John Dewey’s Reinterpretation of the Concept of Existence

Abstract

Existence is a core concept in traditional western philosophy. Traditional philosophy materialism, absolutizes abstracts and mystifies existence, attributes the manifestation of existence (the phenomenon) to an illusion, and strips human daily life which nurtures problems of existence out from existence, giving rise to a series of binary opposition problems. John Dewey, starting from the realistic and era mission of philosophy, based on the reflection of traditional opinions of existence, establishes a new opinion of existence. He believes that existence has empirical, historical and cultural characteristics