John Dewey
1859-1952 · American Philosophy · Prominent
Dewey was an American pragmatist who took his arguments to the public. Thinking, for him, is what you do when a situation breaks down: a tool for working your way out of a problem from inside the mess, rather than a view from the stands. He treated democracy as a way of living alongside other people more than a set of institutions, and spent decades reshaping American schooling around that idea.
Signature
The position Dewey is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Society
- leans Collectivism
- Knowledge
- Pragmatic Test
Positions on the 4 axes the sources answer
- Society
- leans Collectivism (25 on a 0–100 scale from Collectivism to Individualism)
- Order
- leans Horizontal (75 on a 0–100 scale from Vertical to Horizontal)
- Ground of Being
- leans Immanence (19 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Conviction
- leans Uncertain (13 on a 0–100 scale from Uncertain to Certain)
16 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Dewey refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Other
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Direct Democracy / Representative Democracy
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Harmony
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Social Invention / Natural Emergence
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Perception
- Conceptual Mediation / Embodied Perception
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Pragmatic Test
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Virtue / Utilitarian Calculation
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Compatibilism
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Time
- Linear Progressive
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Economy
- Welfare Capitalism
What is the ideal organization of economic life? - Authority
- Consent of the Governed / Collective Will
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Language
- Language-Game
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Law
- Social Contract
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Death
- Annihilation
What happens at death? - Human Nature
- Existence Precedes Essence
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- Humanity
What is your primary bond and loyalty?