10
WILLIAM PHILLIPS
have been taken over by a contempt for traditional knowledge and by
an addiction to trendy notions and values. And liberalism, which has oc–
casionally leaned toward the left, has been even more strongly radical–
ized, and is not the liberalism of Dewey's day. Despite Rorty's cheerful
attempt to preserve Hook's earlier thinking, in the last years of his life
Hook was anything but a confirmed Deweyan in education. And in the
light of Dewey's rugged skepticism and pragmatic sense of reality, it
would seem very unlikely that Dewey, were he alive today, would be
supporting the current modish educational notions.
As to the viability of pragmatism as a whole, there are questions.
It
does not appear that Dewey's scientific method of inquiry applies to
politics and aesthetics, as both Dewey and Hook claimed. Hook was es–
pecially weak in his exegesis of the Deweyan approach to problems of
art, which Hook looked at as a democratic activity. Both Dewey and
Hook were so immersed in the social aspects of democracy that they
failed to understand that intellectual questions are resolved and judgments
in the arts are made by professionals in the various areas.
But Hook's early book will do much to resuscitate his own reputa–
tion as a philosophic thinker - and not only as a political activist.
w.
P.
