The public and its problems: An essay in political inquiry

The Public and its Problems: An Essay in Political Inquiry

Volumn , Issue , 2012, Pages 1-190

  Dewey, John ^b   Rogers, Melvin L ^a  

^a EMORY UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84920124641     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: None     Document Type: Book

References (64)

1. Southern Illinois University Press has produced a wonderful thirty-seven-volume edition containing the most important works by John Dewey. This collection has been published in several parts, covering three periods in Dewey's intellectual development: The Early Works, 1882-1898;
2. The Middle Works, 1899-1924;
3. and The Later Works, 1925-1953. Each volume is prefaced by an introduction, and in these volumes can be found, among other topics, Dewey's additional reflections on democracy.
4. The most important intellectual biography on John Dewey is Robert Westbrook's John Dewey and American Democracy (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991).
5. This biography superseded George Dykhuizen's The Life and Mind of John Dewey (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1973)
6. which is far less interpretative and critical than Westbrook's work. Westbrook's biography should be placed alongside Alan Ryan's John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism (New York: Norton, 1995).
7. The second of the two, by a political theorist rather than an historian, provides a more rigorous description of Dewey's philosophical ideas in the context of his life than can found in Westbrook's text, although the first is really the place to go for a full biography. Additional biographical sources worthy of consideration include Steven C. Rockefeller's John Dewey: Religious Faith and Democratic Humanism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991)
8. the focus of which is the relationship between Dewey's religious commitments and democratic vision, and Jay Martin's The Education of John Dewey: A Biography (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003). The second text is to be distinguished for its treatment of original source material, thus providing the student with a superb collection of bibliographical material, but also the role it accords women, especially Harriet Alice Chipman (Dewey's first wife) and Jane Addams, in helping Dewey give shape to his ideas.
9. Although not biographies, there are a number of important texts that elucidate Dewey's ideas against the backdrop of Western and American philosophical thought. Bruce Kuklick's three books provide the most thorough account of Dewey's intellectual context as well as the tradition of pragmatism to which he belongs: Rise of American Philosophy: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1860-1930 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977);
10. Churchmen and Philosophers: From Jonathan Edwards to John Dewey (New Haven: Yale University Press 1985);
11. A History of Philosophy in America, 1720-2000 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
12. The second of the three works is most directly relevant to understanding Dewey's thinking and should be compared with Herbert Schneider's older, but still usefully accessible volume, A History of American Philosophy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1946).
13. Paul K. Conkin's Puritans and Pragmatists: Eight Eminent American Thinkers (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1968)
14. and H. S. Thayer's Meaning and Action: A Critical History of Pragmatism, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1981) are essential reading for understanding the philosophical tradition out of which pragmatism grew.
15. James T. Kloppenberg, Uncertain Victory: Social Democracy and Progressivism in European and American Thought, 1870-1920 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986)
16. should be distinguished by the transatlantic perspective it takes in treating Dewey's ideas, although readers should note that it does not treat Dewey's most philosophical elucidations of democracy post-World War I. Both Thayer's and Kloppenberg's texts should be compared with Richard Rorty's Consequences of Pragmatism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982)
17. and Cornel West's The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of American Pragmatism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989).
18. Rorty's work represents a first-rate philosophical tour of modern philosophy in which Dewey is squarely located, while West's text advances substantive claims about pragmatism's overlap with and divergence from the wider Western philosophical tradition of thinking. West also expands the umbrella of pragmatists to include thinkers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and W. E. B. Du Bois, thus placing Dewey in a wider American tradition of pragmatism. Louis Menand's The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001) should be carefully studied for its treatment of Dewey and others as providing the ideas in which American life was understood between the Civil War and the close of World War I. Although it gives the appearance of being narrow for its treatment of one theme-namely
19. experience-Martin Jay's Songs of Experience: Modern American and European Variations on a Universal Theme (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2006) provides a magisterial account of an idea central to Dewey's entire corpus and Western philosophy. It offers a perceptive account of experience that provides a nice entry point into Dewey's larger philosophical location.
20. More critical treatments of Dewey in relation to his historical context include Richard Hofstadter's Anti-intellectualism in American Life (New York: Vintage, 1963);
21. Christopher Lasch, The New Radicalism in America (New York: Vintage, 1965);
22. R. Jeffrey Lustig, Corporate Liberalism: The Origins of Modern American Political Theory (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982);
23. John Patrick Diggins, The Promise of Pragmatism: Modernism and the Crisis of Knowledge and Authority (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995);
24. Bob Pepperman Taylor, Citizenship and Democratic Doubt: The Legacy of Progressive Thought (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004).
25. The best general introductions to Dewey's central ideas include David L. Hildebrand, Dewey: A Beginner's Guide (London: Oneworld, 2008)
26. and Jim E. Tiles, Dewey (New York: Routledge, 1988).
