until after the deed is done. We often
blame ourselves for not being more thoughtful when making a particular
decision; and we also blame our children because, even if they are not at
fault for something they did not intend to do, we want to teach them that
there are relations in their experience that they need to consider before
they act, that is, they should be responsible.∂ Of course, one is not always
to blame for not foreseeing the consequences of one’s actions. What will
actually happen is not altogether under our control, but this does not
excuse us from doing the best we can and being conscientious.
The habit of reflectiveness is important because the moral rightness of
a particular sort of conduct can change depending on the actual and
changing relations that an act sustains with other things within its present
but changing context. The same sort of act of charity that I performed ten
years ago might have di√erent moral implications and moral qualities
today. One cannot take for granted the moral worth of a line of conduct
that one has decided to pursue. Sometimes the relations that are relevant
to the moral evaluation of a particular line of conduct do not reveal
themselves until we act. One must then be ready and willing to make
adjustments as these relations are disclosed in further experience.
To be sure, what Dewey meant by conscientiousness is not a detached,
impartial thoughtfulness but the kind that is characteristic of those who
are genuinely concerned with the moral dimension of their conduct. Con-
scientiousness is ‘‘intelligent attention and care to the quality of an act’’
(LW 7:273, my emphasis). It is manifested as an ‘‘interest in the discovery
of the true good of the situation’’ (MW 5:363). This concern is not incom-
patible with a concern for the state of one’s character. On the contrary, we
have already seen how for Dewey being good and doing good are mutually
dependent phases and concerns of a growing moral life. The way to actu-
ally improve one’s habits is through an attentive care to present situations.
In sum, sensitivity and conscientiousness are complementary and
mutually dependent functions in moral intelligence. Moral life is experi-
enced as a recurrent tension between the old, familiar, and stable condi-
tions, and the new. A balance between conscientiousness and sensitivity
allows a good character to use the habits funded by previous experience
while being attentive to new relations and conditions. Many of our moral
failures can be traced back to a failure to be thoughtful or sensitive. These
∞Ω∏
are distinct failures that can only be avoided if we cultivate a correspond-

ing disposition. Each of these dispositions can lead to distinct excesses and
deficiencies when not in a balanced relation with the other. Our sensitivity
becomes warped, stagnant, and predictable if it is not properly a√ected by
a disposition to inquire, criticize, and search for new relations. On the
other hand, conscientiousness becomes morally callous and impervious
to experiential input if it is not checked and informed by sensitivity.
Aesthetic engagement in moral experience requires a balance between
a capacity to be receptive—sensitivity as an instance of undergoing—and a
willingness to seek reflectively what ought to be done, that is, conscien-
tiousness. Conscientiousness keeps a character from falling into ruts and
from a drudgery-filled moral life. And sensitivity keeps it from being
unaware of moral relevancies and qualities in experience; without its guid-
ing function, in fact, our moral life would be aimless and arbitrary.
Sympathy and the Virtues of a Richer and Wider Experience

Moral philosophy often assumes that one must aim at objective thinking
in the sense of a neutral standpoint that one can get to by putting aside or
dispensing with a√ective and imaginative capacities. But for Dewey,
there is care, concern, implicated in every act of thought. There is some-

one who has a√ection for some things over others; when he becomes
a thinker he does not leave his characteristic a√ection behind. As a
thinker, he is still di√erentially sensitive to some qualities, problems,
themes. (LW 6:14)
This should not be a cause of despair but a reason to learn to discriminate

between better and worse habits of a√ection and imagination. As Dewey
said,
one can only see from a certain standpoint, but this fact does not make
all standpoints of equal value. A standpoint which is nowhere in particu-
lar is an absurdity. But one may have an a√ection for a standpoint which
gives a rich and ordered landscape rather than for one from which things
are seen confusedly and meagerly. (LW 6:14–15, my emphasis)
Which ‘‘habits of desire and imagination’’ (LW 7:187) one brings to a

situation will determine one’s selectivity, and hence the scope and depth of
the present situation that is being immediately appreciated and reflectively
examined. Hence, there is a way to assess particular habits of imagination
and a√ections in our moral life. There are habits that provide the agent
∞Ωπ
with a rich, broad, and wide landscape upon which to deliberate and act,
and there are others that in comparison are constraining, one-sided, and
narrow. Dewey prescribes ‘‘the fostering of those habits and impulses
which lead to a broad, just, sympathetic survey of situations’’ (MW 14:144).
Thinking is the capacity to consider an act in its bearings and rela-
tions. But there is more to moral deliberation than reasoning or exploring
logical relations between abstract propositions. Recall that for Dewey one
does not fully examine the relations of an act unless one engages in inquiry
as an imaginative process of constructing and testing hypotheses. In this
process, relations with past experience, present events, and possible con-
sequences are explored. One can do this better or worse according to
whether one has a vivid imagination, but a more important determinant
of one’s success in inquiry is the breadth, width, and flexibility of one’s
imaginative field. At one extreme is the agent who only considers the
consequences of a single proposed act with respect to one person (usually
him or herself ), without considering other possible acts and their conse-
quences. Equally narrow from Dewey’s perspective is the experience of
someone—a utilitarian, for example—who in deliberation can only con-
sider the relation between alternative actions and one predetermined fixed
end. Moral agents can do better. They can develop the kind of habits that
allow them to have a wider experience in that they open themselves in
deliberation to several sometimes incommensurable ends and their rela-
tions, and thereby entertain a rich field of considerations. Sympathetic
imagination and openness are thus two valuable undergoing habits.
I have already considered how openness expands or welcomes our
reach toward new experiences. But whether our experience is wide or nar-
row depends also on the extent and depth of our sympathies. ‘‘Every wid-
ening of contacts with others, every deepening of the level of sympathetic
acquaintance, magnifies in so much vision of the good’’ (MW 5:379).
What Dewey meant by sympathy is closer to what feminist writers today
have identified as empathy.∑ To understand sympathy we must distinguish
it from other more casual and ordinary considerations. It is one thing to
consider how a possible course of conduct will a√ect others, quite another
to consider how those a√ected others would look at it from their stand-
point independently of our own. Of course, this capacity is a matter of
degree and will likely vary as a function of the level of acquaintance, the
nature of the relationship, and one’s powers of imagination. But this
ability does not presuppose the existence of some mysterious or indepen-
dent faculty. For Dewey and George Herbert Mead alike, the natural basis
of sympathy is the way we acquire a sense of a self as an individual. The self
is not given; it emerges out of ‘‘taking on the attitude of the other.’’∏ With
∞Ω∫
proper conditions an individual can also develop the capacity to perceive

the needs, interest, hopes, and dreams of others from their own stand-
point. It becomes a virtue when it is used with other dispositions in moral
inquiry.
Sympathy functions best in moral life when employed as a means in
moral deliberation. ‘‘The emotion of sympathy is morally invaluable. But
it functions properly when used as a principle of reflection and insight
rather than of direct action’’ (LW 7:251). Sympathy is a special kind of
sensitivity. Through sympathy we obtain material for moral deliberation
that cannot be obtained through other means. To emotionally and imagi-
natively put oneself in the place of another is the only way to widen our
intellectual horizon in moral situations and to determine e√ectively what
ought to be done. It is the most ‘‘generous thought . . .’’ (MW 5:302), as it
‘‘widens and deepens concern for consequences’’ (LW 7:251). On the other
hand, ‘‘a person of narrow sympathy is of necessity a person of confined
outlook upon the scene of human good’’ (LW 7:270). This widening of
experience is not quantitative. Someone who has sympathy, even to a few,
may have wider experience than the utilitarian who considers many peo-
ple as abstract loci of utility.
The rationalist tradition in moral theory has assumed that the avoid-
ance of a distorting partiality in moral deliberation to guarantee consid-
erate and just treatment of others requires the adoption of a universal and
objective standpoint provided by moral reason. Both Dewey and recent
feminists cannot make sense of an impartial and universal standpoint.π
However, Dewey holds that the closest we can get to a similar broad
intellectual standpoint that might be useful for moral deliberation is with
the aid of sympathy. ‘‘Sympathy, in short, is the general principle of moral
knowledge . . . because it furnishes the most reliable and e≈cacious intel-
lectual standpoint. It supplies the tool, par excellence, for analyzing and
resolving complex cases . . . sympathy supplies the pou sto for an e√ec-
tive, broad, and objective survey of desires, projects, resolves, and deeds’’
(MW 5:303). The concern implied by a genuine sense of justice cannot be
accounted for by the intellectual capacities associated with the impartiality
of reason; it also requires sympathy. ‘‘A person entirely lacking in sympa-
thetic response might have a keen calculating intellect, but he would have
no spontaneous sense of the claims of others’’ (LW 7:270, my emphasis).
Failure to treat others beyond one’s social group as equals is not a defi-
ciency in the ability to perform a reasoning process from a formal princi-
ple of justice, nor is it a result of failing to intellectually and abstractly
grasp the respect in which all people are equal. James Tufts argues that it is
not a matter of logic:
∞ΩΩ
what we shall set up as our units—whether we shall treat the gentile or

the barbarian or negro as a person, as end not merely as means, or not,
depends on something quite other than reason. And this other factor is
not covered by the term ‘‘practical reason.’’∫
Although Kant in his ethics expressed a democratic ideal, his intellectual-

ism did not allow him to see that it requires sympathy, not reason alone, to
treat others as ends. Tufts continues,
The defect of his statement is that the rational process as such has never
treated and so far as can be foreseen never will treat human beings as
ends. To treat a human being as end it is necessary to put oneself into his
place in his whole nature and not simply in his universalizing, and
legislative aspects.Ω
There is no prima facie reason why humans can be the only objects of
sympathy. Although Tufts and Dewey do not address this issue, it is a lack
of sympathy, rather than a failure to cognitively acknowledge rights, that
may be the reason why many humans fail to treat other animals as ends. A
Deweyan ethics, with a more global or ecological scope than Dewey him-
self acknowledged, would encourage humans today to deliberatively con-
sider other creatures in a sympathetic way and not merely from the point
of view of human needs.
Dewey warned us that ‘‘when a legal type of morality is current’’
(LW 7:373), justice is ‘‘the working of some fixed and abstract law’’
(LW 7:373) and is separated from sympathy or care. But justice ceases to be a
virtue if it is not fused with sympathy. It is through sympathy that one can
appreciate what justice demands because it makes us understand what
each person needs in a vivid and more reliable fashion. Hence Dewey
claims that ‘‘to put ourselves in the place of another, to see things from the
standpoint of his aims and values . . . is the surest way to appreciate what
justice demands in concrete cases’’ (LW 7:251).
For Dewey, moral thought that is sympathetic is integral to the con-
siderate and just character. Sympathy ‘‘is the surest guarantee for the
exercise of consideration, for examination of a proposed line of conduct
in all of its bearings. And such complete interest is the only way in which
justice can be assured’’ (LW 7:259).
I should anticipate the important role of sympathy in Dewey’s ideal
democratic community. He claims that ‘‘the political action of citizens of
an organized community will not be morally satisfactory unless they have,
individually, sympathetic dispositions’’ (LW 7:300). Sympathy makes pos-
≤≠≠
sible the kind of moral life and community where the interests, demands,
and needs of others are vital and moving realities in one’s moral delibera-
tion, rather than abstract variables in a cold utilitarian calculation or in
the application of a formal law. When sympathy becomes fused with other
virtues, such as openness, it becomes part of the democratic readiness to
listen to others and look at things from their point of view whether we
agree or not. The morally reasonable person in Dewey’s moral vision is
not someone who listens to reason, but one who sympathetically listens to
others. The ideal moral community is one where agents treat each other as
ends in the sense that each has the willingness and imagination to take
account of others from the point of view of their needs, desires, and
circumstances.
Moral education should aim at developing in students the habits that
make them capable of examining for themselves the nature of the practical
situations they will face. Foremost is ‘‘the formation of a sympathetic
imagination for human relations in action; this is the ideal which is sub-
stituted for training in moral rules’’ (EW 4:57). The cultivation of charac-
ter is not an easy task, for sympathy can only grow out of having certain
communal experiences. This is why Dewey thought that the most impor-
tant kind of moral education in the school is the creation of the conditions
for a certain kind of community. He objected to the emphasis in schools
on absorption of information and competition because it goes against the
required social spirit needed to cultivate the ‘‘habits of social imagination’’
(MW 4:284). The presence of these habits is a prerequisite for any sig-
nificant moral lessons to be conveyed in the classroom. These lessons
‘‘amount to something only in the degree in which pupils happen to be
already animated by a sympathetic and dignified regard for the sentiments
of others. Without such a regard, it has no more influence on character
than the information about the mountains of Asia’’ (MW 9:364).
I have distinguished sensitivity, conscientiousness, courage, open-
mindedness, and sympathy as some of the virtues required in an intel-
ligent, aesthetic, and democratic moral life. But they are not virtues unless
they are integrated into a certain unity of character.
The Constituents of Moral Character and Their Function

In his lectures on moral education, Dewey addresses moral development
by distinguishing three constituents of character: the intellectual, the
a√ectional-imaginative, and the volitional. Each one plays a di√erent but
indispensable active function in an ideal moral character. These func-
≤≠∞
tional distinctions help one appreciate how the elements of character that
Dewey stressed at di√erent times, including the few virtues I have consid-
ered, form part of an integral whole.
t h e i n t e l l e c t ua l
Commenting on the intellectual aspects of character, Dewey wrote that ‘‘it
has been the fortune of this element to su√er from both over-appreciation
and extreme depreciation’’ (MW 6:383). In modern moral philosophy, the
intellectual has been overappreciated at the expense of the active and
emotional phases simply because experience has been conceived of as a
primarily cognitive a√air. For Dewey, intellectual habits are tools of reflec-
tion needed for general learning and to estimate in particular situations
what one ought to do, that is, to reach judgment. In education Dewey
stressed that the mere passing down of information or knowledge does
not a√ect character in a way needed to a√ect good judgment.∞≠ Judgment
is the ‘‘power to perceive the bearings of what is known’’ (MW 6:382), it ‘‘is
equivalent to valuation, appraisal, estimation’’ (MW 6:383). To reach judg-
ment one must engage in a process of inquiry. To adequately engage in this
process requires all the habits that can make a character critical, experi-
mental, and able to follow the leads of experience wherever they may go.
When one develops the disposition to apply these thinking tools to moral
experience, it becomes conscientiousness.
The importance of cultivating the more intellectual constituents of
our character is that they make possible a relative control of changes based
on the relations or grain found in experience. The habits of critical reflec-
tion make it possible for us to deliberate over the means to achieve our
ends, as well as the ability to assess our ends in light of our means. The
disposition to think and judge signifies the ability to reconsider and re-
shape present habits—that is, to engage in criticism—thereby preventing
us from resting on our oars and living an unaesthetic moral life. Dewey
explains that ‘‘through judging, we get above the mere routine of habit;
through judging, we get above being mere imitators, copiers, and fol-
lowers of others; through judging we get above caprice, above random
activity’’ (LW 17:338).
the executive
For Dewey, the executive is not like the will, that is, a faculty that moves
the self into action after deliberation. If the self is an agent in process (and
not a spectator), then the will developed in our character cannot simply be
≤≠≤
the capacity to initiate activity out of a state of inactivity. For Dewey, we

are always doing something and the only meaningful question is how we
are doing it: are we aggressive? Assertive? Willing to go as far as we can?
Willing to experiment or disposed to become inhibited in the face of risk?
In general, what is designated as the executive in experience has to do
with how to sustain and control both support and resistances from the
environment. In moral life we find that things happen that are congenial
with our wishes and others happen that are not. The disagreeable—pain,
hardship, obstacles, resistance—tends to inhibit conduct, thus highlight-
ing the importance of courage. The agreeable, on the other hand, might
sway us and make us overindulge at the expense of other impulses and
possibilities. Hence the importance of self-control or temperance.
Dewey is opposed to the conception of temperance that supports a
negative view of morality, namely, a morality that is focused on restraining
all impulse and passion because they are the source of wrongdoing. Nei-
ther is he in favor of training the moral will in the Kantian sense of a self-
disciplined inhibition of tendencies and inclinations so that we can follow
abstract duty. Dewey thinks that the only e√ective self-control is based on
more, not fewer, passions and on positive goals. The alternative to asceti-
cism and random indulgence is a particular relation between habits and
desires in a character. This will become clear when I later consider the
notion of a balanced-holistic character.
Moral life requires the development of the executive habits needed to
work out things for ourselves and to face responsibility in the face of
obstacles. These include initiative, self-control, courage, and e≈ciency.
These are habits that enable us to direct changes and confront their conse-
quences in experience. As Dewey understands it, the commonsense idea
that if one means well, then one is morally excused is only true if one has
gone as far as one can in execution. But a good will is often faced with
resistance, unfavorable conditions, and the possibility of failure. Hence
the importance of persistence and courage. As Dewey says, ‘‘the chief ally
of moral thoughtfulness is the resolute courage of willingness to face evil
for the sake of the good’’ (MW 5:379).
With respect to moral education teachers have the di≈cult task of
cultivating ‘‘habits of e≈cient action so that the person won’t be a mere
day-dreamer or theorist, or a wasteful or incompetent person, but to
get that unity with certain a√ections, and desires and sympathies and
with power to carry on intellectual plans’’ (LW 17:82). An educational
system that appeals merely to the absorption of information encourages
worthless passivity. The ideal is a ‘‘character which is not satisfied with
≤≠≥
being simply a spectator, or passive absorber, but that strives earnestly

to put right intention and good desire into actual and concrete e√ect’’
(MW 6:388).
t h e a f f e c t i v e a n d i m a g i n at i v e
The a√ective and imaginative are the areas of moral experience that have
been most devalued and neglected in traditional Western ethics. Dewey
would have agreed with many of today’s feminist writers in ethics who are
reclaiming for the a√ective and imaginative their proper place in our
moral life.∞∞ The a√ective is central to an adequate account of moral
inquiry and of a good moral character. This is evident in the previous
account of sensitivity, openness, and sympathetic imagination as modes of
direct and emotional undergoing in experience. These dispositions under-
lie the function of the a√ective in providing the necessary qualitative
material in inquiry.
The dualism between reason and the emotional or the imaginative, as
well as a narrow view of the latter, have led to views in moral education
and ethics that take emotion and impulse as sources of vices because they
do not allow us to ‘‘look far enough ahead’’ (MW 14:137). But for Dewey,
blindness and narrowness result from a lack of the a√ective and imagina-
tive. To have an a√ective relation with someone or some situation signifies
access and sensitivity to a landscape that would not be available otherwise.
Dewey explains,
We cannot know the varied elements of value in the lives of others and in
the possibilities of our own save as our a√ections are strong. Every
narrowing of love, every encroachment of egoism, means just so much
blindness to the good. (MW 5:379)
The emotional aspects of experience are always the result of a transaction

between the organism and the environment. Emotional appreciation is
about something that in a situation is experienced as having certain quali-
ties. Our sensory reactions are not the only means or access to knowledge
of the world, and they are not even essential to our acquaintance with and
knowledge of persons. Instead, our ‘‘emotional reactions form the chief
materials of our knowledge of ourselves and of others. Just as ideas of phys-
ical objects are constituted out of sensory material, so those of persons are
framed out of emotional and a√ectional materials. The latter are as direct,
as immediate as the former, and more interesting’’ (LW 7:269–270).
But the role of the a√ective in Dewey’s ethics is not limited to provid-
ing the initial data for moral deliberation. The a√ective pervades and
≤≠∂
guides the entire process of deliberation. Recall that this process relies on
making qualitative judgments, rather than on making deductive infer-
ences from moral axioms or on calculating future pleasures and pains.
Any actual experience of reflection upon conduct will show that every
foreseen result at once stirs our present a√ections. . . . There is developed
a running commentary which stamps objects at once as good or evil. It is
this direct sense of value, not the consciousness of general rules or
ultimate goals, which finally determines the worth of the act to the
agent. (LW 7:275)
Good moral deliberation is one that comes from a good character, and a
good character is one that even in imagination responds with the ‘‘right
emotional stamp’’ (MW 5:255).
What Dewey admired in Greek philosophers is how they stressed
‘‘direct emotional susceptibility to values presented in experience,’’ and
how aesthetic qualities, like rhythm, grace, and balance, were considered
the ‘‘chief instruments’’ to ‘‘create a direct feeling of the beauty of the
good’’ (MW 6:386). All this is lost in most modern educational practices
and theories.
The modern mind has been much less sensitive to aesthetic values in
general and to these values in conduct in particular. Much has been lost
in direct responsiveness to right. The bleakness and harshness often
associated with morals is a sign of this loss. (LW 7:271)
The neglect of the aesthetic and a√ective factors (‘‘direct sensitiveness’’) in

American education is ‘‘the greatest deficiency in our educational systems
with respect to character building’’ (MW 6:386).
Dewey also believed that imagination had been underappreciated in
moral education. It is usually identified with the fanciful and imaginary,
but when properly understood, it can be the capacity to experience the
reality of possibilities present in a situation. Hence, ‘‘imagination sup-
plements and deepens observation’’ (MW 6:356). It makes possible the
‘‘warm and intimate taking in of the full scope of a situation’’ (MW 9:244).
The imaginative is not necessarily the imaginary; that is, the unreal. The
proper function of imagination is vision of realities and possibilities that
cannot be exhibited under existing conditions of sense-perception. Clear
insight into the remote, the absent, the obscure is its aim. (MW 6:355)
A good imagination is required for moral deliberation. This is how we can

try out the implications and consequences of an act in order to determine
≤≠∑
its moral worth. Moreover, to be able to reach beyond one’s narrow view
of things and understand others through sympathetic communication
requires imagination, rather than the mere manipulation of information.
Without the development of our imaginative capacities deliberation is
reduced to calculation and a drudgery-filled task. ‘‘The imagination is the
medium of appreciation in every field. The engagement of the imagina-
tion is the only thing that makes any activity more than mechanical’’
(MW 9:244).
The functional classification into constituents of character allows us
to formulate the following thesis found in Dewey: the ideal state is for
these constituents to be in a certain organic relation to one another and as
parts of character in an integral whole. It is only then that the virtues we
have distinguished can in fact function as virtues.
The Balanced Holistic Character

Dewey’s organic view of character lets him evaluate character in terms of
how its constitutive parts relate to each other. The key relation is one of
balance and it is instructive to contrast this ideal with views that have
assumed otherwise. For example, a notion of rationality that recommends
putting aside a√ective aspects of our experiences to achieve objectivity sug-
gests discrimination, isolation, and exclusiveness. For Dewey, these atti-
tudes can only suggest irrationality, or a very unconstructive kind of
repression of indispensable parts of our experience as moral agents. Ratio-
nality has more to do with the attitudes of generosity and inclusiveness; it is
the result of an interactive process among the plural demands and aspects
of experience where a relation of mutual reinforcement is achieved.∞≤
Views of rationality that emphasize objectivity and impartiality as-
sume that the rational agent is a detached spectator, wary of any type of
emotional involvement. Pragmatists, on the other hand, recognize the
importance and need of both detachment and involvement, of both reflec-
tion and emotional sensitivity and commitment. To those who emphasize
‘‘bloodless reason’’ Dewey responds that too much reflection can also be a
vice. It is true that a strong passion can sometimes make us unreasonable.
We are so absorbed that we allow no room for alternatives and we are not
sensitive to the complexity of the situation. However,
the conclusion is not that the emotional, passionate phase of action can
be or should be eliminated in behalf of a bloodless reason. More ‘‘pas-
sions,’’ not fewer, is the answer. To check the influence of hate there must
≤≠∏
be sympathy, while to rationalize sympathy there are needed emotions

of curiosity, caution. (MW 14:136, my emphasis)
It is easy to react to narrow views of the rational moral agent by

overemphasizing the role of the a√ective and imaginative. But this is
equally mistaken and dangerous. Views that express a tyranny of the intel-
lectual over the emotional (or vice versa) usually assume a dualism or
atomism between elements of our character. We can only avoid falling into
extreme views if we entertain an organic-interactive conception of charac-
ter. Under this conception the fundamental concrete unit is the whole
character, and the traits that we can discriminate in such a whole are not
self-su≈cient, isolated compartments.
On this model any trait or power of character—no matter how impor-
tant or central to moral life—can become a vice if it is not checked,
informed, or fused with other dimensions of our character. When consci-
entiousness is cultivated in isolation it becomes a ‘‘morbid anxiety about
the state of one’s virtue’’ (LW 7:116). When justice is not pursued in con-
cert with other virtues it turns into something mechanical, quantitative,
impersonal, and harsh. Sympathy is only protected from sentimentality
and other evils if it is fused with other dispositions—for example, open-
ness and thoughtfulness—that give it the proper perception of conditions
and possibilities. However, it is equally important to note the transform-
ing and protective e√ect that a√ective-sympathetic powers have on other
dispositions. In this regard Dewey says that they influence other attitudes
and interests in such a way as to transform them ‘‘into a single and moral
interest,’’ for it gives them ‘‘social quality and direction’’ (MW 5:272–273).
Dewey would welcome the emphasis that many feminists put on
sympathy and care. Care that is rightly fused with other traits of character
does not fall into the kind of harmful care that stultifies the growth of
those being cared for. What we must make room for in morality is not just
altruistic emotions but the organic interaction between them and other
virtues of character, that is, a balanced character that achieves an active
‘‘union of benevolent impulse and intelligent reflection’’ (LW 7:298).
The cultivation of a balanced character is consistent with, expands,
and adds content to the very general claims I have made so far regarding
the ideal moral life. The balanced character signifies the ‘‘full participation
of all our powers in the endeavor to wrest from each situation of experi-
ence its own full and unique meaning’’ (LW 10:273, my emphasis). Balance
among the virtues and constituents I have distinguished is needed to live
an aesthetic, educative, and meaningful moral life. It is not enough to have
≤≠π
good habits such as conscientiousness, openness, and sympathy, or to try

to cultivate them in isolation. Only when there is a balanced relation
among them do we have a good chance to save our moral life from both
drudgery and aimlessness. Excesses and deficiencies of any of them usually
restrict the capacity of a character to learn from experience. It is not easy
to avoid excesses or one-sidedness in our character especially when our
contemporary ways of living encourage compartmentalization, specializa-
tion, and fragmentation.
If what Dewey means by intelligence in morals involves such a com-
plex and total integration of all the dimensions of our character, then it is
tempting to conclude that he, along with the Greeks, believes that igno-
rance is vice. Moral ignorance is more a condition of our character than it
is a lack of information or true beliefs. Morally ignorant would be the
individual who has a lot of information about right and wrong but who
lacks moral sensitivity. Dewey was very explicit about this,
The modern counterpart to the Socratic doctrine that ignorance is the

root of vice is that being morally ‘‘cold’’ or ‘‘dead,’’ being indi√erent to
moral distinctions, is the most hopeless of all conditions. One who cares,
even if he cares in the wrong way, has at least a spring that may be
touched; the one who is just irresponsive o√ers no leverage for correc-
tion or improvement. (MW 5:377)
The ideal character has an emotional responsiveness and capacity to make

judgments that is missing in the character who is merely a knower of
epistemologically justified moral truths. Dewey explains this di√erence.
It is di≈cult to put the quality into words, but we all know the di√erence
between the character which is somewhat hard and formal, and that
which is sympathetic, flexible, and open. In the abstract the former may
be as sincerely devoted to moral ideas as the latter, but as a practical
matter we prefer to live with the latter, and we count upon it to ac-
complish more in the end by tact, by instinctive recognition of the
claims of others, by skill in adjusting, than the former can accomplish by
mere attachment to rules and principles which are intellectually justi-
fied. (EW 5:80)
One final observation about the ideal character is in order. There is hardly
any reference in Dewey’s ethics to many of the dispositions that are usually
considered moral virtues in ethics textbooks, for example, honesty, truth-
fulness, compassion, etc. Instead, one finds a strong and almost exclusive
emphasis on the complex array of habits that allow one to sense, explore,
and find the right course of action in a situation. To be sure, Dewey does
≤≠∫
not wish to exclude the usual moral virtues from his account of a good
character. They are not emphasized in his texts because he wanted to
discourage a certain view about moral character. It is often assumed in
moral theory that there is a defined number of virtues that are exclusively
moral, such as honesty and truthfulness, and that the habits that allow us
to explore situations are only intellectual means and therefore non-moral
and external to morality. But this dualism between moral and intellectual
virtue is for Dewey unacceptable. The reason why we tend to associate
moral virtues with such virtues as honesty and truthfulness is because they
play a crucial role in our everyday moral relationships. But, as Dewey said,
to treat these virtues as the moral virtues is ‘‘taking the skeleton for the
living body . . . morals concern nothing less than the whole character’’
(MW 9:367). Furthermore, to take the virtue of intelligence as a mere
external means to a core of moral virtues assumes a primacy and self-
su≈ciency of the latter not warranted by our moral experience. If one has
acquired the habit of honesty, it is because of honest acts. But what counts
as an honest act and when or where it is called for requires the context-
sensitive reflection provided by the habits that Dewey identifies with intel-
ligence. Without the habits required to sense and figure out what I ought to
do in particular moral situations there cannot be the development of mor-
ally well-formed characters. This is why they are the most important in-
strumentalities in moral life. The cardinal virtues are the traits of character
that make it possible to determine what morality requires here and now.
Let me summarize my progression up to this point. My presentation
of Dewey’s ideal began in the previous chapter with a very broad charac-
terization in terms of a way of life. In this chapter I have specified what
sort of character is involved and some of the virtues that it requires. But
Dewey occasionally expresses his normative vision in terms of a certain
kind of self. I now consider that characterization of the self.
The Moral Self as the Morally Interested Agent

Dewey was concerned with the spirit of morality, that is, with how one
should be engaged in moral experience. He often spoke about how the
virtues I discussed above are integral to a self that has a genuine interest in
moral activity. This is not the self that is interested in the sense of expect-
ing an external stimulation, such as pleasure, virtue, or salvation from
moral activity. The dependence on external gratification in e√ect reflects a
serious lack of integrity and commitment to morality. As I noted, Dewey
thought there is in moral life the possibility of a more intimate relation
between the moral self and its acts. He had a di√erent paradigm of a moral
≤≠Ω
agent committed to morality. The moral agent who is aesthetically en-

gaged in present moral reconstruction has a direct personal identification
with the conduct that is required of her in a situation. To attend to and try
to ameliorate the moral di≈culties and demands as they present them-
selves in a specific situation is the interest of a moral agent qua moral
agent. This includes having a concern for good, duty, or virtue. What is
not as clear is what makes someone’s interest in morality more or less
genuine. There is a normative component here that needs to be elucidated.
One mark of genuine interest for Dewey is wholeheartedness, which
is one of the ‘‘traits which must belong to an attitude if it is to be genuinely
an interest’’ (LW 7:256). The ideal engagement in any activity is a ‘‘serious
absorption’’ (MW 9:212) that is expressed in conduct that is wholehearted,
integrated, and that ‘‘moves by its own urge to fulfillment’’ (LW 10:46).
There is a lack of character in someone who is partial, divided, and luke-
warm. Wholeheartedness means that the whole character comes into play,
that is, the self can put all of her powers and constituents in a relation of
mutual reinforcement in the process of resolving a morally problematic
situation. Halfhearted engagement is less than the full transaction re-
quired to have an ‘‘active and alert commerce with the world’’ (LW 10:25).
Dewey’s paradigm of integral involvement in some person or cause is love.
In love there is a ‘‘totality of interest’’ (MW 5:363).∞≥ Wholeheartedness can
turn into a vice if it is not checked and balanced by other traits of charac-
ter. There is such a thing as becoming overly absorbed. Hence the impor-
tance of having some of the virtues already mentioned, for example, a
willingness to reflect generously and with openness. Balance is the key to
keeping the genuine interest in moral reconstruction a virtue.
Dewey distinguishes between two di√erent sorts of cases of genuine
interest in any activity. The most direct kind are cases of immediate en-
grossment where ‘‘there is no gap in space nor time between means and
end’’ (EW 5:125). On the other hand, there is indirect or mediated genuine
interest. These are cases where an activity that functions as the means is
su√used and saturated by the interest we have in the end.∞∂ These are
di√erent from cases of non-genuine interest where the means are experi-
enced as remote, external, and separated from the end, and therefore the
moral agent is only mechanically or externally interested in moral action.
That there are cases of genuine mediated interest allows Dewey to
a≈rm that interest in far-reaching ideals can be part of a moral life that
has as its locus present experience. A moral self can be wholeheartedly
engaged in resolving a morally problematic situation and at the same time
care for ideals that transcend the present problem. Where there is a bal-
ance between work and play, enthusiasm with wider aims and ideals is
≤∞≠
integral to the interest in present reconstruction. Again, Dewey takes the

artist as the paradigm of genuine interest in an ideal. ‘‘When the thought
of the end becomes so adequate that it compels translation into the means
that embody it, or when attention to the means is inspired by recognition
of the end they serve, we have the attitude typical of the artist, an attitude
that may be displayed in all activities, even though they are not conven-
tionally designated ‘arts’ ’’ (LW 8:348).
The above account is vague and does not capture an aspect of the ideal
genuine moral interest that is very important to Dewey. It is not enough
that the self be wholeheartedly or aesthetically engaged in moral recon-
struction. The interest of the self must also be authentic in the sense of not
being the result of blindly adopting or following a moral tradition. This is
why the ideal moral self is also intelligent in the sense of having the habits
of critical reflection necessary to e√ect a working connection between
what is inherited and what is new. For Dewey, criticism is needed for
authentic appreciation and commitment to tradition, otherwise we be-
come mere imitators, followers, or agents who drift. It is through inquiry
that one is capable of maintaining the proper spirit of a moral life that has
aesthetic quality and is democratic. Individuals who come to appreciate
the moral truths of their moral traditions as a result of their own critical
inquiries appreciate and identify themselves with these truths in a very
di√erent way than those who just collect and repeat them. Moral conduct
that is not the outcome of one’s moral deliberation lacks the kind of
appropriation and interest that comes from engaging in a creative prob-
lematic process. But all of this requires a community and an education
system that allows and fosters individuals to work out for themselves the
solution to morally problematic situations. This is the positive freedom
integral to a democratic way of life. I will have more to say about this in the
next chapter.
Moral Interest and the Egoism vs. Altruism Debate

Dewey noticed that most discussion about the place of interest in morality
usually centers on preoccupation with the issues of egoism and altruism.
The shared assumption in this debate is that self-interest and altruism are
the only motivations relevant to the issue of moral motivation. This as-
sumption has been questioned by Kantian philosophies that postulate a
moral motive beyond our natural interests, that is, morality is about
finding and doing the right thing in a disinterested manner. The assump-
tions of modern ethics seem to place us in the following dilemma. It seems
as if we cannot preserve the idea that our moral life is emotionally inter-
≤∞∞
ested and self-a≈rmative without assuming or being accused of support-

ing a morality of self-interest. This is one reason why moral philosophers
have shied away from taking a mother’s care toward her children as a
source of insight about morality.∞∑ Is the only way to avoid a self-interested
model to endorse moral conduct as unemotional, disinterested, and self-
denying? Dewey questions the underlying assumptions that lead to such
odds results.
First, why should one assume that there is a single motive that deter-
mines the boundaries of morality? There are, for instance, situations in
which ‘‘intense emotional regard for the welfare of others, unbalanced by
careful thought, may actually result in harm to others’’ (LW 7:295). The
unwarranted identification of altruism with moral conduct is another
unsuccessful attempt to set a fixed criterion for moral conduct. Whether,
and to what extent, there should be regard for others or for ourselves is
determined by the particular context.
An even more questionable assumption according to Dewey is the
idea that we are naturally moved to moral action by any of the motives
appealed to in this debate. This assumes a narrow and simplistic view of
our experience as interested agents. Both self-love and altruism are ac-
quired dispositions. If there is a natural motivation it is that most of the
time we are unreflectively and directly interested in activities and things
without any reference to our selves or to others. Our native impulses and
acts ‘‘are not actuated by conscious regard for either one’s own good or
that of others. They are rather direct responses to situations’’ (LW 7:293).
Furthermore this more direct or natural interest makes for a better
moral life than one in which individuals have to consider in their daily
activities whether or not it is for the good of others that they are acting.
Dewey says, ‘‘the scholar, artist, physician . . . is interested in the work
itself; such objective interest is a condition of mental and moral health’’
(LW 7:297). When there is too much of a deliberate concern to make the
good of others or of ourselves the end of our activities these ends be-
come extraneous and possible obstacles to the wholehearted engagement
needed to find out what a situation morally requires. In any case, Dewey
suggests that just as there is a hedonistic paradox there may be an altruistic
paradox, that is, ‘‘before he can really do good to others, he must stop
thinking about the welfare of others; he must see what the situation really
calls for and go ahead with that, and the reason is the same in both cases.
Whenever one makes his own good or the good of others the end, it
becomes an extraneous end.’’∞∏
Dewey diagnoses the contemporary preoccupation with egoism and
altruism on di√erent levels. Historically, it reflects a concern of many with
≤∞≤
the rugged individualism of a capitalist society. Since the everyday trans-

actions ‘‘taught that each man was actuated by an exclusive regard for its
own profit, moralists were led to insist upon the need of some check upon
this ruthless individualism, and to accentuate the supremacy of morals (as
distinct from business) of sympathy and benevolent regard for others’’
(LW 7:299). But for Dewey the antidote to the narrow pursuit of profit is
not to claim that altruism is the distinct end of all moral conduct. The
problem that many business institutions have of subordinating all of their
present operations to the one and only goal of maximizing profit is not
resolved by setting aside a separate moral goal like benevolence, corporate
responsibility, or the good of society. The setting of altruistic fixed quotas
that have to be met at the end of the day usually results in an external
relation between means and end. When this happens, Dewey writes, it
usually
means that there is no adequate moral criterion within the business

itself. It means that it does not carry its own moral standard and justifi-
cation with it. At every point you must get away from your business and
think about the welfare of other people; and in that outside consider-
ation, which is more or less remote and external to the thing you are
doing, you must seek for justification and for guidance.∞π
For Dewey, an e√ective moral transformation of our business institutions

requires that community well-being, or any other moral concern, be or-
ganically integrated to the everyday operations and deliberations of that
industry.
From a philosophical perspective the preoccupation with the egoism
vs. altruism issue is a consequence of the same starting point in ethics that
created the being vs. doing debate. If the self is a fixed subject, then any
object of one’s interest is always external to and a mere means for the self,
that is, ‘‘action is selfish just because it manifests an interest’’ (LW 7:295).
If to this you add a hedonistic conception of the a√ective that accentu-
ates the acquisitive and possessive (as in utilitarianism), then all interest
and emotional concern is directly or indirectly for the self and therefore
amoral or selfish. The same Cartesian starting point that in epistemology
leads to the problem about the epistemic states of other knowers, leads in
ethics to the problem of accounting for emotional, direct, and genuine in-
terest for other things—including other persons—that are outside the self.
If, as Dewey thinks, the self is an agent (relational, interactive, and
processional), then all interests are self-centered but only in the sense that
they are organically related to a self. For Dewey, interest means ‘‘the active
or moving identity of the self with a certain object’’ (MW 9:362). A person
≤∞≥
can be directly interested in whatever may be the object of her interest as

an a≈rmation of what she is. Hence, moral life can be conceived of as
emotionally interested and self-a≈rmative without assuming a morality
of self-interest. Those who are moral exemplars of a moral life dedicated
to others are as wholeheartedly interested in what they do as those whom
we consider selfish. The di√erence between them lies in what they are
interested in, and in the di√erent selves this expresses. ‘‘It is absurd to
suppose that the di√erence between the good person and the bad person is
that the former has no interest or deep and intimate concern (leading to
personal satisfaction) in what he does’’ (LW 7:296). This posture allows
Dewey to avoid the terms of the egoism and altruism debate and instead
propose an alternative way to evaluate a self according to whether the self
is wide or narrow.
The Wider Self

