Inquiry, Agency, and Art: John Dewey’s Contribution to Pragmatic Cosmopolitanism

Introduction By 1909, when Dewey celebrated his fi ft ieth birthday, he had long since augmented the pragmatic ideas of Charles Peirce and William James and forged from them a powerful method of philosophical, social, and educational critique and reconstruction. James had labeled him a philosophical hero and his ideas were inspiring leading philosophers and progressive era reformers. Following his death in 1952, and by his centennial year 1959, during the depths of the Cold War and the ascendency of Anglo-American analytical philosophy, Dewey was at best a marginal fi gure in both social criticism and philosophy. In recent years, however, his star has again risen. Dewey’s pragmatism has attracted abundant scholarly attention, inspired a new wave of original pragmatist thinkers such as Richard Rorty, Cornel West, and Richard Shusterman, and in Dewey’s sesquicentennial year is again an important resource in addressing contemporary issues. Cosmopolitanism in 2009 is arguably the philosophical and social counterpart of the progressivism of 1909. In this paper, I argue that Dewey’s pragmatism has (at least) two valuable lessons for the theory and practice of cosmopolitanism. Aft er situating Dewey in the current discussion of cosmopolitanism and locating this cosmopolitan strain in his own philosophy, I show the value of his theory of inquiry as a meta-theory for cosmopolitan studies and of his theory of agency through art for building cosmopolitan publics for deliberation and action.