Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel developed the concept of institutionalized education, which reflected public schooling and its legitimacy in the context of rapid transformation of European feudal societies to modern societies. The concept of school reflects the Hegelian theory of Bildung and the concept of modern society. What makes Hegel’s philosophy interesting is his conviction that the processes of Bildung can take place only in the context of social institutions and in the highly organized forms of human interaction regulated by those (...) institutions. Hence the development of an individual, according to Hegel, depends exclusively on institutionalized forms of interaction. In modern society, pedagogical institutions have a specific function: on the one hand, schooling is essentially an institutional form of initiating the process of Bildung in which an individual acquires culture and applies it to life—a life which consequently becomes consciously led by an individual self; on the other, schooling is essentially a way for modern society to ensure its self-preservation by preparing the individual to respond to the demands of civic society so that she or he can take part in the economic production and reproduction of modern society. (shrink)

Hegel spent most of his life as an educator. Between 1794 and 1800, he was a private tutor, first in Bern, Switzerland, and then in Frankfurt-am-Main. He then began a university career at the University of Jena, which in 1806 was interrupted by the Napoleonic conquest of Prussia, and did not resume for ten years. In the intervening years, he was director of a Gymnasium (or secondary school) in Nuremberg. In 1816, Hegel was appointed professor of philosophy at the University (...) of Heidelberg, then abruptly ascended to the chair in philosophy at the University of Berlin in 1818, where he remained until his sudden death from cholera in 1831. (shrink)

From 1882 to 1903, Dewey explicitly espoused a Hegelian philosophy. Until recently, scholars agreed that he broke from Hegel no later than 1903, but never adequately accounted for what he called the "permanent deposit" that Hegel left in his mature thought. I argue that Dewey never made a clean break from Hegel. Instead, he drew on the work of the St. Louis Hegelians to fashion a non-metaphysical reading of Hegel, similar to that championed by Klaus Hartmann and other Hegel scholars (...) since the 1970s. This reading of Hegel is remarkably consistent with Dewey's mature philosophy. Although Dewey abruptly repudiated Hegel during World War I, I contend this reflected the exigencies of war rather than philosophical concerns. (shrink)

In this essay, Jim Garrison explores the emerging scholarship establishing a Hegelian continuity in John Dewey’s thought from his earliest publications to the work published in the last decade of his life. The primary goals of this study are, first, to introduce this new scholarship to philosophers of education and, second, to extend this analysis to new domains, including Dewey’s theory of inquiry, universals, and creative action. Ultimately, Garrison’s analysis also refutes the traditional account that claims that William James converted (...) Dewey from Hegelian idealism, after which Charles Sanders Peirce inspired him to rebuild his instrumentalism along radically different lines. (shrink)