Dewey's Metaphysics and the Self 1

CRAIG A. CUNNINGHAM

The Hyde Foundation

In "Self Realization as the Moral Ideal" (1893), John Dewey announced his
intention to banish metaphysics from "ethical science." The reason was that
metaphysics "seems to solve problems in general, but at the expense of the prac-
tical problems which alone really demand or admit action" (EW 4: 53). 2
Practical problems, Dewey believed, require empirical inquiry into the details of
particular situations, rather than theoretical speculation about general categories
or abstractions. Ethical science deals with the moral growth of individuals rather
than species, and so it must be rooted in an exploration of the specifics of each
individual self. Only "an ethics rooted and grounded in the self," could supplant
the discredited poles of "hedonistic ethics on one side and theological ethics on
the other." Dewey looked toward the emerging science of psychology to avoid
the metaphysical baggage of previous conceptions of the self. Ethical science
would only reach its potential when it "purge[d] itself of all conceptions, of all
ideals, save those which are developed within and for the sake of practice" (EW
4: 53). Ethics would be reconstructed to incorporate the lessons of psychology,
not to determine categorical imperatives or rules of maximizing utility but rather
to provide guidance for the practical problems involved in forming moral indi-
viduals and societies.
Dewey's intention to banish metaphysics from ethics - and to make it more
scientific - seemed to work, for a time. During the next 20 years, Dewey's writ-
ings barely mentioned metaphysics. The few times the word was used, it was in
a derogatory fashion. For example, in 1910, Dewey claimed that it is "self-
contradictory for an instrumental pragmatism to set up claims to supplying a
metaphysics or ontology," because pragmatism "involves the doctrine that the
origin, structure, and purpose of knowing are such as to render nugatory any
wholesale inquiries into the nature of Being" ("Some Implications of Anti-
Intellectualism"; MW 6: 88-89).
In Dewey's most widely read book, Democracy and Education (1916), he
carried this non-metaphysical approach to its ultimate development. He men-
tions neither metaphysics nor ontology in the book, speaking only disparagingly
of those who treat philosophy as "a kind of idle theory which is antithetical to
practice," and praising again and again that "genuinely scientific theory" which
"falls within practice as the agency of its expansion and its direction to new pos-
sibilities" (MW 9: 236). Science, he announced, represents the "safeguard of the
race" by ensuring that practical reflection - rather than tradition, custom, or idle
metaphysics - would guide the practices of education (MW 9: 197). If Dewey
had never again visited metaphysics, this would be the end of an impressive
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© 1995 Kluwer Academic Puhli.vhets. Printed i/t the NethedancLs'.
344 CRAIG A. CUNNINGHAM

story about the defeat of archaic metaphysics and the coming to age of psychol-
ogy as a scientific enterprise. However, 1916 would not see Dewey's last word
on the role of metaphysics. He would continue to write for 36 more years,
during which some of his ideas about the relationships among psychology, phi-
losophy, morals, and metaphysics would change. Dewey eventually came to see
a reconstructed metaphysics as a useful tool for practice. Specifically, he came to
believe that ethics could benefit from the lessons of reconstructed, naturalistic
metaphysics.

WHY DEWEYNEEDEDMETAPHYSICS

Practical decisions, such as those which arise in education or ethics, require cri-
teria. Without a "sense of the unity of experience," Dewey felt, practical prob-
lems would never be resolved. "we have no criterion by which to judge and
decide . . . . Lacking a philosophy of unity, we have no basis upon which to make
connections, and our whole treatment becomes piecemeal, empirical, and at
the mercy of external circumstances" ("The Educational Situation," 1901; MW
1: 265). "Empirical" was at this time a dirty word for Dewey, an epithet for a
system without any central guiding idea. Traditionally, metaphysics had supplied
such central ideas, providing coherence and conviction to practical decisions.
Now that Dewey had banished metaphysics from the determination of practical
ideals, where would these ideals come from? What was needed, Dewey claimed,
was a new theoretical foundation of practice, one which would provide both:
(1) a method for developing a "sane and coherent view of the whole situation";
and (2) a "clear conviction of the ends" we wish to reach. Together, these two
components would constitute a "coherent philosophy of experience" (MW 1:
280, 282).
The obvious success of the scientific approach in solving practical problems
pointed the way. However, while the experimental methods of science seemed to
be capable of providing a "sane and coherent view of the whole situation,"
science seemed to offer little guidance for developing a "clear conviction of the
ends" to be reached. Science, in other words, could be descriptive but lacked any
ability to be prescriptive. For this reason, Dewey realized that he was going to
have to reconstruct the traditional conception of science. He needed to show that
the methods of science could provide practitioners with information relevant to
the formation of aims. This would involve reconceptuatizations of both the
subject-matter and methods of scientific inquiry.
Dewey pursued these reconceptualizations largely through his explorations of
logic. In "The Present Position of Logical Theory" (1891), Dewey laid the initial
groundwork for a reconstruction of logic. The main obstacle to making science
useful for the formulation of aims was the idea that science deals only with facts
and not with relations - which constitute the contents of thought. Dewey pro-
posed a reconstructed logic which would analyze "the relation of fact and
thought to each other, of reality and ideas" (EW 3: 126), and provide a new basis

