Abstract:
This study explores in a comparative way the works of two American pragmatist
philosophers-John Dewey and Richard Rorty. I have provided a reading of their broader
works in order to offer what I hope is a successful sympathetic comparison where very
few exist. Dewey is often viewed as the central hero in the classical American pragmatic
tradition, while Rorty, a contemporary pragmatist, is viewed as some sort of postmodern
villain. I show that the different approaches by the two philosophers-Dewey's
experiential focus versus Rorty's linguistic focus-exist along a common pragmatic
continuum, and that much of the critical scholarship that pits the two pragmatists against
each other has actually created an unwarranted dualism between experience and
language. I accomplish this task by following the critical movement by each of the
pragmatists through their respective reworking of traditional absolutist truth conceptions
toward a more aesthetical, imaginative position. I also show how this shift or "turning"
represents an important aspect of the American philosophical tradition-its aesthetic axis.
I finally indicate a role for liberal education (focusing on higher nonvocational education)
in accommodating this turning, a turning that in the end is necessitated by democracy's
future trajectory
