Outlines of a Critical Theory of EthicsDewey, John
Philosophy
Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics
Dewey, John
Ethics
This world of purposes and activities is differentiated into various
institutions. The child is born as a member of a _family_; as he grows
up he finds that others have possessions which he must respect, that
is, he runs upon the institution of _property_. As he grows still
older, he finds persons outside of the family of whose actions he must
take account as respects his own: _society_, in the limited sense
as meaning relations of special intimacy or acquaintanceship. Then
he finds the political institutions; the city, state and nation. He
finds an educational institution, the school, the college; religious
institutions, the church, etc., etc. Everywhere he finds men having
common wants and thus proposing common ends and using coöperative modes
of action. To these organized modes of action, with their reference to
common interests and purposes, he must adjust his activities; he must
take his part therein, if he acts at all, though it be only negatively
or hostilely, as in evil conduct. These institutions _are_ morality
real and objective; the individual becomes moral as he shares in this
moral world, and takes his due place in it.
Institutions, then, are organized modes of action, on the basis of the
wants and interests which unite men. They differ as the family from the
town, the church from the state, according to the scope and character
of the wants from which they spring. They are not bare _facts_ like
objects of knowledge; they are _practical_, existing for the sake of,
and by means of the will--as execution of ideas which have interest.
Because they are expressions of common purposes and ideas, they are
not merely private will and intelligence, but, in the literal sense,
_public_ will and reason.
The moral endeavor of man thus takes the form not of isolated fancies
about right and wrong, not of attempts to frame a morality for himself,
not of efforts to bring into being some praiseworthy ideal never
realized; but the form of sustaining and furthering the moral world
of which he is a member. Since the world is one of action, and not of
contemplation like the world of knowledge, it can be sustained and
furthered only as he makes its ends his own, and identifies himself and
his satisfaction with the activities in which other wills find their
fulfillment.
This is simply a more concrete rendering of what has
already been said about the moral environment (see Sec. 33).
LV.
The Aspects of a Moral Institution.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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