Volume 9, Issue 3, Fall 1987
William Chaloupka
Pages 243-260
John Dewey’s Social Aesthetics as a Precedent for Environmental Thought
In this essay I review John Dewey’s pragmatism from the perspective of environmental social theory. Dewey’s clarification of aesthetics, values, experience, and the natural world are useful to contemporary environmentalism. His work represents a precedent for critical, anti-dualistic social philosophy in the U. S., and usefully clarifies the relationship of humans to the “material world.” Dewey’s conception of
values, politics, and experience suggests that these elements may be combined in ways congenial to environmental thought.