Élucider le trouble de la situation. L’enquête et son écologie selon John Dewey

Abstract

ContextThe new climate regime, or the Anthropocene age, raises the question of the intelligibility and the experimentation, on an individual and collective scale, of the uncertainty that has become intrinsic to the lived environment. ObjectivesThe author borrows from the theory of inquiry developed in the work of John Dewey a description of the troubled situation in which Being is placed, for lack of a connection with what surrounds it. This article considers the aesthetic experience as a paragon of all experience, in order to describe the existential matrix of the investigation. MethodThe article proposes a reading of the major texts that John Dewey dedicates to the inquiry. The epistemology developed by pragmatic philosophy favors inquiry over result, and assertability (“what works”) over truth; lacunar states and disagreements are not removed from inquiry; beliefs are not discredited under the accusation of subjectivism; and the notion of “community” presides over the quest for certainty and guarantee. In this framing, scientific activity is considered to produce knowledge, but it also fundamentally produces uncertainty and questioning, and knowledge is not so much a result as the process of an approach. ResultsWith uncertainty about the environment gaining a general and absolute status, it is by the means of intensification of the experience of a co-existence of beings that a pragmatic investigation can advance within a pessimistic surrounding, against a generalized capture and alienation of life. ConclusionWhile summarizing the theory of inquiry developed in John Dewey's work, this article emphasizes the particular role of aesthetic experience in elucidating the disturbances of the ecological situation.