On Prophecy and Critical Intelligence

Abstract

At heart of John Dewey's philosophy lays romantic impulse?a vision in which moral plays crucial role in our efforts to become who we hope to be as we engage perilous world.1 My view of romanticism is much like that of Richard Rorty's: that romanticism itself is the thesis of priority of over reason?the claim that reason can only follow paths that has broken.2 Of course, Dewey acknowledged importance of imagination. In Democracy and Education, for example, he wrote that imagination is as much normal and integral part of human activity as is muscular movement.3 We see its role in his 1932 Ethics as inferential dimension of inquiry, where he holds off Kant's worry about self-indulgent implications of run amuck. Dewey is no Rousseau. But, for purposes of this essay, I want to think about Dewey's view of bit differently?not in its tradi tional setting, but as locus for certain view of the prophetic: that is, as dimension of critical intelligence that is not so much about ancient debate between poets and philosophers or a decree of fate but as conduct directed toward an as-yet realized present.4 What occasioned these reflections was an odd encounter in Dewey's corpus. I was rereading Individualism, Old and New, and was struck by relevance