Ebooks for the Classroom+Faculty

John Dewey and American Democracy
ISBN: 9781501702044
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / Cornell University Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Dewey John 1859–1952 -- Contributions in political science; Dewey John 1859–1952 -- Contributions in democracy;

Highly regarded but largely unread today, Dewey is generally considered a pragmatist in the mainstream of American liberalism. This exciting portrait of the philosopher as an advocate of participatory democracy and a political activist presents him as a more radical voice than is generally assumed. Although the anti-Stalinist thinker cared little for Marx and was quick to see the repressive nature of Soviet collectivism, he considered himself a democratic socialist in the 1920s and '30s, and questioned corporate capitalism's capacity to promote democratic values. Dewey often is blamed for ``aimless'' progressive education, but Westbrook, a historian at the University of Rochester, argues that his actual impact on U.S. schools was limited, and examines Dewey's vision of the school as a laboratory fostering social, cooperative impulses instead of competitive, selfish individualism. This study, intellectual biography of the highest order, reevaluates Dewey's thought as a signpost for the revitalization of democracy. Photos. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Robert B. Westbrook is Professor of History at the University of Rochester. He is the author of John Dewey and American Democracy , also from Cornell, winner of the Merle Curti Award. He is also the author of Why We Fought: Forging American Obligations in World War II and the coeditor of In Face of the Facts: Moral Inquiry in American Scholarship .