John Dewey’s Human Nature and Conduct is the most comprehensive statement of a pragmatist moral psychology and provides among the most important treatments of ethical theory in the Dewey corpus. The book’s subtitle “An introduction to social psychology” can be misleading, because the book is not about social psychology as an academic discipline. Dewey clarifies his intention in the preface to the book’s first edition in 1922, when he writes that he aims to put forth not a social psychology as such but rather “an understanding of habit” as the key to social psychology. He views the problem of social psychology as understanding how customs or “collective habit” shape the minds of individuals in the social group. With Human Nature and Conduct, he sets out to attend to just this problem, providing a way to rethink the meaning of habit and how habits – collective and individual – shape our lives.
Importantly, as Dewey explains in his expanded foreword to the 1930 edition, he believes such an undertaking can contribute to our understanding of “Morals” in a wide sense, which includes all subjects “connected with the life of man” and “that bear on the interests of humanity” (MW 14: 228). Here Dewey is pointing readers to his central argument in Human Nature and Conduct, namely that moral conduct cannot be a special, isolated field of study because all conduct has a moral dimension in that every act has consequences for both the agent and others, for good or ill. In this light, the book can be understood as a psychology of conduct that enriches our understanding of what it means to be moral.
Looking at the book today – a century on – Dewey’s critical examination of human conduct and habit formation is still relevant; it provides deep insight into how we can educate ourselves for the purpose of creating a better, more inclusive, democratic society. Our introduction to the handbook starts by placing Dewey’s work in ethics in its historical context. It then moves on to the origins and fundamental principles of pragmatism and pragmatist ethics. We conclude with an introduction to Human Nature and Conduct itself, closing with a description of the handbook’s contents.
The Historical Context of Dewey’s Ethical Theory
Victorian Ethics: From Naturalism to Idealist Critiques
John Dewey’s work in ethics began in the 1880s. The rapid industrial, scientific, and intellectual transformation of the Victorian era was a fertile ground for debates about social problems and morality. Central to ethical theory in England and the United States were the tensions between naturalist ethics, grounded in evolutionary and empirical frameworks, and the idealist critiques emphasizing metaphysical and moral ideals. Philosophers like J. S. Mill, T. H. Huxley, Herbert Spencer, and Henry Sidgwick championed versions (often qualified) of naturalism, while T. H. Green and F. H. Bradley emerged as leading critics of naturalism, offering a robust idealist response. Dewey was immersed in these theoretical disputes.
Naturalist Ethics and the Influence of Darwin
J. S. Mill’s Utilitarianism (Reference Mill1863) had emphasized the greatest happiness principle and argued for a naturalist ethic. Mill was aware of the limitations of Jeremy Bentham’s ethical hedonism; he recognized that goods such as art and friendship ranked higher than bodily pleasures as conducive to human happiness. He tried to salvage a broader hedonism by distinguishing between lower and higher pleasures. Although Mill’s Utilitarianism was written after the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species, his approach was not directly evolutionary. Nonetheless, his naturalist foundation and empirical methodology for moral judgment aligned him with the broader Victorian naturalist tendency – grounding ethics in empirical science.
The publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species (Reference Darwin1859) had fundamentally altered the intellectual landscape, introducing evolution as a framework for understanding life and, by extension, morality. Darwin extended these ideas in The Descent of Man (Reference Darwin1871), arguing that moral instincts evolved as adaptive traits promoting group survival. His work laid the foundation for subsequent naturalist approaches to ethics, which sought to explain morality in terms of biological and social evolution. Herbert Spencer, a major proponent of evolutionary ethics, built on Darwin’s ideas to develop a comprehensive naturalist philosophy. In The Data of Ethics (Reference Spencer1879) and The Principles of Ethics (Reference Spencer1892–1893), Spencer argued that customary morality evolves toward the greatest happiness and social harmony.
