staff, and Colin Koopman of the University of Oregon, Jack Turner of the University of Washington, Christopher Lbron of Yale University, Eric MacGilvray of Ohio State University, Eddie Glaude of Princeton University, and my original research assistant, David Novitsky, at the University of Virginia, all of whom provided helpful suggestions in preparing this volume. As always, support from my partner, Frederick Godley, has sustained me in working on this project.
Melvin L. Rogers
Chronology
| 1859, October 20 | John Dewey is born in Burlington, Vermont |
| 1879 | Receives AB from the University of Vermont |
| 1879–81 | Teaches at high school in Oil City, Pennsylvania |
| 1881–82 | Teaches at Lake View Seminary, Charlotte, Vermont |
| 1882–84 | Attends graduate school at Johns Hopkins University |
| 1884 | Receives PhD from Johns Hopkins University |
| Instructor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Michigan | |
| 1886 | Married to Alice Chipman |
| 1887 | Psychology |
| 1888 | Leibniz’s New Essays Concerning the Human Understanding: A Critical Exposition |
| “The Ethics of Democracy” (first published reflection on democracy) | |
| 1888–89 | Professor of mental and moral philosophy at the University of Minnesota |
| 1889 | Chair of Department of Philosophy at the University of Michigan |
| 1891 | Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics |
| 1894 | Professor and chair of Department of Philosophy (including psychology and pedagogy) at the University of Chicago |
| The Study of Ethics: A Syllabus | |
| 1896 | Founder of the University of Chicago Laboratory School (officially University Elementary School) |
| 1897 | Elected to board of trustees, Hull House Association (originally a settlement house for recently arrived European immigrants) |
| 1899 | The School and Society |
| 1899–1900 | President of the American Psychological Association |
| Studies in Logical Theory | |
| 1904 | Professor of philosophy at Columbia University and Teachers College |
| 1905–6 | President of the American Philosophical Society |
| 1908 | Ethics (with philosopher James Hayden Tufts) |
| 1909 | Supporting member in founding the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) |
| 1910 | How We Think |
| The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy | |
| 1915–16 | President of the American Association of University Professors (organization devoted to the advancement of academic freedom) |
| 1916 | Democracy and Education |
| Essays in Experimental Logic | |
| 1919 | Lectures in Japan |
| 1919–21 | Lectures in China |
| 1920 | Reconstruction in Philosophy |
| 1922 | Human Nature and Conduct |
| 1924 | Visits schools in Turkey |
| 1925 | Experience and Nature |
| 1926 | Visits schools in Mexico |
| 1927 | The Public and Its Problems |
| Death of Alice Chipman Dewey | |
| 1928 | Visits schools in Soviet Russia |
| 1929–36 | President, People’s Lobby (devoted to advancing and realizing social democratic commitments on behalf of unions and the poor) |
| 1929–33 | Chairman of National Committee of League for Independent Political Action (devoted to the establishment of a third political party) |
| 1929 | The Quest for Certainty |
| 1930 | Individualism, Old and New |
| Retires from position at Columbia University, appointed professor emeritus | |
| 1932 | Ethics (revised edition; with philosopher James Hayden Tufts) |
| 1933 | How We Think (revised edition) |
| 1934 | A Common Faith |
| Art as Experience | |
| 1935 | Liberalism and Social Action |
| 1937 | Chair of the Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Made against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials, Mexico City |
| 1938 | Logic: The Theory of Inquiry |
| Experience and Education | |
| 1939 | Freedom and Culture |
| Theory of Valuation | |
| 1946 | Married to Roberta (Lowitz) Grant |
| Knowing and the Known (with political scientist Arthur Fisher Bentley) | |
| 1952, June 1 | Dies in New York City |
In the preparation of this chronology I have relied on many sources, especially the similar chronologies in Larry A. Hickman and Thomas M. Alexander, eds., The Essential Dewey, vol. 1, Pragmatism, Education, Democracy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998); Barbara Levine, “Chronology of John Dewey’s Life and Work,” Center for Dewey Studies, Carbondale, Illinois (http://www.siuc.edu/~deweyctr/about_bio.html); Molly Cochran, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Dewey (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
Editorial Note
The present version of The Public and Its Problems reprints the 1954 edition by Swallow Press, now an imprint of Ohio University Press. The 1954 edition includes the Introduction (titled “Afterword” in that edition) that John Dewey wrote for the Gateway Books edition published in 1946 in Chicago. The present version, however, also includes the subtitle that Dewey appended to the Gateway Books edition, thus providing the full title: The Public and Its Problems: An Essay in Political Inquiry. All of these editions, excluding the substantive additions from 1946, are reprints of the 1927 book published by Henry Holt and Company of New York City. That initial book was in print from 1927 to 1941, and the decision to discontinue its publication was largely due to diminishing sales.
This is the second reprint of The Public and Its Problems for which I have served as editor. The first version, published by Pennsylvania State University Press in 2012, was discontinued in 2015. Pennsylvania State University Press allowed me to honor the initial agreement between Roberta Lowitz Grant (Dewey’s second wife) and Alan Swallow that granted Alan Swallow exclusive rights to The Public and Its Problems. All of the content found in the Pennsylvania State University Press volume (which I shall comment on in a moment) has now been moved over to this edition. This present volume thus replaces the Pennsylvania State University Press 2012 edition and updates the 1954 edition published by Swallow Press.
The only other version of this text in print is the Southern Illinois University Press edition as found in The Later Works of John Dewey, 1925–1953, vol. 2, published in 1984. This reprint differs from the Southern Illinois University Press edition in the following notable ways. The Southern Illinois volume contains full publication information for most of the texts cited by Dewey, the content of which was drawn either from The Public and Its Problems or from Dewey’s personal library as found in John Dewey’s Personal and Professional Library: A Checklist, compiled by Jo Ann Boydston (Southern Illinois University Press, 1982). Unlike the Southern Illinois University reprint of The Public and Its Problems, however, this volume fully incorporates that information into Dewey’s original notes so that the main text and notes are continuous. Further, in instances where citation to a particular edition is not included either in The Public and Its Problems or in Dewey’s personal and professional library, this version provides that information with reference to the most recent edition of the work cited, thus rendering the reprint more complete.
Additionally, I provide informational notes that are otherwise missing from the Southern Illinois volume. My rule has been to supply a note wherever a modern reader might reasonably stop for an explanation or description that Dewey does not provide or might wonder about the full passage of a text from which Dewey quotes. In especially important cases, I have referred the reader to other works by Dewey that might provide further illumination on the subject matter at hand in the text. This now provides the reader with connective tissue among the ideas that are on offer in The Public and Its Problems and the earlier or later iteration of those ideas in Dewey’s corpus.
In all cases above, I have tried to limit my editorial additions, relying whenever possible on the argumentative context and the reader’s