PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIAL PRACTICE

A collection of 18 essays, most of which heretofore have been unjustly languishing in the dust bins of the academy, and half of which rather startlingly record John Dewey's wanderjahre through the metaphysical netherlands of Absolute idealism. Written during his mid and late twenties, these particular essays- unusually peppery defenses and/or developments of Hegelian principles- exhibit a Dewey redolent with discipleship, searching for a world order and a schematic unity, reflecting the tender-minded interests of a period (the 1880's), and eventually escaping via the tough-minded intricacies of Huxleyan biology and Jamesian psychology. The later essays, though equally engaged in systematizing, see man as an organism in an environment, remaking as well as made, not as a solitary ""self"" or ""soul""Dewey's ""instrumentalism"" thus demands that ideas deal specifically with actual stimuli and situations and education work towards a modus vivendi between social control and personal fulfillment. Incidentally, Dewey's style- normally cluttered, rabbed- is here- in parts, anyway- almost charming. Another startler.