Rachael's Final Project Proposal

Rachael Dziechciarz
Research Paper Proposal
March 3, 2008

The general topic area that I will be working on is Pragmatism and social/political progressive movements. More specifically, I will focus on pragmatism and democracy. I am going to do this using option one.
The pragmatist position on democracy is that it is a process of experiences that the people within the democratic society are constancy learning. Democracy is a process, like learning and education, which has no end in sight. It is the way community goes about the learning process collectively. Also, democracy is one of the tools that is necessary in order for the “Great Community” to be achieved.
The pragmatists use the experiences of democracy that have been learned to continue the quest for better experiences. I think that the pragmatists want to find an objective way to practice democracy, which will lead to a society where individual and social goals are achieved simultaneously. One of the issues with democracy is that the people that have decision-making power are not as objective as they should be, and this leads them to use democracy as a way to achieve their political ends. As stated earlier, democracy never has an end, and should be viewed as a combination of experiences that should be continuously called into question.
Democracy doesn’t have to an abstract ideal, but can be implemented in such a way as to bring about true communication among people in the same society. When people learn to communicate with one another effectively, selfish interests become shared interests too, which creates a win-win situation for everyone involved. Furthermore, I would like to claim that the closer society gets to true democracy across the world, using the pragmatic method, the more chance there will be for stability and peace to reign over destruction and war.
Right now, I know that I will be using many ideas that came from John Dewey. This is because he developed clear ideas about how pragmatism fits in with the concept of democracy. I will definitely use his “Search for The Great Community,” and probably also “The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy.” Another pragmatist thinker that I will incorporate into my paper is Ralph Waldo Emerson. I think that his article titled “Self-Reliance” has many ideas about how a society should act. I think Dewey may have taken some ideas from Emerson’s work, although I will admit that Emerson has some extreme views that I won’t include to support my topic.

Top 10 titles that concern my topic area:
(1) Democratic hope: pragmatism and the politics of truth by Robert B. Westbrook (BOOK)
(2) Democracy and the claims of nature: critical perspectives for a new century by Ben A. Minteer (BOOK)
(3) Pragmatic moral realism: a transcendental defense by Sami Pihlstrom (ELECTRONIC RESOURCE)
(4) Judging under uncertainty: an institutional theory of legal interpretation by Adrian Vermeule (BOOK)
(5) Public Administration as Pragmatic, Democratic, and Objective by David L. Hildebrand (JOURNAL ARTICLE)**(I’m definitely going to use this one!)
(6) Rediscovering the Taproot: Is Classical Pragmatism the Route to Renew Public Administration? by Patricia M. Shields (JOURNAL ARTICLE)
(7) Dangerous Supplements, Inventive Dissent, and Military Critiques of the Bush Administration’s Unitary Executive Theories by Marouf Hasian Jr. (JOURNAL ARTICLE)
(8) Principle vs. Pragmatism: Policy Shifts and Political Competition by M. Tavits (JOURNAL ARTICLE)
(9) The Challenge of Pragmatism for Constructivism: Some Perspectives in the Programme of Cologne Constructivism by Stefan Neubert and Kersten Reich (JOURNAL ARTICLE)
(10) Democracy After Liberalism: Pragmatism and Deliberative Politics by Michael J. McGandy (BOOK)