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All too often, we think of our minds and bodies separately. The reality couldn’t be more different: the fundamental fact about our mind is that it is embodied. We have a deep visceral, emotional, and qualitative relationship to the world—and any scientifically and philosophically satisfactory view of the mind must take into account the ways that cognition, meaning, language, action, and values are grounded in and shaped by that embodiment.

This book gathers the best of philosopher Mark Johnson’s essays addressing questions of our embodiment as they deal with aesthetics—which, he argues, we need to rethink so that it takes into account the central role of body-based meaning. Viewed that way, the arts can give us profound insights into the processes of meaning making that underlie our conceptual systems and cultural practices. Johnson shows how our embodiment shapes our philosophy, science, morality, and art; what emerges is a view of humans as aesthetic, meaning-making creatures who draw on their deepest physical processes to make sense of the world around them.

Taking Emerson as his starting point, Cornel West’s basic task in this ambitious enterprise is to chart the emergence, development, decline, and recent resurgence of American pragmatism. John Dewey is the central figure in West’s pantheon of pragmatists, but he treats as well such varied mid-century representatives of the tradition as Sidney Hook, C. Wright Mills, W. E. B. Du Bois, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Lionel Trilling. West’s "genealogy" is, ultimately, a very personal work, for it is imbued throughout with the author’s conviction that a thorough reexamination of American pragmatism may help inspire and instruct contemporary efforts to remake and reform American society and culture.

"West . . . may well be the pre-eminent African American intellectual of our generation."—The Nation

"The American Evasion of Philosophy is a highly intelligent and provocative book. Cornel West gives us illuminating readings of the political thought of Emerson and James; provides a penetrating critical assessment of Dewey, his central figure; and offers a brilliant interpretation—appreciative yet far from uncritical—of the contemporary philosopher and neo-pragmatist Richard Rorty. . . . What shines through, throughout the work, is West's firm commitment to a radical vision of a philosophic discourse as inextricably linked to cultural criticism and political engagement."—Paul S. Boyer, professor emeritus of history, University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Wisconsin Project on American Writers

Frank Lentricchia, General Editor

George Herbert Mead, one of America’s most important and influential philosophers, a founder of pragmatism, social psychology, and symbolic interactionism, was also a keen observer of American culture and early modernism. In the period from the 1870s to 1895, Henry Northrup Castle maintained a correspondence with family members and with Mead—his best friend at Oberlin College and brother-in-law—that reveals many of the intellectual, economic, and cultural forces that shaped American thought in that complex era. Close friends of John Dewey, Jane Addams, and other leading Chicago Progressives, the author of these often intimate letters comments frankly on pivotal events affecting higher education, developments at Oberlin College, Hawaii (where the Castles lived), progressivism, and the general angst that many young intellectuals were experiencing in early modern America.

The letters, drawn from the Mead-Castle collection at the University of Chicago, were collected and edited by Mead after the tragic death of Henry Castle in a shipping accident in the North Sea. Working with his wife Helen Castle (one of Henry’s sisters), he privately published fifty copies of the letters to record an important relationship and as an intellectual history of two progressive thinkers at the end of the nineteenth century. American historians, such as Robert Crunden and Gary Cook, have noted the importance of the letters to historians of the late nineteenth century.

The letters are made available here using the basic Mead text of 1902. Additional insights into the connection between Mead, John Dewey, Henry and Harriet Castle, and Hawaii’s progressive kindergarten system are provided by the foundation’s executive director Alfred L. Castle. Marvin Krislov, president of Oberlin College, has added additional comments on the importance of the letters to understanding the intellectual relationship that flourished at Oberlin College.

Published with the support of the Samuel N. and Mary Castle Foundation.

With the exception of Experience and Nature, (Volume 1 of the Later Works), this volume contains all of Dewey’s writ­ings for 1925 and 1926, as well as his 1927 book, The Public and Its Problems. A Modern Language Association’s Com­mittee on Scholarly Editions textual edi­tion.

