2019 Volume 6, Issue 1 ISSN 2575-9922

Table of Contents *All contributions to this issue have und-gone blind, external peer-review. Confucian-Deweyan Transactions: Keeping Faith in Creative Democracy and Educational Experience by Sustaining Intercultural Philosophical Conversations in the Present Age 2 Joseph Harroff & Kyle Greenwalt John Dewey and Confucius in Dialogue: 1919-2019 9 Leonard J. Waks Diversity, Harmony (he ), and the “Melting Pot” 21 Jim Behuniak Confucianism, Moral Education, and the Harmonious Development of Persons 34 Besse Lina Zhang () The Symbolic Economy of the Hanfeizi 40 Brandon King The Influence of John Dewey on the Chinese Literary Revolution: Hu Shih’s Synthesis of Confucian Learning and John Dewey’s Pragmatism 55 James Z. Yang Dewey in China: A Historical Look at His Message of Peace and Understanding 69 Charles F. Howlett, Audrey Cohan, & Mariola Krol The Journal of School & Society 2 ISSN 2575-9922 6(1) 2–8 ©Author(s) 2019 Confucian-Deweyan Dewey in China Transactions: It was in California, then, that John Dewey was said to have told his wife, Alice, that, “we may Keeping Faith in Creative never again get as near Japan as we are now and that as the years are passing, it is now or never Democracy and Educa- with us.”1 And, so, Dewey set sail for Japan, tional Experience by Sus- where he would spend approximately three months writing and lecturing. During this time, taining Intercultural Philo- he became increasingly concerned about the Japanese government’s approach to interna- sophical Conversations in tional affairs. It was therefore, perhaps, with a sense of the Present Age some relief and happy contingency that Dewey received an invitation from his former student, Joseph Harroff Hu Shih (1891-1962), to teach for a year Temple University at National University in Beijing. Dewey ac- cepted this invitation, and ended up staying for over two years in China, during which time he Kyle Greenwalt was treated as an intellectual "rock star," travel- Michigan State University ling throughout the country as he gave talks at various venues. Dewey arrived in China in May of 1919—a In fall of 1918, John Dewey was on leave from moment of great national renewal. And it was Columbia University, enjoying a visiting ap- no doubt the May Fourth Movement, a nation- pointment at the University of California in wide student-led protest movement against Jap- Berkeley. This was a time, no doubt, for the anese imperialism and Western colonialism in American sage of democracy, education, and China, that resulted in Dewey's warm welcome. experience to rethink familiar habits. He was, in this way, viewed as a harbinger of a The “Great War” was nearly over— more enlightened future for the Chinese public. hostilities had ceased, and a peace treaty was Indeed, Dewey was perhaps treated as a kind of being negotiated in Paris. At this point Dewey convenient stand-in for the values he supposed- was regretting his initial support for Wilson’s ly personified: as “Mr. Science” and “Mr. De- prosecution of the war. And as it became ever mocracy.” clearer to him that the peace deal being negoti- Dewey was enthralled by what he experi- ated would do little or nothing in terms of enced in China, as he taught and lectured across achieving a more just, peaceful, and democratic the country. Jane, Dewey’s daughter, would lat- new world order, his sense of regret would only er say that: grow. 1 Robert B. Westbrook, John Dewey and American Democracy (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1991), 240. The Journal of School & Society 3 ISSN 2575-9922 6(1) 2–8 ©Author(s) 2019 China is the country nearest his heart after social intelligence. his own . The change from the United States to an environment of the oldest cul- Themes That Emerge From ture in the world struggling to adjust itself to new conditions was so great as to act as a This Issue rebirth of intellectual enthusiasms.2 This issue—and the next—of the Journal of Dewey, himself, would say about the May School & Society are devoted to critical issues of Fourth Movement: “To think of kids in our comparative philosophy. In particular, as we country from fourteen on, taking the lead in remember Dewey’s trip to China, we need to starting a big cleanup reform politics movement inquire into what an embodied practical wis- and shaming merchants and professional men dom might look like. We can do so by joining to join them. This is sure some country.”3 the best of the relatively young tradition of Clearly, Dewey’s trip to China was im- American pragmatism with the time-tested wis- portant in expanding his thinking about com- dom of the Chinese philosophical traditions.5 munity, democracy, and the possibility of inter- All of the articles in this issue approach the- national peace. Increasingly, he would employ a se vital questions in one way or another, from a more dynamic and robust conception of social diverse array of theoretical and historical per- intelligence as he sought to bring about a more spectives. And it is in this