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

[Tony Whitson <twhitson@UDel.Edu>]

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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