Human Nature and Conduct · Chapter
The Nature of Aims explained
Dewey argues that ends are not fixed goals beyond action but are ends-in-view that arise within activity as foreseen consequences.
What happens
Dewey argues that ends are not fixed goals beyond action but are ends-in-view that arise within activity as foreseen consequences. He critiques the Aristotelian tradition of final ends and the utilitarian notion of pleasure as an external aim, asserting that genuine aims emerge from the study of natural causation and are transformed from mere fancies into working ends through intelligent deliberation. The chapter emphasizes that fixed ends and principles are props for a false sense of certainty, and that true moral progress requires integrating scientific inquiry into the formation of ideals.
Themes in this chapter
Freedom as Intelligent Deliberation, Not Arbitrary Choice
Dewey presents ends-in-view as products of intelligent deliberation that redirect action, contrasting with arbitrary choice or fixed external goals.
Critique of Traditional Morality and Dualisms
The chapter critiques the dualism between fixed ends and means, and the separation of moral ideals from scientific inquiry, arguing that this renders ideals impotent.
Impulse and Intelligence as Agents of Change
Dewey describes how wishes and emotional reactions (impulse) combine with intelligence (study of causation) to transform fancies into working aims.
Characters to notice
- Aristotle
Dewey identifies Aristotle as the source of the doctrine of fixed ends-in-themselves, which dominated Western culture for two thousand years and persisted in morals even after being expelled from natural science.
Key passages
“Ends are foreseen consequences which arise in the course of activity and which are employed to give activity added meaning and to direct its further course. They are in no sense ends of action.”
Aims are not final destinations but anticipated outcomes that emerge during an activity, enriching its meaning and guiding its continuation.
Dewey redefines ends as functional within action, not as external termini.
“The acceptance of fixed ends in themselves is an aspect of man’s devotion to an ideal of certainty. This affection was inevitably cherished as long as men believed that the highest things in physical nature are at rest...”
Belief in unchanging goals stems from a desire for certainty, rooted in the ancient view that the cosmos is static and perfect.
Dewey links fixed moral ends to a historical attachment to immutability in science and metaphysics.
“A fancy becomes an aim, in short, when some past sequence of known cause-and-effect is projected into the future, and when by assembling its causal conditions we strive to generate a like result.”
A wish becomes a genuine goal when we understand how similar results have occurred naturally and then deliberately recreate those conditions.
Dewey emphasizes that aims require empirical knowledge of causation, not mere imagination.