27. The first of these texts serves as a primer to Dewey's ideas, while the second functions as a critical introduction to Dewey's thought and its contemporary vitality. Additional and very helpful introductions to Dewey's philosophy include Sidney Hook's John Dewey: An Intellectual Portrait (New York: Cosimo Classics, 1939/2008);
28. Richard J. Bernstein, John Dewey (New York: Washington Square Press, 1967);
29. Neil Coughlan, Young John Dewey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975)
30. although this text follows his career only until 1894; James Campbell, Understanding John Dewey: Nature and Cooperative Intelligence (Chicago: Open Court Press, 1995). Further, a helpful set of summations regarding Dewey's most important ideas can be found in two collections
31. Larry Hickman, Reading Dewey: Interpretations for a Postmodern Generation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998);
32. Molly Cochran, Cambridge Companion to John Dewey (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
33. The most thorough critical engagement with various aspects of Dewey's thoughts is the edited volumes by Jim Tiles, John Dewey: A Critical Assessment, 4 vols. (New York: Routledge, 1992).
34. This should be compared with Paul Arthur Schilpp's edited, although much shorter, collection, The Philosophy of John Dewey, The Library of Living Philosophers, vol. 1 (Chicago: Open Court Press 1939/1970).
35. Because Dewey's vision of democracy is so thoroughly dependent on his moral outlook regarding self-development and community, one would do well to consider the following texts on his ethical philosophy: Jennifer Welchman, Dewey's Ethical Thought (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press 1995)
36. although this text only goes as far as his 1908 Ethics and does not consider the 1932 edition; Steven Fesmire, John Dewey and Moral Imagination: Pragmatism in Ethics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), which is a first-rate elucidation of Dewey's ethical outlook and its contemporary relevance;
37. Geogory Fernando Pappas, John Dewey's Ethics: Democracy as Experience (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), which provides the most comprehensive account of Dewey's ethical outlook to date and its relationship to his vision of democracy and can be usefully compared with another comprehensive account in this regard
38. James Gouinlock's John Dewey's Philosophy of Value (New York: Humanities Press, 1972);
39. Melvin L. Rogers, The Undiscovered Dewey: Religion, Morality, and the Ethos of Democracy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008) also provides a careful account of the location of Dewey's ethical philosophy in the context of his wider political and religious philosophy.
40. In addition to some of the works cited above, several excellent and critically engaging accounts of Dewey's political philosophy can be found in Alfonse J. Damico, Individuality and Community: The Social and Political Thought of John Dewey (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1978);
41. Matthew Festenstein, Pragmatism and Political Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), which usefully places Dewey's philosophy alongside careful treatments of contemporary thinkers Richard Rorty
42. John Rawls, and Jürgen Habermas; Michael Eldridge, Transforming Experience: John Dewey's Cultural Instrumentalism (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1998);
43. William R. Caspary, Dewey on Democracy (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000);
44. Daniel M. Savage, John Dewey's Liberalism: Individuality, Community, and Self-Development (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002);
45. Eric MacGilvray, Reconstructing Public Reason (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004);
46. Robert Westbrook, Democratic Hope: Pragmatism and the Politics of Truth (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005);
47. Peter T. Manicas, Rescuing Dewey: Essays in Pragmatic Naturalism (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books 2008);
48. Jim Garrison, ed., Reconstructing Democracy, Recontextualizing Dewey: Pragmatism and Interactive Constructivism in the Twenty-First Century (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008). For a more critical set of reflections on Dewey's political philosophy
49. David Fott, John Dewey: America's Philosopher of Democracy (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998);
50. Patrick Deneen, Democratic Faith (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005);
51. Robert Talisse, A Pragmatist Philosophy of Democracy (New York: Routledge, 2007);
52. Robert Lacey, American Pragmatism and Democratic Faith (Chicago: Northern Illinois University Press, 2008).
53. The following essays on Dewey's political philosophy are worthy of careful consideration: Timothy Kaufman-Osborn, "John Dewey and the Liberal Science of Community", Journal of Politics 46, no. 4(1984):1142-65;
54. Marion Smiley, "Pragmatic Inquiry and Society Conflict: A Critical Reconstruction of Dewey's Model of Democracy", Praxis International 9, no. 4(1990):365-80;
55. Hilary Putnam, "A Reconsideration of Deweyan Democracy", in Pragmatism in Law and Society, ed. Michael Brint and William Weaver (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1991), 217-43;
56. James Campbell, "Democracy as Cooperative Inquiry", in Philosophy and the Reconstruction of Culture, ed. John Stuhr (Albany: State University of New York Press 1993), 17-36;
57. John Stuhr, "Democracy as a Way of Life", in Philosophy and the Reconstruction of Culture, ed. John Stuhr (Albany: State University of New York Press 1993), 37-58;
58. Axel Honneth, "Democracy as Reflexive Cooperation: John Dewey and the Theory of Democracy Today", Political Theory 26, no. 2(1998):763-83;
59. James Bohman, "Democracy as Inquiry, Inquiry as Democratic: Pragmatism, Social Science, and the Cognitive Division of Labor", American Journal of Political Science 43, no. 2(1999):590-607;
60. Matthew Festenstein, "Inquiry as Critique: On the Legacy of Deweyan Pragmatism for Political Theory", Political Studies 49, no. 4(2001):730-48;
61. Melvin Rogers, "Democracy, Elites, and Power: John Dewey Reconsidered", Contemporary Political Theory 8, no. 1(2009):68-89;
62. Roudy Hildreth, "Reconstructing Dewey on Power", Political Theory 37, no. 6(2009):780-807;
63. Melvin Rogers, ed., Contemporary Pragmatism 7, no. 1(2010):9-68;
64. Richard Bernstein, "John Dewey's Vision of Radical Democracy", in his The Pragmatism Turn (Malden, Mass.: Polity, 2010), which is also exceptional for the contemporary connections he draws between classical pragmatism and contemporary philosophy.