Democracia, libertad y secularización. El pragmatismo de John Dewey en la teoría de la justicia de Axel Honneth y en la teoría de la religión de Hans Joas

The aim of this paper is to address the discussion between two contemporary uses of John Dewey's philosophy: that of Honneth in his Hegelian theory of justice, and that of Joas in his response to the “thesis of the spell of freedom” defended by Honneth in his project. The first and second sections introduce, respectively, the projects of the two authors, pointing out their main theoretical commitments and the incidence of Dewey's philosophy on each project. In the fourth section, each reception is analyzed on the basis of the affinity of the premises of their theoretical-methodological frameworks with Deweyan pragmatism, on the one hand, and the links that each author establishes between Hegel and Dewey in the specific treatment of three elements of the latter's thought, on the other. In the case of Honneth, his interpretation is supported by several scholars from the Anglo-Saxon world who judge that Hegelianism in Dewey makes his democratic philosophical project more intelligible. In the case of Joas, his interpretation of Dewey, while accurate in its anthropological conception, is questionable for placing Dewey's philosophy of religion as a separate chapter of his philosophy (detached from his political and ethical philosophy). It is argued that this severance is a consequence of Joas's anti-Hegelian reading of Dewey, and that this approach is not consistent with the “Hegelian deposit” in the latter's philosophy of religion, which may represent relevant distortions in exegetical terms.