Customer Reviews (2)

A Visionary of the Everyday
In the course of a long life beginning before the Civil War and extending to shortly before the election of President Eisenhower, John Dewey (1859-1952) made large contributions to philosophy and to American public life.Dewey wrote extensively for both an academic and a public audience.He developed a philosophy of pragmatism and contributed significantly to American education.He was a socialist and was publically engaged througout his life in addressing the issues of the day.In particular he criticized the President Roosevelt's New Deal for what Dewey thought was an inadequate response to the Depression and a misguided attempt to preserve capitalism.He supported United States participation in WW I but shortly after the end of the War, he became an isolationist.He retained this isolationist stance until Pearl Harbor.

Dewey's thought resists easy summation.His writing style, particularly in his philosophical works, was long, winding, obscure and difficult to follow. As did many thinkers in the 20th Century, Dewey changed and modified his views with some frequency during the course of his life.

Alan Ryan has written an exellent study of John Dewey which explores Dewey's life, the influences upon him, his philosophical writings, his political activism, and the rises and falls in Dewey's reputation after his death.The book is somewhat dense and repetitive, but this too is a characteristic of the writings of its subject.Ryan writes insightfully in trying to place Dewey as philosophically somewhere between the despair of European existentialists such as Heidegger and Sartre and the English-American analytical philosophy of the 20th Century which denied that philosophical thought had a distinctive contribution to make to human intellectual endeavor.

I thought Ryan was good in discussing Dewey's early Congregationalit upbringing and his falling away from Christianity.I also thought Ryan placed good emphasis on the Hegelian idealism which Dewey adopted early in his career.The book could have used a fuller discussion of the nature of Hegelian idealism.As I read Ryan's book, I thought that Dewey retained even more of a Hegelian influence in his later thought than Ryan recognized.Dewey's emphasis on holistic thinking and on the relationship of the community and the individual remains Hegelian -- a naturalized Hegelianism as Ryan points out.

Ryan discussed Dewey's educational work at the University of Chicago.This is the aspect of Dewey's work that is best known.As Ryan points out, Dewey is often criticized for the shortcomings of American education.He is blamed, probably unjustifiably, for a lack of discipline and academic knowledge in too many American students.Ryan does point out, in fairness, that Dewey's actual educational theory was obscure in many points and undeveloped in specifics.It is hard to know just what Dewey had in mind, but it surely was not laxness and a deference to the wishes of young children.

I thought the strongest aspect of Ryan's book was his discussion of Dewey's mature philosophical writings, in particular "Experience and Nature" "A Common Faith" and "Art and Experience."In these works, Dewey tried to develop a philosophical pragmatism which was based on science and secularism.He denied the existence of an objective independent truth which science tries to capture and also denied subjectivism.Dewey recognized that human experience could be viewed from many perspectives and he struggled to explain how many of the goals of the religious and artistic life were consistent with science and secularism.He wanted to show them as perspectives equally important to the scientific perspective and to disclaim a concept of truth as "out there" rather than as sought,developed and made through human social activity.Dewey's position is difficult and, to his credit, Ryan does not simplify it.Ryan's exposition is challenging and made me want to read some of Dewey for myself.

A great deal of Ryan's book is devoted to Dewey's career as a public intellectual commenting on the issues of the day, as he saw them.Dewey travelled to Russia and China, investigated the Russian show trials of Trotsky and others, supported American participation in WW I, and advocated social liberalism.Ryan discusses Dewey's positions fully and intelligently and explores how Dewey's issues remain alive in the late 20th (and early 21st)century.The discussion of American political life and of the role of ideas is fascinating even though I frequently did not agree either with Dewey or with Ryan.

Ryan recognizes the paradoxical nature of the work of this American thinker. Dewey was a philosopher who critized sharply thought and reflection separate from action.He was a secularist who saw the importance of religion.He recognized the nature of industrial society but stressed the importance of art and culture.Dewey was, as Ryan points out in his conclusion
something of a visionary of the everyday.Ryan writes (page 269):"It was his ability to infuse the here and now with a kind of transcendent glow that overcame the denseness and awkwardness of his prose and the vagueness of his message and secured such widespread conviction. .... He will remain for the forseeable future a rich source of intellectual nourishment for anyone not absolutely locked within the anxieties of his or her own heart and not absolutely despondent about the prospects of the modern world."

The life of Dewey and 100 years of American thought
Ryan, from a British perspective, offers a detailed biography of Dewey the philosopher while enveloping the reader in the context of Dewey's varied and shifting America.Ryan also wrestles with the issues America wrestled with and continues to struggle with today.The work blends nicely the intricacies of Dewey's tremendous ideas with detailed and insightful references to Bertrand Russell and contemporary Democratic politics in America.The greatest contribution Ryan has made is detailing the arguments, philosophy, and problems Dewey felt significant without epitomizing and reducing Dewey as many have done since Dewey rose to prominance at the turn of the century at the Chicago Univeristy Lab School.

Educators, graduate students in education and philosophy, politicians, and anyone genuinely interested in American thought will be inpsired by Ryan to dig further--to read more by Dewey, to read more of the history of American ideas not just events in America ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description

Book Description
This book does much to disple the old canard that John Dewey was guilty of "scientism" and a reverent worship of technological progress.Indeed, Dewey predated the Frankfurt school in his warnings about the dangers inherent in a machine culture.With new advances come new problems, and these can only be dealt with through an instrumentalist approach.Dewey also argued that we have no guarantee of success.Natural events can terminate human life and human greed, laziness, or error could have the same result. ... Read more

Product Description
John Dewey was America’s most influential philosopher. He wanted philosophy to rise above old tired disputes to address new, more vital questions and problems. Dewey’s views are known as "pragmatism," which emphasizes action and results. He believed that knowledge and ethics, as well as art and religion, live only in the daily practice of one’s life. Philosophy isn't a system of beliefs but a practical, empirical method of inquiry. It is one with education, which continually develops and renews the capacity for new habits.

Dewey believed that the scientific method can be extended to human affairs. Properly applied, it enables us to organize society to enhance personal happiness and community cooperation. Democracy, for Dewey, is more a way of life than a form of government; each person should help create and direct the social forces that affect our lives. ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description

Combining biography and intellectual history, Steven Rockefeller offers an illuminating introduction to the philosophy of John Dewey, with special emphasis on the evolution of the religious faith and moral vision at the heart of his thought. This study pays particular attention to Dewey's radical democratic reconstruction of Christianity and his many contributions to the American tradition of spiritual democracy.