Dominant Patterns in Associated Living: Hegemony, Domination, and Ideological Recognition in Dewey’s Lectures in China ITALO TESTA Abstract In this paper I focus on the notion of “dominant patterns”, as revealed by the recently discovered typescript of what we can assume to be Dewey’s fragmentary and incomplete preliminary notes for the Lecture Series on Social and Political Philosophy. I will show that the way “dominant patterns” is dealt with in the notes is not only consistent with the conceptual content of the whole series of the Lectures in China as published by R. W. Clopton and Tsuin-Chen, but also gives us further arguments to appreciate the centrality of this question in the development of Dewey’s philosophical project during this period. In particular, I argue that a comparative reading of the notes and the published Lectures in China allows us to appreciate the central role dominant patterns play for Dewey’s understanding of social groupings as embodying habitual patterns of action and the way habit formation shapes and gives content to the interests that groups identify with and are identified by in social practices. Secondly, I will argue that such a comparative reading allows us to appreciate how in the lecture series Dewey developed the notion of dominant patterns into a theory of social domination that is basically described in terms of habitualized recognitive relations. Hence, the discovery of the notes is also very helpful in deepening our understanding of the Deweyan approach to the question of social recognition – in particular of the dynamics of institutional recognition and its ideological function – and how it relates to habitualized patterns of dominant-subservient relations. Keywords: John Dewey, Domination, Habits, Social Philosophy, Struggle for Recognition, Conflict, Groups, Hegemony, Power, Institutionalization In this paper I will focus on the notion of “dominant patterns”, as revealed by the recently discovered typescript of what we can assume to be Dewey’s fragmentary and incomplete preliminary lectures notes for the Lecture Series on Social and Political Philosophy.1 I will show that the way the notion of “dominant patterns” is dealt with in the text of the lectures notes is not only consistent with the conceptual content of the whole series of the Lectures in China as published by R. W. Clopton and Tsuin-Chen,2 but also gives us further arguments to appreciate the centrality of this question to the development of Dewey’s philosophical project during this period. In particular, I will argue that a comparative reading of the lectures notes and of the Lectures in China allows us to appreciate the central role dominant patterns play for Dewey’s understanding of social groupings as embodying habitual patterns of action and the way habit formation shapes and gives content to the interests that groups identify with and are identified by in social practices. Secondly, I will argue that such a comparative reading allows us to appreciate how in the lecture series Dewey has developed the notion of dominant patterns into a theory of social domination which is basically described in terms of habitualized recognitive relations. Hence, the discovery of the lectures notes is also very helpful in deepening our understanding of the Deweyan approach to the question of social recognition – and in particular of the dynamics of institutional recognition and its ideological function – and how it relates to habitualized patterns of dominant-subservient relations. 1. Social Conflict. Lecture III 1.1. Interpenetrating Groups I will first concentrate on the third lecture of the Lectures in China (hereinafter the LC) and its corresponding lectures notes. In the first paragraphs of the third Lecture (LC: 64-65) Dewey develops what he had sketched out in the last part of his lectures notes (hereinafter the DN) for lecture two, that is, an analysis of the directive role of social philosophy in relation to what he assumes to be the practical function of theory. In the Lectures the practical function of theory, which consists in correcting errors and resolving problems when action is impeded, is explicitly connected with the question of social conflict. But this stress on social conflict is not confined only to the Lectures but is also to be found in the DN. In fact the second page of the DN for lecture one closely connects the practical genesis and function of philosophy to the practical situation where collective habitual courses of action cease to function: “men began to philosophize about their collective habits, their established institutions only when these began to cease [to] function satisfactorily. The difficulties might be internal strife or external contacts and conflicts or both” (DN: 7). This lets us understand why the text of the DN for lecture two begins exactly with the notion of conflict: “theory began in disturbance, confusion, friction” (DN: 16), where the notion of conflict is framed with terms such as ‘friction’ that refer specifically to social conflict. This is again consistent with what Dewey will say and develop in the Lectures, while affirming that “we should seek the origin of conflicts in interpenetrating relationships among groups” (LN 65). This affirmation in the Lectures makes it consistent with the social specification of this friction in the DN. Here Dewey qualifies conflict as “some conflict of forces”, and namely of “concrete social forces”. This is further analyzed by the statement that “the significant conflicts are conflicts of groups, classes, factions, parties, peoples” (DN: 16). For Dewey, then, significant conflicts are conflicts between concrete plural social subjects and not mere conflicts between abstract ideals, principles, or values. The basic notion in Dewey’s analysis of conflicts is that of a group, since classes, factions, and parties can all be re-described as different forms of social groupings. And in the DN groups are defined as follows: “A group is a number of people associated together for some purposes, some common activity that holds them” (DN: 16). In the Lectures Dewey makes it clear that we are to understand these groups not as fixed terms, but as “interpenetrating”, groups whose “lines of demarcation are ill-defined and overlapping” (LC: 65). It is interesting to observe that in the Lectures Dewey offers another definition of groups, according to which “groups are a collection of people who are united by common interests” (LC: 65), that is, are collections of people “constituted on the basis of at least one interest held in common by its members”. If one were to read this definition alone, taken out of context, then one could be driven to conclude that groups are identified by their capacity to fulfill some typology of objectively given basic interests.3 Fortunately however we have at our disposal the DN where, as we have seen, another definition of groups is to be found, where they are understood as “a number of people associated together for some purposes, some common activity that holds them”. Now, if we only had this definition available to us, we could run the risk of interpreting Dewey’s definition of groups as a merely intentionalist definition, where groups would be defined by the purposes they intentionally and consciously pursue. But I think these two definitions are complementary ones. If we read them together, we begin to appreciate that first, the relations between groups and interests is mediated by the common activity which holds together a number of people and defines their purposes and the interests they pursue. And second, such an activity, according to the model Dewey begins to develop in the notes for lecture one – and that in the Lectures will be further articulated in lecture five – is not modeled on a merely intentionalist model of action, but has to be understood as a customary activity, that is, as an activity established in prereflexive shared habitual patterns, in collective habits which give shape to and at the same time embody the interests which the group identifies with. It’s true that the Notes for lecture 5 are unfortunately missing, but in order to read this notion of groups in light of the notion of habitual action we do not necessarily need to have recourse to these notes, because in fact the fifth Lecture is heavily based on the conceptual tools of Human Nature and Conduct, a text published shortly after