“Conjoint Communicated Experience”: Art as an Instrument of Democracy

Mostajir, Parysa Clare

doi:10.5406/19446489.17.1.03

Cited by 10 publications

References 6 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

Beyond Moral Fundamentalism

Fesmire

2024

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Moral fundamentalism is the habit of acting as though one has access to the exclusively right way to diagnose problems, along with the single approvable practical solution to any particular problem. This approach causes us to oversimplify situations, neglect broader context, take refuge in dogmatic absolutes, ignore possibilities for finding common ground, assume privileged access to the right way to proceed, and shut off honest inquiry. In this way, moral fundamentalism—exacerbated by social media silos—also makes the worst of native impulses toward social bonding and antagonism. This makes it impossible to debate and achieve superordinate social goals, such as public health, justice, security, sustainability, peace, and democracy. Drawing from John Dewey’s pluralistic and pragmatic approach to philosophical questions, this book develops an alternative to both the oversimplification of moral fundamentalism and the arbitrariness of relativism. Pragmatic pluralism is set up as a response to particular conditions and consequences, so it gains practical leverage with complex ethical, political, educational, and policy problems without flattening variability among values or presuming that abstract theories can determine what we ought to do. The book argues that the reductive monistic premise that logically underlies moral fundamentalism is both unwarranted and constrictive, and there is little to be said in favor of the grand philosophical quest for a unifying principle that cannot be accommodated within a wider pluralistic approach. In a concrete and engaging style, the author clarifies and illustrates the promises and challenges of democratic decision-making in societies struggling to grow beyond moral fundamentalism.

show abstract