Abstract

I argue that John Dewey's philosophical pragmatism provides an ideal-based justification for liberalism. I explain how Dewey's conception of liberalism, because it is justified as a method of self-development rather than as a means for protecting individual rights, is able to reconcile the liberal concern for freedom, toleration and pluralism with the communitarian concern for civic virtue and the good life. The key is Dewey's conception of autonomy. Because Dewey identifies growth as adaptation to change, his notion of autonomy, unlike Kantian autonomy, requires that an individual be located within a specific context of choice, and places great importance upon the concept of creative imagination. Deweyan autonomy, emphasizing as it does the virtues of critical reflection, creative individuality, and communication, in turn justifies both a participatory democracy and liberal freedoms and toleration. Liberal freedoms and toleration are universal because they are part of a process or method of individual and cultural adaptation to change