Jing LIU - Dewey and Chinese Philosophy

Growth, Experience and Nature in Dewey's Philosophy and Chinese Philosophy
Author(s): Jing LIU

Source: Frontiers of Philosophy in China, Vol. 12, No. 1 (March 2017), pp. 90-103
Published by: Brill
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Front. Philos. China 2017, 12(1): 90-103
DOI 1 0.3868/s030-006-01 7-0007-0
LIU Jing
Growth, Experience and Nature in Dewey's Philosophy and

Chinese Philosophy
Abstract Growth is an important concept in Dewey's philosophy, and, indeed,

its ultimate focus. It is not, however, an easy task to posit growth as an ethical
ideal, for here Dewey immediately faces a metaphysical dilemma: whether to
offer us an objective standard of growth, which becomes a type of absolutism, or
to inevitably fall into relativism. This paper explores how Dewey avoids this
dilemma with his concept of experience, which is interrogated through the
relationship between human beings and nature. Still, human growth in nature
involves the cultivation of virtuosities (de ífg) in accordance with the rhythm of
nature, and requires a completely different way of life other than our
technological one. For this reason, I use Chinese philosophy, specifically ideas
from the Yijing, to show how growth can be illustrated through the interaction
between humans and the natural world.
Keywords Dewey, growth, experience, nature, tianren heyi ^An -
1 Introduction: The Problem of Growth
Dewey emphasizes the novel and the prospective in his philosophy. This
characteristic of his thinking can only be understood in light of his concept of
growth, which involves complicated "metaphysical" issues regarding time and
change as well as the relationship between people and their social and natural
environments. Growth is clearly a very important component of Dewey's overall
philosophical project, and it can perhaps even be said that growth serves as his
"ultimate concern." The idea permeates all of his philosophy - whether we are
speaking of community, democracy, or individual life, growth is always his
ultimate focus. As Dewey himself puts it, "we set up this and that end to be
reached, but the end is growth itself' (Dewey 1960, 172). How then should we
understand growth as the end of his philosophy? In what sense does Dewey talk
LIU Jing (El)

Department of Philosophy, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Hawaii 96822, USA
E-mail: jing6@hawaii.edu
Growth, Experience and Nature in Dewey's Philosophy and Chinese Philosophy 9 1
about growth? What is this growth rooted in or founded upon?

First, we may consider how Dewey describes the growth of individuals and
societies. In discussing individual growth Dewey writes:
The growing, enlarging, liberated self [...] goes forth to meet new demands
and occasions, and readapts and remakes itself in the process. It welcomes
untried situations... Indeed, we may say that the good person is precisely the
one who is most conscious of the alternative, and is the most concerned to find
openings for the newly forming or growing self; since no matter how "good"
he has been, he becomes "bad" (even though acting upon a relatively high
plane of attainment) as soon as he fails to respond to the demand for growth.
(Dewey 2008a, 307)
It would seem, however, that positing growth as an ethical ideal is not such a
simple task. After all, doesn't the problem of growth entail the problem of
identifying the good? When we say that some activity constitutes growth and
another degeneracy, must we not assume a standard of ethical judgment? Here
we seem to come back to Plato's query, i.e., the problem of ethical relativism.
What is "good" for me is not necessarily good for others. Even though we might
share the concepts "good" and "evil," the content of each act of judgment differs.
What is viewed as good now can be viewed as bad later. How then can we make
moral judgments? How can we be sure that something is growing and not
degenerating, ethically speaking? Plato thought he had solved this problem by
positing a transcendent eidos of the good - i.e., the agathon as such. However,
this response is not available to Dewey, since he takes any metaphysical
speculation entirely detached from experience to be at best superfluous and at
worst pernicious, insofar as it takes human attention away from the imaginative
task of realizing possibilities for growth in the real world.
How should we understand growth in Dewey? Do we even need a standard?
Or can we get by without one? By doing so, would we not just fall into the trap
of relativism? Or is perhaps relativism itself founded on some certain, fixed
mode of thinking?
For Dewey, growth involves wisdom, and philosophy is the love of wisdom.
He writes:
[B]y wisdom we mean not systematic and proved knowledge of fact and truth,
but a conviction about moral values, a sense for the better kind of life to be led
[. . .] as a moral term [wisdom] refers to a choice about something to be done, a
preference for living this sort of life rather than that. (Dewey 2008b, 44)
What we need to get clear about is what precisely Dewey means by a "better
92 LIU Jing
kind of life." Pr
for different pe
2 The Idea o
When Dewey tal

