Robert Westbrook's John Dewey and American Democracy² is an important book and is receiving much deserved attention both inside and outside the academic community. Richard Rorty calls it "scholarship at its finest--a very unusual combination of vast learning, dialectical acuity and literary skill".³ Louis Menand hails it as "an exceptionally intelligent, rigorous, and thorough book."⁴ John Novak writes that "what makes Westbrook's book so worthwhile is that it is written in a Deweyan spirit and possesses the qualities of a Deweyan aesthetic experience."⁵ While John Dewey and American Democracy covers much of the same biographical material as George Dykhuizen's earlier The Life and Mind of John Dewey,⁶ it provides an important and genuine contribution of its own in its critical analysis of the many intellectual debates that Dewey was involved in during his long life. And while some of the material on Dewey's political theory is anticipated in Alfonso J. Damico's Individuality and Community: The Social and Political Thought of John Dewey,⁷ Westbrook's treatment is more comprehensive although Damico's is theoretically more penetrating. Nevertheless, Westbrook's book provides a clear, and comprehensive account of Dewey's encounter with the likes of Randolf Bourne, Walter Lippmann, Reinhold Niebuhr, as well as useful analysis of his relationship to British idealism, Marxism, and positivism. While a significant portion of the book parallel's Dykhuizen's account of Dewey, it provides a more critical analysis of Dewey's role as an agent of political change. Thus the book deserves high marks for synthesizing a large amount of complex primary and secondary material and for describing the political and intellectual climate in which Dewey's political ideas developed. Westbrook does a good job in advancing our understanding of Dewey as both a political philosopher and a political agent. The book does not, however, advance the project that motivated Dewey's political ideas--to develop a conception of democracy that is appropriate to the modern era. Nor does it do much in the way of probing Dewey's own theory in order to increase our understanding of the nature of democratic society.

Westbrook's central argument is that Dewey maintained an uncompromising, although growing, commitment to participatory democracy throughout his life and, with varying degrees of success, fought the more centralizing tendencies in American political thought and practice. Westbrook also contends that in his support of decentralized decision making structures and participatory decision making, Dewey serves as a precursor of much that later flowered in the new left and that his legacy is most recently to be found in the Port Huron Statement issued at the dawn of the counter culture revolution in 1962 by the Students for a Democratic Society.

For Westbrook the occasional flaws found in Dewey's behavior are not the product of his philosophy but of the man. For example, Westbrook is sympathetic to the pacifist, Randolf Bourne--Dewey's former student and one time ally--in his dispute with Dewey after Dewey's decision to support the war effort in 1917. Westbrook describes how Dewey pressured the editors of The Dial, to fire Bourne as the condition for allowing the magazine to use his name (p. 235).⁸

Westbrook also argues that Bourne was actually more correct about the implications of Dewey's own theory, and at that time more Deweyan than Dewey himself. Nevertheless, the experience contributed to Dewey's growth according to Westbrook. As Dewey's political thought matured, Westbrook argues, he came to accept the more radical implications of his own political philosophy, thereby implicitly accepting the interpretation that he had rejected when it was offered and acted upon by Bourne. Westbrook's sympathy is clearly with Bourne in this encounter, but he uses it to suggest--unconvincingly--that it led to a clarifying and a flowering of Dewey's philosophical system. He asks us to believe that somehow contributing to Bourne's dismissal helped Dewey become Dewey. As Westbrook puts it: "thus Dewey, in effect, admitted the logic of Bourne's pragmatic critique of his 'sentimentalism.' He had yet to recognize the power of Bourne's deeper insights into the inexorability of 'war technique.' But that too would come" (p. 240).

Yet Westbrook is quite wrong about the ideological reconciliation, and this error anticipates other subtle political and philosophical concerns that Westbrook neglects. Bourne argued against the idea that the United States was "ordained as a nation to lead all erring brothers towards the light of liberty and democracy. (p. 205)" Dewey after the war did argue, as Westbrook appropriately notes, that President Wilson "should have made American entry into the war contingent on the adoption of democratic war aims by its allies, and the nation's economic power should have been used to achieve those aims" (p. 240). However, Dewey continued to believe--as Bourne did not-- that America was indeed ordained to lead the world towards liberty and democracy. The only problem for Dewey was that Wilson had botched the job. Bourne rejected the ordination. Distinctions like these are crucial both in assessing Dewey's work and in deepening our understanding of the nature of democratic society, and Westbrook frequently fails to acknowledge them.

Westbrook documents a number of changes in the development of Dewey's political and social philosophy over his long professional life and warns, correctly, that it is a mistake to view Dewey's work as all of one piece without taking into account the various changes that occurred in the corpus as a whole. Westbrook describes four major periods in Dewey's life: "A Social Gospel (1882-1904)" describes Dewey's early life, his attraction to Hegelian philosophy and his academic career through his years at the University of Chicago; "Progressive Democracy (1904-1918)" describes Dewey's early years at Columbia University, his deepening commitment and development of pragmatic philosophy and his involvement in events surrounding the first world war; "Toward the Great Community (1918-1929)" provides a synopsis of Dewey's involvement in a number of political causes devoted to promoting peace and describes Dewey's writings on democracy and his differences with many theorists who advocated various forms of democratic elitism; "Democrat Emeritus (1929-1952)" explores Dewey's reactions to both facsism and communism, his involvement in national politics through participation in third party politics, and his writings on democratic community. The first two periods, which involve the break with Hegelian idealism and the affiliation with pragmatism, are described in terms of a true philosophical conversion with the other periods represented as a deepening and extension of Dewey's commitment to democratic participation. Dewey's break with Hegelianism, however, was not as clean or as unproblematic as Westbrook suggests and the remaining ambivalence--implicit as it was-- contributed to tensions and contradictions within Dewey's idea of democracy that Westbrook glosses over.

Much like Dykhuizen Westbrook devotes a considerable amount of space to Dewey's attraction to Hegelian idealism as a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University under the tutorship of George Sylvester Morris. In this phase of his life Dewey held, with Hegel and T.H. Green, that reality was an organic unity that preserved individuality and allowed it to flourish. He argued, along with the British Hegelians like Green, for the ethical ideal of self-realization. Here Dewey's ideas paralleled the Hegelian, F. H. Bradley's distinction between the apparent, everyday self and the real, or ideal self⁹ which was achieved when, as Dewey put it: "'an individual has found that place in society for which he is best fitted and is exercising the function proper to that place'" (pp. 42-43). Given this distinction, freedom, as Westbrook correctly describes it was but a matter of exercising one's functions (p. 43) and '"every action which is not in the line of performance of functions must necessarily result in self-enslavement'" (p. 43). Hence we can be enslaved even by our own emotions and desires when they fail to reflect the function and place of our true selves. Moreover such enslavement exists even when such immediate emotions and desires are satisfied by an object. Indeed enslavement is more complete when the desires of this apparent, everyday self are met because, as Hegel showed in The Phenomenology of Mind, it inhibits self reflection.¹⁰ For the Hegelians, and for the early Dewey, there was a larger, grander scheme which gave each individual self its significance and its meaning. This did not mean, as Westbrook rightly points out, that one must be passive with regards to one's environment, but it did communicate a sense of place and purpose from which changes should be made.

When Dewey finally left his idealist roots it was Hegelian metaphysics that he left behind. He continued to embrace the view that our individuality--in Hegelian terms, our real self-- is achieved through association and by embracing our connectedness to each other. The philosophical project then was to find a way to maintain his commitment to both individual self-realization and community without loading it with a lot of Hegelian metaphysical baggage. Westbrook does not realize just what a difficult assignment this was. As any reader of Nietzsche knows, individual self-realization is not automatically achieved through embracing communally determined norms.

The twist that a more empirically savvy Dewey added to the Hegelian doctrine, as Westbrook describes it, was to argue that psychology, more than logic, was the means for revealing the spiritual, organic nature of reality as such. By exploring the facts of individual existence, we can reach reason, but "'if we start from Reason alone we shall never reach fact'" (p. 27). In other words, Dewey began the conversion process with the hope that empirical psychology would reveal the essential connectedness of individuality and community without appealing to Hegel and his idea of a continuing unfolding self.

Westbrook is certainly correct in reiterating Dewey's break with Hegel, but he is silent about many of the philosophical problems that this break openned up. For example, Unlike Hegel, Dewey's vision of a life that is fulfilled in association with other lives is a crucial element in his conception and justification of democracy. As Dewey put is, "Democracy is a claim that every human being as an individual may be the best for some particular purpose and hence may be most fitted to rule, to lead, in that specific respect."¹¹ This formulation is interesting because it maintains both the essential associations emphasized by Hegel while it nods to the democratic idea that everyone has a role in ruling. However as a statement of the core of democratic values it is surely incomplete. To grant that everyone is best suited to lead in some specific respect can be taken as a trivial reminder of the division of labor. The problem for democracy is not the general acknowledgement that every human being may be fit to lead in some area. One may be quite willing to let the bus driver determine the best route to downtown, or to allow the mechanic to suggest when to change the oil. The problem of leadership is to determine which particular purpose is most relevant. And the problem of democratic leadership is to find a way of doing this which is consistent with democratic procedures and ideals. Since Hegel did not have Dewey's commitment to democracy, this was not an issue that concerned him. Ultimately each individual's purpose was both realized and subsumed through the state.

Of course this was not a satisfactory solution for Dewey, but his solution--to ground association in empirical psychology-- is vague and problematic. While psychology can probably support a thin theory of community--one that suggest the need to recognize those upon whom we are visibly dependent for nurture and development, it is difficult to see how psychology alone can support the thicker conception that Dewey had in mind--a conception where your participation in determining ends as well as means is a condition for my development. This conception requires that recognition be extended to those who have but a marginal involvement in my development or maturation.

Nevertheless, when Dewey eventually turned away from Hegelian idealism, he maintained many of its ethical and some of its political commitments--especially its concern for individual self-realization, and its belief that individuality entailed association and social relations. What Dewey added was the belief that social science could demonstrate the essential connection between the individual--as fully developed--and the community--as thickly defined. And what he also wanted to add was a strong democratic component that emphasized the importance of participation in the communal process. The question is whether he had developed the philosophical apparatus to accomplish this task.

Westbrook fails to address the philosophical problem of just how well Dewey accomplished this task of using social science to establish the link between the individual and the community. Rather he is content to show that Dewey was an advocate of participatory democracy, a position that Westbrook approves of. However, this belief is more complicated than it may seem and as even Rorty rhetorically asks in his largely favorable review "How many recent 'liberal intellectuals' can you think of who have been against participatory democracy?"¹² For the most part Dewey was vague about what a commitment to participatory democracy entailed in a complex modern society like the United States and how this commitment might be implemented. Clearly he wanted a situation where experts were informed by the "masses" and were in touch with their concerns, but he had little to say about the question of accountability and power, and Westbrook does little to probe these silences.

The failure to probe Dewey's silences on questions of accountability and power leads Westbrook to gloss over too easily the similarities between Dewey and the New Left of the 1960's and 1970's, and to thereby see Dewey as anticipating the major political aims of this movement. This connection is important for Westbrook's case for to a large extent his book is a reaction to much of the criticism of Dewey that developed from radical quarters during the Vietnam war. Yet Westbrook's full and comprehensive treatment of Dewey often reveals material that is at odds with the case that he wishes to make. Consider his treatment of Dewey's contribution to the debate over cultural pluralism.

Westbrook notes Dewey's discomfort with some vigorous and independent forms of cultural expression and describes Dewey's concern to orchestrate the increasing plurality of voices that were becoming an important part of the American social fabric during the early part of the century (p. 14). In matters of cultural expression, participation is best circumscribed by a larger, common purpose. As Westbrook, himself puts it,

He wanted no atonal music in the repertoire of his cultural orchestra. . . . Dewey insisted that there were core ideals in American nationalism which stood apart from the particular values of the country's composite cultures, had priority over them, and ought to shape the lives of all the groups in the society. These ideals were those of democracy: 'friendly and helpful intercourse between all and the equipment of every individual to serve the community by his own best powers in his own best way (p. 214).

