democracy as reflexive cooperation - dewey and theory of democracy (a. honneth)

Democracy as Reflexive Cooperation: John Dewey and the Theory of Democracy TodayAuthor(s): Axel Honneth and John M. M. FarrellReviewed work(s):Source: Political Theory, Vol. 26, No. 6 (Dec., 1998), pp. 763-783Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/191992 .Accessed: 30/08/2012 05:55

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DEMOCRACY AS REFLEXIVE COOPERATION John Dewey and the Theory of Democracy Today

AXEL HONNETH Johann Wolfgang Goethe University

N OT LEAST AS A RESULT of the temporal coincidence of the fall of the Soviet empire and the Western debate on communitarianism, efforts to elucidate the normative foundations of democracy have increased worldwide in recent years. However, wherever an attempt was made to link up with the tradition of radical democracy-as demarcated from the liberal understanding of politics-the discussion quickly got on the confrontational track of republicanism versus proceduralism.1 Today, these key terms ordinarily des- ignate two normative models of democracy whose common goal it is to give democratic will formation a greater role than is usual in political liberalism. Instead of limiting the participatory activity of citizens to the function of periodically legitimating the state's exercise of power, their activity is to be a per- manent matter embodied in the democratic public sphere and should be understood as the source of all political decision-making processes.2

For all the common ground in their critique of liberalism, differences nonetheless exist between the two models. These follow from the different ways in which the principle of the democratic public sphere is normatively justified in each case. Whereas republicanism takes its orientation from antiquity's ideal of a citizenry for whose members the intersubjective negotiation of common affairs has become an essential part of their lives, proceduralism insists that what is needed to reactivate the process of democratic will formation is not citizens' virtues but simply morally justified procedures. In the former, the democratic public sphere is thus regarded as the medium of a self-governing political community; in the latter, it is regarded as the procedure with whose help society attempts to solve political problems rationally in a legitimate manner.'

AUTHOR'S NOTE: For critical remarks, useful advice, and helpful comments, I would like to thank Peter Niesen and, as always, Hans Joas.

POLITICAL THEORY, Vol. 26 No. 6, December 1998 763-783 ? 1998 Sage Publications, Inc.

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764 POLITICAL THEORY / December 1998

As Jiirgen Habermas has made clear, this central difference in the concept of the political public sphere is accompanied by further differences concerning the relation between the state and law.4 The tradition of republicanism assumes there is a solidary citizenry that is in a position to organize society itself through processes of communicative consultation and negotiation; therefore, state politics itself can be grasped here only as the implementation of publicly negotiated programs. The government and the parliament are no longer autonomous institutions of the state subject to specific guidelines, but the institutional spearhead of the progressively rejuvenating communication process that has its real center in the citizens' democratic public sphere.' By contrast, according to the proceduralist conception, state institutions have to form a legally bound but independent subsystem because the widely branch- ing communication structures of the public sphere do not at all possess the kind of political power by which universally binding decisions can be made. Rather, here, in preparliamentary space, public opinion is to be formed through the exchange of arguments and convictions. Public opinion programs decision-making in those institutions of the state administration that on the strength of democratic procedures have to guarantee the social presuppositions for the continued existence of the democratic public sphere.6

Despite their fragmentary quality, these references also indicate the necessary difference between the two approaches in their respective conceptions of law. Political republicanism has by nature a certain tendency to understand legal norms as the social instrument through which the political community attempts to preserve its own identity. According to the proceduralist conviction, basic rights represent a kind of guarantee for the continued existence of the interplay of the democratic public sphere and political administration. For the former, law is the crystallized expression of the particular self- understanding of a solidary citizenry; for the latter, it represents state- sanctioned but morally legitimated precautionary measures to protect the democratic procedure in its entire complexity.7

Now, this plump contrast of two models of radical democracy has domi- nated the political-philosophical discussion in recent years, but for all its fruitfulness, it has also had a negative effect: It frequently appears that these two concepts exhaust the spectrum of alternatives that present themselves today in the attempt to renew and expand democratic principles. However, more than merely two radically democratic alternatives to political liberalism can be found, as I would like to show by reconstructing John Dewey's theory of democracy.8 My claim that it is Dewey who presents a third path may appear surprising. Dewey is claimed by both sides as a theoretical

Honneth / DEMOCRACY AS REFLEXIVE COOPERATION 765

predecessor. It is not difficult for political republicanism to refer to elements of Dewey's theory of democracy because it is similarly based on the idea of an integration of all citizens in a self-organizing community.9 Nor does the proceduralist theory of democracy have any difficulties in relying on Dewey, for his emphasis on rational procedures of problem-solving is far more exten- sive than in other models of the political public sphere.'? Accordingly, my claim that Dewey's theory of democracy contains a third alternative to the liberal understanding of politics must demonstrate the inappropriateness of the other two claims. I will show indirectly that each touches only one of the two sides of Dewey's theory. They thus miss Dewey's synthesis into a single conception, which constitutes the real point of his position. Of course, to be able to understand how Dewey simultaneously conceives of reflexive procedures and political community and how he combines the idea of democratic delib- eration with the notion of community ends, I will need first to elucidate the premise that sharply distinguishes his from others' versions of a theory of democracy. In his endeavor to justify principles of an expanded democracy, Dewey, in contrast to republicanism and to democratic proceduralism, takes his orientation not from the model of communicative consultation but from the model of social cooperation. In brief: because Dewey wishes to understand democracy as a reflexive form of community cooperation, he is able to bring together the two opposing positions of current democratic theory.

