Lectures on Psychological and Political Ethics: 1898 (review)

106 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY instructive and clarifying. And throughout the book, the discussion includes the critical analysis of the pertinent literature on the Weberian topic under review, which makes the book also a sourcebook on much of the treatment of Weber's methodology. 3 KURT H. WOLFF Brandeis University John Dewey. Lectures on Psychological and Political Ethics: 1898. Edited with an introduction by Donald F. Koch. New York: Hafner Press, 1976. Pp. xix + 462. $14.95. In 1898 Dewey lectured on psychological and political ethics at the University of Chicago. No original manuscript of those lectures is known to exist; however, a stenographic record was made, and they were typed and duplicated. In the work under review they have been published for the first time very largely as they were delivered. As the editor remarks, those familiar with Dewey's writings will have no doubt that the stenographic record is quite accurate (p. xix). The original copy of the lectures contained virtually no title headings; Professor Koch with the assistance of Herbert W. Schneider supplied them, along with an analytic table of contents and an index. This volume also contains a fine introduction by Koch, which discusses some of the general features of Dewey's ethical and socio-political thought, summarizes the contents of these lectures, and situates them within the corpus of Dewey's works. While Dewey wrote extensively on ethics, metaethics, the theory of human nature, and social and political philosophy, these lectures are, as Koch claims, particularly valuable because they present his views on these topics in a fairly comprehensive and systematic form (p. xxi). As is to be expected, a series of lectures of this character contains a good deal of repetition. But I do not think this seriously detracts from their worth, especially if we follow Koch and approach them in the light of the relations between Dewey's mature naturalistic views and absolute idealism, the position he held at the beginning of his career. Before doing so, I should point out that although Dewey does on occasion sound like an idealist in this work, the major theses he defends are clearly naturalistic. Of course, his ideas on these issues developed and changed after he delivered these lectures. But many if not most of his mature views can be found here. Similarly, this work provides no basis for novel solutions to criticisms of Dewey's philosophy or for substantial reinterpretations of it. The relations between Dewey's mature views and absolute idealism are complex and subtle. For Dewey rejected some idealistic doctrines and sought to transform, or, to use his term, "reconstruct," other such doctrines within a naturalistic framework. As Koch claims, "Dewey does not reject the notion of self-realization as the moral ideal, but he does reject the meaning of self-realization" (p. xxv). In particular, while idealists held that self-realization is gradual and that the human social order is progressive, they construed progress as the "realization of the eternal, spiritual element of the self' (p. xxix) and posited an extranatural transsocial order "in which self and other were united" (p. xxv). Dewey denies both of these doctrines and, like others influenced by Darwin, concludes that it is radically misleading to understand human existence by appeal to a 3Some of both Burger's arguments and my critical questions gain support from Rickert's own (1926) characterization of Weber: Heinrich Rickert, "Das Lebensbild Max Webers," in Ren6 K6nig and Johannes Winckelmann, eds. Max Weber zum Gedi~chtnis (K61n and Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1963), pp. 109-15. Incidentally, one of Weber's essays in methodology, on which Burger draws and which he says (p. 181, n. 2) is not available in English translation, in fact is: Max Weber, Roscher and Knies: The Logical Problem of Historical Economics (1903-1906), trans, with an introd, by Guy Oakes (New York: Free Press, 1975). BOOK REVIEWS 107 fixed, eternal essence of human nature be it natural or extranatural. The human being, for Dewey, is a natural and socio-cultural entity, and human existence is characterized by change, continuity, and conflict. Many of the differences between Dewey and the absolute idealists are obvious consequences of the fact that...