Analysis of John Dewey's Freedom and Culture - Book Report/Review Example

John Deweys book Freedom and Culture was written in 1939, right about the time that Hitler was invading Poland. At this time, his book was no doubtprovocative and a bit controversial. However, it was also enlightening. Chapter 1 His first Chapter was entitled “The Problem of Freedom.” One of the main ideas of this Chapter was that individuals do not have an inborn moral compass, as it were. Rather, human beings are shaped by external forces, including culture, economic forces, religion and propaganda. To that end, the very notion of freedom is not an innate tendency. A good example that comes to mind is the nation of Iraq. We liberated them ostensibly because we needed to free them, because, as human beings, they have a natural yearn to be free. Dewey would say that this is not necessarily so, as he stated that “[t]he view that love of freedom is so inherent in man that, if it only has a chance given it by abolition of oppressions exercised by church and state, it will produce and maintain free institutions is no longer adequate...[w]e are now forced to see that positive conditions, forming the prevailing state of culture, are required.” (p. 7). As proof that “surrounding conditions,” including culture, shapes mans innate tendencies, he looked to early republicans in America, who were worried that “oppressions of church and state had exercised a corrupting influence upon human nature, so that the original impulse to liberty had either been lost or warped out of shape.” (p. 8). Dewey saw this as the early republicans way of stating that “surrounding conditions may be stronger than native tendencies.” (p. 8). Dewey referred to human nature, as exerted upon by external forces, as a “second or acquired nature,” which must be contrasted by innateness, and stated that this acquired nature is more powerful than original nature, which leads man to “by long habit to hug their chains.” (p. 8). Dewey also believed that the institutions that shape mans acquired nature must start by appealing to emotions and forming opinions. He believed that the fine arts, including theater, music, literature, drama and architecture was a way to stir emotion and form opinions. Indeed, this ability to stir emotions and form opinions is important in forming mans acquired nature. Dewey also opined that religion controlled mans acquired nature in much the same way – by appealing to emotion. Religious organizations appeal to mans “inner,” which makes it a competitor “with any political state that sets out on the totalitarian road.” (p. 11) Totalitarian regimes also must seize mans emotions and opinions, in order to gain total allegiance of their subjects. In this way, the prevailing wisdom that totalitarian regimes retain their power by coercion alone is debunked, for he states that “we must recognize the influence of this factor if we are ourselves to escape collective delusion – that totalitarianism rests upon external coercion alone.” (p. 11). Chapter 2 Deweys continues the theme that he began in the first chapter in the second chapter, entitled “Culture and Human Nature.” However, in this chapter, he explains how culture affects the individual, as opposed to the whole. One interesting point that he made was that “the very nature of individuality” is not the way that man should govern himself. Rather, man should govern himself by rationality, because “those are free who govern themselves by the dictates of reason; those who follow the promptings of appetite and sense are ruled by them as to be unfree...because their lives are chaotic and undisciplined.” (p. 24). This is an interesting premise, because he is stating that man must have some kind of external influence to guide him, because if he is ruled by him base, inner instinct, as opposed to rationality that is borne by external forces, than this invites chaos. As an extension of this concept, he stated that “each person was free as long as his actions did not restrict the freedom of others.” (p. 28). If man was ruled by his base instincts, as opposed to rationality, then his freedom might restrict the freedom of others, as he would believe that his beliefs, and only his, matter. Rule by rationality is different however, and it keeps individual freedom from encroaching upon others freedom. Dewey also contrasted two schools of thought about the rationality that is brought to bear to shape mans inner life. One is that “social conventions, traditions, institutions, rules are maintained only by some form of coercion, overt or covert, which encroaches upon the natural freedom of individuals; while the other school held that individuals are such by nature that the one standing social problem is the agencies by which recalcitrant individuals are brought under social control or socialized.” (p. 27) In other words, one school believes that the only way to maintain order is by some sort of coercion. The other school believes that coercion is a “social problem,” therefore probably illegitimate. However, he also noted that most people occupy a middle ground, in that they believe that some exercise