Abstract

In the series of lectures he delivered during the two years he spent in China, John Dewey provided the most complete version of his theory of social conflict and struggle. The two textual sources from this time we have at our disposal – the doubly translated lectures published in Honolulu2 and Dewey’s original notes recently published under the name of Lectures in Social and Political Philosophy 3 – outline an original understanding of social conflict as taking place between groups with different interests, aims and powers. After formulating a programmatic account of the nature and the tasks of social philosophy, Dewey devoted one of his lectures to the exploration of society’s tendencies to generate...