Larry Hickman

Just as the Hegelians of the nineteenth century divided themselves into left and right, so it is with twentieth-century interpreters of Dewey. The captain of the left is of course Richard Rorty, who regularly announces the death of metaphysics and toasts the longevity of rhetoric. The agenda of the other side, the Deweyan right, has now been ably advanced by Raymond Boisvert's Dewey's Metaphysics, which presents Dewey in the role of a post-Darwinian Aristotle. Like Aristotle, Boisvert writes, Dewey both presented a coherent account of ontology and articulated a set of categories. But whereas Aristotle was concerned with substance and accident, Dewey's units of discourse are "event" and "form."

This essay argues that "the family" should be understood in functional terms:whatever functions as a family should have the legal status of a family. Theauthor's argument thus avoids two extreme positions. The first is the position ofthe hard-line "platonic" essentialists who, on grounds of nature, supernature, orcultural history, argue that a family unit must comprise heterosexual partners.The second is the position of the radical relativist, who argues that there are noessences whatsoever or that essences are purely arbitrary. Treating the family infunctionalist terms, the author argues, would have positive consequences thatwould strengthen the social fabric.

Let me begin by thanking the society’s officers: President Kathleen Knight-Abowitz, President-Elect Len Waks, immediate past President Deron Boyles, Secretary-Treasurer Kyle Greenwalt, membership and development officer Mark Kissling, and of course student liaison Matt Ryg and webmaster Zane Wubbena. I know that their many efforts on behalf of this society are much appreciated by all of us.In 1955, when Will Herberg published his influential book, Protestant–Catholic–Jew, it could be said with some confidence that an essay in American religious sociology could claim exhaustive coverage by restricting its analysis to those three faiths. Scarcely a decade later, however, that formula would be obsolescent. The 1960s...

Diese Abhandlung untersucht die Erkenntnisse über globale Ethik, die Dewey während seiner internationalen Reisen, insbesondere während seines zweijährigen Aufenthalts in China 1919–1921, gewonnen hat. Ich behaupte, dass Deweys Naturalismus, welcher auf einem Verständnis der Möglichkeiten basiert, Charles Darwins Arbeit in den Geisteswissenschaften anzuwenden, Modelle für interkulturelle Diskussionen liefert. Ich weise darauf hin, dass ei nige der Hindernisse, Deweys Beitrag zur globalen Ethik anzuerkennen, in falschem Lesen und falscher Deutung seiner Arbeit liegen, so wie jene, die von Roberto Unger avanciert wur den. Letztendlich behaupte ich, dass das Auftreten einer globalen Ethik solange unwahrscheinlich sein wird, bis die Menschen die engen supernaturalistischen und nicht-naturalistischen Dogmen überschreiten und sich die naturalistischen Weltansichten zueigen machen

In addition to being one of the greatest technical philosophers of the twentieth century, John Dewey was an educational innovator, a Progressive Era reformer, and one of America’s last great public intellectuals. Dewey’s insights into the problems of public education, immigration, the prospects for democratic government, and the relation of religious faith to science are as fresh today as when they were first published. His penetrating treatments of the nature and function of philosophy, the ethical and aesthetic dimensions of life, and the role of inquiry in human experience are of increasing relevance at the turn of the 21st century. Based on the award-winning 37-volume critical edition of Dewey’s work, The Essential Dewey presents for the first time a collection of Dewey’s writings that is both manageable and comprehensive. The volume includes essays and book chapters that exhibit Dewey’s intellectual development over time; the selection represents his mature thinking on every major issue to which he turned his attention. Eleven part divisions cover: Dewey in Context; Reconstructing Philosophy; Evolutionary Naturalism; Pragmatic Metaphysics; Habit, Conduct, and Language; Meaning, Truth, and Inquiry; Valuation and Ethics; The Aims of Education; The Individual, the Community, and Democracy; Pragmatism and Culture: Science and Technology, Art and Religion; and Interpretations and Critiques. Taken as a whole, this collection provides unique access to Dewey’s understanding of the problems and prospects of human existence and of the philosophical enterprise

