versity Press, 1939) for Dewey's eightieth birthday. The third edition of this bibliography, John Dewey: A Centennial Bibliography (Chi-cago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), which Thomas had planned to publish for the Dewey centennial in 1959, was delayed three years. Although the 1939 Thomas list was excellent and reliable, it had been published thirteen years before Dewey's death and twenty-two years before we started work. However, during the time we worked on the edition, Thomas's Centennial Bibliography-and Thomas himself-gave us constant, valuable help.

4. Ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale and Edwardsville: SIU Press, 1970; paperback, 1972).

5. "From Absolutism to Experimentalism," 1930, LW 5:156.

6. Because Volume 1, Early Essays and "Leibniz's New Essays"(1882-1888) appeared in 1969, the beginning of the series has sometimes been mis-dated 1969 instead of 1967.

7. School Review 76 (1968):352-356. 8. For a number of examples of the difference

made by critical editing, see my essay The Collected Works of John Dewey, 1882-1953 and the CEAA/CSE, Publications of the Bibliogra-phical Society of America, 86 (March 1991): 119-144.

9. Modern Schoolman 46 (November 1968):60.

10. Religious Humanism 3 (Summer 1969):136.

11. The James Works edition has been completed and a critical edition of his corres-pondence is underway.

12. Dewey to Lewis G. Vander Velde, December 14, 1939, Vander Velde Papers, Uni-

versity of Michigan Historical Collections. 13. See John Dewey's Personal and Profes-

sional Library: A Checklist (Bibliographical Contributions, No. 10), comp. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982).

14. "From Absolutism to Experimentalism," 1930, LW 5:155.

15. In "The Renascence of Classical American Philosophy," American Studies International 16 (Spring 1978):5-17, John J. McDermott dis-cussed the movement to produce collected, accurate editions of American philosophical writings.

16. In addition to the Dewey Works, volumes published in these editions are: The Works of William James, general editor, Frederick Burk-hardt; textual editor, Fredson Bowers (Cam-bridge: Harvard University Press), 18 vols., 1975-1988; The Writings of Charles Sanders Peirce, ed. Christian J. W. Kloesel et al. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), 4 vols., 1982-; The Works of George Santayana, Herman Saatkamp, general editor; William Holzberger, textual editor (Cambridge: MIT Press), 3 vols., 1986-.

17. Titles of the major works published in the last ten years also illustrate the topics that have engaged Dewey scholars recently:

Steven C. Rockefeller, John Dewey: Religious Faith and Democratic Humanism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991).

Robert B. Westbrook, John Dewey and American Democracy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991).

Larry A. Hickman, John Dewey's Pragmatic Technology (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990).

Cornel West, The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism (Mad-ison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989).

J. E. Tiles, Dewey (London and New York: Routledge, 1988).

Raymond D. Boisvert, Dewey's Metaphysics (New York: Fordham University Press, 1988).

Thomas Alexander, John Dewey's Theory of Art, Experience, and Nature: The Horizons of Feeling (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987).

Ralph W. Sleeper, The Necessity of Pragma-tism: John Dewey's Conception of Philosophy (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986).

Brian Hendley, Dewey, Russell, Whitehead: Philosophers as Educators (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986).

James Gouinlock, Excellence in Public Discourse: John Stuart Mill, John Dewey, and Social Intelligence (New York: Teachers College Press, 1986).

Gary Bullert, The Politics of John Dewey (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1983).

18. Nashville: Carmichael and Carmichael, 1991.

19. Louis Menand, "The Real John Dewey," New York Review of Books, June 25, 1992, pp. 50-55.

20. Letter of July 22, 1977, that TLS did not publish; copy at the Center for Dewey Studies.

21. "The Significance of the Problem of Knowledge," 1897, EW 5:6.

22. "A Controversial Philosopher States His Case on Politics, Poetry, and Moral Principle," Chronicle of Higher Education, May 3, 1989. •

John Dewey and A Common Faith Timothy J. Madigan

Much of John Dewey's philosophy was devoted to combatting what

he considered to be unnecessary dual-isms: mind and body, appearances and reality, idealism and realism. He was interested in empirically studying the place of human beings in the natural world, and felt that by overcoming such either/ or distinctions, one could better understand the dynamic processes that shape our lives. He was particularly critical of philosophies and religions that promoted a supernatural outlook and that sought timeless answers and unques-tionable certainties, thereby negating our lived experiences of changing realities,

Timothy J. Madigan is Executive Editor of FREE INQUIRY.

24

unprecedented opportunities, and baf-fling challenges.

