Focus on Ethics
Now in full charge of the philosophy department at Michigan, Dewey had a freer hand in shaping the department. He was still active in religious organizations but was gradually shifting to a more secular worldview. His writings appeared less frequently in theological journals as he began to publish in journals affiliated with the burgeoning Ethical Culture movement. His article Ethics in the University of Michigan, I published in the Ethical Record in 1889, clearly established the fact that ethics would be the new focus of the department under his direction. In the article, Dewey fleshed out the courses that would be taught. (This work would ultimately result in his book Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics in 1891.) In "Ethics in the University of Michigan," Dewey wrote that the ethical development of individual personality would be examined against the theories of hedonism, utilitarianism, Kantism, and evolution. Subsequent courses would explore personality against the obligations and demands of the ethical world defined as family, nation, society, school, and church. How the individual personality becomes aware of moral distinctions and freedom of action would be the subject of the more advanced lectures in the department. After describing the courses and their content, Dewey apologized for the limited number of courses, noting that "with but two instructors it is impossible to do much special work in ethics."35
Soon the number of philosophy instructors grew, as Dewey began to surround himself with the men who would later make up the nucleus of the "Chicago School," the philosophy department at the resurrected University of Chicago. Dewey hired James Hayden Tufts as an instructor in 1889. Tufts would later describe Michigan during this era as "undoubtedly the most active center of research west of the Alleghenies."36 He handled most of the introductory courses in psychology, freeing Dewey to teach advanced courses such as political philosophy, which focused on the ethics of social relations, and advanced logic, the theory of the scientific method. A major innovation was the introduction of a course on physiological psychology, which incorporated laboratory work with lectures for the first time. The laboratory work was conducted in the newly equipped physiological laboratory in the University of Michigan Medical School.
Interior of the physiology laboratory at the University of Michigan Medical School, circa 1892. (University of Michigan Medical School Photographs, Bentley Historical Library.)
Tufts received an offer from the University of Chicago and resigned his position at Michigan in 1891. To replace Tufts, Dewey hired George Herbert Mead and Alfred H. Lloyd. The addition of two new members energized the department, and a separate laboratory for experimental psychology was established.37 Working with Mead and Lloyd, Dewey achieved a synthesis that began to unite the divergent elements of philosophy, physiological psychology, and ethics into a single theory. In a presentation before the Philosophical Society in 1893, Dewey delivered a paper on "Ethics and Politics" that outlined the essence of his theory. Through analysis of conduct, he arrived at two correlative factors: "agent of action" and "sphere, or conditions of action." He outlined three points in which agent and sphere of action interacted. "The moulding of habits, beliefs, predispositions and dominant ideas through the process of education, conscious and unconscious," Dewey explained in his first point, "makes the individual agent reflect his particular situation." In his second point, he argued "the demands which the conditions of action make, the requirements made of the individual in the family, the neighborhood, the vocation or occupation adopted . . . intrinsically affect conduct." In his final point he stressed that "action of the environment is required to carry an idea to execution." Through an analysis of conduct, Dewey insisted that ethics and politics did not differ in their subject matter but rather through their approach.38
The new theory was more fully articulated in 1894 in The Study of Ethics: A Syllabus. Dewey stated that this new book, prepared for the guidance of his students, was "in no sense a second edition" of Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics. It was a clear departure, "a thorough psychological examination of the process of active experience, and a derivation from this analysis of the chief ethical types and crises–a task, so far as I know, not previously attempted."39 In The Study of Ethics, Dewey wrote, "It is the essence of habit to be instrumental, a means for accomplishing ends."40 The philosophy of "instrumentalism," as Dewey named it, could now be applied to social institutions as ideas became instruments for adapting and improving the environment. Education naturally fit into the concept as he decried the "pedagogical theory which has mechanized our schools–that all children are to recite the history, the geography, the arithmetic lesson in the same way." He saw salvation by observing, "It is only the abstraction, the text-book, which is the same. The truth to each child is this abstract fact assimilated into his own interests and habits, and proceeding from them vitalized–free."41
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