John Dewey`s cultural naturalism: Culture in terms of language, experience, and continuity

This dissertation explores John Dewey's philosophy of culture in terms of history of ideas and cultural anthropology. It argues that Dewey developed his cultural naturalism as a comprehensive theory of culture. Dewey rejected the modern dualism of "nature" vs. "culture," embracing an evolutionary model of culture as continuous with nature. Religion, science, language, democracy, and education are discussed in the context of their relationships with each other in the process of cultural evolution. Culture for Dewey was the highest stage of natural evolution, constantly evolving through the changing relationships of its components, religion and science the most profound among them. The dissertation reveals Dewey's continuous concern with providing a way of integrating a pragmatist scientific method with religious experience. Dewey retained his perception of science as a dynamic and ever changing enterprise represented by its method. His treatment of religion, on the other hand, evolved from the emphasis on the "obligation to knowledge of God" at the beginning to the focus on religious experience consistent with agnosticism by the mature years of his career. The interplay between religion and science and language as a medium of their interaction is explored in the context of psychology, cultural anthropology, education, and social debate and also through the relationships of Dewey's thought with other thinkers' ideas, both pragmatist and nonpragmatist.