Some Remarks on Dewey's Metaphysics and Theory of Education

Abstract

Introduction In a famous and much misunderstood passage in Democracy and Education, Dewey (1916/1980) proclaims: If we are willing to conceive education as process of forming fundamental dispositions, intellectual and emotional, toward nature and fellow-men, philosophy may even be defined as general theory of education (338; emphasis in original). My article examines some of what he means by this statement. We know Dewey as philosopher of reconstruction. His most ambitious and overlooked reconstruction is that of Western metaphysics, which disrupts entire framework of western thought and is a major source of deep discomfort many have with his philosophy of education. I approach Dewey by examining standard ingredients of western metaphysics that he rejects or reconstructs. They are: Fixed form or essence (eidos), ultimate origin, foundation, or first principle (arche), completion or purpose (telos), state of completion, perfection, or complete actualization (entelecheia), and substance or subject (ousia). I will also consider actuality, activity, or function (energeia) and potential for change (dynamis). Metaphysics seems recondite and remote until we ask existential and educational questions as: What is ultimate essence of a human being? What is absolute foundation of human development? What is telos and perfection of a human life? What are limits of human potential? What actualizes human potential and how may we use it to create a better individual and collective destiny? For Dewey, there is no fixed and final human essence, no ultimate foundation, no perfect telos, and no substantial subject. We have potential for change, but not latent potential. In my article, I urge reader to acknowledge educational inevitability and importance of these metaphysical questions, even if you completely reject Dewey's answers. The elements of Western metaphysics tend to collapse into each other. Frequently substance is essence that exists as an innate latent potential actualized through appropriate activities that allow being to achieve its perfect telos. Many theories of educational development are like this. Perhaps most influential of is that of Jean Piaget. In his genetic epistemology, Piaget departs from a foundation of innate biological structures that undergo distinct linear stages of development, or what he calls mental embryology, to achieve perfect teleological actualization of human essence; that is, a rational animal. Dewey completely rejects embryological metaphors of human development along with hidden metaphysics that makes them so plausible. Dewey's social constructivism diverges widely from Piaget's subjective constructivism. Dewey separates metaphysical existence from logical essence while insisting that language joins them. He urges us to avoid three fallacies. First, we should shun what Dewey (1925/1981) calls the philosophic fallacy; that is, conversion of eventual functions into antecedent existences (p. 35). For Dewey, essences, teloi, foundations, substances, and so on are contingent social constructions of language and logic. Language provides us with meanings (e.g., there is a seven foot snake in this room). Logic, what Dewey calls theory of inquiry, determines if we can, in fact warrant linguistic meanings as knowledge (hopefully, inquiry will show there are no snakes in this room). Dewey believes we get our ontology (essences, including human essence) through constructive processes of our language and logic, not other way around. The second fallacy Dewey wishes us to avoid is intellectualism, by which he means notion that all experiencing is a mode of knowing, and that subject-matter, nature, is, in principle, to be reduced and transformed till it is defined in terms identical with characteristics presented by refined objects of science as such (p. …