John Dewey's Philosophy of Spirit, with the 1897 Lecture on Hegel

john dewey’ s philosophy of spirit, with the 1897 lecture on hegel ................. 17851$ $$FM 07-30-10 08:14:41 PS PAGE i ................. 17851$ $$FM 07-30-10 08:14:41 PS PAGE ii john dewey’ s philosophy of spirit, with the 1897 lecture on hegel john r. shook and james a. good fordham university press new york 2010 ................. 17851$ $$FM 07-30-10 08:14:41 PS PAGE iii Copyright ᭧ 2010 Fordham University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means— electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Fordham University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or ac- curacy of URLs for external or third-party Internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Fordham University Press also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the publisher. Printed in the United States of America 12 11 10 5 4 3 2 1 First edition ................. 17851$ $$FM 07-30-10 08:14:42 PS PAGE iv Contents Preface vii Editorial Procedures for Class Lecture Notes by Center for Dewey Studies xi Part I. Dewey’s Philosophy of Spirit Dewey’s Naturalized Philosophy of Spirit and Religion 3 John R. Shook Rereading Dewey’s ‘‘Permanent Hegelian Deposit’’ 56 James A. Good Part II. Dewey’s1897Lecture on Hegel Hegel’s Philosophy of Spirit: 1897, University of Chicago 93 John Dewey Notes 177 Index 193 { v } ................. 17851$ CNTS 07-30-10 08:14:51 PS PAGE v ................. 17851$ CNTS 07-30-10 08:14:51 PS PAGE vi Preface n a brief autobiographical essay published in 1930, John Dewey I acknowledged that Hegel had ‘‘left a permanent deposit’’ in his thought, but he was evasive about the details of Hegel’s influence. Dewey’s admission fueled a debate, which shows no sign of abating even now, about the extent to which his later works contain a mixture of Hegelian and pragmatist elements. Since the publication of Mor- ton White’s The Origins of Dewey’s Instrumentalism in 1943, Dewey scholars have held that he made a complete break from Hegelianism around the turn of the twentieth century. Scholars have argued about the exact timing of Dewey’s conversion, but all agree that it occurred and that it happened sometime during the period 1894–1903. This interpretation, however, never put to rest questions about Hegelian elements in Dewey’s mature thought, particularly in Experience and Nature (1925), Art as Experience (1934), and A Common Faith (1934). John Shook’s book Dewey’s Empirical Theory of Knowledge and Real- ity (2000) was the first to break with the traditional reading of Dewey’s turn from Hegelianism toward pragmatism, arguing instead that Dew- ey’s mature philosophy was a gradual and naturalistic modification of his Hegelianism. For evidence, Shook focused primarily on Dewey’s changing relationship to British neo-Hegelian philosophers. James Good’s book A Search for Unity in Diversity: The ‘‘Permanent Hegelian Deposit’’ in the Philosophy of John Dewey (2005) extended Shook’s argument by comparing Dewey’s thought to recent readings of Hegel. His primary argument is that scholars have been mistaken about Dewey’s Hegelianism because they assume that the neo-Hegelian, metaphysical/ { vii } ................. 17851$ PREF 07-30-10 08:14:56 PS PAGE vii viii preface theological reading of Hegel was the only one available to Dewey. When we examine Dewey’s Hegelianism in the light of recent humanis- tic/historicist readings of Hegel, we find a far more significant Hegelian deposit throughout Dewey’s oeuvre. The arguments of both books receive weighty support from one of Dewey’s unpublished lectures—‘‘Hegel’s Philosophy of Spirit’’—for a graduate seminar he taught at the University of Chicago in 1897. In the University of Chicago Annual Register, the course was titled ‘‘Seminar in the Philosophy of Hegel’’ and was described in the fol- lowing way: Hegel’s Lesser Logic and Philosophy of Mind, as translated by Wallace, will be made the basis of study. Points of connection with the thought of his predecessors, especially Kant and Spinoza, will be studied, and Hegel’s own ideas will be further developed by reference to selected portions of the Phenomenology, the Phi- losophy of Law, and the Aesthetics. For graduate students.1 This lecture is no longer extant in Dewey’s own hand, but it survives in three nearly identical bound typescripts of one hundred and three pages, titled ‘‘Hegel’s Philosophy of Spirit.’’ The highly grammatical and readable text suggests that the typist was either a stenographer recording Dewey’s spoken lecturing or worked directly from excellent student notes or perhaps Dewey’s own notes. Any of these three ac- counts can explain how nearly identical typescripts (suffering only from occasional dropped letters or an odd gap between words) were produced by typewriter using carbon paper. The lecture published in this volume is the result of the transcription and copyediting of the staff of the Center for Dewey Studies in accord with its editing princi- ples (see ‘‘Editorial Procedures for Class Lecture Notes’’). The Center for Dewey Studies holds copyright on all unpublished works of John Dewey and has granted permission to publish this lecture. We cannot pause here to compare in detail this 1897 text with the handwritten lecture notes by Eliza Jane Read Sunderland of Dewey’s University of Michigan course in winter 1891, also titled ‘‘Hegel’s Phi- losophy of Spirit.’’ This set of notes in the Sunderland Manuscript Col- lection at Bentley Historical Library is very similar to the 1897 ................. 17851$ PREF 07-30-10 08:14:56 PS PAGE viii preface ix typescripts. The large degree of repetition suggests that Dewey was content to repeat most of his primary views on Hegel during much of the 1890s. Considered together, these two lectures indicate that Dewey was well versed in the details of Hegel’s intellectual development, his Ger- man context, and his writings and that Dewey was still quite sympa- thetic to Hegel as late as 1897.The1897 lecture complements evidence in his published writings to support the view that, during the 1890s, Dewey shifted from neo-Hegelianism to a humanist/historicist reading of Hegel and that the latter interpretation of Hegel left a far more significant deposit in his mature thought than neo-Hegelianism. On this view, Dewey’s mature philosophy can be seen to be a non-Marxist and nonmetaphysical type of left Hegelianism. To further experiment with this stance on Dewey and Hegel, we pro- pose in our chapters to explore Dewey’s philosophy of religion in general and his inheritance from Hegel of a ‘‘philosophy of spirit’’ in particular. We agree that Dewey did have a philosophy of spirit, that it was heavily indebted to Hegelian themes, and that Dewey’s resulting philosophy of religion is a key component of his social and political theory. Shook’s chapter offers an examination of religion’s role in Dewey’s philosophy throughout his career. Dewey’s understanding of the functions of religion and religious experience in morality and society are indebted to Hegelian themes, and so is Dewey’s theory of democratic politics and its manner of handling the future of religion. Good gives a detailed expla- nation of Dewey’s presentation of Hegel in the 1897 lecture ‘‘Hegel’s Phi- losophy of Spirit.’’ Of special significance for Dewey’s maturing thought is his historicist and progressivist view of Hegel’s treatment of freedom, religion, morality, and politics. For Dewey, Hegel’s philosophy of spirit leads directly to the democratic fellowship of common humanity, which becomes the cornerstone of Dewey’s own politics. We extend special thanks to Larry Hickman, Director of the Center for Dewey Studies at Southern Illinois University, for his cooperation with and encouragement of this project. Our editor at Fordham Uni- versity Press, Helen Tartar, has also been unfailingly supportive, and her efficient and patient assistance made this book possible. ................. 17851$ PREF 07-30-10 08:14:57 PS PAGE ix ................. 17851$ PREF 07-30-10 08:14:57 PS PAGE x Editorial Procedures for Class Lecture Notes by Center for Dewey Studies n general, we are operating on a policy of minimal regularization I or interference with the text. Although we are dealing for the most part with lecture notes taken by others of Dewey’s lectures, the text is the closest thing we have to Dewey’s words. We correct what is clearly wrong (such as typographical errors and incorrect bibliographical in- formation), but make no attempt to standardize the text. Spelling and punctuation. We allow a wide latitude in these areas. If it is possible to consider the spelling of a word acceptable (particularly for its time), we do not change it. Within a set of lecture notes, we allow alternate spellings (e.g., ‘‘esthetic’’ and ‘‘aesthetic,’’ ‘‘skepti- cism’’ and ‘‘scepticism,’’ ‘‘insofar’’ and ‘‘in so far’’), with possible exceptions where instances of a word are in close proximity. Amper- sands are expanded to ‘‘and,’’ abbreviations are expanded, and num- bers are written in full unless in a listing or outline. Punctuation is changed where necessary for the purpose of clarity. No record is provided of these sorts of changes; where substantive changes are made, however, annotation is provided.

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