: The founders of American pragmatism proposed what they regarded as a radical alternative to the philosophical methods and doctrines of their predecessors and contemporaries. Although their central ideas have been understood and applied in some quarters, there remain other areas within which they have been neither appreciated nor appropriated. One of the more pressing of these areas locates a set of problems of knowledge and valuation related to global citizenship. This essay attempts to demonstrate that classical American pragmatism, because its methods are modeled on successes in the technosciences, offers a set of tools for fostering global citizenship that are more effective than the tools of some of its alternatives. First, pragmatism claims to discover a strain of human commonality that trumps the radical postmodernist emphasis on difference and discontinuity. Second, when pragmatism's theory of truth is coupled with its moderate version of cultural relativism, the more skeptical postmodernist version known as “cognitive” relativism is undercut

This chapter discusses some main traits of classical Pragmatism and their potential as critical tools for contemporary discussions about Pragmatism and constructivism. It first examines some of the claims advanced in Stefan Neubert's essay “Pragmatism and Constructivism in Contemporary Philosophical Discourse”. It then explores the vitality of Pragmatist thought and the usefulness of its basic tenets as resources for philosophic criticism. The chapter looks into the problems of “cognitive relativism” in postmodern and neo-Pragmatist discourses. From this standpoint the chapter raises critical questions for the Cologne program of interactive constructivism. It argues for a strong rearticulation of Dewey's instrumentalism and experimentalism and emphasizes its relevancy for the current situation.

Abraham Kaplan once suggested that Dewey’s “magic number” was two. His observation seems to be supported by the titles Dewey gave to his books, such as Experience and Nature. But in making this observation, Kaplan hedged a bit. Perhaps it would be better, he added, to say that Dewey had two magic numbers: he seemed to look for twos in order to turn them into ones. Looking back over the notes I have pencilled in the margins of Dewey’s Collected Works over the years, I am struck with the number of times “1, 2, 3” appears. In some cases these passages are reminiscent of Peirce’s categories. In other cases, they recall Hegel’s dialectic. Dewey’s “magic numbers” are tools that can help us understand the structure and content of his work.

This chapter presents an edited e-mail discussion based on the philosophical conversations at a conference held in Cologne, Germany, in December 2001. The discussion proceeds in three steps. First, the contributors discuss selected questions about their contributions, roughly following the sequence of the chapters in Part II of this book. Second, the contributors ask more general questions about Dewey, Pragmatism, and constructivism. Finally, the chapter ends with brief statements about why Dewey is still an indispensible thinker for them. As they clarify their differences and seek common ground, they articulate concepts such as power, truth, relativism, inquiry, and democracy from Pragmatist and interactive constructivist vantage points, in ways designed to render the preceding essays even more accessible. In their views, the concluding discussion demonstrates both the enduring relevance of classical Pragmatism and the challenge of its reconstruction from the perspective of the Cologne program of interactive constructivism.

This essay considers the lessons about global ethics that John Dewey learned during his international travels, especially during the two years he spent in China, 1919–1921. I argue that Dewey’s naturalism, which is based on an appreciation of the ways in which the work of Charles Darwin can be applied within humanistic disciplines, provides models for cross-cultural discussions of ethics. I suggest that some of the impediments to appreciating Dewey’s contribution to global ethics lie in misreadings and misinterpretations of his work, such as those advanced by Roberto M. Unger. Finally, I suggest that it is unlikely that a global ethics will emerge until human beings transcend narrow supernaturalist and nonnaturalist dogmas and embrace naturalistic world views

Jo Ann Boydston, 2 July 1924 - 25 January 2011Jo Ann Boydston enjoyed a distinguished career as general editor of the Collected Works of John Dewey and director of the Center for Dewey Studies at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Born in Poteau, Oklahoma of Choctaw Indian heritage, she graduated summa cum laude from Oklahoma State University in 1944. She received an M.A. from Oklahoma State (1947), a Ph.D. from Columbia University (1950), and honorary doctorates from Indiana University (1994) and Southern Illinois University (2004).In 1961, Boydston joined the staff of a modest research project at Southern Illinois University called "Co-operative Research on Dewey Publications" as assistant to project ..