If ‘‘the kind and amount of interest actively taken in a thing reveals and
measures the quality of selfhood which exists’’ (MW 9:361–362), then
there are no fixed boundaries to the engaged self; put di√erently, the self
can be extended beyond the traditional boundaries of the body and its
mental states. For Dewey, to have our interest and identity limited to these
boundaries is to have a narrow self. The only sort of self-centeredness that
can be a threat to morality is the unreflective and undue absorption of
a narrow and closed self. This is the self that has ‘‘a narrow vision of
the situation.’’∞∫ Dewey explains that ‘‘the judgment that a man is selfish
means that he ought to be defining himself on the basis of a wider situa-
tion, that he ought to be taking into account factors which as a matter of
fact he is neglecting.’’∞Ω This may lead to wrongdoing. On the other hand,
the generous or wider self is the self whose interests, care, and concern are
expansive, open, and inclusive. In the present experience of a self there are
horizontal edges in moving from one situation to another, just as there are
vertical edges that define the extension of the present arena of action. This
distinction allows us to discriminate between two di√erent aspects of the
wider self. In the horizontal dimension, the wide self is someone inter-
ested in continuous readjustment and open to unforeseen and new experi-
ences. This is an accomplishment because the natural tendency is to have
an aversion toward the new, unexpected, distant, and unfamiliar. ‘‘There is
a tendency to identify the self—or take interest—in what one has got used
to’’ (MW 9:362). To fall back on the achieved self is the easy course but
results in a failure to face and be nurtured by the recurrent demands and
≤∞∂
opportunities for growth, learning; in short, it leads to a stagnant and

unaesthetic life.
In the vertical dimension, the wide self is one who has a willingness to
be faithful, receptive, and concerned with one’s relationships ‘‘instead of
drawing a sharp line between itself and considerations which are excluded
as alien or indi√erent’’ (MW 9:362). To be sure, the idea of having interests
in others or the good of others is very ambiguous. It can mean an inter-
est in others mediated by an interest in being altruistic (having virtue),
achieving the best possible happiness for all, or obeying an altruistic rule.
These are very di√erent interests and therefore express di√erent selves. But
for Dewey none of these abstract altruisms is as genuine and as e√ective
for moral life as the moral care or interest expressed when there is a self
that has a ‘‘direct interest in the welfare of others for their own sake’’
(MW 5:267). Dewey anticipated contemporary feminists in taking direct
care as the paradigmatic example of the kind of direct interest characteris-
tic of a healthy and growing moral life. This is not another ethical theory
that emphasizes benevolence. For Dewey, benevolence becomes a deliber-
ate conscious aim only in situations where it is not at work in the every-
day direct relationships among people, for example, in caring relation-
ships within the family and among friends. An adequate moral life is not
lived by making some kind of happy compromise between concern for
ourselves and an abstract concern for others. These are really secondary to
a direct personal interest in particular others and the relationships one
shares with them.
How far are we capable of extending our selves beyond our immediate
and intimate relationships? Does the ideal of the wider self entail that the
wider our concern the better, regardless of how weak are the connections
one establishes? Dewey recognizes that our interest in others varies de-
pending on the intimacy of the relationship. Hence ‘‘it would be mere
pretense to suppose that one can be as much interested in those at a
distance with whom one has little contact as in those in whom one is in
constant communication’’ (LW 7:257). Moreover, Dewey claims that the
strength and intimacy of our relationships is as important as how inclusive
our concern is or how many relationships we have. The extent (scope) of
our relations and their depth (strength) are two distinguishable but
equally important factors that determine the quality of one’s present expe-
rience. ‘‘An activity has meaning in the degree in which it establishes and
acknowledges variety and intimacy of connections’’ (MW 14:202, my em-
phasis). This is why Dewey stresses in moral education the importance of
fostering the conditions for widening and deepening the experience of
≤∞∑
children. The deepening and expansion of one’s relationships can be con-

flicting goals. The self that overreaches takes the risk of sacrificing depth in
her relationships. For Dewey, the ideal moral self can strike a balance.
Strong ties in our close relationships, as well as extending our interest
beyond them by means of habits of social imagination (including sympa-
thy and openness), are necessary in order to have a wide, rich, and mean-
ingful landscape upon which to inquire and act.
The self lives through and by social relations. This has significant
implications for how an ethics should formulate its normative prescrip-
tions and hypotheses. An account of Dewey’s ideal character would be
incomplete if it left out the kind of relationship and community it as-
sumes. Dewey’s ideal character has to be envisioned in the context of an
ideal net of interactions that Dewey qualified as democratic. Hence, the
appeal to communication, community, and even way of life is necessary
for a fuller picture of Dewey’s view.
≤∞∏
t w e lv e
Democracy as the Ideal Moral Community
The deepest source of happiness in life comes to one, I suppose, from

one’s own family relations; and there too, though I have experienced
great sorrows, I can truly say that in my life companion, in my children,
and in my grandchildren, I have been blessed by the circumstances and
fortunes of life.∞
No formulation of Dewey’s ideal moral life is complete without address-

ing his views about democracy. Moreover, his views about democracy are
incomplete and subject to misunderstanding, oversimplification, and
underappreciation without an adequate understanding of his ethical
thought. I plan here to bring Dewey’s ethical thought to bear on his views
about democracy.
One could characterize the ideal moral community as one in which
people have the type of character that I presented in the last chapter. This
would be true but insu≈cient, and perhaps misleading. It could suggest
that the notion of a community is the sum of individuals prior to their
associations. For Dewey, the quality of our character, and the quality
of our associations, may be distinguished but they cannot be separated.
≤∞π
Dewey’s concern with character is thus a means and end to the task of
enriching the quality of associations, and both are integral to the more
inclusive goal of ameliorating the quality of present experience. Whereas
in the previous chapter I articulated some of the traits of character needed
for an ideal moral community, in this chapter I am concerned with the
kind of community and communication that is required for an ideal
character to flourish.
Democracy as Experience
It is well known that Dewey objected to the customary but narrow view of
democracy as a political mechanism, and preferred that we shift our atten-
tion to democracy as a way of life or as a form of moral association. But
what does this shift really mean? Most commentators are content to add a
moral dimension to Dewey’s ideal, but ignore the importance of experi-
ence, and in particular, his views of moral experience. My claim is that if
one takes Dewey’s views on democracy as integral to his ethical thought,
then one has to attribute to him a more radical and richer view of democ-
racy than is usually done.
The impoverished quality of present moral experience was the under-
lying concern behind Dewey’s democratic vision. This is the context that
gives Dewey’s ideal its plausibility and function. In fact, the relevance of
Dewey’s ideal today can be attributed to the fact that our society still
su√ers from the same generic ailments that prevent us from having a
better quality of shared experience. When Dewey is read today he sounds
prophetic, for he mentions fragmentation, a lack of unity and variety, a
heterogeneity that leads to isolation, a homogeneity that stifles, polariza-
tion, absolutism, drudgery, relativism, drifting, suppression, consumer-
ism, triviality, superficiality, blind impulse, and impersonality as present
threats to the spirit of democracy. Dewey was a philosopher concerned
more with the problems of a society that is democratic in form, but not in
spirit, rather than with the theoretical problems of democratic theory.
A complete diagnosis of why the current ways of living, even in a soci-
ety that calls itself democratic, are unfulfilling must be pursued on many
fronts. Dewey addressed multiple fronts, including the economic, socio-
logical, and political dimensions of the problems of his era. He warned us
that the hope of a democratic culture could be corrupted by a growing
money culture that subordinates the quality of the present process of living
to some future quantifiable product or end. This is a culture in which the
emphasized value is market value, the only freedom it procures is an
economic one, and the only virtues it encourages are those associated with
≤∞∫
democracy as the ideal moral community
financial entrepreneurship and competition. Dewey was also concerned

about how rapid changes in technology and the means of communication
threatened traditional beliefs and strained the quality of our everyday
interactions with each other. ‘‘Changes in domestic, economic, and po-
litical relations have brought about a serious loosening of the social ties
which hold people together in definite and readily recognizable relations’’
(LW 7:233).
Dewey’s discontent with present conditions did not lead him to a
simplistic diagnosis of a truly complex array of interrelated problems. His
role as a philosopher was instead to criticize the dualisms that continue to
a√ect the ways we approach these problems and the narrow notions of
democracy that do not allow us to envision better possibilities.
In this problematic social environment, the notion of democracy as a
mere political mechanism that safeguards individual rights, or as a system
of open and inclusive elections, seems inadequate because it fails to ad-
dress how the impoverished character of our experience is tied to our
everyday interactions. Improvement of the political machinery and pro-
tection of constitutional rights are good things, but how do they recon-
struct the ties that have been strained by contemporary conditions? Why
does aimless obedience to custom, force, or propaganda predominate in
some political democracies? In other words, democracy, conceived strictly
as a political system, is compatible with an unaesthetic and unintelligent
way of life in which there are no strong communal bonds and the people
are not really free to lead their own lives. The generic ailments of a society
that considers itself democratic in form, but which still lacks a democratic
spirit, are more telling of a deeper meaning of democracy.
The presence in democratic societies of detached and lonely individ-
uals, and whole groups that conform to the mob spirit, are not for Dewey
evidence against democracy. Instead, they are the reason why we must
reconstruct the ideal of democracy. Legal and formal guarantees of free-
dom and equality for isolated individuals do not guarantee a more demo-
cratic experience. A philosophy of democracy must also turn its attention
to habit, character, interaction, communication, and the qualitative di-
mension of situations. It must take as its starting and end points the
present lived process and the struggle for democracy. Democracy as expe-
rience means that the primary and ultimate test of democracy as an ideal is
the amelioration of presently experienced problems. It also means that
democracy strives to have certain enriching and meaningful experiences.
Democracy must be conceived as a complex array of transactions where
each individual has a high quality of shared experiences; where, for in-
stance, others are spontaneously and directly experienced in a certain way.
≤∞Ω
The tendency toward extremes of a society that wants to be demo-

cratic is not, from Dewey’s standpoint, surprising. It is rooted in tensions
present in the very nature of experience. Democracy is, for Dewey, par-
tially a proposal about how to deal with these tensions. It is about how to
preserve order, unity, and stability while recognizing uncertainty, change,
individuality, and pluralism. This is not just the challenge of democracy,
but also the challenge of how to live in a world with those generic traits; in
other words, when democracy is understood in the context of Dewey’s
ethics, it becomes an answer to the perennial issue of how one should live.
Recall how Dewey redefined this issue. Although the quality of present
experience is not totally within our control, how we engage life usually is.
The uniqueness of situations precludes universalism and situation-specific
prescriptions by philosophers, although one can inquire into better and
worse general methods. Hence, democracy as an ideal is not a blueprint of
the good life, or a set of norms (e.g., for an ideal communication), but it is
a set of instrumental proposals about how to engage in life in light of its
generic traits. To be sure, democracy is an ideal about how best to elect a
government. However, to appreciate the deeper possibilities of democracy,
we must extend its meaning to include how to make collective decisions,
how to treat and experience others, how to communicate, how to confront
problems and disagreement, how groups must interact, how to engage in
rituals, and how to attend to experience in general.
Dewey’s ideal of democracy thickens the general description of the
ideal way of participating in experience that I have been discussing, one
that is intelligent and aesthetic. It is a task or process that requires the
creative integration in a community of opposing tendencies, traits, and
general values that are hard to maintain in a balance. To demonstrate this,
I will consider the specific interactions that are essential to democracy
and, whenever possible, highlight the particular tensions that must be
balanced and the particular extremes to which it is susceptible. Dewey’s
conception of balance is critical to understanding his democratic vision.
Democracy as the Balance between

Individuality and Interdependence
Democracy is based upon the possibility that the values associated with
individuality can coexist in a tensile balance with those associated with
community. This tension is part of the very nature of things. In all of
experience, tendencies toward solidarity coexist with tendencies toward
di√erentiation. ‘‘Human nature, like other forms of life, tends to di√eren-
tiation, and this moves in the direction of the distinctively individual, . . . it
≤≤≠
also tends toward combination, association’’ (LW 13:77–78). Let’s consider

the specific values on each side of this tension beginning with those associ-
ated with individuality.
positive freedom
In the ideal democratic community there is an environment of free

thought, information, and discussion. It is free insofar as everyone is not
prevented from participating and expressing themselves. This freedom
from interference, or ‘‘negative freedom’’≤ as it is called, rules out cen-
sorship, suppression, or any type of restraint by an external authority or
privileged minority. Although this freedom is necessary, it is not su≈cient
for a democracy. Dewey criticizes traditional liberalism for assuming only
this narrow view of freedom, and he provides a historical and a meta-
physical diagnosis of this mistake.
Historically, it is understandable how liberty became synonymous
with the absence of restriction at a time when the elimination of the
repressive external force of government on individuals and societies was
paramount. Metaphysically, the narrow view of freedom rested on an
erroneous conception of the individual. Philosophical defenders of liber-
alism assume that individuals come to the world atomistically and already
endowed with positive capacities ‘‘which then proceeds to unroll as a ball
of yarn may be unwound’’ (LW 14:103). On this view, all that is required to
actualize individual freedom is the removal of external obstacles for the
unwinding to occur and the protection of the individual from the de-
mands of association. In Dewey’s metaphysics, nothing has inherent po-
tentialities independent of its context and relation with other things. The
development of potentialities is not an unfolding of what previously ex-
isted; they are rather called out through interaction and cannot be known
beforehand. Therefore, association, far from being a threat to individual
freedom, is its very condition. Some forms of association are educative
and empowering to individuals, others are not. Positive freedom is the
capacity of an individual to carry out a course of action; it is accomplished
by creating certain habits in a particular social environment, but it is not
something with which we are born.
Negative liberty is a precondition for positive freedom. External con-
straints that do not let individuals work out for themselves the solutions to
problematic situations are not conducive to adequate habit formation and
empowerment. But merely leaving one alone is not su≈cient to produce
individuals in a community who are capable of self-government, or at
least not the sort implied by the notion that truly democratic individuals
≤≤∞
exercise individual responsibility, initiative, and independence of judg-

ment. Democracy requires the creation of the conditions that nurture
individuals who are equipped with the executive and intellectual habits I
discussed in the previous chapter. It requires, for example, citizens with
the habits of critical intelligence as the means to self-government. What
good is my negative freedom to do and consume when I am unable to
intelligently reflect and choose? Democracy requires more than the capac-
ity to go to the mall and choose between varieties of goods.
The distinction between negative and positive freedom has more po-
tency, and is closer to Dewey’s intent, when it is understood in terms of the
quality of public discourse in a democracy. As he said, ‘‘the conceptions
and shibboleths which are traditionally associated with the idea of democ-
racy take on veridical and directive meaning only when they are construed
as marks and traits of an association which realizes the defining charac-
teristics of a community’’ (LW 2:329).
When one compares democratic and authoritarian methods, one
might characterize the di√erence as one between discussion and violent
imposition of views. Dewey insisted that we need to think of democracy as
more than free, untrammeled discussion. ‘‘I would not minimize the ad-
vance scored in substitution of methods of discussion and conference for
the method of arbitrary rule. But the better is too often the enemy of the
still better’’ (LW 11:50). Communication where there is positive freedom
and learning is better than one that functions merely as a ‘‘safety valve’’
(LW 7:361) where everyone can talk but no one is listening. For Dewey,
mere communication is insu≈cient, and nothing less than intelligent dis-
cussion by individuals with positive freedom should be our ideal.
Dewey was concerned about the consequences of limiting the concep-
tion of democratic communication to mere negative freedom of speech
largely because of the growth of unprecedented forces of technology, pro-
paganda, and commercialism. A community without censorship may still
be controlled by a few who can rely on propaganda and entertainment to
pacify the public.
We seem to be approaching a state of government by hired promoters of

opinion called publicity agents. But the more serious enemy is deeply
concealed in hidden entrenchments. Emotional habituations and intel-
lectual habitudes on the part of the mass of men create the conditions of
which the exploiters of sentiment and opinion only take advantage.
(LW 2:341)
This problem is not resolved simply by getting rid of the few that
control opinion. A useful way to understand this condition today is by
≤≤≤
contrasting Orwell’s prophecy with that of Huxley. Those who champion

negative freedom for a democracy may be content with the fact that there
is no Big Brother in the form of a government, corporation, or group that
controls the minds of the people through the primary means of com-
munication. In contrast, Huxley envisions a society without Big Brother
yet which is nevertheless impotent to direct its own destiny because an
insatiable appetite for amusement and consumerism enslaves it. There are
many who believe that Huxley’s dystopia is much like our situation in
America today. Neil Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death, and Ronald
Collins and David Skover in The Death of Discourse have argued that the
quality of public discourse has deteriorated because of our highly con-
sumerist, television-centered culture. In a Deweyan fashion they attribute
the problem partly to a constricted understanding of the freedoms pro-
tected by the First Amendment. Collins and Skover conclude that
triumphantly, America has survived 1984 and is less fearful of Orwell’s

dark determinism. But our Orwellian perspective hinders us from fo-
cusing on an equally menacing and more realistic threat to the First
Amendment—the evil identified in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.≥
Dewey anticipated the Huxleyan evil, and diagnosed the problem

in terms of positive freedom and inquiry in public discourse. For him,
communication does not become public, democratic, or even discursive
merely by releasing the powers that may control it, or by allowing maxi-
mum freedom of expression. What good is a society where everyone is
allowed to speak but no one is listening and genuinely learning from each
other? As Cornel West has recently claimed, ‘‘The major problem [today]
is not the vociferous shouting from one camp to the other; rather it is that
many have given up even being heard.’’∂ What good is a society where no
one is prevented from participating, but where no one bothers to, where
one can be a citizen, but no one cares to be? Can the public govern itself, or
even have a sense of its own identity, if everyone only cares about the
freedom to consume? From a Deweyan perspective it is disturbing that we
continue to associate democracy with negative freedom provided by our
means of communication. This problem is clear in discussions about
cyberspace as the new hope for democracy. This hope seems justified
when it is compared to television as a public medium. However, this may
be one of those cases where ‘‘the better is . . . the enemy of the still better’’
(LW 11:50). I am afraid that most of the hope, enthusiasm, and defenses
of this medium are based on a narrow view of democracy. Jon Katz, for
example, says,
≤≤≥
the online world is the freest community in American life. Its members
can do things considered unacceptable elsewhere in our culture. They
can curse freely, challenge the existence of god, explore their sexuality
nearly at will, talk to radical thinkers from all over the world. They can
even commit verbal treason.∑
There is no doubt that the Internet, as a technology, has facilitated nega-

tive freedom. The fact that we now have a medium by which it is possible
to have instant, unfiltered information and communication while avoid-
ing Big Brother would be celebrated by Dewey as a step in the democratic
direction. But if cyberspace is to become a democratic space, or a tool for
democratic citizenship, it must become a lot more than a place where free
information is exchanged. Without this Deweyan criticism of our new
means of communication we may fall into the sort of complacency that
Dewey thought was endemic to democratic progress.
Rights-based views of democracy assume that freedom is an end-in-
itself, something that is valuable and to which one is inherently entitled.
For Dewey, freedom is a means as well as an end. It is one of the necessary
conditions for the sort of meaningful engagement that we should strive
for in a democracy. It is only when you have a certain amount of freedom
that there can be genuine learning, enrichment, and responsibility. Legal
and formal guarantees of freedom by institutions amount to nothing if in
the everyday classroom and workplace, rules are imposed on individuals
that constrain their creativity and interest in participating.
e q ua l i t y
There are quantitative and legalistic notions of equality that Dewey criti-
cizes as formal or narrow. They are a consequence of the same assumptions
made by visions of democracy centered only on negative freedom. If a
community was composed of atomistic individuals, each with inherent
potentialities requiring the same obstruction-free conditions for develop-
ment, then equality of opportunity would only require the removal of
these same external conditions. On this view, equality also means that at
the very core of every self, in spite of our di√erences, we are all made up of
the same substance. For utilitarians and for those who hold views that cen-
ter on human rights as an original possession, equality means sameness.
Historically, these views are reactions to aristocratic ones that claimed that
some individuals are inherently superior to others. In Dewey’s alternative
view, equality negates fixed hierarchical inequalities while maintaining the
reality of irreducible di√erences among actual individuals.
Dewey’s understanding of equality is based on the uniqueness of each
≤≤∂
person and means that every one in a community can appreciate every
other one beyond a comparative and quantitative scale–type judgment. So
understood, equality does not mean that beyond our classifications and
plurality of identities everyone is alike. Instead, it means that beyond them
there is something irreducible and incommensurable about everyone.
Equality means ‘‘e√ective regard for whatever is distinctive and unique in
each, irrespective of physical and psychological inequalities’’ (MW 12:329–
30). And further: ‘‘Moral equality means incommensurability, the inap-
plicability of common and quantitative standards’’ (MW 13:299).
A community with Dewey’s ideal of equality does not homogenize,
since it takes di√erences as unavoidable and irreducible. Diversity is cele-
brated not just at the level of social groups but at the level of individuals.
Pluralism in Dewey goes all the way down. This appreciation of individu-
ality is a social good. It tends to improve the quality of communications
and relationships. Equality is more than an empty slogan when it operates
as the assumption that no one has an inherent privilege in communica-
tion or can be reduced to the group, class, or culture he or she represents.
Each participant has something unique to contribute and to gain from
participation. William James and John Dewey hoped that the denial of a
privileged universal standpoint by anyone would lead to an appreciation
of the particular and unique location each of us inhabits in experience.
James said: ‘‘Hands o√: neither the whole of truth nor the whole of good is
revealed to any single observer, although each observer gains a partial
superiority of insight from the peculiar position in which he stands. Even
prisons and sick-rooms have their special revelations.’’∏ And equality as
uniqueness must not only be recognized, it must be fostered. A commu-
nity nurtures its own means of improvement when it makes it possible for
everyone to develop their own unique voice. This is more than allowing
everyone to speak.
The shift from democracy as a political system to democracy as experi-
ence means that there is more to equality than legal and institutional
guarantees. It has to go beyond judging others according to some impartial
standard. Equality is an abstract name for something that can be qualita-
tively and directly experienced in our relations with others. We must
appreciate others as individuals who have grown out of unique conditions
and transactions, and also as having unique possibilities for future growth
and development. Democratic respect is not only about how we treat
others (a doing) but also about how we experience them (an undergoing).
It is, in e√ect, the most generous experience we can have of others. In our
deliberations and judgments of others we must be as sensitive as possible to
their unique circumstances. This is the key to democratic generosity.
≤≤∑
Traditional liberalism assumes that individuals can be ‘‘split up into a

number of isolated and independent powers, all of which can be com-
pared, one by one, with like powers of others so as to determine their
equality’’ (LW 7:335). But this abstraction neglects the context of concrete
individuals. We cannot really determine what is due to someone, and
whether her freedom is furthered or interfered with, unless we consider
the wholeness and uniqueness of her character, environment, and rela-
tions with others. Dewey does not deny that, to some extent, we all share
the same general and minimal conditions for individual development
(e.g., a minimal education), but he stressed that these conditions may
change and, more importantly, inquiry about this issue must be as sensi-
tive as possible to the uniqueness and wholeness of each individual. This
sensitivity is the more fundamental meaning of equality for Dewey, and it
is part of the general sensitivity to context of his ethics.
Is this understanding of equality not a very di≈cult requirement for
us to live up to, even if we wanted to? Some of the apparent unreasonable-
ness of this demand may disappear if we think of this requirement in
terms of degrees, instead of an all-or-nothing a√air. An ideal is, after all,
‘‘the tendency and movement of some thing which exists carried to its
final limit’’ (LW 2:328). In many situations, it may be practically impos-
sible to consider everyone in the context of their unique circumstances,
but this does not mean that we must not try, nor that we should instead
rely on some quantitative notion of equality. To resort, for example, to a
utilitarian calculation, where everyone is in some abstract sense the same,
is to betray the spirit of democracy.
The foundations of democratic respect are, for Dewey, a certain way
of experiencing everything, not an exclusive and abstract regard for hu-
man rights or justice that is independent of nature. For the truly demo-
cratic character, ‘‘every existence deserving the name of existence has
something unique and irreplaceable about it’’ (MW 11:51). Since each
‘‘speaks for itself and demands consideration on its own behalf ’’ it ‘‘must
be reckoned with on its own account’’ (MW 11:52). This is the sort of
natural piety that Dewey hoped for as a consequence of abolishing hier-
archical ways of looking at the world. Instead, philosophy has replaced
these hierarchical views with democratic visions that rest on an atomistic
individualism that absolutizes every human individual as having rights,
and that set humans apart from other animals in nature. Needless to say,
Dewey’s vision points to an ecological democracy with consequences for
environmental ethics.π
This general sensitivity to individuality that Dewey thought ideal has
to be contrasted with the customary way we experience the world. Our
≤≤∏
habitual ways of experiencing and judging individuals in our society is

‘‘not as individuals but as creatures of a class’’ (MW 13:295). Uniqueness is
a trait of experience, a fact often overlooked by us in our eagerness and
practical need to classify, label, and quantify the world. Many of us live in
cities where the kind of superficial undergoing we have of others is recog-
nition rather than perception. Dewey explains the di√erence:
In recognition there is a beginning of an act of perception. But this

beginning is not allowed to serve the development of a full perception of
the thing recognized. It is arrested at the point where it will serve some
other purpose, as we recognize a man on the street in order to greet or
avoid him, not as to see him for the sake of seeing what is there. In
recognition we fall back, as upon a stereotype, upon some previously
formed scheme. Some detail or arrangement of details serves as cue for
bare identification. (LW 10:58–59)
When most of our day is consumed in routine and mechanical rela-

tions, and when even the most intimate of our relations is taken for
granted, there is the sort of stable comfort—a lack of tension—that does
not arouse a vivid consciousness of the other. But when perception re-
places recognition, we experience others in a pregnant sense. Dewey said,
‘‘even a dog that barks and wags his tail joyously on seeing his master
return is more fully alive in his reception of his friend than is a human
being who is content with mere recognition’’ (LW 10:59). Perception, just
as openness, is an active receptivity that makes a significant di√erence in
the quality of our relationships. The point of these distinctions is that
there are degrees in the quality of our transactions that a√ect how we
judge and listen to others. A deeper, fuller receptivity of the other may also
require the sensitivity Dewey called sympathy, an ability to assume, and
not merely infer, the standpoint of the other. As a political system, democ-
racy does not address the issue of how we should experience each other.
And legal guarantees of equality, however important and necessary, are no
substitute for equality as something that is spontaneously felt in a particu-
lar social environment.
f r at e r n i t y
James Gouinlock is not exaggerating when he makes the following claim
about Dewey: ‘‘It would be hard to find a philosopher (I think, in fact, that
there is none) who identified a more profound value in the experience of
intimately associated life.’’∫ This may lead some today to label Dewey a
communitarian, but that word fails to capture the uniqueness of his vi-
≤≤π
sion. In particular, it misses the importance of what is local and direct

in Dewey’s political philosophy. One consequence of an empirical philos-
ophy—one that begins and ends in primary experience—is that ‘‘the local
is the ultimate universal, and as near an absolute as exists’’ (LW 2:369). It is
the quality of the most direct and intimate interactions that is the key to
democracy.
I am inclined to believe that the heart and final guarantee of democracy
is in free gatherings of neighbors on the street corner . . . , and in
gatherings of friends in the living rooms of houses and apartments.
(LW 14:227)
This is advice on method and a warning against taking community too

broadly and abstractly. It is a warning against taking the usual abstractions
about democratic society as antecedent to the unique, direct, and qualita-
tive relations people hold with each other in situations. It would be more
accurate to say that a democratic society is one that is composed of demo-
cratic associations than to say that a democratic association is one that
exists because of a democratic society. ‘‘Democracy is a form of gov-
ernment only because it is a form of moral and spiritual association’’
(EW 1:240). Therefore, pragmatist ethics and politics, rather than being
communitarian, are interactionary or based on an ethics of democratic
relationships.
Local relationships are both the means and the end of democracy.
They are the means by which the democratic character is formed. The
ideal is to have characters competent to participate in the comprehension
and intelligent control of indirect consequences of the larger society. But
this competence can only be developed in the context of a local commu-
nity. It is also through local and personal ties that our sense of duty
and loyalty emerge. Dewey attributes contemporary moral laxity to the
loosening of these ties rather than to a failure to adhere to absolutes.
‘‘In countless ways the customary loyalties that once held men together
and made them aware of their reciprocal obligations have been sapped’’
(LW 7:234). The truth of this diagnosis demands that any solution involves
a revitalization of our relationships. We live in an individualistic society
where individuals are generally more ready to claim their rights than to
acknowledge their obligations. Instead of pretending to ameliorate the
problem by appealing to the direct inculcation of abstract moral rules and
virtues, or a universal sense of duty, Dewey suggests that we find ways to
‘‘develop new stable relationships in society out of which duties and loy-
alties will naturally grow’’ (LW 7:234).
Dewey pleaded for the revitalization of local associations as a condi-
≤≤∫
tion for the ‘‘Great Community’’ (LW 2:327). Does this mean that he
conceived of local communities as a means to a great one? Furthermore,
how can society on a mass scale ever be a community in any meaningful
sense of the word? The United States, for instance, is simply too big and
diverse to create the sort of community that Dewey hoped for. What is
possible on a small scale may not be on a larger one. These are important
challenges, but they misconstrue what Dewey meant.
Dewey was keenly aware of the limitations posed by size and distance
in relationships. He said, ‘‘The Great Community, in the sense of free
and full communication, is conceivable. But it can never possess all the
qualities that mark a local community. . . . Vital and thorough attachments
are bred only in the intimacy of an intercourse which is of necessity
restricted in range’’ (LW 2:367). Nevertheless, he believed that we are
capable of extending our selves beyond our immediate and intimate rela-
tionships, as in his notion of the wider self, but he never addressed the
issue of how far. But is this a problem for his view? Why must he specify in
advance how far the precious qualities found in the local can be extended
beyond its boundaries? Why is it not su≈cient to say that we must extend
ourselves as far as we possibly can?
Even if Dewey’s Great Community is only conceivable, this is hardly
an excuse for failing to try to extend to whatever degree possible at least a
generic sense of ‘‘we’’, that is, of social unity or communal experience.
Indeed, this seems necessary to have even the weakest form of community
needed for democracy. In order for a pluralistic, scattered, and mobile
public to take charge by regulating the indirect consequences of local
interactions, individuals must extend the reach of their sense of ‘‘we’’
beyond their local group; in other words, one must first experience their
identity as that of the people. This does not mean, however, that we should
expect the Great Community to have the same depth in its a√ective ties as
the local ones; rather, the distinct ‘‘we-ness’’ of the local is irreplaceable.
A further problem with this last objection is that it assumes that the
democratic task is an approximation to a certain ultimate or grandiose
state of a√airs—for example, the Great Community—and that a failure to
obtain it means a failure of the overall task. In Dewey’s ethics, the em-
phasis is, however, on the process. There are no promises about ultimate
outcomes. Whether or not there will ever be such a society is not the
ultimate concern. We must keep striving for it, understanding that a final
realization of that goal is not the point. If it were, we’d surely give up. Our
ideals are nothing more than ends-in-view that can help us improve pres-
ent experience.
A rebuttal to the objection may be that we cannot even speak mean-
≤≤Ω
ingfully of a wider sense of ‘‘we’’ in any degree beyond the local. But
whether it can or cannot be done is an empirical issue, that is, of having or
not having the ‘‘we’’ experience. It is clear that Dewey thought that a sense
of ‘‘we’’ could be expanded well beyond our immediate community. In
fact, he even makes reference to the possibility of experiencing oneself as a
citizen of nature. Works of art and our communal bonds can elicit the
religious feeling or quality of belonging to the ‘‘larger, all-inclusive, whole
which is the universe in which we live. . . . This whole is then felt as an
expansion of ourselves [that] we are citizens of this vast world beyond
ourselves’’ (LW 10:199). To become aware of our continuities not only with
others but also with nature had, for Dewey, religious quality. But experi-
encing this sort of natural piety does not require an equal intimacy or
concern for everyone in a Great Community, or that this bigger associa-
tion should be our sole end. It may well be that instead of seeking these
experiences in what is remote and bigger they ‘‘can be found only in the
vital, steady, and deep relationships which are present only in immediate
community’’ (LW 2:368–69). In other words, it is through and by the local
that I can acquire this sense of connection with what is beyond it.
Democracy, just as with the experimental method, must grow out of
but continue to return to what is local. The consequences of e√ective
social reform at the broadest level should be measured ultimately by the
e√ects upon the quality of the experience of individual, concrete relation-
ships. Social institutions should be judged according to the degree to
which they do or do not foster exploitative relationships, and whether
they contributed to the development and qualitative enhancement of as-
sociated living.
Democracy must grow from within, that is, from what is local, spon-
taneous, voluntary, and direct. This includes the neighborhood, family,
classroom, workplace, and grass-roots movements. We may not know
beforehand if the process of democratization can reach as far as the pres-
ent and impersonal political, economic, and intellectual relations of the
wider society, but we must avoid sacrificing the quality of what is had
locally merely for the sake of reach. Our previous discussion about the
ideal wider self made it clear that Dewey is not one to make this sort of
compromise, at least as part of the ideal. The di≈cult balancing task is to
improve our present experience with further depth and intimacy, while
enhancing variety and reach without sacrificing one for the other. This is a
di√erent ideal than that of trying to achieve community on a broad na-
tional scale by any means.
Dewey’s emphasis on the local is not without di≈culties. He often
referred to this as ‘‘face to face intercourse’’ (LW 2:367), but this seems
≤≥≠
outdated and nostalgic today, when people form friendships over the
Internet. The notion of the local needs to be reconstructed in a way that
preserves Dewey’s insight. The functional distinction that Dewey stresses
is between local versus non-local relationships. From a methodological
and metaphysical perspective, the pivotal point of reference of what is
local in Dewey’s philosophy should be clear. The location in which and
from which I live is always a situation. From this shifting place, I philoso-
phize and eat cereal, but it is also where I have di√erent relationships.
Some of them are closer or more distant than others, but there is an
ambiguity about how this is understood. Even if one could make the case
that physical approximation and bodily interaction make relationships
closer and in some ways better, there is no necessary correlation. The dif-
ficulties with using face-to-face interactions as the paradigm are avoided if
we instead contrast our personal relations with our more impersonal and
formal ones.
Dewey’s point is that democracy as a political system stresses these
latter relationships too often, and therefore narrows the time and the
places where democracy is relevant. It puts the emphasis on political
activity performed only every four years (by voting) instead of something
that needs to be worked at every day through our everyday interaction
with each other in contexts such as the classroom, the workplace, and the
living room. Dewey believes that ultimately the most important relation-
ships in our lives are the personal ones.
More has to be done to clear up these conceptual distinctions. Dewey
can be criticized for failing to make some subtle distinctions in his demo-
cratic vision. It is not clear, for example, that the word community is
helpful. Between family and friends, which are usually the most local and
intimate, and our relations with remote groups and institutions, there are
many voluntary groups that vary in size. Today we speak of community of
interest, communities of professionals, and Internet communities. Are
these all communities? Where are we supposed to locate them in the
continuum between friends and the society at large?
Is Dewey guilty of underemphasizing the importance of the wider,
more indirect impersonal associations that we form as membership of a
larger society? Dewey knew that too much emphasis on personal associa-
tions is an excess to be avoided, for it could result in neglect of the wider
social relations and political decisions which might then eventually a√ect
our most personal and direct associations. He was not especially con-
cerned about this possibility simply because he did not perceive this as the
most present danger to American society. However, it is the responsibility
of followers of Dewey to ponder whether things have changed enough to
≤≥∞
prompt concern about a di√erent extreme than Dewey did. Nevertheless,

democratic reconstruction starts for Dewey where we are in the midst of a
web of local relations, and may extend as far as we can reach.
Dewey assumes that the sort of communal loyalty and civic-mind-
edness needed in a democracy can emerge as a natural outgrowth of
strengthening and nurturing local ties. Is this correct, or is it a problematic
generalization that may only apply to certain places or cultures? In places
like Latin America and Italy, personal relationships are emphasized, but
if anything they tend to work against the civic-mindedness needed in a
democracy. In a recent study, Seymour Lipset and Gabriel Lenz claim that
many of the cultures found high on the scale of corruption are also places
that value strong family bonds.Ω In these cultures, loyalty to family,
friends, and groups seems to work against any loyalty to the wider com-
munity and a sense of civic responsibility. Even if these cultures could
achieve a wider experience of the ‘‘we,’’ they would still lack the dutiful
sense of social consciousness that civic-mindedness seems to entail. What
is missing is not openness, tolerance, or inclusivity but a general sense that
there are certain things one must do as a citizen for the anonymous,
generalized other. For some reason, some cultures have this problem more
acutely than others. I am suggesting that, in his e√ort to emphasize what
was missing in his own society, Dewey may have overestimated the impor-
tance of certain things and taken for granted others as conditions for the
sort of interaction needed in a democracy. Nevertheless, his contextualism
is a good safeguard against prescriptions about democracy that do not
take into account deep cultural and historical di√erences among people.
Democracy as Communication with Aesthetic Quality

