Dialectical vs. Experimental Method: Marcuse s Review of Dewey s Logic: The Theory of Inquiry

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1 Dialectical vs. Experimental Method: Marcuse s Review of Dewey s Logic: The Theory of Inquiry Phillip Deen Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society: A Quarterly Journal in American Philosophy, Volume 46, Number 2, Spring 2010, pp (Article) Published by Indiana University Press For additional information about this article Access Provided by Wellesley College Library at 10/13/10 6:23PM GMT

2 Dialectical vs. Experimental Method: Marcuse s Review of Dewey s Logic: The Theory of Inquiry Phillip Deen Abstract This introduction contextualizes and evaluates Herbert Marcuse s the accompanying, previously untranslated review of John Dewey s Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. Marcuse s critique of pragmatism is indebted to Max Horkheimer s claim that pragmatism is an example of traditional theory and reduces thought to mere instrument in service of external ends. Unlike Horkheimer, Marcuse concedes that Dewey, unlike the logical positivists, attempted to develop a material logic of ends. However, he concludes that the attempt was ultimately unsuccessful. I place this conclusion in the context of Marcuse s critique of technological reason. Lastly, I defend Dewey from the charge of crude instrumentalism and delineate Marcuse s and Dewey s critical disagreement on science s capacity for self- reflection. Keywords: Herbert Marcuse, John Dewey, Logic, Instrumental Reason, Frankfurt School. Hans Joas has called the German reception of pragmatism a history of misunderstandings. This is certainly true of the Frankfurt School s reception of John Dewey s work. Even as early as Lukács History and Class Consciousness, which exercised such an influence on the western Marxism of the Frankfurt School, pragmatism is taken as a willful abandonment of reason s highest purpose. Pragmatism is equated with relativism and is only able to conceive of freedom within the gaps of a reified society (1971: ). Adorno, seemingly the most receptive to Dewey s thought, believed pragmatism to be the a priori exclusion of metaphysics (1973: 373). Marcuse, the subject of this introduction, reviewed Dewey s 242 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CHARLES S. PEIRCE SOCIETY Vol. 46, No

3 Theory of Valuation and concluded that he fails to acknowledge an implicit debt to the concept of freedom and thereby loses his critical position (1941b: ). Across the board, pragmatism was dismissed as the manifestation of the worst of America s national culture the crude utilitarianism of success, profit, and anti- intellectualism (Joas 1993: ; Oehler 1981). The early exchange between the Frankfurt School and pragmatism was sadly hostile, one- sided, and fueled by ignorance. Despite the fact that the School went into exile at Dewey s own Columbia University during the Second World War, he makes no mention of them in either his published works or personal correspondence. Meanwhile, the members of the Institute- in- Exile largely isolated themselves from the surrounding American culture. One wonders what sort of conversation could have occurred if only either side had thought to engage the other in a meaningful way. Thankfully, pragmatism and critical theory are now far less ignorant of, or hostile to, one another. The greatest cause of the recent reconciliation is the work of Jürgen Habermas. Habermas has grounded much of his theory of communicative action and discourse theory in the work of Charles Peirce and George Herbert Mead, though, curiously, he has little to say on John Dewey (Habermas 1985, 2001). An ensuing cross- fertilization has stirred in Habermas wake. Critical social theorists in Germany are providing compelling and innovative work on the relevance of Dewey s and Mead s work to a theory of creative action and the pre- political context of democracy (Joas 1993, 1997; Honneth 1998a, 1998b, 2001). Likewise, pragmatic social theorists in America are incorporating and critiquing the work of the Frankfurt School (Antonio 1989, 1992; Bowman 1998, 2001; Shalin 1992). As fruitful as this recent exchange has been, it has also been dominated by Habermas presence (See, for example, Aboulafia 2002; Rehg and Bowman 2001). Other members of the Frankfurt School, Herbert Marcuse in particular, have been marginalized. For example, in a recent encyclopedia article on the relation between critical theory and pragmatism, Marcuse is mentioned only to be set aside (Shook and Margolis 2006: 204). There are exceptions of course (see Hickman 2001; Feenberg 2003; and Nisbet 1974, among others), but Marcuse s critique of pragmatism, and specifically of Dewey, has not found a robust place in the discussion. By providing this translation of Marcuse s review of Dewey s Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, I hope to rectify this marginalization in some small way. Marcuse s review originally appeared in the Journal for Social Research (Zeitschrift für Sozialforshung), the main organ for the Institute for Social Research, commonly known as the Frankfurt School. Their ongoing interdisciplinary project was to explain the failure of the proletariat revolution and the collapse of the European working Dialectical vs. Experimental Method: Marcuse s Review of Dewey s Logic: The Theory of Inquiry Phillip Deen 243

