Human Nature and Conduct · Chapter
No Separate Instincts explained
Dewey argues that instincts are not fixed, separate forces but are shaped by social context and environment.
What happens
Dewey argues that instincts are not fixed, separate forces but are shaped by social context and environment. He uses examples of anger, fear, hunger, and sex to show that the quality and meaning of an impulse vary with its consequences and surroundings. He also discusses the moral function of play and art as necessary outlets for surplus impulses, countering both Puritanical work-ethic and the view that art is morally indifferent.
Themes in this chapter
Social Environment Shapes Morality
Dewey emphasizes that the meaning and moral quality of impulses like anger, fear, and sex are determined by their social consequences and context, not by any fixed internal force.
Impulse and Intelligence as Agents of Change
Impulses are not static; they are modified by intelligence and environment. Play and art are presented as intelligent re-creations that balance and enrich life.
Critique of Traditional Morality and Dualisms
Dewey criticizes the dualism between work and play, useful and useless, and the Puritanical distrust of art, arguing that art and play are moral necessities.
Education as Social Reproduction or Transformation
The plasticity of impulse in youth is implied; the chapter discusses how social conditions shape the expression of impulses, which has implications for education.
Characters to notice
- Plato
Referenced in the context of treating 'woman' as a Platonic universal entity, critiquing the abstraction of fixed natures.
- William James
Implied through the discussion of habit and impulse, though not directly named in the excerpt.
- Bergson
Referenced indirectly via the critique of fixed instincts and the emphasis on change and variation.
- Herbert Spencer
Mentioned in the context of the 'optimistic theory of nature' and natural harmony, which Dewey critiques.
Key passages
“The notion that anger still remains a single force is a lazy mythology.”
Believing that anger is a single, unchanging instinct is an oversimplified and false idea.
Dewey argues that anger varies qualitatively based on social context and consequences.
“Romantic love as it exists today, with all the varying perturbations it occasions, is as definitely a sign of specific historic conditions as are big battle ships with turbines, internal-combustion engines, and electrically driven machines.”
Modern romantic love is a product of particular historical circumstances, just like modern technology, not a universal instinct.
Dewey uses this to critique the psychoanalytic view of a fixed sexual instinct.
“But in truth they are moral necessities. They are required to take care of the margin that exists between the total stock of impulses that demand outlet and the amount expended in regular action.”
Play and art are morally essential because they provide an outlet for impulses not used in daily work, maintaining balance.
Dewey asserts the moral function of recreation against views that see it as trivial or dangerous.
“To say that society is altogether too careless about the moral worth of art is not to say that carelessness about useful occupations is not a necessity for art.”
Criticizing society for neglecting art's moral value does not mean art should be burdened with moral instruction; art needs freedom from utility.
Dewey distinguishes between art's moral function and moralistic censorship.