In part 1, I present the theory of democracy of the early Dewey, in which the idea of proceeding from the sphere of social cooperation is already beginning to become evident. However, while still depending largely on Hegel and, in surprising concordance, with the early Marx, the idea of democratic self-administration here is so immediately derived from the premise of a cooperative division of labor that the central sphere of politically establishing communicative freedom is strangely excluded. In part II, I would like to show how Dewey, in the wake of his epistemological studies, gradually arrives at the proceduralist conception of the democratic public sphere that can be found in a more mature form in his book The Public and Its Problems. What is primarily of interest today in this mature model is the fact that the procedures of democratic will formation are grasped as the rational means with which a cooperatively integrated society attempts to solve its own problems. Finally, in part III, by elaborating the internal connection between cooperation and democracy, I can introduce Dewey's conception into the current debate. I would therefore like to conclude by showing that Dewey's mature model of democracy represents not just an alternative but is superior to the approaches predominating today.


I

The core of all radical democratic objections leveled against liberalism's understanding of democracy has referred to its negative, individualist conception of personal freedom."' Whether in Marx and the socialist tradition or in Tocqueville's heirs and the adherents of republicanism, the central argument has always been that in the liberal understanding of the formation of the democratic, political will could be reduced to the function of periodically legitimating state action. Here the subject is understood as previously fur- nished with a certain amount of individual freedom; and if the personal autonomy of the individual is understood as independent of the processes of social integration, this entails the following normative conclusion: The political activity of citizens must consist primarily in the regular control of a state apparatus whose essential task must, for its part, be the protection of their individual liberties. In contrast to this reductionist understanding of democratic participation, the various traditions that have developed as alternatives to liberalism in the past 200 years begin with a different, a communicative, concept of human freedom. From the evidence that the individual's freedom is dependent upon communicative relations, these traditions have inferred an expanded understanding of democratic will formation. Each individual citizen is now understood as attaining personal autonomy only in association with all others. Thus, the participation of all citizens in political decision-making is not merely the means by which each individual can secure her personal freedom for herself alone; rather, what it articulates is the fact that it is only in the medium of an interaction free from domination that each individual's freedom is to be attained and protected.

In such a counterprogram, a detailed answer to the question of how the mechanism of democratic will formation is constituted depends entirely on the specific character of the concept of communicative freedom employed. In the two drafts of democracy we have so far gotten as alternatives to liberalism, the communicative freedom of human beings is grasped in the same manner, namely, according to the model of intersubjective speech. In both Hannah Arendt and Jiirgen Habermas, the idea of democratic will formation originates in the notion that the single individual can attain freedom only in that public realm constituted by reaching agreement in language.'2 However, even at this early point, where it is just a matter of the underlying concept of communicative freedom, Dewey's theory of democracy already differs from the two approaches mentioned. If Dewey shares with Arendt and Habermas the intention of criticizing the individualist understanding of freedom, then he sees the incarnation of all communicative freedom not as intersubjective speech but as the communal (gemeinschaftlich) employment of individual


forces to cope with a problem. By proceeding from such an idea of voluntary cooperation, Dewey-obligated here more to Marx than to Toc- queville-attempts to draft an alternative to the liberal comprehension of democracy.

Already in "The Ethics of Democracy"'3-the very first essay in which Dewey dealt with the question of the theory of democracy-he outlines briefly the internal connection between cooperation, freedom, and democracy. The problem he takes up deals with the tendency of the then contempo- rary social philosophy to see in democracy just a mere organizational form of state government. What then remains from democratic ideals, according to Dewey, is just majority rule, understood as a "numerical" directive for the procedure according to which the members of the institutions of representa- tion are elected. In just a few pages, Dewey first does away with the central premise of this instrumentalist concept of democracy. He makes clear that to reduce the idea of democratic will formation to the numerical principle of majority rule means assuming society to be an unorganized mass of isolated individuals whose ends are so incongruous with one another that the intention or opinion held by the majority must be discovered arithmetically.'4 To this extent, the quantitative model of democracy shares with the classical theories of contract the notion that, prior to the formation of the state, individuals exist without any communicative relationship in total isolation. Only if unorganized or ruptured sociality is taken as the starting point can one con- sider this concept of democracy as the solution to the problem of social order (much as Hobbes has done). To present such a connection means, in Dewey's view, proving that democracy may not be understood instrumentally as a numerical principle for the formation of state order. For him it is too unrealis- tic, too much a mere fiction, to believe that social life unfolds without any association between the individuals prior to the formation of a political unit.'5 Thus, in the second part of his essay, Dewey turns the question around to explore the understanding of democracy that necessarily emerges on the condition of an antecedent intersubjectivity of social life.

As in all his early writings, the concept of society by which Dewey lets himself be guided in this draft of an alternative theory of democracy is still heavily influenced by Hegel. Hence, the intersubjectivity within whose framework social life has always unfolded is presented according to the model of a "social organism" in which each individual contributes to the reproduction of the whole through her own activity.16 The first fact character- istic of every kind of sociality is the existence of cooperation. However unguided or contingent, individuals do relate to one another by pursuing, on the basis of a division of labor, activities that together contribute to the maintenance of society. Given such a model of social life, for Dewey both personal


autonomy and political government have to be conceived of as related to one another, for the reality of social cooperation consists in a type of jointly shared good, whereby individual freedom and state politics have to be conceived of as its opposite embodiments. Because each member of society contributes, on the basis of a division of labor, through her own activities to the maintenance of society, she represents a "vital embodiment"'7 of the ends of society. For that reason, she is entitled not just to a part of the freedom made socially possible; rather, as an individual she always possesses the entire sovereignty through which all jointly as a people become the sovereign bearer of power. It is not without pride that Dewey declares that this notion of an embodiment of popular sovereignty in each individual citizen represents the central contribution made by the American revolution to the history of political ideas: "And this is the theory, often crudely expressed, but none the less true in substance, that every citizen is a sovereign, the American theory, a doctrine which in grandeur has but one equal in history, and that its fellow, namely, that every man is a priest of God."'8

