Problems of Men

by John Dewey

Although primarily addressed to the general reader, the introduction and the last chapters of this work strike straight at reactionary philosophers who obstruct the philosophers who are honest searchers for wisdom. John Dewey was the most famous teacher of philosophy in the early twentieth century, and he was known for his lifelong work to reform America’s educational system. Dewey was born in Burlington, Vermont in 1859 to strict Calvinist parents. After graduating from the University of Vermont, Dewey taught high school and studied philosophy in his spare time. He finished his doctorate degree at Johns Hopkins University and continued to teach at various universities around the country, finally landing at Columbia University. While in New York, Dewey became involved in political groups and founded what would become the progressive education movement, which purported that students should learn to think for themselves to become active participants of a democratic society. He was also a founding member of the NAACP and the ACLU. At this time, Dewey was influenced by Karl Marx, and after traveling to different countries to study their educational systems, praised Soviet education and came under scrutiny in the United States. Dewey continued his political and philosophical efforts until his death in 1952.

Genres: Philosophy

311 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1946

About the author

John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey, along with Charles Sanders Peirce and William James, is recognized as one of the founders of the philosophy of pragmatism and of functional psychology. He was a major representative of the progressive and progressive populist philosophies of schooling during the first half of the 20th century in the USA.

In 1859, educator and philosopher John Dewey was born in Burlington, Vermont. He earned his doctorate at Johns Hopkins University in 1884. After teaching philosophy at the University of Michigan, he joined the University of Chicago as head of a department in philosophy, psychology and education, influenced by Darwin, Freud and a scientific outlook. He joined the faculty of Columbia University in 1904. Dewey's special concern was reform of education. He promoted learning by doing rather than learning by rote. Dewey conducted international research on education, winning many academic honors worldwide. Of more than 40 books, many of his most influential concerned education, including My Pedagogic Creed (1897), Democracy and Education (1902) and Experience and Education (1938). He was one of the founders of the philosophy of pragmatism. A humanitarian, he was a trustee of Jane Addams' Hull House, supported labor and racial equality, and was at one time active in campaigning for a third political party. He chaired a commission convened in Mexico City in 1937 inquiring into charges made against Leon Trotsky during the Moscow trials. Raised by an evangelical mother, Dewey had rejected faith by his 30s. Although he disavowed being a "militant" atheist, when his mother complained that he should be sending his children to Sunday school, he replied that he had gone to Sunday School enough to make up for any truancy by his children. As a pragmatist, he judged ideas by the results they produced. As a philosopher, he eschewed an allegiance to fixed and changeless dogma and superstition. He belonged to humanist societies, including the American Humanist Association. D. 1952.

Reviews

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

A satisfactory to good collection of essays and papers by Dewey that were otherwise hard to get by the time this book was first published. Since then the Collected Works of John Dewey has been published from the 1960's to the 1990's in 37-or-so-volumes in chronological order.

Even though his works are better available, it only means this collection has become more important as it shows what John Dewey himself thought was really important at the time.

The choices for essays included, especially concerning the relation of democracy and education are still timely and his insights not fully processed in the first quarter of the 21st century.
The same goes for the quite expanded section on his theory of valuation, how values and judgments work. The price of admission is in that section alone if you ask me, because it shows to the reader what Dewey late in life still thought of as the central materials, including the 1903 essay 'Logical Conditions of a Scientific Treatment of Morality' (of which the title is partly misleading, and in which many find evidence for critiquing Dewey that he sought to reduce ethics to science -- to those we have to say: read further than the headlines and engage with his thought -- which is nothing of that sort).