Sam's Philosophy Blog

Thesis proposal:

According to John Dewey, philosophy has effectively rendered itself irrelevant and can only regain usefulness and influence if applied, with an emphasis on the human experience, to present day problems and affairs.

Preliminary Description:

I would like to open the essay with an examination of Dewey’s essay “A Need for the Recovery of Philosophy.” I intend to use this piece to define and frame the problem of philosophy’s irrelevance, as seen and described by Dewey. I will analyze the piece extensively enough to prove that Dewey does believe that philosophy has effectively rendered itself useless. This piece should also begin to preview how philosophy can be brought back to the forefront of influential powers.

From there, I plan to go into specific examples of how Dewey, himself, applies philosophy to current issues (in his lifetime) that need philosophy’s contribution in order to come up with an intelligent solution. I will use text from Experience and Nature (specifically the excerpts we have read in class) as well as the secondary sources presented in the previous blog assignment. I am considering narrowing in on specific areas of application, such as art or communication or education. Most likely this will turn into an examination of a combination of a couple specific social areas we discussed in class. Through these examples I will analyze the text and explain it so that it clearly illustrates how Dewey presents philosophy’s usefulness in the social/public/political realm of life, all the while focusing on the dynamism of human experience.

By allowing Dewey to frame his own problem and then apply his own ideas for solving it, Dewey himself should prove the thesis. The outside sources will help me to make clarifications to Dewey’s ideas and theories. The combination of these techniques should prove the thesis and establish the evidence for the thesis in a very clear and convincing manner.

“Cezanne’s Doubt,” an essay written by Maurice Merleau-Ponty and John Dewey’s “Experience, Nature, and Art” proved to have similar themes running through each other. I found this to be very striking, and somewhat surprising, because of Dewey’s naturalism and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology.

Dewey’s essay stressed production and consumption being together in art. Dewey, in his usual pattern, looked at art as a “solvent union” that dissolved the stable and the unstable together into one. Good art, according to Dewey, encompasses aspects of both extremes: the caprice and the routine, the complete and incomplete, the general and the particular.
Merleau-Ponty expresses a very similar viewpoint about good art in his essay discussing Cezanne’s life, career, and art. Merleau-Ponty says of Cezanne: “Cezanne was always seeking to avoid the ready-made alternatives suggested to him: sensation versus judgment; the painter who sees against the painter who thinks; nature versus composition; primitivism as opposed to tradition” (277). It is not long after he sets up this dichotomy that Merleau-Ponty, much like Dewey, explains the effort taken to integrate. He says that Cezanne “did not think he had to choose between feeling and thought, between order and chaos. He did not want to separate the stable things which we see and the shifting way in which they appear…” (277). These two viewpoints, while not identical, are strikingly similar to each other—a similarity worth noting.

Merleau-Ponty, through his analysis of Cezanne, also puts an almost Deweyan amount of emphasis on the importance of experience. He chose to include a quote from Cezanne discussing the base importance of nature, something we one hears often from Dewey. The quote reads: “Of nature, he [Cezanne] said that ‘the artist must conform to this perfect work of art. Everything that comes to us from nature; we exist through; nothing else is worth remembering’” (276). Merleau-Ponty emphasizes that Cezanne was concerned with painting the world as we, humans, perceive it. He says Cezanne, “wanted nevertheless to portray the world, to change it completely into a spectacle, to make visible how the world touches us” (283).

Dewey believed that the recovery of philosophy relied on the reconstruction of how we view experience. It appears that Merleau-Ponty saw experience as being an issue of utmost importance as well. “It is not enough for a painter like Cezanne, an artist, or a philosopher, to create and express and idea; they must also awaken the experiences which will make their idea take root in the consciousness of others. A successful work has the strange power to teach its own lesson” (283). This idea seems to dissolve into Dewey’s notion of action with imagination and imagination with action. A solvent union, an equal relationship, between the two thinkers seems apparent.

If two great and different minds came up with such a similar concept, perhaps this is something an idea to heed more closely and apply more frequently.

Let me begin with giving a sense of the topic I intend to write on.

I want to focus on Dewey because so much of his writing and so many of his ideas resonate quite deeply with me. Dewey focuses on experience and how to bring philosophy to our daily lives. In order for philosophy to remain useful and relevant, Dewey argues, the idea of experience needs to be reconstructed and philosophy has to start approaching modern problems with intelligent solutions. With this in mind, I want to write my paper on applying philosophic ideals to modern problems and complexities. Specifically, I want to examine Dewey’s take on experience, philosophy, and using it to improve society and its institutions.

Here are three sources I intend to use: some being other Dewey essays that we have not read in class but that I find to be vitally important in addressing this topic.

Brick, Blanche "Changing Concepts Of Equal Educational Opportunity: A Comparison of the Views of Thomas Jefferson, Horace Mann and John Dewey. " American Educational History Journal 32, no. 2 (January 1, 2005): 166-174. http://www.proquest.com/ (accessed November 7, 2007).

While this article does focus heavily on the subject of education, I think it provides a good illustration of how Dewey takes a concrete problem, like public education, and applies philosophy to it. While I don’t necessarily want the paper to focus in on education, I do think that referring to this source for concrete examples of how Dewey goes about applying philosophy to actually societal issues will be useful.

Dewey, John. "The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy." In Pragmatism and Classical American Philosophy Essential Readings & Interpretive Essays, edited by John J. Stuhr. New York: Oxford, 2000.

This essay, written by Dewey, directly addresses Dewey’s theory on what must be done in order to keep philosophy from rendering itself useless and irrelevant. He outlines a five-fold contrast between the traditional understandings of experience and the Deweyean understandings. This reconstruction of the view of experience lies at the base of Dewey’s suggestion as to how to keep philosophy alive and influential.

Talisse, Robert B. "Dewey's Defense of Democracy." Free Inquiry, October 1, 2004, 35-37. http://www.proquest.com/ (accessed November 28, 2007).

Talisse, in this article, discusses Dewey’s approach to living in a democratic method. He explores Dewey’s democratic ideals beyond institutions and examines what Dewey means when he supports an actually democratic lifestyle. This article is a solid way to illustrate the interwoven relationship between Dewey’s philosophy and everyday life. It serves the topic of the paper perfectly.

As soon as restrictions and limitations are put on creativity, a dangerous state has been reached. Whether it is the destruction of degenerate art or the burning of inappropriate books, as soon as society starts impeding on intellectual and creative liberty an environment of censorship and groupthink begins to form. Dewey, in chapter nine of his book Experience and Nature, discusses the relationship between experience, nature, and art. He broadens the notion of art to include much more than just the fine arts. He defines art as a “solvent union of the generic, recurrent, ordered, established phase of nature with its phase that is incomplete, going on, and hence still uncertain, contingent, novel, particular…a union of necessity and freedom, a harmony of the many and one, a reconciliation of sensuous and ideal” (359).

Dewey, just as he sees everything else, sees art as experience. Dewey sees experience as vital. Our life is a series of experiences with no particular type of experience being more important than the next. He sees every experience as playing a vitally important role in our lives—the many different of experiences of art being just as important.

I agree wholeheartedly with Dewey and his theories and beliefs in experience. This is why the restrictions and limitations placed on creativity and ideas, especially when placed by authorities such as governments, make me so uneasy. I see this limitation being put on students in kindergarten through grade twelve in the United States public education system. With the current educational legislation, the variety of subjects students are being exposed to in the classroom is shrinking as the emphasis on standardized testing in very narrow subjects. The liberal arts curriculum is rapidly disappearing and with it students’ interest in learning anything at all. They are taught cold and routine information without being able to become passionate about the art in those subjects whether it be math, theater, English, or a foreign language.

This is, in my opinion, a travesty. I think that Dewey would agree. To him art encompasses and equal relationship between many opposites and manifests itself in almost everything. (If not everything itself.) For the government to restrict the creativity of our youngest citizens will only lead to their inability to see art at all, never mind as a solvent union. This factor joins a very long list of reasons why the US educational system needs to be overhauled dramatically and immediately. The question remains, though: How long will it take to convince society of this? I offer this blog, along with so many other pieces into evidence on the side of an overhaul. We’ll see where it goes.

Human history and politics are intertwined forever into the past and future. Since the dawn of recorded history, and most likely from before even that, humans have organized themselves into communities. These communities, no matter how primitive or developed, have demonstrated politics. No, not all these communities had elaborate monarchies or democracies, but there was an organized system of living that was political which was evident in them all. Merleau-Ponty, in explaining Max Weber’s connection between politics and history, identifies what Weber sees as the key importance between the two subjects. Merleau-Ponty writes: “After all, once the official legends have been put aside, what makes politics important is not the philosophy of history which inspires it and which in other hands would produce only upheavals. What makes it important is the human quality that causes the leaders truly to animate the political apparatus and makes their most personal acts everyone’s affair (344).

Though most people who champion the individual might initially react to this statement reproachfully, a look back at political life will only strengthen Weber’s point. The important part of politics is the capacity of political leaders to animate and motivate those under them to follow his or her own agenda. Weber separates leaders into three types: rational, traditional, and charismatic. There can be hybrids among the three types, but ultimately, he shows that leaders have and will continue to, ultimately exhibit qualities fall into one of the three types. The durability and success of any given polity is dependent on the type of leader and the qualities that leader possesses. I would, because of this, agree with Weber (and Merleau-Ponty) in what they identify as the important part of politics.

Brick, Blanche "Changing Concepts Of Equal Educational Opportunity: A Comparison of the Views of Thomas Jefferson, Horace Mann and John Dewey. " American Educational History Journal 32, no. 2 (January 1, 2005): 166-174. http://www.proquest.com/ (accessed November 7, 2007).

In her American Educational History Journal article “Changing Concepts of Equal Educational Opportunity: A Comparison of the Views of Thomas Jefferson, Horace Mann, and John Dewey” Blanche Brick compares the three philosophers on four different issues that must be weighed when considering educational theory. She looks at their stance on human nature, individual responsibility, the good society, and individual vs. institutional responsibility. I would like to pay particular attention to Dewey when reconstructing Brick’s position because he is the philosopher we have studied, and will continue to study, in class.

Regarding human nature, Brick beings by pointing out a critical similarity between Dewey, Mann, and Jefferson. She says they all “believed in the ability of individuals to improve if given the proper conditions.” Aside from this similarity, however, Dewey’s theory came into distinct difference with Mann and Jefferson. Much of this had to do with the Darwinian publication “The Origin of Species.” Darwin’s theories led Dewey to understand a human nature as a product of a human’s surroundings as opposed to the innate and absolute embraced by Jefferson, and to some extent Mann. Brick quotes Dewey himself as saying “Man's individualism was ‘not found in his original nature but in his habits acquired under social influences’ (Dewey 1922, 318).” Brick acknowledges that Dewey’s connection between human value and social conditions act as the foundation of his theories of human nature. One cannot be considered without the other. Educational policies and expectations, thus, must follow suit.

Brick opens the segment on individual responsibility in a similar way to her human nature segment. She immediately highlights where Dewey, Mann, and Jefferson are similar and then how they differ in that very similarity. She notes that all three “stressed the importance of individual responsibility or "self-control" in a free, democratic society, but they differed in how individuals could develop self-control or responsibility.” Jefferson championed the idea of humans being born with innate moral values and thus held them accountable for their own moral decisions. Mann and Dewey, on the other hand, held schools accountable to instill the responsibility and self-control that democracy requires into the citizens. Dewey and Mann part ways, though, in the Dewey’s idea that self-control and individual responsibility have to be developed, not merely released. Brick uses Dewey’s own words to express the onus of this developmental task. She writes: “He continued to extend the influence of the school as the primary institution responsible for the education of the young in correct social attitudes, stating his belief that ‘individuality is something developing and to be continuously attained, not something given all at once and ready-made’ (Dewey 1928, 201).” Brick identifies the result of this emphasis on social and environmental factors being the inseparable influences as being that Dewey, more so than Jefferson or Mann, “worked to offer a new definition of individualism.”

As per the usual, Brick identifies the commonalities between Dewey, Mann, and Jefferson in regard to the good society. She notes that all three were “committed to the concept of democracy as the basis for the good society…They also believed that in a democratic society each individual should be allowed to be all he was capable of being rather than being chained to the circumstances of his birth.” America: The Land of Opportunity, how very patriotic of them. While Jefferson never acknowledged the environment as a primary determinant of the ability and achievement of an individual, Mann was “more concerned with environmental conditions.” Brick points out that Dewey expanded upon Mann’s arguments. She emphasizes that for Mann and Dewey, good society required more intervention in individual’s lives. Dewey, in response to those who criticized this view, said, “ ‘the real issue is not that of demarcating separate 'spheres' for authority and for freedom . . . but that of effecting an interpenetration of the two’ (Dewey 1939, 352).”

The fourth section of Brick’s article, “Conclusion: From Individual To Institutional Responsibility,” she ties Dewey in with educational equality as it is known today. Her tracing of the evolution of educational from Jefferson to Mann is particularly interesting:

“From a concept of "individual opportunity" which stressed the selective function of the schools under Jefferson, equal opportunity evolved into "equalizing opportunity" under Horace Mann who stressed the need for the schools to create social mobility and harmony in a democratic society. And, finally, under Dewey's influence, the idea evolved into "individualized opportunity" which stressed the growth and development of each individual and charged the schools with providing necessary compensation so that such growth could be realized” (Brick).

In the end Brick boils the three men down into pushing one main and crucially vital ideal: “it is the ability to assume responsibility for one's own life, given a fair opportunity, that all three educators, Thomas Jefferson, Horace Mann, and John Dewey believed to be the true goal of the educational experience in a democratic society.”

I agree completely with this statement. The true goal of the educational experience should be to equip all students with the knowledge, tools, and ability to go out and achieve their dreams. I realize that not everyone is going to accomplish everything they set out or dream too—but I am a firm believer that everyone should be able to jump off from the same level. Education provides that equal launching pad, or at least it should. Right now, however, educational policy is very far from the ideals of all three philosophers/educators, especially John Dewey. No Child Left Behind, advertised as the ultimate piece of legislation aimed at equalizing education for all students, is failing miserably. It is leaving all students, high achieving, low achieving, gifted, challenged, and in-between worse off than before the law was passed. No Child Left Behind misses the exact point that these three educational philosophers, spanning almost 200 years, agreed was at the basis of education—fair opportunity in a democratic society. A democratic society thrives off the individual, which was exactly Dewey’s argument: “individualized opportunity.” Current educational policy calls for the de-individuation of students—requiring equal proficiency in extremely narrow subject areas. This is not the equality that Dewey called for. Educational policy should work to foster students to pursue their own talents and passions in a morally self-responsible way. The United States needs to get back to the idea of individual equality and develop educational policy that aims to honor the individual’s talents and fortes, not the group's narrowed proficiency.

John Herman Randall Jr. is one of the first philosophers that has, for me, addressed the connection between philosophy and action in a practical way. Don’t get me wrong, all of the readings done for class thus far put forth multitudes of knowledge that stretch the mind and have opened my own eyes to seeing things in a different light.

I cannot help but wonder though to what end? These are ideas that the majority of which the United States (as one example) will never know. We live in an anti-intellectual culture where philosophy is not exalted but often kept within a small circle of scholars who have chosen to live their life in academia. The poet isn’t read, the philosopher isn’t pondered…the most important and potentially progressive ideas aren’t circulating to the extent and the sources that they should be.

I firmly believe that if just some of the writings of these philosophers were applied to our everyday institutions and our society as a whole, our country could begin to pull itself out of the hole we have dug. How can that happen though? Unless I missed it, I have not read one developed theory that any of these philosophers have proposed to apply their thinking to an institution that affects our very country and culture. There are critiques and there are theories to make it better…but how do we do it? How do we elect a philosopher to the Senate? How do we get one put on the cabinet? Wouldn’t Dewey have made an excellent Education Secretary? Where is the intellectual in the political world? In the business world? In the scientific world?

Randall claims that the historical treatment of philosophy “displays ideas in action, as they intervene in the other activities of men, and influence the course of institutional development. It thus helps us to understand ourselves, and our culture, our intellectual world.” If this was true of the past and present Randall wrote of, I would not claim that it is true of my present.

The culture I live in doesn’t listen to what it cannot understand at first glance: be it another language, another religion, or different ideas. The culture I live in pushes the intellect to the backburner and exalts the savviest CEO. The culture I live in is in bad need of new thoughts and ideas to inspire new institutions and new leaderships. This doesn’t answer my question of how…how anyone or I can let the intellect take back their importance and place in our country but there has got to be way. Someday, when I run for office, there will be a philosopher within my tightest circle of advisors. I want him/her to remind me what I’m there for—to make a difference that sticks. In the meantime, I hope our society—our community—takes up a fight. I hope philosophers will move beyond the writing and also take up implementing what they work so hard to develop. I hope our culture will begin to respect and exalt philosophers the way they once were. I hope together we fight to restore our culture to Randall’s connection between actions and philosophy. I hope we can fight together to allow philosophy to play the expansive and dialogical role it has had in the past.

The propriation of language lays at the heart of Heidegger’s third “language” in his formula “To bring language as language to language.” He says: “On the basis of owning, these things show themselves, each on its own terms, and linger, each in its own manner” (414). Heidegger argues that language owns itself and humans cannot attempt to conceptualize or define language and then consider that word or formulation of words to be a mastered concept that the human owns. He says, “What propriates is propriation itself—and nothing besides” (415). Language propriates itself and humans will never see the way to language if they continue to belief that they own the language rather than the language owning itself.

This idea seems to me very apparent and clear in practical application. How can we give only one definition or concept to a word or a phrase or any other formulation of language? Two people uttering the same word never completely utter it with the same intended meaning. Take a simple example of using the word “stop.” Imagine a scenario where two mothers are at the playground, each with one child that is their own. The two children are both climbing up the slide. Both mothers yell to their children to stop. While both mothers are directing their children to cease their actions their utterance of “stop” does not resonate the exact same meaning to both of the children. One child, for instance, may have been warned about climbing up the slide before the trip to the playground and took the mother’s stop to be one annoyance and frustration. The other child, on the other hand, may not have received the same instruction and the stop may have been perceived as a new rule that is said with patience.

The two “stops” may also have been uttered with separate meanings. Mother one may have intended it as harsh warning of further trouble to come. Mother two may have said it out of deep concern for the physical safety of her child. The same word is uttered and received by the children, but the same word has a virtually infinite number of nuanced meanings.

This one rudimentary example indicates the prevalence in application that Heidegger’s propriation of language has. Humans do not own language—language propriates itself. Language allows itself to be borrowed as shower, as an expresser like in the case of the mothers. However, it does not allow itself to be harnessed into one tool, easily describable and manipulated. It retains its nuances and meanings—sharing them with humans—not conceding to them. As Heidegger said: “Propriating dispenses the open space of the clearing into which what is present can enter for a while, and from which what is withdrawing into absence can depart, retaining something of itself while all the while in withdrawal” (415).

“To bring language as language to language”--

At first I found this formula to come off as such a confusing and circular statement of a goal. It seemed that trying to conceptualize something by using its very name three times in the path to conceptualization seemed a circular feat with no end in sight. I could see no applicable way to use this language to actually uncover “the way to language.”

Further contemplation of the formula, however, reveals that it may be the only real path to find the way to language. Breaking down the statement helps to make it a more palatable thought. Looking at each use of the word “language” helps to uncover what the formula is actually calling for.

“To bring language as language”—We have no method of articulating ourselves without the use of language. Language is universal in the sense that every culture uses some form of it to communicate, express, and share ideas, thoughts, feelings, and information with others. The word ‘language’ itself is part of language. So the first step in finding the way of language, as dictated by the formula, would be to bring language—the universally recognized method and medium of communication and expression—as itself. Bringing language as itself requires that we not taint the idea of language with the word of language. This is not an easy or natural thing. It requires us to remove the practical application of language from the essence of language.

Once we can find a way to boil language down to its true essence, untainted by what meaning humans have given to the word language, we can then bring it “to language”-- or what I interpret Heidegger to mean by the third use of the word language --the meaning of language. Once the essence of language is reached, we can finally bring its pure form to its meaning and, in doing so, finally find the way to language.

John J. Stuhr, editor of the anthology Pragmatism and Classical American Philosophy Essential Readings and Interpretive Essays provides an interpretive introduction of each of the American pragmatists. He, himself, is the author of the John Dewey introduction. In his essay, Stuhr defines in Dewey’s philosophy in terms of four dimensions and then concludes that these four dimensions lead to Dewey ultimately as a cultural re-constructionist.

Stuhr defines the Dewey philosophy’s first dimension as a philosophy of the subject. He says, “First, the ultimate subject matter of philosophy is experience and its problems…. It cannot and does not begin in total doubt or some presuppostionless state and it issues in no absolute knowledge or eternal truths” (435). Stuhr recognizes that Dewey sees all philosophy as being shaped by the culture from which it was born.

The second dimension Stuhr defines is the method of Dewey’s philosophy. Stuhr says that Dewey’s method is critical and empirical. He defines the method as being a “systematic attempt to intelligently assess experienced values (evident in perception belief, and action), judgments about these values, and methods of making judgments…. This critical method, for Dewey, is experimental and scientific in which ‘scientific’ means regular methods of controlling the formation of judgments regarding some subject matter” (435,436). Stuhr uses this dimension of Dewey’s method to lead into Stuhr’s third recognized dimension. “Third, the orientation of philosophy is thus pragmatic: it is called forth by and in experienced problems, and its consequences in action directed at these problems are the measure of its success and truth” (436). Stuhr emphasizes that this pragmatic dimension makes Dewey’s philosophy “instrumental rather than final.”

The fourth dimension that Stuhr establishes is crucial in tying Dewey’s philosophy and cultural context together. Stuhr says, “philosophy, understood as the result of this critical method in action, is intrinsically connected to the cultural context in which this method operates” (436). Stuhr solidifies the relation between this fourth dimension of cultural context and Dewey’s philosophy for the reader: “…it is not surprising that Dewey’s view of experience stands at the center of his philosophy and informs his writings on issues in education, politics, economics, society, morals, art, and religion (437).

More important than Stuhr’s own summary of Dewey’s philosophy, however, is his commentary on Dewey as soldier of cultural reconstruction. He combines the four dimensions to articulate Dewey as a philosopher for change and progressivism. Stuhr argues that: “Dewey’s important writings on education, ethics, politics, art, and religion are rooted in the view and method of experience outlined above and constitute a reconstruction, a reconstruction of both our thinking and our society” (441). Stuhr insists, “Dewey’s views on cultural reconstruction still wait on our understanding and, above all, our action” (443).

I agree wholly and completely with Stuhr’s ultimate conclusion. Dewey is highly critical of all institutions, as they exist. He believes that the institutions were found on faulty concepts and are in need of rebuilding and modernization. Stuhr points out, “Dewey also constantly faults institutions and practices that fail to acknowledge and adapt to the changing cultural situation in and through which they exist and operate…. As conditions change--- Dewey thinks they have changed rapidly---these ways of life become outdated, disintegrated with actual life conditions, and detrimental to achievement of shared human purposes” (441). Dewey issues a call to action in his writings and through is philosophy. He directs us to, as Stuhr notes, “examine to what extent habits, relationships, practices, association, institutions, and traditions promote growth and the desire for further growth, renew the meanings of experience, and harmoniously adjust individual and environment.” Dewey puts the onus of his philosophy on the individual. He leaves the revision and remodeling of our society and our democracy to the people living in it. It is up to our culture to undertake Dewey’s challenge. Dewey, as Stuhr says, wants to incite a reconstruction of culture and in the very spirit of Dewey’s experientialism, this reconstruction rests on our very action. As long as our culture is trapped within its outdated institutions and traditions, we can truly be free or experiencing the highest potential of experience.

Stuhr argues that Dewey’s philosophy leads up to an ultimate call for cultural reconstruction. This is, in my opinion, undoubtedly Dewey’s intention. Sadly, our culture in the over fifty years since Dewey’s death we have failed miserably at answering Dewey’s call. An answer is required if our culture is to survive and progress—Stuhr recognizes this and so do I.

Stuhr, John, J., "John Dewey," Pragmatism and Classical American Philosophy Essential Readings & Interpretive Essays, compiler John J. Stuhr (New York: Oxford, 2000) 431-443.