Yet this discussion is overlooked and unconnected to Westbrook's discussion of the similarity between Dewey and the New Left. At least for a significant part of the New Left, cultural politics and the development of vigorous, independent and unorchestrated cultural voices has a strong appeal.

True, Dewey does share--up to a point-- a certain political vision with the "New Left" , one that frequently applauds decentralized institutions and participatory decision making. Yet this is a rather sparse picture of the program and activities of the New Left and fails to emphasize important differences with Dewey. Some of these differences show that Dewey could on some issues be more progressive than the student movement of the late sixties and early seventies. Others suggest that sometimes he could be less so. For example, in acknowledging the strong intellectual influence of Dewey's first wife Alice, Westbrook, does a nice job of exploring Dewey's concerns about feminist issues. Yet when he compares Dewey with the New Left, he fails to give Dewey the credit he deserves for being more sensitive, than much of the early student movement on this issue.¹³ On the other hand, Westbrook also fails to acknowledge that Dewey did not anticipate the New Left's commitment to cultural revolution and that Dewey explicitly and virtually a priori rejected the kind of strong, structural critique of American institutions that much of the New Left was to endorse. Dewey preferred a more piece-mean, engineering approach to change and is, as Hilary and Ruth Ann Putnam point out, "deeply suspicious of large scale hypotheses, for they seem to him . . .to be employed not to direct the selection of data but to prejudge them."¹⁴ To the New Left (as well as for the Putnams) these concerns were exaggerated.¹⁵ For much of the New Left a structural critique was exactly what was needed precisely because the engineering approach had become the instrument of a repressive state and the weapons of an unjust war.

While Westbrook is correct about Dewey's commitment to participatory democracy, he does not address the complicated issues that this commitment involves. Consider for example Dewey's idea that democracy requires 'friendly and helpful intercourse between all and the equipment of every individual to serve the community by his own best powers in his own best way'. This conception of democracy is of course tied closely to Dewey's concept of education as growth and to the idea expressed in Democracy and Education that democracy requires ever widening spheres of association.¹⁶ Yet democracy also requires less than this--the right not to associate with others as well as the right to be unfriendly and unhelpful. Dewey was exceptionally persuasive in terms of advancing the positive conceptions of freedom as a foundation for democratic forms of association. In doing so, however, he neglects to consider the important role that negative conceptions of freedom must play in democratic association. The result is that his theory of democracy corrects an important gap in earlier formulations of democratic theory, but in a partial and incomplete way.

While Dewey did have a commitment to participatory democracy, this commitment did not always easily square with another commitment that he had-- the application of scientific intelligence to public affairs. There are times when participation may lead to less rather than more intelligent decision making. Westbrook properly defends Dewey against charges that he saw science as simply a way to advance the cause of the expert against more popular forms of sovereignty. While this view was explicitly advanced by a number of progressive thinkers, such as Walter Lippmann, Westbrook is right that Dewey was not obviously one of them. As Westbrook notes, more or less correctly, "For him, science in its most important sense was not a body of knowledge accumulated by the special science but the common method by which this knowledge had been produced. . . . The scientific attitude of mind . . . was apparent whenever beliefs were not simply taken for granted but established as the conclusion of critical inquiry and testing."¹⁷ I say "more or less" for two reasons. First, as we have seen in his belief that psychology could rescue community, Dewey held that science was quite capable of addressing the most complex and substantial human questions. And second, because Dewey believed that this method of thinking trumped all others. Westbrook is aware of the priority Dewey gave to science:

If Dewey's conception of science was latitudinarian it was none the less imperial. 'Scientific method,' he declared, 'is not just a method which it has been found profitable to pursue in this or that abstruse subject for purely empirical reasons. It represents the only method of thinking that has proved fruitful in any subject. . . . It is not just a peculiar development of thinking for highly specialized ends; it is thinking so far as it has become conscious of its proper ends and the equipment indispensable for success in their pursuit.'¹⁸

Although Westbrook is aware of the imperial quality Dewey assigns to science, he does not challenge it. When Dewey himself is confused, Westbrook rarely takes note of the confusion but continues to report on the conflicting elements of Dewey's thinking as if they comprised one seamless, unproblematic web. For example, a few pages after quoting Dewey that science represents the only method of thinking that has proved fruitful in any subject, Westbrook lets stand unchallenged another statement of Dewey's claiming that a descriptive science of ethics could "never tell us what to do ethically, nor just how to do it" (p. 146). By avoiding this tension--one that Dewey later attempted to resolve by affirming an objective, normative science of ethics--¹⁹ Westbrook fails to open up some of the more interesting and important issues in Dewey's philosophical system. Had he probed the issue more thoroughly he might have seen that Dewey's view of science presents a potential problems for his commitment to participatory forms of democracy. There are times when more participation may not mean more intelligent decisions. Dewey fails to confront the possibility that his commitment to community and participation may at times run counter to his commitment to refined scientific decision-making. He obviously believed that these two could be brought together and that communal decision-making could be more scientific, but he did not say whether scientific deliberation was a prerequisite to democratic decision making. Is participation to be encouraged because it contributes to the growth of an individual or a group? If so, then growth must serve as a constraint on participation. In other words, if there is good reason to believe that participation will not result in growth, then it would be appropriate to limit it. Another alternative is to encourage participation as a basic human right that is limited only in relation to the rights of other people.

Westbrook fails to ask another crucial question-- was Dewey philosophically warranted in his belief that the development of individuality entailed community in the thick sense that he had in mind? The question is very important both philosophically and practically. Hegel had tackled this question in his section on "Self Consciousness" and "Lordship and Bondage" in his Phenomenology of Mind.²⁰ Here recognition of individuality is achieved not through cooperation but first through struggle. (Later, of course, Hegel takes a turn that Dewey tries explicitly to reject, and ties individual identity to national recognition.²¹) Hence Hegel could answer the question by appealing to the need of our real self for affiliation with others. Once this need is recognized, then recognition of the other comes about through an acknowledgement of the political structures that actually confirm and sustain our own highest level of individuality. The real self provides the state with the authority needed to command our loyalty and participation. The argument is complicated, and relies too heavily on the state as the primary unit and agent of history. Nevertheless, the early Dewey reflected this general picture, but like most philosophers entering the twentieth century he would soon find it problematic. Yet if appeals to the judgement of the real self are not available, then on what grounds can the development of the thicker conception of community be justified? If I am perfectly happy with my narrow life, who are you to tell me that I should feel otherwise?