Having appropriated the Christian heritage in this almost Marxist manner-according to which each citizen is completely sovereign as an individual because she serves, on the basis of a division of labor, the common good-Dewey can understand the state as the opposite pole of the relation outlined. Because a "common will" is articulated always more or less consciously in the mere fact of social cooperation, the state apparatus has to be determined as the political, executing institution of this will."9 That is why the government is to be conceived of not as a separate sphere to which public rep- resentatives are delegated under the application of the majority rule but only as a "living expression" of the combined effort to help implement the cooperatively pursued ends more effectively, that is, by concentrating reflexive forces. Here, Dewey takes the organism analogy even further by designating the government apparatus as the "eye" of the political community: "The eye is the body organized for seeing, and just so government is the state organized for declaring and executing its judgments. Government is to the state what language is to thought; it not only communicates the purposes of the state, but in so doing gives them for the first time articulation and generality."20

Now, Dewey is aware that up to this point in his argument he has only given a slightly different version of Plato or Aristotle. The classical political philosophers also conceived of the relation between individual freedom and political community as an organic interaction, in the sense that the single individual, by developing the appropriate virtues, experiences her freedom in the realization of a common good, which in turn is just an expression of the endeavors of all individuals-endeavors, that is, that are coordinated on the basis of a division of labor. To that extent, Dewey concedes, antiquity's ideal


of aristocracy does not essentially differ in substance from the democratic ideal. In both ideals, citizens are said to attain freedom through self- realization in conformity with the ethical ends that together constitute the ethical life (Sittlichkeit) of the polity.2" Hence, any difference between the two ideals must consist not in the ends but in the means of the political constitution: Whereas the aristocratic ideal believes only a small group of very tal- ented individuals are capable of ethically appropriate self-realization, such that the majority of the population has to be urged paternalistically by the elite to conduct a virtuous life, the democratic ideal is confident that every single member of society can, of her own free will, perfect herself in the desired direction of the good that is pursued on the basis of a division of labor. If, in the former, the communal virtues are imposed through persuasion or force from above, as it were, on the uneducated citizen, then in the latter, in democracy, there persists a reciprocal confidence that, in an unconstrained development of personality, each individual can find her appropriate function within society's complex of cooperation. Dewey calls this confidence in the capability of all members of a society to constitute a community the "individualism" of democracy:

Democracy differs as to its means. This universal, this law, this unity of purpose, this ful- filling of function in devotion to the interests of the social organism, is not to be put into a man from without. It mustbegin in the man himself, however much the good and the wise of society contribute. Personal responsibility, individual initiation, these are the notes of democracy.... There is an individualism in democracy which there is not in aristocracy; but it is an ethical, not a numerical individualism; it is an individualism of freedom, of responsibility, of initiative to and for the ethical ideal, not an individualism of lawlessness.22

This latter notion of a democratic individualism indicates in a sufficiently clear manner how the young John Dewey visualized the internal connection between cooperation, freedom, and democracy. He perceives the existence of a social division of labor as evidence for the fact that the individual owes her personal freedom solely to communication with the other members of a society. Freedom for Dewey is primarily the positive experience of unconstrained self-realization that teaches the individual to discover in herself those talents and capabilities through which she can in the end contribute, on the basis of a division of labor, to the maintenance of the social whole.23 If this natural-like process of a communal employment of individual forces on the part of all society's members is raised to consciousness and viewed as a cooperative project, then that ideal evolves that bears the name "democracy": It is the free association of all citizens for the purpose of realizing, on the basis of a division of labor, the ends shared by them; in so doing, society's members expect


of each other that they perfect their own capabilities precisely in the direction that serves the common good. It is easy for Dewey at the end of his essay to rediscover in this notion of democracy as an ethical ideal the three guiding principles of freedom, equality, and fraternity, which had become the normative embodiment of the French Revolution: a democratic constitution presupposes individual freedom in the sense of an unconstrained personality development that, on the condition of institutionalized equality of opportunity, allows all members of society to develop the capabilities and strengths that enable them in association with all others to contribute fraternally, or better, solidarily, to the pursuit of jointly shared ends.24

II

It is easy to recognize in this condensed synopsis what the weaknesses of the young Dewey's conception of democracy necessarily are. If Dewey had left his model of cooperative democracy in the theoretical state described above, it would be difficult to see why his reflections ought to be understood as an alternative to or even as a competitor of conceptions of democracy current today. By proceeding from the social division of labor, Dewey does indeed draw attention to a prepolitical dimension of social communication that is not as such sufficiently taken into consideration by republicanism or the proceduralist theory of democracy today. However, the way he allows-in accordance with his organism analogy-democratic self- administration to emerge directly from voluntary cooperation resembles the democracy ideal of the young Marx to such a degree that he must inadver- tently share all of its weaknesses too. The great insight that the cooperative processing of nature can represent-under certain, normatively constituted conditions-a primary form of communicative freedom was what inspired Marx to the idea of understanding a true democracy as nothing but the free association of producers; and in his model too, such a prepolitical institution of direct, cooperative self-administration would only be possible because the self-realization of people goes automatically, as it were, in a direction that motivates them to develop socially useful capabilities.25 All of these honor- able illusions, which basically owe their existence to a synthesis of Aristotle and Rousseau, return in an almost unchanged form in the young Dewey. They induce him to switch from the level of social cooperation to the sphere of collective self-administration in such a direct way that he is forced to occlude completely the problem of a political institutionalization of communicative


freedom. However, vis-a-vis such a model of democracy, which knows nei- ther elementary forms of a separation of powers nor intermediary associations in the political public sphere, the two concepts of radical democracy discussed today have a clear advantage. Because they proceed from an idea of communicative freedom according to which individual autonomy is bond to intersubjectively reaching agreement in the public realm, they begin- already at the level of basic concepts, as it were-with the social mechanism on which democratic will formation as a normative principle is based. Thus, what first appeared as an advantage of Dewey's theory of democracy- namely, that its starting point in the social division of labor included already in the premises demands for an economic democracy-appears at this point to be an all too evident weakness of his whole approach.26

Now, John Dewey, always open to new insights and eager to learn, did not leave his theory of democracy in the embryonic form he gave it in his early Hegelian period. Though the idea that individual freedom depends primarily on self-realization in a division of labor understood as cooperation is retained in the later phase, this notion is now pursued on the basis of a theory of action such that an independent concept of the public sphere begins to become apparent. In the almost fifty years that lie between his early theory of democracy and the publication of The Public and Its Problems,27 there is a whole series of intermediate stages that together further clarify his maturing conception.

