Studies in Logical Theory · John Dewey
IV
The same experience of failure and disappointment which proves our purpose to have been, from the standpoint of enlargement and enrichment of the self, a mistaken one brings a clearer consciousness of the logic implicit in our first confident belief in the purpose, and at the same time emphasizes the need of making this logic explicit. The purpose, as warranted to us by the conditions and assembled means that lay before us, was our own, and _as our own_ was implicitly a purpose of furtherance of the self. The disappointment that has come brings this implication more clearly into view, and likewise the need of methodical procedure, not as before in the determination of _conditions_, but in the determination of purposes as such; for the essence of the situation is that the _execution_ of the purpose has brought to light some unforeseen consequence now recognized as having been all the while in the nature of things involved in the purpose. This consequence or group of consequences consists (in general terms) in the abatement or arrest of desirable modes of activity which find their motivation elsewhere in the agent's system of accepted ends, and it is registered in consciousness in that sense of restriction or repression from without which is a notable phase of all emotional experience, particularly in its early stages. The consequences are as undesirable as they are unexpected, and the reaction against them, at first emotional, presently passes over into the form of a reflective interpretation of the situation to the effect that the self has suffered a loss by reason of its thoughtless haste in identifying itself with so unsafe a purpose.[131]
It is the essential logical function of the consciousness of self to stimulate the valuation processes which take their rise in the stage of reflective thought thus attained. The consciousness of self is a peculiarly baffling theme for discussion from whatever point of view, because one finds its meaning shifting constantly between the two extremes of a subjectivity to which "all objects of all thought" are external and an objective thing or system of energies which is known just as other things are--known in a sense by itself, to be sure, but _known_ nevertheless, and thought of as an object standing in possible relations to other objects. Now, it is of the subjective self that we are speaking when we say that its essential function is the stimulation or incitement of the valuation processes, but manifestly in order to serve thus it must nevertheless be presented in some sort of sensuous imagery. The subjective self may, in fact, be thought of in many ways--presented in many different sorts of imagery--but in all its forms it must be distinguished carefully from that objective self which, as described in psychology, is the assemblage of conditions under which the subjective or "energetic" self works out its purposes.
It may be the pale, attenuated double of the body, or a personal being standing in need of deliverance from sin, or an atom of soul-substance, or, in our present terminology, a center of developing and unfolding energy. The significant fact is that, however different in content and in motive these various presentations of the subjective self may be, they are, one and all, as presentations and as in so far objective, stimuli to some definite response. The savage warrior deposits his double in a tree or stone for safety while he goes into battle; the self that is to be saved from sin is a self that prompts certain acceptable acts in satisfaction of the quasi-legal obligations that the fact of sin has laid upon the agent. The presented self, whatever the form it may assume as presentation, has its function, and this function is in general that of stimulus to the conservation and increase, in some sense, of the self that is not presented, but for whom the presentation is. Now our own present description of the self as "energetic," as a center or source of developing and unfolding energy is in its way a presentation. It consists of sensuous imagery and suggests a mechanical process, or the growth of a plant perhaps, which if properly safeguarded will go on satisfactorily--a process which one must not allow to be perturbed or hindered by external resistance or internal friction or to run down. To many persons doubtless such an account would seem arbitrary and fantastic in the extreme, but no great importance need be attached to its details. The kind and number and sensuous vividness of the details in which this essential content of presentation may be clothed must of course depend, for each person, upon his psychical idiosyncrasy.
Indeed, as the habit of reflection upon purposes comes to be more firmly fixed, and the procedure of valuation to be consciously methodical and orderly, the sensuous content of the presented self must grow constantly more and more attenuated until it has declined into a mere unexpressed principle or maxim or tacit presumption, prescribing the free and impartial application of the method of valuation to particular practical emergencies as these arise. For a self, consisting of presented content of whatever sort, which one seeks to further through attentive deliberation upon concrete purposes, must, just in so far as it has _content_, determine the outcome of ethical judgment in definite ways. Thus the soul that must be saved from sin (if this be the content of the presented self) is one that has transgressed the law in certain ways and the right relations that should subsist between creature and Creator, and has thereby incurred a more or less technically definable guilt. This guilt can only be removed and the self rehabilitated in its normal relations to the law by an appropriate response to the situation--by a choice on the agent's part, first, of a certain technical procedure of repentance, and then of a settled purpose of living as the law prescribes.[132] So also our own image of the self as "energetic" after the manner of a growing organism may well seem, if taken too seriously as to its presentational details, to foster a bias in favor of over-conservative adherence to the established and the accredited as such.[133]
The argument of the last few paragraphs may be restated in the following way in terms of the evolution of the individual's moral attitude or technique of self-control: 1. In the stage of moral evolution in which custom and authority are the controlling principles of conduct, moral judgment in the proper sense of self-conscious, critical, and reconstructive valuation of purposes is wanting. Such judgment as finds here a place is at best of the merely casuistical type, looking to a determination of particular cases as falling within the scope of fixed and definite concepts. There is no self-consciousness except such as may be mediated by the sentiment of willing obedience. It is, at this stage, not the _particular sort_ of conduct which the law prescribes that in the agent's apprehension enlarges and develops the self; so far as any thought of enlargement and development of the self plays a part in influencing conduct, these effects are such as, in the agent's trusting faith, will come from an entire and willing acceptance of the law as such. "If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine." Moreover, the stage of custom and authority goes along with, in social evolution, either very simple social conditions or else conditions which, though very complex, are stable, so that in either case the conditions of conduct are in general in harmony with the conduct which custom and authority prescribe. The law, therefore, can be absolute and takes no account of possible inability to obey. The divine justice punishes infraction of the law simply as objective infraction; not as sin, in proportion to the sinner's responsibility.
