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John Dewey, The Later Works, 1925-1953, Volume 5: 1929-1930

EDITED BY JO ANN BOYDSTON,

TEXTUAL EDITOR, KATHLEEN E. POULOS

With an Introduction by Paul Kurtz

Southern Illinois University Press,

Carbondale and Edwardsville

[Page lw.5.iv]

Bibliographic Page

Dewey: Page lw.5.iv

Copyright © 1984 by the Board of Trustees,

Southern Illinois University

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

Designed by Richard Hendel

CENTER FOR

SCHOLARLY EDITIONS

AN APPROVED TEXT

MODERN LANGUAGE

ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA

[The CSE seal applies to the print edition only.]

Editorial expenses for this edition have been met in part by grants from the

Editions Program of the National Endowment for the Humanities, an

independent Federal agency, and from the John Dewey Foundation. Publishing expenses

have been met in part by a grant from the John Dewey Foundation.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data



Dewey, John, 1859-1952.

The later works, 1925-1953.

Vol. 5 has introd. by Paul Kurtz.

Continues The middle works, 1899-1924.

Includes bibliographies and indexes.

CONTENTS: V. 1. 1925-- --V. 5. 1929-1930.

1. Philosophy--Collected works. I. Boydston, Jo Ann, 1924-.

B945.D41 1981 191 80-27285

ISBN 0-8093-1163-1 (V. 5)

[Page lw.5.v]

Contents

Dewey: Page lw.5.v

Introduction by Paul Kurtz xi

The Sources of a Science of Education 1

Individualism, Old and New 41

1. The House Divided against Itself 45

2. "America"--By Formula 50

3. The United States, Incorporated 58

4. The Lost Individual 66

5. Toward a New Individualism 77

6. Capitalistic or Public Socialism? 90

7. The Crisis in Culture 99

8. Individuality in Our Day 111

Construction and Criticism 125



Dewey: Page lw.5.v

ESSAYS 145

From Absolutism to Experimentalism 147

Philosophy 161

James Marsh and American Philosophy 178

The Sphere of Application of the Excluded 197

Middle

The Applicability of Logic to Existence 203

In Reply to Some Criticisms 210

[Page lw.5.vi]

Conduct and Experience 218

Psychology and Work 236

Qualitative Thought 243

What Humanism Means to Me 263

What I Believe 267

Three Independent Factors in Morals 279

Philosophy and Education 289

General Principles of Educational Articulation 299

Our Illiteracy Problem 311

How Much Freedom in New Schools? 319

The Duties and Responsibilities of the 326

Teaching Profession

Freedom in Workers' Education 331

Labor Politics and Labor Education 338

What Do Liberals Want? 346

Apostles of World Unity: XVII--Salmon O. 349



Levinson

Religion in the Soviet Union: II--An 355

Interpretation of the Conflict

Social Change and Its Human Direction 363

Dewey: Page lw.5.vi

REVIEWS 369

The School and Society. Review of George S. 371

Counts's School and Society in Chicago

An Organic Universe. Review of Alfred N. 382

Whitehead's Process and Reality

[Page lw.5.vii]

The Course of Modern History. Review of 382

Harry Elmer Barnes's World Politics in

Modern Civilization

Dewey: Page lw.5.vii

MISCELLANY 385

Dr. Dewey and Mr. Woll by Matthew Woll 387

Reply to Woll 389

The Sportsmanship Brotherhood by Daniel 390

Chase

Mr. Woll as a Communist-Catcher 392

Letter to University of Michigan School of 393

Education

Juvenile Reading 394

Understanding and Prejudice 396

Foreword to Helen Edna Davis's Tolstoy and 398



Nietzsche

Foreword to Eastern Commercial Teachers' 401

Association First Yearbook, Foundation of

Commercial Education

Introduction to Henry Evelyn Bliss's The 404

Organization of Knowledge and the System of

the Sciences

Introduction to Maurice Hindus's Humanity 407

Uprooted

Foreword to Fischel Schneersohn's Studies in 410

Psycho-Expedition

Introduction to Training for Group 412

Experience, ed. Alfred Dwight Sheffield

Censorship 417

In Response 418

Tribute to James H. Tufts 424

Dewey: Page lw.5.vii

REPORTS 427

Lobby Inquiry Opens Tomorrow429

[Page lw.5.viii]

Attacks Wage Disparity 431

Child Relief Steps Urged on Congress 432

Asks Federal Fund to Aid Unemployed 434

Asks Hoover to Act on Unemployment 436

Puts Needs of Idle at Two Billions 439

People's Lobby Hits Sugar Loan to Cuba 440



John Dewey Assails the Major Parties 442

Dewey Supports Vladeck 443

Dewey Asks Norris to Lead New Party 444

Dewey for Farm Backing 447

Dewey: Page lw.5.viii

*APPENDIXES 451

*1. Can Logic Be Divorced from Ontology? 453

by Ernest Nagel

*2. Action and Certainty 461

by William Ernest Hocking

*3. Pragmatism and Current Thought 477

by C. I. Lewis

*4. Experience and Dialectic 487

by Frederick J. E. Woodbridge

*5. Three Independent Factors in Morals: 496

Introductory Remarks and Discussion

*6. Insurgents Back Norris in Refusing to Quit 504

Republicans

NOTES 506

TEXTUAL APPARATUS 507

Textual Notes 509

Textual Commentary 511

[Page lw.5.ix]

*Emendations List 529

*Alterations in Typescripts 572

*Line-end Hyphenation 583



*Substantive Variants in Quotations 585

Checklist of Dewey's References 591

*INDEX 599

[*Starred items in print edition]

[Page lw.5.x, blank]

[Page lw.5.xi]

