Reconstruction in Philosophy

by John Dewey

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Pages: 129

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About this book

John Dewey wrote this book after an invitation to lecture at the Imperial University of Japan in Tokyo in February and March. His prefatory note describes an interpretation of the reconstruction of ideas and ways of thought going on in philosophy, with the aim of showing the general contrasts between older and newer types of philosophic problems rather than pleading for one particular solution.

The pages sampled argue that people are governed more by memory than by thought, and that man, save in occasional times of actual work and struggle, lives in a world of dreams organized about desires. They set the spectator conception of knowledge, in which knowing is a mere viewing of reality, beside the practice of a physicist or chemist, who does not merely contemplate the object. Another passage speaks of a religious spirit in harmony with scientific beliefs and everyday social activities.

Philosophy

About the author

John Dewey

Dewey argued that a school teaching children to sit still and repeat is training them for a society that no longer exists, and that democracy is less a form of government than a way of living together that has to be practised daily. Democracy and Education is the fullest statement of it.