John Dewey's original interest in philosophy was in Hegel and his views were primarily Hegelian for most of his early life. However, Dewey was interested in the work of the new writers in Europe and one of his earliest books, the Psychology, took the work of Helmholtz, Fechner, Wundt and other experimental psychologists and made their results "do service to German Idealism."[1]
In his studies of Hegel, Dewey came to read much of Kant and published an essay "Kant and Philosophic Method," but he considered Hegel's method an advance over Kant. He saw in the concepts of the new psychology "its organicism, its dynamism, its rejection of formalism as a logical model" as important improvements which he spent many years working into a Neo-Hegelian position.[2] He came to the conclusion that philosophic method was psychology.[3] With this conclusion in mind, he spent most of his energies in applying the "new method" to philosophy and to his theory of education.
Eventually, Dewey is considered to have made a break with Hegelianism, logical theory and psychology becoming his main interest. However, his interest had begun in German Idealism and his break with it seemed primarily one of linguistic principles. He felt that what new principles in psychology (and biology) "actually stood for could be better understood and stated when completely emancipated from Hegelian garb."[4] Dewey was not influenced as strongly by the movement to simplify language as his European counterparts, yet his rejection of the Hegelian language was in favor of the simpler, more useful language of experimental psychology.
The terminology Dewey adopted was not available to Hegel. Perhaps this is why some feel, as Hofstadter does, that Hegel uses unacceptable language. Hofstadter dos not respond to Hegel as Rudolph Carnap is said to have responded to Heidegger, and with good reason.[5] Nietzsche has explained:
Perhaps none of the famous Germans had more esprit than Hegel;
but he also felt such a great German dread of it that this created his
peculiar bad style. For the essence of this style is that a core is
enveloped, and enveloped once more and again, until it scarcely
peeks out, bashful and curious - as "young women peek out of their
veils," to speak with the old woman-hater, Aeschylus.[6]
Goethe wrote to a friend concerning the publication of the Phenomenology: "I am eager to see at long last a presentation of his way of thinking. He has such an excellent head, and he finds it so difficult to communicate his ideas."[7] Certainly, his German contemporaries, at least, found it easier to understand the written Hegel than the spoken. Yet, what Hegel was "communicating" was much more easily understood by those who understood what Hegel meant by Geist.
Dewey did the English speaking world a great service by emancipating the new principles of psychology (and biology) from "Hegelian garb." For us, he removed a great barrier to understanding Hegel. This, at the same time, hid from the eyes of his readers the Hegelian influence on Dewey's thought, and therefore on the Pragmatic Movement.
Dewey is one of the main representatives of the Pragmatic Movement. By showing the Hegelian influence on his thought the Hegelian influence becomes obvious. The Hegelian influence can best be observed by examining the relationship between collective and individual Geist in Dewey's philosophy.
While the relationship between collective and individual Geist is unproblematic for Hegel, it is very problematic for Dewey, as it is for Berger. In fact, that relationship may be seen as the central problem for Dewey, and the Pragmatic Movement.
Dewey inherits a problem of Kant's through his acceptance of Hegel's solution to the problem with Kant's "thing-in-itself." For Kant, the "thing-in-itself," unknowable by its very nature, was never the less necessary as a cause of the continuity behind experience. For Hegel, the "thing-in-itself" is Geist. Dewey's concept of "Organic Structures" essentially is the same concept completely "emancipated from Hegelian garb." It is through the concept of Organic Structures that Dewy attempts to show that there is consistency in experience.
