John Dewey Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Morton White

Critical Essay by Morton White

SOURCE: "Desire and Desirability: A Rejoinder to a Posthumous Reply by John Dewey," in The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. XCIII, No. 5, May, 1996, pp. 229-42.

In the following article, White recounts Dewey's response to White's book Social Thought in America, and White's answer to Dewey's charges.

Shortly after his ninetieth birthday, John Dewey¹ acknowledged receiving from me two publications in which I had criticized some of his views in ethics: my Social Thought in America, and my "Value and Obligation in Dewey and Lewis," both published in 1949.² Since I never heard anything more from Dewey about them, I surmised that he had probably not read them or that, if he had, he did not think it worth bothering to discuss my criticisms. I was therefore very surprised when I read in the final volume of his Collected Works that he had paid attention to them in a piece...
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