Philosophy and Education: a Deweyan perspective

This paper focuses on the deep relationship existing in Dewey’s work between philosophy and education and aims at highlighting this relationship through a comparative analysis of some particularly significant writings of Dewey from the EW to the LW. This relationship is grounded both in the existential, educational, cultural and social role given to philosophy as well as in the role given to education as a “social function”. In Dewey’s thought, education is a medium term, and plays therefore a pivotal function in the architecture of his argumentation, which starts with a deep analysis of human existence and ends with the assignment of a new task to philosophy, passing through a sound process of “reconstruction” (of the individual and collective experience as well as of the inner structure of philosophical speculation itself) which can be understood to some extent as an “educational” process. From this perspective, it is possible to talk, in Deweyan terms, of Philosophy and Education, on the basis of their having a common ground of individual and collective growth, which allows us to acknowledge them as devices aimed at promoting social change and social development.