When Dewey left the idealist camp, he rejected the metaphysics, but dragged much of the ethics along with him and added a more robust , although conceptually problematic, commitment to democratic forms of social organization. This meant that he needed to allow for individual participation in the determination of social goals, but that he needed also to do so in ways that would accomplish his sense of community. Abandoning the idealist's metaphysics also meant abandoning the notion that spirit, nature, or god has allotted each of us a specific and, perhaps predetermined, place and function in the grand scheme of things. The universe opened up to diversity and choice, but again, as Westbrook noted, it was Dewey's hope that it become an orchestrated diversity.

The philosophical problem, largely overlooked by Westbrook, is whether, without the Hegelian metaphysics, it is possible to maintain the ethics. Or, to put it differently: the Hegelians could hold out the promise of finding our real self as the reward for social--although not necessarily democratic--participation. Hence, when Dewey (at least explicitly) abandoned the idea of a real self he also give up the Hegelian rationale for the kind of communal participation that he desired. Dewey's concern to find a new and more timely rational accounts in part for his turn to science. Yet science as Dewey conceived it had a very heavy burden to shoulder. It had to salvage not only communally formed individuality but democracy as well.

Dewey replaced idealistic metaphysics with a commitment to science and experimentation and Westbrook documents this development. The first steps towards this move had already been taken earlier when Dewey tried to substitute psychology for logic as the fundamental human discipline. He had been exposed to experimentalism as a graduate student at Johns Hopkins through the work of G. Stanley Hall and C. S. Peirce, but it was not until he took up a teaching position as head of the philosophy department at the University of Chicago that Dewey made the final break with his Hegelian past and began to seek a non-metaphysical grounding for his ethics. In practical terms, Dewey began to develop an ethical theory that linked right action to human desires instead of providing a vision of an ultimate reality to which human desires needed to be harnessed if the real self was to unfold.

Westbrook rightly identifies Dewey's early article on the reflex arc theory and his penetrating criticism there of the dualism between stimulus and response as the occasion of the breakthrough that allowed Dewey to ground all of human behavior in experience. The central point of the reflex arc essay involved the brilliant insight that the character of the stimulus was in part determined by the nature of the on-going experience of the agent and thereby experience united both the "objective" stimulus and the "subjective" response. Stimulus and response are not categories of existence but rather categories of function which have to do with regulating experience and directing it towards a desired end. They arise as concepts only when the flow of experience is blocked and then serve to reroute experience through attending to purpose. This argument not only enabled Dewey to ground human behavior in completely natural terms, but as Westbrook correctly notes it also enabled Dewey to explain "purposeful human behavior. . .naturalistically without having to offer a naturalistic argument for a purposeful universe" (p. 71).

Dewey, and I think Westbrook as well, wrongly believed that by explaining the origins of purposeful behavior, he had successfully preserved ethics while rejecting its idealistic metaphysics. The problem arises because Dewey conceptually blurs the distinction between purposeful and ethical behavior. This is not, of course, to say that Dewey thought that all purposes were ethically equal, but that he thought that the character of evolution supported behavior that was ethical and discouraged behavior that was not. The crucial article here (not examined by Westbrook) was published as "Evolution and Ethics" in The Monist²² in 1898, two years after the analysis of the reflex arc theory and argues along Darwinian lines that the struggle for survival actually supports what is ethical best.²³ Here Dewey argues that there is a continuity between nature and ethics. However, when his argument is complete it is not clear whether he has reduced ethics to nature or elevated nature to ethics. What is clear is that he has muddied the distinction between the two.

In this essay Dewey argued that the struggle for survival involved humans attempt to overcome and to mold the ungirded effects of nature. In this process, humans did not set themselves over and against nature but used one part of nature to bend another part to their will and desire. Human intelligence did not violate the natural order in establishing its will; it did not subdue nature; it intervened, but it did so as a part of nature that is conscious of its own process. Intelligence functioned to relate a narrow part of the environment to a wider context and to establish thereby a congruity between the two. Ethical beings struggled with their environment, but only with a part of that environment. They used the remainder as an instrument in the struggle. Thus, there was no absolute distinction between ethical and natural behavior. Human beings use certain elements in the natural world (including their own intelligence) in order to behave ethically.

Dewey's "Evolution and Ethics" parallels the critique of the reflex arc theory, providing a criticism of another kind of dualism--the separation between nature and culture, and between evolution and ethics. In this often overlooked essay Dewey establishes the naturalist foundation for his ethical system. Yet the essay also entails an ambiguity that is to plague even the Dewey's mature ethical system. Dewey believed that ethical behavior was consistent with evolutionary activity because in the long run the survival of the fittest meant the survival of the ethically best. This was not intended as a crude view of the struggle for survival extended to ethical matters, but rather, and more defensibly, as an endorsement of the qualities that we acknowledge as ethical. Dewey argued that the success in overcoming the difficulties we encounter with part of nature always entails the intelligent use of other parts of nature. He then proposed that success in doing this depends on our skills in cooperating with one another, and concluded that success in the struggle for survival would go to those who were most intelligent and cooperative--two qualities that Dewey prized as ethically significant. As Dewey put it: "we have reason to conclude that the 'fittest with respect to the whole of conditions' is the best; . . . The unfit is practically the antisocial."²⁴ Dewey illustrated his point by arguing that a society that cares for its old, sick and feeble develops in the process habits of foresight that aid in the struggle for existence and contribute to the development of the skills of warfare. He wrote that "such conduct would pay in the struggle for existence as well as be morally commendable."²⁵

The problem with this claim is not just that modern anthropologists have shown us cultures where survival may depend upon a (hopefully dignified) abandonment of the old--such as the Eskimos who are reputed to stay behind when they grow too old and weary to carry their weight. It is that Dewey's understanding here of what is to count as ethical behavior is derived independent of his ideas about evolution. This independent derivation suggests that there is a valid reason to maintain the distinction between evolution and ethics. In other words, in order to judge whether behavior that is sound from an evolutionary standpoint is also ethical, we need to have some independent idea about what to count as ethical.

