Doug Anderson on Dewey on common faith, common men, and common sense

"A similar proposal for the creation of a working certainty can be found in Dewey’s essay “Creative Democracy.” There he declares that democracy is neither a formal institution nor an articulate doctrine, but a way of life whose establishment creates an environment in which we can act freely and with the hope of ameliorating our existence. “For what is the faith of democracy in the role of consultation, of conference, of persuasion, of discussion, in formation of public opinion, which in the long run is self-corrective,” Dewey asked, “except faith in the capacity of the intelligence of the common man to respond with common sense to the free play of facts and ideas which are secured by effective guarantees of free inquiry, free assembly, and free communication?” (LW, 14:227). This is precisely the sort of thinking that led Hocking to see irony in Dewey’s rejection of any quest for certainty. For democracy to achieve the sort of instrumental success Dewey envisions, it must arise out of a faith that persons have in it; thus, John E. Smith’s suggestion that Dewey’s common faith was his faith in democracy seems apt. To speak more generally, Hocking and Bugbee openly challenge Dewey’s apparent divorce of philosophy from certainty. They agree with Dewey that we should take philosophy back from the deductivists, the “lovers of clarity” who in “working within premises and procedural rules that are explicit and not in question” can be sure of what they are saying.11 But both argue that we must also retrieve certainty from the same realm. Philosophy does deal with certainty, at least in the ways I have suggested: intuition, inheritance, and creation. If philosophy, as Dewey wishes, is to be more than an intellectual game or mental exercise, it must pursue the bases of human action. Philosophy is a quest for the ongoing development of working certainties, the quest for a meaning we can count on, although, as Marcel and Bugbee remind us, not a final, finished, and fully articulate meaning."

"Philosophy Americana: Making Philosophy at Home in American Culture (American Philosophy Book 18)" by Douglas R. Anderson: https://a.co/7fdxiXL