Felix Kaufmann, On Dewey’s Logic (1940)

Felix Kaufmann’s review of John Dewey’s Logic—The Theory of Inquiry (1938) combines an exposition of the book’s methodological project with a proposal for critical discussion across philosophical traditions. Kaufmann regards Dewey’s work as a major achievement, but distinguishes the force of its analysis of inquiry from the naturalistic and pragmatic commitments accompanying that analysis. His central move is to separate three closely connected doctrines—relationalism, naturalism, and pragmatism—so that agreement with Dewey’s account of logical meaning need not entail acceptance of his entire philosophical position.

Kaufmann begins with Dewey’s wish to bring logical theory into agreement with scientific practice. This ambition establishes common ground even for readers trained in the Aristotelian tradition that Dewey attacks:

The goal set in the sentence quoted, and, in elaborated form, in the first chapter of the book, is to make explicit the rules which actually govern scientific inquiry—a goal which can be accepted as his own by any logician or methodologist regardless of his philosophical position.

“Logic” consequently means general methodology, or inquiry into inquiry. Formal logical rules remain important, but their significance must be understood through their function within scientific investigation rather than through an independently fixed system of forms. Kaufmann presents this reorientation as a project whose value can be assessed without first resolving disagreements over Dewey’s broader philosophy.

His brief account of Dewey’s fundamentals emphasizes the continuity of thinking with practical activity. Inquiry does more than discover means for independently given ends: it is itself an adaptation to a changing environment. Investigators select features of situations that permit anticipation of subsequent changes. Successful procedures become canons of inquiry, while unsuccessful approaches, such as animistic interpretations of nature, are discarded. Inquiry is also socially conditioned and culturally consequential. The historical adequacy of Aristotle’s logical system therefore does not establish its adequacy for modern science or common sense. Inherited logical terms require reinterpretation in relation to contemporary investigative practices.

Kaufmann follows this argument through the book’s four-part structure. Part I, comprising Chapters I–V, establishes logic as methodology, examines inquiry’s biological and cultural setting, and relates common-sense inquiry to science. Part II, Chapters VI–XIV, develops the structure of inquiry and the construction of judgments through sustained criticism of Aristotelian doctrine. Its decisive departure concerns the supposed immediate givenness of qualities and meanings:

The subject-matters of subject and predicate in a judgment are not given by a merely passive perception. They are determined in correspondence to each other in and by the process of inquiry.

Judgment is thus an investigative achievement rather than a combination of independently apprehended elements. Material undergoing inquiry has a different logical role from material at its conclusion, and meanings become determinate through their relations. Part III, Chapters XV–XVIII, extends and tests this account through propositions and terms. Across these two parts, Dewey reinterprets the quality and quantity of judgments, truth and falsity, conjunction and disjunction, syllogism, and the principles of identity, contradiction, and excluded middle.

Part IV, Chapters XIX–XXV, concerns scientific method. Kaufmann recommends it especially to readers seeking a deeper understanding of their own procedures. For social scientists, he singles out the concluding chapters on social inquiry and philosophies of knowledge, while stressing the equal importance of those on induction and deduction and on scientific laws, causation, and sequences. His account makes the book’s relevance methodological as well as philosophical: its reconsideration of logic bears directly on how investigators understand their work.

The review then turns from exposition to constructive criticism. Kaufmann praises Dewey’s understanding of science, synthetic power, and expressive ability, treating the book as a basis for comprehensive philosophical discussion. Yet its three governing standpoints are interconnected without being inseparable:

I think that relationalism, according to which all meanings are interrelated in a continuum of inquiry, is a compelling result of a thorough analysis of science.

Relationalism offers the strongest point of convergence. Kaufmann finds related insights in positivism and empiricism, Marburg neo-Kantianism, and Husserl’s phenomenology. Rather than treating Dewey’s logical analyses as the exclusive property of pragmatism, he proposes asking how far they remain valid independently of naturalism and pragmatism. This separates an account of the interdependence of meanings from particular explanations of inquiry’s foundations.

Naturalism, by contrast, requires a further level of reflection:

I think this would lead to the conclusion that the naturalistic analysis of inquiry should be regarded as only one stratum in the analysis of experience.

Kaufmann does not simply reject naturalistic explanation. He argues that it carries presuppositions themselves open to analysis, generating a reflective task that cannot be defined entirely within naturalistic doctrines. His reservation about pragmatism is similarly discriminating. Despite the intimate connection between theory and practice, he believes theoretical goals can be defined so as to distinguish research from practical behavior in the narrower sense. He also rejects the proposed analogy between procedures serving theoretical goals and practical means serving practical ends.

The review concludes by making these distinctions serve philosophical exchange rather than doctrinal division. Dewey’s achievement may disclose agreements obscured by textbook presentations of rival schools. Kaufmann’s measured endorsement therefore has a precise critical purpose: to preserve the methodological strength of Dewey’s relational account while opening its naturalistic assumptions and theory–practice relation to further examination.