John Dewey's philosophy of spirit, with the 1897 lecture on Hegel

Abstract

John Shook and James Good have each made significant contributions to the scholarly discussion of John Dewey's "permanent Hegelian deposit."In this collection, they come together to further develop their respective analyses of Dewey's Hegelianism.The volume combines two essays, one from each of the authors, in addition to the "definitive text" of Dewey's own 1897 lecture on Hegel, given at the University of Chicago, and entitled "Hegel's Philosophy of Spirit."In comparison to Shook's earlier, more comprehensive work on Dewey's relationship to Hegel, Dewey's Empirical Theory of Knowledge and Reality (2000), and Good's similarly intensive treatment, A Search for Unity in Diversity: The "Permanent Hegelian Deposit" in the Philosophy of John Dewey (2006), the two essays, even in combination with one another, are somewhat fractional and incomplete.The essays succeed, however, in furthering our understanding of the way Dewey's Hegelianism can illuminate his mature philosophy.In the first essay, "Dewey's Naturalized Philosophy of Spirit and Religion," Shook explores how Dewey maintained a place for "religious" faith in his pragmatism despite his antipathy toward organized religion.Drawing on several of Dewey's texts, and in particular A Common Faith (1934), Shook interprets Deweyan faith as a practical tool which sustains individuals in pursuit of their self-chosen ends (34-35).For Dewey, an ideal cannot be achieved without overcoming obstacles in its pursuit.Since persistence does not guarantee success, faith in the possibility of achieving the ideal is necessary for persevering through inevitable setbacks.Alluding to Dewey's distinction between "religion" and "the religious," Shook describes how Dewey saw adherence to organized religion as ineffective for coping in a fundamentally uncertain world.Dewey viewed "any belief in the existence of a divine power to be incompatible with naturalism and quite irrelevant for a genuinely religious life" (19)."Religious" individuals, on the other hand, rather than simply trusting in the

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