The core issue is Dewey's historicization of the self.  Is the self, so inextricably situated within the flux of history that it cannot rise above its context and critique its own society?  xvii

 . . . philosophy, for Hegel, was Bildung  xix

recent humanists/historicist readings of Hegel suggest that Dewey's mature thought is more accurately seen as a deeper understanding of Hegel's most original philosophical insights. xxi

In contrast to the isolated Cartesian self, an entity juxtaposed to its natural and socal environment, Dewey consistently described the self as an integral part of its environment, enmeshed in a web of dialectical relationships within society and nature.  xxv  

Enlightenment and Romanticism: "Hegel sought 'the fusion of the ideal of rational enlightenment with the romantic ideal of direct experience and living intuition.'  This ultimately led him 'to a different and deeper conception of reason itself,' [H. S. Harris] which always included the emotions as well a discursive abilities." 7

Rather than a static correspondence of thought and being, truth is a conceptual activity through which we conceive the world together with our recognition that our concepts shape the world we experience.  There is no reality 'in itself' beyond our experience.  Truth is experience conceived through Begriff, the 'concept.'  Although Begriff  is generally translated as 'concept' or 'notion,' Hegel scholars often object that this obscures its relationship to the verb begreifen, which comes from greifen, to grasp or seize.  Thus Begriff is more than concept or notion because it implies that mind is activity, rather than substance, engaged in capturing, embracing, or encompasing its object within consciousness. 9

Hegel "spoke of a 'sunburst,' perhaps meaning the French Revolution or Enlightenment liberalism, both of which were profoundly impacting Germany at that time.  But rather than specific historical events, the sunburst was a new way of thinking, an attitude that rejected provincial beliefs and authoritative religions. 12-13

 . . . Hegel actually began to undermine the prevalent conception of science, moving it in a direction that Dewey later embraced.  Science, for Hegel, is a willing suspension of final conclusions in favor of a never-ending process of learning in which we continually rethink and reexamine our beliefs.  13

Placing Hegel in the neo-Humanist tradition significantly clarifies his political philosophy.  During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Bildung was a highly contested term in the German states.  Many Germans associated it with the Enlightenment, which was controversial enough, and some asociated it with Jacobinism, which they construed as a desire to murder the aristocracy and the leaders of the church. . . .  During the French Revolution, Bildung took on radical political implications.  Hegel and other neo-humanists fused it with the ideals of the Revolution, depicting it as an education that would enable individuals to be critical of established authority. . . .  34

Under the influence of the neo-humanists, Hegel emphasized personal growth through self-alienation and return as the way to rise above  one's narrow natural inclinations . . .  For Hegel, the idea of Bildung was that one would become not only a man of learning, but also a man of good taste, combining the study of the latest research with the appreciation of literature and the fine arts, thus uniting head and heart, thought and feeling.  Advocating the revolutonary sentiment that 'careers should be open to talent,' Hegel believed that the moral and spiritual renewal of the German people would be realized through the establishment of a new elite of educated and cultivated leaders [the "Party"] who would replace the corrupt, undereducated aristocracy, who held their positions simply by virtue of their birth.   34-5

Bildung requires a well-ordered society in which the individual has the freedom, and even luxury, to develop his unique talents and abilities. 35

The Enlightenment idea of reason as entirely independent of the surroundings reached its peak in Kant.  Dewey rejected this view.  In Hgel's wake, he accepted a quasi-Hegelian view of the relation between culture and the mang of minds, a view of reason that is not alwasys already there, so to speak, but tht is a product or result of the interaction between individuals, groups, and the surroundings.  His acceptance of a Hegelian approach is, as he says, "a factor in producing my belief that the not uncommon [Enlightenment] assumption in both psychology and philosophy of a ready-made mind over against a physical world as an object has no empirical support.  

This general commitment to contextualism led to a shared commitment to what Hegel called Bildung, or education . . .  31-32

[Veblen] provided a strong criticism of hedonism, including marginal utility theory, satirizing its conception of man as a "lightning calculator  of pleasures and pains" and arguing that economics should look to more modern social-psychological theories of behavior based on instinct and habit. (35)

The Veblenian critique of business institutions and marginalist economics, placed together with the ideas of empirical science and Dewey's pragmatic reformism, worked to refocus and reenergize the progressive impulse. . . .  the part played by many of those involved in the formation of institutionalism in the economic planning developed as a part of World War I. (40-41)

 . . . one of the most often repeated claims among institutionalists was that a "scientific" economics would have to be consistent with "modern" psychology.  (45)

institutionalist approach to consumption  47

public utilities [valuation and rate regulation] were major areas of institutionalist research [Cooke] 49
also see p. 51 re unempl. ins., workmens comp, soc sec, labor and public utility reg, ag price support, promotion of public works and planning

Keyniesian rev in America had many of its roots in in the work of New Deal economists, both institutionalist and otherwise. 290

Veblen's criticisms [of neoclassical economics] took two forms; one was scientific and had to do with the requirements of a properly evolutionary science of economics; the other was political and moral and had to do with the direction in which he thought society should evolve.  First, econmics in his view was still largely pre-Darwinan in that it used utilitarian theory as its criterion of choice and clung to an outmoded hedonistic psychology; it was teleological in that it unrealistically postulated certain processes such as equilibrium as normal and taxonomic insofar as it substituted classification for causal explanation.  It erred, methodologically, in using deduction to draw conclusions from unrealistic axioms. 31

Veblen's criticism of neoclassicism also focused on its neglect of the origins of consumer tastes and preferences, its use of marginalist explanations of income distribution and, implicitly, with the static role it assigned to the state.  In his view, neoclassicists simply took consumption patterns for granted without inquiry into the origins of consumer values.  They ignored the emulatory nature of much of consuumption and, also, the role of advertising and salesmanship in whetting consumer appetites.  31-2

pp. 111-12 confusion o the identity of the progressive movement.  is there any unity?

C. Wright Mills has argued that 'both Marxism and Liberalism make the same rationalist assumption that men, given the opportunity, will naturally come to political consciousness of interests, of self, or of class. 115

Another important factor in his involvement with left-wing groups, again emphasized by Oppenheimer himself, was his need for comradeship.  "I began," he said, "to feel the need to participate more fully in the life of the community."  When he started to join with others to pursue political goals, he felt something he longed for, but very rarely achieved: a sense of belonging: "I liked the new sense of companionship, and at the same time felt that I was coming to be part of the life of my time and country."