4 T R A N S A C T I O N S Volume 46 Number 2 class into fascism. In the pages of this journal, we see their project begin as a critique of political economy and defense of the materialist theory of history and then evolve into the School s broader critique of instrumental- technological reason. Published in the pivotal year of 1941, Marcuse s review of Dewey s Logic is part of the larger argument that instrumentalism has severed the internal connection between reason and emancipation severed conceptually by Max Weber and practically by the rise of late capitalism and mechanized warfare. 1 Though members of the Frankfurt School often referred to pragmatism and its theory of truth, these discussions focused on the thought of William James to the detriment of the other classical figures, including Dewey. Even fewer references were made to a pragmatic theory of inquiry. One notable exception is provided here. In Marcuse s review of John Dewey s Logic: The Theory of Inquiry we find a rare direct encounter with the specific points of pragmatic instrumentalism. Typically, the most heated arguments are between members of the same family. Both pragmatism and western Marxism hope to develop a theory of inquiry and knowledge rooted in historical human praxis, not in the abstract operations of transcendental subjectivity. Both are hostile to a logic of bare conceptual relations or one that would strip thought down to an imitation of the physical sciences. However, the Frankfurt School rarely saw the family resemblances and, for that reason, did not see the true points of dispute between these parallel attempts to work out a material logic. Though not a sustained account, Marcuse s treatment offers the opportunity to investigate the essential differences between experimental logic and the dialectical logic of the Frankfurt School. And, in turn, this delineation of the essential differences between them may help preserve pragmatism against the frequent criticism that it offers no hope of an engaged and radical critique of society. 2 In this introduction, I will attempt to sketch briefly some of the background to this review, both for the Frankfurt School generally and for Marcuse s thought in particular. I end by offering some of the basic points of difference in Dewey s thought and resources for a response to Marcuse s critique, with specific attention spent on Dewey s critical social science. 244 I. Max Horkheimer and the Origin of Marcuse s Critique Though pragmatism receives attention in a number of the critical theorists works, Max Horkheimer offers by far the most sustained critique of pragmatism as a method and a theory of truth. For this reason, I devote this section to Marcuse s review in the context of Horkheimer s original critique. Unfortunately, Horkheimer s critique is not very trenchant. This is ironic, given the fact that he once wrote to Leo Lowenthal, a fellow

5 member of the Institute, You can see from my quotes that I have read not a few of these native projects and I have now the feeling to be an expert in it. 3 However, we may for the moment overlook the accuracy of Horkheimer s criticisms. They function here only as background. Aside from the fact that they worked together, Marcuse makes explicit reference to Horkheimer s On the Problem of Truth and its evaluation of pragmatism. Given this, we must determine the context of Marcuse s review without specific reference to the value of Horkheimer s position itself. In his Traditional and Critical Theory (1937), Horkheimer attempts to distinguish the critical social science of the Institute of Social Research, which he directed, from positivist theories of society. In it, pragmatism is clearly defined as a form of traditional theory, which views scientific knowledge as the subsumption of particular, empirical data to general propositions that are derived by inductive selection, invention, or axiomatic stipulation (1972: 196). Such a nomological procedure is called explanation. This implies a sharp breach between formal, conceptual knowledge and the facts of the world. Accordingly, traditional theory does not account for conceptual shifts in the presence of novel data, as any theory can be reformulated to account for new data without significantly altering its basic structure. Further, traditional theory is calculative, oriented solely toward prediction and control. In his Eclipse of Reason, Horkheimer makes use of a distinction between subjective and objective reason. Pragmatism is taken as a species of the former in which reason is equated with utility and the end of useful action is subjectively determined. There are no ends- in- themselves, objectively grounded, but only privately held values. Values are then severed from the means used to attain them. There is no rational procedure for evaluating ends, simply the efficiency of the instruments. Instead of a fruitful transaction of means and ends- in- view, there are solely procedures to ensure the adaptation of means to ends. Subjective reason does not admit adjudication of competing value- claims, refusing to judge matters of conduct. Hence, contemplation of the proper ends of action is devalued as not having an immediate practical application. Pragmatism believes that an idea, concept or a theory is nothing but a scheme or a plan of action, and therefore truth is nothing but the successfulness of the idea (1947: 42). Thinking is reduced to the operation of verification. Both pragmatism and positivism are species of scientism, each taking laboratory experimentation and natural science as its models. Thought collapses into action and the physical event. Pragmatism s ambition is to be itself nothing but practical activity, as distinct from theoretical insight, which, according to pragmatistic teachings, is either a name for physical events or just meaningless (1947: 48). Thought is reduced to action, thereby abolishing thought itself. Dialectical vs. Experimental Method: Marcuse s Review of Dewey s Logic: The Theory of Inquiry Phillip Deen 245

