Abstract

In this article, I discuss contemporary disputes within communication theory over the Dewey-Lippmann ‘debate’ as symptomatic of a broader inability to treat classical pragmatism as an intellectual tradition. If we return historicity to the relationship of classical pragmatism and communication, and if we develop a fuller understanding of the distinctive aspects of pragmatist theories of inquiry, we can better understand the contributions of John Dewey and Walter Lippmann to a novel conception of democracy as problem-solving. In this way, we recover what is distinctive about pragmatist approaches to democracy and acquire a more differentiated sense of politics that refuses to reduce classical pragmatist writing to deliberative or dialogic conceptions of democracy.