John Dewey and the Ideal of Democracy

Ken Taylor
Coming up on Philosophy Talk…

John Perry
The life and thought of John Dewey

Ken Taylor
Quintessentially American philosopher.

John Perry
One of the founding fathers of American pragmatism.

Ken Taylor
Part philosopher, part psychologist, part educational and social reformer.

John Dewey
One of the fundamental problems of education in and for a democratic society is set by the conflict of a nationalistic and a wider social aim.

John Perry
John Dewey and the ideal of democracy.

Johhn Dewey
A democracy is more than a form of government.

Ken Taylor
For Dewey, democracy is the fundamental form of human life through which we realize our deepest ideals and aspirations.

John Dewey
It is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoined, communicated experience.

The Simpsons
When are people going to learn: democracy doesn’t work! Please don’t knock the land that I love.

Our guest is Melvin Rogers, author of “The Undiscovered Dewey: Religion, Morality, and the Ethos of Democracy.”

John Perry
The life and thought of John Dewey

Ken Taylor
…coming up on Philosophy Talk.

Ken Taylor
Welcome to Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

John Perry
…except your intelligence. I’m John Perry.

Ken Taylor
And I’m Ken Taylor. We’re here at the studios of KALW San Francisco.

John Perry
We’re continuing conversations that began at Philosophers cCrner at Stanford University. That’s where Ken teaches philosophy and I did for 40 years.

Ken Taylor
And today we’re thinking about John Dewey and the ideal of democracy.

John Perry
John Dewey was was just a distinctively American philosopher.

Ken Taylor
He may have been the single most influential American philosopher during his lifetime.

John Perry
And he had a long life. He was born before the Civil War and died in the early 1950s.

Ken Taylor
And the guy was an absolute force of nature. I imagine he was one of the founding fathers of the pragmatist school in philosophy. He was a psychologist, a political theorist and a public intellectual. He just didn’t do this from his armchair. He worked tirelessly in the field for various causes, like women’s suffrage, for example. And his influence in education was, I think, transformational.

John Perry
You know, there’s obviously a lot we could say about doing but we’re gonna focus on his views about democracy, of which he was a big fan.

Ken Taylor
A big fan—I think maybe that’s an understatement. I think he adored democracy. He thought of democracy as the ideal form of human social life.

John Perry
Yeah, but talk of the ideal anything implies perfection. Democracy is fine. It’s all right. But I don’t see how anyone can think it’s perfect.

Ken Taylor
Oh, what’s your beef with democracy?

John Perry
Well, I’m with Churchill. Democracy, he said, is the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried. That’s its virtue.

Ken Taylor
I think Churchill was just being ironic or something, wasn’t he?

John Perry
No, I think he was utterly serious. His point was that although the people may not be very good at governing, still, they’re a hell of a lot better than the dictators or revolutionary vanguard’s or haughty elites that have been the norm throughout history.

Ken Taylor
But come on, if democracy is a little logic for you, if democracy is better than the rest, then well, it’s the best. And if it’s the best, it’s ideal, right? QED.

John Perry
Not if it’s a best of a bad lot. I used to chair the philosophy department, I think I was a best of a bad lot of choices, frankly. But far from ideal, no form of government is ideal. All we can hope for is avoiding being ruled by psychotic tyrants, or petty fools, which has happened a lot throughout history.

Ken Taylor
John. you have such a cramped view of democracy in government and politics. For Dewey, this stuff is about really fundamental things. It involves much more than getting off your duff now and then and voting for the lesser evil, it’s but more even the majority rule. Well, like what like, informed activity and reflective participation in civic life, like free and open communication among citizens that’s important, like mutual understanding of one another’s wants and needs like cooperation, collaboration, and compromise, really big stuff.

John Perry
Sounds kind of dreamy and unrealistic.

Ken Taylor
It sounds visionary to me.

John Perry
It’s not a vision that truly describes any democracy I’ve ever heard.

Ken Taylor
I don’t think he was meaning to describe the way things actually are. He was articulating an ideal.

John Perry
There’s that word again.

Ken Taylor
Look, I mean, do we actually saw democracy I think as, as rooted in our deepest aspirations as human beings, he believes that we can realize our full human potential, even our potential as individuals, only through active participation in what he called the public sphere.

John Perry
Well, I guess where he gets off the rails, I have a duty to vote and spend a little time figuring out who to vote for more participation in that. I don’t think that’s what makes my life go it just makes me tired. Oh, John, look, Dewey was a pragmatist, right? Yeah. So what? Well, I thought pragmatist didn’t really go in for a lofty and unreachable ideals. They go into what works, what can realistically be achieved in the here and now.

Ken Taylor
But Dewey went in for what can be achieved and the here and now that’s why he put such an emphasis on education, even think democracy was easy. He said that we can achieve democracy only if we educate people in a way that prepares them for life as active, reflective, engaged citizens. And you know, he thought a lot. That’s how its transformational influence and education. You talked a lot about how to how to actually do that.

