How to Cultivate a Good Character—Pragmatically:
Dewey and Franklin on the Virtues
For publication in Education and Culture
Shane J. Ralston, Ph.D.
Wright College, Woolf University
Abstract
Philosophical pragmatists rarely receive credit for their contribution to virtue ethics. But
perhaps they should. How did America’s philosopher of democracy, John Dewey, and one of
its most famous elder statesmen, Benjamin Franklin, advise troubled souls in search of
moral improvement? According to James Campbell, Dewey and Franklin recommended the
cultivation of inquiry-specific virtues, specifically imagination and fallibilism, thereby
transforming the moral agent into a more effective ethical problem-solver. For Gregory
Pappas, open-mindedness and courage resemble Deweyan virtues, since both are integral
to the pragmatist’s ideal of a balanced character. However, Pappas contends that Dewey
would reject any procedure whereby the virtues are isolated and cultivated individually—a
qualification that if applied to Franklin’s virtue project undermines his entire method of moral
development. Cultivating virtue, on Pappas’ reading of Dewey’s ethics, must contribute to
the integrated whole of a person’s character. The implication of the imperfect DeweyFranklin comparison is that Dewey is not a strict virtue ethicist. Nevertheless, Dewey’s and
Franklin’s respective models of moral improvement offer valuable insight and assistance to
the moral agent wanting to cultivate a good character—or so I argue.
Keywords
John Dewey – Benjamin Franklin - normative ethics - virtue ethics – moral development –
democracy–communication
Word Count: 10,331
Introduction
The call to overcome custom with reasoned evaluation of consequences must be
supplemented, [Benjamin] Franklin thought, with the cultivation of individual virtue.
The basic necessity for individual virtue is that rationality alone is not enough to
guarantee moral conduct.
–J. Campbell1
It is because of his organic model of character that Dewey resisted the approach to
ethics and to moral education that consists in listing and cultivating a set of moral
positive traits of character or virtues.
–G. Pappas2
When one thinks of virtue ethicists, the names of Aristotle, Cicero and, more recently,
MacIntyre and Hursthouse come to mind. Philosophical pragmatists are rarely included
among their ranks. Even the contemporary revival of virtue ethics—the so-called ‘aretaic
turn’—seems to lack a distinct vein of pragmatist influence. However, aretaic ethics has
occupied a prominent place in several pragmatists’ ethical theories.
In this article, I examine the roles of virtue and character in John Dewey’s and
Benjamin Franklin’s respective normative ethical theories with the aim of clarifying the
possibilities and limitations of pragmatist virtue ethics. According to James Campbell, Dewey
and Franklin recommended the cultivation of inquiry-specific virtues, specifically imagination
and fallibilism, in order to transform the moral agent into a more effective ethical problemsolver. For Gregory Pappas, open-mindedness and courage resemble Deweyan virtues,
since both are integral to the pragmatist’s ideal of a balanced character. Pappas contends
that Dewey would reject any procedure whereby the virtues are isolated and cultivated
individually—a qualification that if applied to Franklin’s virtue project undermines his method
of moral development. Cultivating virtue, on Pappas’s reading of Dewey’s ethics, must
contribute to the integrated whole of a person’s character. The implication of the imperfect
Dewey-Franklin comparison is that Dewey is not strictly a virtue ethicist. Nevertheless,
Dewey and Franklin’s models of moral improvement offer valuable insight to the troubled
moral agent wanting to cultivate a good character—or so I argue.
1
The article is organized as follows. In the first section, I present Dewey and
Franklin’s respective models of moral development and, specifically, their recommendations
for how to cultivate a good character. The second section addresses James Campbell’s and
Gregory Pappas’s separate treatments of the relationship between Dewey and Franklin’s
ethics; with Pappas implicitly rejecting a comparison and Campbell explicitly accepting it.
The third section applies a Dewey-Franklin analysis of virtue to an extremely practical virtuecandidate, asking: Is cleanliness truly an excellence of character? Finally, in the conclusion, I
argue that while Dewey cannot be classified strictly as a virtue ethicist, Franklin’s and
Dewey’s insights still offer practical guidance to the moral agent seeking to cultivate a good
character.
Dewey and Franklin on Moral Improvement
John Dewey and Benjamin Franklin’s respective models of moral improvement are not
identical. Furthermore, neither of them forms part of a pragmatist canon on virtue ethics. The
philosophical sophistication of Dewey’s axiological account starkly contrasts with Franklin’s
more common-sense approach to rendering advice on how to cultivate a good character.
For Dewey, ethics is both a method for moral improvement and a process of moral
judgment. It loosely resembles the pattern of experimental inquiry: (i) identification of a
problem, (ii) formation of a hypothesis, (iii) working out the implications of the hypothesis and
(iv) testing the hypothesis.3 “[T]he moral phase of the problem,” Dewey notes, is just “the
question of values and ends.”4 Values direct choice and action when existing habits prove
unhelpful or obstructive to good conduct.
Individuals test their value judgments in lived experience, by (i) acting in accordance
with them, (ii) observing the outcomes, and (iii) evaluating the degree to which they are
acceptable.5 In the process of evaluation, ‘valuings’ of objects, actions and persons are
converted into ‘valuations’; what is subjective and immediately (or unreflectively)
experienced transforms into what is objective and reflectively experienced (or mediated by
2
intelligent habits); the positive outcome of which is moral improvement or what Dewey calls
‘growth.’6
Value judgments can be assessed in three ways: (i) naturalistically, (ii) instrumentally
and (iii) conventionally. First, a determination of their worth can be based on whether they
satisfy a naturalistic criterion of success—that is, whether they cultivate habits that make
humans better adapted to their natural and social environments.7 They can also be
assessed instrumentally—that is, in terms of their efficacy or success in achieving favored
ends. Since deliberation is abductive (or concerned with hypothesis formation and testing), it
is instrumental in the sense of being aimed at experimental confirmation or disconfirmation
(relative to tentative, not fixed, standards of acceptability), but not in the sense of satisfying
an absolute standard or realizing some final end.8 Finally, value judgments can be
evaluated conventionally, that is, by recourse to widely approved or potentially approvable
community standards.9 In sum, pragmatist ethics for Dewey is a form of experimental
inquiry, or a problem-solving method, a way improving our value judgments relative to these
three criteria of acceptability.
So, what is the place of virtue in Dewey’s ethical theory? In the 1908 Ethics, Dewey
and his co-author, James Hayden Tufts, wrote: “It is an attribute or disposition of character,
or the self, not a trait of results experienced, and in general such an attribute is called
Virtue.”10 By 1922, in his book on moral psychology, Human Nature and Conduct, Dewey
refines and naturalizes this earlier account:
All virtues and vices are habits which incorporate objective forces. They are
interactions of elements contributed by the makeup of an individual with elements
supplied by the outdoor world. They can be studied as objectively as physiological
functions, and they can be modified by change of either personal or social
elements.11
As a habit, virtue is no different than vice; it issues forth in habitual behavior.12 Where the
virtue differs is that in satisfying the previously mentioned criteria, the mere valuing, prizing
or unreflective habit transforms into a positively valued object, valuation, reflective objective
3
and outcome of inquiry. Thus, when the habit contributes to acceptable or good action, it is a
virtue. Since the valuation process is fallible, the designation of a habit as virtuous is always
tentative, open to revaluation and subject to possible correction at a future time. Character
is also the outcome of this iterated valuation process: “For it makes us see that character is
the name given to the working interaction of habits.”13
In the essay “Three Independent Factors in Morals,” Dewey expresses his
reservations about embracing a strict virtue theory. The cultivation of a “scheme of virtues,”
he says, is only one of three “independent variables” in moral philosophy, including the
imposition of duties or “demands” (deontology) and the realization of ends or “goods”
(consequentialism). Instead of acknowledging the utility of all three, dependent upon the
specific and unique demands of emergent situations, moral philosophers “postulate one
single principle as an explanation” and solution of all morally problematic situations. Their
mistake lies in “reducing all the elements in moral situations to a single commensurable
principle,” when the qualities of these situations tend to be so diverse and irreducibly
complex as to defy such “oversimplified” or reductionist accounts.
