The Authority of Life: The Critical Task of Dewey's Social Ontology

Testa, Italo

doi:10.5325/jspecphil.31.2.0231

Cited by 10 publications

(8 citation statements)

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“…Although it is partly unclear what the exact definition of associated living is, Dewey tends to include in it some of the most common values and features of liberal societies like free intercourse, unhampered exchange of ideas, mutual respect, friendship, love, and so forth. "In short […] those modes of behaving which make life richer and more worth living for everybody concerned" (Dewey, 1973, p. 90; see also Testa, 2017b). Whereas associated living promotes a richer life, its opposite can be found in social suffering and especially alienation, which is "an antonym of associated living" (Dewey, 1973, p. 91).…”

Section: Digithum No 23 (April 2019) | Issn 1575-2275mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Dewey has recently found place, for example, in Axel Honneth's (2017) attempt to revive the idea of socialism. Similarly, Italo Testa (2017aTesta ( , 2017b interprets Dewey in order to develop his own critical social theory. Arto Laitinen and Arvi Särkelä (2018), in turn, find inspiration from Dewey's work in their analysis of social pathologies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Grounding social criticism: from understanding to suffering and back

Hirvonen

2019

Dig.

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This paper critically examines John Dewey’s and Axel Honneth’s critical social philosophies in order to highlight two different normative sources of social struggle: scientific understanding and social suffering. The paper discusses the relations of these sources with each other and aims to show to what extent the normative sources of Dewey’s and Honneth’s critical social theories are compatible. The comparison between Dewey and Honneth is used in order to argue for a desiderata for critical social ontology. The argument is that we want to consistently include both elements – suffering and understanding – in a critical theory as only by having both will critical theory grant a clear enough direction and good enough motivational normative core for a social struggle.

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Section: Digithum No 23 (April 2019) | Issn 1575-2275mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Grounding social criticism: from understanding to suffering and back

Hirvonen

2019

Dig.

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“…xvii On the social-ontological implications of his naturalistic metaphysics see Dewey 1928/2008, on the socialphilosophical motivation behind his metaphysics see Särkelä 2017b. xviii Closest to something resembling a systematic processual account of the pathologies of social life probably come Renault 2016, Särkelä 2017band Testa 2017. xix Neuhouser 2016…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… 2. The ‘naturalistic vocabulary of social philosophy’, which is simply implied by the use of such concepts as ‘social life’ or ‘social pathology’ does not as such imply any ontological, ethical or methodological position under the banner of ‘naturalism’ but is often combined with explicit anti-naturalism. For a detailed discussion of social-critical naturalism with reference to John Dewey’s social philosophy, see Särkelä (2017b) and Testa (2017). For a discussion of the anti-naturalism typical of continental critical theory, see Ansell-Pearson and Protevi (2017). …”

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confidence: 99%

Four conceptions of social pathology

Laitinen

Särkelä

2018

European Journal of Social Theory

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Draft. To be published in European Journal of Social Theory.Abstract. This paper starts with the idea that the task of social philosophy can be defined as the diagnosis and therapy of social pathologies. It discusses four conceptions of social pathology. The first two conceptions are "normativist" and hold that something is a social pathology if it is socially wrong. On the first view, there is no encompassing characterization of social pathologies available:it is a cluster concept of family resemblances. On the second view, social pathologies share a structure (e.g. second-order disorder). The last two conceptions are "naturalist" and hold that something is wrong because it is pathological. The third view takes it that society is the kind of substance that can fall ill -an organism. The fourth view operates with the notion of a social life that can degenerate. The four conceptions are compared along six criteria: is the view plausible, is it informative (if true), does it help define the task of social philosophy, does it take naturalistic vocabulary seriously, does it hold that pathologies share a structure, and how does it see the primacy of being wrong and being pathological. Social Philosophy and Social PathologyOur aim in this article is to distinguish more clearly four different usages of "social pathology", whose differences have not always been appreciated in the literature. Indeed, a leading theorist, Axel Honneth, in his different writings seems to subscribe to three of these conceptions we distinguish here. We hope that distinguishing these different conceptions (or families of conceptions) will clarify the debates, and hopefully everyone will find a conception that suits their purposes: the anti-theoretical view will appeal to some, whereas others welcome the theoretical structure the other conceptions provide, and so on. The typology we suggest aims to make sense of the usages especially in social philosophy; other typologies for other purposes can use different classification criteria. i The second aim is to assess comparatively the four different usages, and to argue against some of the views (especially the second-order disorder-view and the organicist view).These aims are relatively independent: even people who disagree with our comparative assessments can hopefully find the classification useful. In this introductory section we will shed light both on

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“…There are several naturalisms available to social pathologists who wish to use the concept literally. In fact, a naturalistic account of social pathology could, for instance, think of the organism in process‐ontological terms, or focus on other natural processes that can fail (populations, habits, or species), or just stick to social nature by, for example, conceptualizing “second nature” or “social life” more generally (Särkelä, ; Testa, ). Contrary to what Honneth (, pp.…”

Section: Naturalism As Organicismmentioning

confidence: 99%