Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics · John Dewey
XXVIII.
Relation of this Theory to Hedonism. The Kantian theory, as already noticed, agrees in its psychology with hedonism. It holds that pleasures are the objects of desire. But it reverses the conclusion which hedonism draws from this fact _as to the desirable_. Since pleasures are the object of desire, and pleasures can give no law, no universality to action, the end of action must be found wholly _outside_ the pleasures, and wholly outside the desires. It can be found only in the bare law of the will itself. 1. Hedonism finds the end of conduct, or the desirable, wholly determined by the various particular desires which a man happens to have; Kantianism holds that to discover the end of conduct, we must wholly exclude the desires. 2. Hedonism holds that the rightness of conduct is determined wholly by its consequences; Kantianism holds that the consequences have nothing to do with the rightness of an act, but that it is decided wholly by the motive of the act.
From this contrast, we may anticipate both our criticism of the Kantian theory and our conception of the true end of action. The fundamental error of hedonism and Kantianism is the same--the supposition that desires are for pleasure only. Let it be recognized that desires are for objects conceived as satisfying or developing the self, and that pleasure is incidental to this fulfillment of the capacities of self, and we have the means of escaping the one-sidedness of Kantianism as well as of hedonism. We can see that the end is neither the procuring of particular pleasures through the various desires, nor action from the mere idea of abstract law in general, but that it is the _satisfaction of desires according to law_. The desire in its particular character does not give the law; this, as we saw in our criticism of hedonism, is to take away all law from conduct and to leave us at the mercy of our chance desires as they come and go. On the other hand the law is not something wholly apart from the desires. This, as we shall see, is equally to deprive us of a law capable of governing conduct. The law is the law of the desires themselves--the harmony and adjustment of desires necessary to make them instruments in fulfilling the special destiny or business of the agent. From the same point of view we can see that the criterion is found neither in the consequences of our acts _as pleasures_, nor _apart from consequences_. It is found indeed in the consequences of acts, _but in their complete consequences_:--those upon the agent and society, as helping or hindering them in fulfillment of their respective functions.
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