Dewey’s stay in China (in 1922), but which is also the result of a series of lectures he delivered in 1918. This makes it reasonable to read some aspects of both the DN and of the Lectures in light of the model of social action developed in Human Nature and Conduct, on which the first and the fifth chapter of the Lectures are based, and traces of which we can find also in the DN. Accordingly, action always happens in the context of prior action, and the structure of action’s embodiment is understood in terms of habit formation. This idea is very well expressed also by the passage in the fifth Lecture in China where habit formation is defined as a “regulated pattern of individual behavior derived from prior experience” (LC: 85). Following this model, habit, custom, and institutions are understood by Dewey as different degrees of systematization of patterns of interaction, described at the level of individuals – habit as a pattern of individual behavior – of groups – customs as collective habits common to different people forming a group – and of social totality – institutions understood as established collective habits which provide to the whole of society the same economy as habits and customs provide for individuals and groups.4 1.2. Custom-patterns Here I want to focus on three aspects of this notion of habitual action that I take to be relevant to understanding social groups and their activity. First, Dewey’s action theory is based on the notion of ‘patterns of action’, that is, on a notion of some regular and recurring structure that characterizes action. Second, the structure of these patterns is cemented by the process of habit formation, that is, they are to do with habitual, standing patterns of action. In this sense it is both an objective structure, and the result of a structuring activity, which excludes the idea that patterns of action are simply given as a merely objectively fixed content describable from an observer’s perspective. Third, habitual patterns of action are analyzed by Dewey as forms of embodiment which are both adaptations of our behavior to the natural and social environment and of the environment to our behavior: in this sense these patterns are incorporated in our living bodies, and incorporate within them our natural and social environment. In Human Nature and Conduct, hence, we find a conceptual scheme to understand social groupings and how their activity must be conceived. In particular, the key notion for understanding group action is that of “custom-patterns”, which in the elaboration Dewey offers in Human Nature and Conduct is also related to an analysis of the role that the “present mobility and intermingling of customs” play for social dynamics5. What is here labeled as the “intermingling of customs” offers us a more fine-grained perspective to understand why, according to the description offered in the Lectures, groups, and accordingly the interests that identify them, are not to be conceived of as fixed terms, but rather as interpenetrating to various degrees with each other. Moreover, the notion of custom-patterns is also connected with Dewey’s analysis of social conflict, which is characterized by Dewey in Human Nature and Conduct with the notion of “conflicting patterns”: the more complex the intermingling of customs is, the more its groups and institutions embody habits formed on differing, conflicting patterns6. If we now go back to the DN and the Lectures, we can see that in both texts we find an exemplification of different forms of groups united by different impulses, interests, and instincts. But note that in the DN, and more clearly in the Lectures, Dewey is not at all saying that there are a number of fixed impulses, interests, and needs which from an observer’s perspective objectively define different groups as functionally fulfilling them. The relation between the groups, the common interests by which they are united according to the definition of the DN, and the common activity that holds them according to the definition offered in the Lectures, is a relation of embodiment (DN: 17). The relation between groups and interests then is a relation of embodiment mediated by customary patterns, that is, mediated by a common activity that is incorporated into habitual action patterns. The common interests unite the group insofar as they are held together by a common activity that is to be understood as embodied in custom-patterns. Here interests are shaped by and take the form of the association in which they are incorporated: “some interest with the form of association in which it is embodied gets a particularly intense and widespread start” (DN: 17). Dewey insists on the fact that here some interest, the religious interest for instance, “ceases to be fed by natural sources”, that is, it is being re-defined in its own content and form by the social mediation of custom-patterns which it is embodied within, that is, by the religious social group which interprets it. This embodiment model of groups is moreover consistent with the notion of impulse developed in Human Nature and Conduct, where Dewey repeatedly criticizes every form of substantive understanding of impulses as identified by contents given independently from how they are shaped by natural and social environment. Impulses are characterized as native and original activities, not yet organized and determined. At the same time, Dewey adds that “the meaning of native activities is not native; it is acquired. It depends upon interaction with a matured social medium.”7 Which means that the meaning, the determinate content of impulses, is not given nor fixed. The notion of impulse expresses rather the native character of each action, that is, the fact that each action is something new, and as such is an “agency of deviations”, a “pivot of readjustment.”8 Dewey criticizes then the thesis that postulates that impulses have an invariant fixed content and that a list of sharply demarcated basic impulses may be compiled.9 On the contrary, he affirms that “any impulse may become organized into almost any disposition according to the way it interacts with surroundings.”10 He states as a leading proposition of his model that “social customs are not direct and necessary consequences of specific impulses, but that social institutions and expectations shape and crystallize impulses into dominant habits.”11 Social groups are thus not to be understood as direct consequences of some specific impulses they would fulfill, but are rather united by customary patterns which shape the form and the content of those impulses. This passage of Human Nature and Conduct adds a further decisive element which leads us back to the DN and the Lectures. In fact, Dewey introduces here the notion of “dominant habits”, understood as the result of the process which articulates and organizes impulses into permanent dispositions to action. As we will see, this notion of “dominant habit” is further elaborated into the notion of “dominant patterns” to be found in the DN. In Human Nature and Conduct Dewey uses such a notion of “dominance” to refer both to the intra-personal dimension, that is, to refer to those qualities that are the dominant element in a configuration, and namely to those habits that in an individual mostly characterize its action 12. But he also uses it in an interpersonal and institutional context, that is, to refer to those patterns of group habits that prevail over others, and hence to those social groups that are dominant in social processes. Here one can distinguish a functional notion of dominant habit – related to that which has authority and governs intrapersonal and interpersonal conduct – and a dysfunctional one – where such dominance becomes something unilateral that disfigures associated life. It is exactly in the latter sense that the notion of dominant patterns is developed in the DN and leads to a theory of social domination. We can now realize that Dewey, while writing of the type of group interests that “insists upon dominating activity, monopolizing attention and interest” (DN:17), is first framing them as dominant habits. Second, the qualification of this specific “dominating activity” as something that is “monopolizing” attention and interest, already adds some sort of negative evaluation of it and qualifies it as somehow dysfunctional for associated living. 