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for science. Traditional views of fact and thought held them to be in separate
spheres of existence. Idealism had held that "thought" was what was real, while
"facts" were merely "appearances." Empiricism had held that "facts" were what
was real, while "thought" was merely a phenomenal approximation of the facts.
Dewey developed a new experimentalist view in which thought and fact were
intrinsic to one another. As he had written in his book on Leibniz, "facts are not
mere facts . . . . but are the manifestation of a 'determining reason and regulative
principle' which finds its home in universal intelligence" (EW 1: 400). While he
would abandon the idealistic support for this view, the notion that relations are
intrinsic to facts would stay with Dewey throughout his career.
Dewey's famous 1896 essay, "The Reflex-Arc Concept in Psychology"
marked another crucial milestone in overcoming the traditional dualism bet-
ween fact and thought. His obstacle now was the view that matter/energy and
mind were in separate realms of existence. Dewey developed a naturalistic view
of experience as the fundamental ontological fact. Dewey criticizes the view
that behavior exists existentially as a stimulus followed by a response. Rather,
Dewey held that experience in its "primary" state, is a "psychical unity" (EW
5: 97). All of the contents of experience - including not only the events of nature
(stimuli) but also objects of knowledge (responses) - have the same existential
status.
Studies in Logical Theory (1903) builds upon these foundations and begins to
form the "coherent philosophy of experience" which Dewey required. The book
avoids explicit discussion of metaphysics; yet it incorporates a coherent sense of
nature which can be described as metaphysical. The Preface hints at these meta-
physical implications in its use of the word "Reality" three times in one para-
graph summarizing the "ultimate philosophical bearing of what is set forth"
(MW 2: 296). No longer would a static Reality determine the nature of inquiry;
rather, inquiry itself is a key feature of existence. "Judgment appears," Dewey
wrote, "as the medium through which the consciously effected evolution of
Reality goes on . . . . Reality is thus dynamic or self-evolving" (ibid.). Inference is
existential - a real aspect of nature which has real consequences for what exists;
thought influences reality.
Another key metaphysical significance of the view of logic outlined in the
Studies was the reconstruction of the notion of "object." This reconstruction is
related to Dewey's emerging model of "the temporal development of experi-
ence" (MW 10: 320). In its primary phase, experience is merely had and not
processed or reflected upon; it is literally im-mediate and pre-cognitive. Since
experience at this primitive level is undifferentiated, what is there is experienced
not as a number of distinct things, relations, or objects, but rather as a whole,
containing qualities but no knowledge. The second phase of experience is when
cognition and reflection enter. It is only at this second stage that "objects"
emerge. Dewey in fact reserves the term "object" for "object of knowledge; the
word 'object' is used here as in 'objective': the 'object' of inquiry is what
inquiry is in the process of determining. The real world merely 'suggests' ob-
jects; it does not 'give' them (MW 10: 340). On this view, objects are created in

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the process of inquiry, when a perception is consciously connected to some other

perception or idea. This does not mean, however, that objects of knowledge exist
only in the mind. Both brute existences and objects of knowledge are real; both
exist in experience, and both have existential consequences.
This reconstruction of the theory of inquiry provides the foundation for
Dewey's desire to make ethics scientific. When a human agent comes to an
ethical conclusion in a problematic situation - for example, "the best thing to do
in this situation is x" - reality has been changed. The created object, x, has a new
existential status. Ideal ends, like other object, are real things. As such, they can
be studied empirically. Science, in other words, can say something about ideal
ends. Like other objects, ideals enter into experience through the mediation of
reflective thought. But thought does not operate without existential constraints.
The "brute existences" of nature have features which make the production of
objects possible and which must be taken into account in their formation. Ethical
ideals, in particular, require an analysis of actual conditions. "Unless ideals are
to be dreams and idealism a synonym for romanticism and phantasy-building,"
Dewey would later write, "there must be a most realistic study of actual condi-
tions and of the mode or law' of natural events in order to give it, in short, practi-
cality and constitute it a working end" ( H u m a n Nature and Conduct, 1922; MW
14: 162). Dewey's desire to understand these conditions brought him back to
metaphysics.

METAPHYSICSAS SCIENTIFICINQUIRY

In "The Present Position of Logical Theory," Dewey had set forth a vision of a
reconstructed metaphysics which could overcome its traditional reliance on
supernatural or transcendent conceptions. An "intrinsic metaphysic" of the
"domain of knowledge mad fact" would "dissect and lay bare, at large and in
general, the features of the subject-matter with which the positive sciences have
been occupying themselves in particular and in detail" (EW 3: 141). Dewey thus
projects a "naturalistic" task for metaphysics, concerned with ultimate meaning
- not in the sense of supernatural significance, but of "general" significance, that
is, of significance beyond the particular details of a given situation. Dewey did
not explicitly explore this emerging "naturalistic" view of metaphysics for
the next two decades. However, as he mentioned in a letter to William James
in 1903, while he was "bracketing" metaphysical questions during this time,
Dewey was continuing to work "more or less on the metaphysical - or logical
side, as I prefer to call it" (quoted in Westbrook, 1991, p. 73). Thus we find
that the most "metaphysical" of Dewey's writings during the late 1890s and
early 1900s were explicitly concerned with logic and only implicitly with meta-
physics.
While Dewey's early and middle work in logic had clear metaphysical impli-
cations, Dewey would not explore these implications until more than a decade
later. Under the influence of his colleague ED.E. Woodbridge, Dewey began re-
reading the works of Aristotle. Aristotle's notion of experience as an organon -

