Confucian Democracy as Pragmatic Politics.

This paper examines the democratic political dimensions of Dewey's pragmatism and critically evaluates the recent Deweyan justification of Confucian democracy from Dewey's democratic political theory. Its key claim is that neo-Deweyan Confucian democrats, while exclusively focusing on Dewey's advocacy of the social self and also rejecting the democratic value of willing individuality, dismissed that in a Deweyan pragmatic democracy, social inquiry refers mainly to the communicative process of public judgment and willing and intelligent participation in the common will-formation. Therefore, for Dewey, the common good is not disclosed but politically constructed at a particular time and in a particular situation. It closes by suggesting to Deweyan Confucian democrats on how to make their vision of Deweyan Confucian democracy a politically practicable democracy and hence remain fully faithful to Dewey's own vision of democracy or, alternatively, whether or not it makes more sense to explore non-Deweyan Confucian democracy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]