Minor Virtues: A Deweyan Approach

In the first part of the paper, I shall critically examine Dewey's few sustained discussions of the virtues in order to explain and defend my rejection of these as the basis for a pragmatic account. In the second part, I shall follow up what I take to be more fruitful suggestions in Dewey's educational writings. On the basis of these, I shall lay the groundwork for a pragmatic view of the virtues central to a flourishing character.

Because Dewey identifies right action as action that

Our net condition is that life is development and that development, growing, is life. Translated into its educational equivalents, that means (1) that the educational process has no end beyond itself, it is its own end; and that (2) the educational process is one of continual reorganizing, reconstructing, transforming.(22)

Of course, when reading Dewey, one must be careful not to place too much reliance on his formal definitions, even when italicized or otherwise emphasized in the text. One legacy of his early neo-Hegelianism is his style of progressively unfolding definitions. The result can be confusing. As an early commentator once complained, "definitions make the fibre of [his] book, and even the favorite form of sentence. The author is always working from partial to complete definitions or conversely."(12) Thus what appear to be formal definitions in Dewey's prose are often merely starting points for discussion. So it would be unwise to take these remarks about the virtues at face value.

For example, if Jane has a habit, then Jane engages in some regularly recurring behavior, say jogging every morning or calling her mother twice a month. To establish whether or not she has a particular habit, observation of regularly repeated behavior is sufficient. But observations of this sort are insufficient to whether she possesses a virtue. While we loosely speak of people 'having a habit' of being kind or cruel or intemperate, kindness, cruelty, and intemperance are not exhibited in any particular determinate series of acts. Imagine that Jane is observed on several occasions chattering cheerfully to people who seem depressed. Is this proof she is kind ? Certainly not - her cheerful chatter may be motivated by kindly concern on one occasion, a cruel desire to 'rub it in' on the second, and sheer insensitivity on the third. When we look for evidence of a virtue, we do not look for repetitions of some determinate pattern of behavior. Hence the common view that virtues are dispositions rather than habits. Being dispositions, they are, in Edmund Pincoffs' rather Deweyan phraseology "determinable" rather than "determinant" traits.(14) Dispositions are determinable in part by the readily describable or " determinant" habits they cause us to form. But dispositions are not themselves encompassed in any determinant behavior pattern. Thus attempting to catalogue virtues by cataloguing various socially valuable determinant traits is unhelpful, not because habits can not be catalogued but because virtues are not habits in the usual sense.

Some topics in this essay:
Education Experience21, Enquiry Hume, Ethics Dewey, Defenders Dewey's, Reconstruction Philosophy, Plato Aristotle, Deweyan Dewey's, David Hume, Pincoffs' Deweyan, Imagine Jane, minor virtues, human flourishing, practical wisdom, gratitude loyalty, major virtues, virtues character, virtue ethic, human nature, virtue ethics, desirable themselves, distinguish virtues vices, amenability practical wisdom, trust gratitude loyalty, confidence trust gratitude, cultivation minor virtues,