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Loading... John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalismby Alan Ryan
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When John Dewey died in 1952, he was memorialized as America's most famous philosopher, revered by liberal educators and deplored by conservatives, but universally acknowledged as his country's intellectual voice. Many things conspired to give Dewey an extraordinary intellectual eminence: He was immensely long-lived and immensely prolific; he died in his ninety-third year, and his intellectual productivity hardly slackened until his eighties. Professor Alan Ryan offers new insights into Dewey's many achievements, his character, and the era in which his scholarship had a remarkable impact. He investigates the question of what an American audience wanted from a public philosopher - from an intellectual figure whose credentials came from his academic standing as a philosopher, but whose audience was much wider than an academic one. Ran argues that Dewey's "religious" outlook illuminates his politics much more vividly than it does the politics of religion as ordinarily conceived. He examines how Dewey fit into the American radical tradition, how he was and was not like his transatlantic contemporaries, why he could for so long practice a form of philosophical inquiry that became unfashionable in England after 1914 at the latest. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)191Philosophy and Psychology Modern western philosophy American and Canadian philosophersLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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Alan Ryan’s work gives the reader a clear exposition of Dewey’s main ideas, their meaning and role in his intellectual development. The book is readable, the text clear and fluid. Alan Ryan examines Dewey’s works in context and establishes a dialogue between the american philosopher and his critics (of the past and contemporary). Dewey’s concept of education, experience and pragmatism are well exposed and criticized. The idea of democracy that emerges from Dewey’s reflections is linked with communitarianism and pluralism. One can easily get such things when they get rid of metaphysics. This is an excellent introduction to Dewey’s work. ( )