Dewey: A Beginner's Guide (Beginner's Guides) Paperback – June 1, 2008

Hildebrand's book is a comprehensive overview of Dewey's philosophy which is clear and generally avoids oversimplification. A roadmap to have. as you dive into Dewey's own words.

Dewey's writing is a treasure of thinking that needs to be read and re-read to be appreciated. This is a good reference.

Not a particularly good introduction. Hildebrand mentions that there has been a revival of interest in Dewey in recent years, but doesn’t give a very good sense of what the discussion is about. Mostly a brief account of his own take on Dewey’s thought, much of which makes Dewey sound particularly uninteresting.I’ve read a few of Dewey’s books, and one feature of his writing that is particularly exasperating is his tendency to talk in vague abstractions while insisting on the importance of beginning from concrete experience. Dewey tends to discuss other thinkers in the way they are discussed in an undergraduate survey book (or worse, a Wikipedia article), and never really get into any careful reading of texts. He also limits his examples, most of the time, to the vague and general. Hidlebrand seems to follow Dewey’s lead on this. As a result, Dewey comes off seeming rather anodyne and traditional, despite Hildebrand’s frequent claims that Dewey’s thought is challenging and radically overturns every tradition.For instance, the discussion of aesthetics is particularly lacking in concrete examples. Hildebrand claims that Dewey “challenges and transcends many traditional philosophical assumptions” about aesthetic theory, but his account gives us a very traditional Romantic theory of art. For instance, when he does try to give a concrete example of an aesthetic experience, he describes a woman observing Michelangelo’s David. The account, though, is no more that a vague account of noticing the amazing skill of the artist, followed by this: “there is a consummataory ahh of aesthetic experience.” The great power of art to change the world, it seems, is not much more than an inarticulate orgasmic fulfillment. The example is particularly telling, given Dewey’s interest in expanding the notion of “aesthetic” beyond the works curated in a museum. But setting that aside, there is also no discussion of what function this inarticulate feeling might serve in the world—which, it seems to me, is the part that really interests Dewey.There are other problems, I think. In the chapter on politics, Hildebrand presents Dewey as arguing that the state’s “raison d’etre is to enable the infinitely various private projects of the citizens to flourish.” Apparently, Dewey was a neoliberal. A reading that isn’t too hard to get from some of Dewey’s texts, I’m sure—he was concerned to remain a public intellectual, and shied away from overt criticism of capitalism, limiting his critique to vague claims like this one Hildebrand quotes: “The most marked trait of present life is insecurity...[which] cuts deeper and extends more widely than bare unemployment.” We can surely read that in any number of ways—Hildebrand takes the conventional liberal approach.Hildebrand’s reading of Dewey is, for me, made most explicit in the chapter on religion, when he is discussing the fundamental uncertainty of life, to which religion is supposedly a functional response: “Even today, for Westerners ensconced within a manifold of technological security, hurricanes happen. So do cancer and disastrous economic cascades.” The telling point here is putting the economic crises produced by capitalist economies in the same category as hurricanes—both are natural disasters. On my reading, one of the most interesting things about Dewey in a book like The Quest for Certainty, is that he tries to separate out these two kinds of things, and recognize that there are problems caused by nature, which we address one way, and problems caused by our own social systems, which we should address differently. Hildebrand wants a more safely capitalist, neoliberal, domesticated Dewey. Unfortunately, given Dewey’s tendency to be vague and indirect, it’s not difficult to produce one from his many texts.Overall, I would suggest that reading this book will just confirm what most people already think about Dewey from the brief mention he gets in undergraduate textbooks in philosophy , education, and psychology. He comes off as yet another half-bright conservative American, claiming to offer something radically new but really just offering the hegemonic ideology and calling it philosophy. Sort of a precursor to Sam Harris. I’m not sure if that’s really all there is to Dewey, though.

Clear, readable, and well-balanced critical review of a wider range of Dewey's philosophical endeavors than any of the comparable studies of Dewey. Don't be fooled by the brevity and price of this little book--it delves deeply into the most important issues while bringing those new to Dewey along for the journey. Recommended for philosophers and intelligent readers alike. For selected topics (e.g., psychology, education, ethics, religion) this book can be of great help any teacher who wants their students to get a solid familiarization with Dewey's views in those areas, but cannot devote a large chunk of the semester to reading primary Dewey sources. To philosophy teachers, this is a great way to work Dewey into courses focusing on historical sequences, epistemology, aesthetics, political philosophy, ethics, religion, courses. Most important, it reads well--it moves along briskly with good examples and straightforward explanations. Dewey explained!