John Perry
Well, on the matter of education, aybe Churchill and Dewey weren’t so far apart after all.

Ken Taylor
What do you mean?

John Perry
Well, I mean, Churchill thought ignorance was a problem. Have you ever taken a look at the average voter? Okay, Churchill said, talk to the average voter her five minutes. That’s the best argument against democracy. He won’t turn out to be exactly the engaged reflective citizen of Dewey’s imagining but maybe education.

Ken Taylor
See, again, it’s not about how things actually are, what the citizen is actually. Like. It’s about how things ought to be. That’s what I do. He’s talking about the ideal of democracy, John.

John Perry
Yeah. But I think at the US, we’re divided by religion, class, race and ethnicity. A lot of people end up being minorities and not part of the majority. Do you ever think we can have the kind of mutual understanding that Dewey dreamed up? Well, why not? Well, because I think Dewey’s vision is like watching a rough and tumble rugby game and thinking, Oh, we could transform this into ballet just by education. That’s a great analogy, but it’s still kind of grumpy dude. grumpy, grumpy, grumpy. Yeah, well, in my grumpiness, I’ll give him credit. He believed deeply in education and education deserves all the attention it can get. And he was more than just an educator and a philosopher. He was an activist, a psychologist, a woman’s rights advocate and a lot of other things.

Ken Taylor
So we sent our Roving Philosophical Reporter, Shuka Kalantari, to explore the life and times of this whirlwind John Dewey. She files this report.

Shuka Kalantari
John Dewey began his career as a high school teacher. He was born in Vermont in 1859. And by the end of his life at the ripe age of 92, he had an impressive list of accomplishments under his belt,

Philip Kitcher
His life is actually devoted to lots and lots and lots of practical causes.

Shuka Kalantari
Philip Kitcher is the John Dewey professor of philosophy at Columbia University.

Philip Kitcher
He’s a very early endorser of things like female suffrage. He’s a very early supporter of the NAACP.

Shuka Kalantari
Dewey was also a scholar of psychology, metaphysics, art, education, political theory, you name it. In 1899, Dewey was elected president of the American Psychological Association. In 1905, he became president of the American Philosophical Association, and he was a member of the American Federation of Teachers. Dewey was a pragmatist, who believed philosophers should have a real life impact on the world.

Sarah Stitzlein
Not just kind of pie in the sky ideas and talking to other scholars.

Shuka Kalantari
Sarah Stitzlein is a Professor of Philosophy and Education at the University of Cincinnati. She’s also a Dewey scholar.

Sarah Stitzlein
So there’s this very social aspect of what citizens do for Dewey. And that’s largely about solving social problems that democracy strong and healthy. And that’s all guided by this primal spirit of trying to figure out what works.

Shuka Kalantari
Dewey believed one way to maintain a strong democracy was through a strong public education system. He thought our classrooms should be focused on bettering society, not teaching individual vocational skills.

Sarah Stitzlein
He drew our attention to children as unique individuals whose experience should be fostered and supported our classrooms so that children could come to understand and investigate and improve the world around them.

Shuka Kalantari
When John Dewey died in 1952, not a lot of people were tooting his philosophical horn. Here’s Columbia’s Philip kitcher again.

Philip Kitcher
His influence really waned after his death. He basically got written out of the philosophy curriculum in most places.

Shuka Kalantari
Throughout Deewy’s work runs a critique of capitalism. And kitcher says, that didn’t bode well with the post-WWII American public. People didn’t want to hear about radical reform.

Philip Kitcher
This was the time of the Cold War. This is the time in which capitalism is pitted against the evils of a rival economic system. And people I think, didn’t want to listen to somebody like theory saying, there are things that are really deeply wrong and that need to be reformed.

Shuka Kalantari
He says it wasn’t until the 1970s that scholars started taking Dewey seriously again, we now have things like the John Dewey society, and professors at Columbia who get paid to study his life’s work. Much of American society now lauds John Dewey. But what what do we think about today’s American society?

Philip Kitcher
I think he would be appalled. I mean, Dewey is very scathing, about the idea that democracy is simply a matter of people voting periodically, you don’t get informed decisions, when on complex issues, you get two people on television shouting at one another for about 10 minutes.

Ted Cruz
That’s a matter of principle.

Donald Trump
You probably are worse than Jeb Bush.

Hillary Clinton
We both agree with campaign finance reform!

Bernie Sanders
Let’s talk about it.

Hillary Clinton
I worked hard for McCain-Feingold!

Donald Trump
Nasty guy. Now I know why he doesn’t have one endorsement from any of his colleagues.

Philip Kitcher
I mean, I think you would think there’s not a hope that people can really think through the things that matter to them, and find candidates who can really advance their goals and interests.

Shuka Kalantari
Sarah Stitzlein from the University of Cincinnati says John Dewey might be disappointed in our current democratic system. But she thinks he would still have hope.