Introduction

Dewey: Page lw.5.xi

By Paul Kurtz

Dewey: Page lw.5.xi

John Dewey's writings for the years covered in this volume, 1929 and 1930, are for the

most part practical in content. Dewey's philosophy has had a profound normative impact, and

this volume illustrates throughout the basic continuity of his

philosophical thought with normative interests, for Dewey's

philosophical ideas cannot be fully understood or evaluated

independently of the social context in which they are written. We

should note that 1929 was the year in which both The Quest for

Certainty and the revised edition of Experience and Nature

appeared. Dewey was at the height of his powers and influence. In

retrospect, 1929 also marked the end of an era, the age of

prosperity, and the beginning of the Great Depression of the 1930s

that overtook America and the world. Dewey's papers in this

volume should be read as they were written--against the

background of both the 1929 financial collapse and the sense that a



questions about the nature of a science of education. He asks,

"Can there be a science of education?" and if so, "How does it

proceed and what is its function?" Dewey makes clear that by

"science" he is referring to the use of objective methods in

dealing with the subject matter of education. The methods of

scientific inquiry are brought to bear on a range of facts, enabling

educators to understand and control those facts more

intelligently. Thus by the question "What are the sources of a science

of education?" Dewey means "What are the ways by means of

which the function of education . . . can be conducted with

systematic increase of intelligent control and understanding?"

Dewey: Page lw.5.xii

Education, like engineering, he says, is an art. There is,

however, no sharp distinction between science and art; both

engineering and education are related to the general sciences and

draw upon them in dealing with concrete experience and

practical operations. Many people look to the science of education for

simple recipes or guides for educational practice, but these they

find difficult to deduce. First, educational science is still in a

backward state: no genuine science can be founded on isolated

conclusions; rather these conclusions need to be linked together

to form a "coherent system" in which they confirm and illustrate

each other. Second, educational science cannot be developed

simply by borrowing the techniques of the physical sciences.

Even could we arrive at general laws and facts, they might not

yield simple rules of practice and they would be of only indirect



value for their effect on educators attempting to deal with

concrete problems of educational practice. The function of the

science of education, Dewey maintains, is to provide "intellectual

instrumentalities" for educators. The results of science thus

provide rules for "the conduct of observations and inquiries," not

rules for overt action. Here Dewey is referring to the use of

scientific findings by administrators and researchers. His

conclusion is that "the final reality of educational science is . . . in the

minds of those engaged in directing educational activities."

Dewey stresses that "we must distinguish between the sources of

educational science and scientific content." We must not forget,

he says, that the results of science are only sources to be used

[Page lw.5.xiii]

"through the medium of the minds of educators, to make

educational functions more intelligent."

Dewey: Page lw.5.xiii

This statement by Dewey may come as a surprise, for it may

suggest a subjectivistic character to inquiry, especially insofar as

it focuses on the minds of educators. Dewey goes on to relate

scientific inquiry, however, to educational practices. He says that

"educational practices" provide the data and subject matter that

form the problems of inquiry and also the final test of the value

of the conclusions of such research. Thus the starting point and

nexus of educational science refer to actual educational behavior

in the schools and these precede scientific investigation. Science



thus is an intermediary tool of education and not the reverse. He

does not wish an independent science to dictate the educational

process; rather science should serve the educational process and

is meaningful only in relation to it. Dewey reiterates that these

educational practices furnish the materials and problems of

educational science. However, he also says that there is no

independent science of education per se. Following the analogy with

engineering, he points out that the materials derived from the other

sciences provide the content of educational science and these

must be related to educational practices.


A vital give and take occurs, of course, between practitioners

of education and scientific researchers. The educational

practitioner or field worker needs to draw upon a variety of sciences in

solving educational problems. These include the philosophy of

science (which may help in discovering and introducing creative

hypotheses), psychology, and sociology, among other sciences.

Dewey makes clear that "concrete educational experience is the

primary source of all inquiry and reflection because it sets the

problems, and tests, modifies, confirms or refutes the

conclusions of intellectual investigation."


Dewey also raises the question of how educational values and

objectives are derived, denying that philosophy provides the

ends for the educator and science the means. Rather, he argues,

"education is autonomous." Hence, it "should be free to



determine its own ends, its own objectives." To go outside

education to an external source is to surrender the educational cause.

Dewey is thus encouraging educators to have the independence

and courage to insist that educational aims must be developed

within the educative process. Educators do not create these aims,

[Page lw.5.xiv]

however, although they do play a role in the process; education

itself is a process of discovering worthwhile values and

objectives. Dewey insists that there is no fixed and final set of

unchanging objectives, but a process in which means and ends are

interrelated in the context of educational inquiry and practice.

"The sources of educational science are any portions of

ascertained knowledge that enter into the heart, head and hands of

educators, and which, by entering in, render the performance of

the educational function more enlightened, more humane, more

truly educational than it was before."

Dewey: Page lw.5.xiv

Dewey thus places education at the very center of social

change. The educator is not subservient to external scientists or

to society. The vital function of the educator is to contribute to

social transformation by using science and by developing values

within the educational process. Education is an ongoing activity

that should include science within its process.


It is interesting to read Dewey's educational writings today



when schools, especially public schools, are under heavy

criticism. When Dewey wrote The Sources of a Science of Education

the public schools were accomplishing a heroic task in teaching

the large number of immigrant children the ethics and practice

of democracy and the open society. It seemed appropriate to

argue that education had a vital role in this process of social

change--a positive attitude that was applicable for at least

another generation. In recent years, however, Dewey's influence in

education has come under sustained attack, not only from right

wing foes but from partisans of the left. Conservatives have

strongly rejected Dewey's recommendation that educators should

examine and clarify values, seek to fashion new habits in the

young, and contribute to social change. Any questioning of

traditional values and beliefs, particularly those with a religious

foundation, has been anathema to many parents, preachers, and

politicians. In the post-Sputnik era of the late fifties, Dewey was

accused of loosening standards and was held responsible for the

schools' failure to educate students in science--a paradoxical

charge in view of Dewey's great emphasis on understanding

science as an essential part of the curriculum.


