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Abstract:
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My study looks at the influence that Matthew Arnold , 19th century English poet and literary critic , had on John Dewey , American pragmatist and educational philosopher . While the influence of Arnold on Dewey was more pervasive than I had expected , my real purpose in writing this dissertation was to discover a middle ground between the educational philosophies the two men espoused and to construe a fuller approach to a pluralistic educational philosophy . I have looked at four aspects of mind that draw Arnold and Dewey into close correspondence . The first aspect I have called the tentacled mind from Dewey's favored metaphor of the mind as having tentacles that reach out and encounter directly the physical world . This aspect of mind allows me to look at the common use that both Arnold and Dewey made of the term "experience ." The second aspect of mind I call the critical mind . I have explored this aspect of mind by looking at a brief history of English literary criticism from Dryden to Stanley Fish . The third aspect of mind is the intentional mind which deals with the rhetorical -hermeneutic relationship of mind to the intentionality of other voices and to its own intentionality . This aspect crosses into reader response theory , but I have found within it results that differ significantly from traditional reader -response theory . The final aspect of mind I have called reflective -response . In both Arnold and Dewey the reflective aspects of the mind differ widely from more contemplative conceptions of the mind in a reflective state ; most notably for both Arnold and Dewey the reflective mind is never passive . I believe that when these four aspects of mind are brought together they amount to a truly pluralistic educational philosophy . In the course of my argument I have , as well , identified a need to rehabilitate both the concept of intentionality and that of authority . |