Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics

by John Dewey

It may, however, be said that, while our instinctive actions have another end than pleasure, this is not true of conscious desires—that, indeed, just the difference between instinct and desire is that the former goes blindly to its end, while the latter superimposes the thought of the pleasure to be reached upon the mere instinct. So we have to analyze the nature of desire.

A child, led by impulse, has put a piece of sugar into his mouth, just as, under the same circumstances, he would put a piece of stone into his mouth. But his action results in a state of pleasure wholly unforseen by him. Now the next time the child sees the sugar he will not merely have the impulse to put it in his mouth. There will also be the remembrance of the pleasure enjoyed from sugar previously. There is consciousness of sugar as satisfying impulse and hence desire for it.

1. This is a description of an instance of desire. Does it bear us out in the doctrine that pleasure is the object of desire? It is possible that, in an irrational animal, the experience of eating food reinforces the original instinct for it with associated images of pleasure. But even this is very different from a desire for pleasure. It is simply the primordial instinct intensified and rendered more acute by new sensational factors joined to it. In the strict sense, there is still no desire, but only stronger impulse. Wherever there is desire there is not only a feeling of pleasure associated with other feelings (e. g., those of hunger, thirst), but there is the consciousness of an object in which satisfaction is found. The error of the hedonistic psychology is in omitting one's consciousness of an object which satisfies. The hedonists are quite right in holding that the end of desire is not any object external to consciousness, but a condition of consciousness itself. The error begins in eliminating all objective (that is, active) elements from consciousness, and declaring it to be a mere state of feeling or sensation. The practical consciousness, or will, cannot be reduced to mere feeling, any more than the theoretical consciousness, or knowledge, can be so reduced.

Even Mill, in its statement of the hedonistic psychology, does not succeed in making the object of desire mere pleasure as a state of feeling. It is the "pleasant thing" and not pleasure alone which he finds equivalent to the desire. It is true enough that sugar as an external fact does not awaken desire, but it is equally true that a child does not want a passive pleasure. What he wants is his own activity in which he makes the sugar his own. And it should be remembered that the case of sugar is at once a trivial and an exceptional one. Not even children want simply sweet-meats; and the larger the character which finds expression in wants, the more does the direct object of want, the bread, the meat, become a mere element in a larger system of activity. What a man wants is to live, and he wants sweet-meats, amusements, etc., just as he wants substantials—on account of their value in life.

Professor James compares the idea that pleasure is the end of desire to saying that "because no steamer can go to sea without incidentally consuming coal, ... therefore no steamer can go to sea for any other motive than that of coal-consumption." Psychology, Vol. II, p. 558. See the entire passage, pp. 549-559.

2. But granting that an 'object' and a 'pleasure' are both necessary to desire, it may be argued that the 'object' is ultimately a means to 'pleasure.' This expressly raises a question already incidentally touched upon: What is the controlling element in desire? Why is the object thought of as pleasant? Simply because it is thought of as satisfying want. The hedonists, says Green (Prolegomena to Ethics, p. 168), make the "mistake of supposing that a desire can be excited by the anticipation of its own satisfaction." This is to say, of course, that it exists before it exists, and thus brings itself into being.

Green, Op. cit., p. 167, states the matter thus: "Ordinary motives are interests in the attainment of objects, without which it seems to the man that he cannot satisfy himself, and in the attainment of which, because he has desired them, he will find a certain pleasure, but only because he has previously desired them, not because pleasures are the objects desired." Bradley says on this same point (Ethical Studies, p. 230): "The difference is between my finding my pleasure in an end, and my finding means for the end of my pleasure, and the difference is enormous." Consult the entire passage, pp. 226-235. See also Caird, Critical Philosophy of Kant, Vol. II, p. 229.

It is the object, then, which controls, and the pleasure is on account of the attaining of the desired object. But even this statement makes more division in desire than actually exists; for

3. The real object of desire is activity itself. The will takes its rise, as we have seen, in impulse; in the reaching for something to satisfy some felt lack. Now, in reality, desire adds nothing to impulse excepting consciousness of the impulse. Volitional action does not differ from impulsive or instinctive, except in bringing to consciousness the nature of the want and of the activity necessary to satisfy it. But this makes just the difference between 'natural' or animal activity, and 'moral' or human activity. To be conscious of the impulse is to elevate it from a blind impelling force to an intended or proposed end; and thus, by bringing it before consciousness, both to extend its range and to idealize it, spiritualize it. To be conscious of an impulse for food means to give up the unreasoned and momentary seizing of it; to consider the relation of things to this want, what will satisfy it best, most easily, etc. The object of desire is not something outside the action; it is an element in the enlarged action. And as we become more and more conscious of impulse for food, we analyze our action into more and more 'objects' of desire, but these objects never become anything apart from the action itself. They are simply its analyzed and defined content. Man wants activity still, but he knows better what activity means and includes.

Thus, when we learn what the activity means, it changes its character. To the animal the activity wanted is simply that of eating the food, of realizing the momentary impulse. To man the activity becomes enlarged to include the satisfaction of a whole life, and not of one life singly, but of the family, etc., connected with the single life. The material well-being of the family becomes one of the objects of desire into which the original impulse has grown. But we misinterpret, when we conceive of this well-being as an external object lying outside the action. It means simply one aspect of the fuller action. By like growing consciousness of the meaning of the impulse, production and exchange of commodities are organized. The impulse for food is extended to include a whole range of commercial activities.