Abstract
This paper examines the different conceptions of personal renewal offered in the writings of John Dewey and Stanley Cavell. Both conceptions, I suggest, can be seen as attempting to reconcile the quest for self-realization with democratic life through a poetic, essentially Emersonian vision of the self as a continual work-in-progress. Accordingly, the kinds of selves that Dewey and Cavell seek are in the end highly compatible. Yet it seems clear too that Dewey and Cavell also stand in a somewhat different relation to the Emersonian tradition, and thus diverge in important ways as to the most preferable means of personal renewal. While Dewey tends to focus on the extensive workings of embodied habit, Cavell's ``Emersonian Perfectionism'' takes a more distinctively linguistic turn. After showing the strengths and weaknesses of each approach to personal renewal, I prevail upon the need for educational environments that recognize both the discursive and nondiscursive dimensions of reconstructing the self.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alexander, F. M.: 1918, Man's Supreme Inheritance, E. P. Dutton, New York.
Alexander, F. M.: 1923, Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual, Methuen, London.
Alexander, F. M.: 1932, The Use of the Self, E. P. Dutton, New York.
Alexander, T. M.: 1987, John Dewey's Theory of Art, Experience & Nature: The Horizons of Feeling, State University of New York Press, Albany.
Bourne, R.: 1918, ‘Making Over the Body’, New Republic 15, 359-360.
Cavell, S.: 1981, The Senses of Walden, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Cavell, S.: 1989, This New Yet Unapproachable America: Lectures after Emerson after Wittgenstein, Living Batch Press, Albuquerque.
Cavell, S.: 1990, Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome: The Constitution of Emersonian Perfectionism, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Cavell, S.: 1994, A Pitch of Philosophy: Autobiographical Excercises, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.
Cavell, S.: 1995, Philosophical Passages: Wittgenstein, Emerson, Austin, Derrida, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford.
Dewey, J.: 1918, Introduction to Man's Supreme Inheritance, in J. Boydston (ed.), MW 11: 350-352.
Dewey, J.: 1922, Human Nature and Conduct, in J. Boydston (ed.), MW 14.
Dewey, J.: 1923, Introduction to Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual, in J. Boydston (ed.), MW 15: 308-315.
Dewey, J.: 1925, Experience and Nature, in J. Boydston (ed.), LW 1.
Dewey, J.: 1932a, Introduction to The Use of the Self, in J. Boydston (ed.), LW 6: 315-320.
Dewey, J.: 1932b, Ethics, in J. Boydston (ed.), LW 7.
Dewey, J.: 1934, A Common Faith, in J. Boydston (ed.), LW 9.
Emerson, R. W.: 1965, Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, W. H. Gilman (ed.), Penguin Books, New York.
Garrison, J.: 1997, Dewey and Er's: Wisdom and Desire in the Art of Teaching, Teachers College Press, New York.
Johnson, M.: 1987, The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Johnson, M.: 1993, Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
MacIntyre, A.: 1984, After Virtue, 2nd edition, The University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame.
Mead, J. H.: 1964, ‘The Social Self’, in Andrew Reck (ed.), Mead: Selected Writings, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Poirier, R.: 1992, Poetry and Pragmatism, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.
Ricoeur, P.: 1984, Time and Narrative, K. McLaughlin and D. Pellauer (trans.), The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Rockefeller, S. C.: 1991, John Dewey: Religious Faith and Democratic Humanism, Columbia University Press, New York.
Shusterman, R.: 1997, Practicing Philosophy: Pragmatism and the Philosophical Life, Routledge, New York.
Shusterman, R.: 1999, ‘Somaesthetics: A Disciplinary Proposal’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 57, 299-313.
Thoreau, H. D.: 1937, Walden and Other Writings of Henry David Thoreau, B. Atkinson (ed.), Random House, New York.
Wittgenstein, L.: 1921/1961, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness (trans.), Humanities Press, New Jersey.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Granger, D. Towards an Embodied Poetics of the Self: Personal Renewal in Dewey and Cavell. Studies in Philosophy and Education 20, 107–124 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010355407985
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010355407985