SOURCE: "John Dewey, Spiritual Democracy, and the Human Future," in Crass Currents, Vol. XXXIX, No. 3, Fall, 1989, pp. 300-21.

[In the following essay, Rockefeller—writing from the perspective of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, as well as the student revolts in China—enumerates several concepts from Dewey's social agenda as a desirable antidote to spiritual and social oppression.]

The human race faces the urgent challenge of creating a global community marked by economic opportunity, equal justice, freedom and respect for nature, or its survival as a species is in doubt. The obstacles to achieving community locally as well as internationally are great, for almost everywhere peoples suffer from moral confusion, bitter social conflicts, fragmentation of experience and knowledge, and the deterioration of the environment. In the poet's words, the center no longer holds. There is, then, an urgent need for ideas with integrating spiritual power, for a unifying moral and social faith that is able to affirm the value of cultural pluralism in the process of liberating and harmonizing the self and society on a national, regional and global basis. Such a faith must be comprehensive enough to integrate the technological, economic, social, environmental, moral, and religious dimensions of experience; it cannot otherwise bring the wholeness and harmony that we need.

This essay focuses on an idea that has roots in the moral vision of the Hebrew prophets and in the social ideals of ancient Athens. It concerns an idea that has steadily grown in influence over the centuries and has had extraordinary transformative power throughout the world for over two hundred years. In short, it is the purpose of this essay to explore the global moral, social, environmental, and religious significance of democracy. As symbolized by the construction of the Statue of Liberty in Tiananmen Square last spring and the appearance of glasnost in the Soviet Union, it is probably already the most widely shared moral value in the world today. Reflecting on the widespread disillusionment with communism in the Soviet bloc and China, Francis Fukuyama has even gone so far as to argue in a widely debated essay that Western liberal democracy, which is based on the ideas of freedom, equality, and the consent of the governed, has already won "an unabashed victory" over Marxist-Leninism and all other ideological rivals. Democracy as a mode of political and economic organization has decisively established itself, declares Fukuyama, as "the ideal that will govern the material world in the long run."¹ These developments are cited, not to enter the debate over the correctness of Fukuyama's thesis about current history, but as a way of calling attention to the worldwide potential that lies in the democratic ideal. Also, it is not being implied that the word democracy always possesses a consistent meaning in international discourse, and it may well be that the full significance of democracy as a social ideal is yet to be revealed as different peoples throughout the world explore experimentally its possibilities and meaning in their own social and spiritual contexts.

The question at issue can be stated briefly: Is there a distinctively democratic way of liberation and community, and does it involve an ideal possibility for the future development of the social, economic, moral and religious life of the human species worthy of humanity's shared faith and devotion? This essay argues that the democratic ideal may be understood in such a way as to justify the claim that it does possess this broad significance. Sustaining this argument involves demonstrating that the idea of democracy has, at least in some quarters, historically involved a depth and fullness of meaning that is not commonly appreciated and that it has a potential for acquiring even greater meaning as democratic societies adjust to the challenge of the environmental crisis.

In reflecting on the significance of the democratic ideal, it is helpful to turn back to earlier American intellectual traditions, and especially the thought of John Dewey. Dewey's philosophy of "creative democracy" took form in the late nineteenth century under the influence of Hegel, the St. Louis Hegelians, T. H. Green, and Walt Whitman. Hegel had taught that universal freedom is the goal of the world historical process. Developing Hegel's prophecy that America is "the land of the future," Whitman called for realization in America of "a sublime and serious Religious Democracy."² For Whitman the democratic ideal is a "fervid and tremendous idea" of "vast, and indefinite, spiritual and emotional power" that gives to American life its moral purpose and underlying unity. He called for the emergence of "a cluster of poets, artists, teachers fit for us, national expressers, comprehending and effusing for men and women" the meaning and values associated with this great idea.³

Having learned to respect democratic values as a youth in Vermont, John Dewey was deeply moved early in his philosophical career by Whitman's vision, and he aspired to be one of those "poets, artists, teachers" interpreting for the people the profound spiritual meaning of the democratic ideal. Starting with Protestant Christian social values and the Neo-Hegelian philosophy of the organic unity of the spiritual and the material, the ideal and the real, he set out to construct his own philosophy of individual liberation, social transformation, and harmony with the divine. As he reconstructed his early Neo-Hegelian ethical idealism and developed a new brand of humanistic naturalism, which charts a middle way between a tough-minded and tender-minded world view, the idea of democracy remained of central importance.⁴

As has been suggested, thinkers like Whitman and Dewey understand the idea of democracy to involve much more than a theory of political organization and economic opportunity, important as this is. It is more fundamentally a great moral and social ideal that comprehends all human relations and has important implications also for humanity's relations with nature and the divine. Understood in this more comprehensive sense, the democratic ideal embraces for Dewey both a philosophy of ongoing social reconstruction and a philosophy of "a personal way of individual life." It was his conviction that democracy as a mode of social, political and economic life could be sustained and perfected only if democracy also became a personal philosophy and faith, a unifying way of ethical life and spiritual growth.

Democracy as an individual way "signifies the possession and continued use of certain attitudes, forming personal character and determining desire and purpose in all the relations of life."⁵ As a comprehensive moral ideal, Dewey argues that it should govern human relations in family life, the school, the church, business and industry as well as in government. Moreover, the democratic way becomes an individual path of moral and spiritual growth, a personal way of liberation and transformation. It involves, in other words, a form of spiritual practice in the sense of a way to grow and realize the enduring meaning of life and to find peace, wholeness, and harmony with the world and the divine. In his mid-thirties, Dewey broke with the Congregational church, in which he had been an active member since boyhood, and thereafter had little interest in institutional religion. He never ceased to believe, however, that his work was consistent with the Christian spirit, and was convinced that if the Christian tradition with its gospel of freedom and hope had ongoing relevance and meaning in the contemporary world, it was to be found in the thorough-going democratic reconstruction of experience and all social institutions and interactions.

In what follows, I will explore Dewey's vision of the democratic ideal. In conclusion, the essay will briefly consider the possibilities of a further environmental reconstruction of the idea of democracy and discuss the democratic reconstruction of the religions.

