Lectures on Ethics, 1900 - 1901: John Dewey

Annotated Table of Contents

ANNOTATED TABLE OF CONTENTS Lectures on the Logic of Ethics Fall Quarter 1900 Introduction. The Fundamental Ethical Categories 3 1. Do They Constitute a System? Three Schools of Thought 3 Materialism advocates brutal selfishness; transcendentalism puts science and morality in independent spheres; empiricism catalogues what men do do. 2. Outline of the Position That Will Be Taken in This Course 4 Ethical categories or concepts arise out ofreflection upon conduct, are mutually related, perpetuate and transform conduct, and supervene upon the natural but are not antithetical to it. 3. This Point ofView Contrasted with Empiricism 5 Our view begins with actual facts, but the transformation to the moral is not due to restraints but to the problematic as stimulus to reflective thought. 4. This Point of View Compared with Transcendentalism 7 Ethical categories are developed through reflection on existing data, but are not excluded from the empirical. Kant holds that contingent experience cannot give an unqualified duty and Green appeals to a transcendent spiritual principle . But why does the spiritual principle manifest itself in empirical form, and how is it related to the empirical side? 5. Comparison of the Present Hypothesis with the Transcendental Theory 14 Immediate experience and ethical categories are functionally correlated, and reflect a division of labor for the sake of a common work. Section I. The Concept of the Good 16 1. Hedonism and Perfectionism Criticized 16 Logic deals with the form and not the content of good, but it can explain the unity in a variety ofgood conditions that grow out ofexperience. Both hedonism and perfectionism fail to show how good arises in experience and that the concept is used only under certain emergency conditions. lix Ix Annotated Table ofContents 2. An Analysis of the Conception of the Good 21 All statements of experience contain a content and an attitude or standpoint, although the latter is often suppressed. All content is material in process of valuation, and hence the content of judgments about good is not secondary, derived. 3. Criticism ofHedonistic Naturalism 23 Empirical hedonists hold that good is a generalization from particulars in experience, but they neglect the process of passing judgment on experience. Section II. An Analysis of Happiness 29 1. Factors Necessary to the Idea ofHappiness 29 Happiness is satisfaction or good on the subjective side, but it also involves objective conditions. It is active, expresses the agent, affords an outlet. Final good involves transformation, not repression; we distinguish immediate pleasure and pleasure valued as good. 2. Criticism of the Hedonistic Account ofHappiness 32 Ancient hedonism stressed immediate pleasure and ignored the necessity for reconstruction ofthe subject. A second variation stresses most pleasures on the whole but ignores unity of pleasures. Thirdly, Mill thought satisfaction was regulated by the sense of dignity, but this brings in the self as a universal. 3. The Objective Factor in the Conception ofHappiness 36 Hedonism stresses subjective feeling states, but objective conditions are organic to satisfaction. Objects both excite and hinder the demand for satisfaction; hence the demand for modification of particular conditions. Section III. Good as an Ideal 42 1. The Good as Systematized Unity and Transformation of Natural Goods 42 The moral ideal evolves because ofthe nonsatisfaction ofactual experiences; it transforms obstacles into means. There is interaction of the natural good (of empiricism) and the vague ideal good (oftranscendentalism) with systematized unity as a goal-the reconstruction of the given by the ideal. 2. Criticism ofEmpiricism from a Logical Standpoint 46 Empiricism tries to get a universal from particulars, but the universal is really a starting point, a vague idea prompted by the shock of the unsatisfactory. 3. Abstraction and Generalization as Reconstruction 47 Abstraction is not subtraction but creative selection of material, a reconstruction into a system. Good is not an aggregate but a systematized unity ofnatural goods that gradually becomes a working method. Annotated Table of Contents lxi Section IV. Moral Good 52 1. A More Positive Statement of the Nature ofMoral Good 52 Moral good is the endeavor to organize natural goods. The natural-moral distinction is not metaphysical but practical, teleological, as illustrated in the case of truth-telling. 2. The Difficulty in Kant and Green 54 They radically separate ends and means, but the test ofa moral law is whether it coordinates the situation. The good will is what enables a man to be alive in dealing with any special situation; it brings together the positive values...