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John Dewey's Ethical Naturalism

Together with Charles Peirce, William James, and Josiah Royce, John Dewey forms part of an outpouring of American thought in the early 20th Century frequently called the "golden age of American philosophy". Peirce, James and Dewey founded and taught variations of philosophical pragmatism while Royce, heavily influenced by pragmatism, was closer to philosophical idealism. I have read less of Dewey than of the three companion thinkers.

Dewey (1859 -- 1952) lived a long, active life during which he wrote prolifically. I have thought it difficult to get a clear handle on his work. Dewey has been highly influential, perhaps notoriously (unfairly) so, in educational philosophy. His work has also highly influenced social science and public policy. Dewey's thought has undergone a strong revival in recent years with the growth of interest in American pragmatism and with the so-called "second wave" of pragmatism associated with Richard Rorty. While admiring Dewey greatly, Rorty took Dewey's thought in his own direction.

As with any important philosopher, Dewey needs to be read and struggled with in his own writing rather than through secondary sources or through the views of others. In 1918, Dewey delivered a series of lectures at Stanford which became the basis for his important book, "Human Nature and Conduct: An Introduction to Social Psychology" (1921) which offers a point of entry into his thinking, particularly his ethics. The book is lengthy, repetitive, and difficult, with pithy, sharp writing and observations punctuating less readable stretches. In his short Preface, Dewey summarizes the aim of the book as

"seriously [setting] forth a belief that an understanding of habit and of different types of habit is the key to social psychology, while the operation of impulse and intelligence gives the key to individualized mental activity. But they are secondary to habit so that mind can be understood in the concrete only as a system of beliefs, desires and purposes which are formed in the interaction of biological aptitudes with a social environment."

The book consists of a lengthy and highly important Introduction which sets out the main claims of the book, a lengthy conclusion, summarizing and expanding the text, and three additional parts forming the basis of the lectures Dewey gave at Stanford. The key to the book is the Introduction, as is the case with many "introductions" to seminal philosophical works. It will bear close study, before and after the reading of the text.

It is difficult to summarize this book fairly and adequately. Dewey aims to turn philosophical and ethical thinking on its head. His primary claim is that ethical thinking needs to be based upon human nature and that prior thinkers, both secularly and religiously inclined, have failed to do this. These thinkers would likely agree with the importance to be placed on human nature, but they would deny that they have ignored or flouted it. They would likely resist Dewey's understanding of human nature as well as his understanding of and emphasis on science.

Dewey's account of human nature is heavily shaped by the natural sciences, particularly by the theory of evolution, by psychology, and by what Dewey saw as the potential of the social sciences to assist in human understanding. His thought is what philosophers critical of him might call "psychologistic" because it tends towards the blurring of boundaries between philosophy and scientific thinking. It is naturalistic in that Dewey sees human behavior as part of the natural, scientific world rather than in inhabiting some form of separate, perhaps supernatural or subjective realm in which the finding of the natural sciences do not apply. Dewey sees ethical or moral thinking come into play over a broad range of human activities -- whenever there is a choice of conduct to be made. He sees ethical issues in the first instance of having a form of immediacy about them -- what is sometimes called presentism. Dewey also has a conception of human personality or human nature in which the individual cannot be analyzed or considered separately from the community or culture of which he or she is a part. Dewey adopts a strongly progressive political stance which seems to me integral to the position he develops in his book.

Dewey writes that "morality is largely concerned with controlling human nature" in matters of choices. As a psychologist, he emphasizes the importance of habit, as taught by a culture to its children from the day of their birth. Habit forms an ingrained way of controlling and channeling impulse. For Dewey, the powerful in a society impose their view of things on the weak (a highly postmodern position). When habit becomes ossified or unsatisfactory, individuals need to use intelligence to understand their situation and to try to do not "the good" but "the better". They need to muddle through a particular situation to improve their lot and to make a good a decision that will help them, rather than the habits and platitudes they have imbibed. Ethical thinking is tied to action rather than to claimed absolutes or to introspection. It is a help to making a choice when a bump appears in the road, and it is fallibalistic (subject to error) and changing with conditions.

Dewey develops his thought in part by distinguishing it from thinking he opposes. Most broadly, he opposes Platonism (even though Dewey loved to read Plato) and essentialism in ethics and in knowledge. He opposes appeals to transcendence, sectarian religious teachings, introspective withdrawal of ethical decision from action, and philosophical idealism of all types. He also has insightful, largely critical observations to make about Kantianism and the Categorical Imperative and about philosophical utilitarianism.

As the book proceeds, Dewey becomes more insistent upon the importance of the social sciences as providing a means for directing human action. He claims these sciences are new and undeveloped but that they will provide means of regulating and improving behavior as they progress. He sees and rejects claims that using the social sciences as a means of legislation and social control will invade individual autonomy and choice and constitute a form of "social engineering". Dewey's thinking of these matters had substantial influence. Many people, including myself, are uncomfortable with this and with the broad claims Dewey makes for the social sciences. Dewey's position that science constitutes the sole reliable source for understanding human behavior might also be questioned.

A reader does not have to agree with a book in all or even in some respects to learn from it. Dewey's book is provocative, thoughtful, and insightful as well as difficult. It is a major work of American philosophy that may be thought about and reread. It is a book that still rewards the effort required to read and struggle with it. I look forward to increasing my understanding of Dewey.

Robin Friedman