The Philosophy of John Dewey

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The Philosophy of John Dewey
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John Dewey (1859-1952)

• To study John Dewey is to study America.

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Burlington, Vermont

• Overcoming these separations became for Dewey
  both the way of individual freedom and growth and
  the road to social justice.

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Unifying the Ideal the Real

• Finding the way to unify the ideal and the real
  in contemporary democratic technological culture
  is Deweys central concern as a thinker.

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Columbia University

• In the pragmatic fashion the goal of logical
  instrumentalism was not to answer theoretical
  questions but to solve problems and resolve
  conflicts.

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What is Truth?

• What was observed was observed how we used this
  was the truth--there was no universal truth out
  there waiting to be discovered.

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Functional Knowledge

• Scientists did not concern themselves with the
  problem of whether they had in fact discovered
  anything at all. They didnt ask what knowledge
  was, they produced it.

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Deweys Home

• A liberal democracy gave its members the
  opportunity to grow as human beings, to enlarge
  their experience and realize their full potential
  as individuals.

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Columbia

• To enter deeply into Deweys life and thought is
  to experience the soul of American culture
  wrestling with its meaning and destiny in one of
  its most profound expressions.

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Organic Truth

• Dewey is on to something important when he sees
  truth as organic, as something alive and growing,
  rather than immobile and static.