| John Dewey consistently stressed the importance, for humans, of associated activity. Genuine freedom, for him, was to be understood, not as autonomy, but as growing with the powers, the actual capacities, that re-suited from the proper sorts of interaction with others. My own project underscores the correctness of this view. This work would never have been undertaken, much less completed, without the inspiration, encouragement, and assistance of numerous individuals. |
| John Anton and Jim Gouinlock deserve special mention in this regard: the former for suggesting to a reluctant graduate student, who had never turned a page of Dewey, that, for someone interested in traditional issues, reading Dewey would repay the effort; and the latter whose wide and sensitive understanding of Dewey has served as a model for my work and has saved me from many an egregious interpretive error. For conversations that have furthered my understanding of metaphysical issues, I am indebted to Paul Kuntz, Tom Alexander, Pete Gunter, Lillian Webb, and Sylvia Walsh. Rose Bode gave me crucial advice when I needed it. My wife, Jayne, the family grammarian, not only smoothed out many a convoluted passage but also provided constant encouragementnot to mention a cheerful willingness to share in the typing of the manuscript. |
| Several awards have supported this research in various stages. I wish to thank the United Negro College Fund for two grants: a Faculty Improvement Fellowship, and a fellowship through their Strengthening the Humanities Program. I am also grateful to the Mellon Foundation for a grant to the humanities division of Clark College in Atlanta while I was a faculty member there. |
| Dewey scholarship in general is indebted to two recent works: Ralph Sleeper's The Necessity of Pragmatism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987) and Thomas Alexander's The Horizons of Feeling (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987). I was fortunate to have seen the latter in a pre-publication form, but Sleeper's book, unfortunately, I did not come upon until this manuscript had been completed. Both are important complements to the present study: Alexander's emphasizing Dewey's aesthetics, and Sleeper's, his logic and philosophy of language. |
| In dedicating this text to my parents, I express my gratitude for pro- |
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