La Concepción Antropológica de John Dewey: El Hombre como un Ser Pluridimensional

Abstract

The subject of this research was the anthropology of John Dewey; developed from the question: can a conception of man be identified in Dewey's work? And, if you get an affirmative answer, answer some subsidiary questions, fundamentally, what is man for the American thinker? What are the characteristic dimensions of this conception? In addressing such questions, the main problem encountered was the absence of a systematic explanation of his anthropological conception. Hence, the purpose of this research was to make explicit and systematize Dewey's concept of man. Seeking to achieve the general purpose of this research, the first step was to describe some of Dewey's experiences that, in our view, contributed to forging his anthropological thinking. In fact, after going through various educational, labour, cultural and union experiences, it was possible to appreciate that Dewey was a son of his time as a person, a social being and a thinker, which led us to say that his anthropological conception takes as nutritious soil life itself, that is to say, takes as its starting point the problems and resolutions that it lived in its historical moment. This first step made the second opportune, that is, deepening its theoretical references, so the second chapter of the work concentrated on the analysis of the discussion that Dewey established with his main intellectual teachers, in order to identify inheritances and critical distances that are going to be key in the development of his anthropological perspective. The results of this discussion were relevant insofar as they allowed a further step to be made in explaining and systematizing deweyana anthropology. After analysing these theoretical references, it was necessary to take the definitive step towards the explanation and systematization of Deweyana anthropology: to see how the biographical experiences described and the theoretical references analysed contribute to the conception of man as a being that dynamically integrates the identified dimensions: impulse , habit, sociality, creativity, temporality, freedom, reflection and excellence. This step came to constitute the third chapter of the document that accounts for this research, the objective of which was to explain and systematize Dewey's anthropological conception in order to answer the central question: What is man according to Dewey? The development of the chapter provided sufficient elements to answer it from our fundamental thesis: Dewey conceives of man as a multidimensional being, who articulates its different dimensions taking experience as epicentre. The different dimensions that make up progressive man lead to education, responsible for man cultivating and reaping its best fruits, and it is this that makes school a "social laboratory" in which authentic experience is formed, which will give its definitive results in progressive society. And since they lead to education, the purpose of the fourth and final chapter was to show the progressive school as an institution that, based on its anthropological conception, describes, reflects and even articulates it.