1

In Dewey's view, the American democratic ideal has roots in Christian ideals, and he arrived at his own philosophy of "creative democracy" by undertaking a radical reconstruction of the Protestant Christian tradition in the eighteen eighties and nineties. It is important, however, to make clear in this regard that as mature thinker, Dewey did not believe that faith in democracy necessarily requires any particular metaphysical or theological foundation for its validation. As one of the founders of American pragmatism, he looked for confirmation of the meaning and value of the democratic life in the consequences that flowed from it as revealed by human experience. It is nevertheless illuminating to consider Dewey's understanding of the interconnection between Christian and democratic values.

In 1894, in his last major religious statement before leaving the institutional church, Dewey summarized what he viewed as the three most fundamental Christian ideals or values. First he mentions the idea of "the absolute, immeasurable value of the self or human personality. Second, he cites the notion of a kingdom of God, that is, the idea of a community of free persons bound together in all their relations by mutual love and support and by shared values, that is, devotion to the common good. Third, he cites the idea of the revelation of liberating truth to humanity, and he has in mind primarily practical truth sufficient for the guidance of life.⁶ Even after Dewey abandoned traditional theism and Neo-Hegelian idealism, he continued to associate God or the divine with practical wisdom, especially unifying social ideals, and all those cosmic processes that support realization of the ideal. The reality of the divine is found for Dewey chiefly in the animating spirit of authentic community and is experienced as a living reality in and through all relations informed by sympathy, moral wisdom, and affection.⁷

Dewey goes on to point out that at the time Christianity emerged, these three basic ideas found little opportunity for realization in the everyday world, because politically and industrially society to a large extent treated the mass of people not as persons but as things, means to ends external to themselves. The church justifiably existed as an institution where these ideals could be nurtured separate from society. Given the social situation, the faithful understandably hoped for realization of these values by supernatural means in some future eschatological event. A spirit of world denial and other-worldliness was pervasive. However, over time the gradual spread of basic Christian values caused a transformation of society, and democracy as a social reality was born. The emergence of democracy was coupled with the industrial revolution and the rise of the middle class, causing a major shift in human orientation and aspiration. These social, political and economic forces generated a new spirit of world affirmation and created unheard of possibilities for earthly liberation and fulfillment. As a result, Dewey argues, it became possible for the first time to appreciate fully "the direct, natural sense" of Christian teaching, which calls for liberation of all persons regardless of race, class or gender, in and through the revelation and incarnation of the truth, or, in other words, realization of a kingdom of God that embraces all and finds expression in all social relations.⁸

Given the vast changes in the social situation caused by science and democracy and in the light of their transformative potential, the objective of Christianity and religious persons everywhere should be, Dewey contends, "a society in which the distinction between the spiritual and the secular has ceased, and as in the Greek theory, as in the Christian theory of the Kingdom of God, the church and the state, the divine and the human organization of society are one."⁹ The practice of democracy in the context of a technological age makes this a real ideal possibility, Dewey argues. "Democracy, the crucial expression of modern life, is not so much an addition to the scientific and industrial tendencies [of contemporary culture] as it is the perception of their social or spiritual meaning."¹⁰

In 1892 Dewey stated clearly the momentous social and spiritual meaning that is for him the promise of democracy.

The next religious prophet who will have a permanent and real influence on men's lives will be the man who succeeds in pointing out the religious meaning of democracy, the ultimate religious value to be found in the normal flow of life itself. It is the question of doing what Jesus did for his time.¹¹

Dewey acquired from the Neo-Hegelians the belief that there is no fundamental dualism of God and the world, the ideal and the real, the spiritual and the material, and he retained the conviction as a naturalist that everyday life is inherently full of positive meaning and value. His later thought as well as his early thought is inspired by a passion for unification, or more specifically, for unification of the ideal and the real. He labored as a philosopher to develop a way of living, working, thinking and interacting with the world so as to realize in experience the ideal meaning in life. Democracy as a mode of social organization and a way of personal life has momentous import according to Dewey, because it provides for the first time in human history an opportunity for all persons regardless of race, class, ethnic origin, or gender to realize "the ultimate religious value to be found in the normal flow of life itself," that is, in nature and in everyday life in the secular world. Democracy so understood is, then, the great spiritual challenge and opportunity of the new age.

These convictions make it clear why Dewey does not view the death of the god of supernaturalism as in the final analysis a spiritual catastrophe. Though undeniably painful for many people, it involves a critical transformation in the evolution of human consciousness that opens the door to a deeper and fuller ideal possibility in the religious and moral life of humanity. In the midst of the secularized world, which the atheist and religious conservative alike view as godless and devoid of ultimate meaning, Dewey finds a situation that has made it possible for religious meaning and value to emerge in new, vital, freer forms. His vision is something much more profound than a liberal dream of ongoing material progress, and he lamented the excessive materialism and externalism in American life. To dramatize the point, one might say, using a Mahayana philosophical vocabulary, that democracy for Dewey promises a way of life that offers all persons the opportunity to awaken to the identity of nirvana and samsara. Furthermore, he understood as few others have that, if men and women in contemporary civilization are to find the wholeness, inner peace and meaning that are the fruit of a healthy religious life, and, if the terror and suffering of modern history are to be overcome in the social sphere, then religious life and social life must not only be reconstructed, but they must also be fully integrated. Part of the power and ongoing relevance of Dewey's thought is to be found in the way that he seeks to address the social, moral and religious problems of the age by holding them together and thinking them through as interrelated aspects of a single whole.

Dewey argues that the fundamental link between Christianity and democracy is to be found in the emphasis on equality, freedom and shared experience in the ethics of democracy. The social ideal of equality recognizes the absolute worth of human personality and the individual person. It requires that all persons be treated as ends and not as a means only. It implies most fundamentally, according to Dewey, guaranteeing to every man, woman and child the opportunity "to become a person," to realize his or her distinctive capacities.¹² Realization of personality, or ongoing human growth (to use the language of his later thought), becomes in Dewey's philosophy the most fundamental social objective and a supreme moral good.

Dewey considers freedom a basic democratic value because it is necessary to realization of personality and the pursuit of happiness. The self, he argues, is essentially a self-determining will, and if personality is to be perfected "the choice to develop it, must proceed from the individual." Hence, the development of the self is thwarted in authoritarian social structures where power and control are centralized in the hands of the few. Dewey points out that self-realization requires the development of moral will, moral responsibility, the capacity for moral choice. The self becomes and is the self it chooses to be in its concrete activities. In Dewey's view persons are genuinely free only insofar as they have developed a capacity for intelligent judgment and choice. People are not born with this capacity. It must be developed, and the achievement of positive freedom is conditioned by the quality of the social institutions in which an individual lives, learns and works.

