By David K. Cohen
John Dewey Professor of Education


hn Dewey was America's most distinctive philosopher. Though he was a modest and unassuming man, his philosophical program ranged over the entire agenda of philosophical specialties, from the philosophy of science to the theory of knowledge, aesthetics, metaphysics, education and beyond.

No other philosopher in the United States has contributed so much to so many fields of philosophical inquiry. Moreover, his contributions were extraordinary; in each of these fields of inquiry he sought to fundamentally reorient philosophical work.

In the theory of knowledge, for example, he elaborated a conception of truth that turned on the uses of what we know, and in aesthetics he sought to turn inquiry away from abstract theory and judgment toward a socially grounded consideration of art.

Though a technically proficient philosopher, Dewey attacked the intellectual issues that joined philosophy to the great questions of everyday life. Dewey was a college professor, but he was a public intellectual. Unlike many of his academic colleagues then or now, he worked prodigiously hard to make his ideas count for America and ordinary Americans.

In addition to writing about issues that did count, he was active in the social and political causes that he thought important-including everything from opposing tests and vocational schools that would track workers' children away from brighter futures to a third-party presidential campaign in the 1930s-and worked hard for civil liberties and civil rights. He fiercely opposed Communist and other totalitarian regimes, and spoke out strongly against them at a time when such independence was quite unfashionable.

Dewey combined a penetrating intellect, a philosophical passion for the great ordinary issues, and extraordinary vigor. In his 80s, many decades after his wife Alice had died and only a few years before he would follow her, Dewey married a much younger woman. She had several younger children, and, while still carrying on a vigorous writing career, he found plenty of time to roll on the floor to play with the children. Though he broke a leg or hip in one of these playful encounters, it did not seem to slow him down.