It is not surprising, then, that Dewey addressed the issue of religious belief and its effect on human thinking. Probably his most famous work on this topic is A Common Faith (1934), in which he calls for a new, naturalistically based religious movement that would unify people by a set of shared ideals revolving around reform of social institutions, renewal of community spirit, and re-awakening of a sense of personal meaning and concern. Dewey felt that there was validity to religious inspira-tion, so long as it could be de-coupled from any supernatural goals such as a longing for eternal life. He writes that: "Any activity pursued in behalf of an ideal and against obstacles and in spite

of threats of personal loss because of conviction of its general and enduring value is religious in quality" (A Common Faith, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1934, p. 27). Ideals are fully a part of human nature, but they become dangerous when they are completely unrealizable. The danger of religions is that they codify and enforce the quest for ideals and turn them into supernat-ural constructs. The challenge, then, is to separate the "religious impulse" from the religions that imprison them. "For the moment we have a religion, whether that of the Sioux Indian or of Judaism or of Christianity, that moment the ideal factors in experience that may be called religious take on a load that is not inherent in them, a load of current beliefs and of institutional practices that are

FREE INQUIRY

For All Its Children Nel Noddings

irrelevant to them" (ibid., pp. 8-9). The irony of A Common Faith is that

Dewey's passion for unity caused him to create his own dualisms. The differ-ence between "religious" and "religion" is not as distinct as he would have it. How does one separate religious impulses from the practices of religions? Are such impulses universal, or do they pertain solely to the given institutions through which they are expressed? This is by no means clear. And isn't it rather presumptuous of Dewey to call for the world's religions to give up their super-natural outlooks, when such outlooks are often their raison d'être? Is Dewey's call for a natural religious movement itself a futile hope—an unrealizable ideal? Certainly the religious humanist movement, as expressed by The Human-ist Manifesto I, which he both signed and supported, has not exactly set the

In The School and Society, John Dewey wrote, "What the best and

wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all its children. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy" (1956/ 1900, p. 7). When I read these words today, two very different reactions spring to mind. First, I think how horrified Dewey would be if he observed the disgraceful conditions under which some of our children are schooled (see Kozol, 1991). Second, I think how often Dewey's critics and even some of his followers have misinterpreted his words.

What did Dewey mean when he said that the community should want for all

Nel Noddings is Lee L. Jacks Professor of Child Education and Acting Dean of the School of Education at Stanford. Her latest book is The Challenge to Care in Schools (Teachers College Press).

world on fire. It has most definitely not become a common faith.

There is a tension in John Dewey's writings on faith between what he would like to see and what he suspects to be possible. One can only wonder what he would think about the growing world-wide movement towards religious funda-mentalism, the disillusionment with scientific reason, and the revival of a sort of pantheistically oriented environmen-talism. No doubt, being a good instru-mentalist, he'd role up his sleeves, rethink his earlier positions in the light of new evidence, and get to work. One consults the works of Dewey for inspiration, not for ultimate answers.

Ralph Sleeper, one of today's salient Dewey interpreters, recently wrote that using a biographical approach is some-times a necessity for understanding prag-matism, especially in regards to Dewey's

its children what the best and wisest parents want for their own? Dewey did not mean that all children should have identical educations. He did not mean that some ideal, "best," parent could decide what the education of all children should be. In Democracy and Education

"I think how horrified Dewey would be if he observed the dis-graceful conditions under which some of our children are schooled."

(1966/ 1916), he expressed limited ad-miration for Plato's views, finding him right in advocating that education should match the capacities and interests of children, but wrong in restricting the forms of education to those that seemed to meet the needs of an elitist society. In gentle rebuke of Plato he wrote, "He never got any conception of the indefinite plurality of activities which may char-acterize an individual and a social group, and consequently limited his view to a

metaphysics and his overall sense of "lived experience." (R. W. Sleeper, "What is Metaphysics?", Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, vol. 28, no. 2, p. 186). So I'd like to end on a personal note. I first became aware of John Dewey some twelve years ago, when I took an introduction to philos-ophy course with Lee Nisbet (one of FREE INQUIRY'S founding editors). At the time, I was going through the turmoil of losing my religion (Catholic, in my case). Dewey's emphasis on ends-in-view rather than ultimate fulfillment, his obvious concern with human potential-ity, and his strong defense of democracy had a major impact on me. In particular, his criticisms of the supernatural helped me make the final break with Cathol-icism. I owe a debt of gratitude to John Dewey for assisting me on my own personal path to humanism. •

limited number of classes of capacities and of social arrangements" (1966/1916, p. 88).

Dewey would reject modern-day tracking for the same reason that he rebuked Plato. Curriculum ought not to be organized as college-prep and noncollege-prep. But Dewey would endorse a plan that allows students to follow their own interests to fruitful conclusions. Students interested in mechanics, music, or literature might enroll in a curriculum centered on such interests and prepare for either college or an immediate job. Is this not what wise parents would want for their own children—that they be allowed to follow their own legitimate interests and seek respectable occupations congenial to them?

Dewey would surely deplore our current emphasis, in the name of equality, on college preparation for all. First, of course, he would point out that education is not primarily preparation; it is a mode of experience that has con-

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