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John Dewey's Social Aesthetics

Article in Polity · April 2005

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 Northeastern Political Science Association

John Dewey's Social Aesthetics

Author(s): Jason Kosnoski
Source: Polity, Vol. 37, No. 2 (Apr., 2005), pp. 193-215
Published by: Palgrave Macmillan Journals
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Polity * Volume 37, Number 2 * April 2005
? 2005 NortheasternPolitical Science Association 0032-3497/05 $30.00
www.palgrave-journals.com/polity

John Dewey's Social

Aesthetics *

Jason Kosnoski
Universityof Michigan,Flint
Thispaper interpretsJohn Dewey'sunderstandingof the politicalfunctionof
local associationsin termsof his aesthetictheory.Throughthisanalysisit becomes
clear thatDewey saw the spatio-temporal, of modern
or aesthetic,fragmentation
institutions,media, and ideas as underminingcitizens' abilityto perceive the
relationshipsbetween themselves and society. This phenomenon causes the
individualto become "lost"and unawareof how public events impacthis/her
individuallife.It thenshows thatDewey'sconcernwithsocial aestheticsis shared
by an increasingnumberof contemporary empiricaland theoreticalworks.Finally,
the
throughanalyzing unique aestheticcharacteristicsof Americanpioneerlife, it
claims Dewey suggests that the constructionof associations would assist the
individualin locatinghimself/herselfin fragmentedsocietyand thereforerealizing
the publicimplicationsof his/her seeminglyisolatedactions.
Polity(2005) 37, 193-215.doi:10.1057/palgrave.polity.2300009
Keywords Dewey,John;aesthetics;civilsociety;associations

Jason Kosnoski receivedhis Ph.D.fromthe New School forSocial Researchin

of Michigan
2003. He is an AssistantProfessorof PoliticalScienceat the University
at Flint.He is theauthorof "TheArtof Discussion:JohnDeweyand theAestheticsof
Deliberation," forthcomingin PoliticalTheory.

Introduction

Recentinterpretations of JohnDewey'scritiqueof actuallyexistingdemocracy

have emphasizedwhat is seen as his belief in the ability of civil society to
inculcate democraticcharacteristicsin citizens. These interpretationsgo on to
claim that this encouragementremains necessary because basic democratic
skills and attitudesare constantlyunderminedby contemporaryculture.The

*An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2002 Western Political Science Conference.
I thank John Medearis and Paul Frymer for their comments.

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194 JOHN DEWEY'SSOCIALAESTHETICS

prevalence of this interpretation can be seen when The Public and its Problems
(LW:2, 235-35 1)' is cited by theorists as diverse as Robert Putnam in his Bowling
Alone2 and Jirgen Habermas in his Between Facts and Norms3as justification for
strengthening local association.4 Yet despite this superficial consensus, modern
theorists describe the exact skills advanced by Deweyan associations and the
political activity inspired by possession of these skills in widely divergent ways. To
these theorists, Dewey claims that association cultivates trust, communication
skills, political confidence, tolerance, or whatever characteristic they feel modern
democracy lacks.5 Such diverse interpretations most likely stem from the
numerous accounts of civil society within Dewey's own work. This paper
suggests that Dewey's aesthetic theory, an aspect not greatly acknowledged by
current theorists, can shed new light upon his understanding of the role
associations should play in encouraging political characteristics. Through such a
redirection of attention, one can identify a heretofore yet undiscussed theme in
Dewey that suggests that associations can assist individuals in perceiving the
relationships between themselves and the contemporary fragmented social
environment and encourage them to creatively use this information to inform
their political action and political selves.
An awareness of the political implications of social fragmentation has
been gaining notice in both empirical and theoretical analyses. These studies
do not examine the substantive content of political culture or institutions,
but rather the individual's experience of society's spatio-temporal or aesthetic

1. Dewey quotations are listed in the text using notation referencing its location in the three editions
of John Dewey: The Collected Worksas indicated below, followed by the specific volume, and then the
page number, if applicable:
EW:The Early Worksof John Dewey: 1882-1898, ed. Jo Ann Boydson, 5 Vols. (Carbondale: Southern
Illinois University Press, 1967-1972).
MW: The Middle Works of John Dewey: 1899-1924, ed. Jo Ann Boydson, 15 Vols. (Carbondale:
Southern Illinois University Press, 1976-1983).
LW: The Later Works of John Dewey: 1925-1953, ed. Jo Ann Boydson, 17 Vols. (Carbondale:
Southern Illinois University Press, 1981-1990).
2. Robert Putnanm, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 2000).
3. Jirgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: A Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, trans.
William Rehg (Cambridge: MITPress, 1995).
4. For other works that interpret Dewey as a theorist of civil society see William Sullivan,
Reconstructing Public Philosophy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986); Carol C. Gould,
Rethinking Democracy: Freedom and Social Cooperation in Politics, Economics and Society (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1988); Robert Westbrook, "Democracy and Disenchantment: From Weber
and Dewey to Habermas and Rorty"in The Virtuesof Liberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998),
82-100; and Robert Westbrook, John Dewey and American Democracy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1991) and "Pragmatismand Democracy: Reconstructing the Logic of Dewey's Faith, in The Revival of
Pragmatism, ed. MorrisDickstein (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998), 128-41.
5. The literature on democratic characteristics and civil society has become enormous. For a good
overview see Robert Fullenwider, ed., Civil Society, Democracy and Civic Renewal (Lanham: Rowman &
Littlefield, 1999).

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 Jason Kosnoski 195

qualities.6 They claim that the modern citizen's quick, scattered encounters with
ideas, institutions, and others obscure patterns of social effect, both discouraging
informed political decision-making and camouflaging sources of social power.
Dewey also lamented the spatio-temporal qualities of experience in the United
States of his day. He specifically stated that although the modern individual
possesses a previously unheralded amount of facts and interpretations with
which to understand society, he/she in fact remains more confused than ever
before. He attributed this to the fact that life in a rapidly industrializing and
urbanizing country exhibited fragmentation and frenetic movement that
constantly re-arranged relationships between the disconnected elements of
society. In other words, he claimed that the manner in which modern individuals
experience society robs them of the ability to recreate the links they perceive
between the ever-shiftingpublic and their seemingly isolated actions. This results
in a situation where the public becomes "lost," a phenomenon that both
discourages political activity and leads citizens to become increasingly
dependent upon traditional norms that seem to provide stability in an
increasingly chaotic world.
Dewey explores an answer to this problem by presenting an ideal-typical
association rooted in the aesthetics of nineteenth-century American pioneer
society. Dewey stressed that his interest in this group lies purely in the habits it
encouraged, allowing the contemporary theorist to admire aspects of this social
form without succumbing to charges of nostalgia. Pioneer communities did not
encourage communal spirit, tolerance, or trust but instead cultivation of habits
that allowed the pioneers to understand the relationship between the shifting
aspects of their unfamiliar, confusing environment. These habits were best
represented in the idealized figure of Thomas Jefferson, who combined pioneer
habits with wide-ranging education and experience. He contends that through
the cultivation of these habits in a contemporary context, not only might
individual actions take on new public significance through the extension of their
meaning into larger social contexts, but also individuals would possibly also use
the plethora of new meanings they encounter to construct their own political
interests. Therefore, they would develop "flexible," "liberal"'or "Jeffersonian"
personalities that would predispose them to welcome the challenges flowing
from their increased exposure to different political positions. No matter what the
exact form of political action, if any; encouraged through participation in such
associations was, it would be motivated by a much more varied understanding of

