Paperback
$8.98

Buy used:

$8.98

FREE delivery May 15 - 16. Details

Or fastest delivery May 9 - 10. Details

Select delivery location

Used: Good | Details

Sold by ThriftBooks-Atlanta

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Other sellers on Amazon

Used (4) from $8.98 & FREE Shipping

Human Nature and Conduct (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading) Paperback – August 18, 2008

by john-dewey (Author)

4.8 29 ratings

See all formats and editions

"In this compelling work of philosophy, John Dewey explores the development of personal character and how one interacts with society. Relying on human physiology and psychology as evidence, he investigates how we make moral choices, cope with our surroundings, and act resourcefully. He explains that these social functions spring from natural, moral foundations, as he describes his views on social psychology."

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Unknown (August 18, 2008)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 231 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1435107845
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1435107847
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.4 ounces

Customer Reviews:
4.8 29 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

Customer reviews

4.8 out of 5

29 global ratings

3 star

0%

2 star

5%

1 star

0%

How customer reviews and ratings work

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Angella O'Brien

Good book.

Reviewed in the United States on February 15, 2020

Verified Purchase

A good read. Also the book came on time and in perfect condition.

Helpful

Michael A. Mango

Human Nature and Conduct by John Dewey

Reviewed in the United States on November 2, 2013

Verified Purchase

This is one of several books that I continue to return to. It is packed with depth and yet easy to understand.
I will read it again and again.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Kiluba Nkulu

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on March 8, 2018

A great book.

Astonishingly Refreshing Read

Reviewed in the United States on May 17, 2014

The thought of John Dewey continues to astonish me. One would think that a third-generation thinker from a school, in this case pragmatism, would run out of fresh new turns to take with the doctrine or stance. However, this is not so. Dewey’s objective, in this text, is to ground moral philosophy, just as Peirce and James sought to ground all sorts of other areas of philosophy, e.g., epistemology, science, conceptual meaning, etc. Dewey moves in a direction that builds off of his “Reconstruction of Philosophy,” particularly what he says in his chapter on ethics, and critiques both ends of the spectrum of rationalistic moral philosophers, who have thought morality inherently disconnected from human conduct, as though theorization precedes the human context. His critique, while ending at something similar to Nietzsche or Paine, critiques these sorts of positions, as well as the Kantian position of morality.

Anyone familiar with Dewey in the least will know that his theory of human action, much like Peirce and James, begins with habit, thought Dewey’s is a much more physiological approach than psychological alone. He begins with the nerve, and develops an understanding of societal behavior from that, moving through the human habit, building a dual bottom-up/top-down view of morality and society as individual (and society as collective). In this book, he discusses his thought on free will, impulse, and intelligence, explaining how these ideas fit into a conduct-focused understanding of morality.

Reading the book through for the first time, I don’t know how convincing it is, but I give it five stars on grounds of its creativity, freshness, and its ability to stimulate. I recommend this to all, especially those in education, ethics, and any sort of sociological/public-research domain dealing with relevant matters. As another reviewer said, it is an easily understood book, even though there is much depth to it, and so I think it is accessible to all reading levels. The edition I have read is the "Great Books in Philosophy" edition by Prometheus books, and I can say that, while the font is not the prettiest, the print is nice and large, and so I can recommend it as a readable edition.

9 people found this helpful

Helpful

robin friedman

John Dewey's Ethical Naturalism

Reviewed in the United States on May 21, 2014

Together with Charles Peirce, William James, and Josiah Royce, John Dewey forms part of an outpouring of American thought in the early 20th Century frequently called the "golden age of American philosophy". Peirce, James and Dewey founded and taught variations of philosophical pragmatism while Royce, heavily influenced by pragmatism, was closer to philosophical idealism. I have read less of Dewey than of the three companion thinkers.

Dewey (1859 -- 1952) lived a long, active life during which he wrote prolifically. I have thought it difficult to get a clear handle on his work. Dewey has been highly influential, perhaps notoriously (unfairly) so, in educational philosophy. His work has also highly influenced social science and public policy. Dewey's thought has undergone a strong revival in recent years with the growth of interest in American pragmatism and with the so-called "second wave" of pragmatism associated with Richard Rorty. While admiring Dewey greatly, Rorty took Dewey's thought in his own direction.

