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For Dewey, as for Habermas, what takes the place of the urge to represent reality accurately is the urge to come to free agreement with our fellow human beings - to be full participating members of a free community of inquiry. Dewey offered neither the conservative's philosophical justification of …

[...] I think that the conservatives are wrong in thinking that we have either a truth-tracking faculty called 'reason' or a true self that education brings to consciousness. I think that the radicals are right in saying that if you take care of political, economic, cultural and academic freedom, t…

For Deweyans, the whole idea of 'authority' is suspect. We can still say, if we like, that the American legal system possesses a legitimate authority, and that we have an obligation to obey our country's laws. But we should not press either point. Dewey preferred to skip talk of 'authority', 'legit…

More specifically, we see both intellectual and moral progress not as a matter of getting closer to the True or the Good or the Right, but as an increase in imaginative power. We see imagination as the cutting edge of cultural evolution, the power which - given peace and prosperity - constantly ope…

[...] To say that God wills us to welcome the stranger within our gates is to say that hospitality is one of the virtues upon which our community most prides itself. To say that respect for human rights demanded our intervention to save the Jews from the Nazis, or the Bosnian Muslims from the Ser…