Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/112

96 the realizatoinrealization [sic] of any community of persons [individuals?] having individuals as its members, is found the needed realization of individuality—a statement which certainly no one will call in question, but which is, unfortunately, a mere tautology. Whence it follows that the original proposition is also a tautology; for that whose converse is a tautology is itself a tautology. This, no doubt, Professor Dewey would most readily admit, since to him 'individual' and 'member of a community of persons' are convertible terms. We may express this by saying that the individual, as such, lives and moves and has his being in a community of persons, and that without this he would have no individual life, motion, or being. The community, moreover, is a process, an activity, made up of the organized activities of all the individuals composing it, and the end or well-being of the community and its members means the highest possible amount of organized activity which they can be made to put forth. This organized activity is objective morality; it is the "chief end of man"; it is The Good; it is the only God there is.

In this system the terms Duty (or Obligation) and Freedom assume particular meanings. (1) Duty is determined by social needs. "The social needs give control, law, authority."—"Duty is simply the aspect which the good or moral end assumes, as the individual conceives of it" (p. 152). The more completely the actions of the individual correspond to these social needs, the more moral and dutiful he is. "So far as an act is done unwillingly, under constraint, so far the act is impure and undutiful" (p. 155). Of course, the social need is always a need for fuller activity, and dutiful acts are those which contribute to make this possible. "Morality is activity" (p. 220); immorality is inactivity. (2) Freedom Professor Dewey distinguishes into negative, potential, and positive. The second is what corresponds to the freedom of the will, or freedom of choice, of ordinary ethical treatises. According to Professor Dewey, this freedom is simply the power to conceive two ends, not the power to choose the one or the other at any given time. Such choice he holds to be a simple impossibility. Only, "after action, the agent calls to mind that there was another end open to him [in what sense?] and that if he did choose the other end, it was because of something in his character which made him prefer the one he actually chose" (p. 159). "Here we have the basis of moral responsibility or accountability (p. 160). The theory seems to be this: Given a man's realized character and his surroundings at any given moment, his choice of actions may be infallibly predicted. But having, in one instance, chosen a certain action, and discovering later that it is undesirable, that is, hindering, he is by this discovery made a different character from what he was before, and so necessarily makes a different choice next