Beyond Dewey’s Uncertainty: Banausic Knowledge as Democratic Foundation

Abstract John Dewey holds that uncertainty is a central feature of the concrete interaction between organism and environment, and he mobilizes this diagnosis to explain both the emergence of inquiry and the persistence of speculative and abstract philosophies. However, we show that material reality is not uncertain and that the quest for certainty cannot explain the flight from the concrete, but should explain a return to it. Drawing on historical, philosophical, and sociological sources (most notably Edgar Zilsel’s thesis and the embodied knowledge of artisans) we invert Dewey’s interpretative framework: epistemic uncertainty arises not from material reality, but from theoretical abstraction. This reinterpretation enables a reformulation of Dewey’s critique of dualism and provides the basis for a pragmatist epistemology grounded in the relative stability of practical experience. Finally, it opens the way for a reconsideration of the foundations of democracy from a non-relativistic perspective.