It is one thing to claim that what is ethically best is also what is most appropriate for survival. This is an empirical claim which evidence can, in theory, show to be true or false. It is quite something else to decide just what is to count as ethical behavior. Dewey seems to be saying that something is ethical if it contributes to the survival of the group broadly conceived. Yet surely this is not an adequate explanation of what we are to count as ethical. True, it does make sense to say that if an act is undertaken knowingly that it will seriously hurt the chances for the survival of a group--asssuming the group is itself ethical--then the act is unethical. However, to assume that a group is ethical requires an independent standard of behavior, and therefore, we cannot just reverse the principle and say that because an act contributes to the survival of the group it is ethical. Ethics involves the intent as much as it does the consequences of an act. And, more important, it involves the reasons as well as the act. The person who cares for the sick out of a concern for their well being is acting ethically. The person who cares for the sick because it is the only job available is not usually singled out for ethical commendation. To do nothing wrong is not necessarily to act out of an ethical concern. The failure to understand this distinction lead Dewey throughout his career too easily to connect science and an evaluation of consequences with ethics as such.

By neglecting this point Westbrook is unable to fully comprehend the larger problem in Dewey's political thought. He is critical of Dewey for strategic mistakes, not for philosophical ones, and hence he fails to see the extent to which the strategic mistakes are in part, philosophical errors as well.

For example, Westbrook examines Dewey's reactions to the firing of Edward Bemis, a colleague at the University of Chicago. Bemis was fired by President Harper in 1895 for advocating the municipal ownership of utilities during the Pullman strike. In describing the likely effect of this event on Dewey Westbrook quite properly notes the prudential tone that Dewey took subsequent to this event. In an article on academic freedom written some years after the firing, Dewey cautioned his colleagues against impassioned appeals for unpopular causes suggesting appeals to science were safer and perhaps more effective. Yet Westbrook does not articulate the larger issue. By choosing to take his stand on prudential grounds, Dewey avoids the more important issue of academic freedom by taking his stand on grounds of effectiveness rather than on the principle of free expression.²⁶ Certainly it is sometimes--although not always--more effective to advocate as a dispassionate, objective observer rather than as a passionate partisan. However, what was at stake at the University of Chicago was not effectiveness but freedom of expression.²⁷ In neglecting to point out the difference Dewey was conflating ethical and instrumental values much in the same way that he did in his essay on evolution and ethics.

To criticize Dewey on this point is not to suggest that one must be imprudent, or forever self-sacrificing in order to be ethical. Neither Madonna nor Mother Teresa is exactly the model we are looking for. The point is that instrumentalism needs to be both constrained and guided by ethical norms. Ethics tells us to what ends our instruments may be put and the constrains that should limit the way in which we pursue them. Scientific study in the form of careful calculation of means and consequences can be essential to intelligent ethical action, but it does not define such action as ethical. The issue is more than simply a tactical one, as Westbrook believes, it goes to a basic problem in Dewey's philosophy.

Of course science is not irrelevant to ethics. If two people need a kidney transplant it normally would be foolish and perhaps unethical to choose the patient whose blood is a questionable match and who is likely to die as a result of the transplant over the one whose blood is a good match and whose life is likely to be saved. Waste is frequently unethical. And, in this case about blood types science will provide the answer. However, given two people with appropriate blood types, science will not tell us what criteria to use in deciding which person is to receive the kidney.

Westbrook insinuates that Dewey was in fact aware of such distinctions and he warns correctly that Dewey's conception of science and social engineering should not be taken in a narrow, technical and specialized sense. "Science. . . was not the body of knowledge accumulated by the special sciences but the common method by which this knowledge had been produced" (p. 141) and was "but a refinement of the ordinary procedures for fixing belief" (p. 141). Science thus stood opposed to those methods of fixing belief that were governed by "'past experience, received dogmas, the stirring of self-interest, the arousing of passion, sheer mental laziness, a social environment steeped in biased traditions or animated by false expectation'" (pp. 141-142).

Westbrook also correctly warns against an overly narrow interpretation of Dewey's advocacy of social control as an elitist concept where the "masses" are governed by a professional class. Instead, Westbrook proposes that Dewey's meaning was more democratic and more benign where social control only indicated, quoting Dewey, the "'capacity of a society to regulate itself according to desired principles and values'" (p. 188). And, as Westrbrook notes Dewey often expressed a strong faith in the power of common people. Thus Westbrook distinguishes Dewey from those progressives such as Walter Lippmann and Herbert Croly whom he depicts as advocating elitist social planning.

Occasionally Westbrook sees lapses in Dewey's commitment to democratic values such as in Dewey's confidential report, submitted to the U.S. Military Intelligence Bureau of the War Department, on the perceived anti patriotic forces at work in the Polish Community in Philadelphia.

In his report on the activity of the Polish Community in Philadelphia written during the first world war, Dewey expressed concern about the commitment of its leadership to the goals of the United States. He thus recommended that the government investigate the Polish Press Bureau in this county and, as Westbrook that "the American government take . . . a controlling role in Polish-American politics" (p. 219). Westbrook correctly observes that "Dewey, in the name of democratic self-determination, called for the state to intervene undemocratically in the undemocratic politics of the Polish-American community" (p. 220).

Westbrook's explains Dewey's involvement in this incident as an anomaly by noting that "at no other time did Dewey regard an existing American state as committed to the same vision of democracy as he was" (p. 220). This explanation may, with one likely exception, be correct, but it does not explain why Dewey failed to understand the undemocratic implications of his report. To ask this question is not to initiate a probe of into Dewey's character, or even into the strength of his commitment to participatory democracy. It is to explore the adequacy of the theory of democracy that Dewey was articulating. It is to ask a question about the character of a theory, not to pass judgment on the character of the person who helped develop the theory. Indeed, if Dewey were not thought of as a defender of civil liberties or was an unambiguous proponent of an elitist or paternalistic society, the episode would be quite uninteresting from a theoretical point of view. It is precisely because Dewey probably does not wish to advance such ideas and sees himself as the philosopher of democratic individualism that the episode is theoretically interesting. It opens up some important questions about the character of liberal democracy and enables us to explore the paradigm in terms of both its strengths and its weaknesses.

