“Conjoint Communicated Experience”: Art as an Instrument of Democracy

A democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience.in this short excerpt, John Dewey expresses the pragmatist conviction—first stated by Jane Addams in Democracy and Social Ethics—that a society must cultivate dispositions of curiosity and understanding between its diversely situated members in order to sustain a robust and genuine democracy. It is by our habitual exposure to the experiences of our fellow citizens that we can imagine and understand each other’s diverse situations, struggles, and needs. In enabling such imagination and understanding, we create the possibility of fairly incorporating these diverse perspectives into...