Re-Interpretation in Historiography: John Dewey and the Neo-Humanist Tradition

Did John Deweys new philosophy of education really try to dissolve the whole block of tradition or is his debt namely to educational core-concepts of neo-humanism deeper than he was prepared to acknowledge? After some general remarks on the process of reception as productive re-adaptation and its implication for historiography I will deal with Deweys own contexts that shape the interpretative grid through which he receives the tradition. Two case studies attempt to illustrate both continuity and discontinuity with a specific part of this tradition, namely two critical perspectives within German neo-humanism: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Johann Friedrich Herbart.