Pamental, Matthew. Review of Molly Cochran, ed. CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO DEWEY. NDPR (March 2011).

Cochran, Molly, ed.  Cambridge Companion to Dewey.  Cambridge: CUP, 2010.

John Dewey (1859-1952) was America's leading public philosopher for well over half a century. His collected writings take up thirty seven volumes, with several additional volumes devoted to lecture notes provided by his students, and three volumes of correspondence, all published by Southern Illinois University Press. Thus it is inevitable that any collection of writings about Dewey and his thought will be incomplete. In particular, while Dewey's engagement as a public philosopher is mentioned both in Robert Westbrook's intellectual biography and Richard Bernstein's and Molly Cochran's discussions of Dewey's vision of democracy, his public philosophy receives no sustained attention comparable to his epistemology and logic, for example. Given Dewey's commitment to the ideal of philosophy as a tool for resolving the "problems of men," this is a significant lacuna. That said, however, the collection of essays in Cochran's The Cambridge Companion to Dewey ranges impressively -- both widely and deeply -- over Dewey's corpus, including all of Dewey's major works, his intellectual development, and his significance as a philosopher of democracy. In what follows, I will lay out the themes discussed in each section and make a few critical remarks along the way.

Included in the present volume are an introduction by the editor and Westbrook's intellectual biography, followed by thirteen chapters. Cochran helpfully divides these chapters into five sections. The first section consists of chapters by Ruth Anna Putnam, Richard M. Gale, Isaac Levi, and J. E. Tiles, and investigates Dewey's naturalism and logic of inquiry. The second section consists of two essays, by Mark Johnson and Matthias Jung, on Dewey's philosophy of mind and action. In the third section, Jennifer Welchman and James Bohman treat Dewey's ethics, moral and social philosophy. The fourth section is a bit of a catch-all, including essays by Sami Pihlström on Dewey's naturalistic philosophy of religion, Richard Eldridge on Dewey's aesthetics, and Nel Noddings on Dewey's philosophy of education. The final section consists of essays by Bernstein and Cochran on Dewey's conception of democracy and its application to international affairs. . . .

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Eldridge, Michael. Review of David L. Hildebrand, JOHN DEWEY. NDPR (July 2010).

Hildebrand, David L. John Dewey: a Beginner's Guide. Oxford: Oneworld, 2008.

The most recent addition to the genre that includes books by Sidney Hook (1939), Richard Bernstein (1966), James Campbell (1995), and Raymond Boisvert (1998), Hildebrand's introduction is a knowledgeable and clearly written exposition of John Dewey's thought for those with little or no philosophical preparation and/or no background in Dewey.

Thus it is of interest to academic philosophers for its value as a course text but also to others, philosophers or not, who are just coming to Dewey. Either way it is a reliable -- and readable -- guide to Dewey's thought, making use of the immense amount of recent Dewey scholarship. One should, however, not expect a critical assessment, despite the blurb on the back cover that says "This concise and critical look at Dewey's work". The author explicitly says in the preface that his primary purpose was "to give the most detail of the widest range of Dewey's views" (xi). It is a well-informed work of exposition with only occasional challenges to others' interpretations. . . .

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Tiles, J. E. Review of Richard Gale, JOHN DEWEY'S QUEST FOR UNITY. NDPR (May 2010).

Gale, Richard. John Dewey's Quest for Unity: the Journey of a Promethean Mystic. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2010. Richard Gale professes to favor "determining the greatness of a philosopher . . . by the morally beneficial effects that the philosopher's writings have on the reader. By this criterion," he reckons, "John Dewey must be the greatest philosopher of all time" (9). However, Gale urges, Dewey's "grand normative vision" -- a "pyramid" the apex of which is growth, and the supporting strata of which are inquiry, democracy, freedom, communication and education -- needs to be freed from "his misbegotten attempt to root it in his metaphysics" (16). This metaphysics in its turn needs to be rescued from the implications of Dewey's "metaphilosophical theory about the nature of philosophy," which requires that a metaphysical theory be verifiable and contribute to meliorating the problems of men. This requirement "would rule out Dewey's metaphysics, along with most of his philosophy, as illegitimate" (ibid.). . . . Read the whole review here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=19787.

Depew, David. Review of Larry Hickman, et al., eds. JOHN DEWEY BETWEEN PRAGMATISM AND CONSTRUCTIVISM. NDPR (August 2009).

Hickman, Larry A., Stefan Neubert, and Kersten Reich, eds. John Dewey Between Pragmatism and Constructivism. New York: Fordham UP, 2009. The book begins with a lapidary life of Dewey by Hickman and a review of literature by and about him by Neubert. Stikkers, who specializes in "connections between pragmatism and Continental thought", then offers an account of the initial reception of pragmatism in German-speaking countries (270). It started with the Austrian Wilhelm Jerusalem's uptake of Peirce's appeal to community agreement in knowledge claims. Jerusalem thought he saw the relevance of Peirce's idea to turn-of-the-twentieth-century German-language discussions of the sociology of knowledge. He went on to correspond with William James, translate his Pragmatism, and, in published articles, to identify correctly early pragmatism's core belief that "metaphysical concepts express the world reality of a live creature who orients itself to its environment" (79). For Jerusalem and other German-speaking philosophers the American pragmatists were Lebensphilosophen. Relying almost entirely on Jerusalem's interpretations and translations, Max Scheler approved of the American pragmatists' stress on life as the locus of meaning, value, and knowledge, but seems to have viewed their empiricism as ruling out the intuitionism that his own Lebensphilosophie required. Things went downhill from there. Heidegger's critique of Lebensphilosophie rejected naturalism of every sort and a fortiori the American sort. Soon James's clever metaphor about the meaning of a term being its cash value was being taken at face value. Pre-World War II German philosophers, including Heidegger, took pragmatism to be a defense of capitalist ideology on a par with the Communists' blather about dialectical materialism. German interest in American pragmatism has had to contend with this image ever since. If this isn't much of an issue in the present volume it is because the Cologne school has relied on Hans Joas's more or less successful efforts to correct this misunderstanding, as Stikker reports (76). Nonetheless, the old rift between German philosophy and American naturalism is worth bearing in mind because it resurfaces in this volume as the central bone of contention between these latter day American and German Deweyans. . . . Read the review here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=17007.

Fairfield, Paul. Review of Melvin L. Rogers' THE UNDISCOVERED DEWEY. NDPR (August 2009).

Rogers, Melvin L. The Undiscovered Dewey: Religion, Morality, and the Ethos of Democracy. New York: Columbia UP, 2008. This book promises a great deal. As the title indicates, it is nothing short of a previously "undiscovered Dewey" -- undiscovered, that is, by the existing scholarship -- that Melvin Rogers wishes to present, a claim that he realizes "may seem a bit cavalier" to some readers (ix). It indeed seems that way to this reader, given the number of important studies of Dewey that have appeared in recent years, many of which Rogers mentions and from which he wishes to distinguish his account. Dewey scholarship has come rather a long way in the last couple of decades, as Rogers well realizes, yet his preface announces, "This book offers a new perspective on the foundations of John Dewey's philosophy and so tilts our understanding of his religious, ethical, and political reflections in a novel direction" (ix). One might question just how new that perspective is. For my part, I did not come away from this text with a very different understanding of Dewey than before. Notwithstanding, Rogers has given us a very competent and often subtle reading of Dewey that well deserves the attention of Dewey scholars. What is the undiscovered Dewey? It is, Rogers argues, a reading of Dewey that makes his indebtedness to Darwinian biology more explicit than hitherto and identifies some implications of that influence. . . . Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=16965.

Cfp: "John Dewey's 150th Birthday Celebration," Center for Inquiry, Amherst, October 22-24, 2009.

An International Conference on Dewey's Impact on America and the World. Papers should address some aspect of Dewey's work and its influence. Invited speakers include: Nadine Strossen, current President of the American Civil Liberties Union; Philip Kitcher, John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University; Larry Hickman, Director of the Center for Dewey Studies; Ron Giere, Professor Emeritus, University of Minnesota. Reading time should be between 20-25 minutes. Please only submit papers for blind review. Papers should be sent via email in .pdf or .doc format. Please submit papers to: jshook@centerforinquiry.net Submitted papers due: September 1st, 2009.

Margolis, Eric. "Teaching John Dewey." EDUCATION REVIEW November 29, 2007.

• Johnston, James Scott. Inquiry and Education: John Dewey and the Quest for Democracy. Albany: SUNY Press, 2006.
• Martin, Jay. The Education of John Dewey: a Biography. New York: Columbia UP, 2002.
• Simpson, Douglas J. John Dewey. New York: Peter Lang, 2006.

John Dewey was born two years before the Civil War and lived to see the Cold War. As a psychologist he is credited with developing the functionalist school; he helped found “pragmatism,” which is widely considered the first “American” school of philosophy; and of course, he had an enormous impact on education research and pedagogical practice that ran from the Laboratory School he created at the University of Chicago in 1896 through his long tenure at Teachers College at Columbia University. He was also a prolific social critic of the type we currently call “public intellectuals.” His written works have been collected in 37 volumes. Only teaching Hegel, Marx, and Sartre offer as daunting a challenge. I had used Democracy and Education (1916), which, while a definitive text, did not work well in isolation. Students simply did not have enough context to place the work within the history of social thought. In seeking an answer to how to teach Dewey, I read three recent books on him that could not be more different from one another. Jay Martin’s work, probably the definitive biography, discusses Dewey’s life and intellectual development against a broad background of world history. Simpson’s text is an accessible primer on Dewey, perhaps intended to introduce the man and his basic work to students in teacher preparation programs. Johnston’s book is an elaborate defense of Dewey’s philosophy (particularly his epistemology) against all critics foreign and domestic. There is so little overlap that I will discuss the volumes separately. . . . Read the whole review here: http://edrev.asu.edu/essays/v10n14.pdf.

Senchuk, Dennis. "Review of Larry Hickman's PRAGMATISM AS POST-POSTMODERNISM." NDPR (July 2008).

Hickman, Larry A. Pragmatism as Post-Postmodernism: Lessons from John Dewey. New York: Fordham UP, 2007. This book, a collection of essays, suggests that Dewey has anticipated solutions to some major problems that plague postmodernism -- a loosely confederated movement which the author characterizes (with help from other scholars) as a rejection of epistemological foundationalism, objectivity, and metaphysical realism, as an affirmation of self-reflexiveness and relativism, and as an attempt to have meaning without transcendent value and action without absolute truth. The essays range over po-mo views on global citizenship, Rorty's neo-pragmatism, divers conceptions of technology, environmental concerns, and some straightforwardly expository discussions of Dewey's philosophy. At book's end, Hickman concludes that Dewey's (and Peirce's) views on habit afford post-po-mo solutions to po-mo problems about objectivity and the interminability of "self-referentiality, redescription, and reinterpretation" (p. 254). . . . Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=13646.