User Clip: Rejection of Systems and absolutes

His engagement with Peirce added one more strand to his conviction that the philosophic enterprise requires a truly grasping and gathering imagination. His long unresolved dialogue with Peirce kept his philosophy open and taught Dewey to risk, not to settle for the systems his Hegelianism would have encouraged within him. Dewey's refusal to create and consolidate any system is part of his personality but also a part of his triumph as a thinker. Almost all who knew him commented on his continuous preoccupation with thinking. His thinking had a special cast. He was interested in postulates, not absolutes, and the tools of thinking instead of settled convictions. close