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John Dewey and American Democracy
Over a career spanning American history from the 1880s to the 1950s, John Dewey sought not only to forge a persuasive argument for his conviction that "democracy is freedom" but also to realize his democratic ideals through political activism. Widely considered modern America's most important philosopher, Dewey made his views known both through his writings and through such controversial episodes as his leadership of educational reform at the turn of the century; his support of American intervention in World War I and his leading role in the Outlawry of War movement after the war; and his participation in both radical and anti-communist politics in the 1930s and 40s. Robert B. Westbrook reconstructs the evolution of Dewey's thought and practice in this masterful intellectual biography, combining readings of his major works with an engaging account of key chapters in his activism. Westbrook pays particular attention to the impact upon Dewey of conversations and debates with contemporaries from William James and Reinhold Niebuhr to Jane Addams and Leon Trotsky. Countering prevailing interpretations of Dewey's contribution to the ideology of American liberalism, he discovers a more unorthodox Dewey―a deviant within the liberal community who was steadily radicalized by his profound faith in participatory democracy. Anyone concerned with the nature of democracy and the future of liberalism in America―including educators, moral and social philosophers, social scientists, political theorists, and intellectual and cultural historians―will find John Dewey and American Democracy indispensable reading.
592 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1991
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July 17, 2022
John Dewey, American public intellectual, was born in 1859. He died in 1952. This outstanding book is a trip through the period that repeatedly made this reader pause and consider topics that might be, that should be, on the mind of any American today. Dewey's life began in a time of romanticism and idealism in both Europe and America just as the American Civil War was about to began. It ended when both "isms" were history with nothing to replace them and nuclear war threatening, as it is today.
Romanticism placed emotion above reason. Science, though revealing facts, was a cold companion in a blind universe that it could not transcend. One could not be fully human without relating to the world with feeling. Nature could speak to us, wordlessly, through our emotional response to it.
Idealists believed that there was a spiritual background to reality; that mankind was progressing, improving as it moved toward a destiny indicated by ideals of beauty and the good. If this was not directed by a god, then surely there was a force that acted through human behavior even if not known directly by individuals. There could be no other basis for morality.
Dewey as a young man subscribed to these thoughts. As he aged he became uncomfortable with them, increasingly persuaded that science alone could inform us of reality. The challenge that faced each person, as an individual and in community was to decide what to do about problems as they arose. The good was what would benefit the community through cooperation while at the same time aiding each member in realizing his/her full potential. The was known as Pragmatism.
Democracy was for Dewey the only political arrangement that could be Pragmatic. The trouble he saw was capitalism that, by design, elevated the few to power over the many and degraded the great majority to the status of tools to be used by those few. Socialism would be more in accord with Pragmatism, but Dewey knew well enough from what happened in the USSR that state socialism was not the answer. He also recognized that in the Unites States, just the mention of the word socialism meant defeat in national politics.
He recognized that there could never be the personal growth necessary for true human fulfilment for all if there wasn't equal opportunity. It was foolish to believe in a democracy of one man - one vote when some were born to deprivation and others to entitlement and wealth. He saw no difference between intellectuals claiming sole responsibility for their thinking ability and the wealthy claiming to have earned every cent of their wealth.
He was an advocate of income redistribution, but never believed that in itself would make a difference. He thought that only the individual fully involved with the community could bring the kind of society needed. Everyone would want to see the success of the whole and in achieving that success, each individual would be advanced in realizing all he/she could be. He was a severe critic of public education for the way it unapologetically trained youth to accept the status quo and to fit into the economic scene in willing service to established wealth
Dewey headed a program in pedagogy at the University of Chicago, putting into practice his plan for the best education possible, one that would not (as critics wrongfully claimed) allow children to do as they pleased, but would have teachers guide the inclinations of children to be all that they could be within the limits of the possible. This could not be more in contrast to the typical public education that expected children to take in what was given and then reproduce it on demand. Yet, as with income redistribution, Dewey did not think education in itself would bring improvement, primarily because it was subject to so much input from so many people across the country.
