Center for Dewey Studies
@deweycenter.siu.edu
The Center for Dewey Studies is the home of research, publishing, and archival materials that focus on the life, work, and legacy of John Dewey.
Director: https://bsky.app/profile/thehangedman.com
Website: https://deweycenter.siu.edu/
Director: https://bsky.app/profile/thehangedman.com
Website: https://deweycenter.siu.edu/
“No matter how loudly any one proclaims his Americanism, if he assumes that any one racial strain, any one component culture... is to furnish a pattern to which all other strains and cultures are to conform, he is a traitor to an American nationalism. Our unity cannot be a...
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![A photograph of John Dewey shaking hands with someone in front of an American Flag. Overlaid is text reading: “[Race] and color prejudice have never had such opportunity as they have now to poison the mind, while nationalism is elevated into a religion called patriotism.” Citation: “What I Believe: Living Philosophies–VII.” (1930, LW 5: 275).](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qzxbt32q5k2p6tuiygwjkymy/bafkreibtejd4vanv4lvduzne7c7opmy2ctak4oanti53exul2zxc46izdi@jpeg)
January 19, 2026 at 4:49 PM
“No matter how loudly any one proclaims his Americanism, if he assumes that any one racial strain, any one component culture... is to furnish a pattern to which all other strains and cultures are to conform, he is a traitor to an American nationalism. Our unity cannot be a...
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Join us next Wednesday (Jan 21) at 8 am CT for the inaugural talk in the International Dewey Centers Colloquium Series at the Center for Dewey Studies! For those unable to attend in person, be sure to register in advance with the following link:
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January 14, 2026 at 7:14 PM
Join us next Wednesday (Jan 21) at 8 am CT for the inaugural talk in the International Dewey Centers Colloquium Series at the Center for Dewey Studies! For those unable to attend in person, be sure to register in advance with the following link:
nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...
nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...
SIU Alums and friends of the Center Bethany Henning and Seth Vannatta have a new book coming out with Routledge: A Metaphysics for the Liberal Arts: Process, Quality, and Continuity. Explores what metaphysics can contribute to discussions of the value of a liberal arts education.
December 27, 2025 at 7:04 PM
SIU Alums and friends of the Center Bethany Henning and Seth Vannatta have a new book coming out with Routledge: A Metaphysics for the Liberal Arts: Process, Quality, and Continuity. Explores what metaphysics can contribute to discussions of the value of a liberal arts education.
– John Dewey, “Creative Democracy – The Task Before Us” (1939, LW 14: 228).
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December 12, 2025 at 4:19 PM
– John Dewey, “Creative Democracy – The Task Before Us” (1939, LW 14: 228).
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“To denounce Naziism for intolerance, cruelty and stimulation of hatred amounts to fostering insincerity if, in our personal relations to other persons, if, in our daily walk and conversation, we are moved by racial, color or other class prejudice... The democratic faith in human equality... (1/2)
December 10, 2025 at 6:21 PM
“To denounce Naziism for intolerance, cruelty and stimulation of hatred amounts to fostering insincerity if, in our personal relations to other persons, if, in our daily walk and conversation, we are moved by racial, color or other class prejudice... The democratic faith in human equality... (1/2)
“At the present time, the frontier is moral, not physical.... Unused resources are now human rather than material. They are found in the waste of grown men and women who are without the chance to work, and in the young men and young women who find doors closed where there was once opportunity.”(1/2)
December 8, 2025 at 5:35 PM
“At the present time, the frontier is moral, not physical.... Unused resources are now human rather than material. They are found in the waste of grown men and women who are without the chance to work, and in the young men and young women who find doors closed where there was once opportunity.”(1/2)
...release of the powers of human nature, in service of a freedom which is cooperative and a cooperation which is voluntary.” – John Dewey, Freedom and Culture. (1938, LW 13: 187).
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December 5, 2025 at 5:32 PM
...release of the powers of human nature, in service of a freedom which is cooperative and a cooperation which is voluntary.” – John Dewey, Freedom and Culture. (1938, LW 13: 187).
