Re: [xmca] Dewey, culture, experience (w/o extra line breaks)

Thanks for that Tony. I am somewhat stunned also by the use
of the words "culture" and "ideal" which is so consonant
with CHAT. This is really great stuff.

I have bought a couple of books of Dewey's work in the past,
but I am always frustrated that I never find the material I
am looking for. Which books should I acquire to read
material like the excerpts you sent, and also Dewey's
reflections on collective problem solving, group dynamics
and so on? Or is there a big collected works which is
affordable?

Andy

Tony Whitson wrote:
> Here's the text again, without the extra line breaks:
>
> lw.1.361 Were I to write (or rewrite) Experience and Nature today I
> would entitle the book Culture and Nature and the treatment of specific
> subject-matters would be correspondingly modified. I would abandon the
> term "experience" because of my growing realization that the historical
> obstacles which prevented understanding of my use of "experience" are,
> for all practical purposes, insurmountable. I would substitute the term
> "culture" because with its meanings as now firmly established it can
> fully and freely carry my philosophy of experience.
> lw.1.361 I am not convinced that the task I undertook was totally
> misguided. I still believe that on theoretical, as distinct from
> historical, grounds there is much to be said in favor of using
> "experience" to designate the inclusive subject-matter which
> characteristically "modern" (post-medieval) philosophy breaks
> [Page lw.1.362] up into the dualisms of subject and object, mind and the
> world, psychological and physical. If "experience" is to designate the
> inclusive subject-matter it must designate both what is experienced and
> the ways of experiencing it.
> lw.1.362 There is, assuredly, nothing novel in holding that
> philosophy is distinguished from other intellectual or cognitive
> undertakings by the comparative comprehensiveness of its subject-matter;
> nor is it innovative to maintain that a linguistic expression is needed
> to name philosophy's singular distinction. But by an ironical twist of
> events which I failed to comprehend, the theoretical grounds that can be
> cited for using "experience" as the needed name are historically
> identical with the obstacles that effectively stand in the way of the
> name being understood in the senses I intended.
> lw.1.362 The historical obstacles are now so conspicuous that I can
> at times but wonder how they came to be overlooked. There was a period
> in modern philosophy when the appeal to "experience" was a thoroughly
> wholesome appeal to liberate philosophy from desiccated abstractions.
> But I failed to appreciate the fact that subsequent developments inside
> and outside of philosophy had corrupted and destroyed the wholesomeness
> of the appeal--that "experience" had become effectively identified with
> experiencing in the sense of the psychological, and the psychological
> had become established as that which is intrinsically psychical, mental,
> private. My insistence that "experience" also designates what is
> experienced was a mere ideological thundering in the Index for it
> ignored the ironical twist which made this use of "experience" strange
> and incomprehensible.
> lw.1.362 The name "culture" in its anthropological (not its Matthew
> Arnold) sense designates the vast range of things experienced in an
> indefinite variety of ways. It possesses as a name just that body of
> substantial references which "experience" as a name has lost. It names
> artifacts which rank as "material" and operations upon and with material
> things. The facts named by "culture" also include the whole body of
> beliefs, attitudes, dispositions which are scientific and "moral" and
> which as a matter of cultural fact decide the specific uses to which the
> "material" constituents of culture are put and which accordingly
> deserve, philosophically speaking, the name "ideal" (even the name
> "spiritual," if intelligibly used).
> [Page lw.1.363]
> lw.1.363 It is a prime philosophical consideration that "culture"
> includes the material and the ideal in their reciprocal
> interrelationships and (in marked contrast with the prevailing use of
> "experience") "culture" designates, also in their reciprocal
> interconnections, that immense diversity of human affairs, interests,
> concerns, values which compartmentalists pigeonhole under "religion"
> "morals" "aesthetics" "politics" "economics" etc., etc. Instead of
> separating, isolating and insulating the many aspects of a common life,
> "culture" holds them together in their human and humanistic unity--a
> service which "experience" has ceased to render. What "experience" now
> fails to do and "culture" can successfully do for philosophy is of
> utmost importance if philosophy is to be comprehensive without becoming
> stagnant.»3
> lw.1.363 Culture "comprises inherited artifacts, goods, technical
> processes, ideas, habits, values. Social organization cannot be really
> understood except as a part of culture." Even this brief quotation
> indicates the inclusive or comprehensive summarizing of the conditions
> and aspects of human life designated by the word. Artifacts include
> habitations, temples and their rituals, weapons, paraphernalia, tools,
> implements, means of transportation, roads, clothing, decorations and
> ornamentations, etc., etc. They, together with the technical processes
> involved in their use, constitute the "material aspect of culture." But
> then follows the significant statement: "The material equipment of
> culture is not, however, a force in itself. Knowledge is necessary in
> the production, management and use of artifacts . . . and is essentially
> connected with mental and moral discipline, of which religion, laws and
> ethical rules are the ultimate source. The handling and possession of
> goods imply also the appreciation of their value." The kind of
> cooperation involved in production of goods and the common modes of
> enjoyment of the products "are always based on a definite type of social
> organization." In short, "material culture requires a complement . . .
> consisting of the body of intellectual knowledge, of the system of
> moral, spiritual, and economic values, of social organization and of
> language."
> lw.1.363 The intimate connection of philosophical systems with
> culture is further clarified by the fact that "the formation of sentiments
> [Page lw.1.364] and thus of values is always based on the cultural
> apparatus in a society," the sentiments and values defining man's
> attitudes "toward the realities of his magical, religious or
> metaphysical Weltanschauung." And while I cannot dwell upon its
> implications here, I cannot refrain from quoting the statement that
> "Culture is at the same time psychological and collective."»4
>
> Tony Whitson
> UD School of Education
> NEWARK DE 19716
>
> twhitson@udel.edu
> _______________________________
>
> "those who fail to reread
> are obliged to read the same story everywhere"
> -- Roland Barthes, S/Z (1970)
>
>
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-- 
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Andy Blunden http://www.erythrospress.com/
Classics in Activity Theory: Hegel, Leontyev, Meshcheryakov, 
Ilyenkov $20 ea
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