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SECTION I Subject Matter of the Course 1. Three Main Problems of Social Ethics Lecture I. April 2, 1901 I SHALL BEGIN by recurring to a point which I made early in the course last Quarter regarding the relation ofthe individual to society.l I pointed outthat the antithesis ordinarily made between the individual and society is misleading in a certain way, and that consequently the antithesis or even the separation ofPsychological Ethics, dealing with ethics in terms of the individual life, and of Social Ethics, are also misleading: that the individual, in the sense in which the individual is made antithetical to society, is himself a phase or manifestation of a certain form ofsocial development. That is to say, that the psychical or subjective individual (which of course is the individual that we would place in antithesis to society and social forces) is a product of a certain set ofsocial conditions or a certain social situation and therefore in the more general sense society is the comprehensive term which includes within itselfboth society in the more limited sense and the individual. The latter point was developed practically as follows: It is really not the antithesis between society and the individual that we have to keep in mind but the antithesis between two types of society and two types ofthe individual, the antithesis or contrast between a customary society (a society which expresses itself in the form offixed institutions) and a progressive society. And the subjective or psychical individual is the special agency through which progressive society maintains itself. In speaking of the two types of individuals, there is the individual whose conduct is determined or regulated in the main by the adoption of the accepted social customs. And there is the individual whose con1 . Lectures on the Psychology ofEthics, Section I, Part 1. 267 268 John Dewey duct is controlled, to a considerable degree at least, through the development ofimpulses with which he identifies himself, which he regards as peculiarly and particularly his own. And accordingly the initiative of conduct is found not in the institution or social custom but in this impulse which he finds set over in himself; and then along with that impulse the process of reflection or deliberation by which he evaluates that impulse, determines its worth and significance, and consequently decides his conduct for himself. As students of last Quarter's course will recall, the substance of Psychological Ethics was to trace the development ofthe impulse thus set over, and ofthe process ofreflection upon it which gave it its value, and of the emotional and volitional phenomena which occur in the immediate interaction ofthe impulses and other tendencies and habits which are brought out in the process of reflection. Really the whole Psychological Ethics deals with those two points, impulse and reflection , and the relation between them. The psychical or subjective type of individual shows himself in a changing society or in a disintegrating society, if we limit society now to the localized and particularized forms of society. It is when the established institutions cease to function adequately, to provide sufficient rule, guide, stay, consolation, to life that these distinctively psychical tendencies and the whole process of manipulating those tendencies in deliberation, come to life. In a rough way these psychical processes are the substances which are produced in order to meet the emergencies or the crises due to the failure ofestablished customs and institutions any longer to furnish the necessary direction and instruction . In a biological figure, they are the organs which society develops under those circumstances when its former organs have ceased to meet the necessities of the situation. In that larger sense the Psychological Ethics is itselfa phase ofSocial Ethics. It simply sets before us the machinery by which the progressive, developing, expanding phase ofsocial life is carried on. The psychology of the habitual (not meaning by that this or the other particular habit but the whole tendency ofany and every operation to become habitual, established, set) would lead out into the connections with society on the other side, the psychological aspect ofsociety. The stationary aspect (not using that term in any deprecatory sense), the conservative function, is just as necessary and indispensible to society as the progressive function is. Within that general point of view as the background, the main problems of Social Ethics would present themselves about as follows: In the first place, what types or sorts ofvalue does society bring into the experience ofthe individual? And what activities...

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