to meet new d
process" (Dewe
understood. Th
individual soul a
its community
always human b
"growth within
held that it wa
values. Thus he writes:
[T]he veiy problem of morals is to form an original body of impulsive

tendencies into a voluntary self in which desires and affections center in the
values which are common; in which interest focuses in objects that contribute
to the enrichment of the lives of all. (Dewey 1960, 168)
The growth of the individual cannot occur apart from the growth of a community.
Without the growth found in association with a community, there can be no
individual growth to speak of. Individual growth is rooted in the community
within which common values are formed. Now, seemingly, this idea of growth in
a community at least points out a way for us to escape subjectivism. Though
there are limits to the understanding of community only in terms of human
beings.
To take a contemporary example, technology is an inescapable mode of life
today. Contraiy to the common sense that it is something controlled by humans,
the truth is that we are occupied by technology: our very being today is itself
technological. Living in this technological age, we might oppose GMOs
(genetically modified organisms) in industrial food production because we take
them to be a bad thing, seeing them as doing fundamental violence to the fabric
of nature and humanity, to say nothing of the pollution and corruption brought
about by the technology. However, another group of people may claim that
GMOs are good because they allow a larger human population to be fed, and are
therefore obviously a source of "growth." How would Dewey's ethical
philosophy determine who is right and who is wrong here? Do we inevitably fall
into a kind of relativism or emotivism regarding controversial issues like these?
Growth, Experience and Nature in Dewey's Philosophy and Chinese Philosophy 93
Dewey's idea of common values (which he idealizes as "the Great Community")

