ABSTRACT
The crisis of values engendered by the passions and destruction unleashed by World War I produced an acute critique of the problems inherent in John Dewey’s philosophy by one of his former students and devotees. The young instrumentalists had found a certain contentment during the war, for they were able to concentrate on the problems of sending the nation into war and could derive satisfaction from the technical efficiency that they had achieved. The war had brought the inadequacies of instrumentalism to the fore by demonstrating that it was in fact a benign philosophy dependent on a reservoir of good will. The public philosophy would be a form of natural law consisting of those norms that rational individuals who are fully informed would accept. The liberal leader finds his or her ambivalence toward the use of coercion resolved by allowing the process of group interaction to serve as the basis and standard for policy determination.