T. H. Huxley, another influential naturalist known as Darwin’s Bulldog for his fierce advocacy of evolutionary theory, adopted a more ambivalent stance. In his famous debate with Wilberforce at Oxford in 1860 he placed Darwinism at the center of ethical discussion, while in his Romanes Lecture Evolution and Ethics (Reference Spencer1893), he acknowledged that ethical progress often required resisting the competitive instincts favored by natural selection, highlighting the tension between the natural laws and humanity’s moral ideals.
Henry Sidgwick, in The Methods of Ethics (Reference Sidgwick1874), sought to reconcile utilitarianism with ethical intuitionism, while providing a systematic account of moral reasoning. Like Huxley, he critiqued some aspects of evolutionary ethics, insisting that evolution would have to be joined with the normative principle of utility to provide a basis for moral judgment.
The Idealist Critique of Naturalism
Against this naturalist backdrop, the British idealists – notably T. H. Green and F. H. Bradley – challenged the reduction of morality to biology and the grounding of ethical judgment in empirical inquiries. Green’s Prolegomena to Ethics (published posthumously in Reference Green1883) critiqued the utilitarian and evolutionary frameworks of Spencer and Mill. For Green, morality was rooted in the self-conscious pursuit of self-realization and the common good, grounded in an eternal consciousness beyond empirical observation. He argued that naturalist ethics failed to capture the distinctly human capacities for freedom, rationality, and moral responsibility that had been central in the ethics of Kant and Hegel. F. H. Bradley, a student of Green, provided in Ethical Studies (Reference Bradley1876), an equally trenchant critique. Like Green, Bradley emphasized the importance of the individual’s integration into a social and metaphysical whole, arguing that ethical duties arise from one’s role within a larger communal structure. Dewey’s early book Psychology (EW 2) echoed these idealist authors and themes.
An Intense Dialogue
The ethics of the Victorian era was not a simple progression from naturalism to idealism but rather a rich dialogue. Naturalists like Mill, Spencer, Huxley, and Sidgwick emphasized evolution and utility, reflecting the scientific spirit of their age. Idealists like Green and Bradley critiqued these approaches for their perceived inability to address the deeper metaphysical and normative aspects of moral life that had been addressed by Kant and Hegel. Each camp vigorously responded to the other.
Both naturalists and idealists, however, sought to develop ethical theories useful in addressing the social and moral problems of their age: gross inequality, rural poverty, and urban squalor (Searle, Reference Searle1999). English novelists such as Charles Dickens brought the social and moral problems of the age to popular awareness, while Elizabeth Gaskell and Thomas Hardy brought even the contemporary debates about ethical theory directly into their novels (Schneewind, Reference Schneewind1965). Ethical theory of the Victorian age thus remained both practical and popular – a tool for ameliorative action and a topic of conversation among the educated public.
G. E. Moore and Post-Victorian English Ethics: The Rise of Meta-Ethics
The ethical debates of the Victorian era largely revolved around substantive questions of morality: the origins of ethical principles, the nature of moral progress, and the realization of the good life. However, with the publication of G. E. Moore’s Principia Ethica in Reference Moore1903, the focus of English-language ethics shifted decisively. Moore’s groundbreaking work marked the beginning of a new era in moral philosophy, putting meta-ethics – the analysis of the meaning, use, and justification of moral terms – at the center in place of the normative concerns of his Victorian predecessors. The later (and widely neglected) chapters of Principia Ethica take up concerns about the higher goods and self-realization, friendship, and artistic creativity. But Moore rejected the metaphysical underpinnings of figures like Green and Bradley as well as the naturalist foundations offered by Huxley and Spencer, positioning his work as a rupture from prior ethical thought.
For Moore, the good was a simple undefinable nonnatural feature of objects and situations, known directly by intuition. This simple account of the psychology of moral judgment removed questions about the good from discussion: We know the good directly when we encounter it. This move distanced philosophy from the reasoned consideration of pressing social and moral concerns.
