Living As Learning: John Dewey in the 21st Century
Living As Learning is a passionate and rewarding dialogue on the legacy of the great American philosopher and educator John Dewey (1859–1952). Focused on growth and the creation of value within the context of real life, Dewey’s pragmatic philosophy shares much with humanistic Buddhism, in particular the legacy of Josei Toda. These similarities, which arise throughout the book, add richness to a dialogue already overflowing with faith in our capacity to find common ground and expand human well being in our rapidly globalizing world. For Dewey, individual and social potential alike are unlimited.
“Dewey scholars as well as initiates to his work will be fascinated by the discussion of connections between his ideas and those of Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, the “value creator.” The collegial relationship that both Dewey and Makiguchi described between mentor and disciple (teacher and student) is especially valuable in this age of dull, one-way, authoritarian pedagogy. Readers will be encouraged to renew efforts to establish genuine education in the United States and abroad.”
—Nel Noddings, Lee L. Jacks Professor of Education, Emerita, at Stanford University, and author, Caring: A Relational Approach to Ethics and Moral Education
“In this timely book, two outstanding philosophers—Jim Garrison and Larry Hickman—engage President Daisaku Ikeda of the Soka Gakkai International in a wide-ranging exchange about the enduring value of John Dewey’s philosophy of life and of education. The book offers an intellectual and ethical richness that will provoke, inform, and inspire readers. Listen in on the dialogue, and learn.”
—David T. Hansen, Weinberg Professor of Philosophy and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University
“In Living As Learning, Jim Garrison and Larry Hickman, two of the most astute students of Dewey’s contributions, join Daisaku Ikeda, the premier student of Josei Toda (who was the foremost student of Makiguchi) to provide a beautifully expressed, intellectually stimulating, and compellingly hopeful seedbed for educational action. Reading this book makes me feel as if I am experiencing Dewey and Makiguchi in dialogue that grows through myriad ideas (past, present, and possible) and a mutual quest for peace and justice. This dialogue should inspire readers to do their best to envision and enact a more humane world.”
—William H. Schubert, Professor Emeritus of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and author, Love, Justice, and Education: John Dewey and the Utopians
“In this invigorating and wide-ranging dialogue, scholars Jim Garrison and Larry Hickman and Buddhist leader Daisaku Ikeda come together to explore powerful ideas of great learning and flourishing living drawn from the legacies of John Dewey, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, and other inspiring thinkers. These ideas help cultivate a philosophical and educational landscape that commits not only to the shared interests of diverse individuals and groups, but also to our shared potential for creative, harmonious, and joyful living as learning in an increasingly complex, complicated, and contested world.”
—Ming Fang He, Professor of Curriculum Studies at Georgia Southern University
Jim Garrison is a professor of philosophy of education at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Virginia. A past president of the Philosophy of Education Society and the John Dewey Society, his books include Dewey and Eros: Wisdom and Desire in the Art of Teaching.
Larry A. Hickman is director of the Center for Dewey Studies and professor of philosophy at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. A past president of the John Dewey Society, he has published influential studies on Dewey’s philosophy of technology.
Daisaku Ikeda is president of the Soka Gakkai International, a lay Buddhist organization with more than twelve million members worldwide. He has written and lectured widely on Buddhism, humanism, and global ethics.
CONVERSATIONS
1. What Dewey Stood For
2. Learning Together
3. From Mentor to Disciple
4. Growth Is the Goal
5. The Cost of War
6. All Children Unique
7. Educational Wisdom
8. Creative Families
9. The University Experience
10. The Twenty-First Century University
11. Education for World Citizens
12. Ongoing Education
13. Dialogue and Transformation
14. Breaking the Cycle of Violence
15. Creative Democracy
16. Many Kinds of Democracy
17. Science and Technology
18. A Responsive Philosophy
19. Religious Humanism
20. Expanding Opportunity, Expanding Democracy
Appendix 1. Selected Works—Daisaku Ikeda
Appendix 2. Selected Works—Jim Garrison
Appendix 3. Selected Works—Larry Hickman
Appendix 4. Selected Works—John Dewey
Appendix 5. Selected Works—Tsunesaburo Makiguchi
Notes
Index
About the Authors
Excerpts from Conversation 18 by Jim Garrison, Larry Hickman, and Daisaku Ikeda
HICKMAN: In Reconstruction in Philosophy, the famously mild-mannered Dewey vigorously criticized the long tradition of Western philosophy for its failure to address real human problems. He and his colleagues William James and F. C. S. Schiller were attempting a revolution in philosophy, and their efforts were being met with stubborn opposition by philosophers who wanted their discipline to remain in an ivory tower.