Instead, moral problem solving demands a host of tools, even an entire tool-kit—
whether deontological, consequentialist or virtue-based instrumentalities—to address the
multitude of problematic conditions that can populate any particular moral situation.
Moreover, moral problem solving and the cultivation of virtue are social activities meant to
enrich the experience of community life.14 Therefore, Dewey and contemporary Deweyans
would not tell the troubled moral agent to merely cultivate virtue; nor would they recommend
that she cultivate one specific category of virtue to the exclusion of others. Aristotle’s
distinction between the intellectual virtues, or character excellences that make one skilled at
discovering the truth, and the moral virtues, or character dispositions that make one capable
of performing good actions, is on Dewey’s account a false dualism.15 The two are not
different in kind, only in degree.16
4
In his autobiography, Benjamin Franklin reports that in the 1730s he “conceiv’d the
bold and arduous Project of arriving at moral Perfection” by methodically cultivating a set of
virtues.17 Similar to Aristotle and Dewey, Franklin understood virtues as habits or skills, and
the way to improving them as analogous to physical training or to the familiar saying
‘practice, practice, practice . . . makes perfect!’18
Franklin’s recommended path to cultivating a good character is methodical. In a
notebook, he “allotted a page for each of the virtues” and on the horizontal axis of a table he
placed the first letter for each day of the week and on the vertical axis the first letter of each
of the thirteen virtues. His rationale for the “little book[’s]” design was that he “might mark,
by a little black spot, every fault I found upon examination to have been committed
respecting that virtue upon that day.”19 With each week, he worked on a single virtue,
improving his daily habits of action, avoiding vices or faults and “keep[ing] [successive] . . .
lines clear of spots,” thereby signaling incremental progress “in the Means and Manner of
Obtaining Virtue.”20 Franklin describes the satisfying consummation of a single cycle in the
virtue cultivating process:
Proceeding thus to the last [virtue], I could go thro’ a course complete in thirteen
weeks, and four courses in a year. And like him who, having a garden to weed, does
not attempt to eradicate all the bad herbs at once, which would exceed his reach and
his strength, but works on one of the beds at a time, and, having accomplished the
first, proceeds to a second, so I should have, I hoped, the encouraging pleasure of
seeing on my pages the progress I made in virtue, by clearing successively my lines
of their spots, till in the end, by a number of courses, I should be happy in viewing a
clean book, after a thirteen weeks’ daily examination.21
Franklin envisioned his own moral development as a long, difficult and self-critical process of
transforming external behavior, not realizing some internal state (such as purity of heart or
divine grace), to such an extent that even the appearance of cultivating a virtue was
tantamount to the reality.22
Commentator Norman Fiering argues that Franklin’s model of moral improvement
was not original, with the exception of two innovations.23 One, he analyzed the virtues into
smaller “units of behavior” than anyone before him.24 While the ancient cardinal virtues are
5
only four in number (justice, fortitude, prudence and temperance) and the Christian virtues
are seven (add faith, hope and charity), Franklin thought that it would be easier to master
them if they were reduced to “rather more names with fewer Ideas,” resulting in his favorite
thirteen (temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice,
moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity and humility).25 For each virtue, he attaches a
maxim or “Precept” to guide the virtue-seeker’s conduct. For instance, industry is
accompanied by the instruction “Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut
off all unnecessary actions.”26 The briefest maxim, for humility, recommends that the virtueseeker “Imitate Jesus and Socrates,” in a spirit similar to Linda Zagzebski’s theory of
exemplarist virtue ethics.27 Notably absent from Franklin’s list are many of the classic Greek
or aristocratic virtues, such as wisdom, courage and magnanimity.28
The second innovation was that he conceived the development of virtue as a lexically
ordered and instrumental process, whereby, in Franklin’s own words, “the Acquisition of
some [virtues] might facilitate the acquisition of certain others.”29 Once cultivated,
temperance makes the acquisition of silence much easier; likewise, resolution once acquired
enables the cultivation of all the other virtues, since the virtue-seeker “keep[s] . . . firm in . . .
[his] Endeavours.”30 Even though Franklin cast the method as an individual undertaking, its
execution and benefits are quintessentially social.31 The cumulative effect of cultivating the
virtues is a cascade of benefits for society generally, including greater social order and
collective welfare.
The genius of Franklin’s virtue project is that it avails the troubled moral agent of a
precise method, a concrete procedure or practical technique for improving her character. In
Franklin’s brief essay “The Morals of Chess,” he insists that if the game is played regularly
and “according to the rules” then the player will develop foresight, circumspection, caution
and perseverance.32 Still, mere acquaintance with the rules of a game or a method for
cultivating virtue does not guarantee that a good character will be within easy reach. As
6
Franklin’s own experience attests, to employ the method with even marginal success
demands hard work and, inevitably, some amount of failure.33
Even though they both shared a commitment to method, Franklin and Dewey’s
approaches to moral development were neither perfectly the same nor wholly different.
Rather than distinguish between the intellectual and the moral virtues, following Aristotle,
Franklin, similar to Dewey, treats the two Peripatetic categories—dispositions to find the
truth and dispositions to be good—as a distinction without a difference. Also, both Dewey
and Franklin rejected the view that there is a single, supreme moral principle.34 However, it
would be an oversimplification to claim that their approaches to moral improvement are
identical. Unlike Dewey, Franklin never articulated a general theory of ethics. While he
intended to write a treatise on virtue (titled “The Art of Virtue”), he never left more than a half
dozen pages of reflections on the topic, most appearing in his autobiography.35
Nevertheless, Franklin did justify his method for moral improvement in a letter to a friend,
stating that “Men don’t become very good or very bad in an Instant, both vicious and virtuous
Habits being acquired by Length of Time and repeated Acts.”36
Campbell and Pappas on the Dewey-Franklin Comparison
That there are genuine similarities between Dewey and Franklin’s models of moral
improvement—what I call the ‘Dewey-Franklin comparison’—is by no means self-evident.
Two recent commentators, James Campbell and Gregory Pappas, reveal how the
comparison succeeds and falters.
In his essay “The Pragmatism of Benjamin Franklin” and book Recovering Benjamin
Franklin, Campbell’s aims to demonstrate that Ben Franklin’s thought and writings
anticipated the philosophy of American pragmatists, particularly John Dewey. It is “fair to
categorize him [Benjamin Franklin] as a pragmatist and a philosopher,” he states, “and to
treat him as one who deserves a place in our discussions of American philosophy.”37 On the
topic of virtue, Campbell also sees Dewey and Franklin as fellow travellers. For them, the
virtues of pragmatic inquiry reflect parallels between scientific and moral inquiry.
