Analytic Philosophy and the Critical Reception of John Dewey’s Pragmatic Philosophy

This book examines the critical reception of Dewey’s pragmatic philosophy by six prominent analytic philosophers and relates it to the contested history of analytic philosophy and Deweyan pragmatism. It argues that analytic philosophers’ critical reception of Dewey’s pragmatist philosophy has, from the very beginning, been marred by externalist readings that do not engage with Dewey’s thinking from the inside, and suggests that this throws doubt upon the new revisionary histories of analytic philosophy and Deweyan pragmatism according to which the marginalization of Dewey’s pragmatism represents the sensible result of critical processes of reasoning. At the same time, however, the book also points out that Dewey and his analytic critics in fact share several worries and suggests that these common concerns might serve as points of reference for more fruitful dialogues across the traditions of analytic philosophy and Deweyan pragmatism in the future.

Martin Ejsing Christensen is Senior Research Officer at the National Center for Ethics, Denmark, and holds a PhD in philosophy from Aarhus University. His research focuses on the history of philosophy, in particular the history of Dewey’s pragmatism.