6. Timothy Kaufmann-Osbourne,in Politics/Sense/Experience: A Pragmatic Inquiryinto the Promise

of Democracy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), stresses the importance of aesthetics in Dewey's
work, but interprets them purely in terms of what he sees as the homogenization caused by bureaucratic-
rationality

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196 JOHN DEWEY'SSOCIALAESTHETICS

the relationship between the individual and his/her social environment than the
pioneer ever possessed.
This paper will proceed in four sections. First, it will discuss the social
problems Dewey identified as most dangerous to twentieth-century democracy
and explain them in the context of his aesthetic theory. Next, it will briefly survey
recent evidence that the social phenomena Dewey discusses remain operative in
contemporary society. Then, it will discuss the pioneer environment and how it
encouraged habits that allowed them to understand superbly and recreate
meanings within their social and physical environment. Finally,it will suggest that
Dewey's analysis calls for the establishment of aesthetic enclaves to protect the
modern individual from the fragmented experience of his/her modern existence
and extrapolate concerning how such associations would affect the political
action of participants.

Dewey's Social Critique

The underappreciation of Dewey's stress upon the linkage between his
aesthetic and political theory originates in misunderstandings of his social
critique. Most current interpreters associate Dewey's vision of democracy with
Tocqueville's America: a place where participation in face-to-face, egalitarian
associations not only trained individuals in the skills required for political activity
but also imbued them with community spirit and tolerance. For example, not
only does William Caspary suggest that Dewey's work calls for increased face-to-
face democratic dialog that would "lead to the discovery of common interests,"
but he also claims that such participation would also contribute to the self-
actualization of citizen's identities.8 Although Dewey's social critique certainly
contains elements of these contemporary views, especially early works such as
"Christianityand Democracy" (EW: 4) where he claims that citizen interaction
within small groups would lead to social harmony, by the 1930s his work had
taken on a dramatically different character.
This new critique notably manifests itself in IndividualismOld and New, which,
although appearing in book form in the late 1930s, was first published as a series
of articles in The New Republic, beginning on April 24, 1929 and ending on April
4, 1930. The first two chapters, entitled "The House Divided Against Itself" and
"America'-By Formula"'primarily bemoan social trends that bolster the earlier
"lost community" interpretation because of their emphasis on the effects of
industrialization and rationalization characteristic of the United States in the early

7. William Caspary Dewey on Democracy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), 9.

8. See James Campbell, The CommunityReconstructs (Urbana: Universityof Illinois Press, 1992), and
Alphonse D'Amico, Individuality and Community: The Social and Political Thought of John Dewey
(Gainsville: University of Florida Press, 1972), for other expressions of this idea.

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 Jason Kosnoski 197

twentieth century. He states, "the marks and signs of the impersonalization of the
human soul are quantification of life; its mechanization and the almost universal
habit of esteeming technique as an end, not as a means so that organic and
intellectual life is also rationalized; and finally standardization." (LW: 5, 52)
Dewey claims that this forced conformity robs citizens of the creativity and self-
reliance necessary for autonomous democratic action. With this analysis, one
can easily see how Dewey might advocate small-town life and participatory local
democracy as sites that might encourage characteristics that would revive citizen
political action.
This critique of rationalization leading to alienation is accompanied by a less
well-noted analysis of the dangers to democracy In the third chapter, Dewey
begins to identify chaos, drift, and confusion as the predominant national
characteristics, phenomena distinct from the alienation and forced conformity he
previously discusses. He states, "the significant thing is that the loyalties which
once held individuals, which gave them support, direction and unity of outlook
on life have well-nigh disappeared. In consequence individuals are confused and
bewildered." (LW:5, 66) Note the difference from the previous chapter in this
quote's emphasis upon confusion and bewilderment. The sources of this
confusion are numerous; however, Dewey cites economic development and
organization as one of the primary factors. He points out that the "growth of
corporateness is arbitrarilyrestricted; hence, it operates to limit individuality and
confuse and submerge it. It crowds more out than it incorporates in an ordered
and secure life. It has made rural districts stagnant while bringing excess restless
movement to the city." (LW: 5, 56) Dewey goes on to note the increasing
haphazard relationship between the increasingly independent sectors of the
legal, media, and notably the political system. "Ourpolitics, as far as they are not
covertly manipulated on the behalf of the pecuniary advantage of groups are in a
state of confusion. Issues are improvised from week to week with constant shift of
allegiance ... political apathy is broken by recurrent sensations and spasms as its
natural outcome." (LW:5, 60) This emphasis upon the separation of society into
seemingly non-related autonomous fragments remains present throughout the
rest of the work and constitutes an independent strain in Dewey's analysis.
In the face of these new social forces, the individual loses his/her ability to
discern the social forces that affect his/her life. "America by formula" has
transformed into the "lost individual." "The tragedy of the lost individual,"
according to Dewey "is due to the fact that while individuals are now caught up
into a vast complex of associations, there is no harmonious and coherent
reflection of the import of these connections into the imaginative and emotional
outlook on life."He goes on to emphasize that the origin of this confusion does
not lie within the individual, but instead is "due in turn to the absence of
harmony within the state of society." (LW:5, 81) This complexity or fragmentation

