IDIHCS   22126
INSTITUTO DE INVESTIGACIONES EN HUMANIDADES Y CIENCIAS SOCIALES
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
John Dewey on Social Philosophy. Exploring his Normative Perspective
Autor/es:
LIVIO MATTAROLLO
Lugar:
Sao Paulo
Reunión:
Congreso; 17th International Meeting on Pragmatism; 2017
Institución organizadora:
Centro de Estudos de Pragmatismo, Pontificia Universidade Católica de Sao Paulo
Resumen:
Between 1919 and 1921 John Dewey visited China and delivered a series of lectures about social and political philosophy in Peking, Beijing and the provinces of Shandong and Shanxi. For many decades, Dewey?s typescripts had been considered lost and the only existing publication related to the lectures was a ?back translation? from a Chinese transcription of the oral presentations into English (Clopton and Ou, 1973). However, working at the Hu Shi Archives in Beijing, Prof. Yung-chen Chiang discovered a series of notes typed by Dewey himself and corresponding to nine out of the sixteen lectures he presented at Peking University in 1919. Due to this finding, since 2015 a new publication of Dewey?s ?Lectures in Social and Political Philosophy? has been available (Dewey, 2015), providing a unique material to reconsider his social philosophy ?a domain that has certainly received insufficient attention.In order to introduce this topic, it is important to consider some starting points that may probably surprise Dewey?s usual readers. Firstly, the entire position presents an anthropological foundation since Dewey identifies a series of basic human needs or interests, namely reproduction and affective security, sustenance and material comfort, spiritual guidance and security, intellectual curiosity and regulation of men?s conduct, which are crucial to develop his further arguments. Secondly, Dewey claims that the satisfaction of these basic needs could be achieved only through associated action and that each of the needs is related to a particular type of association ?family, business or industry, religion, science and the state, respectively. These types are named as ?groups?, qualified by the capacity to satisfy their corresponding basic human need and considered as ?[...] fairly universal modes of union and association.? (Dewey, 2015: 16). Thirdly, Dewey argues that once a particular group succeeds in satisfying its proper basic human need, it tends to impose its organizational logic upon the whole social life, providing the initial assumptions for a theory of social conflict. Finally, Dewey elaborates an ideal picture according to which social phenomena should be evaluated with reference to the degree of the fulfilment of the above-mentioned basic human needs and to the equal and proportionate development of their respective forms of associated life.Within this context, during the communication we aim to explore Dewey?s normative perspective on social philosophy. In order to achieve this goal, we examine Dewey?s criticism both to what he classifies as idealistic and as conservative theories. Besides that, we analyse his proposal about a third type of social thought, defined as ?[...] the union of the scientific spirit with the moral and practical aim of philosophy? and oriented to introduce more conscious regulation into the course of events in behalf of the general or public interests considering the specific and concrete situation (Dewey, 2015: 12-13). Once we reconstruct Dewey?s position, we raise the following questions: what kind of assumptions is Dewey making about these basic human needs and even about human nature? How should we understand a normative standard that, on one hand, is supposed to consider the specific and concrete situations and, on the other, takes into account the integration of universal modes of union and association based on a set of human basic needs? As a hypothesis, we consider (i) that it is plausible to interpret these basic human needs as ends-in-view, that is, as directive plans within a genuine process of valuation, and (ii) that under such interpretation we could explain Dewey?s normative standard in a coherent way with respect to the aims of his social thought ?and, furthermore, with respect to the anti-essentialist and experimentalist character of his entire philosophy.