Thus, in his psychological studies, which claim a large portion of his intellectual energies in the first quarter of the new century, he attempts to justify- for the first time explicitly-a tacitly Hegelian thesis on which his original ideal of democracy is based. He had assumed rather optimistically that human self-realization would strive by itself and without external constraint or influence in a direction that leads in the end to the voluntary acceptance of social obligations. In this view, if all members of society could actualize their own developmental potential on the basis of equal opportunity, they would want of their own free will to become good cooperative partners in the social division of labor. However, once Dewey overcomes his initial Hegelism, he has to realize that this thesis presupposes an untenable teleology of human nature. For that reason, he now endeavors in his various studies in psychology to work out the social mechanism that could explain, without metaphysical borrowings, the social compatibility of human self-realization.28 This new solution can be understood in terms of an intersubjectivist theory of human socialization: From their completely open drives, which at first consist of nothing other than a multitude of undirected and thus formable impulses, human beings can develop only those capabilities and needs as stable habits


of action that have met with the approval and esteem of their particular reference group; the satisfaction that a subject has in realizing certain action impulses increases to the degree to which it can be sure of the recognition of its partners in interaction. Insofar as every member of society always belongs to various reference groups, the superimposed layers of expectations see to it that, in the course of the development of a personality, only socially useful habits of action are formed.29 Dewey does not relinquish this model of human self-realization for the rest of his life. It also shapes the ideal of democracy in the book on the public. It assumes the function of bringing out the connection between the individual development of personality and a democratic community, which is presented as a relation of free exchange between cooperating groups:

A member of a robber band may express his powers in a way consonant with belonging to that group and be directed by the interest common to its members. But he does so only at the cost of repression of those of his potentialities that can be realized only through mem- bership in other groups. The robber band cannot interact flexibly with other groups; it can act only through isolating itself. It must prevent the operation of all interests save those which circumscribe it in its separateness. But a good citizen finds his conduct as a member of a political group enriching and enriched by his participation in family life, indus- try, scientific and artistic associations. There is a free give-and-take: fullness of integrated personality is therefore possible of achievement, since the pulls and responses of different groups reenforce one another and their values accord.3()

If these reflections on the mutual dependence of self-realization and a democratic life form can be understood as the outcome of his years of study of human personality development, during the same period but in a second discipline Dewey attained a further clarification of the premises of his democracy theory. As a supplement to his psychological studies, Dewey was also concerned with questions of the logic of scientific research. Here, he pro- ceeded from the pragmatist thesis that we have to be able to grasp every kind of scientific practice as a methodologically organized extension of those intellectual activities with which we, in our everyday action, attempt to inves- tigate and solve the problem causing a disruption. Guided by the example of experimental research in the natural sciences, Dewey could quickly recognize that the chances of finding clever solutions to problems rose with the quality of the cooperation on the part of researchers involved; the more the participating scientists could introduce, without constraint, their own hypotheses, beliefs, or intuitions into the investigation process, the more bal- anced, comprehensive, and thus intelligent would be the hypothesis they jointly formed in the end.31 It is this conclusion that Dewey began gradually to transfer over to social learning processes as a whole. In social cooperation-


he could correspondingly soon claim-the intelligence of the solution to emerging problems increases to the degree to which all those involved could, without constraint and with equal rights, exchange information and introduce reflections. Thus, in the end, from his research in the logic of sci- ence, Dewey developed an epistemological argument that proposed regard- ing democracy as a condition for increasing the rationality of solutions to social problems: Without democratic procedures, which guarantee all members of society something like communication free from domination, social challenges would not be resolved in intelligent ways. In this sense, Dewey could ultimately claim in The Public and Its Problems that democracy represents the political form of organization in which human intelligence achieves complete development; for it is only where methods of publicly debating individual convictions have assumed institutional form that, in social life, the communicative character of rational problem solving can be set free in the same manner as this is done in the natural sciences by experimental research in laboratories: "The retort only brings out the point: the difference made by different objects to think of and by different meanings in cir- culation, a more intelligent state of social affairs, one more informed with knowledge, one more directed by intelligence, would not improve original endowments one whit, but it would raise the level upon which the intelligence of all operates."32

In contrast to his original, organism-theoretic notion of democracy, this argument opened a path for Dewey that allowed him to see for the first time the rational value of democratic procedures. It was now possible for him to grant to procedures of unconstrained opinion and will formation a much greater role in a true democracy. A new problem arose, however: how might this insight into the procedural character of democracy be reconciled with the previously presented claim that individual self-realization was only possible in a community of cooperation? In what way was the epistemological focus on democratic procedures to be harmonized with the notion of a jointly shared idea of the good, of a democratic value community? The introduction of the concept of the public, which Dewey carries out in his book The Public and Its Problems, represents an initial, hesitant, but still today an eminently challenging response to this problem. Before returning to the question of the extent to which Dewey's theory of democracy contains a superior alternative to the two approaches of a radical democracy discussed today, I would like to sketch broadly the arguments in the study.

