Confirming his moniker as “America’s philosopher of democracy,” John Dewey engaged in a series of public debates over the course of his lifetime, vividly demonstrating how his thought translates into action. These debates made Dewey a household name and a renowned public intellectual during the early to mid-twentieth century, a time when the United States fought two World Wars, struggled through an economic depression, experienced explosive economic growth and spawned a grassroots movement that characterized an entire era: Progressivism. Unfortunately, much recent Dewey scholarship neglects to situate Dewey’s ideas in the broader context of his activities and engagements as a public intellectual. This project charts a path through two of Dewey’s actual debates with his contemporaries, Leon Trotsky and Robert Hutchins, to two reconstructed debates with contemporary intellectuals, E.D. Hirsch and Robert Talisse, both of whom criticized Dewey’s ideas long after the American philosopher’s death and, finally, to two recent debates, one on home schooling and the other on U.S. foreign policy, in which Dewey’s ideas offer a unique and compelling vision of a way forward.

"An annotated edition of John Dewey's work of democratic theory, first published in 1927. Includes a substantive introduction and bibliographical essay"--Provided by publisher.

Links democracy with the process of overcoming severe social inequality, rather than with ideal forms of political debate.

DIVWritten shortly after the shattering effects of World War I, this volume initiated the author's experimental concept of pragmatic humanism. This revised, enlarged edition features Dewey's informative introduction. /div

A thorough, definitive account of Dewey's ethics

. Renewal of Life by Transmission. The most notable distinction between living and inanimate things is that the former maintain themselves by renewal. A stone when struck resists. If its resistance is greater than the force of the blow struck, it remains outwardly unchanged. Otherwise, it is shattered into smaller bits. Never does the stone attempt to react in such a way that it may maintain itself against the blow, much less so as to render the blow a contributing factor to its own continued action. While the living thing may easily be crushed by superior force, it none the less tries to turn the energies which act upon it into means of its own further existence. If it cannot do so, it does not just split into smaller pieces (at least in the higher forms of life), but loses its identity as a living thing. As long as it endures, it struggles to use surrounding energies in its own behalf. It uses light, air, moisture, and the material of soil. To say that it uses them is to say that it turns them into means of its own conservation. As long as it is growing, the energy it expends in thus turning the environment to account is more than compensated for by the return it gets: it grows. Understanding the word "control" in this sense, it may be said that a living being is one that subjugates and controls for its own continued activity the energies that would otherwise use it up. Life is a self-renewing process through action upon the environment.