In the second section, I narrow this scope to facilitate a closer reading of Dewey’s political theory in the context of his discussion between means and ends.

I do so, first, by showing how key concepts like experience, education, art, science, and Dewey’s understanding of the state should be conceived as particular components of the said democratic spiral. Ģ More concretely, I assess the strengths and limitations of Dewey’s political theory vis-à-vis the realization of the democratic spiral. As Damico (1971: 9) put it, “Dewey’s social and political theory is part of a comprehensive philosophy or system of thought,” and the first part of this article straddles the philosophical and political angles of the Deweyan project to underline how both remained active in, and constitutive of, his concept of democracy. By dealing with all of these subjects, Dewey forced himself to carve out, from multiple angles, the contours of what a thorough exploration of his work reveals to be his fundamental idea: namely, the conceptualization of an ever-expanding, ever-widening democratic spiral and its realization in the United States (Westbrook, 1992). Dewey had a robust, unified oeuvre and a coherent philosophy, one which can only be accessed by reading a variety of his early, middle, and later writings on education, science, psychology, ethics, art, logic, and – of course – politics. 1 There is the risk, when reading Dewey’s The Public and its Problems (1927/2008f), Individualism Old and New (1929/2008i), and Liberalism and Social Action (1935/2008k), of thinking that this political trilogy offers autonomous treatises on the state, individualism, and liberalism, respectively, rather than a crystallization of Dewey’s wider philosophical project, as recast and remolded in connection with these three political subject matters – which is what these three books actually are.

Dewey and democracy