7
In “The Pragmatism of Benjamin Franklin,” Campbell shows how Franklin’s insights
as an experimental scientist, especially apparent in his works on electricity, parlayed into an
equally impressive understanding of moral imagination. He writes: “As an experimentalist,
he [Benjamin Franklin] could hardly maintain that he knew that he was right. His point,
rather, is about disseminating information and suggestions to offer those who would like to
change a sense of the range of possibilities.”38 Not being too sure that one is correct (i.e.,
fallibilism) and imagining a “range of possibilities” (i.e., imagination) are virtues of pragmatic
inquiry—virtues that spring forth from Franklin’s work as an experimental scientist, an ethicist
and a statesman, and can serve as a guide for the moral agent struggling to improve her
character.39 Campbell demonstrates that Dewey’s and Franklin’s pragmatic virtues,
imagination and fallibilism, apply to moral subject-matter, specifically, and the activity of
moral problem solving, generally.40 Similar to Dewey’s ethical theory, Franklin’s virtue
project not only recommends the cultivation of personal habits of good conduct, but also
indicates cascading benefits for the entire community in terms of public-spirited projects and
efforts to “cooperative[ly] advance . . . the common good.”41
In contrast to Franklin, though, Dewey eschews any explicit list or schedule of
virtues. One reason for this omission is that Dewey conceived the precise content of the
virtues as contingent on the conditions in actual, morally problematic situations. In his book
Dewey’s Ethics and essay “Open-mindedness and Courage: Complementary Virtues,”
Gregory Pappas provides an expansive, and for the most part accurate, interpretation of
Dewey’s ethical theory, including a Deweyan account of how to cultivate an integrated moral
character. He demonstrates that moral agents seek to balance extreme positions witnessed
in past, morally problematic situations. For instance, experiences witnessing rash actions
and extreme cowardice condition the courageous soldier to seek a more measured
approach to facing danger in the field of battle. Consequently, value judgments that “proceed
from a well-developed character are judgments funded by previous experience.”42
8
Pappas extrapolates from Dewey’s ethical writings two “complementary virtues”: (i)
courage and (ii) open-mindedness.43 Dewey was more partial to the Greek virtues—
specifically courage—than Franklin; though he balanced this partiality for an aristocratic
virtue with a dose of what Pappas calls “democratic humility” or the humble admission that
regardless of our station in life we all have equal moral worth.44 For Aristotle, military
courage was a simulacra (or copy without an original) for genuine courage—a position that is
closer to Franklin’s view that the appearance of having cultivated a virtue (e.g., feigned
humility) could substitute for the real behavior (i.e., genuine humility).45 For the Deweyan,
having a courageous character means that the moral agent is disposed to face precarious
and uncertain life experiences with confidence, an experimental attitude and openness to
“constant readjustment.”46 The virtue of open-mindedness signifies a general “willingness to
be affected by participation in the new” or that the moral agent assumes a flexible stance
from which to courageously act in novel and uncertain moral situations.47 Still, Pappas
concedes that while Dewey articulated these two virtues, he did not expressly catalogue
them and that the cultivation of virtue is not the sole factor in moral decision making.48
Pappas acknowledges that Dewey advised against any moral theory with a fixed
schedule of the virtues necessary for cultivating a good (or balanced) character. Those
virtues listed and pursued independently of all others, or apart from the organic whole of the
agent’s character, can quickly revert to vices.49 In Dewey’s words,
[t]he mere idea of a catalogue of different virtues commits us to the notion that virtues
may be kept apart, pigeon-holed in water-tight compartments. In fact virtuous traits
interpenetrate one another; this unity is involved in the very idea of integrity of
character.50
On this point, too, Dewey’s account of the virtues appears in opposition to Franklin’s.
Though the accompanying aphorisms serve as guides, they do not specify exactly how to
act consistent with Franklin’s enumerated virtues. Consequently, the potential for hypocrisy
increases as a factor of the virtue’s ambiguity and the actor’s ability to rationalize her ethical
transgressions ex post.51
9
However, Pappas’s comments on Dewey’s argument against an explicit schedule of
virtues (beyond its incompatibility with nurturing the whole character) are sparse. Indeed,
Dewey’s rejection of any attempt to catalogue the virtues is not as categorical as Pappas
suggests, and indeed does make room for a “tentative” listing of virtues. Dewey
distinguishes “customary morality” which often relies on such “a list or catalogue of . . .
virtues” and “reflective morality” which stops short of giving “a fixed meaning [to the virtues],
because each expresses an interest in objects and institutions which are changing.”52
Therefore, as an object of reflective morality or an objective of moral inquiry, a schedule of
virtues—whether Franklin’s or some other—is permissible insofar as it remains flexible, not
fixed, in the face of what is contingent and novel in our moral experience—that is, the
unforeseen morally problematic situation.
Is Cleanliness a Virtue?
A pragmatist model of virtue demonstrates its value insofar as it helps to solve ethical
problems. One problem is how to identify a disposition or habit as prima facie virtuous. Not
all habits are virtues. But some are. Most virtues (cardinal, Christian and Greek) are
amenable to traditional virtue ethical analyses, such as whether the excellence of character
produces happiness (eudaimonistic), reflects proper motivation (agent-based) or aims at
tractable and morally worthy ends (target-based). Franklin’s wholly practical virtues, such as
cleanliness and frugality, prove more challenging, since they appear to lack a clear
axiological orientation.
Is cleanliness truly a virtue? Cleanliness—unlike, for instance, humility or courage—
seems to lack moral valence. Cleanliness or its opposite (vice), slovenliness, are not typical
targets of moral judgment. While most acknowledge that it is prudent to exercise good
hygiene, the practice is by no means morally obligatory. When a moral evaluation includes
the terms “clean” or “dirty” it is often for rhetorical, not ethical, purposes (e.g., “that dirty
politician”), indicating some other morally relevant property (e.g., corruption). Standards of
cleanliness also vary from one time period to another, one generation to the next as well as
10
within and between different geographical areas and cultural contexts. In addition,
evaluations of cleanliness are typically indexed to social rank. Less well-off, working-class
people often perform jobs that are “dirty” (mechanic, plumber, janitor), while the more
educated and financially secure have the luxury of working in “clean” offices
(businesspeople, professors, accountants).53 Honest or “clean” living, however, is often
associated with the former, not the later. Hence the saying, “dirty hands, clean money.”
Notwithstanding ‘clean’ and ‘dirty’ in the vernacular, a good moral character appears utterly
divorced from evaluations of cleanliness.
In his autobiography, Franklin identified cleanliness as a virtue, followed by the
instructive aphorism: “Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes or habitation.”54 In her book
Chasing Dirt, Suellen Hoy traces Franklin’s obsession with hygiene to health and safety
concerns in his hometown:
He [Franklin] had lamented the condition of Philadelphia’s streets, which were
quagmires of mud after a rain and offensively dusty when dry, and at one point
personally paid “a poor industrious Man” to keep “the pavement clean, by sweeping it
twice a week.” Franklin believed that personal cleanliness, even in small things, led
to “Human Felicity.”55
Cleanliness, according to Franklin, facilitates human happiness (eudaimonia). In the lexical
ordering of the thirteen virtues Cleanliness appears between Moderation and Tranquillity.
The positioning is intentional, not accidental. It indicates that a moderate disposition is
instrumental to cleanliness and, once cultivated, the virtue facilitates the development of a
tranquil disposition. In this respect, the target or aim of clean living is tranquillity. While
Franklin defined cleanliness in physical terms—body, attire and environs—it is possible,
especially given the aim of tranquillity, to interpret cleanliness more generously to include,
for instance, emotional housekeeping and mindfulness.
However, we should not accept that cleanliness is a virtue on Franklin’s authority
alone. A more philosophically sophisticated account of why cleanliness is a virtue can be
found in Dewey’s ethical theory. To determine whether cleanliness is an excellence of
character, Dewey would first ask whether it is a habit or disposition toward action.
11
Cleanliness is a tendency to respond to an unhygienic bodily state, dirty attire or a sullied
environment by restoring its previously hygienic, clean and untainted quality. So, it is a habit
that disposes an agent to inquiry and action. Next, Dewey would determine whether
incorporating the habit into the agent’s character leads to morally worthy action. Recall that
for Dewey judgments of an action’s excellence, goodness or rightness are conducted
naturalistically, instrumentally and conventionally. Value judgments concerning cleanliness
are no different.
Three questions follow from Dewey’s three standards:
1) Does the habit (in this case, cleanliness) make humans better adapted to their
natural and social environments?
2) Is the habit (cleanliness) effective at securing favored ends, such as personal
happiness and collective welfare?
3) Does the habit (cleanliness) accord with widely approved or potentially approvable
community standards?
If all these questions are answered in the affirmative, then Dewey would conclude that
cleanliness is a virtue. Of course, not all habits are virtues. In order to be a virtue, the
habitual disposition towards cleanliness, once incorporated into a person’s character, should
facilitate balance, flourishing and growth. As an empirical matter, cleanliness likely satisfies
these three standards. It promotes good hygiene, personal health and longer life, and it
resonates well in successful communities, which themselves promote high standards of
cleanliness. Therefore, in all probability, cleanliness for the pragmatist constitutes a virtue.
Unfortunately, Dewey’s account is limited insofar as it implicates contingent not universal
criteria of goodness (natural and social environment, favoured ends and community
standards). So, his defense of cleanliness as a virtue would be susceptible to the charge of
relativism.
12
The last criterion—whether the habit accords with widely approved or potentially
approvable community standards—goes to the heart of Dewey’s views on communication
and its role in a democracy. Although Franklin was committed to republicanism (a popular
government constrained by law and reason, particularly an assembly of elder statesmen or
senators), Dewey had a more far-reaching commitment to democracy, not as a set of
institutions, but as an aspirational ideal for realizing the potentialities of all members of a
community. In The Public and Its Problems, he distinguishes political democracy and the
social idea of democracy: “We have had occasion to refer in passing to the distinction
between democracy as a social idea and political democracy as a system of government.
The two are, of course, connected. The idea remains barren and empty save as it is
incarnated in human relationships. Yet in discussion they may be distinguished.”56 Next, he
defines political democracy as “those traditional political institutions” which include “general
suffrage, elected representatives [and] majority rule.”57 Dewey connects political democracy
to the social idea of democracy and communication, the ability of citizens to realize personal
growth and collective empowerment through the cultivation of habits of deliberation. While
cleanliness as a virtue might lack political content, cleanliness can become a topic of
democratic communication, as when a pandemic or health emergency requires citizen
deliberation about the best precautions to ensure a community’s safety.
Conclusion
I would like to close the article by considering two interpretations of Dewey’s ethics as a
precursor to contemporary ethics of character or virtue, and then argue that both are
mistaken. As mentioned, in the 1980s, a revival of virtue ethics took place—referred to as
‘the aretaic turn’—revealed in the writings of Bernard Mayo, Elizabeth Anscombe, Alasdair
MacIntyre, Phillipa Foot, Christina Hoff Sommers ad Rosalind Hursthouse, among others.58
For Stephen Carden and John Teehan, John Dewey anticipated the aretaic turn.
Carden identifies Dewey as a virtue ethicist who “regarded the virtues and the development
of character as primary moral ideas.”59 Despite Carden’s claim, Dewey did not believe that
13
the virtues were “primary moral ideas.” In fact, they and their sum total, character, were
derivative of the process of moral judgment, or valuation. As revealed in the essay “Three
Independent Factors in Morals,” virtue for Dewey was only one of three “independent
variables” in moral decision making. So, to agree with Carden would mean denying the
influence of rights-based demands and utilitarian considerations in moral choice—exactly
what Dewey warned against.60 On Teehan’s eliminativist reading, the development of the
virtues is for Dewey “the only morally acceptable choice” for ultimately improving our
“functioning” as moral problem-solvers.61 In response to Carden and Teehan, it should be
restated that while virtue for Dewey is a factor in moral decision making and one product of
the valuation process, it is not the only factor or the sole product responsible for moral
growth.62 Dewey deployed a method, an instrument or a means by which moral agents
could strive to improve themselves morally—and one feature of that method, among others,
is the cultivation of a good character. Hence, he was not a virtue ethicist.63
Dewey and Franklin would agree that a good character is the product of an ongoing
project of self-improvement; that habit and virtue are intimately connected, if not identical;
and that Aristotle’s dichotomy between the intellectual and moral virtues is a distinction
without a proper difference. However, Dewey and Franklin’s respective accounts of virtue
part company on other fronts, such as (i) the value of cataloguing the virtues, (ii) the
relevance of the classic Greek virtues (especially courage) and (iii) the worthiness of a
method whereby each virtue is isolated and cultivated singly. So, while Dewey and
Franklin's recommendations to the moral agent struggling to develop a good character
display undeniable points of convergence, they also diverge at sufficient points to make us
question the proximity of the comparison. As we have seen, the upshot of this less-thanperfect match is that Dewey, in treating virtue as derivative of the valuation process and only
one factor in moral decision-making, does not anticipate the work of most contemporary
virtue ethicists.64
14
In sum, the central insight of Franklin’s and Dewey’s respective accounts of how to
cultivate a good character is that ethics (or virtue ethics) should provide some practical
guidance for the troubled moral agent; not a panacea or sermon, but a useful method, a
procedure—perhaps what we would nowadays call a ‘self-help program’--for moral
improvement.
References
Annas, J. “The Structure of Virtue.” In M. DePaul and L. T. Zagzebski (eds.), Intellectual
Virtue: Perspectives from Ethics and Epistemology, 15-33. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2003.
Anderson, Douglas. “The Art of Virtue.” In C. Mulford (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to
Benjamin Franklin, 24-43. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Anscombe, G.E.M. “Modern Moral Philosophy,” Philosophy, vol. 33 (1958): 1–19.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1925.
Axtell, G. “The Role of the Intellectual Virtues in the Reunification of Epistemology.” The
Monist, vol. 81, no. 3 (July 1998): 353-70.
------------. “Utilitarianism and Dewey’s ‘Three Independent Factors in Morals’.” Kadish
Center for Morality, Law & Public Affairs. ISUS-X, Tenth Conference of the International
Society for Utilitarian Studies (September 11, 2008): 1-11. Available at:
http://repositories.cdlib.org/kadish/isus_x/by_G_Axtell (accessed January 28, 2008).
Bennett, W. The Book of Virtues: A Treasury of Great Moral Stories. New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1993.
Campbell, J. “The Pragmatism of Benjamin Franklin.” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce
Society, vol. 31, no. 4 (Fall 1995):745-792.
——. Recovering Benjamin Franklin: An Exploration of a Life of Science and Service.
Chicago and La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1999.
Carden, S. D. Virtue Ethics: Dewey and MacIntyre. New York and London: Continuum,
2006.
Dewey, J. The Collected Works of John Dewey: The Electronic Edition, L. A. Hickman (ed.).
Charlottesville, VA: Intelex Corp., 1996.
Fesmire, S. John Dewey and Moral Imagination: Pragmatism in Ethics (Bloomington and
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2003.
