Experience as Experiment: Some Consequences of Pragmatism for Democratic Theory

Abstract

Contemporary pragmatists are divided between those who focus on the critique of epistemology and those who focus on the defense of democracy. I argue that classical pragmatism provides a moral framework which links these projects while largely avoiding their respective pitfalls. In particular, I argue that the pragmatic conception of human intelligence as a tool for managing experience through experimental inquiry provides a set of egalitarian and progressive political principles, grounded in a reconstruction of scientific inquiry and oriented toward the fuller realization of human capacities. I make use of this conception in evaluating a political exchange between John Dewey and Walter Lippmann in the 1920's. In doing so, I hope to demonstrate the contemporary importance of Deweyan political thought, in spite of the inadequacy of Dewey's own program of political reform. Thus while the essay is intended primarily as a contribution to the tradition of pragmatic moral thought as principled advocacy for liberal democratic ideals, it also suggests some characteristic normative and empirical blind spots of a pragmatic theory of democracy.