Reintroducing Dewey’s Re-Introduction to Experience and Nature
This paper revaluates Dewey’s famous, unfinished Re-Introduction to Experience and Nature, edited by his close assistant Joseph Ratner. Here we contrast Ratner’s claims from his two editorial notes from the first volume of The Later Works with the archival manuscripts in the Special Collections Rese...
Kaydedildi:
| Yayımlandı: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/ejpap, |
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| Asıl Yazarlar: | , |
| Materyal Türü: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Dil: | Anglais |
| Baskı/Yayın Bilgisi: |
European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy
2026
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| Konular: | |
| Online Erişim: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Özet: | This paper revaluates Dewey’s famous, unfinished Re-Introduction to Experience and Nature, edited by his close assistant Joseph Ratner. Here we contrast Ratner’s claims from his two editorial notes from the first volume of The Later Works with the archival manuscripts in the Special Collections Research Center at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Despite Ratner’s claims that there are two installments of Dewey’s Re-Introduction to Experience and Nature, we found that there are actually five. The paper provides a short qualitative summary of each of the first four installments as well as a close comparative textual analysis of the fifth installment with Ratner’s edited version. We raise serious concerns about the fidelity of Ratner’s editorial work to Dewey’s original text. In particular, Dewey’s much-discussed statement that he would “abandon the term ‘experience’” in favor of “culture” is actually an invention of Ratner’s and does not appear in Dewey’s own text. The paper’s Appendices contain further information about the archival sources and our inquiry into them. Finally, the Appendix 3 contains a full transcription of Dewey’s fifth installment. |
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