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Dewey and the Public Sphere: Rethinking Pragmatism

The Place of Emotions in the Public Sphere1 (Ed. Edmundo Balsemão Pires) Lisboa: Edições Afrontamento, 2007. pp. 107-124

Dina Mendonça - dmendonca.ifl@fcsh.unl.pt

Instituto de Filosofia da Linguagem, Universidade Nova de Lisboa

March 2005

In The Public and Its Problems (1946), Dewey states that the problem of the

public is the improvement of the methods and conditions of debate, discussion and

persuasion. This paper is an addition to Dewey’s pragmatist proposal, by bringing to the

picture of the debate the issue of the role and place of emotion in the Public Sphere. The

aim is not to talk about this of that emotion, or how we should understand emotions but

to place them as a condition of the Public Sphere.

In order to do that I begin by laying down some of the Deweyan background

putting forward some of the crucial insights of Dewey’s philosophical reflection in The

Public and Its Problems, followed by some of the main criticisms to Dewey’s work.

Then, I will place emotions as a necessary condition of political philosophy

subsequently explaining that the understanding of the role of emotions in the Public

Sphere may be the way, to best understand, the connection between politics and

emotions. Finally I will lay down some directions for future inquiry that further clarify

the place of emotion in the Public Sphere and, consequently, increase the clarification of

the “problem of the Public”.

Part I. Dewey’s proposal in The Public and Its Problems

1. Dewey’s conception of public

1 This paper would not have been possible without the post-doctoral fellowship (SFRH/BPD/14175/2003) granted by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia. It is a work developed within the Research project: Emotion, Cognition, and Communication (POCTI/FIL/58227/2004). also want to show my appreciation for the audience of “Public Space, Power and Communication” for lively debate that help me to clarify some parts of the paper.

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Dewey’s main goal in The Public and Its Problems is to identify the intellectual

antecedents of reflection upon the public in order to escape dead end formulations.

Among other things, this means redirecting reflection by concentrating upon the

consequences of issues to generate new methods of resolution. These methods should

embody an intellectual posture that understands that thinking and beliefs are

experimental. Although, this appears throughout the entire text, it is already clearly

visible in the first chapter of the book when Dewey writes,

“The formation of states must be an experimental process. … And since the

conditions of action and of inquiry and knowledge are always changing, the

experiment must always be retried: the State must always be rediscovered.

Except, once more, in formal statement of conditions to be met, we have no idea

what history may still bring forth. It is not the business of political philosophy

and science to determine what the state in general should or must be. What they

may do is to aid in creation of methods of such that experimentation may go on

less blindly, less at the mercy of accident, more intelligently, so that men may

learn from their errors and profit by their successes” (LW2: 256-7).

It is this experimental mood present in Dewey’s thought that provides the hypothesis

that the public should be defined in terms of the consequences of the transactions

undergone. Accordingly, Dewey defines the public by consisting of all those “who are

affected by the indirect consequences of transactions to such extent that it is deemed

necessary to have those consequences systematically cared for” (LW2: 245-6). By

defining the public in this way, Dewey maintain the perspective that the formation of

the state is an ongoing experimental process for he does not limit the kinds of

transactions taken into consideration nor the scope people considered. With this

definition of the public Dewey allows for attention in possible transformation of

transactions and individuals and, perhaps more importantly, moves away from the

intellectual opposition between the Individual and the Social. For Dewey wants to

correct the tendency to consider the distinction between private and public, equivalent

to the distinction between individual and social. The misguided equivalence prevents

the recognition that transactions are social by their very qualitative nature and that not

only public acts format the social. As he writes, “The distinction between private and

public is thus in no sense equivalent to the distinction between individual and social, …

Many private acts are social; their consequences contribute to the welfare of the

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community or affect its status and prospects. In the broad sense any transaction

deliberately carried on between two or more persons is social in quality.” (LW2: 244)

That is, as long as private acts somehow affect and contribute the community they are

social. These acts can only classified public when their consequences affect others such

that systematic caring must be established.

The Deweyan definition of the also presents the boundaries between public and

private as moveable and that, in accordance with his experimental conception of the

state, the line of demarcation dividing public and private is to be discovered

experimentally, simultaneously to the on going experiment of the state. As Dewey

points out, “The line of demarcation between actions left to private initiative and

management and those regulated by the state has to be discovered experimentally”

(LW2: 275) and, Dewey adds, such demarcation will be drawn very differently at

different times and places (LW2:275). The acceptance of the malleability of the

distinction between private and public achieves provides continuity between these two

realms (Rappa 2002, 50), but also illustrates Dewey’s functionalist pragmatic

perspective that overcomes the philosophical rigidity of previous philosophical

traditions.

One of the focuses of The Public and its Problems is the identification of the

inchoate and unorganized form of the public in democratic settings and stating that the

first issue the public is its definition as such. Dewey writes, “primary problem of the

public: to achieve such recognition of itself as will give it weight in the selection of

official representatives and in the definition of their responsibilities and rights” (LW2:

383). Dewey’s analysis shows that a democratic state makes a serious demand to

democratic life, for it shows that the public has no entity. An historical perspective over

democratic birth shows that the adoption of democratic procedures and methods brings

to light the varied and complex constitution of the people of a state. For, as he writes,

“The same forces which have brought about the forms of democratic

government, general suffrage, executives and legislators chosen by majority

vote, have also brought about conditions which halt the social and humane ideals

that demand the utilization of government as the genuine instrumentality of an

inclusive and fraternally associated habit. The new age of human relationships

has no political agencies worthy of it. The democratic public is still largely

inchoate and unorganized” (LW2: 303).

