This struggle to deal with complex ranges of values that need to be harmonized and integrated or perhaps chosen or rejected altogether is what Dewey calls “deliberation.” This was another term that made people confuse his thought with the utilitarians’ emphasis on “calculation.” But it is quite different, and in no way is it some sort of algorithmic calculus such as Bentham imagined possible. Deliberation relies on a body of experience and our web of habits in order to explore, prior to acting, the various possible ways of responding to a situation. Dewey sometimes calls this “dramatic rehearsal in imagination.” In one of his major works on ethics, Human Nature and Conduct, Dewey keenly observes:
The poignancy of situations that evoke reflection lies in the fact that we really do not know the meaning of the tendencies that are pressing for action. We have to search, to experiment. Deliberation is a work of discovery. Conflict is acute; one impulse carries us one way into one situation, and another impulse takes us another way to a radically different objective result. Deliberation is not an attempt to do away with this opposition by reducing it to one amount. It is an attempt to uncover the conflict in its full scope and bearing. What we want to find out is what difference each impulse and habit imports, to reveal qualitative incompatibilities by detecting the different courses to which they commit us, the different dispositions they form and foster, the different situations into which they plunge us. In short, the thing at stake in any serious deliberation is not a difference of quantity, but what kind of person one is to become, what sort of self is in the making, what kind of world is in the making.2
This key point is almost universally neglected when Dewey is seen as a “consequentialist” like the utilitarians. The moral concern in deliberation is uncovering the various meanings and values at play in a situation and thus providing us the basis for what this or that action will mean and who we shall become.
This passage also shows, by the way, how Dewey differs from the existentialist position of Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre had argued that humans are radically free and we create our “essence” out of our existence; that is, we become what we are as a result of our choices. Choosing is our act of self-creation. But for Sartre this was an irrational act of pure will and something that each individual had to grapple with on his own. He gives the example of a young man, one of his students, who came to him during the war with a moral dilemma: should he join the Résistance (the “resistance” movement against the Germans) or stay at home and care for his aging mother?3 Sartre’s response was “I can’t choose for you.” Sartre regarded the young man as trying to evade his freedom; but even in the act of choosing to go to Sartre and not a priest, he had in effect chosen. What the young man was probably hoping for was someone to help him figure out the implications of each possible decision; that is, the meaning of each possible choice. It is too bad he was not able to go to Dewey instead of Sartre. For both thinkers we could say that when we choose we choose the self we will be, except that Dewey thinks this is a deliberative process, an exploration in thought and dialogue with others, while for Sartre it is a lonely and irrational act of will.
As we deliberate, the role of ideals becomes clear. Ideals are not pure fixed realities but genuine possibilities of the present. Insofar as an ideal becomes truly operative in our present situation, various aspects of the situation are transformed into what Dewey calls “ends-in-view.” That is, the meaning of something in the present situation is transformed by the possibilities it has of realizing some ideal. Let us say I wish to befriend someone I like at work. The ideal here would be friendship—the enjoyment of companionship, enjoyment of each other’s company, and sharing of interests. The means at hand—the ends-in-view—could be asking the person to join me for lunch or a cup of coffee, engaging in conversation that indicates interest in what he or she does or cares about or offering to do small favors. Another example could be that one’s ideal is to build a house. At various stages pouring cement, setting up wooden frames, laying bricks, and so on would be the ends-in-view of the same ideal: the complete house. What Dewey wants to stress by this term is that nothing is a “mere means”; the end is the outgrowth of the means and in reflecting on the means, we need also to reflect on the end. Dewey is often thought to have held that we somehow seize on an end and then coldly use whatever can function as a means to realize it. This is the opposite of what he said. Dewey constantly emphasized not only that means and ends are woven together in intelligent conduct but also that ends themselves must undergo reflection and deliberation as they are realized. After all, the person one thought would be a good friend may turn out to be another sort of individual entirely; the actual house one lives in may be quite a different reality from the ideal one thought to bring forth.
Deliberation, then, involves the use of imagination to reveal the possibilities of the present situation and the various ideals or meanings it might come to embody. Dewey’s ethics, then, is really an ethics of meaning. The environment in which we act is not merely the immediate physical one, here and now. The environment includes past history and future possibilities. Intelligence is our ability to interpret the present in light of those two temporal horizons. The more we grasp the past history involved in the present situation the more likely we are to understand better the conflicts it carries. Knowledge is a highly relevant aspect of ethics for Dewey. Knowledge does not simply give us the past history but provides a more accurate basis for projecting possibilities in the present. The more we grasp the range of possibilities for action, the more we might select a course of action that realizes value and meaning, harmonizing the conflict. Thus knowledge, imagination, and ideals work together to constitute moral intelligence. This is why the popular understanding of the term pragmatist is so inappropriate to Dewey’s ethics.
