Publication date:
11 April 2019Length of book:
280 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksISBN-13: 9781498500760
What virtues are necessary for democracy to succeed? This book turns to John Dewey and Reinhold Niebuhr, two of America’s most influential theorists of democracy, to answer this question. Dewey and Niebuhr both implied—although for very different reasons—that humility and mutuality are important virtues for the success of people rule. Not only do these virtues allow people to participate well in their own governance, they also equip us to meet challenges to democracy generated by free-market economic policy and practices. Ironically, though, Dewey and Niebuhr quarreled with each other for twenty years and missed the opportunity to achieve political consensus. In their discourse with each other they failed to become “one out of many,” a task that is distilled in the democratic rallying cry “e pluribus unum.” This failure itself reflects a deficiency in democratic virtue. Thus, exploring the Dewey/Niebuhr debate with attention to their discursive failures reveals the importance of a third virtue: democratic tolerance. If democracy is to succeed, we must cultivate a deeper hospitality toward difference than Dewey and Niebuhr were able to extend to each other.
Sometime in the spring of 1968—marked, as it was, by the assassinations of MLK and RFK, and the Tet Offensive—the New Left replaced the Old and the focus of sociopolitical attention shifted from economics, the distribution of power, institutional purpose, and progress to political identity, suspicion of power, self-fulfillment, and revolution. The shift was probably both necessary and inevitable, but a decade and a half into the twenty-first century, many of the concerns of the Old Left are ascendant. We are, therefore, fortunate to have Dan Morris' new book re-introduce us to two towering figures of the Old Left: John Dewey and Reinhold Niebuhr. Morris deftly links the philosopher and the theologian to each other, managing not only to walk us through their work and their conflicts but to bring their insights to bear on some of the most pressing issues we now face.