In the seventies and eighties Dewey has been accused of

fathering "secular humanism" and thus eroding religious values. The

critics are no doubt correct in identifying the schools as agents of

[Page lw.5.xv]



social change and in attributing to Dewey the view that such a

function is appropriate for the schools. It is a pity that educators

have sometimes retreated in the face of militant vigilantes who

oppose the schools' efforts to engage in moral education or to

clarify and transform values, for this examination is a vital part

of any education relevant to contemporary problems. Dewey

argues that values are not absolute or fixed but need to be

reappraised and evaluated in the context of contemporary society

through the use of critical intelligence. In these days of budget-

cutting and scalp-hunting, the teacher has often become the

sacrificial lamb who is blamed for all the evils of the modern world

and transformations of the old moral verities. But Dewey's

outline of a program of educational reform still has merit and can be

read with profit today.

Dewey: Page lw.5.xv

Of considerable interest also for the light that they shed on

later debates are several other writings on education,

particularly those in which Dewey criticizes so-called progressive

educators. His discussions are noteworthy in view of the radical

educational reform movements of the late sixties and early seventies,

when higher education became embroiled in intense controversy.

The war cry was for "relevance" and the loosening of curriculum

standards. Dewey, often thought to be the progenitor of the

protests, was blamed by Admirals Radford and Rickover and others

for these anti-intellectual excesses. Yet, interestingly, Dewey

writing in 1930 denies that he defends unlimited or anarchic



student freedom, and he makes clear that he opposed

de-emphasizing the intellectual content of education.

Dewey: Page lw.5.xv

In the essay "How Much Freedom in New Schools?" Dewey

observes that many parents send their children to progressive

schools because they are reacting against the formalism and

regimentation of traditional education. These "child-centered

schools," in which children are not taught dead subject matter,

emphasize freedom, esthetic enjoyment and artistic

development, and learning through activity. Dewey believes that this

revolt produced a one-sided emphasis. Rebellion against the

conventional schoolroom was needed, he says, but it overlooked the

need to develop a new subject matter organized as well as or

better than the old. Education should center on the pupil, but that

pupil does not live in isolation and must learn to "reach out into

a world of objects and persons" under proper "guidance and

[Page lw.5.xvi]

direction." The child's impulses and desires should be encouraged

to mature by development of thought. Dewey deplores the

indulgence of some schools in unrestrained action, speech, and

manners by students, nearly to the point of license and anarchy; he

believes that subject matter must be taught and that, above all,

the discipline of intellectual control, objective knowledge, and

understanding should be cultivated. He says, that "it is the

absence of intellectual control through significant subject matter



which stimulates the deplorable egotism, cockiness,

impertinence and disregard for the rights of others apparently

considered by some persons to be the inevitable accompaniment, if not

the essence, of freedom." He recommends in its place not

subjective but rational freedom. He criticizes the tendency of

progressive schools to emphasize the things that make schooling

immediately enjoyable rather than the things that give understanding

and capacity relevant to contemporary life. Dewey wants

education to have more depth and rigor and, in particular, to instill an

understanding of the relation of science to industrial society.

Dewey: Page lw.5.xvi

How pertinent his analysis still is today, not only to public

schools but to schools of higher learning. For example, in his

essay "Philosophy and Education" Dewey maintains that the

"ultimate aim of education" is "the creation of human beings in the

fulness of their capacities. . . . generous in aspiration, liberal in

thought, cultivated in taste, and equipped with knowledge and

competent method." Through the development of such human

beings, society is "constantly remade." Speaking of the

universities, he says, "After a long period in which education was

treated as a matter of routine experience, tradition, and mere

apprenticeship, we are engaged once more in regarding education

as a pursuit having intellectual foundations, and needing

systematic intellectual guidance."

II. Political and Social Philosophy



Dewey: Page lw.5.xvi

In the late 1920s and in the 1930s, Dewey authored a

number of important books on politics, including The Public

and Its Problems (1927), Liberalism and Social Action (1935),

and Freedom and Culture (1939), in which he sought to work

out a new definition of liberalism, emphasizing that liberalism

[Page lw.5.xvii]

should not be identified with a particular party platform or

program but rather with a method of intelligence to be used in a

democracy to solve social problems. Dewey was attempting to

break away from the traditional nineteenth-century conception

of classical liberalism.

Dewey: Page lw.5.xvii

Dewey's role in the growth of a liberal movement in the United

States is important, illustrating anew his deep involvement in

public affairs. For example, in September 1929, Dewey was

elected Chairman of the League for Independent Political Action,

which comprised liberals, socialists, and pacifists, including

Paul H. Douglas, Oswald Garrison Villard, Reinhold Niebuhr,

Stuart Chase, and Norman Thomas. In his essay "What Do

Liberals Want?" Dewey deplores the fact that liberals are so hard to

organize. He notes a body of progressive sentiment in the United

States and an immense sympathy for the underdog, as well as



dissatisfaction with the existing alignment of political parties.

The purpose of the League, he says, is to work out a body of

political principles adapted to economic and social conditions.

The New York Times reported that Dewey, as chairman of the

League, urged Senator George W. Norris to lead a new third

party (see Miscellany, "Dewey Asks Norris to Lead New Party");

Senator Norris later rejected this call (see Appendix 6 [print edition],

"Insurgents Back Norris in Refusing to Quit Republicans").


Individualism, Old and New, in the present volume, is a part

of Dewey's effort to develop this new conception of liberalism. It

is especially interesting that the chapters of this book began

appearing in the New Republic on 24 April 1929, during a period

of relatively high prosperity, and continued after the great stock

market crash of October 1929. These articles reflect the intense

dissatisfaction that Dewey and others felt with the classical

liberal defense of laissez-faire economics and the capitalist system.

