Difference between revisions of "John Dewey"

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Revision as of 02:01, May 8, 2009

John Dewey (1859-1952) was a major American philosopher and a leading liberal commentator on public affairs. A student of Charles Peirce he was a leading exponent of pragmatism and instrumentalism. Dewey was especially influential as the philosopher of "progressive education." He sought the reconstruction of society through education in which children discovered knowledge for themselves rather than repeat rote learning .

Dewey and religion

Dewey mostly avoided religious topics. Important exceptions include his 1892 address "Christianity and Democracy" given to the University of Michigan Students' Christian Association and his 1933 Terry Lectures at Yale University—the basis of his 1934 book A Common Faith. In A Common Faith Dewey attempted to somehow separate the experience of the "religious" from the supernatural aspects of "God" and "religion".[1] According to the scholar Steven C. Rockefeller, Dewey was an American Feuerbach and keenly interested in gutting what he saw as Christianity's "false" and "harmful" supernatural characteristics. Both Dewey and Feuerbach believed that they possessed a deep philosophical understanding of Christianity. Their shared belief rejected the Incarnation and all other biblical miracles.[2] Dewey viewed conservative Christianity (i.e., protestant fundamentalism and mainline Catholicism) as a dark, evil lair harboring political enemies if not intellectual rivals of his own philosophy and its emphasis on "intelligence" as well as "religious" feelings. This can be seen in part in a 1924 essay titled "Fundamentals" written for the New Republic[3]

“ Those traditionalists and literalists who have arrogated to themselves the title of fundamentalists recognize of course no mean between their dogmas and blank, dark, hopeless uncertainty and unsettlement. Until they have been reborn into the life of intelligence, they will not be aware that there are a steadily increasing number of persons who find security in methods of inquiry, of observation, experiment, of forming and following working hypotheses. ”

Dewey was surprised by the strong sway that neo-orthodox figures like Reinhold Niebuhr were coming to hold over the liberal academy—his 1934 A Common Faith was a reaction towards, what was to him and other religious/secular humanists, a still very unacceptable and even repulsive form of Christianity. For not only did Niebuhr never deny, but he sometimes upheld biblical supernaturalism.

References

  1. ↑ Reinhold Niebuhr and John Dewey: An American Odyssey, Daniel F. Rice, 1993, State University of New York Press, ISBN 0-7914-1345-4, pages 43-58 (these pages are Chapter 5 titled "A Common Faih")
  2. ↑ John Dewey: Religious Faith and Democratic Humanism, Steven C. Rockefeller, Columbia University Press, 1991, ISBN 0231073488, ISBN 9780231073486, 683 pages
    • Choice v. 29 (March 1992) p. 1094 Title: John Dewey
    "The way in which Rockefeller (Middlebury College) has presented the generally accepted two periods of Dewey's development (childhood through the Michigan years and from Chicago on) enables him to show the continuous role of religion in Dewey's life and thought as his thought evolved. What emerges is not only a broadened perspective on Dewey's naturalism, but the best intellectual biography of Dewey that we have. . . . The book fills a need that George Dykhuizen's The Life and Mind of John Dewey {BRD 1973} did not, despite all that work's value as a factual resource."
    • Library Journal v. 116 (March 1 1991) p. 91
    "Rockefeller shows how Dewey's evolving thought was closely related to the events and experiences in his life, and he interweaves both throughout the narrative, rather than considering them separately--a very effective strategy. . . . Aside from its value as a major study of Dewey's life and thought, this work has great value in showing how contemporary sensibilities which are persuaded by the natural-scientific worldview can, at the same time, maintain a religious orientation."
  3. ↑ John Dewey: Religious Faith and Democratic Humanism, Steven C. Rockefeller, p.442

Quotes

  • "education is all one with growing; it has no end beyond itself,"
  • "education consists primarily of transmission through communication,"
  • "education is a constant reorganizing or reconstructing of experience."

External Links

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