is often sharply criticized, either as being naively idealistic or as suppressing
democratic differences in the interest of social solidarity.
Despite all the difficulties in front of us, I would remind such critics that
Dewey's notion of the "Great Community" does not just involve human to
human relations, but also includes humanity's organic involvements with nature.
In my opinion, it is exactly here that Dewey can provide us with a conception of
growth in the full sense, and thereby offer us the answers to many questions.
3 Experience and Nature: Dewey's Naturalistic Metaphysics
Let us begin by asking: what lies at the foundation of the meaning of growth in
Dewey's philosophy?
Dewey's notion of growth is based on the ground of experience. When Dewey
discusses growth it is always in the context of enlarging and ameliorating lived
experience. What then is experience? For Dewey, it is important to first of all
make clear that it is not what the traditional empiricists meant by the term.
Traditional empiricism presupposes an experience that is based on a fundamental
dualism of subject/object, viewing it as nothing but the activity of mental
cognition. This view of experience cuts the flow of lived experience into
atomized bits of sense data for a discrete, self-sufficient individual consciousness.
In this mode of thinking, subjective experience can never come to know the
world "as it is in itself," i.e., as noumena.
The relationship between humanity and nature is a key problem here.
Ultimately, this problem is, in fact, at the heart of the ontologies of all
philosophical interrogations, albeit expressed differently in different historical
epochs and cultural contexts. In ancient Greek philosophy the world was taken to
be in a constant state of flux, and therefore lacking ontological reality. Human
essence was defined through rationality (nous, logos), and it was through the
employment of such reason that one could attain access to the supernatural - and
therefore more real - realm of forms. In this philosophical paradigm, then, the
relationship between human beings and the world is cut off, with the atomization
of individuals and the fragmentation of the natural world the inevitable result. It
should be noted that there is a historical-logical progression from Greek
substance metaphysics to Christian theology, wherein God is taken to be the sole
creator while humanity and the entire natural world are decisively reduced to
creatures - the created - even if man is designated the steward of this creation.
Man in this picture is described as both the dominator of nature, as the world is
created for his use, and also its keeper, inasmuch as the world is for him to
manage. From the marriage of Christianity and Greek philosophy, modern
94 LIU Jing
individualism w
all things." Th
thousand bein
"standing-reser
through a techn
progress. Scienc
our time.
Heidegger gras
to overcome it
captured in hi
thinking, Bein
world, history,
in which temp
relationship bet
living as "the
thus arises for
describe this ess
Dewey opposed
holding that "e
being "in" natu
(Dewey 1958, 2
and time are ta
root in the soi
relationship wh
holistic, dynam
substance and t
We begin by
double-barrele
men do and suf
men act and ar
enjoy, see, believe, imagine - in short, processes of experiencing.
"Experience" denotes the planted field, the sowed seeds, the reaped harvests,
the changes of night and day, spring and autumn, wet and dry, heat and cold,
that are observed, feared, longed for; it also denotes the one who plants and
reaps, who works and rejoices, hopes, fears, plans, invokes magic or chemistry
to aid him, who is downcast or triumphant. It is "double-barreled" in that it
recognizes in its primary integrity no division between act and material,
subject and object, but contains them both in an unanalyzed totality. (Dewey
1958, 8)
Here we can see that Dewey's notion of "experience" is strikingly similar to both
Heidegger's conception of "being-in-the-world" and Husserl's Lebenswelt.
Dewey uses experience to deconstruct traditional metaphysics, which constructs
an eternally unchanging world of forms and denigrates the experienced world of
process and change. Dewey holds that outside of experience there is nothing:
"The mystery is that the world is as it is - a mystery that is the source of all joy
and all sorrow, of all hope and fear, and the source of development both creative
and degenerative" (Dewey 1988, 112). When we rely upon experience we must
praise the profundity of transformation and recognize the value of temporality,
because there is nothing outside of experience. Dewey's philosophy of
experience "will think of time not as that part of reality which for some strange
reason has not yet been traversed, but as a genuine field of novelty, of real and
unpredictable increments to existence, a field for experimentation and invention"
(Dewey 2008b, 50).
Experience unfolds in a temporal environment, and temporality is always
involved. For Dewey the environment also always includes both the social and
natural aspects of experience; the nature/nurture, social/biological dichotomy is
thus never drawn by Dewey. Experience is nature; nature is experience. The
human person and the world are one ongoing dynamic process. It is in this part of
Dewey's philosophy that I believe we can find an answer to the question of
growth raised earlier. When our understanding of community is enlarged such
that human life experience is a part of nature, our horizons are no longer
confined to human interests. Rather, all human activities are already part of
nature: what we do inevitably affects nature and nature correspondingly always
affects us in turn. Thus, despite the fact that its "benefits" are still questionable,
the industrial production of GMO foods should not be examined only in terms of
human interests, but, first of all, in terms of nature. If the human person and the
world are one unfolding process, then when human ways of living incur
problems (e.g., global warming, GMO-caused pollution, or nuclear fallout), the
nature of the crisis will be revealed immediately in our experience. This is why,
when we look at the world of experience, we must discuss growth and the
prosperity of nature as a dynamic process. Without an eternal soul that will
escape to some supernatural paradise, this world is all we have. Growth is raising
the quality of life for individuals and also for communities. For Dewey,
individual growth is nothing other than improving the quality of relationships
between human beings and the organic environment, and a better way of life is
thus created. Growth for Dewey is always ameliorative:
Direct experience comes from nature and man interacting with each other. In
this interaction, human energy gathers, is released, dammed up, frustrated and
victorious. There are rhythmic beats of want and fulfillment, pulses of doing
96 LIU Jing
and being with
Human life is
meaningful con
4 Growth i
We have seen th
to experience
subjectivism ca
however, still
understood. W
potentially rhy
rhythm of natu
technological l
familiar to hum
That is, the rhy
than concealed
meaning of "e
thinking in ord
and humans."
I will definitely not be simply using Chinese philosophy to interpret Dewey, or
vice versa. Just as Dewey claimed, with regard to democracy, every culture will
produce its own suitable forms of democratic practice, so it is with philosophy.
The weight of tradition and history has always already provided us with differing
perspectives. It is, however, precisely because of this space of difference that the
possibility for dialogue and meaningful interaction emerges. In this technological
age, when the whole world's history has been dragged into the shadow of
Western history and when the way of life destined by the history of Western
onto-theological thinking is dominant, dialogue becomes especially important. If
we follow Dewey, philosophy is far from an irrelevant system of ideas and
abstractions; rather, it is the sustained practice of cultivating wisdom to address
the concrete problems of the human life-world. Philosophy should return to its
primordial meaning of "love of wisdom" where "wisdom" is focused on the
broadening of meaning in lived experience. Only this kind of wisdom can point
us towards a better way of living in the world.
Thus, Dewey's philosophy is very similar to the radically immanent "unity of
tian and humans" posited in the Yijing. Both the Yijing and Dewey can help point
us towards a way of life different from the hegemonic paradigm offered by
modern technology. When making this claim, it is vital to keep in mind that
"technology" cannot be understood simply as a tool or instrument for human

