Inquiry and Virtue: A PragmatistLiberal Argument for Civic Education


Inquiry and Virtue: A Pragmatist-Liberal Argument
for Civic Education

Phillip Deen

Liberal democracy and virtue have an uncomfortable relationship. The repub-
lican tradition ranging from the ancient world through the Atlantic tradition of
the Founding Fathers, to present-day communitarians, argues that democracy
relies uniquely on the virtue of its citizens. They hold that republics are not
defeated from without, but corrupted from within. There is a dire need for a shared
conception of the good life. Only then are citizens willing to act together and to
make the sacrifices necessary for the common weal. Liberals, however, argue that
a shared conception of the good life can be bought only at the price of freedom.
Within a nation-state of our size and possessing our level of freedom, differing
images of the good life are inevitable and worth respecting. Therefore, the state
should not craft souls, but provide the conditions for all to flourish according to
their own desired ends.

Liberals are not tolerant of all forms of life. Moral doctrines, communities,
and traditions that do not accept liberal values of tolerance, respect, liberty,
equality, and free inquiry do not have a place in the liberal public sphere (although
anti-liberal beliefs may be retained in one’s private life). However, liberals are in
a uniquely difficult position because, while they may possess deeply held com-
mitments regarding the need for openness, courage, or respect in a good life, part
of that life includes not imposing their image of a good life on others. Liberals
must find reasons for coercing fellow citizens that do not require a prior “conver-
sion” to liberalism. They must find impartial reasons for their partiality. More
sardonically, Robert Frost defined a liberal as someone “too broadminded to take
his own side in a quarrel.”

The contest between liberalism and virtue is particularly heated in the area
of public education. Because public education is coerced, both by requiring
attendance by the young and by taxation of adults, it is a test case for liberalism.
Seemingly, public schools must refrain from imposing an image of human excel-
lence on children of disparate faiths and traditions since the state sanctions those
who do not comply. Take the example of California’s recent mandate that the
historical contribution of homosexuals be included in the curriculum. As a liberal,
it is possible to believe not only that toleration and respect of homosexual citizens
are inherently good and necessary for the health of our democracy, but also that
imposing these virtues through a coercive system of education is intolerant and
disrespectful since it violates the right of illiberal parents to raise their children

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JOURNAL of SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY, Vol. 43 No. 4, Winter 2012, 406–425.
© 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.



as they see fit. The difficulty is that civic education—that is, education for good
citizenship, including the cultivation of certain virtues—is both necessary if
liberal democracy is to continue and hard to justify on liberal terms.

I argue that recent political philosophy rooted in the tradition of American
philosophical pragmatism offers a way to reconcile the liberal image of a good life
with the pluralism of modern, liberal democracies.1 Pragmatism has clear histori-
cal links to the rise of progressive education and political liberalism. In particular,
John Dewey is a pivotal figure in both. Widely known as the father of progres-
sive education—although he chafed at the label—Dewey was also a key figure in
interwar American politics. One biographer goes so far as to name his work John
Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism (Ryan 1995). A great deal of
excellent work has been written on Dewey’s philosophy of education (e.g., Gar-
rison 2010). With apologies to those authors, I will intentionally avoid a discus-
sion of pragmatist philosophy of education. Rather, in this article, I discuss the
political problem of how we might justify education for civic virtue in public
schools while avoiding the problem of liberal pluralism.

I present two types of argument for liberal-democratic virtues, both of which
are grounded in the pragmatist thought of Charles Peirce and John Dewey. The
first type relies on their substantive teleological accounts of truth and moral
flourishing. The second type, however, is based on their account of the general
conditions of inquiry and not on any substantive ontology or moral ideal. I argue
that, under conditions of liberal pluralism, the latter is more practically viable
and morally justifiable. I conclude by applying the general argument for liberal-
democratic virtue to the case of civic education and by addressing some objec-
tions. The argument from a pragmatist account of inquiry shows the legitimacy of
coerced civic education while giving due respect to the plurality of moral tradi-
tions among those being coerced.

1. Teleological Pragmatist Accounts of Virtue

This section sets out one nonexclusive account of the relationship between
pragmatism and virtue. Here, the emphasis is on how liberal-democratic virtues
may be rooted in substantive pragmatist metaphysical and moral commitments.
For now, I will present only thick metaphysical versions of Dewey’s and Peirce’s
pragmatism, and how liberal-democratic virtues arise from them.2 This section is
intentionally partial and does not claim to describe the sole or primary means for
a pragmatist to justify liberal virtues. As will be discussed in the next section, the
pluralism of the modern nation-state makes the following substantive approach
problematic.

Before proceeding, however, I must clarify what is meant by “liberal-
democratic virtues.” Virtue generally means those qualities of character deserving
of praise, exhibiting excellence, or conducive to a good life. Virtues include
piety, magnanimity, and prudence, among many more. By “liberal-democratic”

Inquiry and Virtue 407



I mean the subset of those virtues central to the maintenance and justice of a
liberal-democratic society. Democracy requires, for example, that citizens exhibit
concern for the whole and moderate their selfish desires, while also courageously
defending their beliefs in the public arena. Liberal-democratic societies particu-
larly emphasize toleration and mutual respect. If we are to protect basic rights and
liberties, including rights to privacy, practice of religion, and free expression, then
toleration of competing images of a good life is essential. Ironically, if we are to
have a liberal society that refrains from imposing a singular image of the Good on
its citizens, those citizens must have a set of liberal-democratic virtues conducive
to that end. In what follows, I attempt a justification of civic education in a cluster
of those virtues—openness, a willingness to experiment, courage, perseverance,
sociality, inclusiveness, moderation, self-reflection, and toleration.3

1.1 Dewey: Virtue as Attentiveness to Experience

“Experience,” as William James noted, is a double-barreled word. It includes
the passive and active, the experienced and the experiencer. Based in an openly
Darwinian model, Dewey presents experience as the nexus of meaning where
an organism makes contact with, manipulates, and is acted upon by its natural
and social environment. This transaction is disrupted when previously fit habits
no longer result in a fruitful relation with the organism’s environment. Dewey
describes this as a “problematic situation” and calls for its “reconstruction.” If
the organism is to survive, it must develop new habits, and, in more developed
species, habits of reflection. The latter are second-order habits that allow the
organism to take the formation of primary habits as an active concern.

We may then draw certain broad conclusions about experience in general.
Experience has an irreducibly temporal dimension. Recalling Peirce’s notion of
tychism, Dewey argues that time matters, and that novelty and chance are real. The
next moment is not strictly determined. We find that it has phases that are, to
borrow from a chapter heading in Experience and Nature, precarious and stable.
At times, our transactions sustain us and provide nutrition. At others, we starve.
Our relationships with others sometimes provide the conditions for flourishing, or
they may stunt further growth.

Perhaps the most sustained account of Deweyan democratic virtue is provided
by Gregory Pappas in his John Dewey’s Ethics: Democracy as Experience
(Pappas 2008, especially chapter 11; see also Teehan 1995; Pappas 1996; Rice
1996; Olson 2007). Pappas reveals how a compelling theory of virtue develops out
of Dewey’s concept of experience. Virtues of open-mindedness, sensitivity, con-
scientiousness, and courage are all qualities of character that suit a world that is
both precarious and stable.

A character that is not open to future experience is unprepared to deal with,
or learn from, novel situations. Open-mindedness and sensitivity are virtues
because they show “hospitality to the new,” the ability to learn from experience,
and a “willingness to let experiences accumulate and sink in and ripen” (Dewey

408 Phillip Deen



1887–1952/MW 9: 183).4 And to hear what experience has to teach, we must have
a refined sensitivity. A blunt or dogmatic approach to the world closes one off from
the situation at hand in all of its complexity and richness. The conscientious person
then attends to the implications of his/her acts and seeks the greater significance of
what he/she experiences.5 But to counter the instability of life, a person must
develop virtues of persistence and courage. Sheer vulnerability to the new is not
enough to sustain a fulfilling relation to an environment. There is also the need to
press on when experience does not satisfy. Courage without openness produces
dogmatism, while openness without courage dissolves the self. Both results are
failures of transaction (Pappas 2008, chapter 11; Dewey 1887–1952/LW 7: chapter
14–5).

An implication of the novelty and precariousness of experience is that
morality is not a matter of identifying fixed moral ends, principles, or virtues.
Each of these is derived from the needs, relations, and tensions of the situation
at hand. Moral reflection arises when the fund of valued goods or social duties
no longer harmonize under novel conditions. This morally problematic situation
must then be reconstructed. Through inquiry, we determine which goods and
duties should have priority at this time, which need to be set aside and which
must be invented. Moral is not a matter of identifying and applying the tran-
scendent Good, but of constructing the good so that human practice may proceed
in a fruitful manner.

Virtues are those qualities of character that allow experience to grow in
“ordered richness.”6 Scattered through his many works, Dewey catalogues
a substantial table of such virtues, including honesty, courage, kindness (MW
14: 35–6 and MW 9: 357), open-mindedness (LW 8: 136; MW 9: 49, 183, 366),
curiosity and respectfulness (MW 14: 136), sympathy, sensitivity, persistence
(MW 12: 179–80), imagination (MW 5: 351–61, LW 7: 255–60), and finally the
cardinal virtues of justice, courage, temperance, and wisdom (MW 5: 364–79). As
Pappas writes of openness and courage, but is true of the virtues in general,

[f]or pragmatism they are virtues because (1) they are part of the concrete set of habits
which make possible the amelioration of experience through its own means (what I will call
the “pragmatist faith”), (2) they are dispositions of the kind of character and community
that is faithful to experience, and (3) a checking-complementary relation of these disposi-
tions in a character is the only way to avoid extremes that pragmatism considers undesir-
able. (Pappas 1996, 323)

Or, as stated by another author, “[t]hese are virtues required by any moral agent
(understood transactionally) attempting to maintain the integrity of their moral
image in an uncertain and changing world” (Teehan 1995, 856). Ultimately,
Dewey defined education as “that reconstruction or reorganization of experience
which adds to the meaning of the experience, and which increases ability to
direct the course of subsequent experience” (MW 9: 82). Education is the growth
of experience. Democratic virtues are those that are required for personal growth
in a constantly changing environment.7

Inquiry and Virtue 409



1.2 Peirce: Virtue as Concrete Reasonableness

Charles Peirce provided a similarly thick account. Despite some noble
attempts to correct the disparity, Peirce’s normative theory still receives little
attention compared with the effort spent to plumb the depths of his semiotics and
logic.8 Although this brief discussion will not eliminate that gap, I hope to sketch
out Peirce’s own account of what we might call a “virtue ethics,” although Peirce
did not believe himself to be doing anything of the sort. I argue here that Peirce’s
model of Reality as increasingly self-controlled and self-reflective, and as oriented
toward an ultimate good, undergirds his account of virtue.

Ironically, Peirce did not believe that scientific inquiry had much to offer
ethics. He believed that ethical behavior was largely the result of instinct and
tradition. It is a matter of habit or convention, and virtue does not depend on
rational reflection (Peirce 1931–1958/1.623).9 Further, in matters of vital impor-
tance such as morality and religion, we have neither the time nor inclination to
apply science (1.636–7). Belief is a commitment, an urge to act in the name of
some ideal, but scientists hold their beliefs at abeyance as hypotheses that are open
to experimentation. The scientist whose first commitment is to a moral or political
belief then undercuts the clinical detachment required for inquiry. Science then
requires a certain laxity of moral commitment. As a consequence, Peirce amus-
ingly informs his audience at the beginning of his 1898 lecture on ‘Philosophy and
the Conduct of Life’ that philosophy must be kept away from practice, and “I do
not hold forth the slightest promise that I have the philosophical wares to offer you
which will make you either better men or more successful men” (1.621).

Of course, this is not the whole story. Although he did not believe that
scientific philosophy would help us directly, it was shot through with commit-
ments of its own, and these may indirectly describe the admirable character.
Where the moralist is governed by some particular conventional or instinctual
ideal, the scientist cares only for Truth and Reason, and this love shapes the moral
character of the scientist.

The eternal forms, that mathematics and philosophy and the other sciences make us
acquainted with, will by slow percolation gradually reach the very core of one’s being; and
will come to influence our lives; and this they will do, not because they involve truths of
merely vital importance but because they are ideal and eternal verities. (1.648)

Let us then examine Peirce’s account of why scientific inquiry has a normative
dimension and what bearing this has for a pragmatist virtue ethics.

All conduct desires to achieve some end, to satisfy some desire. In order to
act according to these ideals, agents develop rules of conduct. Such rules are
resolutions to act in a certain manner in future situations. When desire inevitably
arises and we act in pursuit of it, we are then in a position to reflect on whether our
conduct accorded with our prior resolution, and in so doing provided a feeling of
pleasure. Delving deeper, we may examine the intention behind the resolution or,

410 Phillip Deen



of particular importance to our present discussion, the character of the man
behind the intention. Right thought and right behavior are structurally similar. As
Peirce stated, “[t]he phenomena of reasoning are, in their general features, parallel
to those of moral conduct. For reasoning is essentially thought that is under
self-control, just as moral conduct is conduct under self-control” (1.606; for more
on self-control in Peirce’s thought, see Petry 1992).

That conduct is governed by some ideal is not sufficient to make it right
conduct. Ends or ideals may be desired without being desirable. Right conduct
pursues what is desirable in itself without any ulterior motive. We must necessar-
ily postulate an ultimate end if ethical conduct is possible (5.130–3). Ethics is,
therefore, dependent upon the deeper level of esthetics. As Peirce understands it,
esthetics is not the evaluation of artworks but the deliberate formation of taste, the
creation of habits of feeling that will govern future conduct. Esthetics concerns the
truly desirable, that ultimate aim that ought to serve as the ideal of our conduct
(1.574, 5.36). Truly right conduct, either logical or ethical, is that which seeks the
right end, the ultimate aim.

This aim must be general in nature, unified, pure, and precise. It is Real, not
a postulate. It is self-satisfied, but it is also not static. It is inherently good, not
instrumentally so (1.611–4). For Peirce, only one thing satisfies these conditions,
and it is Reason. Reason is perfect in itself, but it is inexhaustible as an object of
desire and devotion. The scientific endeavor is the perpetual attempt to think and
act according to the Real while never fully succeeding. Peirce clearly understands
this as a sacred task, an act of devotion:

The creation of the universe, which did not take place during a certain very busy week, in
the year 4004 BC, but is going on today and will never be done, is the very development of
Reason. The one thing whose admirableness is not due to an ulterior reason is Reason itself
comprehended in all its fullness, so far as we can comprehend it. (1.615)

Elsewhere, he writes that nature is “something great, and beautiful, and sacred,
and eternal, and real,” and that the scientist’s aim is “simply and solely knowledge
of God’s truth” (5.589, 1.239).

A logical and ethical life is then a life spent in service of Reason and the Real.
We may now see why Peirce believed that science required its own ideal and
its own way of life. “The ideal of conduct will be to execute our little function
in the operation of the creation by giving a hand toward rendering the world
more reasonable whenever, as the slang is, it is ‘up to us’ to do so” (1.615). Ethical
conduct contributes to the growth of concrete reasonableness, of the self-control
and self-reflection that Peirce, as an objective idealist, saw as the development of
God. This process requires the development of habits of self-control in general,
and greater control of one’s reasoning in particular. Dedication to the ultimate aim
of Reason entails moral conduct and scientific inquiry.

Therefore, despite Peirce’s claim that the scientific way of life must refrain
from thick commitments, such a life does place requirements on the character of

Inquiry and Virtue 411



the scientist.10 Peirce has sketched an image of human flourishing. For a person to
be committed to Reason, he/she must show love and devotion to the truth, or what
Peirce calls as “the true scientific Eros” (1.620; see also Reilly, 1970, 9–23).
Inquiry requires dedication to one’s highest ideals in the face of the temptation to
accept easy and comforting beliefs. He/she must be industrious and dedicated to
the work before him/her, despite the fact that the project will not be completed
in his/her lifetime (1.576, 5.387). This way of life requires selflessness, courage,
and humility. The scientist “must prefer the truth to his own interest and well-
being and not merely to his bread and butter, and to his vanity too” (1.576). Lastly,
there must be a social sentiment, an overcoming of our natural feeling of self-love
through the unification of sentiment into communities of feeling and interpretation
(1.673, 5.354–7).

This all culminates in Peirce’s panegyric to the methods of scientific inquiry:

The genius of a man’s logical method should be loved and reverenced as his bride, whom
he has chosen from all the world. . . . And having made it, he will work and fight for her,
and will not complain that there are blows to take, hoping that there may be as many and
as hard to give, and will strive to be the worthy knight and champion of her in the blaze of
whose splendors he draws his inspiration and his courage. (5.387)

Of course, to anyone familiar with his many indiscretions—ranging from physical
abuse of his wife and employees, to personal abuse of drugs and alcohol, and
abuse of federal funds as a member of the U.S. Oceanic and Geodetic Survey—
Peirce’s praise of self-control and devotion to one’s beloved might seem hollow,
hypocritical, or just laughable (Brent 1998). But setting the character of the man
aside, it is clear that his placement of scientific inquiry within a broader meta-
physic entailed a further account of the virtuous life.

2. Democracy and the Virtues of Inquiry

These substantive arguments for particular virtues are rooted in an image
of reality and humanity’s place in it. For Dewey, it is a novel, natural world that
requires openness, respectfulness, and courage. For Peirce, we must develop
self-control and a love of Truth so that we might be in touch with Reason and, in
part, bring it about. These are the sort of virtues one might want to see inculcated
in children if we are to have a sustainable liberal-democratic culture. They must be
open to the experience of others, yet willing to defend their beliefs in a process
of political debate. They must be tolerant of those with whom they disagree, yet
demand that respect be returned.

From a substantive position, the argument would run as follows: Because this
thick description of the True and the Good is correct, liberal-democratic virtues
instrumental to that end are true and good as well. Therefore, parents should be
required to financially support democratic education, and children should be
required to receive it, under threat of sanction. In this section, I argue that Dewey’s

412 Phillip Deen



and Peirce’s grounding of virtue in thick metaphysical accounts of experience,
novelty, the Real and/or concrete reasonableness are unhelpful within the context
of liberal public reason and within deliberation about what should be done with
the force of law. I then justify democratic virtue education by turning to another,
equally important aspect of their thought—their pragmatist account of inquiry.

2.1 Critiquing the Teleological Pragmatist Approach

Now that we have a sketch of two pragmatist, substantive attempts to ground
democratic virtues in a thick account of reality and humanity’s place in it, we may
turn to the problem of liberal pluralism. Stated simply, pluralism raises a problem
because, in liberal democracies, (i) the use of coercion must be justified to the
citizens affected, but (ii) the freedom afforded to democratic citizens ensures that
they will not agree on one comprehensive metaphysical or moral doctrine. There-
fore, (iii) justifying coercion on the basis of such a thick account is certainly
impractical and likely unjust, as it will exclude many reasonable ways of life.

Appeal to a substantive metaphysical and moral doctrine is problematic not
because people are too stubborn or unreasonable to accept its truth. This is not a
failure of understanding, although such failures do explain many political dis-
agreements. If that were true, then we would have to assert that those who disagree
are irrational, ignorant, or insincere. But this does not seem to represent many
cases where reasonable people disagree. Rather, disagreement over the Good is
a result of freedom. In any sufficiently free and large society, there will be many
incompatible yet reasonable doctrines (and an endless number of unreasonable
ones). Given that no one doctrine will be shared by the citizenry, yet all will be
affected by the law, the law’s authority cannot rest on any particular image of the
universe and the Good (Rawls 1996).

As it bears on the discussion at hand, the result is that we may not coerce
individuals into being liberal-democratic citizens on the basis of Dewey’s and
Peirce’s arguments (at least, not on the substantive accounts presented so far).
Whether I, as a partisan Deweyan, find his account true or argument persuasive is
beside the point. As a matter of prudence, it will neither persuade those of other
moral and metaphysical traditions nor secure their participation in our project of
social cooperation. As a matter of justice, I must accept that others may be wrong,
yet still entitled to their beliefs. I must accept that others reasonably disagree, even
with the truth—assuming, of course, that I am in possession of the truth.11

It is not that we are forbidden from bringing moral commitments into the
public sphere. Rather, acceptance of a substantive doctrine must not be a precon-
dition for acceptance of an argument. If an argument is brought into the public
sphere, it must be adjudicable by means of public reason. A Deweyan may bring
his/her Darwinian ontology into the public arena as part of his/her argument that
we must educate for democratic citizenship, but that ontology must be open to
debate. He/she may try to persuade fellow citizens to see the truth of the Darwin-
ian ontology but, ultimately, there are limits. Not everyone will be persuaded. Out

Inquiry and Virtue 413



of respect for the experience of others and the requirements of political prudence,
the pragmatist must abide by certain argumentative constraints, just as they would
ask the fundamentalist to do, despite the gulf between pragmatist fallibilism and
fundamentalism.12

2.2 Virtues as Conditions of Inquiry

Within recent pragmatist political philosophy, there have been attempts to
find a way to justify democracy without relying on a shared image of the good
life. An alternative to grounding justification of democratic virtues in a thick
account of experience and human nature is to ground it in inquiry. Robert Talisse
and Cheryl Misak have made such an attempt. They argue that there are general
norms of inquiry that provide a firm foundation for basic principles that bind even
the harshest critic of democracy, yet do not assume a prior commitment to some
ideal. Their argument is that the mere assertion of belief commits the person to
a process of inclusive, public justification (Misak 2000; Talisse 2007; see also
Westbrook 2005, Anderson 2006, and Putnam 1992, 104–08). Misak argues that
“the requirements of genuine belief show that we must, broadly speaking, be
democratic inquirers” (2000, 106).

Although my argument bears a resemblance to Talisse and Misak’s, there are
significant differences. First, they appeal to the conditions of belief assertion,
while I emphasize the conditions of successful experimental inquiry. Their argu-
ment and mine share a quasi-transcendental character. As the “quasi” indicates,
neither argument is a traditional deduction of the necessary conditions for the
possibility of some given phenomena. Misak explicitly rejects the transcendental-
pragmatic argument by Habermas and Apel (Misak 2000, 35–45). Rather, demo-
cratic inquiry is a necessary condition for genuine belief in the way that oxygen
is a necessary condition for combustion. Oxygen is not derived conceptually
from combustion; however, it is practically necessary. Misak and Talisse argue
that democratic inquiry is necessary for genuine belief, as refusal to participate
in a democratic community of inquiry undercuts one’s claim to be reasonable. I
argue that liberal-democratic character is a necessary condition for good inquiry;
further, I do not appeal to the conditions of genuine belief, but of successful
problem-solving. These conditions have been revealed during the long history of
attempts to solve problems. Second, as noted, I extend the quasi-transcendental
argument to considerations of character. If we are to inquire well, then we must
have a certain character. In particular, liberal-democratic virtues are the necessary
conditions for the possibility of good inquiry. And the need for good inquiry is
inescapable. Therefore, we are justified in coercing civic education upon the basis
of these reasons.

Let us turn to the argument itself. For both Peirce and Dewey, inquiry is the
attempt to reconstruct a formerly habitual and fruitful transaction with the world.
Our ruts are usually satisfying and lead where we expect. However, particular
habits sometimes break down as we encounter new phenomena, or our standard

414 Phillip Deen



actions bring about new consequences. When our relationship to our environment
is sufficiently out of sorts, we feel uneasy and compelled to investigate. Inquiry
is that process of instituting new habits through changing ourselves and our
environments. Once the concrete situation is corrected, which allows us to achieve
a fruitful transaction with our world, inquiry ends. Peirce describes this as the
doubt–belief arc, while Dewey describes it as the movement from a problematic
situation to a reconstructed one.

Moral and political inquiry, specifically, addresses the conflict of competing
goods. The goal is not to attain the Good, but to harmonize the various goods that
are already in play. For example, were it not for the preexistence of goods, such as
the welfare of children or the preservation of families and moral traditions, then
there would be no need to deliberate about what school policy should be. Such
inquiry attempts to resolve a situation already shot through with competing goods
into one where goods are articulated, ranked, and harmonized.

To get from the problematic to the reconstructed, we must develop certain
techniques to “fix” belief. Peirce dismisses many possible methods. One may
tenaciously hold to the standard way of behaving, rely on the authority of others
to tell them what is best to do, or submit them to the test of abstract reason by
asking themselves what seems most reasonable. However, in trying each, we find
ourselves inevitably running into brute facts. The world resists our desires, we find
our beliefs are not shared by others, and so on.

Only the scientific method of inquiry allows problems to be consistently
resolved, including problems of value.13 It is the only method that tests beliefs
against the world. Beliefs, both old and new, become the hypotheses that are
proposed to alleviate the original uneasy breakdown of habit. They are put into
practice and their consequences evaluated. If they work, then the unease goes
away and we have a new equilibrium. If not, then we learn from the failure and
propose a new hypothesis. Scientific inquiry then has certain stages: there is felt
unease, an attempt to articulate the problem, proposal of hypotheses, testing them,
and finally evaluation for future action (LW 12: passim, especially chapter 6).

Scientific inquiry not only tests against the natural environment, but also
against the social one. Hypotheses are tested in public, and others may repeat
the experiments, evaluate the results of previous tests, or add their wisdom by
proposing their own solutions to the problems at hand. The best inquiry is con-
ducted by a community of inquirers, and the larger that community, the more
likely a resolution of the problem—assuming they are committed both to resolv-
ing the problem and conduct themselves according to the best methods currently
known.

We need not say with Peirce that the True is that which the community of
inquiry is “fated” to believe, given infinite time and an infinite number of inquirers
(CP 5: 407). However, we may say that when certain conditions are met, good
inquiry follows and problems are more likely to be resolved. The long history of
humanity’s attempts to overcome problems both big and small has shown that
some conditions are more conducive to trustworthy habits and beliefs than others.

Inquiry and Virtue 415



Improvement of inquiry then requires determination of those conditions under
which inquiry is more likely to succeed. Regarding method, science has shown
itself more valuable than imploring the gods or unquestioning faith in community
authorities. These conditions also include objective, institutional conditions, such
as freedom of expression and the press so that information might be more easily
exchanged. Free institutions of learning, such as universities or publicly funded
research centers, lessen political and economic distortion of experimentation. The
lessening of violence in political decision making produces outcomes that are
more likely to harmonize competing goods.

But they also include certain subjective conditions. That is, improved inquiry
requires that those involved possess certain virtues, such as openness, respect,
and courage (see Bohman 2010, passim but especially p. 200). Consider the basic
arc of inquiry just outlined. To engage in this process, the inquirer must exhibit
certain qualities of character. First, he/she must be open to new information.
Unwillingness to acknowledge novel situations or facts results in the inability
either to identify sources of unease or to discover sources of new hypotheses or
evidence. As Peirce and other philosophers of science have noted, scientific
inquiry is a creative enterprise, requiring flights of imagination. To use more
technical language, in addition to induction and deduction, inquiry requires
abduction, or inference to the best explanation, or “educated guessing.”

Following openness is the willingness to experiment, to test beliefs and
proposals against the natural world and the experience of others. Willingness to
experiment entails other virtues, including, on the one hand, perseverance and
courage, and on the other, moderation and willingness to reflect. Perseverance
and courage are required by those who must engage in the arduous task of forming
tests and gathering evidence, and face the recriminations of those who question
received authorities or tenaciously held beliefs. Moderation and reflection are
similarly required because the inquirers must limit their regard for their own
beliefs if they are to question or test them. These are virtues of obedience,
submission, or scientific objectivity.

As inquiry is a social process of public experimentation, inquirers must be
open to the broadest acceptable range of input. The community of inquiry must
be maximally inclusive if we are to maximize the chances of success. To exclude
participation on the basis of arbitrary considerations like gender, class, race, or
nationality would be to artificially limit sources for hypotheses and experimental
feedback. In other words, inquiry requires toleration and mutual respect, whenever
reasonable. This is not to say that it is infinitely tolerant. The pragmatist model
finds those who are unwilling to engage in the process of proposing, critiquing,
and defending hypotheses unreasonable. But limits on participation, toleration,
and respect are themselves determined only in the course of inquiry, so there must
always be a way to question them in the course of future inquiries.

Inquiry then entails a certain character, and what qualifies as virtue depends
on its value to inquiry. Put simply, “[a] character trait (habit, disposition or human
potency) is a virtue if it facilitates intelligent problem solving. A character trait is

416 Phillip Deen



a vice if it hinders intelligent problem solving” (Olson 2007, 10). Or, to cite James
Gouinlock at length,

[i]n Dewey’s ideal, experimental inquiry and democratic behavior become fused. The
nature of their combination can perhaps be best suggested by thinking of them as a union
of certain moral and intellectual virtues . . . The virtues include the willingness to question,
investigate, and learn; a determination to search for clarity in discourse and evidence in
argument. There is also a readiness to hear and respect the views of others, to consider
alternatives thoroughly and impartially, and to communicate in a like manner in turn. One
is not irrevocably committed to antecedent conditions but is ready to qualify or change his
views as a consequence of inquiry and communication. There is an urgency to persist in
shared discourse in the direction of agreement. These virtues embrace novelty, innovation,
growth, regard for the concerns of others, and scientific discipline. (Gouinlock 1995, 88;
see also Dewey LW 14: 166, 167, and MacGilvray 1999, 549)

Hence, the virtues that make for good inquiry are also many of those that typify
liberal-democratic citizens. Dewey long held that scientific and democratic prac-
tice was similar in structure: “I would not claim that any existing democracy has
ever made complete or adequate use of scientific method in deciding upon its
policies. But freedom of inquiry, toleration of diverse views, freedom of commu-
nication, the distribution of what is found out to every individual as the ultimate
intellectual consumer, are involved in the democratic as in the scientific method”
(LW 14: 135).14

To simplify the argument, inquiry is the process by which doubt or the
problematic is converted into belief or the reconstructed. Because problems are
unavoidable, inquiry is too. Although doubts may be resolved in various ways,
pragmatists believe that experience has shown that scientific inquiry is by far the
most successful. Such inquiry requires the virtues of openness, willingness to
experiment, perseverance, courage, moderation, reflection, sociality, inclusive-
ness, toleration, and mutual respect. These are also many of the virtues required by
a liberal-democratic society. Because the need for successful inquiry is inevitable,
virtues required for such inquiry are necessary as well, and a society may justi-
fiably cultivate these virtues in its citizens—not because they are the substantive
values of a liberal-democratic community, but because they are the virtues of
inquiry. Of course, history has shown that individual scientists, even brilliant ones,
may be vicious people. Nevertheless, the community of inquiry must exhibit these
virtues as a whole. As regards educational policy, the result is that if we are to
produce good inquirers, they must be educated in certain (liberal-democratic)
virtues. This is particularly true, given the problems that the community is trying
to solve—those that are felt widely, and require cooperation and mutual concern.

2.3 Method, Not End

This approach from the conditions of inquiry differs importantly from the first
pragmatist way to ground virtue. Admittedly, by linking scientific inquiry with

Inquiry and Virtue 417



character, this argument also recalls Peirce’s substantive one. Peirce went so far as
to challenge the reader to identify any great man of truth who was a criminal,
claiming that they are mutually exclusive (1.576). Critically, however, the con-
nection to the objective idealist metaphysic has been dropped. These virtues are
not valuable because they are instrumental to the end of concrete reasonableness
or the self-organization of a loving God. Second, this differs from the substantive
Deweyan account above in that they are the virtues of a method, not of any
particular end, nor is this argument based on a substantive and prior commitment
to liberal ideals. It does not argue that citizens must be educated for tolerance
because it maximizes the greatest utility (Mill), we are endowed with natural
rights (Locke and Jefferson), or we are rationally autonomous beings (Kant).
Rather, the justification is based on the necessity of inquiry in light of the
permanent need to address problems.

Further, in distinction from epistemic justifications of democracy as the
best form of government because it is the only form that provides the epistemic
conditions for truth, the argument from inquiry does not assert the value of truth,
and then claim that inquiry and democracy are valuable because they serve that
end (Estlund 2007). Democracy is not justified because it produces truth; that is,
democracy is not valuable simply because it is a means to something inherently
valuable outside of it. Inquiry is not motivated by anything other than the attempt
to reconstruct a situation, to solve a felt problem. Truth is internal to this process.
For Peirce, truth is what arrives at the end of an endless, well-conducted inquiry,
while for Dewey, it is (notoriously) “warranted assertibility.”

The argument from the conditions of inquiry is then non-teleological, except
in the general sense that problem-solving has a generic telos: to resolve felt
problems. Democratic virtues are conditions for the possibility of inquiry, not
the True or Good. They govern the attempt to understand one’s present ideals, to
resolve tensions between them, and to formulate new ideals in response to the
problems that arise in the course of living according to one’s ideals. As inquiry is
the result of problematic situations, the only way to avoid it is to never encounter
a tension between one’s ideals and the world, or between the ideals themselves.
Such a life is simply unavoidable, given limited resources, the existence of others,
and a world that frustrates our desires. Most importantly, for the problem at
hand—the tension between the liberal image of the good life and its commitment
to toleration—there is no imposition of an ideal life on illiberal citizens. The telos
is provided from within the illiberal community as it attempts to resolve internal
tensions and conflicts with the larger world.15

3. Educating for Democratic Virtue

We now have an alternative pragmatist-liberal argument for the superiority of
certain virtues central to the democratic character: good inquiry requires certain
liberal-democratic virtues, and the need for good inquiry is inescapable. Further-

418 Phillip Deen



more, this argument is less vulnerable to the liberal objection that this argument
appeals to prior belief in a liberal moral and metaphysical framework, and therefore
is disrespectful to illiberal citizens. One does not have to be a liberal to accept this
argument. One must only value inquiry. In principle, we may reasonably expect
others to be persuaded by it, even if there is no prior conversion to liberalism.

Let us return to the case of civic education. If the argument above is cogent,
then liberals have a compelling argument on behalf of certain virtues. This argu-
ment can be used in service of civic education in public schools, despite the fact
that attendance by children and taxation of parents is backed by force of state
sanction. Schools must cultivate liberal-democratic virtues of toleration, openness
to novelty, respect, courage, and honesty because these virtues are required for
good inquiry and good inquiry is necessary.

3.1 The Case of Civic Education

Of course, not every parent wants their child to be educated in these virtues.
What strikes the liberal as obviously virtuous may strike another as equally
obviously vicious. The tolerance and mutual respect valued by the liberal may be
seen as the celebration of depravation or sin. Given that, from within the liberal
framework, the state has a prima facie duty to respect the values of such families,
churches, and other moral communities, this poses a problem for those liberals
who would require liberal civic education in public schools.

Consistent with the liberal value of toleration and the practical necessity
of maintaining social stability, the state has affirmed a right to be exempt from
compulsory attendance in public schools, either entirely or from certain parts of
the curriculum. There are many bases for exemption, but I focus here on the first
amendment right to the free exercise of religion. The pivotal court decision in this
matter is the well-known Wisconsin v. Yoder (although Michigan v. DeJonge and
Duro v. District Attorney also address the matter). In the Yoder case, members of
the Old Order Amish religion and the Conservative Amish Mennonite Church
objected to a Wisconsin law mandating attendance in public schools until the age
of sixteen, and petitioned to remove their children at the end of eighth grade on the
grounds that compulsory attendance violated their religious beliefs. Their Amish
faith required a separation from the “evil world” and a commitment to a tightly
knit community threatened by supposed virtues, such as openness, toleration, and
a willingness to experiment. Rather, Amish youth must develop the virtues of
purity, piety, and discipline. The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the right
to the free exercise of religion outweighed any state interest in compelling chil-
dren to attend another two years of public education (Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 US
205 [1972]).

Interestingly, in his dissent, Justice William Douglas made a classic liberal
argument, contending that the child’s right to determine their own way of life was
being overlooked: “He may want to be a pianist or an astronaut or an oceanog-
rapher. To do so he will have to break from the Amish tradition. It is the future of

Inquiry and Virtue 419



the students, not the future of the parents, that is imperiled by today’s decision. If
a parent keeps his child out of school beyond the grade school, then the child will
be forever barred from entry into the new and amazing world of diversity that we
have today” (ibid.). However, as I have tried to argue, such a substantive appeal to
the value of autonomy is problematic if pluralism is to be taken seriously.

According to the argument I have put forth, the Amish children from the
Yoder case would be compelled to receive education in those liberal-democratic
virtues necessary for inquiry, that is, to be provided a character that will allow
them to test their beliefs against the “evil world.” Even from a liberal position,
such coercion is unnerving. However, it is, in principle, justifiable. The Amish
community has historically had to come to terms with the modern, secular
world. From within, there have always been tensions between those who would be
more open and those who would not, between those who interpret their tradition
more strictly and those who have not. Particularly in the case of technological
appropriation, the Amish have a long history of slowly testing the effect of new
technologies against communal and traditional values (Kelly 2010, chapter 12).
The inescapability of the need for inquiry entails children’s inescapable need for
certain virtues. This need is not imposed from without, but arises from within.
Rather than present a harmless supplement to traditional beliefs, this argument
concludes that public reasoning, and the democratic virtues it requires, must be
taught to children even when it does pose a threat to traditional pieties. For simply
trying to live according to these pieties in a conflicted and frustrating natural and
social environment entails a commitment to liberal-democratic virtues.

3.2 Objecting to Inquiry

Given this conclusion, one might reasonably object that the shift from sub-
stantive arguments to arguments grounded in the structure of inquiry does not
avoid the problem of pluralism. Rather, it obscures it by a false appeal to universal
norms that are, in fact, surreptitiously partisan. The argument from inquiry
circumvents problematic moral virtues with inquiry-based ones, but the latter are
also hotly contested.

The argument from inquiry assumes that illiberal citizens still accept public
inquiry. I believe this describes the majority of conservative American citizens.
For example, parents may believe that tolerance of homosexuality should not be
taught to children because promotion of tolerance of homosexuality has a corro-
sive effect on the health of the child and on basic institutions like the family and
their Church. The sheer fact that their position is illiberal does not make them
unreasonable (as some have charged of Rawls’s account of “reasonableness”).
Their position is reasonable because they believe that this is a publicly defensible
position and that the facts will bear it out. They are willing to submit their beliefs
to a process of public inquiry and experimentation. In cases such as this, the
justification of coerced civic education has force.

420 Phillip Deen



However, some are put off when Dewey claims that there is “but one method
for ascertaining fact and truth—that conveyed by the word ‘scientific’ in its
most general sense,” or that “Democracy thus appears as the means by which the
revelation of truth is carried on” (LW 9: 23 and EW 4: 9). Commitment to a public
and discursive model of truth is to reject Peirce’s other means of fixing belief—the
methods of tenacity, authority, and a priori reasoning. The pragmatist assumes an
image of truth and how it is attained, a deep metaphysical commitment that other
citizens may not share and that results in a civic totalism with undesirable con-
sequences for religious communities (Macedo 2000, 139–45).

Rather than accept the idea that truth arises through the public testing
of hypotheses of reasons and evidence—that is, that there is an essential link
between truth and public experimentation—fundamentalist communities argue
that Truth is given by means of divine revelation, private intuition, or sacred texts
and traditions. They may further argue that the use of public reason exposes
one’s sacred beliefs to corruption by those who have not received the revelation.
Recall the 1983 case Mozert v. Hawkins, in which parents claimed the right
to reject any public education that exposed their children to any beliefs other
than their own, as this might lead children to respect other faiths and to question
their own (Mozert v. Hawkins 1984).16 If others are corrupt, then we might
be better off not exposing Truths to criticism. In other words, they may appeal
to the methods of “fixation” rejected by Peirce: tenacity, authority, and appeal
to subjective reason. The criticism is ultimately that, while children and parents
are inevitably compelled to inquire, they are not compelled to engage in
pragmatist-scientific inquiry. Therefore, they are not compelled to cultivate
liberal-democratic virtues.17

Robert Talisse has argued that, while reasonable disagreement may exist
more than substantive moral and metaphysical beliefs, it may not in matters of
seeking truth. Recall his quasi-transcendental argument that mere assertion of
beliefs as true entails a process of presenting and evaluating reasons. There are
implicit norms in this process. Anyone who asserts “I believe that p, but I have
never subjected p to the type of scrutiny that would allow counterevidence to
challenges to p to emerge, and have never attended to the reasons that others have
for holding beliefs opposed to p” has undercut their own claim to be reasonable
(Talisse 2010, 46). One could tweak this to hold that those who assert “I believe
p, but I am unwilling to test p experimentally” would have similarly given up on
the norms implicit to asserting their beliefs. Upon self-assessment, it signals an
epistemic failure. However, as noted in section 2.2, the argument I present here is
not the same as Talisse’s. I do not appeal to the conditions for the possibility of
belief assertion but the conditions of good inquiry. Therefore, this response is
inconsistent with the argument at hand. In addition, although his argument may
conceivably appeal to our imagined fundamentalist, it is unlikely to do so. Tal-
isse’s argument may be sufficient to convince a liberal-democrat that the funda-
mentalist has sacrificed his/her epistemic authority, but the fundamentalist rejects
the assumption connecting Truth and public argumentation. If the goal is to

Inquiry and Virtue 421



persuade the fundamentalist to send his/her children to public schools, then it is
unlikely to succeed.

A more modest alternative is to concede that if not everyone assents to a
necessary connection between truth and public argumentation, then we must appeal
to an empirical connection. In that case, the pragmatist would have to concede that
the fundamentalist may reject his/her account of truth and its internal connection to
public inquiry, but in doing so, the fundamentalist is also rejecting the scientific and
democratic revolutions. In that vein, Amy Gutmann argues that those who reject
the teaching of evolution in public schools reject not only a particular scientific
theory, but also the form of scientific reasoning itself. “The religions that reject
evolution as a valid scientific theory also reject the secular standards of reasoning
that make evolution clearly superior as a theory to creationism” (Gutmann 1999,
102). They reject the standards of cogent reasoning that form the core of scientific
method. In this case, one might point out the great successes of public experimen-
tation and the corresponding decline of the methods of revelation and authority in
science and public life, and argue that the open exchange of reasons has been shown
a far superior method of solving problems. The appeal is to the history of problem-
solving and to the benefits of scientific inquiry they currently enjoy. Given the
historical successes of experimental inquiry, we may argue that those who enjoy its
benefits while denying it a place in education are being unreasonable.

