Economic issues in John Dewey's social philosophy: An evolutionary and ethical account

Abstract

This article focuses on the pragmatist philosopher John Dewey's conception of economic life in his social philosophy and underlines how his Lectures on Political Ethics (1896, 1898, 1901) and his Syllabus: Social Institutions and the Study of Morals (1924) contributed to this issue. We argue that Dewey's analysis of the nature and role of economic processes in these sources can shed light on his latter, less theoretical and better-known writings on the criticism of social life in the 1920's and 1930's. We show that his conception of economic issues is an integral part of his more general project of reconstructing social philosophy and that it is at the heart of his ethical theory on the development of democracy.