Human Nature and Conduct · Chapter
Custom and Habit explained
Dewey argues that individual habits are largely formed by prior customs and social institutions, not the reverse.
What happens
Dewey argues that individual habits are largely formed by prior customs and social institutions, not the reverse. He critiques the dualism between habit and thought, showing how their separation leads to routine without intelligence and thought without practical effect. He also examines Bergson's vitalism as a sanction of this dualism, and warns against treating habit as mere mechanical repetition.
Themes in this chapter
Habit and Custom as the Foundation of Conduct
Dewey emphasizes that customs precede and shape individual habits, and that habit is the primary mechanism of social continuity.
Social Environment Shapes Morality
The chapter argues that morality is inherited through social customs, not individually invented, and that the social group sets the conditions for personal habit formation.
Impulse and Intelligence as Agents of Change
Dewey contrasts blind habit with intelligent thought, and criticizes the separation that leaves habit routine and thought ineffective.
Characters to notice
- Bergson
Dewey critiques Bergson's separation of spirit and habit, and his concept of the élan vital as a blind creative force that may be destructive rather than creative.
Key passages
“We often fancy that institutions, social custom, collective habit, have been formed by the consolidation of individual habits. In the main this supposition is false to fact.”
People commonly think that social customs are built up from individual habits, but this is mostly incorrect.
Dewey reverses the common assumption, asserting the priority of custom over individual habit.
“The nature of habit is to be assertive, insistent, self-perpetuating.”
Habits tend to persist and reinforce themselves.
This explains why customs are so stable and resistant to change.
“To talk about the priority of 'society' to the individual is to indulge in nonsensical metaphysics. But to say that some preexistent association of human beings is prior to every particular human being who is born into the world is to mention a commonplace.”
It is meaningless to argue whether society comes before the individual in abstract terms, but it is obvious that every newborn enters an already existing social world.
Dewey dismisses the metaphysical debate while affirming the empirical priority of social groups.
“The genuine heart of reasonableness (and of goodness in conduct) lies in effective mastery of the conditions which now enter into action.”
True rationality and morality consist in intelligently handling present circumstances.
Dewey opposes this to mere repetition of past habits or rules.
“Habits deprived of thought and thought which is futile are two sides of the same fact.”
Routine without intelligence and intelligence without practical application are actually the same problem.
Dewey diagnoses the dualism as a single underlying failure to integrate thought and action.