Teachers, Leaders, and Schools: Essays by John Dewey

Intelligence and Power (1934)

Intelligence and Power (1934) THOSE WHO CONTEND THAT INTELLIGENCE is capable of exercising a significant role in social affairs and that it would be well if it had a much larger influence in directing social affairs can readily be made to appear ridiculous. From the standpoint of past human history it not only appears but is ridiculous. It takes little acquaintance with the past to realize what the forces have been that have determined social institutions, arrangements and changes. There has been oligarchical despotic power, political, ecclesiastic and economic, sometimes exercised openly, more often by all sorts of indirect and subtle means. Habit, custom and tradition have had a weight in comparison with which that of intelligence is feeble. Custom and tradition have originated in all sorts of ways, many of them accidental. But, once established, they have had weight independent of the conditions of their origin and have reinforced the power of vested interests. At critical times, widespread illusions, generated by intense emotions, have played a role in comparison with which the influence of intelligence is negligible. What critics overlook is that there would be no point in urging the potential claims of intelligence unless the latter had been submerged in such ways as have been indicated. The net outcome of the domination of the methods of institutional force, custom and illusion does not encourage one to look with great hope upon dependence on new combinations among them for future progress. The situation is such that it is calculated to make one look around, even if from sheer desperation, for some other method, however desperate. And under such circumstances, it also seems as if the effort to stimulate resort to the method of intelligence might present itself as at least one desperate recourse, if not the only one that remains untried. In view of the influence of collective illusion in 230 First published in New Republic 78 (25 April 1934): 306–7. Intelligence and Power 231 the past, some case might be made out for the contention that even if it be an illusion, exaltation of intelligence and experimental method is worth a trial. Illusion for illusion, this particular one may be better than those upon which humanity has usually depended. The success of this method in obtaining control over physical forces and conditions has been offered as evidence that the case for trying it in social matters is not altogether desperate nor yet illusory. This reference has also been misunderstood by critics. For it is not held that the particular techniques of the physical sciences are to be literally copied—though of course they are to be utilized wherever applicable—nor that experimentation in the laboratory sense can be carried out on any large scale in social affairs. It is held that the attitude of mind exemplified in the conquest of nature by the experimental sciences, and the method involved in it, may and should be carried into social affairs. And the force of the contention depends on the consideration already mentioned: What are the alternatives? Dogmatism, reinforced by the weight of unquestioned custom and tradition, the disguised or open play of class interests, dependence upon brute force and violence. It is stated, however, that a fundamental difference in the two cases of physical and social intelligence is ignored. “The physical sciences, it is said, gained their freedom when they overcame the traditionalism based on ignorance, but the traditionalism which the social sciences face is based upon the economic interest of the dominant social classes who are trying to maintain their special privileges in society” (Niebuhr). Of course it is. But it is a naïve view of history that supposes that dominant class interests were not the chief force that maintained the tradition against which the new method and conclusions in physical science had to make their way. Nor is it supposed for a moment that the new scientific method would have won its way in a comparatively few centuries—not that it has completely conquered even yet in the physical field—unless it had found a lodgment in other social interests than the dominant ones and been backed by the constantly growing influence of other interests. Here we come to the nub of the matter. Intelligence has no power per se. In so far as the older rationalists assumed that it had, they were wrong. Hume was nearer the truth, although guilty of exaggeration on the other side, when he said “reason is and always must...