Robert Westbrook excels in making the intellectual ideas that prevailed during Dewey's lifetime understandable to the reader. He gives both Dewey and his critics full play, in particular the debate between Dewey and Walter Lippman over democracy, an absorbing topic for this reader.
Democracy as seen by the two men had three possibilities.
1) All citizens would have the vote and all would be encouraged to vote. Those who did not vote would be failing the system of rule of, by and for the people. This was Dewey's preference with the proviso that "the public" would be individuals fulling engaged in community and supported by that community. His analogy was that only the man who wears the shoes can say where they pinch. Power had to come from the bottom up where problems were encountered in everyday life.
2) Though all had the vote, the great majority were not qualified to vote based on the fact that most were ignorant of the matters involved. Only an elite, those who knew the issues should be in the driver's seat. There was no need to worry about non-voters. The only purpose for the people to vote was to throw out bad guys and retain good ones. This was Lippman's view. As I read this, I thought of Jefferson's idea of the voting yeoman farmer who was intimately familiar with the problems of the agricultural America of his day, property ownership being a qualification for voting. In other words, this scheme is nothing new and is in practice what we know today, with the experts on legislation being lobbyists who know every detail but have a vested interest far different from that of the public.
3) All would have the vote and there would be an advisory body of technical experts who would only offer alternatives to the legislature without having any power to pass legislation. Dewey feared that this restriction on power could too easily be sidestepped, in the end putting the elite in control.
It seems obvious that choice #3 is the best plan, interesting to note that from 1974 to 1995 there was an Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) as part of the government, composed of experts and tasked with advising Congress. It was terminated in 1995 when Republicans took power (the "Contract With America and Newt Gingrich) under the claim that it cost too much and was not in line with Republican goals.
Democracy was Dewey's obsession and reading this book is exhilarating if only for exposing the reader to his wide open, stimulating ideas regarding a system of government that could be so much more than it has evolved to be: a democracy of lobbies, projecting an image of the public behind which is the reality of the few operating the process for their own profit, exactly the case of experts putting themselves into power that Dewey feared.
Dewey's thoughts remained only thoughts. He was clear in his descriptions of the goal, but he could never come up with a practical (pragmatic!) way to get from here to there. He treasured science as a source of information and dismissed any grand idea of divine direction for human affairs. he treasured human beings as wonderfully capable and productive if allowed to develop fully. He deplored the use of people as tools with work that had nothing of them in it but their robotic actions, to the detriment of their minds; a person as a replaceable part.
On finishing the book, I considered Dewey to have come up with a perfect description of a mountain peak; the good society good for each member. At the same time he precisely defined the barriers to ascent. We need to solve the problem of how to make the climb, being pragmatic in doing so.
Romanticism placed emotion above reason. Science, though revealing facts, was a cold companion in a blind universe that it could not transcend. One could not be fully human without relating to the world with feeling. Nature could speak to us, wordlessly, through our emotional response to it.
Idealists believed that there was a spiritual background to reality; that mankind was progressing, improving as it moved toward a destiny indicated by ideals of beauty and the good. If this was not directed by a god, then surely there was a force that acted through human behavior even if not known directly by individuals. There could be no other basis for morality.
Dewey as a young man subscribed to these thoughts. As he aged he became uncomfortable with them, increasingly persuaded that science alone could inform us of reality. The challenge that faced each person, as an individual and in community was to decide what to do about problems as they arose. The good was what would benefit the community through cooperation while at the same time aiding each member in realizing his/her full potential. The was known as Pragmatism.
Democracy was for Dewey the only political arrangement that could be Pragmatic. The trouble he saw was capitalism that, by design, elevated the few to power over the many and degraded the great majority to the status of tools to be used by those few. Socialism would be more in accord with Pragmatism, but Dewey knew well enough from what happened in the USSR that state socialism was not the answer. He also recognized that in the Unites States, just the mention of the word socialism meant defeat in national politics.