6 T R A N S A C T I O N S Volume 46 Number On its own terms, traditional theory cannot address the broader research project of which it is a part. Nor can it address the social conditions under which theory change takes place. These theories cannot understand that they are within broader social movements and institutions. The pragmatist, neatly equated with the positivist, views inquiry as a private enterprise, completely severed from social conditions. As such, pragmatism is incorporated into the dominant cultural logic of the day. In the attempt to legitimate its own approach, pragmatism is a defense of streamlined corporate production. Even the Peircean scientific community of inquirers is taken to mean those in the service of industrial laboratories and their strict methods of inquiry based in the physical sciences. The scholar/ scientist s role is simply to aid in the function of a systematic conceptual framework. The social division of labor is mirrored in the mechanistic, assembly- line manufacture of knowledge. And, like any product, knowledge is then set to any particular use that the owner desires. What the pragmatist fails to realize is that the objects of everyday perception are socially constituted. The thing is a reified, that is, commodified nexus of transactions among men. Hence scientific activity, in its failure to acknowledge the constitution of its objects, is severed from the other activities of society. In this view of theory, therefore, the real social function of science is not made manifest; it speaks not of what theory means in human life, but only of what it means in the isolated sphere in which for historical reasons it comes into existence (1972: 197). If the test of truth is subjective short- term satisfaction, then the overwhelming force of the present natural and social world makes truth into whatever allows survival. Deweyan adjustment, instead of being the dynamic equilibrium of doing and undergoing, becomes simple acceptance and acquiescence. Dewey identifies fulfillment of people as they are with the highest aspirations of mankind (1947: 53). The pragmatist s supposed reduction of thought to instrument opens the door to domination. Reason s operational value, its role in the domination of men and nature, has been made it sole criterion (1947: 21). The manipulative calculation of nature requires a corresponding domination of human nature (an argument that reappears in Dialectic of Enlightenment). Taking a clue from Weber s analyses, subjective reason becomes the process of rationalization whereby all of existence is demythologized, that is, evaluated by efficiency alone, then wrapped in the mythology of the enlightenment. Thought becomes ideology, society becomes an accepted second nature, and language becomes propaganda for the status quo. Pragmatism then has no critical potential, abandoning issues of value and collapsing into the cultural logic of late capitalism. It, like all traditional theory, is not suspicious of the categories of value by which society is divided into better or worse, productive or wasteful, appropriate or inappropriate, etc. These determinations of value are taken as

7 fixed, objective, and alien. They are natural and to be accepted. The individual believes himself to be separate from and subsumed to the category Society as a fact of nature. II. The Argument of Marcuse s Review We now turn to Marcuse s critique itself. Though, as we will see, it contains a number of the same conclusions as Horkheimer s, this critique does differ in certain important ways. Foremost is the presentation of a tension between material and idealist logic internal to instrumentalism. Recognition of this tension forces Marcuse to elaborate on Horkheimer s original critique. The Frankfurt School s analysis of the specific process by which pragmatism is said to lose its critical capacity is deepened. Marcuse s review itself is somewhat fragmented. It attempts both to follow the content of the Logic as well as to present an argument of its own. The needs of each are in tension with the other. In addition, the review as a whole does not appear fully integrated. Witness the conclusion which is not in fact a conclusion at all. Instead, the review appears either to begin a transition into another aspect of Dewey s thought, his naturalism, or Marcuse has appended the review with a postscript which is not integrated well with the rest of the piece. In short, the review comes across as hasty. Despite this, a coherent argument still pre sents itself. It is Marcuse s overall contention that Dewey s Logic, though an attempt to develop a material logic, is actually idealistic. Specifically, it is idealistic in a way which robs inquiry of its critical capacity. Inquiry collapses into a crudely instrumental affirmation of the predetermined ends of research. Let us see how this argument is made. To begin, Marcuse s repeated separation of pragmatism from positivism is itself a strong move away from the usual equation of the two by the other critical theorists, as seen above. The very fact that Marcuse recognizes the desire to develop a material logic that motivates pragmatic instrumentalism is then innovative. Instrumentalism s avowed attempt to know the object, to include it in the process of inquiry, is a break with the formalism of logical positivism. Logical forms are understood only within the context of inquiry. Logical terms such as judgment, subject, predicate, and copula are meaningful only insofar as they have a function within a concrete investigation. Therefore, they are not true of Reason as such, but of an inquiring intelligence. Because of their relative and contextual nature, systems of logical terms are not final in themselves. They always depend upon some inquiry in which they function to resolve a problematic situation. Marcuse takes this to mean that the ends of the investigation are then predetermined. Logical instruments are located already within a continuum of research, wherein their function and goal are given. The role of logical tools is to aid in the accomplishment of this objective. This is Dialectical vs. Experimental Method: Marcuse s Review of Dewey s Logic: The Theory of Inquiry Phillip Deen 247