The most significant weakness of the democracy theory found in Dewey's early work proved to be the absence of a political dimension to communicative freedom. Like Marx, Dewey also moved from cooperative self- realization to collective self-administration so directly that in the end there


was no place at all for any discursive, procedural exercise of individual freedom in joint will formation. Dewey redresses this deficiency already in the first step of his study on the public by attempting to reconstruct-while proceeding from social cooperation and on the basis of action theory-the state as a sphere of joint problem solving. In terms of a history of theory, the argument fulfills the function of fending off metaphysical and teleological notions of the state; systematically, however, it provides Dewey with the opportunity to introduce the public as a discursive medium of cooperative problem solving under democratic conditions. The basic idea is very simple, even if the action-theoretic implementation might surprise us today: Social action unfolds in forms of interaction whose consequences in the simple case affect only those immediately involved; but as soon as those not involved see themselves affected by the consequences of such interaction, there emerges from their perspective the need for joint control of the corresponding actions either by their cessation or by their promotion. This articulation of the demand for joint problem-solving already constitutes for Dewey that which he will henceforth call "public": The term "public" is attributed to that sphere of social action that a social group can successfully prove to be in need of general regulation because encroaching consequences are being generated; and, accordingly, a "public" consists of the circle of citizens who, on the basis of a jointly experienced concern, share the conviction that they have to turn to the rest of society for the purposes of administratively controlling the relevant interaction.:

Of course, this proposed determination of the concept in turn raises a series of problems that Dewey cannot always satisfactorily solve in his text. There is thus above all the question of what is to be understood by those "indirect consequences of transactions" that can "affect" those beyond the circle of the immediately involved, especially whether this comprises only those consequences that are objective, interpretation-independent, or also those consequences that are relative to certain interpretations or moral sensibilities. However, irrespective of these internal problems, which Dewey would have had to resolve probably in favor of the second alternative, the great accom- plishment of his approach here consists in the proposal to assume a proceduralist differentiation between "private" and "public" instead of an essen- tialist distinction: "namely, that the line between private and public is to be drawn on the basis of the extent and scope of the consequences of acts which are so important as to need control."34 Now, it is not difficult to see how this action-theoretic concept of the "public" gives rise to a notion of the state that, in the sense of experimental problem solving, is tailored to the steering needs of a cooperating society: From the perspective of the interacting members of society, the various state institutions perform the task of ensuring the general


regulation ot indirect consequences of action, a regulation called for in various public spheres by those indirectly affected; that is why the state has to be regarded, as Dewey says, as a "secondary form of association" with which connected publics attempt to solve rationally encroaching problems of the coordination of social action. Conversely, the state so conceived has, vis-a-vis cooperating society as the sovereign, the function of securing (with the help of legal norms) the social conditions under which all citizens can articulate their interests without constraint and with equal opportunity. State institutions, whose officials are "officers of the public," have to enable, Dewey says, all members of society "to count with reasonable certainty upon what others will do"; they create "respect for others and for one's self."35

Up to this point, Dewey has primarily stated what role he wants to give politics or political action in reference to the cooperating society. The political sphere is not-as Hannah Arendt and, to a lesser degree, Habermas believe-the place for a communicative exercise of freedom but the cognitive medium with whose help society attempts, experimentally, to explore, process, and solve its own problems with the coordination of social action. Because the rationality of such problem solutions increases to the degree to which all those affected are equally included in the "research process," it is beyond question for Dewey that the political self-steering of society has to be democratically organized; the more actively, the more sensitively the connected publics react to social problems, the more rational the experimental process with which the state can reach universally approved problem solutions. But how, for Dewey, does the transition to the necessity of democratic ethical life, of a cooperating community, follow from this epistemological justification of democratic procedures? Here again, his answer is very simple, even if the solution might be surprising in view of the current discussion on democracy.

The diagnosis of the times that forms the starting point of Dewey's study is-as is generally known-the observation that, as a result of industrializa- tion, growth of complexity, and individualization, modern societies find themselves in a state of disintegration that makes ideas of a participation of all citizens in democratic public spheres appear illusionary. That is why he takes seriously the reservations of the political thinkers of his time who, in view of the differentiation of expert knowledge, can only regard the idea of democratic self-administration as a pure fiction. If all citizens are to take their orientation from democratic procedures of political problem solving, it is beyond question for Dewey that a form of prepolitical association must be presupposed, such as those that originally existed only in the small, easily observed communities of American townships: Society's members must have been able to see in advance that, through their cooperative actions, they


are pursuing a common goal, in order then to be able to understand the establishment of democratic institutions of self-organization as the means for a political solution to their problems of social coordination. To that extent, Dewey concedes dispassionately, the "great society" must first be trans- formed into a "great community" before democratic procedures can be com- prehended generally as a function of cooperative problem solving. There- fore, under the conditions of complex industrialized societies, the revival of democratic publics presupposes a reintegration of society that can only consist in the development of a common consciousness for the prepolitical association of all citizens.

After all we have so far discovered about Dewey's political-philosophical development, it is now no longer difficult to identify the mechanism in which he attempts to anchor such a prepolitical ethical life of democratic society: Like Durkheim in his book on the social division of labor,36 Dewey also assumes that only a fair and just form of a division of labor can give each individual member of society a consciousness of cooperatively contributing with all others to the realization of common goals. It is only the experience of participating, by means of an individual contribution, in the particular tasks of a group that can convince the single individual of the necessity of a democratic public: "In a search for the conditions under which the inchoate public now extant may function democratically, we may proceed from a statement of the nature of the democratic idea in its generic social sense. From the standpoint of the individual, it consists in having a responsible share according to capacity in forming and directing the activities of the groups to which one belongs and in participating according to need in the values which the groups sustain. From the standpoint of the groups, it demands liberation of the potentialities of members of a group in harmony with the interests and goods which are common."37

Taking one's orientation from democratic procedures presupposes a form of democratic ethical life anchored not in political virtues but in the consciousness of social cooperation. In this sense, Dewey can claim that in the end the three guiding maxims of the French Revolution normatively express ideals, which, through democratic and fair forms of the division of labor, are located in a prepolitical association:

