Dewey S Ethical Thought

In the first book on the development ofJohn Dewey's ethical thought, Jennifer Welchman revises the prevalent interpretation of his ethics. Her clear and engaging account traces the history of Dewey's distinctive moral philosophy from its roots in idealism during the 1890s through the pragmatist approach of his 1922 work, Human Nature and Conduct. Central to the development of Dewey's ethics was his lifelong conviction that the realms of science and morals, facts and values were reconcilable. This conviction, Welchman demonstrates, drove Dewey to reject the orthodox ethics of his day in favor of radical alternatives—first absolute idealism and later pragmatism. She reveals how Dewey came to adopt and subsequently to modify idealist ethics of self-realization. Welchman then explores the transformations in Dewey's conception of science that exploded the fragile truce between fact and value that he had negotiated as an idealist. Finally, she examines how Dewey developed his own instrumentalist accounts of moral value, conduct, and character that culminated in his best-known work of ethics, Human Nature and Conduct.

This book provides a wide-ranging, systematic, and comprehensive approach to the moral philosophy of John Dewey, one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century. It does so by focusing on his greatest achievement in this field: the Ethics he jointly published with James Hayden Tufts in 1908 and then republished in a heavily revised version in 1932. The essays in this volume are divided into two distinct parts. The first features essays that provide a running commentary on the chapters of the 1932 Ethics written by Dewey. Each chapter is introduced, situated within a historical perspective, and then its main achievements are highlighted and discussed. The second part of the book interprets the Ethics and demonstrates its contemporary relevance and vitality. The essays in this part situate the Ethics in the broader interpretive frameworks of Dewey’s philosophy, American pragmatism, and 20th-century moral theory at large. Taken together, these essays show that, far from being a mere survey of moral theories, the 1932 Ethics presents the theoretical highpoint in Dewey’s thinking about moral philosophy. This book features contributions by some of the most influential Dewey scholars from North America and Europe. It will be of keen interest to scholars and students of American pragmatism, ethics and moral philosophy, and the history of 20th-century philosophy.

A thorough, definitive account of Dewey's ethics

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Ethics" by John Dewey, James Hayden Tufts. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

John Dewey (1859-1952), renowned educator and philosopher, has been called the national philosopher of American civilization. James Gouinlock's superb collection of Dewey's writings presents the many aspects of Dewey's ethical thought. With this collection, students and scholars alike will more readily acknowledge Dewey's substantial contribution to our understanding of the moral life. The selections are grouped according to topic, including: "The Nature of Moral Philosophy"; "Man, Nature, and Society"; "Value and Nature"; "Human Nature and Value"; "Value and Intelligence"; "Moral Language"; and "Social Intelligence and Democracy".

John Dewey was unique among American philosophers in his insistence that the events, the social structure, the beliefs and attitudes of a period, its models of science and human history, all have some constitutive role in its philosophical theory. This belief is amply demonstrated in Dewey's own writings. Dewey and James H. Tufts' Ethics was first published in 1908 with a revised edition appearing in 1932. Dewey's part in the latter was wholly rewritten, and in effect constituted a new work, showing that Dewey did not believe ethical beliefs were eternal and unchanging. In Ethical Theory and Social Change, Abraham Edel provides a comparative analysis of the two editions to show how Dewey conceived ethics as part of an ongoing culture, not intelligible if isolated.The years between the two editions of Dewey and Tufts' Ethics were momentous in America and across the world. In 1908 industrialism was in high gear, putting greater pressure on social institutions and raising expectations of technological progress and extended democratic growth. By 1932, the devastation of World War I, economic depression, and the rise of totalitarianisms of the left and right had shattered that earlier optimism. The shift toward secular philosophy and new perspectives in research and method in the social sciences was challenging established universalizing views of morality with perceptions of fundamental moral conflict and the threat of relativism in their resolution.Dewey, is an ideal case for comparing changes in ethical theory over a quarter century. Unlike many philosophers he appreciated change and many of his basic ideas are geared to the problem of human control over change. Moreover he is concerned with the relation of theory and practice, and much of his work in metaphysics and epistemology is devoted to discovering the role that doctrines in these fields play and how they reflect the movement of social life. He is constantly concerned with ethics, with the history of ethics, and with the presuppositions of ethical theories that are studied in the social sciences and applied in the normative disciplines of politics, education, and law.Dewey's project of comparison in ethics reveals how theory is crystallized in the processes of the growth of knowledge in all fields and the human vicissitudes of history. Ethical Theory and Social Change will be of interest to philosophers, sociologists, and intellectual historians.