Practical Piety and Conscience

Piety is problematic for Pragmatism, for, as traditionally conceived as a private attitude, it is independent of Action, and, hence, is a phenomenon that the doctrine does not recognize.  Attempts to extrinsically attach Piety to Action--as a qualifier of the latter, e. g. Dewey's project, or as expressible by, or as inferable from it, do not resolve the fundamental antithesis.  In contrast, Conscience is intrinsically related to Action, and, of course, has religious connotations, thought Kant, Nietzsche, and Heidegger have concepts of it that are independent of traditional theology.  So, if Dewey had sought to establish a concept of practical Piety, rather than one of naturalistic Piety, he might have arrived at one, such as Conscience, that is more proper to Pragmatism.