Sarah Stitzlein
We can’t just hope in something else outside of us, but rather our hope has to relate to our own personal efforts to improve our lives as well as those of others. And all of that for him is guided by belief in meliorism. This is kind of a positive optimistic outlook where you believe that the world can indeed be improved with effort together.

Shuka Kalantari
Maybe a little meliorism can go a long way.

Ted Cruz
If Donald Trump is President—

Moderator
Hold on gentlemen, I’m gonna turn this car around.

Shuka Kalantari
Here’s hoping. For Philosophy Talk, I’m Shuka Kalantari

John Perry
And I’m John Perry. Thanks, Shuka, for that interesting look at the life and times of John Dewey. I’m here with my fellow Stanford philosopher, Ken Taylor.

Ken Taylor
And today we’re thinking about the life and thought of John Dewey. We’re joined now by Melvin Rogers. He’s a professor of political science and of African American Studies at UCLA. He’s author of “The Undiscovered Dewey: Religion, Morality, and the Ethos of Democracy.” Welcome, Melvin. Welcome to Philosophy Talk.

Sarah Stitzlein
Thank you, John. And Ken. I’m delighted.

John Perry
Okay, Melvin. Thank you. We’ve got a little echo. But I’m sure that the more Melvins the better. Now, I have a question for you. In my experience, Dewey is not a big topic for the average African American Studies department. So how did you get interested in John Dewey in the first place?

Sarah Stitzlein
So I was introduced to John Dewey by a college professor. And when I finally came around to read in Dewey, and this will sound weird. If you’ve read Dewey, he’s done especially beautiful, good writer. But when I finally came around to reading him, I experienced what I can only describe as an overwhelming feeling of joy. And let me just very briefly put this in proper context. I’m not an especially religious person. I did not grow up in the church. But when I read Dewey, I found both my religion a particular system of faith, and my church and I, and I never stopped reading them.

John Perry
Well, that’s, that’s, that’s great. We’re gonna have to go to our break a little bit early. But we’ll be right back.

Ken Taylor
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today, we’re thinking about the American philosopher John Dewey and the ideal of democracy,

John Perry
Government, of the people, by the people, for the people.

Ken Taylor
Dewey, diversity, and democracy—when Philosophy Talk continues.

John Lennon
Power to the people, power to the people, right on.

John Perry
Democracy is power to the people, the public. But who exactly is that? I’m John Perry. This is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Ken Taylor
…except your intelligence. I’m Ken Taylor. And we’re thinking about John Dewey and the ideal of democracy.

John Perry
Our guest is Melvin Rogers from UCLA author of “The Undiscovered Dewey.” And Melvin was explaining to us how he got interested in Dewey and how thrilled he was when he started reading Dewey, I admit, I had similar feelings really put off by the prose. But like the idea the world ain’t perfect, but it’s getting better. There’s no God. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be committed to things and democracies. Okay? Do we love democracy? He embraced it. Plato avoided it, Churchill tolerated it. Can you give us a brief account of why Dewey was so enthusiastic about democracy?

Sarah Stitzlein
Yes. So do we, I think some people often get Dewey mistaken on democracy. Dewey was excited about democracy because he thought that democracy provided the best means by which people on the one hand could avoid being dominated, and on the other, they could find a sort of system through which they could experience the sort of full flowering of their capacities and abilities.

Ken Taylor
Yeah, that’s a really that’s a great uplifting vision of, you know, democracy as a means to like, realizing human potential or something like that. Even I, as I understood this, even for an individual, right, democracy is this way of life through which you can achieve individuality. Is that is that is that right?

Sarah Stitzlein
Yeah, I mean, do we thought that how we actually become the distinctive people that we are, is actually dependent on our interactions, conversations, exchanges with the communities to which we belong. Why? Because those communities actually provide the resource horses that we rely on to make ourselves into the distinctive people that we turn out to be?

John Perry
Well, that’s a very optimistic vision. But but don’t a lot of us achieve our individuality by kind of tolerating other people having even more fun than we do with the live ones with the dead ones through their books, and creating solitary works of great importance. What do we think about all that?

Sarah Stitzlein
I mean, that is partly true, although I think you have something of a sort of narrow idea of what’s going on. Actually, when we’re in conversation. With the works, let’s say, of past scholars of the works of previous thinkers, we still find ourselves located in a community stretched across time, we still find ourselves making use of the resources of that community, to make ourselves into a distinctive human beings.

Ken Taylor
You know, this seems to me to harken back to the sort of idealist roots, The Hague alien ideals. I know, Dewey ultimately rejected idealism. But I still hear some echoes of the idealism because the idealism says, you know, the dialectic of all rational people, we’re in community with each other, we, this kind of Spirit comes and emerges and unifies us all and politics and religion. And I know he rejected that. But it still seems like there’s traces of that in him. Is that right?

