Much of the history of philosophy has deployed the metaphor of sight over and above language of tactility and feeling. The body, the flesh, the hands and feet are seen as impediments to reason's upward journey towards the pure "light" of truth. But it is precisely these tactile points of contact with the world where knowledge and action begins and…

In this article, we argue for the importance of the notion of conflict in John Dewey's philosophy. Indeed, many criticisms have been leveled against Dewey regarding his political philosophy and his philosophy of education based on the idea that he underestimated the conflict inherent in human affairs. These criticisms are compelling because they…

Ninety years ago, John Dewey's discussion of "the religious"--as distinct from traditional "religion"--opened new ways of thinking about the connection between spirituality and everyday forms of human action. But in what ways does our contemporary religious landscape invite us to reimagine and reconstruct Deweyan approaches to…

Critics of Dewey's metaphysics point to his dismissal of any philosophy which locates ideals in a realm beyond experience. However, Dewey's sustained critique of dualistic philosophies is but a first step in his reconstruction and recovery of the function of the metaphysical. Detaching the discussion of values from inquiry, whether scientific,…

Challenges to education today are part of a wider cultural context. Dewey, Heidegger, and certain Russian thinkers have remarkably similar diagnoses of our post-Cartesian reductive condition. In education this complex appears as "educational materialism." In contrast, a "sophic education" would be similar to Bulgakov's…

This article explores the possibility that John Dewey's silence about which democratic means are needed to achieve democratic ends, while confusing, makes greater sense if we appreciate the notion of political technology from an anthropological perspective. Michael Eldridge relates the exchange between John Herman Randall, Jr. and Dewey in which…

In this article, we first suggest that contemporary school policies and practices represent a utopia-gone-wrong. In striving for an unattainable educational utopia--that is, all students will be proficient in math and reading by 2014--current polices and their resulting practices have brought a classic dystopian turn--the dehumanization of…

In this article, the author digs into John Dewey's writings to explore his democratic community to better understand the meaning and the value of community. The author begins by considering the connotation of the concept "community," which is distinguished from the more popular term "society" used in ordinary language. Then the author transitions…

Malcolm X in his autobiography claimed that every experience he had as a youth was educative. Such a claim confronts us, as educators, with a serious dilemma, that is, whether all transformations and human experiences are educative. In reviewing John Dewey's major writings on the topic, the author concludes that some of Malcolm X's early…

This article opens by raising a need to examine today's moral education for a new century. John Dewey insists that "arts are educative," so that "they open the door to an expansion of meaning and to an enlarged capacity to experience the world." This insight retains remarkable implications for today's moral education. Aesthetic experience is…