The idea of self-realization in ethics, Dewey begins, may be helpful or harmful according to the way in which the ideas of the self and its realization are worked out in the concrete. The mere idea of a self to be realized is, of course, abstract; it is merely the statement of a problem, which needs to be worked out and given content. By way of introducing his own idea of self-realization, Dewey proposes to criticize a certain conception of the self which he finds in current discussion. "The notion which I wish to criticize," he says, "is that of the self as a presupposed fixed schema or outline, while realization consists in the filling up of this schema. The notion which I would suggest as substitute is that of the self as always a concrete specific activity; and, therefore, (to anticipate) of the identity of self and realization."[104] Such a presupposed fixed self is to be found in Green's "Eternally complete Consciousness."
The idea of self-realization implies capacities or possibilities. To translate capacity into actuality, as the conception of the fixed self seems to do, is to vitiate the whole idea of possibility. There must, then, be some conception of unrealized powers which will meet this difficulty. The way to a valid conception is through the realization that capacities are always specific. "The capacities of a child, for example, are not simply of a child, not of a man, but of this child, not of any other."[105] Whatever else capacity may be, whether infinite or not, it must be an element in an actual situation. As specific things, moreover, capacities reside in activities, which are now going on. The capacity of a child to become a musician consists in this fact: "Even now he has a certain quickness, vividness, and plasticity of vision, a certain deftness of hand, and a certain motor coördination by which his hand is stimulated to work in harmony with his eye."[106]
How do these specific, actual activities come to be called capacities? There is a peculiar psychological reason for this which James has pointed out, in his statement that essence "is that which is so important for my interests that, comparatively, other properties may be omitted."[107] When we pay attention to any activity, there is a natural tendency to select only that portion of it that is of immediate interest, and to exclude the rest as irrelevant. "In the act of vision, for example," Dewey tells us, "the thing that seems nearest us, that which claims continuously our attention, is the eye itself. We thus come to abstract the eye from all special acts of seeing; we make the eye the essential thing in sight, and conceive of the circumstances of vision as indeed circumstances; as more or less accidental concomitants of the permanent eye."[108] There is no eye in general; the eye is always given along with other circumstances which in their totality make up a concrete seeing situation. Nevertheless, we abstract the eye from other circumstances and set it up as the essence of seeing. But we cannot retain the eye in absolute abstraction, because the concrete circumstances of vision force themselves upon the attention. So we lump these together on the other side as a new object, and take as their essence the vibrations of ether. "The eye now becomes the capacity of seeing; the vibrations of ether, conditions required for the exercise of the capacity."[109] We keep the two abstractions, but try to restore the unity of the situation through taking one as capacity and the other as the condition of the exercise of capacity.
But we cannot stop even with this double abstraction. "The eye in general and the vibrations in general do not, even in their unity, constitute the act of vision. A multitude of other factors are included."[110] Preserving the original 'core' as capacity, we tend to treat all the attendant circumstances which occur frequently enough to require taking account of, as conditions which help realize the abstracted reality called capacity.
The discussion here is very much like that in "The Superstition of Necessity" (published in the same year), which was reviewed in the last chapter. Dewey calls attention to this connection in a foot-note, remarking that he has already developed at greater length "the idea that necessity and possibility are simply the two correlative abstractions into which the one reality falls apart during the process of our conscious apprehension of it."[111] The danger, Dewey says, is that the merely relative character of a given capacity may be overlooked, and that it may be ontologized into a fixed entity. This is the error, he thinks, into which Green fell. The ideal self, as that which capacity may realize, is ontologized into an already existent fact. Then we get a separation between the present self, as capacity, and the ideal self which is to be realized. The self already realized is opposed to the self as yet ideal. "This 'realized self' is no reality by itself; it is simply our partial conception of the self erected into an entity. Recognizing its incomplete character, we bring in what we have left out and call it the 'ideal self.' Then by way of dealing with the fact that we have not two selves here at all, but simply a less and a more adequate insight into the same self, we insert the idea of one of these selves realizing the other."[112] It is in this manner that error arises.
But what is the correct attitude toward the self? First of all, the self must be conceived as "a working, practical self, carrying within the rhythm of its own process both 'realized' and 'ideal' self. The current ethics of the self ... are too apt to stop with a metaphysical definition, which seems to solve problems in general, but at the expense of the practical problems which alone really demand or admit solution."[113] The first point of the argument is that the self activity is individual, concrete, and specific, here and now, and the second point is that if the self is to be talked of in an intelligent way it must be taken as something empirically given. "The whole point is expressed when we say that no possible future activities or conditions have anything to do with the present action except as they enable us to take deeper account of the present activity, to get beyond the mere superficies of the act, to see it in its totality."[114] The phrase, 'realize yourself,' is a direction for knowledge; it means, see the wider consequences of your act, realize its wider bearings.
Dewey says: "The fixed ideal is as distinctly the bane of ethical science today as the fixed universe of mediævalism was the bane of the natural science of the Renascence."[115] This is a strong statement, which indicates how wide was the gulf which now separated Dewey from Green, whom he formerly acknowledged as his master.
Dewey's interpretation of Green's ideal self is far from satisfactory, largely because of its lack of insight and appreciation. The reduction of thought to a 'form of activity' renders a purely theoretical inquiry impossible. The 'present activity,' the biological situation, becomes the measure of all things, even of thought. Ideals, in his own words, have nothing to do with present action, "except as they enable us to take deeper account of the present activity." Dewey's self and Green's are incommensurable. The former is the biological organism, with a capacity for indirect activity called thinking; the latter is a not-natural being, whose reality escapes the logic of descriptive science, because of the fulness of its content. Dewey's failure to understand this difference is significant. His acquaintance with Green seems to have been formal from the beginning, never intimate, and the articles just reviewed mark the end of Dewey's idealistic discipleship. His psychological idealism, in fact, was fundamentally antithetical to the Neo-Hegelianism which he had sought to espouse, and the development of his own standpoint brought out the vital differences which had been hidden from his earlier understanding. The idealism which seeks to view reality together and as a whole is forever incompatible with a method which seeks to interpret the whole in terms of one of its parts.
FOOTNOTES:
[75] Vol. I, pp. 186-203.