Abstract
This essay defends the Pragmatist’s call to activism in higher education, understanding it as a necessary development of good democratic inquiry. Some criticisms of activism have merit, but I distinguish crass or uncritical activism from judicious activism. I then argue that judicious activism in higher education and in philosophy is not only defensible, but both called for implicitly in the task of democratic education as well as an aspect of what John Dewey has articulated as the supreme intellectual obligation, namely to ensure that inquiry is put to use for the benefit of life.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-2020
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.5840/eip2020211/23
Repository Citation
Weber, Eric Thomas, "The Pragmatist’s Call to Democratic Activism in Higher Education" (2020). Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation Faculty Publications. 17.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/epe_facpub/17
Notes/Citation Information
Published in Essays in Philosophy, v. 21, issue 1/2.
© 2020 Weber
his open access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).