8 T R A N S A C T I O N S Volume 46 Number 2 the judgment. However, the nature of this resolution, the judgment, is fixed before the process of resolution. The research program preexists the instruments, logical concepts, and shapes them in advance. The program of research is itself delimited. First, it is naturalistic. This is interpreted as the requirement that inquiries model themselves after the natural sciences. Any judgment is strictly spatio- temporal. Its meaning is derived by reference to concrete, observable future consequences brought about by determinate processes. Ideas are tested as in a laboratory. However, because statements such as Justice is a virtue are incapable of such reference, they are not meaningful, at least in a strict sense. They still possess directive power, but do not have concrete, existential meaning. Second, every inquiry is societal. The language that we use and the values we possess as a society prefigure the nature of the research. A situation becomes problematic only under the cultural limitations defining what in fact can be known as problematic. The basic principles of a society cannot be questioned by the inquiry, as it already exists within them. Instrumentalism possesses no standpoint of critique that does not already presuppose the dominant cultural commitments. Philosophical reason s continuity with common sense is a reduction of the former into the latter. Concepts, in the Hegelian sense, contain the truth of the particular. Because of this, it is from the perspective of Reason, Freedom, and Truth that judgments upon reality can be made. According to Marcuse s account, these universals are lost by pragmatic instrumentalism. Vernunft loses out to Verstand. The self- critical capacity of reason to reflect on its fundamental categories disappears. The categories of reason are subsumed to the needs of a particular research program and cannot thereby render judgment on social reality as such. Instrumentalism is then idealistic. The resistance offered by the object in a material logic fades because the object can be only by its prior assimilation to a concept in the service of the inquiry. Objectivity collapses into subjectivity. In contrast to this method is dialectical thought, which seeks to heighten the tension between present reality and its Truth to the point where the contradictions of the former are overcome. From the perspective of dialectical thought, Dewey overcomes the split between theory and praxis in a facile manner. As a result, justice is not done to the truth of the object. Rather, the tension is circumvented by surreptitiously identifying the object with society s dominant logic. Ironically, by taking positive natural science as its model, instrumentalism becomes idealism. 248 III. Pragmatism and the Possibility of an Emancipatory Social Science I will not attempt to provide a systematic evaluation of Marcuse s critique. Instead, this section is devoted to an exceedingly brief

9 presentation of the underlying assumptions of Marcuse s critique of technological reason in its relation to emancipation and how they differ from Dewey s own presuppositions. In this way, I will not evaluate the specific points of the dispute, but only present the essential point of difference. Fundamentally, Marcuse and Dewey part ways on the issue of whether scientific inquiry is self- reflective. Marcuse s analysis, like that of the other critical theorists, is Weberian. In his Industrialization and Capitalism in the Work of Max Weber (1964), Marcuse offers three characteristics of technological / instrumental rationality: 1) The mathematization of experience based on the methods of the natural sciences and extended into the social sciences. This reduction of quality to quantity is concomitant with the universal functionalization of value under the exchange value of the market place. Mathematical science and market exchange are linked. 2) The necessity of rational, that is, experimental proof. 3) This movement is embodied in a universal bureaucratic organization that becomes necessary for the efficient accomplishment of projects. All of these are aspects of the overall reduction of reason to its form. Instrumental reason is evaluated only by efficiency of means, not by the specific content of the goal. The form of instrumental reason is simply domination, or, technical mastery. Abstract reason becomes concrete in the calculable and calculated domination of nature and man. The reason envisaged by Weber is revealed as technical reason, as the production and transformation of material (things and men) through the methodical- scientific apparatus (1968: 205). Formerly metaphysical issues are functionalized. They change from What is? to How is?. Functionalization is seen as part of the physicalist, mathematical treatment of the world. It allows us to remain exclusively within an operational context, an inquiry, which means that the only limit to operations is the technical capacity. Questions of whether an action is right are left behind for matters of sheer ability. The sense of the humanity of our actions is forgotten (1964: 151). All bureaucratic activities are subservient to an irrational charismatic authority. Therefore, beyond the specific substance of the project, there is an intrinsic irrationality, when we accept only technical- purposive rationality as our model. Under a totally administered society, Deweyan inquiry is a productive process that is internal to bureaucratic rationality, for this is an aspect of all efficient technical activity. Therefore the inquiry does not serve its own purposes, those given by the problematic character of the situation, but must be turned to the purposes determined by the authority which oversees the bureaucratic, technical enterprise. Technology is always a historical- social project: in it is projected what a society and its ruling interests intend to do with men and things (1968: 224). Under modern conditions, these are the interests of organized capital. In short, the inquiry, as a productive process, Dialectical vs. Experimental Method: Marcuse s Review of Dewey s Logic: The Theory of Inquiry Phillip Deen 249

