Abstract

In Experience and Nature, John Dewey writes, "Every existence is an event." This dissertation begins by taking this claim seriously and asking what it would mean for understanding and reconstructing individuality and democracy. If we think of ourselves, our social institutions, and our very understanding of experience as temporally developing, we will understand that ongoing experimentation and reconstructive growth must be central concerns in a pragmatic political philosophy. Individuality becomes an element of unique and unpredictable behavior within a system of habits and customs. Individuality also operates at a variety of levels of organization---within a self as an impulse, within a community as a creative and dynamic person, and within larger political units as communities of shared and communicated ways of life. If every existence is an event, then democracy cannot be an attempt to guarantee timeless truths. Instead, it must be a method, a continual concern with freeing possibilities and developing the means by which we may continue to grow our experiences through reconstructive and experimental activity. My primary task will be to establish continuities among Dewey's work on the temporal development of individuals and the experimental nature of democracy. These continuities will include the ways in which individuality as a temporally reconstructive phenomenon causes prior habits and customs to be brought into question; the ways that reconstructive activity always works within a nexus of social and historical forces; and the ways that experimental activity in democracy takes place on a variety of levels of organization---within selves, among selves, among communities, and among states and nations. By establishing and exploring these continuities, I will offer a Deweyan understanding of the rich nature of growth in personal and political life, open up new democratic and experimental possibilities, and explore important ways in which democratic life may be experienced both deeply and broadly