1.3. Dominant Patterns and Monopolizing Activity As we have seen, the plurality of (to varying degrees) interpenetrating groups, as well as the plurality of custom-patterns seem to be a constitutive aspect of human society according to Dewey. And, as stated in Human Nature and Conduct, the more complex social practices become, the more conflict between groups manifests itself as a structural feature of social evolution both within and among societies. In this sense social philosophy presupposes conflict as a constitutive element of associated life. This is clearly stated, as seen, by the beginning of the notes on Lecture 2 (“Theory began in disturbance, confusion, friction”) and to my mind is consistent with the spirit and the letter of the Lectures in China, where the not eliminable character of social conflict is explicitly mentioned, for instance in the final pages of Lecture four, in a passage not to be found in the DN, where Dewey writes that “to be sure, conflict will not be eliminated, but can be ameliorated” (LC: 80).13 This is a point further developed in the Lectures, where it is framed within the notion of the “state of imbalance” (“society is in a state of imbalance, because the many groups do not and cannot develop equally” [LC: 66]). Conflict is a structural feature of social life since this is constituted by many intersecting social groupings, in a standing state of potential imbalance. The problem here is not imbalance per se, but rather the situation where imbalance becomes pathological, and manifests dissatisfactions and obstructions which express some sort of social suffering. As we will see, this is exactly the point where dominant patterns turn into domination. The text of the DN here is helpful because first it confirms the importance of the notion of imbalance we encounter in Lecture two, and second, it connects it with the diagnostic and transformative task of social philosophy. Dewey writes: That the unequal and unbalanced development of forms of life is the source of social difficulties in general and that the problem of theory is to detect these causes in detail and provide plans for remedial action thus appears. (DN: 19) Social pathologies, whose diagnosis is associated at the very beginning of the DN with the practical role of theory in social philosophy, are systematic disturbances in the characteristic functions of collective habitual action. And the diagnostic and reconstructive role of social philosophy, which in the Lectures in China and in Human Nature and Conduct is more developed than in the DN, is connected with the diagnosis of such ills and their critical transformation. Such pathologies intervene when the imbalance of associated living becomes “unequal” in a way that becomes dysfunctional, because it leads to a condition that prevents individuals and groups from fully developing their potential and results in an unhealthy situation for the whole society. This is exactly where life’s structural imbalance turns into domination, leading to social patterns where oppression is exercised by some groups over some others. Here the following long quote plays an important role: the interest in question becomes isolated; it ceases to be fed by natural sources; it becomes rigid, petrified, fossilized, and unless its pretensions are broken down and interaction and balance restored, it decays, there is general relapse and stagnation, corruption. Some force has to come in from outside to stir things up and bring about a vital interplay of social activities. A mode of social life that is monopolistic of human energy and attention, comparatively speaking, necessarily becomes itself one sided. (DN: 17) The point Dewey wants to highlight is that the activity of some groups, that is their patterns of action, become “dominating” in social life, in a way which exercises a sort of “monopolizing activity” over “human energy and attention”. The notion of “monopoly”, which is characteristically used in the DN, signals where dominant patterns of action become forms of social domination. What dominates here is not a certain interest content, but a certain form, that is, a certain form of social organization – for instance, the religious group – which gives shape to its own and to the other groups’ interests. At first sight, Dewey’s analysis is focused on what might be called a reifying effect, that is on the fact that those custom patterns which prevail tend to reify some social interests, to detach and “isolate” them from the living social interplay, and to let them become “one sided”, “rigid”, petrified” – which are exactly the expressions that would later be used by authors such as Lukács and Adorno to describe commodification as a realm of frozen spirit, a sphere of human interpersonal activity turned into a fossilized dead thing. But in the analysis of those modes of social life that monopolize human activities, Dewey also makes it clear that such reifying effects are to be read as a certain manifestation of the conflictive relation between groups: when conflict leads to a situation where, to quote the Lectures, “one group oppresses another” (LC: 66). The notion of dominant patterns is then applied to analyze situations of social oppression, understood as subordination of some groups to some others. This reading is strongly backed now by the DN, where Dewey, analyzing forms of “predominance” within groups, or of one group over another, frames this again in terms of social oppression, that is, as a condition where one group or some social subjects are “suppressed, choked, dwarfed” (DN: 17). In the Lectures in China these groups are framed as “subordinated groups” and in the sixth Lecture these social relations are defined as a “pattern of dominance-subservience” (LC: 92). This passage offers us a compact definition of domination in terms of habitual patterns of action. If it’s a pity that most of the sixth Lecture is missing from the DN, we can anyway find here, in the course of the analysis that Dewey offers of the predominance of the church and religious groups over other social groups and institutions, a nice quote which corresponds quite literally to the formula of the Lectures, where Dewey writes: “The dominant pattern, others subordinated even when they split off” (DN: 18). This confirms that the question of domination was a crucial one in the scheme of the notes which Dewey had prepared for his lectures. Moreover, in the DN we can find an annotation that confers a methodological role to the notion of patterns as for our understanding of social conflict and antagonism of interests. Here Dewey writes that: In dealing then on the basis of theory with any particular social condition we need first to ask what pattern of human association tends to be central and regulative; what are the one-sidednesses and arrests, fixation [and] rigidities thereby produced; where are the suppressions from which society is suffering in consequence; what are the points of conflict, strife, antagonism of interest (DN: 18). This is a very important passage for our overall interpretation. First, it states that the notion of action patterns is a focal point of social theory. Second, asking oneself which patterns of human association tend to be central and regulative, we are not fixing them to basic needs: rather, we start from these group patterns and then see how they frame the needs and interests. Third, this notion of patterns is used in the functional sense of dominant patterns, understood as those patterns that tend to be central and regulative in human association. Fourth, Dewey identifies also dysfunctional dominant patterns – dysfunctional for associated living, because they produce suffering and social ills – and characterizes them as reifications – “fixations”, “rigidities” of social interplay. Fifth, these reifications are analyzed in terms of domination understood as social oppression – the situation where one group suppresses another – and these forms of subordination are connected with specific forms of conflict and antagonism of interest which they give rise to. 1.4. Dewey’s analyses of social domination It is now interesting to observe how Dewey concretely applies his methodological approach based on the analysis of customary patterns of action and develops it into an analysis of some particular social forms of predominance of some groups over some others. As already mentioned, in the DN Dewey offers first as an example the domination exercised