Κοινωνιολογικός πραγματισμός και δημοκρατία

Abstract

In this article we discuss a set of problems raised by the pragmatic criticism of both liberal ideology and practice. In the first place, this criticism takes the form of a sociological objection against the utilitarian/individualist, but also the rationalist/normative formulations of liberal ‘doctrine’. According to pragmatists, like John Dewey, these features of the classical liberal thought and action become blatantly anachronistic as the modern world faces the need of complex social organization, technological innovation and institutional adaptation. At the core of such thinking there is a certain open-ended and fully creative conception of social action.
In second place, we treat the developments of the pragmatic theory of action; especially, we consider the problem of values in a contemporary democracy. In Hans Joas’s work we see the refinement as well as the sophistication, to a certain extent, of Dewey’s and Mead’s early theoretical tools and intuitions. Despite the fruitful insights that it sparked, today’s hermeneutic pragmatism remains always faithful to an overestimated picture of expressive and voluntaristic features of social action. The article concludes that this overestimation, although useful in terms of a day-by-day interaction and small-scale experiences, fails to understand the institutional rules of the game in ‘established’ democracies.