The first essay in this volume, “The Development of American Pragmatism,” is perhaps Dewey’s best-known article of these years, emphasizing the uniquely American origins of his own philosophi­cal innovations. Other essays focus on Dewey’s continuing investigation of the “nature of intelligent conduct,” as, for example, his debate with David Wight Prall on the underpinnings of value, his study of sense-perception, and his support for outlawing of war. Also appearing here are Dewey’s final articles on the culture of the developing world, written for the New Republic after his travels to China, Turkey, and Mexico.

All of Dewey’s writings for 1927 and 1928 with the exception of The Public and Its Problems, which appears in Volume 2, A Modern Language Associ­ation’s Committee on Scholarly Editions textual edition.

These essays are, as Sidorsky says in his Introduction, “framed, in great mea­sure, by those two poles of his philo­sophical interest: looking backward, in a sense, to the defense of naturalistic metaphysics and moving forward to the justification and to the implications for practice of an empirical theory.”

Dewey’s five essays on education are evidence of his continued interest in that field. Among them is the frequently quoted “Why I Am a Member of the Teachers Union,” which is still used by the American Federation of Teachers in its recruiting efforts. Other highlights of this volume include the famous ex­change between George Santayana and Dewey on Experience and Nature; an im­passioned condemnation of the mis­carriage of justice Dewey saw in the Sacco-Vanzetti trial; and a series of six articles on the Soviet Union based on Dewey’s trip to that country in 1928.

This volume provides an authoritative edition of Dewey’s The Quest for Cer­tainty: A Study of the Relation Between Knowledge and Action. The book is made up of the Gifford Lectures deliv­ered April–May 1929 at the University of Edinburgh. Writing to Sidney Hook, Dewey described this work as “a criti­cism of philosophy as attempting to at­tain theoretical certainty.” In the Philo­sophical Review Max C. Otto later elaborated: “Mr. Dewey wanted, so far as lay in his power, to crumble into dust, once and for all, ‘the chief fortress of the classic philosophical tradition.”

Combining political psychology with his own insights into Chinese culture, Pye addresses perplexing but profoundly important questions about Chinese political behavior and makes fundamental contributions both to our understanding of the political culture of China and to the theory of political culture itself.

A collection of all of Dewey’s writings for 1920 with the excep­tion of Letters from China and Japan. A Modern Language Association Committee on Scholarly Editions textual edition.

The nineteen items collected here, including his major work, Reconstruction in Philosophy, evolved in the main from Dewey’s travel, touring, lecturing, and teaching in Japan and China. Ralph Ross notes in his Introduction to this volume that Recon­struction in Philosophy is “a radical book . . . a pugnacious book by a gentle man.” It is in this book that Dewey summarizes his version of pragmatism, then called Instrumentalism. For Dew­ey, the pragmatist, it was people acting on the strength of in­telligence modeled on science who could find true ideas, ones “we can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and verify.” Optimism pervades Reconstruction of Philosophy; in keeping with Dewey’s world of open possibilities, the book recognizes that the obser­vation and thought of human striving can make the difference between despair and affirmation of life.

The seven essays on Chinese politics and social tradition that Dewey sent back from the Orient exhibit both the liveliness and the sensitive power of an insightful mind. Set against a backdrop of Japanese hegemony in China, the last days of Manchu imperi­alism, Europe’s carving of China into concessions, and China’s subsequent refusal to accept the terms of the Treaty of Ver­sailles, the essays were startlingly relevant in this time of Eastern turbulence and change.

At the National University of Peking, Dewey delivered a se­ries of lectures on “Three Contemporary Philosophers: William James, Henri Bergson, and Bertrand Russell.” The James and Bergson lectures are published for the first time in this volume. Dewey chose these philosophers, according to Ralph Ross, be­cause he was trying to show “his oriental audience what he believed and hoped about man and society and was talking about those fellow philosophers who shared the same beliefs and hopes.”

Volume 13 in The Middle Works of John Dewey, 1899–1924, series brings together Dewey’s writings for 1921 and 1922,with the exception of Human Nature and Conduct. A Modern Language Association Committee on Scholarly Editions textual edition.

Ralph Ross notes in his Introduction that the 53 items constituting this volume “defend Dewey’s beliefs at 63 and look forward to what he was yet to write.” The essays to which Dewey responded, as well as abstracts of articles that have been published only in Japanese, appear as appendixes.

The article “Valuation and Experimental Knowledge” treats a favorite Dewey theme: “Most of the important crises of life are cases where tastes are the only things worth dis­cussing, and where, if the life of reason is to exist and prevail, judgment must be per­formed with regard for its logical implica­tions.” The philosophical articles stress Dewey’s view that, as Ross remarks, “philosophies are not timeless and universal, but speak to times, places and conditions.”

Volume 14 of The Middle Works of John Dewey, 1899–1924, series provides an authoritative edition of Dewey’s Human Nature and Conduct. A Modern Language Association Committee on Scholarly Editions textual edition.

Human Nature and Conduct evolved from the West Memorial Foundation lectures at Stanford University. The lectures were ex­tensively rewritten and expanded into one of Dewey’s best-known works. As Murray G. Murphey says in his Introduction, “It was a work in which Dewey sought to make ex­plicit the social character of his psychology and philosophy—something which had long been evident but never so clearly spelled out.”

Subtitled “An Introduction to Social Psy­chology,” Human Nature and Conduct sets forth Dewey’s view that habits are social functions, and that social phenomena, such as habit and custom and scientific methods of inquiry are moral and natural. Dewey con­cludes, “Within the flickering inconsequen­tial acts of separate selves dwells a sense of the whole which claims and dignifies them. In its presence we put off mortality and live in the universal.”

William James, remarking in 1909 on the differences among the three leading spokesmen for pragmatism—himself, F. C. S. Schiller, and John Dewey—said that Schiller’s views were essential­ly “psychological,” his own, “epistemo­logical,” whereas Dewey’s “panorama is the widest of the three.”

The two main subjects of Dewey’s essays at this time are also two of the most fundamental and persistent philo­sophical questions: the nature of knowl­edge and the meaning of truth. Dewey’s distinctive analysis is concentrated chiefly in seven essays, in a long, sig­nificant, and previously almost un­known work entitled “The Problem of Truth,” and in his book How We Think. As a whole, the 1910–11 writings il­lustrate especially well that which the Thayers identify in their Introduction as Dewey’s “deepening concentration on questions of logic and epistemology as contrasted with the more pronounced psychological and pedagogical treat­ment in earlier writings.”

During the three years embraced by Volume 7, Dewey published twenty articles and reviews, one of the articles of monograph-length, “The Psychology of Social Behavior,” one small book, Interest and Effort in Education, and sev­enty encyclopedia articles.

A salient and arresting feature of the essays is the continuing polemic be­tween Dewey and some of his critics. Ralph Ross, whose perceptive Introduc­tion to the volume provides a broad per­spective of the various philosophical controversies in which Dewey was en­gaged, comments that “when Dewey was pitting himself against important adversaries, his talents as a critic were fully evident.”

Hailed as "the most important overall reassessment of Dewey in several decades" (Sidney Ratner, Journal of Speculative Philosophy), The Necessity of Pragmatism investigates the most difficult and neglected aspects of Dewey's thought, his metaphysics and logic. R. W. Sleeper argues for a fundamental unity in Dewey's work, a unity that rests on his philosophy of language, and clarifies Dewey's conception of pragmatism as an action-based philosophy with the power to effect social change through criticism and inquiry.
 
Identifying Dewey's differences with his pragmatist forerunners, Charles Sanders Peirce and William James, Sleeper elucidates Dewey's reshaping of pragmatism and the radical significance of his philosophy of culture. In this first paperback edition, a new introduction by Tom Burke establishes the ongoing importance of Sleeper's analysis of the integrity of Dewey's work and its implications for mathematics, aesthetics, and the cognitive sciences.
 

The most important of John Dewey's landmark writings on philosophy in a single volume

John J. McDermott's anthology, The Philosophy of John Dewey, provides the best general selection available of the writings of America's most distinguished philosopher and social critic. This comprehensive collection, ideal for use in the classroom and indispensable for anyone interested in the wide scope of Dewey's thought and works, affords great insight into his role in the history of ideas and the basic integrity of his philosophy.

This edition combines in one book the two volumes previously published separately. Volume 1, "The Structure of Experience," contains essays on metaphysics, the logic of inquiry, the problem of knowledge, and value theory. In volume 2, "The Lived Experience," Dewey's writings on pedagogy, ethics, the aesthetics of the "live creature," politics, and the philosophy of culture are presented. McDermott has prefaced each essay with a helpful explanatory note and has written an excellent general introduction to the anthology.

The Poetics of Transition examines the connection between American pragmatism and literary modernism by focusing on the concept of transition as a theme common to both movements. Jonathan Levin begins with the Emersonian notion that transition—the movement from one state or condition to another or, alternately, the figural enactment of that movement—is infused with power. He then offers a revisionary reading of the pragmatists’ view of the permeability of subjective and objective realms and of how American literary modernists stage this permeability in the language and form of their writing.
Levin draws on the pragmatist and neopragmatist writings of William James, John Dewey, George Santayana, Richard Rorty, and Cornel West to illuminate the work of modernist literature. In turn, he illuminates the poetic imperatives of pragmatism by tracing the ways in which Henry James, Gertrude Stein, and Wallace Stevens capture the moment of transition—a paradoxical moment that, once it is represented in language or art, requires its own perpetual overcoming. Throughout, he explores how modernist writers, who are masters at recording such “illegible” moments of transition in their poetry and prose, significantly contribute to an expanded understanding of pragmatism and its underlying aesthetics. By linking Emerson with the progressive philosophy of turn-of-the-century pragmatism and the experimentation of American literary modernism, Levin offers new insight into Emerson’s lasting influence on later American philosophers, novelists, and poets.
The Poetics of Transition will interest scholars and students in the fields of literary criticism, neopragmatism, literary modernism, and American literature.

The Pragmatic Mind is a study of the pragmatism of Emerson, James, and Peirce and its overlooked relevance for the neopragmatism of thinkers like Richard Rorty, Stanley Cavell, Stanley Fish, and Cornel West. Arguing that the "original" pragmatists are too-often cited casually and imprecisely as mere precursors to this contemporary group of American intellectuals, Mark Bauerlein explores the explicit consequences of the earlier group’s work for current debates among and around the neopragmatists.
Bauerlein extracts from Emerson, James, and Peirce an intellectual focus that can be used to advance the broad social and academic reforms that the new pragmatists hail. He claims that, in an effort to repudiate the phony universalism of much contemporary theory, the new generation of theorists has ignored the fact that its visions of pragmatic action are grounded in this "old" school, not just in a way of doing things but also in a way of thinking about things. In other words, despite its inclination to regard psychological questions as irrelevant, Bauerlein shows that the pragmatic method demands a pragmatic mind—that is, a concept of cognition, judgment, habit, and belief. He shows that, in fact, such a concept of mind does exist, in the work of the "old" pragmatists.

For much of our century, pragmatism has enjoyed a charmed life, holding the dominant point of view in American politics, law, education, and social thought in general. After suffering a brief eclipse in the post-World War II period, pragmatism has experienced a revival, especially in literary theory and such areas as poststructuralism and deconstruction. In this critique of pragmatism and neopragmatism, one of our leading intellectual historians traces the attempts of thinkers from William James to Richard Rorty to find a response to the crisis of modernism. John Patrick Diggins analyzes the limitations of pragmatism from a historical perspective and dares to ask whether America's one original contribution to the world of philosophy has actually fulfilled its promise.

"Diggins, an eminent historian of American intellectual life, has written a timely and impressive book charting the rich history of American pragmatism and placing William James, Charles Peirce, John Dewey, George Herbert Mead, Sidney Hook, and Richard Rorty in their times and in the light of contemporary concerns. The book also draws on an alternative set of American thinkers to explore the blind spots in the pragmatic temper."—William Connolly, New York Times Book Review

"An extraordinarily ambitious work of both analysis and synthesis. . . . Diggins's book is rewarding in its thoughtfulness and its nuanced presentation of ideas."—Daniel J. Silver, Commentary

"Diggins's superbly informed book comprises a comprehensive history of American pragmatic thought. . . . It contains expert descriptions of James, John Dewey and Charles Sanders Peirce, the first generation of American pragmatists. . . . Diggins is just as good on the revival of pragmatism that's taken place over the last 20 years in America. . . . [A] richly intelligent book."—Mark Edmundson, Washington Post Book World

Although long considered the most distinctive American contribution to philosophy, pragmatism—with its problem-solving emphasis and its contingent view of truth—lost popularity in mid-century after the advent of World War II, the horror of the Holocaust, and the dawning of the Cold War. Since the 1960s, however, pragmatism in many guises has again gained prominence, finding congenial places to flourish within growing intellectual movements. This volume of new essays brings together leading philosophers, historians, legal scholars, social thinkers, and literary critics to examine the far-reaching effects of this revival.
As the twenty-five intellectuals who take part in this discussion show, pragmatism has become a complex terrain on which a rich variety of contemporary debates have been played out. Contributors such as Richard Rorty, Stanley Cavell, Nancy Fraser, Robert Westbrook, Hilary Putnam, and Morris Dickstein trace pragmatism’s cultural and intellectual evolution, consider its connection to democracy, and discuss its complex relationship to the work of Emerson, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein. They show the influence of pragmatism on black intellectuals such as W. E. B. Du Bois, explore its view of poetic language, and debate its effects on social science, history, and jurisprudence. Also including essays by critics of the revival such as Alan Wolfe and John Patrick Diggins, the volume concludes with a response to the whole collection from Stanley Fish.

Including an extensive bibliography, this interdisciplinary work provides an in-depth and broadly gauged introduction to pragmatism, one that will be crucial for understanding the shape of the transformations taking place in the American social and philosophical scene at the end of the twentieth century.

Contributors. Richard Bernstein, David Bromwich, Ray Carney, Stanley Cavell, Morris Dickstein, John Patrick Diggins, Stanley Fish, Nancy Fraser, Thomas C. Grey, Giles Gunn, Hans Joas, James T. Kloppenberg, David Luban, Louis Menand, Sidney Morgenbesser, Richard Poirier, Richard A. Posner, Ross Posnock, Hilary Putnam, Ruth Anna Putnam, Richard Rorty, Michel Rosenfeld, Richard H. Weisberg, Robert B. Westbrook, Alan Wolfe

 

George Herbert Mead is widely considered one of the most influential American philosophers of the twentieth century, and his work remains vibrant and relevant to many areas of scholarly inquiry today. The Timeliness of George Herbert Mead brings together a range of scholars who provide detailed analyses of Mead’s importance to innovative fields of scholarship, including cognitive science, environmental studies, democratic epistemology, and social ethics, non-teleological historiography, and the history of the natural and social sciences.

Edited by well-respected Mead scholars Hans Joas and Daniel R. Huebner, the volume as a whole makes a coherent statement that places Mead in dialogue with current research, pushing these domains of scholarship forward while also revitalizing the growing literature on an author who has an ongoing and major influence on sociology, psychology, and philosophy.

In Thinking Across the American Grain Giles Gunn makes a
major contribution to the current revival of pragmatism in
America by showing how it provides the most critically
resilient and constructive response to the intellectual
challenges of postmodernism.

Gunn reclaims and refurbishes elements of the pragmatic
tradition that either have been lost or have undergone
important changes and shows how newer critical approaches
have strong roots in the pragmatic tradition. For Gunn,
pragmatism is no longer concerned solely with the nature of
knowledge and the meaning of truth. Because of its
insistence on critical self-awareness, its opposition to
closed systems of thought, and its concern with the ethical,
political, and practical contexts of ideas, pragmatism offers
a blueprint for performing intellectual work in a world
without absolutes. The world Gunn's pragmatism recognizes is
one of multiple truths, unstable interpretations, and
competing interests.

After critically reexamining the nature and scope of the
pragmatic legacy, Gunn explores the way pragmatism
successfully responds to conceptual and methodological
controversies, from the rebirth of ideology, the spread of
interdisciplinarity, and the development of the new
historicism, to the revolt against theory, the erosion of
public discourse, and the problematics of American civil
religion. Drawing throughout on the work of William James,
Henry James, Sr., John Dewey, Kenneth Burke, W. E. B. Du
Bois, Richard Poirier, Stanley Cavell, Clifford Geertz, Frank
Lentricchia, Richard Rorty, Richard J. Bernstein, and
others, Gunn shows that pragmatism, because it offers a way
of thinking across the categories of modern intellectual
specializations, is located at the intersection of these
critical, and often competitive, discourses. The postmodern
challenge for the pragmatist thinker is not only how to
render these different discourses conversible with one
another, but how to turn the salient insights of each into
elements of a new democratic and critical public culture, one
able to counter the twin threats of ideology and solipsism.

Giles Gunn is one of our most acclaimed contemporary critics,
and this broad and ambitious book is certain to become one of
the central works in the current revival of critical
pragmatism and cultural studies.

Thinking through Kierkegaard is a critical evaluation of Søren Kierkegaard's vision of the normatively human, of who we are and might aspire to become, and of what Mehl calls our existential identity. Through a pragmatist examination of three of Kierkegaard's key pseudonymous "voices" (Judge William, Climacus, and Anti-Climacus), Peter J. Mehl argues that Kierkegaard's path is not the only end of our search, but instead leads us to affirm a plurality of paths toward a fulfilling existential identity.   
 
Contrary to Kierkegaard's ideal of moral personhood and orthodox Christian identity, Mehl aims to acknowledge the possibility of pluralism in existential identities. By demanding sensitivity to the deep ways social and cultural context influences human perception, interpretation and self?representation, Mehl argues that Kierkegaard is not simply discovering but also participating in a cultural construction of the human being. 
Drawing on accounts of what it is to be a person by prominent philosophers outside of Kierkegaard scholarship, including Charles Taylor, Owen Flanagan, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Thomas Nagel, Mehl also works to bridge the analytic and continental traditions and reestablishes Kierkegaard as a rich resource for situating moral and spiritual identity. This reexamination of Kierkegaard is recommended for anyone interested in what it means to be a person.
 

In Toward a Pragmatist Sociology, Robert Dunn explores the relationship between the ideas of philosopher and educator John Dewey and those of sociologist C. Wright Mills in order to provide a philosophical and theoretical foundation for the development of a critical and public sociology. Dunn recovers an intellectual and conceptual framework for transforming sociology into a more substantive, comprehensive, and socially useful discipline. 

Toward a Pragmatist Sociology argues that Dewey and Mills shared a common vision of a relevant, critical, public sociology dedicated to the solution of societal problems. Dunn investigates the past and present state of the discipline, critiquing its dominant tendencies, and offering historical examples of alternatives to conventional sociological approaches.  

By stressing the similar intellectual and moral visions of both men, Toward a Pragmatist Sociology provides an original treatment of two important American thinkers whose work offers a conception and model of a sociology with a sense of moral and political purpose and public relevance. It should liberate future sociologists and others to regard the discipline as not only a science but an intellectual, moral, and political enterprise.