Combining biography and intellectual history, Steven Rockefeller offers an illuminating introduction to the philosophy of John Dewey, with special emphasis on the evolution of the religious faith and moral vision at the heart of his thought. This study pays particular attention to Dewey's radical democratic reconstruction of Christianity and his many contributions to the American tradition of spiritual democracy.
Read More
Combining biography and intellectual history, Steven Rockefeller offers an illuminating introduction to the philosophy of John Dewey, with special emphasis on the evolution of the religious faith and moral vision at the heart of his thought. This study pays particular attention to Dewey's radical democratic reconstruction of Christianity and his many contributions to the American tradition of spiritual democracy.
Read Less
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Fine. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. 683 p. In Stock. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Brand New, Perfect Condition, allow 4-14 business days for standard shipping. To Alaska, Hawaii, U.S. protectorate, P.O. box, and APO/FPO addresses allow 4-28 business days for Standard shipping. No expedited shipping. All orders placed with expedited shipping will be cancelled. Over 3, 000, 000 happy customers.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
New. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. 683 p. In Stock. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Brand New, Perfect Condition, allow 4-14 business days for standard shipping. To Alaska, Hawaii, U.S. protectorate, P.O. box, and APO/FPO addresses allow 4-28 business days for Standard shipping. No expedited shipping. All orders placed with expedited shipping will be cancelled. Over 3, 000, 000 happy customers.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Good. Connecting readers with great books since 1972! Used textbooks may not include companion materials such as access codes, etc. May have some wear or writing/highlighting. We ship orders daily and Customer Service is our top priority!
John Dewey (1859 -- 1952), together with William James and Charles Peirce, was a major figure in the American philosophy of pragmatism. Dewey was also a public intellectual and widely known over his life. His philosophy went into an eclipse upon his death but has been revisited and studied afresh from the latter third of the Twentieth Century and beyond. Dewey wrote prolifically, and his long life took him through momentous events including the Civil War, World War I, the Depression, World War II, the Holocaust, and the atomic bomb.
With the sheer volume of Dewey's writing, his sometimes impenetrable prose, and the development of his thought over time, it is difficult to get a handle on Dewey's thought. Steven Rockefeller's lengthy study "John Dewey: Religious Faith and Democratic Humanism" (1990) is a wonderful guide. Rockefeller has a mastery of Dewey's large output and has thought deeply about it. He guides the reader though Dewey's works, both familiar and unfamiliar. At least as importantly, he places Dewey's work in the context of his life, his interactions with others, with historical events, and with the history of philosophy and science over the course of Dewey's life. His study is a work of philosophical exposition, intellectual history, and biography.
Rockefeller has a focus in his study. Some readers tend to downplay the importance of religious thought to American pragmatism and to Dewey in particular. And many readers tend to downplay the broader, metaphysical aspects of Dewey's thought about the nature of what is real. Rockefeller's book stresses the importance of religious questions to Dewey and traces the continuities and changes in his approach to religion over his life. It also stresses the relationship of the "real" and the "ideal" in Dewey. Together with many readers, Rockefeller emphasizes the importance of Dewey in overcoming various philosophical dualisms, such as mind and body, ideal and real, immanence and transcendence. He sees Dewey as engaged in a lifelong effort to show the difficulties of these and other dualisms and to redirect philosophy around them. His efforts in this direction led him to a philosophy Rockefeller terms democratic humanism which Rockefeller develops in his study.
It is a lengthy, complex story and Rockefeller helps the reader along. His writing is as lucid as the subject matter permits. Each chapter has a careful introduction, a roadmap of where it is going, extensive discussion, and a conclusion. The chapters are linked together as Rockefeller provides a sense of the continuity and changes in Dewey's thought.
Broadly, Dewey's thought can be divided into two parts. In his early years, Dewey was much influenced by the Christianity in which he was raised and later by idealism, the American Transcendentalists and Hegel. Dewey gradually abandoned both Christianity and idealism in large part under the influence of Darwin and his theory of evolution, but other considerations were involved as well. So too, Rockefeller's book is divided into two parts, each with chapters. Part I, "The Democratic Reconstruction of Christianity" takes the reader through Dewey's overtly Christian and idealistic period, emphasizing Dewey's "quest for unity" and his broad and growing interests, particularly his interest in social activism.
Part II of the study, "The Way of Freedom and Community" explores Dewey's mature thought, including his views on education, and morals. It discusses the impact of WW I on Dewey as well as developments in his personal life during that time, including his writing of poetry, his brief relationship with the novelist Anzia Yezierska, his correspondence with the independent scholar Scudder Klyce and much more. The book develops into a study of Dewey's naturalism, and what that difficult term meant, and of the relationship between the ideal and the real and of the nature, as Dewey saw it, of religion. The goal was to develop a naturalistic philosophy, not dependent on a transcendent God or upon a realm of essences, that included a sense of religion and of meaning, was non-dualistic, promoted democracy and equality, and did not limit reality to the mechanisms of science. It was a sweepingly broad and ambitious philosophical project. Rockefeller develops Dewey's thought with a focus on his books "Experience and Nature", "Logic: A Theory of Inquiry" and "A Common Faith". In discussion Dewey's "A Common Faith", Rockefeller places Dewey's work in the context of religious thought of the day and shows Dewey in dialogue and disagreement with many other American thinkers of the time, particularly Reinhold Niebuhr but including many others as well. Rockefeller offers a careful consideration of Dewey and of Dewey's critics and offers a measured, positive view of his goals and his work.
This is a book for serious students of Dewey, American thought, and religion. I have been studying Dewey for some time and learned a great deal from Rockefeller. He helped me understand Dewey's naturalism, the continued influence of Christianity and idealism, and the broad systematic character of Dewey's thought.