15
Fiering, N. S. “Benjamin Franklin and the Way to Virtue.” American Quarterly, vol. 30, no. 2
(Summer 1978):199-223.
Foot, P. Virtues and Vices. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978.
Frankena, W. “A Critique of Virtue-Based Ethics.” In L. P. Pojman (ed.), Moral Philosophy,
264-70. New York: Hackett Publishing, 2003 (originally appeared in Ethics, 1973).
Franklin, B. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, edited by L. W. Labaree, R. L.
Ketcham, H. C. Boatfield, and H. H. Fineman. New Haven and London: Yale University
Press, 1964.
——. The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vols. 1 and 9, edited by L. W. Labaree. New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1959.
“GOP Moralist Bennett Gives Up Gambling,” CNN.com (05/05/2003). Available at
<http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/05/05/bennett.gambling/index.html>. Accessed
02/25/09.
Hickman, L. Pragmatism as Post-postmodernism: Lessons from John Dewey. New York:
Fordham University, 2007.
Houston, A. Benjamin Franklin and the Politics of Improvement. New Haven and London:
Yale University Press, 2008.
Hoy, S. Chasing Dirt: The American Pursuit of Cleanliness. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1995.
Hursthouse, R. On Virtue Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Isaacson, W. Benjamin Franklin: An American Portrait. New York: Simon and Schuster,
2004.
Johnston, J. S. Inquiry and Education: John Dewey and the Quest for Democracy. Albany:
State University of New York Pres, 2006
MacIntyre, A. “The Nature of the Virtues.” The Hastings Center Report, vol. 11, no. 2 (April
1981):2734.
Mayo, B. “Virtue and the Moral Life.” In L. P. Pojman (ed.), Moral Philosophy, 260-3. New
York: Hackett Publishing, 2003 (originally appeared in Ethics and the Moral Life, 1958).
Olsen, P. “Dewey’s Virtues,” traditional paper presented at the 2007 meeting of the Society
for the Advancement of American Philosophy (March 9, 2007): 1-11, 10, available at:
www.philosophy.uncc.edu/mledrid/SAAP/USC/TP51.html (accessed January 28, 2009).
Pangle, L. S. The Political Philosophy of Benjamin Franklin. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2007.
Pappas, G. F. John Dewey’s Ethics: Democracy as Experience. Bloomington and
Indianapolis: Indiana University press, 2008.
——. “Open-mindedness and Courage: Complementary Virtues of Pragmatism.”
Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, vol. 32, no. 2 (Spring 1996): 316-335.
Pence, G. “Virtue Theory.” In P. Singer (ed.), A Companion to Ethics, 249-58. Oxford: Basil
Blackwell 1991.
16
Pincoffs, E. L. “Two Cheers for Meno: The Definition of the Virtues” in Quandaries and
Virtues: Against Reductivism in Ethics, 73-100. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1986.
Ralston, S. J. “Ole Ben Franklin, the Pragmatist? On the Philosophical Credentials of an
American Founder,” The Pluralist, vol. 7, no. 2 (2010): 6-26.
——. “Teaching Ethics in the High Schools: A Deweyan Challenge,” Teaching Ethics, vol. 8.
No. 3 (Fall 2008): 73-86.
Rice, S. “Dewey’s Conception of Virtue and Its Educational Implications.” Philosophy of
Education, 1996. Available at <http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/EPS/PESYearbook/96_docs/rice.html>. Accessed 02/26/09.
Sommers, C. H. Vice and Virtue in Everyday Life. Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing, 1985.
Teehan, J. “Character, Integrity and Dewey’s Virtue Ethics,” Transactions of the Charles S.
Peirce Society, vol. 31, no. 4 (Fall 1995):841-63.
Watson, G. “On the Primacy of Virtue.” In O. Flanagan and A. Rorty (eds.), Identity,
Character and Morality, 449-69. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990.
Wolf, S. “Moral Saints,” Journal of Philosophy, vol. 79 (1982):419-39.
Zagzebski, L. T. Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtues and the Ethical
Foundations of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
——. “Exemplarist Virtue Theory”, Metaphilosophy, vol. 41, no. 1/2 (2010): 41–57.
Notes
1
J. Campbell, Recovering Benjamin Franklin (Chicago and La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1999), pp. 14950.
G. F. Pappas, John Dewey’s Ethics: Democracy as Experience (Bloomington and Indianapolis:
Indiana University Press, 2008), p. 125.
2
More precisely, Dewey explains the five stages of inquiry, as follows: “Upon examination, each
instance of [intelligent inquiry] reveals more or less clearly, five logically distinct steps: (i) a felt
difficulty; (ii) its location and definition; (iii) suggestion of possible solution; (iv) development by
reasoning of the bearings of the suggestion; (v) further observation and experimental leading to its
acceptance or rejection; that is, the conclusion of belief or disbelief.” “The Analysis of a Complete Act
of Thought” in How We Think, MW 6:236. Citations of Dewey’s writings are to The Collected Works of
John Dewey: Electronic Edition, edited by L.A. Hickman (1996), following the conventional method,
LW (Later Works) or MW (Middle Works) or EW (Early Works), volume: page number. With respect to
their differences, ethical inquiry and scientific inquiry have separate objectives: improving value
judgments and explaining phenomena, respectively. Dewey, “Judgments of Value” in The Logic of
Judgments of Practice, MW 8:24-32. Id., “Valuation and Experimental Knowledge,” MW 13:23-28.
3
4
5
Dewey, “Democracy and America,” in Freedom and Culture, LW 13:184.
Dewey, “Value, Objective Reference, and Criticism,” LW 2:78-97.
17
On how the process of valuation proceeds, Dewey explains: “The new value, dependent upon
judgment, is, when it comes, as immediate a good or bad as anything can be. But it is also an
immediate value of a plus sort. The prior judgment has affected the new good not merely as its
causal condition but by entering into its quality. The new good has an added dimension of value.”
“Valuation and Experimental Knowledge,” MW 13:6. Gregory Pappas provides a compelling example
of how his immediate and unreflective reaction to (or valuing of) homosexuality was very negative, but
after due reflection his considered judgment (or valuation) was made positive. John Dewey’s Ethics,
p. 106. On growth, Dewey writes: “Growth itself is the only moral ‘end’.” “Reconstruction in Moral
Perception,” in Reconstruction in Philosophy, MW 12:181. In his recent book, Scott Johnston
proposes that the term ‘growth’ means three possible things for Dewey. First, it is a biological or
“organismic” capacity that humans as well as other organisms have for developing and adapting to
their environs. Second, growth indicates the emerging evaluative or “judgmental” skills that humans
display in solving problems. Third, it is “experiential” in the sense that humans can learn from
experiences and change their behaviors accordingly, thereby cultivating intelligent habits. Inquiry and
Education: John Dewey and the Quest for Democracy (Albany: State University of New York Press,
2006), pp. 106-7.
6
7
Dewey (with James Hayden Tufts), “The Moral Self,” in Ethics (1932 revision), LW 7:285-309.
8
In contrast, a utilitarian deliberator judges the worth (or value) of the alternatives before her relative
to a single fixed criterion, viz., whether the alternative maximizes hedonistic pleasure, happiness or
utility. Pappas, John Dewey’s Ethics, p. 198. For someone who sees more in common between
utilitarianism and Dewey’s ethics, see Guy Axtell, “Utilitarianism and Dewey’s ‘Three Independent
Factors in Morals’,” Kadish Center for Morality, Law & Public Affairs. ISUS-X, Tenth Conference of the
International Society for Utilitarian Studies (September 11, 2008): 1-11, available at:
http://repositories.cdlib.org/kadish/isus_x/by_G_Axtell (accessed January 28, 2009).