Democracy as a social ideal also means a community of free persons in which all are bound together by shared experience and a commitment to the common good. "Since democracies forbid, by their very nature, highly centralized governments working by coercion," Dewey points out, they depend upon shared interests and experiences for their unity . . ."¹³ Freedom of inquiry, assembly and speech become essential, for "free and open communication .. . is the heart and strength of the American democratic way of living." Class divisions, religious or racial prejudices, and discrimination on the basis of sex, "imperil democracy because they set up barriers to communication, or deflect and distort its operation." The democratic spirit is antithetical, then, to all social barriers that estrange human beings from one another and limit the potential for shared experience. "Democracy is a name for a life of free and enriching communion."¹⁴

Free communication and the sharing of experience characterize both the internal and external relations of a democratic institution or society. Any social group imbued with the democratic spirit seeks a free give and take with its neighbors. In this way the sharing of experience, the discovering of common values, and the building of community expand. Such is the democratic strategy for the progressive enlargement of authentic community until it embraces all of humanity. In Dewey's world community, the primary social entities would not be nation states, but those voluntary associations formed by men and women from around the world to pursue their shared interests in education, the arts, the sciences, the humanities, business, athletics. The chief task of government is to protect and facilitate the "life of free and enriching communion" which is the very life of democracy.

"If democracy has a moral and ideal meaning," Dewey writes in Democracy and Education, "it is that a social return be demanded from all and that opportunity for development of distinctive capacities be afforded to all."¹⁵ In other words, as he points out elsewhere, in a democratic community every person is both a "sustaining and sustained" member of the whole.¹⁶ In this regard, the question may be asked: What makes Dewey think that educating people, developing their capacities for freedom of choice, and creating opportunities for free communication will result in commitment to the common good and an attitude of social service?

In the final analysis, Dewey believes that human beings educated in a genuinely liberating environment will act in a socially responsible fashion because it offers them a path to the deepest and richest fulfillment possible. He rejects the idea of a fundamental dualism between the individual and society, self and world, as the product of a false psychology. The individual person is not an atomic entity that can develop itself and find satisfaction as an isolated self. Humans are social beings interconnected with their environment, and the communities in which they choose to live shape their character, habits and beliefs. They have a basic need to feel that they belong to the larger whole and find enduring meaning in life by achieving a deep-seated adjustment with their world. According to Dewey's psychology and theory of education, developing one's distinctive capacities in and through responding to the needs of the community is the soundest approach to self-realization. A person best serves the common good by devotion to the capacities with which he or she is endowed and by loyalty to the needs of the social environment. "There is something absolutely worthwhile, something 'divine' in the demands imposed by one's actual situation and powers."¹⁷ The ideal towards which a democratic society should work, then, is creation of a community in which all individuals are provided with the opportunity to develop and employ their special abilities. The individual in this way finds realization of self and the community is sustained.

In developing these ideas about equal opportunity, freedom and community, Dewey sought a way of humanizing the industrial sphere, of making industrial relations subordinate to human relations. This endeavor led him to embrace the concept of "industrial democracy," which is central to his social philosophy. In brief, Dewey's point is that all social institutions—business, industry and government as well as the family, school and religious bodies—are responsible for providing an environment that makes it possible for the people working in these institutions to grow as persons and to develop their distinctive capacities. Social institutions exist first and foremost, not as means of producing things, but as "means of creating individuals," as agencies for developing responsible, self-motivated, resourceful and creative persons.¹⁸ In other words, all social organizations have an educational task to perform:

... the test of all the institutions of adult life is their effect in furthering continued education. Government, business, art, religion, all social institutions have a meaning, a purpose. That purpose is to set free and to develop the capacities of human individuals without respect to race, sex, class or economic status. And this is all one with saying that the test of their value is the extent to which they educate every individual into the full stature of his possibility. Democracy has many meanings, but if it has a moral meaning, it is found in resolving that the supreme test of all political institutions and industrial arrangements shall be the contribution they make to the all-around growth of every member of society.¹⁹

Dewey further explains what this entails: "Full education comes only when there is a responsible share on the part of each person, in proportion to capacity, in shaping the aims and policies of the social groups to which he belongs."²⁰ Emancipation from external oppression and social welfare programs cannot set a people free unless their living and working environment develops in them the powers of initiative, inventiveness, deliberation and intelligent choice.

In an effort to facilitate the development of industrial democracy, Dewey as a philosopher labors persistently to break down the long standing Western dualisms between the spiritual and the material, the ideal and the natural, and means and ends. These dualisms, he argues, have the effect of degrading the material or natural by stripping it of inherent moral and spiritual meaning. This in turn has a dehumanizing and dispiriting effect on the life of the mass of people whose lives are largely bound up with material and industrial concerns. Dewey's point is that the material and spiritual, means and ends, are organically connected so that the ideal values that illuminate human life are realized and made manifest only in and through the natural and material. In other words, true ideals are properly understood as possibilities of nature. Ends are constituted by means so that properly understood means have all of the meaning and value attributed to ends. Industrial democracy means realizing the inherent meaning and value of industrial work and reconstructing the industrial sphere so that they are actualized for those involved in it.

Dewey's ideal of industrial democracy has been criticized as impractical and Utopian. Its realization does involve overcoming complex educational, social, and economic problems. Nevertheless it remains a valid definition of a genuinely liberated society and an ideal by which a democratic culture should be guided. It is furthermore an ideal that gives concreteness to the idea of integrating the spiritual and the secular and to the notion of "the religious meaning of democracy."

