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History of the Human Sciences
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Dewey's philosophy of questioning: science, practical reason and democracy

Nick Turnbull

University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK. , nick.turnbull{at}manchester.ac.uk

John Dewey's ideas on politics derive from his epistemology of inquiry as practical problem-solving. Dewey's philosophy is important for democratic theory because it emphasizes deliberation through questioning. However, Dewey's philosophy shares with positivism the same conception of answering as exclusively the dissolution of questions. While Dewey's ideas are distinct from positivism in important respects, he rejects a constitutive role for questioning by constructing knowledge as problem-solving via experience. The problem-solving ideal lends itself to a scientific conception of politics. Applying Michel Meyer's philosophy of questioning, problematology, to Dewey's logic, reveals that Dewey's theory of inquiry is itself the product of an inquiry, confirming that questioning plays a constitutive role in knowledge. This suggests a problematological reconstruction of knowledge which extends Dewey's ideas by affirming an enhanced status for questioning. Grounding knowledge in the principle of questioning provides the basis for extending the rhetorical analysis of politics.

Key Words: democracy • John Dewey • Michel Meyer • practical reason • problematology • questioning

History of the Human Sciences, Vol. 21, No. 1, 49-75 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0952695107086152
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