Studies in Logical Theory

by John Dewey

The following illustration will serve our present undertaking: A lawyer or man of business is struck by the great need of honest men in public office, or has had his attention in some impressive way called to the fact of great inequality in the present distribution of wealth, and to the diverse evils resulting therefrom. These facts hold his attention, perhaps against his will, and at last suggest the thought of his making some personal endeavor toward improvement of conditions, political or social, as the case may be. On the other hand, however, the man has before him the promise of a successful or even brilliant career in his chosen occupation, and is already in the enjoyment of a substantial income, which is rapidly increasing. Moreover, he has a family growing up about him, and he is not simply strongly interested in the early training and development of his children, and desirous of having himself some share in conducting it, but he sees that the suitable higher education of his children will in a few years make heavy demands upon his pecuniary means. Here, then, we have a situation the analysis of which will enable us to distinguish and define the provinces of ethical and economic judgment.

It is easy to see that we have here a conflict between ends. On the one side is the thought of public service in some important office or, let us say, the thought of bettering society in a more fundamental way by joining the propaganda of some proposed social reform. This end rests upon certain social impulses in the man's nature and appeals to him as strongly, we may fairly assume, as would any purpose of immediate self-interest or self-indulgence, so that it stands before him and urges him with an insistent pertinacity that at first even puts him on his guard against it as a temptation. Over against this concrete end or subject of moral valuation stand other ends comprehended or symbolized in the ideals of regular and steady industry, of material provision for family, of paternal duty toward children, of scholarly achievement as lawyer or judge, and the like—ideals which are indeed practical and personal, but which, as they now function, are general or universal in character, are lacking in the concreteness and emotional quality which belong to the new purpose which has just come to imagination and has brought these ideals into action on the predicate side. Will this life of social agitation really be quite "respectable," and befitting the character of a sober and industrious man? Will it enable me to support and educate my family? Will it permit me to devote sufficient attention to their present care and training? And will it not so warp my nature, so narrow and concentrate my interests, as in a measure to disqualify me for the right exercise of paternal authority over them in years to come? Moreover, will not a life of agitation, of constant intercourse with minds and natures in many ways inferior to my own and those of my present professional associates, lower my intellectual and moral standards, and so make of me in the end a less useful member of society than I am at present? These and other questions like them present the issue in its earlier aspect. Presently, however, the tentative purpose puts in its defense, appealing to yet other recognized ideals or standards of self-sacrifice, benevolence, or social justice as witnesses in its favor. The conflict thus takes on the subject-predicate form, as has already been explained. On the one hand we have the undefined but strongly insistent concrete purpose; on the other hand we have a number of symbolic concepts or universals standing for accepted and accredited habitual modes of conduct. The problem is that of working the two sides of the situation together into a unified and harmonious plan of conduct which shall be at once concrete and particular, as a plan chosen by way of solution of a given present emergency, and universal, as having due regard for past modes of conduct, and as itself worthy of consideration in coping with future emergencies.

Now, how shall we discriminate the ethical and the economic aspects of the situation which we have described? We shall most satisfactorily do this through a consideration of the various sorts of conditions and means of which account must be taken in working the situation through to a solution, or (to express it more accurately) the various sorts of conditions and means which need to be defined over against the purpose as the purpose gradually develops into detailed form.

We may say, first of all, that there are psychological conditions which must be taken into consideration in the case before us. Our thesis is that in so far as a situation gives rise to the determination of psychological conditions and is advanced along the way toward final solution through determination of these, the situation is an ethical one. In other words, we hold that the ends at issue in the situation are "related" in so far as they depend upon the same set of psychological conditions. In so far as these statements are not true of the situation there must be a resort to economic judgment.