“Morals means growth of conduct in meaning . . .,” says Dewey. “It is all one with growing. Growing and growth are the same fact expanded in actuality or telescoped in thought. In the largest sense of the word, morals is education.”4 We can now see why Dewey thought education to be of such central importance to philosophy in general and ethics in particular. Strangely, he stands in company of only a few other major philosophers who have agreed on this point: Plato, Rousseau, and, perhaps, Aristotle (Aristotle’s Politics breaks off just as he brings up the topic). Dewey is close to Aristotle, especially in terms of his view that ethics is ultimately about moral character. With Aristotle, Dewey assigned a central place in ethics to the formation of the right habits. Whereas Aristotle tended to focus on habits to discern the “mean relative to oneself,” Dewey stressed the formation of habits of thoughtfulness, conscientiousness, and shared inquiry. This for him was the key to democracy—not a set of governmental principles. In a strange way Dewey is in agreement with Plato: the best society is that in which intelligence guides conduct. Plato, however, had indulged in a magnificent but dangerous hypothesis in his Republic. He had asked the question: “What would a society look like IF a science of justice existed?” He is often mistaken to have thought presumptuously THAT he actually possessed such a science, when it is absolutely clear he did not (Republic 506e). Dewey asks the question: “What habits should a society cultivate in which there is no finished science of morals?” His conclusion is, a society that is disposed to inquiry, exploration of possibilities, discussion, and criticism and reevaluation of prior ends in light of actual outcomes. It is a society that can grow intelligently.
The aim of moral education for Dewey is to become a moral self, to have a moral character. Insofar as the Aristotelian idea of “virtue ethics” has been a subject of philosophical interest in recent times, largely in light of the perceived dead-end debate between utilitarianism and deontological ethics, it would be more accurate to place Dewey along with Aristotle in the class of “virtue ethicists.” Virtue ethics focuses on the ideal of moral character, not specific rules or specific actions. One may donate a large sum of money to a worthy charity, but if one does it by accident or in order to gain popula
rity, the act has different moral significance than it does if one does it from pure generosity and compassion. It is the character that reveals the meaning of the act. If the Once-ler had been convinced by the Lorax that it was in his economic self-interest to save the Truffula Trees, he still would have been acting out of a selfish motive rather than one taking into account the needs of other creatures and the welfare of the environment.
The self should be wise or prudent, looking to an inclusive satisfaction and hence subordinating the satisfaction of an immediately urgent single appetite; it should be faithful in acknowledgement of the claims involved in its relations with others; it should be solicitous, thoughtful, in the award of praise and blame, use of approbation and disapprobation, and, finally, should be conscientious and have the active will to discover new values and to revise former notions.5
As for Aristotle, the self is the interwoven set of habits that provides the structure for our organized responses to situations. Habits are not passive tools but active powers; they project lines of action into the future. Some sets of habits simply replicate themselves in conduct. But other habits move us toward growth. Aristotle believed in a fixed essence of the species, whereas Dewey knew that life was an ongoing, open-ended process. Thus Dewey stressed the habits of growth as of key moral importance. The self is revealed in its actions; actions show what we truly and genuinely care about. Dewey dismisses the idea that haunted Kant: the possibility our most generous actions might spring from “self-interest.” The self is its interests, says Dewey. The question is what kind of interests we have. If I care for my own immediate gratification over the needs or feelings of others, I am selfish; if I care for the needs and feelings of others, I am altruistic. The issue is not whether I follow or repress my “self-interest.” The issue is whether I have a pinched and narrow self or a broad and sympathetic one. As Dewey says, “The real moral question is what kind of self is being furthered and formed.”6
A final comment can be made about Dewey’s concept of freedom. Too often freedom is simply treated as the absence of restraints. But as Plato well knew, we may be prisoners of ignorance and bad desires. Dewey would agree. The key to freedom is not simply doing what we want but being able to do what is good. A baby left alone at birth is not thereby “free”—it dies. It must be cared for and raised to become a full human being. Thus acquiring habits is a key to freedom: we could not speak English without having learned it; we could not play a guitar unless we had learned how. It is because we were taught a language in our past that we can go on and learn others. It is by learning how to play a guitar that I might go on and learn another instrument. Thus the education of desire is a key aspect of freedom; desires need wise habits, and wise habits help us to evaluate past desires. Once again, education becomes a central topic for Dewey: a culture that believes in freedom needs to believe in education, the sort of education that helps cultivate growing, reflective, thoughtful, inquiring selves.
“Pragmatist ethics,” understood in its Deweyan rather than popular sense, offers an important alternative to most of contemporary moral theory. Dewey’s ideas suffered an eclipse for nearly half a century until a growing number of scholars from a variety of fields began to rediscover them. In time, ignorant misconceptions may be replaced by sounder readings, and once again ethics may actually speak to what Dewey termed “the problems of men” and not the problems of professional puzzle solvers. With his emphasis on education, Dewey would have found Dr. Seuss’s wonderful books as laying the foundations for the development of thoughtful, concerned moral characters.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Grinch’s Change of Heart: Whodunit?
