Page 133 - Šolsko polje, XXVIII, 2017, no. 3-4: Education and the American Dream, ed. Mitja Sardoč
P. 133
i. bijuklič ■ manufacturing and selling a way of life
by enabling people’s common activity in public affairs, but by creating a
binding public experience transmitted via communication. Such a com-
munity, which would exist in transmission, had the potential to extend as
far as the communications channels would stretch. Although Dewey, un-
like Lippmann, was probably one of those most reserved toward the tech-
nocratic ideas of regimenting the public from expert minority, this is the
main reason for exposing him as an example, he still confidently relied
on the new governing potential of social sciences to solve the problems of
men. In this approach, he was not far away from social engineering ide-
as and sociocracy. On the contrary, his ambitions just went in the oppo-
site direction; to enable everybody as a social scientist, which would en-
able anyone to raise to the level of an »expert and governor of society«
(Peters, 1989: p. 252). In fact, his notion of cohesive public experience is
nothing else but the experience of social sciences, in his time already es-
tablished in the public discourse as those professionally devoted to me-
thodical discovery of social laws and capable of describing and predicting
social reality. For this reason, they were promoted above all tradition, as a
new public philosophy that would function as an organ of enlightenment,
which is one of the fundamental turns in the Comtean positivism. Their
enlightment was in fact a paradigmatic closure with political consequenc-
es, namely, by turning their theorems and assumptions, for example, that
people are by nature animal laborans or that productive society is the only
possible form of common existence, into constitutive facts, determinative
for the whole sphere of human affairs. The second function, which touch-
es directly our topic, is even more explicit in its socio-formative intention,
namely, to »invent values, ideas and practices - in short, intelligence – to
enliven and unify the Great community« (Dewey, 1927: p. 181).
If Dewey was criticized for being the spokesman »for the crass in-
dustrialism in American life« (Peters, 1986: p. 115) it is because his project
of bringing public and community back to life is more an apology to the
actual state of affairs than a new perspective that would reopen a possi-
bility for the public sphere where people could indeed practice their »ca-
pacity of being citizens« (Arendt, 2006: p. 245). Although Dewey was
preoccupied, at least nominally, with the problems of democracy and its
decaying conditions, his starting ground was not in the tradition of polit-
ical thought, but in the emerging Progressive social theory and its expec-
tations that communication would fulfil a new function of »providing
the means for society to gain consciousness of itself as a totality, to cre-
ate a grand unity of all its members« (Peters, 1986: p. 54). In one aspect,
the idea of human organisation they were striving for was evidently en-
trenched in what they saw around them, a rising land of steam, steel and
131
by enabling people’s common activity in public affairs, but by creating a
binding public experience transmitted via communication. Such a com-
munity, which would exist in transmission, had the potential to extend as
far as the communications channels would stretch. Although Dewey, un-
like Lippmann, was probably one of those most reserved toward the tech-
nocratic ideas of regimenting the public from expert minority, this is the
main reason for exposing him as an example, he still confidently relied
on the new governing potential of social sciences to solve the problems of
men. In this approach, he was not far away from social engineering ide-
as and sociocracy. On the contrary, his ambitions just went in the oppo-
site direction; to enable everybody as a social scientist, which would en-
able anyone to raise to the level of an »expert and governor of society«
(Peters, 1989: p. 252). In fact, his notion of cohesive public experience is
nothing else but the experience of social sciences, in his time already es-
tablished in the public discourse as those professionally devoted to me-
thodical discovery of social laws and capable of describing and predicting
social reality. For this reason, they were promoted above all tradition, as a
new public philosophy that would function as an organ of enlightenment,
which is one of the fundamental turns in the Comtean positivism. Their
enlightment was in fact a paradigmatic closure with political consequenc-
es, namely, by turning their theorems and assumptions, for example, that
people are by nature animal laborans or that productive society is the only
possible form of common existence, into constitutive facts, determinative
for the whole sphere of human affairs. The second function, which touch-
es directly our topic, is even more explicit in its socio-formative intention,
namely, to »invent values, ideas and practices - in short, intelligence – to
enliven and unify the Great community« (Dewey, 1927: p. 181).
If Dewey was criticized for being the spokesman »for the crass in-
dustrialism in American life« (Peters, 1986: p. 115) it is because his project
of bringing public and community back to life is more an apology to the
actual state of affairs than a new perspective that would reopen a possi-
bility for the public sphere where people could indeed practice their »ca-
pacity of being citizens« (Arendt, 2006: p. 245). Although Dewey was
preoccupied, at least nominally, with the problems of democracy and its
decaying conditions, his starting ground was not in the tradition of polit-
ical thought, but in the emerging Progressive social theory and its expec-
tations that communication would fulfil a new function of »providing
the means for society to gain consciousness of itself as a totality, to cre-
ate a grand unity of all its members« (Peters, 1986: p. 54). In one aspect,
the idea of human organisation they were striving for was evidently en-
trenched in what they saw around them, a rising land of steam, steel and
131
