the social importance of the concept in the conception of philosophy and education of john dewey

Abstract

This paper investigates the importance of the social dimension in the conception of the concept developed by Dewey. It explores the concept as a component of the meaning of the experience. As such, philosophy can be understood as the study of the experience of life, and a process of reconstruction of concepts through the critique of habits and cultural prejudices, and the construction of new hypotheses that operate as a source of both emancipation and enrichment. The concept operates like an instrument in the conduct of intelligent experience, and language plays a basic role in this process as the “instrument of the instruments.” Language makes it possible to represent the uses of the concept, and to enlarge experience indefinitely through free communication. Democratic life is the only form life worthy of human beings. In it, conjoint associated experience reaches its full form in the free and necessary communication of concepts between individuals, and in the shared action that provides continuity in social life. Education itself is the experience itself of associated, meaningful, communicated life.