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##### June 2, 1952 OBITUARY ## Dr. John Dewey Dead at 92; Philosopher a Noted Liberal ##### By THE NEW YORK TIMES Dr. John Dewey, the philosopher from whose teachings has grown the school of progressive education and "learning by doing," died of pneumonia in his home, 1158 Fifth Avenue, at 7 o'clock last night. He was 92 years old. His wife, the former Mrs. Roberta Lowit Grant, who was with him when he died, said he had been ill for twenty-six hours. He had broken a hip last November, and had been confined to the apartment, except for occasional trips to the roof for sunning. The widow said Dr. Dewey had been carrying on various projects at home to the last, and had outlined several works. She had no idea how near to possible publication any of them might be. Surviving also are two adopted children, Adrienne, 12, and John, 9. Five other children of his first marriage also survive--Frederick A. Dewey of New York, Mrs. Evelyn Smith of Kansas City, Mo.; Mrs. Lucy A. Brandaur of Syracuse, N.Y.; Miss Jane U. Dewey of Baltimore and Sabino L. Dewey of Huntington, L.I., the last also having been adopted. Mrs. Dewey said the funeral service would be held at the Community Church of New York, 40 East Thirty-fifth Street, on Wednesday at 1 P.M. As a philosopher--and he was acknowledged by many as America's foremost philosopher of his time--Dr. Dewey was not content to bring forth theories; he came forward to emphasize his ideas of liberalism, and, with the courage of a crusader, was willing to lend his name and reputation to causes that were frowned upon by staid society. He was too big a man to be sneered at as an "armchair Bolshevist." His convictions were those of an essentially honest man, and although he might well have sat back to criticize the general order of things, he took an active part in the attempt to create a third political party, to lend his voice and influence to help the down-trodden, to do away with oppression in this country and elsewhere, and to strive for a finer universal education. In his quest for betterment he met--and was prepared to meet--not only opposition but defeat. Some of his plans were quixotic and much too good for this world, but he never wavered in a cause that he considered just and he commanded the respect of all who opposed him. As the champion of an ideal and liberal democracy, Dr. Dewey saw the good as well as the bad in countries where the masses were groping for new social systems. He visited Russia, China and Turkey; saw for himself, and maintained his views in the face of public opinion in this country. He condemned hasty judgment of the affairs of other peoples and pointed to the flaws at home in no uncertain terms. Dr. Dewey had become attached to liberalism in his student days at the University of Vermont and at Johns Hopkins, where he came under the influence of Coleridge, Emerson and T. H. Green, but what finally emancipated him from the cumbersome and academic systems of transcendentalism was his discovery in 1891 of William James' "Psychology." In this work, according to Prof. Herbert W. Schneider of Columbia, he not only found the "instrumental theory of concepts" on which Dewey's logic was based, but also experienced that contagious mental "loosening up" with which James influenced his generation and which made him the father of American philosophy. Noted for Educational Reform Dr. Dewey's principal achievement was perhaps his educational reform. He was the chief prophet of progressive education. After twenty years that movement--"learning by doing"--had become a major factor in American education in the late Thirties, and in 1941 the New York State Department of Education approved a six-year experiment in schools embodying the Dewey philosophy. But progressive education was long the center of controversy among educators, and in the early Forties criticism was becoming more outspoken. The revolt against Dewey and pragmatism in education was strongest in Chicago, the scene of his first and greatest triumphs. At the University of Chicago, where Dr. Dewey was head of the Department of Philosophy and for two years director of the School of Education, President Robert Hutchins has sponsored a system of "education for freedom" which seeks to separate the teaching of the "intellectual" from the "practical" arts. Both Dr. Hutchins and Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, long president of Columbia University, sharply attacked progressive education in 1944. In a birthday interview that year Dr. Dewey dismissed as "a childish point of view" the criticism by Dr. Butler, in an address at the opening of the university, that progressive education, "a most reactionary philosophy," has led to undisciplined youth. And replying to Dr. Hutchins' attacks, he said: "President Hutchins calls for liberal education of a small, elite group and vocational education for the masses. I cannot think of any idea more completely reactionary and more fatal to the whole democratic outlook." While Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan in 1893 Dewey wrote: "If I were asked to name the most needed of all reforms in the spirit of education I should say: 'Cease conceiving of education as mere preparation for later life, and make of it the full meaning of the present life.' And to add that only in this case does it become truly a preparation for later life is not the paradox it seems. An activity which does not have worth enough to be carried on for its own sake cannot be very effective as a preparation for something else if the new spirit in education forms the habit of requiring that every act be an outlet of the whole self, and it provides the instruments of such complete functioning." Later in life Professor Dewey devoted much time and thought to reform of government. He declared that the "control of government must be redeemed from the special interests which have usurped it and restored to the people." Unless this were done, he warned, political democracy would be doomed. Championed New Thought He referred to the major political parties as "the errand boys of big business," and he championed new thought, actively through his connections with the People's Lobby, of which he was the president, and more indirectly by his writings. During 1946 Dr. Dewey participated with labor leaders in conferences at Chicago and Detroit designed to lay the groundwork for a third, or People's, party for 1948. At the Detroit conference, a National Educational Committee was formed. Leaders at the conferences were from the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the American Federation of Labor and the farmers' unions. John Dewey was born at Burlington, Vt., on Oct. 20, 1859, son of Archibald S. Dewey and Lucina A. Rich Dewey. His father was a merchant who traced his ancestry to 1640. His mother was the daughter of a prosperous Vermont farmer of Cape Cod ancestry. He studied in common schools and later attended the University of Vermont, being graduated in 1879. He then taught school at Oil City, Pa., and subsequently in general country schools in Vermont. One year he spent studying philosophy with Prof. H. A. P. Torrey of the University of Vermont. After this he went to Johns Hopkins, where he studied philosophy and psychology under Prof. G. S. Morris, and in 1884 he received his Ph.D. degree. That year he was appointed instructor and assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan and remained as such until 1888, when he went to the University of Minnesota as Professor of Philosophy. After a year he returned to the University of Michigan where he remained for five years. From 1894 to 1904 Professor Dewey was head of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago and for two years he was director of the School of Education of the same institution. In 1904 he was appointed Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University. Besides his regular work there Dr. Dewey taught at Teachers College. He retired with the title of Professor Emeritus on July 1, 1930. In 1886 his first work, "Psychology," was published. This was followed by "Liebnitz," "Critical Theory of Ethics," "Study of Ethics," "School and Society," "Studies in Logical Theory," "How to Think," "Influence of Darwin on Philosophy and Other Essays," "German Philosophy and Politics," "Democracy and Education," "Reconstruction in Philosophy," "Human Nature and Conduct," "Experience and Nature," "The Public and Its Problems," "The Quest for Certainty" and "Individualism, Old and New." Others were "Philosophy and Civilization," "Art as Experience," "Liberalism and Social Action," "Logic: The Theory of Inquiry" and "Culture and Freedom." In reviewing Dr. Dewey's "Problems of Men," published in June, 1946, Dr. Alvin Johnson, president emeritus of the New School for Social Research, said Dr. Dewey struck "straight at reactionary philosophers." In replying to his philosophical and educational critics, Dr. Johnson said that Dewey concluded: "Philosophy counts for next to nothing in the present world-wide crisis of human affairs and should count for less. It needs a thorough house-cleaning and the final, definitive abandonment of most of its traditional values. Those values are class values. They were established in a time when the masses of mankind lived in slavery, or near-slavery, and when a little body of the elect could occupy themselves with speculations on the divine and the absolute. The present world belongs to a democracy. And the democracy cannot waste time on recondite speculations that have nothing to do with life." Professor Dewey had a small but enthusiastic following of Socialists, moderate radicals and thinkers. There was a so-called "Dewey group," which was popularly known as a gathering of liberal-minded men and women. Among those who became his disciples, or rather associates in thought, were such men as Walter Lippmann, Charles A. Beard, Sinclair Lewis, Morris Hillquit, Oswald Garison Villard and Norman Thomas. Their influence was felt more especially at times when political graft and abuse became