Existence, Value and Criticism

“As to truth, then, philosophy has no preeminent status; it is a recipient, not a donor” (p. 307).

Beede Falls, Fabruary 19th, 2011.

“If we are to recur to the Greek conceptions, the return must be a return with a difference.  It must surrender the identification of natural ends with good and perfection; recognizing that a natural end, apart from endeavor expressing choice, has no intrinsic eulogistic quality, but is the boundary which writes ‘Finis’ to a chapter of history inscribed by a moving system of energies.  Failure by exhaustion as well as by triumph may constitute an end; death, ignorance, as well as life, are finalities” (pp. 295-296) (emphasis mine).

In considering values (which Dewey writes are analogous to ends, “All that can be said of them concerns their generative conditions and the consequences to which they give rise” [p. 297]) Dewey suggest we consider the line of Greek thinking, however the differences we must apply to it seem to summarize Dewey’s position in this book.  I found it interesting (after your comment on my chapter 9 post) that he, in the second paragraph of this chapter, pointed to failure and death as ends.   He continues to summarize his argument:

Again, the return must abandon the notion of a predetermined limited number of ends inherently in an order of increasing comprehensiveness and finality.  It will have to recognize that natural termini are as infinitely numerous and varied as are the individual systems of action they delimit; and that since there is only relative, not absolute, impermeability and fixity of structure, new individuals with novel ends emerge in irregular procession.  It must be recognized that limits, closures, ends, are experimentally or dynamically determined, presenting, like the boundaries of political individuals or states, a moving adjustment of various energy-systems in their cooperative and competitive interactions, not something belonging to them of their own right.  Consequently, it will surrender the separation in nature from each other of contingency and regularity, the hazardous and the assured; it will avoid that regulation of them to distinct orders of Being which is characteristic of the classical tradition.  It will note that they intersect everywhere; that it is uncertainty and indeterminateness that create the need for and the sense of order and security; that whatever is most complete and liberal in being and possession is for that very reason most exposed to vicissitude, and most needful of watchful safeguarding art. (p. 296).

With this, Dewey quickly gives his conception of the hand philosophy has to play. 

“…philosophy is inherently criticism, having its distinctive position among various modes of criticism in its generality; a criticism of criticisms, as it were” (p. 298).

“It does not annihilate the differences among beliefs; it does not set up the fact that an object believed in is perforce found good as if it were a reason for belief.  On the contrary: the statement is preliminary.  The all-important matter is what lies back of and causes acceptance and rejection; whether or no there is method of discrimination and assessment which makes a difference in what is assented to and denied” (pp. 302-303).

“When the question is raised as to the ‘real’ value of the object for belief, the appeal is to criticism, intelligence” (p. 303).

“Its primary concern is to clarify, liberate and extend the goods which inhere in the naturally generated functions of experience.  It has no call to create a world of ‘reality’…”(p 305).

“As to truth, then, philosophy has no preeminent status; it is a recipient, not a donor” (p. 307).

“poetic meanings, moral meanings, a large part of the goods of life are matters of richness and freedom of meanings, rather than truth; a large part of our life is carried on in a realm of meanings to which truth and falsity as such are irrelevant” (p. 307).

The charge to philosophy is to liberate and extend the goods through intelligent criticism, through the arguments behind thoughtful choice.  It is to find meaning, not truth.  Thus far Dewey has avoided value, he answers the obvious question of what is good through the relations not of good and bad (which would be immediate ends in themselves and therefore unknowable,) but we could say “better” or “worse.”

“Any liking is choice, unwittingly performed.  There is no selection without rejection; interest and bias are selective, preferential” (p. 320).

“But when we recognize that in effect the assertion is that one is better than another thing, the issues shift to something comparative, relational, causal, intellectual and objective.  Immediately nothing is better or worse than anything else; it is just what it is” (pp. 320-321).

“To make a valuation, to judge appraisingly, is then to bring to conscious perception relations of productivity and resistance and thus to make value significant, intelligent and intelligible” (p. 321).

“…the arts, those of converse and literary arts which are enhanced continuations of social converse, have been the means by which goods are brought home to human perception” (p. 322).

Dewey concludes by urging us to test this mode of philosophic discourse in experience, to tie the other end of the vine of theory back to experience.   It falls somewhere between science and art, but it, like everything else, is held accountable to the results in experience.

“What the method of intelligence, thoughtful valuation will accomplish, if once it be tried, is for the result of trial to determine” (p. 326). 

“The import of such knowledge as we have acquired and such experience has been quickened by thought is to evoke and justify the trial” (p. 326).