In the summer of 1894 after John Dewey – American pragmatist, educator, and labor advocate – was appointed chair of philosophy at the University of Chicago, he took the train ride from Ann Arbor, Michigan to Chicago. He barely made it. Eugene Debs and the American Railway Union had effectively shut down all rail traffic west of Chicago, and the only way into the city was on trains without Pullman sleeping cars attached to them. After Debs was arrested and the strike broken, Dewey wrote to his wife Alice, then in Europe on vacation, that the strike and all its violence had indeed accomplished something: It had gotten “the social organism thinking” (Menand 297).
This anecdote encapsulates thematically John Dewey’s lasting contribution to American intellectual life. In his writings
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Citation: Jackson, Brian. "John Dewey". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 22 September 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1247, accessed 24 November 2024.]