As with any important philosopher, Dewey needs to be read and struggled with in his own writing rather than through secondary sources or through the views of others. In 1918, Dewey delivered a series of lectures at Stanford which became the basis for his important book, "Human Nature and Conduct: An Introduction to Social Psychology" (1921) which offers a point of entry into his thinking, particularly his ethics. The book is lengthy, repetitive, and difficult, with pithy, sharp writing and observations punctuating less readable stretches. In his short Preface, Dewey summarizes the aim of the book as

"seriously [setting] forth a belief that an understanding of habit and of different types of habit is the key to social psychology, while the operation of impulse and intelligence gives the key to individualized mental activity. But they are secondary to habit so that mind can be understood in the concrete only as a system of beliefs, desires and purposes which are formed in the interaction of biological aptidudes with a social environment."

The book consists of a lengthy and highly important Introduction which sets out the main claims of the book, a lengthy conclusion, summarizing and expanding the text, and three additional parts forming the basis of the lectures Dewey gave at Stanford. The key to the book is the Introduction, as is the case with many "introductions" to seminal philosophical works. It will bear close study, before and after the reading of the text.

It is difficult to summarize this book fairly and adequately. Dewey aims to turn philosophical and ethical thinking on its head. His primary claim is that ethical thinking needs to be based upon human nature and that prior thinkers, both secularly and religiously inclined, have failed to do this. These thinkers would likely agree with the importance to be placed on human nature, but they would deny that they have ignored or flouted it. They would likely resist Dewey's understanding of human nature as well as his understanding of and emphasis on science.

Dewey's account of human nature is heavily shaped by the natural sciences, particularly by the theory of evolution, by psychology, and by what Dewey saw as the potential of the social sciences to assist in human understanding. His thought is what philosophers critical of him might call "psychologistic" because it tends towards the blurring of boundaries between philosophy and scientific thinking. It is naturalistic in that Dewey sees human behavior as part of the natural, scientific world rather than in inhabiting some form of separate, perhaps supernatural or subjective realm in which the finding of the natural sciences do not apply. Dewey sees ethical or moral thinking come into play over a broad range of human activities -- whenever there is a choice of conduct to be made. He sees ethical issues in the first instance of having a form of immediacy about them -- what is sometimes called presentism. Dewey also has a conception of human personality or human nature in which the individual cannot be analyzed or considered separately from the community or culture of which he or she is a part. Dewey adopts a strongly progressive political stance which seems to me integral to the position he develops in his book.

Dewey writes that "morality is largely concerned with controlling human nature" in matters of choices. As a psychologist, he emphasizes the importance of habit, as taught by a culture to its children from the day of their birth. Habit forms an ingrained way of controlling and channeling impulse. For Dewey, the powerful in a society impose their view of things on the weak (a highly postmodern position). When habit becomes ossified or unsatisfactory, individuals need to use intelligence to understand their situation and to try to do not "the good" but "the better". They need to muddle through a particular situation to improve their lot and to make a good a decision that will help them, rather than the habits and platitudes they have imbibed. Ethical thinking is tied to action rather than to claimed absolutes or to introspection. It is a help to making a choice when a bump appears in the road, and it is fallibalistic (subject to error) and changing with conditions.

Dewey develops his thought in part by distinguishing it from thinking he opposes. Most broadly, he opposes Platonism (even though Dewey loved to read Plato) and essentialism in ethics and in knowledge. He opposes appeals to transcendence, sectarian religious teachings, introspective withdrawal of ethical decision from action, and philosophical idealism of all types. He also has insightful, largely critical observations to make about Kantianism and the Categorical Imperative and about philosophical utilitarianism.

As the book proceeds, Dewey becomes more insistent upon the importance of the social sciences as providing a means for directing human action. He claims these sciences are new and undeveloped but that they will provide means of regulating and improving behavior as they progress. He sees and rejects claims that using the social sciences as a means of legislation and social control will invade individual autonomy and choice and constitute a form of "social engineering". Dewey's thinking of these matters had substantial influence. Many people, including myself, are uncomfortable with this and with the broad claims Dewey makes for the social sciences. Dewey's position that science constitutes the sole reliable source for understanding human behavior might also be questioned.

A reader does not have to agree with a book in all or even in some respects to learn from it. Dewey's book is provocative, thoughtful, and insightful as well as difficult. It is a major work of American philosophy that may be thought about and reread. It is a book that still rewards the effort required to read and struggle with it. I look forward to increasing my understanding of Dewey.

Robin Friedman

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Image Unavailable

Human Nature and Conduct (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading) Paperback – August 18, 2008

Similar items that may deliver to you quickly

Product details

Videos

Customer reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries