Abstract
There is a felt need for reunion in philosophy, for new perspective and vision that is informed by the lessons of careful analysis. In this search for new directions, there is much to be learned from John Dewey, who sought to unite speculative imagination with a sensitive concern for the variety of human experience and the specific “problems of men.”1
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References
Richard J. Bernstein, “Introduction,” On Experience, Nature, and Freedom, ed. Richard J. Bernstein (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1960), p. xlvii.
“The Experimental Theory of Knowledge,” in Influence of Darwin, p. 77. Lest the passage be thought unrepresentative, see also “Experience, Knowledge, and Value: A Rejoinder.” pp. 561, 566–567 and Dewey’s remarks about defining knowledge “in the honorific sense” in “Propositions, Warranted Assertibility, and Truth,” in Problems of Men, pp. 332, 340.
Above, p. 11.
Above, p. 25.
Above, p. 92.
Above, p. 109.
Logic, p. 127.
Reconstruction in Philosophy, enl. ed., p. 96.
Ibid.,p. 118.
Experience and Nature, 2d ed., p. 308.
“Philosophies of Freedom,” in Philosophy and Civilization, p. 295.
Logic, pp. 104–105. The original text is italicized.
Experience and Nature, 2d ed., p. 331.
“Experience, Knowledge, and Value: A Rejoinder,” pp. 561, 567–568.
Logic, p. 104.
Reconstruction in Philosophy, enl. ed., passim, esp. Introduction, Chs. IV and V; Quest for Certainty, passim, esp. pp. 72–73, 290–291.
See, e.g., “The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy,” in Creative Intelligence: “The Development of American Pragmatism,” in Philosophy and Civilization; Reconstruction in Philosophy, enl. ed., Chs. IV and V. Andrew J. Reck has commented in a review of this manuscript that Dewey’s category of continuity can be used to save Dewey’s method from the criticism that it attends to consequences but neglects antecedents. Reck also cites John Herman Randall, Jr., as having employed the category of continuity in his Nature and Historical Experience (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958) to avoid this problem. In response to these points, Reck’s suggestion is reasonable but I still find that the difficulty remains in Dewey’s philosophy. For example, in Dewey’s mature work, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, he employs the category of continuity primarily to emphasize the links between lower (less complex) and higher (more complex) forms of nature and activities. (See e.g., pp. 19, 23, 35–36.) Later in the Logic, Dewey does discuss retrospective and prospective reference in connection with his theory of causal propositions and the sharp dichotomy I have noted between antecedents and consequences appears again. (See pp. 461–462; other instances of the dichotomy can be found in this same work, pp. 131, 499, 511–512.) Randall’s metaphysics, on the other hand, may very well avoid this difficulty. Insofar as Randall’s views represent a modification of Dewey’s, his success is further testimony to my general thesis that much of Dewey’s thought can be reconciled with that of his critics.
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© 1977 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Dewey, R.E. (1977). Toward a Broader Empiricism. In: The Philosophy of John Dewey. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9666-3_8
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