Conflitto, interessi, bisogni. Le Lezioni in Cina di John Dewey.

This article aims to discuss the new edition of John Dewey’s Lectures in China, starting from a reconstruction of the theory of social conflict proposed by Dewey in the two versions of the text. The relationship between interests and needs is at the core of this discussion. Starting from the dialectical relationship between these two dimensions of human social action, it becomes possible to articulate a Deweyan approach to two central issues of contemporary social philosophy: recognition and hegemony. This approach will be analogous in some ways and in other ways exceeding the major theoretical paradigms of the two fields, respectively Honneth’s theory of recognition and Laclau’s theory of hegemony. In order to develop this attempt, it will be necessary to recognize the incomplete nature of the considerations that Dewey introduces in his lectures, and the need to refer to both earlier and later works by Dewey.