by the church over other social groupings in the middle ages: an example that is analyzed in more detail in the Lectures, with a major emphasis on the “special respect and status” accorded to ecclesiastical organizations (LC: 67). A further example given in the DN is that of the domination exercised by political organizations, and that in the Lectures will be developed also in relation to the Oriental World. Moreover, the Lectures develop some other examples in relation to the domination of family groups over society, and in relation to the social domination exercised by some economically classified groups, such as the group of American capitalists. It is interesting here to note how the treatment of family differs between the DN and the Lectures. Here the DN is helpful to understand on which basis in the Lectures Dewey qualifies the family as the “most important of all social groupings and institutions” and the “fundamental social institution”. Dewey adds here that family is the social institution that “has throughout history been able to resist, at least in a measure, the attempted domination of other groups” (LC: 69). Here family is fundamental just because it is the group that throughout history has proved to be best able to resist the oppression of other groups. In fact, when Dewey in the DN writes that “there are good reasons why the family principle should be expressed first historically” (DN: 18), he is not saying that because he wants to embrace some sort of Aristotelian crude naturalistic understanding of the natural function of the family. A crude naturalistic understanding of family is explicitly excluded by the fact that in the DN this passage is followed by some notes where Dewey resumes the Aristotelian conception of the family, and afterwards criticizes it. The Aristotelian model of the household is here sketched as an instance of how domination operates within a social group, and of how some sort of configuration of a family group can define a dominating pattern. Also in the Lectures Dewey noted that family groups are liable to “conservatism and inequality” (LC: 70), since in “most families the various members do not enjoy equality of privilege and opportunity” and “some members exercise the authority, while others simply obey” – as is the case, to various degrees, with women and slaves. But in the DN this is connected with an explicit criticism of Aristotle, and with a more extended analysis of the phenomenon of domination at play. First, Dewey observes that in a patriarchal society there is a “dominant family” which dominates over other families and exercises a sort of pre-political power. This is read in terms of dominant patterns: “the dominant pattern, others subordinated even when they split off” (DN: 18). Second, Dewey analyzes how dominant patterns are established within the family, and reads this explicitly in terms of “subordination” (DN: 19). And the main example is here that of the “subordination of women to men”, where women are being reduced to “passive means of reproduction”, and the relation between women and men reduced to some sort of relation “of inferiors to superiors fixed naturally, physically and inalterably. Aristotle – on position of women, and some persons naturally slaves, tools” (DN: 19). Patriarchal family is then a good example of how within some groups dominating custompatterns are established and inscribed into bodily existence that accord to some individuals a privileged status to the disadvantages of some others. But this relation of subordination does not only affect single individuals, because in a society where patriarchal family becomes the dominant social organization, it affects the subordinated individuals as members of a subordinated group – for instance, women as members of an oppressed group or class of individuals. Moreover, even the phenomenon of domination within a family is connected both with a reification of natural functions to the disadvantage of some subjects, and with the phenomenon of the division of labor – applied here to reproductive labor –and of economic exploitation of some by others. That’s why Dewey uses in the DN the formula “women a property” (DN: 19) and connects intimately sexist subordination to the racist and/or economical exploitation of slaves reduced as tools of the pater familias. The plural composition of social subordination as embodied in custom-patterns is thus not reduced exclusively to mere economic factors, but anyway gives them an important explicative role in this framework and the text of the DN is here an important tool to get this right. We need here only to mention that the first paradigm under which Dewey in the DN thinks subordination is that of “monopolizing activity”, which is clearly a generalization of an economic notion which describes some development of American Capitalism. This is confirmed first by a passage in the DN, where capitalist groups are understood as establishing dominating patterns that monopolize and colonize other forms of life, thus leading to a disfigured and unilateral development of associated living.14 Second, just after having schematically sketched out how in the family different factors of social subordination are connected with the economic structures of society, Dewey introduces the notion Eliminato: iv of “class” in order to better characterize the more general aspects of social domination. Hence he writes that “certain classes in community not really parts, sharers in community life but external means, must live, supply conditions to higher, leisure class that devotes itself to higher things” (DN: 19), where the dominated are not really participants in social life but rather used as means, tools to others’ ends by other groups whose privileges also have an economic standing. Third, when coming to analyze how group domination manifests itself in the political sphere, Dewey uses the formula “the state began as Es-tate” (DN: 19) and observes how the historical genesis of state formations is connected with the affirmation of some sort of social domination by some individuals and groups whose ruling role was connected with social property.15 Finally, in the last part of the DN for Lecture three, Dewey analyzes groups where the bond of union is constituted by familiarity, acquaintance, neighborhood, and which in the Lectures are labeled as “geographical groups” (LC: 70). In the Lectures Dewey stresses both the positive side of these groups – which mitigate other forms of conflict providing an “overarching sense of community” – and their negative side – degeneration into nationalism, provincialism. The analysis of these aspects is more fine-grained in the DN, where Dewey stresses the fact that groups of contiguity tend to reinforce an instinctive attitude towards those who do not conform to our habits, as alien and suspicious, and thus to enforce an exclusive sense of “us”: Our village, district, province, nation, as distinct from outsiders, instinctive attitude toward the strange, alien foreign in appearance and custom, habits, clothes, one of suspicion, fear dislike. Our church, club, clique, circle, party, college, class, those who have the same habits, who are familiar with one another and understand one another. Exclusiveness, prejudice, jealously, isolation, hostility. (DN: 20) This is a point Dewey connects with some social conflicts he qualifies specifically as “friction” (DN: 21) – a notion he uses also at a later point in the Lectures to analyze some forms of conflict and that here he sees connected with the great mobility of modern life, that on the one hand dissolves old bonds of contiguity, but on the other hand brings local groups into closer contact and increases the sources of friction. In the present context it is very important to observe that the analysis of friction is here once again connected with an analysis in terms of dominant custompatterns. This is a point Dewey also develops in “Racial prejudice and friction” (1922), where he observes that dominant patterns, providing us with standards of social normality, when reified, drive social groups towards some sort of attitude which tends to regard as “abnormal” and “unnatural” anything which departs from our embodied habits.16 Here Dewey’s theory of dominant patterns is developed as some sort of criticism of the role that implicit forms of reifying naturalization play in social conflicts (for instance racism) and in social domination – for instance the domination of males over females in patriarchal society, based on a relation of inferiors to superiors fixed naturally and invariantly. But, as we have seen, habit formation is in another sense considered by Dewey a naturalized mechanism, a mechanism of adaptation to and of the environment. How are we to understand here the double role played by naturalness in the formation of dominant custompatterns? 1.5 Human Nature and Associated Living The notion of “patterns” is then explicitly associated in the final part of the notes for the third lecture with dominating effects rooted in habit formation that are understood as “distortions of human nature”: Now [it is] obvious that all these things involve a onesidedness and distortion of human nature – suppression of growth in some direction, exaggeration in others. Lordship, mastery, authority stimulated out of all properties in a few. The qualities that could be developed only by direct share in associations for advance of intellectual life, art, industry, religion, inhibited. Even as these forms of association grow up, they are not free to grow; they have to accommodate themselves to habits carried over from a prior dominant association. (DN: 19) Here the notion of patterns as habit formations and the role they play in the configuration of social practices, is not only associated with the institution of relations of “lordship” and “mastery” – which is consistent with the role that in Lecture six will be assigned to the Hegelian master-slave dialectics as a general model of relations of domination both at the interindividual and at the group level. Patterns of “dominance-subservience” are also characterized as a “mode of living”, which in the DN is qualified as one-sided, as a “distortion of human nature”. Dewey’s social philosophy is articulated here as a theory of domination and at the same time given a naturalist and anthropological foundation. And here it is the naturalized theory of habit formation Dewey uses in Human Nature and Conduct to criticize substantive approaches to impulses, which can offer us the key to understanding how Dewey conceives human nature. Human nature is not understood here as a matter of some set of instincts, impulses, needs or interests, but is rather connected with the dynamic notion of the development of “associated living” through habit formation. In the fifth Lecture, unfortunately missing in the DN, Dewey introduced the notion of associated living as the chief source of the criteria of judgment of social philosophy. Associated living then is understood as a matter of cooperation and communication. The ultimate criterion it furnishes us with for the judgment of social practices is nothing more than that of their contribution to the “development and qualitative enhancement of associated living” (LC: 90). But luckily enough, the short section we have of the notes for the sixth Lecture very well epitomizes Dewey’s understanding of associated living with the following words: The supreme test of any social arrangement, custom, institution, law etc. is its relationship to promoting living together, association, intercourse, communication exchange of feelings and ideas that makes experiences common (common, communication, community). (DN: 25) The notion of associated living deploys a process anthropology of our form of life, of our Gattung, understood as a self-interpreting communicative life-form.17 Forms of domination are thus considered as dysfunctional and pathological because of their monopolizing character, which produces a lack of social communication, and leads to an individual and collective development that is finally unilaterally directed, disfigured and repressed. That’s also why, when Dewey analyzed the dominating role of American capitalists in the United States, he framed that in terms of “groups cutting across the other forms of life, and tending to subordinate them to its own unchecked aggrandizement” (DN: 18). Here capitalist domination was understood as a form of life that colonizes other forms of life and, monopolizing social totality, tends to disfigure the development of associated living as a whole. Now we can better understand in which sense the monopolizing activity of certain dominant patterns was framed in the DN as some sort of reification of social life, reduced to something unilateral, fixed, petrified. This is consistent with the concept of alienation Dewey offers in the Lectures, where alienation is defined as “an antonym of associated living” (LC: 91). Since the qualitative enhancement of associated living is extended communication, social alienation is understood as a deprivation of such an expressive communicative force of life, or in other terms as a situation where communication between social groups is reduced to a minimum and is limited or impeded by a socially established blockage. As Dewey states in another passage of the DN we have already quoted, this is a situation where “free give and take, mutual enrichment, reciprocal stimulation is prevented” (DN: 17). In the Lectures this idea is articulated in a way that is consistent with the DN, and that is negatively expressed by saying that “when one group suffers disadvantage, then all are hurt”, and positively expressed by saying that “ social groups are so intimately interrelated that what happens to one of them ultimately affects the well-being of all of them” (LC: 71). Eliminato: America Finally, in order to better understand what it means for domination to distort human nature, we can turn to a passage of the DN relative to the fourth lecture. Here Dewey writes that: at some point the suppressed side of human interest, the instincts that have not got expression and satisfaction come to consciousness, and they claim the right to operate. (DN: 20) While speaking of the “suppressed side of human interest” and of “instincts that have not got expression”, Dewey is again referring to the idea developed in Human nature and conduct, where impulses were understood as fresh forces, agents of reconstruction, rather than as already structured contents. Moreover, in the same passage Dewey writes that such human interests: are not abstract but are embodied in definite groups of persons. There is no struggle between science and religion, between church and state, but there is one between those concrete human beings who exercise, say, the controlling power through the church and other men and women whose instincts to investigate and discover or to promote secular welfare, or achieve political power, are repressed and thwarted. (DN: 20) Here Dewey explicitly denies that social conflict happens between interests per se, or even between groups defined abstractly as fulfilling basic functional needs.18 Social conflict is rather understood as conflict between concrete groups that embody the interests they identify with and are identified by their custom-patterns. Hence, there are no abstract religious, scientific interests, but rather concrete different social groups who interpret these interests, ascribe them to one another and while doing that get into conflict. And this is consistent with what Dewey writes in the fourth chapter of the Lectures, where he defines “social conflict as disparity among the interests sought by groups of people” (LC: 73). Once again, the theory of domination is here connected with a notion of human nature understood as a process of habit formation. 