Lectures on Ethics, 1900 - 1901: John Dewey

Section VIII. The Economic Function: Part I

SECTION VIII The Economic Function: Part I 1. Philosophy of Economics Involves Adjustment of Organism to Environment Lecture XXV. May 21,1901 THE ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES mark the direct relation between the organism and environment: the expenditure ofeffort on the environment on the one side by the organism, and, on the other side, the returns, the increment. The immediate addition comes about through the changes wrought in the environment: roughly speaking, production on the one side and commerce on the other. These represent the more active and passive sides of the same process, that of effort on one side and of enlargement on the other. This relationship has been reacted into by all the subsequent developments of science and the learned professions so that there is presented a degree of complication of phenomena which disguises this primary immediate relationship. Those activities as thus transformed or mediated give us what we may call the technological pursuits on the one side and the artistic vocation on the other, the first corresponding to the side of energy expended for the sake ofreaching ends over and beyond the expenditure ofthe energy itself, and the latter having to do with the production and creation of objects that immediately give satisfaction or that are ends in themselves. Ofcourse they are to be distinguished from the primary satisfactions because they give us the value of ends or results without any sense of striving, without any sense ofthe effort which is put forth. Aesthetic enjoyment is just as immediate, direct, as the satisfaction that is got from eating food but there is a difference in that it carries 387 388 John Dewey with it a content of meaning which represents all the previous adjustments which have been made with effort. It represents the socialization and idealization of the aspect of consumption. Because of the idealization there is no actual physical use (dissolution) of the thing; but its meaning, its range of value is apprehended immediately without any consumption ofthe thing itself. In saying that I am speaking from what might be called the aesthetic rather than the artistic point of view, from the standpoint ofthe one who appreciates rather than the one who produces. The artist is first of all a workman, a craftsman. Of course his technique is of a peculiar sort. It is directed at securing this end of appreciation on the part of the beholder or hearer. But the productive activity of the artists as such fall rather on the active side, on the side of technical procedure rather than on the side of his immediate apprehension of values. The consideration ofthis primary relationship (spoken of as mediating ) with the transformations that are brought about through the intervening processes, would give us the category of economical science. Philosophical categories [in Economics] give, as distinct from the body of actual facts, a generalization of these facts which form the body of economic science itself. The primary categories are: (1) The need which expresses itself in demand. (2) The effort or labor put forth to satisfy that need. (3) The material change effected, that is to say, the commodity and the satisfaction of the original need through the commodity. The term 'want' has a double sense, one expressing the negative side and the other the positive. A want is a need but it is also an assertion of need. It is not a mere lack, a mere hole which needs to be filled up. As a want it involves assertion of itself, which of course is different from a mere lack or need. There is the element of labor in the putting forth the want. There is the change in the environment which is brought about through this activity of the agent or organism to reach the category of the commodity. And then there is the use ofthat, the return of the circle, coming back in the satisfaction, consumption. 2. The Categories of Capital, Labor, the Market Express Increasing Mediation of Primary Activities This is merely an endeavor to state and place the categories. The idea of capital, of tools, material agencies, is practically involved here from the first. The organism must have capital, must have surplus energy of some sort or other, or else it cannot put forth this effort at all. It cannot assert itself in the environment unless there is some Social Ethics 389 excess of energy there. That is not what we...