Perhaps if the Polish Community had been some kind of fifth column and if this nation was involved in a war of national survival, Dewey's activities might be well be justified. However, no one, not even Dewey, makes the case that a Polish community in Philadelphia threatened national security. The closest Dewey comes to this is to suggest that an exodus of Polish workers back to the home land might hurt American industry, but this is hardly an acceptable reason for calling on the Federal government to keep tabs on these people.

True, the Poles that Dewey reported on were conservative and they were not, according to Dewey, democratic; they were, he reported, strongly, perhaps blindly, influenced by the Polish clergy and some were anti- Semitic. Yet as unattractive as these traits may have been to him, they certainly do not justify Dewey's recommendations for government surveillance of their leaders, government investigation of their press and government guidance of their association (p. 219). That all of these recommendations were contained in his confidential report suggests that we need to look more closely Dewey's conception of democracy.

There is little in traditional democratic theory that would justify the special burden on a group of people simply because of their beliefs and traditions. Even the anti-semitism that Dewey pointed to--as repulsive as such attitudes are--is flimsy ground for government surveillance unless there is good reason to believe that it is likely to result in violent action. Dewey, however, never mentioned any concern about potential violence. Westbrook notes that Dewey later voiced some private concerns about this episode, but in fact were simply wistful regret that the project failed to have any influence (p. 223). Dewey did not express concern that the report itself was extremely problematic from a democratic point of view. Nor is the problem, as Westbrook believes, just an anomaly in which Dewey wandered from his own best conception.

The problem relates, as I have mentioned above, to Dewey's image of the relationship between science and democratic participation. But even more, to the conception of human and political association that he developed after he moved away from his Hegelian roots. It involves his attempt to hold on to something like the Hegelian conception of the relationship between individuality and community while trying to build a different ladder to reach it. And it involves Dewey's confusion between the pedagogical and governing roles of democracy.

The mistake expressed in the Polish study is entailed in an unstated belief that groups that do not conform to a notion of progressive democracy may somehow be treated differently in terms of rights than groups whose internal structure is more consistent with a progressive, democratic ideal. This belief is consistent with Dewey's earlier equation of evolution and ethics. While this belief is unstated in Dewey, it is clearly communicated in the ways in which he juxtaposes in many of his discussions "traditional" and "scientific" values. The former are often pictured as regressive and backward looking and the latter as progressive and forward looking. Good traditions are those that are scientific and willing to embrace the procedures of critical intelligence.

Dewey's "relativism" was anchored to the bedrock of American exceptionalism, an idea that saw this country as the bearer to the world of the fruits of democracy and of scientific intelligence. However, one does not need to be a more perfect relativist--which I am not--²⁸ to see the difficulties with Dewey's view of democracy and with his willingness in this instance to allow the state to interfere in the life of a cultural minority. The mistake rests on a conceptual error which involves the failure to distinguish between groups that are non-democratic and groups that are anti-democratic.²⁹ Non-democratic groups are those that are organized in hierarchical ways where orders flow from the top to the bottom and accountability flows from the bottom to the top, and where rituals and tradition reinforce beliefs about authority that are held uncritically. Some group that are ordered non-democratically may be quite agnostic about the value of democracy for other groups or for the society at large. Others may aggressively advocate non-democratic organization as superior to others. However, as long as such advocacy respects the rights of other groups to organize according to their own inclinations, non democratic groups have a place in a democratic society and their basic rights to non interference in matters of organization, assembly and communication must be respected. Anti democratic groups are quite different. They are not only organized along non democratic, authoritarian lines and advocate that the larger society should be similarly organized, they aim to destroy democratic structures using any effective means available. When such groups constitute a direct and significant threat to democratic society, then a government has an obligation to defend against the threat.³⁰

Secure democracies must be tolerant of different cultural forms--even those which are themselves not democratic. The distinction is crucial for protecting the very plurality that a democratic public requires, but Dewey failed, both in his study of the Polish community and in his political philosophy, to acknowledge its importance. He failed to understand that a government may act quite differently against groups that are both anti democratic, and at the same time threaten democratic institutions or populations in an immediate and serious way, than it can with groups that are simply not-democratic. And he certainly failed to make a case that the Polish community was anti-democratic and constituted a serious threat to larger democratic institutions.

Westbrook's analysis of this incident is correct. Dewey did see a strong coincidence between his own ideas about democracy and those of the Wilson administration and it was this belief that brought him to support the Administration's war effort and to view it as an ally in his efforts to advance democracy. Yet if the Poles were not a serious threat, just what was it about Dewey's conception of democracy and America that led Dewey to be so callous about the rights of the members of the Polish community? The answer to this question lies in Dewey's conviction that America could serve as the bearer of science and intelligence to the world and in his unstated assumption that the methods of science must work to tame factional differences. Ultimately a commitment to the method of intelligence should command the loyalty of disparate cultural and political groups. Scientific intelligence could lead all people to the right answer. This was the source of Dewey's ideas on progress and it was the flaw in his theory of democratic participation.

Dewey was a democrat, but he expected that democracy could be made neat and tidy. Dewey could hold that the government infiltrate the Polish American community was an act in the service of democracy because he held an image of democratic participation in which science and intelligent decision making--which he saw represented at that time in the Wilson administration-- could serve to tame some of the more unpleasant effects of participation. Without a clear conceptual difference between non-democratic and anti-democratic groups, he was unable to see the undemocratic character of his own recommendations.