He recognized that there could never be the personal growth necessary for true human fulfilment for all if there wasn't equal opportunity. It was foolish to believe in a democracy of one man - one vote when some were born to deprivation and others to entitlement and wealth. He saw no difference between intellectuals claiming sole responsibility for their thinking ability and the wealthy claiming to have earned every cent of their wealth.
He was an advocate of income redistribution, but never believed that in itself would make a difference. He thought that only the individual fully involved with the community could bring the kind of society needed. Everyone would want to see the success of the whole and in achieving that success, each individual would be advanced in realizing all he/she could be. He was a severe critic of public education for the way it unapologetically trained youth to accept the status quo and to fit into the economic scene in willing service to established wealth
Dewey headed a program in pedagogy at the University of Chicago, putting into practice his plan for the best education possible, one that would not (as critics wrongfully claimed) allow children to do as they pleased, but would have teachers guide the inclinations of children to be all that they could be within the limits of the possible. This could not be more in contrast to the typical public education that expected children to take in what was given and then reproduce it on demand. Yet, as with income redistribution, Dewey did not think education in itself would bring improvement, primarily because it was subject to so much input from so many people across the country.
Robert Westbrook excels in making the intellectual ideas that prevailed during Dewey's lifetime understandable to the reader. He gives both Dewey and his critics full play, in particular the debate between Dewey and Walter Lippman over democracy, an absorbing topic for this reader.
Democracy as seen by the two men had three possibilities.
1) All citizens would have the vote and all would be encouraged to vote. Those who did not vote would be failing the system of rule of, by and for the people. This was Dewey's preference with the proviso that "the public" would be individuals fulling engaged in community and supported by that community. His analogy was that only the man who wears the shoes can say where they pinch. Power had to come from the bottom up where problems were encountered in everyday life.
2) Though all had the vote, the great majority were not qualified to vote based on the fact that most were ignorant of the matters involved. Only an elite, those who knew the issues should be in the driver's seat. There was no need to worry about non-voters. The only purpose for the people to vote was to throw out bad guys and retain good ones. This was Lippman's view. As I read this, I thought of Jefferson's idea of the voting yeoman farmer who was intimately familiar with the problems of the agricultural America of his day, property ownership being a qualification for voting. In other words, this scheme is nothing new and is in practice what we know today, with the experts on legislation being lobbyists who know every detail but have a vested interest far different from that of the public.
3) All would have the vote and there would be an advisory body of technical experts who would only offer alternatives to the legislature without having any power to pass legislation. Dewey feared that this restriction on power could too easily be sidestepped, in the end putting the elite in control.
It seems obvious that choice #3 is the best plan, interesting to note that from 1974 to 1995 there was an Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) as part of the government, composed of experts and tasked with advising Congress. It was terminated in 1995 when Republicans took power (the "Contract With America and Newt Gingrich) under the claim that it cost too much and was not in line with Republican goals.
Democracy was Dewey's obsession and reading this book is exhilarating if only for exposing the reader to his wide open, stimulating ideas regarding a system of government that could be so much more than it has evolved to be: a democracy of lobbies, projecting an image of the public behind which is the reality of the few operating the process for their own profit, exactly the case of experts putting themselves into power that Dewey feared.
Dewey's thoughts remained only thoughts. He was clear in his descriptions of the goal, but he could never come up with a practical (pragmatic!) way to get from here to there. He treasured science as a source of information and dismissed any grand idea of divine direction for human affairs. he treasured human beings as wonderfully capable and productive if allowed to develop fully. He deplored the use of people as tools with work that had nothing of them in it but their robotic actions, to the detriment of their minds; a person as a replaceable part.
On finishing the book, I considered Dewey to have come up with a perfect description of a mountain peak; the good society good for each member. At the same time he precisely defined the barriers to ascent. We need to solve the problem of how to make the climb, being pragmatic in doing so.
October 15, 2017
Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes remarked that Dewey wrote as, "God would have spoken had he been inarticulate but keenly desirous to tell you how it was."