A community is created through participation and interaction in com-
mon rituals and practices. In a democratic community, these rituals and
practices provide an order and stability that is not rigid or oppressive to
individuality. The participation of individuals is aesthetic and not me-
chanically imposed. Dewey hoped that a certain quality of discussion
experienced in local associations could be encouraged and extended to
other areas of life.
The optimal sort of communication can be described as intelligent in
order to emphasize the role of inquiry in controlling the direction of the
discussion, but communication must also have an aesthetic quality. There
must be a balance between activity and receptivity that steers between
extremes. The licentious classroom environment, where each student says
what he or she feels but ‘‘without paying much attention to what another
≤≥≤
is saying,’’ or without any sensitivity or receptivity to ‘‘the limits imposed

either by the subject matter or the input of others,’’∞≠ is one extreme.
The communication may be free and between equals, but fails to be the
full transaction that can make the process educative, enriching, and self-
regulative. Communication is full whenever it is reciprocal, a genuine
transaction where everyone involved is a√ected by the process. Letting
every voice speak is good but it is much better when everyone is listening
in a wholehearted manner where learning and sharing occurs. Genuine
listening, especially to those who speak against our beliefs, does more on
behalf of participatory democracy than voting. The strength of full trans-
actions and receptivity in communication is a matter of degree. At one
end of the ideal is a classroom where students in the process of discussion
mutually modify not only their thinking but their whole selves.
Much has been made of cooperation to describe Dewey’s conception
of democratic deliberation,∞∞ but there are cooperative discussions that
can fall short of the ideal envisioned by him. Compromise and bargaining
are cooperative processes but they do not represent the highest possibili-
ties in human association. In negotiation, the end of the discussion is to
get concessions and consensus from each side. Each must be willing to give
some ground to the other, but at the end of the discussion there may not
be a significant change in the participants or their views. Taking a part in a
discussion where we imaginatively enter into the experience of the other
requires more than that we meet each other halfway. What we want is a
deeper interaction. It is a truism that in a democracy, conflict is resolved
by discussion, yet there is a di√erence between mere bargaining and the
sort of discussion where members reexamine their values and interest in
light of all others.∞≤ In a community of inquiry, there is more than the
taking, adding, or subtracting of viewpoints to reach some decision; it is
not a zero-sum game. Ideally there is a transformation of the views that
came into the dialogue.
In procuring freedom of communication, democracy makes itself
vulnerable to the dangers of becoming unruly and capricious. But for
Dewey, the solution is not to gravitate to an equally undesirable extreme.
It is easy to react to the possibility of a permissive or unrestrained class-
room by creating a constricted one where interaction is totally controlled
by pre-established goals (such as standardized content) or the orders of a
teacher; on this model, students are merely passive recipients of informa-
tion. The results are also unaesthetic: in a classroom environment where
discussion is routine and mechanical, drudgery predominates. To be sure,
creating this sort of extreme does not require an external force (like the
teacher or Big Brother) that controls the discussion. A discussion with
≤≥≥
excess receptivity (undergoing) can be one where there is much following

but little initiative, spontaneity, reformulation, criticism, and power of
judgment (i.e., positive freedom). A classroom where the teacher is a
tyrant is as bad as one where the students are nothing more than passive
recipients of information with a singular external interest in grades, be-
cause in both there is no chance to have an aesthetic discussion. This is
also the danger in a society where everyone is a consumer but no one a
citizen. In improving the quality of discourse, it is tempting to shift be-
tween extremes because doing so is much easier than facing the challenges
posed by the democratic ideal.
Dualisms often get in the way of imagining how the freedom, playful-
ness, and spontaneity of our best discussions can be reconciled with con-
trol, order, and direction. Indeed, what seems puzzling to many about
democracy is that it is unclear what can control the direction of discussion
where freedom of expression is allowed and encouraged, and claims to in-
herent authority are denied. Dewey argued against such skepticism by ap-
pealing to our ordinary experience. We would have more faith in demo-
cratic discussion if we paid attention to how many of our ordinary free
discussions actually unfold. In them, just as in moral deliberation, the
present qualitative process guides its direction, that is, the control comes
from within the discussion. Consider our best moments in a classroom dis-
cussion. They are not the ones that are mechanical and controlled by objec-
tives or particular individuals. Rather, they are the ones where no one in
particular controls the discussion because control comes from everyone at-
tending to the subject matter and to what others say as the process unfolds.
The dialogue develops through the mutual modification of the original
contributions of its participants. The same thing happens to a sensitive
artist in her interaction with materials. However free her interaction is,
there are limits imposed by the subject matter she is trying to transform,
and this is what serves to control and direct the process of production.
What the conditions and obstacles are for having the optimal sort of
communication is a complex issue that Dewey hoped we would never stop
discussing. The freeness and fullness of communication needed in democ-
racy is not possible when there is intolerance, marginalization, fragmenta-
tion, polarization, and segregation. Racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, and
all ‘‘barriers that divide human beings into sets and cliques, into an-
tagonistic sects and factions’’ (LW 14:227) remain culprits in today’s en-
vironment. Dewey writes that every way of life ‘‘that fails in its democracy
limits the contacts, the exchanges, the communications, the interactions
by which experience is steadied while it is also enlarged and enriched’’
(LW 14:230).
≤≥∂
Whatever social and political reforms we need for free and full com-
munication, it is clear that we also require wider selves with the comple-
mentary virtues presented in previous chapters. To rely on some explicitly
formulated rules may sometimes be necessary, but this is a sign of a failure
to habitually experience each other in a more significant way. Communi-
cation is free when tolerance is a central virtue among individuals, but it is
not full unless there are also the receptive dispositions of openness and
sympathy. This last virtue plays an important function.
Sympathy is responsible for the sort of deliberation where partici-
pants take the roles of speaker and listener. It is only when individuals in
communication are able to emotionally and imaginatively take the role of
the other, and be willing to be a√ected by it, that significant learning and
shared experience occurs. What is precious and distinctive about demo-
cratic communication, as George Herbert Mead and Dewey conceived it,
is that the common experience is not based on sameness. As Mead put it:
‘‘A di√erence of functions does not preclude a common experience; it is
possible for the individual to put himself in the place of the other although
his function is di√erent.’’∞≥ The idea that we cannot understand or com-
municate with each other at a deeper level unless we are the same, or that
communication is better when di√erence is removed, is simply false. As an
ideal, democracy is the possibility that individuality and di√erence can
flourish and meet in common experience.
The role of openness in a democratic communication should be ob-
vious. A community of people who are merely tolerant but not open-
minded has built up internal barriers to the fullness of discussion. They
may be able to compromise and bargain, but will not learn from each
other. Democracy requires more than letting others have their say; it also
requires a certain kind of vulnerable but committed participation in a
constant dialogue. Genuine undergoing requires the kind of openness and
receptivity that may a√ect who we are. This is not easy. ‘‘It involves recon-
struction which may be painful’’ (LW 10:48). It takes courage to have a
willingness to be a√ected in this way. This is very di√erent from paying lip
service to others doing their own thing when we are already convinced
that there is nothing important to be learned from them. One must habit-
ually listen with care to the concerns of even those who oppose one’s
views. This is a standard by which we may judge today’s cyberspace com-
munications. Insofar as the Internet as a medium gives the power to
individuals to communicate with like-minded individuals, it is a tool that
can be used against democracy. Communication between parties where
each has as the primordial goal the validation of what they already believe
is superficial (i.e., not full), unfruitful, and dull.
≤≥∑
Character is something that is formed in the context of local commu-

nications, but the process of communication must not be conceived as a
mere means to virtue or any predetermined goal. When people communi-
cate solely in order to solve their problems, or to reach consensus, or for
the sake of democracy as a remote end, they risk turning that discussion
into drudgery. More important, they miss something that Dewey thinks is
unique and precious: the present and the intrinsic enjoyment of sharing.
In Dewey’s view of participatory democracy, just as in his ethics, the
emphasis is on the quality of the present process. Ideal communication is
both fertile and immediately enjoyable; it is neither mere work nor mere
play. Communication may or may not come to something, but when it is
immediately meaningful, it is more likely to be productive in terms of
future e≈cacy than when it is not. ‘‘When the instrumental and final
functions of communication live together in experience, there exist an in-
telligence which is the method and reward of the common life, and a soci-
ety worthy to command a√ection, admiration, and loyalty’’ (LW 1:160).
Dewey’s strong emphasis on the quality of communication and on
shared experience does not imply a sacrifice of individuality. Dewey’s
communitarian values are based on the hope of ‘‘enlarging and deepening
the range of our individuality’’ (LW 17:322). In democracy, the values we
routinely separate are in fact interdependent. The liberation and apprecia-
tion of individuality (equality and liberty) are done in and through associa-
tions (fraternity), but the improvement of these associations is dependent
on the voluntary nature and power of judgment of all its individuals as well.
Only when individuals have initiative, independence of judgment, flexi-

bility, fullness of experience, can they act so as to enrich the lives of
others and only in this way can a truly common welfare be built up.
(LW 7:348)
This is not the view that there is a pre-established harmony between these
values, but it does presuppose that there is no dualism that precludes
possible degrees of harmonization. It is based on the possibility that the
values that are associated with individuality can co-exist in a tensive bal-
ance with those associated with community.
Democracy as the Celebration of

Continuities and Di√erences
Democracy is a task that can be metaphorically described as a process of
balancing centripetal with centrifugal forces. Local communities must be
sustained by loyalty and solidarity while also remaining receptive to the
≤≥∏
continuities within the larger context of a pluralistic society. Moreover,

there must be a balancing act that allows di√erences, diversity, pluralism,
and independence to flourish while also celebrating and building com-
monalities, unity, continuities, and interdependence. This is the act of
balancing needed to widen and deepen everyday experience.
The di≈culty of this proposal, even in the most favorable of condi-
tions, should be obvious. Overemphasis on di√erences has a centripetal
e√ect, one that leads to isolation, exclusivity, and divisiveness. This unbal-
anced response is supported by atomistic ways of conceiving the world
which deny that relations and continuities are fully real. This can take the
form of the atomistic individualism that Dewey criticized, or of today’s
cultural atomism. Let’s consider the latter for the purposes of illustration.
Cultural atomism is the assumption that cultures are pure, discrete,
and singular wholes. It is a view that is sometimes assumed in debates
about multiculturalism. Insofar as multiculturalism is a move away from
monistic and hierarchical ways of conceiving the status of cultural di√er-
ences in our society, it is well intended. The problem, however, is that in its
extreme forms, it assumes a pluralistic ideal that is also separatist. Accord-
ing to such views, protecting, sheltering, and separating all cultures pre-
serve a multicultural society. Each culture is incommensurable and en-
titled (as if by right) to be protected and left alone. This is the best we can
hope for on such views because any other alternative may produce a
society where the larger group obliterates the culture of small groups, or
where all cultural di√erences are homogenized. Is this true?
Contextualism dictates that one must be open to the possibility that,
in a particular time and place, these are the only options. One must not
ignore political and historical realities. A defensive provincialism, ethno-
centrism, or protectionism on the part of certain groups may well be the
only adequate response in a particular situation. But Dewey would not see
this as ideal or the best we can hope for. The best we can hope for is a
society composed of an indefinite variety of cultures whose free and full
interactions enrich the lives of all. This equality of cultural interchange is
an ideal that goes well beyond mere cultural tolerance.
When the only competing ideals are that we are either all the same or
radically di√erent, there is usually an assumed metaphysics that denies
the reality of continuities. An empirical philosophy, on the other hand,
recognizes that similarities and di√erences coexist in the continuum of
experience. One cannot appreciate di√erences without also appreciating
similarities. Moreover, identity and di√erence are functional rather than
ontological designations. For some purposes, I must ignore the di√erences
among groups or cultures; for others I must a≈rm them. This does not
≤≥π
mean that they are arbitrary or artificial, but only that they are not radical
or fixed. The pluralist-separatist has chosen to select—exaggerate, in fact—
the di√erences between groups and ignore their continuities. This is an
instance of the fallacy of selective emphasis. However, the obliteration or
denial of such di√erences is not the only alternative to their overemphasis.
Both overemphasis and denial are extreme stances toward di√erence, and
both are mistaken. The mistaken denial of di√erence, for example, is
evident in the sort of universalism that denies di√erences by postulating a
human essence, or in the ideal of melting all of our di√erences together.
When di√erences are exaggerated and not conceived as a matter of de-
gree they contribute to isolation, exclusivity, and (possibly) racism.∞∂
The democratic ideal entails that we should transform di√erences from
sources of friction to sources of enrichment. And for this we need to
develop characters with suitable dispositions (e.g., open-mindedness and
sympathy) that welcome and are nurtured by what is experienced as new
and di√erent.
Di√erences and continuities each have di√erent functions in an ideal
community. Individuals and groups should be encouraged to be di√erent
because this contributes to the whole. It adds the variety needed to work
against both boredom and an atmosphere of suppression. General unifor-
mity or homogeneity produces stability but one that leads to fixity and
mechanical interaction. On the other hand, a celebration of diversity that
forbids interaction, sympathy, the making of connections, and the explo-
ration of commonalities seems to rule out any basis for a sense of ‘‘we.’’ It
is also a waste of resources since only in interaction are potentialities
discovered and developed. We can avoid separatism and homogeneity by
maintaining a balance between emphasizing our di√erences and our con-
tinuities. A pluralistic community that incorporates this in its daily com-
munication nurtures itself with di√erences and change, and at the same
time experiences a common life. The stability procured is rhythmic and
developing. It has the dynamic variation within balance that for Dewey
characterizes great works of art.
In general, one of the most di≈cult balancing acts in a democracy is
to know when and in what proportion di√erences among individuals or
groups obstruct democratic communication. Deficiency and excess in, for
example, social di√erences such as economic class and knowledge tend to
a√ect the quality of communication. Insu≈cient variety often results in
stagnation, homogeneity, and a lack of creative tension in the relation-
ships. But too much variety or too many di√erences can also undermine
the possibility of having mutually enriching democratic communication.
It may result in an undesirable power relation where it is impossible to
≤≥∫
imaginatively take the standpoint of the other, as occurs, for example,

when large economic or class di√erences exist.
As a good contextualist, Dewey does not tell us precisely when and in
what proportion di√erences are detrimental to democracy. But the lack of
specificity should not prevent us from appreciating how distinctive his
approach is to problems related to gaps in knowledge and economics in a
democracy. These problems are evaluated in terms of how di√erences may
a√ect the quality of the concrete relations among individuals in com-
munication, rather than in terms of rights. A Deweyan approach can
appropriate rights talk but only as a tool to e√ect societal and political
changes that would ameliorate our concrete relationships.∞∑
Dewey welcomes knowledge-related di√erences among people and he
is aware of the need for experts. There is, of course, the provision that
everyone in a democracy possess minimal knowledge and thinking skills to
be a participatory citizen and to exercise positive freedom. Nevertheless,
there is a di≈culty that Dewey did not address. It is because of the knowl-
edge gap between experts and clients that clients are vulnerable to exploita-
tion and that communication can easily deteriorate. Even if everyone was
equipped with the habits needed to be critical of experts, we must ulti-
mately rely on trust in democratic communication. The expert must be
worthy of trust and the client must be willing to trust. Trust is what democ-
ratizes communication and other practices. This is a democratic virtue
absent in Dewey’s moral and political writings that he should have stressed.
That he assumes it as integral to the democratic way of living is clear in the
following passage: ‘‘Merely legal guarantees of the civil liberties of free
belief, free expression, free assembly are of little avail if in daily life free-
dom of communication, the give and take of ideas, facts, experiences, is
choked by mutual suspicion’’ (LW 14:228). Dewey should have considered
how di≈cult it is to extend this virtue beyond the local level. It is the
sort of di≈culty that can make people skeptical about the prospects for
democracy.
Democracy as the Intelligent Community

Intelligence for Dewey is not a faculty, but a general way of interacting by
which a social organism develops the means within experience to inform
and guide ongoing experience. The intelligent self can be described in
terms of having certain habits, but the corresponding intelligent commu-
nity is best characterized in terms of the predominance of a certain type of
communication: one that comes to decisions and judgments guided by
inquiry.
≤≥Ω
Dewey’s qualification of democracy as intelligent serves as a point of

contrast with communities that, for example, relied merely on authority,
tradition, impulse (caprice), or imitation as methods for addressing prob-
lems and regulating and directing its own a√airs and decisions. But, more
importantly, it allows him to distinguish his view from other conceptions
of democracy. Democracy must be more than a collective consensus by
majority rule or the mere counting of votes. This last procedure, if re-
quired in democracy, must be the culmination of a process of inquiry
where participants may change their views at any time in light of new
evidence and arguments. The quality of this process or method is more im-
portant than reaching any preconceived result. ‘‘The question of method
to be used in judging existing customs and policies proposed is of greater
moral significance than the particular conclusion reached in connection
with any one controversy’’ (LW 7:338).
Dewey thought that intelligent inquiry, although exemplified in the
sciences, had yet to penetrate into the ways we handle matters in religion,
politics, and morals. This is why in many of his texts and essays about
religion, politics, and morals, he promotes rather than articulates his
conception of intelligence. This is regrettable since readers of his ethics
not acquainted with his logic are left without the more systematic and
formal bases of the method Dewey called intelligence. Meanwhile, those
acquainted only with his writings in logic and epistemology may be left
without a clear idea of how intelligence is actually operative or embodied
in the process of making moral and political decisions. To bridge this gap,
one must keep in mind that the context of the process of inquiry presented
in the Logic is not the mind but a situation where there is a dialogue with
the world and others. The pattern, forms, operations, and propositions of
Dewey’s logic are theoretical abstractions from intelligence as a concrete
inquirential process where there is concomitant communication among
individuals equipped with certain habits (virtues). Dewey explicates the
common patterns of successful inquiry more systematically than he does
the common traits of good communication (or of the ideal community),
but there is no doubt that the former presupposes the latter.∞∏ Among the
habits or general attitudes presupposed by inquiry are sensitivity to con-
text (i.e., to the indeterminate situation), a genuine disposition to listen
and learn from others (openness), and a general willingness to let experi-
ence decide. Communication where these attitudes are present has a dif-
ferent quality than communication that is merely the confrontation of
ideologies or an attempt to compromise regardless of how much tolerance
is exhibited. Dewey occasionally chooses scientific discourse as exemplify-
ing some of the habits and general qualities he wished would become part
≤∂≠
of public discourse. But artistic communication is also a model. In music,

for example, listening to each other and to the subject matter, experiment-
ing, cooperating, and thereby learning are crucial traits of the interaction
between musicians.
I have contrasted intelligence as method with reliance upon caprice,
prejudice, or authority but there are more subtle ways in which much of
public discourse today fails to be intelligent from Dewey’s point of view.
Take, for example, the requirement of sensitivity to context. This means
that communication must be regulated and guided by the specific and
unique problem that brought the parties into dialogue. To set up an
antecedent end to the process, even one as vague and as desirable as
reaching a consensus, is to risk failing to guide the analysis, construction
of hypotheses, and possible solutions by attention to and care for the
specific situation.
A community of inquiry that is not centered and guided by the unique
problem at hand usually deteriorates into a mere conflict of ideologies
without the fullness of interaction required for learning. Moreover, this
leads to an oversimplification of concrete social problems and often to
faulty solutions. For Dewey, one of the most important threats to intel-
ligent, context-sensitive communication in a democracy is the opposition
between individualism and collectivism in attending to problems.
The ideological opposition between individualism and collectivism in
social matters has a long history. Political theorists who focus on individ-
ual natural rights and the notion of negative freedom are suspicious of all
collective action for it tends toward regimentation, mechanical and mass
uniformity, censorship, and suppression. Collectivists, for their part, con-
sider collective organized action as the source of all that is good and civil
in nature. Both views assume an untenable dualism between the individ-
ual and the social but, more importantly, they share the same dogmatic
approach to problems. For the individualist, social organization (govern-
ment) is at best a necessary evil and it tends to be oppressive. Therefore,
social problems are analyzed in terms of how individual initiative, free-
dom, incentives, and independence have been suppressed by some collec-
tive action or organization. The collectivist, on the other hand, tends to
analyze problems in terms of the disintegration and instability created by a
rampant individualism that has undermined social order or communal
bonds. Depending on who represents the status quo in this debate, one
accuses the other of the present problems but neither one cares to examine
situations on their own merits. Hence, Dewey refers to them as dangerous
opposing doctrines that seem to exempt us from the responsibility and
hard work of ameliorating social problems in light of their contextual
≤∂∞
uniqueness. ‘‘The person who holds the doctrine of ‘individualism’ or

‘collectivism’ has his program determined for him in advance’’ (LW 2:361).
These opposed camps or schools of thought would be of only histori-
cal interest if they did not continue to this day. But these oppositions
persist and are exemplified in the way many liberals and communitarians
analyze and seek solutions to concrete problems. This is not the place to
assess this ongoing debate, but I trust that what has been said is su≈cient
to make anyone suspicious of e√orts to interpret Dewey as belonging to
either camp.∞π Instead, Dewey was simply a contextualist who, however
much he cherished community, avoided prejudicing the communal over
the individual good. For the same reasons, I would also resist characteriz-
ing Dewey as a socialist. Dewey was a contextualist democrat. Even if he
may have sided during his time in favor of a more socialized economy, his
approach to means and problem-solving is a radical, non-partisan con-
textualism. Every question regarding what should be socialized or other-
wise left to be solved by market forces must be considered on its own
merits. Dewey was clear about this:
We have to consider the probable consequences of any proposed mea-

sure with reference to the situation, as it exists at some definite time and
place in which it is to apply. There cannot be any universal rule laid
down, for example, regarding the respective scope of private and public
action. (LW 7:336)
Being a contextualist about the appropriate means to democratize our

experience is not an easy position to hold in today’s political climate.
Consider the implications. It may require that we resolve one problem by
market means and another through government intervention, or even
that we treat the same problem di√erently at di√erent times. Such an
approach by a politician would probably be perceived as a sign of in-
decision or lack of character. Nowadays, political integrity is identified
with standing by one’s ideological and pre-conceived way of dealing with a
problem. Granted, insofar as both seem flexible, a genuine contextualist
politician may at times be di≈cult to distinguish from one who operates
capriciously, but for Dewey there is a profound di√erence in method and
result.
Sensitivity to context presupposes that democratic communication
must take experience as its guide. Aristocratic and hierarchical ideals oper-
ate under the assumption that guidance, standards, and solutions must
come down either from outside or from above the ordinary communica-
tions we hold about the problems we share. ‘‘Every other form of moral
and social faith rests upon the idea that experience must be subjected at
≤∂≤
some point or other to some form of external control; to some authority

alleged to exist outside the process of experience’’ (LW 14:229).
In democratic communication, no one has an a priori or absolute
authority, but not all points of view are equally valid. If the expert or
professional is granted more authority in some aspect of everyday life, it is
only because of her accumulated experience and not because of some
inherent authority. Her credibility is always open to question and revision.
The ideal is for decisions and problems to be addressed by engaging in a
process of inquiry where everyone has implicitly agreed to let experience
decide, and they have therefore agreed to remain equally vulnerable to the
lessons or authority of experience.
To accept experience as the authority is to believe in the self-su≈ciency
and potentialities of communal inquiry. In other words, in a democratic
community the control and direction of a discussion comes from within
itself as it unfolds. ‘‘The final issue of empirical method is whether the
guide and standard of beliefs and conduct lies within or without the
sharable situations of life’’ (LW 1:391). But this should not be confused with
the sort of relativism that proclaims that there is no authority beyond our
language, culture, conceptual scheme, or human consensus. Communal
inquiry is devoted to making ourselves answerable to the world, to how
things really are, to follow the evidence wherever it leads and not just to find
out what the majority wants. This is an aspiration beyond consensus or the
reinforcement of one’s ethnocentric beliefs, but not one beyond experi-
ence. A view of reality as a world in the making with humans as participants
does not entail that we can make reality what we wish. On the contrary, ‘‘it
will indeed recognize that there is in things a grain against which we cannot
successfully go’’ (MW 11:50).
Dewey’s robust view of public discourse is what allows him to insulate
himself from the traditional objection that democracy can be nothing
more than the tyranny of the majority. For it is through inquiry that
individuals in a democracy can be heard and can criticize the judgments
made by a majority. Dewey thought it was imperative to ‘‘create the condi-
tions which will enable the minority by use of communication and per-
suasion to become a majority’’ (LW 7:362). In any case, he thought that the
fear of the tyranny of the majority in democracy had been exaggerated.
‘‘The world has su√ered more from leaders and authorities than from the
masses’’ (LW 2:365). For him the real culprit most of the time is a powerful
minority that suppresses a majority who stands by passively (e.g., as mere
consumers) and permits it to occur. Hence, he stresses the importance of
educating the general public to be both active and critical.
But is the majority capable of such high-quality public discourse and
≤∂≥
activism? Are the people capable of good judgment? If it is impossible to

raise the quality of public discourse of the masses then we might as well let
an intelligent elite rule. Dewey worried about this sort of objection to
democracy, which was raised by Plato, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Walter
Lippman. Dewey was not naïve and he recognized that the ignorance, bias,
and levity of the masses are liabilities for democracy. But for him the
actual limitations of the people at any given time and place are not fixed by
nature or fate. This may not be satisfactory to those skeptics who claim
that democracy has built-in features that militate against achievement of
the ideal. It lends itself to widespread manipulation of mass opinion by
political and financial elites. This debate may and should continue, but it
certainly reveals Dewey’s deep faith in the intelligence of the people once
proper conditions are provided. This generous belief in the possibilities of
everyone as a human being irrespective of race, color, sex, or class is basic
to the democratic faith. Dewey explains what is required: ‘‘Generosity in
judgment of others as distinct from narrowness is largely a matter of
estimating what they can grow into instead of judging them on the basis of
what conditions have so far made of them’’ (LW 7:348).
Democracy and the Balance between

the Stable and the Precarious
In Dewey’s metaphysics, tendencies toward association and continuity are
usually the source of stability, while tendencies to di√erentiation and
individuality are the source of novelty and the precarious. There is thus an
even broader way to characterize the democratic way of life. The demo-
cratic community is one that is able to maintain, in its everyday trans-
actions, a productive balance between the stable and the more precarious
aspects of experience. This is also a consequence of its intelligence or
reliance on the experimental method. For it is the sort of community that,
although it relies on the stabilities inherited from the past (tradition,
habits, precedent, institutions, etc.), is also ready to engage in criticism
and is receptive to new conditions.
Dewey’s democratic community allows for moral rebels, but main-
tains ‘‘a presumption in favor of principles that have had a long career in
the past and that have been endorsed by men of insight’’ (LW 7:330). It is
because a principle may no longer be valid and may need to be revised that
a democratic community must allow moral rebels. ‘‘Some persons per-
secuted as moral rebels in one period have been hailed as moral heroes at a
later time’’ (LW 7:230). Of course, the sort of moral rebel that Dewey
≤∂∂
imagines is one who genuinely cares about morality and has the virtues
integral to communal inquiry and learning. In other words, he must be
open and willing to accept that the burden of proof is upon him. Dewey
explains,
In asserting the rightfulness of his own judgment of what is obligatory,

he is implicitly putting forth a social claim, something therefore to be
tested and confirmed by further trial by others. He therefore recognizes
that when he protests he is liable to su√er the consequences that result
from his protesting; he will strive with patience and cheerfulness to
convince others. (LW 7:231)
On the other hand, Dewey is fully aware that one of the problems with
developing a democracy is that ‘‘the majority is always hostile to permit-
ting a minority to develop ideas which are opposed to its own’’ (LW 7:362);
therefore, ‘‘If patience, cheerfulness, freedom from conceit, self-display
and self-pity are demanded of the moral non-conformist, there is a cor-
relative duty imposed upon conformists: namely the duty of toleration’’
(LW 7:231). For Dewey, the continued vitality of communal inquiry re-
quires a ‘‘creative tension’’∞∫ between its participants, rather than the har-
mony that comes from the consensus of homogeneity. This tension may
require a diversification of the functions or roles among the participants.
The function of the conservative is to stand on precedent or on what
is generally accepted, whereas the radical is more critical and open to
change; but what brings everyone together is the ‘‘positive willingness to
permit reflection and inquiry, to go in the faith that the truly right will
be rendered more secure through questioning and discussion’’ (LW 7:231).
Moreover, one could generalize and claim that the important function of
the individual in communal inquiry is usually to provide the novelty
and experimentation, while communal bonds provide the needed stabil-
ity. As James once said: ‘‘The community stagnates without the impulse
of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the
community.’’∞Ω
The rigidity and solidity of a community that is not open to change
usually results either in maintaining the stability by repression and con-
finement that ultimately does not work, or it leads eventually to such a
violent enthusiasm for the new as to encourage complete rupture from
previous experience. To maintain a community that is both faithful to
tradition and experimentation is a never-ending challenge. For new expe-
riences that result from open and wide communication are often per-
ceived as a threat to the traditional beliefs and accepted code that form the
≤∂∑
basis of a community’s stability. On the other hand, a community that

cherishes change and experimentation often perceives tradition as a threat
to creativity and freedom, or as the source of stagnation.
The sort of community Dewey endorsed must be enthusiastic and
hopeful about inquiry. But this also makes it vulnerable to overconfidence
and naïve optimism. An overly optimistic quest for control leads to disillu-
sionment and a passive pessimism in a universe where ‘‘when all is said and
done, the fundamentally hazardous character of the world is not seriously
modified, much less eliminated’’ (LW 1:45). There is no certain way to
avoid this vulnerability except by maintaining a deep sense of the tragic.
The democratic community cherishes stability and control, but this must
be balanced by an appreciation of the precarious character of life. Dewey’s
criticism of traditional ethics is based on the hope that more people would
come to appreciate incommensurability, disagreement, risk, and uncer-
tainty as features that are at the very heart of morality and not as mere
appearances or products of human ignorance. The readiness to ameliorate
life through the use of our best resources (tools and funded experience)
needs to be balanced out by a keen sense of the ambiguities and novelties of
the world that are beyond our control, even with all of our hard facts and
predictive methodologies. ‘‘Because it recognizes that contingency cooper-
ates with intelligence in the realization of every plan, even the one most
carefully and wisely thought out, it will avoid conceit and intellectual
arrogance’’ (MW 11:51). This is the basis of democratic humility that con-
trasts with the self-assurance and arrogance of aristocracy. For Dewey it
was humility, not pride, that was needed for democracy. When the values
of democracy are used arrogantly by a leader or a nation to express superi-
ority and self-su≈ciency, it betrays the very spirit of democracy.
Pride and conceit in its many manifestations (e.g., of the learned, the
wealthy, of those with status, or of those who profess a special connection
with a spiritual world or the good) usually leads to isolation, exclusivity,
and divisiveness. Democratic humility presupposes equality in that no
matter what our di√erences in merit and achievement are, we are all
subject to the precarious. The sense that we are dependent and living in
the same precarious context can reinforce the experience of shared life
and interdependence that is key to democracy. ‘‘A sense of common par-
ticipation in the inevitable uncertainties of existence would be coeval with
a sense of common e√ort and shared destiny’’ (LW 4:246). For Dewey, the
highest achievement of this experience of interdependence takes on a
religious quality. ‘‘Whether or not we are, save in some metaphorical
sense, all brothers, we are at least all in the same boat traversing the
≤∂∏
same turbulent ocean. The potential religious significance of this fact

is infinite’’ (LW 9:56).
Democracy as a Task
If believing in democracy is just a matter of accepting some theory, then it
seems as if the inherent tensions projected in the ideal of democracy
present a serious challenge to its reasonableness. John Patrick Diggins
observes that ‘‘democracy is too full of tensions and contradictions to be
subsumed under logical formulas . . . if there is a logic to democracy, it is
the logic of contradiction.’’≤≠ But Dewey stressed that part of what is meant
by calling democracy a moral ideal is that it is an endeavor, part of a
program of work, rather than a theory or something already given and
ready-made.
Democracy as a way of life means that one takes on the task of work-
ing out and ameliorating actual tensions that are integral to democracy’s
ideal in concrete and particular situations; it is not a matter of proving its
coherence or validity at the abstract level of ideas. In a democracy we want
things that, although necessary for meaning and quality of life, do not
automatically reinforce each other. History does not prove the futility of
our democratic hopes, but it does teach us that the built-in values of
democracy contain tensions that are not easily reconciled. Dewey ex-
plains, for example,
that there is no automatic criterion of liberty and fraternity with each

other. How can fraternal relations be secured without putting individual
freedom under restraint? History proves also that liberty and equality do
not automatically tend to generate and support one another. (LW 7:349)
Indeed, the situation of a community where tendencies toward solidarity

coexist with tendencies toward di√erentiation is tense and continuously
challenging. How can a community that celebrates agreement and shared
experience also encourage disagreement, individuality, and diversity? How
do we encourage openness while preserving loyalty to tradition; how do we
encourage both work and a spirit of play, both action and receptivity? How
much freedom should we give up for the sake of more order and security?
These are some of the never-ending challenges posed by democracy. But
with Dewey’s account of balance in place, we know that the challenge is not
met by trying to dissolve all tension; rather, to live in democracy is to learn
to embrace conflict and tension.
≤∂π
The di≈culty of the democratic endeavor lies in the fact that the risk
of imbalances is constant as new conditions require adjustments. Balance
is not guaranteed by the simple addition or subtraction of the elements in
tension. Moreover, the values that are supposed to be balanced are not
antecedently given. We have seen that freedom and equality, for instance,
require appropriate conditions and concerted e√ort for their emergence.
Democracy as a task also means that, beyond merely theorizing about
the coherence or philosophical foundations of the ideal, intellectual work
is needed to spell out what contemporary problems it entails in light of
present conditions. This is why Dewey insists that democracy as an ideal
‘‘poses, rather than solves’’ (LW 7:350) problems. For example, what con-
ditions are needed at a particular time to sustain a stable community
capable of readjusting or reexamining the habits and principles inherited
from previous experience? Although this must be left to a specific inquiry
of the particular case, one can speculate about some general conditions. It
seems necessary to have in the community the proper means to pass along
and reinforce the valuable habits, traditions, and lessons of experience.
Hence, communal bonds and rituals must be strong. On the other hand,
for a community to remain experimental and self-corrective, it must not
take any policy as final nor exclude anyone’s interest from continued
consideration. It would be the kind of community that secures a flexible
readjustment of its institutions and rituals, not for change’s own sake, but
because change is inevitable and the demand for remaking old habits and
institutions is recurrent. This presupposes the operation of some of the
virtues I have outlined.
Another problem posed by democracy as an ideal is how we achieve,
in light of present conditions, a way of life where there is an organic and
nurturing relation between all individuals and the social wholes (relation-
ships, institutions) to which they belong. Dewey describes this as ‘‘a postu-
late in the sense of a demand to be realized: That each individual shall have
the opportunity for release, expression, fulfillment, of his distinctive ca-
pacities, and that the outcome shall further the establishment of a fund of
shared values’’ (LW 7:350). There are no easy formulas or guarantees that
we can get close to the balance described. Neither is this something to be
achieved once and for all, nor is this the point of the endeavor. Working
for balance requires the constant meeting and solving of new and unfore-
seen problems in particular situations. Even if all goes well in a democracy,
we cannot rely solely on our past accomplishments because ‘‘the condi-
tions and the concrete significance of liberty, of equality, of mutual re-
spect, and reciprocal service, change from generation to generation, in
some degree from year to year’’ (LW 7:350).
≤∂∫
Dewey diagnosed many problems that he believed were undermining

the democratic ideal during his time; these included distrust of govern-
ment, indi√erence, corruption, control of the public by propaganda and
entertainment, a system of formal education that does not cultivate demo-
cratic habits, economic inequalities, and the present ‘‘walls of privilege
and of monopolistic possession’’ (LW 7:348) that do not permit individ-
uals to develop and contribute to society. These same general problems are
still with us, but in di√erent form or manifestation.
Democracy as a task means that one must never stop identifying the
structural obstacles to democracy, but also that one must always con-
front and attempt to dismantle these obstacles. This requires interdisci-
plinary research and on-the-ground activity. This is one of the goals of
Public Agenda, a nonpartisan public opinion and citizen engagement
organization. It works with community-based organizations, school dis-
tricts, corporations, government o≈cials, and citizen-leaders to foster
substantive public engagement that produces civil, productive dialogue on
di≈cult issues of public importance. The public intellectuals in this orga-
nization, like Alison Kadlec and Will Friedman, are doing research and
experiments with new design principles for deliberative forums that may
help overcome the gridlock, divisiveness, and power relations that under-
mine meaningful democratic communication.≤∞
Is making the ideal our task something that contradicts the con-
textualist approach that is so crucial to Dewey’s method? Yes, but only if
we take ideals as ends-in-themselves, and not as means for present recon-
struction. The task is here and now. One has an end-in-view that points in
the direction in which we need to go; the point of the direction is not to
arrive at some final place, but to assist us in the journey. The ideal can do
much for us in terms of general guidance and inspiration, but it says
nothing about what must be done for a particular case. For example, there
are times and places where more unity, solidarity, and tradition may be the
intelligent response; at others times more pluralism, individualism, and
openness might help. One can have this sensitivity to context (practical
wisdom) while holding that highly uniform societies and highly indi-
vidualistic societies are usually undesirable extremes. Recall also that bal-
ance for Dewey does not require that we aim at or even obtain a win-win
situation among the elements in tension. A balanced society may well be
more individualistic than community-oriented.
The recent wave of communitarianism and calls for civic respon-
sibility in American society can be interpreted as a reaction to the rampant
individualism that has a√ected us since Dewey’s times. These calls for
change would cease to be intelligent if they ignored context and set up a
≤∂Ω
universal and fixed ideal. By making community values the only and final
aim, we may fall into the opposite extreme. We tend to fall easily into
this pattern of compensation (i.e. alternating between extremes) because,
under the experience of an extreme, the contrary excess seems desirable.
Dewey hoped we could do better. We can try instead to maintain rhythmic
variation within a balanced relation to a particular context, where the
danger of extremes (because of tensions) is always present. This requires
that we become sensitive to imbalances and that we be willing to experi-
ment in trying to reconcile tendencies that seem to lead us in di√erent
directions. More importantly, even if we succeed in our endeavor, we must
be humble and accept the vulnerability of the balance to the contingencies
of experience. The easiest task and temptation is to take an extreme.
Extremes are appealing because they seem simple and final solutions to
problems that require persistence and context-sensitive reflection. Since
they are easily noticed, they seem to represent a position of strength. But
Dewey argues otherwise. It is when we live under an extreme that we are
the most vulnerable and when we are more likely to compensate by shift-
ing to the opposite extreme.
For the democratic task, we are going to need a lot of imagination,
especially since we are living in a time of cynicism with much ‘‘disillusion-
ment about all comprehensive and positive ideas’’ (LW 5:277). In order to
be able to envision the goals of freedom and equality in balance with
fraternity, we need to give up not only dualisms but also the competi-
tive market metaphors that underlie political rhetoric about freedom and
equality. One of these is the notion that the ideal society takes place in a
field where everyone has the same capacities and freedom to run a com-
petitive race. Westbrook has suggested that we should instead think of a
basketball team as the appropriate metaphor of the type of communal
association needed for democracy. For ‘‘the game calls upon players to
develop some common skills and virtues while at the same time specializ-
ing in some of each in accordance with individual talents and desires and
to coordinate these talents with other members of the team to advance
common goals.’’≤≤ I would suggest that an even better metaphor is jazz.
This is usually the sort of music where an organic relation between inter-
action, common goals, and individuality is cherished. It is the type of
music that often achieves a balance between stable elements (perhaps in
melody, harmonies, or rhythm) and more precarious ones (in experimen-
tation or improvisation). Here is how jazz pianist Brad Mehldau describes
what should happen in a jazz trio setting: ‘‘Improvisation takes place
not only in performance but in the way the band develops. There is a
≤∑≠
group decision perpetually taking place, a collective intelligence that wants

everyone to express themselves.’’≤≥
Dewey’s Ethics and Contemporary Political Theory