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The confused and disperse nature of the identity of the public of the democratic system

does not, for question the value of democracy nor does it cast democratic states

permanently under a dark cloud. Quite the contrary, the need to overcome the eclipse of

the public provides one reason to continued to search the conditions to make democracy

live.

One tends to think of democracy as one of the forms of political structure to

govern a society. We are so used to think that democracy is in place as long as citizens

perform a set of political duties, like voting, respecting elected members of government,

etc. (LW 14:25). For Dewey democracy is a word of many meanings (LW2: 286), and it

is more than a form of government. Dewey considers democracy to be “primarily a

mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience” (MW 9:93). And,

consequently, the conception of the existence of democracy because certain democratic

procedures and methods are in place is short to the nature of democracy. Dewey argues

that the only way to correct this misconception is to understand that democracy “is a

personal way of individual life” (LW 14:226), and that the existence of a democracy is

testified by the democratic procedures because they either illustrate the continued search

for democratic action of citizens of the recognized need to embody democracy in all

modes of association.

The Portuguese Revolution of ’74 can perhaps provide a good illustration of the

assumption of an external conception of democracy, which Dewey identifies and

criticizes. In Portugal 1974, an authoritarian government was overthrown, secret police

was ban, people were allowed to vote, and Portuguese at the time must have felt like the

big part of the work was done. However, living in Portugal thirty years after the

revolution clearly shows that the assimilation of democratic values is still very weak,

and that in fact the big part of the revolutionary work is still undone. It is a bit like the

experience of motherhood: for sure the nine months of pregnancy and the birth of the

baby are crucial moments, but this is only the beginning of the road and motherhood is a

continual process of learning and becoming more mother as one continues to search to

be a mother. And just as motherhood is not given by the pregnancy and birth, a

revolution does not implement democracy once and for all. Portuguese who undertook

the change of political regime in ’74 held an external conception of democracy, they

were a bit like an eight-month pregnant women who assumes that with the delivery of

the baby she will transform into all there is to be a mother.

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In sum, Dewey´s proposals is that instead of thinking of our dispositions and

habits as created to accommodate a certain given political structure, we should take the

political organizations as expressions and projections of personal ways of being and,

consequently, think of democracy as the possession and the continual use of certain

attitudes and habits which demand a democratic government (LW 14:226).

Dewey has many times been accused of being politically naïve but I think these

accusations are misguided for Dewey never said democracy was a complete and

finished idea, nor that its achievement was easy or even close by. In fact, quite the

contrary, the way Dewey presents democracy makes it an ongoing process, which

continually seeks to be. As Dewey writes, “the task of democracy is forever that of

creation of a freer and more humane experience in which all share and to which all

contribute” (LW 14:230). This means that even the best democratic state continues to

fall short of illustrating democracy completely for, as Dewey writes, “the idea of

democracy is wider and fuller idea than can be exemplified in the state even at its best”

(LW 2:325). Consequently, democracy is only realized when it affects all modes of

association: family, school, industry, religion. (LW 2:325). Dewey thinks that the idea

of democracy is the idea of community itself (LW2: 328), for he argues that, “[T]he

clear consciousness of a communal life, in all its implications, constitutes the idea of

democracy” (LW 2: 328). In conclusion, the apparent simplicity of Dewey’s thought on

democracy turns out to be adoption of a different attitude in face of the complex reality

of the identity of a public in democracy. Instead of taking it difficultness of definition as

a sign of the failure of democracy, Dewey interpreted it as a mark of the continual need

formation of the democratic state.

As was already pointed out, Dewey thought that the democratic state had

brought with it the importance of recognizing the public as a public, and simultaneously

it had given birth to an inchoate public. In order to overcome the threat of the eclipse of

the public, one needs to better characterize the public. Thought when Dewey defines

public he uses the term in the singular one can read it in the plural, for the way Dewey

sets up the need to recognize the antecedent conditions of public issues forces us to

realize that one belongs to several publics, there is a multi-public system in a

democratic setting. As Sor-Hoon Tan comments, “Even though Dewey kept the usage

of ‘the Public’, it is more accurate to talk about ‘publics’ in his philosophy of

democracy” (Sor-Hoon Tan 2002, 27). Consequently each person is a member of

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numerous publics, and therefore one participates, can participate, in numerous co-

operative inquiries. However, this also means that one does not belong to all publics,

that is each person does not have to have an opinion upon all public affairs, only those

upon which one feels one has something decisive to say. And consequently, here Dewey

sides with Lippmann about the character of membership in democratic states, agreeing

that “since one is not a member of all the possible publics in a democracy, one need not,

… ‘know everything’ and ‘do everything’” (Sor-Hoon Tan 2002, 27). Only once this is

recognized can we understand Dewey’s proposal for the great community as a vision of

public life as a collaborative problem solving supported by communal relations

(Mattern 1999, 54).