Moore furthermore claimed that naturalism rested on a fallacy – the “naturalist fallacy” – defining “good” in nonethical terms. He provided a test, the “open question test,” for detecting that fallacy. If one tries to substitute “good” with any nonethical term, for example pleasure, we could still meaningfully ask “but was it good?,” purportedly showing that the definitional equivalence failed. Actually the fallacy – and naturalist philosophers denied it was one – applied to more than just naturalist definitions of the good. A religious moralist, for example, could define “good” as “willed by God,” and Moore’s open question test would show that we could ask whether an act willed by God is good. Thus even theistic ethics commits the naturalistic fallacy.
Emotivism
In the decades following Principia Ethica, the meta-ethical impulse Moore unleashed came to dominate English-speaking moral philosophy, with questions about the nature of ethical language and the logic of moral reasoning taking center stage through the mid twentieth century. Noteworthy in these meta-ethical inquiries were those of the logical positivists whose views were summed up, crisply if not entirely accurately, by A. J. Ayer in Language, Truth and Logic (Reference Ayer1936).
Ayer dismissed both metaphysical and moral claims as meaningless because they do not satisfy the positivist’s verification principle, according to which a statement is meaningful only if it is either empirically verifiable or analytically true. Instead, Ayer categorized moral sentences as expressions of emotions or attitudes: Saying “Murder is wrong” is not a statement of fact but an expression of disapproval akin to saying, “Boo to murder!” His view, known as emotivism, posits that moral language functions to express feelings and influence others. Emotivism was further developed by the American philosopher Charles Stevenson in Ethics and Language (Reference Stevenson1944).Footnote 1
Dewey’s Alternative Response
The American pragmatists responded to the same moral and social issues as their post-Victorian English contemporaries, but their ethical views offered a radical alternative to the approach of Moore and his analytic philosophy successors. Unlike Moore’s rupture, Dewey’s ethics in particular was in important ways a continuation of Victorian themes. Early in his career Dewey immersed himself in the Victorian ethical theorists, who were, after all, his older living contemporaries: Huxley died in 1895; Sidgwick and Martineau in 1900; Spencer in 1903. Dewey spent his final year in college (Reference Spencer1879) reading through the works of Herbert Spencer (Feuer, Reference Feuer1958).
Dewey’s earliest published essays address the leading figures of the Victorian era, Spencer, Huxley, Green, Bradley, and James Martineau. While Dewey was in graduate school at Johns Hopkins University from 1882 through 1884, he was active in the Hopkins Metaphysical Club, where, in January 1883, he gave a talk on the writings of T. H. Green. Green’s major work Prolegomena to Ethics had just been posthumously published. In 1885 Dewey spoke on “Doctor Martineau’s Theory of Morals” (LW 17: 4–7) at the University of Michigan. Henry Sidgwick, whose monumental Methods of Ethics had appeared in 1874, before the main works of Victorian ethics, continued to update his account of ethics until his death. He was in the 1880s also writing about Green, Spencer, and Martineau; his articles on these authors, published originally in Mind, were collected posthumously as a major book (Sidgwick, Reference Sidgwick1902). While at Michigan, Dewey also lectured on Green, and in 1889 he published “The Philosophy of Thomas Hill Green” and in 1890 lectured on “Green’s Religious Philosophy.” Dewey’s Psychology (EW 2) was also idealist in spirit, taking self-realization as the ethical end and equating it, as had Green and Bradley, with union with God. Dewey’s major work on ethics during the Michigan period, Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics (EW 3), sympathetically surveyed the key Victorian moral theorists. Dewey was right up to date with the latest Victorian trends.
Dewey and Pragmatism
Though Dewey initially accepted British neo-Hegelian idealism, during the 1890s he abandoned transcendent foundations for both his philosophy and his religious beliefs. He proclaimed his full conversion to pragmatism in Studies in Logical Theory in 1903 but later acknowledged “that … Hegel ha[d] left a permanent deposit in [his] thinking” (LW 4: 154; White, Reference White1943; Good, Reference Good2006).
