{John Dewey was a prominent educator and a proponent of the philosophy known as Pragmatism, which sought to remove Truth from the realm of metaphysical Idealism and to find it instead in worldly activity. Pragmatism has been much derided, caricatured as claiming that “Truth is what works,” and accused of lacking any fundamental moral principles. Dewey was no Marxist, but in his philosophy, it is not hard to hear echoes of Marx: ‘Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world; the point, however, is to change it.’}
“The quest for certitude has determined our basic metaphysics.” (John Dewey)
“The problem of the relation of theory and practice is the most practical problem of life.” (John Dewey)
John Dewey (from The Quest for Certainty):
Man, who lives in a world of hazards is compelled to seek for security. He has sought to attain it in two ways: the first is by changing the world through action, and the other is by changing the self in emotion and idea. It is a commentary on the slight control man has obtained over himself by means of control over nature, that the method of action has been felt to manifest dangerous pride, even defiance of the powers which be.
Philosophers have celebrated the method of change in personal ideas, and religious teachers that of change in the affections of the heart. These conversions have been prized on their own account, and only incidentally because of any change in action which would ensue. The latter has been esteemed as evidence of the change in thought and sentiment, not as a method of transforming the scene of life. The places in which the use of the arts has effected actual objective transformation have been regarded as inferior, if not base, and the activities connected with them as menial. The disparagement attending the idea of the material has seized upon them.
The depreciation of action, of doing and making, has been cultivated by philosophers. But they did not originate it; independently of their attitude, many things conspired to the same effect. Work has been onerous, toilsome, associated with a primeval curse. It has been done under compulsion and the pressure of necessity, while intellectual activity has been associated with leisure. Because of the unpleasantness of practical activity, as much of it as possible has been put upon slaves and serfs. Thus, the social dishonor in which this class was held was extended to the work they did. There is also the age-long association of knowing and thinking with immaterial and spiritual principles, and of the arts, of all practical activity in doing and making, with matter. For work is done with the body, by means of mechanical appliances, and is directed upon material things. The disrepute which has attended the thought of material things in comparison with immaterial thought has been transferred to everything associated with practice.
The exaltation of pure intellect and its activity above practical affairs is fundamentally connected with the quest for a certainty which shall be absolute and unshakeable. The distinctive characteristic of practical activity, one which is so inherent that it cannot be eliminated, is the uncertainty which attends it. Through thought, however, it has seemed that men might escape from the perils of uncertainty. Practical activity deals with individualized and unique situations which are never exactly duplicable and about which, accordingly, no complete assurance is possible. All activity, moreover, involves change. The intellect, however, according to the traditional doctrine, may grasp universal Being, and which is fixed and immutable. Wherever there is practical activity, all the fear, disesteem and lack of confidence which gather about the thought of ourselves, cluster also about the thought of the actions we undertake. Man’s distrust of himself has caused him to desire to get beyond and above himself; in pure knowledge he has thought he could attain this self-transcendence.
The ancient Greek philosophers brought us the idea of a higher realm of fixed reality of which alone true science is possible, and an inferior world of change with which mundane experience and practical matters are concerned. They glorified the invariant at the expense of change, it being evident that all practical activity falls within the realm of change. It bequeathed the notion, which has ruled philosophy ever since their time, that the office of knowledge is to uncover the antecedently real, rather than, as is the case with our practical judgments, to gain the kind of understanding which is necessary to deal with problems as they arise.
Perfect certainty is what man wants. It cannot be found by practical doing or making; these take effect in an uncertain future, and involve peril, the risk of misadventure, frustration, and failure. Knowledge, on the other hand, is thought to be concerned with a region of Being which is fixed, eternal, and unalterable; human knowing is not to make any difference in It.
The problem of the relation of theory and practice is the most practical problem of life. For it is the question of how intelligence may inform action, and how action may bear the fruit of increased insight into meaning: a clear view of the values that are worthwhile and of how they are to be made secure in tangible objects. The glorification of theoretical knowledge as the exclusive avenue of access to what is real is not going to give way soon nor all at once. But it can hardly endure indefinitely.
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Chicago Club, 1896:
A basket of philosophical deplorables?
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