In is in the fifth chapter of The Public and Its problems that Dewey most

explores the conditions for the definition of the public and avoiding its eclipse, by

stipulating the conditions of the Great Community. That is, by searching the conditions

under which the inchoate public may function democratically in order to become less

inchoate and continue the search for the democratic ideal. Among other things, it means

understanding the conditions of the Great Community from an individual and social

perspective. Dewey writes,

“From the point of view 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” (LW2: 327-8)

This quotation should be read as proposing a way to understand the functional

distinctions of individual and social, and as the grounds for the establishment of

continued communication.

One of the intellectual antecedents that John Dewey wants to overcome is the

opposition between Individual and Society. Dewey wants to describe the duo Society

and Individual differently and argue that insofar as human beings tend towards

differentiation they move in the direction of the distinctively individual, and that insofar

as they tend toward combination, they move in the direction of association (LW 13:78).

Dewey argues that the previous conceptions of individuality concentrate upon the first

tendency of human nature, and consequently opposes the self to the community, taking

the second tendency as an added, extra condition of human nature. Only when we

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understand mind as a function of social interactions, which is reached by an organized

interaction with others through communication (LW 1:198) can we understand how

behavior means transformation of the environment.

Dewey believes that when we accept the functional role of such distinctions we

realize that there is no immanent opposition between society and the individual. The

individual is a moving, changing entity of different associations in a historical

incomplete continuum. Therefore, if individuals feel alienated, it is not because the

social sphere is severe and too complex for the genuine and true existence of the single

individual. Instead, individuals may feel detached and lost because the vast complex of

associations is not organized into a “harmonious and coherent reflection of these

connections into the imaginative and emotional outlook on life” (LW 5:81).

By shifting the focus of our discourse about individuals, Dewey wants to provide

a conception of individuality that recognizes both tendencies of human nature and that

recognizes individuality as the particular manner in which one participates in communal

life (Boisvert 1998, 68). For instance, he thinks that the use of the word “society”

enforces the conception of individuals as independent from its social relationships

because it projects “society” as a distant and cold ruler who enslaves the individual.

Dewey writes,

“We should forget ‘society’ and think of law, industry, religion, medicine,

politics, art, education, philosophyand think of them in the plural. For points

of contact are not the same for any two persons, and hence the questions which

the interests and occupations pose are never twice the same” (LW 5:120).

That is, when we think of the individuals in terms of habits, we should think of how

they have to promote and prolong the life of law, religion, medicine, politics, art

education, philosophy, etc. Consequently, we are more apt to express those habits in

terms of means-ends relationships and thus are more capable of considering possible

ways to change them.

It is important to stress that Dewey did not understand the notion of community

to stand for a static unity of homogenous people. Quite the contrary, he frequently

claimed the importance of heterogeneity and diversity of human experience and

consequently at the heart of community, and that Dewey thought that the importance of

communication is decided precisely because there is a variety and rich set of

perspectives.

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Communication stands as a crucial term for Dewey also because without it the

public cannot form itself, because it will be unable to formulate the problems, which

make a public a public. However, Dewey did not reserve the term communication to

speech, for has for Dewey at the center of communication there is the need to make

things common and art as the purest form of communication (LW10: 244).

Consequently Dewey gives art a central role in democracy (Mattern 1999, 54) for it

represents not only the most universal and the freest form of communication as it also

stands as the most effective means of communication (LW10: 270). We can better

understand Dewey’s complement of art as communication because it is a form of

providing direct access to meanings by providing experiences, instead of making things

common by providing a description of experience (Mattern 1999, 57). In addition, art

provides different possibilities for the future while it embodies its visionary role

(Mattern 1999, 64). That is, for Dewey, while art puts things in common by expressing

a set of shared experiences, history and identity, it also creates a communality of future

possibilities, unifying the format and conditions of hope. In addition, art shows that

communication also has a critical role. As Mattern comments, “Dewey assigns to art the

task of challenging people to think more critically and self-reflectively about themselves

and their lives and at the same time of opening new alternatives and possibiliti8es for

consideration. Art contributes to people’s capacity for critical judgment, and it does this

through an ‘expansion of experience’” (324-25) (Mattern 1999, 65).

In summary, art acquires a central role in democratic states because it best

embodies the need and results of communication by not only bringing things in

common as past experiences and possibilities for experiences as it simultaneously

provokes critical moves by challenging people’s view and perspectives.

2. Dewey’s Problems

In spite of the challenging formulation of the Public and the reformulation of the

conception of democracy, Dewey’s presentation of the Public Sphere holds many

problems.

First, Dewey seems to hold a very naive conception of citizen and consequently

ignore the fact that citizens may be unable to make fair choices (either because they

don’t have the sufficient information, they lack the appropriate method of analysis, or

the things that escape their control are making them make unfair choices). Also, it

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assumes that the individual finds himself reflected in the groups he belongs to, as well

as the public as a whole and raises the question: how can one guarantee that the

individuals are truly reflected in the public as a whole?

Second, Dewey seems to have disregarded the issue of conflict in social settings.

