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During the first half of the twentieth century, John Dewey was regarded in America as the foremost philosopher of his age. This was no mean feat at a time when Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger were all alive and producing some of their finest work. Russell himself called Dewey ‘the leading living philosopher of America’. The fact that Dewey had once saved Russell’s life should not be seen as influencing this view. Both men took philosophy far too seriously to let any such indebtedness influence their opinions. Russell also described Dewey as ‘a man of the highest character, liberal in outlook, generous and kind in personal relations, indefatigable in work’. But this did not stop him from regarding Dewey’s pragmatic view of truth as nothing less than a philosophic catastrophe, liable to lead to lunacy. In Russell’s view: ‘The concept of “truth” as something dependent upon facts largely outside human control has been one of the ways in which philosophy hitherto has inculcated the necessary element of humility. When this check upon pride is removed, a further step is taken on the road towards a certain kind of madness. ’

John Dewey was born October 20, 1859, close to the Canadian border in Vermont. The states of Texas, California, and Florida had only recently been admitted to the Union; the internal combustion engine would not be invented until the following year; and there were the first rumblings of a civil war between the Northern and Southern states. The Dewey family had been Vermont farmers for three generations, and Dewey’s father, Archibald, ran a local grocery business in Burlington, which was then a small but thriving lumber city on the banks of Lake Champlain.

John Dewey’s early childhood was disturbed by the Civil War, which broke out when he was just a year old. Although Archibald Dewey was already forty, he immediately responded to Lincoln’s call for volunteers and enlisted as a quartermaster in the 1st Vermont Cavalry. When he was sent south, Lucinda took the family to Virginia so that they could remain together, and they did not return to Burlington until the Civil War ended. By now Burlington was in the process of becoming the second largest lumber depot in the country. Amidst the atmosphere of booming business, the middle classes (which included the Deweys) lived in conditions of some prosperity. Meanwhile, down by the lakeside, squalid tenements housed the poor immigrant workers, who were mainly Irish and French Canadian. These slums were described in a contemporary local report as ‘abodes of wretchedness and filth’ which had become ‘haunts of dissipation’. Unlike many of the well-to-do families, the Deweys did not remain indifferent to such social injustice, and Lucinda Dewey undertook philanthropic work. As a result, though her son John was brought up and educated amidst ‘old American’ culture, he was constantly aware of what life was like on the other side of the tracks.