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a continuously reconstructed, organic system of self-referent implications, which

did not reach beyond itself to justify its terms and methods - could assist in the
task of extracting metaphysics from its transcendental foundations. Metaphysics
could be reconstructed as part of self-referential experience, and could pro-
vide experience with enhanced understanding of nature and of the nature of ex-
perience.
By 1915, Dewey was ready to revisit his claim that metaphysics could be
reconstructed as a naturalistic discipline. Dewey argued in "The Subject Matter
of Metaphysical Inquiry" that metaphysics should abandon the attempt to deal
with ultimate causes (in the sense of "first," or transcendental causes), and
instead devote itself to the empirical study of the irreducible traits of nature.
"We m a y . . , mark off the metaphysical subject-matter by reference to certain
irreducible traits found in any and every subject of scientific inquiry (MW 8: 4).
Metaphysical inquiry would supplement the various sciences, each of which
deals with only a subset of existences and thus does not address the issue of
what sorts of traits belong to every existence. The traits of diversity, interaction,
and change, for example, are seen no matter what the subject-matter of inquiry.
Scientific inquiry into these ultimate traits could help inquirers to avoid hypo-
statizing certain aspects of existence and denigrating others: "we shall be saved
from the recurrent attempts to reduce heterogeneity to homogeneity, diversity
to sheer uniformity, quality to quantity, and so on" (MW 8: 7). Metaphysics
could play a role in the refinement of inquiry by reminding inquirers of certain
qualities of actual conditions: in this case the plurality of ends, means, and
values.
The ideas presented in the 1915 essay were given a much more complete
justification in Experience and Nature (1925). The book explores in detail
the "ultimate traits of the world" - now called "the generic traits manifested
by existences of all kinds" (LW h 308). These generic traits are studied using
an "empirical and denotative" method continuous with the natural sciences
(LW 1: 62). "Things are to be studied on their own account, so as to find out
what is revealed when they are experienced" (p. 14). The metaphysics is denota-
tive because it uses its "refined, secondary products as a path pointing and
leading back to something in primary experience" (pp. 16-17). Dewey's meta-
physics enlarges and enriches the meaning of the "things of ordinary experi-
ence" (p. 17); it is not abstract, but makes contact with everyday things and does
not disparage them. Dewey hoped that an empirical survey of existences would
produce a list of generic traits which could then be used as principles of intelli-
gence. These traits can also be used, I claim, as basic conceptual categories for
situated moral inquiry.
In Experience and Nature and other works, Dewey extended his list of pro-
posed generic traits beyond the three initially identified in 1915. He also recon-
structed the notion of "generic traits" so that he saw most occurring in what can
be called "complementary pairs." Dewey wrote:
The significantproblemsand issues of life and philosophyconcern the rate and mode of the con-
junction of the precarious and the assured, the incompleteand the finished, the repetitious and the
varying, the safe and sane and the hazardous. If we trust to the evidence of experienced things,

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these traits, and the modes and tempos of their interaction with each other, are fundamental fea-
tures of natural existence. (LW 1: 67)

The traits in and of themselves are only part of what interests Dewey. It is the
rates and modes of interaction of these traits, and their proportion in any specific
natural existence, which are the stuff of philosophy. Dewey always writes in
Experience and Nature, for examp'le, of stability in combination with precarious-
ness, and of repetition together with variation.
The quoted passage identifies the traits of precariousness, assuredness, safety,
hazard, repetition, and variation. Dewey identified at least 30 such traits in
Experience and Nature and elsewhere. I have listed these proposed generic traits
in Table I. 3 This list is labeled a "proposed" list of generic traits because Dewey
always held them to be provisional. If even one existence is found that does not
possess a given trait, it can no longer be taken as generic. Note that the list
includes several complementary pairs. These pairs can be summarized as stabil-
ity and precariousness, incompleteness and finishedness, repetition and irregu-
larity, and association and individuality. There are also several traits which do
not appear to have complements. For example, Dewey never provides a comple-
ment for "togicibility." There also doesn't seem to be a complement for
"quality" or "temporality." We can then see Dewey's "generic traits" as a cate-
gory actually encompassing at least two types of traits: (1) complementary pairs,
of which both poles are always present to some degree; and (2) descriptors of all
events as events, present absolutely and not subject to the proportionality found
in the complementary pairs.

TABLE I
List of Proposed Generic Traits
stability continuity repetition interaction
movement arrest potentiality unity
safe and sane structure precariousness quality
contingency discontinuity incompleteness finishedness
variation hazard uncertainty association
change ambiguity irregularity specificity
indeterminateness openness possibility temporality
logicibility tendency bias certainty
preference direction potentiality constant relations
pluralism of values pluralism of ends diversity qualitative
individuality

There are additional features of the metaphysics Dewey develops in Experi-

ence and Nature, besides the generic traits, which are important for understand-
ing its significance for his view of ethics. Most importantly, Dewey reaffirms his
abandonment of traditional dualisms. Everything which exists, is in nature (see
Rockefeller, 1991; p. 362). Nature is all there is. As the realm of existence,
nature has certain "defining characteristics" (LW 1: 126). The first is that exis-
tences in nature have a temporal dimension. Nature consists of events. Every

