John Dewey and Continental Philosophy

by Fairfield, Paul; Johnston, James Scott (CON); Rockmore, Tom (CON); Good, James A. (CON)

• ISBN13: 9780809329878
• ISBN10: 0809329875
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-08-19
• Publisher: Southern Illinois Univ Pr

Summary

John Dewey and Continental Philosophyprovides a rich sampling of exchanges that could have taken place long ago between the traditions of American pragmatism and continental philosophy had the lines of communication been more open between Dewey and his European contemporaries. Since they were not, Paul Fairfield and thirteen of his colleagues seek to remedy the situation by bringing the philosophy of Dewey into conversation with several currents in continental philosophical thought, from post-Kantian idealism and the work of Friedrich Nietzsche to twentieth-century phenomenology, hermeneutics, and poststructuralism. This unique volume includes discussions comparing and contrasting Dewey with the German philosophers G. W. F. Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Hans-Georg Gadamer on such topics as phenomenology, naturalism, organicism, contextualism, and poetry. Others investigate a series of connections between Dewey and contemporary French philosophy, including the notions of subjectivity, education, and the critique of modernity in Michel Foucault; language and politics in Jacques Derrida; and the concept of experience in Gilles Deleuze. Also discussed is the question of whether we can identify traces ofBildungin Dewey's writings on education, and pragmatism's complex relation to twentieth-century phenomenology and hermeneutics, including the problematic question of whether Heidegger was a pragmatist in any meaningful sense. Presented in intriguing pairings, these thirteen essays offer different approaches to the material that will leave readers with much to deliberate. John Dewey and Continental Philosophydemonstrates some of the many connections and opportunities for cross-traditional thinking that have long existed between Dewey and continental thought, but have been under-explored. The intersection presented here between Dewey's pragmatism and the European traditions makes a significant contribution to continental and American philosophy and will spur new and important developments in the American philosophical debate.

Author Biography

Paul Fairfield is associate professor of philosophy at Queen’s University in Ontario. He is the author of six books, including most recently Education After Dewey.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Overdue Conversations	p. 1
German Post-Kantian Idealism and Dewey's Metaphysics: Mutual Themes	p. 6
Dewey, Hegel, and Knowledge after Kant	p. 26
Traces of Hegelian Bildung in Dewey's Philosophy	p. 44
Pragmatism and Gay Science: Comparing Dewey and Nietzsche	p. 69
Dewey, Nietzsche, and the Self-Image of Philosophy	p. 90
Heidegger: A Pragmatist by Any Means	p. 111
Science, Nature, and Philosophic Foundations: Dewey and Heidegger	p. 126
Pragmatism and Hermeneutics	p. 148
Dewey, Gadamer, and the Status of Poetry among the Arts	p. 161
Educating the Self: Dewey and Foucault	p. 174
The History and Critique of Modernity: Dewey with Foucault against Weber	p. 194
Meanings, Communication, and Politics: Dewey and Derrida	p. 219
Eagerness for Experience: Dewey and Deleuze on the Problematic of Thinking and Learning	p. 233
Contributors	p. 269
Index	p. 271
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