John Dewey's logical theory

by Delton Thomas Howard

There must be, Dewey again asserts, some vital connection of theory with practice. "Ethical theory must be a general statement of the reality involved in every moral situation. It must be action stated in its more generic terms, terms so generic that every individual action will fall within the outlines it sets forth. If the theory agrees with these requirements, then we have for use in any special case a tool for analyzing that case; a method for attacking and reducing it, for laying it open so that the action called for in order to meet, to satisfy it, may readily appear."[91] Dewey argues that moral theory cannot possibly give directions for every concrete case, but that it by no means follows that theory can stand aside from the specific case and say: "What have I to do with thee? Thou art empirical, and I am the metaphysics of conduct."

Dewey's preliminary remarks are introductory to a consideration of Green's ethical theory. "His theory would, I think," Dewey says, "be commonly regarded as the best of the modern attempts to form a metaphysic of ethic. I wish, using this as type, to point out the inadequacy of such metaphysical theories, on the ground that they fail to meet the demand just made of truly ethical theory, that it lend itself to translation into concrete terms, and thereby to the guidance, the direction of actual conduct."[92] Dewey recognizes that Green is better than his theory, but says that the theory, taken in logical strictness, cannot meet individual needs.

Dewey makes a special demand of Green's theory. He demands, that is, that it supply a body of rules, or guides to action which can be employed by the moral agent as tools of analysis in cases requiring moral judgment. It is evident in advance that Green's theory was built upon a different plan, and can not meet the conditions which Dewey prescribes. The general nature of Green's inquiry is well stated in the following summary by Professor Thilly: "The truth in Green's thought is this: the purpose of all social devotion and reform is, after all, the perfection of man on the spiritual side, the development of men of character and ideals.... The final purpose of all moral endeavor must be the realization of an attitude of the human soul, of some form of noble consciousness in human personalities.... It is well enough to feed and house human bodies, but the paramount question will always be: What kinds of souls are to dwell in these bodies?"[93] To put the matter in more technical terms, Green is concerned with ends and values. His question is not, What is the best means of accomplishing a given purpose, but, What end is worth attaining? Such an inquiry has no immediate relation to action. It may lead to conclusions which become determining factors in action, but the process of inquiry has no direct reference to conduct. Dewey, having reduced thought to a function of activity, must proceed, by logical necessity, to carry the same reduction into the field of theory in general. This he does in thorough style. His demand that moral theory shall concern itself with concrete and 'specific' situations is a result of the same tendency. Since action can only be described as response to a 'situation,' thought, as a function of activity, must likewise be directed upon a 'situation.' Conduct in general and values in general become impossible under his system, because there is no such thing as an activity-in-general of the organism. Ends, in other words, exist only for thought, when thought is interpreted as transcending action, and being, in some sense, self-contained. When thought is interpreted as a kind of 'indirect activity,' its capacity for metaphysical inquiry vanishes along with its independence.

It would have been more in keeping with sound criticism had Dewey himself taken note of the important divergence in aim and intent between his work and Green's. As a consequence of his failure to do so, he fails, necessarily, to do justice to Green's standpoint. The criticism which he directs against Green's moral theory may be briefly summed up as follows.

Green tends to repeat the Kantian separation of the self as reason from the self as want or desire. "The dualism between reason and sense is given up, indeed, but only to be replaced by a dualism between the end which would satisfy the self as a unity or whole, and that which satisfies it in the particular circumstances of actual conduct."[94] As a consequence of the separation of the ideal from the actual, no action can satisfy the whole self, and thus no action can be truly moral. "No thorough-going theory of total depravity ever made righteousness more impossible to the natural man than Green makes it to a human being by the very constitution of his being...."[95] Dewey traces this separation of the self as reason from the self as desire through those passages in which Green describes the moral agent as one who distinguishes himself from his desires (Book II, Prolegomena to Ethics). "The process of moral experience involves, therefore, a process in which the self, in becoming conscious of its want, objectifies that want by setting it over against itself; distinguishing the want from self and self from want.... Now this theory so far might be developed in either of two directions."[96]

