JOHN DEWEY, RECONSTRUCTION OF PHILOSOPHY AND IMMEDIATE EMPIRICISM

In this paper, I analyze John Dewey's concept of philosophy, in relation with its specificity within the pragmatic philosophical tradition. For this, I will approach the problem of the reconstruction of philosophy as Dewey presents in his work Reconstruction in Philosophy (1920), a work in which he completely and explicitly exposes his concept of and what he believes to be the role of philosophy. In particular, I will characterize Dewey's concept of philosophy from his critique to what he think to be the problems of modern or traditional philosophies. From this point of view, I will examine Dewey's use of his postulate of immediate empiricism as a philosophical methodology to avoid the alleged misconceptions of past philosophies and to develop a philosophy of concrete experience.