By the general questions suggested above as presenting themselves to the agent we have indicated in what way the course of action taken must have regard to certain psychological considerations. Entering upon the new way of life will inevitably lessen the agent's interest in his present professional pursuits and so make difficult, and in the end even irksome, any attempt at continuing in them either as a partial means of livelihood or as a recreation. The new work will be absorbing—as indeed it must be if it is to be worth while. In the same way the man must recognize that his nature is not one of the rare ones so richly endowed in capacity for sympathy that constant familiarity with general conditions of misery and suffering does not dull their fineness of sensibility to the special concerns and interests of particular individuals. If he takes his suffering fellow-men at large for his children, his own children will probably suffer just in so far the loss of a father's special sympathy and understanding care. And likewise he must be drawn away and isolated from his friends, for it will be hard for him, he must foresee, to hold free and intimate converse with men whose ways of thinking lie apart from his own controlling interest and for whose insensibility to the things that move him so profoundly he must come more and more to feel a certain impatience if not contempt. Not to enlarge upon these possibilities and others of like nature, we must see that reflection upon the situation must presently bring to consciousness these various consequences of the kind of action which is proposed and a recognition that the ground of relation between them and the action proposed lies in certain qualities and limitations of his own nature. These latter are for him the general psychological conditions of action, his "empirical self," the general nature of which he has doubtless already come to be familiar with in many former situations perhaps wholly different in superficial aspect from from the present one.

Now, just in so far as there is this relation of mutual exclusiveness between the end proposed and certain of the standard ends or modes of conduct which are involved, judgment will be by the direct or ethical method of adjustment presently to be described. Let us assume accordingly that a tentative solution of the problem has been reached to the effect that a portion of the lawyer's time shall be given to his profession and to his family life, and that the remainder shall be given to a moderate participation in the social propaganda. Over against this tentative ethical solution, as its warrant in the sense explained above, will stand in the survey of the situation that may now be taken a certain fairly definite disposition or Anlage of the capacities and functions of the empirical self.[137] Now on the basis of the ethical solution thus reached there will be further study of the situation, perhaps as a result of failure in the attempt to carry the solution into practice, but more probably as a further preparation for overt action. Forthwith it develops that the compromise proposed will be impossible. Participation in the social agitation will excite hostility on the part of the classes from which possible clients would come and will cause distrust and a suspicion of inattention to details of business among the lawyer's present clientage. There are, in a word, a whole assemblage of "external" sociological conditions (and we need not stop to speak of physical conditions which co-operate with these and contribute to their effect) which effectually veto the plan proposed. In general these external conditions are such as to deprive the agent of the means of living in the manner which the ethical determination of the end proposes. In the present case, unless some other more feasible compromise can be devised, either the one extreme or the other must be chosen—either continuance in the profession and the corresponding general scheme of life or the social propaganda and reliance upon such scant and precarious income as it may incidentally afford.

We can now define the economic aspect of a situation in terms of our present illustration. The end which the lawyer had in view in a vague and tentative way was, as we saw, defined with reference to his ethical standards—that is to say, a certain measure of participation in the new work was determined as satisfactory at once to his ideals of devotion to the cause of social justice and to his sense of obligation to himself and to his family. In this sense, logically speaking, a subject was defined to which a system of predicates, comprehended perhaps under the general predicate of right or good, applies. Now, however, it appears, from the inspection of the material and social environment, that the execution of this purpose, perfectly in accord though it may be with the spiritual capacities and powers of the agent, is possible only on pain of certain other consequences, certain other sacrifices, which have not hitherto been considered. That a half-hearted interest in his profession would still not prevent his earning a moderate income from it was never questioned in the ethical "first approximation" to a final decision, but now the issue is fairly presented, and, as we must see, in a very difficult and distressing way; for the essence of the situation is that the ends now in conflict, that of earning a living and caring for his family and that of laboring for the social good, are not intrinsically (that is, from the standpoint of the empirical self) incompatible. On the contrary, these two ends are psychologically quite compatible, as the outcome of the ethical judgment shows; only the "external" conditions oppose them to each other. The difficulty of the case lies, then, just in the fact that the conflicting ends, both standing, as they do, for strong personal interests of the self, nevertheless cannot be brought to an adjustment by the direct method of an apportionment between them of the "spiritual resources" or "energies" of the self. Instead, the case is one calling for an apportionment of the external means, and so, proximately, not for immediate determination of the final end, but for economic determination of the means.