Anthony Cunningham
In How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, we find a creature who experiences a remarkable metanoia, a profound change of heart. The same creature who would steal Christmas and delight in the stealthy scheme at the great expense of the Whos eventually returns all the trappings of Christmas and even carves the “roast beast” with the joyful denizens of Who-ville. By the end of the story, the Grinch is certainly a new and better Grinch. We have similar examples of such transformations for the better in other well-known stories. Like the Grinch, Charles Dickens’s Ebenezer Scrooge experiences a Christmas conversion, turning from his miserly, misanthropic ways toward love, generosity, and good cheer. In much the same way, on his trip to Damascus to persecute Christians, the biblical Saul literally sees the light and becomes a new man.
Such dramatic changes are not confined to literature and biblical stories. Real-life cases are plentiful enough. George Wallace, the Alabama governor who defiantly stood in the doorway of the University of Alabama in 1963 to prevent Vivian Malone and James Hood from enrolling later renounced his staunch segregationist views and apologized to black civil rights leaders for his ways. Oskar Schindler, the crafty businessman who sought wealth and power and who was quite willing to exploit the lucrative opportunities that the war and the Nazi oppression of Jews offered in this vein, eventually spent his great fortune saving Jews from annihilation. Such stories are hardly the mundane stuff of everyday life, but neither are they exotic. They are simply famous examples on public stages. We certainly recognize them when we see them. The undeniable fact is that sometimes people, even everyday people, change profoundly for the better, and sometimes the change is less a matter of slow, gradual evolution and more a matter of virtual revolution. In the Grinch’s case, this is precisely what we find—a sudden change of heart where he turns his back on his mean ways and embraces a new life and self.
We know that this kind of thing can happen, so by thinking about the Grinch and his kind, we are not just speculating on one particular make-believe character, a fanciful product of one creative man’s vivid imagination. This sort of thing is not simply make-believe. Nevertheless, the phenomenon is always remarkable because, after all, people rightly say that it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks. Well-entrenched characters tend to resist amendment, gradual or otherwise. In this light, understanding how and why people might experience a profound change of heart can help put some flesh on the bones of a better understanding of something extraordinary about us—our capacity for change for the better against such tall odds. And this kind of appreciation might also say something meaningful about our ethical attachments and commitments in general. So with this in mind, let’s see if we can understand the Grinch and his kind.
The Grinch’s Change of Heart: Some General Anatomy
First of all, notice that we can separate some important elements of such stories. For one thing, changes can always vary greatly so far as the sheer extent of the change is concerned. In a word, people can change just a little, and they can change a whole lot. Obviously, the big changes are usually the most remarkable ones, but even small changes can be most welcome as an initial step in the right direction. As they say, long journeys start with the first step.
Moreover, aside from the sheer amplitude of a change, alterations can be a matter of degree or a matter of kind. For instance, if I’ve always given $20 a year to the poor and I suddenly increase my contribution to $20,000, the change is a big one, but it is fundamentally a matter of degree: In this case, I do more of what I’ve always done. However, if I have never given to the poor in my whole life and I suddenly change my ways, then the change is not just a matter of degree, but a change in kind: I do something different, something I’ve never done before, and not simply more of what I’ve always done. Notice that in the Grinch’s case, the change is a change in kind and it’s also a big one. He goes from hating a Who-ville Christmas to happily joining their celebration of the holiday.
Changes can also vary in terms of their pace. In this sense, think about human bodies. We certainly expect them to change. If we found a group of octogenarians who looked just like twenty-somethings, we’d be very surprised (and no doubt they’d be very pleased). On the other hand, if we suddenly aged twenty years overnight, we’d be shocked (and dismayed). Where the body is concerned, we expect
most changes associated with aging to be fairly gradual, even if they are virtually inevitable. For the most part, we expect as much of human character, whether the changes are for the better or the worse. Rapid character changes tend to be the great exception, rather than the norm, particularly where changes for the better are concerned. This makes sense because, like a house of cards, it takes a lot longer to build character than to knock it down.
Notice that the most extraordinary changes of heart are like the Grinch’s: profound changes in kind that take place over a relatively short period of time. In the Grinch’s particular case, the change seems just shy of instantaneous. From the top of Mount Crumpit, he listens on Christmas morning and hears the denizens of Who-ville singing despite the fact that he has stolen all their presents and Christmas trappings. He puzzles over the paradox until his “puzzler” is sore because he was certain that his scheme would obliterate their Christmas. Finally he comes around to the idea that maybe Christmas doesn’t come from a store. Perhaps, Christmas means a little bit more than just that for Who-ville, and this realization somehow induces a dramatic change in him. Hence, in almost no time at all, the Grinch comes to see the world in a radically new way. The creature who races down the mountain at breakneck speed to return all the presents, decorations, and Christmas goodies, and who eventually carves the roast beast, is a new Grinch so far as his character is concerned. Again, we know from real life that this kind of thing can happen, so the vital question is how and why.
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