2

To appreciate Dewey's idea of democracy fully, it is necessary to explore further some of the fundamental attitudes that he associates with the democratic spirit. First of all, the democratic way of life is animated by a faith in human nature, a "faith in the potentialities of human nature, as that nature is exhibited in every human being irrespective of race, color, sex, birth and family, of material or cultural wealth."²¹ Dewey adds "that this faith may be enacted in statutes, but it is only on paper unless it is put in force in the attitudes which human beings display to one another in all the incidents and relations of daily life." Dewey has often been criticized for maintaining a faith in human nature that is naive and unduly optimistic. In response he explains his position:

Democracy is a way of personal life controlled not merely by faith in human nature in general but by faith in the capacity of human beings for intelligent judgement and action if proper conditions are furnished. I have been accused more than once and from opposed quarters of an undue, a utopian, faith in the possibilities of intelligence and in education as a correlate of intelligence. At all events, 1 did not invent this faith. I acquired it from my surroundings as far as those surroundings were animated by the democratic spirit. For what is the faith of democracy in the role of consultation, of conference, of persuasion, of discussion, in formation of public opinion, which in the long run is self-corrective, except faith in the capacity of the intelligence of the common man to respond with common sense to the free play of facts and ideas which are secured by effective guarantees of free inquiry, free assembly, and free communication? I am willing to leave to upholders of totalitarian states of the right and the left the view that faith in the capacities of intelligence is utopian.²²

Reinhold Niebuhr, who in the 1930s was a harsh critic of Dewey's liberal optimism, conceded in 1944 that a consistent pessimism regarding human nature leads invariably to "tyrannical political strategies." Niebuhr concluded: "Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary."²³ Dewey would agree.

Second, Dewey gives special attention to what he calls "intelligent sympathy" as an essential democratic virtue. "Sympathy as a desirable quality is something more than feeling. It is a cultivated imagination for what men have in common and a rebellion at whatever unnecessarily divides them."²⁴ It involves the will "to join freely and fully in shared or common activities." More specifically, sympathy is sensitive responsiveness to the interests, sufferings, and rights of others. He finds sympathy "the animating mold of moral judgment . . . because it furnishes the most efficacious intellectual standpoint."²⁵ "Sympathy . . . carries thought out beyond the self," "renders vivid the interests of others," and "humbles . . . our own pretensions," encouraging the development of impartial moral judgments. Sympathy "is the tool, par excellence, for resolving complex situations." Dewey, however, did not believe that feelings of compassion by themselves are an adequate guide in the moral life. He urged development of what he calls "intelligent sympathy," that is, a union of benevolent impulses and experimental inquiry into conditions and consequences.

Third, Dewey argues that the democratic way of life involves an attitude of cooperation and peace that includes a commitment to non-violent methods of resolving conflicts whenever possible.

. . . democracy as a way of life is controlled by personal faith in personal day-by-day working together with others. Democracy is the belief that even when needs and ends or consequences are different for each individual, the habit of amicable co-operation—which may include, as in sport, rivalry and competition—is itself a priceless addition to life. To take as far as possible every conflict which arises—and they are bound to arise—out of the atmosphere and medium of force, of violence as a means of settlement, into that of discussion and of intelligence, is to treat those who disagree—even profoundly—with us as those from whom we may learn, and in so far, as friends. A genuinely democratic faith in peace is faith in the possibility of conducting disputes, controversies, and conflicts as co-operative undertakings in which both parties learn by giving the other a chance to express itself, instead of having one party conquer by forceful suppression of the other—a suppression which is none the less one of violence when it takes place by psychological means of ridicule, abuse, intimidation, instead of by overt imprisonment or in concentration camps. To cooperate by giving differences a chance to show themselves because of the belief that the expression of difference is not only a right of the other person but is a means of enriching one's own life-experience, is inherent in the democratic personal way of life.²⁶

The depth of good will demanded by Dewey's idea of the democratic spirit is revealed in his counsel "to treat those who disagree—even profoundly—with us as those from whom one may learn, and in so far, as friends." Regarding Dewey's attitude toward non-violence, he was led to support World War I, but the consequences of the war left him deeply disillusioned. During the 1920s and 1930s he worked tirelessly in support of the international movement to outlaw war and consistently attacked the communist advocacy of class war as the means of social progress.

3

The democratic way of life, Dewey teaches, is an ethical way guided by "intelligent sympathy" and concern for the common good. Such a way of life fosters ongoing growth in the individual and transforms and sustains the community. At this juncture it is useful to seek clarification of Dewey's democratic ethics of intelligent sympathy and social reconstruction. Here one finds him working out his interpretation of the "direct, natural sense" of Christian belief in the revelation of liberating practical truth.

As a philosopher of democracy, Dewey seeks in his approach to ethics a middle way between absolutism and subjectivism, just as in his metaphysics he seeks a middle way between supernaturalism and an atheistic scientific materialism. Moral absolutism has the advantage of affirming the objective validity of moral values. However, it also involves ideas of an external authority and a fixed hierarchy of ends and goods that reflect aristocratic social values and feudal class divisions, Dewey asserts. It frequently is an obstacle to progressive social change. It may be used to obstruct the development of independent thought and has all too often in human history fostered fanaticism and the gross abuse of power. Subjectivism respects the freedom of the individual and the authority of direct personal experience, but it leaves society and the individual at the mercy of whim, prejudice, passion, uncriticized habit and narrow self-interest.

Dewey argues that the democratic spirit in ethics charts a course between the extremes of absolutism and subjectivism by looking for guidance to experience and intelligence, or, more specifically, to the experimental method of knowledge. By giving authority in matters of knowledge, including moral values, to experimental intelligence rather than to something external to experience, Dewey seeks to develop a method of moral knowledge consistent with the democratic faith in human nature, education, free inquiry, and public debate. By adapting the experimental method of the sciences to the process of moral valuation, he endeavors to overcome the split between science and moral and religious values and to give moral judgments an empirical foundation and objective validity. Moreover, Dewey's larger theory of the moral life becomes a theory of the unification of the spiritual and the material and pursues the full integration of the moral good with ordinary life. In his democratic reconstruction of Christianity, then, the experimental method becomes the instrument for the ongoing revelation of practical truth, and the authentic moral life becomes the incarnation of liberating truth in everyday existence.

Dewey's pragmatism and democratic experimental ethics reflects the marked influence of Darwinian biology and William James' functional psychology and instrumentalist view of mind. The mind according to James and Dewey is chiefly an organ designed to assist the human being in adapting to its environment. They view ideas and beliefs first and foremost as guides to action. Knowledge may possess for thinkers a certain inherent aesthetic meaning, but it has a fundamentally instrumental function. Ideas are to be evaluated according to their effectiveness as guides to ongoing growth and to well-being in the fullest sense. Ideas, like the tools of a craftsman, are not only to be respected and prized but also to be redefined and reconstructed so as to better meet the demands of the situation. As an evolutionary naturalist, Dewey emphasizes the pervasive presence of change and rejects all ideas of fixed final causes. There are no absolute fixities in nature. Even species come to be and pass away. Moral and religious values, he reasons, may and should change in response to the needs of a changing human situation.

