The Public and Its Problems · Chapter
Endnotes explained
This chapter provides endnotes and references for the main text, citing sources such as W.
What happens
This chapter provides endnotes and references for the main text, citing sources such as W. H. Hudson, David Hume, William Ernest Hocking, Clarence Ayres, Charles Horton Cooley, Walter Lippmann, T. V. Smith, Carleton Hayes, and John Stuart Mill. It also includes a functional definition of government and officers, and a note on the modernity of the state.
Free preview opens on this chapter — companions, themes, and character notes appear beside the text.
Narrative arc
Story tension across the book — this chapter sits in Resolution.
- Setup
- Breaking point
- Aftermath
- Closing
The emotional and psychological peak occurs in Dewey’s insistence that democracy is not a fixed political mech…
Full beat labels and climax notes unlock in the reader.
Follow the arc while readingKey passages
“Judges make rules of law. On the “will” theory this is an encroachment on the legislative function. Not so, if the judges further define conditions of action.”
When judges create legal rules, it may seem like they are overstepping into legislative territory, but it is not an encroachment if they are merely clarifying the conditions under which actions occur.
Dewey defends judicial rule-making as a legitimate function of defining conditions, not usurping legislation.
“The words “government” and “officers” are taken functionally, not in terms of some particular structure which is so familiar to us that it leaps to the eyes when these words are used.”
The terms 'government' and 'officers' are used to refer to their functions, not to any specific institutional structure that we might immediately think of.
Dewey clarifies that his use of these terms is broad and functional, applicable beyond modern states.
“While modernity is a property of those structures which go by the name of states, yet all history, or almost all, records the exercise of analogous functions.”
Although the specific structures we call states are modern, similar functions have been performed throughout history.
Dewey argues that the functions of the state are universal, even if the term 'state' is modern.
