Copyright 2006 by Tad Beckman, Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA 91711
John Dewey was born in Burlington, Vermont, in 1859, to parents who both counted roots back to colonial days --- his father, through a line of merchants, and his mother, through a line of Vermont farmers. Dewey's childhood and education were unassuming. Finishing his bachelor's degree, at the University of Vermont, in 1879, he went to work teaching in public schools in Pennsylvania and Vermont. This modest life ended largely through the influence of his Vermont philosophy professor, H. A. P. Torrey, who continued to encourage Dewey to read classics, history of philosophy, T. H. Green, and German philosophers. In 1882, Dewey published a paper called "The Metaphysical Assumptions of Materialism," in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, and the success of this paper inspired him to quit teaching and return to school. He enrolled in the newly established Johns Hopkins University and finished a Ph. D. in 1884. His dissertation was entitled "The Psychology of Kant."As it happened, Charles Sanders Peirce was a faculty member at Johns Hopkins during this period and Dewey was stronglyinfluenced by several courses of study with Peirce. Peirce was the brilliant son of the famous Harvard mathematicianBenjamin Peirce and he had written a series of influential articles on the philosophy of science and epistemology. Anotherfamous Harvard faculty member had already been substantially influenced by Peirce; this was William James. From the 60sthrough the late 80s, James had made his way from physiology to psychology to philosophy, writing one of the most famous19th Century books on psychology along the way. Together, Peirce and James constituted the core of the school ofAmerican Pragmatism. Other influences at Hopkins were G. Stanley Hall and James McKeen Catell, famous psychologists,and a Hegelian philosopher, G. S. Morris.
During the first decade after his Ph. D., Dewey taught at Michigan, Minnesota, and Chicago, concentrating on therelationships between psychology and philosophy. In 1887, he published a book, Psychology. But eventually, his teachingexperiences in public schools led him to focus on educational pedagogy. At the University of Chicago, he began the famous"Laboratory School" and also was involved with the "Chicago Circle," which developed the philosophy of Pragmatism. TheSchool and Society was one of several books produced in this period.
In 1904, Dewey was invited to join the faculty at Columbia University and he stayed at Columbia until his retirement, in1930, continuing as an emeritus until 1939. At Columbia, his career blossomed into more purely philosophical areas, and hewrote many books on political and moral philosophy. Dewey was an especially enthusiastic advocate for democracy but healso deeply recognized the complete dependence of a democratic system on a free and well educated electorate. He broughtthis point home in books like Democracy and Education. But his creative life had tremendous range, as indicated by hislarge book, late in his career, Art as Experience. While his first wife died in 1927, Dewey remarried, at the age of 87, in1946. He lived on Long Island, where he continued the life of a Vermont farmer, close to the earth, managing a small eggfarm. He died at 93, in 1952. He wrote Freedom and Culture in 1939, in his retirement and at a desperate time in worldhistory. As you will see it reflects his lifelong dedication to ideas about education, culture, democracy, and freedom.
Some Relevant Background
While Freedom and Culture is a philosophical work, it is clearly strongly related to the time in which it was written --- the late 1930s. The world had been traumatized by the First World War and America had been devastated by the Great Depression. Recovery from the Depression, under the Roosevelt administration, had tested the Federal government in new ways; indeed, the country had moved much more strongly in the direction of central administration of social and economic programs.
Throughout the world, International Communism had been making significant progress. Russia had become a communist nation after the Revolution of 1917, which excited communist parties throughout the rest of the world, especially in the heavily industrialized nations. America's own economic problems made communism an interesting possibility in the minds of intellectuals and artists throughout the 1930s.
Last but not least, Fascist governments had arisen in Spain, Italy, and Germany. The power of these governments and the necessity of competing with them in the world caused some people to argue for yet greater centralization of power in the Federal system. There were very significant questions about whether democratic principles and institutions could survive such competition. All of these factors had come to a head by the time Dewey wrote this book in 1939.
Dewey's philosophical method, as alluded to above, was Pragmatism. Aside from being inspired by various interpretations of scientific method, Pragmatism was also inspired by the failure of metaphysics (or essentialism) in Western philosophy. Neither the meaning nor the truth of our ideas, even our most fundamental ideas, is believed to descend to us from some untouchable authority or fountainhead. Ideas have meaning insofar as they have application in the experienced world; they have truth insofar as their application is successful. Our physical and social relationships are the testing grounds of our ideas. When it comes to the defense of democracy, we cannot rely on "natural law" or "social contracts" or democractic instrumentalities. The issues are meaningfully expressed only in the ways that we behave. Thus, much of this book attempts to pose questions about American culture and the factors behind it.
A Word About Culture
Dewey considers two factors that affect human behavior and, hence, democratic practice. These are culture and human nature. People are strongly inclined to cite human nature as the cause of human behavior, but Dewey suggests that more-often-than-not the particular concept of human nature that is advanced is specially (though perhaps unconsciously) constructed to point to whatever program is favored by the commentator. Clearly, human nature influences behavior but the cultural factor is so pervasive that it is difficult to discover and understand precisely what human nature is.