I warned the reader above that I have presented Dewey’s views about
democracy based on his ethics and overall philosophy, rather than in
contrast to current debates in democratic political theory. There is, how-
ever, a resurgence of interest in Dewey in democratic political theory, so I
must address some of the consequences of my inquiry for the present use
of Dewey’s philosophy in political theory.
Engaging Dewey in present debates in democratic political theory
without his ethics would count as a failure to confront the most funda-
mental and thought-provoking di√erences that confound present dia-
logue. Doing so would mean that we have not used Dewey’s thought in its
most productive way, for many of the current debates in political theory
center on issues that have to do with morality. We must make the assump-
tions about moral life explicit in order to determine where Dewey would
stand on these issues. To illustrate matters, I will consider two recent
issues. My aim here is not to fully analyze these issues, nor to assess the
pro√ered answers; at best, I want to use Dewey’s ethics as a way to suggest
some promising avenues for future inquiry as they bear on the problems
that concern political theorists today.
d e w e y a n d d e l i b e r at i v e d e m o c r a c y
In recent years, political theory and socio-political philosophy has experi-
enced what has been called a deliberative turn. Many of the members of
this movement have proclaimed John Dewey as a predecessor, an influ-
ence, or as a founding father of deliberative democracy.≤∂ There is no
doubt that deliberative democratic thinkers share with Dewey the concern
that the quality of deliberation in political democracies continues to dete-
riorate. Moreover, they share the concern that traditional liberal theory
has neglected the importance of public deliberation. Democracy is in need
of rehabilitation through an emphasis on a more robust notion of demo-
cratic deliberation. Communal deliberation and judgment can be more
than the aggregation of private preferences, or the competition among
fixed preferences and standpoints. Deliberative political theorists have
argued, as Dewey did, for the power of dialogue to transform the prefer-
ences and views of participants. However, in examining the recent deliber-
≤∑∞
ative turn in political theory, a Deweyan must be critical of the notion of

deliberation that is often assumed.
Iris Marion Young has recently argued that many deliberationists still
operate under a traditional rational and epistemic model of discourse:
an exchange of propositions, reasons, and arguments governed by rules
and reasoning.≤∑ This focus entails the exclusion of emotional-imaginative
methods and reasons that are not traditionally associated with rational
speech. This is problematic because it is a bias toward the mode of speech
of certain groups and it leaves out much that is essential to good delibera-
tion and communication.
This recent criticism of deliberative democracy, and the quest toward
a less restrictive notion of proper public deliberation, dovetails with Dew-
ey’s robust notion of deliberation and democracy, and is an alternative
worthy of consideration. As his ethics reveals, Dewey does not restrict
deliberation to argument and rational speech; instead, it is a qualita-
tive process and transaction that includes emotional and imaginative ele-
ments. The recent emphasis on deliberation is a good corrective against
narrow views of democracy, but political theorists must avoid the intellec-
tualist temptation that has plagued the history of philosophy: the reduc-
tion of experience to the cognitive realm. Furthermore, there is more to
democratic experience than democratic deliberation. How we experience
each other in our everyday local and direct interactions is something more
inclusive than how we talk and inquire together. Democratic discourse
takes place in the non-discursive context of our democratic relationships.
Hence, as important as public deliberation was for Dewey, the turn that he
hoped for in the philosophy of democracy was toward a view of democracy
as experience.
Dewey’s alternative conception of democratic deliberation is worth
reexamining and developing especially in light of the present threats and
obstacles that distort democratic deliberation. For instance, there are new
forms of emotional persuasion that are the consequence of the medium in
which dialogue in public life is had. We live in a world in which images
and other non-cognitive and non-verbal means preclude or guide inquiry.
The mass production and consumption of images that please and deceive
have taken center stage in public discourse. This non-propositional con-
tent is easily dismissed by rationalist deliberationists as irrational, psy-
chological, and beyond the realm of logic. This is the same sort of magi-
cal safeguard that Dewey criticized in philosophy: label something as
unreal or irrational and it will go away. A Deweyan view of public deliber-
ation is not as prone to this mistake because it holds that what is emo-
tional, qualitative, imaginative, non-cognitive, or non-verbal is an impor-
≤∑≤
tant aspect of any genuine process of deliberation. A Deweyan approach

would not pretend to repress what cannot be repressed. Dewey would be
skeptical that the solution to our problematic situation lies in a return to a
print-centered culture where propositions and their logical relation are
the means to truth and knowledge and are the main vehicles of public
deliberation.
Does Dewey, however, provide any practical advice about how to
avoid the dangers of a society where public discourse is susceptible to the
distortions of emotional appeals and manipulation? If one explicitly in-
cludes in democratic deliberation the non-propositional and emotional
factors, then how can we avoid all of the obvious dangers and evils that
come with that inclusion? The dangerous aspects of rhetoric and emo-
tional persuasion are more significant today than during Dewey’s time.
The problem with public discourse in America is that emotional reasons
and rhetoric are used to reduce the quality of collective intelligence. The
people are often swayed by irrelevancy, amusement, and fear. They are
seduced by images, propaganda, and demagoguery instead of by the force
of the better argument.
This is not the place to fully pursue a Deweyan response to these
serious contemporary challenges, for Dewey did not provide answers to
the problems that a√ect us today. There are, however, important lessons
from my reconstruction of Dewey’s ethics worth considering in any future
inquiry. For Dewey, good judgment and deliberation depend on the culti-
vation of habits. Encouraging certain virtues in a community is the best
way to prepare for particular collective decision making. The best way to
counteract the seductive lure of images, coercive rhetoric, wishful think-
ing, and appeals to fear is to work on the conditions required to encourage
individuals who have the capacity to be critical. Instilling virtuous traits is
the alternative to the imposition of proper rules or restrictions on public
discourse, and this is the reason why Dewey put so much faith in educa-
tion. This is the most democratic solution because defenses against the
anti-deliberative forces emerge from within democratic culture instead of
being something external to or imposed on particular situations and com-
munities. But is Dewey not just saying that we need to work on making
people more rational? Is making people more rational not just a new form
of rationalism? Dewey’s notion of the ideal character is, however, so inclu-
sive and so distant from the traditional use of the word ‘rational’ that even
‘intelligence’—the term he preferred—seems narrow and misleading, and
its use distracts from appreciating the uniqueness of his view.
According to Dewey’s view of the ideal character, we need more, not
fewer, emotional and imaginative habits to counteract the seduction of
≤∑≥
images and emotional appeals that distort inquiry. Pragmatists under-

stand the force of habits. The simple awareness of being emotionally
manipulated is insu≈cient to protect us from such manipulations. What
we need is the development of a character that is emotionally receptive to
doubt and that has a habitual passion for criticism. To counteract the
craving and comfort provided by absolutism and dualisms, we must learn
to habitually find some emotional zest and thrill in facing uncertainty and
contingency. One might even claim that, if we want to protect ourselves
from the seduction of images, we need to develop characters that can
negotiate and interact with more, not fewer, images. Visual literacy, com-
munication, and criticism may well have their own logic and the proper
place in the sort of education that is needed.
Proponents of deliberative democracy prefer to describe the ideal dia-
logue in terms of an exchange of reasons bounded by certain norms
and conditions. Some are concerned that this model yields an overly
formal normative vision of democracy. As Frank Cunningham notes,
‘‘deliberative-democratic theory may be seen to overcome the formalism
of liberal democracy: by introducing the idea of deliberation and its con-
ditions, substantive content for abstract democratic rights can be justified.
A question that poses itself is whether deliberative democracy might not
itself be too formal.’’≤∏
Dewey presents an alternative. To avoid the same sort of formalism
that is common in ethics, democratic theory should formulate its norma-
tive prescriptions in terms of certain types of relationships and habits,
rather than in terms of rules. If people are genuinely engaged in demo-
cratic deliberation, it is because they have certain habits and not because,
as Jürgen Habermas claims, they are committed to certain implicit rules of
discourse.≤π Virtues as embodied habits, or ways of interacting in a de-
liberative situation, are better than the mere following of rules in describ-
ing and capturing the spirit of democracy deliberation. Democratization
takes more than improving rules. We must, for example, be asking about
the proper imaginative and emotional capacities that are needed to have
more people take more seriously the standpoint, reasons, and beliefs of
others. The art of listening needed in a democracy is a matter of embodied
habits. Without a cadre of people with certain imaginative and emotional
capacities there is no hope for democracy.
Some recent deliberativists, like Robert Talisse, are moving away from
rules and reasons by proposing the importance of the ‘‘deliberative vir-
tues’’ as the intellectual habits that can ‘‘foster in the individual episte-
mically responsible habits of belief.’’≤∫ Talisse, in fact, joins Hilary Putnam
≤∑∂
and Cheryl Misak in proposing a pragmatic epistemic conception of de-

mocracy.≤Ω How well does this square with Dewey’s view? What points of
contention are worth exploring with these nominally pragmatist theories
of democracy? Dewey would be suspicious about the separation of episte-
mic virtues from moral virtues; the very integrity of our lived character
forbids such separation. Thus, for Dewey, the deliberative turn must be
more than an epistemic turn. Democracy is about much more than episte-
mology. There is more to democratic inquiry than the exchange of reasons
and arguments by thinkers with excellent epistemic habits.
d e w e y a n d t h e ‘‘o n e - v e r s u s - m a n y’’ d e b at e s
i n p o l i t i c a l t h e o ry
A fair and productive use of Dewey today must also keep a critical eye
on how many of the debates in political theory are centered on the same
false dichotomies that he criticized in his ethics. One such debate is that
between forms of individualism and collectivism, but there is also the
one-versus-many debate that has made its way into democratic theory
around two interdependent issues: how much unity do we actually find in
moral life? And, how much unity and pluralism can one be justified in
prescribing?
Ever since John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice it has become common to
adopt, as the starting point of democratic theory, the existence of compet-
ing visions of the good life. Many thinkers take this pluralism about the
good as a fact and as the starting point of democratic theory. As delibera-
tivists see it, the only normative task or challenge for democratic theory is
how to bring more unity in the form of a unified conception of public
reason, or an impartial standpoint upon which we can build some con-
sensus about legitimate reasons or rules. From the standpoint of these
pluralistic philosophers the concept of deliberation advanced by commu-
nitarians is suspect because the communitarians tend to assume a wide-
spread moral agreement or shared moral vision about the good that does
not exist. Communitarians take that kind of unity in moral life as a fact,
but for other philosophers what needs to be taken as a fact is a radical
pluralism among conceptions of the good. From Dewey’s perspective this
debate is based on serious misconceptions about moral life.
First, why is morality reduced to either a unified conception of the
good life or a homogenizing conception of right? Dewey would question
the tendency in political theory to oversimplify our moral life by sub-
suming or unifying it under one simple category. Just as in ethics, the
≤∑∑
only di√erence between political theories seems to be the single, over-

arching category to which their proponents believe normative issues can
be reduced. Notice how Talisse’s description of the contemporary political
scene resembles the debates between the good, duty, and virtue-centered
views in ethics that Dewey criticized. Talisse writes,
The liberal approach involves an analysis of competing rights claims and

a bracketing o√ of questions about the good. The communitarian ap-
proach subordinates concerns about individual rights to those of the
communal good. . . . The civic republican approach likewise places the
good prior to the right.≥≠
Second, Dewey would question the assumption that what is most

fundamental to morality and the source of moral judgments is a shared
moral framework. Why are moral conflicts or disagreements among peo-
ple reduced to competing comprehensive visions of the good? Is moral life
constituted by one or many moral conceptual schemes? Dewey would
question the empirical basis of this top-down view of moral experience.
Are shared conceptions of the good even part of anyone’s primary moral
experience, and if so, why does sharing a conception of the good entail
homogeneity in moral experience? This assumes the same view of judg-
ment and deliberation that Dewey criticized in his ethics. Homogeneity
follows only if it is assumed that people’s moral experience and judgments
are determined by a derivation from some unified moral code that pro-
vides the criteria of right and wrong. For Dewey, even if everyone in a
society had the exact ideal conception of the good, this does not mean that
there would be agreement about moral relevance and judgment in a par-
ticular situation. By Dewey’s lights, this is not what ideals usually do, and
we should not try to employ ideals in this way.
This last top-down view of moral life is also often accompanied in
political theory by what Jorge Valadez has called the ‘‘iron cage thesis.’’ The
iron cage thesis is the view that ‘‘when we try to understand a fundamen-
tally di√erent culture, we must rely exclusively on the conceptual resources
of our own worldview.’’≥∞ The result of the top-down and iron cage views is
the notion that the task of political theory is to have an answer to the
challenge of living in a multicultural world where there is conflict caused
by radically di√erent moral standards. If one as philosopher starts with the
fact of incommensurable moral conceptual schemes or conceptions of the
good that determine specific moral judgments, then the best we can hope
for is some overlapping consensus that is motivated by the practical goal
of peaceful coexistence. We just need to find a way to find some common
ground based on prudential reasons instead of moral ones. But this as-
≤∑∏
sumes that prudential reasons are inherently less controversial or more

rational. This comes very close to the Hobbesian idea that the basis for
tolerance is avoiding social instability or mutual destruction.≥≤
Dewey presents us with an alternative view because he has a di√erent
starting point. He would question whether starting with a large global
scenario of multicultural societies that are trying to deliberate is an em-
pirical starting point or an abstraction. There are situations in which one
is faced with incommensurable groups, but this does not explain why we
should favor these sorts of situations in the formulation and starting point
of a democratic theory. In any case, Dewey does not find democracy less of
a challenge in cases where agreements can be counted on. As we have seen
with Dewey, too much agreement is also one of the undesirable conditions
of democracy. Why not start with these sorts of situations instead of a
scenario where there is too much disagreement?
As Dewey sees it, it does not make sense to build a democratic theory
on attempts to answer situations of radical moral pluralism because in
most situations in life there is some measure of both agreement and
disagreement. In other words, there is no reason why pluralism is the
empirical fact of any present view of democracy and unity its normative
side. Unity as shared experience is also an empirical, social fact and it is an
important normative issue what sort of pluralism we should have once we
find unity. Dewey is, of course, a pluralist, but he would be skeptical of
how unity and pluralism are understood in contemporary debates. If
unity means homogeneity—that is, universal agreement about moral
matters—and pluralism means the incommensurability among concep-
tions of the good, then we seem to be caught in a false dilemma between
undesirable extremes.
The normative issue of how much or what kind of unity and plurality
is desirable in moral and political life is an important practical issue. But
in political theory, just as in ethical theory, the problem is often under-
stood as something that requires a once-and-for-all theoretical solution
and the adoption of wholesale stances. The answer, for Dewey, is di√erent
in every situation and the never-ending democratic task (challenge) is to
find a context-sensitive balance between unity and plurality even though
the tensions remain.
In a previous chapter, I explained how for Dewey oppositions in
ethics are usually based on choosing sides on elements that are in tension
in experience. Philosophers try to find ways to undo or dissolve practical
tensions. Even when they are willing to let the opposing factors co-exist,
they are committed to one of the sides and are eager to set the proper
limits of the opposing factor. Something similar tends to occur in political
≤∑π
theory. Some philosophers of democracy stand for unity, while others

stand for plurality, because they esteem the values associated with each, or
because they are worried about the vices that can occur if they are not
su≈ciently a≈rmed and the opposing element is valorized in our soci-
ety. One philosopher stands for pluralism and avoids unity because of
the dangers associated with a homogeneous collectivism. Prescribing one
normative view of things seems to preclude many. For instance, the com-
mitment to substantial or thick moral values of communitarians has made
them susceptible to the charge of inviting tyranny, intolerance, and op-
pression. On the other hand, there are thinkers committed to unity be-
cause they are concerned with the fragmentation and isolation caused by
pluralism. Prescribing many entails the risk of slipping into relativism,
where there are no limits on tolerance and all is permitted. Both of these
concerns (and fears) are legitimate, but for Dewey they must be addressed
in a particular context by a particular inquiry that finds the appropriate
workable balance. Dewey believes that there is an alternative to prescrib-
ing unity as homogeneity and pluralism without limits, but it is di≈cult to
articulate it in a way that would satisfy those caught up in this dilemma.
The tension, I have argued, is a practical one, in the sense that avoiding
these extremes is an inherent and crucial part of the democratic task. The
balance between the one and the many is not something to be resolved by
a theory. It is, rather, the challenge that one experiences when one tries to
live democratically. The absolute neutrality of certain forms of liberalism,
as much as the moral partiality of some communitarians, is problematic
to those of us who care about democracy.
Instead of recognizing the balance between unity and pluralism as the
shared practical challenge of all believers in democracy, it has become the
source of theoretical debates among political theorists. Michael Sandel is
concerned that his civic republicanism not be confused with the commu-
nitarians who tend to overemphasize unity (of a homogenizing type). On
the other hand, Sandel is critical of Rorty and Rawls for emphasizing
pluralism too much, and therefore jeopardizing the sources of identity
needed in a healthy democracy. For Rorty, Sandel’s view a≈rms identity
(unity) too much. However, for radical pluralists like Chantal Mou√e, or
feminists like Iris Marion Young, Rorty is not pluralistic enough.≥≥ Among
deliberative democrats, there is a tension between those who believe the
a≈rmation of di√erence should be central to public deliberation, and
those who emphasize a unifying consensus as the condition or goal of
deliberation.
From Dewey’s standpoint these debates are wrongheaded if the aim
is to settle, once and for all, which element or value of democracy is
≤∑∫
supreme. In other words, the discussion is among thinkers who, at the end
of the day, believe in the same ideal. Unity and plurality, and their corre-
sponding values, are key to democracy. Community, cooperation, iden-
tity, loyalty, and solidarity are among the things that provide unity to
democracy. Individuality, di√erence, tolerance, and independence pro-
vide plurality to democracy. There is no pre-established harmony between
these values, and whether one side should be emphasized over the other is
a context-based issue. The tension between the values of democracy makes
it something fragile and in need of our intelligence, but not in need of a
final theoretical answer or resolution. Contemporary political theorists
could better spend their energies if they would recognize the context-
bound nature of their prescriptions toward either more unity or plurality.
Their disagreements may be more about the present state of a√airs than
about the ideal. There are those who believe that the present lack of
community is the problem of our democracy, whereas others believe that
the problem lies elsewhere. The calls for more unity and for more plurality
are integral parts of democracy, but one call in a particular situation may
be more important than the other based on the conditions at that particu-
lar time.
More work needs to be done in order to fairly and fully engage Dew-
ey’s views with those of contemporary political theorists. My goal here is
simply to suggest that such a dialogue is not possible, or is impoverished,
if it does not confront the most basic assumptions about moral life. I
claimed earlier that in trying to place Dewey in the context of the contem-
porary debates in ethical theory, one runs the risk of making him com-
plicit in assumptions he sought to override. This is also true in regard to
political theory. What is most promising about Dewey’s political philoso-
phy is that it proposes a way to move beyond the family quarrels between
democratic theories because of a di√erent starting point and metaphysics
of ethics. Dewey’s political theory may in the end prove inadequate, but
unless we try to understand it from the point of view of his entire philoso-
phy, and in particular his ethics, we may fail to consider how radical is his
view in comparison to many democratic political theorists.
≤∑Ω
thirteen
A Philosophical Justification of Democracy
Democracy is the faith that the process of experience is more important

than any special result attained, so that special results achieved are of
ultimate value only as they are used to enrich and order the ongoing
process. (LW 14:229)
The Reasonableness of an Ideal

D ewey never denied the a≈nities of pragmatism with the democratic
spirit or way of life. On the contrary, he openly asserts that ‘‘upon one
thing we take our stand. We frankly accept the democratic tradition in
its moral and human import’’ (LW 8:76). Dewey reconstructed and justi-
fied one of the most distinctive and radical visions of democracy of the
20th century.
If the only way philosophy can provide justification for our demo-
cratic aspirations is in the form of a knowledge foundation or from some
historical objective standpoint, then Dewey failed as a defender of democ-
racy. Such failure is assumed by Richard Rorty, who believes that a prag-
≤∏≠
a p h i l o s o p h i c a l j u s t i f i c at i o n o f d e m o c r a c y
matist must abandon, once and for all, the notion that she can provide a
philosophical justification for democracy or any other particular way of
life. ‘‘There is no ahistorical standpoint from which to endorse the habits
of modern democracies he wishes to praise,’’∞ Rorty claims, and there is no
‘‘demonstration of the ‘objective’ superiority of our way of life over all
other alternatives.’’≤
Unwillingness to accept Rorty’s resolution has recently sparked an
interest in reformulating Dewey’s intellectual warrant for democracy. The
problem with these attempts is that they often seem more eager to answer
Rorty than to understand Dewey’s philosophy on its own terms. It is not
surprising, then, that in many of these reformulations Dewey ends up
begging the question or o√ering an embarrassingly circular justification.
According to David Fott, for example, Dewey runs into the di≈culty of
justifying science or the assumed historical relativism without going in
circles. He finds in Dewey ‘‘an odd defense of democracy,’’≥ for there is no
‘‘clear final point for his defense of democracy.’’∂ Fott is puzzled about the
validity of Dewey’s metaphysical and normative claims because he makes a
common mistake among scholars: he wants to believe that at the heart of
Dewey’s philosophy there is some truth, proposition, or theoretical thesis
from which we can derive, explain, and examine the rest of his thought.
And, of course, once one has presumably identified that first thesis for
Dewey, one is faced with a dogma or finds oneself unable to defend him
against the charge of begging the question. Meanwhile, Dewey’s remarks
about doing philosophy by starting with experience and making the entire
enterprise hypothetical are either ignored or reduced to the ludicrous
claim that philosophy must bow to science or to its truths. Dewey did not
presuppose what he set out to prove simply because he did not set out to
prove anything, at least in the traditional sense of searching for premises
by which anyone may be able to deductively derive a conclusion. This is a
view of justification sharply at odds with Dewey’s philosophy.
Even more sympathetic scholars, like Matthew Festenstein, are dis-
appointed by the incomplete character of Dewey’s justification of democ-
racy.∑ According to him, Dewey may have an adequate answer to the
skeptical threat against democracy, but it is not clear that Dewey has a
response to the relativist challenge that confronts neopragmatists today.
Festenstein is right only if it is assumed that any reasonable justification
must answer the challenges of an imaginary radical skeptic or relativist.
But this requirement for justification, like those which require an appeal
to certain first axioms or an ahistorical objective standpoint, presumes a
starting point of philosophical investigation that is not Dewey’s.
Philosophical inquiry is invariably and inevitably enmeshed in a par-
≤∏∞
ticular context and background (i.e., experience) so that any justification

or criticism of democracy has to arise out of this context. Dewey does not
think philosophy seeks knowledge of timeless truths, but neither does he
think it is ‘‘a mere arbitrary expression of wish or feeling or a vague
aspiration after something nobody knows what’’ (MW 11:46). Philosophy
is the kind of inquiry that will ‘‘use current knowledge to drive home the
reasonableness of its conception of life’’ (MW 11:46). Therefore, providing
a justification of democracy cannot mean anything more than establishing
the ‘‘reasonableness of some course of life which has been adopted from
custom or instinct’’ (MW 11:46, my emphasis) as a response to concrete
problematic situations and with whatever resources we have available at
the time in lived experience.
Indeed, a basic premise of this work has been that Dewey’s philosophy
is an e√ort to establish the reasonableness of a certain vision about how to
live. It is addressed to people in a particular place and time in history
where democracy is already a live option, rather than to an imaginary
skeptic or relativist. Dewey used philosophy to make his hope reasonable,
which is di√erent than seeking a foundation or a rationalization for a way
of life. Philosophy ‘‘shows men that they are not fools for doing what they
already want to do.’’∏ Pragmatism involves the preference and the choice of
a way of life but this choice does not have to be based, as Rorty suggests,
solely on a desire for solidarity, mere imitation, or obedience to tradition.
We do not need to become ahistorical beings to make an intelligent choice;
we need to constantly examine our inherited ideals in the light of present
conditions and be sincere about our preferences in the sense of stating ‘‘as
clearly as possible what is chosen and why it is chosen’’ (LW 8:78).
This contextualist view of philosophical justification is not subject to
the charge of circularity because Dewey’s philosophy is not a postmodern,
relativist philosophy that starts with the theory that we are in a culture,
language, or any cohesive cognitive framework. On such views justifica-
tion is always circular since judgments about better and worse forms of life
are just propositional assumptions of the same form of life or ‘‘language
game’’ we are trying to validate. From Dewey’s standpoint there is not
much that is ‘‘post’’ about this sort of postmodernism. To start with the
theory that there is no way to escape our ethnocentric beliefs and language
is not much di√erent than starting with the Cartesian assumption that we
start trapped within our subjectivity. Douglas Browning has said this best:
I take the so-called ‘‘linguistic turn’’ in recent philosophy and the lin-
guistic and cultural relativism which has lately been spawned by certain
so-called ‘‘Post-Modernists’’ to be in fact the last and dying gasp of
≤∏≤
Modernity, Modernism, or whatever one wishes to call the subjective

turn in 17th century philosophy. Deeper than foundationalism and rep-
resentationalism is the Modern avowal of the irremediable enslavement
of the individual to his own manner of thinking, his own ideas, wherever
those ideas originated. The notion that the world which one takes him-
self to live in is somehow constructed intersubjectively through the me-
dium of one’s own native language or culture is only a variation upon
the Cartesian theme. I cannot help but believe that Dewey’s revolution
was much more radical, much more thoroughgoing, simply because it
rests upon a more vital shift or turn than that.π
To be empirical we must begin, not with theory, but where we are,

with what is pre-theoretically given in the midst of our lives. We do not
find ourselves in our minds, languages, beliefs, conceptual schemes, cul-
tures, or theories. On the contrary, these are all things that are found
within the crude and situational non-cognitive experience as it is lived. To
make any of them prior to all experience is to commit what Dewey calls
the philosophical fallacy.
In light of Dewey’s more radical turn and his philosophy of experi-
ence, what would constitute adequate philosophical support for democ-
racy as an ideal? What were Dewey’s grounds for his faith in democracy?
These are issues that cannot be discussed in isolation from Dewey’s ethics
and his basic assumptions about the nature of ideals, faith, and how they
emerge in the context of lived experience. Recall that ideals are experi-
enced as part of the resources (instrumentalities) operative in situations,
as ends-in-view, not as final ends with antecedent existence. Because of
their nature and role in experience their reasonableness can be deter-
mined in terms of (1) their adequacy to what is actually experienced,
(2) their functionality, and (3) their congeniality and consistency with
one’s other central commitments and hopes. Let’s clarify each of these
grounds and how they apply to democracy.
The Empirical Grounds of Democracy

Ideals must be empirically grounded, that is, they must be adequate to
experience as it is experienced. There are at least two senses in which
democracy as an ideal can meet this requirement: (1) It is supported by
and emerges out of actual values experienced, and (2) it is supported by
how moral life in its most generic traits is experienced. These claims are
based upon a certain view of how ideals or any normative standards
emerge and function in experience.
It is because we experience meaningful and worthwhile experiences in
≤∏≥
a precarious and changing world that we form and rely on ideals. If all
experiences were of equal worth or if there were not a need to try to secure
and reproduce the best of our experiences, then ideals would not have a
function. ‘‘Because of this mixture of the regular and that which cuts
across stability, a good object once experienced acquires ideal quality and
attracts demand and e√ort to itself ’’ (LW 1:57). Ideals are experienced as
imaginative projections of possibilities based on goods actually experi-
enced. Democracy is not only based on but goes beyond the goods of
associated life in the sense that it is an appreciation of its richest possibili-
ties. These possibilities are not subjective or fictitious. In Dewey’s ethics
discovery and imagination, inquiry into actual conditions, and the explo-
ration of possibilities are mutually dependent phases of inquiry about
betterment. He explains this process:
There are values, goods, actually realized upon a natural basis—the

goods of human association, of art and knowledge. The idealizing imag-
ination seizes upon the most precious things found in climacteric mo-
ments of experience and projects them. We need no external criterion
and guarantee of their goodness. They are had, they exist as good, and
out of them we frame our ideal ends. (LW 9:33)
Although Dewey was critical of the traditional normative ambitions

of philosophy, he thought that an empirical philosophy is not limited to
description; it can imaginatively propose general and hypothetical meth-
ods of participating in situations. Nevertheless, ideal proposed methods of
farming, surgery, thinking, and living together are adequate to the degree
that they have been informed and constructed out of an updated and
comprehensive survey of actual satisfactory experiences. For instance, the
pattern of inquiry presented by Dewey in his 1938 Logic is descriptive
insofar as it is the general structure shared by di√erent surveyed modes of
thinking. Nevertheless, it is selected as exemplary for any future inquiry. It
serves a normative function insofar as it provides a generic description of
how we ought to think. An expert’s ideal farming methods are not drawn
out of the blue; rather, they come from experiencing good and bad farm-
ing. Experience provides the means to discriminate between better and
worse ideals. Dewey makes the same point with respect to his inquiry into
inquiry:
We know that some methods of inquiry are better than others in just the
same way in which we know that some methods of surgery, farming,
road-making, navigating or what-not are better than others. It does not
follow in any of these cases that the ‘‘better’’ methods are ideally perfect,
≤∏∂
or that they are regulative or ‘‘normative’’ because of conformity to some

absolute form. They are the methods which experience up to the present
time shows to be the best methods available for achieving certain results,
while abstraction of these methods does supply a (relative) norm or
standard for further undertakings. (LW 12:108)
A philosophy of democracy is an imaginative e√ort to articulate in a

coherent fashion the most salient traits of the most worthwhile experi-
ences and possibilities of human interaction for the purpose of ameliora-
tive criticism. Democracy rests on experiencing and discriminating better
and worse forms of interactions in our daily life. It is precisely because
meaningful and enriching relationships are hard to come by that we need
to set them up as ideal and inquire into their conditions. ‘‘The problem is
to extract the desirable traits of forms of community life which actually
exist, and employ them to criticize undesirable features and suggest im-
provement’’ (MW 9:88–89).
Dewey insisted that this ideal must remain open to modification and
improvement as new forms of communication in di√erent contexts are
experienced. Since ideals are based upon experienced goods, they can be
subject to criticism and improvement based on their adequacy to these
goods. For example, an ideal may assume certain goods that are no longer
experienced as such or it may fail to include some important ones. In fact,
our task today in reevaluating Dewey’s ideal should be to ask ourselves:
Are the features of democratic interactions that Dewey thought were im-
portant still experienced as positive and essential features of the best in
human relationships? For instance, is it still the case that openness, toler-
ance, and sympathy are integral to our most enriching and meaningful
communicative experiences? Things that were worth aspiring to yesterday
may not be worth aspiring to today. Someone could well maintain that
openness and tolerance are no longer good in most situations or that, if
they are good, we should not make them part of an inclusive end-in-view.
It is hard to see how one could argue for such a position, especially today
when ‘‘closedness’’ and intolerance are so common and insidious; but as a
contextualist, I must accept that someday, somewhere, openness and tol-
erance may well not be worth our e√orts. The reasonableness of Dewey’s
ideal from the point of view of values experienced could also be ques-
tioned on the grounds of what he failed to include or emphasize. I have
raised this criticism of Dewey in regard to trust and loyalty. A similar case
could also be made in regard to responsibility, humility, curiosity, discern-
ment, love of learning, forgiveness, and compassion. These are virtues that
are usually present in the sort of interaction that Dewey envisioned as
≤∏∑
ideal, but they are underemphasized or not explicitly considered by him in

his ethics.
What may seem peculiar and perhaps objectionable about this ac-
count of how ideals can emerge in philosophical inquiry is the assumption
that experiencing better and worse in particular situations does not itself
presuppose an antecedent ideal standard or criterion that must be made
explicit. More to the point, can a philosophical defender of democracy
determine what interactions are experienced as better (or valuable) with-
out begging the question in favor of democracy? I will consider this im-
portant objection at a later point.
The Metaphysical Support for Democracy

Metaphysical support for democracy counts as empirical support when
metaphysics is understood as an empirical inquiry into the most generic
traits of experience as it is experienced. For Dewey, a view of democracy
‘‘not grounded in a comprehensive philosophy seems . . . only a projection
of arbitrary preference’’ (LW 14:150). Our general view of reality must
support our democratic hopes and e√orts. His criticisms of traditional
metaphysics and ethics were e√orts to demolish a view of things that
makes our faith in democracy seem unreasonable. Philosophers have for
the most part, whether aware of it or not, failed to deliver philosophies
that can provide intellectual warrant for democracy. Philosophers have
assumed views of reality and of moral life that are not congenial to and
supportive of democratic values and aspirations. Foremost among them is
what Dewey called the ‘‘metaphysics of feudalism,’’ that is, a hierarchical
and fixed view of reality. This is clear in ethical theory, where the presup-
posed view of morality usually has a top-down structure and spirit. For
instance, ethical theorists assume that among the concepts of good, duty,
and virtue one of them must be primordial (i.e., that there is a set hier-
archy). There is also the authoritarian belief that there is a single rule- or
law-governed right thing to do in any moral situation, and that otherwise
there would be anarchy. The top-down aspect of traditional ethical theory
is even more evident in the shared assumption (in spite of remarkable
di√erences) that individual acts and situations fall under some prior ab-
stract or universal moral truth or code, or that one’s regard for a particular
individual must fall under some wider or higher concern (e.g., justice).
This stands in sharp contrast with Dewey’s radical bottom-up democratic
ethical theory. As I have already argued, Dewey turned traditional ethics
on its head. Each situation is both the means and end of morality. Moral
reasoning and justification are not manners of working downward from
≤∏∏
rules to their application; instead, it is ‘‘working upward from concrete

moral experience and decision making toward guiding moral hypothe-
ses.’’∫ Even someone like Jürgen Habermas, who shares a similar commu-
nicative ideal, seems to be caught in the traditional quest for a top-down
ethics in which the validation of general rules that apply to what is par-
ticular and unique is primary.Ω
If the top-down assumptions about morality and nature were only the
fancy of philosophers, then Dewey’s ethics is at best therapy for philoso-
phers. But these assumptions are still part of the dominant model of
morality in Western culture and, therefore, many have adopted them as
their ground map (metaphysics) that provides their basic orientation in
the world. Therefore, for Dewey, criticism of ethical theories that help
perpetuate this erroneous view of morality is necessary, for such ethical
theories undermine the spirit and hopes that Dewey considered essential
to democracy. This situation is worsened by the fact that those philoso-
phers who have explicitly tried to provide philosophical support for de-
mocracy have ended up assuming an obnoxious and dangerous type of
metaphysical individualism: the notion of the isolated individual with
inherent rights who is naturally self-interested. As Dewey said, when de-
mocracy ‘‘has tried to achieve a philosophy it has clothed itself in an
atomistic individualism, as full of defect and inconsistencies in theory as it
was charged with obnoxious consequences when an attempt was made to
act upon it’’ (MW 11:52).
It is because Dewey conceived democracy as an aspiration about how
we should relate to nature (reality) that metaphysics is an important part
of its justification.∞≠ If, contrary to Dewey, there is in nature a set hierarchy
of beings or values, and its open-ended character is an illusion, then
democracy seems to recommend that we live in a way that is orthogonal to
nature’s dictates. But if nature is a process where new problems, risks, and
the unexpected seem unavoidable, then a community and character that
goes forth to meet new demands, that welcomes untried situations, and
that is capable of constant readjustment is in better shape than a fixed,
static one. It is because the world has certain generic traits that democracy
is a reasonable way to interact in it. Dewey thought that his ethics sup-
ported democratic hopes and aspirations better than most ethical theories
because it portrayed moral reality itself as open, contingent, individual,
social, and irreducibly pluralistic.
In fact, Dewey’s views about democracy cannot be separated from his
plea that we accept a certain metaphysics, that is, that we do not turn
away from or ignore the complexity, pluralism, and uncertainty of reality.
Democracy is another name for a way of life that ‘‘accepts life and experi-
≤∏π
ence in all its uncertainty, mystery, doubt, and half-knowledge and turns
that experience upon itself to deepen and intensify its own qualities’’
(LW 10:41). Pluralism of beliefs, religions, cultures, and social groups is
increasingly an unquestionable trait of present experience. In a world
where interaction is becoming unavoidable and even necessary, isolation
and segregation are no longer ways to successfully cope with pluralism. We
can respond to pluralism by trying to remove it, either by force, indoc-
trination, or by constructing a philosophical theory that explains the
unfortunate pluralism as mere appearance or a result of human limita-
tions. These responses assume that a pluralism of beliefs is merely an early
stage on the way to later convergence or, perhaps, a fall from grace. For
pragmatists, on the other hand, the plurality of views that are deeply
believed is a positive characteristic of the human condition, rather than
something to lament. For pluralism is not only the irreducible charac-
ter of reality but a source of possible enrichment. Participation, com-
munication, and sharing in a pluralistic environment can make life rich
and varied in meanings. ‘‘To cooperate by giving di√erences a chance to
show themselves because of the belief that the expression of di√erence is
not only a right of the other persons but is a means of enriching one’s
own life-experience, is inherent in the democratic personal way of life’’
(LW 14:228).
Dewey believes that the ideals of liberty, equality, and freedom are
more meaningful or congenial to the pragmatist conception of experience
than to traditional metaphysics. Our liberty is more meaningful if we are
participants (instead of spectators) in a universe that is a genuine field of
experimentation, novelty, and constantly in the making.
A philosophy animated, be it unconsciously or consciously, by the striv-

ings of men to achieve democracy will construe liberty as meaning a uni-
verse in which there is real uncertainty and contingency, a world which
is not all in, and never will be, a world which in some respect is incom-
plete and in the making, and which in these respects may be made this
way or that according as men judge, prize, love and labor. (MW 11:50)
Pragmatism is a philosophy that supports the democratic ideal of

equality because it rejects ‘‘the metaphysics of feudalism’’ (MW 11:51) that
supports authoritarian ideals, while also recognizing that uniqueness and
individuality are traits of experience. In a world where every existence is
qualitatively unique and develops in the context of unique social circum-
stances, our democratic aspirations to respect the individuality of the
other seems most reasonable. Dewey supports the ideal of equality by ‘‘a
metaphysical mathematics of the incommensurable in which each speaks
≤∏∫
for itself and demands consideration on its own behalf ’’ (MW 11:53). A
metaphysics of democracy based on the notion of everyone having the
same rights cannot elicit the same democratic respect for one another that
comes from recognizing that there is something irreplaceable about each
one of us in every new moment in the flow of experience.
However, individuality is not something that develops or that can be
appreciated independently of association and interaction. Hence, an indi-
vidualism that is not atomistic is the metaphysical basis for fraternity as an
ideal of democracy.
To say that what is specific and unique can be exhibited and become
forceful or actual only in relationship with other like beings is merely, I
take it, to give a metaphysical version to the fact that democracy is
concerned not with freaks or geniuses or heroes or divine leaders but
with associated individuals in which each by intercourse with others
somehow makes the life of each more distinctive. (MW 11:53)
To be sure, democracy is not something separated from nature (the

subject matter of metaphysics). It is not some sort of method or way of
talking to each other by which humans can, in isolation from a valueless
and chaotic world, establish some sort of order. Democracy lacks meta-
physical grounding if one begins with the theory that all of our wishes,
ideals, and values are nothing more than our own cultural and arbitrary
(self-serving) projections imposed upon a valueless world. This dualistic
picture of things is not the starting point of Dewey’s ethics. For him,
democracy points to values and possibilities that are experienced and have
arisen in our transaction with the world. These values and possibilities are
as much a part of the objective everyday world as they are ours. Demo-
cratic interaction is something we do in discourse with other humans, but
we are part of nature and the context that guides the discourse is the
qualitative world that we inhabit. Therefore, the ordered richness achieved
by democracy is of nature and because of it.
The Functionality of Democracy

