John Dewey

John Dewey is dead, but for a lot of people around this university, and elsewhere, it is going to be difficult to stop saying "Dewey says ..." and start saying "Dewey said ..." For Dewey, who can easily be considered a great 19th century American (he was in his 50's when his colleague William James died), was also a great 20th century American. He retired from a life of teaching in the year when most of the College's seniors were born. Since then he published over 300 books and articles and took an active part in American political life. He has been so significant in recent affairs that it is hard to think of him as anything but very much present.

The man on the street tends to think of philosophers as sitting in murky chambers and meditating on the existence of the Absolute. John Dewey was a philosopher, but he was also a man on the street, and that accounts for what is most characteristic in his philosophy. It is a practical philosophy, a philosophy of action. Dewey inherited from James the idea that human knowing springs from the needs of human action and never functions as anything more than a guide for action. He expanded James' insight, so that many of his writings are attempts to explain the good, the true, and the beautiful, the traditional subjects of metaphysical system building, by pointing out the function those concepts fill in successful human activity. What was Pragmatism for James became Instrumentalism for Dewey. He formed an instrumental theory of knowledge, of ethics, of aesthetics, and even of social organization. As for those ideas that have no function in human action, which do not "make a difference," Dewey three them out. The existence of the Absolute and like matters were dismissed to the same dusty shelf where rests the problem of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. In the present world, claimed Dewey, we "cannot waste time on recondite speculations that have nothing to do with life."

Dewey lived up to his own dictates; when not writing his practical philosophy, he was practicing it. While teaching at Chicago and Columbia he started the system of progressive education that is now the basis, at least to some degree, of most American public education. About half of the articles written in his later years were on social problems of immediate interest. He worked actively to bring the government closer to the people. He lectured all over the country and around the world. Several times Dewey traveled abroad to investigate matters of international concern. He also pointed out the faulty methods used by the Lowell Committee in investigating the Sacco-Vanzetti trial, and at 78 he journeyed to Mexico to hear Leon Trosky's defense against the charges of the Russian purge trials.

John Dewey, philosopher and man on the street, is dead, and eventually those who speak of him will learn to use the past tense. It will, however, be difficult.