This cumulative index to the thirty-seven volumes of The Collected Works of John Dewey, 1882–1953, is an invaluable guide to The Collected Works. The Collected Works Contents incorporates all the tables of contents of Dewey’s individual volumes, providing a chronological, volume-by-volume overview of every item in The Early Works, The Middle Works, and The Later Works. The Title Index lists alphabetically by shortened titles and by key words all items in The Collected Works. Articles republished in the collections listed above are also grouped under the titles of those books. The Subject Index, which includes all information in the original volume indexes, expands that information by adding the authors of introductions to each volume, authors and titles of books Dewey reviewed or introduced, authors of appendix items, and relevant details from the source notes.

Heralded as "the crowning work of a great career," Logic: The Theory of Inquiry was widely reviewed. To Evander Bradley McGilvary, the work assured Dewey "a place among the world's great logicians." William Gruen thought "No treatise on logic ever written has had as direct and vital an impact on social life as Dewey's will have." Paul Weiss called it "the source and inspiration of a new and powerful movement." Irwin Edman said of it, "Most philosophers write postscripts; Dewey has made a program. His Logic is a new charter for liberal intelligence." Ernest Nagel called the Logic an impressive work. Its unique virtue is to bring fresh illumination to its subject by stressing the roles logical principles and concepts have in achieving the objectives of scientific inquiry."

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This volume includes all Dewey's writings for 1938 except for Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (Volume 12 of The Later Works), as well as his 1939 Freedom and Culture, Theory of Valuation, and two items from Intelligence in the Modern World. Freedom and Culture presents, as Steven M. Cahn points out, the essence of his philosophical position: a commitment to a free society, critical intelligence, and the education required for their advance.

New Essays on Human Understanding is a chapter-by-chapter rebuttal by Gottfried Leibniz of John Locke's major work, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. It was finished in 1704 but Locke's death was the cause alleged by Leibniz to withhold its publication. The book appeared some sixty years later. Like many philosophical works of the time, it is written in dialogue form. The two speakers in the book are Theophilus, who represents the views of Leibniz, and Philalethes, who represents those of Locke. The famous rebuttal to the empiricist thesis about the provenance of ideas appears at the beginning of Book II: "Nothing is in the mind without being first in the senses, except for the mind itself". All of Locke's major arguments against innate ideas are criticized at length by Leibniz, who defends an extreme view of innate cognition, according to which all thoughts and actions of the soul are innate. In addition to his discussion of innate ideas, Leibniz offers penetrating critiques of Locke's views on personal identity, free will, mind-body dualism, language, necessary truth, and Locke's attempted proof of the existence of God.

Typescripts, essays, and an authoritative edition of Knowing and the Known, Dewey's collaborative work with Arthur F. Bentley. In an illuminating Introduction T. Z. Lavine defines the collaboration's three goals--the "construction of a new language for behavioral inquiry," "a critique of formal logicians, in defense of Dewey's Logic, " and "a critique of logical positivism." In Dewey's words: "Largely due to Bentley, I've finally got the nerve inside of me to do what I should have done years ago." "What Is It to Be a Linguistic Sign or Name?" and "Values, Valuations, and Social Facts, ' both written in 1945, are published here for the first time.