Synopses & Reviews
Larry A. Hickman presents John Dewey as very much at home in the busy mix of contemporary philosophy-as a thinker whose work now, more than fifty years after his death, still furnishes fresh insights into cutting-edge philosophical debates. Hickman argues that it is precisely the rich, pluralistic mix of contemporary philosophical discourse, with its competing research programs in French-inspired postmodernism, phenomenology, Critical Theory, Heidegger studies, analytic philosophy, and neopragmatism-all busily engaging, challenging, and informing one another-that invites renewed examination of Dewey's central ideas. Hickman offers a Dewey who both anticipated some of the central insights of French-inspired postmodernism, and, if he were alive today, would certainly be one of its most committed critics; a Dewey who foresaw some of the most trenchant problems associated with fostering global citizenship; and a Dewey whose core ideas are often at odds with those of some of his most ardent neopragmatist interpreters. In the trio of essays that launch this book, Dewey is an observer and critic of some of the central features of French-inspired postmodernism and its American cousin, neopragmatism. In the next four, Dewey enters into dialogue with contemporary critics of technology, including Jürgen Habermas, Andrew Feenberg, and Albert Borgmann. The next two essays establish Dewey as an environmental philosopher of the first rank-a worthy conversation partner for Holmes Ralston III, Baird Callicott, Bryan G. Norton, and Aldo Leopold. The concluding essays provide novel interpretations of Dewey's views of religious belief, the psychology of habit, philosophical anthropology, and what he termed "the epistemology industry." In all this, Hickman presents a version of classical Pragmatism that is supremely equipped to pay its own way in the complex world where philosophical inquiry does its business.
Synopsis
This collection of essays examines the issue of norms and social practices both in epistemology and in moral and social philosophy. The contributors examine the issue across an unprecedented range of issues, including epistemology (realism, perception, testimony), logic, education, foundations of morality, philosophy of law, the pragmatic account of norms and their justification, and the pragmatic character of reason itself.
About the Author
Larry A. Hickman is director of the Center for Dewey Studies and Professor of Philosophy at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. He is the author of Modern Theories of Higher Level Predicates, John Dewey's Pragmatic Technology, and Philosophical Tools for Technological Culture. he is also the editor of Technology as a Human Affair, Reading Dewey, The Essential Dewey (with Thomas Alexander), the electronic edition of The Collected Works of John Dewey, 1882-1953, and the three volumes of The Correspondence of John Dewey, 1871-1952.