ABSTRACT
John Dewey said 'Democracy is a way of life controlled by a working faith in the possibilities of human nature'. Like Dewey, John Lachs's ultimate goal is to make life more intelligent and meaningful. Lachs argues that there are three kinds of facts: objective facts wholly independent of human interest and activity; conventional facts, wholly dependent on human purposes and practices; and, most important, a large class of choice-inclusive facts whose constitution involves both objective elements and human decisions. Pluralists focus on the multiple relevances of philosophies to multiple lives and their multiple situations-the plural and different relevances of plural and different philosophies to plural and different lives. Pragmatists who seek the unity of theory and practice demand the relevance of theory to some concrete practice. The rat race, as Lachs employs this term, drawn from laboratory experiments, is a life of processes undertaken in order to secure some end or goal other than the process itself.
