ABSTRACT

The word crisis comes from Ancient Greek κρίσις which can be translated as ‘power of distinguishing’ and is related to modern κρίνω which means ‘to pick out’. This is apt, because the pandemic of 2020 has exposed the limitation of approaches to social governance premised on calculation. The – some would argue false – choice between either saving lives or the economy, is the highest profile example of the necessity to ‘pick’ between different qualitative options. This has brought into relief something suppressed by the calculation approach, namely the need to adjudicate between multiple and competing value orientations in public life. With this, an alternative way of decision making in the public domain is needed, one that does not revert back to mere politics and subjective decisions. This article turns to the writings of John Dewey to look for alternatives. It shows that the model of deliberative inquiry found in Dewey, even though not without its own challenges, presents a viable option to replace metrics-based valuation approaches, without falling back on the whimsy of political judgement. This suggests that Dewey is not just contemporaneous, but that translating his insights into action could not be more urgent.

摘要

危机一词来自古希腊语κρίσις，可译为“分辨力”，与现代κρίνω有关，意思是“挑出”。这是恰当的，因为2020年的大流行暴露了以计算为前提的社会治理方法的局限性。在拯救生命或经济之间做出的选择——有些人会认为是错误的——是必须在不同定性选项之间“挑选”的最引人注目的例子。这让计算方法所压制的东西得到了缓解，即需要在公共生活中的多重和相互竞争的价值取向之间做出判断。因此，需要一种公共领域的替代决策方式，这种方式不会回到单纯的政治和主观决策。本文转向约翰杜威的著作以寻找替代方案。它表明，杜威的审议式调查模型，尽管并非没有自身的挑战，但提供了一个可行的选择来取代基于指标的估值方法，而不会倒退于政治判断的奇思妙想。这表明杜威不仅是同时代的，而且将他的见解转化为行动已经迫在眉睫。