Much dialectical ingenuity has been expended in construction of an essence or intrinsic nature in virtue of which any particular association is entitled to have applied to it the concept of statehood.
Dewey reflects on the philosophical efforts to define the essence of statehood.
Share
More from John Dewey
The foe to be dreaded is interference of government.
Extensive, enduring, intricate and serious indirect consequences of the conjoint activity of a comparatively few persons traverse the globe.
For the very familiarity with the phenomena conceals their significance and blinds us to their relation to immediate political problems.
Nor can the liberating and confirming results of public action be construed to yield a wholesale idealization of states in contrast with other associations.