Southern Illinois University Press Experience and Value: Essays on John Dewey and Pragmatic Naturalism

Experience and Value: Essays on John Dewey and Pragmatic Naturalism brings together twelve essays spanning the career of noted Dewey scholar, S. Morris Eames. The volume includes both critiques and interpretations of important issues in John Dewey's value theory as well as the application of Eames's pragmatic naturalism in addressing contemporary problems in social theory, education, and religion. The collection begins with a discussion of the underlying principles of Dewey's pragmatic naturalism, including the concepts of nature, experience, and philosophic method. From this framework, Eames also considers possible resolutions of the current dichotomy between the factual worldview of science and the humanistic worldview of the liberal arts. The volume concludes with a discussion of the very topic that first brought Eames to philosophy - the meaning of religion and the religious life. Review As a commentator on the thought of John Dewey, Eames is in the top rank. He cites the most salient criticisms of Dewey's metaphysics and epistemology and then addresses them directly and wisely....Further, Eames's moral and aesthetic sensibility is as welcome in his prose as it was in his person for those of us who knew and admired him. - John J. McDermott, Texas A&M University About the Author S. Morris Eames was a longtime professor of philosophy at Southern Illinois University Carbondale and an internationally known scholar of American philosophy. Eames authored over one hundred articles, reviews, and poems, and his book Pragmatic Naturalism: An Introduction has been translated into four languages. With Elizabeth R. Eames, he is also the author of Lectures in the Far East. Elizabeth R. Eames, wife of S. Morris Eames, is a professor emeritus of philosophy at Southern Illinois University Carbondale and the author of Bertrand Russell's Theory of Knowledge and Bertrand Russell's Dialogue with His Contemporaries. Richard W. Field is an assistant professor in the history, humanities, and philosophy department at Northwest Missouri State University. He received his Ph.D. under the direction of S. Morris Eames in 1987.