John Dewey's Democracy and Education is a landmark text for pragmatism, and it set the agenda for philosophical reflection on education for years to come. Yet Dewey developed his ideas more richly and subtly in later writings, and these extend well beyond the received view of his work. Democracy and Education from Dewey to Cavell provides an account of this achievement, but it also exposes tensions between Dewey's work and that of his predecessors, Emerson and Thoreau, especially in the light of the contemporary thinking of Stanley Cavell. Cavell's principal sources are to be found in his inheritance of the work of Wittgenstein and J. L. Austin. These latter sources and Cavell's highly original response to them bring to the fore questions of language that are treated differently and taken less seriously by Dewey. The authors show how such questions are crucial to democracy and education today.
