Dewey's Critique Of American Culture

Little attention has been paid to the issue 'Dewey's philosophy and the culture of the United States' in civil academia. More attention focuses on the consistency than the difference especially for individualism , the clear topic for them in common. Individualism in Dewey's view is different from that in the culture of the United States through Dewey's works. Dewey's philosophy shows the culture of the United States in background, but it's not enough to understand the relation between Dewey's philosophy and the culture of the United States proceeding from their attention on individual. Dewey criticizes the culture of the United States profoundly when discussing which type of individualism can promote individual and perfect personality indeed. Looking on Dewey's inquiry into individual as clue, the paper tries to unscramble newly Dewey's understanding on the culture of the United States from the values, political culture and thought of education in order to dig the criticism that Dewey holds. Therefrom, the paper opens out the outstanding characteristic of Dewey's philosophy as praxis and incarnates that Dewey attached importance to living world. The internal infrospection on the culture of the United States in Dewey's philosophy has strong expression. All these efforts base on Dewey's original works.I will try to expound Dewey's point of view as follows:Section I summarizes that Dewey talks about the relation between philosophy and culture. It expounds how Dewey opposed traditional philosophy and explains the relation between philosophy and culture. This is the keynote. Section II introduces Dewey's criticism of values of the United States. We will see how Dewey understands 'individual' and criticizes value of old individualism. Section III focuses on Dewey's criticism of the political culture in the United States. It displays how Dewey puts forward his democracy ideal, which is based on the problem 'which kind of life the individual should have' and criticizes of American life. Section IV discusses Dewey's criticism of education in the United States. Basing on the question 'how to cultivate the individual to realize democracy ideal', Dewey thinks education is the most important way to cultivate personality. Then he criticizes current education. Section V shows the influence of Dewey's criticism of the culture of the United States. We can see the ingredient of Communitarianism in Dewey's philosophy from the controversy between Communitarianism and Liberalism. So we can understand 'the meaning of perfect individual in great community' more profoundly.