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existence is an event, and events are what make up experience. Each event pre-
sents its own immediate qualities. "In every event there is something obdurate,
self-sufficient, wholly immediate, neither a relation nor an element in a rela-
tional whole, but terminal and exclusive" (LW 1: 74). This "something" is the
event's qualitative immediacy, its unique individuality. Each and every event is
also, in some manner, continuous with every other event. Because experience
involves more than one event at a time, it deals not with bare events but with
combinations of events converging in space and time to form situations. The sit-
uation is the specific and concrete context of the present moment (LW 1: 61).
Objects of thought, such as ideas, ideals and purposes, are as much a part of
Dewey's "situation" as are more material events, such as people, schools, and
textbooks.
As an "affair of affairs" (LW 1: 83), nature consists of events with beginnings,
histories, and endings. Since events are "ongoing and hence as such unfinished,
incomplete, indeterminate," nature possesses the "possibility of being so man-
aged and steered that ends may become fulfillments not just termini, conclusions
not just closings" (LW 1: 127). Nature is a "challenge," providing "possible
starting points and opportunities rather than final ends" (The Quest for Certainty,
i929; LW 4: 80-81). Existences have actual tendencies which must be appre-
hended and not simply constructed if events are to be dealt with intelligently.
These tendencies are not final or eternal: Dewey's "natural teleology" (LW
1: 279) is provisional and contextual, rather than eternal. However, the potential-
ities of any specific existent have some stability - otherwise they would not exit
long enough to matter to human agents. This stability means that existences
have a structure which Dewey conceptualizes as "form." Nature is formed,
and these forms enter into experience as possibilities. Nature contains possibili-
ties; these possibilities are apprehended by intelligence and can be utilized to
alter the directions of natural events so that human desires may be fulfilled
(Boisvert 1988).
The transformation from an event's natural terminus to an end-in-view in-
volves the mediation of reflection and the attribution to events of meaning - that
is, it involves their conversion from immediate events to mediated objects.
"Events-with-meanings" are the "objects" of knowledge (see LW 10: 286-87).
"Meanings" refer to roles that an object might play in the future; the attribution
of possible roles is what allows for agents to direct events in preferred direc-
tions. Meanings are imputed potentialities, and are developed by the application
of intelligence to experience. This leads directly to Dewey's reconstructed
notion of essence:
When an event has meaning, its potential consequences become its integral and funded feature.
When the potential consequences are important and repeated, they form the very nature and
essence of a thing, its defining, identifying, and distinguishing form.... I'o perceive is to acknowl-
edge unattained possibilities; it is to refer the present to consequences, apparition to issue, and
thereby to behave in deferenceto the connectionsof events (LW 1: 143).
This is an important passage for understanding Dewey's reconstruction of
Aristotle's metaphysics. Rather than the essence of a thing being supernatural

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and somehow controlling the actuality of that thing from a transcendent realm,
essences are constructed through the interaction of an event with an agent
when the agent becomes aware that some potential consequence or set of
consequences is important and repeated. Once an event has been connected with
a potential consequence, it becomes an "object." "An object.., is a set of
qualities treated as potentialities for specified existential consequences" (LW
12: 132). The object is now available as a tool for solving problems. Reality
itself is altered by the meaning-attribution. When inference takes place, there is
created not simply a new mental state but a new situation. Again, inference is
existential.
I have now completed my summary of Dewey's metaphysical perspective. I
will now show how I see the relevance of this perspective for Dewey's view of
the self.

METAPHYSICSAND THE SELF

Dewey's early notions of the self were based upon his idealistic notion of a tran-
scendent universal and unitary Self, or Absolute which Dewey equated with
God. This ideal self provided an absolute moral standard. Through realizing
the "true nature" of the self, the agent both achieves personal morality and plays
her part in the greater realization of God (see Dewey's Psychology, 1887;
EW 2: 358; see also Westbrook 1991, p. 45). This early ethics, based as it was
on transcendent metaphysical concepts, was roundly criticized by Dewey's
mentors. For this reason and others, he devoted considerable efforts in the next
decade toward creating a more acceptable foundation for his ethics. Dewey's
first book specifically devoted to ethics, Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics
(1891), displays Dewey's initial attempts to overcome metaphysical idealism.
There Dewey affirms that self-realization is the individual aspect of the realiza-
tion of a larger whole, although now he has substituted the "community" for the
Absolute (EW 3: 322). Individuals would realize their own selves through par-
ticipation in social life and simultaneously build better social institutions which
more nearly represent the Absolute, universal self.
As Dewey later realized the implications of Darwinism, and developed more
confidence in his psychology, he moved away from the notion of an Absolute
and began rooting his model of the self in the natural sciences. The beginnings
of this transition are evident in differences between the Outlines and The Study
of Ethics: A Syllabus (1894). The Outlines indicate Dewey's moves away from
idealism; by the time of the Syllabus, Dewey had begun to describe ethical
development in explicitly psychological terms. Moral ideals were to be deter-
mined experimentally through interaction with the environment in a specific
context. This situational ethic relied heavily on Dewey's emerging concept of
"function." As Dewey had written in the Outlines, "The idea of function is that
of an active relation established between power of doing, on one side, and some-
thing to be done on the other" (EW 3: 303). This leads to a formula for "the

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moral end": "The performance by a person of his specific function, this function
consisting in an activity which realizes wants and powers with reference to their
peculiar surroundings (p. 304; see Westbrook, 1991, p. 43). As in Darwinian
theory, where biological development is a result of the interaction of individuals
and their environment, on Dewey's functionalism moral growth is a function of
the interaction of self and the environment. Since functions are subject to contin-
ual alteration as situations change, this standard was consistent with the experi-
mentalism favored by emerging natural sciences and especially psychology.
In "Self-Realization as the Moral Ideal," Dewey makes the functionalist
justification of his ethics explicit. He describes the conceptual shift necessary "to
substitute a working conception of the self for a metaphysical definition of it"
(EW 4: 50). The key to this shift for Dewey was the concept of "capacity."
The capacities of the self are conceived "not as mere possibility of an ideal or
infinite self, but as the more adequate comprehension and treatment of the
present activity" (ibid.). The self is "always a concrete specific activity" (p. 43;
see Rockefeller, 1991, p. 201). The ideal self is an experimentally-defined
"working ideal," "developed within and for the sake of practice" (EW 4: 53).
The reformulated ethical postulate of the 1894 Syllabus reflects this situationally
defined standard:
The conduct required to truly express an agent is, at the same time, the conduct required to main-
tain the situation in which he is placed; while, conversely,the conduct that truly meets the situa-
tion is that which furthers the agent" (EW 4: 234).

