Abstract
Analytic philosophers are no storytellers. Provocatively asking whether one does real philosophy or whether one is rather more interested in the history of philosophy (and thus in such utterly unreadable texts as Hegel’s Phenomenology), they consider intellectual history and its sweeping stories to be negligible or even a nuisance. Consequently, one often gets the impression that analytic philosophers, with a few exceptions, are inclined to hold that the history of American philosophy, culminating in pragmatism, should be left to their theoretically interested colleagues in the American Studies department (or the department of History, for that matter). This is also one of the reasons why John Dewey’s reputation almost immediately waned after his death in 1952.1 It was not only Dewey’s theory of logic and inquiry, his concept of experience, or his naturalist epistemology that bothered many analytic philosophers, but also books such as Reconstruction in Philosophy (1920) and The Quest for Certainty (1929). These works, elegantly combining philosophy and intellectual history, tell antifoundationalist stories of progress. From today’s perspective, the two books are among Dewey’s most valuable, thought-provoking, and illuminating texts. These antifoundationalist stories of progress and emancipation — and this makes them so valuable for our purposes — demonstrate how pragmatism, humanism, anti-authoritarianism, and postmetaphysics are interlinked.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Concerning Dewey’s changing reputation, see the final chapter (“Death and Resurrection”) of Alan Ryan’s John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism (New York: Norton, 1995), 328–69.
For Dewey’s intellectual development, see Robert B. Westbrook, John Dewey and American Democracy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991);
and Robert B. Westbrook, “The Making of a Democratic Philosopher: The Intellectual Development of John Dewey,” The Cambridge Companion to John Dewey, ed. Molly Cochran (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 13–33.
In addition, see Steven C. Rockefeller, John Dewey: Religious Faith and Democratic Humanism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991);
and Thomas C. Dalton, Becoming John Dewey: Dilemmas of a Philosopher and Naturalist (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2002).
In this context, see Rorty’s “Dewey between Hegel and Darwin” in Truth and Progress (1998b: 290–306).
For excellent discussions of Dewey’s aesthetics and theory of aesthetic experience, see Winfried Fluck, “John Dewey’s Ästhetik und die Literaturtheorie der Gegenwart,” Philosophie der Demokratie: Beiträge zum Werk von John Dewey, ed. Hans Joas (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2000), 160–93;
Thomas M. Alexander, “The Art of Life: Dewey’s Aesthetics,” Reading Dewey: Interpretations for a Postmodern Generation, ed. Larry A. Hickman (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1998), 1–22;
and Richard Eldridge, “Dewey’s Aesthetics,” The Cambridge Companion to John Dewey, ed. Molly Cochran (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 242–64.
In addition, see Thomas M. Alexander, John Dewey’s Theory of Art, Experience, and Nature: The Horizons of Feeling (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1987).
Still valuable in this context is Richard Shusterman, Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art (2nd edn, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000).
In the aforementioned piece “Dewey’s Metaphysics,” Rorty characterizes his fellow pragmatist as follows: “For better or worse, he wanted to write a metaphysical system. Throughout his life, he wavered between a therapeutic stance toward philosophy and another, quite different, stance — one in which philosophy was to become ‘scientific’ and ‘empirical’ and to do something serious, systematic, important, and constructive. Dewey sometimes described philosophy as the criticism of culture, but he was never quite content to think of himself as a kibitzer or a therapist or an intellectual historian. He wanted to have things both ways” (1982: 73). There are, of course, numerous authors who have critiqued Rorty’s reading of Dewey. See, for instance, James Gouinlock, “What Is the Legacy of Instrumentalism? Rorty’s Interpretation of Dewey,” Rorty and Pragmatism: The Philosopher Responds to His Critics, ed. Herman J. Saatkamp, Jr. (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 1995), 72–90. Gouinlock also gives a good overview of the most important essays criticizing Rorty’s understanding of Dewey.
In addition, see Raymond D. Boisvert, “Rorty, Dewey, and Post-Modern Metaphysics,” John Dewey: Critical Assessments, Vol. IV, ed. J.E. Tiles (New York: Routledge, 1992), 231–49.
Consider also the following diagnosis by Dewey in Reconstruction: “After all, then, we are only pleading for the adoption in moral reflection of the logic that has been proved to make for security, stringency and fertility in passing judgments upon physical phenomena. And the reason is the same. The old method in spite of its nominal and esthetic worship of reason discouraged reason, because it hindered the operation of scrupulous and unremitting inquiry” (1957: 165). In this context, see Larry A. Hickman, “Dewey’s Theory of Inquiry,” Reading Dewey: Interpretations for a Postmodern Generation, ed. Larry A. Hickman (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1998), 166–86. In addition, see the thought-provoking critique of Dewey’s conception of science in the chapter “Empirical Method and Moral Knowledge” in John Patrick Diggins’s The Promise of Pragmatism: Modernism and the Crisis of Knowledge and Authority (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 238–49. Particularly valuable is also the chapter “Science and Valuation” in Richard J. Bernstein’s John Dewey (New York: Washington Square Press, 1966), 115–29. This book, written at the height of the reign of analytic philosophy in the United States, is still one of the best introductions to Dewey’s work. See also the chapter “Action, Conduct, and Inquiry: Peirce and Dewey” in Bernstein’s Praxis and Action: Contemporary Philosophies of Human Activity (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971), 165–229. 8.
For a discussion of Rorty’s understanding of the natural sciences, and of his reading of Thomas S. Kuhn, see Ulf Schulenberg, “Bridging the Gap? Postmodernism, Science, and the Two Cultures,” Anglistik: International Journal of English Studies 21.1 (2010): 193–208.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2015 Ulf Schulenberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Schulenberg, U. (2015). John Dewey’s Antifoundationalist Story of Progress. In: Romanticism and Pragmatism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137474193_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137474193_8
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-50149-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-47419-3
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)