Agent of Democracy - Society for College and University Planning

The Makings of a Public
public judgment, or public will, knowledge that ideally could help
shape public policy; and second, members of the public need to be
able to communicate together to help create this public knowledge.
Systematic and continuous inquiry into all the conditions
which affect association and their dissemination
in print is a precondition of the creation of a true public.
But it and its results are but tools after all. Their final
actuality is accomplished in face-to-face relationships
by means of direct give and take. Logic in its fulfillment
recurs to the primitive sense of the word: dialogue. 3
The public can find itself, or to put it more aptly, make itself
by coming together to talk about the pressing problems of the day,
to identify the sources of problems, to see how these problems differentially
affect others, to try to decide together what should be done.
Out of these processes, processes that all amount to what we call
public deliberation, might emanate informed public opinion about
what should be done. This information has a special status. Dewey
put it this way, “The man who wears the shoe knows best that it
pinches and where it pinches, even if the expert shoemaker is the
best judge of how the trouble is to be remedied.” 4 Public problems
are best fathomed by the public itself. It may enlist experts or governments
to fix the problems, but it alone is the best judge of what
needs to be addressed and whether the remedy is successful. 5
Dewey’s clarification still left us with many problems. For one,
how in fact the public can make itself, what help it needs, who can
help, and how. For another, how it creates its intelligence, opinion,
or judgment. And finally, how the public’s understanding of what
should be done can have any impact on those in the business of
governing. While Dewey might have had a nice rejoinder to Lippmann,
history took its cue from Lippmann, not Dewey, and the
political system generally proceeds as if citizens are merely clients,
taxpayers, and occasional voters, not potential publics with any
3 Ibid., 218.
4 Ibid., 207.
5 Noëlle McAfee, “Public Knowledge, “ Philosophy and Social Criticism, 30:2
(2004): 139-157.
175