Shunji Ukai

Serge Grigoriev’s Pragmatism and Historical Representation is a historical study of pragmatism’s treatment of historical representation. In this book Grigoriev constructs a “tentative trajectory” of a “conceptually sustainable transition” (p. 1) from the traditional view that representation involves constructing a language that faithfully corresponds to some underlying reality—a view that Grigoriev describes as an “engrained unwarranted prejudice” (p. 66)—to “representation understood as being represented—having one’s voice, one’s perspective, and one’s contributions included and properly attended to in the narratives of the past” (p. 1). The book comprises four essays, each of which engages with one figure to... Read More.

This essay examines the religious deposit in Dewey’s philosophic method as a case study to show how thinking with Dewey provokes a series of questioning that leads the thinker to cease to conform to familiar outward forms of philosophizing. I first call attention to the significance of the religious deposit by showing how both religion and philosophy, in Dewey’s early philosophy, share the motivation to achieve unity. I then show that the two are, nevertheless, different, because the former emphasizes the ultimate end of the endeavor, whereas the latter emphasizes its methodic function. Based on these discussions, I show that the religious deposit remains operative in Dewey’s mature empirical method, even though he explicitly disassociates it from religion, since the central significance of the search for unity is never abandoned. By calling attention to this transition, I argue that thinking with Dewey involves ceasing to adhere to the outward forms of the traditions of which the philosopher is a part because what is characteristic of philosophy is not those traditions, but the search for unity which propels the thinker to reach beyond them. I further call attention to the significance of my argument insofar as philosophy may be taken—with the religious deposit in place—as an essential practice of democracy.

The aim of this paper is to show how Dewey's empirical philosophy is anti-totalitarian through an examination of his diagnosis of how there is a decisive break within Western philosophy. First, I trace Dewey's account of the social origin of philosophy and how the classical conception of it was instituted in Western philosophy. Then, I show that modern philosophy breaks from this conception due to the discovery of an alternative notion of knowing. Based on these expositions, I provide an elucidation of Dewey's alternative conception of philosophy as a formulation of a way of life that seeks to bring about individuality through the creation of experience. I argue that this conception is anti-totalitarian because it rejects the denial of individuality which Dewey takes to be implicit in the classical conception. Finally, I call attention to the contemporary significance of this conclusion by showing how Dewey's anti-totalitarianism bears upon two interrelated contemporary concerns that scholars have raised, inviting scholars to take up Dewey's philosophical project with renewed and critical urgency.