Experience and Nature

Ebook

EXPERIENCE AND NATURE by JOHN DEWEY. Originally printed in the united states of America in 1929. Contents include: THE PAUL CARUS FOUNDATION .... ix CHAPTER I. EXPERIENCE AND PHILOSOPHIC METHOD . la II. EXISTP NCE AS PRECARIOUS AND AS STABLE . 40 III. NATURE, ENDS AND HISTORIES .... 78 IV. NATURE, MEANS AND KNOWLEDGE . . . 121 V. NATURE, COMMUNICATION AND AS MEANING 166 VI. NATURE, MIND AND THE SUBJECT . . . 208 VII. NATURE, LIFE AND BODY-MIND . . . . 248 VIII. EXISTENCE, IDEAS AND CONSCIOUSNESS . . 298 IX. EXPERIENCE, NATURE AND ART . . . . 354 X. EXISTENCE, VALUE AND CRITICISM . . . 394 INDEX 439. THE PAUL CARUS FOUNDATION: Dr. Paul Carus was born in Usenburg, Germany, hi 1852. He was educated at the Universities of Strass burg and Tubingen, from the latter of which he received the doctorate of philosophy in 1876. It was, however, in the United States, to which he shortly after removed, that his life-work was performed. He became editor of the Open Court in 1888, and later established The Monist, remaining throughout his career, editor of these two peri odicals and Director of the editorial policies of the Open Court Company. He died in February, 1919, at La Salle, Illinois. The primary interests which actuated Dr. Caruss life work were in the field of philosophy, touching with almost equal weight the two great phases of modern speculative concern represented by the philosophy of science and com parative religion. To each of these he devoted numerous special studies, and to each he gave the influence of the press which he directed. This influence was in no sense narrow or specialistic. Dr. Caxus was personally pro foundly concerned for the broadening of that understand ing in all intellectual fields which he felt must be the foundation of whatever is to be valuable in our future human culture he saw his philosophy never as a closet pursuit, but always as a quest for the social illumination of mankind, in which his hope of betterment lay. In this interest he combatted prejudice, in religion and science alike, seeking to divest the spirit of truth of all cloaking of formula, and turning with eager and open eyes in every direction in which there was a suggestion of light and leading to men and to thought of every com plexion and to all levels of active human concern with matters of reflection. Dr. Cams was, in fact, strongly Socratic in disposition he wished to bring philosophy down from the skies of a too studied abstraction and habituate it to the houses of mens souls and to the rich and changing tides of cultural interests. Certainly so far as America is concerned his service is a signal one. During much of his career he stood almost alone as a philosopher outside academic walls, a living exponent of the fact that philosophy is significant as a force as well as useful as an educational discipline. He looked to the cultivation of philosophy as a frame of mind open to all, lay and professional, who should come to see that social liberty is made secure only where there is growth of a sympathetic public intelligence. It is with the spirit and intention of Dr. Caruss life work in mind that his family have established in his memory the Paul Cams Lectures. In the United States, foundations devoted to the cultivation of philosophy are so confined to scholastic institutions that the whole field of philosophic concern tends to assume the slant of an immured and scholastic discipline and the observer is tempted to say that the greatest gift that can befall philosophic liberalism is one that will cause its followers to forget their professional character. Such a gift, certainly, is more than suggested by a lectureship which comes with no institutional atmosphere to further the free play of the mind upon all phases of life...