As Mattern comments, “Perhaps Dewey’s single most glaring political failure was his

apparent inability to understand why people might turn to confrontational forms of

political action such as opposition, resistance, and subterfuge” (Mattern 1999, 71). This

means that he doesn’t seem to acknowledge the strength of conflict. Not only how it is

sometimes an essential step of resolution of problems, and how sometimes it hinders the

possibility of reaching a solution, but also how it formats the identity of groups and

individuals. Ultimately it means not recognizing the tensions that are at the root of

confrontation, negotiation and contestation.

Third, Dewey’s reflection upon communication and the Great Community assumes that

clarity is possible. The assumption of clarity assumes that the different voices of a

community are going to create a symphony and are not going to be several different

instruments playing simultaneously (Mattern 1999, 66). And, in addition, it disregards

the difficult issues of interpretations connected to works of art. Like Mattern writes,

“Art typically communicates more obscurely and ambiguously than he [Dewey]

appeared to admit. He recognized, but downplayed, problems of interpretation,

disagreement, and variable intent” (Mattern 1999, 59). Consequently, Dewey’s reading

of art as communication also ignores that the artist intends not to communicate

something about the world but that he simply wants to create something new to add and

to be in the world (Mattern 1999, 59).

Finally, Dewey takes for granted that establishing problems is unproblematic.

That is, his notion of identifying a problem seems easier that it actually is. Dewey tells

us that the problem at stake makes the public, but simultaneously it is the public that

formulates the problem. It seems that part of the problematic of the public sphere has to

do with how, when, and with whom are problems established.

3. Insights from Dewey

Despite, the problems Dewey’s take on the Public Sphere carries there are many

interesting and fruitful insights worth maintaining. First, the adoption of a pragmatic

philosophical attitudes, that recognizes the on going experiment of human life and

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activities by avoiding philosophical rigidity. Second, that his definition of the public

and its problems assumes an open and unfinished world where creativity still has a role

and where communication is part of making things that are to be made common. In this

way, Dewey not only makes communication the basis of democracy, as he also

characterizes the political world as an open-ended entity, allowing the democratic ideal

to be an on going process, and accepting that nothing is decided once and for all and

many issues await decisions. As Junggren comments,

“In his [Dewey’s] conception of communication as a constructive aspect of

society and of individuals it is the creation of new political and moral values

which is the central element, and it is the intersubjectivity agreed content in this

communication which constitutes the basis of democracy—not the once and for

all, already decided, good. Dewey’s image of an open, unfinished world is also

an acceptance of man and society as being a world without foundations”

(Junggren 2003, 355).

In addition, Dewey’s formulation of the public promotes reflected action. For when he

writes about the Public he is not aiming at describing this or that social stratum, but

rather he expresses possibilities of actions by identifying needs, describing problems

and sets of solutions, etc. As Junggren comments, “The Public rather should be treated

as a political philosophical way of commending on action—to be public, then, is to act”

(Junggren 2003, 352). In addition, because for Dewey moral deliberation is not only one

of constructing and formulating choices but of creating what sort of person one wants to

become (Junggren 2003, 360), the process of moral deliberation that democratic life

requires is simultaneously the process by which the public can discover and invent

itself.

Finally, Dewey’s conception of a plurality of publics overcomes the simplistic

reading that all participants of a public are equal in all respects. While no doubt the

principle of equality is of utmost important, in order to maintain its importance it is

crucial to understand its application (Rappa 2002, 47). That is, while class, gender and

ideology should not be ground for public participation, interest, needs and insights into

consequences draw the intensity of participation and the criteria for the continual

definition of the public. More importantly, the public reinforces his position towards the

crucial importance of education. For it may be the case that a higher level of education

as well as a more democratic mode of education may allow people to make such

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decisions instead of leaving matters to chance what are the matters to which they show

shared interest, consequently changing the shape and identity of the public.

Part II. Emotions and the Public Sphere

1. Emotions and Political Philosophy

The introduction of emotional processes in the Public Space debate may allows

us to retain the value of Dewey’s insights into the conditions of the public sphere and

overcome some of the problems of the Deweyan formulation.

First it is important to acknowledge how emotions are necessary present in

political philosophy. Susan James, in a very interesting article entitled “Passions and

Politics,” states the difficulties, and yet the necessity, of introducing the component of

emotions in political philosophy.

“The view that one can resolve philosophical questions about politics only with

the help of a theory of the passions derived its plausibility from the belief that a

political philosophy should, as Rousseau put it, ‘take men as they are and laws

as they might be’” (James 2003, 222).

On one hand political philosophy aims to be transformative and the appeal to

emotions can be the means to change political problems (James 2003, 224), but on the

other hand to appeal to emotional dispositions and capacities seems to restrict its

transformative nature because some of the problems that are the stuff of political

philosophy limit the ways in which problems can be solved (James 2003, 223).

As James stresses, contemporary political philosophers believe that one can do

political philosophy without an account of everyday emotional dispositions. (James

2003, 225) First, because they assume that political theories are build upon common

sense believe that people are afraid of punishment, that people look for security, that

people do not like oppressors, etc. (James 2003, 225), and political theorists seem to

consider such assumptions unproblematic. However, as James remarks, one should not

accept that these presuppositions without examination because common sense

assumptions about emotions in politics are not common to all theorists. And, a second

reason that Susan James considers more important, it is important to make explicit even

what is taken to be common by all (James 2003, 225). Unfortunately, the growing field

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of philosophy of emotions suggests that making this last move is far more complex than

it seems. As Susan James writes, “our emotional dispositions are far more complicated

and varied than systematic theorists have allowed, [and] we are unlikely to be able to

arrive at any satisfactory equivalent of their highly general claims (James, 2003, 226).

