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 Dewey's work helps us put aside that spirit of seriousness which artists traditionally lack and philosophers are traditionally supposed to maintain. For the spirit of seriousness can only exist in an intellectual world in which human life is an attempt to attain an end beyond life, an escape from freedom into the atemporal. The conception of such a world is still built into our education and our common speech, not to mention the attitudes of philosophers toward their work. But Dewey did his best to help get rid of it, and he should not be blamed if he occasionally came down with the diseases he was trying to cure. (Rorty, Richard, "Dewey's Metaphysics," P. 87-88)
The statement is confusing. It seems that Dewey wishes to have his cake and eat it too. He spends over four hundred pages arguing that we should accept his method of philosophical criticism. Dewey criticizes other philosophers of selective emphasis then claims we should accept his theory of the ineluctable traits of natural existence as a starting point for philosophic discovery or his selective emphasis. Dewey's method of philosophy claims the world is constantly changing and that truth can only be obtained according to the values we place on it. Dewey shows how our values, experiences, and culture change what we perceive as true. Truth, like nature constantly changes and hence, cannot be predicted or permanently defined. Dewey, by offering a selective emphasis of the natural traits nature, Dewey is, once again, guilty of his own criticism. There cannot be a selective emphasis in the system of philosophy Dewey espouses. Dewey states of selective emphasis:
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