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
Meantime the practical man wants something definite, tangible and
presumably obtainable for which to work. He is looking after "a good
thing" as the average man is looking after a "good time," that natural
caricature of an intrinsically significant activity. Yet his activity is
impractical. He is looking for satisfaction somewhere else than where it
can be found. In his utopian search for a future good he neglects the
only place where good can be found. He empties present activity of
meaning by making it a mere instrumentality. When the future arrives it
is only after all another despised present. By habit as well as by
definition it is still a means to something which has yet to come. Again
human nature must have its claims satisfied, and sensuality is the
inevitable recourse. Usually a compromise is worked out, by which a man
for his working-hours accepts the philosophy of activity for some future
result, while at odd leisure times he enters by conventionally
recognized channels upon an enjoyment of "spiritual" blessings and
"ideal" refinements. The problem of serving God and Mammon is thus
solved. The situation exemplifies the concrete meaning of the separation
of means from ends which is the intellectual reflex of the divorce of
theory and practice, intelligence and habit, foresight and present
impulse. Moralists have spent time and energy in showing what happens
when appetite, impulse, is indulged without reference to consequences
and reason. But they have mostly ignored the counterpart evils of an
intelligence that conceives ideals and goods which do not enter into
present impulse and habit. The life of reason has been specialized,
romanticized, or made a heavy burden. This situation embodies the import
of the problem of actualizing the place of intelligence in conduct.
Our whole account of the place of intelligence in conduct is exposed
however to the charge of being itself romantic, a compensatory
idealization. The history of mind is a record of intellect which
registers, with more or less inaccuracy, what has happened after it has
happened. The crisis in which the intervention of foreseeing and
directing mind is needed passes unnoted, with attention directed toward
incidentals and irrelevancies. The work of intellect is _post mortem_.
The rise of social science, it will be pointed out, has increased the
amount of registering that occurs. Social post mortems occur much more
frequently than they used to. But one of the things which the unbiased
mind will register is the impotency of discussion, analysis and
reporting in modifying the course of events. The latter goes its way
unheeding. The reply that this condition of matters shows not the
impotency of intelligence but that what passes for science is not
science is too easy a retort to be satisfactory. We must have recourse
to some concrete facts or surrender our doctrine just at the moment when
we have formulated it.
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