A Review of The Cambridge Companion to Dewey (original) (raw)
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The Cambridge Companion to Dewey
2010
John Dewey (1859–1952) was a major figure of the American cultural and intellectual landscape in the first half of the twentieth century. While not the originator of American pragmatism, he was instrumental to its articulation as a philosophy and the spread of its influence beyond philosophy to other disciplines. His prolific writings encompass metaphysics, philosophy of mind, cognitive science, psychology, moral philosophy, the philosophies of religion, art, and education, and democratic political and international theory. The contributors to this Companion examine the wide range of Dewey's thought and provide a critical evaluation of his philosophy and its lasting influence, both elsewhere in philosophy and on other disciplines.
The Continuing Relevance of John Dewey
Education and Culture, 2014
, marked the anniversary of John Dewey's 150th birthday, and pursued as its stated theme: "John Dewey in the context of American and European Values." The volume begins with an introduction by Larry Hickman, one of John Dewey's most committed and energetic champions. The rest of the volume's seventeen essays are organized into four sections: (1) Aesthetics, (2) Ethics, (3) Science and Logic, and lastly, (4) Society. The first section features six essays on aesthetics that range across an assortment of issues. Taken as a group, these essays do well to accentuate the pivotal role in Dewey's thought of aesthetic experience. Aesthetics is indeed a central theme in Dewey's corpus (it is fitting, admittedly, that a selection of essays on aesthetics would come first in a volume of this kind) and the authors of the papers in this section admirably bring out some implications that Deweyan aesthetics have both for political theory and naturalized ethics. It is decisively un-Deweyan to demand necessary and sufficient conditions for some concept, but "aesthetics" in these essays seems to take on different meanings at different times. Sometimes, as in John Ryder's "Experience, Knowledge and Art," the term can be substituted for "art." At other times, as in James Campbell's "Aesthetics as Social Philosophy" (in my opinion, the finest essay in this section), it comes to mean something more like "the organic unity between individual and community." The volume's second section offers four papers on ethics. While loyal and experienced readers of Dewey are unlikely to gain much from these offerings, they nevertheless do well to highlight the anti-foundationalism and functionalism that was at the center of Dewey's ethical thinking. Angel M. Faerna's piece, "Dewey's Value Theory and the Analytic Tradition of Moral Philosophy," is particularly noteworthy on this score. Hugh McDonald's essay on Dewey's theory of evaluation provides a clear and helpful overview of Dewey's theory, though, as far as I can tell, it is almost entirely expository and does not break new ground. Rather conspicuous
Chapter 1, ‘Experience’, takes up areas fundamental to Dewey’s naturalism – what it means for things to exist in modes which might be labeled physical, psychical, and semantic (or meaningful). Issues covered here include Dewey’s ‘psychology’ as well as his special account of how organism–environment transactions produce ‘experience’. Chapter 2, ‘Inquiry’, explores Dewey’s naturalistic reconstruction of epistemology (with its traditional components of knowledge, justification, and truth). Inquiry is a central feature of Dewey’s instrumentalist philosophy, and plays a significant role in every other chapter in this book because each of them (morality, politics, education, art, and religion) consti- tutes a special inquiry of their own. Chapter 3, ‘Morality’, explains how Dewey uses transactional experience and experi- mental inquiry to revamp moral theory. The result, ‘moral science’, is presented as a way to address practical problems without becoming insensitive to the complexities and nuances of moral life. Chapter 4, ‘Politics’, focuses on Dewey’s critique of liberalism and its account of the individual’s relation to society. Dewey’s emphasis on community-based, participatory Intro-Ch1.qxp 4/21/2008 2:45 PM Page 6 Introduction 7 democracy is also explored, along with its necessary, interdepen- dent relation to liberal education. Chapter 5, ‘Education’, covers the area for which Dewey was most widely known. Here I explain why Dewey rejected many of his era’s conventional restrictions on children, teachers, and curriculum and why he believes that fostering children’s self-sustaining habits of creativ- ity and cooperative inquiry should be the primary mission of a humane (and democratic) education. Chapter 6, ‘Aesthetics’, explores how Dewey’s metaphysical views about experience apply to art objects, artistic production and appreciation, and communication in general. For Dewey, aesthetic experience describes a phase characteristic of any deeply meaningful experi- ence – regardless of whether an artwork is involved. In this regard, aesthetics promises important clues for how ordinary life could be made more fulfilling. Chapter 7, ‘Religion’, looks at religious experience, concepts, and institutions through the eyes of a devoted naturalist and pragmatist. Dewey rejects transcen- dentalism in religion, and argues that life’s tribulations are more effectively addressed by instrumental intelligence. Because religions have forged many communal bonds helpful to the social and moral good, Dewey argues that rather than renouncing religions wholesale it would be preferable to draw from religious experience those elements consistent with a secular, non- transcendental ‘common faith’ in intelligent inquiry. Finally, the Conclusion, ‘Philosophy as Equipment for Living’, argues that Dewey is worth reading today not only for his philosophical insights, but also for the uses his methods provide in a variety of fields outside philosophy. Three such fields (medicine, environmentalism, feminism) are sketched. Each chapter is designed to stand on its own. While the book strives to offer a cumulative and integrated portrait of Dewey’s thought, those interested in just a few specific topics (e.g., religion and art) can obtain informative and coherent content by selectively reading the pertinent chapters.
INTRODUCTION TO SECTION II: DEWEY'S LIVING IDEAS
In Democracy and Education, Dewey famously condemns what he called "the cold-storage ideal of knowledge," in which students are asked to accumulate disconnected pieces of information for possible later use. 1 This insight is now conventional wisdom for many progressive educators, but it is not only school knowledge that can achieve the status of "cold storage": scholarly works can gain this status as well, especially as they become canonical in a particular field. Once a work falls into the "cold storage" category, few will deny that it should be read, but even fewer will actually read it. Many of the works of the nineteenth century educational pioneers have already fallen into this category; how many educators still read the work of Maria Montessori, Friedrich Froebel, or, to pick an example from the pragmatist tradition, William James?