In its just connection with communal experience, fraternity is another name for the consciously appreciated goods which accrue from an association in which all share, and which give direction to the conduct of each. Liberty is that secure release and fulfillment of personal potentialities which take place only in rich and manifold association with others: the power to be an individualized self making a distinctive contribution and enjoying in its own way the fruits of association. Equality denotes the unhampered share which each individual member of the community has in the consequences of associated


action. It is equitable because it is measured only by need and capacity to utilize, not by extraneous factors which deprive one in order that another may take and have.38

III

Among the theories of democracy attempting to overcome-in the sense of a further democratization-the liberal understanding of politics, Dewey's mature conception represents Marx's legacy, without taking over his mis- takes. Dewey sees the presupposition for a revitalization of democratic publics located in the prepolitical sphere of the social division of labor, which has to be regulated in such a fair and just manner that each member of society can understand herself as an active participant in a cooperative enterprise. With- out such a consciousness of shared responsibility and cooperation, Dewey correctly assumes, the individual will never manage to see in democratic procedures the means for joint problem-solving. To that extent, democratic procedures of will formation and the just organization of the division of labor refer to one another: Only a form of the division of labor that grants each member of society, according to autonomously discovered abilities and talents, a fair chance to assume socially desirable occupations allows that consciousness of communal cooperation to emerge. Only thus will democratic procedures necessarily have a value as the best instrument for rationally solving jointly shared problems. To elaborate this insight of Dewey's conception of democracy in a little greater detail, let us now return, in a comparative mode, to the two normative models presented at the beginning as contempo- rary alternatives to political liberalism. As we have seen, Dewey shares with republicanism and with proceduralism the critique of the liberal understanding of democracy. However, he proceeds from a model of communicative freedom that enables the development of a stronger, more demanding concept of democratic will formation. But Dewey's notion of how individual freedom springs from communication is gleaned not from intersubjective speech but from communal cooperation. As a consequence, this difference leads to a very different theory of democracy, one that has two advantages over republicanism and two over the proceduralist theory of democracy.

In the tradition of republicanism, citizens are expected to develop political virtues, which are said to represent an essential presupposition for participation in the intersubjective practice of opinion and will formation; for it is only the extent to which political participation itself has become a central part of the lives of all society's members that the democratic public sphere can main- tain itself as an end for itself. Such a strong ethicization of politics, scarcely compatible with the actual value pluralism of modern societies, could not be


further from the mature Dewey. At this point in his book on the public, he writes, polemically, as if to avert a cultural critique of consumerism in Han- nah Arendt's sense: "Man is a consuming and sportive animal as well as a political one."39 Dewey can make this statement so nonchalantly because in his view the realization of the type of community necessary for a dynamic democracy must unfold not within the political sphere but prepolitically within structures of a division of labor experienced as cooperation. And here, within networks of groups and associations that relate to one another along the lines of a division of labor, the factual pluralism of value orientations is naturally of functional advantage because it sees to the development of an abundance of completely different interests and abilities. For his idea of a cooperative community, however, Dewey has to be able to presuppose-at a second, higher level-an individual orientation toward ajointly shared good; but this can be understood as that end to which each individual must be able to relate in the sense of a higher-order value, if this individual is to understand her activity as a contribution to a cooperative process.40

Dewey goes beyond the strict limits set to republicanism to arrive at a procedural model of the democratic public sphere. Whereas, for instance, with Hannah Arendt, it is never entirely clear according to what standard the institutional form of intersubjective opinion formation is to be gauged as it is nei- ther a means nor an instrument but an end in itself, with Dewey, the answer is evident: Because the democratic public sphere constitutes the medium through which society attempts to process and solve its problems, its establishment and composition depend completely upon criteria of rational problem solving. Indeed, Dewey goes so far as to conceive of the process of public will formation as a large-scale experimental process in which, according to the criteria of the rationality of past decisions, we continually decide anew how state institutions are to be specifically organized and how they are to relate to one another in terms of their jurisdiction.4' With such a rationality- theoretic determination of democratic procedures, Dewey undoubtedly draws near to the model of democracy that Habermas has developed in the form of a discourse theory in recent years; but again, Dewey's model differs from that one in two respects, both of which I can only interpret as advantages of his approach.

Habermas also allows democracy to begin at that point where Hannah Arendt locates its legitimate place; namely, at the threshold where-beyond the realm of social labor-the domain of an intersubjective practice com- mences through which citizens have to discuss and regulate publicly their common affairs. Within this politically constituted public sphere, democratic procedures see to it that each individual can make use of her legally guaran- teed autonomy by participating with all others and with equal rights in joint


will formation. Thus, in contrast to Hannah Arendt's model, the prepolitical relations of socioeconomic inequality are taken systematically into consideration, because in liberal democratic constitutions, there is supposed to be a normative principle that gives marginalized or repressed groups the chance of a legally legitimated struggle against all forms of social disadvantage.42 Nonetheless, the perspective from which the "social question" becomes a normative reference problem in Habermas's theory of democracy is of a kind completely different from that of Dewey's conception. Because of the functional conditions of democratic publics, and altogether independently of the state of recognition struggles, Dewey has to regard the establishment of just, cooperative forms of the division of labor as a normative requirement that is in principle valid and thus an internal component of every genuine idea of democracy. Habermas, however, cannot allow the demand for social equality conceptual priority over the principle of democratic will formation; he has to make it dependent upon the contingent state of politically articulated goals.43 Because of this one-sided restriction of democracy to the political sphere, however, one loses sight of the fact that a democratic public sphere can function only on the tacit premise of an inclusion of all members of society in the social reproduction process. The idea of the democratic public sphere lives off social presuppositions that can be secured only outside this idea itself; it must expect each citizen to share so much common ground with all others that at least an interest can emerge in involving oneself actively in political affairs. However, such a degree of common ground can evolve only where, in the prepolitical domain, it has already been possible to experience communicative relatedness; and this vacant spot in a politically one-sided theory of democracy is filled, in my view, by Dewey's idea of social cooperation, that is, of a division of labor under conditions of justice.

