Reimagining Pragmatism: John Dewey and Democracy in Postwar American Thought

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This project offers the first intellectual history of John Dewey's legacy in postwar American thought and culture. Deweywas twentieth-century America's 'official philosopher', a preeminent thinker of science, philosophy, education anddemocracy. Crucially, Dewey was also the era's leading spokesperson for Pragmatism, a distinctively Americanphilosophy, which, originally bound up with Progressive-era social reform, sought to jettison fixed principles in favour ofdemocratic experiment. Yet, after Dewey's death in 1952, and contrary to orthodox accounts, his story began anew, asacademics, cultural figures, activists and community leaders co-opted and rejected different segments of the DeweyanPragmatist legacy, in the service of contesting social and intellectual causes. This dissertation provides the first accountof this afterlife, asking, how did America think after Dewey? Organised around central themes in Dewey's contestedreception, the project foregrounds the archival papers of influential intellectual and cultural figures, demonstrating thesignificance of Dewey's legacy in postwar American thought. With the canon now an urgent site of social conflict, andwith American democracy supposedly 'in crisis', the postwar channelling of Dewey's ideas - the reimagining ofPragmatism - provides a vital prism through which to highlight the manifest diversity of American Pragmatism's insightsfor contemporary discussions of ideology, democracy and intellectual life.