IKEDA: He was trying to revive the wisdom of an insular world and make it widely available. In Reconstruction in Philosophy, he rebuked the long-held misperception that intelligence has a static nature:
Intelligence is not something possessed once for all. It is in constant process of forming, and its retention requires constant alertness in observing consequences, an open-minded will to learn and courage in re-adjustment. In contrast with this experimental and re-adjusting intelligence, it must be said that Reason as employed by historic rationalism has tended to carelessness, conceit, irresponsibility, and rigidity—in short absolutism.
This is a splendid insight into the essence of the learning process. To me, it is a starting point to which all engaged in intellectual pursuits should return.
*
GARRISON: For Dewey, imagination and emotions are also important parts of intelligence. In Art as Experience, he wrote:
No “reasoning” as reasoning, that is, as excluding imagination … can reach truth… . He [the inquirer] selects and puts aside as his imaginative sentiments move. “Reason” at its height cannot attain complete grasp and a self-contained assurance. It must fall back upon imagination—upon the embodiment of ideas in emotionally charged sense.
Elsewhere, he goes so far as to insist that rationality is a ‘working harmony among diverse desires.’ Hence, rationality, or rather intelligence, is never a fixed thing; it is an evolving life function.
*
IKEDA: All things are in state of continual flux, and our value criteria and actions must respond in a flexible fashion to these changes. Dewey expressed it this way: ‘Since changes are going on anyway, the great thing is to learn enough about them so that we be able to lay hold of them and turn them in the direction of our desires.’
HICKMAN: Once again, you go to the heart of Dewey’s philosophy. He continually argued against basing inquiry on what is outside of what has been developed in the course of human experience. That would include ideologies and authoritarian systems of all types.
Dewey even criticized the logic of Aristotle as being Procrustean, to use your example. He thought that, whereas Aristotle had attempted to make experience fit his logical forms, real productive inquiry should develop logical forms as tools to generate further experience. In this regard, he was not against abstractions, but he was against treating them as absolutes. In his view, abstractions are tools that are properly understood as tools of inquiry.”
*
IKEDA: What is the nature of life? Dewey wrote: ‘Wherever there is life, there is behavior, activity. In order that life may persist, this activity has to be both continuous and adapted to the environment.’
In addition to the word activity, Dewey uses the term adapted but most definitely not in a passive sense. He means not simply adapting to the environment but interacting and communicating with it.
Living beings constantly grow and change through a give-and-take of energy and matter with the surrounding world. They take in oxygen and nourishment from the outside world to build their bodies, then act on the outside world, expending energy.
In other words, change and communication are major characteristics of life. Dewey devoted considerable attention to this point.
GARRISON: The things he appreciated in Charles Darwin, as well as James, help us understand Dewey’s own thoughts. In his essay “The Influence of Darwinism on Philosophy,” Dewey declared:
The conceptions that had reigned in the philosophy of nature and knowledge for two thousand years, the conceptions that had become the familiar furniture of the mind, rested on the assumption of the superiority of the fixed and final… . In laying hands upon the sacred ark of absolute permanency … the Origin of Species introduced a mode of thinking that … was bound to transform the logic of knowledge, and hence the treatment of morals, politics and religion.
IKEDA: Darwin famously employed the phrase ‘the struggle for existence’ in articulating his theory of evolution, but he was referring primarily not to a struggle to dominate other living beings so much as the struggle to survive—in other words, the energetic actions of each individual being necessary to live.
Darwin was critical of the traditional philosophical approach that comprehended life based on assumptions of fixed and final essences. He constructed a “logic of knowledge” that sought to view the actuality of life in its ever-changing mutability. This is why, as Dewey perceived it, Darwin’s ‘logic of knowledge’ transcended the field of biology and transformed our ways of thinking about society, history, and politics as well.
