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

ISBN: 0809328119

Author: Dewey, John

Condition: New

John Deweys Experience and Nature has been considered the fullest expression of his mature philosophy since its eagerly awaited publication in 1925.Irwin Edman wrote at that time that with monumental care, detail and completeness, Professor Dewey has in this volume revealed the metaphysical heart that beats its unvarying alert tempo through all his writings, whatever their explicit themes. In his introduction to this volume, Sidney Hook points out that Deweys Experience and Nature is both the most suggestive and most difficult of his writings.The meticulously edited text published here as the first volume in the series The Later Works of John Dewey, 1925-1953spans that entire period in Deweys thought by including two important and previously unpublished documents from the books history: Deweys unfinished new introduction written between 1947and 1949,edited by the late Joseph Ratner, and Deweys unedited final draft of that introduction written the year before his death. In the intervening years Dewey realized the impossibility of making his use of the word experience understood. He wrote in his 1951draft for a new introduction: Were I to write (or rewrite) Experience and Nature today I would entitle the book Culture and Nature and the treatment of specific subject-matters would be correspondingly modified. I would abandon the term experience because of my growing realization that the historical obstacles which prevented understanding of my use of experience are, for all practical purposes, insurmountable. I would substitute the term culture because with its meanings as now firmly established it can fully and freely carry my philosophy of experience.