Instead of seeking absolute ideals and offering ready-made solutions to moral problems, pragmatism adopts a genetic and experimental approach that focuses on developing a method for dealing with specific moral difficulties as they arise in concrete situations. It directs a person facing a moral dilemma to carefully clarify the nature of the problem and then to give attention to specific alternative values or ideal possibilities that might guide conduct in the situation, noting especially the conditions necessary to actualize them, that is, the means to their realization. With the aid of this knowledge of conditions or means, it studies the actual consequences that will flow from acting under guidance of the alternative values in question. In the light of knowledge of consequences, it then evaluates these ideals taking into consideration the specific needs of the moral problem at hand. Pragmatism, then, evaluates moral values or ideals with reference to specific problematic situations and in the light of the means involved in their realization and the consequences that necessarily follow.

In Dewey's middle way, true moral values are relative to the situation, but since moral judgments are based on an examination of conditions and consequences, they possess objective validity. Much of the popular discussion of moral values today incorrectly assumes that the only alternative to absolutism is subjectivism, because it is thought that relativism inevitably means subjectivism. Dewey clearly demonstrates that this is not the case. It is also widely assumed that science and empirical methods of knowledge support moral subjectivism. Again, Dewey's ethical experimentalism shows that this is not necessarily true. The experimental method of knowledge cannot prove that the values of beauty and goodness are objectively real, but Dewey asserts that this is hardly necessary and not its function. The reality of values—social, moral, aesthetic, religious—is disclosed in direct, immediate experience.

One does not need philosophy and science—reflective experience—to reveal or demonstrate that values are real unless one adopts an "arbitrary intellectualism" and makes the unempirical assumption that "knowledge has a monopolistic claim to access to reality."²⁷ However, the experimental method of inquiry may become a way of evaluating and reconstructing the many goods and related purposes that are discovered in and through direct experience, that is, it may serve as an instrument for deepening and refining the human vision of the ideal possibilities of life. It also may help in the process of realizing these ideal possibilities by disclosing the means necessary to chosen ends. In this fashion Dewey seeks to overcome the division between science and human values and to develop a method of moral guidance adequate to the demands of a democratic and technological age.

Regarding the criteria for making moral decisions, Dewey points out that deliberation is called into play when a problematical situation arises, and the criteria for evaluating alternative courses of action are supplied by the situation itself. The end of action is judged good which overcomes the original problems and reestablishes a harmonious situation.²⁸ He also emphasizes "a plurality of changing, moving, individualized goods and ends."²⁹ His point is that the good will vary according to individual need and capacity and the situation. Each situation is unique having "its own irreplaceable good." It is the task of intelligence using the method of experimental empiricism to determine just what the good is in any particular situation. The supreme value at any one time varies with the situation, which is a further reason for rejecting the idea of a fixed hierarchy of goods.

Every case where moral action is required becomes of equal importance and urgency with every other. If the need and deficiencies of a specific situation indicate improvement of health as the end and good, then for that situation health is the ultimate and supreme good.³⁰

It is "a final and intrinsic value" and "the whole personality should be concerned with it." Dewey here broadens the idea of what constitutes moral action and again seeks to break down the dualism of spiritual and material. He would liberate people to live wholeheartedly in the present, realizing the inherent meaning and value of even the most ordinary everyday tasks. He seeks to locate the center of gravity and attention in the moral life within the process of living. It is the difference between what Paul calls living under the law and living in the spirit.³¹

As an evolutionary naturalist who views the universe as unfinished and open to novel creative possibilities, Dewey opposes any idea of a fixed supreme good, but he was not without his own general definition of the moral good and a comprehensive end of moral action. He argues in Experience and Nature (1925), for example, that to common sense "the better is that which will do more in the way of security, liberation and fecundity for other likings and values," because "the best, the richest and fullest experience possible" is "the common purpose of men."³² Dewey assumes, then, that there is a common sense, common purpose generated by experience and shared by all, which is growth toward the richest and fullest experience possible. He has, however, abandoned the Hegelian idea of some pre-established notion of the universal self and every other idea of a fixed end. His thought shifts the emphasis from achievement of a preestablished goal to a concern with the process of growing itself, emphasizing the intrinsic value of the process as lived each day and its ongoing open-ended nature: "Not perfection as a final goal, but the ever-enduring process of perfecting, maturing, refining is the aim in living."³³

In his discussion of moral virtue, Dewey returns to a classical Christian theme, asserting that love may be understood as the comprehensive moral virtue. He then proceeds to give his own democratic experimentalist's definition of love. By love he means wholehearted interest in those objects, ends, and ideals which the process of experimental moral evaluation recognizes as good. In other words, love is the whole self responding with complete interest and intelligent sympathy to the needs of the situation and the perfect union of subject and object, of self and activity—the activity dictated by the ideal possibilities of the situation. The good person "is his whole self in each of his acts," and "his whole self being in the act, the deed is solid and substantial, no matter how trivial the outer occasion."³⁴ "To find the self in the highest and fullest activity possible at the time and to perform the act in the consciousness of its complete identification with self," that is, its ultimate meaningfulness in this situation, is to live as a liberated and enlightened moral being. So defined, love realizes the full positive value of the present situation. It ensures responsibility. It also involves the classical Greek virtues of courage, self-discipline, justice and wisdom.³⁵ Love so defined is the way of freedom and growth for the individual and the community. It is the perfection of democracy as a creative way of personal life.

Dewey's experimental reconstruction of the moral life involving the ideas of sympathetic responsiveness, complete identification of self and activity, and wholehearted living in the present, reminds one of the spiritual practice of teachers as diverse as St. Francis of Assisi, Zen Master Dogen, and Martin Buber.³⁶ They all emphasize that a vital spiritual life involves being able to respond to a situation with the energy and attention of the whole self. In other words, one finds here in Dewey a theory of what might be called a secular democratic form of spiritual practice.

Dewey's democratic strategy for ongoing creative social change emphasizes the development of the social sciences, experimental ethical valuation, education, and communication. In this regard, he has been justly criticized for failing to appreciate fully the depth of the contradictions that divide social groups in the contemporary world and for not recognizing the necessity for "confrontational politics and agitational social struggle."³⁷ Nevertheless, Dewey's approach remains fundamental, for without experimental inquiry and evaluation confrontation will be without intelligent purpose, and without communication the peace of authentic community will never be more than a dream.

4

In her essay on Democracy and Social Ethics (1902), Jane Addams, the founder of Hull House in Chicago, writes that the democratic way brings "a certain life-giving power" and a sense "that we belong to the whole, that a certain basic well-being can never be taken away from us whatever the turn of fortune."³⁸ Dewey, who worked closely with Addams on many liberal social fronts and learned much from her about the meaning of democracy, shared these sentiments. In short, he found the democratic way of life to be a source of sustaining religious experience.

As a Hegelian idealist Dewey had embraced a certain ethical as well as aesthetic mysticism arguing that the democratic life leads to an experience of union with God, the Universal Self. As a naturalist, he ceased to think of God as in any sense a being. Nevertheless, in A Common Faith (1934), he asserts that, if a person wishes to use the term God, or the divine, it may quite properly be used to refer to all those conditions and processes in human nature, society and the universe at large that have a liberating and unifying effect on human life and contribute to the actualization of the ideal. So defined, the divine includes the creative democratic life.

Furthermore, Dewey argues that the democratic faith and way of life have the power to give to experience a distinctly "religious quality." He identifies the religious quality of experience with a deep enduring sense of unification of self and of self and world.³⁹ It includes feelings of belonging to the larger whole, cosmic trust, and peace, and it involves a sustaining sense of the meaning and value of life. Reflecting on the religious significance of the democratic life in 1920, he borrows some imagery from Wordsworth and writes: "When the emotional force, the mystic force one might say, of communication, of the miracle of shared life and shared experience is spontaneously felt, the hardness and crudeness of contemporary life will be bathed in the light that never was on land or sea."⁴⁰ Even in the midst of failure and tragedy a person committed to the ethics of democracy may be "sustained and expanded .. . by the sense of an enveloping whole."⁴¹ Given the unifying and sustaining effects of a moral faith in democracy, Dewey argues that it may properly be called a form of religious faith.

He also points out that philosophical reflection and aesthetic intuitions of a mystical nature may reinforce and deepen the religious quality of experience generated by a faith in democracy. In short, there is divine grace flowing in the democratic life and natural experience as Dewey understands it. One could even argue that his account of the religious quality of experience implies more about the nature of the divine than is expressed in his philosophy, but that is not a matter which can be explored in this essay.

5

Today the human race faces a major environmental crisis which will make the planet uninhabitable unless there are major changes in humanity's moral values and behavior in relation to nature. Dewey's philosophy lays the foundation for such a development by rejecting all dualisms of spirit and nature and of mind and body and by proposing an ecological world view. As a philosophical naturalist, Dewey identifies nature as the all-encompassing whole of which humanity is a part interrelated with all other parts. Nature is the primal matrix out of which the human spirit has evolved, and humanity's creativity and spiritual life are viewed as expressions of possibilities resident in nature and as dependent on nature as well as human effort for full realization. Having a keen sense of the interrelation of culture and nature, Dewey counselled "piety toward nature," and expressed appreciation of the Taoist spirit of living in harmony with nature.⁴² He conceived the democratic community to be intimately interrelated with all those aspects of nature which support and help to make possible the flowering of human civilization, but he did not explore the idea of extending the ethics of democracy to encompass the rights of nature outside the human sphere. Today this further step is imperative. Some thinkers have already proposed such a development.

In recent decades animal rights activists and environmentalists have been working to extend the liberal tradition of natural rights to embrace plant species, animals and eco-systems as well as human beings. This has resulted in an expansion of the idea of the democratic community. The first to make the connection with democracy explicit was an Englishman and champion of animal rights, a contemporary of John Dewey's named Henry J. Salt. As early as 1894 Salt is found calling for the perfection of democracy by including "all living things within this scope."⁴³ More recently, the American theologian and medieval historian Lynn White, working in the tradition of St. Francis of Assisi, has advocated a new spiritual democracy that recognizes all living things as possessing intrinsic value and ethical rights.⁴⁴ In a Pulitzer prize winning book of poetry, Gary Snyder, who has been influenced by Zen Buddhism and Native American traditions, calls for a new definition of democracy that conceives it to involve a social order in which plants and animals are given legal rights and represented in the councils of government.⁴⁵ There is, of course, already legislation in many nations forbidding certain kinds of animal abuse and protecting endangered species and wilderness areas.

The expansion and deepening of the idea of the democratic community proposed by Salt, White, and Snyder involve constructive proposals for giving the democratic ideal a necessary added dimension of ethical meaning. In an age that is learning how to think ecologically, the ethics of creative democracy must integrate the values of economic well-being and equal rights for humans with respect for the needs and rights of other life forms and ecosystems.⁴⁶

6

Fukuyama in his essay on the triumph of Western liberal democracy sees the future as "a very sad time," because he identifies liberal democracy with consumerism and finds it suffering from "impersonality and spiritual vacuity .. . at the core."⁴⁷ Dewey, who arrived at his idea of the democratic ideal by reconstructing Christian ethics, would argue that, even if Fukuyama is correct about the current spiritual condition of liberal democratic societies, his assessment suffers from a failure to appreciate the full ethical meaning of the idea. Democracy as Dewey conceives it offers liberal democratic societies an opportunity to recover their spiritual center and to become profoundly ethical at the core. The democratic way involves a full integration of religious life and secular life. It offers the religious person a meaningful way to be religious in the contemporary world, and it offers society a way to find the meaning and value that consumerism cannot provide.

These observations raise questions about the relation of creative democracy, or what could also be called spiritual democracy, to the great world religions. The democratic faith can be practiced within the framework of a humanistic and naturalistic world view, and it does not necessarily require the support of traditional institutional religion. It is also quite capable of living peacefully in association with different religious faiths, provided they respect the ethics of democracy in living together. Furthermore, it can be actively supported by a variety of religious world views, and the democratic life can be deepened and enriched by this association. The religions in turn are developed in a positive fashion by undergoing a democratic reconstruction that brings their symbols, ideas and practices fully into harmony with democratic values.

