# Custom and Morality explained — Human Nature and Conduct > Chapter companion for Human Nature and Conduct by John Dewey. ## What happens Dewey argues that morals are fundamentally rooted in customs and collective habits, which provide the standards for personal conduct. He critiques the moral theorist's illusion that modern society is an exception, noting that while contemporary mobility offers a range of custom-patterns, habits still shape moral expectations and generate emotional and reflective responses when disrupted. Dewey distinguishes between routine, unintelligent habit and intelligent habit or art, and traces the emergence of reflective intelligence from social customs, using the Greeks as an example. He addresses objections that deriving morals from custom evacuates authority, drawing an analogy with language to show that institutions generate new demands and standards. The chapter concludes by highlighting the conflict between customs tied to the past and emotions oriented toward the future, with intelligence as the potential mediator. ## Themes in this chapter ### Habit and Custom as the Foundation of Conduct Dewey asserts that morals are practically synonymous with customs and collective habits, which supply the standards for personal activities and generate expectations and emotional responses when breached. ### Social Environment Shapes Morality The chapter emphasizes that customs constitute moral standards and that individual conduct is woven into existing social patterns, with reflection arising from conflicts among customs. ### Impulse and Intelligence as Agents of Change Dewey distinguishes between routine habit and intelligent habit (art), arguing that reflective intelligence emerges from social customs and can reorganize them, serving as an experimental and creative force. ## Character check-ins ### Westermarck Dewey critiques Westermarck's monumental collection of facts on custom and morals, arguing that he misstates the point by treating sympathetic resentment and approbation as inner feelings rather than as arising within action. ### Plato Dewey discusses Plato's ethical writings, noting that Plato's solution to the dilemma of personal thought versus objective standards was to posit reason as universal and cosmic, substituting a metaphysical ethics for the ethics of custom. ### Socrates Dewey references the Athenian Socrates as initiating conscious moral theorizing with the discovery that customs contradict one another, are often unjust, and require criticism. ## Key lines > For practical purposes morals mean customs, folkways, established collective habits. In practice, morality is equivalent to customs, folkways, and established collective habits. _Dewey opens the chapter by defining morals in terms of social customs and habits._ > Breach of custom or habit is the source of sympathetic resentment, while overt approbation goes out to fidelity to custom maintained under exceptional circumstances. Violating a custom or habit triggers sympathetic resentment, whereas public approval is given to those who remain loyal to custom in exceptional situations. _Dewey explains the emotional responses tied to custom, critiquing Westermarck's subjective psychology._ > The real opposition is not between reason and habit but between routine, unintelligent habit, and intelligent habit or art. The true contrast is not between reason and habit, but between mindless routine and intelligent habit, which is akin to art. _Dewey reframes the common dichotomy between reason and habit._ > How shall thought which is personal arrive at standards which hold good for all, which, in modern phrase, are objective? How can personal thought produce standards that are universally valid or objective? _Dewey poses the central dilemma of Plato's ethics._ > Language grew out of unintelligent babblings, instinctive motions called gestures, and the pressure of circumstance. But nevertheless language once called into existence is language and operates as language. Language originated from meaningless sounds, instinctive gestures, and environmental pressures, yet once it exists, it functions as a meaningful system. _Dewey uses the analogy of language to illustrate how institutions generate new standards and demands._ ## Links - HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/human_nature_and_conduct_se/chapters/v-custom-and-morality - Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/human_nature_and_conduct_se - All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/human_nature_and_conduct_se/chapters