Utilizing a brand of pragmatism influenced very largely by John Dewey, Pragmatism and Modern American Democracy examines the state of American democracy and the ways in which it falls short of its purported ideals. By adopting Deweys definitions of both democracy and philosophy, the paper argues that the purpose of democracy is to identify and subsequently actualize the collective will of the public. However, American democracy has consistently fallen short of this ideal. The paper extrapolates from Deweys explicit argument against the modern American democracy in order to argue that philosophy must be given a central role in empowering the public and therefore helping democracy live up to its ideals. The solution provided by Deweys model is to educate the population to incubate and adhere to a critical disposition with regard to their environment. By so doing, the public would be able to more accurately identify their collective needs and subsequently actualize them. Deweys model guides people to be critical, identify trends, communicate and to act more intelligently, with the end goal of politically enfranchising the public.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-07102012-095906 |
| Date | 18 July 2012 |
| Creators | McCaffrey, Kevin Michael |
| Contributors | David C Wood, Michael P Hodges, John Lachs |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-07102012-095906/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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