John Dewey

Or, as in the case of Hegel and his followers, a mythical philosophy of history is constructed to eke out the deficiencies of a mythical doctrine of statehood.

But they also suggest that actual states exhibit traits which perform the function that has been stated and which serve as marks of anything to be called a state.

Discussion of these traits will define the nature of the public and the problem of its political organization, and will also operate to test our theory.

We can hardly select a better trait to serve as a mark and sign of the nature of a state than a point just mentioned, temporal and geographical localization.

Immediate contiguity, face to face relationships, have consequences which generate a community of interests, a sharing of values, too direct and vital to occasion a need for political organization.

In like manner all thoughts and feelings would pass freely from one to another, though not necessarily communicated by speech; and all would be participants in virtue of that sympathy and solidarity uniting the members of a small isolated…

For long periods of human history, especially in the Orient, the state is hardly more than a shadow thrown upon the family and neighborhood by remote personages, swollen to gigantic form by religious beliefs.

Politics is not a branch of morals; it is submerged in morals.

Wrongdoing is culpable because it reflects upon one’s ancestry and kin.

The measure of value of the remote and theocratic state lies in what it does not do.

Its perfection is found in its identification with the processes of nature, in virtue of which the seasons travel their constant round, so that fields under the beneficent rule of sun and rain produce their harvest, and the neighborhood…

If one wishes to realize the distance which may lie between “facts” and the meaning of facts, let one go to the field of social discussion.