To evaluate and justify ideals requires much more than investigating their
relation to how life in its actual values and generic features is experienced.
For what makes them ideals is that they are in some sense beyond how
things are and have been. And they are not things destined to be facts or to
be fully realized. As Giovanni Sartori has said, ‘‘ideals always smack of
hubris, they are always excessive. This is, as it should be, since ideals are
designed to overcome resistances.’’∞∞ An ideal that is fully realizable ceases
≤∏Ω
to function as an ideal. This explains why Dewey can say that democracy
‘‘is not a fact and never will be’’ (LW 2:328).
Ideals are experienced as ends-in-view that interact with the world
and have a practical function. We could thus ask about any ideal: Is it
constructive or is it counterproductive and self-defeating? Does it provide
orientation, inspiration, and carry us through tough times? Does it guide
action or make our individual struggles more meaningful? Does it posi-
tively provoke our imaginations in the sense of eliciting possibilities that
may not be appreciated or explored otherwise? These are all important
questions that would have to be considered in a full evaluation of democ-
racy as an ideal. For now I would like to focus on one important aspect of a
useful ideal according to Dewey’s ethics.
A constructive ideal must assist in transforming, guiding, and inspir-
ing but it must itself be open to improvement in light of present experi-
ence. This requires that an ideal be ‘‘su≈ciently definite to be usable and
su≈ciently flexible to lead to its own reinterpretation as experience pro-
gresses’’ (LW 7:344). Dewey was aware that both excess generality and
specificity in the formulation of an ideal tend to be counterproductive. He
was, on the one hand, concerned that the ideal of a democratic way of life
not remain an idle tool by becoming a vague abstraction. We must do
better than regurgitate the political slogans associated with democracy.
The ideal ‘‘must not remain vague and general. It must be translated into
the concrete details of what it means in every walk of life’’ (LW 11:237). On
the other hand, he was keenly aware that too much specificity can work
against the e√ectiveness of an ideal. As we saw earlier, Dewey thought that
ethical theory can betray its practical function if it abandons its generic
character and pretends to provide specific instructions. In order to serve
as an e√ective instrument of criticism without undermining context-sen-
sitive reflection, democracy as an ideal must be ‘‘stated in such a way that it
will apply to changed conditions of the present and the future’’ (LW 7:343).
This last point is relevant to evaluating an objection to Dewey that has
been reconsidered by Robert Westbrook and Michael Eldridge. They find
it problematic that, as Eldridge puts it, Dewey did not specify ‘‘ ‘in the
concrete’ the political means to e√ect the democratic ends.’’∞≤ He failed to
flesh out the details of his democratic vision. But how much more thick-
ness could be added to his ideal before it becomes counterproductive? I
am suggesting that the generality and vagueness of Dewey’s views about
democracy are strengths not weaknesses of his position. Dewey was a
committed contextualist and the lack of a more detailed vision is what
allows us today to develop the specifics as they pertain to our present
experience without abandoning Dewey’s vision. Had he, for example,
≤π≠
given us specific instructions about how freedom is secured in a democ-

racy, they could have prevented us from engaging in a fresh context-
sensitive inquiry into this matter today. Critics wanted to know ‘‘what to
think’’ but Dewey instead would tell them ‘‘how to think,’’∞≥ because the
latter was more fruitful.
The lack of specific instructions in Dewey’s philosophy regarding the
democratic task does not mean a total lack of guidance as to what can be
done to democratize experience. Let’s reassess the issue of functionality in
light of Dewey’s ethics. Criticism and inquiry into conditions on behalf of
a more democratic experience are legitimate theoretical tasks. If democ-
racy has to do with the quality of our most immediate associations, then
widespread institutional, political, or legal reforms must be tested by how
they a√ect the quality of these relationships. If democracy is about having
certain experiences, then instead of investigating rules of justice or the
proper conception of human rights, philosophers and political theorists
must inquire into which character traits and environmental conditions
are necessary for having those experiences.
Dewey was particularly concerned with which type of education and
classroom environment would provide the conditions for the develop-
ment of characters that have an emotional readiness to assimilate the
experience of others (e.g., openness, sympathy), and are active, flexible,
critical, sensitive, and willing to cooperate in the common good. It is
especially important that in a democracy each generation of children be
equipped to ‘‘formulate its own beliefs and practices in light of new expe-
riences and discoveries’’ (LW 11:554). Philosophy cannot set the particular
conditions and means that are needed for democracy for all times and
places, but it can be concerned with useful generalities such as how to
inquire into them. The importance of context-sensitive reflection cannot
be underestimated. In order to seek solutions in terms of concrete prob-
lems as they arise we must ‘‘surrender our faith in system and in some
wholesale belief ’’ (LW 5:119–20).
Dewey was also critical of ways to inquire into conditions and means
that are not consistent with the ideal. To force individuals to be free in the
name of democracy is a form of intellectual hypocrisy which leads to anti-
democratic results. ‘‘The fundamental principle of democracy is that the
ends of freedom and individuality for all can be attained only by means
that accord with those ends’’ (LW 11:298). The aristocratic means of such
democratic elitists as Walter Lippmann was also against the spirit and
realization of democracy.∞∂ A democratic community cannot be created or
handed down from above by a democratic elite that has a blueprint of the
good life. It must rather emerge from within its voluntary associations.
≤π∞
The stress on immanence is consistent with the notion of a moral life

that is ameliorated by its own means. In ‘‘The Ethics of Democracy’’
(EW 1:227–49) Dewey stresses that what really distinguishes democracy
from any aristocratic ideal is the means by which all that is worth striving
for is brought about. What is most objectionable about a society ruled by
the few wise and good (assuming that power will not corrupt them) is that
their decisions (no matter how wise) lead to benefits that are external to
others in the sense that do not come from within individuals (the rest of
society) working out for themselves problematic situations. Hence, it vio-
lates an important condition for ideal activity, for having the most mean-
ingful experiences.
The defenders of aristocracy are quick to point out that the outcomes
they propose are good, but for Dewey, as we have seen in his ethics, the
quality of the process is more important than how good or beneficial the
outcome happens to be. ‘‘Humanity cannot be content with a good which
is procured from without, however high and otherwise complete that
good’’ (EW 1:243). A society where good outcomes are given is not to be
preferred to one in which these goods are the result of participation
(working). It is good when others solve problems for us but it is more
meaningful and enriching—it has an aesthetic quality—when we have put
some of our own work or e√ort into the process. When we work things
out for ourselves we learn, and the results of our task achieve consumma-
tory value. Dewey o√ers no argument to defend this. He is just o√er-
ing a hypothesis and an invitation to try it out to see whether it is a
more meaningful experience. To be engaged in an activity where there is
a balanced relation between means and ends, between play and work is
the ideal.
It follows that the best way to help others is indirectly, by creating the
conditions for them to help themselves as well as deepen and widen their
relationships. This idea is easily misunderstood. But Dewey endorses it
because positive freedom happens to be a condition for the enhancement
of present activity (living), not because individuals are self-su≈cient, must
be left alone, and liberty is an absolute good.
To foster conditions that widen the horizon of others and give them
command of their own powers, so that they can find their own happi-
ness in their own fashion, is the way of ‘‘social’’ action. Otherwise the
prayer of a freeman would be to be left alone, and to be delivered, above
all, from ‘‘reformers’’ and ‘‘kind’’ people. (MW 14:203)
This is a call for a lot of work in a society that takes democracy

seriously. Leaving the individuals to themselves to whatever they want
≤π≤
does not foster the positive freedom needed for democratic interaction.
It takes great e√ort and communal resources to foster individuals and
communities capable of working out the problems they experience for
themselves.
Although we cannot export or impose democracy, we can provide or
prepare the soil in which the flower of democracy may gradually emerge.
There are some interesting implications and complications of this impor-
tant insight. First, there is the question of who is the ‘‘we’’ that fosters the
conditions for the emergence of democracy. Can it ever be someone from
outside the community in question? Furthermore, at what point can the
control over indirect conditions ruin the spontaneous emergence of what
is wanted? This is especially troublesome when one aims to restore or
revitalize the sort of relationships and genuine communities for which
Dewey hoped. They cannot be engineered or created the way one con-
structs a bridge or fixes a pipe. Since community is usually associated with
stability in experience it is easy to overlook the importance of contingency,
novelty, and spontaneity in the creation, sustenance, and quality of a
community. This becomes clear in examining the recent attempt to build
gated communities. The gates, rules, and homogeneity of these commu-
nities provide the comfort of a controlled, secured, predictable, and safe
environment but at the cost of sterility, boredom, and the unaesthetic. The
retreat into gated communities is a flight from chance. The price for
security is an environment with no surprises, where an unplanned and
enriching conversation with a person unlike oneself is ruled out. Dewey, of
course, would be opposed to this sort of community, but it is not clear
how a more intelligent and flexible Deweyan e√ort to create community is
not vulnerable to the same sort of problem. A Deweyan project to in-
directly control the conditions for the emergence of a community may
run into the problem of determining when its intervention is spoiling the
needed chance and spontaneity for a community to emerge. This being
said, it does not mean that the way of intelligence is to leave things alone. I
can think of no solution to this di≈culty except to hope that, equipped
with the habits of intelligence, we will be able to determine in a particular
case when we have reached that critical point where even indirect control
is too much. The emergence of a genuine community is in some ways a
more delicate matter than that of a flower. But just as with the flower, even
if we do what is in our power we must come to terms with the fact that it
many never blossom. This is all Deweyan in spirit.
Perhaps a more promising way of inquiring about conditions in the
name of democracy can take the negative form of answering the ques-
tion: What feature of present conditions is an obstacle to having more
≤π≥
of the kinds of experiences associated with democracy? Just as with a

flower we may decide to focus our attention on weeds. This is one way in
which the ideal may serve as a tool of criticism. For example, what under-
mines meaningful and e√ective democratic public deliberation? What
specific environmental conditions (economic, sociological, and political)
are responsible for nurturing habits that work against the habits and spirit
of democracy? What has contributed to the snobbery and aristocratic
habits that continue to predominate in our society? To what extent have
the habits of classifying, quantification, labeling, and ranking contrib-
uted to our numbness toward the individuality of others in our everyday
experience? What in our society encourages the habit of dismissing or
demonizing others instead of genuinely listening to them? What encour-
ages dogmatism or the habit of thinking of simplistic good/evil, us/them
dichotomies?
One di≈culty with inquiry into the obstacles to democracy is that
dualism often gets in the way. One must be careful, for example, not to
assume that there are certain institutions or means that are somehow by
nature intrinsically opposed to the values of democracy. The material/
spiritual dualism is sometimes behind the assumption that industry and
business (i.e., our economic relations) are intrinsically non-democratic or
outside the realm of human values. This often has the unintended conse-
quence of making them immune from the sort of democratic reconstruc-
tion for which Dewey hoped. ‘‘To stop with mere emotional rejection and
moral condemnation of industry and trade as materialistic is to leave them
in this inhuman region where they operate as the instruments of those
who employ them for private ends. Exclusion of this sort is an accomplice
of the forces that keep things in the saddle’’ (LW 5:17).
There is no realm of human experience that is immune from democ-
ratization or criticism from the point of view of democracy. If some
corporations and governments are a threat to democracy we must find
ways to transform them from within their everyday operations and inter-
actions. One could argue that this is a more radical and subversive ap-
proach to the threats to democracy than merely adopting an ideological
view that understands such threats as inherently evil powers that can only
be subject to external control.
Technology, science, and commerce are responsible for the mobility,
organization, and impersonalism that have eroded the quality of the local
ties needed for a healthy democracy. But Dewey insisted that there is
nothing in the nature of things that rules out that the same forces that have
undermined democracy can be used to reverse their e√ect. ‘‘We can assert
with confidence that there is nothing intrinsic in the forces which have
≤π∂
a√ected uniform standardization, mobility and remote invisible relation-

ships that is fatally obstructive to the return movement of their conse-
quences into the local homes of mankind’’ (LW 2:369). There is no going
back to some mythical better past. Dewey’s solution was to try to turn
these same forces in favor of procuring a free, diverse, but stable commu-
nal life. This is what it means to reconstruct from within our present
resources and possibilities. He is, for instance, explicit about the impor-
tant role that mobility and organization can play in maintaining the sort
of balance that is needed. ‘‘Mobility may in the end supply the means by
which the spoils of remote and indirect interaction and interdependence
flow back into local life, keeping it flexible, preventing the stagnancy
which has attended stability in the past, and furnishing it with the ele-
ments of a variegated and many-hued experience. Organization may cease
to be taken as an end in itself. Then it will no longer be mechanical and
external, hampering the free play of artistic gifts . . .’’ (LW 2:370).
The functionality of Dewey’s philosophy of democracy could be ques-
tioned on the grounds that it is just too utopian. In other words, it is
too demanding or idealistic to be taken seriously or to play any positive
function. The idealistic or optimistic character of Dewey’s vision in light
of present conditions should be obvious. His vision was of a society in
which the strength and depth of local relations (family, neighborhood,
and friendships) are not a threat but supportive of the organizations and
institutions we delegate to administer the indirect consequences for all
social groups. He even dreamed of finding ways to extend some of the
democratic qualities of the most intimate and direct relations to the wider
circle of an organized society. Is there something objectionable in holding
such utopian dreams and hopes?
The Utopia Objection

There are di√erent versions of this utopia objection that must be consid-
ered.∞∑ On one level, it seems to be based on a misunderstanding of what
an ideal is. A failure to achieve or even envision full realizability should not
count against an ideal. What would be the use of an ideal if it was not
utopian and beyond complete realization? But perhaps the objection is
that the ideal is too idealistic, that is, too good to be taken seriously. The
charge of excessive goodness can take two forms. It may be that the con-
tent of the ideal is so good and perfect that it becomes undesirable, thereby
losing its intrinsic imaginative appeal as something worth aspiring to. This
was the same reaction and concern expressed by James after he visited the
Chautauqua community and saw ‘‘a gathering of wonderfully cooperative,
≤π∑
peaceful, benign, socially conscious’’ persons. James’s account of his re-

action is worth quoting here at length:
And yet what was my own astonishment, on emerging into the dark and
wicked world again, to catch myself quite unexpectedly and involun-
tarily saying: ‘‘Ouf ! What a relief ! Now for something primordial and
savage, even though it were as bad as an Armenian massacre, to set the
balance straight again. This order is too tame, this culture too second-
rate, this goodness too uninspiring . . . this city simmering in the tepid
lakeside sun; this atrocious harmlessness of all things,—I cannot abide
with them. Let me take my chances again in the big outside worldly
wilderness with all its sins and su√erings . . .’’∞∏
Is my description of Dewey’s ideal too good in this sense and therefore

susceptible to the same sort of charge? Only if one ignores what I have said
about the nature of ideals. The ideal described is not something intended
to be fully realizable or supposed to describe a comprehensive state of
a√airs. Therefore, there is much that is missing in the description that is
not presented simply because it is taken for granted that it will be part of
any community. Dewey never assumes that the precarious, the uncertain,
and all the things that make our lives less than absolutely perfect—that is,
those things that are missing in the Chautauqua community—would have
to be eliminated. On the contrary, he counted on them, and I have made
that a key to my description. I have shown that conflict, tension, and risk
are an integral part of his ideal. ‘‘Balance’’ is understood by Dewey as
a creative but precarious tension, and not as a stable state of peaceful
harmony that we can rest on. A community that is too tame needs a dose
of danger. Fragility, contingency, struggle, and conflict are integral to a
meaningful life.
There is, however, another interpretation of the utopia objection that
any Deweyan should confront. What if the excessive goodness of an ideal
a√ects its practical e√ectiveness under present conditions? Although all
ideals are excesses, this does not mean that they can be safely maximized
beyond measure without losing their e√ectiveness. An excessively idealis-
tic view of democracy can work against the democracy it is supposed to
generate. This is a danger today. The gap between our actual way of life
and Dewey’s ideal is so pronounced that becoming aware of the latter may
only lead to cynicism, nihilism, and passive resignation. The point is that
sometimes when ideals become too high or idealistic relative to the pres-
ent context they are nothing but obstacles to present amelioration. Pes-
simism is usually the result of having unreasonably high standards and
expectations about the potentialities of life and others. It is not a matter of
≤π∏
humility to aim or dream lower when constructing ideals, but a matter of

making the ideal instrumentally e√ective.
This last objection raises a legitimate concern. Dewey would want his
ideal to be a good means and it may be the case that Deweyans today must
make the content of the democratic ideal more modest in order to in-
crease its instrumental potency. The objection, however, is only a practical
warning and does not give us a philosophical basis to evaluate the reason-
ableness of Dewey’s ideal independently of any particular use and context.
Indeed, it is di≈cult to assess the instrumental potency of an ideal in the
abstract, independently of a particular context and of how an ideal is
actually used. The threat of cynicism and passivity, for example, may be
more a consequence of the bad use of the ideal than of anything related to
its content. An ideal may seem reasonable in all other respects, but because
it is taken as an absolute standard, it ceases to function as a possibility
which provokes our imaginations and makes us nonconformist (and un-
comfortable) about the present state of a√airs. Those who think of de-
mocracy as a blueprint and ignore the fact that the meaning of democracy
changes with time and place may be considered traitors of the ideal be-
cause they confuse the spirit with the letter of democracy. We have already
seen that Dewey makes this same point regarding the use of rules in
morality. Even the best moral principles can be harmful if one is not
sensitive to context. Hence, even if we were to agree that Dewey’s ideal has
the appropriate amount of substance, detail, and appeal, it could still
remain counterproductive because of the way it is employed in situations.
This underscores the emphasis on the ‘‘how’’ of his ethics, that is, being
equipped with the right habits needed to find out what democracy re-
quires in particular situations.
The Naïveté Objection

The counterpart to the utopia objection is the charge that Dewey was
naïve which a√ected the reasonableness of his democratic vision. This
could mean that he was naïve (1) about the problems or obstacles of
democracy, (2) about how bad (severe) these problems really are, or
(3) about the means needed for ameliorating them. These are, of course,
related. Naïveté about the means is usually a result of underestimating the
problems. The most common charge against Dewey has been that his ideal
seems impotent and naïve because he underestimated the extent to which
conflict, power (as force and coercion), tragic irreconcilabilities, instinct,
and irrationalities undermine any e√ort to democratize experience.∞π This
claim is serious since it in e√ect accuses Dewey of failing to meet the
≤ππ
requirement of adequacy to experience. In his zealousness for democracy

he may have downplayed or ignored undesirable and anti-democratic
forces that are intrinsic features of the human condition.
Is this charge fair? It depends on the nature of the accusation. It would
not do to claim that he hoped for what is impossible, or that he expected
too much out of human relationships, social institutions, and human
beings because he had the wrong (and naïve) view of the nature of these
things (e.g., because humans are by nature intrinsically evil or selfish).
There is, for Dewey, no fixed nature of anything, certainly not of human
beings. The extent to which forces plague or create limitations to what can
be done in human relationships is an empirical issue because it is based on
present conditions. The problem with non-empirical ways of deciding
what is or is not possible (e.g., what can we expect of humans) is that it
settles the issue in advance.
If, however, the charge is that Dewey did not take into account the evil
and complexity that we experience today but which was not part of his
situation, then this either makes no sense or it is an unreasonable expecta-
tion. But we can inquire into whether he was oblivious or blind to the
ways that the anti-democratic forces operated during his time. Eldridge,
for example, defends Dewey on these grounds by providing evidence that
in Dewey’s active involvement of the problems of his time he did not
‘‘ignore class interests’’ or the use of power politics.∞∫ There is in fact plenty
of textual support to show that Dewey recognized the subtle and hidden
forces that controlled public discussion.∞Ω He even warned future genera-
tions about how the growing forces of propaganda (control by the few)
and the consumerist appetite for sensationalism are bound to prevent the
possibility of democratic public discourse.≤≠ It is not clear to me how
much more we can expect of Dewey.
The more interesting and important issue is whether our problems
today are su≈ciently di√erent, and things so much worse, that Dewey’s
ideas and ideal seem out of touch, naïve, and inapplicable. To properly
answer this question I would have to provide an empirical assessment of
present conditions, something that is beyond the scope of this book. I can
predict, however, that we would indeed find aspects of Dewey’s view that
seem naïve when compared to today’s complex social conditions. For
instance, given what science is today, it may be hard to have the same sort
of confidence that Dewey had in its instrumentalities for moral life or in
his confidence in science as the best example of communal inquiry. Given
the unprecedented power of global corporations today it seems that much
more is needed for positive freedom and the self-governing capacity of the
public than what Dewey suggested. New technologies have made possible
≤π∫
new ways to reduce political discourse to a sport-like spectacle where the

public remains entertained but dormant. More could be said, but I fail to
see how this sort of criticism constitutes a refutation of Dewey’s views or a
reason to dismiss their relevance. For he expected context to change, and
therefore he expected that followers of his vision would reconstruct his
ideas in light of present conditions, so that they do not become irrelevant,
naïve, and out of touch.
The most flawed version of the naïveté charge comes from miscon-
ceptions about what Dewey hoped for and how he conceived moral life.
John Patrick Diggins, for example, faults Dewey for not recognizing that
democracy is full of tensions and contradictions. He claims that unlike
Dewey, ‘‘Lincoln saw democracy as tragic.’’≤∞ Diggins makes the common
mistake of inferring from the fact that since Dewey argued against dual-
isms he must have presupposed the possibility of an easygoing harmony.
He says, ‘‘since Dewey denies dualism, he sees little distinction between the
community and the individual. He is also unwilling to see that liberty,
equality, and fraternity are value preferences and, as such, are incom-
patible with one another.’’≤≤ It should be clear by now that Dewey never
underestimated the tensions integral to the ideal of democracy, or the
di≈culties and even tragic character of the decisions one must make in
living by this ideal. Even if, as Richard Bernstein has recently pointed out,
Dewey may have at times ‘‘relied too much on metaphors of harmony and
organic unity,’’≤≥ they must not be understood as the quest for a state
without tension and conflict.
Dewey’s view of moral life provides the rich and complex context or
background in which we must understand his hopes for democracy. In his
ethics one finds a view of moral problems, conflicts, and deliberation that
should discredit most charges of naïveté. As obvious as this may be, there
have been reputable Dewey scholars who have claimed that there is a lack
of tragic sensibility in Dewey ethics.≤∂ Hilary Putnam, for example, finds
Dewey’s moral philosophy less satisfactory than his social philosophy be-
cause he failed to take into account the tensions and irreconcilability
between human goods. James Kloppenberg thinks that because of Dewey’s
failure on this score we should turn to James’s ethics as the basis of a
democratic vision. James’s sensitivity to the ‘‘tragic betrayal of some ethi-
cal ideal in every choice between irreconcilable conceptions of the good
makes his variety of pragmatist political thinking perhaps better suited to
our time.’’≤∑
I would admit that Dewey, in comparison to James, often overzeal-
ously encouraged us to create instrumentalities of prediction and control.
But this is just a di√erence of degrees, emphasis, and character. Dewey
≤πΩ
recognizes that in the paradigmatic problems of moral life there is genuine

uncertainty and conflict as to the morally correct thing to do. Dewey’s
starting point is not a world where values are compatible and where most
problems can be solved by some intellectual method. On the contrary,
moral life is usually so complex and conflicting that it is no wonder we
tend to flee by seeking the false security of rules or some foundation
outside of lived experience. We should instead try to work with the raw
resources, and trust that with perseverance and sensitivity we may find
some guidance within experience. This makes Dewey faith extraordinary
but not naïve.
In sum, tragic sensibility is not what is missing in Dewey’s ethics. His
faith in the instrumentalities of experience was tempered by an honest
realization that moral life was strenuous and tragic, and that ‘‘when all is
said and done, the fundamentally hazardous character of the world is not
seriously modified, much less eliminated’’ (LW 1:45).
The charge of naïveté presents at best a danger for the democratic
task. The risk of downplaying actual limitations in dealing with problems
is that we may fail to rely on them in inquiry. The danger of wishful
thinking is that we may stop consulting the ‘‘grain of experience,’’ and this
has consequences. Democracy is in jeopardy if people decide to ignore the
actual obstacles and limitations present at any time in human relations.
This is why for Dewey ‘‘choosing and acting with conscious regard to the
grain of circumstance’’ (LW 3:105) must become habit.
But the risk in emphasizing limitations is also serious. If we convince
ourselves that improving our relationships in a more democratic direction
is impossible, then we have automatically precluded one of its first condi-
tions: our faith. Because of this and because we cannot know in advance
what our actual limitations will be, it seems wise to be hopeful but alert, to
have faith but be critical. Naïveté today is avoided by allowing criticism to
reach down to even those concealed forces that control what may seem
like free public discourse. The di≈culty, however, is how to do this with-
out becoming cynical and losing faith in all dialogue and resorting to non-
democratic means. The alternative to cynicism and a primitive naïveté is
the balance between faith and criticism that Dewey describes as a ‘‘culti-
vated naivety of eye, ear, and thought, one that can be acquired only
through the discipline of severe thought’’ (LW 1:40).
Dewey’s meliorism tries to avoid both pessimism and optimism. There
is a false sense of comfort or security in these opposing views, and assent to
either of them shows a failure to confront the open-ended character of life
and an intellectual arrogance in claiming to know things in advance.
Learning from defeat, frustration, and failure does not presuppose that
≤∫≠
there will always be a lesson or that the lessons are already there in some
sense. Rather, it presupposes that we may learn while acknowledging that
‘‘control or power is never complete; luck or fortune, the propitious sup-
port of circumstances not foreseeable is always involved’’ (LW 3:105).
A di√erent charge of naïveté can be raised against Dewey. He was not
naïve about our limitations but rather about the dangers of the drive to
control and ameliorate present conditions. Even if Dewey was sensitive to
the tragic, his meliorism is an intellectual justification for the drive to
improve that can go against certain more passive but important attitudes
toward people and events. Dewey’s faith in the instrumentalities of experi-
ence should have been tempered by recognition of what positive value
there is to accepting things as they come. There is in life a time to amelio-
rate our contingent circumstances, but there is also a time to accept them,
not in a grudgingly or stoical way, but in a loving way.
This is an issue that has come up in regard to technology in its
seemingly endless capacity to improve our lives. In a recent article, Mi-
chael Sandel argues that what is troubling about designer children, bionic
athletes, and genetic engineering is that this kind of meliorism represents
‘‘a kind of hyperagency—a Promethean aspiration to remake nature, in-
cluding human nature, to serve our purposes and satisfy our desires. The
problem is not the drift to mechanism but the drive to mastery. And what
the drive to mastery misses and may even destroy is an appreciation of the
gifted character of human powers and achievements.’’≤∏ The ethics of en-
hancement raises ‘‘questions about the moral status of nature, and about
the proper stance of human beings toward the given world.’’≤π
If we can become better human beings and communities by genetic
engineering, should we? Is that what Dewey’s melioristic ethics implies? Is
there in Dewey an acknowledgment of the attitude Sandel thinks is threat-
ened by the new developments in technology?
Dewey has been called an instrumentalist but he was aware of the
dangers of too much mastery or excessive doing.≤∫ I have argued that for
him activity with aesthetic quality (as a balanced relation between doing
and undergoing) is the paradigmatic form of activity. Beholding, savor-
ing, accepting, and celebrating the given world does not have to be incom-
patible with molding, transforming, and perfecting it, even if there is a
tension and risks corresponding to doing each of these things in isolation
or to the extreme. The di≈cult balance between a transforming love and
an accepting love, between molding our children and accepting their indi-
viduality, is true of all democratic relationships. The parents to be ad-
mired are not those who are willing to improve their children by whatever
means and to whatever the extent. Dewey addressed these issues with
≤∫∞
respect to education. The overbearing parent is like the overbearing

teacher—she does not allow for the changes that come from within the
child’s own transactions with circumstances. Their drive toward mastery
not only has bad consequences but it is a failure to appreciate chance,
novelty, individuality, and mystery. Dewey tried to point to a balance
between discipline-structure and freedom in the classroom but was often
misunderstood as holding an extreme view. The causes of hyper-parenting
are too complex to be discussed here, but even during Dewey’s time he was
aware of how our education system has been a√ected by the pressure to
succeed, compete, and produce quantifiable outcomes that characterize
our society at large.
I have argued that Dewey’s appreciation of uniqueness (a key to his
notion of equality), valuing, and his natural piety provide a side of Dewey
that is concerned with appreciating what there is for what it is, indepen-
dently of our wishes or how it can be improved. It is true that in many of
his writings he was mostly concerned that we be more willing to amelio-
rate the quality of present experience by its own resources, but this sort of
encouragement is not incompatible with appreciating things for what
they are, in their uniqueness, and irrespective of our wishes or outcomes
for us. Even when we are able to elicit the potentialities of present experi-
ence, what actually emerges from our intervention is a source of wonder, a
gift, to be embraced for what it is. The individuality of things is the basis of
‘‘the mystery of things being just what they are.’’ This is a ‘‘mystery that is
the source of all joy and sorrow, of all hope and fear, and the source of
development both creative and degenerative’’ (LW 14:112).
The proper appreciation of the giftedness and contingency of things
is, by Dewey’s lights, part of a balanced attitude toward the world that falls
in between two extremes. One extreme is the excessive resolve to improve
and control that becomes a pride bordering on arrogance with respect to
the world. The other extreme is the one that does not seem to worry
Sandel. Too much of what Sandel sees threatened by the new technologies
can degenerate into a passive resignation. We are so receptive and accept-
ing of the contingent character of events that we celebrate even the evils
that come to others and us without making an e√ort to ameliorate things.
This borders on moral irresponsibility, especially when there is the tech-
nology available to ameliorate our problems. If one pole is based on an
exaggerated optimism about our own powers, the other pole borders on
determinism. As mentioned before, Dewey wants a humility that is ac-
companied with a readiness to ameliorate. This humility is a basis for
democratic solidarity and the generous treatment of others.
≤∫≤
The sort of ethics of enhancement that Sandel criticizes is a very dif-

ferent view than Dewey’s ethics even if they both emphasize amelioration.
Remember how I distinguished Dewey’s view from the notion of improve-
ment as approximation to a final end or standard of perfection. Dewey is
not interested in perfection as either an ideal or as a standard. This is in no
way a license to be lazy, sloppy, or unconcerned about improvement.
Meliorism in Dewey is a context-relative notion (i.e., to particular prob-
lematic situations that call for improvement). He does not endorse ame-
lioration for the sake of amelioration. The amelioration that is encour-
aged by his ethics is one that is grounded on problems experienced—in
this sense, terms such as ‘alleviating’ and ‘re-constructing’ are better than
‘perfecting’ or ‘enhancing.’ The moral agent is not someone who amelio-
rates as part of a general quest for perfection or even amelioration. Dewey
reverses this Platonic quest. Notions of perfection are not antecedent to
problematic situations; they are, at best, instruments for present ameliora-
tion whenever the context calls for amelioration. This is an important
di√erence. The demand for improvement is not something created or
projected by humans in a world that is otherwise neutral or indi√erent,
that is, valueless. This is a very suspicious starting point. Although Dewey
would not deny the importance of having characters with the readiness to
improve (as a habit or disposition), his starting point is a world that
demands improvement in its problematic phases.
Men have constructed a strange dream-world when they have supposed

that without a fixed ideal of a remote good to inspire them, they have no
inducement to get relief from present troubles, no desires for liberation
from what oppresses and for clearing-up what confuses present ac-
tion. . . . Su≈cient unto the day is the evil thereof. Su≈cient it is to
stimulate us to remedial action. (MW 14:195)
In sum, there is in Dewey’s ethics some basis to warn us about the dangers
of technological enhancement as a general practice. It can erode an atti-
tude toward the world that is part of the sort of balanced engagement that
I have articulated in this book. The road toward perfectionism is the road
to the sort of stability and harmony that is non-aesthetic. The contingency
of our talents, fortunes, as well as of our bad circumstances are for Dewey
the grounds of democratic solidarity. I said earlier that the ultimate glue in
Dewey’s view is a faith in experience or nature, one that is felt as the
notion that ‘‘everything that’s here is here, and you can just lie back on
it.’’≤Ω There is an active and a more passive side to this faith. You can lie
back on experience by trusting its potentialities that may be released with
≤∫≥
our intervention, but it is also important to lie back in the sense of accept-
ing the grain of experience and a≈rming what it brings even if it is not in
line with our wishes.
Of course, this does not answer the di≈cult questions. At what point
does our capacity for mastery with the developments of new enhancement
technology lead to the sort of unbalanced control where we have removed
too much contingency, novelty, surprise, gifts, and uniqueness from our
everyday lives? Dewey does not say, and given his contextualism, he would
be skeptical of any philosophical attempt to fix this line a priori. Fur-
thermore, slippery-slope-type arguments would not convince Dewey to
set absolute limits to enhancement technologies; rather, he would likely
eschew line drawing and assume the risks of such technologies in the
name of trying to maintain a context-sensitive balance. Nevertheless, the
danger is there and if it is true that today we are on the verge of too much
mastery, then Deweyans today should be more resistant or watchful about
the e√ects of technology in this regard than Dewey was.
Democracy and the Limits of Pluralism

Another way to raise the naïveté charge against Dewey would be to ques-
tion the means by which conflict, force, and disagreement are to be han-
dled. The idea that we can sit down as equals, admit everyone to the table,
and have a rational discussion would seem to ignore the fact that there are
people who are not willing to put their special interests aside, and that
sometimes we may have to resort to force and coercion. Pragmatism,
hence, would appear to be dangerously naïve because it seems too tolerant,
open, generous, and inclusive. Dewey prescribes that we have a discussion
with even those who may not deserve to be talked to and who may be a
danger to a democratic society. How is Dewey’s pragmatism any di√erent
from the ‘‘let many flowers bloom’’ variety that is sometimes defended?
This is, of course, a caricature of Dewey’s view.≥≠ He was aware of the
limitations of inquiry. Moreover, there is nothing in Dewey that rules out
the use of force or of recognizing that there are limits to pluralism and
tolerance. It is true that nowhere does he lay out rules for exclusion (i.e., as
a set of necessary and su≈cient conditions for excluding some views from
communal inquiry), but it does not follow that there is no conceivable basis
to exclude certain viewpoints in particular situations. This is the same sort
of assumption that is behind the idea that if in ethical theory we cannot
provide a theoretical basis to rule out someone as evil as Hitler, then there is
no actual basis to do so in concrete situations and all is permitted.
Dewey did encourage us to avoid violence to settle conflicts of interest
≤∫∂
and opinion in a pluralistic society. The enemies of democracies are the

enemies of inquiry and public discussion. These are not only censorship
and suppression but the covert and indirect use of force. ‘‘Mankind still
prefers upon the whole to rely upon force, not now exercised directly and
physically as it was once, but upon covert and indirect force, rather than
upon intelligence to discover and cling to what is right’’ (LW 7:231). But for
Dewey the proper way to stand by the principles of openness and tolerance
is also to stand by contextualism. The most that can be said about these
principles prior to a situation is that there are good reasons to try them
and to avoid the use of force, violence, and exclusion. We cannot a priori
or absolutely rule out force, violence, and exclusion. But does it follow that
these stand as equally warranted ways of confronting situations? Even if in
a democracy we must do our best to try to consider each case on its own
merits, the burden of proof is on those who do not wish to try democratic
means in a specific situation. To favor democratic principles also means
that in cases of doubt we should err on the side of being too tolerant than
not tolerant enough.
The objection considered does, however, raise a legitimate practical
concern. There are risks (or liabilities) for standing by the principles of
tolerance, freedom of action, and dialogue in a democracy, but there is no
reason to believe that Dewey was not aware of this. He counted on the sort
of intelligent contextualism that would hopefully allow us to recognize, as
we engage in particular situations, when we have reached the limits of
tolerance and when it is time to use force or exclude someone. I am aware
that this answer is not satisfactory for many who expect some sort of fixed
criteria or rules as an adequate answer; anything less seems too lax and
unstable. But from the point of view of Dewey’s ethics, the habits required
to be an intelligent contextualist are more stable and reliable tools to rely
on (in these critical situations) than any cognitive criteria. The openness of
contextualism is no comfort for those who want the security of knowing
answers in advance. But from Dewey’s perspective this is naïve. It is want-
ing or counting on what the universe cannot provide. Both absolutism and
a relativism that permits anything provide a false sense of comfort.
Pessimistic views about human nature would find Dewey’s views na-
ïve because, according to them, violent warfare and the use of force seem
inevitable. But for Dewey claims about inevitability are non-empirical and
non-intelligent.
Wherever the inevitable reigns intelligence cannot be used. Commit-

ment to inevitability is always the fruit of dogma; intelligence does not
pretend to know save as a result of experimentation, the opposite of
≤∫∑
preconceived dogma. Moreover, acceptance in advance of the inevita-

bility of violence tends to produce the use of violence in cases where
peaceful methods might otherwise avail. (LW 11:55)
We must not assume defeatism in advance of actual trial. Dewey gave us

many reasons why democracy seems worth trying but ultimately theoreti-
cal reasons are impotent if we do not in our own experience feel the need
to ameliorate the quality of present experience. ‘‘The reasons for making
the trial are not abstract or recondite. They are found in the confusion,
uncertainty and conflict that mark the modern world’’ (LW 11:64).
Democracy and the Quality of Experience

The most important functional evaluation of an ideal is one that takes into
account the particular problem from which it has arisen. After all, an ideal
has a context and it is born from a particular dissatisfaction with how
things are. As George Herbert Mead said, ‘‘a conception of a di√erent
world comes to us always as the result of some specific problem which
involves readjustment of the world as it is.’’≥∞ Given what I have taken to be
the problematic context that grounds Dewey’s hopes or aspirations, the
following questions are important in reevaluating democracy as an ideal:
does trying to live by his view of democracy (and using it as a tool of
criticism) have the power or potential to transform (improve) the quality
of our interactions and present experience by its own means? Can it guide,
inspire, and inform our individual struggles on this issue? That Dewey
thought of democracy as the best hypothetical response to living a more
qualitatively enriching social life is supported by his most straightforward
and explicit remarks regarding the justification of democracy. In Experi-
ence and Education he said,
is it not the reason for our preference that we believe that mutual con-
sultation and convictions reached through persuasion, make possible a
better quality of experience than can otherwise be provided on any wide
scale? . . . I do not see how we can justify our preference for democracy
and humanity on any other ground. (LW 13:18)
To be sure, the ideal of democracy is not a mere instrumentality to some

future state of a√airs where the quality of our interactions (and life) is
enhanced and fulfillment is achieved. As previously noted, the aim of
Dewey’s ethics is a better life relative to where we are, rather than to some
predetermined conception of the good life. The rewards and test of having
democracy as an ideal are in the very striving and piecemeal achievement
≤∫∏
in particular situations and in light of particular problems encountered.

