Later Works of John Dewey: 1925-1953 – serie

John Dewey’s Experience and Nature has been considered the fullest expression of his mature philosophy since its eagerly awaited publication in 1925. Irwin Edman wrote at that time that “with monumental care, detail and completeness, Professor Dewey has in this volume revealed the metaphysical heart that beats its unvarying alert tempo through all his writings, whatever their explicit themes.” In his introduction to this volume, Sidney Hook points out that “Dewey’s Experience and Nature is both the most suggestive and most difficult of his writings.” The meticulously edited text published here as the first vol­ume in the series The Later Works of John Dewey, 1925–1953 spans that entire period in Dewey’s thought by including two important and previously unpublished documents from the book’s history: Dewey’s unfinished new introduction written between 1947 and 1949, edited by the late Joseph Ratner, and Dewey’s unedited final draft of that introduction written the year before his death. In the intervening years Dewey realized the impossibility of making his use of the word “experience” understood. He wrote in his 1951 draft for a new introduction: “Were I to write (or rewrite) Experience and Nature today I would entitle the book Culture and Nature and the treatment of specific subject-matters would be correspondingly modified. I would abandon the term ‘experience’ because of my growing realiza­tion that the historical obstacles which prevented understand­ing of my use of ‘experience’ are, for all practical purposes, insurmountable. I would substitute the term ‘culture’ because with its meanings as now firmly established it can fully and freely carry my philosophy of experience.”

This volume includes all Dewey's writings for 1938 except for Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (Volume 12 of The Later Works), as well as his 1939 Freedom and Culture, Theory of Valuation, and two items from Intelligence in the Modern World. Freedom and Culture presents, as Steven M. Cahn points out, the essence of his philosophical position: a commitment to a free society, critical intelligence, and the education required for their advance.

This volume includes all Dewey's writings for 1938 except for Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (Volume 12 of The Later Works), as well as his 1939 Freedom and Culture, Theory of Valuation, and two items from Intelligence in the Modern World. Freedom and Culture presents, as Steven M. Cahn points out, the essence of his philosophical position: a commitment to a free society, critical intelligence, and the education required for their advance.

This volume includes all Dewey's writings for 1938 except for Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (Volume 12 of The Later Works), as well as his 1939 Freedom and Culture, Theory of Valuation, and two items from Intelligence in the Modern World. Freedom and Culture presents, as Steven M. Cahn points out, the essence of his philosophical position: a commitment to a free society, critical intelligence, and the education required for their advance.

With the exception of The Quest for Cer­tainty (Volume 4) this fifth volume brings together Dewey’s writings for the 1929–1930 period.During this time Dewey published 4 books and 50 articles on philosophical, educational, political, and social issues. His philosophical essays include “What Humanism Means to Me” and “What I Believe,” both of which express Dewey’s faith in man’s potentialities and intel­ligence, and a lively Journal of Philoso­phy exchange with Ernest Nagel, Wil­liam Ernest Hocking, C. I. Lewis, and F. J.E. Woodbridge. Educational writings include The Sources of a Science of Education. The contents of this volume re­flect Dewey’s increasing involvement in social and political problems.

This volume includes all Dewey's writings for 1938 except for Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (Volume 12 of The Later Works), as well as his 1939 Freedom and Culture, Theory of Valuation, and two items from Intelligence in the Modern World. Freedom and Culture presents, as Steven M. Cahn points out, the essence of his philosophical position: a commitment to a free society, critical intelligence, and the education required for their advance.

This volume includes all Dewey's writings for 1938 except for Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (Volume 12 of The Later Works), as well as his 1939 Freedom and Culture, Theory of Valuation, and two items from Intelligence in the Modern World. Freedom and Culture presents, as Steven M. Cahn points out, the essence of his philosophical position: a commitment to a free society, critical intelligence, and the education required for their advance.

Art as Experience evolved from John Dewey's Willam James Lectures, delivered at Harvard University from February to May 1931. In his Introduction, Abraham Kaplan places Dewey's philosophy of art within the context of his pragmatism. Kaplan demonstrates in Dewey's esthetic theory his traditional “movement from a dualism to a monism€ and discusses whether Dewey's viewpoint is that of the artist, the respondent, or the critic.

This volume includes ninety-two items from 1935, 1936, and 1937, including Dewey's 1935 Page-Barbour Lectures at the University of Virginia, published as Liberalism and Social Action. In essay after essay Dewey analyzed, criticized, and reevaluated liberalism. When his controversial Liberalism and Social Action appeared, asking whether it was still possible to be a liberal, Horace M. Kallen wrote that Dewey restates in the language and under the conditions of his times what Jefferson's Declaration of Independence affirmed in the language and under the conditions of his. The diverse nature of the writings belies their underlying unity: some are technical philosophy; other philosophical articles shade into social and political themes; social and political issues permeate the educational articles, which in turn involve Dewey's philosophical ideas.

Heralded as “the crowning work of a great career,” Logic: The Theory of Inquiry was widely reviewed. To Evander Bradley McGilvary, the work assured De­wey “a place among the world’s great logicians.”William Gruen thought “No treatise on logic ever written has had as direct and vital an impact on social life as Dewey’s will have.”

This volume includes all Dewey's writings for 1938 except for Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (Volume 12 of The Later Works), as well as his 1939 Freedom and Culture, Theory of Valuation, and two items from Intelligence in the Modern World. Freedom and Culture presents, as Steven M. Cahn points out, the essence of his philosophical position: a commitment to a free society, critical intelligence, and the education required for their advance.

This volume republishes forty-four essays, reviews, and miscellaneous pieces from 1939, 1940, and 1941.In his Introduction, R. W. Sleeper characterizes the contents of this volume as “vintage Dewey. Ranging widely over problems of theory and practice, they reveal him commencing his ninth decade at the peak of his intellectual powers.”“Nature in Experience,” Dewey’s reply to Morris R. Cohen and William Ernest Hocking, “is a model of clarity and responsiveness,” writes Sleeper, “perhaps his clearest statement of why it is that metaphysics does not play the fundamental role for him that it had regularly played for his predecessors.”