Abstract

"What would Dewey say?" I seem to hear this question posed at least once at virtually every academic conference I attend. Following the typical pattern, the speaker goes on to submit for consideration whatever he thinks Dewey would say about the issue at hand. So why is this question so common? On some occasions, the speaker is addressing a subject—perhaps something contemporary—about which Dewey never spoke, at least not directly. Or, perhaps, he is responding to Dewey's tendency to work at a high level of abstraction, offering topographical maps of some critical portion of the lived world while leaving the map reader to determine the relevant connections to contexts that are more local and concrete in nature. ..