Description
Living As Learning is a passionate and rewarding dialogue on the legacy of the great American philosopher and educator John Dewey (1859–1952). Focused on growth and the creation of value within the context of real life, Dewey’s pragmatic philosophy shares much with humanistic Buddhism, in particular the legacy of Josei Toda. These similarities, which arise throughout the book, add richness to a dialogue already overflowing with faith in our capacity to find common ground and expand human well being in our rapidly globalizing world. For Dewey, individual and social potential alike are unlimited.
Advance Praise
“Dewey scholars as well as initiates to his work will be fascinated by the discussion of connections between his ideas and those of Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, the “value creator.” The collegial relationship that both Dewey and Makiguchi described between mentor and disciple (teacher and student) is especially valuable in this age of dull, one-way, authoritarian pedagogy. Readers will be encouraged to renew efforts to establish genuine education in the United States and abroad.”
—Nel Noddings, Lee L. Jacks Professor of Education, Emerita, at Stanford University, and author, Caring: A Relational Approach to Ethics and Moral Education
“In this timely book, two outstanding philosophers—Jim Garrison and Larry Hickman—engage President Daisaku Ikeda of the Soka Gakkai International in a wide-ranging exchange about the enduring value of John Dewey’s philosophy of life and of education. The book offers an intellectual and ethical richness that will provoke, inform, and inspire readers. Listen in on the dialogue, and learn.”
—David T. Hansen, Weinberg Professor of Philosophy and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University
“In Living As Learning, Jim Garrison and Larry Hickman, two of the most astute students of Dewey’s contributions, join Daisaku Ikeda, the premier student of Josei Toda (who was the foremost student of Makiguchi) to provide a beautifully expressed, intellectually stimulating, and compellingly hopeful seedbed for educational action. Reading this book makes me feel as if I am experiencing Dewey and Makiguchi in dialogue that grows through myriad ideas (past, present, and possible) and a mutual quest for peace and justice. This dialogue should inspire readers to do their best to envision and enact a more humane world.”
—William H. Schubert, Professor Emeritus of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and author, Love, Justice, and Education: John Dewey and the Utopians
“In this invigorating and wide-ranging dialogue, scholars Jim Garrison and Larry Hickman and Buddhist leader Daisaku Ikeda come together to explore powerful ideas of great learning and flourishing living drawn from the legacies of John Dewey, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, and other inspiring thinkers. These ideas help cultivate a philosophical and educational landscape that commits not only to the shared interests of diverse individuals and groups, but also to our shared potential for creative, harmonious, and joyful living as learning in an increasingly complex, complicated, and contested world.”
—Ming Fang He, Professor of Curriculum Studies at Georgia Southern University
Author(s)
Jim Garrison is a professor of philosophy of education at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Virginia. A past president of the Philosophy of Education Society and the John Dewey Society, his books include Dewey and Eros: Wisdom and Desire in the Art of Teaching.
Larry A. Hickman is director of the Center for Dewey Studies and professor of philosophy at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. A past president of the John Dewey Society, he has published influential studies on Dewey’s philosophy of technology.
Daisaku Ikeda is president of the Soka Gakkai International, a lay Buddhist organization with more than twelve million members worldwide. He has written and lectured widely on Buddhism, humanism, and global ethics.
Table of Contents
CONVERSATIONS
1. What Dewey Stood For
2. Learning Together
3. From Mentor to Disciple
4. Growth Is the Goal
5. The Cost of War
6. All Children Unique
7. Educational Wisdom
8. Creative Families
9. The University Experience
10. The Twenty-First Century University
11. Education for World Citizens
12. Ongoing Education
13. Dialogue and Transformation
14. Breaking the Cycle of Violence
15. Creative Democracy
16. Many Kinds of Democracy
17. Science and Technology
18. A Responsive Philosophy
19. Religious Humanism
20. Expanding Opportunity, Expanding Democracy
Appendix 1. Selected Works—Daisaku Ikeda
Appendix 2. Selected Works—Jim Garrison
Appendix 3. Selected Works—Larry Hickman
Appendix 4. Selected Works—John Dewey
Appendix 5. Selected Works—Tsunesaburo Makiguchi
Notes
Index
About the Authors
Excerpts
Excerpts from Conversation 18 by Jim Garrison, Larry Hickman, and Daisaku Ikeda
HICKMAN: In Reconstruction in Philosophy, the famously mild-mannered Dewey vigorously criticized the long tradition of Western philosophy for its failure to address real human problems. He and his colleagues William James and F. C. S. Schiller were attempting a revolution in philosophy, and their efforts were being met with stubborn opposition by philosophers who wanted their discipline to remain in an ivory tower.
