John Dewey Totalitarianism

Words: 1672
Pages: 7

Title: The Reconstruction of Liberalism to Showcase The Threat Posed By Totalitarianism
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ABSTRACT
“Liberalism and social action” is one of the fine works of John Dewey over time. Through this book he tries to showcase the future of liberalism and he calls this the ‘reconstruction’ of the American society. This book tries to analyze liberalism and showcase the core of liberalism in our modern society. He critically surveys the liberal thoughts of other philosophers like John Locke in his work. The advancement in maturity of society gives liberalism no choice but to also change in a society that the government must plays role. His advocacy to the positive role the government must play in new liberalism
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And through this reconstruction of social individuals of these new liberalism, the liberties and rights of the old liberalism which was clearly expressed in the Declaration of the Independence must now be discarded. Dewey argues that the old liberalism assumed absolutism which justifies certain social ills like the economic life, but further argues that the new liberalism through the intellectuals have ignored rather attack the Founding, since earlier liberalism did not perceive individuals as something that is achieved a notion taken by the new liberalism. And so according to Dewey, liberalism has become a continuous construction process of wide experiments to try and socialize individuals in order to make them more cooperative. As much as this sounds as if in line with the American thinking, this is different according to Dewey, because free individuals would be democratized and socialized and hence unable to live freely as per the sense of Founders. Through this Dewey clearly shows the threat of totalitarian because he argues that in order for the new liberalism to be achieved, it must be guided by elite social scientists. And so this new liberalism would entirely rely upon the intelligence of the few elites who would intern socialize