Abstract

: This article connects two of Dewey's generic traits of existence—stability and precariousness—to four elements specified in his preface to Democracy and Education (democracy, evolution, industrialization and the experimental method) and one element specified in his preface to How We Think (childhood). It argues that Dewey's metaphysics of stability and precariousness is implicit in his philosophy of education and provides a unifying aspect to his philosophy of education that is relevant to the modern world. The article then briefly looks at whether Dewey developed a metaphysics at all and concludes that Dewey did indeed develop a metaphysics—a new metaphysics of human experience—which needs to be further analysed in relation to various aspects of his philosophy of education.