ABSTRACT
‘Democracy’ is the central concept of Dewey’s political thought. At its core, we find democracy understood as social hope. This social hope consists in believing that we can resolve tensions and problems experienced within human groups in peaceful, intelligent, and truly satisfying ways. On the Deweyan view, we must hold this hope for fear that our failure to resolve such problems calls forth unnecessary friction, violence, and war. However, parsing out exactly what this means is a complex matter. This chapter thus starts by opposing Dewey’s conception of democracy to that defended by classical liberals. It then goes on to argue that, for Dewey, freedom is created through the process of becoming an individual in relation to others, and democracy represents the highest ideal in which this freedom is as widely accessible as possible; this implies that democracy is also a social ideal which deals with how we make decisions collectively and asks of us that we go beyond merely liberal democratic commitments. Ultimately, this chapter argues that Dewey’s conception of democracy is best understood as an idea of peaceful conflict resolution where intelligence allows for rich associative living.
