ABSTRACT
The Stanford Encyclopedia entry “Constructivism in Metaethics” (Bagnoli 2011) begins thus, “The term ‘constructivism’ entered recent debates in moral theory with John Rawls’ seminal article “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory.” I wish to examine an earlier twentieth-century constructivist theory of ethics, Pragmatic Constructivism, as associated especially with the writings of John Dewey.1 However, I will not enter directly into current debates swirling around constructivist theories. For one, ‘constructivism’ is a broad label for a number of approaches to ethics that vary in significant ways. Second, the issues now under debate differ depending on whether the constructivist procedures apply to political institutions or individuals, and on whether the constructivist theory is taken to be an ethical theory or a metaethical theory. It is possible to accept constructivism as an ethical theory, yet deny that it provides an acceptable metaethical account of morality.