10 T R A N S A C T I O N S Volume 46 Number cannot determine its own ends, but must find direction from something external to the inquiry itself. 4 In his Some Social Implications of Modern Technology, written contemporaneously with his review of the Logic, Marcuse continues this basic critique of technological rationality that he would later develop in One- Dimensional Man. At the heart of this treatment of technological rationality is the belief that this rationality is irreducible to the sum of present technical apparatuses, but is instead fundamentally a social process. Technology, as a mode of production, as the totality of instruments, devices, and contrivances which characterize the machine age is thus at the same time a mode of organizing and perpetuating (or changing) social relationships, a manifestation of prevalent thought and behavior patterns, an instrument for control and domination (1941c: ). Though ambivalent in its specific direction, it still embodies a certain direction of history. That is to say, though this technological rationality can be turned to assorted goals, the means themselves have historical force. Marcuse terms this the Technological a priori. Material is pre- figured as instrumental, to be subsumed to a potential project prior to the development of specific technological artifacts. It is the initial selection of a worldview that precludes incompatible possibilities, original historical commitments to a particular way of organizing reality. Whereas liberal reason still contained an emancipatory moment (the assertion that reality be judged in accordance with individual reason) the growth of technological / bureaucratic reason has undercut the free market foundation which supported the entrepreneurial frontier spirit. Liberal reason modeled itself on the creative agent in the marketplace. However, with the concentration of capital in this century and the birth of a qualitatively new form of organized capitalism, this belief in the continued relevance of the entrepreneur is at best ideological. The free economic subject rather has developed into the object of large- scale organization and coordination, and individual achievement has been transformed into standardized efficiency (1941c: 142). 5 However, the direction of this efficiency is not in the hands of the individual, but in the hands of those who direct the apparatus or, what is more dangerous, separate from any person and internal to the logic of technological reason itself. The worker is then an assistant to the machine, not the reverse. This helps to explain the reduction of Deweyan doing and undergoing to sheer survival. Success under modern conditions is dependent upon one s ability to fulfill the demands of the process. Individual rationality has developed into efficient compliance with the pre- given continuum of means and ends (1941c: 144). This last phrase resonates with Deweyan language. In this model, the continuum is the useful coordination of elements, each point in the curve already subsumed to a goal that is pre- fixed by the demands of the apparatus. In essence, this is not actually a continuum at all. Ends are external to the process.

11 Within Marcuse s presentation, a continuum is simply the path that leads to the end without interruption or delay. An end is not continuous with the means, but the means are in forced compliance with the end. The individual loses the capacity to question the whole, for rationality is rational only because of its prior inclusion within a larger project. To question the rationality of efficiency entails a contradiction. Reasonable submissiveness follows. So, though Marcuse notes the tension between pragmatic instrumentalism and logical positivism, he concludes that they share the same flaws. Both collapse robust philosophical inquiry into mere method, specifically, the method of the natural sciences. Internal to positivism is an inexorable resignation before the existent state of affairs. Positivism abides by certain principles that rob it of any critical capacity: One, observation of fact trumps reason and the imagination. Any extension beyond the bare datum is the introduction of error. Two, the given is part of an inexorable order which has the status of natural laws. Three, social science has no relation to value judgments; facts and values are radically separated. Hence, there is no objective basis for judgments of value (1941a: ). To this Marcuse opposes a critical rationality that evaluates the status quo in light of its own claims to truth. It is an immanent- historical method that measures a society s implicit or explicit claims to social justice. 6 This method thereby separates itself from the Deweyan instrumentalism we find presented in the review. There, instrumentalism is said to reduce logical concepts to their immanent- scientific function. Inquiry is unable to produce a broad critique of society or the present form of rationality because inquiry is internal exclusively to the existing scientific investigation. And, as we have seen, such investigations are intrinsically unable to question their pre- given goal. Society itself cannot become the object of an inquiry, as the category Society is reified and external to the social agents that produce it. This, fundamentally, is the distinction between science and philosophy. Though both penetrate appearances, scientific inquiry does so only within a mathematical framework. Philosophical inquiry, however, retains its complex historical character (1964: 185). Dewey, of course, does not accept any of the three positivist principles named above. First, knowing is an active relation in which constitutive reason and imagination play an integral part. Second, natural laws are explanatory tools and are therefore revisable, though they possess a great deal of experiential support. (Marcuse even acknowledges this point in the course of the review, but as a point of critique.) Third, social science is intrinsically evaluative and value- rich. Further, one could argue that the central theme of Dewey s writings was the objective status, without recourse to an absolutist perspective, of value judgments (Dewey 1916; LW 12: ). Dialectical vs. Experimental Method: Marcuse s Review of Dewey s Logic: The Theory of Inquiry Phillip Deen 251