Sarah Stitzlein
Yeah, I mean, you know, there are still sort of traces of hey, Galeon idealism in him, he said, that he actually never fully abandon a Hegel. But we need to sort of understand this in its proper context. For Dewey, he does not think that darkness or tragedy saturates the world in which we live. He believes that there is always a space upon which to stand, to sort of spear into the brightness, the light that may yet be, and he in some sense, holds together both darkness and lightness together as a condition for human development, human flourishing, if it’s all dark. What is the point of going on?

Ken Taylor
Yeah, that sounds cool. That sounds cool. But you know, and that’s, it’s connected to another thing that I that I wonder about, like, think about Rousseau, who talked about the social will this all encompassing social will that summed up the vector sum or something like that, of all? And then Lincoln who talks about government of by and for the people? Do he has this idea of like, the public interest, the public sphere, that public, but who is the public? I mean, isn’t the public just a collection of competing interests and desires, and you and then if I lose through majoritarian rule, and I’m in the minority, I’m excluded from that public, right? So isn’t this just kind of wishful thinking?

Sarah Stitzlein
You know, there was in 1927, what do we publish the public and his problems, he made something of a mistake when he called it the public. Because the moment you read through the work, one of the things that you come to understand the do we actually has in mind, multiple publics, and publics just simply mean, sort of groups of individuals that are trying to have problems that affect their life chances cared for? And have it cared for in ways that cannot be satisfied by their own hands? And so they have to create, you know, public agents or agents that that, in some sense, become representatives. So, the moment you have that in view, of course, there will be a conflict. But do we subscribe to the idea that through intelligent judgment, dialogue, the possibility for working through those conflicts actually exist?

Ken Taylor
Well, that all sounds good. I mean, I’m all for dialogue, and I’m all for trying to work through our, our competing interests, and, you know, mutual respect, all that sounds right. But I, I get the sense, like, there’s a kind of approach to democratic theory that says, you know, we all start out as atomistic individuals, we enter the state, because in the state of nature, or the original position, or whatever, we’ve got this massive problem, that we’re not constrained by each other. And then we kind of get government as a kind of compromise thing to help us solve this problem. But we started out as atomistic individuals and now if we have common ways of seeing the world we can get along but if we can’t, you know, if we have uncommon ways of seeing the world we have divergent fundamental point of view, democracy may not help you know, I mean, big deal because you you, you and John get together with your liberal poo baldness. And vote me out and I’m the conservative or I’m the black guy and you guys are the you know, mean, really? I mean, big deal? I mean, what does what does Dewey have to say about all this radical pluralism that we face in this moment?

Sarah Stitzlein
I mean, I think in one sense, sort of Dewey is going to look skeptically upon the notion of radical pluralism in the context of the United States. On the other hand, Dewey is going to say that part of what sort of critical reflection allows for us to do is to actually gain some distance from the beliefs, the commitments and the interests that we hold such that we are open to the possibility of those interest commitments being transformed in light of interests and commitments of other individuals that share the community with us, right? The notion of the atomistic individual doesn’t make much sense, right? Because we actually need to have an account of how individuals come to have interests in the first place. And the moment in which you’re trying to explain that, that’s immediately going to send you to community is going to send you to social life, is going to send you to interactions with other individuals, right. And now we need to explain how it is that people got in the business of forming those interests. And what will come up is critical inquiry, reflection, dialogue, and so forth.

John Perry
Do we have much to say about the details of the American government? I mean, we seem to have invented a system where not only does a minority not rule, but neither does the majority, nobody rules, because the majority has to be a supermajority to get anything through the Senate. So did he give us a critique of our own system?

Sarah Stitzlein
So do he thought that we were often confused about democracy, he often drew a distinction between political democracy which includes, you know, universal suffrage, majority rule that, you know, the right to vote process of accountability. But he also had an idea of democracy as an ethical idea which ideal, which is what we’ve mostly been describing, right? I think of Dewey, we’re looking at our political system. Now, especially, I think he would say, actually, it’s not clear at all, we even live in a political democracy. And the reason for that is that the entry fee for running for both national local office is too high, he would point to the role of special interests and corporate money, he would point to economic inequality that frustrate the ability of people to flourish, right? He was already making these critiques in the 1930s.

Ken Taylor
Well, that sounds good. I mean, he sounds like a prescient kind of guy. But I still want to get back to the theory just a little bit. Right. I still want to get back to the theory just a little bit, because I’m still wondering about the I like this kind of communitarian, if you could call it that approach. I like the idea that we don’t start out as atomistic individuals, what we have are being somehow in in through this collective undertaking, that all sounds cool. But I still don’t quite understand what to do about the dispossessed minority, who’s always on the losing side in a democracy. One of the things that is opposed to make democracy have maximum buy in is that the minority can have a hope of a future in which he’s not always the minority and all that. But, you know, that’s a hope. So what else do we have to say about the the minority in a democracy, the people on the losing side and about why they should buy in?