Dewey’s method of ethical inquiry requires that we locate the conditions of justification for our value
judgments in both the individual’s community (i.e., in terms of standards of general approval) and
human conduct itself (i.e., in terms of instrumental efficacy), not in a priori criteria, such as divine
commands, Platonic Forms, pure reason, or a fixed Aristotelian telos. Dewey, “Three Independent
Factors in Morals,” LW 5:278-88. Id. (with Tufts), “Moral Judgment and Knowledge,” in Ethics (1932
revision), LW 7:262-83.
9
They also acknowledged that scholarly dissensus on the matter persists: “But there are as many
differences of opinion as to what constitutes virtue as there are on the other side as to what pleasure
and happiness are.” Dewey (with Tufts), “Types of Moral Theory” in Ethics, MW 5:212.
10
Dewey, “Habits as Social Functions,” in Human Nature and Conduct, MW 14:16. In the 1932
revision of the Ethics, within a section titled “Approbation, the Standard and Virtue,” Dewey explicitly
connects virtue with social conventions: “[V]irtues and vices in morals as far as dominated by custom
are strictly correlative to the ruling institutions and habits of a given social group. Its members are
trained to commend and admire whatever conforms to its established ways of life; hence the great
divergence of schemes of valuation of conduct in different civilizations.” LW 7:254-5.
11
Dewey explains why he chose to employ the word ‘habit’ as the repository of both values and
virtues: “But we need a word [‘habit’] to express that kind of human activity which is influenced by
prior activity and in that sense acquired; which contains within itself a certain ordering or
systematization of minor elements of action; which is projective, dynamic in quality, ready for overt
manifestation; and which is operative in some subdued subordinate form even when not obviously
dominating activity. ”Habits and Will,” in Human Nature and Conduct, MW 14:31.
12
13
Ibid.
Suzanne Rice writes: “A modern Deweyan would try to encourage activities and social relations that
themselves support the development and practice of desired character traits.” “Dewey’s Conception of
Virtue and Its Educational Implications,” Philosophy of Education Society, 1996, available at
<http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/EPS/PESYearbook/96_docs/rice.html> (accessed 02/26/09).
14
18
15
Aristotle distinguished between the intellectual and moral virtues, identifying five virtues that aided
the intellect in finding truth: (i) sophia, (ii) episteme, (iii) nous, (iv) phronesis, and (v) techne. Aristotle,
Nicomachean Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1925), Book VI. Phillip Olsen confirms
Dewey’s opposition to the intellectual/moral virtue dichotomy: “”[I]t [Dewey’s ethics] should attract
virtue theorists who are interested in the relationship between the moral and epistemic (or intellectual)
virtues in that it provides us with a way of simultaneously handling moral and epistemological [or
intellectual] virtues under a single heading.” “Dewey’s Virtues,” traditional paper presented at the 2007
meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy (March 9, 2007): 1-11, 10,
available at: www.philosophy.uncc.edu/meldrid/SAAP/USC/TP51.html (accessed January 28, 2009).
16
In other words, the same resources that make a person competent at inquiry, generally (i.e.,
intellectual virtues), make her skilled at moral inquiry and conduct, specifically (i.e., moral virtues)—
and, thus, the possession of one has a clear tendency to produce the other. Another way to say this
is that competent inquirers have the tools or potentialities to become good characters and good
citizens, or persons who undertake both to benefit themselves as well as their communities. The
inseparability of the intellectual and moral virtues emerges in Dewey’s essay on the topic of whether
and how to integrate the teaching of ethics into high school curricula. In it, he argues that if we start
with a “conception of ethical theory” different from the traditional one of “moralizing in the classroom,”
viz. where agents inquire into morally problematic situations and imagine possible ways of acting and
resolving these problems, then ethical theory is “teachable in the schoolroom” and, indeed, is
“necessary to any well-adjusted curriculum.” Dewey’s rationale for making ethics a subject for high
school students to study is that it cultivates open-minded and imaginative dispositions, empowering
the learners to address problematic “practical situations,” generally, and the development of morally
good character, specifically. Dewey, “Teaching Ethics in the High School,” EW 4:54-5. See also
Ralston, “Teaching Ethics in the High Schools: A Deweyan Challenge,” Teaching Ethics, vol. 8, no. 3
(Fall 2008): 73-86. For a contemporary critic of the intellectual/moral virtue distinction, see Linda T.
Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtues and the Ethical Foundations of
Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). For a defense of the distinction in the
service of reunifying epistemology, see Guy Axtell, “The Role of the Intellectual Virtues in the
Reunification of Epistemology,” The Monist, vol. 81, no. 3 (July 1998): 353-70. For discussions of the
distinction as it relates to a specific telos or end, see Julia Annas, “The Structure of Virtue” in
Intellectual Virtue: Perspectives from Ethics and Epistemology, edited by M. DePaul and L. T.
Zagzebski (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 15-33.
17
Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, edited by L. W. Labaree, R. L. Ketcham, H. C.
Boatfield and H. H. Fineman (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1964), p. 157.
18 MacIntyre nicely captures the similarities and differences between Aristotle and Franklin’s
treatments of the virtues: “Franklin’s account, like Aristotle’s, is teleological; but unlike Aristotle’s, it is
utilitarian. According to Franklin in his Autobiography the virtues are means to an end, but he
envisages the means-end relationship as external rather than internal.” For Aristotle, McIntyre notes
earlier in the same essay, “the relationship of means to end is internal and not external. I call a
means internal to a given end when the end cannot be adequately characterized independently of a
characterization of the means.” “The Nature of the Virtues,” 28-9.
19
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, p. 157.
20
Ibid, pp. 157-8.
21
Ibid, p. 159.
Norman Fiering notes that “[i]n general, Franklin cared little about inward states in and for
themselves and surprisingly little about inward states even as they may be understood as necessary
preconditions of particular forms of outward conduct.” “Benjamin Franklin and the Way to Virtue,”
American Quarterly, vol. 30, no. 2 (Summer 1978): 199-223, 207.
22
Fiering claims that Franklin’s method was anticipated by Aristotle (in the peripatetic idea that virtue
is a species of habit), Francis Bacon (in his notion that developing virtue involves mastering a method
23
19
or technical skill), John Locke (in his proposal that education should aim to cultivate virtue), Joseph
Addison (in his idea that regularity or custom breeds the practice and love of virtue) and George
Turnball (in his notion that virtue was acquired incrementally). “Benjamin Franklin and the Way to
Virtue,” 201, 208, 210, 212, and 214.
24
Ibid, 214.
25
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, p. 157. For an explanation of different ways of defining
the virtues, from antiquity to the modern day, see Edmund L. Pincoffs, “Two Cheers for Meno: The
Definition of the Virtues” in Quandaries and Virtues: Against Reductivism in Ethics (Lawrence:
University Press of Kansas, 1986), pp. 73-100.
Franklin’s Precepts loosely resemble what Anscombe and Hursthouse call “v-rules,” indicating
actions a moral agent should using virtue and vice-laden vocabulary, such as “Do what is
honest/charitable; do not do what is dishonest/uncharitable.” Anscombe, G.E.M., “Modern Moral
Philosophy”, Philosophy, vol. 33 (1958): 1–19. Hursthouse, R., On Virtue Ethics (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1999).
26
Zagzebski notes that “We do not have criteria for goodness in advance of identifying the exemplars
of goodness.” “Exemplarist Virtue Theory”, Metaphilosophy, vol. 41, no. 1/2 (2010): 41–57, 41.