12 T R A N S A C T I O N S Volume 46 Number A critical social inquiry based in pragmatic instrumentalism attempts to address the means by which lived experience is truncated and to develop the concrete institutional means by which these distortions can be eliminated. There is no need to look for any authority aside from the relations and desire for mature liberation internal to experience. Hence, though there is certainly a desperate need for liberating intelligence, there is no need for a theory of reality in general, uberhaupt to undergird, secure and justify it (MW 10:39). Dewey did not believe that the relation of conceptual content to reality was unproblematic, but that the supposed problem of the relation of Concept to Reality does not exist. Problems are specific and contextual. 7 Therefore, though there are certainly cases of misunderstanding and deception, and even of systemic distortion, these are grounded and particular problems. The issue of knowledge is not one of relating Subject to Object. Rather, it is the problem of knowing how we should act, what we should desire, and whether we are being lied to. For example, the ideological distortions so well described by the Frankfurt School are in fact dire problems, but neither the problem nor the solution is to be addressed by ontological considerations. When social scientific inquiry addresses the problems of ideology, it does not do so in order to achieve a reconciliation of Subject and Object, but to erase those artificial and oppressive distortions that act in the lives of specific individuals. 8 Dewey s naturalism requires that any theory of inquiry be continuous with lower organic life. Taking the discoveries of Darwin as his starting point, Dewey is able to undercut the previous split between Mind and Nature. These no longer represent ontological categories, but functional. Mind is not understood as a separate realm of being, noumenal versus phenomenal, whereby we break with nature in order to achieve reflection. Instead, Mind is a way that nature functions. With the evolution of man comes the ability of nature to reflect upon itself. There is no break that marks off the uniqueness of man. Our capacity to reflect on, critique, and transform experience is not transcendent, but is internal to the operations of nature. The fact that these activities are natural does not require a reductionism. Dewey s evolutionary naturalism does not imply that we may reduce the qualitative richness of the particular experience to its physicalist components. Building from a Darwinian context in addition to a German Idealistic one, he finds the source of critical social inquiry in the desire for dynamic growth in a natural and social environment. The statement Justice is a virtue does not dissipate once we recognize the continuity of intelligence with lower biological operations. Nor can qualities such as virtue be reformulated in terms of these lower functions. Justice is not a coordination of chemical operations. However, if we attempt to deny the continuity of higher acts with their

13 biological context, then the cord that binds experience and nature is cut (LW 1:29). Once the breach between understanding and reason, Verstand and Vernunft, is introduced as a rear- guard measure to ensure the certainty of reason, then the grimmer task is to explain how one sphere still has relevance for the other. However, though he did not believe that critique required a new type of reason, neither did Dewey believe that all inquiry could be conducted in the same style as the physical sciences. In fact, Dewey both locates the physical sciences within a cultural matrix of social relations and denies that the methods of physical science are appropriate to the study of social phenomena. In an explicit reply to the proto- positivism of the philosophical realists, he writes, [A]ssuredly any philosophy which takes science not to be an account of the world (which it is), but a literal and exhaustive apprehension of it in its full reality, a philosophy which therefore has no place for poetry or possibilities, still needs a theory of experience (MW 10:359). In essence, he attempted to locate the ends of inquiry within the problematic situation and our attempts to resolve it, while at the same time remaining sensitive to the given situation s uniqueness. What are central to science are the experimental attitude and the willingness to engage and modify our situation for the better, not any specific method of measurement or manipulation (LW 12:481; LW 4: 108). Dewey was well aware of the dangers inherent to technological reason: A new individualism can be achieved only through the controlled use of all the resources of the science and technology that have mastered the physical forces of nature. They are not now controlled in any fundamental sense. Rather do they control us. They are indeed physically controlled. Every factory, power- house and railway system testifies to the fact that we have attained this measure of control. But control of power through the machine is not control of the machine itself.... We are not even approaching a climax of control; we are hardly at its feeble beginnings. [LW 5: 86; see also LW 17: ] However, rather than seeking another kind of knowledge radically distinct from that of science and common affairs, Dewey sought to find out how this very problem posed by instrumental reason could also be opened to inquiry and further control. Of course, this requires that we reconceive the meaning of control. Control does not here imply domination, but the self- control exercised in an integrated democracy, a strong character, or an undistorted scientific community. Control of unwelcome circumstances is not itself problematic. The danger is in an incomplete or distorted inquiry that, often in the service of class, fails to apply the experimental attitude embodied in scientific inquiry back upon the methods of inquiry and desired objects themselves. 9 Dialectical vs. Experimental Method: Marcuse s Review of Dewey s Logic: The Theory of Inquiry Phillip Deen 253

