American Democracy in Crisis
On Tocqueville, Douglass, Dewey, and Arendt
February 2, 2023
Adapted from the New School forum “American Democracy in Crisis: Perspectives from Tocqueville, Douglass, Wells, Dewey, and Arendt,” this special issue of Public Seminar presents remarks by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, Juliet Hooker, Deva Woodly, James Miller, and moderator William Milberg.
“Tocqueville appreciated the ingenuity of the American experiment. He understood that democracy is not just a system of governance with strengths and weaknesses. He understood how this system was built on a social infrastructure, a product of fortune and design, constituted by social equality and individualism.” Jeffrey C. Goldfarb unpacks how Alexis de Tocqueville anticipated the rise of populism in democratic culture. (January 30, 2023)
While Frederick Douglass is remembered primarily as a theorist of freedom, the brilliant orator and abolitionist also had profound insights about democracy, explains Juliet Hooker. “He aspired to reshape U.S. democracy, both by extending equal citizenship rights and dignity to oppressed groups such as Black and Indigenous peoples, and by being open to immigrants, particularly nonwhite immigrants.” (January 30, 2023)
“For Dewey, the notion of social intelligence is that human beings are able to shape and change the world through the understandings that they gain from the fund of human knowledge that exists: old ideas combined and related through the world as we experience it, and latched onto something new.” Deva Woodly uses the tools of John Dewey’s philosophy to imagine how we can remake contemporary politics. (January 31, 2023)
Hannah Arendt insists on the active assertion of shared political freedom; she also acknowledged the tension between democratic insurrections and the constitution of collective freedom via laws and institutions, writes James Miller. “Unfortunately, as Arendt also understood, all such large-scale, putatively democratic representative institutions have so far proven in practice prone to frustrate anyone hoping to play a more direct and personal role in political decision-making, in an effort to experience firsthand what Arendt regarded as the joys of political freedom.” (January 31, 2023)
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How do we support collective participation? What do we do with the institutions we have? How do we live and thrive? In a conversation moderated by William Milberg, panelists Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, Juliet Hooker, James Miller, and Deva Woodly consider the future of American democracy. (February 1, 2023)