of law and political authority is proper, but that too much would encroach upon “legitimate liberty,” and are trying to reconcile the two so that “each can maintain its own province under its own jurisdiction.” (p. 27). Defending Deweys notion of individuality As noted above, Dewey saw the individual as being shaped by “social convention, custom, tradition and rules.” (p. 31). The individual interacting with these constructs are what Dewey was interested in when examining the individual. This would explain, to Dewey, why slaves were sometimes satisfied with their lot, oppressed people in totalitarian regimes sometimes experienced no discomfort and some men formed gangs that were shaped by their social instincts. In each of these cases, the individual was reacting to the situation around him, saw that others were in the same situation, therefore their situation was indicative of the “custom, tradition and rules” of his time, even if the prevailing “custom, tradition and rules” was negative, as in the above examples. This seems to be a reasonable prospect. For instance, the daily life of the Iraqi people, as shown in the popular movie “Fahrenheit 911” was peaceful and normal before the war. Kids flew kites and went to school, families gathered around the dinner table. They were under the rule of the oppressive regime, yet it seemed to not effect the daily life of the individual. Maybe they did not have total freedom and the luxuries of the western world, but they did not know what they were missing, either, and, since everybody was in the same boat, there was no reason to necessarily be dissatisfied. They were not necessarily “conscious of their servitude,” as Dewey puts it. (p. 33). If they were, then an internal revolution probably would have occurred, which did not. It took outside forces to overthrow the totalitarian regime, because the outsiders saw the situation much more clearly than the insiders did. Another example is my mother. She was brought up in poverty, raised by a single alcoholic mother in one of the worst parts of town. Despite this, she and her brothers were happy, because they did not know differently. All of their friends growing up were in similar situations, including most of their classmates, so there was no comparing the haves with the have-nots. Their social conventions, customs, traditions and rules were shaped by their environment, and they were not aware that there were other children who did not operate by these same conventions. There was therefore no reason for unhappiness. Indeed, it is difficult for most of us to fathom a world without our luxuries. How did individuals in our society get along before e-mail, cable television, video games, cell phones and I-pods? How did individuals in our society get along without hot water and indoor plumbing? Before modern medicine? Yet, individuals in prior generations did get along without these and other luxuries, and they were probably just as happy, if not happier, than individuals now. They were not aware that any of these luxuries were even possible. Their customs, traditions and rules were necessarily different from ours, and it was just the way it was. Not knowing differently, they got along just fine in a world where you did not have a toilet to flush and women often died in childbirth due to the fact that modern medicine had not yet invented the cesarean. These were hardships to be endured, but since everybody was enduring the same hardships, there was no need for dissatisfaction. Kierkegaards “Teleological Suspension of the Ethical” The final question has to do with Soren Kierkegaards theory about the “Teleogical Suspension of the Ethical.” By this he means that there is a final cause for all that exists, and that ethical is of the universal. In his view, asserting individuality in the singular before the universal is a sin. If an individual makes a sacrifice that is for the good of the collective, this is a noble sacrifice. If the same individual makes a sacrifice that is either only beneficial to himself or in the service of faith, then this is not noble. For in Kierkegaards view, faith is elevating the single individual over the universal. He illustrates his point by examining the story of Abraham, which represents the view of elevating the individual over the universal, as Abraham is a man of faith. The intended sacrifice of Isaac was not, in Kierkegaards view, a noble one, for it was “not to save a nation, not to uphold the idea of the state...it is not to appease angry gods. If it were a matter of the deitys being angry, then he was, after all, angry only with Abraham, and Abrahams act is totally unrelated to the universal, is a purely private endeavor.” (p. 59). He therefore found that Abraham is considered to be great because of purely personal virtue, as opposed to a moral virtue that would characterize a truly tragic hero. The fact that Abraham does it for Gods sake is an identical motivation to doing it for his own sake. He “gives up the finite in order to grasp the infinite.” (p. 60). On the other hand, a true tragic hero “gives up the certain for the even more certain.”(p. 61). Read More