These problems are so varied and unique that all that can be said about
them is that they demand a qualitative improvement in how we interact
with each other. The interaction in an oppressive working environment,
the mechanical and superficial character of most dialogues, the inability of
many to understand and consider in deliberations the su√ering of the
other, a felt lack of control over the forces that guide my conduct, the
inability to learn from others and embrace the irreducible pluralism of
experience, the unjust oppression of a minority, the drudgery of working
with others, the capricious and arbitrary nature of our decisions, and so
on are the problems of democracy. The ideal must be tested and reevalu-
ated in light of these sorts of problems that according to Dewey character-
ize our contemporary social existence. There would be no point or value
to democracy as an ideal in a world where we are confronted with situa-
tions in no need of qualitative improvement.
The move to justify democracy by the quality of lived present experi-
ence is consistent with a philosophy that makes experience its starting
point. That which initiates inquiry and tests the validity of its results is life.
This is Dewey’s alternative to justifying democracy by appealing to natural
rights, self-interest, or rationality. However, it is open to challenges from
more traditional philosophers. How does one judge what counts as better
quality? How do we determine if living by the democratic ideal tends to
improve the quality of our interactions and present experience? Are we
justified in believing that the democratization of our experience leads to
improvement of its quality? If so, by what standards? By what criteria are
we even entitled to reach any judgment that there is better and worst in
interaction? If the criteria presuppose features of democratic interaction
then are we not begging the question? Even Deweyan sympathizers like
Sydney Hook and Robert Westbrook have found the challenge about cri-
teria legitimate.
After quoting Dewey’s claim that a democratic community is superior
to other forms of association because it is ‘‘full and free,’’ Hook raises the
problem that this sort of justification of democracy will not work. ‘‘Actu-
ally this derivation of the validity of democratic society is circular, and
some may even claim it is question-begging because the very choice of
criteria presupposes an ideal family.’’≥≤ Hook regrets that Dewey did not
devote ‘‘more pages to the problem of justification.’’≥≥ Westbrook raises the
criteria challenge in a di√erent context. ‘‘If one is willing to go this far with
Dewey, a nagging question remains; that is, what criteria do we use to
evaluate the success of our ends in view?’’≥∂
This criteria challenge is in fact one that could also be raised against
≤∫π
my own reconstruction of Dewey. I have argued that democracy seems

best or most promising from a Deweyan perspective because it has the
features of the sort of interactive process in our lives that have aesthetic
quality. But on what basis do we judge that events with aesthetic quality
are better than those that do not have this quality? What criteria are
we assuming when, for example, we hold that experiences that are frag-
mented or mechanical are not as meaningful and as educational as those
with organic unity and diversity, and where means and ends are inte-
grated? Can we come up with a justification of the criteria that would
justify such judgments of quality without begging the question?
This objection is a good example of how important it is to understand
how radical Dewey’s departure is from much of traditional ethics. The
objection assumes that without some ultimate (explicit or implicit) crite-
ria there is no reasonable basis to ground value judgments. For Dewey, as
we have seen, valuations are not conclusions deduced from some precon-
ceived criteria about what is good. It is an experience that is had that
certain interactions (e.g., communications) are experienced as valuable
and meaningful. These experiences must be subjected to criticism and
there may be plenty of disagreement among people about them. In this
inquiry we may come to formulate hypotheses and rules about what is the
best in human interaction, but we must begin and return to the pre-
conceptual experiences that we have. In other words, the bottom line
is that either you have the experiences that validate democracy or you
do not.
The aesthetic quality and the drudgery of our everyday discussions, as
well as the fact that the former is better than the latter, are judgments that
can be reached without the need of some ultimate standard. This is what it
means to rely on primary experience. Dewey was explicit about his start-
ing point: ‘‘There are enormous di√erences of better and worse in the
quality of what is social. Ideal morals begin with the perception of these
di√erences’’ (MW 14:225, my emphasis). Some relationships are experi-
enced as mechanical and superficial, others are experienced as optimal
and deep. For Dewey, if you cannot tell the di√erence between one and the
other, then you lack sensitivity, which is something more serious than
lacking a theoretical criterion of a good relationship. Hence, when Dewey
claims that democracy ‘‘makes a better quality of experience,’’ he means
that its interactions are enriching and meaningful. This claim is a hypoth-
esis and a generalization based upon an inquiry that relies (ultimately) on
judging particular experiences that have been had, and not on the appli-
cation of some antecedent, theoretically justified criteria. To insist that
Dewey must presuppose some universal standard of value is to assume
≤∫∫
that knowledge (in the form of rules or criteria) is prior to experience; this
is an instance of the intellectualist fallacy.
The empirical attitude that certain interactions are better because
they are experienced as such is not an appeal to intuition or to the view
that it is good simply because one says so. Recall that Dewey’s method is
one of trusting immediate experience without closing the door to further
inquiry. The need for criticism and communal inquiry about value is
recurrent in a changing world where we are aware of the possible narrow-
ness and limitations of our own experiences. What may be experienced
initially as good may not be experienced that way upon further dialogue,
reflection, judgment, and experience. About our most direct personal
experiences, Dewey admits that they can be restricted, one-sided, and
perverted but the ‘‘remedy, however, is not divorce of thought from the
intimacies of the direct contacts and intercourses of life, but a supplemen-
tation of limitations and a correction of biases through acquaintance with
the experience of others’’ (LW 6:21).
Dewey denied that there is a single universal standard or criterion of
value, but he did not think that it follows that there is no basis for criticism
or reasonableness, nor that one must abandon the need to provide reasons
or support for our judgments. Reasons and arguments are important for
reasonableness; they are arrived at in the process of critically reexamining
judgments and commitments, and they play a role in further inquiry. But
their mere formulation is no substitute for personal judgment based on
experience. The variety of reasons presented in favor of democracy may
lead others, who hold similar commitments, to test certain hypotheses
and to reach similar judgments about the value and promise of democ-
racy. You can guide but not reason someone into having the experiences
that can validate democracy. And even in the best of circumstances, there
is ‘‘no assurance that any one will so act as to have the experience. The
horse led to water is not forced to drink’’ (LW 14:31). According to Dewey’s
denotative method, the empirical philosopher must provide arguments,
but she should also guide others (through descriptions and other means)
to have the experiences that may confirm their hypotheses.
Dewey’s critics and sympathizers, however, continue to presuppose
that Dewey’s politics is grounded in Dewey’s ethics because in the lat-
ter one finds the ultimate criterion of all value judgments. They presup-
pose that for Dewey self-realization, human fulfillment, or growth are the
goods ultimately served by democracy.≥∑ It is hard to deny that Dewey was
to some extent concerned with all of these goods, but to assume that any of
them is the underlying and final telos is to fail to do justice to the radically
pluralistic and contextualist view of Dewey’s mature ethical thought and
≤∫Ω
philosophy. There is no overriding aim to all of our moral struggles that

can be used as the theoretical standard to judge all activity. The ideal of
democracy is an end-in-view and, as such, it is a means. I have suggested
di√erent ways in which Dewey would want us to evaluate it as a means.
But doesn’t this make him a consequentialist regarding democracy and
therefore bind him to some sort of criteria? Dewey does think that democ-
racy as an ideal is a means and that it produces good results. But one can
make good consequences key to evaluating action or an ideal without
assuming the sort of standard assumed by consequentialists. Furthermore,
Dewey found it objectionable when consequences and results are under-
stood in terms of a future end that is remote and external to the present
situation. A consequentialist might argue that democracy leads or con-
tributes to, for example, human flourishing, the just and happy society, or
the survival of our species beyond and apart from democracy itself. This
assumes a dualism between means and ends, and it disregards the present
as the locus of moral reconstruction.
Dewey wanted to shift the focus of democracy to the present striving
or democratization of experience instead of toward future results. Democ-
racy as an ideal is a means to present reconstruction of specific problems
in a situation. Democracy is not a journey to some predefined end point,
nor is it the end of the journey itself. The spirit of democracy is in the
present process of adjusting democratic means and ends. Living by and
with the ideal and dealing with the problems and challenges it entails for
us now is to endorse democracy as a way of life. When the emphasis is put
on the striving to be democratic, every unique contextual battle for the
sake of democracy is its own reason for being, as well as a unique oppor-
tunity for celebration if won (i.e., a source of immediate enjoyment).
There is no grandiose and ultimate war for the sake of which the piece-
meal present battles are fought. We do (and should) carry forward the
wisdom from previous battles, but there is no end in sight in the sense of a
final consummation or cumulative goal that serves as the standard for all
the battles. Trying to transform everyday activity to make it richer and
fuller relative to concrete present problems and possibilities is what we do
in democracy as a way of life. The experience of pursuing and achieving
democratic ends is a means but it is valued for its own sake as the experi-
ence which it is.
Dewey was more concerned with the spirit of democracy—that is,
with how one is engaged in democratic reconstruction—than with trying
to make fixed and final normative pronouncements about democratic
rules or conduct. In the ideal democratic engagement there is a balance
between work and play; moreover, present activity is not taken as mere
≤Ω≠
means, but neither are goals or ideals taken as mere ends. Mastery over
means of execution and enthusiasm for wider aims and ideals should
supplement each other. In other words, the democrat needs to adopt the
‘‘genuine interest’’ in an ideal typical of the artist. The ideal democrat
experiences each e√ort on behalf of democracy in the same way that the
sculptor experiences each stroke of the chisel.
Each molding of the clay . . . is at the time the whole end in process of
realization. Whatever interest or value attaches to the end attaches to
each of these steps. He is as much absorbed in one as in the other. . . . A
genuine interest in the ideal indicates of necessity an equal interest in all
the conditions of its expression. (EW 5:128)
In sum, a consequentialist justification of Dewey’s ideal of democracy is

inconsistent with Dewey’s philosophy, for it is central to the ideal that
there should be a balanced relation between means and ends, and a con-
cern for the quality of present processes. Insofar as the consequentialist
justification of democracy would make the present striving for democracy
a mere means, it is sharply at odds with the ideal of democracy as con-
ceived by Dewey. The notion, for example, that democracy produces aes-
thetic satisfaction≥∏ or that it is a prerequisite for epistemic goals≥π seems to
make democracy a mere means to a future and separate goal.
The justificatory requirements for democracy cannot be the same as
those for theory. The reasonableness of an ideal way of life is to be tested in
lived experience by trying to live by it. Consistency with one’s beliefs and
with the nature of experience is important, but this is ultimately nothing
more than an intellectual warrant to try to live in a certain way. In other
words, there are limitations to a philosophical investigation about better
or worse ways of participating in experience. The most important one is
that we can test our hypotheses only by living them. Participation can only
be tested by participating. There is, then, no theoretical justification of
democracy that can replace the support provided in favor of democracy
by living and embodying democratic habits in our everyday interaction.
That, for example, openness and tolerance usually make for a better dia-
logue can only be tested by adopting them in our daily interactions with
others. To argue that in the end all theoretical arguments in favor of
democracy pale in comparison to our attempts to try it for ourselves could
not be more consistent with the very spirit of democracy.
In the last analysis, ideals are experiments. We know that the world is
tolerant and fairly hospitable to our experiments. But perhaps the world
does not lend itself equally to all our ideals. Of course, there are limitations
to this appeal to experimentation. We cannot divest ourselves of our habits
≤Ω∞
as we do with our clothes, but just because we cannot stand outside our
ways of life to make side-by-side comparisons does not mean that we can
never know whether we are improving or whether changes are needed in
our lives. About growth or progress Dewey says, ‘‘. . . if it cannot be told by
qualities belonging to the moment of transition it can never be judged’’
(MW 14:195).
Dewey turns the fact that we cannot stand outside of our situatedness
into a positive resource, rather than a reason to abandon all objectivity. If
we were to appreciate the guiding force of reflection based on a unique
and pervasive quality of each problematic situation, we would find absurd
the need for antecedent knowledge of the good life or some outside stand-
point to know whether or not we are doing well. As Dewey said,
there are plenty of negative elements, due to conflict, entanglement and

obscurity, in most situations of life, and we do not require a revelation of
some supreme perfection to inform us whether or no we are making
headway in present rectification. (MW 14:195)
It is in and because of the felt intolerance and the superficial and mechani-
cal aspects of our relations and discussions that we seek to democratize
our experience. In the process of transforming these situations of conflict,
entanglement, and obscurity, we need to rely on the sense of relevance and
guidance found in the concrete situations where these problems are felt.
We do in fact judge better from worse when guided by the same qualitative
context that raises the issue, and we do this without the need for a God’s-
eye point of view. If Dewey’s view seems like an invitation to anarchy, it is
because, as opposed to most philosophies, it holds that what ultimately
guides judgment cannot be articulated in terms of any sort of proposi-
tional knowledge. What can save us from nihilism in a world without
foundations is qualitative, unique, and pre-conceptual.
Dewey’s emphasis on primary qualitative and situated experience
does not rule out the possibility of formulating general principles of dem-
ocratic discourse or interaction. It may be useful in certain circumstances
to lay out some rules of proper deliberation in a democracy in order to
criticize present institutions. What must be avoided is overlooking the fact
that these rules are only tools derived from, not prior to, having a certain
quality of communication. Democracy as experience means that it arises
and is ultimately justified by having certain experiences in particular sit-
uations. This is a bottom-up justification of democracy.
Have we succeeded in avoiding the charge of circularity in justifica-
tion? We could play the skeptic and push the objection one more time. To
≤Ω≤
test democracy by its quality in lived experience is to rely on the experi-

mental method. But what in turn supports a reliance on experimental
method? If we say that it is itself something to be tested by proceeding and
guiding our lives in a certain way, then we seem to be arguing in a circle.
Does not testing openness require openness? This is indeed a circle, but it
is hardly a damaging or objectionable one. Being experimental about the
experimental method in our lives is hardly as objectionable as assuming in
a deductive justification the same conclusion we set out to prove. First, in
the context of our lives this lived process of validation is never a return
back to the same (or prior) place, so that perhaps a spiral, rather than a
circle, is a better analogy. More importantly, it is precisely the capacity to
move in a spiral motion that makes the experimental way of living attrac-
tive to Dewey. That is to say, it holds the promise of being a self-corrective
process. It can be applied to itself without an appeal to an external stan-
dard to determine its direction and movement. Dewey proposed a way of
approaching our problems that promises not only to ameliorate them but
to ameliorate itself in the process. He was interested in the sort of moral
life that can develop in its own ongoing course the standards to which
further living should be submitted, as well as the experiences by which
these standards must themselves be tested. Democracy is a way of life that
tries and hopes for salvation from within this process. Non-democratic
systems and communications do not have the built-in means to improve
themselves or respond adequately to change.
We could raise one more skeptical challenge to all of this. Is Dewey
warranted in hoping that we can deepen and regulate everyday experience
by its own means? This is to raise a question about his underlying faith in
experience. Dewey was explicit that democracy ultimately rests on faith.
Democracy and Faith in Experience

To be both empirical and to appeal to faith may seem contradictory or
incoherent. In particular, how can democracy be empirically grounded
when it is only an imagined possibility with much evidence against it?
Granted, ideals are the sorts of thing that are supposed to be beyond
evidence, but aren’t we in the case of democracy going beyond what is
reasonable? Why should we persist in believing in what we know, based
upon the evidence, cannot be? Is it not more reasonable to abandon faith?
Is not relying on faith as the basis of democracy a recognition that it lacks
the reasonableness of our most rational commitments?
These questions and most of the traditional polemics about the justi-
fication of faith are sustained without questioning the assumptions either
≤Ω≥
that faith is a special form of knowledge or that it is unimportant or

invalid. But Dewey inherited from William James an alternative model of
faith. He points out that ‘‘change from the one conception of faith to the
other is indicative of a profound alteration’’ (LW 5:267).
James knew that it is only by presupposing the traditional epistemic
conception of a believer (i.e., a detached and neutral spectator of proposi-
tions) that one can hold that faith is an auxiliary faculty, an add-on to
reason (and to what is reasonable) after reason can go no further.≥∫ Having
faith is a type of commitment, an insistence on a possibility, and a ten-
dency to act upon it, fully aware of the risk involved in a particular con-
text. Faith is necessary and important in all dimensions of life and not
something confined to religion.
Faith is a complex and rich phenomenon where di√erent modes of
experience are brought together. And it is an active organic cooperation
between the plurality of demands placed on the believer. Since we are not
merely cognitive beings, says James, we represent the appeal of our be-
lieved hypothesis to be to ‘‘our whole nature’s loyalty and not to any
emaciated faculty of syllogistic proof.’’≥Ω
Hence, determining or evaluating the reasonableness of a faith in
democracy is di√erent from determining whether democracy is true or
false, and di√erent from validating a knowledge claim. There are con-
textual reasons relevant to this determination that go well beyond evi-
dence or any other epistemic reasons. There is, strictly speaking, no faith
in democracy in general; there are only particular faiths. Ultimately the
issue of justification is a contextual one; that is, the unique context of each
individual as each confronts a di√erent set of circumstances (including
evidence and needs) determines whether a particular faith is justified.
But what, then, about the question of whether Dewey was justified in
his particular faith in democracy? All of the reasons presented would have
to count in favor of a positive answer, but we cannot pretend here to
exhaust all of the personal and non-epistemic reasons Dewey may have
had to continue to have faith in democracy in spite of contrary considera-
tions and challenges. We can say, however, that his faith was reasonable
insofar as it was not uncritically adopted. As Michael Eldridge has demon-
strated, Dewey’s faith was ‘‘a set of enduring beliefs that ran beyond the
evidence available at any given time, but that remained correctable by
continued experience.’’∂≠
The view that justification of faith is something individual and con-
textual does not entail that a philosophical defense of democracy is futile.
A philosopher can provide support that may become part of the con-
≤Ω∂
textual set of reasons to be considered by an individual. In other words,

the reasons Dewey gives in favor of democracy may lead others with
similar commitments and circumstances to adopt a faith, or strengthen
their faith, in democracy.
The di√erent understanding of faith which is based upon a pragmatist
view of experience underscores the importance and necessity of faith for
democracy. James understood that the traditional conceptions of faith
had been built upon the model of a passive, cognitive subject in a static
universe. If the world is complete, then all the beliefs in what we want the
world to be seem futile or like wishful thinking. Faith in democracy seems
like believing something that is false. But if reality is in transformation—in
the making—then faith is an active agency; it is not a passive certitude, but
a formative factor. For often it is only by taking this kind of risk in our
beliefs that we can bring about significant positive changes in the world;
and ‘‘often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only
thing that makes the result come true,’’∂∞ as James put it. In short, faith is a
formative factor necessary to actualize our ideals.
Depending on their consequences, some faiths will surely be better
than others, but we cannot know a priori what those consequences will be.
We need to engage in ‘‘faith ventures’’ to find out. Sometimes we have to
be explorers, open new trails, and adopt a willingness to learn from our
mistakes. James and Dewey were meliorists, that is, they believed in the
possibility that we can make this a better world. But they were aware that
this might require a good will not only in our actions, but in our beliefs.
For it might be the case that one of the first risks we need to take in order
to actually make this a better world is to believe that we can.
But by basing democracy on faith, how do we avoid the risks of wish-
ful thinking and self-deception? The answer is that we do not. These are
dangers, but they should not be met by simply ruling out faith altogether
or discouraging it, for there are equal, if not greater, risks involved in
paralyzing our ‘‘native capacities for faith.’’∂≤ A failure to take the risk
involved in having faith in democracy (and surrendering to skepticism
and cynicism) is not altogether to avoid risk, but to take a di√erent kind of
risk, namely, the risk of losing those things that might depend on believing
in the possibility of democracy. One of the things lost may be democracy
as a way of life. Democracy requires faith for its own realization.
I claimed earlier that one of the considerations in determining the
reasonableness of an ideal is how it relates to one’s other central commit-
ments and hopes. An important part of my present task has been to make
explicit how Dewey’s views on morality, democracy, and philosophy are
≤Ω∑
part of a coherent vision. In order to engage in criticism and to learn one

needs to have a clearer and more organized vision of one’s commitments.
Dewey thought this was a task for philosophy.
The clearer and more organized vision of the contents of beliefs may
have as an immediate outcome an enhanced sense of their worth and
greater loyalty to them. But nevertheless the set of beliefs undergoes
more than a sea-change in the process. (LW 6:19)
It is perhaps a mistake to ask which of Dewey’s commitments and beliefs

was more fundamental, for this presupposes the kind of foundational
model of justification that he did not adopt. Instead, among them there
was a supporting relationship in any ongoing inquiry. Dewey’s philosoph-
ical investigations into each such commitment led him to continuously
develop, modify, and refine the conceptions of the others. He sought a
view of experience that supports his moral ideal as much as he sought a
moral ideal that is congenial to his view of experience. His philosophy of
experience served as a way of reinterpreting the democratic ideals and of
holding that the world we live in is one in which faith in democracy is
reasonable.∂≥ However, it is equally true that he found in democracy an
a≈rmation of the potentialities of experience.
The ideal moral life is one that is based on and is supportive of faith in
experience. Dewey could not have been more explicit that the pursuit of
democracy was such a life. He claimed that, compared to other general
modes of social and moral participation, it is the
sole way of living which believes wholeheartedly in the process of experi-

ence as end and as means. . . . Democracy is belief in the ability of human
experience to generate the aims and methods by which further experi-
ence will grow in ordered richness. (LW 14:229)
What is it about democracy that makes it the way of life most consistent
with the pragmatist faith in experience? In social and moral matters we
are accustomed to assume that amelioration and solutions must come
from the top down, especially from means that are beyond or above
experience. ‘‘Men have not been able to trust either the world or them-
selves to realize the values and qualities which are the possibilities of na-
ture’’ (LW 4:240). For Dewey, this general distrust in nature is intimately
tied to a distrust of those who serve as the backbone of most aristocratic
ideals. Democracy’s faith in the people is understood by Dewey as a faith
in the potentialities and self-su≈ciency of the everyday transactions of
individuals if the proper conditions are provided. ‘‘Every other form of
≤Ω∏
moral and social faith rest upon the idea that experience must be subjected
at some point or other to some form of external control; to some ‘author-
ity’ alleged to exist outside the process of experience’’ (LW 14:229).
For Dewey, formal and political notions of democracy are not su≈-
ciently robust to counteract the need for some aristocratic scheme to
regulate our everyday a√airs. On the other hand, if democracy is under-
stood as merely following the conversations and wishes of the people, then
this seems like the abandonment of any standards. Only a robust notion of
democracy that requires communal inquiry (with all that this implies) can
be supportive of the faith that experience can provide the standards to
which further experience may submit. Aristocracy and the need to look
outside our direct qualitative world and communications for guidance
will continue to appeal and flourish so long as democracy is devoid of its
most promising possibilities. For Dewey, the alternative to the disillusion-
ment with formal democratic societies where people are merely drifting,
are apathetic, or are mere consumers of entertainment is more democ-
racy; it is not the search for the guidance of a wise and benevolent dictator.
Again, to take this stand requires a lot of faith in the people.
The connection between Dewey’s faiths in experience and democracy
is made even stronger when the latter is understood from the point of view
of his ethics. Democracy fits his conception of an ideal moral life because
it has in its generic features, phases, and dynamics all of the features of an
intelligent and aesthetic moral life. Democratic inquiry embraces, a≈rms,
and relies on everyday life in all of its contingency and qualitative richness
to settle disagreements or to come to decisions. It so trusts the grain of
experience that it tries to turn even error, conflict, incompleteness, plural-
ism, uncertainty, and tragedy into sources of instruction. This makes
possible a moral life that can be self-educational and capable of ameliorat-
ing its problems through its own resources.
Experience cannot become educational and grow in ordered richness
when our relationships are not democratic. Certain ways of interacting are
cumulatively enriching and meaningful,∂∂ whereas others are not. It is in
democratic communication that the conditions for experience to educate,
enlarge, and enrich itself are maximized. These conditions consist of the
predominance of the traits already mentioned: full and free communica-
tion and cooperation, generous give-and-take (reciprocity and sharing),
and the exchange of experiences and ideas in an environment of sympa-
thetic intercommunication where everyone contributes and corrects her
individual limitations. The truth of this claim may be intuitively obvious
to those who have had the opportunity to be part of this kind of inter-
action. But I think there are more general and basic assumptions that are
≤Ωπ
worth disclosing behind Dewey’s preference for the organic interactions

that characterize a democratic way of life.
If we think of a self, a relationship, a community, or a society as
wholes (constituted by transacting parts) in the context of transacting
with other wholes, then this allows us to abstractly, but usefully, highlight
the most general features of democratic interactions, and to highlight
some of Dewey’s hidden working hypotheses. In previous chapters I char-
acterized the ideal self and community as wholes in which inclusivity,
openness, diversity (distinctiveness of its parts), and flexibility coexist
with fullness and intimacy of interaction. I also characterized the tension-
filled nature of this coexistence in terms of centripetal and centrifugal
forces, values, or tendencies. Each of these correspond to two di√erent
ways in which present experience is subject to qualitative improvement,
namely, it can both deepen and widen.
The centrifugal tendencies allow a self and a community the richness
of experience that comes from expansion and increased breadth. Widen-
ing the experience of children should be the result of growing up in a com-
munity or in relationships where certain virtues are encouraged. Dewey
seems to be committed to the hypothesis that inclusivity and diversity as
features of organic, interactive wholes are better traits than exclusivity (or
‘‘closedness’’) and homogeneity. In both the ideal character and the ideal
community he assumes that more points of transactions and opportuni-
ties for new and diverse relations signify more opportunities for learning
and releasing unknown potentialities. Expansion of horizons leads to a
rich and diversified experience. On the other hand, exclusiveness, one-
sidedness, homogeneity, and suppression are usually restrictions of expe-
rience. They are barriers to full development and growth that can starve
the whole and its parts.
But breadth does not guarantee depth. In fact, it can be a threat if
taken to an extreme. The wider and expansive self and community are not
improvements in experience if there is no genuine transaction between its
parts, that is, the sort of wholehearted reciprocal interaction where the
parts are a√ected. Dewey’s hypothesis is that fullness is usually better than
halfhearted or superficial interaction. Interdependence and solidarity are
positive traits. Where there is isolation, compartmentalization, segrega-
tion, suppression, fragmentation, and polarization there are barriers that
can impoverish the lives of everyone.
The possibility of democracy is then for Dewey the possibility of
widening and deepening present experience. ‘‘Every way of life that fails in
its democracy limits the contacts, the exchanges, the communications, the
interactions by which experience is steadied while it is also enlarged and
≤Ω∫
enriched’’ (LW 14:229–30). The ideal is for generosity, openness, and in-
clusivity not to undermine fullness of interaction. The democratic com-
munity is wide and open, both vertically and horizontally, without losing
its integrity. The features that provide its ability to widen experience are
also responsible for its freedom and flexibility; and the ones that make
depth and fullness possible contribute to its stability and order. As with
any work of art there is a very delicate balance between the stable and the
precarious, as well as between its centripetal and centrifugal values.
The intelligent and aesthetic characters of democracies are mutually
dependent. The community most capable of learning from experience is
also the one that has all the features that define aesthetic activity, which
for Dewey is the most inherently meaningful type of activity in experi-
ence. The democratic way of life is able to maintain the kind of balance
and rhythm in its everyday doings and undergoings that, for Dewey,
characterize aesthetic experience: a balance of tensions with rhythmic
variety. Ideal activity is a merging of playfulness with seriousness that
allows richness and flexibility without sacrificing stability. Democracy
signifies for Dewey this possibility at a social level. The democratic com-
munity is also the aesthetic community because it is constituted by rela-
tionships that are neither fixed, routine, or mechanical, nor anarchical,
capricious, or arbitrary.
The democratic community falls between the extremes of a commu-
nity that is disintegrated and one that is kept stable only because of some
imposed external authority. In other words, it is capable of preserving
its own integrity without the need of external foundations. A stability
achieved through full interaction and openness and not through force or
repression is required to procure its ordered richness. Since it can steer
safely between complete radicalism and complete conservatism, it can rely
on what is stable without falling into drudgery. But it can also be play-
ful and welcome change without degenerating into chaos. The non-
democratic ways of dealing with moral and social problems represent for
Dewey a failure to use the resources and potentialities of experience. For
example, in dealing with change, uncertainty, ambivalence, and pluralism,
it is ine√ective to deny their reality (as is often the strategies of authori-
tarian, dualistic, and rule-guided views). The best way to preserve order is
not by trying to get rid of participation or of the diversity present in
human experience.
≤ΩΩ
Conclusion
E ven though Dewey never wrote a single comprehensive and definitive

rendition of his moral thought, he had a coherent and complex view
worth reconstructing and reconsidering today. His meta-ethics (part 1),
his view of moral life (part 2), and his normative ethics (part 3) mutually
support one another. They are parts of Dewey’s larger inquiry, namely, an
investigation of the conditions and instrumentalities required to amelio-
rate concrete, existential, and lived experience. Dewey’s theoretical in-
quiries in ethics had, as their problematic situation, his discontent with
actual conditions, for example, extremism and the lack of meaningful
moral engagement. In other words, the above three aspects of his ethics
were not ends in themselves, but just di√erent uses of philosophy as
criticism, and di√erent types of instruments to be used to liberate and
improve actual moral practice.
Dewey’s ethics was also a reaction to what he perceived as the failure
of ethical philosophy to provide proper guidance to moral agents. Absolu-
tist and subjectivist views of morality as well as the search for some ulti-
mate criteria of right and wrong by much ethical theory signified for
Dewey a lack of confidence in the directive powers that inhere in experi-
≥≠≠
conclusion
ence. Instead, Dewey was in search of an ethics based on the capacity of

each situation to guide and rectify its own problems and challenges. This
presupposes his faith in experience, a commitment that I have made
explicit and that is intimately related to Dewey’s philosophical methodol-
ogy and to his faith in democracy.
In part 1, I set out the methodological commitments that form the
basis of Dewey’s reconstruction of moral theory. He puts into question the
predominant theoretical starting points of philosophers in their construc-
tion of ethical theories. According to Dewey’s philosophical empiricism,
the proper starting point should be morality as it is experienced, that is, as
it is pre-theoretically given in the midst of our lives. Although for Dewey
there is no area of our experience that is exclusively or essentially moral, he
designated those situations that we experience as predominantly moral as
those that have the pervasive quality of demanding of the agent that she
discover what she morally ought to do among conflicting moral forces or
demands. This is the experiential subject matter to be studied, described,
and appealed to in order to test our theoretical accounts.
Moral situations are the center of moral life. A hypothetical descrip-
tion of the generic traits and phases of such situations is the subject matter
of Dewey’s metaphysics of ethics (part 2). His account reconstructs tradi-
tional conceptions of the moral self, character, conduct, habit, moral
deliberation, principles, and moral problems. Dewey also points to di-
mensions of moral life that tend to be overlooked and undervalued in
much of modern ethical thought. Morality is a social, creative, imagi-
native, emotional, hypothetical, and experimental process to ameliorate
present situations. Dewey’s re-description of moral life was in turn the
basis for his normative proposals (hypotheses) about how best to deal
with moral situations (part 3).
A consequence of Dewey’s empiricism is a radical contextualism that
precludes moral theory from performing the functions it has traditionally
performed. However, as I argued at the end of part 1, Dewey is not anti-
theoretical. His empirical turn in ethics validates a legitimate descriptive
function and a normative function for ethical theory. These are the two
functions I explained and defended in parts 2 and 3.
Dewey does not o√er a criterion for right conduct and thus challenges
the traditional expectations about an ethical theory. Traditional ethical
theories usually assume that the normativity or reasonableness of our
specific moral judgments is solely derivative from a general standard of
right conduct. For Dewey, this is backward and puts the emphasis in the
wrong place. The validity of generalizations and standards depends on
particular moral judgments. Judgments are individual acts about, and in,
≥≠∞
a unique qualitative context that can emerge from engaging in moral

deliberation as an imaginative, qualitative, experimental, and social pro-
cess. Judgments are not propositions that are the result of other proposi-
tions in an argument, located in one’s mind.
Dewey advocates an approach to moral decision making that may be
termed situational. He a≈rms that reasonable moral judgments and deci-
sions come from intelligently exploring and assessing the situation in its
qualitative uniqueness. The warrant of a judgment changes and is relative
to its particular context. Instead of trying to come up with theories, rules,
or criteria to solve our moral problems, Dewey claims that we should
attend to the particular, the qualitative, and the unique, equipped with the
best habits available. This faith in context is not a blind trust in experience;
rather, it requires a balance between reflective criticism and sensitivity,
what Dewey called cultivated naïveté (LW 1:40). Such cultivated naïveté
can be acquired by an education that fosters the habits to be critical, and
also the habits needed to listen, not just to others, but also to situations
that we are in and in which we experience problems. We must take a situa-
tion seriously, letting it speak for itself, instead of trying to impose some
theory or some comforting universal answer that fits all moral problems.
Dewey’s ethics does not deny the importance of having, using, and
carrying forward our inherited moral knowledge in the form of prin-
ciples, ideals, and habits. What should be dethroned are not moral gen-
eralizations per se, but a way of using them that discourages moral sen-
sitivity and precludes the genuine exercise of moral judgment. The most
important instrumentalities for morality, the cardinal virtues, are the
traits of character that can improve moral habits and, more importantly,
better assist us in determining what morality requires here and now.
Dewey’s contextualism thus advances a view about which habits better
enable a person to confront moral situations, even if it does not prescribe
beforehand what to do in the moral situation. Such habits include sen-
sitivity, conscientiousness, sympathy, and open-mindedness. These are
the habits Dewey identifies as contributing to moral intelligence, which is
required to become aesthetically engaged in moral reconstruction. He
emphasizes that moral anarchy and chaos are not avoided by fixing moral
rules, but by the proper cultivation of character. Dewey invites us to drop
legalistic or absolutist models of moral conduct and to look instead to art
as the paradigm of an activity that can steer between living aimlessly and
living mechanically.
I hope to have undermined, once and for all, the common but mis-
taken notion that the ethics that grounds Dewey’s politics is a type of con-
sequentialism or an appeal to some ultimate good, such as self-realization,
≥≠≤
conclusion
human flourishing, or growth. These interpretations are problematic be-

cause they are not supported by the text and are inconsistent with the
pluralism and view of moral judgment of his mature ethical thought. Any
consequentialist or teleological interpretation of Dewey’s ethics also ig-
nores his attempt to shift the center of gravity of morality to concrete
present situations.
In moral education, Dewey proposes that the cultivation of habits is
better than the formulation of, and adherence to, rules. However, this is
di√erent than claiming that moral life is centered on improving habits or
on the growth of our characters.∞ Habits are our best tools, but they are
not all there is to moral experience. Tools should not be mere means, but it
is also important not to reify our tools. The pragmatist must be careful not
to commit the version of the philosophical fallacy where what is most
useful (for certain purposes) is taken as more real. The concern to re-
fashion one’s tools can in fact be distracting to what really matters to a
moral agent: the reconstruction of this morally problematic situation. The
moral agent cares to elicit the appropriate response to situations, that is,
what the situation morally calls for. For Dewey, the locus of moral activity
is in what is present and unique, and not on tool-building or the future.
The moral end is not growth (unless we take growth to be the enhance-
ment of meaning in the present), but it is simply the consummatory
resolution of a morally problematic situation. As William Myers puts it,
‘‘the resolution of that situation may or may not result in growth—it may
in fact require my death. . . . The consummation of a morally problematic
situation may be tragically painful to the point of retarding my own
growth.’’≤ The moral agent who is aesthetically engaged in present moral
reconstruction has a direct personal identification with the conduct that is
required of her in a situation. To attend to and try to ameliorate the moral
di≈culties and demands as they present themselves in a specific situation
is the interest of a moral agent qua moral agent.
Dewey’s ethics is a distinctive alternative that is worth considering
when studying the history of ethical theory. His ethics is not a consequen-
tialist, deontological, or a virtue ethics, but it tries to recover some key
insights of these other views. This recovery is developed by a reconstruc-
tion that abandons the metaphysical and methodological assumptions
that ground debates between competing views in ethical theory. The my-
opic character of many ethical theories is the result of their failure to be
empirical. If philosophers could curb their theoretical and self-serving
tendency to latch on to one aspect of moral experience and make it pri-
mary, they may be able to embrace a pluralistic and richer view of moral-
ity. To identify morals, for example, exclusively with virtue, duty, or the
≥≠≥
good is to oversimplify the moral enterprise. Such misidentification isn’t

merely a theoretical quibble; the practical upshot of a narrow ethics is a
narrow response to broader problems.≥
Dewey’s ethics predates the emphasis on context in moral judgment
that has been recently stressed by moral particularists but without the
need to abandon the important role of generalities, abstractions, ideals,
and principles in moral life. It is an ethics that emphasizes the individual
without falling into an atomistic individualism, and it emphasizes social
relationships without falling into communitarianism. Dewey tries to cap-
ture the personal character of morality without centering it on the self.
Dewey’s naturalistic ethics protects the dignity and autonomy of morality
(as a distinctive mode of experience) without abandoning its continuity
with everyday life and the subject matter of the natural sciences. Dewey is
an objectivist insofar as moral values are real and capable of intelligent
criticism, but he does not presuppose the absolutism and universalism
that are associated with objectivism. He can be called a relativist insofar as
he rejects a God’s-eye view and a≈rms that the agent is one of the condi-
tions of moral experience, but he does not fall into subjective or cultural
relativism. In sum, Dewey’s ethics defies e√orts to place it within tradi-
tional pigeonholes, but this should not deter us from appreciating its
originality.
Dewey thought that there are questions and problems in ethics that
must be subjected to criticism, if there is to be any further advance in
ethics. He thought that an inherited, but mistaken, view of moral experi-
ence shared by philosophical opponents is the only thing that keeps many
discussions in ethics alive. The history of ethics is dominated by the recur-
rent oscillation between extreme views, each trying to compensate for
what the other has failed to emphasize—for example, debates centered on
character versus conduct, one versus many, individualism versus collectiv-
ism. Dewey was particularly critical of debates centered upon trying to
find a theoretical solution to the dangerous extremes to which our moral
life is susceptible, for example, moral anarchy and moral absolutism. The
dangers perceived by these views are real, but the quest for a theoretical
solution is misguided. Moral life is, at its very core, full of irreducible
tensions that are conflicted, uncertain, and sometimes even tragic. For
Dewey, dealing with irreducible tensions is the reality of living according
to the values of democracy. There is no pre-established condition or final
tension-free harmony to aim for. Those things that bring freedom, open-
ness, and diversity to moral life are always in tension with those that bring
order and stability. The quest for a theoretical and final solution to the
tensions inherent in moral life and democracy is distracting (to say the
≥≠∂
conclusion
least) from the practical and situation-specific challenge of living a bal-

anced moral life. What are the limits of tolerance, freedom, and order?
How much freedom should one give up to have some equality and order?
These are questions that, for Dewey, are meaningful in a particular con-
text. When these questions occur in a problematic situation, they are
about the balancing of forces and cannot be properly decided without
attending to the particular situation.
That Dewey had a normative view in ethics should now be clear. With
the proper qualifications, he is proposing an answer to the traditional
ethical issue of how to live. The moral task of ameliorating the concrete,
specific, and present situations that our moral life presents us with might
best be performed by the e√ort to participate in our moral life in an
intelligent, aesthetic, and democratic way. I presented this view from the
most general to a description specifying the habits, tensions, and values of
the ideal character and community. I have not claimed to have provided a
comprehensive list of habits or character traits. Instead, I have suggested a
few virtues that Dewey neglected to emphasize, but there is a lot more
work to be done in ‘‘thickening’’ Dewey’s ideal. Nevertheless, I hope that
my account is a good start, one that is thick enough to show the cohesive-
ness of Dewey’s moral vision and the importance of his notion of balance
as a relation between forces in tension. Dewey’s conception of ideal ac-
tivity in terms of balance is a key to his philosophy. His conception is
particularly useful to understand his view of democracy.
In the last pages of this book, I explored some of the most important
consequences of Dewey’s ethics for his socio-political philosophy. Dewey’s
view of moral life provides the rich and complex background against
which we must understand his hopes for democracy. Objections raised
against Dewey’s view of democracy are likely to be misguided if they fail to
consider his view of moral life. If we want to defend Dewey today as a
democratic liberal who dares to stand on some moral commitments and
away from an exclusive or myopic focus on democracy as a formal pro-
cedure and electoral politics, we must consult his ethics. Dewey’s ethics
is also a resource to counter the contemporary stereotype of pragmatism
as a philosophy without a su≈ciently thick normative backbone. He never
doubted that the criticism of pragmatism in ethics and politics presup-
posed some substantial normative moral commitments. We find in Dew-
ey’s ethics the particular virtues, relationships, and experiences that make
his view of democracy substantive. Democracy was, for Dewey, part of a
general moral outlook about how to engage in life and not just a mode of
public deliberation.
Dewey does not provide answers, specific instructions, or a sure-fire
≥≠∑
method to resolve moral disagreement or foster democracy. Instead, he

