Moral Philosophy Of The Concept Of "moral Self" As The Core Of Dewey

The Study on moral philosophy of pragmatism and John Dewey has invoked more and more attention in recent academic discussion. This dissertation focuses on Moral Self as a key concept on study of John Dewey's moral philosophy, which will be reinterpreted and reconstructed. In this process, what we concern are not only those concepts and questions, but also relating to the basic experience it reflects. Through this interpretation moral-self is not primarily regarded as a knowledge-affair and a pure mental affair, it represents interactions between the self and environments which he lives in, including natural and social conditions, and how the self tries to cope with his environments. Moral self, according to Dewey's position, is not only a cognitive affair, and its connotation is far wider than cognition and it includes our whole life and history. In Dewey's thought, Moral self means life activity, and the premier condition of the life activity is integration of life with its environment. The interdependent relations between self and his environment become start point of Dewey's philosophy; it's also his original intention to dispel the sharper separation between self and nature. But as we all know, Dewey's expression and interpretation on this subject are not organic and coincidence due to his far long academic career, especially in the first decade of last century, his thought turns out some critical changes. So, this reconstruction of his concept of moral self contains two different aspects, one is about how the moral self occurs and what's its generic traits and development in light of a textual analysis; on the other hand, this reconstruction based on a perspective of virtue ethics which will exam the characteristics of moral self and its primary virtues in light of a significant analysis.This dissertation is a study on Dewey's concept of moral self. It comprises the following parts.The introduction discusses the reason why I select Dewey's conception of moral self as my subject, and introduces the condition of the study on this subject and my new method and thought.The first chapter discusses the development of the concept of moral self in Dewey's whole philosophy background. We illustrate different thought resources of his understanding in different stages. The task of this chapter is to show how abundance and complexity Dewey's thought is. So, the traditional view is not sufficient and proper for his integrated idea, which interprets Dewey's thoughts as the transition from absolutism to experimentalism, then the process of accepting Hegel's philosophic method and then Darwin's theory of evolution and James's biological theory.The second and third chapters are the two ways of reconstruction of moral self.The second chapter discusses how the moral self is constructed in Dewey's moral philosophy. In this chapter, we find that the essence of self is his social property, and we interpret how the moral self occurs when the self encounters concrete problem in a certain environment. Dewey shows that how one action becomes a moral conduct through reflection and deliberation and how important the habits and characters are. In sum, Dewey rejects a static isolated and closure concept of moral self. He insists that moral self is constructed through resolving every concrete problem properly in particular moral situation. But it doesn't mean that Dewey considered moral self as a pure product of our society and culture. In deed, what he really focuses on is how the moral self is made in the sense of society and morality. After all, Dewey emphases both moral self as an active intelligence and the importance of habits and characters as well, emphases both the interaction between moral self and environment which he actual lives in, and the renewal and creation of moral self as well.The third chapter discusses the reconstruction of moral self from a perspective of virtue ethics. This chapter emphases the virtue aspect of Dewey's moral philosophy which is neglected traditionally. It shows how different and distinct Dewey's virtue concept is through the analysis of his concepts of good and virtue. In Dewey's opinion, virtue is regarded as a mean between dogmatism and moral skepticism, and then we exam three unique virtues which are important for Dewey by this method. We consider at last how this virtue perspective results a new alternative for us besides right-based political liberalism and virtue-based communitarianism, and why we prefer to the communitarian liberalism Dewey provided.In the end of this dissertation I expound the theoretical contribution and the dilemma of Dewey's concept of moral self.