Sarah Stitzlein
So this is actually what’s interesting about his conception of the public. The public actually matters because it is a vehicle by which the citizenry can articulate their grievances, so that they can be systematically cared for, in the absence of a political society. That takes seriously the public society will remain stale, and it will be unresponsive. And do we have this moment in the public in his pop in the public in his problems, where he says that very logic actually gives way to revolution that is responsible for wiping away old and resistant publics to create the condition for a new society that is actually responsive to the ongoing grievances of the citizenry. So what does that mean for the minority? If in fact, you’re in a permanent position of a minority, you don’t live in a democracy, then it’s time now to wipe the slate clean?

John Perry
So this question of the role of minorities, particularly dispossessed minorities, in democracy isn’t just America’s problem. I heard an interview with the President of Burma whose name I unfortunately don’t remember. She’s a Nobel Prize winner, but still the problem with the Muslim minority. There is a tremendous problem and then In India, where the caste system in The Untouchables, they’ve dealt with that forever. They have a thriving world’s largest democracy, but they’re still having problems. We have a caller with a very interesting perspective on that. That’s Dayamudra fom San Francisco. Welcome to Philosophy Talk, Dayamudra.

Dayamudra
Hi, thanks. I’m really enjoying this. A lot of people don’t know about Dr. Ambedkar. He’s one of the most famous Indians you’ve never heard of wrote the Indian constitution.

Ken Taylor
We actually did a show on him, Dayamudra, We actually did a show about him.

Dayamudra
Oh, okay, I’ll have to go back and listen. But he studied with John Dewey. And he always credits John Dewey as being his most important teacher, and graduated from Columbia 1927 and brought John Dewey vision for education as a tool in social change to India, including introducing a women’s Bill of Rights way before the United States had anything like that. So there’s a real, the people that I work with now in India, are really influenced by Dr. Ambedkar and John Dewey’s influence in terms of social change in education.

Ken Taylor
So Dayamudra, thanks for the call. The show that we did on this was was called Radical democracy. And we talked a lot about, um, because theory, and it’s and, and its alternative form of democracy. So but Melvin, you have any response to Dayamudra’s insight?

John Perry
insight, insight?

Sarah Stitzlein
No, I think she’s absolutely you know, nothing substantive in the sense that she’s absolutely right about this relationship between Dewey and because, and because, in fact, his first, the first political party, the independent Labour Party, that was founded in 1936, which took the its name from British politics was largely informed by Dewey’s outlook of democracy and his and because wife often tell stories about the ways in which he would actually mimic or imitate Dewey’s mannerisms in the classroom. Of course, this points to the sort of international reach of Dewey’s political philosophy.

John Perry
So Dewey, as I remember, spent a lot of time in China, I think, maybe he even say Bertrand Russell’s life, and they were both in China. Did he have a big influence on China?

Sarah Stitzlein
You’d know, there are, you know, Dewey gave a series of lectures in the sort of early 20th century, in, in China. And it is still the case that Dewey is a sort of sage voice for Chinese intellectuals. I’m not exactly sure about how deep it has, how deep it runs in terms of contemporary Chinese politics.

Ken Taylor
So I want to I want to connect this up to our caller and something else. It sounds to me that Dewey is there’s this movement in contemporary democratic theory called deliberative, deliberative democracy movement. It sounds to me in a way that like Dewey is the first deliberative Democrat. And by that I mean, something like this, I always wonder about the deliberative democracy movement, which which says, the key to democracy is deliberation, shared deliberation, a conversation among citizens about what they’re to do and be together. But the but one thing you can think of democracy is about one man, one person, one vote, and it’s about voting and schemes of voting and majoritarian ism, and all that sort of stuff. But it seems to me that the doing thinks there’s a lot more to democracy a whole lot more than then voting schemes. It’s not essentially I mean, it’s partly about voting schemes, but not really essentially not in its core. Is that right?

Sarah Stitzlein
Yeah. I mean, I think that’s absolutely right. And the reason why that’s the case is that do we understood the sort of institutional aspects of what we associate with political democracy, to be the sort of product of historical circumstances in responding to arbitrary power? It could come to be the case that down the road, we come to discover that there’s some new configuration of political life that we ought to use institutionally to best channel, the ideal of democracy, right. And so Dewey was very convinced that the hallmark of what it is to be a democratic citizen is to be constantly vigilant, right about those who sort of exercise power on your behalf. And that requires a more active role far beyond narrow institutional politics than we’re inclined to otherwise think.

Ken Taylor
Yeah, so there’s a lot to talk about here, Melvin and we’re gonna get to a break but there’s much more to dig into. You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. We’re thinking about the political thought of John Dewey with Melvin Rogers from UCLA. In our next segment, we’ll ask the question does Dewey’s vision still make sense in the age of the internet? Twitter, Facebook and the ideal of democracy—when Philosophy Talk continues.

Woody Guthrie
This land was made for you and me.

John Perry
This democracy was made for you and me. Well, anyway, it was made for me. I’m from Nebraska, grown up on stolen Indian land. And I’m white. I don’t know about you, but it was made for me. But this this democracy still make sense in our globalized, interconnected age was it even made for me anymore, I can barely get my computer to turn on. I’m John Perry. And this is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Ken Taylor
…except your intelligence. I’m Ken Taylor. Our guest is Melvin Rogers from UCLA. We’re thinking about John Dewey, and the ideal of democracy, and we’ve got a caller Benita on the line. Welcome to Philosophy Talk, Benita.

Benita
Hello, thank you for taking my call.

Ken Taylor
So what’s your comment or question?

Benita
Well, um, it’s kind of serendipitous that I happen to have you read your program out today, because I just spent the evening with John Dewey’s granddaughter, who happens to be a longtime friend of mine.

Ken Taylor
Oh really? His actual honest-to-goodness granddaughter?

Speaker 9
Yes. John Dewey, his granddaughter, Joanna Dewey. Her name is She’s a retired theologian. She’s a New Testament scholar who pioneered feminist thinking she’s very interested in justice. And she recently retired as a Dean from one of our seminaries Episcopal seminaries. And we met because I’m an activist, I spent 20 years in the Episcopal Church fighting for gay marriage. So I very much believe in engagement with the structures of power. But also, I’m curious to know, I actually read pragmatism as part of a course I took at Vassar, I had no idea John Dewey had such a broad impact and influence on the question of a democracy. And I’m wondering what you think he might believe about the demonstrations happening right now, on the streets, as well as the protests, and just the call thing of a conscientious objection? What do you think about his perspective on activism? And I’m curious what he wrote about that.

Ken Taylor
Okay Benita, thanks for the call. That’s a great serendipitous call. Melvin, what do you what do you what do you think there?

Melvin Rogers
So I think do we would think two things. First, he would, he would say that the, let’s take black lives matter. The the activism of Black Lives Matter. He would think that it actually represents an attempt by a group of folks to articulate not only the problems of police brutality, visibly black and brown folks, but the ways in which that concern, the police brutality of black and brown folks ought to be of national concern. This is how Publix actually, this is how Publix actually work. I think secondly, he would actually see black lives matter as indications of the vibrancy, actually, of democracy. And that may sound ironic, because obviously, are they not protesting the inability of democracy to be realized? Yes, but the fact that they exist, the fact that they are hitting the streets, and the fact that the organization has achieved multiracial currency is indicative of the power of ordinary everyday people to capture the imagination of their fellows.

Ken Taylor
So the point about I mean, I think that’s really profound what you said, and I’m really glad that bonitas question prompted that, because I think this helps us see something. What do we meant by conversation? If I understand this, all right, it’s not just like polite conversation. It’s not necessarily even with shared standards of let’s shared conversational norms. Right, because a voice can come from the outside and, and, and, and kind of bring about a kind of rupture in the ongoing conversation and democracy should it should be open to that it’s a it’s a sphere. It’s not it’s a sphere of contestation, where the means of contestation can change and the can be grabbed by this person and altered by that person. I mean, it’s not the right understanding.

Melvin Rogers
Yeah, I mean, for Dewey contestation rivalry competition. In polite conversation sits at the heart of what democracy is about.

Ken Taylor
Right. But back to John’s analogy to the rugby versus ballet analogy, when you stress the collaboration Understanding mutual interest and all that sort of stuff. I think that’s where John thinks, Oh, it sounds like ballet because that’s a deeply cooperative thing. But the rugby thing is rough and tumble where we’re trying to beat the other guy beat the other guy out. So is it more like ballet? Or is it more like rugby?

Sarah Stitzlein
I don’t think that we’re trying to so much beat the other guy out as much as we are trying to sort of beat our fellows into a new way of existence. And that may sound awkward. But for Dewey, democracy created the conditions for us to experience a new kind of sort of intellectual and political death, if you will. That is to say, the old self has to die away in order for the new self to be realized. Right. And in that respect, democracy is very difficult. It requires courage. It requires humility. And it requires a willingness to endure discomfort.

John Perry
So can’t I think we should return to this issue of the internet, though? You’ve got a caller there that’s relevant.

Ken Taylor
Oh, yeah. There’s a person who asked about, oh, well, we asked this person on Twitter, who asked, and it’s the Twitter that impresses me also, the question, the question from Twitter is vocational educate. That’s from add to gable asked, vocational education is important as economic inequality grows in the US, but wouldn’t do a be against this. So that’s one thing about the kind of education but I’m also impressed that it’s coming from Twitter, but first answer his question. And then I want to talk about the Twitter thing.

Melvin Rogers
What what do we be against vocational education? Yeah. No, at the core of democracy in education is is a whole set of reflections on the importance of vocational training. The issue for us today, given the nature of capitalism, is that vocations. Actually, there needs to be jobs, for one to go to once they are trained in vocations.

