John Dewey
(Burlington, 1859-New York, 1952) American philosopher, pedagogue and psychologist.John Dewey was born in a "Yankee" citadel in New England, into a family of humble settlers, the same year that Darwin's On the Origin of Species appeared."Yankeeism" and Darwinism were the two starting points of a philosophical activity that, begun in an archaic age today, was to end in 1952, and of a philosophy whose worldwide repercussions are still being felt today.
John Dewey
The nonrational foundations of John Dewey's thought rest on the "Yankee" tradition of practice, stubborn empiricism, and "common sense and nothing absurd" from at least the time of Benjamin Franklin, who, like Dewey, considered experimental mentality and method legitimate goals.Apparently, the more strictly philosophical and moral traditions of New England-usually called Puritanism-did not leave their mark on our author.
In 1916, when he published his most elaborate treatise, Democracy and Education , the "Progressive Education Movement" could be considered definitely on the move.In 1903, Dewey had also written Studies in Logical Theory , a work that in 1938 would give rise to Logic . The theory of research , but also, singularly, in 1920 to Reconstruction in philosophy , full accusation of traditional metaphysics and of the very practice of contemplation or speculation as an end in itself as a useless luxury of the idle wealthy classes (a commoner democratic spoke).
Here are the elements of judgment used by Dewey in verifying the truth and value of an idea: "Does it work? Does it produce beneficial results?" As elsewhere, the problem of "profitableness"-that is, the fundamental question of classical ethics-did not have, in our author's work, a satisfactory answer.The "profit" is equated, in general, to what determines the "growth", "progress", "improvement", "development", "evolution"...On the basis of these vague rationalist notions there was a certain irrational horror of the immobile and fixed; We are thus faced with the typically North American conviction that immobility is, by itself, evil, while movement and change are beneficial by themselves.
Dewey's philosophy found favor with an avid public not only in America, but also in any other part of the world where awareness of the need for change, impatience against the traditional order, had appeared From the mind as well as from society: Russia, Mexico, China, Turkey, Japan...Several trips and series of conferences led him to establish direct contact with those countries; enormous were the reciprocal effects of such visits.Dewey's long existence allowed him to deplore certain consequences, profoundly alien to his humanitarian liberalism, of some revolutionary movements encouraged by his own theories.
As prolific as a writer, as coarse, faded and unattractive in this regard, he composed, among other important works, several instrumentalist interpretations: Human nature and behavior , Experience and nature , The search for certainty , Art as experience , Experience and education ( Experience and Education , 1938) and Libertad y cultura ( Freedom and Culture , 1939).His theory of evolutionary "adaptation" tends more and more, among the more distant and less numerous disciples, to become a discipline of conformism to any mediocre "norm" and a kind of subtle and often unconscious intellectual tyranny.The inevitable rebellion against "deweysm" in education has taken the form of an opposing authoritarianism that claims to be inspired by Saint Thomas Aquinas.
Comments
Post a Comment