2. Social Reform. Lecture Four 2.1. Hegemonic groups in public recognition The notes for Lecture four in the DN begin with the recapitulation of the result of the notes for the previous lecture. Now the first block of the text seems to frame social friction in terms of a conflict between different interests: The point of view presented at the last hour was that the practical difficulties which lie back of theoretical social problems are due to the exaggerated development of some one interest in a given type of society, the family, the religious, the economic, the political, that of personal acquaintance or whatever. This exaggerated development of some interest brings groups or classes of persons into conflict with one another. (DN: 20) But this does not involve any substantive difference with respect to the Lectures. First, the fact that here Dewey speaks of the conflict between religious, scientific, family, and economic interest is not to be interpreted, as we have seen, as if interests were given by themselves, with a fixed content, related to the abstract categories of science, religion, economy, and the like. Second, interests are not to be reified and considered as independent from social groups. Dewey in the previous chapter of the DN has very well made clear that social conflict is a matter of conflict between groups. Moreover, groups are united by interests, but the content and form of these interests has been said not to be independent of the customary form of these groups’ activity. Third, Dewey has made clear that what is crucial in conflict are the “dominant” relations within and among groups. Also in relation to the analysis of the church as a predominant group, he has stressed not so much the conflict between religious interest and scientific interest, but rather the conflict between ecclesiastical organizations as dominant interpreters of the group’s purposes that tend to colonize other social formations. The notes for the fourth Lecture in the DN are important here because they express in a clear and synthetic way the interpretative structure of the custom-patterns that constitute social groups. The specification in terms of dominant patterns is explicit where Dewey writes: one set of persons represents and embodies the dominant, law-interpreting group and other persons the subdued, depressed, comparatively dumb group. (DN: 20) Here these social relations are qualified as relations between dominant and subdued groups. Moreover, these groups are interpreted in terms of embodiment of habitual patterns. And the dominant group is defined as “law interpreting”, that is, a normative circle whose customs embody a dominant authoritative interpretation of the needs of society. This interpretative scheme plays a major role in Dewey’s analysis of the dynamics of social conflict and of its outcome in terms of domination of some groups over some others. Such an embodiment of an interpretation of social interests on the part of the dominant group is further considered as the fact that “they represent what is established, the customary and instituted order, they appear to embody the claims, authority and majesty of society”. This means that this group embodies the dominant habitual patterns, that is, those patterns which express the instituted order: in other terms, the patterns that embody the normative order which is hegemonic in this society. To use Dewey’s words, this is the ensemble of “claims” that have not only normative “authority” but that obtain also “majesty” in that society, insofar as they monopolize the interpretation of social needs. This is consistent with what Dewey will say in the Lectures, where he will make explicit this point by saying that the dominant group – he also qualifies as “disproportionately privileged” – is the group which identifies its interests with those of the whole society (“The dominant group is society, its interests are the interests of the society”, LC: 73).19 On the basis of the DN we can now better understand such an identification as a law-interpreting activity where a social group strives to establish its own articulation of social purposes as an hegemonic normative order, that is, as a dominant pattern also for the interpretative activity of other groups. Now we can finally come to the specific contribution that the DN makes to the qualification in terms of recognition of this dynamic. In the DN, in fact, Dewey expresses the position of the dominant groups as that of those groups who “have the sanction of any social aim which has become acknowledged authoritatively” (DN: 20–21). Here the expression “acknowledgment” clearly refers to an interpersonal context of normative attitudes and can be assumed to be a genuine occurrence of the recognitive register of the analysis of social conflict. Moreover, such an acknowledgment of authority is also explicitly qualified as “recognition” when Dewey further writes that “it comes about that egoism, selfishness, which has become established by custom, which has attained recognition and prestige, puts on the garb of social sanction and moral standards, of law and order.” This attained recognition is an instance of interpersonal social recognition – note the reference to the phenomenon of prestige – that is furthermore normatively acknowledged and institutionally sanctioned.20 This passage then refers to the same phenomenon that in the Lectures will be framed through the notion of “public recognition”. For instance, the Lectures say that in medieval society the interests of the church were “publicly recognized”, whereas members of the dominant ecclesiastic group did not recognize interpretations of social interests disparate or competitive to their own (LC: 73), regarding them as being individual idiosyncrasies rather than expressing socially accepted purposes. This was a situation where the interpretative scheme of the dominant groups “tend to be implicitly identified with those of society”; that is, tend to monopolize social interpretations and to subordinate other groups to their pre-reflective, implicitly assumed custom-patterns. And the subordinated groups were here those that “did not yet enjoy such public recognition” (LC: 75), that is, those groups whose interpretative scheme are not embodied in the customary-patterns dominating in that society. That’s why in the Lectures these are plastically defined as being in a social condition where “interests sought by a subordinate group are customarily not so recognized” (LC: 74). The idea here is that customary patterns embody not only interpretative schemes of social purposes but also patterns of social acceptance. The notion of recognition refers to the interpersonal dynamics of this social acceptance. The DN are here precious because, while stressing that “attained recognition” is “established by social custom”, they make it clear that such interpersonal courses of recognition/acceptance are not to be understood as a mere matter of intentional attitudes, but rather are patterns inscribed in bodily attitudes and habits. The notion of “public recognition” developed in the Lectures articulates furthermore the role that these patterns of acceptance play for the articulation of public space, that is for the social definition of what is to be taken as public, of common and shared interest, and what is to be taken as merely private and idiosyncratic. This notion then captures the role that recognitive intercourses play for the configuration of the structure of the public space. On the other hand, the text of the DN lets us better appreciate the institutional dimension of public recognition. The interpretative schemes and custom-patterns of those groups who have attained public recognition are those law-interpreting schemes that are institutionalized as authoritative and that define the normal interpretations of social life. This is then a process of normative institutionalization of dominant patterns in a “form of life”. 2.2. Institutionalization and Ideological Recognition As we have seen, in the DN Dewey is particularly sensitive to the slippery slope dynamics that turns dominant patterns into forms of social domination. This is again reflected in the way that Dewey’s analysis of recognitively mediated institutionalizations can be connected with ideological domination: In short one form of self-seeking, of selfish aggrandizement had been [illeg.] institutionalized, so wrapped up with all forms of life, and so controlling, that it did not seem to express selfish ambition and aggrandizement, sheer love of power at all. (LC: 21) Here we are speaking about forms of institutionalization that somehow become ideological, that is, which present themselves as expressing general interests which define the grammar of what is normatively publicly recognized, of what is publicly accepted as valid and authoritative by social institutions, while suppressing alternative perspectives and denying their common value. This notion of “institutionalization” is one of the important acquisitions of the DN. Here institutionalization is understood in terms of the establishment of a “customary and instituted order”. This process of institutionalization is further analyzed in the DN in relation to “family patterns”, that is to habitual forms of familiar association, and in particular in relation to the situation where family is the dominant