On the record
They prevent that development of new forms of the state which might grow up rapidly were social life more fluid, less precipitated into set political and legal molds.
Said by
John Dewey
Source
gutenberg.orgJohn Dewey: “They prevent that development of new forms of the state which might grow up rapidly were social life more fluid, less…”
Editor's note · Context
Dewey argues that existing political and legal frameworks can stifle the development of more adaptive state forms.
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More from John Dewey
The easiest way out was to go back to the naked individual, to sweep away all associations as foreign to his nature and rights save as they proceeded from his own voluntary choice, and guaranteed his own private ends.
Nor can the liberating and confirming results of public action be construed to yield a wholesale idealization of states in contrast with other associations.
They are reflections into the singular human being of customs and institutions; they are not natural, that is, “native,” organic propensities.
Freedom presented itself as an end in itself, though it signified in fact liberation from oppression and tradition.