purposes. Rather, "technology" indicates the problematic aspect of the
subject/object dualism at the heart of modern metaphysics, which colors our way
of life.
The similarity between Dewey and classical Chinese philosophy lies in the
fact that they both focus on the interaction between human persons in community
and the natural world so as to formulate a dynamic life philosophy. In this style
of thinking there can be no separation between human persons and human
life-worlds. These life philosophies are aesthetic holisms1 wherein experience
can be fruitfully conceived as an organic process of becoming one body ( htmran
yiti Wife- If). The Zhuangzi reveals that "the human and tian are one."2 The
Song dynasty scholar Cheng Hao (1032-1085) asserts, " Tian and humanity are
not dual."3 Cheng Hao's statement is most profound insofar as it assumes that if
human persons follow their natures, unifying their heart-minds with the dao, then
they can realize themselves and also realize w u fí/j (processes, situations, events,
things).4 However, if the heart-mind is overgrown with the weeds of selfish
desiring, to the point of its being "lost," it will necessarily lead to the destruction
of humanity and the destruction of things (wu %). Cheng Hao provides a radical
alternative to the mode of living offered by modern technology, and issues an
urgent call to reevaluate our technological values.
From the beginning of modern metaphysics, the hegemony of reason has been
operative. Thus, philosophy has been split into the different disciplines of
metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, and logic. According to Immanuel Kant, these
disciplines are differing employments of a single reason. However, Chinese
philosophy, or any holistically empirical philosophy, would say that morality and
aesthetics are rooted in the same life-world. In this mode of thinking, departure
from the world as it is immediately lived assures that there can be no real beauty
or goodness to speak of. Rather, the growth of experience in time is the unfolding
of inexhaustible meaning, and infinite attributions of beauty and goodness are
thus possible. There is no experience without meaning, and there is no realm of
1 I am somewhat reluctant to refer to Chinese philosophy as an "aestheticism" only because

