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
picking out that one consequence which will enable us to do what we wish
to do and for which we feel the need of justification.
Yet this assumption is continually made. It is made by implication in
the current view of purposes or ends-in-view as objects in themselves,
instead of means to unification and liberation of present conflicting,
confused habits and impulses. There is something almost sinister in the
desire to label the doctrine that the end justifies the means with the
name of some one obnoxious school. Politicians, especially if they have
to do with the foreign affairs of a nation and are called statesmen,
almost uniformly act upon the doctrine that the welfare of their own
country justifies any measure irrespective of all the demoralization it
works. Captains of industry, great executives in all lines, usually work
upon this plan. But they are not the original offenders by any means.
Every man works upon it so far as he permits himself to become so
absorbed in one aspect of what he is doing that he loses a view of its
varied consequences, hypnotizing his attention by consideration of just
those consequences which in the abstract are desirable and slurring over
other consequences equally real. Every man works upon this principle who
becomes over-interested in any cause or project, and who uses its
desirability in the abstract to justify himself in employing any means
that will assist him in arriving, ignoring all the collateral "ends" of
his behavior. It is frequently pointed out that there is a type of
executive-man whose conduct seems to be as non-moral as the action of
the forces of nature. We all tend to relapse into this non-moral
condition whenever we want any one thing intensely. In general, the
identification of the end prominent in conscious desire and effort with
_the_ end is part of the technique of avoiding a reasonable survey of
consequences. The survey is avoided because of a subconscious
recognition that it would reveal desire in its true worth and thus
preclude action to satisfy it--or at all events give us an uneasy
conscience in striving to realize it. Thus the doctrine of the isolated,
complete or fixed end limits intelligent examination, encourages
insincerity, and puts a pseudo-stamp of moral justification upon success
at any price.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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