Nevertheless, as Susan James rightly points out, there are several complications

with the project of bringing to the surface the emotional dispositions on which a

political theory relies.

First, it assumes that the emotional dispositions are determinate. However, the

“ideal citizen” and the “good-enough” citizen hold different dispositions, different

intensities of those dispositions and a theory must account for this variety of quality in

emotional processes (James 2003, 232-3).

Second complication, the attention to citizens’ emotional dispositions varies

depending on its constitution. As Susan James writes “An authoritarian regime may be

untroubled if citizens feel anger or hatred for it and its officials, but concerned if it

looses the knack for generating fear. A more open society, by contrast, may be anxious

to cultivate the emotional dispositions required for democratic practices, and disturbed

by a strong desire for conformity” (James 2003, 233). And regarding democratic

political theories, I would add to Susan James analysis, that the historical conditions of

how democracy was installed and how long it has been present will change the

emotional dispositions necessary for the continuation of the democratic ideal.

A third complication Susan James points out is the sensitivity of emotional

processes to circumstances. Emotional dispositions are formatted by the overall moods

of the state and this makes it very hard to map and predict all nuances of emotional

processes.

The main point of Susan James’ paper is to point out that political theories need

to account for the emotional dispositions and commitments that sustain its possibility

(James 2003, 234).

1. Emotions in Dewey’s Political Theory

Dewey’s political philosophy accounts for the emotional dispositions and

commitments that sustain it by recognizing the political character of art as the purest

form of communication.

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First, art is political because it creates a stronger sense of community. When an

artist’s work is seen and appreciated by many people it reflects and, simultaneously,

creates a sense of unity. This unity is a unity of shared experience, not merely a unity of

unreflected taste, as one tends to wear orange when the fashion so dictates. As Thomas

Alexander writes, “Any experience, to the extent that it becomes so organized as to

exhibit in a consciously intense manner an integrating quality, becomes an experience

and reveals a dimension of the meaning of the human encounter of the world”

(Alexander 1987, 200). Alexander argues in his book John Dewey’s Theory of art,

Experience & Nature: The Horizons of Feeling, art gives us an example of such an

encounter with the world, because art exemplifies doing and undergoing in relation, and

in so doing, “Art provides, then, a reservoir of shared experience vital in the exploration

of the meaning of existence” (Alexander 1987, 201). Dewey would further argue that

such understanding of artistic creation points to a democratic way of life. Not only

because democracy is a creative enterprise in itself (LW 10:31) but also because artistic

creation promotes democracy by enlarging the field of shared experience since “the

more the arts flourish, the more they belong to all persons alike; without regard to

wealth, birth, race or creed” (LW 14:256).

In addition, art explores and communicates political consequences even when its

subject matter is not political. For, as Dewey writes, “Art is a mode of prediction not

found in charts and statistics, and it insinuates possibilities of human relations not to be

found in rule and percept, admonition and administration” (LW 10:352). That is, the

political character of art is not given by the fact of whether art conforms or not to a

certain political system already developed. Instead, it is given by its ability to provide a

space for criticism by projecting consequences of political attitudes. The dead nature

paintings of Picasso during the war and occupation in France illustrate this: their subject

matter is not political, yet they express consequences of the political occupation of

France, and such consequences are given by their emotional impact.

Therefore, as Dewey writes, “art is more moral than moralities” (LW 10: 350)

and we can easily substitute morals by politics since for Dewey morality and politics

were two sides of the same coin as his understanding of democracy illustrates. This

ultimately means that when we educate with and for the arts we are also educating

politically. For, as Dewey writes: “Shelley’s statement goes to the heart of the matter.

Imagination is the chief instrument of the good” (LW 10:350). Political education

through artistic education is not simply identifiable by art’s capacity to reinforcing

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people’s ability to place themselves in other people situations, but also by art’s role in

introducing them to the field of shared experience and to art’s insight in exploring

political consequences. Martha Nussbaum makes a similar point in her book The

Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (2001), when she writes: “arts

serve a vital political function, even when their content is not expressively political – for

they cultivate imaginative abilities that are central to political life” (Nussbaum, 2001,

433). Here she acknowledges that art is fundamental for education because by helping a

child to master and develop the rudimentary social vocabulary of emotions it makes her

“ready to be exposed to stories that display the vulnerabilities of human life more

plainly, and in a more distressing light, than did her first stories” (Nussbaum, 2001,

428) and this, Nussbaum argues, is psychologically important for the child for she

becomes “acquainted with such things through stories that enlist her participation,

convincing her of the urgency of their perceptions of importance. No mere recital of

facts can achieve this” (Nussbaum, 2001, 428). Nussbaum, however, is mainly

concerned in this book with illustration of two specific emotions, namely, compassion

and love.

