Human Nature and Conduct An introduction to social psychology
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Some scanning errors (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand) · 1 illegible passage, excluded from answers
- Extent:
- ~92,400 words · 439 passages
Cite this work
- APAJohn Dewey. (n.d.). Human Nature and Conduct An introduction to social psychology. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/john-dewey/human-nature-and-conduct-an-introduction-to-social-psychology
- MLAJohn Dewey. Human Nature and Conduct An introduction to social psychology. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/john-dewey/human-nature-and-conduct-an-introduction-to-social-psychology.
- ChicagoJohn Dewey. Human Nature and Conduct An introduction to social psychology. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/john-dewey/human-nature-and-conduct-an-introduction-to-social-psychology.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
Human Nature and Conduct (1922): on habit, impulse and intelligence as forms of conduct.
Context and history
Dewey's book of ethics, and the one that best shows his idea that character is a fabric of social habits rather than an inner substance. The section on habit is among the finest things he wrote.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
are complete within the human body. To get a rational basis for moral discussion we must begin with recognizing that functions and habits are ways of using and incorporating the environment in which the latter has its say as surely as the former. We may borrow words from a context less technical than that of biology, and convey the same idea by saying that habits are arts. They involve skill of sensory and motor organs, cunning or craft, and objective materials. They assimilate objective energies, and eventuate in command of environment. They require order, discipline, and manifest technique. They have a beginning, middle and end. Each stage marks progress in dealing with materials and tools, advance in converting material to active use. We should laugh at any one who said that he was master of stone working, but that the art was cooped up within himself and in no wise dependent upon support from objects and assistance from tools. In morals we are however quite accustomed to such a fatuity. Moral dispositions are thought of as belonging exclusively to a self. The self is thereby isolated from natural and social surroundings. A whole school of morals flourishes upon capital drawn from restricting morals to character and then separating character from conduct, motives from actual deeds. Recognition of the analogy of moral action with functions and arts uproots the causes which have made morals subjective and "individualistic." It brings morals to earth, and if they still aspire to heaven it is to the heavens of the earth, and not to another world. Honesty, chastity, malice, peevishness, courage, triviality, industry, irresponsibility are not private possessions of a person. They are working adaptations of personal capacities with environing forces. All virtues and vices are habits which incorporate objective forces. They are interactions of elements contributed by the make-up of an individual with elements supplied by the out-door world.…
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