“Who was John Dewey?” John McDermott opened the preface to his influential collection The Philosophy of John Dewey with that question, and it is still pertinent. McDermott's query expresses an all-too-common puzzlement when faced with the phenomenon of John Dewey: “Despite a staggering output of lectures, articles and books, an incredibly long career of almost a century, an engendering of fascination, controversy, and widespread influence in many areas of human activity, the question is difficult to answer in any depth. No modern philosopher has exerted such influence while being hidden from view.” Interestingly, Dewey himself comes to this conclusion in “From Absolutism to Experimentalism,” the short autobiography he wrote in 1929. After reviewing his early life and his philosophical career through his “Hegelian” period, he observed: