Abstract

This dissertation critically examines the nature and meaning of metaphysics in the philosophy of John Dewey. This is accomplished by focusing our analysis of Dewey's metaphysics upon the level of generality appropriate to the study of human experience. Central to Dewey's metaphysics is the category of the consummatory or what he alternatively calls the qualitative. An analysis of this category serves as the basis for our reflections upon the adequacy of Dewey's entire categorical framework. Our concern with the consummatory is to clearly spell out how this category hinders or aids in the successful articulation of the significant traits of experience. Our analysis begins with Dewey's critical identification of the limitations of Greek metaphysical thinking engendered by its misappropriation of the qualitative element into a metaphysics of being. This is followed by chapters on Dewey's general theory of experience and his more specialized theories of art and inquiry. We conclude that Dewey's categorical framework does not succeed in meaningfully distinguishing these domains of art and inquiry within a generalized account of human experiencing. Dewey's categories generate certain complications, a number of which are explored in the course of this work. ;Our thesis is that these complications result from the fact that Dewey has framed his major categories at a level incommensurate with the proposed theoretical ends of his philosophy of experience. It is often the case that a category is framed by Dewey so as to set a standard or an ideal by which to judge the worth of a certain aspect of experience, as opposed to providing an account of that aspect regardless of its worth. Dewey's categorial framework does not allow him to consistently recognize the parity between all aspects of experience as experience. Dewey has taken a particular "ideal" of experience as a general structural feature of all experience and by doing so is unable to acknowledge that the "best" may neither be the most pervasive nor the most distinctive of human traits