14 T R A N S A C T I O N S Volume 46 Number Dewey argues that we cannot speak of a monolithic bourgeois culture which encompasses economics and scientific/technological reason. Present culture contains an inherent tension between the intersubjective, liberatory core of intelligent inquiry and the constraint of these forces by established habits and institutions that were developed under entrepreneurial capitalism (LW 11:54; LW 4:65; LW 5:41 143). Organized capitalism is then a structure of social control which channels the productive capacity of culture, developed by technological inquiry, into the hands of a private few. Whereas Marcuse takes science and capitalism to be part of a common process of bureaucratic rationalization, Dewey argues that this movement is itself in tension between that aspect which strives for self- control in the sense given above and the unreflective control of nature fostered by the privatization of goals and resources under capitalism and our outdated philosophical inheritance. 10 In answer to the rise of late capitalism, Dewey offers an alternate route to that offered by the Frankfurt School. The response is the social organization of intelligence, which requires that we set aside the outdated model of entrepreneurial individualism. He argues that we should not pursue an isolating individualism, even if this seems to provide a safe refuge from the dissolution of the individual under modern capital, the rise of fascism, the decline of the father s authority, etc. Under modern conditions, the task is to regulate social relations in which individuality is formed without abandoning liberalism s fundamental commitment to self- development. Further, this can be accomplished only within a self- governing community of inquiry, that is, in democratic association. The problem at hand is not then how to escape technological rationality, but to develop the techniques through which social power is redistributed, by a reflective society, in order to sustain individual fulfillment. In short, Dewey would ask for the specific means by which we are to achieve a praxis escorted by an unmutilated theory. 11 Marcuse s review of Dewey s Logic then takes us deep into the basic commitments of each thinker. Fundamentally, Marcuse and Dewey divide on the issue of whether science can reflect on its own orientation. If not, science embodies an uncritical application of technological efficiency to the dominant cultural ends. In our time, this is the mastery of both man and nature under late capitalism. Given this point of departure, Dewey s attempt to redefine logic as the theory of inquiry is to deny the radically critical role of Reason necessary to question the basic categories of society. Juxtaposed to Marcuse s critique is the position that experimentation requires reflection upon all aspects of the problematic situation, not simply the means. For Dewey, the central aspect of science is its liberatory capacity, brought about by its commitment to intersubjective and experimental methods. If this liberation is denied under late capitalism, it is not the result of scientific inquiry

15 itself but the failure to apply its democratic methods to the social conditions that allow some to benefit to the detriment of others. As one of the few points of direct engagement between the Frankfurt School and pragmatic instrumentalism, this short review therefore offers the opportunity to go to the core of our stance on the possibility of science and its place in democratic emancipation. Wellesley College REFERENCES Aboulafia, Mitchell, ed. (2002) Habermas and Pragmatism (Routledge Press). Adorno, Theodor. (1973) Negative Dialectics. E.B. Ashton, trans. (Continuum Press: New York). Antonio, Robert (1989) The Normative Foundations of Emancipatory Theory: Evolutionary vs. Pragmatic Perspectives American Journal of Sociology 94(4), Antonio, Robert and Douglas Kellner (1992) Communication, Modernity and Democracy in Habermas and Dewey Symbolic Interaction 15(3), Bernstein, Richard (1985) Habermas and Modernity (MIT Press: Cambridge). Bowman, James (1998) Theories, Practices and Pluralism: A Pragmatic Interpretation of Critical Social Science Philosophy of the Social Sciences 29, (2004) Realizing Deliberative Democracy as a Mode of Inquiry Journal of Speculative Philosophy 18(1), Dewey, John (1916) Essays in Experimental Logic (Dover Publications: New York). The Collected Works of John Dewey (SIU Press: Carbondale) [I have followed the standard citation form of indicating volume and page numbers. For example, (LW 12: xxx yyy) to indicate Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, which is volume 12 of the Later Works of John Dewey]. Feenberg, Andrew (2003) Pragmatism and Critical Theory of Technology Techne 7(1). Habermas, Jürgen (1985) Theory of Communicative Action, Volume 2 (Beacon Press: Boston). (2001) Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (MIT Press: Cambridge). Hickman, Larry (2001) Philosophical Tools for Technological Culture: Putting Pragmatism to Work (Indiana University Press). Honneth, Axel (1998a) Between Proceduralism and Teleology: An Unresolved Conflict in Dewey s Moral Theory Transactions of the Charles Peirce Society 34(3), (1998b) Dewey and Reflexive Cooperation: John Dewey and the Theory of Democracy Today Political Theory 26(6), (2001) The Logic of Fanaticism: Dewey s Archaeology of the German Mentality in (Rehg and Bowman 2001). Horkheimer, Max (1972) Critical Theory. Matthew J. O Connell, trans. (Continuum Press: New York). (1947) Eclipse of Reason (Continuum Press: New York). Dialectical vs. Experimental Method: Marcuse s Review of Dewey s Logic: The Theory of Inquiry Phillip Deen 255