The notion of "realization" has been moved out of the center of the postulate -
although it is retained in the idea of "truly expressing" the agent. It is replaced
by the notion of "maintaining the situation." If the conduct of the agent "main-
tains" the situation - that is, fulfills or "functions" its intrinsic capacities - then
the conduct will be moral and will lead to moral growth. The realization of the
capacities of the continuing flow of activity that is the evolving serf is moral
growth. "To find the self in the highest and fullest activity possible at the time,
and to perform the act in the consciousness of its complete identification with
self (which means, I take it, with complete interest) is morality, and is realiza-
tion" (EW 4: 51). Each situation contains clues as to which actions would main-
tain the situation and realize the individual self. While "some acts tend to narrow
the self, to introduce friction into it, to weaken it power, and in various ways to
disintegrate it . . . . other acts tend to expand, invigorate, harmonize, and in
general organize the self" (EW 4: 244).
By defining the actual self as "always a concrete specific activity," Dewey
seems to be asserting that the self "exists" only at the present moment, as a
process. This suggests a ethereal quality which is heightened by Dewey's
attempt to define the moral ideal in terms of the present moment. While Dewey's
theory was not naive - in that he continued to discuss the influence of the past
and the future on the development of the self -, his ethical ideal of the realiza-
tion of present capacities seems to discount the long-term processes of growth.
Dewey's image of the self as "activity" or "instrument" in the functional situa-

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tion approaches Locke's notion of a "punctual self' who is freed from the
burden of hexis or character and who can disengage the past, emotion, and the
society in the quest for fulfillment of function (see Taylor, 1989, pp. 171-72). In
this sense, Dewey's early experimentalist self seems to ignore the importance of
the self's structure, or habits (see also Hollis, 1977, p. 60.) The tendency of a
purely functionalist model of the self to discount "habit" and tradition may have
contributed to Dewey's eventual dissatisfaction with this model of the self. As
Dewey matured during his middle period, he gradually expanded his notion of
the self to include more than just present "activity."

The Capacities of the Self

In Dewey's middle period he explored the implications of his functionalist self
in some detail. The self was given a structure in the Ethics (1908), where Dewey
focused his attention on the disposition of the agent: "that body of active tenden-
cies and interests in the individual which make him open, ready, warm to certain
aims, and callous, cold, blind to others" (MW 5: 234). The agent's set of disposi-
tions, or character, represents the agent's overall attitude toward what might
happen, and it represents Dewey's initial attempt to describe the structure of the
self. This begins to mitigate the problems with seeing the self as mere activity.
Dewey had always believed that the primary end for an individual is the
realization of her capacities and powers (see Westbrook, 1991, p. 161). This
self-realization ethic was now further naturalized. Within the self, there are both
organized, repetitive aspects and unorganized, unactualized possibilities. The
organized or "habitual self' represents "those factors of the self which have
become so definitely organized into set habits that they take care of themselves"
(MW 5: 326). What allows the self to grow beyond this habitual self are the pos-
sibilities, "presented in aspirations which, since they are not yet formed into
habits, have no organized hold upon the self and which can get organized into
habitual tendencies and interests only by a more or less painful and difficult
reconstruction of the habitual self' (ibid.). The set of these possibilities, or
"forms" of the self, represents Dewey's naturalized ideal self.
Dewey further refined his conception of the self to avoid the debate between
hedonism - which sees self-love as the primary good - and theological ethics -
which sees self-denial as the primary good. Specifically, Dewey argued that "the
self' includes more than simply the agent's own selfish interests. There is no
"self' to "love" apart from those objective ends which are incorporated into it.
He wrote, "the self is constituted and developed through instincts and interests
which are directed upon their own objects with no conscious regard for anything
except those objects themselves" (p. 340). The instincts and habits of the self are
always directed toward objects which are objective, or extra-personal. For
example, when an agent is motivated by the desire to help another person, that
other person becomes, functionally, "a part of the self." The absorption of objec-
tive ends into the self reconstructs what is included in an agent's sense of self so
that all interests, even those perceived as "selfish," involve some end which is
external to the self.

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The key moral distinction for Dewey is to see that some agents incorporate a
set of objective ends which are "too narrow and exclusive" (p. 342), resulting in
a self which is "too petty or narrow" (p. 343) and which fails to take adequate
account of the interests of others. It is the extent and scope of the self's interests
which are determinative of moral worth. Only when an agent takes account not
only of purely personal interests but the "needs and possibilities of others on the
same basis as our own," will the agent form an "adequate view of the situation"
from which to determine the right course of action (p. 349). Moral growth, on
this view, is the broadening and deepening of the agent's capacity to take all the
interests inherent within a situation into account. On this view, the determination
of "right" conduct involves an empirical survey of the "needs and possibilities"
of all the agents in a given situation. The intelligent and moral agent will chose
that action which will fulfill the greatest number of the capacities intrinsic to a
situation.
There are several metaphysical issues involved in this conception. There is
only one realm of existence: the realm of experience. Within this realm distinc-
tions can be made, for example between the "habitual" self and the self which
contains unrealized possibilities. But both exist within experience. The self has a
structure or form which reveals possibilities. Dewey's insistence on the impor-
tance of the entire situation in the practice of moral judgment is also crucial.
Determining which actions are moral and which are not cannot be done accord-
ing to some a priori rule or principle. Rather, all elements of the situation have
to be analyzed to determine the right course of action and to assess whether an
agent has behaved morally. Moral inquiry is treated "as an organon of asking
questions and looking for explanations" (MW 4: 8), and distinctions of "good"
and "bad" are functional rather than a priori or transcendental. Under this con-
ception of the self, there can be no absolute standards of morality. No longer is
it possible to determine whether any particular agent is moral by comparing the
agent's self to a "true" or actual self. The ideal standard was to be determined
experimentally, through moral practice. But this is not to say there are no moral
principles or imperatives. Since all existences have possibilities, and all agents
have capacities, moral agents can assume that developing capacities is a good
thing to do. "It is the business of men to develop such capacities and desires,
such selves as render them capable of finding their own satisfaction, their
invaluable value, in fulfiUing the demands which grow out of their associated
life" (MW 5: 356). "The capacities which constitute the self demand fulfillment"
(MW 5: 331). The situation - though the intrinsic capacities of the present activ-
ity - dictates the direction of moral growth. There is, according to this model,
one "right end" which uniquely satisfies the demands of the situation. The
"good" self is the self which meets these demands. Only then can it be said of a
person that he has "found himself" (p. 356).
In Democracy and Education, Dewey applied the moral philosophy of
the 1908 Ethics to his theory of education. He further developed his idea that
the self is a mixture of incompleteness and finishedness. It is "not something
ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action"

