杜威對於自由主義的批判與重建是一激進的文化革命計畫，指向人格、文-ft.﹒與社會的重新構造。這個計畫首先批判西方旁觀者哲學傳統中的知行二元對立和對行的貶低。旁觀者哲學傳統在政治上的符映就是放任自由主義的「公J(即「國家J)I私J (即「市民社會J)領域的機械二分。杜威對這個知識、倫理、與玫治的旁觀者傳統批判的另一面是實驗經驗主義的知識、倫理、和政治觀的建立。杜威認為由實驗經驗主義所概念化的科學應當被解放到一般人的社會生活中，形成多元的、創造的、其智能的公采，並以其為民主社會的真正體現。在此，智白色、自由、與個體性等自由主義的核心概念都將不再只扣押在形式和法制主義下，反而是社會與個人成長的具坑。

Aiming at the reconstitution of personality， culture， and society， Dewey's project of critique and reconstruction of liberalism is no less than a cultural revolution. Dewey's project starts with the critique of the dualistic opposition between knowing and doing and the abasement of the latter in the Western spectator tradition of philosophy. The political correspondence of this spectator theory of knowledge is a spectator theory of politics which arbitrarily divides empirical worlds into "the Public" and "the Private" and subsumes the former under the State. The other side of Dewey's critique of spectator theory is his reconstruction of science as experimental empiricism. Dewey believes that core to the modern malaise is the enslavement of science to the realm of material production， and that a radical democratic project ought to engage first in the emancipation of science from this pecuniary realm and to transform it into part and parcel of the social intelligence that ordinary people can act upon in daily life. Intelligently dealing with their own problems， publics (instead of the Public) can thus regain the realm of the political. Stripped off their formalistic strictures placed upon by the old liberalism， liberty and individuality become true empirical expressions of democratic life.