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...be directed, the habits of intelligent action that are necessary to the orderly development of society cannot be created.” – John Dewey, “The Social Significance of Academic Freedom.” (1936, LW 11: 379).
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December 3, 2025 at 6:53 PM
...be directed, the habits of intelligent action that are necessary to the orderly development of society cannot be created.” – John Dewey, “The Social Significance of Academic Freedom.” (1936, LW 11: 379).
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Join us tomorrow for Dr. Ruta's talk, "Experience, Musical Understanding & Aesthetic Value" at 11 am in the Center for Dewey Studies (Morris Library Basement, Room 0044).
December 2, 2025 at 7:45 PM
Join us tomorrow for Dr. Ruta's talk, "Experience, Musical Understanding & Aesthetic Value" at 11 am in the Center for Dewey Studies (Morris Library Basement, Room 0044).
...If universal freedom is to become anything like a reality, methods must be found by which the mass of individuals will have a much larger share in directing industrial processes than they have at present.” – John Dewey, “Freedom.” (1937, LW 11: 252).
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December 1, 2025 at 5:26 PM
...If universal freedom is to become anything like a reality, methods must be found by which the mass of individuals will have a much larger share in directing industrial processes than they have at present.” – John Dewey, “Freedom.” (1937, LW 11: 252).
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“[The] lesson of history is that the forces which limit and restrict the life of individuals and thereby hinder freedom change with every great change in human relations. Consequently, freedom is...
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November 28, 2025 at 5:37 PM
“[The] lesson of history is that the forces which limit and restrict the life of individuals and thereby hinder freedom change with every great change in human relations. Consequently, freedom is...
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“Society means association; coming together in joint intercourse and action for the better realization of any form of experience which is augmented and confirmed by being shared. Hence there are as many associations as...
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November 26, 2025 at 5:04 PM
“Society means association; coming together in joint intercourse and action for the better realization of any form of experience which is augmented and confirmed by being shared. Hence there are as many associations as...
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– John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy (1920, MW 12: 194).
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November 24, 2025 at 5:34 PM
– John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy (1920, MW 12: 194).
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...a particular man suffering from some particular disability aims to live healthily, and consequently health cannot mean for him exactly what it means for any other mortal.” – John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy (1920, MW 12: 175).
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November 21, 2025 at 7:10 PM
...a particular man suffering from some particular disability aims to live healthily, and consequently health cannot mean for him exactly what it means for any other mortal.” – John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy (1920, MW 12: 175).
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“A moral situation is one in which judgment and choice are required antecedently to overt action. The practical meaning of the situation—that is to say the action needed to satisfy it—is not self-evident....
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November 20, 2025 at 4:26 PM
“A moral situation is one in which judgment and choice are required antecedently to overt action. The practical meaning of the situation—that is to say the action needed to satisfy it—is not self-evident....
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Join us tomorrow at noon for Dr. Harris's talk!
November 17, 2025 at 7:47 PM
Join us tomorrow at noon for Dr. Harris's talk!
“To perceive this fact is to abolish rigid dogmas from the world. It is to recognize that conceptions, theories and systems of thought are always open to development through use. It is to enforce the lesson that we must be on the lookout quite as much for indications to...
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![A photograph of John Dewey with overlaid text reading: “[Notions], theories, systems, no matter how elaborate and self-consistent they are, must be regarded as hypotheses. They are to be accepted as bases of actions which test them, not as finalities.” Citation: Reconstruction in Philosophy (1920, MW 12: 163).](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qzxbt32q5k2p6tuiygwjkymy/bafkreigguxbmnzvh4dcelkzqurvtxdsq2rssmtxxktg3bpkga4pczsbvie@jpeg)
November 17, 2025 at 6:21 PM
“To perceive this fact is to abolish rigid dogmas from the world. It is to recognize that conceptions, theories and systems of thought are always open to development through use. It is to enforce the lesson that we must be on the lookout quite as much for indications to...