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(MW 9: 361). There is also something there to be changed - the "finished" part
of the self, which possesses some continuity or "structure. ''4 The individual
person brings to the learning situation something from her past, con-sisting of
native capacities and the residues of prior experiences. The key to understanding
the role of the structure of the self - its "continuity" - is to understand
the importance Dewey places on the child's "power to develop dispositions"
(MW 9: 49). This power is comprehended in the concept of "capacity."
Next to the concepts of "democracy" and "education," "capacity" is the
central notion of Democracy and Education. Education is defined throughout the
book as the "freeing" of the capacities of learners. Both the process and the goal
of education are the freeing of capacities. (It is not surprising that the process
and the goal should be the same, given Dewey's contention that in all worth-
while activities, "the end should be intrinsic to the action; it should be its end - a
part of its own course"; MW 9: 212.) Dewey describes this "freeing" with
several different words, including realization, liberation (p. 93), development
(p. 95), maintenance, and discovery (p. 95). Always there is the underlying faith
that capacity is the one thing about people that is most valuable.
This model avoids two extremes of educational thought which, Dewey
believed, had disastrous effects on children. The first was the traditional view
that educational ends should be developed outside of the children themselves,
relying completely on tradition and the needs of adult society. The second was
the romantic view that the child somehow "knows" her own interests and that all
adults should do is stand by ready to supply the child with the resources which
her interests demand. Dewey wanted adults to have a role in directing the child's
interests toward "ends" which were somehow more objective. The notion of the
realization of intrinsic capacity appears to place the ends of growth in the objec-
tive situation. Dewey's notion that the self consists in the objective ends which
it incorporates into itself supports this view. By developing the capacities, or
objective ends, of the self, educators would not only develop "happy" individu-
als but also contribute to the development of a "welt organized" democratic
society (MW 9: 96).
During Dewey's later middle and early later periods, as he further explored
the "actual conditions" of moral development, he began to question whether the
dual concepts of individual capacity and social democracy could serve the moral
function he had built for them in Democracy and Education. Specifically, he
wondered whether "capacities" provided as "objective" a source for educational
ends as he had previously supposed. It is to these shifts that I now turn.

Individuality as Potentiality
In my discussion of Dewey's middle-period conception of the self, I indi-
cated several key aspects. The self is a mixture of finished and continuous struc-
ture with incompleteness and discontinuities. The self possesses various possi-
bilities; Dewey conceptualized the best possibilities as "intrinsic" capacities
(MW 9:114, 212). While his middle-period conception avoided the transcendent

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 DEWEY'S METAPHYSICS AND THE SELF 355

notion of a "higher self," it supposed the existence objective "ends" in any situa-
tion. These ends are revealed by inquiry into the "intrinsic" capacities of present
activity; such capacities are external to human choice. If identified, capacities
provide moral guidance. In other words, Dewey believed that some possibil-
ities of each situation - those that are "intrinsic" - are morally privileged over
others. Some ends point to future situations which are intrinsically better than
other future situations. The teacher's role, on this conception, was to supply
the environmental conditions necessary to bring identified capacities to frui-
tion. Dewey's later writings would completely reject this view of intrinsically
better ends.
In Human Nature and Conduct (1922), Dewey further developed his psychol-
ogy of the habits. This marked a return, of sorts, to the Aristotelian view of hexis
as the "formed" quality of the individual. Habits are "latent" yet "operative"
aspects of the serf which allow it to respond quickly to environmental conditions
(MW 14" 29). While a "capacity" is a potential activity, a habit is 'working
adaptation" of a personal capacity with "environing forces" (MW 14: 16). Each
habit represents a "confirmed or impaired capacity" (LW 7: 170-71), that is, a
capacity which has either been actualized or impeded. A habit, in short, is a
"working capacity" (p. 21).
The new explicit theory of habit solves several problems arising from
Dewey's earlier notions of the self. Dewey had wanted to characterize the ideal
self in terms of capacities intrinsic to certain activities, as the morally privileged
objectives of the self. However, despite the efforts of some scientists to measure
students' learning capacities, as potential activities they are unmeasurable and
immune to study. "Capacity" is a nonoperational concept which can only be
evaluated retrospectively. As long as Dewey characterized the actual self as
nothing but "activity" and the ideal self as fulfillment of capacities, he was
holding the serf as beyond the scope of psychology. Dewey's mature psychology
of habit brings the structure of the self into the realm of inquiry. Past activities
leave their residue in habits, which are always active yet not continuously
expressed. An agent's habits reveal themselves as patterns of behavior. The
emergence of patterns over time thus provides clues to the agent's character.
Habit thus helps Dewey to move from a rather ethereal notion of conduct as the
exercise of situational functions in the present moment to a more behaviorist
psychology in which conduct expresses the interaction of a formed character
with a specific environment.
Dewey wanted the self to be an emergent phenomenon whose emergence
could be explained scientifically rather than transcendentally. Seeing the self as a
relatively enduring organization of habits, and seeing habits as active rather than
simply passive or structural, satisfied this criterion. The concept of habit also
helped Dewey to apply temporality to his theory of the self. The self, like other
existences, is an "event," with a beginning, a history, and an ending. The "inter-
penetration of habits" (MW 14: 30) or character which an agent builds up
during a lifetime is the operative residue of the agent's history. This conception
explains moral growth over time.

