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
Common-sense in short never loses sight wholly of the two facts which
limit and define a moral situation. One is that consequences fix the
moral quality of an act. The other is that upon the whole, or in the
long run but not unqualifiedly, consequences are what they are because
of the nature of desire and disposition. Hence there is a natural
contempt for the morality of the "good" man who does not show his
goodness in the results of his habitual acts. But there is also an
aversion to attributing omnipotence to even the best of good
dispositions, and hence an aversion to applying the criterion of
consequences unreservedly. A holiness of character which is celebrated
only on holy-days is unreal. A virtue of honesty, or chastity or
benevolence which lives upon itself apart from definite results consumes
itself and goes up in smoke. The separation of motive from motive-force
in action accounts both for the morbidities and futilities of the
professionally good, and for the more or less subconscious contempt for
morality entertained by men of a strong executive habit with their
preference for "getting things done."
Yet there is justification for the common assumption that deeds cannot
be judged properly without taking their animating disposition as well as
their concrete consequences into account. The reason, however, lies not
in isolation of disposition from consequences, but in the need for
viewing consequences broadly. _This_ act is only one of a multitude of
acts. If we confine ourselves to the consequences of this one act we
shall come out with a poor reckoning. Disposition is habitual,
persistent. It shows itself therefore in many acts and in many
consequences. Only as we keep a running account, can we judge
disposition, disentangling its tendency from accidental accompaniments.
When once we have got a fair idea of its tendency, we are able to place
the particular consequences of a single act in a wider context of
continuing consequences. Thus we protect ourselves from taking as
trivial a habit which is serious, and from exaggerating into
momentousness an act which, viewed in the light of aggregate
consequences, is innocent. There is no need to abandon common-sense
which tells us in judging acts first to inquire into disposition; but
there is great need that the estimate of disposition be enlightened by a
scientific psychology. Our legal procedure, for example, wobbles between
a too tender treatment of criminality and a viciously drastic treatment
of it. The vacillation can be remedied only as we can analyze an act in
the light of habits, and analyze habits in the light of education,
environment and prior acts. The dawn of truly scientific criminal law
will come when each individual case is approached with something
corresponding to the complete clinical record which every competent
physician attempts to procure as a matter of course in dealing with his
subjects.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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