Subject Matter in John Dewey: Making Objects of Knowledge

14 SUBJECT MATTER IN JOHN DEWEY: MAKING OBJECTS OF KNOWLEDGE J. J. CHAMBLISS In a syllabus for "Introduction to Philosophy," a course taught at the University at the University of Michigan in 1892, John Dewey worked on a problematic that was to continue to engage him right down to his collaborative work with Arthur F. Bentley, which culminated in the essays published as Knowing and the Known in 1949. 1 Beginning with a "General Statement of Nature of Experience" in the 1892 syllabus, Dewey pointed out that "our experience is simply what we do."2 In the doing of an infant, "there is simply the experiencing." Here, Dewey continues, "there is no distinction of a me and not-me... This practice constitutes at first both self and world of reality. There is no distinction."3 In going on to ask how the original experience gets to be broken into two parts - "How does the distinction arise between things which aifl. experienced and a subject which has. these experiences; between an external and an internal?"--4 Dewey was embarking on a journey of investigation that never arrived at its destination, for exactly what constitutes the "practice," or the "experiencing" itself, came to be continually reworked so that, near the end of his life, Dewey was prepared to substitute "culture" for "experience" in a projected revision of Experience and Nature. As we shall see, Dewey's journey of investigation was not satisfied with asking how the original experience "gets to be broken," but also tried to determine how we could put it back together. The aim of this essay is to characterize Dewey's attempts to put "broken" experience back together as an inquiry into the nature of subject matter. 5 Exploring the nature of subject matter involved the nature of "objects" of inquiry (the relationship between subject and object, along with their corollaries, subjectivity and objectivity), came to be familiar themes in Dewey's writings. In an unpublished typescript, written about 1909, Dewey points to three meaning of the term "object": "In the first sense, it denotes existence irrespective of value or validity; in the second, it denotes daia. crude material, as selective determinations of existence for the sake of their interpretation or valuation in reference to meaning; in the third, it denotes valid object, lad which is secure, which satisfies the conditions of knowledge." 6 In his discussions of these different senses in philosophical and educational writings, Dewey was sensitive to these distinctions, and was especially careful to emphasize the distinction between "objects" as existents or as data, from objects that are made in the process of testing ideas in inquiry. The present essay is divided into three parts. We shall begin with Dewey's comparison of the "objective" character of ancient Greek philosophy with the "subjective" character of modem philosophy. Next, the way in which subject matter may be called "objects of knowing" will be considered. And, finally we shall take into account the way in which Dewey attempted to clarify the nature of subject matter as he and Arthur F. Bentley developed a "transactional" approach to problems of knowing and the known. Here we are interested in thinking about subject matter in two ways: first, in a general sense, in which subject matter is involved in attempts to understand the breaking apart and the reconstituting of "subjects" and "objects," of "knowers" and "knowns." While such attempts are "epistemological," it must be recognized that they may also be thought of as "psychological," "social," "ethical," and "educational" pursuits. This leads us to a second way of thinking about subject matter. It is the one we have in mind when we think of students working with subject matter as they try to understand something - as examples, we commonly refer to "subjects" or "studies" such as geometry, history, or moral philosophy. The aim here is not to attempt to show that the way in which students come to know something may be reduced to epistemological terms. Rather, it is to explore the senses in which Dewey's investigation of the nature of subject matter addresses a problematic that is common to students of epistemology and to students of various school subjects. Anrient...