Marxist ideas were spreading and one can see their influence on

Dewey. Nevertheless, Individualism, Old and New is prophetic

in anticipating the kind of welfare liberalism that would emerge

shortly with the New Deal.


The central question of Individualism, Old and New is how to

create a new form of individualism appropriate to the kind of

society in which we actually live. Dewey begins his discussion by

examining the contradictions he finds in American culture,



particularly "between our institutions and practice on one hand,

[Page lw.5.xviii]

and our creeds and theories on the other." In the late twenties,

the philosophy of rugged individualism dominated the thinking

of a large sector of society. How does such a philosophy square

with the traditional religion and morality we have inherited? We

are unprepared, he suggests, for the industrialization of our

civilization. Although we claim to believe in the ideals of

individualism, equality of opportunity, and freedom for all, these are

perverted by a dominant "pecuniary culture" that justifies

inequality and oppression in the name of an economic struggle for

survival of the fittest.

Dewey: Page lw.5.xviii

Dewey discusses the widespread European criticism of

American cultural traits that were allegedly conquering the globe:

quantification, mechanization, standardization, material

success, and technique--all being condemned for submerging

individuality. Dewey defends the use of technology as a means of

emancipating individuality; the most serious defect of our

civilization and the major threat to individualism, he finds, comes

from the control of technology primarily for "private profit."

The deepest problem of our time is "constructing a new

individuality consonant with the objective conditions under which we

live." Dewey maintains that the United States had entered a

"collective age," moving from an earlier "pioneer individualism" of



the small entrepreneur to a society in which large-scale business

corporations and trusts dominate economic activities. Indeed,

Dewey bemoans the increased concentration of economic power

by corporations. The realities of a mass production economy are

mass education, advertising, and consumerism, which further

contribute to the repression of the individual.

Dewey: Page lw.5.xviii

Dewey analyzes the plight of the lost individual in corporate

society. The salient traits of a person's life are insecurity, fear of

unemployment, and the oncoming of old age. Dewey deplores

that individualism had been equated with private economic gain

in our business-oriented civilization. The paradox is that while

our material culture is corporate, our moral culture and

ideology are saturated with values of an individualism derived from a

pre-technological age and rooted in medieval religion and the

feudal period. The Protestant emphasis on abstract rights that

are uniquely individual and on economic enterprise has been

overshadowed by the later developments of the industrial age

[Page lw.5.xix]

and is no longer viable. For Dewey, economic individualism

based on private gain is often a parasite on the great productive

forces of society that are scientific and technical. The key

questions are, "How shall the individual find himself in an

unprecedentedly new situation?" and "What qualities will the new

individualism exhibit?"



Dewey: Page lw.5.xix

Dewey suggests that a new individualism can be achieved only

through the controlled use of all our social resources. The call

for national planning became especially prominent in the 1930s.

Although Dewey was a critic of Bolshevik Russia, he

nevertheless says that "the future historian of our times will [admire]

those who had the imagination first to see that the resources of

technology might be directed by organized planning to serve

chosen ends." This course would, he indicated, embark us

"constructively and voluntarily" upon the road that Soviet Russia

was travelling with so much "destruction and coercion." Dewey

later became an even more vigorous critic of Russia and headed

a special commission in the late thirties to investigate the charges

against Leon Trotsky, charges he found largely to have been

fabricated by Stalinists. In retrospect, liberal opinion today has lost

much of its confidence that national plans can fulfill high

expectations and there is greater reluctance to undermine the

operation of the free market with overall programs of governmental

planning.

Dewey: Page lw.5.xix

Dewey does not always indicate the exact form that the new

individualism will take. In criticizing modern Luddites who

reject machine technology and science, which they consider the

enemy, he suggests that an emergent individualism must refashion

the role of the individual in the corporate world and use science

and technology for social purposes. Maintaining that we need to



introduce social responsibilities into the business system, he

recommends the establishment of "a coordinating and directive

council in which captains of industry and finance would meet

with representatives of labor and public officials." They would

cooperatively "plan the regulation of industrial activity,"

somewhat as in Germany and other mixed economies in the world

today. Dewey incidentally criticized Marx for not sufficiently

appreciating the dynamic role of technology and the capacities for

expanding industry by developing new inventions. Nor did Marx

[Page lw.5.xx]

recognize, he says, that employers would rush to sustain

consumption by granting high wages and not seek to bring workers

down to a subsistence level.

Dewey: Page lw.5.xx

In Individualism, Old and New Dewey criticizes the

prevailing economic system with its large scale maldistribution of

income, disproportionate income tax, quiescent labor movement,

unregulated industry, and no social security or unemployment

insurance. All these problems were later addressed by the New

Deal, the Fair Deal, the Great Society, and the labor-liberal

coalition that emerged.

Dewey: Page lw.5.xx

"We are in for some kind of socialism," says Dewey, "call it by

whatever name we please." The difference, he says, is between a

socialism that is public and democratic and one that is



capitalistic in character.

Dewey: Page lw.5.xx

Dewey diagnoses the crisis in our culture. In one aspect of this

crisis, those engaged in production and distribution have no

imaginative, intellectual, or emotional share in directing their

activities. To bring about a new individualism, he suggests some

form of participatory democracy and a system of cooperative

control of industry. If so developed, industry could become a

primary educative and cultural force for those involved in it. The

focus of industry would be on social utility, not simply pecuniary

profit--which is responsible, Dewey says, for our distorted

cultural development. In this new individualism, industry would be

conducted from the standpoint of the user and enjoyer of goods

and services, not the captains of industry or finance. Intellectuals

now disenchanted with mass culture or seeking to escape from it

would have a role: they can contribute to inquiry and thus help

"humanize industrial civilization" and make it and technology

"a servant of human life."

