J.Dewey's philosophy of education through the prism of G.F.Hegel's logic and abductive analysis

Abstract

Classical philosophical knowledge projected into the sphere of education is still an interesting subject of discussions both in the philosophical community and in pedagogical scientific circles interested in the methodological understanding of educational theories and practices. Of particular interest in this regard are the dialogues of philosophers of education and logicians who worked in different eras. Such dialogues can be reflected in printed works and oral presentations, and in absentia; the content of them is constructed by a modern researcher, carefully reading the content of the works. The explications and comparisons allow us to identify the following points: 1) the extent to which ideas born in later periods, that are significant for the sphere of education, “absorbed” the conclusions of their predecessors, 2) how they were transformed by the time that passed between the moments of publication, 3) how all of the mentioned above is reflected from the point of view of a modern researcher of education. In this regard, the authors decided to turn to the explication of traces of G. Hegel's logic in the works of the American representative of philosophy of education J. Dewey. The authors of the article revealed: a) the consistency of the approaches of the two philosophers in the interpretation of the categories of analysis and synthesis, as well as the law of sufficient reason; b) the presence of a concept of critical thinking (in Dewey's works) that is based on Hegel's understanding of reflection and is relevant to the modern educational sphere; c) an applied specification both of the categories of similarity and difference (in Dewey's texts), oriented towards the process of scientific search in the field of education, and of the strategies for searching for the different in the identical and the similar in the different (proposed by Hegel); d) the resulting applied conclusions about the complementarity of the two designated strategies in scientific experimental search and warnings to researchers in the field of education who neglect this complementarity. The version of the correspondence comparison and interpenetration of the ideas of thinkers of the past given in the article is proposed as a methodological guideline for a modern scientific dialogue aimed at searching for the sources of various ideas, approaches, concepts and theoretical constructions in the field of education.