There is, of course, a good deal to be said in favor of different groups making a commitment to resolve their differences as intelligently as possible and a willingness to proceed along lines suggested by Dewey's conception of the scientific method is clearly a component in this commitment. The method that Dewey advocated makes sense in a number of ways. For example, it entails some important principles about the process of democratic decision making. If the method is exercised properly, domination and suppression of different views must be minimized and people must become conscious of the various pressures that may lead them to act non intelligently. If Dewey is correct about the Polish community, these procedures were not being practiced and people were deciding matters on the basis of revered and uncritically accepted authority. However, to acknowledge the importance of procedural matters is not the same as licensing a government to interfere when groups decide internal matters in ways that are not, by democratic standards, procedurally correct. Democracy must even allow for decisions that are not especially intelligent or scientific.

Westbrook suggests that this episode was unrepresentative of Dewey's larger political activities. As I have already shown, its anomalous character for Westbrook "points up what is . . . the most distinctive feature of Dewey's politics during World War I. "At no other time did he regard an existing American state as committed to the same vision of democracy as he was" (p. 220). Although Westbrook is correct about the anomalous character of the Polish study, Westbrook's own report suggests that Dewey did not reject state authority and its vision of democratic order. He reports that after the Second World War Dewey called for "the cessation of criticism of the foreign policy of Dean Acheson" because such criticism was "'our free gift to the communists cause'" (p. 489). In both the Polish study and in his remarks on the cold war, Dewey was supporting the government's foreign policy and may well have had strong reservations about its domestic policy. Nevertheless, in documenting Dewey's activities in the League for Independent Political Action in the 1930's, his support for socialist candidate Norman Thomas, and other similar involvements after the first world war Westbrook makes a strong, if not unassailable case, that Dewey's commitment to radical positions grew after his disappointing involvement in support for Wilson's policies.

What Westbrook fails to understand is that the issue is larger than whether Dewey's involvement was or was not an anomalous act. An answer to this question tells us about the man but not about the philosophy. To illustrate the difference suppose that Dewey did again find a government that agreed with his conception of democracy as Westbrook suggests he did not. Clearly this would not justify a repetition of his act.

Dewey's treatment of the Polish community is consistent with a larger philosophical insensitivity--an insensitivity to the principle that democracies are required to protect the rights even of un-enlightened groups. This insensitiviety can be traced to the ambivalent way in which he abandoned his earlier Hegelian social vision. As I have shown, while Dewey let go of the unfolding dialectic, he did not fully abandon the vision of social order that it entailed. Instead he replaced the dialectic as the vehicle of change with a conception of science generally conceived.

Dewey worried that not all groups were yet capable of reasoning scientifically. Some were encumbered by customs and outdated traditions. The very importance of the public school was its ability to move people from tradition to science (or to tradition informed by science) and, hence Dewey believed, to democratic participation. Science thus stood opposed to those methods of fixing belief that were governed by "'past experience, received dogmas, the stirring of self-interest, the arousing of passion, sheer mental laziness, a social environment steeped in biased traditions or animated by false expectation.'" (pp. 139-140, emphasis added here). While Dewey does speak about open, democratic and scientific traditions, these are the traditions of the new world order--they are the traditions of science, critical intelligence and the new world. The traditions of the old order were not open, not scientific and, not democratic. Assuming that Dewey was correct in his characterization of traditional culture--a big assumption--and the oppositional relationship between traditional cultures and democratic, scientific ones, democratic theory has an important choice to make. It must decide whether there are rights that apply to all peoples regardless of their cultural affiliation or whether groups must first meet some standard for intelligent democratic participation before their voice is to be counted. Dewey simply does not confront this issue and, in the Polish study, makes the wrong choice.

Had he thought to explicitly addressed the issue of the rights of traditional groups, he might have agreed that they warrant protection; Whether a group is "scientific" or pre-scientific, democracy requires that its members be granted the right to participate in the political process without interference from government. And this holds even when members might be subject to manipulation and control from other sources such as the church. In other words, had Dewey thought clearly about this matter, he might well have realized that when a group does not offer a serious threat to other groups or to the larger social order, democracy requires that it not be discriminated against. Its members basic rights to freedom of speech, press and assembly are not to be violated by the government. To say this is not to require that governments support such groups--although in the case of certain threatened minorities--a case may be made that it do so. Nor does it require that governments refrain from developing positive incentives that will enable members to develop new and more plural associations--as Dewey surely wanted. It simply means that non-democratic groups and their members must enjoy the same basic rights as others. And it requires that ideas must be allowed to flow from such groups into the public domain unfiltered by government penetration or influence. (It is, for example, significant that when I first wrote about the Polish Study in 1972, it was at the time when the CIA's infiltration of liberal scholarly and student organizations, and its secret sponsorship of academic research was being revealed.³¹)

The question therefore is not exactly whether Dewey was an advocate of participatory democracy. It is widely accepted that he had some notion of participation in mind and expressed it in a number of works. The more fundamental question is just what is to be taken as the basis for participating and how are those who choose not to participate in many of the activities of the wider community to be treated. Dewey neglected both of these questions, but the Polish study can be read as a practical response to them. Commitment to progress and scientific intelligence was, in this case, the condition for participation. Yet this response is surely wrong. Democracy requires that freedom of press, assembly and the like be respected without regard to a method of inquiry. This is basic. In addition, democracy does require, and here Dewey is quite right, a sufficient number of citizens who are open to change and willing to consider new and multiple associations. (I would not hold much hope for a democratic society that was just an amalgamation of non democratic groups.³²) A strong democracy does as much as possible to encourage such openness. It does not, however, force people to take on new associations or infiltrate their organizations because the groups are not democratic.

Westbrook is generally correct however. The wrong is not typical of Dewey's career and is inconsistent with many of his activities on behalf of civil liberties. Many of these more positive instances, such as Dewey's defense of Russell's right to teach in the United States, are described by Westbrook and provides an important balance to the picture provided by the Polish Study. Yet it is precisely because Dewey's best instincts lead him often in a different direction that it is so important to understand the conception of democracy that failed to guard Dewey against such an uncharacteristic act. Those who believe that philosophy does have some guiding influence on action would do well to retrace the philosophical elements in Dewey's conception of democratic society that may have brought him to cooperate with the War Department in the investigation of the Polish community.

