Not available to order
Publication date:
01 July 2015Length of book:
280 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksISBN-13: 9781498500753
What virtues are necessary for democracy to succeed? This book turns to John Dewey and Reinhold Niebuhr, two of America’s most influential theorists of democracy, to answer this question. Dewey and Niebuhr both implied—although for very different reasons—that humility and mutuality are important virtues for the success of people rule. Not only do these virtues allow people to participate well in their own governance, they also equip us to meet challenges to democracy generated by free-market economic policy and practices. Ironically, though, Dewey and Niebuhr quarreled with each other for twenty years and missed the opportunity to achieve political consensus. In their discourse with each other they failed to become “one out of many,” a task that is distilled in the democratic rallying cry “e pluribus unum.” This failure itself reflects a deficiency in democratic virtue. Thus, exploring the Dewey/Niebuhr debate with attention to their discursive failures reveals the importance of a third virtue: democratic tolerance. If democracy is to succeed, we must cultivate a deeper hospitality toward difference than Dewey and Niebuhr were able to extend to each other.
In Virtue and Irony Dan Morris sets a new standard for democratically engaged scholarship. His compelling account of Niebuhr's Augustinian Protestantism and Dewey's philosophical pragmatism provides a distinctive point of departure for a democratic approach to virtue ethics. While others have attempted to situate virtues such as tolerance, mutality, and humility as important character traits for successful democratic living, Morris uses the unresolved Dewey/Niebuhr debate to illuminate the possibilities for developing these core dispositions for democracy. Morris's dynamic reading of the major figures of American Democratic thought, such as Jefferson, Franklin, and Lincoln, and his wonderfully generative interpretation of moral philosophers such as Rawls, Rorty, MacIntyre, is energetic and inviting—I did not want to put it down! Dan Morris has given us lucid analysis of the central texts that inform our democratic heritage. His eloquent pen moves from Aristotle to contemporary feminism and Afro-pragmatism with the grace of a symphonic wand. This is a powerful prescription for many of the ills that threaten the delicate social fabric of democratic life. It is my hope that we heed Daniel Morris's call, through Dewey and Niebuhr, to a more rich democratic world.