over-oppressive. Others who associated themselves with Dr. Dewey were Rabbi Stephen S. Wise and John Haynes Holmes. Dr. Dewey was a supporter of the Civil Liberties Union and was chairman of the League for Independent Political Action. One of the articles of Professor Dewey's political creed was "vote for the man rather than for the party." His faith was embodied in articles that he wrote for The New Republic, Philosophical Review, Journal of Philosophy, Monist and International Journal of Ethics. Lectured in Tokyo In 1919 Dr. Dewey delivered a series of lectures at the Imperial University at Tokyo. These were later published as "Reconstruction in Philosophy." That same year he was invited by former Chinese students in this country to lecture in China on the subjects of education and philosophy. He stayed in China for two years, making his headquarters at Peiping, but he traveled through all the provinces from Mukden to Canton. Dr. Dewey went to Turkey in 1924 to make a report on the new republican government schools. In 1926 he was in Mexico, where he lectured at the Summer School of the University of Mexico. In 1928 he was one of the delegates of American educators who visited children's institutions at Leningrad and Moscow at the invitation of the Soviet Government. Dr. Dewey was highly impressed with the educational experiments in new Russia, and voiced enthusiasm upon his return to this country. He was somewhat criticized for his views, however, and there were some who maintained that he was naive, though his sincerity was never questioned. In 1937 he experienced one of the stormiest episodes in his life. He went to Mexico as the head of a commission to investigate the validity of charges made by the Soviet Government against Leon Trotsky, who was living in Mexico. Trotsky had been sentenced to death by a Russian court for plotting to overthrow the Moscow Government, but Dr. Dewey insisted that Trotsky never had a chance to defend himself. "Now," he said, "it is up to him to present his case. I am neither a Trotskyite nor a Stalinist. I don't accept the Moscow evidence as conclusive till I hear the other side." The commission announced that it found Trotsky was innocent of the terrorism and fascist conspiracy with which he had been charged. An avowed anti-Communist, Dr. Dewey had his views as to the ideal balance between the State and the individual. What was needed, he explained, was an authority capable of directing and utilizing changes for a kind of individual freedom unlike that which the unconstrained economic liberty had produced and justified. Dr. Dewey believed that if democracy were to survive in this country it would require it would require a tremendous reorganization of instruction and administration in the schools. Democracy, he maintained, "cannot go forward unless the intelligence of the mass of people is educated to understand the social realities of their own time." Professor Dewey constantly urged the cultivation of independent thinking, and he deplored what he termed the "empty imitation" in this country of thought in Europe. He was often heard in public debate on matters of social or political significance, and he cheerfully agreed to act as chairman whenever he thought something of consequence might result from such disputations. Predicted War by Hitler As early as 1933 Dr. Dewey voiced his fear of what the future might bring if Hitler remained unchecked in Germany. Just before he sailed for Europe that year he predicted that Hitler would be headed for war as soon as he felt strong enough. A year later he asserted that Hitler and Hitlerism were "by all odds the greatest threat to world peace today." In 1936 he was one of a group of eighteen philosophers who refused to participate in the celebration of a philosophical institution in Berlin. At that time he also was wary of Japan, warning that a secret agreement existed between Japan and Germany. He called for the United States to take action against Japan, urging that a boycott be put into effect till such time as the Nipponese forces left China. The Chinese Government conferred on him the Order of the Jade for the contributions he had made to the education and leadership of China. He was honorary life president of the National Education Association, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Psychological Association (president, 1899-1900), American Philosophical Association (president, 1905-06), and corresponding member of the Institut de France. In 1938 Dr. Dewey was voted by the Aristogenic Society as one of the ten "greatest Americans." This honor included the recording of every phase of his life for future generations. Active In Teachers Guild Professor Dewey took a sharp interest in the internal affairs of this city and the nation. In 1936 he was a leader in the movement to obtain a new city charter. He was active in organizations such as the New York Teachers Guild, the League for Industrial Democracy, the International League for Academic Freedom and the Committee for Cultural Freedom. He also assisted in the founding