John Dewey

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Lore & Background

John Dewey was born in Burlington, Vermont, to a family of modest means. He was one of four boys born to Archibald Sprague Dewey and Lucina Artemisia Rich Dewey. Their first son, also named John, died in an accident on January 17, 1859; the second John Dewey was born October 20, 1859, forty weeks later. He attended the University of Vermont, where he was initiated into Delta Psi and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1879. A significant professor there was Henry Augustus Pearson Torrey, with whom Dewey studied privately after graduation. After two years as a high-school teacher in Oil City, Pennsylvania, and one year as an elementary school teacher in Charlotte, Vermont, he decided he was unsuited for teaching primary or secondary school. He received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1884, with a now-lost dissertation titled "The Psychology of Kant." He accepted a faculty position at the University of Michigan (1884–88 and 1889–94) with the help of George Sylvester Morris. In 1894, Dewey joined the newly founded University of Chicago (1894–1904), where he developed his belief in Rational Empiricism and became associated with Pragmatic philosophy. He initiated the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, applying his progressive pedagogical ideas. Disagreements with the administration led to his resignation. From 1904 until his retirement in 1930 he was professor of philosophy at Teachers College, Columbia University, where he influenced Carl Rogers. He was elected president of the American Psychological Association in 1899 and president of the American Philosophical Association in 1905. He was a longtime member of the American Federation of Teachers and, with historians Charles A. Beard and James Harvey Robinson and economist Thorstein Veblen, a founder of The New School. Dewey published more than 700 articles in 140 journals and approximately 40 books. Major works include "The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology" (1896), Democracy and Education (1916), Human Nature and Conduct (1922), The Public and its Problems (1927), Experience and Nature (1925), Impressions of Soviet Russia and the Revolutionary World (1929), Art as Experience (1934), A Common Faith (1934), Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (1938), Freedom and Culture (1939), and Knowing and the Known (1949). In 1919, he and his wife traveled to Japan, where he was critical of the nation's governing system, warning that "bureaucracy and militarism might come back." He was then invited to Peking University and arrived in Shanghai on April 30, 1919, just days before the May Fourth demonstrations. He stayed in China for two years, visiting 11 provinces, giving nearly 200 lectures, and writing monthly articles for The New Republic. His lectures were interpreted by Hu Shih and widely published; he was hailed as "the American Confucius." He met Sun Yat-sen, reform-minded intellectuals, and the warlord Yan Xishan. His lecture on "Three Contemporary Philosophers: Bertrand Russell, Henri Bergson and William James" at Peking University in 1919 was attended by a young Mao Zedong.

Reader's Guide

John Dewey's significance lies in his profound influence on American philosophy, psychology, and education. As a leading pragmatist, he argued that complete democracy required not just extending voting rights but ensuring a fully formed public opinion through communication among citizens, experts, and politicians. He considered schools and civil society as major topics needing reconstruction to encourage experimental intelligence and plurality. His functional psychology began with his 1896 paper "The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology," regarded as the first major work of the Chicago functionalist school. As an educational reformer, Dewey was a major voice of progressive education. He founded the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools to test his pedagogical ideas, and his work Democracy and Education (1916) became a celebrated text on progressive education. His writings spanned epistemology, metaphysics, aesthetics, art, logic, social theory, and ethics. Hilda Neatby wrote that "Dewey has been to our age what Aristotle was to the later Middle Ages, not a philosopher, but the philosopher." His legacy includes shaping modern educational practices and democratic theory, though his ideas have also been subject to debate and reinterpretation.

Did You Know?

• Dewey's older brother, also named John, died in an accident on January 17, 1859; Dewey was born forty weeks later on October 20, 1859.
• His Ph.D. dissertation, titled "The Psychology of Kant," is now lost.
• In 1919, Dewey arrived in Shanghai just days before the May Fourth demonstrations, which excited and energized him.
• He gave nearly 200 lectures in China over two years, visiting 11 provinces.
• A young Mao Zedong attended Dewey's 1919 lecture on "Three Contemporary Philosophers" at Peking University.