Dewey: Page lw.5.xx

In a sense, says Dewey, the suppression of individuality is the

individual's own responsibility; the first move to recover

individuality therefore rests "with the individual himself." One cannot

hope to develop integrated individuality by an all-embracing

social program alone. We must cultivate our own garden, but that

garden has no sharp fence about it. Our garden is the world--

including the corporate and industrial world in which we live



and function. Dewey recommended the adoption of the scientific

method in human affairs and its application to morals, religion,

[Page lw.5.xxi]

politics, and industry. If so used, it can lead not only to social

improvement but also to an appreciation of the free working of

mind as a source of creativity and joy.

Dewey: Page lw.5.xxi

At the time Dewey wrote these views, socialist ideas were

everywhere present, serving as a promise of a better tomorrow.

The infamous tyrannies of Marxist dictatorships were not clearly

seen by intellectuals; moreover, capitalism began to undergo a

serious economic crisis. Today, more than a half century later,

the kind of libertarian individualism that Dewey condemned has

had a resurgence: economic libertarians and neo-conservatives

deplore the growth of government regulations and the increase

in taxation and welfare policies in democratic societies. Since

Dewey wrote, old age security, unemployment insurance, and

other governmental programs of regulation have been enacted to

mitigate some of the insecurities that concerned him. Capitalist

societies are now "mixed economies" with a large public sector.

Although they still face serious problems of unemployment,

inflation, and economic cycles, and the trend toward mergers and

conglomerates continues unabated, many would not wish to

weaken the free market. Moreover, the individual is often as

alienated and estranged in welfare societies as he was in free



enterprise economies, though the threats to his existence assume

other forms. The continued growth of the mass media further

exacerbates the problem of submerged individuality. And mass

society raises anew the question of the appropriate role of

government in society. Some of Dewey's followers today are social

democrats or democratic socialists who still wish to use the state

as an instrument of social welfare. Others have reevaluated

capitalism and wish to democratize and humanize, not abandon, it.

They place far greater trust in the marketplace than did Dewey,

and they are now convinced that political and social liberty

cannot be guaranteed without a wide measure of economic freedom.

Perhaps one conclusion to be drawn is that economics is still an

art rather than a science and that economists differ as much as

philosophers. They divide into schools which are often

contradictory in their analyses of economic problems and in their

recommendations for dealing with them. Dewey's Individualism,

Old and New was a product of the period in which he wrote, on

the eve of the Great Depression; nevertheless, the submerging of

[Page lw.5.xxii]

the individual that concerned Dewey is as serious a problem in

our present post-industrial age as it was in the thirties. His work

helps us identify that problem, although what course society

should take in rescuing and restoring individuality is still largely

an unanswered question.



III. Philosophical Controversies

Dewey: Page lw.5.xxii

This volume includes more than a dozen of Dewey's

strictly philosophical essays; my comments are therefore highly

selective.


In "From Absolutism to Experimentalism" Dewey gives a

personal account of his own philosophical development, beginning

as an undergraduate at the University of Vermont, where he

studied with H. A. P. Torrey. Dewey tells how, under the tutelage of

George Sylvester Morris and W. T. Harris, Hegel's philosophy

had a strong early appeal because "it supplied a demand for

unification that was doubtless an intense emotional craving."

Hegel's synthesis of subject and object, matter and spirit, the divine

and the human had a particular attraction for Dewey. He

recounts how he drifted away from Hegel's thought over the next

several years, though it left a "permanent deposit" upon his

philosophy.


Four points stand out in Dewey's intellectual development:

first is the importance for him of the theory and practice of

education, especially the education of the young. Second, Dewey

became increasingly troubled by the dualism in logical standpoint

and method between science and morals, which led to his



development of instrumentalism. Third is the influence of William

James's Psychology, especially his biological conception of

experience and thought and its impact on philosophy. Fourth is his

perception of the importance of social categories, especially of

communication and participation, which led to an appreciation

for the influence of the social sciences on philosophy, education,

morals, and religion.


This fourth theme is reiterated by Dewey in his essay

"Philosophy," where he argues that philosophy is one of the social

studies, and both philosophy and the social sciences have suffered

because they have been isolated from each other. Dewey believes

[Page lw.5.xxiii]

that the history of philosophic thought offers a field for social

research and that philosophy cannot be fully understood apart

from its social environment. The business of philosophy is to

criticize the dominant beliefs of a culture. These beliefs, however,

need to be examined as social products and forces. This applies

from the earliest Greek philosophers to the present, including

the relationship of logical studies, often considered in

abstraction from a social context, to practical social questions. Dewey

further observes that the subjectivistic controversies between

empiricists and rationalists were abstract and that philosophers

should instead deal with and consider the "phenomenon of

social interactions, as real in their own right." From this point of



view the basic source of philosophical fallacies is the conversion

of a temporary abstraction for purposes of analysis to a

permanent one. Dewey complains that the divorce of philosophy from

the social sciences has led to the "over-technicality of

philosophical systems" and to an "undue emphasis upon intellectual

gymnastics and dialectic" at the expense of their bearing upon

life. This evaluation might well apply to the kind of linguistic

and analytical philosophy that dominated Anglo-American

philosophy in the post-Deweyan period, making it seem too often

trivial, formal, and dead. Excessive focus on analytic distinctions

quite independent of their social context and the failure to

examine psychological premises in the light of social science research

have only intensified this problem. Many analytic philosophers

have insisted that epistemological or logical issues can be

pursued independently of psycho-genetic inquiries, but such issues

often only mask unexamined psycho-logistic assumptions.

Dewey: Page lw.5.xxiii

This volume contains a number of spirited discussions

between Dewey and his critics. Among these is an exchange with

Ernest Nagel and another replying to F. J. E. Woodbridge,

William Ernest Hocking, and C. I. Lewis, who critically analyzed

the adequacy of Dewey's instrumentalism in a special American

Philosophical Association symposium on 30 December 1929.