27
28
Lorraine Pangle notices this omission in her book The Political Philosophy of Benjamin Franklin
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), p. 74. Indeed, for Aristotle, Franklin’s virtue of
humility resembles a vice (the shortage of magnanimity). MacIntyre gives a possible explanation for
the divergence between Franklin and the Greeks’ notions of virtue: “Perhaps the moral structures in
archaic Greece, in fourth-century Greece, and in eighteenth-century Pennsylvania were so different
from each other that we should treat them as embodying quite different concepts, whose difference is
initially disguised from us by the historical accident of an inherited vocabulary which misleads us by
linguistic resemblance long after conceptual identity and similarity have failed.” “The Nature of the
Virtues,” 29. Franklin was also opposed generally to attempts to associate wisdom and virtue with
rank and class, a common strategy among the Greeks. In response to those who would require that
political representatives own substantial property, Franklin retorted: “Some of the greatest rogues I
was ever acquainted with, were the richest rogues.” Cited by Alan Houston, Benjamin Franklin and
the Politics of Improvement (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008), p. 191. Franklin
did criticize the choice of the bald eagle as the national bird due to its lack of courage (it steals fish
from an honest laborer, the Fishing Hawk), noting that a superior choice would have been the turkey,
“a Bird of Courage.” The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, pp. 336-40.
29
30
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, p. 157.
Ibid, pp. 157-8.
Houston highlights the social quality of Franklin’s project for moral improvement: “To thrive in the
company of others, individuals need to be improved. Character is achieved through the cultivation of
good habits, and the measure of those habits is their usefulness, their ability to sustain and deepen
the ties of society.” Benjamin Franklin and the Politics of Improvement, p. 196.
31
32
Papers 29:753-57. Cited by Houston, Benjamin Franklin and the Politics of Improvement, p. 193.
Though the scheme is utterly routinized—or as Fiering writes, “strikingly automatized”—it has an
underlying rationale to it, training the agent to develop good (or virtuous) habits of action through
constant attention to her moral failings. However, even Franklin, who carried the book and followed
the procedure throughout the majority of his lifetime, was forced to concede that, despite his initial
aspiration, achieving moral perfection is impossible. He wrote: “On the whole tho’ I never arrived at
the Perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet I was by the Endeavour
a better and happier Man than I otherwise should have been, if I had not attempted it.” The
Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, p. 156. Cited by Fiering, “Benjamin Franklin and the Way to
33
20
Virtue,” 216. Alan Houston comments: “Anyone who has ever dieted or taken up an exercise program
will easily understand Franklin’s difficulties.” Benjamin Franklin and the Politics of Improvement, p. 34.
Franklin’s position on reductionist accounts of human motivation closely resembles Dewey’s thesis
in “Three Independent Factors in Morals” LW 5:279-88. Alan Houston summarizes Franklin’s position:
“Any attempt to reduce the motives for action to a single source, whether moral virtue of material selfinterest, was doomed to failure.” Benjamin Franklin and the Politics of Improvement, p. 218.
34
35
Even though he never completed the planned project, he seemed genuine in his intention to, as
revealed in a letter: “With these Sentiments you will no doubt my being serious in my Intention of
finishing my Art of Virtue. ‘Tis not a mere ideal Work. I plann’d it first in 1732. I have from time to
time made and caus’d to be made Experiments of the Method, with Success.” Franklin to Kanes 21
October 1761, Papers 9:375. Franklin also hoped that a global “Party of Virtue” would form. Its
members would follow the recommendations in his book on virtue. Fiering, “Franklin and the Way to
Virtue,” 223, ftn. 63.
Franklin to Andrews, 7 April 1735, Papers 2:53. Cited in Fiering, “Benjamin Franklin and the Way
to Virtue,” 206. It could be objected, on the basis of Franklin’s “Plan of Conduct,” that his virtue
project was only intended to improve himself, not others. As he writes in the plan, he wished to “make
some resolutions, and form some scheme of action, that, henceforth, . . . [he] may live in all respects
like a rational creature.” Papers, vol. 1, pp. 99-100. However, in the Autobiography, he expressly
states that he saw his life as “fit to be imitated.” The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, p. 68. He
also expressed hope that if a sufficient number of people would commit themselves to the project as
he recommended—each day, every week and over thirteen week periods—human nature could
eventually be reformed. “Oh that moral science were in as fair a Way of Improvement,” Franklin
longingly reflected, “that Men would cease to be Wolves to one another.” Letter from Benjamin
Franklin to Joseph Priestly, 8 February 1780, in Papers 31:455-6. Cited by Houston, Benjamin
Franklin and the Politics of Improvement, p. 15.
36
37 Campbell asserts that “Franklin’s broader sense of pragmatism resembled in many ways the social
pragmatism of Tufts, Mead and Dewey.” “The Pragmatism of Benjamin Franklin,” 779. An almost
identical passage appears in the final chapter of his book: “Still, if this Pragmatist vision of human
well-being is valuable as I believe it is, and if Franklin is clearly at the head of this tradition, then it
does seem fair to categorize him as a Pragmatist. As such, it also seems sensible to categorize him
as a philosopher, and to treat him as one who deserves a more central place in our discussions of
American philosophy.” Id, Recovering Benjamin Franklin, pp. 271-2.
38
Id., “The Pragmatism of Benjamin Franklin,” 764.
Isaacson points to the connection between Franklin’s skills as an experimental scientist and his
abilities as a statesman: “So Franklin would soon apply his scientific style of reasoning—
experimental, pragmatic—not only to nature but also to public affairs. These political pursuits would
be enhanced by the fame he had gained as a scientist. The scientist and statesman would
henceforth be interwoven, each strand reinforcing the other, until it could be said of him, in the two
part epigram that the French statesman Turgot composed, ‘He snatched lightning from the sky and
the scepter from tyrants.’” Benjamin Franklin, p. 145.
39
For a fuller treatment of Dewey’s understanding of moral imagination, see Steven Fesmire, John
Dewey and Moral Imagination: Pragmatism in Ethics (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana
University Press, 2003).
40
Recovering Benjamin Franklin, p. 86. Campbell shows how Franklin’s pragmatic virtues extend to
the social, collective and political dimensions of moral problem solving. According to Franklin, there
are two possible approaches to undertaking joint inquiry: one, basing our assessments on the lessons
of prior experience (i.e., a kind of best practices approach) or, two, “admitting that mistakes are
always possible, and asking others for assistance, clarifications, and criticisms” (i.e., a pragmatic
approach). Ibid., p. 85. See also Ralston, “Ole Ben Franklin, the Pragmatist? On the Philosophical
Credentials of an American Founder,” The Pluralist, vol. 7, no. 2 (2010): 6-26, 10-12.
41
42
Pappas, John Dewey’s Ethics, p. 111.
21
Pappas, John Dewey’s Ethics, p. 189. Id., “Open-mindedness and Courage: Complementary
Virtues of Pragmatism,” p. 316-7. John Teehan interprets Dewey’s virtue of open-mindedness as
comparable to the traditional virtue of humility (which was part of Franklin’s list) and “willing[ness] to
engage in inquiry” as a Deweyan counterpart to courage. “Character, Integrity and Dewey’s Virtue
Ethics,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, vol. 31, no. 4 (Fall 1995): 841-63, 857.
