Hickman, Larry A. : Southern Illinois University at Carbondale

Larry A. Hickman is Director of the Center for Dewey Studies and Professor of Philosophy at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. He is author of John Dewey's Pragmatic Technology and editor of Reading Dewey. He is also General Editor of The Collected Works of John Dewey, 1882-1953: The Electronic Edition.

Alexander, Thomas M. : Southern Illinois University at Carbondale

Thomas M. Alexander is Professor of Philosophy at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and the author of John Dewey's Theory of Art, Experience, and Nature: The Horizons of Feeling.

In addition to being one of the greatest technical philosophers of the 20th century, John Dewey was an educational innovator, a Progressive Era reformer, and one of America's last great public intellectuals. Dewey's insights into the problems of public education, immigration, the prospects for democratic government, and the relation of religious faith to science are as fresh today as when they were first published. His penetrating treatments of the nature and function of philosophy, the ethical and aesthetic dimensions of life, and the role of inquiry in human experience are of increasing relevance at the turn of the 21st century.

Based on the award-winning 37-volume critical edition of Dewey's work, The Essential Dewey presents in two thematically arranged volumes a collection of Dewey's essays that represents his thinking on every major issue to which he turned his attention. Taken as a whole, this collection provides unique access to Dewey's understanding of the problems and prospects of human existence and of the philosophical enterprise.