Reconstructing Individualism: A Pragmatic Tradition from Emerson to Ellison

5 “The Local Is the Ultimate Universal”: Dewey on Reconstructing Individuality and Community

{  } five “the local is the ultimate universal” Dewey on Reconstructing Individuality and Community B In , when John Dewey delivered and revised the series of lectures that would be published as The Public and Its Problems, the future of individualism in American culture weighed heavily on his mind. In “William James in Nineteen Twenty-Six,” he wondered aloud about James’s melioristic ethic of individualized vocation—as typified in James’s vision in “Pragmatism and Religion”—of individuals willing to stake themselves in the uncertain struggle to realize ideals in “the parts of the world to which [they] are closest”:1 had James described “an abiding, an indestructible, possession of American life,” or merely “summed up an age, the pioneer age, . . . when it was passing from the actual scene”? Had the type of “intellectual and moral individuality” James envisioned been rendered obsolete by the “organization and regimentation appropriate to the technology of mass production”? “Merely to ask the questions,” Dewey remarked in an uncharacteristically glum tone, “occasions a certain depression.”2 Dewey’s most direct answer to his own questions comes in Individualism Old and New (originally serialized in The New Republic in  and ), yet this work is best understood in tandem with The Public “t h E l o c a l Is t h E u lt I m at E u n I V E r sa l”  and Its Problems, a broader reflection on the nature of the state and the prospects for democracy as both a form of government and an ideal of community to be realized in all areas of human association. For the task of reconstructing individuality—and specifically a democratic individuality —is only one aspect of (or an analytical distinction within) the larger project of reconstructing the diverse forms of associated activity so that they might better embody a communal dynamic. It is a cornerstone of Dewey’s social thought that human beings do not exist apart from association with other humans; individuality emerges and can be reshaped only within the specific forms of association in which individuals live and form their habits. Further, the ideal of community that, for Dewey, defines democracy applies not only to an individual’s relation to the various groups to which he or she belongs, but also to each group’s interaction with other groups in the larger society. Accordingly , two requirements that are essential to the model of a conscientious and liberating self outlined in chapter  are also necessary for achieving a communal relationship between various groups: namely, knowledge of the consequences (especially those affecting others) that define the meaning of an activity, and the ability, on the basis of such knowledge, to control that meaning by choosing the ends that redirect the activity and reshape its tendency. As discussed above, community exists to the extent that such knowledge of the consequences of our actions reveals a broader common interest that is made the motivating object of individuals’ and local groups’ activities, and to the extent that the broader social group (however widely defined) identifies its interest in helping all groups and individuals to share equally in shaping the aims and enjoying the fruits of associated activity. The Public and Its Problems and Individualism Old and New argue that these conditions of community—knowledge of the consequences that define an activity’s meaning and significant ability to shape the ends that direct activity—have been eroded by the corporate forms of social organization ushered in by the scientific and industrial revolutions. This new social order, Dewey argues, has extended the consequences of our associated activities far beyond the scope of the local, face-to-face communities in which we most immediately live and act, making it immensely difficult to recognize, let alone control, those consequences adequately. At the same time, the fact that an increasingly collective system of production has remained tied to an outdated system of individual property has Pr agm at Ism  alienated the vast majority of workers from meaningful control over and understanding of the larger ends that direct their labor, thereby stripping their individuality of a socially integrated meaning. Accordingly, when Dewey analyzes the social conditions of s America in order to assess the obstacles to, and the immanent possibilities for, a revitalized community and individuality, he frames the issue as follows: can inquiry into the consequences of our complex networks of association help identify and empower the public which...