RECONSTRUCTION IN PHILOSOPHY BY JOHN DEWEY Professor of Philosophy in Columbia University [Illustration] NEW YORK. HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1920 COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY The Quinn & Boden Company BOOK MANUFACTURERS RAHWAY NEW JERSEY PREFATORY NOTE Being invited to lecture at the Imperial University of Japan in Tokyo during February and March of the present year, I attempted an interpretation of the reconstruction of ideas and ways of thought now going on in philosophy. While the lectures cannot avoid revealing the marks of the particular standpoint of their author, the aim is to exhibit the general contrasts between older and newer types of philosophic problems rather than to make a partisan plea in behalf of any one specific solution of these problems. I have tried for the most part to set forth the forces which make intellectual reconstruction inevitable and to prefigure some of the lines upon which it must proceed. Any one who has enjoyed the unique hospitality of Japan will be overwhelmed with confusion if he endeavors to make an acknowledgment in any way commensurate to the kindnesses he received. Yet I must set down in the barest of black and white my grateful appreciation of them, and in particular record my ineffaceable impressions of the courtesy and help of the members of the department of philosophy of Tokyo University, and of my dear friends Dr. Ono and Dr. Nitobe. J. D. September, 1919. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I CHANGING CONCEPTIONS OF PHILOSOPHY 1 Origin of philosophy in desire and imagination. Influence of community traditions and authority. Simultaneous development of matter-of-fact knowledge. Incongruity and conflict of the two types. Respective values of each type.... Classic philosophies (i) compensatory, (ii) dialectically formal, and (iii) concerned with "superior" Reality. Contemporary thinking accepts primacy of matter-of-fact knowledge and assigns to philosophy a social function rather than that of absolute knowledge. II SOME HISTORICAL FACTORS IN PHILOSOPHICAL RECONSTRUCTION 28 Francis Bacon exemplifies the newer spirit.... He conceived knowledge as power. As dependent upon organized cooperative research.... As tested by promotion of social progress. The new thought reflected actual social changes, industrial, political, religious.... The new idealism. III THE SCIENTIFIC FACTOR IN RECONSTRUCTION OF PHILOSOPHY 53