John Dewey, widely known as "America's philosopher," provided important insights into education and political philosophy, but surprisingly never set down a complete moral or ethical philosophy. ...Gregory Fernando Pappas presents the first systematic and comprehensive treatment of Dewey's ethics. By providing a pluralistic account of moral life that is both unified and coherent, Pappas considers ethics to be key to an understanding of Dewey's other philosophical insights, especially his views on democracy. Pappas unfolds Dewey's ethical vision by looking carefully at the virtues and values of ideal character and community. Showing that Dewey's ethics are compatible with the rest of his philosophy, Pappas corrects the reputation of American pragmatism as a philosophy committed to skepticism and relativism. Readers will find a robust and boldly detailed view of Dewey's ethics in this groundbreaking book.
The Handbook of Dewey's Educational Theory and Practice provides a comprehensive, accessible, richly theoretical yet practical guide to the educational theories, ideals, and pragmatic implications of ...the work of John Dewey, America's preeminent philosopher of education.
Over a career spanning American history from the 1880s to the 1950s, John Dewey sought not only to forge a persuasive argument for his conviction that "democracy is freedom" but also to realize his ...democratic ideals through political activism. Widely considered modern America's most important philosopher, Dewey made his views known both through his writings and through such controversial episodes as his leadership of educational reform at the turn of the century; his support of American intervention in World War I and his leading role in the Outlawry of War movement after the war; and his participation in both radical and anti-communist politics in the 1930s and 40s. Robert B. Westbrook reconstructs the evolution of Dewey's thought and practice in this masterful intellectual biography, combining readings of his major works with an engaging account of key chapters in his activism. Westbrook pays particular attention to the impact upon Dewey of conversations and debates with contemporaries from William James and Reinhold Niebuhr to Jane Addams and Leon Trotsky. Countering prevailing interpretations of Dewey's contribution to the ideology of American liberalism, he discovers a more unorthodox Dewey-a deviant within the liberal community who was steadily radicalized by his profound faith in participatory democracy. Anyone concerned with the nature of democracy and the future of liberalism in America-including educators, moral and social philosophers, social scientists, political theorists, and intellectual and cultural historians-will findJohn Dewey and American Democracyindispensable reading.
"How are ideas about education and democracy configured and reconfigured as they travel? Democracy and the Intersection of Religion and Traditions looks at the work of John Dewey, the renowned ...philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer, and the ways in which his educational ideas and democratic ideals have been configured and reconfigured, adopted, and interpreted in different historical and cultural spaces." "Using case studies of China, Spain, and the American Interdenominational Committee on Cooperation in Latin America, the four authors explore the ways in which each alternative reading of Dewey's ideas was nested in the regionally dominant ideologies that preceded the arrival of his work and show that interpretations of his work developed differently in each setting, as a means of adapting to local needs." "Democracy and the Intersection of Religion and Traditions challenges us to think in new ways about how ideas are configured in historical contexts and how their interpretation is mediated by specific beliefs and historical circumstances."--BOOK JACKET.
While examining the important role of imagination in making moral judgments, John Dewey and Moral Imagination focuses new attention on the relationship between American pragmatism and ethics. Steven ...Fesmire takes up threads of Dewey's thought that have been largely unexplored and elaborates pragmatism's distinctive contribution to understandings of moral experience, inquiry, and judgment. Building on two Deweyan notions -- that moral character, belief, and reasoning are part of a social and historical context and that moral deliberation is an imaginative, dramatic rehearsal of possibilities -- Fesmire shows that moral imagination can be conceived as a process of aesthetic perception and artistic creativity. Fesmire's original readings of Dewey shed new light on the imaginative process, human emotional make-up and expression, and the nature of moral judgment. This original book presents a robust and distinctly pragmatic approach to ethics, politics, moral education, and moral conduct.
In this conclusion to his two-volume series, Jim Behuniak builds upon the groundbreaking work begun in John Dewey and Daoist Thought in arguing that "Chinese natural philosophy" is the proper ...hermeneutical context in which to understand early Confucianism. First, he traces Dewey's late-period "cultural turn" in more detail and then proceeds to assess Dewey's visit to China in 1919-21 as a multifaceted "intra-cultural" episode: one that includes not only what Dewey taught his Chinese audiences, but also what he learned in China and what we stand to learn from this encounter today."Dewey in China" provides an opportunity to continue establishing "specific philosophical relationships" between Dewey and Confucian thought for the purpose of getting ourselves "back in gear" with contemporary thinking in the social and natural sciences. To this end, Behuniak critically assesses readings of early Chinese thought reliant on outdated Greek-medieval assumptions, paying particular attention to readings of early Confucianism that rely heavily on Western virtue ethics, such as the "Heaven's plan" reading. Topics covered include education, tradition, ethics, the family, human nature, and religiousness-thus engaging Dewey with themes generally associated with Confucian thought.
Revived appreciation of John Dewey as an inspirational advocate of participatory democracy has been tempered by criticism that he lacks a concrete political program. William R. Caspary makes the case ...for Dewey as a more discerning and challenging political theorist than this. Caspary draws from Dewey's extensive writings a concrete politics of participatory democracy, solving classic dilemmas confronting both democratic theorists and citizen activists. He compares Dewey's views with the full range of approaches in contemporary democratic theory and explores the underpinnings of Dewey's political theory by offering a thorough and innovative account of his philosophy of science, social science, and ethics. In Dewey's democratic theory, conflict is an inescapable condition of politics, according to Caspary, and is also an essential stimulus for the advancement of individuals and societies. Recognizing the centrality of conflict, Caspary claims, Dewey makes conflict resolution an overarching concept in his theory of democracy. Caspary argues that conflict resolution is central to Dewey's philosophy of ethics and of science. Caspary—a scholar with many years of experience as a social movement activist, ombudsperson, and mediator—traces this conflict resolution orientation throughout Dewey's writings. Caspary brings Dewey's abstract theories down to earth with examples from present-day social and political experiments, including progressive educational experiments, common-ground dialogues on abortion, the South African program for truth and reconciliation, and worker self-management cooperatives. These cases illustrate Dewey's linking of political action, social experimentation, and public discourse. They pin down specific meanings for Dewey's sometimes vague political maxims, and suggest workable programs. Throughout Caspary demonstrates the courage and vision of Dewey's unwavering commitment to participatory democracy.
In this groundbreaking book, Andrea English challenges common assumptions by arguing that discontinuous experiences, such as uncertainty and struggle, are essential to the learning process. To make ...this argument, Dr English draws from the works of two seminal thinkers in philosophy of education - nineteenth-century German philosopher J. F. Herbart and American pragmatist John Dewey. English's analysis considers Herbart's influence on Dewey, inverting the accepted interpretation of Dewey's thought as a dramatic break from modern European understandings of education. Three key concepts - transformational learning, tact in teaching, and perfectibility - emerge from this analysis to revitalize our understanding of education as a transformational process. Dr English's comparative approach interweaves European and Anglo-American traditions of educational thought with a contemporary scholarly perspective, contributing to a work that is both intellectually rewarding and applicable to a classroom setting. The result is a book that is essential reading for philosophers and scholars of education, as well as educators.
Ali Mirsepassi's book presents a powerful challenge to the dominant media and scholarly construction of radical Islamist politics, and their anti-Western ideology, as a purely Islamic phenomenon ...derived from insular, traditional and monolithic religious 'foundations'. It argues that the discourse of political Islam has strong connections to important and disturbing currents in Western philosophy and modern Western intellectual trends. The work demonstrates this by establishing links between important contemporary Iranian intellectuals and the central influence of Martin Heidegger's philosophy. We are also introduced to new democratic narratives of modernity linked to diverse intellectual trends in the West and in non-Western societies, notably in India, where the ideas of John Dewey have influenced important democratic social movements. As the first book to make such connections, it promises to be an important contribution to the field and will do much to overturn some pervasive assumptions about the dichotomy between East and West.
Aesthetic experience has had a long and contentious history in the Western intellectual tradition. Following Kant and Hegel, a human’s interaction with nature or art frequently has been ...conceptualized as separate from issues of practical activity or moral value. This book examines how art can be seen as a way of moral cultivation. Scott Stroud uses the thought of the American pragmatist John Dewey to argue that art and the aesthetic have a close connection to morality. Dewey gives us a way to reconceptualize our ideas of ends, means, and experience so as to locate the moral value of aesthetic experience in the experience of absorption itself, as well as in the experience of reflective attention evoked by an art object.