These commentators discuss Dewey's theory of logic and

reflective inquiry in the light of alternative metaphysical positions,

whether realism or idealism, and their criticisms are extremely



useful in clarifying the ontological ground of Dewey's

philosophy. Many writers have been puzzled by Dewey's basic

categories; some have found them "idealistic" in character.

[Page lw.5.xxiv]

"Interactions" and "transactions" seem to be ultimately "real," which

raises questions about their relationship to the world of nature.

Does nature exist independently of reflective inquiry? What role

do the principles of logic have in the executive order of nature?

What is the relationship between "primary" and "secondary"

experience, i.e., are antecedent objects, as directly or

immediately experienced or had, "real," and in what sense; or are only

those objects "real" that are defined and explained in the course

of reflective thinking and inquiry? Some critics have thought

that Dewey was equivocating on these issues, or that he was

himself uncertain about their precise status. His critics, all influential

philosophers, pose probing questions about aspects of Dewey's

philosophy that even his most sympathetic readers find

troubling. Thus Dewey's responses to his critics are valuable and

contribute significantly to an understanding of his philosophical

assumptions.

Dewey: Page lw.5.xxiv

Dewey's debate with Ernest Nagel, his former student at

Columbia who later became Professor of Philosophy there, is

especially instructive. First, Dewey raises a question about "the kind

of subject-matter to which the formal principles of logic are



legitimately applicable." In "The Sphere of Application of the

Excluded Middle" Dewey says that the formal principles of

logic "are applicable only to formal or non-existential subject-

matter." Logical principles, such as the excluded middle,

identity, and contradiction, are universal propositions. They do not

denote anything about the real world as such, nor do they have

existential import. To be applicable to existence, independent

assertions of a matter-of-fact kind must be made in the form of a

particular proposition. To say that "A is either B or non-B is . . .

indifferent to the question whether anything exists having the

properties designated by A and B." It would be fallacious, says

Dewey, to move from a universal property to a material or

existential one. The Aristotelian conception, he thinks, confuses the

relationship between the formal and material, the "essential"

and the existential, and begs the question of the relationship

between the logical and the ontological or existent. Does the

principle of the excluded middle apply to nature? Dewey is impressed

by the contingency or particularity of existence and events, and

by the fact that existence undergoes change and transition. Does

the principle of the excluded middle apply to propositions about

[Page lw.5.xxv]

the future? Although Dewey otherwise agrees with Nagel, he

challenges Nagel's statement in "Intuition, Consistency, and the

Excluded Middle" (see Journal of Philosophy, volume 26) that it

is possible "to enumerate exhaustive (though very general)



properties about the future if that future is not altogether

independent of the past." Dewey considers the term "exhaustive"

unfortunate, since it would remove all contingency from the future

and make it so determinate that the principle of the excluded

middle would apply. On the contrary, Dewey finds the future to

be conditional and to have a temporal quality that makes it

indeterminate. The principle of the excluded middle not only does

not apply to the future, it does not apply to the past or present

either. Dewey concludes his article by raising questions of the

status of the principle of the excluded middle in the broader

question of the relationship of the logical and the ontological,

the formal and the existential.

Dewey: Page lw.5.xxv

Nagel responds to Dewey in "Can Logic Be Divorced from

Ontology?" (see Appendix 1 [print edition]) protesting the diremption between

a method of inquiry and "the irreducible traits" of subject matter

explored. He says that Dewey's writings provide both a

metaphysics that describes the "generic traits of existence" and a logic of

the method of inquiry. Nagel says that one can infer on the basis

of Dewey's work that there are generic factors which are the

traits of every subject of scientific investigation. These

ontological characteristics become objects of knowledge as conclusions

of a process of inquiry; they do not exist fully antecedent to

inquiry. Nagel believes that Dewey himself seems to ask whether

these "ontological traits can be identified, at least in part, with

the logical traits."



Dewey: Page lw.5.xxv

According to Nagel, if logical traits are cut off from

ontological traits, then Dewey's belief, as expressed in The Quest for

Certainty, for example, that the "precarious" and the "stable" are

not only features of human experience but of nature, would be

untenable. Dewey's chief argument for the view that both nature

and experience contain generic characteristics is the continuity

between them. Nagel quotes approvingly Dewey's statement that

"one who believes in continuity may argue that, since human

experience exhibits such traits, nature must contain their

prototypes." And Nagel concludes that although there may be other

ontological traits besides the logical to which our common-day

[Page lw.5.xxvi]

experience certifies, nature must at least reflect and contain the

logical as well, and this is revealed in the course of reflective

history.

Dewey: Page lw.5.xxvi

Nagel finds the laws of logic unique, in that they turn up in

every conceivable inquiry; therefore they represent factors

invariant in every subject matter. A whole-hearted naturalist, Nagel

insists, cannot break the continuity between logic and

metaphysics. Although it is true, he says, that logical principles are

concerned with the mutual relations of propositions, not with the

mutual relations of things, nevertheless the ground of the

principles of contradiction and the excluded middle is not to be found



in the propositions but in the nature of things which the

propositions state.

Dewey: Page lw.5.xxvi

Dewey's response to Nagel came quickly in "The Applicability

of Logic to Existence." A reader sympathetic to Dewey may find

his reply rather curious. At first he seems to concede Nagel's

point and to have been convinced by him. He states at once that

he does not think "that logic can be divorced from ontology,"

and that the "ground" of the logical "must be found in the

ontological," and that there is a "continuity between logic and

metaphysics." But he asks, in what sense, and what kind of

continuity is there? He doubts Nagel's answer to these questions,

maintaining that logical character can be employed practically

upon existences, though they do not inherently characterize

other existences or afford premises in which existential

inferences may be directly based. He denies that formal logical

principles can be directly assigned to actual existences, even though

they are applicable in dealing with such existential premises.

