Thinking under the Pressure of Practice: A Critical Interpretation of Dewey's Preparatory Notes for the Lectures in China

Abstract

The goal of the article is to provide a detailed analysis of the preparatory notes for the second lectures of the Social and Political Philosophy series. The typescript is usually read in strong continuity with the other texts in which Dewey articulates his pragmatist version of social philosophy. In this article, I question this assumption: I maintain that in this text Dewey follows a different and original line of reasoning, revolving around the conceptual couple pure/applied science. Through the analysis of his uses of that conceptual couple, I reconstruct Dewey’s argument, and show that this position is highly problematic. In particular, I argue that Dewey’s pragmatist social philosophy lays itself open to the charge of elitism since it seems to be committed to the idea that since social philosophy applies knowledge developed by other disciplines, and since application is the ultimate source of knowledge, then social philosophy provides a more real and more concrete knowledge. The hypothesis that lies at the basis of the interpretation put forward in the article, however, is not that Dewey’s position is barely contradictory, but rather that the typescript is a battlefield of contrasting theoretical intuitions, which Dewey does not succeed in harmonizing in a single, consistent whole.