Dewey, John

Basic Biographical Information

John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychological and educational theorist, and public intellectual. He was born in Burlington, Vermont, on October 20, 1859, and died in New York City on June 1, 1952. After receiving an A. B. from the University of Vermont, he taught high school for 2 years and then attended graduate school at Johns Hopkins University. He took courses from G. Stanley Hall, but his main interest was in German idealist philosophy. He subsequently wrote on Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, and Herbart, and retained a holistic perspective even after he abandoned idealism for experiential naturalism. Dewey was hired at the University of Michigan in 1884 and began teaching the basic psychology course. In 1887, he published Psychology, one of the first American textbooks on the subject.

Dewey became professor and chair of philosophy at the University of Minnesota in 1888 and returned to the University of Michigan as chair in 1889. He became chair at the...