John Dewey's writing is notoriously difficult to understand as he sometimes lacked the precision and clarity of language to present his ideas clearly, however, thanks to Westbrook's in-depth chronology of both the development of Dewey's ideas and his debate with "democratic elitists", Dewey is now much more comprehensible to me, and I find myself genuinely admiring this work and Dewey for his unshakable faith in participatory democracy.
A minority outside of the mainstream American liberalism, Dewey never lost his belief in the maximum participation of the people in a democracy (as opposed to democratic realists who thought the average citizen should stay out of politics and only involve themselves in voting during elections). Dewey has largely lost the battle in Western intellectual history for influence of ideas, even in the early 20th century, social theorists had already dismissed participatory democracy as hopelessly utopian, and the recent US election would seem to concur with that pessimistic sentiment, however, there is something so wonderful in Dewey's belief, a faith in human dignity that I am not ready to abandon in its entirety.
John Dewey's writing is notoriously difficult to understand as he sometimes lacked the precision and clarity of language to present his ideas clearly, however, thanks to Westbrook's in-depth chronology of both the development of Dewey's ideas and his debate with "democratic elitists", Dewey is now much more comprehensible to me, and I find myself genuinely admiring this work and Dewey for his unshakable faith in participatory democracy.
A minority outside of the mainstream American liberalism, Dewey never lost his belief in the maximum participation of the people in a democracy (as opposed to democratic realists who thought the average citizen should stay out of politics and only involve themselves in voting during elections). Dewey has largely lost the battle in Western intellectual history for influence of ideas, even in the early 20th century, social theorists had already dismissed participatory democracy as hopelessly utopian, and the recent US election would seem to concur with that pessimistic sentiment, however, there is something so wonderful in Dewey's belief, a faith in human dignity that I am not ready to abandon in its entirety.
August 31, 2015
Westbrook writes against the dominant interpretation of Dewey as one of the founders of modern liberalism by placing him in the minority, on the radical wing of democratic theorists, someone whose influence is perhaps less, and certainly less mainstream than is normally thought.
Westbrook illustrates that Dewey supported Democracy as a means and not as an ends (though in following Deweyian thought, all first ends are actually means...) Democracy (not representative democracy, but full, participatory democracy) was the system which best provided for the full self-development of every individual, the inheritor of the best of Republicanism/ Civic Humanism and Liberalism.
Westbrook illustrates that Dewey supported Democracy as a means and not as an ends (though in following Deweyian thought, all first ends are actually means...) Democracy (not representative democracy, but full, participatory democracy) was the system which best provided for the full self-development of every individual, the inheritor of the best of Republicanism/ Civic Humanism and Liberalism.
September 25, 2018
A tremendous overview of a most tremendous thinker. I can think of none the world needs more
August 22, 2021
Great book, awesome scholarship.
I’m withholding a possible fifth star until after I reread this book and can reconsider its many merits & occasional shortcomings.
This book begins with an excellent Preface (4350 words) and Prologue (4100 words). The main text is divided into four sections that each have three or four chapters ranging in length from eleven- to eighteen-thousand words. The book ends with a lackluster Epilogue (7400 words), perhaps because Westbrook ran out of gas in the course of producing this book’s seventeen chapters (210,000 words). This book has 717 footnotes (39,000 words)—almost a book within a book, where Westbrook makes all sorts of interesting comments about . . . everything.
It took me 18 months to read this book and I envision someday rereading it.
Westbrook's prolific. Over the years I’ve collected about four dozen of his book reviews to help me get a sense of how he makes sense of the world. I found more often at odds with the opinions he expressed in book reviews than I did in this book.
I sometimes found myself peeved by Westbrook's judgments in this book but I don't have a good enough handle on what exactly rubbed me the wrong way. I have to reread this book.
I take Westbrook to be something of a disciple of Christopher Lasch, who was something of an arch-enemy to Richard Rorty. Both Lasch & Rorty are superheroes to me, but they had different ways of making sense of the world. I greatly admire both of them, but I might lean more towards Rorty than Lasch. I'd guess Westbrook leans more towards Lasch than Rorty.