grouping in society, as in patriarchate. This is described as the situation where the “egotism” of the male adults gets a “social sanction” (DN: 21), which is further analyzed by saying that here the: special and one-sided interests of male adults become institutionalized, and standardized, vested interests, and they become influential, that is to say actually bound up with all forms of social intercourse and relationships, affecting all ceremonies and the trend of thought and action, those interests take on social justification, glory, prestige. (DN: 22) Here such an institutionalization is read as a situation where some sort of ideological normality is established. This happens where a particular self-interested perspective on social meanings becomes a public standard of interpretation, embodied in social institutions, socially sanctioned and normatively acknowledged. The interplay between the notion of institutionalization to be found in the DN and the notion of public recognition to be found in the Lectures, lets us see that at least one level of analysis of the latter concerns what we may call ‘ideological recognition,’21 that is how some forms of established public recognition become institutional apparatus with ideological function. The ideological effect consists here in concealing its particular character, vesting its interest as a public one, and exercising some sort of influential power over other social formations the legitimacy of whose standing interpretative attitudes it tends to deny. It is not merely by chance that the notion of “prestige” is mentioned often in the DN and expresses exactly this influential recognitive power that tends to give shape to social values. Dewey is also clearer on this connection between social normativity and influential ideological power when he says that those interests “take on social justification, glory and prestige” (DN: 22). This again confirms a reading in terms of recognition – glory and prestige being two traditional manifestation of recognition in terms of hierarchic patterns of dominance – and also confirms that the whole point of the notion of public recognition is to make explicit the intimate connection between recognitive relations, power, and social justifications (where some social justifications express imbalances of recognitive relations). And in fact some lines below Dewey in the DN will characterize such form of institutionalization as a “recognized system of beliefs” (DN: 23), and will qualify the subdued “class” as the “class” of those “who suffer from inadequate social recognition” (DN: 25). In the same sense, in chapter V of the Lectures, Dewey speaks of “consciously recognized customs”, as a form of “systematization” of customs which gives rise to “traditions” (LC: 86). In the Lectures the analysis of family patterns is developed in relation to the oriental audience and the changes in the structure of the “oriental family” (LC: 75), where the elders, considered as those who “occupy positions of status and exercise considerable power”, disregard or oppose demands of the subordinated groups (women, younger people). Here again the “subordinated groups” are identified as those that “have not yet been accorded sufficiently wide public recognition” (LC: 76) and are “not recognized as an operating component of the larger society”. Dewey generalizes this point, saying that he believes that “every instance of social conflict in history can be shown to have had this sort of origin”, and then describes again social conflict as a matter of conflict between groups, one of which “has been publicly recognized by the larger society, the other of which has not yet achieved such recognition”. And here again Dewey makes it clear that interests are “social interests”, and that the problem in this situation is that society cannot yet see that “the demands of still-unrecognized groups do, in fact, constitute a social interest”. Here the point is that social interests are constituted in light of demands for recognition, hence of the selfand reciprocal interpretations of social groups. Now we can better appreciate how the process of normative institutionalization of dominant patterns introduces a specific conflictive dynamic in a form of life. The institutional implementation of a form of public recognition is seen as the result of a struggle between social groups that fight to establish their patterns as dominant in society, that is, to have their demands publicly acknowledged as authoritative and sanctioned standards of social interpretations. It’s important to see that the analysis of the three phases of social reform, which is to be found both in the DN and in the Lectures, is exactly an articulation of this dialectical dynamic of the demands for recognition which gives shape to the dominance relations that constitute a public space. In this sense the three phase model is first an analysis of a general structure of social conflicts; second, is consistent with an analysis in terms of demands of recognition; and third, corresponds to the different forms of social domination. As for the analysis of the phases, this is identical both in the DN and in the Lectures.22 The first phase is 1) tacit acceptance –where suppression and subordination is taken as a “necessary order of things” (DN: 22) and as “a fact of nature – inalterable, and therefore to be accepted”. This is the situation where some group patterns gain control over public recognition and dominate other groups to the point where the latter cannot even articulate alternative demands (LC: 77). The second phase is 2) “restlessness and discontent” (DN: 23) or “challenge” (LC: 77), where “consciousness of powers which are not expressed and satisfied” (DN: 23) arises. Here “demands” are formulated in light of which “facts of nature turn out not to be immutable after all” (LC: 77), that is, are somehow revealed as hegemonic ones. Such demands for recognition are still framed in individualistic terms both by those who raise them (in terms of individual rights) and by their opponents (who qualify this as a form of disruptive selfishness). The Third phase is 3) “fruition” (LC: 78) and is characterized in the DN as the stage where the “demands” are socialized, and become a “demand for a chance to perform a badly needed social function” (DN: 23). In the Lectures this is characterized as a situation where society “recognizes the social validity of the demand”, that is, where there is “general recognition that the demands made by the movement are actually matters of social interest” (LC: 78). Here it is not only the group that recognizes as social its own interest, but society at large recognizes this interest as socially shared. This is the phase where the demands for recognition of a previously oppressed group are included and contribute to redefine the structure of public recognition and its power relations. Here we come back to phase one when and if the patterns of this group become themselves dominating patterns in social life. In the DN, as in the Lectures, the first exemplification of the three phases is feminism, the movement for the emancipation of women. An interesting definition of this movement is to be found in the DN, where Dewey says that it is a “matter of new action of social forces bringing about a reconstruction of social groups and their re-adjustments to each other” (DN: 22). What’s peculiar of the DN is that here the second exemplification of the three phases is given in relation to the growth of scientific interest. It is relevant to note that, in describing the third phase, Dewey stresses the role of the group as a matter of “social standing and repute” (“In the third stage, the scientific movement has got enough organization, it has grouped about itself a sufficient number of persons, so that it has a social standing and repute” [DN: 24]), once again underlining the status like character of the groups involved and the role recognitive practices play in the constitution of social groups. This can allow us to appreciate that the status analysis of social domination that is to be found in a more articulated fashion in the Lectures has a footing in the DN. Finally, the third example both in the DN and in the Lectures is the labor movement and the struggle between workers and capitalists in industrial society. These three exemplifications are intermingled in a number of ways and are not to be taken separately, as if each of these social struggles were expressing fixed and separate interests. In fact, the development of the women’s movement is deeply connected with the question of the division of labor and of the growth of industrial revolution, which is also the context in which the social group of scientists begins to question the authority of previous forms of knowledge. In the Lectures Dewey, after having delineated the three phases, comes back to his general definition of social conflict, and formulates the image of social conflict as a “tug of war between the interests of one group of people and those of another group” (LC: 79). This image is consistent with the analysis of the three phases in the DN, and is followed by a further specification of this dynamic of demands in social movements as a matter of achieving “recognition”, that is, of subordinate groups gaining “numbers, strength, and public recognition”. This notion of public recognition is used so often in the Lectures that it is reasonable to think that it cannot be a mere interpolation of the Chinese translator, or the fruit of a misunderstanding of some notion by the auditors who have recorded the lectures, but that it must correspond to some notion Dewey has further articulated. And in fact, as we have seen, the notion of public recognition makes explicit the conceptual structure of the three phase analysis of social conflict that is to be found both in the DN and in the Lectures, and is further elaborated into the notion of ‘institutionalization’, which to my mind constitutes the most significant conceptual contribution offered by the text of the DN. Università degli Studi di Parma italo.testa@unipr.it REFERENCES Dewey, J. (1973), Lectures in China, 1919-1920, translated and edited by Robert W. Clopton and Tsuin-Chen Ou. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii. ——— (1983), Human Nature and Conduct, in The Middle Works of John Dewey [MW], 18991924. Volume 14: 1922, Human Nature and Conduct, edited by Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale: SIUP. ——— (1922a), “Racial Prejudice and Friction”, in MW 13: 242–254 ——— (2008), “Conscription of Thought”, in MW 10: 276–280 ——— (2015), “Lectures in Social and Political Philosophy”, edited by Roberto Frega and Roberto Gronda, European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, VII, 2: 7-44 Chiang, Y. C. (2015), “Appropriating Dewey: Hu Shi and His Translation of Dewey’s “Social and Philosophical Philosophy” Lectures Series in China”, European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, VII, 2: 71-97 Frega, R., “John Dewey’s Social Philosophy: A Restatement”, European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, VII, 2: 98-127 Honneth, A. (2007), “Recognition as Ideology”, in Bert v. den Brink, David Owen (eds.), Recognition and Power. Axel Honneth and the Tradition of Critical Social Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press): 323-347 Midtgarden, T. (2012). “Critical Pragmatism: Dewey’s Social Philosophy Revisited”. European Journal of Social Theory: 1–17. Renault, R. (2013), “Dewey, Mead e il concetto hegeliano di riconoscimento”, Consecutio temporum, 5: 1–10 Särkelä, A. (2013). “Ein drama in drei akten”, Deutsche Ze , 61 (5-6):681– 696. Testa, I. (2017a). “Dewey’s Social Ontology: A Pragmatist Alternative to Searle’s Approach to Social Reality,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies, VOL & PAGE#S ——— (2017b). “The Authority of Life: The Critical Task of Dewey’s Social Ontology,” Journal of Speculative Philosophy, forthcoming NOTES Dewey (2015). Dewey (1973). 3 For an interpretation of DN in terms of a theory of intrinsic basic needs see on the contrary Frega (2015). 4 For this socio-ontological analysis of habit formation in Dewey see Testa 2017a. 5 Dewey (1983: 54). 6 Dewey (1983: 89). 7 Dewey (1983: 65). 8 Dewey (1983: 67 and 76). 9 Dewey (1983: 92): “In the first place, it is unscientific to try to restrict original activities to a definite number of sharply demarcated classes of instincts”; see also Dewey (1983: 86 and 104). 10 Dewey (1983: 69). 11 Dewey (1983: 85). 12 Dewey (1983: 29). 13 For this reason I don’t agree with Yung-Chen Chiang’s interpretation, according to which Hu Shin, from whose point of view conflicts were anomalies, has manipulated here the Chinese text on which the English edition of the Lectures is based and erased the traces of Dewey’s appreciation of the structural role of conflict (Chiang 2015: 88–90). First, in the text of the Lectures a deep Eliminato: 6 Commento [it1]: “International Journal of Philosophical Studies”, Vol. 25, No. 1 (2017): 40-62; first published on-line 5 dic. 2016, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09672559.20 16.1260625 1 2 Eliminato: 6 Formattato: Inglese (Stati Uniti) understanding of the structural role of social conflict is to be detected. Second, if Hu Shin had manipulated the text, why should he have added a passage on the inevitability of conflict? More in general Chiang assumes that, whenever something appears in the published text of the Lectures which is not to be found in the notes, and vice versa, then we should impute to Hu Shin’s manipulation. This is a rather questionable assumption, which combined with the further assumption that Hu Shin’s translation were a translation of the notes rather than a translation of the impromptu of the lectures recorded by the auditors (on the process of delivery, interpretation, recording, and translation of the lectures see Introduction, in Dewey 1973: 9), leads Chen-Chiang to the conclusion that the text of the Lectures in China would be unreliable. But let alone these methodological assumptions, in this article I argue on the basis of a philosophical comparison between the lectures note and the Lectures in China that the lectures notes are fundamentally consistent with the conceptual content of the edited Lectures in China. This gives us a sound argument to evaluate the text of the Lectures in China as fundamentally reliable and complementary to the lectures notes. 14 “The contemporary West, especially American industrial and economic groups cutting across the other forms of life, and tending to subordinate them to its own unchecked aggrandizement” (DN: 18). 15 “In politics generally, the state began as the Es-tate, the dominion of the ruler. The dominion, that over which one exercised rule, lordship, authority, was the same as property” (DN: 19). 16 Dewey (2008a): 243–248. 17 For an analysis of life form in Dewey’s critical social philosophy see Testa (2017b). 18 I think this passage, together with a number of arguments I offer throughout my reconstruction of the notions of ‘group’, ‘conflict’ and ‘domination’, undermine Roberto Frega’s interpretation of DN as being based on a taxonomic theory of basic intrinsic human needs or interests (see Frega 2015: 107–108), on a functionalist theory of groups as social formations qualified by their capacity to satisfy such fixed needs (110), and on a notion of social conflict as being a struggle among basic needs (112) rather than a struggle among groups. 19 On the ‘hegemony’ of dominating groups in the Lectures see Särkela (2013). 20 It seems to me that Roberto Frega, while downplaying the role of recognition in the DN in comparison with the Lectures on the basis of the premise that in the DN there would be only six occurrences of recognition – of which “only one could be referred to the theoretical framework of a theory of recognition” – does not take into account these relevant uses (see Frega, 2015: 120–121). I think that the present analysis shows that, even if numerically less frequent, the occurrences of the notion of recognition in the DN are first wholly consistent with those to be found in the Lectures. Second, they make explicit an aspect which in the Lectures remains rather implicit – the institutional role of recognition. And third, they are further coherently articulated in the Lectures into the notion of “public recognition”. 21 I take this notion from Honneth (2007). 22 For a precious analysis of these three phases of struggle for public recognition in the Lectures see Särkela (2013). On the Hegelian roots of this model see also some interesting remarks in Renault (2013: 7–8). For an interpretation in terms of a neorepublican notion of nondomination see Midtgarten (2012). Formattato: Inglese (Stati Uniti) Eliminato: 7