The important element here involves Dewey's failure to distinguish adequately between the governing and the educational functions of democracy. It is, of course the recognition of the educational dimension of democracy that constitutes one of his most important contributions to democratic theory. Yet it is important to maintain procedural constraints as well to ensure that the educational function not be used to quiet the often untidy give and take of the democratic process, or to override basic political rights. Dewey is philosophically quiet when it comes to matters of procedural guarantees.

This is not to suggest, as Westbrook seems to accuse some of Dewey's critics of doing, that he was anti-democratic. He contributed much to our conception of democracy. It is, however, to agree with the observation--most recently made by Cornel West's-- that Dewey's "favored historical agents" were "the professionals and the reformist elements of the middle class"³³ and that each embraced an elitist model of social change.³⁴ It is also to point out that at the very least the focus on the educational functions of democracy led Dewey to underemphasize in his theoretical formulations the importance and reasons for procedural constraints. The Polish study is surely the most extreme expression of this neglect. The fact is, however,that both educational features and procedural ones are important.While Dewey is quite concerned that the "masses" have the opportunity to inform the experts, his concern was rightly to improve the conditions of debate and to perfect the process of inquiry³⁵--in other words to make it more scientific. Yet some among the "masses" do not always speak with the authority of science, and it is important for democracy to respect their voices too.

A second philosophical misconception that likely contributed to suggesting that the the rights of the Polish community could be waived stems from Dewey's conflation of science and ethics mentioned earlier. While Westbrook is correct in his belief that Dewey's views on science matured over the years and became less mechanical, there are still problems. Dewey was attracted to science because he believed that in a pluralist society, like the United States, tradition alone cannot produce sufficient consensus. Instead, a decision making mechanism is required that transcends traditions and can be used to validate their claims. Science is conceived as serving this transcendent function. However, as Westbrook correctly notes, it is not the science of the narrow specialist that Dewey has in mind. Cornel West explains this point nicely:

Critical intelligence, for him, is simply the operation of the scientific attitude in problematic situations. This attitude often--though by no means always. . .--results in deploying the scientific method to resolve problems. This distinction between scientific attitude and scientific method is crucial for Dewey.³⁶

As a description of intelligent decision making this makes sense, but what I think Dewey failed to understand is that problematic situations are not always sufficiently independent of specific traditions, and that therefore, a single method rooted in science cannot always be counted upon to resolve disputes between traditions. Nor is there any reason to think that the method can always be applied in a way that is neutral in relation to conflicting claims by competing traditions. Indeed Dewey's view rests on the questionable belief that the scientific method can always be extracted from a specific paradigm and thereby be used to evaluate claims across frames of discourse. Not only does this run counter to more recent studies of the nature of science,--such as Thomas Kuhn's often cited work on scientific revolutions-- it actually serves to constrain discourse along certain channels which in some cases may not be productive. Sometimes conflicting traditions may find that the best avenue for growth and development is a live and let live attitude where the role of the larger community is simply to allow the internal discourses to continue within a cultural paradigm. This is not perhaps the best of all possible worlds, but in some cases it may well be the best that one can do and still respect differences.

Procedural elements of democracy should allow incommensurable views to be expressed while protecting less powerful voices. The basis for such guarantees is not the optimistic view of a Hegel or a Dewey where we can all be educated to higher forms of participation--although it need not deny that such education is both possible and desirable. It is rather the capacity that each of us has to project ourselves in and sympathize with those in a minority position, and therefore, to understand the importance of procedures that will protect our continuing freedoms. Clearly a commitment to such procedures also entails a commitment to the social structures that will maintain them. However, this commitment, by itself, requires a rather weak attachment to the larger community. We should desire and encourage more, but democracy allows people to reject--at least for themselves--what is desirable. Just as it is important not to allow the educational function of democracy to usurp the governing function, it is also important to understand the importance of Dewey's project and not to replace the educational function with the governing function. Procedural protection is a necessary condition of democracy, but it is not the best that democracy can do. Procedures keep the state at some distance, but provide neither the amplification to be heard nor the credibility to be listened to. Nor do they provide the patience to listen to others, to weigh evidence, to seek accommodation or to adopt the perspective of the weak or the vulnerable. They do not provide the sensitivity to understand how people can be manipulated by symbols or the ability to determine the causes of ones own desires and emotions--or the ability to reflect on these in light of those causes. These and many other things belong to the educational function of democracy, and Westbrook rightly highlights and commends these features of Dewey's work. Dewey did indeed understand many of the educational requirements of democracy. It was because of this understanding that so many educational scholars continued to see merit in Dewey, even while he was being ignored by the philosophical establishment and long before his ideas were resurrected by a contemporary philosophical maverick like Richard Rorty.³⁸

Westbrook's John Dewey and American Democracy deserves much of the high praise it has received. Dewey is indeed one of the most important intellectual figures in American history and the single most important American twentieth century philosopher and educator. Westbrook's respectful yet critical examination is a fitting monument to the importance of Dewey in the American intellectual tradition. His book provides a rich and comprehensive history of Dewey--one that is theoretically sophisticated and that strikes a reasonable balance between appreciation and criticism. Yet the questions that Westbrook raises are somewhat narrower than the ones that need to be asked. He is concerned about the character of Dewey when ultimately it is the character of Dewey's philosophy that needs to be appraised.

Dewey was more than an intellectual presence in American life. He was a preeminent philosopher and as a philosopher the quality of an idea is what matters. Philosophers try to be concerned with the merits of the idea, with its clarity, consistency, scope, coherence and, in Dewey's case, with its practical implications. It is at this level that one seeks more than Westbrook provides. Westbrook measures Dewey against his (Westbrook's) own commitments, which he tells us reflects the participatory ideal, and he seeks to find out whether his commitment is shared by Dewey. To a large extent his favorable treatment of Dewey is guided by this commitment and the affirmative answer he gives to his central (albeit implicit question) how well does Dewey lived up to this commitment to participatory democracy. One may, of course, agree or disagree with Westbrook's evaluation of Dewey on this matter, but the problem limits the project. The work that remains is to examine critically Dewey's philosophy in order to seek a more adequate conception of democracy and its application to the modern age. It is only though an engaged but critical evaluation of the ideas themselves that the Deweyan project--as contrasted with projects about Dewey--will be continued.