ABSTRACT In this article I will first reconstruct a Deweyan model of social ontology, based on the process of habituation. Habit ontology leads to a social philosophy that is not merely descriptive, since it involves a critical redescription of the social world. I will argue that a habit-modeled social ontology is critical insofar as it includes an account of social transformation and of the inevitability of social conflict. Such an understanding is based on a diagnosis of social pathologies of our (...) form of life and includes an account of the experience of domination. Accordingly, it is described as a matter of an imbalance of recognition that embodies subjugating patterns and is seen from the critical perspective of freedom understood as emancipation from oppression. This leads to a reconstruction of the genesis of critical attitudes from life's processes of habituation, which leads to an extended naturalist account of social authority. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article argues that Dewey has a “progressive historicist” theory of ethics and social philosophy. That theory is here explicated with the notion of an “evaluative framework,” which can be embodied both implicitly in practice and in explicit theories and judgments. Such historicism, in which each stage has overcome the deficiencies of the previous stage, has ample resources to avoid unconstrained relativism, in terms of three aspects: the “dynamic,” the “dialogic,” and the “historical.” The article poses, however, a challenge (...) for such “progressive historicisms”: while there are determinate oughts within each stage of history before the inadequacies of that stage have come to the fore, it is indeterminate what one ought to do during the intermediate phases once such inadequacies have come to one's knowledge and before a new solution has been generally socially accepted and habitualized. The last subsection briefly outlines various responses historicism might give. (shrink)

ABSTRACT There are two traditions of immanent social critique. One of them, prominent in contemporary Frankfurt school critical theory, regards the immanence of critique as a quality of the standard employed. Such a conception of immanent critique needs to show, prior to the concrete practice of critique, how the standard is immanent in the object of critique. Showing this is the task of a “model of immanent critique.” The other tradition, going back to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit and practiced in (...) particular by Dewey in his later works, regards the immanence of critique as the form of critical practice itself. Because such a conception of immanent critique does not, at the outset, ask how the standard is immanent to its object, it also does not need a model licensing critical practice. Indeed, it must be inherently hostile to any attempt at modeling immanent critique because the immanence lies in the power of critical practice to transform any models it applies. (shrink)

This paper aims at renovating the prospects for social philosophy through a confrontation between pragmatism and critical theory. In particular, it contends that the resources of pragmatism for advancing a project of emancipatory social philosophy have so far been neglected. After contrasting the two major traditions in social philosophy—the analytical and the critical—I proceed to outline the main traits of a pragmatist social philosophy. By inscribing pragmatism within the tradition of social philosophy, my aim is to promote a new understanding (...) of pragmatism as one of the central Euro-American traditions in social and political philosophy, deserving to be on an equal footing with critical theory and political liberalism. And, furthermore, one whose critical and radical force may be of great help in the wake of the dismissal of the metaphysical certainties upon which the critical program of social philosophy had once set its hopes of social emancipation. (shrink)

In the last three decades, ongoing debates on the epistemic features of democratic decision making have influenced the way we conceive the basic terms of democratic theory, such as inclusion, participation, public reason, and collective autonomy.1 Within these debates, attention has been given to the role played by mobilized collectives in the generation of the knowledge necessary for the enhancement of the epistemic quality of those processes. However, little attention has been given to a further epistemic function of mobilizations: the (...) innovations they have brought about in the very practices within which new knowledge and perspectives are generated. Using... (shrink)

Dewey’s social ontology could be characterized as a habit ontology, an ontology of habit qua second nature that offers us an account of intentionality, social statuses, institutions, and norms in terms of habituations. Such an account offers us a promising alternative to contemporary intentionalist and deontic approaches to social ontology such as Searle’s. Furthermore, it could be the basis of a social ontology better suited to explain both the maintenance and the transformation of social reality. In the first part I (...) will characterize Dewey’s model as a social ontology based on the notion of habit, and present it as an alternative to intentionalist approaches to social reality. In the second part I will argue that habit ontology offers us an account of social norms that is based on a peculiar understanding of the notion of ‘status’, and represents an alternative to deontic accounts. In the third part I will claim that Dewey’s notion of “public” offers us a dynamic understanding of social institutions and a ‘reactive’ notion of collective intentionality as an achievement rather than as a presupposition of social practices. In the final section I will summarize some advantages of the Deweyan over the Searlean social ontology concerning our understanding of acceptance, maintenance and transformation of statuses, and of the role played by the ‘background’. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The article critically discusses Rahel Jaeggi’s recent philosophical contribution to a critical theory of capitalism. The first part reconstructs Jaeggi’s account of Lebensform, life-form, that builds up the main ontological framework for addressing and problematizing capitalism intended not as an economic system but as a social whole. The second part focuses on the three different theoretical strategies that Jaeggi puts forward to detect and deal with capitalism’s immanent flaws. The third and last part problematizes the metaphysical assumptions and implications (...) of Jaeggi’s understanding of life-form and outlines a more dialectical, or “transactional” notion of form of life, which is inspired by Dewey’s non-reductionist naturalist method of inquiry. The overall aim is to strengthen the philosophical critique of the capitalist form of life. (shrink)

Social positioning theory, in defending a general social ontology, is a particular extension of critical realism. It is a theory of social constitution that clarifies how items including human bein...

In this dissertation I explore the conceptual relationship between equality and resistance in political philosophy. Through examination of the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx, John Dewey, and Jacques Rancière, I formulate a position called Fractured Social Holism. This is a problematic that attempts to articulate core issues at stake in the debates surrounding the purposes, meanings, and possibilities for politics. Through Fractured Social Holism I articulate a theory of equality that emphasizes the communities upon which societys institutions intend to (...) distribute equality, arguing that resistance on the part of a populationgroup opposition, formal or informal, to some element of the societal status quoconceptually grounds equality and its distribution by articulating its very possibilities. My central questionHow is equality constituted?focuses on the community itself in order to shift agency from institutions that distribute equality to those who demand it. It emphasizes the active role of the people in the constitution of a community of equals, as well as the fact that the very notion of the people is what is at stake in that constitution; popular resistance challenges the very meaning and content of any given people. I understand equality in the broadest possible sense, in terms of the opportunity of each and all within society to participate in dictating the terms of their public engagement with that society and with others within it. I argue for the possibility of resistance within egalitarian community in Rousseau, the limits of what that resistance in egalitarian society looks like in Marx, how egalitarian communities can organize themselves in Dewey, and how subjectivity relates to mechanisms of resistance and political action within society in Rancière. These historical interpretations and the conceptual framework they engender provide a novel means of thinking about issues of paramount importance in contemporary political philosophy, including pluralism, oppression and domination, and the purposes and meaning of politics, remaining true to a normative vision of equality while insisting on the necessity of the peoples resistance to the status quo in the name of a re-imagined vision of social harmony. (shrink)

One important element of globalization is the dissemination of western educational ideals and organizational frameworks through educational development projects. While postcolonial theory has long offered a useful critique of this expansion, it is less clear about how educational development that eschews neo-imperialist tendencies might proceed. This problem poses a question that requires philosophical reflection. However, much of comparative and international development education ignores philosophical modes of inquiry. Moreover, as Libbrecht (2007) argues, philosophy all too often sees itself as synonymous with (...) the Euro-American intellectual tradition, thus ignoring indigenous educational thought that might more appropriately guide local educational development. Drawing on John Dewey's (1938) call for deeper and more inclusive plans of operations in response to social conflicts and Jurgen Habermas (2008) call for ?reciprocal learning processes? and ?cooperative acts of translation,? we will attempt to reach beyond our individual philosophical borders to explore the necessity and possibilities of comparative philosophy of education by sharing three examples of our current efforts to apply philosophical analysis to international educational development. These examples will articulate and embody the necessity and the challenges of applying philosophical analysis to educational development work. (shrink)

This article compares the theories of democracy of John Dewey and Claude Lefort, identifying some common themes in their otherwise radically different philosophical outlooks. In so doing, it attempts to analyze the philosophical implications of a ‘democracy first’ approach to politics. It then explains in what sense Dewey’s idea of ‘democracy as a way of life’ and Claude Lefort’s conception of ‘democracy as a form of society’ provide the cornerstone of an original and so far insufficiently explored approach to political (...) philosophy. Such an approach offers an alternative both to the classical-liberal and to the critical-radical projects which still dominate contemporary political philosophy. It then indicates some of the potential advantages of such a ‘wide view’ for contemporary debates in democratic theory. (shrink)