Chapter 8: The “Citizen” in Youth Civic Engagement

SUMMARY

The concept of citizenship is a central, necessary, and defining feature of youth civic engagement. Any effort to educate young people for citizenship entails an implicit idea of what a “good citizen” is. There are a number of different and sometimes competing versions of what is a “good citizen.” This chapter reviews “standard” accounts of citizenship in political theory and offers lived citizen as a critical expansion and bridging dimension to current discourses of citizenship. We develop this idea through our readings of the three initiatives in conversation with the writing of Hannah Arendt and John Dewey. Our reading of Arendt and Dewey provides a grounded, embodied, and fluid understanding of the relationship between doing citizen activities (PA, YIG, YSC), becoming citizen (learning through interaction), and being citizen.     

Democracy and the limits of political realism

ABSTRACT

This article explores the recent resurgence of realism in the political sciences, questioning its relevance for democratic theory. Starting from a critical review of recent works in the field, the article calls into question the relevance of empirical investigations of political reality for normative theorizing, and contends that some of the normative conclusions advanced in this literature are not warranted. More precisely, the article questions the reliability of studies of political behavior and of political opinion as a sound basis on which to draw normative inferences about democratic legitimacy. It contends that the kind of epistemic realism their authors promote cannot deliver what it promises. The article concludes by proposing an alternative interpretation of the democratic principle as a practical postulate of political reason that reconciles empirical evidence about political behavior with the classical interpretation of democratic legitimacy.     

杜威“经验”概念与马克思“实践”概念之比较

杜威的"经验"概念与马克思的"实践"概念都是和生活与历史相同层次的概念,此两概念体现了两位思想家共同的对于全部西方形而上学传统,尤其是近代主体性哲学的毫不妥协的反叛姿态,使杜威和马克思共享实践哲学的基本立场.但这两个概念从根本上来讲是异质的:不仅二者的内涵不同,它们的主旨也大异其趣.     

杜威对传统哲学的改造——基于对“二元论”的批判

杜威,实用主义的典型代表人物,其对传统哲学的批判在西方哲学史上称得上是独树一帜。他详尽剖析了传统哲学中"二元论"产生的原因及其后果,提出哲学要抛弃二元论,进行自身的改造,使哲学成为追求美好生活而不是终极知识的工具。他受达尔文生物进化思想的影响,提出了"新经验论",并用这一新经验的哲学观对传统哲学进行改造。通过杜威对传统哲学的支撑基础———"二元论"的批判,来分析其对哲学的批判和改造。     

论杜威教育哲学的意义

教育哲学是杜威思想中最为独特和新颖的维度。杜威教育哲学在西方教育哲学史上具有重要的地位。实践哲学的观念、进步和民主的信念、现实主义的考虑和实验主义的方法,使得杜威企图通过教育来实现其改造生活世界的哲学宗旨,并以此作为判断一种哲学的实际价值的重要标准。杜威教育哲学的核心是经验主义,其基本原则是实验主义和民主主义。杜威教育哲学弥合二元论的努力是哲学改造、社会改造和教育改造的综合。讨论杜威教育哲学的当代意义,既要肯定其建设性,又要看到其有限性。     

杜威教育思想在日本的传播

杜威是美国著名的哲学家和教育家，他的哲学理论和教育思想对日本产生了重要影响。20世纪初，西方的文化和教育思想开始大量涌入日本。在这种背景下，杜威的教育思想也作为外来思想开始传入日本，并在日本文化教育史上占有相当重要的地位。     

The Naturalistic Side of Hegel’s Pragmatism

Abstract

This paper contrasts the Hegelianism of contemporary neo-pragmatism (Brandom) and the Hegelianism of classical pragmatism as it has been reassessed in contemporary Deweyan scholarship. Drawing on Dewey’s interpretation of Hegel, this paper argues that Hegel’s theory of the spirit is in many aspects more akin to Dewey’s pragmatism than Brandom’s. The first part compares Dewey’s pragmatism with Hegel’s conceptions of experience and the theory/practice relation. The second part compares Dewey’s naturalism with Hegel’s theory of the relation between nature and spirit.     

Pragmatism and Radical Democracy

Abstract

This paper suggests that pragmatism makes a distinctive contribution to the theory and practice of radical democracy. It investigates the relation ship between the renewal of interest in pragmatism and the recent attempts to develop radical democratic alternatives to political liberalism. With particular reference to the contemporary critical social theory of Habermas and Honneth, the paper outlines key dimensions of the civic republican, deliberative democratic and reflexive cooperative reconstructions of John Dewey's conception of democracy. These reconstructions are shown to have explicated important pragmatist insights concerning public participation in civic associations, the discursive practices of deliberation, and the cooperative organization of the division of labour. However, it is argued that each of these reconstructions pre suppose some facet of the additional pragmatist understanding of the creativity of action and that the most distinctive contributions of pragmatism to radical democratic theory and practice derive from a notion of democracy as instituted and emergent meaning.     

杜威的“民主共同体”思想述评

杜威以道德伦理价值为基础,提出了建立"民主共同体"的社会政治哲学思想."民主共同体"的社会形态观念体现了杜威对人的价值和人的本质的新认识.其提出"民主共同体"思想的目的是使人类达到"实现每一个人的解放和全面发展"的社会理想状态.这是杜威"民主共同体"思想的内在本质.     

John Dewey on experience: a critical resource for the theory and practice of youth civic engagement

Research on youth civic engagement often sees the everyday lives of young people as barriers to civic engagement. Recent qualitative approaches have drawn attention to the civic and political dimensions of young people's everyday lives. This is a crucial insight, but cannot – by itself – answer a key question: just how is it that everyday experience can be transformed into civic engagement? I argue that John Dewey's theory of experience makes two key contributions toward answering this question. First, Dewey's situational understanding of experience directs us to the concrete conditions of everyday life as the necessary groundwork and starting point for civic engagement. Second, his concept of reflective experience helps us understand how taken for granted assumptions about political and social life can be transformed into more active forms of engagement. I illustrate this argument by drawing on selected findings from a qualitative study of young people's experience in Public Achievement, a civic engagement initiative.