John Dewey

Unlike Egan, Vico, Cassier, Claude Lйvi-Strauss, and Nietzsche, Dewey's philosophical anthropology does not account for the origin of thought of the modern mind in the aesthetic, more precisely the myth, but instead in the original occupations and industries of ancient people, and eventually in the history of science.[1] A criticism of this approach is that it does not account for the origin of cultural institutions,which can be accounted for by the aesthetic. Language and its development, in Dewey's philosophical anthropology, have not a central role but are instead a consequence of the cognitive capacity.[1]

As can be seen in his Democracy and Education Dewey sought to at once synthesize, criticize, and expand upon the democratic or proto-democratic educational philosophies of Rousseau and Plato.[citation needed] He saw Rousseau's philosophy as overemphasizing the individual and Plato's philosophy as overemphasizing the society in which the individual lived. For Dewey, this distinction was by and large a false one; like Vygotsky,