For Dewey, "Experience has temporal continuity" and "Organic structures, which are the physical conditions of experience, are enduring."[8] In reading Dewey, it becomes clear that what he means by "Organic" includes the organism. What Berger calls social structure would then be included in Dewey's Organic structures. Organic structures, then, includes "Life" as ones intrasocial life and also the structures organic materials take.[9]
Dewey has trouble in showing that "organic structures" is a theoretically consistent concept. It becomes a touch-and-go point on which he basis much of his work. With respect to Dewey's position, some critics present the following problem:
Dewey seems to maintain:
(1) The knower gives or adds to the things to be known just those properties and
relations which he is said to discover by inquiry, and therefore that
(2) what is found out about the things is not true of them before and independently of inquiry.[10]
This is problematic for Dewey since, in wanting to maintain that nature is consistent, he wants to maintain that what is found out about things in inquiry was true of them before and independently of inquiry. The problem centers not so much on the actual consistency of nature as much as it does on our being about to know this consistency.
It is in this problem that we can see the essential similarity between organic structures and Geist. The essential similarity lies in the collective-individual relationship. The collective influences the individual, and the individual influences the collective. The consistency of nature lies in the collective, change lies in the individual conflict with the collective. It is the individual who becomes aware of a problem, by his conflict with some aspect of his collective's description of reality. His process of inquiry results in a new warranted assertion that to some degree must be adopted by the collective, perhaps causing a string of changes in the collective's description of reality. The problem then is how consistent can the collective's description of reality be with individuals constantly introducing change? Where can the line be drawn that enables us at anytime to feel comfortable with this view of reality?
In order to cope with this problem, Dewey makes a distinction between "coming to know" and "using knowledge in coming to know." By "coming to know" I mean the process of inquiry which has knowledge as its outcome. In this sense we are coming to know the solution of a problem by our experimentation. By "using knowledge in coming to know" I mean the propositional outcome of one inquiry as it is being used in another inquiry. IN this sense we are using previously gained knowledge to come to know something else. This distinction is not always clear in Dewey's work. He seems to deny such a distinction in some instances:
...knowledge as attained is distinction from knowing in process,
is a flat contradiction of my actual position, according to which
only the subject-matter in which inquiry terminates (in fulfillment
of its own conditions) is knowledge.[11]
And yet elsewhere he insists on the distinction:
...things and events are the material and objects of inquiry, and propositions
are means in inquiry, so that as conclusions of a given inquiry they become
the means of carrying on further inquiries.[12]
Addressing this problem in his work, Dewey says:
...I should, from the start, have systematically distinguished between
knowledge as the outcome of special inquiries (undertaken because
of the presence of problems) and intelligence as the product and
expression of cumulative funding of the meanings reached in these
special cases.[13]
Knowledge by acquaintance and recognition is not a re-knowing. "It is rather an acknowledgement of a certain object or event as having a specified place in a situation."[14] Dewey is then confronted with the problem of when we can be assured that something is warrantable assertible. In short, how can we be sure that the knowledge gained from an inquiry is still knowledge if we have no proof that nature has remained consistent?
Dewey approaches this problem with his conceptions of habits and communities of action.
...since habits involve the support of environing conditions, a society or
some specific group of fellow men, is always accessory before and after
the fact. Some activity proceeds from a man; then it sets up reactions in
the surroundings. Others approve, disapprove, protest, encourage,
share and resist. Even letting a man alone is a definite response.
Envy, admiration and imitation are complicities. Neutrality is non-
Existent. Conduct is always shared; this is the difference between
It and a physiological process.[15]
The word habit may seem twisted somewhat from its customary use
When employed as we have been using it. But we need a word to
express that kind of human activity which is influenced by prior
activity and in that sense acquired; which contains within itself a
certain ordering or systematization of minor elements of action;
which is operative in subdued subordinate form even when not
obviously dominating activity. Habit even in its ordinary usage
comes nearer to denoting these facts than any other word.[16]
In using the word "habit" in this way Dewey feels he continues in the tradition of David Hume, who "...emphasized habit and custom, but ...failed to see that custom is essentially a fact of associated living whose force is dominant in forming the habits of individuals."[17] Custom then is that aspect of organic structures which is the creative force. One of the most important of habits, or rather, of those habits that are most important, are those habits of speech, associated with their several communities of action, which are functions of the environment as much as functions of a person. "They are things done by the environment by means of organic structures of acquired dispositions."[18] It is in this way that knowledge as a judgment or as a warranted assertion is associated with a particular problematic situation which in turn is set in a community of action.
