John Dewey as a reader of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The problem of the formation of human capacities

Abstract

Understanding human capacities, how they develop and what direction they can take is the core problem of educational theories. This paper investigates this problem in two powerful classical theories: natural development, by Rousseau; and social efficiency, by Dewey. Taking Democracy and Education as reference, the paper reconstructs Dewey's reading of Rousseau, showing what Dewey retains and what he denies of Rousseau's ideas. With more accuracy than Rousseau, Dewey ethically places the social development of human capacities at the center of his educational theory: the active-interactive condition of human beings opens the possibility of assuming intelligent sympathy as the moral-political affection of their exercise aiming at good citizenship. Thereunto, the paper concludes that far from having an immediately instrumental economic and political sense, Dewey's pragmatist theory of social efficiencyaims at the normative solidarity dimension that is at the basis of democracy as a social bond that solidifies the human community.