The Pursuit of Certainty: A Study on the Relationship Between Knowledge and Action

Author: John Dewey (USA)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-09-01
Features: The significance of a work and a philosophical tradition does not only depend on how contemporaries understand it but also on how later generations understand it. From this perspective, the People's Publishing House of Shanghai, with the consent of Professor Habermas, had me translate the book review I wrote in Chinese for his German translation of "The Quest for Certainty" (published in 1998), which is included as a part of this book. In this article, Habermas provides an overview and analysis of the reception history of Dewey, as well as the entire American pragmatism philosophy, in Germany. This should help us gain a comprehensive understanding of Dewey's work. The German philosopher Jürgen Habermas has called Dewey's "The Quest for Certainty" Dewey's "influential work" and highly praised it. In this book, Dewey discusses the important role of mediation in bridging the fields of cognition and evaluation. Dewey studies the relationship between knowledge and action, emphasizing the practical significance of knowledge and pointing out the inherent connection between theory and practice. This intrinsic connection makes knowledge a tool and means for achieving human purposes. The book explains how the traditional distinction between knowledge and action has influenced philosophical concepts, how the coordination between conclusions of natural science and value judgments has dominated various schools of philosophy, and how science itself is a form of purposeful practical action. It clarifies that the determination of knowledge is an ongoing pursuit.