It is, therefore, in the concept of organic structures that Dewey attempts to solve the problem of consistency in nature. However, it was with the concept of organic structures that the problem arose in the first place. He, in effect, describes reality as socially constructed as does Berger. The problem is that of the relationship between the individual and the collective of which he is a part. How can the individual know the consistencies inherent in the collective body, whether that body be considered as nature or society, because other individuals, as well as himself, constantly introduces change? This problem is drastically different from the question "how is Mind related to Body?" The difference lies in the dilemma that not only can the collective (nature or society) affect the nature of the individual but the individual can affect the nature of the collective. This would not be a difference from the other questions if it were just in the sense that an individual could affect reality in the sense by which he does something to it, as in to build a house. It is instead that reality is totally socially structured. There is a consistency but we can change it. The problem is how often do we change the consistency and by how much? We have adopted Hegel's dictum "The real is the rational and the rational is the real." While Berger describes this problem as "the vertigo of relativity"[19] He also describes it as concerning "the extent to which thought reflects or is independent of the proposed determinative factors."[20]
Many other similarities between Hegel, Dewey and Berger can be drawn. However, the most important revolve around the importance they place on language, on knowledge as socially functional and socially defined, and most especially, the acceptance of the relationship between the individual and the collective as a dialectical process.
There are many similarities between Dewey and Berger that are not evident in Hegel. One such similarity is Dewey's conception of habits and Berger's conception of habitualization.[21] (But there is Hegel's discussion of custom.) However, enough has been shown with respect to their concern with the relationship between the collective and the individual, and that they handle this relationship in a way that shows the influence of Hegel's conception of Geist.
Dewey appears to be first in bringing the influence of Hegel into the Pragmatic Movement. Royce need not be shown to be influenced by Hegel. But, it has already been mentioned that his influence may not have been as much Hegelian as was others who were highly critical of Royce. William James has also been mentioned as holding views similar to Hegel; but Dewey appears to be far more Hegelian. Berger's position seems to be closest to pure Hegelianism and therefore clarifies the nature of the concept of Geist best. The philosopher who has been most influential in bringing Hegelianism into contemporary thought is Wittgenstein. He will be studied next.
[1] George Dykhuizen. The Life and Mind of John Dewey (Southern Illinois University Press, 1973) p. 55
[2] Ibid. p. 38
[3] Ibid. p. 49
[4] Ibid. p. 83
[5] It is said that Rudolph Carnap once regurgitated on a page of Heidegger's that he was reading.
[6] Friedrich Nietzsche. Dawn #193 and quoted in Kaufmann, op. cit. p. 99
[7] Kaufmann. Op. cit. p. 96
[8] John Dewey. Logic, The Theory of Inquiry (New York, 1938) p. 245
[9] John Dewey. Experience and Nature (Illinois, 1925) see under Organism and Organic Structures in the Index
[10] George Dicker. "John Dewey on the Object of Knowledge" Charles S. Pierce Society Transactions 8 1972 pp. 152-166 p. 152
[11] John Dewey. "Experience, Knowledge and Value: A Rejoinder" The Philosophy of John Dewey Schlipp ed., (New York, 1939) p. 558
[12] Ibid. p. 559
[13] Ibid. p. 521
[14] Dewey. Logic, The Theory of Inquiry p. 152
[15] John Dewey. Human Nature and Conduct (New York, 1922) p. 19
[16] Ibid. p. 39
[17] Ibid. pp. vi-vii
[18] Ibid. p. 17
[19] Berger. The Social Construction of Reality
[20] Ibid.
[21] Ibid. p. 53