Rediscovering John Dewey by Rex Li

Author:Rex Li
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789811579417
Publisher: Springer Singapore

Democracy

Interesting enough, Dewey did not explicitly mention democracy here but he was depicting a modern democratic society. Dewey’s idea of democracy started as early as 1888. In The Ethics of Democracy (EW1: 227–249), Dewey suggested that:…… democracy is an ethical idea, the idea of a personality, with truly infinite capacities, incorporate with every man. Democracy and the one, the ultimate, ethical ideal of humanity are to my mind synonyms…… (EW1: 248)

Dewey’s ideas grew from The Ethics of Democracy (1888) to Ethical Principles Underlying Education (1897). When the paper was revised to become Moral Principles in Education (1909), the main ideas remained, to be further elaborated in Democracy and Education (1916).

But democracy is more than a form of government. It is a way of living, in which “the growth of freedom” is the underlying value, the guide to moral development and basis of moral choice. In the Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics (1891), Dewey had already examined the idea of freedom, which he later contrasted with the idea of responsibility and discipline. When ethics are behaviors and ethics is “normal and free living of life as it is,” the same idea was transplanted into education a few years later to become Dewey’s signature, “education is living.”

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