Pragmatism and Ethics
American pragmatism developed on an independent, parallel track to that of Moore and his analytic philosophy followers.Footnote 2 It had its roots in the Metaphysical Club, a discussion group meeting in Cambridge, Massachusetts from 1871 to 1875. The most important members included Chauncey Wright, Nicholas St. John Green, Charles Sanders Peirce, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., and William James. Darwin’s Origin of Species (Reference Darwin1859) and Descent of Man (Reference Darwin1871), and the works of Kant and Hegel and Spencer and Huxley, were among the books discussed. Darwin himself had arranged for the publication of Wright’s essays on evolution. Nicholas St. John Green, who Peirce called “the grandfather of pragmatism,” introduced the group to psychologist Alexander Bain’s notion that beliefs were habits of action – shifting the understanding of belief from a subjective state in an individual mind to an active disposition rooted in a nervous system conditioned by social experience (Menand, Reference Menand2001). This shift influenced the later development of pragmatist ethics in its turn from evaluating moral judgments as true or false, based on prior principles, to evaluating plans of action as useful, based on subsequent experience.
The Spirit of Pragmatism
The essence of pragmatism is reflected in Peirce’s critique of the Cartesian method. Descartes insisted that certainty in knowledge could be constructed through systematic doubt. Aware that individuals are immersed in a web of inherited sociocultural beliefs, he argued that philosophers must, like architects, clear away unreliable assumptions and build knowledge on an absolutely secure foundation. To accomplish this, they should subject all beliefs to radical doubt, imagining that an evil deceiver might have misled them about everything. His famous conclusion, Cogito, ergo sum, was meant to establish at least one indubitable truth – his own existence as a thinking being – upon which additional clear and distinct ideas could be constructed. This division between subjective thought and an external world persisted as a defining feature of modern philosophy.
Peirce rejected this approach on two key grounds. First, Cartesian doubt is psychologically unrealistic. We cannot genuinely doubt our beliefs unless experience calls them into question. Second, such radical doubt is unnecessary, as we can rationally revise beliefs when inquiry exposes them as problematic (Peirce, Reference Peirce, Hartshorne and Weiss1934; Friedman, Reference Friedman1999).
Implications for Theory of Knowledge and Moral Philosophy
Peirce’s rejection of Cartesianism carries several significant implications for epistemology and moral philosophy. First, knowledge does not require fixed foundations. Inquiry begins from where we are – with the beliefs we already hold, the doubts we genuinely experience, and the norms of inquiry we employ. Nothing is immune to revision, not even these norms. Otto Neurath’s metaphor of sailors repairing their ship at sea captures this idea: We cannot dismantle our vessel entirely, but we can replace its planks one by one while remaining afloat. This image aptly illustrates Peirce’s anti-foundationalist stance.
Second, inquiry is inherently communal. Individuals often begin with deeply ingrained cultural biases, but engagement with a diverse community of inquirers fosters intellectual challenge and correction. In pluralistic settings, competing perspectives refine one another, and the community values those who unsettle entrenched assumptions, venture into new domains, and formulate fresh theories and norms (MacDonald, Reference MacDonald2019). The goal of inquiry is not the discovery of fixed, eternal truths but the development of ideas that prove useful for guiding further exploration. As James put it, a true idea is one that “works best in leading us” when all real and imagined alternatives have been thoroughly examined (James, Reference James1981, p. 38). The success of inquiry, then, depends on a wide-ranging exchange of viewpoints, underscoring the importance of intellectual diversity.
Third, there is no fundamental divide between factual and moral beliefs. Both originate in social conditioning, both serve as guides in navigating the unexpected, and both are open to scrutiny and modification through inquiry. Investigative processes can reveal new facts just as they can bring to light new values and ethical frameworks (Putnam, Reference Putnam2002). This insight helps to integrate moral, social, and educational ideas within the broader pragmatist framework.
Fourth, the preceding points led James and Dewey to propose that the pluralistic community of inquirers serves as a model for democratic society. A functioning democracy, like an intellectual community, thrives on cooperation, ongoing experimentation, and the collective effort to address social challenges (Miller, Reference Miller2021; Smith, Reference Smith2007; Weber, Reference Weber2009). Both democratic governance and the practice of inquiry involve adjusting to new circumstances, revising prior assumptions, and embracing a process of continuous refinement.
Fifth, a democracy understood in this way depends on citizens who have been initiated into the practices of cooperative inquiry. This necessitates the broadest possible extension of democratic education. Dewey made this argument explicit in Democracy and Education (MW 9), where he maintained that democratic life cannot sustain itself without an educational system that instills habits of critical engagement and mutual problem-solving. He later expanded on this in Human Nature and Conduct, emphasizing how informal social interactions shape habits and cultivate the intelligence necessary for participatory democracy. These ideas will be explored in greater depth later in the Introduction.
Pragmatism resonated deeply with American philosophy and culture from the late nineteenth century through the New Deal era. The United States was undergoing rapid change, and pragmatism’s emphasis on contingency, possibility, and democratic aspiration aligned well with the national mood. Historian Henry Steele Commager (Reference Commager1950) observed that pragmatism’s readiness to break with tradition, experiment with new approaches, and revise beliefs based on experience felt both radical and familiar to Americans. As for Dewey, Commager noted that his influence was so profound that he became “the guide, the mentor, and the conscience of the American people,” shaping public discourse on major issues for an entire generation (Commager, Reference Commager1950, p. 100). To grasp the intellectual history of twentieth-century America, he concluded, one must understand pragmatism itself.
Dewey’s Mature System of Ideas
Dewey developed his pragmatist approach to ethics in The Theory of the Moral Life, the second part of the ethics textbook he coauthored with James Tufts in 1908. In that work, he examined the views of key moral philosophers – including Kant, Mill, Sidgwick, Green, Martineau, and Spencer – before advancing his own perspective. Rather than treating moral principles such as reason, duty, happiness, and self-realization as the foundations of competing ethical systems, he argued that each plays a valuable role in moral life. Those familiar with multiple perspectives, he maintained, would be better equipped to deliberate on moral issues and plan their actions accordingly.
Dewey’s philosophical outlook, particularly his moral psychology, matured further during the writing of Democracy and Education. In 1915, at the age of fifty-six, while working on the manuscript, he confided in a letter to Scudder Klyce that only recently had his ideas cohered in a way that gave him confidence to undertake a systematic presentation of his thought [1915.05.13 (03530)]. Following the book’s publication in 1916, he outlined a broader plan to develop a comprehensive philosophical system that would engage all major branches of philosophy.
The Call for Recovery
The first stage of this larger project took shape in “The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy” (MW 10), which served as the opening chapter of Creative Intelligence: Essays in the Pragmatic Attitude (1917). There, he argued that all subfields of philosophy – including logic, ethics, aesthetics, economics, and both formal and natural sciences – should shift focus from abstract, professionalized concerns to real-world challenges. He proposed that intellectual progress occurs in two distinct ways:
1. When inquiry builds upon established concepts, refining and expanding them without fundamentally altering their structure.
2. When inquiry introduces new concepts, demanding a qualitative transformation rather than incremental adjustment (MW 10: 3).
The second kind of shift, he argued, becomes necessary when changes in knowledge and cultural conditions render old problems obsolete while previously overlooked observations gain new significance. This insight strongly anticipates Kuhn’s (Reference Kuhn1970) later distinction between normal and revolutionary science.
For Dewey, modern social, industrial, and scientific developments demanded a fundamental reorientation in philosophy – a willingness not merely to replace outdated solutions but to question whether long-standing philosophical problems themselves were worth preserving (MW 10: 4). He observed that the educated public was increasingly concerned with what aspects of the intellectual inheritance should be revised or discarded and how contemporary developments might be translated into broader theoretical insights (MW 10: 4).
