The Public and Its Problems. Джон Дьюи

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