What has just been said also suggests the possible response to a further problem in Habermasian discourse theory of democracy. As has been frequently remarked in recent years, Habermas also has to be able to assume more than just the establishment of democratic procedures for the success of democratic will formation. For citizens to have motives and interests to participate in public opinion and will formation, they have to have made democratic procedures as such a normative element of their daily habits.44 But because Habermas is afraid that such an idea of democratic ethical life could lead him onto the track of an ethical understanding of politics, he shifts the problems emerging here into the domain of sociological functionalism: Instead of conceptualizing the habitualized attitudes of the democratic citizen as political virtues in the sense that they constitute the normative epitome of a desirable culture of democracy, he attempts to grasp them as features of a political culture whose "accommodating quality" (Entgegenkommen) we


have to be able to expect sociologically due to functional requirements.45 In respect of this problem too, it seems to me that Dewey's theory of democracy contains an answer that opens a third avenue between the false options of an overethicized republicanism and an empty proceduralism; namely, to grasp democratic ethical life as the outcome of the experience that all members of society could have if they related to one another cooperatively through ajust organizing of the division of labor.

Of course, in the present situation in which we in the highly developed countries can see the end of work society coming gradually, such an idea can no longer simply assume the form of a normatively inspired restructuring of the capitalist labor market; rather, one is to think of the project of a far- reaching, radical redefinition of what in future has to count as a cooperative contribution to social reproduction in the sense that every adult member of society again gets the chance to participate in cooperation based on a division of labor. From the perspective of this outcome, it is not difficult to see why the democracy model of the mature Dewey can be considered a serious alternative in the current debate: because-to put it in a nutshell-this model regards the normative idea of democracy not only as a political, but first and foremost as a social ideal.46

Translated by John M. M. Farrell

NOTES

1. With this characterization of the situation, I am linking up, to a certain extent, with Habermas's diagnosis, in which liberalism and republicanism are presented as the two prevailing paradigms in a theory of the democratic constitutional state today (Jurgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, trans. William Rehg [Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996], chap. 6, esp. pp. 267-86). If we add to these two alternatives the procedural concept of democracy developed by Habermas, there follows the conception I assumed of two radically democratic approaches that are today attempting from contrary standpoints to defend a normatively more substantive idea of democratic will formation vis-a-vis the liberal understanding of politics. Such standardized concepts-liberalism, republicanism, proceduralism-are always in danger of oversimplifying; we can easily lose sight of those dif- ferentiations and restrictions with which the various positions attempt to demobilize precipitous stereotypes. Moreover, the difficulty in ascribing consciously stylized positions to specific authors is made especially clear by Ingeborg Maus's original approach. By proceeding here from a normative concept of subjective rights, which are understood in the liberal sense of negative freedom (staatsabwehrend), she develops an idea of radical democratic participation that does indeed share with republicanism emphatic consideration of direct participation but does not, however, wish to couple this with ethical expectations concerning individual willingness to participate (see, for instance, Ingeborg Maus, "Naturrecht, Menschenrecht und politische


Gerechtigkeit," Dialektik 1 [1994]: 9-18; "Freiheitsrechte und Volkssouveranitat," Rechtstheo- rie 26.4 [1995]: 507-62). The model of democracy I develop with the help of Dewey's mature conception does of course include an indirect critique of the position defended by Ingeborg Maus.

2. When speaking in what follows of the "proceduralist" model of democracy, I am of course referring primarily to the concept developed by Habermas, Between Facts and Norms; but see also, by way of a continuation, Seyla Benhabib, "Toward a Deliberative Model of Demo- cratic Legitimacy," in Democracy andDifference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, ed. S. Benhabib (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 67-94. When speaking in what follows of the "republican" model of democracy, I have in mind, of course, primarily the model developed indirectly by Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (New York: Penguin, 1973); as a kind of continuation, see also Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press, 1982). That I do not present the theory of "civil society" here as an independent approach among models of radical democracy is due to the fact that, in my view, its rep- resentatives are notorious for their oscillating between proceduralism and republicanism; on this, see the allusions in Axel Honneth, "Fragen der Zivilgesellschaft," in Desintegration: Bruchstucke einer soziologischen Zeitdiagnose (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1994), 80-9.

3. On these differences, see Seyla Benhabib, "Models of Public Space: Hannah Arendt, the Liberal Tradition, and Juirgen Habermas," in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Cal- houn (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), 73-98.

4. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms. 5. Rainer Forst, Kontexte der Gerechtigkeit: Politische Philosophie jenseits von Liberalis-

mus und Kommunitarismus (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1994), chap. 111.2. 6. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, 287-328. 7. On these differences, see Forst, Kontexte der Gerechtigkeit, chap. 11.3. 8. On the biographical, historical, and theoretical context, see the two new standard works:

Robert B. Westbrook, John Dewey and American Democracy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991); Steven C. Rockefeller, John Dewey, Religious Faith and Democratic Humanism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991).

9. See, for instance, the reflections in Alan Ryan, John Dewey and the High Tide of Ameri- can Liberalism (New York: Norton, 1995), 358-9.

10. See, for instance, the different references to Dewey in Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, 171, 304.

1 1. On this contrasting of individualist and communicative models of personal freedom, see Albrecht Wellmer, "Models of Freedom in the Modern World," in Hermeneutics and Critical Theory in Ethics and Politics, ed. Michael Kelly (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990), 227-52.

12. See Hannah Arendt, "What Is Freedom?" in Between Past and Future (New York: Pen- guin, 1977), 173-96; The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), esp. chaps. II and V; Jurgen Habermas, "Popular Sovereignty as Procedure," in Between Facts and Norms, appendix I, pp. 463-90; Between Facts and Norms, chap. 3.

13. John Dewey, "The Ethics of Democracy," in The Early Works of John Dewey, 1882-1898, vol. 1, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969), 227-49. If not otherwise stated, I shall cite Dewey in the notes that follow according to the collected works published in Carbondale and shall use the following abbreviations: EW for The Early Works, 1882-1898; MW for The Middle Works, 1899-1924; and LW for The Later Works, 1925-1953.