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“Each science from mathematics to history exhibits typical fallacious methods and typical efficacious methods in special subject-matters. Logical theory has thus a large, almost inexhaustible field of empirical study....
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November 14, 2025 at 7:19 PM
“Each science from mathematics to history exhibits typical fallacious methods and typical efficacious methods in special subject-matters. Logical theory has thus a large, almost inexhaustible field of empirical study....
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“[Philosophy] cannot ‘solve’ the problem of the relation of the ideal and the real.... It can make it easier for mankind to take the right steps in action by making it clear that a sympathetic and integral intelligence brought to bear upon...
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November 12, 2025 at 5:47 PM
“[Philosophy] cannot ‘solve’ the problem of the relation of the ideal and the real.... It can make it easier for mankind to take the right steps in action by making it clear that a sympathetic and integral intelligence brought to bear upon...
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“When the practice of knowledge ceased to be dialectical and became experimental, knowing became preoccupied with changes and the test of knowledge became the ability to bring about certain changes. Knowing, for the experimental sciences, means...
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![A photograph of John Dewey chopping wood with overlaid text reading “[Philosophy] must also alter its nature. It must assume a practical nature; it must become operative and experimental.” Citation: Reconstruction in Philosophy (1920, MW 12: 149).](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qzxbt32q5k2p6tuiygwjkymy/bafkreigtpcmvwgthri5kcpm43qvgo4xgpeoppxgcrlgvwv62fb5dmrsz2i@jpeg)
November 10, 2025 at 5:09 PM
“When the practice of knowledge ceased to be dialectical and became experimental, knowing became preoccupied with changes and the test of knowledge became the ability to bring about certain changes. Knowing, for the experimental sciences, means...
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“The conceptions that are socially current and important become the child's principles of interpretation and estimation long before he attains to personal and deliberate control of conduct. Things come to him clothed in language, not in physical nakedness, and this garb of...
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November 7, 2025 at 3:10 PM
“The conceptions that are socially current and important become the child's principles of interpretation and estimation long before he attains to personal and deliberate control of conduct. Things come to him clothed in language, not in physical nakedness, and this garb of...
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“The organism acts in accordance with its own structure, simple or complex, upon its surroundings. As a consequence the changes produced in the environment react upon the organism and its activities. The living creature...
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November 5, 2025 at 5:36 PM
“The organism acts in accordance with its own structure, simple or complex, upon its surroundings. As a consequence the changes produced in the environment react upon the organism and its activities. The living creature...
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Join us this Friday for Dr. Ruta's talk, "From Opposition to Intertwinement: Rethinking Tradition and Progress Through Dewey" in the Center for Dewey Studies (Morris Library Basement). Light refreshments will be provided, and you are welcome to bring your own lunch.
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November 4, 2025 at 5:40 PM
Join us this Friday for Dr. Ruta's talk, "From Opposition to Intertwinement: Rethinking Tradition and Progress Through Dewey" in the Center for Dewey Studies (Morris Library Basement). Light refreshments will be provided, and you are welcome to bring your own lunch.
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“Until the dogma of fixed unchangeable types and species, of arrangement in classes of higher and lower, of subordination of the transitory individual to the universal or kind had been shaken in its hold upon...
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November 3, 2025 at 3:58 PM
“Until the dogma of fixed unchangeable types and species, of arrangement in classes of higher and lower, of subordination of the transitory individual to the universal or kind had been shaken in its hold upon...
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“Philosophy starts from some deep and wide way of responding to the difficulties life presents, but it grows only when material is at hand for making this practical response conscious, articulate and communicable.” – John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy (1920, MW 12: 110).
October 31, 2025 at 3:15 PM
“Philosophy starts from some deep and wide way of responding to the difficulties life presents, but it grows only when material is at hand for making this practical response conscious, articulate and communicable.” – John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy (1920, MW 12: 110).