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These improvements to Dewey's theory are made more explicit in the 1932
revision of the Ethics. There, Dewey incorporates his psychology of habit into a
new sense of what constitutes the moral "growth." Since each agent possesses a
multitude of capacities, not all of which can be developed harmoniously, choice
is necessary. An adequate ethical system needs to provide guidance on these
choices. The moral agent, on Dewey's new view, is the one who becomes
"aware that our acts are connected with one another; thereby an ideal of con-
duct is substituted for the blind and thoughtless performance of isolated acts"
(LW 7: 168-69). Dewey's use of the word "conduct" here is a technical one.
"Where there is conduct there is not simply a succession of disconnected acts
but each thing done carries forward an underlying tendency and intent, con-
ducting, leading up, to further acts and to a final fulfillment or consummation"
(LW 7: 168). In other words, when an agent's actions cohere into an integral
series of related events, each of which carries forward previous actions and fore-
shadows future actions, then the agent is showing moral growth. While this has
similarities with Dewey's middle-period idea that the moral action is the one
which fulfills the intrinsic capacities of the present action (in that he continues to
believe that actions should follow each other in some coherent way), the deter-
mination of the "right" action is now made with reference to the agent's past,
present, and future - the entire "event" of her life - instead of only to the present
action. The "right" action is the one which fits into a larger unity of conduct or
character. This is a better account of the continuity of the self than Dewey had
during his middle period, and it provides more guidance for moral choice.
Growth is dependent upon this construction of a unity of conduct. Because
situations constantly change, the moral self is open to new possibilities, it "goes
forth to meet new demands and occasions, and readapts and remakes itself in the
process. It welcomes untried situations . . . . the good person is precisely the one
who is most conscious of the alternative, and is the most concerned to find open-
ings for the newly forming or growing self' (LW 7: 307). Dewey defines moral-
ity in terms of a radical stance toward personal growth, in which both continuity
and localized criteria are considered. The moral agent always looks to interact
with possibilities and explore new things. To treat "the old, the habitual self
... as if it were the self' is to court moral turpitude. To withdraw from actual
conditions and their "requirements and opportunities" is to "contract and harden
the self' (LW 7: 307). But since the habitual self itself provides "actual condi-
tions" for moral inquiry, it is not necessarily a drag on moral growth; rather, if
treated with respect yet made subject to revision, the habitual self makes growth
possible.
Moral inquiry involves a continual survey of changing conditions; evaluating
moral growth involves a continual and recurrent determination of how many of
the "demands" for growth the agent responds to. This evaluation must take
account of the entire career of the self, paying attention not only to the fulfill-
ment of present capacity but also to the development of the self's overall tenden-
cies. "Any other basis for judging the moral status of the self is conventional. In
reality, direction of movement, not the plane of attainment and rest, determines

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 DEWEY'S METAPHYSICS AND THE SELF 357

moral quality" (LW 7: 307). This notion of "direction of movement" indicates

that the self has "continuity, consistency," and an "enduring unity of attitudes
and habits." The various actions of the moral self "hang together because they
proceed from a single and stable self" (LW 7: 172). Dewey's long-standing con-
ception of self-realization was reconstituted as an "essentially aesthetic" crite-
rion. Self-realization is the process of forging the self into "an organic unity of
competing forces like that characteristic of great art" (Westbrook 1991, p. 416).
Aesthetic criteria such as wholeheartedness or single-mindedness protect "us
from an unreal separation of virtuous qualities from one another. . . . . [V]irtuous
traits interpenetrate one another; this unity is involved in the very idea of
integrity of character" (LW 7: 257). The "self," on this view, is an emergent phe-
nomenon whose "unification" (a process rather than an end-result) is the new
moral standard.
Dewey brought these various developments into a coherent theory of moral
growth based on the ideal of continual and emergent formation of an individual.
"Individuality," and with it "preference and centeredness," is a trait of every
natural being, including the self (LW 1: 162). In Individualism, Old and New
(1929-30), he wrote:
Individuality is at first spontaneous and unshaped; it is a potentiality, a capacity of development.
Even so, it is a unique manner of acting in and with a world of objects and persons. It is not some-
thing complete in itself .... Since individuality is a distinctive way of feeling the impacts of the
world and of showing a preferential bias in response to these impacts, it develops into shape and
form only through interaction with actual conditions.... (LW 5:121)
Dewey rejected the idea of the unified self, waiting to be discovered. Instead he
viewed the self as full of multiple, conflicting tendencies and activities which, in
moral growth, are gradually and continually unified, developing "a distinctive
way of feeling" and a "preferential bias."
In "Time and Individuality" (1940), Dewey further elaborated on this model.
The essay stresses the importance of the concept of "potentiality." The very fact
that growth can occur implies "that potentiality is a category of existence, for
development cannot occur unless an individual has powers or capacities that are
not actualized at a given time" (LW 14: 109). Potentialities exist; this much is a
metaphysical statement. But these powers and capacities are not necessarily
determinative of the moral self. Potentialities are not necessarily moral just
because they are possible. Dewey wanted to reconstruct the classic Aristotelian
formulation in which potentialities are connected with a fixed and intrinsic end.
Dewey had reiected the idea of a fixed end to growth in 1893. But it took
Dewey until his later period to give up the notion that moral ends are intrinsic to
the activities of the self. Potentialities cannot be known in advance. This renders
problematic Dewey's suggestion in Democracy and Education that teachers
should determine the directions, or ends, of growth through examination of
intrinsic capacities. Since there are for any existence "things with which it has
not yet interacted," it is impossible to say for sure what the future holds for
a learner. "As things are brought by new procedures into new contacts and
new interactions, new consequences are produced and the power to produce

