Abstract

This chapter explores the contemporary significance of Dewey’s pragmatism – a philosophy in service of practice and action and answering to the problems of common people: it reevaluates the use of Dewey’s American philosophy today, especially as lip-service to this is sometimes paid in the rhetoric of this new, alleged practicality. Dewey’s pragmatism can offer us an insight into the current issue – if, in the spirit of “reconstruction in philosophy”, it is critically reconstructed such that it is not assimilated simply into ‘pragmatic’ use and hijacked by a superficial idea of problem-solving and instrumentality.For the sake of making Dewey’s pragmatism more thoroughly and robustly resist the tide of global the economy, I shall explore a dimension of thinking beyond problem-solving. These matters are pursued in terms of interrelated notions drawn from Thoreau of the obscure and twilight. Dewey’s later writings on aesthetics shed light on an alternative sense of useful knowledge. What Thoreau calls Beautiful Knowledge here helps show that it is a way to make best use of the wisdom of Dewey’s pragmatism, and more in general, of American philosophy in resistance to the tide of the global economy.