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198 JOHN DEWEY'SSOCIALAESTHETICS

obscures the manner in which one institution, social group, or individual affects
another and therefore blunts any perception of the greater implications of any of
these seemingly isolated elements of society. Dewey implies that complex social
formations and meanings can be understood by the citizens if experienced
through "harmonious"interactions. It is important to note that the lack of social
"harmony,"which Dewey bemoans, need not be interpreted as a desire to erase
all conflict in society. When juxtaposing this invocation of "social harmony" with
the desire for "harmonious reflection" in the previous quote, it becomes more
plausible that Dewey's use of this word expresses a desire for a "harmony"
between individual self-understanding and the social forces that constitute the
context for this understanding. Therefore, harmony in the self and society, or
between the self and society, does not imply lack of change or conflict, but
instead connotes when the citizen discerns the numerous linkages between the
different aspects of society and his/her daily life.
The differentiation of the effects of rationalization to fragmentation found in
Individualism Old and New can aid in rendering earlier works more consistent
and understandable. For example, Dewey's most overtly political work, ThePublic
and Its Problems, has been understood by many as identifying the loss of
community as the main danger facing modern democracy Although many
different interpretive threads run through this book, Individualism'sconcern with
the inability of the average citizen to be able to construct connections between
the diverse aspects of modern society clearly comprises one of Dewey's central
concerns. Notably, in Public, Dewey does not state that the average citizen lacks
the capacity to comprehend and retain large amounts of information or that
his/her experience remains rarefied or intolerant. Instead, Dewey decries a
society that renders differentiated and specialized groups of citizens unable to
discern the impact they have upon each other. Again, it is important to note
that Dewey does not attribute the difficulty in discerning social relationships to
social differentiation itself; he blames this upon the spatial qualities of
fragmented society. He emphasizes "there is too much public, a public too
diffused and scattered and too intricate in composition. And there are too
many publics, for conjoint actions which have indirect serious and enduring
consequences are multitudinous beyond comparison, and each one of them
crosses the others and generates its own group of persons especially affected
with little to hold these different publics together into an integrated whole."
(LW:2, 320) By noting the existence of "too many publics," Dewey suggests that
the "scope of results of conjoint behavior" (LW: 2, 265) that tie individuals
together through mutual effect become confused due to the sudden increase
of these paths of influence and their distance from the individual. Here, he
once again claims that the complexity of social relationships has not necessarily
increased due to industrialization and urbanization, but it is their distribution

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 Jason Kosnoski 199

across the social geography that renders the individual lost in the modern social
environment.
Dewey does not identify the spatial fragmentation of society and individual
experience as the sole cause of the lost individual. In addition, he notes that the
already fragmented constituent parts of urbanized America constantly rearranged
themselves across the chaotic social landscape. Institutions and associations
consistently transformed their character and location, and therefore undertake
new relationships with their general environments. Although huge corporations
might grow within a central location, subsidiaries and sources of raw materials
relocated, families migrated, and individuals felt more free to leave their rigid
social groups. Dewey observes in Individualism that "conditions are always
moving; they are always in transition to something else." (LW:2, 109) The already
confusing social landscape constantly shuffles with different paths of effect
gaining and losing prominence. Yet, he stated that this movement did not result in
broadening the citizen's tolerance to strange ideas or other individuals as some
contemporary theorists claim.9 Dewey emphasizes that "we still move about a
great deal, but we do it in ready-made motor and Pullman cars, and we go to
places that are similar in habits of mind and feeling to the places which we have
left; where people get the same news in their papers, read the same best sellers,
and listen to the same music and talks, including advertisements of the same
ready-made goods, over the radio."(LW:5, 129) The movement Dewey describes
highlights the temporal fragmentation of society, or the fact that individuals
experience the same things, yet in shorter bursts. This erratic movement between
social elements encourages individuals to

alternate between mental subjection to routine and unordered physical

activity. They also strive to compensate for subjection to tasks of absorption
and reproduction by excess aimless mobility The standardized factory and the
automobile racing from nowhere in particular to nowhere else in particular
with no special purpose except to get there and back as fast as possible are
the Siamese twins of our civilization.
-(LW: 5, 133)

In other words Dewey claims that movement among the fragmented webs of
social co-effect or "publics"becomes episodic and meaningless. It does not lead

9. See Seyla Benhabib, Situating the Self- Gender Communityand Post Modernism in Contemporary
Ethics (London: Routledge, 1992) and Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, Democracy and
Disagreement (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992) for assertions that small group interaction
leads individuals to better tolerate different political and cultural views. Benhabib puts forth a
particularly strong version of this thesis, claiming that close, sustained encounters with others who
express their concrete life histories will result in the cultivation of "enlarged thought," 122-23.

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200 JOHN DEWEY'S SOCIAL AESTHETICS

to the establishment of physical or mental connections among the numerous

powers that exert influence upon the individual. It simply leads to more
movement, a situation that further obscures the already confusing social
landscape.
Dewey's final claim is that this increase in spatial fragmentation and temporal
freneticism eventually affects the individual at the most basic levels of his/her
character. He emphasizes that the individual's habits of cognition and perception
take on the character of the spatio-temporal qualities of his/her society The effect
of these social trends upon the character of individuals "has been to create in a
large number of persons an appetite for the momentary thrills caused by impacts
that stimulate nerve endings but whose connections with cerebral functions are
broken. Then stimulation and excitement are not so ordered that intelligence is
produced."10 (LW: 13, 94) Through their day-to-day interaction with social
institutions, individuals begin to adopt fragmented discernment and mental
habits, jumping from one interaction to the next with no discomment of the
relationships of their actions to each other or to any larger social structures. He
describes that "feverish love of change as long as it is change . .. unsettlement,
nervous discontent and desire for excitement." (LW: 5, 56) Therefore, merely
through the experience of modern society and without the conscious effort at
depoliticization, individuals lose the ability to discern the larger, public impli-
cations of their actions. Without this realization of the significance of the public,
both political participation and general concern with government diminishes.
These spatial and temporal observations, while not dominant in Dewey's
social works, come to the foreground in Art as Experience. (LW: 10) Using the
terminology available through this work, it becomes apparent that the concerns
cited earlier should be expressed as a concern with the aesthetics of society.
Dewey's use of the term 'aesthetics' is highly idiosyncratic and its invocation to
describe social phenomena should not be taken as a concern with public art or
entertainment. For Dewey all objects possess spatial and temporal, or aesthetic,
characteristics due to the irreducible relationality of experience. Although
controlled experimentation and analysis can isolate individual things and
observe their discrete characteristics, without such conscious intervention things
always exist in relation to other things, a fact directly apprehended when

10. In this, Dewey's thought bears a striking similarity to that of Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of
Practice, trans. Richard Niece (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1990), and his focus on how modern
society and institutions not only affect conscious interpretation and self-perception but also unconscious
perceptions of the body, basic patterns of adaptation, and seemingly endogenous tastes. Bourdieu calls
these patterns of unconscious, socially determined behavior and perception habitus and describes them
as "embodied history,internalized as a second nature and so forgotten as history. . the active presence
of the whole past of which it is the product" (56) The difference between the two remains that Dewey
confines his thoughts to spatial and temporal perception, whereas Bourdieu discusses habitus in terms of
various micro-cultural practices.

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 Jason Kosnoski 201

individuals immediately encounter them. Therefore, all objects not only possess
individual characteristics but also an aesthetic or spatio-temporal quality
depending upon their relation to other things and the speed with which they
move among these things. He further claims that the particular quality of these
relationships is constantly and unavoidably "sensed" by individuals on the fringes
of their consciousness." Dewey remains somewhat vague in characterizing
specific qualities, but he emphasizes that quality falls between two poles, that of
"harmony" and "tension" And he also emphasizes that even the largest
environment possesses sensed aesthetic qualities, stating that changes in quality
"accompany every disturbance of normal relations of husband and wife, parent
and child, group and group, class and class, nation and nation" (LW: 13, 225)
Furthermore, he stresses that society, as a system of institutions and meanings
possesses spatio-temporal or aesthetic qualities. Although harmony and discord
can take innumerable individual forms, a harmonious situation exhibits regular,
recurrent, or rhythmic patterns and close spatial relationships, while discord
manifests random temporal patterns and scattered distribution among elements.
Dewey describes the process as such: when an individual senses a
harmonious aesthetic quality enveloping a situation, he/she behaves in a regular
predictable way in relation to other elements of his/her environment. Or,in other
words, harmonious qualities indicate that the individual constituents of a
situation possess an easily discerned meaning, or an understandable relationship
with other things. If an object possesses chaotic aesthetics, this indicates a more
complex meaning, difficult to perceive because of its irregular interactions with
its environment. Dewey stresses that not only do the physical and social world
possess qualities but that an individual's "mental" environment exhibits these
characteristics. Dewey states:

Different ideas have their different "feels,"their immediate qualitative aspects,

just as much as anything else. One who is thinking his way through a
complicated problem finds direction on his way by means of this property of
ideas, their qualities stop him when he enters the wrong path and send him
ahead when he hits the right one. These are signs of an intellectual "stop"and
go."
-(LW: 10, 125)

11. Dewey's best account of the manner in which individuals "sense" the quality of relationships
occurs in the chapter "Nature, Life, and Body-Mind" in Experience and Nature (LW: 1, 191-226).
Furthermore, recent neurological studies have focused on the importance of subconscious "sense" to
both rational thought and the construction of identity. See Antonio Damasio, The Feeling of What
Happens: The Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (New York:Harcourt Brace, 1999).

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202 JOHN DEWEY'SSOCIALAESTHETICS

Furthermore, thought or the construction of meanings between seemingly

unrelated things12 moves forward through both conscious acts of logic and
"feeling"the general relationships between disparate ideas and elements of the
environment. A general sense of whether or not ideas fit together bind one
element in the thought process to another.13 Therefore, effective thought
processes possess particular temporal qualities. Dewey states that the experience
of thought:

Like that of watching a storm reach its height and gradually subside, is one
continuous movement of subject matters. Like the ocean in the storm, there
are a series of waves; suggestions reaching out and being broken in a clash, or
being carried onwards by a cooperative wave. . .. Hence an experience of
thinking has its own aesthetic quality
-(LW: 10, 45)

Therefore, the order and pace in which individuals experience new objects and
ideas either encourages the construction of these relationships or discourages
them. And the most seemingly simple object or idea, when located in a chaotic
aesthetic environment, will confuse the most intelligent individual.
The observation that an individual's experience consists of both the
knowledge of substantive facts and the sense of aesthetic qualities in Art as
Experience leads Dewey to observe that society as constituted by diverse
institutions, associations, and practices in relation possesses a general aesthetic.
He observes that in his contemporary aesthetic social environment "what is
prized is then the mere undergoing of this and that irrespective of perception of
any meaning, the crowding together of as many impressions as possible is
thought to be life even though no one of them is more than a flitting and a
slipping." (LW: 10, 51) This "crowding together of as many perceptions as
possible,' articulated in the apparently apolitical Art as Experience, closely
resembles Dewey's social analysis as expressed in the Public and Its Problems and
IndividualismOld and New. The greater danger to the individual than the inability
to perceive the meaning possessed by any individual thing lies in long exposure
to fragmented social aesthetics, which produces habits that inhibit the ability to
perceive social meaning and envision the future social relationships he/she might

12. He states that thinking "always proceeds by taking the thing inquired out of its isolation. The
search is continued until the thing is discovered to be a related part in some larger whole" (How We
Think, 2nd ed., LW:8, 226).
13. This presentation of Dewey's aesthetic interpretation of the experience of thinking remains
necessarily brief. Dewey fully outlines his theory of thinking in How We Think,2nd ed. (LW:8) and Logic:
The Theory of Inquiry (LW:7) Thomas Alexander's John Dewey's Theory of Art, Experience and Nature:
Horizons of Feeling (Albany: State University of New YorkPress, 1987) presents an excellent synthesis of
Dewey's aesthetic interpretation of thought.

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 Jason Kosnoski 203

build through his/her autonomous political action. Environments inevitably

alternate between periods of harmony and discord, with harmonious environ-
ments immediately admitting of meaning and chaotic environments requiring
extra efforts to discern meaning. However, exclusive exposure to chaotic social
aesthetics leaves the individual with no experience of the "feel" of the
relationship of ideas, nor the ability to construct these relationships. The
disconnected institutions, associations, and products that constitute modern
experience do not allow for their accumulation into the "cooperative wave," nor
does the frenetic movement most experienced encourage the steady "continuous
movement" of subject matters described previously
In sum, Dewey laments that modern society possesses aesthetic qualities that
render difficult linking one's individual experience to social phenomena, and
encourages habits destructive of this deceptively difficult process. Without this
activity,there can be no public because thinking creates the connection between
individual actions and their larger implications.

Dewey and Contemporary Aesthetics

Although claims that Dewey's social critique was more complex than
understood by contemporary interpreters might excite intellectual historians,
this realization does little to aid contemporary political scientists unless it can
shed light upon recent circumstances. This task is not as daunting as it might
seem due to the contemporary theorists who have taken up the theme of social
space and time as a tool for understanding contemporary American culture and
politics. These writers particularly focus on the aesthetic character of the social
entities individuals experience in their everyday life, such as voluntary
associations, commodity exchanges, and workplaces. A brief review of some of
these theorists will demonstrate that Dewey's analysis not only still describes
social trends in the United States but also that his analysis adds a unique
perspective to this growing literature.
In an example of empirical works that mirror Dewey's concern with social
aesthetics, Robert Wunthow finds, in opposition to those who claim association
in civil society in itself has declined, that while levels of participation in these
groups have remained constant, their aesthetic qualities have changed. He
observes that these groups have become "porous"or "possess social boundaries
that permit people, goods, information, and other resources to flow across them
with relative ease."'4The porousness of association allows individuals to quickly
shift participation from one group to another, and therefore although individuals

JoiningTogetherin America'sFragmentedCommunities
14. RobertWunthow,Loose Connections:
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 71.

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204 JOHN DEWEY'SSOCIALAESTHETICS

might devote the same aggregate amount of time to association, the length of
participation in individual groups declines. Yet this shifting does not result in
exposure to other groups, and therefore to other opinions. Wunthow emphasizes
that "verticalrelationships that connect people from different social strata do not
seem to occur naturally or easily in today's society. Americans generally choose
friends who are like themselves, live in neighborhoods with people of similar
incomes, and join community organizations with relatively homogenous
memberships."5 Therefore, Wunthow demonstrates that while associations share
the same substantive character as their progenitors, they differ quite markedly in
their aesthetic qualities. Demographer Michael Weiss echoes these observations
on a national scale through his identification of 62 distinct "clusters"into which
Americans divide themselves according to consumer taste, economic class, and
political affiliation. Although social stratification is nothing new within the United
States, these clusters are unique in that they are scattered across the country with
little coherent pattern. One is just as likely to find members of the "starter
families" clusters who voted for Ross Perot, drive Hyundai excels, and watch
Dateline NBC in Fairfield, California as one is in Pascagoula, Mississippi.16These
contemporary analyses add credence to Dewey's observation that social
experience has become more fragmentary and episodic.
Furthermore, the electronic media that seemed to promise free flow of
information has dramatically undermined the individual's ability to comprehend
the meaning of this information due to fragmentation. Cass Sunstein in his
Republic.com notes that "in the face of dramatic recent increases in commu-
nications options, there is an omnipresent risk of information overload-too
many options, too many topics, too many opinions, a cacophony of voices"'17
This information overload remains particularly acute due to the proliferation of
on-line sources that paradoxically increase the amount of information available
to the individual, while contributing to the restriction of actual exposure to
different perspectives.18 The Internet creates particularly fragmented social
aesthetics due to the increased ability to filterout information that contradicts the
individual's prejudices. Sunstein notes:

15. Wunthow,Loose Connections, 210.

16. Michael Weiss, The Clustered World:How We Live, What We Buy, and What it all Means About
Who WeAre (Boston: Little Brown Publishing, 2000), 250.
17. Cass Sunstein, Republic.com. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 56.
18. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, usually an unequivocal endorser of new
communication technologies, relates a speech from an even more unlikely critic of technology, Microsoft
Corporation Researcher Linda Stone. She posits that cellular phones and other devices have led to the
age of "continuous partial attention.... It means that while you are answering your e-mail and talking to
your kid, your cell phone rings and you have a conversation. You are now involved in a continuous flow
of interaction in which you can only partially concentrate on each" See, "CyberSerfdom"'The New York
Times, Tuesday,January 30, A23.

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 Jason Kosnoski 205

Not surprisingly,people of certain interests and political convictions tend to

choose sites and discussion groups that support their convictions. Because the
Internet makes it easier to find like-minded individuals, it can facilitate and
strengthen fringe communities that have a common ideology but are
dispersed geographically Thus, particle physicists, Star Trek fans, and
members of militia groups have used the Internet to find each other, swap
information and stoke each other's passions.19

Although noting that the Internet encourages both insularityand a cacophony of

voices might seem to be a contradiction, this dual emphasis in fact highlights the
aesthetic nature of the trends he discusses. The "too many topics" Sunstein notes
earlier do not necessarily originate from divergent perspectives or social milieus.
In fact, his analysis instead suggests that individuals experience larger amounts of
similar information through the Internet, and therefore the difference it brings
remains in the aesthetic realm.20 New communications technology does not
encourage the reception of different information, simply a different way of
experiencing the same information. Finally,not only do these media increase the
spatial fragmentation of information but also they increase its pace of reception.
Sunstein chronicles the increasing frequency of "cybercascades" where
unfiltered and increasingly inaccurate information spreads and becomes
common opinion. Even accurate information, because of its increasing speed,
tends to more quickly polarize already fragmented groups and furtherdiscourage
them from thinking, in the Deweyan sense of the term, about the larger meaning
of this information.

The Pioneers

While these congruities between Dewey and contemporary empirical and

theoretical work on social aesthetics might confirm Dewey's ongoing relevance,
they do not indicate any particular implications for his aesthetic critique. What, if
anything, can Dewey's analysis tell contemporary political inquirers about how to
counteract these social aesthetics? He explains his solution through discussing
the environment and character of the American pioneer. Although this figure

19. Sunstein, Republic.com, 58.

20. These observations are reiterated by Todd Gitlin when he says of the media that "the torrent is
seamless: a collage of back-to-back stories, talk show banter, fragments of ads, soundtracks of musical
snippets. Even as we clink around, something feels uniform-a relentless pace, a pattern of interruption,
a pressure toward unseriousness, readiness for sensation, an anticipation of the next new thing.
Whatever the diversity of texts, the media largely share a texture.. . . real and unreal, present and absent,
disposable and essential, distracting and absorbing, sensational and tedious, emotional and numbing"
See MediaUnlimited: of Imagesand SoundsOverwhelmsOurLives,(New York:Henry
How the Torrent
Holt and Company 2001), 7, italics added.

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206 JOHN DEWEY'S SOCIAL AESTHETICS

might seem atavistically inappropriate, Dewey begins by noting the similarities

between the pioneers and contemporary individuals. Both face radically
undetermined physical and social environments where old beliefs and
techniques do not produce expected outcomes. Dewey emphasizes in
Construction and Criticism that "our forefathers were constantly moving on,
many of them moved physically Their migrations and new settlements created a
constantly expanding frontier and horizon." (LW: 5, 128) And just as the
constantly shifting contemporary social environment calls upon the individual to
quickly discern ever-changing social relationships, the pioneers were called upon
to exercise "versatilityand inventiveness, ready adaptation to new conditions,
minds of courage and fertilityin facing obstacles. Originalwork was once done in
politics and government in this country because there were so many minds
trained to deal with unprecedented conditions in daily life. Men were not then
afraid to experiment and improvise; they had to do these things in order not to be
overwhelmed by alien forces."(LW:5, 128-29, italics added) But these similarities
should not be taken too far. Dewey emphasizes that his inquiry into pioneer life
should be understood as a search for ideas applicable to industrialized America.
He asks "how shall we today under our conditions develop the same
independence and initiative of mind with respect to our problems that [the
pioneers] were forced to evolve in the face of their problems?" (LW:5, 130) With
this caveat in mind, the question remains of what exact aspects of the pioneer
environment called out these personal characteristics that Dewey believes are so
desperately needed for the contemporary public.
Dewey's admiration lies in the pioneer's ability to grasp the connections
between themselves and their confusing new environments. He states in Freedom
and Culture "before we engage in too much pity for the inhabitants of our rural
regions before the days of invention of modern devices for circulation of
information, we should recall that they knew more about the things that affected
their own lives than the city dweller of today is likely to know about the
causes of his affairs."(LW:13, 94) Although this might seem to be no impressive
attribute because the modern individual is called upon to master much greater
amounts of knowledge, Dewey claims the pioneer, who was required to know
multiple techniques in agriculture, construction, hunting, and medicine, could
not be said to "know" quantifiably less than a contemporary citizen. He also
emphasizes that pioneer society was not less complicated or differentiated than
current life. Despite this complexity, the claim that the pioneer knew the "causes
of his affairs"demonstrates that Dewey believed these individuals possessed
greater perception of the manner in which the different aspects of their lives
affected each other. In other words, they possessed clear cognitive maps that
revealed the locations and relationships of the different aspects of their social
geography

