The undiscovered Dewey : religion, morality, and the ethos of democracy / Melvin L. Rogers.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 297-318) and index.

Dewey and the problem of intellectual retrieval -- Avoiding the criticism : Dewey's darwinian enlightenment -- Redirection : religious certainty and the quest for meaning -- The plan of this book -- Part I: From certainty to contingency -- Protestant self-assertion and spiritual sickness -- Dewey's evasion of Protestant self-assertion and spiritual sickness -- Darwin, science, and the moral economy of self and society -- Hodge and the problem of human agency in the wake of evolution -- Reconciliation and the quest for certainty -- Dewey and the meaningfulness of modern life -- Agency and inquiry after Darwin -- Inquiry and phronemacrosis : Dewey's modified aristotelianism -- Theory, practice, and the quest for certainty -- The experience of living : action and the primacy of contingency -- Contingency and the place of intelligent action -- Part II: Religion, the moral life, and democracy -- Faith and democratic piety -- Democratic self-reliance : Emerson, Dewey, and Niebuhr -- Reading a common faith -- Within the space of moral reflection -- The moral life and the place of conflict -- The expanded self : deliberation, imagination, and sympathy -- The tragic self : deliberation and conflict -- Constraining elites and managing power -- The danger of political pessimism : between Lippmann and Wolin -- Employing and legitimizing power -- The permanence of contingency : on the precarious and stable public.

"The Undiscovered Dewey explores the profound influence of evolution and its corresponding ideas of contingency and uncertainty on John Dewey's philosophy of action, particularly its argument that inquiry proceeds from the uncertainty of human activity." "Melvin L. Rogers explicitly connects Dewey's theory of inquiry to his religious, moral, and political philosophy. He argues that, contrary to common belief, Dewey sought a place for religious commitment within a democratic society sensitive to modern pluralism."--BOOK JACKET.