Tag: John Dewey
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A Pragmatic Option
by Jay Jeffers ____ American Pragmatism has been controversial from the start. It was accused of “cosmic impiety” by Bertrand Russell, a founding father of Anglophone analytic philosophy. Rifts developed quickly even within the young school of thought, with the original pragmatist Charles Sanders Peirce renaming his approach “pragmaticism,” which he thought was “ugly enough…
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Truth Rediscovered: A Humanistic View of Rationality
By Jay Jeffers ___ The Buddha said, “Three things cannot long be hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.” Or maybe he didn’t. Scholars would have to chime in on the popular interpretation through the lens of history, linguistics, and the like. Either way it’s a vivid quote. The real problem isn’t whether or…
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An Ethical Response to Fascism
by E. John Winner ___ There can be a profound difference between confrontation and conflict. Confrontation simply involves facing the world as it is, and facing others as they are. Doing so can bring out the most creative of our resources; the most charitable toward others. Conflict can establish unbreachable barriers between ourselves and others,…
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Psychologizing Philosophy: My Own Philosophical Temperament
by Kevin Currie-Knight ___ Recently, I wrote an article here defending the position — held also by Nietzsche and William James — that a person’s philosophy must reflect their temperament and attitude toward the world. Different folks with different temperaments (and experiences) will inevitably have at least some different starting assumptions, respond differently to different…
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Experiencing Nature, Naturally Experienced
by E. John Winner 1. John Dewey was one of America’s most important philosophers. He’ll be better remembered in the future than he is today. With philosophers on both sides of the Atlantic fascinated with the ambiguities of language and otherwise unsure of what they are expected to explain – is that science or ethics…