Dewey

by Steven Fesmire

John Dewey (1859 - 1952) was the dominant voice in American philosophy through the World Wars, the Great Depression, and the nascent years of the Cold War. With a professional career spanning three generations and a profile that no public intellectual has operated on in the U.S. since, Dewey's biographer Robert Westbrook accurately describes him as "the most important philosopher in modern American history." In this superb and engaging introduction, Steven Fesmire begins with a chapter on Dewey’s life and works, before discussing and assessing Dewey's key ideas across the major disciplines in philosophy; including metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, ethics, educational philosophy, social-political philosophy, and religious philosophy. This is an invaluable introduction and guide to this deeply influential philosopher and his legacy, and essential reading for anyone coming to Dewey's work for the first time.

300 pages, Paperback

First published December 17, 2014

Reviews

[Patrick Walsh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really wonderful overview of Dewey. Sympathetic, but not worshipful.

[James R · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my first book on Dewey. This is a good brief overview of a selection of his writings with many references to his works for further reading. I like how he presents a balanced view of Dewey: he allows him to speak for himself with quotes from primary sources, while also correcting issues where they appear. For example, he said Dewey saw racism as simply an economic issue, whereas we know now that continued racism is more than money, and has to be viewed in a different way than how Dewey saw it. If you want to learn about racism, contemporary research and sources will give you better information.

Much of Dewey's work has been superseded with research of the past 50 years, but Fesmire is careful (so he says) to ignore Dewey's work that no longer applies. Like most social commentators of his era, Dewey was wrong about topics such as environmental destruction, systematic racism, and Christian history. This doesn't however mean that we have to throw all of Dewey's works out, instead we can keep the good parts while recognizing we've moved beyond him in many ways, which is something I think Dewey would be happy about. Some of Dewey's goals still haven't been achieved, and this is where I think it's still worth reading Dewey.

I'm skeptical of digging up people from the past (i.e. before 30 years ago) for ideas, but it is interesting to see how conservatives have not presented Dewey with any accuracy. In their minds, Dewey is the source of all evils in the public school system, which is absolutely not the case. Dewey's ideas went far beyond education, and his discussion of democracy is something we should still be having today. Dewey seemed to have a more balanced approach than what we have today, where the options are either a free-for-all economic system of hustling or a David Graeber style leaderless anarchy.

Raising 100% of people to their full potential & of full participatory democracy are still goals we should be discussing. We can take Dewey's concept here and expand it by using what we know now about environmental issues, racism, inequalities, and all the other topics in contemporary social writing.

[Mills College Library]

191 F413 2015