Dewey’s contention that the formulation of philosophical problems may itself be flawed – not just the proposed solutions – posed a profound challenge to the discipline. If philosophy was to remain culturally relevant, he argued, it needed to reconstruct its own assumptions, methods, and aims, adapting to the evolving realities of human life and knowledge.
Intelligence and Novelty
After a review of the pragmatic conception of knowledge as arising from human problems and serving as an instrument for subsequent problem-solving, and the pragmatic conception of mind as attentive monitoring of experience in resolving indeterminate and problematic situations, Dewey turns to what becomes the central idea of “Recovery,” the pragmatic conception of intelligence. This notion is then carried forward in Human Nature and Conduct.
For Dewey, intelligence arises as a need when entrenched social customs and old habits prove inadequate for the conditions and problems of the present. The function of mind is to project new and more complex ends – to free experience from routine and caprice. Intelligence exists to liberate and liberalize action toward new ends and new practices in social life. Dewey does not call for a “reform” of the schools, church, and state; he opts for creative destruction, to liberate impulse and to initiate experiments and new practices. We have to envision creative new institutions, for the sake of ends not yet given.
Intelligence as intelligence is inherently forward-looking; only by ignoring its primary function does it become a mere means for an end already given … action directed to ends to which the agent has not previously been attached inevitably carries with it a quickened and enlarged spirit. A pragmatic intelligence is a creative intelligence.
Conduct, Nature, and Society
Human conduct is not merely the expression of an underlying genotype but is regulated by natural and social experience. The natural and social environments are both implicated in action. There is no “self” in isolation from nature. Breathing is not merely an affair of the lungs but also of the air. Visual perception involves the retina but also the object perceived (LW 1: 21). And all behavior is social. The neonate is affected by the surrounding culture – for instance, in the diet and sleep patterns of the mother. The newborn is greeted with culturally conditioned patterns of child-rearing affecting its diet and all of its interactions with the world and other people.
These interactions persist throughout maturation as the child enters social groups, each with its own norms, values, and practices. Every society must address fundamental existential needs – food, shelter, clothing, and relationships with family, neighbors, and outsiders. Naturally social, young people seek to belong, and in doing so, they absorb the ideas and emotions that animate those around them (MW 9: 17). Through shared activity, they encounter both encouragement and restriction. Over time, social customs become ingrained, shaping personal habits that are neurologically embedded as individual habits.
Customs and Morality
Custom and habit form the foundation of customary morality. “For practical purposes morals mean customs, folkways, established collective habits … They are the pattern into which individual activity must weave itself” (MW 14: 54). A child’s behavior affects others and is shaped by parents, teachers, and peers through moral rules, social approval, and discipline. Over time, concern for others is cultivated, replacing self-centered tendencies. Psychological egoism, which claims self-interest is innate, is unfounded – children acquire moral habits and concern for others just as they absorb language: “assimilation of his own acts to their pattern is a prerequisite of a share therein” (MW 14: 43).
Morality is not a separate domain but inherent in social life, where norms and values constantly influence behavior. However, customary morality has limitations – it is shaped by the past, yet society evolves. Rules often clash with desires or with one another, creating moral dilemmas that demand reflection. When customary morality proves inadequate, it must be augmented and modified by intelligent deliberation.
Growth as the End
Our deliberations not only shape our immediate actions and goals but also influence our character. It is therefore reasonable to ask what kind of character we should cultivate. Dewey’s answer is a growth character – not a fixed or perfected state but an ongoing process of development. “The ever-enduring process of perfecting, maturing, refining is the aim in living.” There is no final self-realization; virtues like honesty, industry, and temperance are not static ideals but guiding principles for continuous improvement. “Growth itself is the only moral end” (MW 12: 181, emphasis added).
