Dewey and Cosmopolitanism

Many people rightly consider John Dewey a distinctively American thinker. He was born into a time-honored New England culture. He was educated in American schools. He lived and worked virtually his entire life in the United States. He had a lifelong respect for American traditions in poetry, literature, philosophy, and more. He was active in political and cultural movements, ranging from the protection of free speech to the right of teachers to unionize. For over a century his educational philosophy has infl uenced educators across the fi ft y states. He has had a wide-ranging impact on several streams of American thought, among them pragmatism. If Ralph Waldo Emerson had written aft er rather than before Dewey, he might have called Dewey “A Representative Man,” embodying much that is original and hopeful about the American prospect.1 Th ere is at least one other Dewey, however, fused with his familiar American avatar. Th is Dewey expressed in his writing a deep and abiding interest in the world writ large. Th is Dewey enunciated ideas and points of view as a philosopher in and of the world: as if the provenance of his thought had no national or otherwise predetermined boundaries, and as if the meanings in his thought were not preshaped by wherever his desk and typewriter happened to be. Th is Dewey was cosmopolitan. In what follows I will sketch some aspects of this claim. Aft er providing a brief account of cosmopolitanism, I will focus upon Dewey’s philosophy of education where many of his cosmopolitan impulses come most generatively alive.