2. But inevitably custom and authority come to be inadequate. As social conditions change, custom becomes antiquated and authority blunders, wavers, contradicts itself in the endeavor to prescribe suitable modes of individual conduct. Obedience no longer is the way to light. The self becomes self-conscious through feeling more and more the repression and the misdirection of its energies that obedience now involves. This is the stage of subjective morality or conscience; and the rise of conscience, the attitude of appeal to conscience, means the beginning of endeavor at _methodical solution_ of those new problematic situations in the attempt to deal with which authority as such has palpably collapsed. We say, however, that conscience is the _beginning_ of this endeavor; for conscience is, in fact, an ambiguous and essentially transitional phenomenon. On the one hand conscience is the inner nature of a man speaking within him, and so the self furthers its own growth in listening to this expression of itself. In this aspect conscience is methodological. But on the other hand conscience _speaks_, and, speaking, must say something determinate, however general this something may be.
In this aspect conscience is a _résumé_ of the _generic_ values realized under the system of custom and authority, but to the present continued attainment of which the _particular prescriptions_ of custom and authority are no longer adequate guides. Conscience is thus at once an inward prompting to the application of logical method to the case in hand and a body of general or specific rules under some one of which the case can be subsumed. In ethical theory we accordingly find no unanimity as to the nature of conscience. At the one extreme it is the voice of God speaking in us or through us, in detailed and specific terms--and so, virtually, custom and authority in disguise. At the other it is an empty abstract intuition that the right is binding upon us--and, so, simply the hypostasis of demand for a logical procedure. The history of ethics presents us with all possible intermediate conceptions in which these extreme motives are more or less skilfully interwoven or combined in varying proportions. The truth is that conscience is essentially a transitional conception, and so necessarily looks before and after.
In one of its aspects it is a self which has come to miss (and therefore to image for itself) the values and, it may be, a certain dawning sense of vitality and growth which obedience to authority once afforded.[134] In its other aspect it is a self that is looking forward in a self-reliant way to the determination on its own account of its purposes and values. And finally, as for the environing world of means and conditions, clearly this is not necessarily harmonious with and amenable to conscience; indeed, in the nature of things it can be only partially so. The morality of conscience is, therefore, either mystical, a morality that seeks to escape the world in the very moment of its affirmation that the world is unreal (because worthless), or else it takes refuge in a virtual distinction between "absolute" and "relative" morality (to borrow a terminology from a system in which properly it should have no place), perhaps setting up as an intermediary between heaven and earth a machinery of special dispensation.[135] 3. Conscience professes in general, that is, to be autonomous, and the profession is, strictly speaking, a contradiction in terms. Moreover, apart from considerations of the logic of the situation, theories of conscience have, as a matter of fact, always lent themselves kindly to theological purposes just as the theory of self-realization in its classic modern statement rests upon a metaphysical doctrine of the Absolute.[136] Inevitably the movement concealed within this essentially unstable conception must have its legitimate outcome (1) in a clearing of the presented self of its fixed elements of content, thus setting it free in its character of a non-presentational principle of valuation, and (2) a setting apart of these elements of content from the principle of valuation as standards for reference and consultation rather than as law to be obeyed.
We have thus correlated our account of the logic whereby the "energetic" self comes to explicit recognition as stimulus to the valuation-process with the three main stages in the moral evolution of the individual and the race. We were brought to this first-mentioned part of our discussion by our endeavor to find out the factors involved in the first acceptance of a conscious purpose (or, indifferently, the subsequent recognition of it as a standard)--an endeavor prompted by the need of distinguishing, with a view to their special analysis, the two types of valuation-process. We now return to this problem. 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.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
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