Reimagining Pragmatism: John Dewey and Democracy in Postwar American Thought

这个项目提供了约翰杜威的遗产在战后美国思想和文化的第一个知识分子的历史。杜威是二十世纪美国的“官方哲学家”，是一位杰出的科学、哲学、教育和民主思想家。至关重要的是，杜威还是那个时代实用主义的主要代言人，实用主义是一种独特的美国哲学，最初与进步时代的社会改革联系在一起，寻求抛弃固定的原则，支持民主实验。然而，在杜威于1952年去世后，与正统的说法相反，他的故事重新开始，学者，文化人物，活动家和社区领袖吸收并拒绝了杜威实用主义遗产的不同部分，为争夺社会和知识事业服务。这篇论文提供了这个来世的第一个帐户，问，如何美国认为杜威之后？该项目围绕杜威的早期接受的中心主题组织，突出了有影响力的知识分子和文化人物的档案文件，展示了杜威遗产在战后美国思想中的重要性。随着正典现在成为社会冲突的紧急场所，随着美国民主被认为处于“危机”之中，杜威思想的战后传播--对实用主义的重新想象--提供了一个重要的棱镜，通过它来突出美国实用主义的见解的明显多样性，以促进当代对意识形态、民主和知识生活的讨论。

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.