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James Good

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Jim Good
Chair, Department of Social Sciences

Lone Star College-North Harris

Department of Social Sciences

2700 W.W. Thorne Drive

Houston, TX 77073-3499

Phone: 281-618-5573

Fax: 281-618-5632

E-mail: james.a.good@nhmccd.edu
Web: http://faculty.nhmccd.edu/jagood/

Videointerview

´Good #01

Universalism/Contextualism
»Habits of speech, including syntax and vocabulary, and modes of interpretation have been formed in the face of inclusive and defining situations of context ... We are not explicitly aware of the role of context just because our every utterance is so saturated with it that it forms the significance of what we say and hear ... Now thought lives, moves, and has its being in and through symbols, and, therefore, depends for meaning upon context as do the symbols ... I should venture to assert that the most pervasive fallacy of philosophic thinking goes back to neglect of context.« (LW 6: 4-5)
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Good #02

Re/de/constructions
Construction (experience) »I have used the word construction" to denote "the creative mind, the mind that is genuinely productive in its operations. We are given to associating creative mind with persons regarded as rare and unique, like geniuses. But every individual is in his own way unique. Each one experiences life from a different angle than anybody else, and consequently has something distinctive to give others if he can turn his experiences into ideas and pass them on to others.« (LW 5: 127)
Reconstruction (habit)
»There is no one among us who is not called upon to face honestly and courageously the equipment of beliefs, religious, political, artistic, economic, that has come to him in all sorts of indirect and uncriticized ways, and to inquire how much of it is validated and verified in present need, opportunity, and application.« (LW 5: 142)
Deconstruction (criticism)
»Creative activity is our great need; but criticism, self-criticism, is the road to its release.« (LW 5: 143) »We cannot permanently divest ourselves of the intellectual habits we take on and wear when we assimilate the culture of our own time and place. But intelligent furthering of culture demands that we take some of them off, that we inspect them critically to see what they are made of and what wearing them does to us« (LW 1: 40)
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Good #03

Truth and Warranted Assertions (Experimentalism)
»... the term ‘warranted assertion' s preferred to the terms belief and knowledge. It is free from the ambiguity of these latter terms, and it involves reference to inquiry as that which warrants assertion« (LW 12: 17)
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Good #04

Experience and the Real
»... the question ... is what the real is. If natural existence is qualitatively individualized or genuinely plural, as well as repetitious, and if things have both temporal quality and recurrence or uniformity, then the more realistic knowledge is, the more fully it will reflect and exemplify these traits« (LW 1: 127)
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Good #05

Experience and Language
»If existence in its immediacies could speak it would proclaim: ‘I may have relatives but I am not related.' In aesthetic objects, that is in all immediately enjoyed and suffered things, in things directly possessed, they thus speak for themselves.« (LW 1: 75f)
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Good #06

Communication and Participation
»Of all affairs, communication is the most wonderful. That things should be able to pass from the plane of external pushing and pulling to that of revealing themselves to man, and thereby to themselves; and that the fruit of communication should be participation, sharing, is a wonder by the side of which transubstantiation pales.« (LW 1: 132) »Communication is the process of creating participation, of making common what had been isolated and singular; and part of the miracle it achieves is that, in being communicated, the conveyance of meaning gives body and definiteness to the experience of the one who utters as well as to that of those who listen« (LW 10: 248f).
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Good #07

Democracy (Liberalism and Socialism)
»The end of democracy is a radical end. For it is an end that has not been adequately realized in any country at any time. It is radical because it requires great change in existing social institutions, economic, legal and cultural.« (LW 11: 298f)
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Good #08

Democracy (Experience and Education)
»Democracy is the faith that the process of experience is more important than any special result attained, so that special results achieved are of ultimate value only as they are used to enrich and order the ongoing process. Since the process of experience is capable of being educative, faith in democracy is all one with faith in experience and education.« (LW 14: 229)
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Good #09

Democracy (Culture and the Power of Imagination)
“Imagination is the chief instrument of the good” (LW 10: 350), because only “imaginative vision elicits the possibilities that are interwoven within the texture of the actual.” (LW 10: 348)
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Good #10

Democracy (Intelligence and Local Communities)
»In a word, that expansion and reinforcement of personal understanding and judgment by the cumulative and transmitted intellectual wealth of the community which may render nugatory the indictment of democracy drawn on the basis of the ignorance, bias and levity of the masses, can be fulfilled only in the relations of personal intercourse in the local community ... Vision is a spectator; hearing is a participator ... We lie, as Emerson said, in the lap of an immense intelligence. But that intelligence is dormant and its communications are broken, inarticulate and faint until it possesses the local community as its medium.« (LW 2: 371f)
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Good #11

Education as Growth
»Since growth is the characteristic of life, education is all one with growing; it has no end beyond itself. The criterion of the value of school education is the extent in which it creates a desire for continued growth and supplies means for making the desire effective in fact.« (MW 9: 58)
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Good #12

Special question to the scholar
What do you think about the connection between Dewey and Hegel?
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POSITIONS HELD:

2006-present

Chair, Department of Social Sciences, North Harris College

2005-present

Professor of History, North Harris College

2005-present

Visiting Scholar, Rice University

2002-05

Associate Professor of History, North Harris College

2000-02

Lecturer, Rice University

1991-97

Adjunct Instructor, Tomball College

1992-96

Adjunct Instructor, Houston Community College

1988-89

Lecturer, Baylor University

EDUCATION:

Ph.D. History, Rice University (2001)

Dissertation:

"A Search for Unity in Diversity: The ‘Permanent Hegelian Deposit' in the Philosophy of John Dewey"

M.A. History, University of Houston (1993)

Thesis:

"John Dewey, Jonathan Edwards, and New England Theology"

M.A. Philosophy, Baylor University (1991)

Critical Papers:

"Jonathan Edwards and American Pragmatism"

"An Analysis of Religious Language"

"A Defense of Subjective Foundationalism"

B.A. Philosophy, Oklahoma Baptist University (1987)

PUBLICATIONS:

Books:

Co-author with John Shook, John Dewey's Philosophy of Spirit, with Dewey's 1897 Lecture on Hegel. Fordham University Press (forthcoming).