Dewey's concept of culture is informed by the contemporary development of anthropology. Culture is essentially the complex of artifacts, relationships, and institutions that develop and control behavior in a society; the elements of culture are recognized as fundamentally important to the society in such a way that they are maintained and defended against arbitrary invention. Since the mid-19th Century, anthropologists had been engaged in studies of societies around the world. And one of their most important discoveries has been the impressive diversity of cultural systems. All of these, Dewey is quick to point out, are based on "human nature" and yet they lead to strongly divergent systems of behavior. We are formed by cultural influences from birth onward. The words 'culture' and 'cultivate' are strongly related. The culture in which we grow up is literally the medium through which our behaviors are cultivated.
What are the components of culture? Some of the most basic components are the particular ways in which we clothe ourselves, house ourselves, and feed ourselves. Since humans tend to live in social groups, there are also characteristic patterns of socialization. Some of these, like decision making (governance) and family rearing (marriage), may become fixed or institutionalized (meaning that there are specific rules that cannot be changed). Virtually all cultures allow for the educational development of its children by some means; also, virtually all of them provide some pattern of spiritual life. Science, in some form, and the arts, in many forms, are important components of culture. Language, of course, is one of the chief artifacts. What makes cultural studies important and fascinating is when we begin to see how all of these components work together as a system of shaping and maintaining human behavior.
The importance of culture to freedom and democracy should be obvious. Does the culture cultivate human behavior in the directions that favor self-government and that tolerance of individuality that we identify with freedom? Does it, for example, favor cooperative activity, peaceful settlement of disputes, and a work ethic that encourages people to shoulder the responsibilities of decision making? Certainly, the colonial cultures that Jefferson knew and idealized favored these habits. The agrarian work ethic and system of social dependence determined that people would have common interests so that they would tend to be sympathetic and cooperative when they met for decision making. At the same time, agrarian life set people apart on their farms where they developed a spirit of self-reliance and independence. Democracy and freedom would seem to be natural attributes of such a culture.
Dewey's Freedom and Culture
Concepts like democracy and freedom frequently get swept up in metaphysical speculation and, frequently, are put to rhetorical use in rather empty ways. Americans measure themselves against other people by saying that we are free and democratic. But what do we really mean? Do we actually say anything in this claim other than issuing some self-congratulatory slogan that makes us feel happy or righteous? Dewey was especially concerned, in the late 1930s, because the world was rapidly becoming polarized between the radical right and the radical left. At the same time, the Great Depression had brought forward strong polarities within the United States itself. Was democracy coming apart worldwide? Could the pure will to be free salvage America? In particular, do American democratic institutions, as founded in specific political documents, guarantee the survival of democracy and freedom in America? These were understandably important questions in 1939; however, they are no less relevant to our own age. The recently proclaimed "victory" of Capitalism over Communism, ending the Cold War, welcomed in an incomparable period of blindness, forwarding self-congratulations and prohibiting all further self-criticism. In an even more daring move, the Bush administration has announced its intention to bring democracy to countries around the world, starting with its war in Iraq. All of these events require us to ask anew just what democracy is.
In Dewey's Pragmatic analysis, the idea of freedom can only mean something that we experience in our physical and social relations. It is either there or it isn't. If we are free people, then we have something to show for it. Similarly, if democracy is meaningful, then we can show what it is by application in our world of experience. If democracy and freedom are alive and well, they are aspects of our actual culture, not just declarations on paper, eternal principles, or heroic beliefs. Dewey was completely convinced that a democratic way of life is hard. It demands work, and it demands constant vigilance. This conviction comes straight out of his Pragmatist position. That is, democracy doesn't happen because we state it, declare it, or found it. Democracy happens because we make it happen each day in the way we live. Here, Dewey found the development of American society more than worrisome. The principles and social practices of American democracy developed out of the culture of New England --- largely rural agrarian and largely guided by the Protestant ethic. By 1939 that had changed dramatically; by 2006 it has changed even more dramatically. There was no doubt whatsoever, in Dewey's mind, that the cultural changes in America had transformed democracy and freedom. With agrarian life patterns falling to less than one percent of the American population, those most basic components of culture --- clothing, housing, and feeding --- have evolved into entirely different forms. In particular, in the world where we no longer raise our own food and have little or no relationship with the land, our survival now hangs on an entirely different cultural component called "employment". And employment is most frequently available only in large congregations of people, or cities. Hence, we have lost the self-reliance and independence of the farm, and we have lost the commonality of interests and cooperative spirit that made freedom and democracy natural. The Capitalist system of economy allows this entire system of survival to be organized and administered by so-called entrepeneurs, a system that has evolved into "corporate capitalism' and is now heading toward "global capitalism". When we make a sober evaluation of this cultural system, it looks more like a new form of feudalism than any evolved form of democracy, in spite of our fanatical need to identify democracy and capitalism as though they were necessarily linked. It is tough to maintain that American culture today nurtures democracy and freedom when it would appear that a very small percentage of the population is in complete control of the economy. What remains questionable is what democracy has become and whether there is anything that can be done to salvage it.
In short, what is American culture in the 21st Century? And are democracy and freedom attributes of it? Do our cultural practices give us the tools for the legitimate practice of democracy and freedom? If not, how can American culture be re-shaped to preserve freedom and renew optimism among our youth?
Updated on March 8, 2006; click here to return to My HomePage or here to return to Course Index Page.