thought it was more appropriate for philosophy to prescribe in very gen-
eral terms where to look and how to look for guidance. Where we look,
according to Dewey, is toward the resources in those same situations that
require amelioration. Among these possible resources are principles, hab-
its, and the qualitative. Instead of prescribing what to do, philosophy
should be concerned with issues that are admittedly more general and
perhaps vague in comparison: how to best prepare ourselves for moral
problems; how to engage ourselves and inquire in situations; how to inter-
act with others and deal with disagreement; and how to test the reforms
that are made, presumably for the sake of democracy.
Dewey focused on how to proceed because of his contextualism and
because he was concerned to criticize how many individuals and commu-
nities deal with moral and social problems. For him, the non-democratic
ways in which we ordinarily handle problems and interact with others
only encourage non-democratic habits and a non-democratic way of life,
no matter how democratic our political machinery might be. For instance,
individuals or organizations are working against democracy when they
make decisions and solve problems in the top-down fashion of imposing
rigid rules, without listening to those closest to the relevant situation,
or when they rely on a standardized approach to all problems, places,
and people. The democratic task requires us to be critical of market pres-
sure to make a profit and of new technologies if they deprive people of
the autonomy and time to exercise judgment and nurture their personal
relationships.
For Dewey, if we really care about democracy, then activities and
environments that encourage habits that work against democracy must be
criticized at all levels and in all relationships, for example, in families and
in the everyday workings of a corporation. Democratic reform must be
inclusive, and it is particularly important that it emerges from within
the relationships that are most local, personal, spontaneous, voluntary,
and direct.
Dewey’s criticisms of the ordinary, but unintended, ways in which we
sometimes work against democracy are a counterpart to his more posi-
tive inquiry about the optimal types of engagement and communication
needed in a democracy. But even his most positive proposals were always
tempered with an awareness of our limitations. Democracy cannot be
exported or imposed. Neither is it something that automatically emerges
by merely removing what oppresses the people, whether that is a state or
the forces of propaganda. It is not under our direct control to create a
more intelligent, aesthetic, and democratic way of life. Democracy and
≥≠∏
conclusion
virtue cannot be taught, but we can provide the conditions for their
emergence. We can only prepare the soil, and reconstruction must come
from within everyday interactions. Continuous inquiry about indirect
means and present conditions is the key to finding the way we can democ-
ratize experience.
In the end, what Dewey is proposing is a program for more work, a
never-ending task that requires of those who have not lost their faith in
democracy a commitment that is balanced with criticism, and infused
with a humility that comes from the awareness of how tension-filled and
precarious is that which we seek. Of all the problems of democracy, the
one that strikes me as most urgent today is simply that democracy is not
experienced as a task or problem. This happens when it is taken for
granted, or worse, when many people have no ideal or sense of how things
could be better. Without awareness that there is a crisis of democracy,
there is not the felt, problematic situation that can lead to inquiry about
how to ameliorate present conditions.
Finally, I have claimed that one also finds in Dewey’s ethics the philo-
sophical resources to provide an alternative justification of democracy
that, while not foundational, is not problematic. What, for Dewey, is the
ultimate court of appeal in ethical matters and the grounds for the prag-
matist’s commitment to democracy? There is no absolute authority, nor is
there an Archimedean standpoint that we can take. Instead, Dewey’s ulti-
mate grounding is a historical and contextual one that he does not think is
arbitrary. Dewey shares with Richard Rorty his criticism of the quest for
some transcendental non-human authority, but Dewey’s appeal to context
is not a bald appeal to us humans, that is, our communication, consensus,
tradition, discourse, or beliefs. Instead, Dewey appeals to a faith in our
transactions within nature, that is, within a situation that can guide our
plans, purposes, and judgments. We can look outside of the human com-
munity, discourse, or consensus for guidance and test our hypotheses
without presupposing any problematic dualism. Rorty, however, contin-
ues to claim that ‘‘as Dewey saw it, whole-hearted pursuit of the demo-
cratic ideal requires us to set aside any authority save that of consensus of
our fellow humans.’’∂
What I provided in the last chapter was neither an ahistorical objec-
tive justification of democracy, nor the only plausible one. Instead, I pre-
sented philosophical reasons why Dewey thought the commitment to
democracy was reasonable and worth trying. These reasons to commit to
democracy will not convince the imaginary radical skeptic who is presup-
posed throughout much of philosophy. These are reasons, however, that
have a chance of winning the consent of people who are already com-
≥≠π
mitted to certain vague and sometimes conflicting democratic values that

they have inherited. They are reasons that should be of interest to people
who want to ameliorate the same sort of concrete problems that troubled
Dewey.
To convince someone that, through a process of democratization, our
life can become more aesthetic and intelligent, or that we can both secure
freedom and organization, stability and openness, or that order and sta-
bility can be preserved in a way of life that is also open, free, and flexible,
requires more than argumentation in today’s complex conditions. Philos-
ophy cannot convert people into having a faith in democracy, but it can,
through criticism, remove prejudices and obstacles that are sources of
skepticism regarding the ideal. In his ethics, Dewey criticizes unques-
tioned assumptions about moral life that keep many from entertaining the
possibility that he envisioned. For instance, what Dewey proposed seems
today impossible if one assumes that only universal and absolute rules can
provide order, stability, and direction to moral life. When only absolute
authority will do, Dewey’s appeals to virtues and to the guidance of the
unique qualitative context seem like an invitation to licentiousness and
moral anarchy. It is di≈cult to encourage someone to have a positive trust
in the possibilities and instrumentalities available in a situation when they
are looking outside experience for guidance, or when they assume that
independent of human desire, the objective world is devoid of meaning,
guidance, and values. Dewey hoped that the abandonment of traditional
assumptions about moral experience would lead to more faith in the
potentialities of humans within nature.
Democracy is, in the end, an experiment. With regard to democracy,
what we believe and defend philosophically must be tested in the class-
room, in the workplace, and everywhere there is human interaction. If I
have been successful, then my elicitation and articulation of Dewey’s eth-
ics now makes his democratic ideal more amenable to testing, to further
criticism, and makes it available to be used as a tool in the criticism of
present practices and institutions.
≥≠∫
NOTES
introduction
1. Compared to this book, the three previous books devoted to Dewey’s
ethics, while important, are more circumspect in scope and focus. The first, James
Gouinlock’s John Dewey’s Philosophy of Value (New York, N.Y.: Humanities Press,
1972), articulates Dewey’s theory of value in light of his views on experience and
nature. The second, Jennifer Welchman’s Dewey’s Ethical Thought (Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, 1995), focuses on the evolution of Dewey’s early ethical
thought. And the third, Steven Fesmire’s John Dewey and the Moral Imagina-
tion: Pragmatism in Ethics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), ex-
plores Dewey’s views on moral deliberation and imagination from a contempo-
rary perspective.
2. The most common mistake is to attribute to Dewey some form of conse-
quentialism or teleology. I argue against this interpretation throughout this book.
But there have been recent e√orts to classify Dewey as a virtue ethicist. See, e.g.,
John Teehan, ‘‘Character, Integrity and Dewey’s Virtue Ethics,’’ Transactions of the
Charles S. Peirce Society 31, no. 4 (1995):841–63.
3. G. E. M. Anscombe, ‘‘Modern Moral Philosophy,’’ in Virtue Ethics, ed.
Roger Crisp and Michael Slote (New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 2002),
26. Anscombe’s article was originally published in Philosophy 33 (1958):1–19.
≥≠Ω
notes to pages 2 – 7
4. See ‘‘The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy’’ (MW 10:3).

5. Mark Johnson, ‘‘Cognitive Science,’’ in A Companion to Pragmatism, ed.
John R. Shook and Joseph Margolis (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2006), 374.
6. In his first writings on morality in 1887 Dewey was an absolute idealist,
but by 1908 there is almost no residuum in his ethics of his early idealism.
7. For the history of the changes in Dewey’s earlier work, see the contribu-
tions of Darnell Rucker and Herbert W. Schneider in Guide to the Works of John
Dewey, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press,
1970), 99–130. For the changes from Dewey’s early to middle period (1908), see
Jennifer Welchman, Dewey’s Ethical Thought. For the changes from Dewey’s 1908
Ethics to his revised 1932 edition, see Abraham Edel and Elizabeth Flower’s intro-
duction to the 1932 Ethics (LW 7) and Abraham Edel’s recent book, Ethical Theory
and Social Change: The Evolution of John Dewey’s Ethics, 1908–1932 (New Bruns-
wick, N.J.: Transaction, 2001).
8. In Ethical Theory and Social Change, Abraham Edel correctly argues that
the most significant change between the two editions of Dewey’s Ethics is from
asserting the primacy of the good as a moral category to recognizing three inde-
pendent factors in morals. Edel’s main concern is the historical and biographical
events that may have contributed to this shift in Dewey’s thought. He also con-
siders how changes in Dewey’s theory of the self may have contributed to this. His
account is perfectly compatible with mine. In this book, however, I am not con-
cerned with the reasons why Dewey acquired a better phenomenological sen-
sitivity to moral experience.
9. I agree with Douglas Browning that there is a shift of emphasis in Dewey’s
mature thought around the 1930s. His writings at this time reveal ‘‘a refreshed and
more careful appreciation of the enormous complexity and subtlety of an individ-
ual’s experience.’’ Douglas Browning, letter to Larry Hickman, Director, Center
for Dewey Studies, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, August 4, 2000.
10. Dewey’s early ethical writings are more psychological or self-oriented in
the sense that ethical concepts are generally interpreted in terms of inner, individ-
ual processes and tensions. In Dewey’s mature ethical philosophy there is more of
a direct focus on a situation as the field of moral experience constituted by
transactions. The moral agent is conceived of as a participant or in a network of
relations in situations. The function of intelligence in moral experience is defined
in terms of habits and the reconstruction of particular situations. Moral situations
are characterized as requiring choice among irreconcilable demands.
11. Joseph Margolis, Moral Philosophy after 9/11 (University Park: Pennsyl-
vania State University Press, 2004), vii.
12. Ibid., xvi.
13. Richard Posner, Law, Pragmatism, and Democracy (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 2003), 50.
14. Je√rey Stout, Ethics after Babel: The Languages of Morals and Their Discon-
tents (Boston, Mass.: Beacon, 1988), 243–44.
15. Lee Siegel, ‘‘Cold Verities: The Chilly Ethics of American Pragmatism,’’
≥∞≠
review of The Metaphysical Club, by Louis Menand, Harper’s Magazine, October

2001, 84.
16. Ibid., 88.
17. Cornel West, Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism
(New York, N.Y.: Penguin, 2004), 15.
18. Robert Westbrook, John Dewey and American Democracy (Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, 1991), xvi.
19. Consequentialism is any view in ethics that bases its moral evaluations of
acts solely on good consequences. Teleological ethics is a broader category that
holds some ultimate end or aim as the ultimate basis of its ethical recommenda-
tions. Many secondary sources have assumed that Dewey’s ethics is centered on
some good conceived either as self-realization, human fulfillment, or growth.
Here is some evidence:
1) Michael Slote, in ‘‘Teleological Ethics,’’ his contribution to the Encyclopedia
of Ethics, ed. Lawrence C. Becker (New York, N.Y.: Garland, 1992), says, ‘‘and still
other forms of teleology, notably the socio-cultural self-realizationism to be found
in . . . Dewey’’ (1238).
2) According to James Campbell, in Understanding John Dewey (Chicago, Ill.:
Open Court Publishing, 1995), John Dewey o√ers ‘‘a broad consequentialism,
evaluating actions by their e√ects ‘upon the common welfare, the general well-
being’ [LW 7:344] and defending . . . growth as the criterion for evaluating the
e√ects’’ (112).
3) Matthew Festenstein argues in Pragmatism and Political Theory: From
Dewey to Rorty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997) that Dewey’s ethics is
‘‘intended to show how the demands of morality are rooted in a certain concep-
tion of human well-being’’ (47).
4) Hilary Putnam, in Renewing Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1992), makes reference to ‘‘Dewey’s consequentialism’’ (190).
5) In ‘‘Between Proceduralism and Teleology: An Unresolved Conflict in
Dewey’s Moral Theory,’’ Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 34, no. 3
(1998):689–711, Axel Honneth argues that Dewey’s remarks about growth assume
an ultimate notion of human good, that is, a ‘‘naturalistic teleology . . . incompat-
ible with the intentions of his proceduralism’’ (704).
6) Andrew Altman claims, in ‘‘John Dewey and Contemporary Normative
Ethics,’’ Metaphilosophy 13, no. 2 (1982):149–60, that ‘‘among normative theories
that are popular today, rule-utilitarianism is one of the closest to Dewey’s own
view’’ (153).
7) J. E. Tiles claims, in Dewey (London: Routledge, 1990), that Dewey’s
ethics belongs to the type of ethical theory ‘‘based upon a conception of what
it is for human beings to live well and flourish in a distinctively human fashion’’
(212).
8) Jennifer Welchman, in Dewey’s Ethical Thought, argues that in moral
situations options for Dewey are ‘‘evaluated in terms of their potential to serve as
constituents of a good life and character’’ (189).
≥∞∞
9) Richard Rorty, in ‘‘Pragmatism as Anti-authoritarianism,’’ in A Compan-

ion To Pragmatism, claims that ‘‘Dewey, like James, was a utilitarian’’ (258).
20. Hilary Putnam, Ethics without Ontology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 2004), 10.
21. Mark Malloch Brown, quoted in Barbara Crossette, ‘‘U.N. Report Says
New Democracies Falter,’’ New York Times, July 24, 2002, Foreign Desk.
22. Steven Erlanger, ‘‘Why Democracy Defies the Urge to Implant It,’’ New
York Times, February 15, 2004, Week in Review Desk.
23. Thomas Alexander, ‘‘The Aesthetics of Reality: The Development of Dew-
ey’s Ecological Theory of Experience,’’ in Dewey’s Logical Theory, ed. Thomas
Burke, Micah Hester, and Robert B. Talisse (Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt Univer-
sity Press, 2002), 3.
24. For a criticism of neopragmatism from the same standpoint taken in this
book, see David Hildebrand’s Beyond Realism and Antirealism (Nashville, Tenn.:
Vanderbilt University Press, 2003).
25. See the introduction to A Companion to Pragmatism by Joseph Margolis
for a recent account of this historical interpretation of pragmatism. In my view the
history of pragmatism is the history of adopting a new starting point in light of a
criticism of the theoretical starting point. Charles Peirce called it ‘‘Cartesianism’’
because he saw it in Descartes. James detected the theoretical starting point in
traditional empiricism and therefore called for a more ‘‘radical’’ empiricism. But
once you get to Dewey, the failure to come to terms with the proper ‘‘practical’’
starting point is so common in philosophy that he decided to call it ‘‘the philo-
sophical fallacy.’’
26. Douglas Browning, ‘‘Understanding Dewey: Starting at the Starting Point’’
(paper presented at the XIV Congreso Interamericano de Filosofía, Puebla, Mex-
ico, August 19, 1999), 1.
27. See Michael Eldridge, Transforming Experience (Nashville, Tenn.: Vander-
bilt University Press, 1998); Larry A. Hickman, John Dewey’s Pragmatic Technol-
ogy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990); Westbrook, John Dewey and
American Democracy; and Thomas Alexander, John Dewey’s Theory of Art, Experi-
ence, and Nature (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987).
28. John Dewey, quoted in Max Eastman, ‘‘John Dewey,’’ Atlantic Monthly,
December 1941, 673.
29. Westbrook, John Dewey and American Democracy, p. 8.
30. This is something that Dewey himself came to stress more in his later
years, and his writings from the 1930s stress this. This aspect of Dewey deserves to
be stressed because it represents his own most radical shift from the canons of
Western thought.
1. experience as method
1. See Ralph W. Sleeper, ‘‘Dewey’s Metaphysical Perspective: A Note on
White, Geiger, and the Problem of Obligation,’’ Journal of Philosophy 57, no. 3
(1960):100–15; James Gouinlock, ‘‘Dewey’s Theory of Moral Deliberation,’’ Ethics
≥∞≤
88, no. 3 (1978):218–28; and Robert L. Holmes, ‘‘The Development of John Dew-
ey’s Ethical Thought,’’ The Monist 48 (1964):392–406.
2. See, e.g., Hugh LaFollette, ‘‘Pragmatic Ethics,’’ in The Blackwell Guide to
Ethical Theory, ed. Hugh LaFollette (Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell, 2000), 400–19; and
Elizabeth Anderson, ‘‘Dewey’s Moral Philosophy,’’ in The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (Spring 2005 Edition), http://plato.stanford.edu/
archives/spr2005/entries/dewey-moral/ (accessed September 17, 2007).
3. It is therefore perfectly understandable why in Human Nature and Con-
duct (MW 12), a book that Dewey explicitly regarded as an introduction to social
psychology, there is no reference to moral qualities. From a scientific point of
view, one cannot usefully talk about moral qualities; thus, Dewey refers instead to
‘‘impulses’’ and ‘‘instincts.’’
4. Jennifer Welchman, Dewey’s Ethical Thought (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Uni-
versity Press, 1995), 143.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. James Campbell, Understanding John Dewey (Chicago, Ill.: Open Court
Publishing, 1995), 110.
8. If one tracks the historical development of Dewey’s philosophy, there
might be support for understanding his ethics by reference to his views on science.
This is what Jennifer Welchman has accomplished in Dewey’s Ethical Thought. But
even if Dewey came to adopt an empirical view of ethics after he reexamined his
own views about the nature of science, this does not mean that his views on
science are the key to his ethics. My intention here is not to discredit but to
supplement Welchman’s work, since we are concerned about di√erent things. She
is concerned with Dewey’s e√orts to bring science and ethics closer together
(‘‘reconcile’’), but this can be distinguished from his e√ort to show how to proceed
in an empirical philosophical inquiry about morality. I am in this book concerned
with the latter and not with the former.
9. See William T. Myers’s review of John Dewey and Moral Imagination in the
Journal of Aesthetic Education 39, no. 2 (2005):107–14.
10. Alasdair MacIntyre, ‘‘Moral Dilemmas,’’ Philosophy and Phenomenological
Research 50, Suppl. (1990):371.
11. See LW 1:40.
12. Douglas Browning, ‘‘Understanding Dewey: Starting at the Starting Point’’
(paper presented at the XIV Congreso Interamericano de Filosofía, Puebla, Mex-
ico, August 19, 1999), 4.
13. This is the fallacy of taking what is eventual as given, the ‘‘conversion of
eventual functions into antecedent existence’’ (LW 1:34).
14. Dale Jamieson, ‘‘Method and Moral Theory,’’ in A Companion to Ethics,
ed. Peter Singer (Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell, 1993), 477.
15. See MW 5:313.
16. James Gouinlock, Rediscovering the Moral Life: Philosophy and Human
Practice (Bu√alo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1993), 267–68.
≥∞≥
17. Douglas Browning, ‘‘Comments on David Hildebrand’s ‘The Neopragma-

tist Turn’,’’ Southwest Philosophy Review 19, no. 2 (2003):69.
18. R. M. Hare, Moral Thinking: Its Levels, Method and Point (Oxford, U.K.:
Clarendon Press, 1981), 66.
19. Browning, ‘‘Comments on David Hildebrand’s ‘The Neopragmatist Turn’,’’
69.
20. Michael Stocker, ‘‘The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories,’’ Jour-
nal of Philosophy 73, no. 14 (1976):453–66.
21. Stocker’s argument is often taken to provide a reason to abandon conse-
quentialism and deontology in favor of virtue ethics. But, as I will later argue,
virtue ethics is equally vulnerable to these problems as long as the theoretical
standpoint is taken as primary.
22. See J. L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (London, U.K.: Pen-
guin, 1977).
23. See Hare, Moral Thinking, 79.
24. Ibid., 137.
25. Among the contemporary philosophers who favor this theoretical starting
point are: James Sterba, Three Challenges to Ethics (New York, N.Y.: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2001); Richard B. Brandt, A Theory of the Good and the Right (New
York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 1979); and David Gauthier, Morals by Agree-
ment (New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 1986).
26. See Gilbert Harman, The Nature of Morality (New York, N.Y.: Oxford
University Press, 1977).
27. Hare, Moral Thinking, 81.
28. Ibid.
29. It is an instance of the analytic fallacy and a short step toward the fallacy of
unlimited universalization. Hence, what begins as an analysis of ordinary lan-
guage ends up as a theory of the good or of the meaning of ‘‘morally good’’ by all
speakers of the language.
30. W. D. Ross, Foundations of Ethics (Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1939), 1.
31. Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass.:
32. See, e.g., Charles R. Pigden, ‘‘Naturalism,’’ in A Companion to Ethics, ed.
Peter Singer (Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell, 1993), 421–31.
33. Hilary Putnam, Ethics without Ontology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 2004), 72, my emphasis.
34. Ibid., 106.
35. These are general concepts used, for example, by Alasdair MacIntyre in his
A Short History of Ethics (New York, N.Y.: Macmillan, 1966).
2 . m o r a l t h e o ry a n d m o r a l p r a c t i c e
1. The term ‘situation ethics’ was already used by Joseph Fletcher in Situation
Ethics (Philadelphia, Pa.: Westminster Press, 1966), but it fits Dewey’s view better.
2. I am here considering the issue of abortion as a moral decision and not as
≥∞∂
a legal issue. On the legal issue, I suppose the contextualist would be in favor of the
legal arrangement that would in practice allow the necessary flexibility to be
contextualist about abortion. This raises some interesting questions. Does our
system of jurisprudence work against the contextualist, and toward some simple,
measurable standard? China has the concept of degrees of guilt and degrees of
liability whereas in the United States and the United Kingdom, guilt or liability is
an either/or standard.
3. For a recent formulation of contextualism in ethics, see Mark Timmons,
‘‘Moral Justification in Context,’’ The Monist 76, no. 3 (1993):360–78.
4. For an excellent account of this capacity and habits from a Deweyan
ethical standpoint, see Todd Lekan, Making Morality: Pragmatist Reconstruction in
Ethical Theory (Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 2003).
5. See MW 14:169.
6. Jonathan Dancy, Ethics without Principles (New York, N.Y.: Oxford Uni-
7. Jonathan Dancy, ‘‘The Particularist’s Progress,’’ in Moral Particularism, ed.
Brad Hooker and Margaret Olivia Little (New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press,
2001), 130.
8. Ibid., 131.
9. Dancy, Ethics without Principles, 77.
10. Ibid., 2.
11. Jonathan Dancy, ‘‘Moral Particularism,’’ in The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (Summer 2005 Edition), http://plato.stanford.edu/
archives/sum2005/entries/moral-particularism/ (assessed September 17, 2007).
12. Ibid.
13. Dancy, Ethics without Principles, 2.
14. Brad Hooker and Margaret Olivia Little, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in Moral Par-
ticularism, vii.
15. Margaret Olivia Little, ‘‘Moral Generalities Revisited,’’ in Moral Particular-
ism, 304.
16. Testing our intuitions by comparing possible cases of ‘‘torturing children
for fun’’ leaves out much of the contextual background that may or may not make
a moral di√erence. Our inability to imagine one of these cases with enough
contextual details so as to make it seem morally permissible may well reflect our
lack of imagination and not the discovery of some self-evident truth. The com-
mon approach in ethics of testing theories by appealing to our intuitions in
imaginary cases has limitations that have not been su≈ciently acknowledged.
17. C. I. Lewis, ‘‘Review of The Quest for Certainty,’’ Journal of Philosophy 27,
no. 1 (1930):14–25; reprinted in Dewey and His Critics: Essays from the Journal of
Philosophy, ed. Sidney Morgenbesser (New York, N.Y.: Journal of Philosophy, Inc.,
1977), 263.
18. Ibid.
19. This is the question raised by Robert Westbrook in ‘‘Pragmatism and
Democracy: Reconstructing the Logic of John Dewey’s Faith,’’ in The Revival of
≥∞∑
Pragmatism: New Essays on Social Thought, Law, and Culture, ed. Morris Dickstein
(Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998), 133.
20. Sidney Hook regrets that Dewey did not devote enough pages to this issue.
See Sidney Hook, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in MW 9, xi–xii.
21. Hilary Putnam, The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), 104.
22. Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass.:
23. Ibid., 29.
24. Susan Wolf, ‘‘The Deflation of Moral Philosophy,’’ review of Ethics and the
Limits of Philosophy, by Bernard Williams, Ethics 97, no. 4 (1987):827.
25. Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, 93.
26. Williams’s deflation of theories has been received with both enthusiasm
and disappointment by the philosophical community. The source of disappoint-
ment is that Williams and other contemporary skeptics do not have much to say
about the direction (if any) that moral theory should take. See, e.g., Samuel
ScheΔer, ‘‘Morality Through Thick and Thin: A Critical Notice of Ethics and the
Limits of Philosophy, by Bernard Williams,’’ The Philosophical Review 96, no. 3
(1987):411–34.
27. Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, 116.
28. William James, The Letters of William James, ed. Henry James (Boston,
Mass.: Atlanta Monthly Press, 1920), 270.
3 . t h e n o r m at i v e s ta n d p o i n t o f p r a g m at i s m
1. I am using the terms ‘living’, ‘momentous’, and ‘forced’ in the same sense
that William James used them in The Will to Believe and Other Popular Essays
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979), 14.
2. Richard Rorty, ‘‘Solidarity or Objectivity?’’ in his Objectivity, Relativism,
and Truth (New York, N.Y.: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 29, 34.
3. Ibid., 29.
4. I could have instead said that Dewey had a faith in nature or that this is
what makes Dewey a naturalist. For Dewey experience is continuous with and of
nature, and any claim about experience is a claim about nature. For the pragmatic
view of faith assumed here, see my ‘‘William James and the Logic of Faith,’’
Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 28, no. 4 (1992):781–808.
4. morality as experience
1. J. B. Schneewind, ‘‘Modern Moral Philosophy,’’ in A Companion to Ethics,
ed. Peter Singer (Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell, 1993), 147.
2. Todd Lekan, Making Morality: Pragmatist Reconstruction in Ethical Theory
(Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 2003), 30.
3. For an account of who is a naturalist in ethical theory today, see Charles R.
Pigden, ‘‘Naturalism,’’ in A Companion to Ethics, ed. Peter Singer (Oxford, U.K.:
Blackwell, 1993), 421–31.
≥∞∏
5 . t h e ‘‘w h a t’’ o f m o r a l e x p e r i e n c e
1. See MW 9:172–74. This is what James referred to as the double-barreled
aspect of experience. Double-barreled in that ‘‘it recognizes in its primary integ-
rity no division between act and material, subject and object, but contains them
both in an unanalyzed totality’’ (LW 1:18).
2. For recent skepticism about whether there can be a pre-theoretical desig-
nation of moral problems, see Alasdair MacIntyre, ‘‘Moral Dilemmas,’’ Philosophy
and Phenomenological Research 50, Suppl. (1990):382.
3. Dewey makes this same point, though using a di√erent example, in ‘‘The
Postulate of Immediate Empiricism’’ (MW 3:158–67). Contrast this, for example,
with R. M. Hare, who in Moral Thinking claims ‘‘If I am su√ering, I know that I am
su√ering,’’ 92.
4. This example is from Dewey’s ‘‘The Postulate of Immediate Empiricism’’
(MW 3:158–67).
5. This pluralism is not evident in Dewey’s discussions about value in gen-
eral, for example, in his ‘‘Theory of Valuation’’ (LW 13:189–254).
6. For more on this important aspect of Dewey’s thought, see Tom Burke,
Dewey’s New Logic: A Reply to Russell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1994).
7. For Dewey and cognitive science, see Mark Johnson, Moral Imagination:
Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1993).
8. There are some interesting questions that I cannot address here about the
nature of my own or anyone else’s non-moral negative valuing of homosexual
acts. Do I really find homosexual acts repugnant? Or is it that I find the thought of
my engaging in such acts as repugnant? Is it really repugnance or merely an
aversion to my engaging in a homosexual relationship, just as homosexuals expe-
rience an aversion to a heterosexual relationship? In any case, the important point
is that none of these possibilities has anything to do with immediate moral dis-
value.
9. See Russell Freeman, Out of Darkness: The Story of Louis Braille (Boston,
Mass.: Houghton MiΔin Company, 1999).
10. Just as with the term ‘experience’, Dewey wrestled with the ambiguities
and associations of value as a philosophical term. See, for example, ‘‘The Meaning
of Value’’ (LW 2:69–77). In The Quest for Certainty (LW 4:207) he restricted the
term ‘value’ to what results from valuation, perhaps hoping to avoid misunder-
standing of his view for subjectivism: the identification of enjoyment with value.
The same thing happened with his use of ‘judgment’. In some of his writings
‘judgment’ was a term he used only for valuation and not valuing.
11. In his Theory of Valuation and Quest for Certainty, Dewey attacks subjec-
tive/emotive and transcendental/objective views of morality and art in one stroke.
12. Dewey claims that ‘‘to grasp this aspect of empiricism is to see what the
empiricist means by objectivity’’ (MW 3:163).
13. For a recent article defending this Deweyan naturalism and distinguishing
≥∞π
it from other contemporary versions, see John Teehan, ‘‘In Defense of a Natural-
ism,’’ Journal of Speculative Philosophy 10, no. 2 (1996):79–91.
14. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, 5.
15. For example, see Gilbert Harman’s Explaining Value and Other Essays in
Moral Philosophy (New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 2000).
16. Sidney Hook, The Quest for Being (Bu√alo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books,
1961), 206.
17. Joseph Margolis, Moral Philosophy after 9/11 (University Park: Pennsyl-
vania State University Press, 2004), vii.
18. Ibid., xvi.
19. See Richard Rorty, ‘‘Putnam and the Relativist Menace,’’ Journal of Philos-
ophy 90, no. 9 (1993):453.
20. David Hildebrand, Beyond Realism and Antirealism (Nashville, Tenn.:
Vanderbilt University Press, 2003), 154.
6 . t h e ‘‘ho w’’ o f m o r a l e x p e r i e n c e
1. For Dewey on custom, see MW 14:43–60.
2. John Dewey, Lectures on Psychological and Political Ethics, 1898, ed. Daniel
Koch (New York, N.Y.: Hafner Press, 1976), 80.
3. See LW 7:235.
4. See MW 3:20.
5. Alan Gewirth, ‘‘The Implicit Teaching of Ethics,’’ APA Newsletter 90
(1990):34.
7. character and conduct

1. Some philosophers have regarded the acts-versus-character (or doing-
versus-being) debate as ‘‘perhaps the liveliest debate within recent ethical theory.’’
Robert B. Louden, Morality and Moral Theory (New York, N.Y.: Oxford University
Press, 1992), 27. Louden thinks this debate began in 1958 with G. E. M. Anscombe’s
article ‘‘Modern Moral Philosophy,’’ in Virtue Ethics, ed. Roger Crisp and Michael
Slote (New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 2002), 24–44. Anscombe’s article
was originally published in Philosophy 33 (1958):1–19.
2. William Frankena, ‘‘A Critique of Virtue-Based Ethical Systems,’’ in Ethi-
cal Theory, 2nd ed., ed. Louis P. Pojman (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1995), 336.
4. Ibid., 80.
5. For example, Phillip Montague defines virtue ethics as the view that
‘‘treat[s] act appraisals as explicable in terms of more basic person appraisal’’ in
his ‘‘Virtue Ethics: A Qualified Success Story,’’ American Philosophical Quarterly
29, no. 1 (1992):53.
6. See Dewey, MW 14:154–55.
7. Louden, Morality and Moral Theory, 29. Edmund Pinco√s has a similar
≥∞∫
argument in Quandaries and Virtues (Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kan-

sas, 1986).
8. Bernard Mayo, ‘‘Virtue and the Moral Life,’’ in Ethical Theory, ed. Poj-
man, 333.
9. Bernard Williams, ‘‘A Critique of Utilitarianism,’’ in Bernard Williams
and J. J. C. Smart, Utilitarianism: For and Against (New York, N.Y.: Cambridge
University Press, 1973), 104.
10. John Dewey, Lectures on Ethics, 1900–1901, ed. Donald F. Koch (Carbon-
dale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991), 135. Dewey once said that ‘‘the only
way I can tell what I am . . . is by looking at some specific situation into which I as
agent enter and then define myself in terms of the part to be played in that
situation.’’ Dewey, Lectures on Psychological and Political Ethics, 207.
11. Dewey, Lectures on Psychological and Political Ethics, 205.
12. See Dewey LW 7:289.
8. present activity and the meaning of moral life

1. For the metaphysical importance of the present in pragmatism, see George
Herbert Mead, The Philosophy of the Present, ed. Arthur E. Murphy (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1980 [1932]), 1–31.
2. William James, The Will to Believe and Other Popular Essays (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979), 47.
9. conclusion: the need for a

r e c o v e ry o f m o r a l p h i l o s o p h y
1. Jen Wright, ‘‘Dewey and Dreyfus on Mature Moral Agency’’ (paper pre-
sented at the 2005 Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy Con-
ference, Bakersfield, California). For recent research that seems supportive of
Dewey’s views on judgment and deliberation, see Jonathan Haidt, ‘‘The Emo-
tional Dog and Its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judg-
ment,’’ Psychological Review 108, no. 4 (2001):814–34; Joshua Green and Jonathan
Haidt, ‘‘How (and Where) Does Moral Judgment Work?’’ Trends in Cognitive
Science 6, no. 12 (2002):517–23; and Francisco Varela, Ethical Know-How: Action,
Wisdom, and Cognition (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999).
2. Dewey is explicit about how his view of situations avoids these extreme
views. ‘‘The theory of experiential situations which follows directly from the
biological-anthropological approach is by its very nature a via media between
extreme atomistic pluralism and block universe monisms’’ (LW 14:28–29).
1 0 . t h e i n t e l l i g e n t, a e s t h e t i c , a n d d e m o c r at i c way o f l i f e
1. John Dewey, Lectures on Ethics, 1900–1901, ed. Donald F. Koch (Carbon-
dale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991), 331.
2. Items listed in column A are about generic traits of experience that are of
utmost importance from the standpoint of work and control, while those in
≥∞Ω
column B are traits of experience from the standpoint of play, immediate enjoy-
ment, and consummation. One could also argue that A and B can be identified,
respectively, with the Enlightenment and romantic modernity.
3. In his early lectures Dewey claimed that ‘‘the more subjects we took up the
more we would be convinced that they show up everywhere and that they show
themselves in a practical, working opposition to each other,’’ Lectures on Ethics,
1900–1901, 331.
4. It is an instance of what Dewey called the ‘‘fallacy of selective emphasis.’’
For Dewey the above oppositions do not place us in an ontological either/or
dilemma; rather, opposing generic traits of experience are all equally real.
5. Dewey, Lectures on Ethics, 1900–1901, 329, my emphasis.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. The extent to which Dewey’s notion of balance is similar to Aristotle’s no-
tion of the mean depends on one’s interpretation of Aristotle. There are recent neo-
Aristotelian views that, insofar as they entertain a particular and context-relative
notion of a mean and the interdependence of the virtues, are similar to Dewey’s
view. See, e.g., Martha Nussbaum, Poetic Justice (Boston, Mass.: Beacon, 1995); and
Barry Schwartz and Kenneth E. Sharpe, ‘‘Practical Wisdom: Aristotle Meets Posi-
tive Psychology,’’ Journal of Happiness Studies 7, no. 3 (2006):377–95. Di√erences
between Dewey and these neo-Aristotelians may be worth further inquiry.
9. Dewey can hold that the biological is the ‘‘roots of the esthetic in experi-
ence’’ (LW 10:20) without committing himself to a reduction of one to the other
because of the ‘‘postulate of continuity’’ and ‘‘emergence.’’ Dewey shared these
postulates with George Herbert Mead; see LW 12:30.
10. Dewey, Lectures on Ethics, 1900–1901, 342.
11. Alan Ryan, John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism (New
York, N.Y.: W. W. Norton, 1995), 329.
11. the ideal moral self

1. For more criticism of epistemology from a Deweyan perspective, see
my ‘‘Open-mindedness and Courage: Complementary Virtues of Pragmatism,’’
Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 32, no. 2 (1996):316–35.
2. See MW 9:366 and LW 8:136.
3. In the 1908 Ethics (MW 5:376) Dewey takes conscientiousness as a more
inclusive virtue that includes sensitivity and thoughtfulness. There is no inconsis-
tency between this and the classification that I have adopted from his 1932 Ethics
(LW 7), for all genuine and actual conscientiousness includes sensitivity.
4. For Dewey’s notion of responsibility, see LW 7:31–33, 44–46.
5. Usually sympathy means a shared compassion or agreement. See Diana T.
Meyers, ‘‘Moral Reflection: Beyond Impartial Reason,’’ Hypatia 8, no. 3 (1993):21–
47; and Nel Noddings, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education
(Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1984).
6. George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self and Society: From the Standpoint of a
≥≤≠
Social Behaviorist, ed. Charles W. Morris (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1934), 299. The importance and influence of Mead on Dewey’s ethical thought has
been largely underappreciated.
7. See my ‘‘Dewey and Feminism: The A√ective and Relationships in Dew-
ey’s Ethics,’’ Hypatia 8, no. 2 (1993):78–95.
8. James Hayden Tufts, ‘‘The Moral Life and the Construction of Values and
Standards,’’ in his Creative Intelligence: Essays in the Pragmatic Attitude (New York,
N.Y.: Henry Holt and Company, 1917), 389.
9. Ibid., 395.
10. See LW 17:338.
11. In fact, he provides an ethics that can be of value to the feminist post-
modern transformation of ethics; on this, see my ‘‘Dewey and Feminism.’’ In 1930
Dewey pointed out that present moral notions ‘‘are almost exclusively male con-
structions’’ and predicted that ‘‘the growing freedom of women can hardly have
any other outcome than the production of more realistic and more humane
morals’’ (LW 5:276).
12. This same view of character is already implicit in William James’s 1881
public lecture ‘‘Reflex, Action and Theism,’’ in his The Will to Believe and Other
Popular Essays (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979), 90–113.
13. Love is the ‘‘higher power of interest’’ (EW 3:305).
14. See EW 5:126 where he first makes this distinction.
15. The exceptions to this are contemporary feminists in ethics. On this, see
Virginia Held, ‘‘Feminist Transformations of Moral Theory,’’ Philosophy and Phe-
nomenological Research 50, Suppl. (1990):321–44.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid., 213.
19. Ibid.
12. democracy as the ideal moral community

1. Remarks made in 1929 by Dewey at the celebration of his 70th birthday.
See George Dykhuizen, The Life and Mind of John Dewey (Carbondale: Southern
Illinois University Press, 1973), 233.
2. For the historical origin of the distinction between negative and positive
freedom, see Robert Westbrook, John Dewey and American Democracy (Ithaca,
N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991), 37–45.
3. Ronald K. L. Collins and David M. Skover, The Death of Discourse (Boul-
der, Colo.: Westview, 1996), 6.
4. Cornel West, Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism
(New York, N.Y.: Penguin, 2004), 7.
5. John Katz, ‘‘A Birth of a Digital Nation,’’ Wired Magazine, April 1997 (my
emphasis), http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.04/netizen — pr.html (ac-
cessed September 17, 2007).
≥≤∞
6. William James, ‘‘On a Certain Blindness of Human Beings,’’ in his Talks to

Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life’s Ideals (New York, N.Y.:
Henry Holt and Company, 1899), 264.
7. See Andrew Light and Eric Katz, eds., Environmental Pragmatism (New
York, N.Y.: Routledge, 1996).
8. James Gouinlock, Rediscovering the Moral Life: Philosophy and Human
Practice (Bu√alo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1993), 55–56.
9. Seymour Martin Lipset and Gabriel Salman Lenz, ‘‘Corruption, Culture,
and Markets,’’ in Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress, ed. Law-
rence E. Harrison and Samuel P. Huntington (New York, N.Y.: Basic Books, 2000),
112–25.
10. Joseph H. Kupfer, Experience as Art (Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1983), 30.
11. See, e.g., James Campbell’s descriptions of democracy in terms of ‘‘cooper-
ative intelligence’’ in his Understanding John Dewey (Chicago: Open Court Pub-
lishing, 1995), 200–12.
12. For a wonderful explanation of this di√erence, see chapters 3 and 4 of
Kupfer, Experience as Art.
13. George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self and Society: From the Standpoint of a
Social Behaviorist, ed. Charles W. Morris (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1934), 325.
14. See my ‘‘Dewey’s Philosophical Approach to Racial Prejudice,’’ Social
Theory and Practice 22, no. 1 (1996):47–66.
15. For a pragmatist interpretation of rights, see Beth Singer’s Pragmatism,
Rights, and Democracy (New York, N.Y.: Fordham University Press, 1999).
16. This is clear in How We Think (LW 8) where Dewey describes inquiry in
terms of the habits that are operative in this process.
17. For more on this contemporary debate, see Daniel M. Savage’s John Dewey’s
Liberalism: Individual, Community, and Self-Development (Carbondale: Southern
Illinois University Press, 2002).
18. This is a concept that was very important to Martin Luther King, Jr. In his
famous ‘‘Letter from Birmingham Jail,’’ he wrote, ‘‘I must confess that I am not
afraid of ‘tension.’ I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of
constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth.’’ Martin Luther
King, Jr., ‘‘Letter from Birmingham Jail,’’ in his Why We Can’t Wait (New York,
N.Y.: Signet Classic, 2000), 64–84. See also Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We
Go From Here: Chaos or Community? (Boston, Mass.: Beacon, 1967).
20. John Patrick Diggins, ‘‘Pragmatism and Its Limits,’’ in The Revival of
Pragmatism, ed. Morris Dickstein (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998),
207–208.
21. See the Public Agenda website at: http://publicagenda.org/. For further
discussion of democracy and the problem of power relations, see Alison Kadlec
≥≤≤
and Will Friedman, ‘‘Deliberative Democracy and the Problem of Power,’’ Journal
of Public Deliberation 3, no. 1 (2007):article 8, http://services.bepress.com/jpd/
vol3/iss1/art8 (accessed September 17, 2007); and, for a defense of Dewey’s demo-
cratic vision from radical democratic theorists who claim that extant democratic
deliberation is blind to power relations and ill-prepared to combat such relations,
see Alison Kadlec’s Dewey’s Critical Pragmatism (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books,
2007).
22. Westbrook, John Dewey and American Democracy, 166.
23. From liner notes by Brad Mehldau in his music CD Elegiac Cycles (Warner
Brothers, 1999).
24. John Dryzek claims that ‘‘an emphasis on deliberation is not entirely new.
Antecedents can be found in . . . theorists of the early twentieth century such as
John Dewey,’’ John S. Dryzek, Deliberative Democracy and Beyond (New York,
N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 2000), 2. Richard Posner also considers Dewey a de-
liberative democrat; see his Law, Pragmatism, and Democracy (Cambridge, Mass.:
25. See Iris Marion Young, ‘‘Communication and the Other: Beyond Deliber-
ative Democracy,’’ in Democracy and Di√erence: Contesting the Boundaries of the
Political, ed. Seyla Benhabib (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996),
120–36.
26. Frank Cunningham, Theories of Democracy: A Critical Introduction (New
York, N.Y.: Routledge, 2001), 180.
27. This is at least one most common understanding of Habermas. See Cun-
ningham, Theories of Democracy, 176.
28. Robert B. Talisse, Democracy after Liberalism: Pragmatism and Delibera-
tive Politics (New York, N.Y.: Routledge, 2005), 314.
29. Hilary Putnam, ‘‘A Reconsideration of Deweyan Democracy,’’ in Pragma-
tism in Law and Society, ed. Michael Brint (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1991); and
Cheryl Misak, Truth, Politics, and Morality: Pragmatism and Deliberation (New
York, N.Y.: Routledge, 2000).
30. Tallisse, Democracy after Liberalism, 62.
31. Jorge Valadez, Deliberative Democracy, Political Legitimacy, and Self-Deter-
mination in Multicultural Societies (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 2001), 89.
32. According to Andrew G. Fiala, Dewey, Rawls, and other pragmatists share
the same view about tolerance: ‘‘Toleration is a pragmatic response to the practical
need to coexist with others who have di√erent conceptions of the good.’’ Andrew
G. Fiala, ‘‘Toleration and Pragmatism,’’ Journal of Speculative Philosophy 16, no. 2
(2002):103. Needless to say, I disagree with Fiala.
33. For Rorty’s view on Sandel, see his ‘‘A Defense of Minimalist Liberalism,’’
in Debating Democracy’s Discontent: Essays on American Politics, Law, and Public
Philosophy, ed. Anita L. Allen and Milton Regan (New York, N.Y.: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1999), 117–25. Chantal Mou√e criticizes liberals, like Rorty, for not being
pluralistic enough in her ‘‘Democracy, Power and the ‘Political’,’’ in Democracy and
Di√erence, ed. Benhabib, 245–56.
≥≤≥
1 3 . a p h i l o s o p h i c a l j u s t i f i c at i o n o f d e m o c r a c y
1. Richard Rorty, ‘‘Solidarity or Objectivity?’’ in Post-Analytic Philosophy, ed.
John Rajchman and Cornel West (New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press,
1985), 12.
2. Ibid., 16.
3. David Fott, John Dewey: America’s Philosopher of Democracy (Lanham,
Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), 82.
4. Ibid.
5. Matthew Festenstein, for example, argues in his Pragmatism and Political
Theory: From Dewey to Rorty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997) that
Dewey o√ers a plausible, but incomplete, philosophical justification for his nor-
mative ethical and political theory.
6. This is a quote from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., that Dewey uses in
LW 1:313.
7. Doug Browning, ‘‘Remarks on Rorty’s criticism of Dewey’s Metaphysics’’
(unpublished paper, May 1990).
8. Rogene A. Buchholz and Sandra B. Rosenthal, Business Ethics: The Prag-
matic Path Beyond Principles to Process (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall,
1997), 63.
9. For more about comparing Dewey with Habermas’s discourse ethics, see
Matthew Festenstein, Pragmatism and Political Theory, 146–61; and Scott R. Bart-
lett, ‘‘Discursive Democracy and a Democratic Way of Life,’’ in Perspectives on
Habermas, ed. Lewis Edwin Hahn (Chicago, Ill.: Open Court Publishing, 2000),
367–86.
10. Recall that, for Dewey, nature (i.e., reality) is not something apart, out-
side, or behind experience.
11. Giovanni Sartori, The Theory of Democracy Revisited (Chatham, N.J.:
Chatham House, 1987), 69.
12. Michael Eldridge, Transforming Experience (Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt
University Press, 1998), 83. Eldridge traces the history of this objection to Dewey
(see pp. 70–84). Eldridge defends Dewey against Walter Lippmann, John Herman
Randall, Jr., and Robert Westbrook by providing some Deweyan guidelines that
could be part of a ‘‘Deweyan manual to political action’’ (113). My defense of
Dewey consists, instead, in raising doubts about what is assumed by the objection.
13. This way of expressing the objection is Alan Ryan’s. See Alan Ryan, ‘‘Prag-
matism Rides Again,’’ review of The Promise of Pragmatism, by John P. Diggins,
The New York Review of Books, February 16, 1995, 33.
14. For more on the Dewey-Lippmann debate, see Robert Westbrook, John
Dewey and American Democracy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991),
293–300.
15. For a recent book on this issue from a pragmatic standpoint, see Erin
McKenna, The Task of Utopia (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002).
16. William James, ‘‘What Makes a Life Significant,’’ in his Talks to Teachers on
≥≤∂
Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life’s Ideals (New York, N.Y.: Henry Holt
and Company, 1899), 270.
17. Reinhold Niebuhr was the most persistent critic of Dewey on the issue of
naïveté. For the history of this criticism of Dewey, see Westbrook, John Dewey and
American Democracy, 523–36; and Eldridge, Transforming Experience, 52–62.
18. Eldridge, Transforming Experience, 54.
19. For instance, in The Public and its Problems, Dewey says, ‘‘As long as
interests of pecuniary profit are powerful, and a public has not located and identi-
fied itself, those who have this interest will have an unresisted motive for tamper-
ing with the spring of political action in all that a√ects them’’ (LW 2:348).
20. He was aware of ‘‘the influence of private interests in procuring suppres-
sion, secrecy and misrepresentation,’’ and of ‘‘the triviality and ‘sensational’ qual-
ity of so much of what passes as news’’ (LW 2:347).
21. John Patrick Diggins, ‘‘Pragmatism and Its Limits,’’ in The Revival of
Pragmatism: New Essays on Social Thought, Law, and Culture, ed. Morris Dickstein
(Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998), 213.
22. Ibid., 212.
23. Richard J. Bernstein, ‘‘Community in the Pragmatic Tradition,’’ in The
Revival of Pragmatism, ed. Dickstein, 149.
24. See Raymond D. Boisvert, ‘‘The Nemesis of Necessity: Tragedy’s Challenge
to Deweyan Pragmatism,’’ in Dewey Reconfigured: Essays on Deweyan Pragmatism,
ed. Casey Haskins and David I. Seiple (Albany: State University of New York Press,
1999), 151–68; James T. Kloppenberg, ‘‘Pragmatism: An Old Name for Some New
Ways of Thinking?’’ in The Revival of Pragmatism, ed. Dickstein, 83–127; West-
brook, John Dewey and American Democracy, 163, 416–17; and Hilary Putnam,
‘‘Reconsideration of Deweyan Democracy,’’ in Renewing Philosophy (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), 190–99.
25. Kloppenberg, ‘‘Pragmatism: An Old Name for Some New Ways of Think-
ing?’’ 114.
26. Michael Sandel, ‘‘The Case Against Perfection,’’ Atlantic Monthly, April
2004, 54.
27. Ibid., 51.
28. See LW 10:54.
29. John Dewey, quoted in Max Eastman, ‘‘John Dewey,’’ Atlantic Monthly,
December 1941, 673.
30. As Michael Eldridge has argued in Transforming Experience, there is more
to inquiry than having a rational discussion; see pp. 24–42.
31. George Herbert Mead, Selected Writings, ed. Andrew J. Reck (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1964), 5.
32. Sidney Hook, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in MW 9, xi–xii.
33. Ibid.
34. Robert Westbrook, ‘‘Pragmatism and Democracy: Reconstructing the
Logic of John Dewey’s Faith,’’ in The Revival of Pragmatism: New Essays on Social
≥≤∑
Thought, Law, and Culture, ed. Morris Dickstein (Durham, N.C.: Duke University
Press, 1998), 133.
35. For textual support of this claim, see endnote #19 in this book’s intro-
duction.
36. This seems to be Richard Shusterman’s view in his ‘‘Putnam and Cavell on
the Ethics of Democracy,’’ Political Theory 25, no. 2 (1997):193–214.
37. This is the view of Hilary Putnam in ‘‘A Reconsideration of Deweyan
Democracy,’’ Renewing Philosophy, 180–200.
38. See my ‘‘William James and the Logic of Faith,’’ Transactions of the Charles
S. Peirce Society 28, no. 4 (1992):781–808.
39. William James, The Meaning of Truth (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-
40. Eldridge, Transforming Experience, 145.
42. Ibid., 7.
43. Dewey’s metaphysics, as Westbrook correctly suggests, is a metaphysics
that supports democracy; it is a ‘‘metaphysics for the common man.’’ Westbrook,
John Dewey and American Democracy, 361.
44. James Gouinlock argues this same point eloquently in ‘‘The Moral Value
of a Philosophic Education,’’ Teaching Philosophy 3, no. 1 (1979):37–50.
conclusion
1. Dewey’s views on moral education and his moral philosophy are closely
intertwined and perhaps inseparable. Nevertheless, these are di√erent inquiries
initiated by a di√erent problem. We must not confuse the standpoint of an educa-
tor concerned to provide the best tools or prepare others for moral life with the
standpoint of a philosopher concerned with ethics as an inquiry of morality as it is
experienced. Interpretations of Dewey that take his emphasis on growth and the
cultivation of our characters as central to his ethics sometimes confuse these two
standpoints.
2. William T. Myers, review of John Dewey and Moral Imagination, by Steven
Fesmire, Journal of Aesthetic Education 39, no. 2 (2005):113.
3. I owe this way of articulating this point to Steven Fesmire.
4. Richard Rorty, ‘‘Pragmatism as Anti-authoritarianism,’’ in A Companion
To Pragmatism, ed. John R. Shook and Joseph Margolis (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell,
2006), 257.
≥≤∏
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≥≥∂
INDEX
absolutism, 7, 10, 12, 48, 56–57, 77, 118, 157, and balance, 173–75, 177, 182, 238, 299;
170–71, 188, 254, 285, 304 music, 241, 250; and science, 8, 12, 116
act-centered ethics, 129–41, 144, 156, authority: divine, 38; external, 75, 166, 308
318n1:7. See also being; doing
Alexander, Thomas, 11, 12 balance, 172–77, 179–84, 205, 210, 220, 247–
alienation, 140–41 49, 276, 305
Altman, Andrew, 311n19 being, 140; and doing, 129, 134–36, 196, 213
altruism, 35, 211–15. See also egoism beliefs, 22, 40, 90, 120, 123, 166, 191, 268
analysis, 26, 49, 60, 96–97, 103 Bernstein, Richard, 279
analytic fallacy, 26, 314n29 bottom-up theory, 266, 292. See also top-
anarchy, 10, 56, 70, 188, 266, 292, 302, 304, down theory
308 Braille, Louis, 109
Anscombe, G. E. M., 2 Brown, Mark Malloch, 10
Archimedean standpoint, 61, 71–72, 74, 76, Browning, Douglas, 11, 24, 33, 34, 262, 310n9
117, 307. See also God’s-eye point of Buddhism, 150
view
aristocracy, 246, 272, 297 Campbell, James, 19, 311n19
Aristotle, 4, 69, 194, 320n8 censorship, 222, 285
Art as Experience (Dewey), 8, 173 certainty, 50, 76, 134, 167
art, 82, 83, 86, 101, 109, 113, 118, 143–44, 167, change, 53, 56, 73, 117, 169, 177, 191, 220, 248;
178–79, 211–12, 230, 234, 264, 291, 302; openness to, 245–46
≥≥∑
index
chaos, 50, 70, 302 165, 186, 237, 249, 262, 265, 285, 301, 302,
character, 34, 55, 66, 69–70, 83, 88, 115, 127– 306, 315n2
28, 136–42, 144, 146, 151, 160, 178, 182, control, 77, 110, 118, 191, 279, 284
185, 187, 193, 196, 201, 204, 206, 217–18, courage, 187–91, 203, 235
236, 267, 301, 326n1; character-centered criteria, 56–58, 113, 151, 159, 287–89, 301–
theory, 130–33, 136–38, 140–41, 156, 302; universal, 68
318n1:7; and conduct, 130–35, 304; and criticism, 22, 29, 65, 66, 77, 118–19; reflec-
habits, 122, 124–26, 186; ideal, 68, 189– tive, 24, 51, 65, 110, 302
90, 208, 216, 253; intellectual, 201–202; Cunningham, Frank, 254
and moral deliberation, 205; traits of, custom, 122, 191
186, 209, 271. See also self cynicism, 276–77, 280, 295
Chautauqua community. See James,
William Dancy, Jonathan, 52, 54, 55
choice, 93, 94, 98, 128, 142, 160. See also Darwin, Charles, 18
judgments decisions, moral, 46, 60, 137, 240
collectivism, 241–42, 255, 258, 304. See also deliberation, 28, 30, 38, 45, 48, 51–54, 59, 66,
individualism 89–90, 94–95, 98–104, 109, 111, 121–22,
Collins, Ronald, 223 132, 136, 158, 192, 234, 252, 279, 301,
communication, 126, 166, 190, 206, 216, 323n24; and a√ective, 204–205; and rea-
222–23, 235, 241, 252, 254, 265, 288, 292; soning, 108, 198; and sympathy, 199, 201
in community, 238; democratic, 242–43, deliberativists, 252, 254, 255, 258
249; ideal, 68, 232–33, 236 Democracy and Education (Dewey), 5
communitarianism, 228, 242, 249, 255, 258, democracy, 224, 226, 240, 255, 259, 260–99,
304 308; as experience, 225, 252, 292; as ideal,
community, 10, 84, 119, 166, 178, 180, 184, 67, 74, 154, 200, 219, 238, 248, 263, 270,
201, 211, 213, 216, 225, 228–31, 236, 250, 276–77, 286, 290; conditions for, 222,
259, 273, 298; characteristics of, 222, 267; 259; justification of, 58, 262, 287; obsta-
‘‘Great Community,’’ 229–30; ideal, 68, cles to, 167, 244, 249, 285, 287; as politi-
172, 217, 221, 240, 276, 298; and indi- cal system, 218–19, 225; and starting
viduality, 220, 242. See also relations, point, 74, 257; values of, 10, 13, 70, 304;
social as way of life, 218, 244, 247, 290, 293
conduct, 44, 59–60, 70, 119, 125–28, 130–33, deontology, 2, 29, 33, 93, 129, 303, 314n21
140–42, 144, 158, 182, 203, 211, 213, 301, Descartes, René, 24; Cartesian philosophy,
303–304 123, 213, 262–63, 312n25
conflict, 45, 90, 92, 94–95, 120, 233, 276, 277, designation, 30–32
279, 284 determinism, 282
conscientiousness, 187, 192, 195–97, 202, Dewey, John: Art as Experience, 8, 173;
208, 302, 320n3:11 Ethics, 5, 17, 94, 310n8, 320n3:11; ‘‘The
consciousness, 21, 32, 157; social, 232 Ethics of Democracy,’’ 272; Experience
consequences, 145, 149, 198 and Education, 286; Experience and
consequentialism, 2, 9, 33, 93, 100, 129, 149, Nature, 11, 17, 31, 76, 83, 104, 111, 171;
291, 302–303, 309n2, 311n19, 314n21 How We Think, 177; Human Nature and
conservatism, 65, 245, 299 Conduct, 5, 123, 313n3; Lectures on Ethics,
constraints, 54, 58–59 1900–1901, 170; Logic: The Theory of
context, 7, 13, 45, 48, 53, 60, 66, 122–23, 302; Inquiry, 8, 75, 111, 240, 264; ‘‘The Postu-
situational, 32, 40–41, 66, 118 late of Immediate Empiricism,’’ 11; The
contextualism, 7, 11, 41–42, 46, 47, 51–53, Quest for Certainty, 111; Reconstruction
56–58, 69, 75, 83, 85, 106, 131, 133, 140, in Philosophy, 5; Theory of Valuation, 111;
≥≥∏
index
‘‘Three Independent Factors in Morals,’’ 211; as tool, 64–65; traditional, 1, 2, 7–8,

5, 33, 92, 94, 111 81, 84, 288
dialogue, 99, 109, 285, 291 Ethics (Dewey), 5, 17, 94, 310n8, 320n3:11
Diggins, John Patrick, 247, 279 ‘‘Ethics of Democracy, The’’ (Dewey), 272
disagreement, 119–20 ethnocentrism, 72, 234, 237
discourse, 40, 59, 130, 132–33, 252; political, exclusion, 284–85, 298
279; public, 10, 222–23, 243–44, 252–53, Experience and Education (Dewey), 286
278, 280 Experience and Nature (Dewey), 11, 17, 31,
discovery, 116–17, 264 76, 83, 104, 111, 171
doing, 96, 113, 129; and being, 129, 134–36, experience, 11, 22, 25–29, 32, 50, 58, 61, 63,
196, 213, 318n1:7; and undergoing, 96, 69, 71, 81–82, 84, 89, 121, 149, 165, 193–
104, 113, 184, 281. See also act-centered 94, 201, 227; aesthetic, 12, 186, 299; a√ec-
ethics; virtue ethics tive, 84, 204, 207; continuity of, 49, 83,
Dryzek, John, 323n24 124; faith in, 75, 94, 153, 176, 281; future,
dualisms, 12, 18, 27, 35, 66, 107, 142, 168–69, 166, 191; imaginative, 204, 207; lived, 11,
274 25, 77, 83, 88, 114, 177, 262, 280, 293, 300;
duty, 2, 33, 35, 93, 94, 99, 102, 106, 137, 138, as method, 24, 264–65; moral, 32, 38,
141, 143, 146, 159, 210, 256, 266, 303 132, 136, 138, 157, 186; past, 72, 97, 112,
166, 180, 194, 196, 198; present, 59, 73, 76,
Edel, Abraham, 310n8 145, 150, 165, 170, 189, 191, 210, 218, 220,
education, 64, 74, 76–77, 127, 134, 144, 168, 282, 286; as starting point, 11, 18, 20–24,
178, 180, 189, 193–94, 201–205, 211, 215, 41, 61, 65, 287
253, 271, 282, 302–303, 326n1 experimentation, 13, 98, 118, 175, 183, 186, 244
egoism, 35, 211, 213–14. See also altruism extremism, 7, 10, 170, 180–81, 184, 300
egotism, spiritual, 139
either/or dilemma, 50, 56, 78 faith, 11, 75, 280, 294–97
Eldridge, Michael, 12, 270, 278, 294, 324n12, feminism, 198–99, 204, 207, 215, 321n11
325n30 Fesmire, Steven, 20
elitism, 271 Festenstein, Matthew, 261, 311n19, 324n5
emotivism, 40, 86, 116 feudalism, 266
empiricism, 7, 17, 19–26, 30, 41–42, 47, 62, Fiala, Andrew G., 323n32
64, 75–77, 81, 83, 90, 98, 110, 112, 115, 168, fixity, 191–92
228, 237, 264, 289, 301, 312n25, 313n8, Fletcher, Joseph, 314n1
317n12; denotative method, 11, 31, 289; formalism, 254
and non-empirical philosophy, 23; radi- Fott, David, 261
cal, 2, 5, 11, 41, 89, 147, 312n25. See also foundationalism, 24, 58, 263
contextualism Frankena, William, 129
engaged standpoint, 34–36 fraternity, 10, 236, 247, 250, 269, 279
enhancement, genetic, 281, 283–84 freedom, 10, 23, 181, 224, 247–48, 250, 268,
Enlightenment, 320n2:10 271, 299, 304–305; negative, 221–24, 241;
Epicureanism, 147 positive, 211, 221–23, 234, 239, 272–73,
epistemology, 22, 28, 39–40, 50, 92, 187, 213, 278
255 Friedman, Will, and Public Agenda, 249
equality, 10, 224–26, 236, 246–48, 250, 268, future, 147–49, 151, 152, 160, 303. See also
279, 282 past; present
Erlanger, Steven, 10
ethical theory, 2, 29, 44, 60, 63–64; applied, generalism, 52, 54–55
62; history of, 157, 303; modern, 39, 81, Gewirth, Alan, 127
≥≥π
index
God’s-eye point of view, 41, 42, 72, 119, 147, instrumentalism, 8, 62, 186, 263
160, 292, 304. See also Archimedean intellectualism, 28–29, 39, 45, 85, 90, 168
standpoint intellectualist fallacy, 101, 289
good, 2, 33, 42, 93, 94, 99, 137, 138–39, 159, intelligence, 9, 12, 13, 47, 50–51, 59, 66, 75,
210, 256, 266, 303 82, 109, 148, 165–66, 178, 189, 195–96,
Gouinlock, James, 30, 227 208–209, 211, 241, 253, 273, 302, 310n10;
social, 74, 239
Habermas, Jürgen, 127, 254, 267 interactions, 124, 127, 166, 298–99, 306, 308
habits, 22, 69, 72, 75, 88, 96, 97, 118, 121–24, Internet, 224, 231, 235
127, 151, 155, 158–61, 166, 168, 171, 178, intuition, 289, 315n16
193, 195, 244, 248, 253, 291, 302–303; and intuitionism, 40, 99
character, 131, 134, 136, 139, 142, 254; as
tools, 191, 306; and virtues, 187, 209, James, William, 2, 11, 67, 150, 225, 245, 279,
240. See also experience 294–95, 312n25, 316n1:3, 317n1; and
happiness, 143, 146, 217 Chautauqua community, 275–76
Hare, R. M., 34, 36–37, 317n3 Jamieson, Dale, 29
harmony, 113, 283 Johnson, Mark, 3
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 30 judgments, 9, 38–39, 45, 47, 48, 52–53, 59,
heterogeneity, 218 89, 93, 95–96, 98–99, 101–102, 104, 108,
Hickman, Larry, 12 115–19, 130, 158, 159, 166, 202, 205; and
Hildebrand, David, 120 valuation, 110, 111, 113. See also synthesis;
Hitler, Adolf, 65, 73, 284 valuation; valuing
Hobbes, Thomas, 257 justice, 199–200, 207, 266
homogeneity, 218, 238, 256–57, 298
homosexuality, 106–109, 317n8 Kadlec, Alison, and Public Agenda, 249
Honneth, Axel, 311n19 Kant, Immanuel, 2, 4, 30, 49, 130, 134, 200,
Hook, Sydney, 57–58, 117, 287, 316n20 203, 211
How We Think (Dewey), 177 Katz, Jon, 223
human nature, 9, 38 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 322n18
Human Nature and Conduct (Dewey), 5, Kloppenberg, James, 279
123, 313n3 knowledge, 28, 76, 86, 90–91, 107, 112, 116,
humanism, naturalistic, 117 177, 194, 199, 202, 253, 264, 289
humility, 77, 246, 282, 307
Huxley, Aldous, 223 language, moral, 34, 39
Lectures on Ethics, 1900–1901 (Dewey), 170
ideals, 42, 66–69, 73, 75, 144, 154, 166, 177, Lekan, Todd, 84
263, 270, 275–77, 291, 293, 302; as crit- Lenz, Gabriel, 232
icism, 67–68, 274 Lewis, C. I., 57–58, 63
imagination, 67, 97–99, 102, 123, 198, 205– liberalism, 8, 119, 221, 226, 242, 251, 258, 305
206, 264 licentiousness, moral, 57, 155
immanence, 272 life, moral, 45, 54, 87, 214; aesthetic, 51, 78,
individualism, 183, 213, 220, 226, 237, 241–42, 152, 165–66, 177, 180, 184, 187–88, 192,
249, 255, 267, 304. See also collectivism 201, 207, 211, 297, 305–306, 308; demo-
individuality, 84, 220–21, 232, 235–36, 244, cratic, 165–66, 184, 187, 192, 201, 211,
259, 268–69, 271, 274 305–306; ideal, 207, 297; intelligent, 180,
inquiry, 25–26, 69, 75, 86, 91, 94, 112–13, 117, 184, 187, 192, 201, 297, 305–306, 308;
119, 126–27, 155, 198, 204, 261; commu- unaesthetic, 46, 195, 202, 215, 219
nal, 243, 245 linguistics, 35, 39–40, 101, 115, 262
≥≥∫
index
Lippman, Walter, 244, 271, 324n12 organism, biological, 173, 176

Lipset, Seymour, 232 Ortega y Gasset, José, 34
Little, Margaret Olivia, 55 Orwell, George, 223
logic, 103, 107; logicians, 53
Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (Dewey), 8, 75, participation, 72, 268, 291
111, 240, 264 particularism, 48, 51–55, 137, 140, 159, 177
Louden, Robert B., 135 passivity, 203–204, 276–77
love, 210; self-love, 212 past, 147, 152, 160. See also future; present
Peirce, Charles, 312n25
MacIntyre, Alasdair, 21, 41, 186 pessimism, 150, 153, 246, 276, 280, 285
Mackie, John, 36, 115 philosophical fallacy, 26, 33, 44, 60, 89, 113,
Margolis, Joseph, 6, 119 115, 125, 157, 160, 166, 171, 263, 303,
Mayo, Bernard, 137 312n25
McKenna, Erin, 324n15 philosophy, 18, 251, 261; cognitive, 3, 28; as
Mead, George Herbert, 99, 121, 198, 235, 286 criticism, 23, 65, 170; Greek, 205; mod-
Mehldau, Brad, 250 ern, 27, 33; non-empirical, 25–26, 28,
meliorism, 10, 67, 153–55, 168, 188, 280–83, 75, 157, 168–69
295 Plato, 37, 41, 244, 283
Menand, Louis, 7 play, 178–80, 299, 320n2:10
metaphysics, 39, 176 pluralism, 58, 186, 220, 225, 237–38, 249, 255,
Mill, John Stuart, 2, 130 257–59, 267–68, 284, 303
Misak, Cheryl, 255 politics, 8, 82, 167, 240
modernism, 263, 320n2:10. See also Postman, Neil, 223
postmodernism postmodernism, 262, 321n11
Montague, Phillip, 318n5:7 ‘‘Postulate of Immediate Empiricism, The’’
Mou√e, Chantal, 258 (Dewey), 11
multiculturalism, 237 practice, moral, 44, 57, 59, 60–62
music. See under art pragmatism, 6–8, 11, 18, 25, 28, 35, 58, 63,
Myers, William, 303 66–67, 71–72, 76, 122, 186–88, 192, 206,
228, 254, 260–62, 268, 284, 295, 303, 305,
naïveté, cultivated, 77, 302 323n32; history of, 312n25. See also
naturalism, 40, 86; evolutionary, 18 neopragmatism
nature (outside world), 107 present, 7, 13, 147–49, 151–55, 157, 160, 179,
neopragmatism, 11, 29, 40, 120, 261. See also 198, 303. See also future; past
pragmatism principles, 51–60, 69, 74–75, 83, 89–90, 97,
nihilism, 292 99, 103, 151, 159, 171, 178; and rules, 49–
nominalists, 171 50, 52, 56, 57–58
norms, moral, 38, 75, 119–20 problems, 3, 28, 30, 33, 37, 38, 41–42, 54,
59, 62, 65–66, 69, 73, 75, 83, 86, 88–89,
objectivism, 35, 38, 116, 118–20, 169, 304. See 91–93, 95–96, 112, 114, 121–23, 136–40,
also subjectivism 143, 158, 279, 301; and solutions, 117,
objectivity, 40, 72, 114, 117, 160, 206, 292 166, 169, 210; uniqueness of, 94, 145, 153,
openness, 187–92, 198, 201, 204, 207–208, 182
216, 227, 235, 238, 240, 247, 249, 265, 271, psychology, social. See social psychology
285, 291, 299, 302, 304 Putnam, Hilary, 9, 40, 57, 254, 279, 311n19
optimism, 153, 246, 280, 282
order, 10, 177, 181, 220, 232, 299, 305. See also Quest for Certainty, The (Dewey), 111
stability qualitative, 7, 13, 306
≥≥Ω
index
racism, 234, 238 274, 278; and art, 8, 12, 116; and ethics,
Randall, John Herman, Jr., 324n12 17–19, 82, 83, 86, 101–102, 304; scientific
rationalism, 99, 199, 253 inquiry, 117–19, 240; and standpoint,
rationality, 37, 53, 206 34–35
Rawls, John, 30, 255, 258, 323n32 scientism, 37
realism, 28, 85, 91–92, 107, 114 selectivity, 21–22, 27, 62
reality, 27, 91–92, 107, 160, 243, 266 self, 3, 83, 114, 121, 124, 131, 137, 140–43, 146,
reason, 53, 90, 97–98, 103, 108, 133, 148, 166, 148–49, 158, 180, 184, 198–99, 202, 213,
169, 199–201, 204, 206 298, 301, 304; and acts, 143, 209; ideal,
reasonableness, 262, 289, 301 10, 172, 185, 298; self-centeredness, 214;
reasons, 36, 53, 109, 159, 289 self-control, 203; self-interest, 267; self-
receptivity, 77, 116 realization, 9, 143, 302, 311n19
Reconstruction in Philosophy (Dewey), 5 sense perception, 22
reductionism, 23, 28, 30, 83, 132, 138, 168 sensitivity, 32, 55, 183, 187, 192–93, 194–97,
reflection, 59, 65, 69, 95, 100, 107–10, 112, 199, 204, 208, 226, 271, 288, 302, 320n3:11;
117, 196, 206, 292. See also inquiry; to context, 241–42, 249, 257, 271, 277,
valuation 284
relations, 39, 68, 104–105, 128, 160, 215–18, separatism, 238
220, 228, 230–31, 248, 254, 264, 271, 273, sexism, 234
298; local, 231–32, 274–75; personal, Sisyphus, 150, 153
231–32, 306; social, 84, 275 situations, 41–42, 48–49, 53, 55–56, 59, 69,
relativism, 7, 38, 59, 115, 120, 169–71, 192, 86–87, 118–20, 123–24, 131, 134; present,
243, 258, 261, 262, 285, 304; cultural, 37, 157–58; situation ethics, 48, 50–51, 74–
119 75, 77, 159, 314n1; uniqueness of, 44, 47,
religion, 83, 167–68, 240, 268, 294 49, 62
representationalism, 263 skepticism, 6–7, 59, 61, 65, 77, 192, 262, 295,
republicanism, civic, 258 307–308, 316n26
responsibility, 155; civic, 232, 249 Skover, David, 223
rhythm, 173, 175, 182, 184, 205, 299. See also social psychology, 3, 17–18, 159, 313n3
balance solidarity, 72, 259; democratic, 282–83
right and wrong, 34, 37–38, 40, 43, 45–47, spectator view, 33, 147–48, 206, 268
56–57, 59, 61, 112, 177, 208, 256 stability, 57, 122, 149, 176–77, 191, 220, 232,
Rorty, Richard, 9, 65, 72, 258, 260–62, 307, 238, 244, 246, 273, 283, 299. See also
312n19 order
Ross, W. D., 40, 52, 102 Stocker, Michael, 36, 314n21
rules, 35, 45–51, 54, 56, 64, 68, 70, 73, 75, 90, Stout, Je√rey, 6
92, 96, 97–98, 118, 134, 136, 145, 151, 153– subjectivism, 12, 35, 42, 69, 82, 115–19, 121,
54, 159–60, 177, 179, 188, 194–95, 224, 156–57, 317n10. See also objectivism
235, 254, 277, 280, 289, 302–303, 306, survey, 103, 106, 109
308; and principles, 52, 57, 127, 140–41, sympathy, 187, 198–201, 204, 207–208, 216,
156 227, 235, 238, 265, 302
Russell, Bertrand, 29 synthesis, 96–97
Ryan, Alan, 184
Talisse, Robert, 254, 256
Sandel, Michael, 258, 281–82 technology, 12, 82, 219, 274, 278, 281–82,
Sartori, Giovanni, 269 284, 306
Schneewind, Jerome, 82 teleology, 9, 33, 93, 149, 186, 309n2, 311n19
science, 19, 116, 118, 126, 167, 169, 178, 261, tension, 276, 304, 322n18
≥∂≠
index
theoretical standpoint, 33–36 values, 45, 90, 93, 104, 110–11, 114–15, 118,
Theory of Valuation (Dewey), 111 127, 144, 159, 317n10
thought, qualitative, 86, 101 valuing, 95, 104–105, 107–13, 117–19, 192,
‘‘Three Independent Factors in Morals’’ 282, 317n10. See also valuation
(Dewey), 5, 33, 92, 94, 111 vice, 125, 187
Tiles, J. E., 311n19 violence, 284–86
Tocqueville, Alexis de, 244 virtue ethics, 33, 93, 129–30, 135–44, 185,
tolerance, 10, 235, 257, 259, 265, 284–85, 291, 256, 303, 314n21, 318n5:7
305, 323n32 virtues, 2, 33, 42, 55, 93, 94, 99, 125–27, 133–
top-down theory, 256, 266–67, 296, 306. See 35, 138–39, 141, 143–44, 146, 159, 187, 190,
also bottom-up theory 192, 206, 208–10, 253, 266, 303, 305; as
tradition, 67, 82, 123, 166, 169, 211, 244, 247, habits, 254. See also character
249 vulnerability, 191
transcendentalism, 150
trust, 77, 239 Welchman, Jennifer, 19, 311n19, 313n8
Tufts, James Hayden, 199–200 West, Cornel, 8, 223
Westbrook, Robert, 9, 12, 13, 57–58, 270,
uncertainty, 30, 95–96, 190, 220 287, 324n12, 326n43
undergoing, 235; and doing, 96, 104, 113 wholeheartedness, 210–12
unity, 127, 173, 220, 237, 249, 255, 257–59 will, 102, 134, 144, 202
universalism, 41, 171, 177, 220 Williams, Bernard, 40, 59, 61, 63, 65, 140–
universalization, 27, 314n29 41, 316n26
utilitarianism, 29, 30, 99–101, 134, 140, 143, wisdom, 68, 176, 180–81, 183, 249
146, 198–99, 201, 213, 224 Wolf, Susan, 61
utopia objection, 275–76 work, 178–80
Wright, Jennifer, 159
Valadez, Jorge, 256
valuation, 95, 104–13, 117–18, 192–93, 195, Young, Iris Marion, 252, 258
288, 317n10. See also valuing
≥∂∞
Gregory Fernando Pappas is Associate Professor of Philosophy at
Texas A&M University. He is the author of numerous articles on the
philosophy of William James and John Dewey. He has been the recipient
of a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship as well as the William
James and the Latin American Thought prizes by the American
Philosophical Association.

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What is the book about?

What is the book about?

What are the main parts of the book?

What are the main parts of the book?

John Dewey’s Ethics

Gregory fernando Pappas

Gregory Fernando Pappas

Indiana University Press

Telephone orders 800-842-6796

∫ 2008 by Gregory Fernando Pappas

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pappas, Gregory Fernando, date

has been neglected in philosophy when it should be the primary focal

Citations of John Dewey’s works are to the thirty-seven volume critical

I n this book, I present the ﬁrst comprehensive interpretation of John

Dewey’s Reconstruction of Moral Philosophy

In presenting Dewey’s rich account of moral experience, I will high-

Three Facets of Dewey’s Ethics

choice of intelligence as the preferred method of action implies, like

enough to support a sharp distinction between an early and a late Dewey.

stand, or even embrace, Dewey’s normative proposals (part 3) once one

[P]ragmatism, so its critics say, leads to unwelcome consequences in

adherents a kind of moral aphasia, an inability to talk back in the face of

Although Louis Menand’s thesis that ‘‘pragmatism arose out of disillu-

Dewey’s Ethics and His Philosophy of

on its head. In contrast to traditional ethics, Dewey took what is local,

underlying moral commitments and visions and fortiﬁcations of the soul

I believe that Dewey’s perceptive and realistic refusal to reduce ethics to

necessary in the resolution of political and ethical problems, makes him

The continued relevance of Dewey’s ethics may be because the condi-

Democracy, in other words, grows out of a nation’s history and experi-

The Centrality of Experience in Dewey’s Philosophy

Understanding John Dewey’s comprehensive and, in its details, daunt-

import of each of these phases, is initially shaped at the starting point

Centering one’s interpretation of Dewey on the starting point is not

It is commonly claimed that Dewey, like other theorists in the twentieth

evolutionary naturalism (i.e., one based on scientiﬁc truths or

Many of the misdirected criticisms of Dewey’s ethics have assumed

emphasizing ‘‘the continuity of ethical with other forms of experience’’

Experience as the Starting Point

abstractions (or as Dewey says, ‘‘reﬂective products’’), rather than primary

ence is problematic. Contemporary philosophers who think otherwise

have prejudices or stereotypes that distort our immediate experience, then

Hence, in a certain sense, experience is always our starting point (and

The Philosophical Fallacy

Analysis is a process where we discriminate some particulars or elements

crete non-cognitive integral contexts from which things were dissected

by philosophers who are ‘‘wedded to the idea that there is no experi-

In sum, Dewey’s reconstruction in ethics is a diagnosis of how these

Di√erent theories take di√erent categories as primary. For example,

constructing a theoretically coherent system that can presumably provide

Designating the Subject Matter:

and wrong. Dewey’s descriptions of moral experience are thus totally

Occasionally, though, we ﬁnd ourselves in a problematic situation, only

Ethical Theory and the Theoretical Starting Point

The theoretical standpoint is sometimes di≈cult to detect, since it is not