John Perry
I think Dewey would be against kind of premature channeling of kids into vocational education. But but they’re I think the idea would be great.

Ken Taylor
There’s no intrinsic opposition between education for useful work and education for citizenship. I don’t think education for citizenship, citizenship, just his education for user useful work. Right. But there’s no inherent conflict between those two.

John Perry
Yeah, yeah. But the question is, how old you have to be to demonstrate that you’re not going to make a living doing philosophy, right?

Ken Taylor
So but the Twitter part is, so so we got we got this input from Twitter, there’s so many ways that citizens have of communicating with one another, not just through the top down hierarchy of the press, and all that sort of stuff, which you know, can be used to manipulate, but also through through Twitter and Facebook, and the Internet noise, more noise is generated. So unbalance, right? Are these new means of communication? Because democracy is about citizens communicating with communicating with one another? Is this is the new means of communication good for democracy or bad for democracy?

Sarah Stitzlein
Now, that’s a very difficult question. I know we aren’t radio, what kind of want short answers? That’s a very difficult question. The reason why it is a very difficult question is because with old technologies, the the goodness or badness of them, partly depends on the pre existing habits and dispositions of those that are actually deploying the technology. So if it is the case, that you belong to a movement, let’s say, once again, Black Lives Matter, I’m inclined to say that the use of the Twitterverse, the use of social media, the use of information technology has been so crucial to expanding that organization. If, however, you use the Twitterverse, you use the interest the internet as a way to create an echo chamber, right, such that it creates silos and political society, thus increasing partisanship, I’m inclined to say the Dewey would want to say that this is a bad thing. But all of this depends on the background, habits, sensibilities and attitudes that’s bringing you to the technology in the first instance,

Ken Taylor
Melvin, you said something that just moves my heart deeply as implied in what you said I want because I you know, we live in Silicon Valley, I teach at Stanford University, I direct this symbolic systems program, which is a kind of technology oriented major. And we train we train leaders, technological leaders, but I keep saying to people, technology is not a means to an end in itself. And and then it doesn’t determine our future, but human institutions, human habits, human structures, which which may be enhanced by technology or worsened by technology. Those are antecedent to technology and determine the good or bad of technology and and do we believe something like that? Was he explicit about that?

Sarah Stitzlein
I think Dewey is very explicit about this as reflections on science. Right? Many thought that that that Dewey was just simply taken with science. And he had no critical perspective on it. But do we actually thought science technological interventions always involved a sort of double edge of quality to them? And the reason why is because if we did not investigate the background habits and sensibilities, that were shaping the context in which the science or technology was located, we may actually be, we may actually confuse what the appropriate use of that science or that technology is about or how it ought to be, how it ought to be used. So Dewey was always interested in trying to describe what are the requisite habits of being a democratic citizen deploy in science or technology in such a way that create the conditions for broad based flourishing?

John Perry
So I mean, my get my guess is a Dewey would be very enthusiastic about blogging, the idea of opening the conversation, everyone and then allowing, in a very easy way people to respond, although I don’t think he would like trolling. And I think he’d be pretty, as you suggested pretty ambivalent about Twitter, it’s fine for some things. But it can can be abused. 140 words isn’t quite enough. It wouldn’t have been enough for Dewey to complete a paragraph, frankly.

Sarah Stitzlein
Well, no, it wouldn’t have been enough for Dewey. And, and and with all of these things, I think we have to sort of look carefully at the context, blogging, that is widespread blog, blogging, that is tied to anonymity is going to be an issue for Dewey.

Ken Taylor
So I want to just really quickly, I mean, it seems to me that the things you said about Dewey on technology, and all that also apply to the institutions of society and government, like voting, like in itself is not a solution. It says, I have a voting scheme, because voting schemes have to fit into a social structure and people with their habits of mind and all that, so that it’s the people and how they relate to one another. That’s most fundamental. That seem right?

Melvin Rogers
No, I think that’s absolutely right. I mean, this is the, for Dewey, this is sort of the real problem that were confronting. It is it’s not whether or not one is able to vote or not. It is a question of what in fact, is one voting for and the language of what one is voting for will be bound up to background habits and sensibilities that one is trying to sort of maintain and sustain Donald Trump is a perfect example of this. Donald Trump appeals to the worst dispositions of the American Deimos. And now he is in running for president trying to channel that into his ascendancy to the presidency. If that were to happen, given what Donald Trump has laid out, this would actually sort of spell doom and do his mind to how he thinks about democracy. Why? Because what Donald Trump values above all else, is not openness, but a sense of closeness. It is not a tolerance, it is intolerance. It is not reciprocity

Ken Taylor
Well, we could go on about that one. But unfortunately, we’ve got it. I’ve got to call this to a close and I want to really want to thank you. This has been a scintillating conversation. So thanks so much for joining us. Our guest has been Melvin Rogers. He’s a professor of political science and of African American Studies at UCLA. He’s author of “The Undiscovered Dewey: Religion, Morality, and the Ethos of Democracy. And this conversation continues at philosophers corner, at our online community of thinkers, where our motto is Cogito Ergo Bloggo—I think, therefore, I blog. And you too could become a partner in that very vibrant and growing community just by visiting our website, philosophytalk.org

John Perry
Now we’re gonna fill the public space with the fast paced conversational thoughts of Ian Shoales the Sixty-Second Philosopher.

