This book examines the critical reception of Deweys pragmatic philosophy by six prominent analytic philosophers and relates it to the contested history of analytic philosophy and Deweyan pragmatism. It argues that analytic philosophers critical reception of Deweys pragmatist philosophy has, from the very beginning, been marred by externalist readings that do not engage with Deweys thinking from the inside, and suggests that this throws doubt upon the new revisionary histories of analytic philosophy and Deweyan pragmatism according to which the marginalization of Deweys pragmatism represents the sensible result of critical processes of reasoning. At the same time, however, the book also points out that Dewey and his analytic critics in fact share several worries and suggests that these common concerns might serve as points of reference for more fruitful dialogues across the traditions of analytic philosophy and Deweyan pragmatism in the future.
Chapter 1: Introduction.
Chapter 2: Dewey, philosophical criticism and
the internal-external distinction.- Chapter 3: Intellectual joy and the quest
for truth in the age of industrialism and collective enterprise. Bertrand
Russell reads Dewey.- Chapter 4: Immanence, transcendence and the varied
fullness of life. Hans Reichenbach reads Dewey.- Chapter 5: Genuine
empiricism, dogmatic metaphysics and the question of language. Max Black
reads Dewey.- Chapter 6: Science, values and the internecine logical war
between rationalism and empiricism. May Brodbeck reads Dewey.- Chapter 7:
Mysticism, metaphysics, and cultural barbarism. Richard M. Gale reads
Dewey.- Chapter 8: Genuine Normativity, In-/Externality and Revolutionary
reconstruction. Cheryl Misak reads Dewey.- Chapter 9: The historiography of
analytic philosophy and Deweyan pragmatism between self-assurance and
self-awareness.
Martin Ejsing Christensen is Senior Research Officer at the National Center for Ethics, Denmark, and holds a PhD in philosophy from Aarhus University. His research focuses on the history of philosophy, in particular the history of Deweys pragmatism.
