Questions April 6

 Let's all ask questions again, this time with a thought of putting them to the author directly when he visits on the13th. 

• Do you habitually socialize with anyone whose politics you do not know? Have you ever? (If No and Yes, what changed?)
• Talisse, as I've mentioned, is not a sports fan. But don't spectator sports come as close as anything in our culture to bridging political divisions and bringing people together for occasions in which politics is simply irrelevant? (Well, now that we no longer have a POTUS tweeting about Colin Kaepernick etc.)
• Are you conscious of any specific consumer "brand" preferences you hold simply because they conform to your sense of political identity (Starbucks or Dunkin, Target or Wal-mart, etc.)?
• Are there any non-democratic political systems that avoid division, polarization, etc., at a cost worth the exchange? 
• Are you persuaded that Dewey and Addams were wrong to say that “the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy"? *
• Is it possible to both (1) agree with Talisse that our democracy would benefit from less polarization and more recognition of social contexts in which politics is irrelevant, and (2) think such a benefit negligible in light of the influence of "dark money," misinformation, and general dishonesty--the sorts of things documented by Nancy MacLean and Kurt Andersen--in our politics?
• This may be impertinent but I can't resist: Has "robust" been overused in public discourse (not to mention OD) lately? 
• Add yours, please (and feel free to answer your own and others' questions)

  

 

 

COMMENT?:

• "Democratic politics is tearing us apart." 3
• "...we need to occasionally do something other than politics." 4
• "...we must reserve spaces within our social environments for... projects in whi...ch politics is simply beside the point." 5
• "More and better politics cannot be the solution... politics is the problem." 7
• "According to [philosophical anarchists], democracy is nothing but the illusion of political rule among equals." 13
• "...democratic societies tend to be adept at protecting the civil liberties and basic rights of their citizens" 14
• "the cure for some of democracy's ills is to do less, not more, democracy" 21 *
• "Our conceptions of a good neighbor, dependable coworker, and responsible parent are now likely to be infused with our political allegiances..." 23
• "...in collectively retreating from politics, we thereby acquiesce in the political status quo" 26
• "everything is political" [is not equivalent to] "everything is politics" 30
• "the point of democracy is to foster valuable human relationships and lives that are devoted... to meaningful projects that lie beyond the struggles of politics" 36
• "...workplaces and classrooms generally are not spaces where open political discussion and deliberation among equal citizens can commence" 47
• "Those who oppose the kneeling [of athletes] should also oppose the playing of the national anthem" 48
• "...Rousseau, who saw democracy as 'a form of association...by means of which each one, while uniting with all, nevertheless obeys only himself and remains as free as before" 51
• "it is obvious that 'one person, one vote' is not sufficient for treating individuals as equals" 55
• "Where social standing is unequal due to the preservation of ...bigotry, discrimination, and unjust bias...the participatory conception [of democracy] offers little remedy" 58
• "expressions of bigoted attitudes, no matter how popular, do not serve as reasons, and so cannot provide grounds for a democratic outcome" 61
• "reinforcing their prejudices, marginalizing their critics, and assembling silos of like-minded fellow citizens" 66
• "the liberating capacity of modern technology might be largely illusory" 79
• "certain professions--banking, technology, education, law, and medicine--now skew decidedly along partisan lines" 82-3
• "conservatives and liberals...drink different beer, drive different cars, follow different sports teams..." 90
• 
  

* Dewey almost certainly did not say "the solution to the ills of Democracy is more Democracy."

It is an old quote, attributed to many people, usually old progressive politicians. One person that did say something very close to this is # Jane Addams, who was closely associated with Dewey.

Dewey might have agreed with this statement, but only with a heaping pile of qualifications.

Mostly this is because Dewey’s conception of democracy was far richer and more expansive than the simple one dimensional conception of democracy as a form of government.

For Dewey, democracy is a way of life that exists primarily in the meanings and values and beliefs of individuals in their interactions with each other. It is part of the character and behavior of individuals that they can choose to affirm, not some external fact about how a government somewhere is organized:

we can escape from this external way of thinking only as we realize in thought and act that democracy is a personal way of individual life; that it signifies the possession and continual use of certain attitudes, forming personal character and determining desire and purpose in all the relations of life. [LW14:226]

In this conception of democracy, Dewey saw the promise of the full development of individual and society.

From the standpoint of the individual, it consists in having a responsible share according to capacity in forming and directing the activities of the groups to which one belongs and in participating according to need in the values which the groups sustain. From the standpoint of the groups, it demands liberation of the potentialities of members of a group in harmony with the interests and good which are in common. [LW 2:327-328].

Democracy for Dewey then represented the possibility of individuals participating in shaping their own futures collectively in how they treated others and formed new and shared aims to determine their fate together. It is also the ultimate belief in the power of action informed by faith in the possibilities of human life, achievement and intelligent judgement..

In this light, the original quote seems fairly simplistic, kind of a political one liner, and certainly not in line with Dewey’s conception of democracy. For Dewey, democracy was an ideal, but one that is worth striving for, as there are no real alternatives. So the “ills” of political democracy might indeed by ameliorated by a search for more fundamentally democratic forms of living (maybe!). Quora

==

* What Dewey actually did say, in The Public and Its Problems (1927)... 

The old saying that the cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy is not apt if it means that the evils may be remedied by introducing more machinery of the same kind as that which already exists, or by refining and perfecting that machinery. But the phrase may also indicate the need of returning to the idea itself, of clarifying and deepening our apprehension of it, and of employing our sense of its meaning to criticize and remake its political manifestations. 119

And, 

We have every reason to think that whatever changes may take place in existing democratic machinery, they will be of a sort to...enable the public to form and manifest its purposes still more authoritatively. In this sense the cure for the ailments of democracy is more democracy. The prime difficulty, as we have seen, is that of discovering the means by which a scattered, mobile and manifold public may so recognize itself as to define and express its interests. This discovery is necessarily precedent to any fundamental change in the machinery... 121

 



# Jane Addams

Nearly a century before the advent of "multiculturalism," Jane Addams put forward her conception of the moral significance of diversity. Each member of a democracy, Addams believed, is under a moral obligation to seek out diverse experiences, making a daily effort to confront others' perspectives. Morality must be seen as a social rather than an individual endeavor, and democracy as a way of life rather than merely a basis for laws. Failing this, both democracy and ethics remain sterile, empty concepts.

In Democracy and Social Ethics, Addams's earliest book on ethics--presented here with a substantial introduction by Charlene Haddock Seigfried--she reflects on the factors that hinder the ability of all members of society to determine their own well-being. Observing relationships between charitable workers and their clients, between factory owners and their employers, and between household employers and their servants, she identifies sources of friction and shows how conceiving of democracy as a social obligation can lead to new, mutually beneficial lines of conduct. She also considers the proper education of workers, struggles between parents and their adult daughters over conflicting family and social claims, and the merging of politics with the daily lives of constituents.

"The sphere of morals is the sphere of action," Addams proclaims. It is not enough to believe passively in the innate dignity of all human beings. Rather, one must work daily to root out racial, gender, class, and other prejudices from personal relationships.

Jane Addams (1860-1935) was a social activist, Progressive reformer, and author of many books of social criticism. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931. Charlene Haddock Seigfried, a professor of philosophy at Purdue University, is the author of Pragmatism and Feminism: Reweaving the Social Fabric.