Dewey (from Freedom and Culture):

The present predicament may be stated as follows: Democracy does involve a belief that political institutions and law be such as to take fundamental account of human nature. They must give it freer play than any non-democratic institutions. At the same time, the theory, legalistic and moralistic, about human nature that has been used to expound and justify this reliance upon human nature has proved inadequate. Upon the legal and political side, during the nineteenth century it was progressively overloaded with ideas and practices which have more to do with business carried on for profit than with democracy. On the moralistic side, it has tended to substitute emotional exhortation to act in accord with the Golden Rule for the discipline and the control afforded by incorporation of democratic ideals into all the relations of life. Because of lack of an adequate theory of human nature in its relations to democracy, attachment to democratic ends and methods has tended to become a matter of tradition and habit — an excellent thing as far as it goes, but when it becomes routine is easily undermined when change of conditions changes other habits.

Were I to say that democracy needs a new psychology of human nature, one adequate to the heavy demands put upon it by foreign and domestic conditions, I might be taken to utter an academic irrelevancy. But if the remark is understood to mean that democracy has always been allied with humanism, with faith in the potentialities of human nature, and that the present need is vigorous reassertion of this faith, developed in relevant ideas and manifested in practical attitudes, it but continues the American tradition. For belief in the “common man” has no significance save as an expression of belief in the intimate and vital connection of democracy and human nature.

We cannot continue the idea that human nature when left to itself, when freed from external arbitrary restrictions, will tend to the production of democratic institutions that work successfully. We have now to state the issue from the other side. We have to see that democracy means the belief that humanistic culture should prevail; we should be frank and open in our recognition that the proposition is a moral one — like any idea that concerns what should be.

Strange as it seems to us, democracy is challenged by totalitarian states of the Fascist variety on moral grounds just as it is challenged by totalitarianisms of the left on economic grounds. We may be able to defend democracy on the latter score, as far as comparative conditions are involved, since up to the present at least the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics has not “caught up” with us, much less “surpassed” us, in material affairs. But defense against the other type of totalitarianism (and perhaps in the end against also the Marxist type) requires a positive and courageous constructive awakening to the significance of faith in human nature for development of every phase of our culture:science, art, education, morals and religion, as well as politics and economics. No matter how uniform and constant human nature is in the abstract, the conditions within which and upon which it operates have changed so greatly since political democracy was established among us, that democracy cannot now depend upon or be expressed in political institutions alone. We cannot even be certain that they and their legal accompaniments are actually democratic at the present time — for democracy is expressed in the attitudes of human beings and is measured by consequences produced in their lives.

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Nietzsche:

“Whoever does not know how to lay his will into things, at least lays some meaning into them: that means, he has the faith that they already obey a will (principle of ‘faith’).”

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1) Is ethics (as a branch of philosophy) the practice of learning how to lay one’s will into things?

2) I still consider my typology of behavioral disciplines (morals, moralism, ethics and behavior aesthetics) valid, but my (ethical?) attitude toward them may be shifting.

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(Much of what I’ve written below is based on second-hand information on Leo Strauss, and it very well might be wrong. I’ve only read one essay by Leo Strauss, and it was a non-political one. It was actually pretty amazing.)

As I understand it, the fundamental conflict between the Straussians (the school of philosophy upon which Neoconservatism was founded) and the Pragmatists (the school of philosophy upon which Progressivism appears to have been founded) boils down to attitudes toward Natural Rights, the conception of human rights that sees them as metaphysically belonging to human nature within the natural order in general.

I believe both sides agree that Natural Right is a mythical feature within American culture, but they disagree on the practical value of the belief. My understanding is that the Straussians believe the myth is a necessary one, required for the continuance of America as we know it, culturally and politically, because the masses require a metaphysical externalization of morality in order to accept it as valid.

The Pragmatists on the other hand consider the belief an obsolete superstition that must be overcome and replaced with a truer and more resilient concept – that we choose to uphold democracy and freedom simply because we – Americans, in particular – experience it as good and worth preserving for its intrinsic value and the intrinsic value of the constellation of values associated with it. This value needs no further metaphysical validation.

A very important consequence of belief in natural rights is the belief that democracy is simply what happens when obstacles to its realization are removed. When democracy is offered, human nature kicks in and the choice is automatic. The Pragmatist believes that democratic values are cultural, and even the desire for democracy must be cultivated. Further, the continuance of democracy depends not only on the absence of tyrants and democratic political mechanisms and institutions, but most of all on cultivation of democratic attitudes and skills.

What is unnerving about the Straussians is their (reputed) willingness to propagate myths in which they do not themselves believe (or to put it more nicely, telling “noble lies”). Which of the Neoconservatives were actually Straussians, speaking disingenuously (nobly lying) about Freedom, and which Neoconservatives were noble dupes of Straussians? Which Republicans really believed Democracy would be embraced in the Middle East despite the nonexistence of a supporting cultural context, and what were the ones who knew better trying to accomplish over there – or over here?

I’m strongly considering reading Strauss’s Natural Right and History to see if I have Strauss anywhere close to right.