14. Ibid., 229 ff. 15. Ibid., 231. 16. On the theoretical context, see the excellent presentation in Westbrook, John Dewey and

American Democracy, part 1, chap. 2; see also Ryan, John Dewey and the High Tide, chap. 3.


17. John Dewey, "The Ethics of Democracy," 237. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid., 239. 20. Ibid., 238. 21. Ibid., 240-1. 22. Ibid., 243-4. 23. Corresponding to this element of the early theory of democracy is the positive concept of

freedom that Dewey attempted to develop simultaneously as an ideal of self-realization in his ethics, which was influenced by T. H. Green: John Dewey, "Outline of a Critical Theory of Eth- ics" [1891 ], in EW, vol. 3, pp. 239-388; on this, see Jennifer Welchman, Dewey's Ethical Thought (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), esp. chaps. 1 and 3; Axel Honneth, "Between Pro- ceduralism and Teleology: An Unresolved Conflict in The Moral Theory of John Dewey," forthcoming.

24. Dewey, "The Ethics of Democracy,' 244 ff. 25. On the ideal of democracy of the young Marx, see the critical account in Ernst Michael

Lange, "Verein freier Menschen, Demokratie, Kommunismus," in Ethik und Marx: Moralkritik und normative Grundlagen der Marxschen Theorie (Konigstein im Taunus: Hain, 1986), 102-24; a very convincing critique of Marx's concept of democracy as a whole is given by Rolf Zimmermann, Utopie-Ratinalitat-Politik Zu Kritik, Rekonstruktion und Systematik einer emanzipatorischen Gesellschaftstheorie bei Marx und Habermas (Freiburg: Albert, 1985), part 1.

26. On this deficiency of Dewey's early theory of democracy, see, for instance, Ryan, John Dewey and the High Tide, chap. 3.

27. John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems [1927], in LW, vol. 2, pp. 235-372; here, however, I shall cite the following edition: John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems: An Essay in Political Inquiry (Chicago: Gateway Books, 1946).

28. Here I am thinking primarily of John Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct [ 1922], in MW, vol. 14, above all parts III and IV; but see also John Dewey, Democracy and Education [1916], in MW, vol. 9.

29. See Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct, part IV (Conclusion); see also J. E. Tiles, Dewey (London: Routledge, 1988), 210 ff.

30. Dewey, The Public and Its Problems, 147-8. 31. See, for instance, John Dewey, How We Think [1910], in MW, vol. 6; "Philosophy and

Democracy," in MW, vol. 11, pp. 41-53. 32. Dewey, The Public and Its Problems, 210. Following these Deweyan reflections, Hilary

Putnam has even developed an "epistemological justification of democracy"; see "A Reconsid- eration of Deweyan Democracy," in Renewing Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer- sity Press, 1992), 180-200.

33. For furtherelaboration, see Hans Joas, "Die politische Idee des amerikanischen Pragma- tismus," in Pipers Handbuch derPolitischen Ideen, vol. 5 (Munich: Piper, 1987), 611-20; Rainer Schmalz-Bruns, Reflexive Demokratie: Die demokratische Transformation moderner Politik (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1995), 214 ff.

34. Dewey, The Public and Its Problems, 15. 35. Ibid., 72. 36. Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, intro. Lewis A. Coser, trans. W. D.

Halls (New York: Free Press, 1984), esp. Book III. The evident proximity of Dewey to Durkheim on this point has-to my knowledge-been scarcely considered in the secondary literature so far. Durkheim is not mentioned at all by Westbrook; Rockefeller refers only to his book on religious forms; the occasional references in Ryan, John Dewey and the High Tide (for instance, pp. 112, 359), are a commendable exception. On the internal difficulties of Durkheim's


normative approach in his book on the division of labor, which are also of interest in respect to Dewey's solution, see C. Sirrianni, "Justice and the Division of Labour: A Reconsideration of Durkheim's Division of Labour in Society," Sociological Review 17 (1984): 449-70.

37. Dewey, The Public and Its Problems, 147. This argument again makes particularly clear the proximity to Durkheim's concept of professional groups as intermediary associations; on Durkheim's concept, see The Division of Labor in Society, preface to the second edition, xxxi-lix.

38. Dewey, The Public and Its Problems, 150. 39. Ibid., 139. 40. A helpful analysis of the normative presuppositions of cooperative activities is provided

by Michael E. Bratman, "Shared Cooperative Activity," The Philosophical Review 101.2 (1992): 327-41.

41. Dewey, The Public and Its Problems, 73-4. 42. See Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, chaps. 3, 4, and 9; "Struggles for Recognition

in the Democratic Constitutional State," trans. S. W. Nicholsen, in Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, ed. A. Gutmann (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 107-48.

43. See Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, chap. 9.2. 44. See, for instance, Albrecht Wellmer, "Bedingungen einer demokratischen Kultur," in

Endspiele: Die unversohnliche Moderne (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1993), 54-80; Richard Bernstein, "The Retrieval of the Democratic Ethos," Cardozo Law Review 17.4/5 (1996): 1127-46.

45. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, chap. 7; see also "Reply," Cardozo Law Review 17 (1996): 1477-1558.

46. 1 see tendencies to revive such a "social" idea of radical democracy today in Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers "Secondary Associations and Democratic Governance" Politics & Soci- ety 20.4 (1992): 393-472.

Axel Honneth, born 1949 in Essen (Germany), studied philosophy, sociology and Ger- man literature in Bonn, Bochum, and Berlin; today he is professorfor socialphilosophy at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt/Main. His main publications are Social Action and Human Nature (Cambridge University Press, 1988); Critique of Power (MITPress, 1990); The Struggle for Recognition (Polity Press, 1994); The Frag- mented World of the Social, Essays in Social and Political Philosophy (State University of New York Press, 1995).

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