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THE THOMIST A SPECULATIVE QUARTERLY REVIEW OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY EDITORS: THE DOMINICAN FATHERS OF THE PROVINCE OF ST. JOSEPH Publishers: The Thomist Press, Washington 17, D. C. VoL. XVIII APRIL, 1955 A THOMISTIC APPRAISAL OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF JOHN DEWEY No.~ T HERE is more than one way to skin a cat and the ways to be rid of metaphysics seem even more numerous. A Descartes can make the connection between body and soul so tenuous that the realities of the spirit rise up into thin Berkeleyean air. The wisdom of the first philosophy can be declared unknowable by a man in Konigsberg. Three men in Jena will claim vision of it as a veritable nonsense. Deny the mind's existence and sensation will perform the exorcising. Deny the soul itself and matter with heavy tread will tramp out all thoughts of being or the perfections of being while itself marching gravely to the grave. Therein lay the difficulty. Each scissoring performed its task too well. Metaphysics was excluded but with it part of the world still desirable to retain. With Kantian bifurcation all was lost; recourse only in faith was left. With the positivist 127 128 FERRER SMITH and materialist renouncement, all values were renounced as well. Another cut could yet be made. It gave promise of retrieving for man a life with more than atoms and molecules on which to found his happiness. This was to divide not body and soul, at least not immediately nor as the principle of interpretation, not sensation and reason, nor matter from its form, but the mind itself. It was to take the practical and drop the speculative. At one stroke were values saved and metaphysics excised. This split, of the practical function of the mind from its speculative power, was John Dewey's contribution to the history of man's search for wisdom. He dedicated his philosophic life, an unusually long one, to the implementation and exploitation of the practical and the extirpation of what he considered the obstructionist chimeras resultant upon any affirmation of the speculative. The result was the abundant literature of pragmatism, instrumentalism and experimentalism, as his thought was at various times called. A Thomist, once aware of what was to be done, could predict with confidence general features of such a philosophic truncation , notwithstanding Dewey's vehement objection to such prophecy. After all, the practical function of the intellect has not lacked the attention of thinkers from Aristotle onwards. The nature, conditions, scope and limitations of the practical order are clearly marked out in the Thomist tradition. General traits of an exclusively practical philosophy can thus be readily foreseen. However, the radical arbitrariness of such an outlook forbids any particularization. The adoption of the practical as fundamental attitude admits, in terms of content, of widely diverse philosophic development. The insights into the practical afforded by tradition are best employed in analysis and appraisal of the philosophy Dewey has produced. The integrity, indeed, the consistency of that philosophy has often been questioned. V. J. McGill, for example, regards instrumentalism as embracing two features: "I) a theory of meaning, and of truth or ' warranted assertibility ' and 2) a APPRAISAL OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF JOHN DEWEY 129 body of fairly flexible philosophical doctrines." 1 For him, the connection between the two parts is not intrinsic. On the other hand, Joseph Ratner, on many occasions an official interpreter of the philosopher, maintains that, granted Dewey's analysis of experimentalism, all else follows.2 While in nowise sharing Ratner's enthusiasm, Father Fleckenstein would agree that in Dewey's thought method and philosophy are inextricably bound together.3 All are in a measure correct. The inner necessities of a solely practical outlook are limited to the disposition of only general features but, nevertheless, fundamental and determining ones. The rest is a matter of choice. Yet, a coherence is there and for a more profound reason than arbitrary convenience for the sake of plausibility. The division made by Dr. McGill is, however, suggestive of a method of presentation. The British mathematical philosopher , Betrand Russell, designates Dewey's theory of inquiry as his most distinctive philosophical doctrine. Certainly it is in his theories...

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