In Dewey’s scheme the claim, I think, goes further for art plays a crucial role in

the education of emotions themselves. For emotions “exist in the most extensive scale

from the coarse to the refined and subtle” (LW 6:114) and art is more easily employed

and suitable to secure emotional maturity and transformation of native crude emotions

(LW 6:114) given that, as Dewey writes,

“A lifetime would be too short to reproduce in words a single emotion. In

reality, however, poet and novelist have an immense advantage over even an

expert psychologist in dealing with an emotion. … Instead of a description of an

emotion in intellectual and symbolic terms, the artist ‘does the deed that breeds’

the emotion” (LW 10:73).

It is visible that thought Dewey never clearly stated the emotional commitments of his

political theory he recognized the emotional character of politics by his interpretation of

art as political. I want to show how Dewey’s political reflection incorporates an account

of the emotional dispositions and commitments by pushing Dewey’s ideas a bit further

and suggest that his notion of an experience, with its emotionally given unity, is one

way to examine and understand some of our political choices. Dewey’s notion of an

experience is not a term solely applicable to esthetic experience. Art is only a privileged

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field to analyze such instances. In fact, when Dewey introduces the concept of an

experience he doesn’t give examples of esthetic experience confined to fine arts but of

episodes to which we spontaneously refer to as being “real experiences”, like a quarrel

with someone intimate, a storm in a crossing of the Atlantic. And, interestingly, he adds

that an experience may be something slight in comparison with the given examples, like

a meal in Paris, and that “perhaps because of its very slightness illustrate all the better

what it is to be an experience” (LW 10:43).

Therefore, we may attempt to examine certain political choices in this light and

say that when people make certain political choices they do it emotionally. And this

means that people are reacting in politics with a type of movement that resembles that

had in an experience. Let me give you some examples. Let us take the election of

Arnold Swatzneager in California. Even if his political project was attractive I would

hesitate to say that that was what really made people vote for him. Not only his movie

star image had an impact on people’s decision and, in addition, he represents a success

story of the “land of opportunity”. Now, we may discharge the value of such political

choices by saying that since they are not made upon political ground they are not valid

for political examination. But this strategy, I think, might invalidate a lot of the political

choices of most democratic citizens. Le me give you another example, this one more

recent and in Europe: the Spanish election of march 2004. The predictions pointed to a

victory to José Maria Aznar. However, the sad and unfortunate events of March 11, and

the government response to such terrible event, turned the election results. One may

describe this change of vote as an emotional movement: citizens were maybe offended

by the government attitude, or it may have become apparent that they didn’t share the

government set of values. Looking at such political choices through the lenses of an

experience may give proper due to the emotional character of these political choices

because instead of disregarding it emotional impact it points out the sense of community

that such choices reflect.

That is, people make political choices emotionally and this doesn’t mean they

are being irrational, taken by whims and blind impulses; nor does it mean that there is a

rationalization hidden behind emotional activity that once examined will give us the

rational picture of emotions. It is important to insist that disregarding the political

options made emotionally on the grounds that they are subjective and politically

irrelevant is the result of a poor understanding of emotion.

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Objection we were subject to emotional processes because there was no time for

deliberation. It assumes that if there had been time for deliberation they would have

been no emotions, but it is not the case. Surely there would have been maybe a different

set of emotions. So it is important to see and understand how emotions work in the

process of deliberation. If not we will continue to be at the mercy of those who can

manipulate those emotional processes. Emotions are part of the political scenario and

insofar as they are they are also part of political deliberation, political changes, etc. If

we deny emotion its role emotional processes will continue to affect and change the

political world. With this reply to the objection I do not want to give the impression that

emotions need to be controlled, but the lack of acceptance of their role in politics makes

us be at the mercy of emotional chance and of those who learn by the public sphere to

manipulate the conditions of the emotional dispositions like the media.

An objection may be raised concerning the examples given: it may seem that

emotional forces played a role because there was no time for proper political

deliberation, if there had been time one wouldn’t be able to use this examples to

illustrate how political choices are done emotionally. Therefore, what the examples

show is only that when there is no time for proper political deliberation it is substituted

by an emotional reaction at the mercy of other forces such as the opinions of the media.

The objection raised assumes that “proper political deliberation” is immune to

emotional processes, while we have already established the intimate relationship

between politics and emotional dispositions and commitments. Nevertheless, the

objection allows us to point out that when we think we are being distant and cool about

a decision, we may be cheating ourselves to think there are no emotional processes

underlying our deliberative process. The unfortunate consequence of this misconception

is to leave us at the mercy of emotional processes and prevent us from modifying our

emotional commitments.

In addition, interpreting certain political choices in terms of an experience

makes us be aware that emotions are only part of emotional reality. For it is hard to

precise exactly which set of emotions formatted the elections in California or in Spain,

though it is clearly an emotional movement. This reinforces something Dewey points

out in his comments about emotion. Dewey writes,

“Save nominally, there is no such thing as the emotion of fear, hate, love. The

unique, unduplicated character of experienced events and situations impregnates

the emotion that is evoked. Were it the function of speech to reproduce that to

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which it refers, we could never speak of fear, but only of fear-of-this-particular-

oncoming-automobile, while all its specifications of time and place, or fear-

under-specific-circumstances-of-drawing-a-wrong-conclusion from just-such-

and-such-data” (LW 10:73).