Historically, the world religions have been a mixed blessing for humanity. On the one hand, they have been treasure houses of faith, wisdom and compassion providing beneficial methods of spiritual growth and transformation. On the other hand, they have often suffered moral corruption, and they have been a source of superstition, fanaticism, persecution, and war. The greatest single moral failing of the religions has been their inability to instill in the mass of their followers an attitude of respect for the rights and dignity of all human beings including those of different religious faiths. Where the influence of democratic social change has been strong, many religious groups have endeavored to revise official doctrine and teaching in this regard. Wherever the spirit of religious absolutism and fundamentalism is strong, this issue can be a serious problem, and throughout the world social and political conflicts continue to be exacerbated by religious exclusivism and intolerance.

Another particularly pressing moral issue is the discrimination against women within many religious institutions, which has been unmasked by feminist theology in recent decades. The corrective to interfaith hostility, religious bias against women, and other forms of unjust religious discrimination is to be found in the ethics of democracy and the abandonment of those patriarchal, monarchical and imperialistic images of God that foster undemocratic attitudes and behavior. This is fundamental to what is meant by the democratic reconstruction of the religions. In line with a transformation of the democratic ideal into a vision of a community of all life, democratic reconstruction would also support those movements within the religions that are developing an environmental ethics and a supporting ecological world view.

The democratic spirit also works to break down completely the dualism of the sacred and the secular, and it focuses religious concern first and foremost in the life of relationship and intelligent sympathy. Whole-hearted ethical actionis the finest flower of the religious life, and the deepest mystical insight and union with the divine comes in and through its radiant energy. As Martin Buber has expressed it, turning inward and concentration by means of prayer and meditation are preparation for going forth, and the Eternal Thou is encountered in everyday life in and through relationship to persons—and also to dogs, trees, and stones—insofar as each is treated as a thou and not only as an it. In all the world religions there are traditions which emphasize some variation on this teaching. A democratic reformation of the religions would make it central and seek to clarify its implications for an understanding of God, the moral life, and spiritual practice in societies being transformed by ongoing technological change, democratic reform, and destruction of the natural environment.

Writing in 1946, Albert Schweitzer, who embraced an ethics of reverence for all life as essential to the survival of civilization, states the general issue within a Christian theological vocabulary:

Belief in the Kingdom of God now takes a new lease of life. It no longer looks for its coming, self-determined, as an eschatological cosmic event, but regards it as something ethical and spiritual, not bound up with the last things, but to be realized with the cooperation of men.

. . . Mankind to-day must either realize the Kingdom of God or perish. The very tragedy of our present situation compels us to devote ourselves in faith to its realization.⁴⁸

The growing nuclear threat only adds urgency to Schweitzer's words, which in the democratic spirit stress human responsibility and invention rather than divine control and intervention.

Devotion to the community of God in its democratic transformation means commitment to the creation of social institutions that would enable all human beings to develop fully their capacities for spiritual freedom, intelligent judgment, aesthetic enjoyment, creating, sharing, cooperating and loving. At its best, the democratic mind knows that none are truly free until all are free, and that the spiritual meaning of our time is to be found by working to build a world where freedom is universal. This is especially true at the end of the twentieth century, because advancement towards the goal of freedom is a possibility as never before, even if the complexities and difficulties are greater than ever. Also, as Schweitzer understood, the concept of liberation must be extended to the entire biosphere.

Ethical principles with democratic implications have been at work in a variety of traditions within the great world religions for centuries. Various forms of liberation theology have in the last two hundred years worked to overcome the dualism of the religious and the secular. The democratic reformation of the religions under the impact of democratic social change and interfaith dialogue is far advanced today in some quarters. It remains to make men and women fully conscious of the meaning and potential of this process and to extend it. Space does not permit discussion of democratic change within specific traditions, but a few general comments are in order. What is being contemplated would respect the unique identity of each of the religions and of the many traditions within them. Many paths can be followed as ways into the democratic life. The objective is not to impose on the religions some moral ideal external to their traditions; that would be an undemocratic procedure. It is rather to encourage development from within each tradition of those ethical principles and images of the divine which have creative democratic and ecological implications and support freedom, human rights, equal opportunity, collective participation, peace in living together, and respect for nature. The democratic reformation of the religions will be accomplished only when they come to recognize in the democratic way the deeper practical meaning of their own spirituality.

This discussion would be incomplete without considering the contradiction between the democratic faith and authoritarianism and absolutism. Democracy rejects authoritarianism as the fundamental method of education and government, because it is inconsistent with the goal of a free self-governing individual. The defenders of authoritarianism, like Dostoevski's Grand Inquisitor, can at times mount strong arguments. Authoritarianism may have popular appeal: witness the rise of fascism in the 1930s and theocracy in Iran more recently. Respect for duly constituted, responsible authority has its place. Obedience to the moral truth is an important virtue, and a vow of obedience to a superior authority in a monastic situation may be an effective instrument for getting rid of ego.

However, the democratic faith opposes authoritarianism. In the final analysis it believes that the full meaning of human life is realized only in and through the challenge and risk of freedom. There are great risks, as the abuse of freedom in liberal democratic societies reveals again and again. There is much to be learned from a democratic social philosopher with a profound appreciation of the problem of evil in human nature such as Reinhold Niebuhr. Nevertheless, the central concern in a democratic environment is always the creating of free persons—persons with independent minds capable of intelligent responsible choice—not obedient persons whose minds and wills are subordinate to an external authority. Autonomy and direct personal realization of the truth constitute the critical issue.

Commitment to the liberation of the individual is the most fundamental aspect of the great spiritual significance of democracy. When a school system, an economic system, a religious community or a government lose sight of this ultimate objective, democracy begins to die. The democratic objective of a self-governing individual does not necessarily imply moral subjectivism. The democratic faith as outlined in this essay is identified with an ethical experimentalism that affirms the reality of objective moral truth and the critical social significance of an enlightened sense of moral responsibility. Autonomy is not an end in itself, but without it the individual cannot undertake the great social and religious challenges of life.