of a University-in-Exile for famous scholars driven out of their native countries. In 1944 he aided in the organization of a Council for a Democratic Germany, and was on and Educators-for-Roosevelt Committee formed to promote the re-election of Franklin D. Roosevelt. After the war he joined with other leaders in petitions to President Truman for the release of conscientious objectors still being held. Dr. Dewey was extremely courteous and mild of manner. He was a scholar who ventured to descend into the maelstrom of political strife and who took his blows, unfair as they were in many cases, with a smile and a shrug of the shoulder. But he was persistent and his enthusiasm was infectious. "I see no hope," he said once, "for sanity and reality in American life except through the agency of a new party." He sowed the seeds, but he never saw its fruits. When a bust of John Dewey, modeled by Jacob Epstein, was unveiled at Columbia in 1928, Dr. William Heard Kilpatrick, Professor of Education, said: "Dr. Dewey is America's greatest living philosopher and must be included among the greatest thinkers of all times. He has in the minds of many changed almost our whole conception of what philosophy is, delivering us from the old puzzles that have formed the stock in trade of the traditional philosophy. He is chiefly responsible for our thinking of intelligence as primarily instrumental. His philosophy has common sense, acceptability and a social bearing which distinguishes it in degree from all other philosophies." But perhaps the best description of all can be found in an editorial written to mark his eightieth birthday: "there are countless school children today and yesterday whose lives have been influenced in a constructive way by this one man who never shouted, and whose formally stated philosophy often is a stiff dose for more subtle minds. One thinks of him as refining into gold the rough ore of our tumultuous pioneer experience. He is yankeeism at its best--shrewd, wise, humane." Dr. Dewey retired from teaching at Columbia in 1930, when he was 70, but he went on writing and lecturing, publishing more than 300 books, essays and articles. By the time he was 90, his published works must have totaled 1,000. Opposed Loyalty Oaths In recent years, he had lived in a large apartment overlooking Central Park at Fifth Avenue and Ninety-seventh Street. He spent his winters in Florida. He never lost interest in public affairs, often speaking and writing on questions of the day. He opposed teachers' loyalty oaths, but came to believe that known Communists should not be permitted to teach children. He defended the United States action in Korea. For these and other anti-Soviet views, he won the criticism of Pravda. To the end he lent his name to the causes for which he believed, even when he could not be present in person. This year, he was a member of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which, among other activities, sponsored a festival of Western music, art and literature in Paris dedicated to victims of Nazi, Soviet and Franco Spanish tyrannies. Last month he was elected an honorary vice chairman of the Liberal party of New York State. Dr. Dewey's ninetieth birthday was celebrated in many universities and by cultural societies in the United States and abroad. He was honored, mostly in absentia, by testimonial dinners and meetings for weeks in the fall of 1949. He did attend one large testimonial dinner at the Commodore Hotel, when admirers presented to him $90,000 to be used on worthy educational projects of his choosing. Among notables who sent felicitations were President Truman and Prime Minister Attlee of England. Honored by Yale in 1951 Professor Dewey maintained surprisingly good health for such an old man. Even a serious operation in 1951 did not incapacitate him, and he recovered sufficiently to accept in person the honorary degree of Doctor of Literature at Yale's June commencement. At the age of 92, Dr. Dewey looked twenty years younger. His bushy hair and mustache were white, but they had been so for decades. His eyes were still keen, his mind alert, and his physical strength sufficient for him to take walks and typewrite his own scripts and letters. Dr. Dewey married twice. In 1886, Alice Chipman, one of his students at the University of Michigan, became his bride. There were born to them six children, two of whom died in childhood. A seventh child was adopted. Mrs. Dewey died in 1927. When he was 87, the philosopher married Mrs. Grant, a widow who lived in San Francisco, on December 11, 1946. Not quite half his age, Mrs. Grant came from an Oil City, Pa., glass manufacturing family which had been friends with Dr. Dewey before she was born. She had been a director of educational travel for the Cunard Steamship Company. Dr. Dewey had arranged years before to turn over the bulk of his assets to his first wife and their children, and after his second marriage the Deweys lived largely on his wife's inheritance and some later royalties.
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