Roberto Frega

In this article I examine the main conceptions of public reason in contemporary political philosophy in order to set the frame for appreciating the novelty of the pragmatist understanding of public reason as based upon the notion of consequences and upon a theory of rationality as inquiry. The approach is inspired by Dewey but is free from any concern with history of philosophy. The aim is to propose a different understanding of the nature of public reason aimed at overcoming the limitations of the existing approaches. Public reason is presented as the proper basis for discussing contested issues in the broad frame of deep democracy

This paper provides a fresh examination of John Dewey’s social philosophy in the light of new evidence made available by the recent discovery of the original manuscript Dewey wrote in preparation of the Lectures on Social and Political Philosophy delivered in China and published here for the first time. The paper reconstructs Dewey’s ambivalent relationship with social philosophy throughout his long career and focuses upon his attempt between 1919 and 1923 to develop his own’s social philosophy. It proceeds to examine the contribution of the Chinese Lectures in Social and Political Philosophy to Dewey’s project in social philosophy and shows that our understanding of Dewey’s social philosophy was severely hampered by the unavailability of the original text. It concludes by assessing the critical potential of Dewey’s social philosophy.

Qu’est-ce que la rationalité pratique? Et quelle rôle joue-t-elle dans les pratiques normatives qui structures notre vie sociale et politique? Ce livre propose une réflexion sur les différentes manières de penser le rapport entre rationalité et vie sociale et politique. Il le fait à partir d’une conception de la rationalité comme institution sociale, dont il retrace la généalogie au sein de la philosophie politique anglo-américaine contemporaine. Cette réflexion autour des sources de la rationalité ré-ouvre le débat sur le rapport complexe entre formes de rationalité et formes politiques. Refusant l'opposition stérile entre conceptions critiques et justificatives de la rationalité politique, elle suggère une possibilité nouvelle, celle d'une conception expressive de notre rapport à la raison, dont l’œuvre d’auteurs tels que Charles Taylor, Stanley Cavell et Alasdair MacIntyre nous indique la voie. Roberto Frega, philosophe, est chargé de recherche CNRS à l’Institut Marcel Mauss. Ses activités de recherche portent sur la tradition pragmatiste, ainsi que sur la philosophie politique contemporaine. Il a notamment publié Pensée, expérience, pratique. Essai sur la théorie du jugement de John Dewey (2006), John Dewey et la philosophie comme épistémologie de la pratique (2006), Voci della ragione (2009), Practice, Judgment, and the Challenged of Moral and Political Disagreement. A pragmatist Account (2012). Il est co-fondateur et co-éditeur du European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy.

I examine Thomas Kuhn’s work regarding the role played by the concept of practice in the development of his theory of scientific rationality. I outline the epistemological implications of his theory of incommensurability. I then show how the original intuition of a practice-based and social conception of incommensurability is replaced by a more conventional linguistic interpretation. I then examine Kuhn’s solution to the problem of incommensurability and explain its inadequacy. I then show that, ultimately, his failure to grasp the epistemological dimension of practice prevents him from providing a fully satisfactory solution to the epistemological problem raised in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.