In the first place, the self-distinguishing process may be an activity by means of which the self specifies its own activity and satisfaction. "The particular desires and ends would be the modes in which the self relieved itself of its abstractness, its undeveloped character, and assumed concrete existence.... The unity of the self would stand in no opposition to the particularity of the special desire; on the contrary, the unity of the self and the manifold of definite desires would be the synthetic and analytic aspects of one and the same reality, neither having any advantage metaphysical or ethical over the other!"[97] But Green, unfortunately, does not develop his theory in this concrete direction. The self does not specify itself in the particulars, but remains apart from them. "The objectification is not of the self in the special end; but the self remains behind setting the special object over against itself as not adequate to itself.... The unity of the self sets up an ideal of satisfaction for itself as it withdraws from the special want, and this ideal set up through negation of the particular desire and its satisfaction constitutes the moral ideal. It is forever unrealizable, because it forever negates the special activities through which alone it might, after all, realize itself."[98] In completing this argument Dewey refers to certain well-known passages in the Prolegomena to Ethics, in which Green states that the moral ideal is never completely attainable. Green's abstract conception of the self as that which forever sets itself over against its desires is, Dewey argues, not only useless as an ideal for action, but positively opposed to moral striving. "It supervenes, not as a power active in its own satisfaction, but to make us realize the unsatisfactoriness of such seeming satisfactions as we may happen to get, and to keep us striving for something which we can never get!"[99] The most that can be made of Green's moral ideal is to conceive it as the bare form of unity in conduct. Employed as a tool of analysis, as a moral rule, it might tell us, "Whatever the situation, seek for its unity." But it can scarcely go even as far as this in the direction of concreteness, for it says: "No unity can be found in the situation because the situation is particular, and therefore set over against the unity."[100]

Most students of Green would undoubtedly say that this account of his moral theory is entirely one-sided, and fails to reckon with certain elements which should properly be taken into account. In the first place, Green is defining the moral agent as he finds him, and is reporting what seems to him a fact when he says that the moral ideal is too high to be realized in this life. Having a spiritual nature, man fails to find satisfaction in the goods of natural life. Dewey should address himself to the facts in refuting Green's analysis of human nature. In the second place, with respect to Green's separation of the self as unity from the self as a manifold of desires, Dewey's criticism may be flatly rejected. Green raises the question himself: "'Do you mean,' it may be asked, 'to assert the existence of a mysterious abstract entity which you call the self of a man, apart from all his particular feelings, desires, and thoughts—all the experience of his inner life?'"[101] Green takes time to state his position as clearly as possible. He repudiates the idea of an abstract self apart from desire. The following passage is typical of his remarks: "Just as we hold that our desires, feelings, and thoughts would not be what they are—would not be those of a man—if not related to a subject which distinguishes itself from each and all of them; so we hold that this subject would not be what it is, if it were not related to the particular feelings, desires, and thoughts, which it thus distinguishes from and presents to itself."[102] It will be remembered also, that in moral action the agent identifies himself with his desires, or adopts them as his own, and the ability to do this is the chief mark of human intelligence. But man could not identify himself with his desires, or 'specify himself in them,' as Dewey says, did he not at the same time have the capacity to differentiate himself from them.

Dewey's further remarks on Green's ideal need not be followed in detail, since they rest upon a misapprehension of Green's purpose, and add little to what he has already said. Taking the moral ideal as something that can never be realized in this life, Dewey inquires what use can be made of it. He considers three modes in which Green might have given content to the ideal, as a working principle, and finds that it cannot be made, in any of these ways, to serve as a tool of analysis. Green was not prepared to meet these 'pragmatic' requirements. He did not propose his ideal as a principle of conduct, in Dewey's sense; he stated that, as a matter of fact, man is more than natural, and that, as such a being, his ideals can never be completely met by natural objects. How man is to act, in view of his spiritual nature, is a further question: but the realization which the individual has of his own spiritual nature must of necessity be a large factor in the determination of his conduct. The 'Spiritual Nature,' in Green's terminology, meant a 'not-natural' nature, and 'not-natural' in turn meant a nature that is not definable in mechanical or biological terms. Dewey's criticism, therefore, went wide of the mark.

In November, 1893, Dewey followed his criticism of Green's moral motive by a second article in the Philosophical Review on "Self-realization as the Moral Ideal."[103] It continues the criticism which has already been made of Green, but from a different point of departure.