A Search for Unity in Diversity: The "Permanent Hegelian Deposit" in the Philosophy of John Dewey. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books (2006).

Articles:

"Dewey, Hegel and Causation." Co-authored with Jim Garrison. Submitted to Idealistic Studies.

"Dewey's ‘Permanent Hegelian Deposit': A Reply to Hickman and Alexander." Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society (forthcoming).

"Reflections on Josiah Royce's Conservatism." The Pluralist 2, no. 2 (Summer 2007): 56-62.

"Beyond ‘Sushiology': John Dewey on Diversity." The Pluralist 1, no. 2 (Summer 2006): 123-132.

"Dewey's ‘Permanent Hegelian Deposit' and the Exigencies of War." The Journal of the History Philosophy 44, no. 2 (April 2006): 293-314.

"The Value of Thomas Davidson." Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 40, no. 2 (Spring 2004): 289-318.

"The ‘Eclipse' of Pragmatism: A Reply to John Capps." Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 39, no.1 (Winter 2003): 77-86.

"A ‘World-Historical Idea': The St. Louis Hegelians and the Civil War." Journal of American Studies 34, no. 1 (December 2000): 447-464.

Book Chapters:

"Traces of Hegelian Bildung in Dewey's Philosophy" (ca-authored with Jim Garrison) in Pragmatism and Continental Philosophy, ed. Paul Fairfield. Under consideration at Southern Illinois University Press.

"The Hegelian Roots of Dewey's Pragmatism" in Pragmatism and Pedagogy, ed. Daniel Tröhler and Jürgen Oelkers. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers (2005).

"Die hegelianischen Wurzeln von Deweys Pragmatismus" in Pragmatismus und Pädagogik, eds. Daniel Tröhler and Jürgen Oelkers. Zurich: Verlag Pestalozzianum (2005).

Editing:

Supervising Editor. Dictionary of Early American Philosophy. Bristol, U.K.: Thoemmes Press, forthcoming.

Supervising Editor. Dictionary of Modern American Philosophy. Bristol, U.K.: Thoemmes Press, 2005.

Edited Volumes with Introductions:

The Ohio Hegelians. 3 volumes. Bristol, U.K.: Thoemmes Press, 2004.

Moncure Daniel Conway: Autobiography and Miscellaneous Writings. 3 volumes. Bristol, U.K.: Thoemmes Press, 2003.

The Journal of Speculative Philosophy (1867-93). 22 volumes. Bristol, U.K.: Thoemmes Press, 2002.

The Early American Reception of German Idealism. 5 volumes. Bristol, U.K.: Thoemmes Press, 2002.

Everett, Charles Carroll. The Science of Thought: A System of Logic (1869).

Hedge, Frederic Henry. Prose Writers of Germany (1847).

Hickock, Laurens Perseus. Rational Psychology: Or the Subjective Idea and the Objective Law of All Intelligence (1849).

Marsh, James. The Remains of the Rev. James Marsh, D.D.: Late President and Professor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy, in the University of Vermont; with a Memoir of His Life (1843).

Rauch, Frederich Augustus. Psychology; or a view of the Human Soul; including Anthropology (1840).

Co-editor. The St. Louis Hegelians. 3 volumes. Bristol, U.K.: Thoemmes Press, 2001.

Translations:

Hoffman, Franz. "Die Hegelsche Philosophie in St. Louis in den vereinigten Staaten Nordamerika's." Philosophische Monatshefte 7 (1871): 58-63. In The St. Louis Hegelians, Thoemmes Press.

Dictionary Entries:

"Bakewell, Charles Montague"; "Conway, Moncure Daniel"; "Garman, Charles Edward"; "Hedge, Frederic Henry"; "Henry, Caleb Sprague"; "Willich, August" in Dictionary of Modern American Philosophy. Bristol, U.K.: Thoemmes Press, 2005.

HONORS AND AWARDS:
2007	The North Houston Greenspoint Chamber of Commerce Teachers Excellence Award

2007	Faculty Excellence Award, Lone Star College System

2007	Published Writing Award, Lone Star College System

2006	Published Writing Award, Lone Star College System

2005	Published Writing Award, Lone Star College System

2001	John W. Gardner Award in Humanities and Social Sciences, Rice University (dissertation award)

2001	Captain Charles Septimus Longcope Award in History, Rice University, History Department (dissertation award)

2000-01	Rice University Sarofim/NEH Fellow

1995-2000	Rice University Graduate Fellowship

1998	The James Scott Peterson Distinguished Service Award, Rice University, History Department

1987-91	Baylor University Graduate Assistantship

1987	Phi Sigma Tau (Philosophy Honor Society)

1987	Jent Philosophy Award, Oklahoma Baptist University

1985-87	Ida Pickens Scholarship, Oklahoma Baptist University

1985-86	Dighton Scholarship, Oklahoma Baptist University