Pragmatism and Radical Democracy

Bibliographic Data

ID12643264
AuthorsCraig Browne (0000-0002-5929-319X, Department of Sociology and Social Policy University of Sydney, corresponding author)
Year2009
Volume10
Issue1
Pages54-75
Publication date2009-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCritical Horizons (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1440-9917 • E-ISSN: 1568-5160
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1558/crit.v10i1.54
OpenAlexW2038325166
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited39

This paper suggests that pragmatism makes a distinctive contribution to the theory and practice of radical democracy. It investigates the relation ship between the renewal of interest in pragmatism and the recent attempts to develop radical democratic alternatives to political liberalism. With particular reference to the contemporary critical social theory of Habermas and Honneth, the paper outlines key dimensions of the civic republican, deliberative democratic and reflexive cooperative reconstructions of John Dewey's conception of democracy. These reconstructions are shown to have explicated important pragmatist insights concerning public participation in civic associations, the discursive practices of deliberation, and the cooperative organization of the division of labour. However, it is argued that each of these reconstructions pre suppose some facet of the additional pragmatist understanding of the creativity of action and that the most distinctive contributions of pragmatism to radical democratic theory and practice derive from a notion of democracy as instituted and emergent meaning

Deliberation · Democracy · Epistemology · Meaning (existential · Political science · Politics · Pragmatism · Sociology · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Law · Philosophy · Political theory and Gramsci · Pragmatism in Philosophy and Education