Social Cooperation and Individual Growth: An Unresolved Tension in Dewey’s Theory of Moral Education

• In Event: Critical Pragmatism, Tensions, Limits, and Activism: Contemporary Expressions of Deweyan Scholarship

Abstract

This paper explains Dewey’s early theory of moral education and considers the implications for it of his later ideas about growth. It aims to show that the introduction of growth generates an unresolved tension between cooperative participation in social practices and individual growth, as prioritizing growth sets each individual on a distinct, and sometimes lonely, path toward new values..

Author

• Leonard J. Waks, Temple University