Abstract
In this chapter, d’Agnese analyzes the questions of thinking and subject in Dewey’s oeuvre and discusses the educational consequences that follow from such an analysis. Specifically, d’Agnese argues that Dewey revealed a radical uncertainty at the core of human thinking while dismantling the understanding of the subject as a detached and self-assured center of agency. In Deweyan thinking, inquiry and reflection are to be understood as the power to evolve new ways of acting, creating new points of interaction within experience and thus pushing experience forward. This understanding of thinking, cognition and subject has far-reaching consequences for education, which must be conceived not as the attempt to master and control experience but as the means to create new, unpredictable experience by introducing new points of interaction into our relationship with the environment, changing our being-embedded-in-the-world. Dewey repositions educational, intentional agency away from control and mastery and in the direction of growth and openness.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Biesta, G. J. J. (1994). Pragmatism as a Pedagogy of Communicative Action. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 13, 273–290.
Biesta, G. J. J. (2007). Why ‘What Works’ Won’t Work: Evidence-Based Practice and the Democratic Deficit in Educational Research. Educational Theory, 57(1), 1–22.
Biesta, G. J. J. (2010). This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours’. Deconstructive Pragmatism as a Philosophy for Education. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 42(7), 710–727.
Biesta, G. J. J., & Burbules, N. C. (2003). Pragmatism and Educational Research. Boston: Rowman & Littlefield.
Boisvert, R. D. (1998). John Dewey: Rethinking Our Time. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Dewey, J. (1882). The Metaphysical Assumptions of Materialism. Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 16, 208–213.
Dewey, J. (1910). How We Think. Boston, New York, and Chicago: D.C. Heath.
Dewey, J. (1913). Interest and Effort in Education. Boston, New York and Chicago: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Dewey, J. (1917). The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy. In J. Dewey et al. (Eds.), Creative Intelligence: Essays in the Pragmatic Attitude (pp. 3–69). New York: Henry Holt and Company.
Dewey, J. (1922). Human Nature and Conduct: An Introduction to Social Psychology. New York: Henry Holt and Company.
Dewey, J. (1929/1925). Experience and Nature. London: George Allen & Unwin.
Dewey, J. (1929a). The Quest for Certainty: A Study of the Relation between Knowledge and Action. New York: Minton, Balch & Company.
Dewey, J. (1929b). The Sources of a Science of Education. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), John Dewey: The Later Works, 1929–1930 (Vol. 5, pp. 1–40). Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press.
Dewey, J. (1930/1916). Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education. New York: Macmillan.
Dewey, J. (1938). Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. New York: Henry Holt and Company.
Dewey, J. (1980/1934). Art as Experience. New York: Perigee Books.
Dewey, J. (1998/1912). Perception and Organic Action. In L. A. Hickman & T. M. Alexander (Eds.), The Essential Dewey: Ethics, Logic, Psychology (Vol. 2). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Dewey, J., & Bentley, A. F. (1949). Knowing and the Known. Boston: Beacon Press.
English, A. (2013). Discontinuity in Learning: Dewey, Herbart and Education as Transformation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Farfield, P. (Ed.). (2010). John Dewey and the Continental Philosophy. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Garrison, J. (1994). Realism, Deweyan Pragmatism and Educational Research. Educational Researcher, 23(1), 5–14.
Garrison, J. (1996). A Deweyan Theory of Democratic Listening. Educational Theory, 46(4), 429–451.
Garrison, J. (1997). Dewey and Eros: Wisdom and Desire in the Art of Teaching. New York: Teacher’s College Press.
Garrison, J. (1998). Foucault, Dewey and Self-Creation. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 30(2), 111–134.
Garrison, J. (1999). John Dewey’s Theory of Practical Reasoning. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 31(3), 291–312.
Garrison, J. (2003). Dewey, Derrida and the ‘Double Bind’. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 35(3), 349–362.
Garrison, J. (2005). A Pragmatist Conception of Creative Listening to Emotional Expressions. In K. R. Howe (Ed.), Dialogues Across Differences (pp. 112–120). Urbana, IL: Philosophy of Education Society.
Glassman, M. (2004). Running in Circles: Chasing Dewey. Educational Theory, 54(3), 314–341.
Granger, D. (2006). John Dewey, Robert Pirsig, and the Art of Living: Revisioning Aesthetic Education. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hansen, D. T. (2009). Dewey and Cosmopolitanism. E&C/Education & Culture, 25(2), 126–140.
Heidegger, M. (1992/1929–1930). The Foundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Heidegger, M. (1996/1927). Being and Time. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Hickman, L. A. (1990). John Dewey’s Pragmatic Technology. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Higgins, C. (2010). A Question of Experience: Dewey and Gadamer on Practical Wisdom. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 44(2–3), 310–333.
Johnston, J. S. (2002). John Dewey and the Role of Scientific Method in Aesthetic Experience. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 21, 1–15.
Levinas, E. (1969/1961). Totality and Infinity. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press.
Rømer, T. A. (2012). Imagination and Judgment in John Dewey’s Philosophy: Intelligent Transactions in a Democratic Context. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 44(2), 133–150.
Saito, N. (2005). The Gleam of Light: Moral Perfectionism and Education in Dewey and Emerson. New York: Fordham University Press.
Semetsky, I. (2003). Deleuze’s New Image of Thought, or Dewey Revisited. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 35(1), 17–29.
Semetsky, I. (2008). On the Creative Logic of Education, or: Re-reading Dewey Through the Lens of Complexity Science. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 40(1), 83–95.
Shook, J. (2000). Dewey’s Empirical Theory of Knowledge and Reality. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press.
Sleeper, R. (1986). The Necessity of Pragmatism: John Dewey’s Conception of Philosophy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Todd, S. (2015). Experiencing Change, Encountering the Unknown: An Education in ‘Negative Capability’ in Light of Buddhism and Levinas. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 49(2), 240–254.
Wilshire, B. (1993). Body-Mind and Subconsciousness: Tragedy in Dewey’s Life and Work. In J. J. Stuhr (Ed.), Philosophy and the Reconstruction of Culture (pp. 257–272). Albany: State University of New York Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
d’Agnese, V. (2019). The Essential Uncertainty of Thinking: Subject and Education in John Dewey. In: Dewey, Heidegger, and the Future of Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19482-6_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19482-6_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-19481-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-19482-6
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)