Donald F. Koch supplies the only extant complete transcription of the annual three-course sequence on ethics Dewey gave at the University of Chicago from 1894 to 1904. Koch argues that these lectures offer the best systematic, overall introduction to Dewey’s approach to moral philosophy and are the only account showing the unity of his views in nearly all phases of ethical inquiry. These lectures are the only work by Dewey to set forth a complete theory of moral language. They offer (...) a clear illustration of the central methodological questions in the development of a pragmatic instrumentalist ethic and the actual working out of the instrumentalist approach as distinct from simply presenting it as a conclusion. (shrink)

In the lectures on the logic of ethics, he sets forth and defends the view that the "is" in a moral judgment such as "This is good" is a coordinating factor in an inquiry.

This paper contends that Heldke's recipe analogy can be reworked to help us deal with those who hold beliefs and practice activities that are contrary to our own. It draws upon the work of William James and John Dewey to develop a practical approach to such conflict situations.

Henry Sedgewick's The Methods of Ethics challenges comparison, as no other work in moral philosophy, with Aristotle's Ethics in the depth of its understanding of practical rationality, and in its architectural coherence it rivals the work of Kant. In this historical, rather than critical study, Professor Schneewind shows how Sidgewick's arguments and conclusions represent rational developments of the work of Sidgewick's predecessors, and brings out the nature and structure of the reasoning underlying his position.

How should pragmatists respond to and contribute to the resolution of one of America's greatest and most enduring problems? Given that the most important thinkers of the pragmatist movement—Charles S. Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead—said little about the problem of race, how does their distinctly American way of thinking confront the hardship and brutality that characterizes the experience of many African Americans in this country? In 12 thoughtful and provocative essays, contemporary American pragmatists connect ideas with (...) action and theory with practice to come to terms with this seemingly intractable problem. Exploring themes such as racism and social change, the value of the concept of race, the role of education in ameliorating racism, and the place of democracy in dealing with the tragedy of race, the voices gathered in this volume consider how pragmatism can focus new attention on the problem of race. Contributors are Michael Eldridge, Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., Judith M. Green, D. Micah Hester, Donald F. Koch, Bill E. Lawson, David E. McClean, Gregory F. Pappas, Scott L. Pratt, Alfred E. Prettyman, John R. Shook, Paul C. Taylor, and Cornel West. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 489 right; and it will be of interest to students of modern aesthetics. But compared with Rudolf Makkreel's ground-breaking study, Dilthey, Philosopher of the Human Studies (Princeton, 1975), it is handicapped by an exasperating vagueness. This is mainly because Heinen does not go more deeply into Dilthey's profuse aesthetic writings from a historical perspective and on the basis of a commitment to an appropriate methodology. What we (...) get, instead, is a rather one-sided reflection on several important aspects of Dilthey's aesthetic writings. ROLF-DIETERHERRMANN University of Tennessee Young John Dewey: An Essay in American Intellectual History. By Nell Coughlan. (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1975. Pp. xii + 187) The author's aim in this carefully researched volume is to examine the early development of Dewey's character, primarily as it is expressed in the changes in his philosophical development from the time he was a student at the University of Vermont until he left the University of Michigan to go to Chicago in 1894. The account is at its best in relating the common problems shared by Dewey, his teachers George Sylvester Morris and G. Stanley Hall and his younger colleague George Herbert Mead. All were conscientious men, concerned to develop an account of the world and of society that does not fall back on religion as a crutch, that could give some accounting of or even take advantage of new developments in empirical psychology yet still provide a role for the philosopher as a moral leader. Where in the America of the 1870s and 1880s could such a person turn? Aside from Harvard and Johns Hopkins, there was no place for the independent, secular philosopher in American colleges and universities. The safe clergyman was typically given employment; the free thinking agnostic was considered dangerous. Further, there was the problem of intellectual isolation. Coughlan brilliantly contrasts the tight knit intellectual community of Victorian England with the struggles of individual American thinkers, scattered around the United States, to find like-minded intellectual companionship. Morris tried to resolve these problems by embracing the idealism of T. H. Green and hoping for a full-time chair at Hopkins. Hall, who eventually got the chair, went into empirical psychology. His choice was safe and intellectually respectable but ignored moral matters. Mead and a young friend named Henry Castle went through a long struggle to develop a satisfactory world view. Castle never achieved success and died in a shipwreck at age 32. Mead's correspondence with Castle reveals that he endured a number of acute personal crises before becoming Dewey's colleague at Michigan and discovering the latter's newly developing "organic circuit" theory with all its implications for the development of social psychology. Dewey was the most successful of the lot. It would be easy to construe a scenario wherein the young Dewey became skeptical about Green's idealism and underwent an acute personal crisis at the prospect of a world no longer glued together by the universal mind. This apparently never happened. By his own account, Dewey's "drift" from idealism took fifteen years, 1and I suspect that this gradual disengagement served as an effective buffer against the shock of having to develop an experimental naturalism all of a sudden. At any rate, Coughlan gives the most thorough account available of the evolution of Dewey's thought during the Michigan years. Coughlan is on solid ground so long as he treats Dewey as a person who shared common intellectual problems with like-minded colleagues and teachers. But how can one reconstruct his personal life? The difficulties are real. Dewey's published writings of the period reveal little John Dewey, "From Absolutism to Experimentalism," in John Dewey on Experience, Nature, and Freedom, ed. Richard J. Bernstein (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1960), p. 12. 490 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY of his personality. Indeed, one is moved to ask whether his personality was almost entirely submerged in his work. Colleagues, friends and students are no longer available to tell their story. There is little in the way of revealing personal correspondence that is available. Dewey was not inclined to reminisce.2 About all we have from him... (shrink)

We need guidance in interpreting and evaluating C. S. Peirce. The scope, complexity, and ongoing development of his extensive body of philosophical work call for the location of central themes and arguments. This collection of essays, originally published or written between 1966 and 1995, sets forth those themes that dominate Potter’s thought.