We come now to the task of describing, so far as this may be possible, the judgment or valuation-processes which correspond to the types of situation thus distinguished. We are able now to see that these must be constructive processes, in the sense that in and through them courses of conduct adapted to unique situations are shaped by the concourse of established standards with a new end which has arisen and put in its claim for recognition. We can see, moreover, that these valuation-processes effect a construction of a different order from that given in factual judgment. Factual judgment determines external objects as means or conditions of action from standpoints suggested by the analysis and development of ends. Judgments of valuation determine concrete purposes from standpoints given in recognized general purposes of the self—purposes which are general in virtue of their having been taken by abstraction from concrete cases, in which they have received particular formulation as purposes, and set apart as typical modes of conduct in general serviceable to the "energetic" self.[138] Logically factual judgment is at all times subordinate to valuational; when valuational judgment has become consciously deliberate, this logical subordination becomes explicit and factual judgment appears in its true character. Its essential function is that of presenting the conditions which sanction and stimulate our ethically and economically determined purposes.[139] Finally, in the construction of purposes and reconstruction of standards in valuation the ideal of the expansion and development of the "energetic" self controls—not as a "presented" or contentual self prescribing particular modes of conduct, but as a principle prescribing the greatest possible openness to suggestion and an impartial application of the method of valuation to the case in hand. As we have said, in whatever sensuous image we figure the "energetic" self, its essential character lies in its function of stimulating methodical valuation. In place of the two-faced and ambiguous "presented" self, which is characteristic of the stage of conscience, we now have in the stage of valuation the "energetic" self on the one hand and standards on the other.[140]

We have now to consider the actual procedure of valuation, and first the ethical form as above defined. Bearing in mind that we are not concerned with cases of obedience to authority or deference to conscience, let us take a case of genuine moral conflict such as we were considering some time since. Suppose that one has the impulse to indulge in some form of amusement which he has been in the habit of considering frivolous or absolutely wrong. The end, as soon as imaged, or rather as the condition of its being imaged, encounters past habits of conduct symbolized by standards—standards which may be presented under a variety of forms, a maxim learned in early childhood, the ideal of a Stoic sage or Christian saint, the example of some friend, or a precept put in abstract terms, but which, however presented, are essentially symbolic of established habits of thought or action.[141] Solution of such a problem proceeds, in general, along two closely interwoven lines: (1) collation and comparison of cases recognized as conforming to the standard, with a view to determining the standard type of conduct in a less ambiguous way, and (2) definition of the relations between this type of conduct and other recognized types in the catalogue of virtues.

Now, these two movements are in fact inseparable, for, without reference to the entire system of virtues of which the one now asserting itself is a member, the comparison of cases with a view to definition of the virtue would be blind and hopeless of any outcome. The agent in the case before us desires to be temperate in amusement and to make profitable use of leisure time, but after all he may wonder whether these ideals really require the austerities of certain mediæval saints or the Stoic ataraxy. The saint's feats of spiritual athletics may have served a useful purpose, in ruder times, as evidence of human power to lead a virtuous and thoughtful life, but can such self-denial now be required of the moral man? It is apparent, in short, that the superficially conceived ideal must be analyzed. We must consider the "spirit" of our saint or hero, not the letter of his conduct, as we say, and in interpreting it make due allowance for the conditions of the time in which he lived and the grade of general intelligence of those he sought to edify. Whether our standard is a person or a parable or an abstractly formulated precept, the logic of the situation is the same in every case of judgment. The analysis of a standard cannot proceed without the "synthesis" or co-ordination of the type of conduct thereby defined with other distinguishable recognized types of conduct into a comprehensive ideal of life as a whole. In the last resort the implicit relations of all the virtues will be made explicit in the process of defining accurately any one of them.