Ian Shoales
Ian Shoales… Jane Addams started Hull House in Chicago in 1889 with her partner Ellen Gates Star. Inspired by the so-called Settlement Houses in England, Hull House began as a kind of halfway house for recent immigrants, where bright young middle class women would help them adapt to America. John Dewey was a friend of hers. Now it happened that Chicago’s George Pullman ran the Uber of his time. Uber disrupted taxis, Pullman disrupted trains. He offered luxury cars, with chandeliers, black walnut interiors, steak, oysters. If you had to go cross country, you could spend the week in style. They were very popular in that ostentatious age. Pullman was worth 24 billion in today’s dollars. He built a town in Illinois for his workers, also called Pullman. Workers couldn’t own their houses, but the rent was relatively low. The sticking points? He was kind of against drinking so there was only one bar in town, at the one hotel. He did have a library full of books selected by the company, and a theater, with plays selected by the company. The houses were nice, but all the same. And you had to live there if you wanted to advance in the company. So he was kind of a hero to workers, with grumbling, and kind of a hero to bosses, with grumbling. Well, there was a crash. Pullman cut wages, but didn’t lower rents. This led to trouble, including a union started by Eugene Debs, BEFORE he became a socialist. There was a walkout and a lockout. The Civic Federation of Chicago formed a committee, to try to calm things down. Jane Addams was on that committee. To no avail. The managers of the railroad yards staged a train stoppage and blamed it on the union. Tricky! A thousand federal troops were called in. And that was that for that strike. Despite her own even-handedness in the strike, Jane Addams came to be seen as prejudiced. This hurt contributions to Hull House, now seen as pro-worker. Beyond that the Pullman Strike had a huge life-changing effect on her. She and John Dewey exchanged letters about it. Was class antagonism inevitable? Dewey believed that to be true. Ms. Addams wrote: “The antagonism of institutions was always unreal; it was simply due to the injection of personal attitude & reaction; & then instead of adding to the recognition of meaning, it delayed and distorted it.” Antagonism even poisoned positive outcomes, she believed. She wrote, “we freed the slaves by war & and had now to free them all over again individually, & pay the costs of the war & reckon with the added bitterness of the Southerner beside.” She did not think that antagonisms were caused by, in Dewey’s words, “objective differences, which would always grow into unity if left alone, but [by] a person’s mixing in his own personal reactions.” She thought a person was antagonistic because he took pleasure in opposing others, because he desired not to be a “moral coward,” or because he felt hurt or insulted. These are all avoidable and unnecessary reactions, totally outside of the right and wrong of a conflict. If there is antagonism it cannot end well. Dewey later wrote to his wife: “I can see that I have always been interpreting dialectic wrong end up, the unity as the reconciliation of opposites, instead of the opposites as the unity in its growth.… I never had anything take hold of me so…” Jane Addams changed her approach to Hull House. Rather than imposing on what we would now call clients what she thought they needed, she listened to them, and gave them what they wanted. She would bring them to her presentations, so she would not be viewed as an outside expert. Mistakes improved her practices. With Hull House, Jane Addams introduced the NGO, the social worker, the social justice warrior, and the first community center. In recent years she has been recognized more and more as a philosopher in her own right. She certainly influenced John Dewey. Hull House itself, alas, went bankrupt in 2012. Its laid off workers were underpaid with their final check, and were left with no medical or health benefits, and no pension. And so it goes. I gotta go.

John Perry
Philosophy Talk is a presentation of Ben Manilla Productions and the trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University copyright 2016.

Ken Taylor
Our executive producer is David Demarest.

John Perry
The program is produced by Devin Strolovitch. Laura Maguire is our director of research. Dave McAllister is our Director of Marketing.

Ken Taylor
Thanks also to Merle Kessler, Mark Stone, Erica Topete, and Colin Peden.

John Perry
Support for Philosophy Talk comes from various groups at Stanford University and the partners at our online community of thinkers.

Ken Taylor
And also from the members of KALW San Francisco, where our program originates.

John Perry
The views expressed (or mis-expressed) on this program do not necessarily represent the opinions of Stanford University or of our other funders.

Ken Taylor
Not even when they’re true and reasonable! The conversation continues on our website, philosophytalk.org, where you too can become a partner in our community of thinkers.

John Perry
I’m John Perry.

Ken Taylor
And I’m Ken Taylor. Thank you for listening.

John Perry
And thank you for thinking.

George Carlin
Maybe it’s not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here, like the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There’s a nice campaign slogan for somebody.