16 T R A N S A C T I O N S Volume 46 Number 2 Jay, Martin (1973) The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, (University of California Press: Berkeley). Joas, Hans (1993) Pragmatism and Social Theory (University of Chicago Press). (1997) The Creativity of Action (University of Chicago Press). Lukács, Georg (1971) History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics. Rodney Livingstone, trans. (MIT Press: Cambridge). Marcuse, Herbert (1941a) Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory (Beacon Press: Boston). (1941b) Review of John Dewey s Theory of Valuation Zeitschrift fur Sozialforschung 9, (1941c) Some Social Implications of Modern Technology Studies in Philosophy and the Social Sciences 9 (1941). Reprinted in The Essential Frankfurt School Reader, Arato and Gebhardt ed. (Continuum Press: New York, 1982). (1964) One- Dimensional Man (Beacon Press: Boston). (1968) Industrialism and Capitalism in the Work of Max Weber in Negations. Jeremy Shapiro, trans. (Beacon Press: Boston). Nisbet, Arthur Lee (1974) A Comparative Analysis of Herbert Marcuse s and John Dewey s Conceptions of Freedom. VI, 220 Bl. (Dissertation, SUNY Buffalo). Oehler, Klaus (1981) Notes on the Reception of American Pragmatism in Germany, Transactions of the Charles Peirce Society 17(1), Rehg, William and James Bowman (2001) Pluralism and the Pragmatic Turn: The Transformation of Critical Theory: Essays in Honor of Thomas McCarthy (MIT Press: Cambridge). Scheler, Max (1926) Erkenntnis und Arbeit: Eine Studie uber Wert und Grenzen des pragmatischen Motivs in der Erkenntnis der Welt (Franke Verlag: Bern). Shalin, Dmitri (1992) Critical Theory and the Pragmatist Challenge American Journal of Sociology 98(2), Shook, John and Joseph Margolis, ed. (2006) A Companion to Pragmatism (Blackwell Publishing). Westbrook, Robert (1991) John Dewey and American Democracy (Cornell University Press). Wiggershaus, Rolf (1993) The Frankfurt School (Polity Press). 256 NOTES 1. See (Jay 1973) for a general history of the School and (Wiggershaus 1993) for both a general history and (1993: ) for a discussion of the Zeitschrift in particular. 2. Horkheimer and Marcuse s critique is indebted to Max Scheler s critique of pragmatism in Erkenntnis und Arbeit. Scheler s critique of pragmatism lives on, continued in the 1998 papal encyclical Fides et Ratio, in which pragmatism is given the common criticism that it is relativist and scientistic. This is not a coincidence, considering that the author, Pope John Paul II, wrote his dissertation on Scheler. 3. Quoted in (Jay, 1973: 83). Horkheimer s questionable scholarship extends to even misquoting the titles of works in suspicious ways, such as when Human

17 Nature and Conduct becomes Human Nature or Conduct or The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy becomes The Recovery of Philosophy in his Eclipse of Reason. Robert Westbrook goes so far as to say Like the rest of the first generation of the Frankfurt School, Horkheimer did not know what he was talking about when it came to pragmatism. (1991: 187n42). 4. Of course, it is ironic given that the Institute in Exile at Columbia University was funded in part by the Rockefeller Foundation, which believed that the critical theorists work on fascism worked to the benefit of western capitalist democracy. Specifically, Marcuse s own work was also part of his service to the State Department. 5. Dewey makes a strikingly similar argument in his Individualism: Old and New (LW 5: 75 84). 6. As explication of the immanent- historical method, Marcuse refers his readers to Horkheimer s Traditional and Critical Theory. We may assume that Marcuse takes his own method to be essentially that of Horkheimer, at least at this point in time. 7. See Dewey s The Relation of Thought and its Subject Matter (MW 2: ), published as part of his Studies in Logical Theory (1903). Ironically, Marcuse quotes this volume in his review. 8. Of course, the concern for suffering is at the heart of Marcuse s project. See Habermas memory of Marcuse s words in his Psychic Thermidor and the Rebirth of Rebellious Subjectivity (Bernstein 1985: 77). However, the rarified manner of presenting the problem of alleviating suffering may get in the way of resolving it. 9. Among many examples is that given in the Logic, where Dewey explicitly criticizes those who, in social inquiry, are not willing to submit their goals to inquiry and thereby fall into a crude instrumentalism (LW 12: 490). 10. In pragmatic circles, there has been a growing interest in the isomorphism of scientific and democratic reason. It is argued that they share a common intersubjectivity, reflexivity and orientation toward the truth. This, in turn, had led to attempts to develop a deliberative model of democracy from the pragmatic model of inquiry. See Cheryl Misak s Truth, Politics, Morality: Pragmatism and Deliberation (Routledge) 2000, Robert Talisse s Democracy and Liberalism: Pragmatism and Deliberative Politics (Routledge) 2005 and Robert Westbrook s Democratic Hope: Pragmatism and the Politics of Truth (Cornell) Marcuse s phrase, from the review. Dialectical vs. Experimental Method: Marcuse s Review of Dewey s Logic: The Theory of Inquiry Phillip Deen 257