Description
Book SynopsisThe Person Vanishes argues that despite John Dewey's failure to articulate an adequate theory of personality, his writings provide at least a theory-sketch of human personality consistent with the assumptions that framed his philosophical outlook. Recognizing the new developments in society, science, and the arts, Dewey argues for the necessity of a Copernican revolution in our understanding of the human self; from the monadic and minimalist self of the Cartesian-Newtonian modernist tradition to a relational and processual model of selfhood consonant with the press of post-modernist historical experience. As a field and activity conception, Dewey's self emerges as a nexus of relational energizing, genuinely moored in a cultural surrounding in which ongoing creative reconstruction becomes the mark and criterion of the self's health and growth. What vanishes in Dewey's reconstruction is not the self as such, but only the entitative, substantive self of early modernism.
Dewey's
Trade Review«The work herein is the process and product of an authentically situated self-in-the-making. Taking a cue from John Dewey, Yoram Lubling uses Dramatic Rehearsal to reconnect philosophy with the problems of ordinary people. His case study shows that the true power of philosophical ideas lies in their becoming ‘moving ideas’ in experience.» (Eric A. Evans, Philosophy of Education, University of Nebraska-Lincoln)
