Thinking under the Pressure of Practice: A Critical Interpretation of Dewey's Preparatory Notes for the Lectures in China

Dewey’s Lectures in China 1919–1920 is a highly controversial text. For many years, scholars have been suspicious about its reliability as a source: the book is an English translation of the Chinese translation of two series of lectures that Dewey held in China during the first year of his two year stay. For this reason, Deweyan scholars have tended to dismiss the text: they believed that Dewey’s speeches had been manipulated by Chinese translators driven less by textual fidelity than by a partisan desire to use Dewey’s words as a powerful intellectual weapon in their political struggle to modernize the country. It is impossible to really know – that was the bottom-line argument – what Dewey...