Dewey regrets that his earlier discussion was so narrow and is

willing to deal with the larger issues named by Nagel. He agrees

with Nagel that "logical principles are concerned with the

mutual relations of propositions, not with the mutual relations of

things." But, says Dewey, he would not dream of denying that

valid objects of thought are conditioned by prior existences or

are indirectly applicable to them by means of existential

operations. Moreover, he agrees that he would not deny that



contingent existence has elements of definite characteristics, so that

logical principles would apply to them as well. He adds that

reflective inquiry itself exists and is in turn conditioned by

[Page lw.5.xxvii]

existential objects. To clarify his point further, Dewey introduces here

the distinction between the potential and actual. "Existence

apart from that of reflection is logicible, but not logicized," until

the actual operations of human organisms supervene. These

operations produce additive consequences, so that qualities and

relations that were previously only potential "become actualized."

Dewey is dealing with issues implied in one form or another in

Experience and Nature and The Quest for Certainty that have

puzzled other philosophers. Only later, in Logic: The Theory of

Inquiry, published in 1938, does he eventually attempt to

develop a broader theory of the nature and function of logical

principles.

Dewey: Page lw.5.xxvii

F. J. E. Woodbridge, Dewey's colleague at Columbia and

editor of the Journal of Philosophy, contributed his share to the

critical analysis of Dewey's thought with the important article

"Experience and Dialectic." Woodbridge, who had a powerful

influence on many of Dewey's students, expressed a kind of

Aristotelian realism; his main criticisms of Dewey's instrumentalism

are two-fold: first he questions Dewey's distinction between

"antecedent objects" and "known objects," as he believes that



objects exist independently of and prior to being known. He

questions Dewey's statement in The Quest for Certainty that "only

the conclusion of reflective inquiry is known." This, complains

Woodbridge, could throw him into the arms of the idealists. He

wishes to distinguish clearly between knowledge and its object.

"If any objects whatever are known," he says, then it is

"irrelevant whether they exist prior or subsequent to the act of

knowing."

Dewey: Page lw.5.xxvii

In his "In Reply to Some Criticisms" Dewey responds that he

does not understand why anyone should think he was "denying

the existence of antecedent things." On the contrary, he insists

that "things had in direct experience exist prior to being known."

Dewey denies, however, that he is identifying the "things had in

direct experience with the object of knowledge." He and

Woodbridge, he says, differ only about the character of the antecedent

existence with respect to knowledge while it is known. Dewey

claims that "the object is the eventual product of reflection,"

whereas "antecedent existences" are the "subject-matter for

knowledge."

[Page lw.5.xxviii]

Dewey: Page lw.5.xxviii

Woodbridge's second criticism is that since Dewey does not

attempt to demonstrate his theory empirically but rather uses a

dialectical argument, this implies that nature is at root dialectical



and that the dialectic is implemented by the practical procedure

of intelligence. Dewey again denies that his method is purely

dialectical and insists that he depended upon empirical evidence

drawn from the experimental sciences. Dialectic is used, but only

to invite others to experience the empirical consequences of

experimental inquiry.


Harvard philosopher William Ernest Hocking also criticizes

Dewey, but from the standpoint of objective idealism (see

Appendix 2 [print edition], "Action and Certainty"). He defends a priori truth, the

idea of an eternal aspect to total reality, and certainty. Hocking

nonetheless finds some sympathy with Dewey insofar as he reads

him as an "experimental idealist." Hocking denies, however, the

basic premise of instrumentalism, according to which we must

judge the validity of propositions by seeing how they function.

He rejects the notion that there is a correspondence between

meaning and working. "If we only know a thing when we see

what comes of it, then indeed, we never know anything; for we

never have in hand what is yet to eventuate." The meaning of

an idea is not exhausted in our interest in it. There is "fact-

meaning" independent of "active-meaning." Hocking believes

that even partial truths not worked out have some "consistency

of meaning."


In response, Dewey maintains that Hocking's objection is

implicit in his own theory that "truth is conceived of as an inherent



property of some meanings, ideas, or propositions." But he says

that "any idea or proposition is relevant to its own problematic

situation in which it arises and which it intends to resolve." It is

validated as "true" insofar as it does resolve it. And this may

produce still another situation that needs resolution, and so on.

Even partial truths are meanings in process of development; thus

meanings have indeterminate aspects.


Dewey also denies that meanings apart from their application

are more than claims to truth. The so-called "immediacies of

truth" of the rationalist apply to meanings, nothing more.

Although he objects to Hocking's use of the term "eternal," he

grants that the "stability of truth" like "reality" represents an

ideal limit, but this does not enable us to convert this limit

[Page lw.5.xxix]

into an inherent or antecedent property of meanings. He fears

that Hocking's reference to "absolute" can easily convert into a

fixed dogma.

Dewey: Page lw.5.xxix

Dewey also maintains that he has never doubted that there are

a priori meanings in an empirical sense; these are, however,

"prospective postulates," and one must guard against converting

their meaning-as-postulates into truths. Hocking asserts that we

can deduce "necessary consequences" from their postulates. But

Dewey finds this ambiguous, depending on whether it signifies



"logical implications" or "existential outcomes." The fallacy

arises in supposing the latter should be identical with the former,

which Dewey thinks can lead to "dogmatism in thought" and

"fanaticism in action."


Harvard pragmatist C. I. Lewis agrees basically with Dewey's

position (see Appendix 3 [print edition], "Pragmatism and Current Thought").

He shares William James's conviction that pragmatism is not a

doctrine but a method. Viewed logically, it involves a single

principle of procedure; i.e., the pragmatic test of significance is to

examine ideas by their practical bearings or consequences in

experience. Dewey agrees when he says that "ideas are plans of

action" and that "concepts are prescriptions of certain operations

whose empirical consequences determine their significance."


Lewis believes that Dewey's "functional theory of the concept"

also has important implications for logical theory, to which,

incidentally, Lewis directed a good deal of his philosophical

attention in his most important work, An Analysis of Knowledge and

Valuation. Lewis agrees with Dewey that the concepts of physics

and mathematics have been abstracted from the context of

inquiry, but they nonetheless play an important and vital role in

the intermediate stage of knowledge. For Lewis, although

meanings as connotation refer to abstract configurations of relations,

meanings as descriptions or empirical applications refer to a

process which begins and ends with something done "in the



operation which translates a presented datum into an instrument

of prediction and control." This interpretation he shares with

Dewey's instrumentalism.


Dewey responds in "In Reply to Some Criticisms" that he

finds himself in sympathy with Lewis. He does not mean to deny

the vital role of abstractions in science and thought. The use of

abstractions lies at "the heart of thought." The only way we can

[Page lw.5.xxx]

effectively control concrete experience is by means of an

intermediate use of conceptual thought. "What I regret," he

concludes, "is the effort to erect the abstractions into complete and

self-subsistent things, or into a kind of superior Being," or the

tendency of many inquirers in the social sciences to be overawed

by the abstract concepts of the physical sciences and their failure

to develop abstractions appropriate to their own subject matter.

Thus Dewey reaffirms his instrumentalist theory, seeking to

ground it in his broader theory of experience that leaves room

for both immediate and reflective inquiry.

Dewey: Page lw.5.xxx

Two essays in this volume deserve special comment. They not

only anticipate many of the ideas later to emerge in A Common

Faith (1934) but also help define what Dewey means by

humanism. Dewey has in recent years been bitterly attacked for signing

A Humanist Manifesto, a document issued in 1933 and endorsed



by thirty-four liberal philosophers, writers, and Unitarian

ministers. Many of Dewey's foes blame the growth of secular

humanism in later years on his influence. Dewey is clearly a humanist,

but in what sense?


In the first essay, "What Humanism Means to Me," Dewey

points out that the term "humanism" has a great number of

different meanings attributed to it. He wants especially to

distinguish his conception from a view then prominently advocated by

a number of American literary critics, notably Paul Elmer More

and Irving Babbitt. Dewey finds their humanism too negative,

"anti-romantic," and "anti-naturalistic." It sets man off from

nature; it condemns and rejects science. He criticizes its

"transcendental imagination" and, implicit in its Kantian ethics, its

divorce of man from nature. It has more in common with

romanticism than it is aware of.


Humanism, says Dewey, originally referred to the revival of

learning in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and to the keen

interest men of letters felt in the literature of ancient Greece and

Rome. Renaissance humanism was in violent rebellion against

authority. The humanities thus were held in opposition to

theology. Another form of humanism emphasized the values of

human life, past and present, as the center of our concern. Walter

Pater expressed the belief that nothing that ever interested men

and women can lose its vitality. Another phase of humanism was



that espoused by Francis Bacon, Condorcet, and Comte, who

[Page lw.5.xxxi]

wished to apply the sciences to the improvement of the human

condition. The Oxford pragmatist F. C. S. Schiller also defended

humanism; like Protagoras, he said that "man is the measure of

all things," and especially the measure of value.

Dewey: Page lw.5.xxxi

Dewey's own humanism is like Bacon's, for it attempts to

integrate science and to use it in the service of mankind. Dewey

concludes with a statement of what humanism means to him:

"Humanism . . . is an expansion, not a contraction, of human life, an

expansion in which nature and the science of nature are made

the willing servants of human good." Dewey's definition is

especially interesting in view of the recent development of the

ecological movement. This new romanticism, in the name of

humanism, often condemns science and technology, seeks to

preserve nature and to return to it as the idyllic womb and standard

of all value. In one sense it is not unlike the literary humanism of

More and Babbitt that Dewey was objecting to.

Dewey: Page lw.5.xxxi

In "What I Believe" Dewey further defines a humanistic

conception of religion, rejecting the classical notion of a

transcendent or supernaturalistic faith in which the meaning of nature

and human life has its source "above and beyond experience."

Christianity, he says, offers "a fixed revelation of absolute,



unchanging Being and truth," which was elaborated into a "system

of definite rules and ends" used for the direction of life. But this

system led to "fixed dogma and rigid institutionalism." Dewey

denies that Christianity as such has any ready-made remedies for

present ills and social problems. Instead, he offers a naturalistic

conception of faith. It is not a faith based upon a creed accepted

from on high; it is rather a faith that provides an inspiration for

action and endeavor, one that is rooted in human experience as

"the sole ultimate authority" of knowledge and conduct. Central

to this philosophy of experience is the principle derived from the

natural sciences that to exist is to be in process and change. This

means that we must be willing to modify social institutions and

traditional moral attitudes. The chief danger to religion, thinks

Dewey, is that it has become so respectable that it sanctions what

exists in society and has therefore become an obstacle to moral

change. For Dewey "the future of religion is connected with . . .

faith in the possibilities of human experience and human

relationships that will create a vital sense of the solidarity of human

interests and inspire action to make that sense a reality." Dewey

[Page lw.5.xxxii]

wishes to use the resources of science and technology to improve

human life and in particular to reconstruct economic forces.

Dewey rails against excessive Cassandrian gloom. Man has lost

confidence in reason. Faith in progress has been shaken.

Skepticism has become rampant, not only against the older creeds but



also against any kind of far-reaching ideas that may help us to

direct human affairs intelligently.

Dewey: Page lw.5.xxxii

In such a context, says Dewey, "a thoroughgoing philosophy

of experience, framed in the light of science and technique, has

its significance." Such a philosophy, he urges, can be "brought

unitedly to bear upon industry, politics, religion, domestic life,

and human relations in general." Dewey expresses a deep faith in

human potentialities and intelligence that is the hallmark of his

humanism and permeates his thought and action. "A philosophic

faith, being a tendency to action," he concludes, "can be tried

and tested only in action. I know of no viable alternative in the

present day to such a philosophy. . . ."

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