John Dewey, Confucius, and Global Philosophy

Chapter One: Experience

1 ❁ Experience Dewey’s Novel Insight “Experience” is one of the most common words in our vocabulary. We say someone is experienced or we comment on how someone needs further experience. It is often used as a positive term and frequently connotes wisdom, superior skill and even a virtuous quality. As we say “Let’s give this task to a very experienced person.” Furthermore, we equate experience with learning and the ability to cope with many different and difficult situations. Conversely, lack of experience is regarded as a drawback and something to be overcome. So there is a general agreement that experience is a good, even a valuable quality. So why is it that when Dewey began using the term to describe the centerpiece of his philosophy, so many professional philosophers went out of their way to lambaste him for destroying all that philosophy had achieved over the centuries? To many of his colleagues it appeared that Dewey had sold out to the man in street. He was seen as a crude popularizer and a mouthpiece for the worst sort of American materialism. But this vicious criticism is also evidence that Dewey had touched a raw nerve in the groves of academic philosophy. By the time Dewey had reached a preeminent position in philosophy’s professional hierarchy , another style of philosophizing was gaining recognition. It sought to purify philosophy of concerns with the problems of everyday life. Academic philosophy began to ape the sciences with their concern for exactness and absolute certainty. Epistemology, logic, philosophy of science , and verification procedures replaced debates about experience, 1 inquiry, and culture. Variously called analytic philosophy or positivism, these schools had traded in their street clothes for the pure white lab coats favored by the sciences. Matters that mean the most to human beings took a back seat to abstract ruminations far removed from the problems of men and women. This “New Philosophy” was largely an import from Anglo-European schools of thought. It was almost totally unaware of the rich tradition of classical American philosophy. Thinkers like Royce, James, Peirce, and Dewey were scorned for their lack of sophistication. The fact that there was a thriving indigenous American philosophy rooted in its own soil and grappling with its own cultural problems escaped the notice of these “new” thinkers. Such a valuable retrieval of our philosophical past can be gained by understanding why Dewey chose experience as the touchstone of his philosophy of culture. It also sets the stage for understanding the remarkable similarity between Dewey and Confucius. Both philosophers seek a category that can embrace in the widest possible terms the richest view of human existence. Dewey calls it experience. Confucius calls his fundamental category, “the Way” or “the Dao.” It, too, depends upon the act of undergoing experience. I will begin by describing what Dewey means by experience. Then we will be in a position to see how emphatically the ancient Chinese sage Confucius underscores the cultural philosophy of the modern American philosopher. What will result is a vital working connection that can serve as a tool for future efforts to understand the issues that divide China and America. What follows revolves about the meaning of value and the terms of its achievement. The reconstruction of the idea of experience remains Dewey’s enduring contribution to philosophy. One reason for this is the fact that Dewey was never afraid to send his thoughts out into the streets and see how they fared. And his account of experience continues to repay those who seek to understand it. His distinctive use of the term also distinguishes his way of doing philosophy from other philosophies. Experience became for him what the Forms were for Plato, Substance for Aristotle, and the “I think, therefore I am” for Descartes. And he employed it with the same sense of rigor that Kant used his A Priori, and Hegel his Dialectic. To understand Dewey’s concept of experience is therefore to head straight for the heart of his philosophy. A good place to begin would be with Dewey’s own personal experiences with experience. In his early life, he tells us, he suffered from 2 John Dewey, Confucius, and Global Philosophy “inward lacerations of the spirit” brought on by the conflicts he underwent while growing from boyhood to manhood.1 A laceration is a cut that causes deep fissures in the skin. It divides a naturally seamless...