Accordingly, Dewey describes the emotional force of an experience saying that esthetic

experience is emotional through and through but that there are no separate and easily

identifiable emotions in such experience (LW 10:48).

2. Emotions and Dewey’s formulation of the Public Sphere.

One of the ways to understand the emotional reality of the world of politics is to

analyze how emotional processes live in the public sphere. Now Dewey seems to have

had little to say about the need to identify emotional dispositions as part of the

antecedents of the public space. Nor does he seem especially concerned with the ability

of emotions to convey, and also manipulate, political options. As, Thayer notes

“Dewey himself did not have much to say about the emotive, persuasive uses of ethical

language” ([Standish Thayer 1981, 408, cited in Junggren 2003, 366).

In The Public and its Problems emotions appear, in a first reading, to be pointed

out, only as obstacles of clarity of the public sphere. Sor-Hoon Tan, for instance, who

writes about the issues of the public space and adopts a Deweyan position, describes the

place of emotion in the public sphere as a negative aspect of the public and something

which needs to be controlled in order to allow members of a public to concentrate upon

their problems. He writes,

“Public space is necessary but not sufficient for democracy. Opportunity goes

hand in hand with risk. Large numbers of people gathered in a public space

threaten public order. Emotion can spread through a crowd very quickly, and the

emotions of crowds are prone to violence. A crowd can turn into a mob. The

sense of sharing in a mighty and irresistible power renders a mob reckless of

consequences and encourages license of the worst sort. Too often we find that

peaceful protests turn into riots. Even when people share a common interest in

some indirect consequences of transactions that require systematic regulation,

what is to ensure that such a Deweyan public would proceed as an inquiring

public rather than deteriorate into a mob?” (Sor-Hoon Tan 2002, 28).

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Even though Sor-Hoon Tan states that Dewey would not subscribe to the dualistic

opposition of reason and emotion (Sor-Hoon Tan 2002, 28), he continues to describe

Dewey’s position such that the outcome result is to understand emotions as something

that blocks inquiry, confuses reaching solutions for problems, making emotions

obstacles of the public.

However, Dewey was suspicious of dichotomies in general and, consequently,

he would not hold a dualistic opposition of reason and emotion, and specially in his

aesthetics one can see the organizing force of emotional processes. Therefore a closer

reading of Dewey’s philosophical work may provides a different perspective, something

that Dewey himself never worked out completely.

Emotions are often taken to belong to the realm of the private space, yet the

culturally dependence of emotional processes indicates that this division of reason as

public and emotions as private has been often mistakenly put forward. Fortunately,

Dewey’s take on the Public provides a way to understand a continuity between private

and public for, as Rappa notes, “What is interesting about Dewey’s concept is that

private action and activities may exist in public, and public ones in private.” (Rappa

2002, 50).

At this point one may raise the objection: why should we be concerned with

breaking this opposition between public and private? The exploitation from the media

of the private life of public sphere seems to run contrary to the suggestion made. The

use of private issues in the public sphere seems to indicate that we need a clearer and

stronger division between public and private. The assumption underlying the objection,

that there is a clear division between private and public which only needs to be stated

clearly, shows us that the misleading character of such division is how it makes one

ignore the interferences of the private into public and vice-versa. Contrary to the

statement of such division, private and public sphere interfere constantly. In a small

article entitled “The Time and Space of Everyday life”, Burkitt, gives a good example

of how private and public realm are not separate realms. Burkitt writes,

“Take, for example, the family, perhaps one of the most private and intimate

spheres of everyday life, which rests on the emotional bonds between its

members. Even here, in the private realm, we are subject to official ideas of what

the family should be and how family life should be lived. State policy and

legislation shape the types of families we live in and, along with religious

authorities, seek to define exactly what families are. The recent debates over

19

whether gay couples should be allowed to marry or to adopt children is an

illustration of this. However, much of the social pressure that has led to such

debates comes from the unofficial spheres of everyday life, where more gay

couples are living together more openly and wanting social, legal, and in some

cases, religious recognition of their union. There are also many more single

parent families. All of this is calling into question and leading us to redefine

what a family is. It is also a good example of the ways in which the official and

the unofficial interact in everyday life to call established ideas into question and

generate new ones.” (Burkitt 2004, 215)

Dewey’s description of the Public allows for emotional processes, which are

traditionally confined to the private realm to have an impact, to belong and make part of

the conditions of the public sphere. First because Dewey’s frame of work allows us to

examine the continuity between public and private spheres, therefore allowing us to see

how emotions of private realm have an impact on the public sphere, and how emotions

of the public realm are felt in the private sphere.

What I want to do here at the end of this paper is to elaborate on Susan James

comment, that it is important for political theory to take account of this diversity and the

emotional commitments that sustain it (James 2003, 234), by taking up Dewey’s

proposal of identifying intellectual antecedents and consequences of interactions, laying

down some of the areas upon which one can better understand the emotional processes

underlying the conditions of the public sphere.