this term seems to imply the separation of the various disciplines of philosophy (metaphysics,
epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, logic) familiar since Aristotle. However, if we understand the
term as being opposed to rationalism, wherein analytic reasoning structures experience by
either providing an a priori synthetic unity or an analytic separation of lived experience, then
the designation is fine by me.
2 "Aiœ-te. "( «&Ť-LÍJ*» )
3 "( irjm-mtù )
"Human nature" in this instance should not be understood as th
and predestined soul innate in the human body. Rather it is a
evolving in particular environments.
98 LIU Jing
value independ
there is no dif
aesthetics, and
and feeling. Onl
two millennia o
lived experien
opposed Other
Important part
reason and sen
viewed throug
sentiment from
a knife. Movin
Chinese Yijing t
I now want to
show how the
thought, the
patterns.5 The
with the twelve
by one returnin
reemergence
winter solstice
yang qi will bec
so that the trig
hexagram gou
cycle continu
transformation
growth of sum
encompassed in
flï) as correlat
rhythm as yang
The transforma
rhythm of y
5 Yuzhou: the fo
arriving present a
"It is originally i
From the eleven
dazhuang guai
the eleventh mon
-jiazhong $$$Ě.-guxi tëfà-zhonglii ftg -ruibin USE ~ linzhong -yize ^IlJ
-nanlii M S - wuye fâfâ-yingzhong MM- See Appendix 1 and 2.
derives from the rhythms of this yin-yang harmonization.

The Yijing states:
The sun goes and the moon comes. The moon goes and the sun comes. The
sun and moon mutually influence each other and this is the birth of brightness.
The winter goes and the summer comes. The summer goes and the winter
comes. The mutual influence of summer and winter accomplishes a year.7
This passage is about time, but, when one talks about time, space is already
involved. When one talks about time and space, tiandi and the ten
thousand beings ( wanwu MfáJ) are all also involved.
The human person is always in the midst of yin-yang transformations. A
human person can model herself on the transformations of tian and earth and
cultivates virtuosities. Such is the human growth in the context of the Yijing. The
Great Treatise, a commentary on the Yijing, says, "The great virtuosity of tian
and earth is life."8 The human person can, thus, establish the root of her virtues
here. The way of tiandi is a ceaseless creativity and this is "consummate
conduct" ( ren C). As the Shuogua commentary states,
In the past when the sages composed the Changes, they followed the nature
and propensity of natural patterning. Thus they were able to establish the way
of tian as yin and yang, the way of earth as soft and firm, and the human way
as consummate conduct and appropriateness ( ren {Z and yi H).9
It is through Yin and yang, soft and firm, that the myriad things between tian and
earth are generated. Consummate conduct and appropriateness ( ren yi ÍT.ü) is
how humans achieve their nature (xing 14), thereby participating in the cosmic
creativity of tiandi. Consummate conduct is the root of ceaseless creativity;
Mencius calls this the "peaceful dwelling of humanity."10 Only when the
heart-mind dwells here can it be ceaselessly creative. Appropriateness (yi ü) is
what is "fitting,"11 and it is a matter of practical wisdom (quan H). They/ person
can adjust to situations as they emerge, which is where meaning is rooted. Notice
that yi ü also means "meaning." A hexagram is a symbol of a certain time, and
7 Baawï*. mmmm, mmmim*

( <*»T> )
8 )
B tli. ( <|g£MV> )
10 "OtAČŠcí o " ( C£Ť-1»±> )
11 "m%> ( <*,*> )
100 LIU Jing
each hexagram e
different conte
phenomena of tia
praised Confuciu
unyieldingly, th
when "the prope
ample virtuosities
Time has both
auspicious or for
and nourishing n
philosophy presen
and rhythm pos
an ebb and flow,
sand where waves
cloud" (Dewey 1
With regard to t
states,
Before happiness, anger, sadness, or joy have arisen it is called centrality