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 Jason Kosnoski 207

This understanding was encouraged through the unique aesthetic environ-

ment of the pioneers; although they faced undetermined circumstances, the
social geography of their environment allowed for easy detection of the
unexpected and seemingly unrelated results of their actions. In other words,
because the various activities in which they engaged all occurred in a limited
area, both geographic and social, they could easily observe and modify the
results their actions initiated in the totality of their environment. The social
institutions were that scattered across the social landscape of the urban world
were compacted into the limited space of the frontier town. Not only were towns
closely clustered together but also individuals undertook multiple roles and
could therefore directly observe the effects of actions upon numerous social and
technical endeavors. Individuals directly experienced all the effects of their
actions because their daily occupations and information "bore pretty directly
upon what they had to do, while its sources were pretty much within their
control." (LW: 13, 94) They learned to conceive of their actions in their
relationality or in other words they gained a sense that their actions necessarily
possessed a location on the social geography. In School and Society,Dewey credits
this skill to an environment where

the supply of flour, of lumber, of foods, of building materials, of household

furniture,even of metal ware, of nails, hinges, hammers, etc. was produced in
the immediate neighborhood, in shops which were constantly open to
inspection and often centers of neighborhood congregation. The entire
industrial process stood revealed, from production on the farm of the raw
materials till the finished article was actually put to use.
-(MW: 1, 7)

As a result of their cultivated expectation that social and cultural events possess
wider consequences, when faced with a confusing situation, the first reaction of
the pioneers was to search for the general effects of their actions upon the entire
environment, not to examine the details of the individual occurence. Hence,
although the pioneer social environment was differentiated with individuals
undertaking multiple social tasks, the location of these tasks within their social
geography encouraged the perception of their individual inter-relationships.They
could "sense" the effect that one action had upon another, and therefore their
attention focused upon the relationships between things, not the things in
themselves. In general, Dewey claims that the pioneers could sense both the
effects of their actions on the environment and the relationships that different
aspects of society possessed toward each other.
In addition to these propitious spatial dynamics, the pioneer life possessed
temporal characteristics that encouraged the propensity to perceive social

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208 JOHN DEWEY'S SOCIAL AESTHETICS

meaning. Dewey emphasizes that pioneer existence entailed frequent, yet steady
and recurrent movement between the individual activities in which they engaged
in their daily lives. And within each individual activity,they were forced to devote
an extended period of time to its fulfillment due to the lack of interchangeable
parts and ready-made materials. Instead of fitting together pre-fabricated parts or
sorting meaningless data, Dewey stresses that the pioneers expended long efforts
slowly modifying their tools and raw materials. For example, he states in Art as
Experiencethat

the long rhythms of agrarian pursuits were broken into minuter and more
directly perceptible cycles with the development of the crafts. With the
working of wood, metal, fibers, clay, the change of raw material into
consummated result, through technically controlled means, is objectly [sic]
manifest. In working the matter there are the recurrent beats of patting,
chipping, molding, cutting, pounding, that mark off the work into measures.
-(LW: 10, 152)

Directly working with materials and agriculture encourages slow repeated

interactions that not only force long periods of encounter with objects but also
the rhythmic recurrence of observation and action. The metalworker strikes his/
her material, observes its effect, and then hits again. When the material
approaches resembling whatever tool he/she intended, perhaps a horseshoe, he/
she would then ride the newly shod horse to directly experience whether the tool
adequately performed. If it did not, the likely outcome at the beginning of the
process, he/she would modify the tool based upon his/her own experience.
Dewey emphasizes that "to produce and then to see and judge what we and
others have done in order that we may create again is the law of all natural
activity ... Production that is not followed by criticism becomes a mere gush of
impulse; criticism that is not a step to furthercreation deadens impulse and ends
in sterility."(LW:5, 140) Therefore, even when facing unknown situations, their
rhythmic movement among different social locations encouraged the discern-
ment of the effects of their actions.
Dewey emphasizes that the pioneers gained these habits subconsciously
through repeated encounters with new situations. All the while, the aesthetic
qualities of their environment persistently shaped their unconscious habits. Not
only did they possess the general propensity to search for the greater meaning of
their actions in confusing situations, but they also possessed the skills to
continually rethink the meaning of the social events and institutions they
encountered. He claims that they gained the habit of sensing whether two
unfamiliar ideas possessed a possible relationship with each other because
their previous geography afforded many opportunities to experience such

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 Jason Kosnoski 209

connections. They cultivated the propensity to "move"slowly and rhythmically

among foreign ideas and institutions when searching for their possible
association. And more importantly, not only did these habits allow them to
understand the contingencies of frontier life, but they traveled with them to
whatever novel social situation they might face.
Yet with all of these advantages, most pioneers remained limited in their
perspective and deficient in their democratic skills. Dewey realized this, and
therefore presents his reconstruction of a very extraordinary pioneer in order to
hypothesize the promise of the frontier social aesthetic. Once again, as with his
definition of the aesthetic and thinking, his presentation of this figure, Thomas
Jefferson is highly idiosyncratic. Dewey begins his "PresentingThomas Jefferson"
by stating that Jefferson was a product of "both the pioneer frontier and the
Enlightenment of the 18th century." (LW:14, 210) His education exposed him to
wide swaths of knowledge unavailable to most pioneers, yet his "pioneer"
background and habits (Dewey notes that Jefferson's father was a frontiersman)
led him to interact with this knowledge as if all of the Enlightenment were his
rural environment. Dewey stresses that Jefferson approached ideas and social
positions as his provisional tools that were to alternate among until they could be
understood for all their potential uses and meanings. He states of Jefferson:

His curiosity was insatiable. His interest in almost every new and useful
invention was at least as equal to that of Franklin.... He occupied practically
every possible position in public life, serving in each not only with distinction
but marked power of adaptability to the new and unexpected..... He was an
idealist whose native faith was developed, checked and confirmed by
extensive and varied practical experience.
-(LW: 14, 204)

Here, Dewey stresses familiar themes. It was not only what Jefferson knew, but
how he knew and developed these ideas. Not only was he a scientist, farmer,
politician, and intellectual, but his alternation between these different profes-
sions exposed him to ideas in such a way that he could discern the connections
between these areas of knowledge. As he could not only perform varied activities,
but understand their greater meaning, he was able to deploy these knowledges in
innovative ways.
Although throughout much of his panegyric, Dewey expresses these idealized
characteristics of Jefferson's personality through simple superlatives and their
practical consequences, he does hint toward their aesthetic origins. Dewey
emphasizes "the key to the work and character of our first great democrat; the
vital union of attitudes and convictions so spontaneous that they are the kind
called instinctive with the fruitsof a rich and varied experience." (LW:14, 202) He

