Human Nature and Conduct: An introduction to social psychologyDewey, John
Philosophy
Human Nature and Conduct: An introduction to social psychology
Dewey, John
Habit; Social psychology
Joy and suffering, pain and pleasure, the agreeable and disagreeable,
play their considerable rôle in deliberation. Not, however, by way of a
calculated estimate of future delights and miseries, but by way of
experiencing present ones. The reaction of joy and sorrow, elation and
depression, is as natural a response to objects presented in imagination
as to those presented in sense. Complacency and annoyance follow hard at
the heels of any object presented in image as they do upon its sensuous
experience. Some objects when thought of are congruent to our existing
state of activity. They fit in, they are welcome. They agree, or are
agreeable, not as matter of calculation but as matter of experienced
fact. Other objects rasp; they cut across activity; they are tiresome,
hateful, unwelcome. They disagree with the existing trend of activity,
that is, they are disagreeable, and in no other way than as a bore who
prolongs his visit, a dun we can't pay, or a pestiferous mosquito who
goes on buzzing. We do not think of future losses and expansions. We
think, through imagination, of objects into which in the future some
course of action will run, and we are _now_ delighted or depressed,
pleased or pained at what is presented. This running commentary of likes
and dislikes, attractions and disdains, joys and sorrows, reveals to any
man who is intelligent enough to note them and to study their occasions
his own character. It instructs him as to the composition and direction
of the activities that make him what he is. To know what jars an
activity and what agrees with it is to know something important about
that activity and about ourselves.
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