John Dewey ─ The Later Works, 1925-1953 : 1927-1928

All of Dewey’s writings for 1927 and 1928 with the exception of The Public and Its Problems, which appears in Volume 2, A Modern Language Associ-ation’s Committee on Scholarly Editions textual edition.

These essays are, as Sidorsky says in his Introduction, “framed, in great mea-sure, by those two poles of his philo-sophical interest: looking backward, in a sense, to the defense of naturalistic metaphysics and moving forward to the justification and to the implications for practice of an empirical theory.”

Dewey’s five essays on education are evidence of his continued interest in that field. Among them is the frequently quoted “Why I Am a Member of the Teachers Union,” which is still used by the American Federation of Teachers in its recruiting efforts. Other highlights of this volume include the famous ex-change between George Santayana and Dewey on Experience and Nature; an im-passioned condemnation of the mis-carriage of justice Dewey saw in the Sacco-Vanzetti trial; and a series of six articles on the Soviet Union based on Dewey’s trip to that country in 1928.

David Sidorsky is Professor of Phi-losophy at Columbia University and is editor of The Essential Writings of John Dewey.

Jo Ann Boydston is General Editor of The Collected Works of John Dewey and Director of the Center for Dewey Studies.