(1998). Foucault, Dewey, and Self‐creation. Educational Philosophy and Theory: Vol. 30, No. 2, pp. 111-134.

John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925-1953 Volume 7: 1932, Ethics

Foucault, Dewey, and Self‐creation

It is no accident that in his Ethics textbook, John Dewey discussed marriage and family, population growth, and managing the social sphere together, albeit briefly. In earlyand mid-twentieth century intellectual circles, especially in the United States, the issue of maintaining a healthy “family stock” was not without its controversy. To some theorists, the notion of “social control” alluded to various forms of “population control,” and beyond more “traditional” state laws restricting interracial marriage, social policies emerged advocating various forms of eugenics. Some of these policies manifested in state laws. Indiana passed the first eugenic sterilization law in 1907, followed by California in 1909. By the early 1930s thirty additional states had passed eugenics-based sterilization laws (Cullen 163). If eugenics programs were so ubiquitous, and US education curricula so steeped in eugenic thinking, why did Dewey rarely ever mention it directly? What did he think about the subject? While I can only speculate about the first question, I argue here that Dewey strongly disagreed with its premises and promises, and his vision of creative education provided the pragmatic corrective. An outgrowth of the misapplied biological theories that marked the intellectual history of its age, “eugenics” meant different things to different people—from race improvement to simply proper nutrition and healthful living (Rury 104). Positive eugenics programs attempted to pair through careful selection those judged as society’s best, while supporters of negative eugenics tried to restrict procreation by those deemed to be socially inferior (Selden 68). Most eugenicists were committed to limiting the transmission of

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/pluralist.7.3.0096

Dewey's Dilemma: Eugenics, Education, and the Art of Living

Abstract It is commonly assumed that classical pragmatism has not developed an ethical outlook that deserves to be taken seriously despite the fact that John Dewey, in particular, has published several books on ethics. Major contemporary textbooks in ethics do not mention a possible pragmatist ethics. However, recently there have been various approaches in ethics and political philosophy that claim to base their normative accounts on pragmatist ideas (Philip Kitcher, Elizabeth Anderson). The article introduces these approaches and suggests that they adopt a methodological or proceduralist interpretation of pragmatism devoid of substantial ethical assumptions. It is then claimed that a purely methodological or procedural reading of pragmatism runs into problems that can only be solved if a closer look is taken at some of the more substantial ethical assumptions of pragmatism. Following a review of central elements of Dewey’s ethics, in particular his description of the role of the self in moral dilemmas, typical criticisms of these assumptions are discussed and partially rebutted. It is then suggested that one might conceptualise a pragmatist ethics as a “consequentialism of character”.

/pdf/gibt-es-eine-pragmatistische-ethik-37fpdjfhr2.pdf

John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925-1953 Volume 7: 1932, Ethics

Citations

Foucault, Dewey, and Self‐creation

Dewey's Dilemma: Eugenics, Education, and the Art of Living

Gibt es eine pragmatistische Ethik

Related Papers (5)

The Later Works of John Dewey, Volume 7, 1925 - 1953: 1932, Ethics

The Later Works of John Dewey, Volume 1, 1925 - 1953: 1925, Experience and Nature

The Later Works, 1925-1953. Volume I , 1925: Experience and Nature. By John Dewey

John Dewey : His life and work

The education of John Dewey : a biography