The objective of this paper is to analyze John Dewey’s fundamental philosophical study “Experience and Nature” for the purpose of assessing the author’s claim that modern views of the relationship between individual personhood and society prioritize the significance of the individuality in shaping society in a way that ancient views did not. The first part of the paper will deal with Dewey’s characterization of ancient notions of society, particularly his assertion that in the ancient world the social order was authoritative over the lived of individuals. The following part will focus on the author’s claim that the modern period reoriented the relative priority of individual persons and involved an alteration in valuing the distinctiveness of individual members of society. The third portion of the paper will center around the role that Dewey gives to experience in the picture of a preconceived relationship between individual and society. In the last portion I will attempt to determine the accuracy of Dewey’s understanding of the shift from ancient to modern conceptions of the relationship between individuals and their societies.
