Abstract
John Dewey belonged to the Aristotelian and Kantian metaphysical tradition, which means that he relied on their categories to signify and therefore to know individual entities in the empirical world, including human beings. Specifically, he relied on 'relation.' With the help of the method of intelligence (or the scientific method generally), Dewey found that 'relation' reigns in the physical environment. Since human beings are inextricably bound to it, Dewey inferred that 'relation' reigns, or rather should be made to reign, in the social environment. The chief purpose of education is to ensure this reign, and this purpose is a moral purpose. Concerned with doing the 'right' thing, teachers (and adults generally) would strive to realize this purpose by encouraging students to reconcile their powers and dispositions with conjoint activity aimed at the expansion of the general welfare. In doing so, teachers would be teaching students, in Dewey's view, the essence of morality. It is Dewey's inferring 'relation' from the physical environment, and using it as the ground to draw a conclusion about the essence of morality, with which I take issue in this dissertation. From the perspective of Martin Heidegger's fundamental ontology--and of his 'existentials' in particular, which he formulated as a set of categories with which to distinguish human from non-human entities--I challenge what I refer to as Dewey's 'excessive optimism' with respect to what we may expect from teachers (and adults in general) who insist that children choose to reconcile their powers and dispositions with other children (and adults) in an effort to expand the general welfare, and to adopt the notion that what they are choosing is the essence of morality. From this perspective, I offer an alternative philosophy of moral education that is more consistent with the kinds of teachers (and adults) children are likely to encounter.
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