The problems with absolutism have already been discussed in connection with Dewey's theory of ethics. It remains to make clear that it is quite possible for the democratic spirit to embrace a faith in the Absolute, the Eternal One or God, while standing firmly opposed to absolutism in the sense of a belief that one particular revelation, creed or set of dogmas contains a fixed and final formulation of the absolute truth. The democratic faith may be harmonized with a trust that there is at work in the cosmos an ultimate meaning that transcends the threats of evil, time and death. However, such a faith when consistent with the democratic spirit would insist that by its very nature the Truth cannot be grasped by the discursive intellect alone and formulated in concepts once and for all. Socrates, who firmly believed in the reality of the Absolute Truth and may well have directly experienced it, makes the critical point when he asserts that the wisest human being is one who knows his or her own ignorance. The highest wisdom of the Buddha is expressed in a thunderous silence. One Christian mystic speaks of God as a dazzling obscurity.

A person may find a way to the Absolute in and through the symbols and beliefs, of a particular religious tradition, but symbols and beliefs should not be confused with the Absolute itself. One may rightfully trust a particular religious tradition without adopting the arrogant and dangerous belief that one possesses the absolute truth and that other religious paths are necessarily inferior or wrong. Faith in God or the Absolute is consistent with democracy when it leads an individual to spiritual poverty and the humble effort to help others knowing always that, while the Truth may possess us as its instruments, we do not possess it. Such faith offers the deepest support to creative democracy as a unified way of social, economic, moral and religious life.

The task of criticizing and developing the democratic ideal can give post-analytic philosophy a coherent social purpose, and it offers liberation theology—especially in North America—the possibility of a more comprehensive and integrated vision than it has yet achieved. A thoroughgoing democratic reconstruction of the religions in a world experiencing democratic social transformation will breathe new life into the religions and fresh energy into democracy as a way of liberation. It will enable men and women in the midst of their every day existence to look anew to the great religious traditions for guidance in wrestling with the deeper mysteries of life and death. It will unify social, moral and religious life, bringing a wholeness, peace and joy that many seek and few today are able to find.

NOTES

¹ Francis Fukuyama, 'The End of History?" The National Interest, 16 (Summer 1989), 4.

² G. W. F. Hegel, "America is Therefore the Land of the Future, in The American Hegelians, ed. W. H. Goetzmann (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973), p. 20. Walt Whitman, Democratic Vistas, in Walt Whitman, ed. Mark Van Doren (New York: Viking Press, 1945), p. 365.

³Ibid., pp. 323-324.

⁴ See Steven C. Rockefeller, "John Dewey: The Evolution of a Faith," in History, Religion, and Spiritual Democracy, Essays in Honor of Joseph L. Blau, ed. Maurice Wohlgelernter (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), pp. 5-35.

⁵ John Dewey, "Creative Democracy—The Task Before Us," in LW 14:226. EW, MW, LW refer to the Early, Middle and Later Works of John Dewey edited by Jo Ann Boydston and published by Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, Ill.

⁶ John Dewey, "Reconstruction," in EW 4:98-102.

⁷ John Dewey, A Common Faith, in LW 9:29-37.

⁸ John Dewey, "Christianity and Democracy," in EW 4:7-8.

⁹ John Dewey, The Ethics of Democracy, in EW 1:248-249.

¹⁰ John Dewey, "Intelligence and Morals," in MW 4:39.

¹¹ John Dewey, "The Relation of Philosophy to Theology," in EW 4:367.

¹² Dewey, The Ethics of Democracy, pp. 244-248.

¹³ John Dewey, "The Need of an Industrial Education in an Industrial Democracy," in MW 10:137-138.

¹⁴ John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems, in LW 2:350.

¹⁵ John Dewey, Democracy and Education, in MW 9:129.

¹⁶ John Dewey, Individualism Old and New, in LW 5:68.

¹⁷ John Dewey, Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics, in EW 3:321.

¹⁸ John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy, in MW 12:191.

¹⁹Ibid., p. 186.

²⁰Ibid., p. 199.

²¹ Dewey, "Creative Democracy," p. 226.

²²Ibid., p. 227.

²³ Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1944), pp. xii-xv.

²⁴ Dewey, Democracy and Education, pp. 127-128, 130.

²⁵ John Dewey, Ethics, in LW 7:251-252, 270, 299-300.

²⁶ Dewey, "Creative Democracy," p. 228.

²⁷ John Dewey, Experience and Nature, in LW 1:28; John Dewey, The Quest for Certainty, LW 4:20.

²⁸ John Dewey, Theory of Valuation, in LW 13:231-233.

²⁹ Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy, p. 173.

³⁰Ibid., pp. 176, 180.

³¹ Dewey, Ethics, p. 279.

³² Dewey, Experience and Nature, pp. 311, 321.

³³ Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy, p. 181.

³⁴ John Dewey, The Study of Ethics, in EW 4:245, 293.

³⁵Ibid., p. 361; Dewey, Ethics, p. 259.

³⁶ See for example, John C. Maraldo, "The Hermeneutics of Practice in Dogen and Francis of Assisi: An Exercise in Buddhist-Christian Dialogue," in Eastern Buddhist, 14 (1981), 22-46.

³⁷ Cornel West, The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), pp. 101-107.

³⁸ Jane Addams, Democracy and Social Ethics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964), p. 276.

³⁹ Dewey, A Common Faith, pp. 8-17.

⁴⁰ Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy, p. 201.

⁴¹ John Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct, in MW 14:181.

⁴² Dewey, A Common Faith, pp. 18, 36; John Dewey, "As the Chinese Think," in MW 13:222-224.

⁴³ Henry S. Salt Animals' Rights Considered in Relation to Social Progress (New York, 1894) as quoted in Roderick Frazier Nash, The Rights of Nature (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), p. 28.

⁴⁴ Lynn White, Jr., "Continuing the Conversation," in Ian G. Barbour, ed., Western Man and Environmental Ethics (Reading, Mass., 1973), p. 61 and Lynn White, Jr., "The Future of Compassion," Ecumenical Review 30 (April 1978), 107. See Nash, The Rights of Nature, Chapter 4.

⁴⁵ Gary Snyder, "Energy is Eternal Delight" and "Wilderness" in Turtle Island (New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1974), pp. 104, 106-110.

⁴⁶ I am particularly indebted to conversations with Professor J. Ronald Engel and his work on a world conservation ethic, which will soon be published, for first bringing to my attention the possibilities for integrating the ethics of democracy and environment ethics.

⁴⁷ Fukuyama, "The End of History?" pp. 14, 18.

⁴⁸ Albert Schweitzer, "The Conception of the Kingdom of God in the Transformation of Eschatology," in Religion From Tolstoy to Camus, ed. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1961), pp. 420, 424.