context of appreciat- optimal reality. This is best seen in one of his ing pluralism, that we feel the following three most important books on democratic social focal issues can be productively foregrounded theory, The Public and its Problems, published in in order to facilitate an inter-cultural conversa- 1927, soon after his return to the States. tion that concerned educators might wish to We might wish to reconsider Dewey’s trip attend to in reflecting upon the educational to China as opening up into a world beyond the scene in the present: interest of merely historical particulars. In this Democratic Experience and Relational Metaphys- special issue, we are of course seeking to learn ics. Ordinary human experience6 and “heavenly from history, but are simultaneously also hop- values”7 are always thought of as being deeply ing to revisit and reimagine the fecund possi- continuous and correlational within Confucian bilities of transformative philosophical dialogue traditions. that could happen across cultures and epochs in The non-dualistic mantra of “the heavenly the interstitial encounters and entanglements and human are everywhere continuous” (tianren opening up between Confucianism4 and Dew- heyi ) can be found animating the eyan thinking about democracy, education, and Confucian tradition. For example, early in the experience as all-encompassing ways of life best tradition, there is the Zhou dynasty invention approached with a working faith in creative 5 With a particular focus on the historical and “corporate- 2 ly” imagined Confucius in the context of living Confu- Westbrook, John Dewey, 240-241. 3 cian traditions. Westbrook, John Dewey, 243. 6 4 Confucianism is here broadly construed as an intergen- ren as an ethical-aesthetic achievement concept from erational project of optimizing human experience via a the relatively anonymous and ambiguously swarming thoroughly relational conception of persons rooted in multitude of min . family dynamics—gerundively understood as an ideal 7 tian as a “sky-like” set of natural transformations process for cultivating creative social intelligence. with ordered growth in intergenerational significance. The Journal of School & Society 4 ISSN 2575-9922 6(1) 2–8 ©Author(s) 2019 of a non-coercive governing regime of “Cultur- ) is the only viable (re)source that al China” or “focal state” (zhongguo ) at the we have from which to develop critically in- heart of a cosmopolitan “all-under-heavens” formed conversations and democratically effi- (tianxia ) way of thinking about a shared cacious action. We can't step outside of our world order. A more recent example is the skins to realize a philosopher's dream of an ob- manifold of modern Confucian voices of jective “View from Nowhere,” nor can we dis- reformation and revolution calling out emer- encumber ourselves from our lived family and gent publics to address post-colonial projects of social roles, a nexus of relationships that consti- the ethico-political order by thinking outside of, tutes our very identity as unique persons, in or- or “otherwise” than, the still dominant Western der to realize our quotient of creative potential ideologies of possessive individualism and ex- to transform this world as we find it. ceptional sovereignty. We might consider ways in which the cur- Dewey, Confucius, and the Work rent set of problems and predicaments we are facing as a fragile planetary public could be re- of Teaching imagined and redressed in such a philosophical conversation, if not resolved, in light of the cre- As Henry Rosemont and Roger Ames have ative thinking that can come into view regard- called our attention to, there is practically no ing the deep relationality and creative intelli- way for those reared exclusively in the environs gence found in both Deweyan and Confucian of Western culture (viz., European philosophi- conceptions of collaborative democratic agency cal grammatology as a melding of Platonic met- and the concomitant hopes for a more robust aphysics and Abrahamic monotheism) to make world of shared human flourishing and plane- sense of the Chinese conception of tian , tary sustainability most often translated into English as “heav- Pragmatic Fallibilism and Communal Moral In- en.”8 quiry. Solutions to any problem are best However, by engaging in responsible philo- thought of as temporary adjustments to ongo- sophical generalizations in order to better con- ing changes in the natural and human environ- textualize our understandings of this and other ment—concrete adjustments in response to concepts in early Chinese philosophies, those emergent conditions. And as such we need to most deeply entrenched in the ideology of indi- situate our collective energies and collaborative vidualism and absolute sovereignty might have inquiries of a broadly moral nature within hori- a fighting chance to think otherwise with the zons of traditional intelligibility and affective help of Confucian texts and a ritual-social signification.

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