( zhong tf )• Arising all in accordance with a centralizing rhythm this is called
harmony ( he fll). Centrality is the great root of the world. Harmony is the way
of according with things.15
Before qing arises the heart-mind is still and at one with the myriad things. Thus
it is called zhong 4" (centrality). This is another way to speak of the consummate
conduct ( ren {Z) which is the root-body of ceaseless creativity,16 and as such it
is called the "root of the world." When qing has arisen according to a rhythmic
patterning, this is called harmony, which is synonymous with appropriateness.
This is how the world proceeds together with human experience - or, as Mencius
says, "appropriateness is the right way of human beings."17 For this reason it is
called the "way of according with things." Happiness, anger, sadness, joy, love,
hatred, and desire (xi nu ai le ai wu yu are the seven qing.
Human conduct does not go beyond these seven qing. If one can bring a
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15 "»BKÎIfô*». Ute:*; aro**«. ūŽSlo tf
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Growth, Experience and Nature in Dewey's Philosophy and Chinese Philosophy 1 0 1
rhythmic pattern to the transformation of these qing , a musicality will attach to

our experience. If one can do this, it is personal growth, and growth towards a
unity with the myriad things. Following one's nature ( xing ft), thereby
achieving one's self and consummating things, is called promoting the way
(hongdao äZufi). The Zhongyong states: "The highest centrality and harmony
allows tian and earth to be established and the myriad things to be nourished."18
Establishing tiandi and nourishing the myriad things is not setting up humanity
as dominant over tiandi . Rather, it is possible exactly because I am always
already one with tiandi and the ten thousand things within it. Thus, achieving
one's own nature is achieving other people's natures and the natures of the
myriad things. Only as such will everything be nurtured, producing a cosmic
harmony. Conversely, to harm one's nature is to harm the nature of others and the
nature of things generally. Thus, cosmic centrality and harmony is rooted in one's
own heart-mind. Can we not but be careful? The promotion of the Way ( dao xË)
is everyone's responsibility. Can we not but be vigilant? This is the profound and
extensive critically-engaged spirit at the heart of Confucian social and
environmental justice.
5 Conclusion: Happiness (Le 2SŠ)
Today it seems that most of us have not come to be aware of the crisis of our
basic mode of being in the world. Anyone who dares offer a wholesale critique of
technology today is usually viewed as insane. But the fact of the matter is that we
must become aware of the essence of technology (which is itself nothing
technological). Heidegger thinks that the essence of modern metaphysics is the
same as the essence of technology. When modern metaphysics splits an isolated
epistemic subject off from the world, it is, as a mode of being, harming one's
nature. This leads inevitably to setting up the world as an object of research, or a
resource to be exploited, which harms the nature of things. Thus, modern
metaphysics commits profound violence against individual persons and the world
at large. This is the source of all our problems, which derives from the
metaphysical mode of substantial thinking. Dewey challenged this way of
thinking and worked against the trend of Western metaphysics. The key to
Dewey's thought is recognizing that experience is about relationships - namely,
relationships between human beings and nature. Growth happens in experience
or it does not happen at all. With this in mind, we can understand the kind of
"objectivity" that Dewey implies when he speaks of "a better way of life":
18
102 LIU Jing
Infinite relation
The ideal means
with their infini
because they ar
them. Even in t
possible of the
Only in the conte

self-sufficient individual cannot grow. Only when we realize our
interconnectedness with the myriad things can we hope to be on the path of
growth. Being on the path of growth, we can have a deep and abiding happiness
{le ^). As Dewey writes:
Happiness is fundamental in morals only because happiness is not something

to be sought for, but is something now attained, even in the midst of pain and
trouble, whenever recognition of our ties with nature and with fellowmen
releases and informs our action. (Dewey 2008b, 1 82)
According to Chinese philosophy, one should dwell in consummate conduct,

emerge from appropriateness, and be ceaselessly creative - only then can one
reach the realm of the highest joy. The joyous person is at one with dao.
Everything she does is self-fulfilling ( zide Él #). Thus the Zhongyong says:
The junzi abides by her station in acting and doesn't think outside of this. In
rich circumstances she acts appropriately, in poor circumstances she acts
appropriately. When amongst barbarians she acts appropriately. When in
difficult times she acts appropriately. Everything she does is self-fulfilling.19
This is awareness (jtie 5t) that the present moment is "it." In realizing one's
unity with tiandi there is no moment that is not joyous.
As a philosopher, Dewey was fully aware of the problem of individualism in
the Western metaphysical tradition. He realized that society is not a collection of
individuals that share a knowledge of basic rules and laws, but is rather based on
a sense of collective identity out of which common values are formed; he also
expanded this sense of community to nature. However, in a certain sense, all this
still seems quite thin. As we have pointed out, human growth in nature demands
that we pursue a way of life completely unlike our technological one - one that
unfolds in accordance with the rhythm of nature. Furthermore, it understands the
19 mmn, mmm, nvutm-. mmík, ff**»«

*««> "
Growth, Experience and Nature in Dewey's Philosophy and Chinese Philosophy 1 03
cultivation of virtuosities as a prerequisite for setting one's roots in nature and

promoting nature's flourishing. I hope that I have, through this article, shown
how the ancient Chinese way of life as "unity of tian and humans," which still
awaits realization in our technological time, helps us to illuminate this issue. It is
in this different way of life that metaphysical absolutism and relativism can be
deconstructed, and we can talk about human growth, and growth towards the
prosperity of nature.
References
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Brothers). Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju.
Dewey, J. 1958a. Art as Experience. New York : Capricorn Books.
Dewey, J. 1958b. Expereince and Nature. New York: Dover Publications.
Dewey, J. 1960. Theory of the Moral Life. New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Dewey, J. 1988. The Later Works of John Dewey, 1925-1953, Volume 14:1939-1941, Essays,
Reviews, and Miscellany , edited by Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale: Southern Illinois
University Press.
Dewey, J. 2008a. The Later Works of John Dewey, 1925-1953, Volume 7:1932, Ethics , edited
by Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Dewey, J. 2008b. "Philosophy and Democracy," in The Middle Works of John Dewey,
1899-1924, Volume 11: 1918-1919: Journal Articles, Essays, and Miscellany Published in
the 1918-1919 Period , edited by Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale: Southern Illinois
University Press.
Dewey, J. 2008c. The Middle Works of John Dewey, 1899-1924, Volume 14: 1922: Human
Nature and Conduct , edited by Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University
Press.
Li, Daoping. 1994. Zhouyi Jijie Zuanshu jHHÍ RŘ¥lí®ít (Collected Commentaries on the
Book of Change). Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju.
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Zhonghua Shuju.
Zhu, Xi. 2012. Sishu Zhangju Jizhu (Collected Commentaries on the Four
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Jing LIU - Dewey and Chinese Philosophy

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Growth, Experience and Nature in Dewey's Philosophy and Chinese Philosophy

Author(s): Jing LIU

Growth, Experience and Nature in Dewey's Philosophy and

Abstract Growth is an important concept in Dewey's philosophy, and, indeed,

Keywords Dewey, growth, experience, nature, tianren heyi ^An -

1 Introduction: The Problem of Growth

LIU Jing (El)

about growth? What is this growth rooted in or founded upon?

When Dewey tal

[T]he veiy problem of morals is to form an original body of impulsive

Dewey's idea of common values (which he idealizes as "the Great Community")

3 Experience and Nature: Dewey's Naturalistic Metaphysics

and being with

"technology" cannot be understood simply as a tool or instrument for human

1 I am somewhat reluctant to refer to Chinese philosophy as an "aestheticism" only because

derives from the rhythms of this yin-yang harmonization.

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Before happiness, anger, sadness, or joy have arisen it is called centrality

rhythmic pattern to the transformation of these qing , a musicality will attach to

5 Conclusion: Happiness (Le 2SŠ)

Only in the conte

Happiness is fundamental in morals only because happiness is not something

According to Chinese philosophy, one should dwell in consummate conduct,

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cultivation of virtuosities as a prerequisite for setting one's roots in nature and

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