Democratic consciousness and religious faith in John Dewey

Abstract

This paper aims an approach to the relationship between democratic consciousness and religious faith from the perspective of Classical American Pragmatism. The article analyses the characteristics of the religious experience from a naturalistic philosophical perspective taking as bedrock Dewey’s book A Common Faith. Dewey braces democracy with a way of life characterized by fallibility of knowledge and contingency of human being and reality. He understands the religious beliefs as a moral ideal that gives full sense and meaning to the transformative action of human being. Thus, Dewey maintains the continuity between religion and democracy from a philosophical postmodern conception. Under these bases faith may be a proposal for all human beings.