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210 JOHN DEWEY'SSOCIALAESTHETICS

also states that "seldom has such an unusually sincere and united temperament
been so happily combined with rich opportunities for observation and reflection."
(LW: 14, 202) A cursory reading of such statements might lead the reader to
interpret them as mere platitudes. However, with an understanding of the
importance Dewey places on aesthetic environments and the habits they create,
these descriptions reveal that Jefferson's democratic character originated,
according to Dewey, in his ability to expertly manage the aesthetics of his
experience. Note that Dewey highlights Jefferson's "united temperament" and the
"union of attitudes and convictions" with "a rich and varied experience." This
"union" came about through Jefferson's ability to related gain insight from the
varied aspects of his seemly chaotic career. It should be stressed that this
harmony did not somehow obviate tension and conflict between Jefferson's
ideas; instead this harmony manifested itself through Jefferson'sability to discern
the meaning of seemingly disconnected events and ideas. Furthermore, Dewey
stressed that this unity operated the importance of
"spontaneously,"suggesting
habits to its construction and maintenance. Dewey concludes by claiming that
this unity "expressed the liberal cause" in that, to Dewey, it demonstrates the
ability to not simply tolerate different values and political positions but to use
these varied meanings to form one's own life plans. He states that "the liberal
spirit is marked by its own picture of the pattern that is required: a social
organization that will make possible effective liberty and opportunity for personal
growth in the mind and spirit in all individuals" and where "intelligence actually
existent and potentially available [is] embodied in that institutional medium in
which an individual thinks, desires and acts." (LW:13, 41-42)
Jefferson came of age in an environment that gave him a character that
allowed him to develop habits that allowed him to use the "intelligence actually
existent and potentially available" or in other words spontaneously exercise the
liberal spirit. The "social organization" that encourages these habits is
characterized by particular spatial and temporal qualities. It is these qualities,
Dewey claims, that modern American society lacks.

Aesthetic Associations
With the particular aesthetic of pioneer life established as a major Dewey
concern, one can begin to construct possible strategies based on this theme to
encourage these lost aesthetic conceptions and habits in contemporary life.
When searching Dewey's writing for a program to counteract the fragmented
aesthetics of contemporary life, one is pulled back slightly to the interpretations
discredited at the beginning of the essay in that Dewey, in all of his writings,
clearly focuses on small-scale, face-to-face associations. With his focus on social
aesthetics established, a fruitfulinterpretivestrategy would be to tie his interest in

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 Jason Kosnoski 211

small-scale association with his aesthetic concerns, an interpretivedirection away

from most recent civil-society theorists. Most contemporary theorists of civil
society emphasize the beneficial effects of conversation, work, or some other
activity unique to face-to-face interaction. For example, through directly
confronting strange viewpoints and parsing over complicated information,
individuals develop political sophistication or confidence they could never gain
through activity in an impersonal modern political institution. However, Dewey
expresses skepticism concerning the democratic benefits of this substantive
aspect of conversation. For example, he states in Liberalism and Social Action,
"discussion and dialectic, however, indispensable they are to the elaboration of
ideas and policies after ideas are once put forth are weak reeds to depend upon
for systematic origination of comprehensive plans . . . ." (LW: 11, 50) Hence,
Dewey felt that associations should not be conceived of as incubators of specific
policies or virtues that will later guide public action. Not only should these groups
remain inadequate as generators of policy but they should also not be thought of
as generating personal characteristics such as civic pride or tolerance.
An aesthetic reading of Dewey's concern with civil society emphasizes these
associations' role in acting as agents of cognitive meditation between the
individual and fragmented, frenetic social aesthetics. For example, in The Public
and Its Problems Dewey asks "can the vast innumerable and intricate currents of
trans-local associations be so banked and conducted that they will pour the
generous and abundant meanings of which they are potential bearers into the
smaller intimate unions of human beings living in immediate contact with one
another?" (LW: 2, 367) In stating this he emphasizes not the specific topics
discussed in associations but whether or not these associations act as agents that
assist individuals in constructing the relationships between seemingly discon-
nected social events and institutions. Groups should encourage the cultivation of
a particular style of inquiry; no particular public concepts should be encouraged
because the public transforms itself so frequently. Furthermore, because the
relationship between individuals and their environment can be constructed in
many different ways, emphasizing different social causes and reflecting personal
biases,21 these associations would not produce uniform interpretations that
would unify diverse populations due to their objective authority. They instead

21. In Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (LW:12), he stresses that constructing social meaning does not
produce objective truths. He claims there is "another assumption which underlies a considerable part of
allegedly scientific social inquiry; the idea, namely, that facts are just there and need only to be observed
accurately and be assembled in sufficient number to warrant generalization .... no generalization can
emerge as a warranted conclusion unless a generalization in the form of a hypothesis has previously
exercised control of the operations of discriminate selection and synthetic ordering of material to form
the fact of and for a problem" (491-92) These hypotheses "grow out of actual social situations, needs,
troubles" (493), which depend upon the perspective of the individual and not abstract considerations.

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212 JOHN DEWEY'SSOCIALAESTHETICS

would assist individuals in thinking about their seemingly isolated actions and
endowing them with the public meanings obscured by fragmented society.
Small-scale associations aid the individual in connecting the scattered pieces
of contemporary society because they possess aesthetic qualities that counteract
the spatio-temporal qualities of society in general. He notes in Freedom and
Culturethat adequate mediation between fragmented society and the individual
"involves development of local agencies of communication and cooperation,
creating stable loyal attachments to militate against the centrifugal forces of
present culture, while at the same time they are of a kind to respond flexibly
to the demands of the larger unseen and indefinite public." (LW: 13, 177)
The previous quotation's invocation of stable attachments that protect
against centrifugal cultural forces clearly indicates that associations somehow
counteract the aesthetics of contemporary society. Or in The Public and Its
Problems he asks:

How can a public be organized we may ask, when literally it does not stay in
place? Only deep issues or those which can be make to appear such can find
a common denominator among all the shifting and unstable relationships.
Affections will continue as long as the heart beats. But attachment requires
something more than organic causes. The very things which stimulate and
intensify affections may undermine attachments. Forthese are bred in tranquil
stability; they are nourished in constant relationship. Acceleration of mobility
disturbs them at their root. And without abiding attachments associations are
too shifting and shaken to permit a public ready to locate and identify itself.
-(LW: 2, 323)