First, political life is guided by what is cared for, that is what is at stake in the

consequences that affect us has to do with what we care about. So there may be many

issues to which I constitute part of a public, but given the set of priorities I have design

for myself, I cannot pay attention to all issues. I choose the things that I most care

about, and for the constitution of the public sphere it is of crucial importance to

recognize this aspect of responsibility of our emotional world. In this aspect of our

emotional world I not only invest in what I care, but I also can delegate trust in other

people that I know care upon issues which though I recognize as important I do not feel

I can care. Finally, it is important for people who care to clarify why such an issue is

worth caring for. For example, a non-smoker may think that policies for banning

smoking in buildings are good, but not care enough to write repeated letters requesting

such a policy. A smoker who wants to stop smoking may find cigarette butts on the

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beech appalling. And care so much that she picks a plastic bag and cleans up around her

at the beech. The fact that this single gesture means little for the big picture of

thousands of kilometers filled with cigarette butts does not stop caring or action. On the

contrary, abstinence for action on the grounds that it is insignificance in the overall

picture is not only a sign of apathy of democratic life as well as a sign of small intensity

of caring.

Consequently, what is cared for, what should be cared for, and what citizens care

about should be further elaborated. Political philosophers should consider the questions:

What are the reasons for caring? What things in the past seemed to be not cared for and

are now cared for? How did this change came about?

In addition, political emotional commitments of citizens vary in degree and

intensity. The emotional commitments demonstrated in election “I vote him for

president because I like him” is surely different from the emotional commitment

demonstrated by the member of a party who votes on a candidate because he represents

a certain political attitude. Political philosophers should reflect on what types of

differences there are between different emotional commitments, and inquire if there are

criteria for judging the political value of different emotional commitments.

Second, Dewey wrote often about the notion of shared experience but

unfortunately he only concentrated his attention upon it in his later works (like Art as

Experience 1934) and the emotional character of such “sharing” needs to be further

researched, for mostly attention upon emotion centers itself on the emotion of this or

that individual. The issue of the Public Sphere is an excellent place to reflect upon the

emotional tone of shared experiences. What emotional processes are capable of being

shared, which modes are there for sharing (empathy, living the same thing, sympathy,

etc.), and which are the limits of such sharing. What difference and similarities are there

between the enthusiasm over football compared to the enthusiasm of a strike? What are

the ways in which people feel implicated (or not)?

The concern with emotions of shared experiences would, on one hand, direct

attention to understand what is the available repertoire of emotions that format the

public sphere. Researching, for instance, what families of fear can we find, or how some

emotion-words changed their political value (pride, respect and love for a nation, etc.),

if guilt can be the foundation of an ethical commitment.

One the other hand, political reflection on the role of emotional processes would

research how the conditions of the public affect and modify emotional processes.

21

Researching, for instance, how the Internet has changed, or not, the emotional

commitments of debate, how the city space has conditioned emotions of the public, if

the increase of access to information has changed people’s attention and caring

attitudes.

Finally, Dewey’s philosophical reflection on the public space poses a challenge

for education. Dewey is, of course, known for his concern and reflection on education.

His statement that education is the laboratory of philosophical ideas should be, I think,

taken very seriously. No doubt, educators have always been concerned with preparation

for the future, but they have misunderstood the importance of the future partly because

they hold a static vision of nature. They make preparation the controlling end of

educational activity and sacrifice the present for a supposed clear and known future.

Accordingly educators assume, Dewey writes,

“that by acquiring certain skills and by learning certain subjects which would be

needed later (perhaps in college or perhaps in adult life) pupils are as a matter of

course made ready for the needs and circumstances of the future” (LW 13:28).

However, for Dewey, education is not this sort of preparation, nor is the educational

process limited to schooling. Education implies “continual reorganization,

reconstructing, transferring” (MW 9:54). In this vision, schooling is one moment of

education, which among other things enables us to acquire habits, and the criteria to

evaluate schools education is based upon the ability of schools to create the conditions

for the desire for continued learning (MW 9:58). Among other things this suggests that

schools should be thought not as places where “truth” is taught. Rather, their curriculum

should be structured in view of teaching their students what is still unclear, uncertain,

unknown to science, politics, and life. And though education is never limited to

schooling, it is perhaps the easiest target to reflect upon political education.

The turn of attention for the political role of emotional processes challenges

education to provide experiences that bring to light which emotions are educated for

shared experiences, for caring, for questioning of emotional processes, for continuation

or modification of emotional commitments. For if citizens are to participate, modify,

challenge the public sphere, education must not only provide critical tools of reflection

and discussion and live experience of such tools, but also become aware that it is

educating people emotionally (by taking positions regarding emotional processes, by

22

dealing with emotional processes, by not taking up the responsibility that this is going

on).

Let me conclude by saying that both political philosophy as well as philosophy

of emotion have much to gain from this discussion. Philosophy of emotion may find in

this reflection a way to escape the underlying tendency of thinking of emotion as

something situated “inside” a subject. Of course, emotions cannot exist save as felt by a

sentient subject. However, for Dewey this does not make emotion subjective because,

under his conception of experience, “an emotion is to or from or about something

objective. … An emotion is implicated in a situation” (LW 10:72). Political philosophy

may better understand what are the emotional conditions of political life by paying

attention to the emotional processes of the public sphere, for not only it provides an

excellent place to understand the malleability of the private versus public realm as it

also identifies antecedents of political philosophy that are often disregarded.

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