Dewey's Enduring Impact: Essays on America's Philosopher

John Dewey was recognized in his own day as America's philosopher. His defenses of pragmatism, naturalism, humanism, and democracy stand among the highest achievements of thought, and they helped shape the destiny of America and the world. In this collection of twenty-three essays, written especially for this volume, many of the most prominent scholars on Dewey and pragmatism offer fresh insights and explorations of Dewey's enduring impact. The contributors are inspired to search for that new enlightenment that Dewey himself sought, reconfigured to deal with the pressing problems of our times. The world seems to be reaching a tipping point of social, political, and ecological instability. Can Dewey's philosophy help once again with the real-world problems of our own day? Among this book's contributors are John Peter Anton (University of South Florida), Molly Cochran (Georgia Tech), Peter Godfrey-Smith (Harvard University), James Gouinlock (Emory University), Judith Green (Fordham University), Larry Hickman (Southern Illinois University), Philip Kitcher (Columbia University), Paul Kurtz (Center for Inquiry), Joseph Margolis (Temple University), Gregory Pappas (Texas A&M University), Hilary Putnam (Harvard University), Ruth Anna Putnam (Wellesley College), Jay Schulkin (Georgetown University), and Giuseppe Spadafora (University of Calabria).

John R. Shook (Amherst, NY) is vice president for education and research and a senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry in Amherst, New York. He is the author of Dewey’s Empirical Theory of Knowledge and Reality. He is the editor of Pragmatic Naturalism and Realism and, with Hugh McDonald, of F. C. S. Schiller on Pragmatism and Humanism: Selected Writings, 1891–1939, among other works.

Paul Kurtz (1925-2012), professor emeritus of philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, was the author or editor of more than fifty books, including The Transcendental Temptation, The Courage to Become, and Embracing the Power of Humanism, plus nine hundred articles and reviews. He was the founder and chairman of the Center for Inquiry, the Council for Secular Humanism, and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He appeared on many major television and radio talk shows and has lectured at universities worldwide.