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these new consequences is a recognized potentiality of the thing in question"

(LW 14: 109-10). The implicit challenge for teachers is to arrange ~br students
to interact with "things with which they had not yet interacted," thus giving
them the opportunity to express their "unactualized potentialities." New conse-
quences, new possibilities, will be the result. Only the "power to produce these
new consequences" (ibid.) is intrinsic to agency or selfhood. What these conse-
quences will be - and which ones are morally worthy - is subject to future
uncertainties.
Dewey concluded that "potentialities are not fixed and intrinsic, but are a
matter of an indefinite range of interactions in which an individual may engage"
(LW 14: 110). On this view, there is no "Self" to be "realized." There is nothing
"in" the future possibilities of the self, no intrinsic essence, no "brute core of
existence" (ibid.), no defining characteristic toward which to guide personal
growth. The potential self is primarily characterized by incompleteness. It is
neither a unitary or nor essentializable phenomenon; rather, it is "a field of inde-
terminate (though not limitless) transactionality" (Calore 1989, p. 19). This does
not however necessarily mean the quest for unification is wasted effort. Dewey
felt that the concept of "soul" could be naturalized in an "idiomatic non-
doctrinal" sense to account for the coherence of a moral self (LW 1: 223). The
agent's soul keeps her from trying to pursue every direction at once and provides
for "coordinated participation in all the situations of life" (ibid.) This "co-ordi-
nation" - otherwise conceived as "unification" - is a process rather than a state
of affairs.
A learner's potentialities are open and indeterminate. Since only a subset of
the multitude of possibilities can be actualized, each decision has moral conse-
quences for the future. The incompleteness of the self provides the agent with
the opportunity to craft her emerging self through altering the conditions of
growth. Further, the ideal "ends" of a person's growth are not in any sense pre-
determined by the actual character or attributes of a learner. "Intrinsic capaci-
ties" do no inexorably indicate ideal ends. While continuing to hold that there
are directions, possibilities, and forms in the actual conditions of the present,
Dewey now rejected the idea of a "future" self as inherent in or implied by these
directions. The present conditions of the self do not dictate the future ideals for
the self; rather, the plethora of possible directions constitutes a field of potential-
ity from which the moral agent must select ideal ends.

MORAL METAPHYSICS

Michael Scriven has written that the question "Why should I be moral?" is one
of the most pressing of our contemporary age (quoted in Johnson 1980). As
Johnson writes in response, "It is our failure to render a justifiable and persua-
sive answer to this question which has led the young into widespread cynicism
about the legitimacy (and hence the usefulness) of thinking and acting in ethical
terms" (1980, pp. 56-57). Taylor (1989) has suggested that answers to this ques-

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 DEWEY'S METAPHYSICS AND THE SELF 359

tion are f o u n d in the epiphanic experiences o f art, and that philosophers can help
others to tap into the sources b e h i n d these experiences by articulating a language
with which it is possible to discuss aesthetic and c o n s u m m a t o r y experiences and
their qualities. D e w e y ' s metaphysics articulates such a language. "To declare
this whole kind of thinking without object is to incur a huge self-inflicted
w o u n d " (Taylor, 1989, p. 513). D e w e y tells us that morality arises w h e n e v e r an
action has possible consequences. If n o t doing metaphysics is to "incur a huge
self-inflicted w o u n d , " then certainly there are moral consequences to D e w e y ' s
metaphysics. I believe it is a m o r a l question as to whether we should or should
not engage in thinking and writing about metaphysics. Such categories as poten-
tiality, continuity, uncertainty, and stability are moral as well as metaphysical
categories, w h e n they are applied to the o n g o i n g "event" that is each agent's
self.

NOTES

J An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational
Research Association, New Orleans, in April 1994.
2 Citations to Dewey's work (the Southern Illinois University Press Collected Works edition) are
given in standard form, consisting of initials representing the set (e.g. EW, MW, and LW for Early
Works, Middle Works, and Later Works respectively), the volume number, and the page number.
Thus, "EW 4: 53" refers to page 53 of volume 4 of the Early Works.
3 Dewey lists most of these traits explicitly. See LW 1: 50, 62-63,308; LW 3: 41; LW 5: 208. Other
traits are highlighted by commentators on Dewey's texts: Fendrich (1975); Eames (1977); Shea
(1984); Westbrook (1991); Sleeper (1985); Ratner and Attman (1964).
4 For more on Dewey's ideas about the self's continuity or structure, see his article on "Self' in
Cyclopaedia of Education, 1912-13; MW: 7: 340).

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