The Public and Its Problems
John Dewey 1927
These six lectures examine how a public forms and how democracy can work in a complex society. Dewey challenges Walter Lippmann's doubts about ordinary citizens' ability to take part in government.
186 pages 3h 37m reading time
- A founding work of American thinking about democracy, still read in political science, philosophy, and media studies.
- Argues that a public forms when people realize that other people's actions affect their lives, and that they need to organize together to deal with those effects.
- Argues that the main problem of modern democracy is not that citizens are ignorant, but that they lack good ways to talk with each other and share knowledge, so better communication and education can make them capable of self-government.
- Its side of the debate with Lippmann remains a starting point for arguments about whether ordinary people or experts should guide public decisions.
- It shaped later ideas of participatory democracy (where citizens take an active part in decisions) and deliberative democracy (where decisions grow out of public discussion), including the work of Jürgen Habermas.
Praised its rival first
Before answering Lippmann, Dewey called his book Public Opinion perhaps the most powerful attack on democracy ever written.
Began as college lectures
Dewey first gave the book as a series of talks at Kenyon College, a small college in Ohio, in early 1926.
Revisited after world war
Nearly twenty years later, Dewey wrote a new introduction looking back at his argument after World War II.