Book contents
- John Dewey’s Human Nature and Conduct
- John Dewey’s Human Nature and Conduct
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Citations of Dewey’s Work
- Introduction
- Part IEthical Theory
- Section IDewey and Ethical Theory
- Section IIMain Concepts in Human Nature and Conduct
- Part IIEducation
- Section IEducation, Habit, and Growth
- Section IIEducation, Crisis, and Possible Futures
- 17Cyber Education
- 18The Moral Potentialities of Science Education in the Atomic Age
- 19Habits and the Education of Teachers in Challenging Times
- 20Educating in a World on Fire
- 21Changing Human Nature
- Part IIIContemporary Issues and Applications
- Index of Names
- References
21 - Changing Human Nature
Gesturing toward the Decolonial Human
from Section II - Education, Crisis, and Possible Futures
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 January 2026
Book contents
- John Dewey’s Human Nature and Conduct
- John Dewey’s Human Nature and Conduct
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Citations of Dewey’s Work
- Introduction
- Part IEthical Theory
- Section IDewey and Ethical Theory
- Section IIMain Concepts in Human Nature and Conduct
- Part IIEducation
- Section IEducation, Habit, and Growth
- Section IIEducation, Crisis, and Possible Futures
- 17Cyber Education
- 18The Moral Potentialities of Science Education in the Atomic Age
- 19Habits and the Education of Teachers in Challenging Times
- 20Educating in a World on Fire
- 21Changing Human Nature
- Part IIIContemporary Issues and Applications
- Index of Names
- References
Summary
Abstract: In Human Nature and Conduct (1922), Dewey seems to suggest that we can and should change human nature. In this chapter, McBride queries Dewey’s account of native impulses and how instincts, impulses, and dispositions relate to human nature. Dewey proffers insights into the ways in which impulses, habitual conduct, and social institutions condition and circumscribe the dominant mode of being human (and the ordering principles that enjoin the relations therein). The chapter argues that these particular Deweyan insights could potentially help us to conceive an education-based path to a decolonial conception of anthropos (human being). In this light, the chapter critically reassesses the Deweyan democratic conception of the alterability of human nature. It brings in additional insights from the decolonial thinking of novelist and philosopher Sylvia Wynter to extend Deweyan philosophy and point to the Euro-American coloniality that undergirds the present order of things. In closing, McBride suggests that a viable decolonial way forward will require a change in human nature in ways that transform our habits and demand the establishment of new social and educational institutions.
Information
- Type
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- Information
- John Dewey's Human Nature and ConductA Centennial Handbook, pp. 251 - 262Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2026
References
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McBride, L. (2017). Leftist democratic politics. In Reder, M., Finkelde, D., Filipovic, A., & Wallacher, J. (Eds.), Jahrbuch Praktische Philosophie in globaler Perspektive/Yearbook Practical Philosophy in a Global Perspective (pp. 74–92). Verlag Karl Alber.Google Scholar
McBride, L. (2021a). Culture, acquisitiveness, and decolonial philosophy. In McCall, C. & McReynolds, P. (Eds.), Decolonizing American philosophy (pp. 17–35). State University of New York Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McKittrick, K., & Wynter, S. (2015). Unparalleled catastrophe for our species? Or, to give humanness a different future: Conversations. In McKittrick, K. (Ed.), Sylvia Wynter: On being human as praxis (pp. 9–89). Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Ortega y Gasset, J. (1960). What is philosophy?, translated by Adams, M.. W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
Simpson, L. B. (2017). As we have always done: Indigenous freedom through radical resistance. University of Minnesota Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tuck, E., & Yang, K. W. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1(1), 1–40.Google Scholar
Whyte, K., & Meissner, S. N. (2021). Without land, decolonizing American philosophy is impossible. In McCall, C. & McReynolds, P. (Eds.), Decolonizing American philosophy (pp. 37–61). State University of New York Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wynter, S. (1995). The pope must have been drunk, the king of Castile a madman: Culture as actuality, and the Caribbean rethinking modernity. In Reprecht, A. & Taiana, C. (Eds.), The reordering of culture: Latin America, the Caribbean and Canada in the hood (pp. 17–41). Carleton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wynter, S. (2003). Unsettling the coloniality of being/power/truth/freedom: Towards the human, after man, its overrepresentation – An argument. CR: The New Centennial Review, 3(3), 257–337.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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