IKEDA: He was trying to revive the wisdom of an insular world and make it widely available. In Reconstruction in Philosophy, he rebuked the long-held misperception that intelligence has a static nature:
Intelligence is not something possessed once for all. It is in constant process of forming, and its retention requires constant alertness in observing consequences, an open-minded will to learn and courage in re-adjustment. In contrast with this experimental and re-adjusting intelligence, it must be said that Reason as employed by historic rationalism has tended to carelessness, conceit, irresponsibility, and rigidity—in short absolutism.
This is a splendid insight into the essence of the learning process. To me, it is a starting point to which all engaged in intellectual pursuits should return.
*
GARRISON: For Dewey, imagination and emotions are also important parts of intelligence. In Art as Experience, he wrote:
No “reasoning” as reasoning, that is, as excluding imagination … can reach truth… . He [the inquirer] selects and puts aside as his imaginative sentiments move. “Reason” at its height cannot attain complete grasp and a self-contained assurance. It must fall back upon imagination—upon the embodiment of ideas in emotionally charged sense.
Elsewhere, he goes so far as to insist that rationality is a ‘working harmony among diverse desires.’ Hence, rationality, or rather intelligence, is never a fixed thing; it is an evolving life function.
*
IKEDA: All things are in state of continual flux, and our value criteria and actions must respond in a flexible fashion to these changes. Dewey expressed it this way: ‘Since changes are going on anyway, the great thing is to learn enough about them so that we be able to lay hold of them and turn them in the direction of our desires.’
HICKMAN: Once again, you go to the heart of Dewey’s philosophy. He continually argued against basing inquiry on what is outside of what has been developed in the course of human experience. That would include ideologies and authoritarian systems of all types.
Dewey even criticized the logic of Aristotle as being Procrustean, to use your example. He thought that, whereas Aristotle had attempted to make experience fit his logical forms, real productive inquiry should develop logical forms as tools to generate further experience. In this regard, he was not against abstractions, but he was against treating them as absolutes. In his view, abstractions are tools that are properly understood as tools of inquiry.”
*
IKEDA: What is the nature of life? Dewey wrote: ‘Wherever there is life, there is behavior, activity. In order that life may persist, this activity has to be both continuous and adapted to the environment.’
In addition to the word activity, Dewey uses the term adapted but most definitely not in a passive sense. He means not simply adapting to the environment but interacting and communicating with it.
Living beings constantly grow and change through a give-and-take of energy and matter with the surrounding world. They take in oxygen and nourishment from the outside world to build their bodies, then act on the outside world, expending energy.
In other words, change and communication are major characteristics of life. Dewey devoted considerable attention to this point.
GARRISON: The things he appreciated in Charles Darwin, as well as James, help us understand Dewey’s own thoughts. In his essay “The Influence of Darwinism on Philosophy,” Dewey declared:
The conceptions that had reigned in the philosophy of nature and knowledge for two thousand years, the conceptions that had become the familiar furniture of the mind, rested on the assumption of the superiority of the fixed and final… . In laying hands upon the sacred ark of absolute permanency … the Origin of Species introduced a mode of thinking that … was bound to transform the logic of knowledge, and hence the treatment of morals, politics and religion.
IKEDA: Darwin famously employed the phrase ‘the struggle for existence’ in articulating his theory of evolution, but he was referring primarily not to a struggle to dominate other living beings so much as the struggle to survive—in other words, the energetic actions of each individual being necessary to live.
Darwin was critical of the traditional philosophical approach that comprehended life based on assumptions of fixed and final essences. He constructed a “logic of knowledge” that sought to view the actuality of life in its ever-changing mutability. This is why, as Dewey perceived it, Darwin’s ‘logic of knowledge’ transcended the field of biology and transformed our ways of thinking about society, history, and politics as well.