In the extreme case, believers may reject the modern world remade by
public reason as corrupt. They may see scientific-technological and democratic
inquiry, and the “progress” that follows, as a fall from a simpler, more divine time.
Reasonable agreement may not be possible. At that point, there would be the need
for bargaining, voting, or other nondiscursive means of decision making, even as
we hold that those who are unwilling to engage in experimental inquiry are being
unreasonable. But, even if the argument from inquiry is not universally persuasive,
it is at least less controversial than more substantive ones. While deep moral
disagreement is easy to find, there is certainly less dispute over the assertions that
coercive acts must be open to public scrutiny, that hypotheses must be tested, or
that problems are best resolved by those who exhibit certain qualities of character
(even if we must admit the existence of extreme epistemic positions that reject
these conclusions). Consistent with pragmatism’s commitment to meliorism, the
argument from inquiry offers hope for greater agreement, even if universal agree-
ment always evades us. The claim here is modest—that arguments based in an
account of inquiry are on less controversial ground, both prudentially and norma-
tively. Given the need to secure broad consensus if virtue education is to be
instituted, and given the further ethical demand (within the liberal model) to
respect, when possible, all comprehensive doctrines affected by the policy, our
reasons should strive to be as “public” as possible.

Nevertheless, the inquiry-based, pragmatist account allows the liberal
democrat to argue that virtues necessary for inquiry are not open to reasonable
disagreement. That is, the underlying necessity of inquiry implies that even
anti-democrats admit that liberal-democratic virtues are required of all. Parents

422 Phillip Deen



are not previously obliged to accept the ideal of consciously reproducing a
liberal society. Rather, they need only admit that next generation must be able to
inquire. Therefore, the state may legitimately use coercion to cultivate a genera-
tion of children who are able to test their beliefs. From a comprehensive Deweyan
position, this is so because the world is both precarious and stable, while for the
comprehensive Peircean, it is a requirement of the pursuit of Truth. But from the
inquiry-based pragmatist position, it is entailed by the need for any moral tradition
to engage objections both from within and without, or to deal with new problems.
Even the fundamentalist parent must acknowledge external tensions with the
modern, secularizing world, and internal tensions between those who interpret
their tradition. Both call for inquiry. Despite the difficulties that arise from liber-
alism’s central commitment to toleration, there is at least one impartial reason for
compulsory civic education.

Notes

1 In this, I am engaged in a project similar to that of Eric MacGilvray and Robert Talisse (MacGilvray
2004; Talisse 2007). For a nice summary of the attempt by pragmatists to develop post-Rawlsian
justifications of political liberalism, see Festenstein (2010).

2 I have ignored the contributions of other pragmatists, specifically James and Mead. I have done this
only for reasons of economy.

3 Stephen Macedo has offered his own defense of liberal virtues, including sympathy, self-reflection,
willingness to experiment, openness, self-control, altruism, and appreciation of social inheritance
(Macedo 2000, 271–72). See also Galston (1991) and Kloppenberg (1998).

4 Following standard practice, all further references to Dewey’s works will indicate the volume of the
Early Works (EW), Middle Works (MW), or Late Works (LW) of The Collected Works of John
Dewey, followed by the page or chapter number.

5 Sadly, conscientiousness and openness are not easily joined. A study of the geographic distribution of
the “big five” personality traits in the United States found that where agreeableness and consci-
entiousness are more prominent—the southeast—openness is lacking. The reverse is found where
openness is more prominent—the northeast and west coast metropolitan areas (Rentfrow, Gosling,
and Potter 2008), graphically represented at http://mapscroll.blogspot.com/2009/05/new-and-
improved-geography-of.html.

6 Dewey elsewhere defines democracy as the “belief in the ability of human experience to generate the
aims and methods by which further experience will grow in ordered richness” (LW 14: 229).

7 A complementary Deweyan argument is made by Juan Carlos Mougán Rivero that social cooperation,
as a necessary element of human flourishing, grounds other democratic virtues (Mougán Rivero
2008).

8 This section is indebted to Hookway 1985, 58–79; Sheriff 1994, 60–82; Reilly 1970, 9–23; and
particularly Mullin 2007, 133–48.

9 Following standard practice, all further references to Peirce’s works will indicate the volume and
paragraph number of the Collected Papers.

10 For more on Peirce’s substantive moral and metaphysical commitments, see Potter (1967) and
Mayorga (2009).

11 Despite presenting an excellent account of Dewey’s moral theory, Pappas fails to address the real
force of the pluralist objection (2008, 284–6). He sees disagreement as the result of dogged
partiality or stubbornness rather than as an outcome of free reason. Disagreement is presented as
the result of irrationality, despite Pappas’ insight that, for Dewey, tension and conflict are a
fundamental quality of moral life.

Inquiry and Virtue 423



12 Admittedly, most Deweyans do not believe that the Rawlsian problem of reasonable pluralism poses
a problem for a pragmatist justification of democracy. In particular, they have objected to Robert
Talisse’s claim that pluralism requires that we abandon Dewey entirely for a Peircean epistemic
approach (Talisse 2007). Because of limited space, I cannot attempt to defend the Rawlsian
objection here. However, despite sharing his belief that Rawls’s pluralist problem must be taken
seriously, I should note that I disagree with Talisse’s conclusion: both Dewey and Peirce have
much to offer a pragmatist philosophy of democracy, and it need not be strictly epistemic in form
(Deen 2009).

13 The contention that scientific inquiry is the best method to resolve not only matters of fact but also of
value is a controversial one. Central to pragmatist moral philosophy are a rejection of the fact-value
split and a call to extend experimental methods to morals. Defense of these central beliefs would
require far more space than this article allows, as it spans much of Dewey’s vast corpus, not to
mention the work of other pragmatists. However, those interested should consult Dewey’s Ethics
(LW 7), Theory of Valuation (LW 13: 189–251), and “Logic of Judgments of Practice” (MW 8:
14–82).

14 The inquiry-based virtues discussed here do not encompass all democratic virtues. As Michael
Walzer and others have noted, democratic politics is not the same as a democratic deliberation.
It requires virtues appropriate to political mobilization and realpolitik (Walzer 2004, chap. 5).
However, they are among the central liberal-democratic virtues.

15 This argument from inquiry differs from Stephen Macedo’s position in Liberal Virtues that liberal
virtues are entailed by the process of public justification. Although I find that argument compel-
ling, I differ in an emphasis on inquiry, which does not run the risk of emphasizing discourse to
the detriment of experiment (Macedo 1990).

16 The federal appeals court ultimately ruled that the parents did not have legitimate claim.
17 A variant of this argument is that, while the method of experiment and inquiry is appropriate for

natural scientific facts, it is not proper for moral values. However, as already pointed out in
footnote 12, the pragmatist tradition has a long history of rejecting the fact–value dichotomy and
of calling for an experimental approach to values.

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