I should add that Westbrook wrote a wonderfully sweet, funny, beautiful essay (“A Tale of Two Dicks,” May 2010) in honor of both Richard Bernstein (who reportedly shed a tear upon first hearing it read aloud at his festschrift) and Richard Rorty — available here:
https://urresearch.rochester.edu/inst...
I read and loved Sidney Hook’s memoir Out of Step, a great friend of the Rorty family & mentor to Dick, which Westbrook reviewed (“Stream of Contentiousness”, The Nation, May 30, 1987) in mostly favorable terms, though I'd nitpick his criticism of Hook.
Westbrook pummels Rorty in the Epilogue of this Dewey bio, landing several solid blows. I haven’t yet decided if he scored a technical knockout, if his charges warrant conviction but I'm inclined towards acquitting Rorty.
Rorty wrote a short 1700-word review of John Dewey and American Democracy (The New Leader, May 20, 1991, pp. 13-15), defending himself and throwing counterpunches at his Christopher Lasch-like critics, accusing them of smugly congratulating themselves, taking refuge in
I’m withholding a possible fifth star until after I reread this book and can reconsider its many merits & occasional shortcomings.
This book begins with an excellent Preface (4350 words) and Prologue (4100 words). The main text is divided into four sections that each have three or four chapters ranging in length from eleven- to eighteen-thousand words. The book ends with a lackluster Epilogue (7400 words), perhaps because Westbrook ran out of gas in the course of producing this book’s seventeen chapters (210,000 words). This book has 717 footnotes (39,000 words)—almost a book within a book, where Westbrook makes all sorts of interesting comments about . . . everything.
It took me 18 months to read this book and I envision someday rereading it.
Westbrook's prolific. Over the years I’ve collected about four dozen of his book reviews to help me get a sense of how he makes sense of the world. I found more often at odds with the opinions he expressed in book reviews than I did in this book.
I sometimes found myself peeved by Westbrook's judgments in this book but I don't have a good enough handle on what exactly rubbed me the wrong way. I have to reread this book.
I take Westbrook to be something of a disciple of Christopher Lasch, who was something of an arch-enemy to Richard Rorty. Both Lasch & Rorty are superheroes to me, but they had different ways of making sense of the world. I greatly admire both of them, but I might lean more towards Rorty than Lasch. I'd guess Westbrook leans more towards Lasch than Rorty.
I should add that Westbrook wrote a wonderfully sweet, funny, beautiful essay (“A Tale of Two Dicks,” May 2010) in honor of both Richard Bernstein (who reportedly shed a tear upon first hearing it read aloud at his festschrift) and Richard Rorty — available here:
https://urresearch.rochester.edu/inst...
I read and loved Sidney Hook’s memoir Out of Step, a great friend of the Rorty family & mentor to Dick, which Westbrook reviewed (“Stream of Contentiousness”, The Nation, May 30, 1987) in mostly favorable terms, though I'd nitpick his criticism of Hook.
Westbrook pummels Rorty in the Epilogue of this Dewey bio, landing several solid blows. I haven’t yet decided if he scored a technical knockout, if his charges warrant conviction but I'm inclined towards acquitting Rorty.
Rorty wrote a short 1700-word review of John Dewey and American Democracy (The New Leader, May 20, 1991, pp. 13-15), defending himself and throwing counterpunches at his Christopher Lasch-like critics, accusing them of smugly congratulating themselves, taking refuge in
the sort of denunciation that makes the denouncer feel deliciously brave and pure, washed clean of complicity with power, and that renders him or her ineffectual as a citizen.So Rorty is still standing.
March 25, 2012
Excellent intellectual history of "America's #1 philosopher!" Westbrook gives a somewhat apologetic, but critical leftist POV. Provides extensive, incredibly detailed, well researched connections primarily focused on John Dewey's Social Philosophy, somewhat to the exclusion of his influence in Education.
May 24, 2025
Phenomenal and deep contextualization of Dewey's philosophy. I highly recommend it, whether you are new to Dewey or already well-acquainted with his ideas.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews