John Dewey in Context

Here is Collins' depiction of the intellectual context for John Dewey's thought, which demonstates Collins' sociological methodology for tracking intellectual change.

Relational ties, whether master-pupil ties, adversarial ties, or acquaintanceship ties, as well as the groups associated with them, constitute the intellectual context for the development of individual thought. See Collins, The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change (1998).

C.S. Pierce, William James, G. S. Hall, G. H. Mead (at Chicago), G. S. Morris are all well know influences on Dewey. But less well known are the St. Louis Hegelians that gave support and encouragement to the young Dewey: W. T. Harris, H. C. Bokmeyer, and through them, ties to the New England Transcendentalists. Others include Denton Snider, Thomas Davidson, and G. H. Howison.

It would not be going too far to characterize the St. Louis Hegelians as an innovation hearth, whose particular focus of interest and activity was public education and progressive reform -- Dewey in embryo.

For more see: http://www.iep.utm.edu/h/hstlouis.htm

On the roots of Dewey’s Education as Growth idea:
http://www.philosophy.uncc.edu/mleldrid/SAAP/USC/PD11.html

Harris:
http://gyral.blackshell.com/hegel/hegedu.html

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Bertrand Russell devotes several pages to the thought of John Dewey in his A History of Western Philosophy (1945). But after lauding him in the opening paragraph (saying that Dewey is “the leading living philosopher of America”), Russell concludes by calling Dewey’s underlying hopefulness a form of hubris, an “intoxification of power … [that] is the greatest danger of our time, and that any philosophy which, however unintentionally, contributes to it is increasing the danger of a vast social disaster.” (819, 828)

Such an extreme variation of opinion calls for further elucidation.

In his review, Russell recalls that “Hegelian philosophy influenced Dewey in his youth” (820); and he points out that, while critiquing the reliance upon organic or “unified wholes” in Dewey’s philosophy of instrumentalism, “Dewey’s love of what is organic is due partly to biology, partly to a lingering influence of Hegel … [or on] an unconscious Hegelian metaphysic” (823). Russell himself does “not know how far [Dewey] is aware of this fact.”

Santayana agrees, saying that “In Dewey … there is a pervasive quasi-Hegelian tendency to dissolve the individual into his social functions, as well as everything substantial and actual into something relative and transitional.”

However, to the extent that Santayana dismisses Dewey’s incipient constructivism, the result of Dewey’s influence by G. H. Mead, he perhaps errs, and Dewey comes out the better. And while Russell is himself groping toward a kind of constructivism in his discussion of “truth” and “significance,” he does not see Hegel’s involvement, as Santayana does.

Russell concludes by allowing that Dewey is “attractive to those how are more impressed by our new control over natural forces than by the limitations to which that control is subject,” finding that Dewey’s philosophy “is in harmony with the age of industrialism and collective enterprise.” But it is Dewey’s underlying hubris that Russell singles out as “the greatest danger in our time” because “it is increasing the danger of a vast social disaster,” however unintentionally.

Russell’s fears, at least in part, have been realized. There are many who would, without hesitation, describe public education, in combination with other social, economic and political forces, a “vast social disaster.” There are, of course, many more that disagree.