Two aspects of this passage merit particular attention. First, Dewey contrasts
attachment and affection. Attachment here refers to a type of relationship
encouraged in small-scale association, a relationship that allows for attachment
to larger society. Affections or common conceptions of good, nation, or ethics do
not breed attachments. In fact these substantive characteristics may "undermine"
attachment to a public overwhelmingly characterized by flux and contingency
Attachments instead depend on "tranquilstability,"and "constant relationship,"
characteristics that both suggest aesthetic qualities. Therefore, Dewey asserts that
these associations provide a sanctuary from the shifting movement and scattered
geography of modern society. Through discussion, individuals place discon-
nected concepts in spatial proximity and begin to explore their possible
relationship. Furthermore,in these sanctuaries they can devote ample time to the
process of rhythmicallyalternating between one topic and another without facing
the pressure of decision, and subsequently develop Jefferson's habits of liberal
mediation. Within these associations, the attachments upon which a general

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 Jason Kosnoski 213

perception of the public is dependent possess adequate space and time to grow,
a habitat not available in society at large.
After sufficient exposure to such an environment, Dewey hopes that citizens
will develop habits that will allow them to negotiate fragmented society without
the protection of associations. These asylums that protect citizens from the chaos
of contemporary society actually encourage more varied intercourse with the
diverse ideas that are a product of this chaos. Dewey stresses that these face-to-
face associations would not encourage retreat from modern life, but comprise
agents for better understanding it. With the cultivation of these habits, Dewey sees
individuals better able to understand the manner in which their lives relate to the
seemingly distant events comprising public debate. Furthermore, Dewey asserts
that if individuals possessed a forum where they could slowly, rhythmically
assimilate the many meanings and interpretations made available through the
world community, they would lose the insularity that characterized earlier
pioneer culture. Unlike pioneer communities, such an association

will be alive and flexible as well as stable, responsive to the complex and
world-wide scene in which it is enmeshed. While local it will not be isolated.
Its larger relationships will provide an inexhaustible and flowing fund of
meanings upon which to draw, with assurance that its drafts will be honored.
-(LW: 2, 370)

These associations would possess the best of both worlds: the understanding of
pioneer communities with the cosmopolitanism only available through globa-
lized society. This is because they would cultivate the habits that allow individuals
not only to understand social relationships but also to fully take advantage of this
understanding and integrate this knowledge into their own political identity.
Dewey calls this function of associations the encouragement of "liberal
mediation." In Liberalismand Social Action, he states:

What I have called the mediating function of liberalism is all one with the work
of intelligence. The indictments that are drawn against the intelligence of
individuals are in truth indictments of a social order that does not permit the
average individual to have access to the rich store of the accumulated wealth
of mankind in knowledge, ideas and purposes. There does not now exist the
kind of social organization that even permits the average human being to
share the potentially available social intelligence.
-(LW: 11, 37-38, italics added)

With the inclusion of this explicitly political function, Dewey links associations
not simply to the encouragement of pioneer habits, but also to the Jeffersonian

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214 JOHN DEWEY'SSOCIALAESTHETICS

liberal-democratic character. Citizens who participate in associations that

provide liberal mediation not only understand the linkages between the various
aspects of their individual lives and society but also welcome the diverse
meanings to which they are exposed as opportunities to rethink their own
political positions and identities.
Although they might not choose to vigorously participate in public through
direct political action, Dewey feels interest in the public itself would increase
through involvement in such associations. As citizens came to realize the public
implications of their actions more and more, they would become more
concerned with attempting to influence the institutions that affect their lives in
whatever form they might choose. This direct political participation would occur
in associations independent of the "protective"associations that foment general
interest in the public itself. Yet through political participation, individuals change
the relationships they hope to influence. Therefore, Dewey's analysis implies that
politically active individuals would need to alternate participation in two "types"
of associations-protective and active--just as the pioneers had to establish a
rhythm between "construction and criticism."Whatever the type of participation,
whether the limited act of voting or the involved process of directly attempting to
craft policy through participatory structures, without periodic efforts to "reorient"
oneself through re-establishing the connections between oneself and the various
aspects of the social environment, the confusion that causes the public to be
"lost"will reemerge and undermine the most liberal approach to interpreting the
public.

Conclusion
This has necessarily been a brief sketch of the political implication of an
aesthetic interpretation of Dewey's political and social writings. Despite its brevity
it does help to establish a plausible account of Dewey's social critique and theory
of civil society where none existed before. The account should especially interest
those currently involved in debates concerning the political implications of
participation in voluntary associations. This is because it contradicts most
"congruence" theorists of civil society. Nancy Rosenblum describes civil society
theorists who adhere to a "logic of congruence" and assume that by establishing
associations that exhibit certain qualities, these characteristics will encourage
congruent personal and political attitudes. She states that "there is the tendency
to adopt a simplistic transmission belt model of civil society which says that the
beneficial formative effects of association spill over from one sphere to another."22

22. Nancy Rosenblum, Membership and Morals: The Personal Uses of Pluralism in America
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 48.

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 Jason Kosnoski 215

In other words, they claim that participation in non-hierarchical, egalitarian

associations will produce similar behavior in political and institutional contexts.
This interpretation of Deweyan associations claims that, in fact, in order to
effectively incorporate the diversity and flux of modern society into one's political
self-consciousness one must periodically retreat from complexity. In this
interpretation, associations should not exactly mirror the characteristics they
wish to encourage. It does not surmise that repeated encounters with difference
will acclimate individuals to such encounters and therefore encourage political
tolerance. The flexible personality and the habits it requires develop through the
ability to separate oneself from the social diversity that constitutes the possibility
for "liberal mediation" between the individual and benefits of modern social
complexity.
Yet despite the fact that this interpretation envisions individuals retreating
from politics when they enter associations, it still depicts an active relationship
between voluntary associations and the public sphere. Nor does it claim the
protective function as the only function necessary for associations to perform in a
vibrant democracy Itsees individuals who are not overwhelmed by the onslaught
of disconnected information or confused by the shifting and obscure social
relationships that exist within global society as understanding with greater
precision how seemingly isolated actions possess public, and even global
implications. Furthermore,citizens will be able to identify the specific institutions
and social phenomena upon which to focus their attention in their public
actions, as opposed to the invective toward diffuse social categories such as
"governments" or "big business" so prevalent in contemporary political
discourse.23 Their liberal reactions to social change will consist of creative
reformulation of previously held beliefs. So although Dewey's civil society does
not encourage the active democratic practice that so many of his contemporary
interpreters support and does not require cultivation of the political skills that
recent democratic theorists claim necessary, it does provide a vision uniquely
suited to the social obstacles presently facing citizens attempting to understand
their political situation.

23. Gitlin describes different strategies individuals develop for navigating within fragmented
confusing society most of which exhibiting such vagueness. For example, the "paranoid" believes
shadowy forces to be behind the meaningless and confusing events of his/her life, while the "ironist"and
the "content critic" adopt a stance of detached bemusement and doubt the sincerity and relevance of all
public figures and ideas. For the "paranoid'style, see Media Unlimited, 142-45, for the "ironist:'150-52,
and for the "content critic:' 135-42.

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