By “growth,” Dewey means increase in meaning: that is, in discernment of conditions which, when affected by possible actions, will lead to different and better consequences. This growth of meaning entails both increase in (i) powers of intelligence and efficiency in action and (ii) depth or richness in experience. Those with growth character continuously enhance their capacities for deliberation. They form broad interests and thus greater inclusiveness. Their creative imagination expands and they get better at achieving ends – their own and those of the broader community – through the constant testing of new means.
Dewey’s Morality Is Radical
Like James, Dewey emphasizes the strenuous life – one marked by vital engagement and purposeful action. Those with a growth character actively shape their ends, carefully assess the means to achieve them, and refine their habits based on experience. Deliberation expands possibilities. As we operate within social roles, we may recognize that entrenched practices no longer serve the common good. A conventional engineer, doctor, teacher, or lawyer might focus on incremental improvements, but those with a growth character continuously question assumptions; they reimagine both means and ends, guiding others toward more meaningful transformations.
However, change does not occur through thought alone – it requires action, often in collaboration with others. The only way to discover new possibilities is by pursuing them in practice. “It is impossible that the new art should precede the new achievement” (MW 13:324, emphasis added). Experimentation comes first. Moral agents must act amid uncertainty, accept the possibility of failure, and exercise imagination to break from conventional patterns (MW 13: 325). This demands courage to defy custom, inventiveness in forging new paths, initiative to challenge inertia, and honesty to learn from failure. These qualities define the growth character: daring, creativity, initiative, imagination, and integrity. Dewey saw these traits – not technical expertise – as the true drivers of social progress (MW 13: 325).
For Dewey, as for Aristotle, deliberation culminates not in passive judgment but in action. Thought intervenes when uncertainty disrupts habitual responses, seeking a resolution that integrates conflicting factors into new meaning. This process does not merely restore equilibrium; it unleashes energy for new action. Dewey holds that the direct experience of this resolution is intrinsically good – indeed, the only good fully within our control.
Deliberation, Growth, and Democracy
For Dewey, social customs are the starting point in morals. We live in community with others, and our community’s customs lie outside of our individual selves, so customs provide the objective component of morals. The values stemming from individual deliberation and judgment are, on the other hand, subjective, in the sense that they rest on the experience of distinct individuals bringing unique learning histories to bear in deliberation. This subjectivity lies at the heart of individual autonomy and responsibility. These deliberations, conclusions, and actions are mine. I own them and I accept responsibility.
In affairs involving others in our community, however, we have to share openly and deliberate together toward satisfactory common resolutions. We have to work toward a common good. We must grow together, discover new meanings, and shape new ends suitable for our time, a point discussed further in the Introduction to Part III of this handbook, where Dewey’s program for practical inquiry diverges sharply from what has come to be called “applied ethics.” As an unceasing process, moral inquiry can be understood as the program of continuing self-education of humanity. Democracy thus remains, as in Dewey’s earliest essays, the “ultimate ethical ideal of humanity” (EW 1: 248).
Organization of the Handbook
The handbook is organized into three parts. Part I addresses the main concepts and themes in Human Nature and Conduct. Dewey argues there that ultimately morals is education, meaning growth in its most inclusive sense. Thus, Part II is dedicated to exploring the broad educational nature and implications of these concepts. Dewey intended moral psychology and philosophy to be more than an intellectual enterprise. Rather, he aimed to reconstruct all branches of philosophy, and maybe ethics more than the others, as instruments to guide ameliorative projects to improve the quality of democratic life. In this light, Part III offers analyses grounded in Human Nature and Conduct of bioethics, religious reconstruction, love and sex, and other topics often considered under the banner of applied ethics.
The three key psychological concepts around which Dewey’s entire argument turns in Human Nature and Conduct – impulse, habit, and intelligence – are also found throughout this handbook, as no significant topic in HNC can be discussed without direct reference to them.