43
Dewey notes that an empirical approach to studying problems cultivates courage: “An empirical
method which remains true to nature does not ‘save’; it is not an insurance device nor a mechanical
antiseptic. But it inspires the mind with courage and vitality to create new ideals and values in the
face of the perplexities of a new world.” “Preface” in Experience and Nature, LW 1:4. He generally
supported the Greek ethics of character: “The utmost to be said in praise of Plato and Aristotle is not
that they invented excellent moral theories, but that they rose to the opportunity which the spectacle
of Greek life afforded. For Athens presented an all but complete microcosm for the study of the
interaction of social organization and individual character.” “Intelligence and Morals,” MW 4:31.
Pappas qualifies Dewey’s commitment to courage with an equal commitment to humility: “For Dewey
it was humility, not pride, that was needed for democracy. When the values of democracy are used
arrogantly by a leader or a nation to express superiority and self sufficiency, it betrays the very spirit
of democracy.” Pappas, John Dewey’s Ethics, p. 246.
44
45
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book V. With respect to cultivating the virtue of humility, Franklin
declared that after some difficulty he was satisfied with the “Appearance” and could not “boast of
much success in acquiring the Reality.” Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, p. 156.
Cited by Fiering, “Benjamin Franklin and the Way to Virtue,” 216.
46
John Dewey’s Ethics, p. 191.
47“Open-mindedness
and Virtue,” 320. John Dewey’s Ethics, p. 188.
48
The view that considerations of virtue and character are the sole factors in making moral decisions
is often termed ‘eliminativism’ for it eliminates the relevance of conduct-based ethical theories such as
deontology and consequentialism. Greg Pence, “Virtue Theory” in A Companion to Ethics, edited by
P. Singer (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1991), pp. 249-58, 21.
49
Pappas provides the examples of temperance which, when treated singly, can manifest as
excessive “inhibition” and courage which, when cultivated in isolation, can transform into stoic
detachment. “Open-mindedness and Virtue,” 320.
Dewey, “Approbation, the Standard and Virtue” in Ethics, LW 7:257. Cited by Pappas, John
Dewey’s Ethics, p. 125.
50
51
In a concrete example, contemporary conservative commentator and former Philosophy Professor
Bill Bennett, similar to Franklin, proffers a list of the virtues accompanied by aphorisms and stories in
his best-selling The Book of Virtues. Given Bennett’s long-standing gambling habit and advice in the
Book to cultivate self-discipline, he has been continually pressed by the media to defend himself
against the charge of hypocrisy. While habitual gambling offends an explicit schedule of virtues that
includes self-discipline, it could be tolerated within a balanced or integrated theory of character insofar
as the agent moderates the activity with a concern to avoid financial insolvency and consequent loss
of moral autonomy. W. Bennett, The Book of Virtues: A Treasury of Great Moral Stories (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1993).
52
Dewey, “Approbation, the Standard and Virtue” in Ethics, LW 7:255-6.
Suellen Hoy offers a similar explanation of the American expression “cleanliness is next to
godliness”: “People did not ordinarily consider themselves godly of they kept clean, nor ungodly if they
remained dirty. Instead, commonly used words such as ‘neat’ and ‘tidy’ tended to describe orderly and
polite individuals who were comfortably well off. Thus, in a very generalized Calvinist way, clean
American may have appeared godly since they had the means to be so.” Chasing Dirt: The American
Pursuit of Cleanliness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 3-4.
53
22
54
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, p. 158.
55
Hoy, Chasing Dirt, p. 4.
56
LW, 2:325.
57
LW, 2:326.
58
For a summary of the history of virtue ethics and its revival, see Greg Pence, “Virtue Theory,” 250-
1.
Carden’s entire statement presents a direct comparison of Dewey and a contemporary virtue
ethicist: “Alisdair MacIntyre is a central figure in the resurgence of interest in the virtues as
fundamental concepts in moral philosophy; many of his ideas, however, are anticipated by John
Dewey, who also regarded the virtues and the development of character as primary moral ideas.”
Virtue Ethics, p. 1. MacIntyre himself distils three treatments of the virtues in the literature, one
exemplified by Ben Franklin, but nowhere does he cite Dewey as a virtue theorist: “[First] a virtue is a
quality which enables an individual to discharge his or her social role (Homer); [second] a virtue is a
quality which enables an individual to move towards the achievement of the specifically human telos,
whether natural or supernatural (Aristotle, the New testament and Aquinas); [third] a virtue is a quality
which has utility in achieving earthly and heavenly success (Franklin).” “The Nature of the Virtues,”
29. For Guy Axtell, “whether one should identify him [Dewey] as a ‘virtue ethicist’ is a somewhat
anachronistic question.” “Utilitarianism and ‘Three Independent Factors in Morals’,” 2.
59
Pappas sees Dewey’s argument in favor of considering multiple factors (rights, good ends and
virtues) in moral decision making as “a way to move beyond the debate between character-centered
and act-centered ethics.” John Dewey’s Ethics, p. 129. However, some commentators see Dewey’s
critique of the moral tradition as confined to conduct or act-centered ethics. For instance, Fesmire
writes: “Dewey’s central message to the classic moral tradition: moral conduct is not an issuing of
moral laws from the cocoon of autonomous transcendental reason. Individuals must be replanted in
their social soil.” John Dewey and Moral Imagination, p. 26.
60
Teehan’s evidence for this claim is a single sentence in Dewey’s work on moral psychology: “the
thing actually 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 making.” Dewey,
“The Uniqueness of Good” in Human Nature and Conduct, MW 14:150, cited by Teehan, “Character,
Integrity and Dewey’s Virtue Ethics,” 846, 851-2. He writes: “So, to state it simply, a successful moral
decision will be one which makes a change in the character of the self which enhances the
functioning (understood in a non-Aristotelian sense) of that individual.” Ibid., 849. What Teehan fails to
mention is that Dewey’s claim applies to deliberation, generally, and not moral deliberation,
specifically. Once we take the thesis of “Three Independent Factors in Morals” into consideration,
moral deliberation must countenance deontological and consequentialist factors, not exclusively
virtue-based ones. This general strategy of selectively quoting Dewey, or quoting his words out of
context, in order to support a position that Dewey did not hold is identified by James S. Johnston as
among “the perils of the textual interpretation of Dewey” and representative of “the futility of simply
citing passages out of context.” Inquiry and Education: John Dewey and the Quest for Democracy
(Albany: State University of New York Pres, 2006), pp. 38, 126.
61
62
Larry Hickman suggests a more measured alternative to the positions taken by Carden and
Teehan: “[T]he Pragmatist shares certain positions with the ‘virtue’ ethicist: the moral individual is a
construct, a well-articulated artifact, a finely honed product of factors that are uniquely individual
entering into dynamic relationships with those that are cultural historical.” L. A. Hickman, Pragmatism
as Post-postmodernism: Lessons from John Dewey (New York: Fordham University, 2007), p. 176.
Still, these shared positions do not make Dewey a virtue theorist.
Likewise, Pappas concludes that “it would be a mistake to regard Dewey’s ethics as a form of
virtue ethics.” John Dewey’s Ethics, p. 144. However, Pappas’ reason for this conclusion is that to do
otherwise would deny the uniqueness of Dewey’s ethical theory. My reason is that to do otherwise
would deny the instrumental character of Dewey’s model of moral improvement, similar to Franklin’s,
in giving practical guidance to the troubled moral agent concerned to cultivate a good character.
63
23
However, it could be objected that the matter is merely terminological, such that no matter what we
call it and even if it emerges side-by-side with deontological and consequentialist factors, Dewey has
an account of character or virtue within his ethical theory. Phillip Deen suggested this insightful point.
64 I qualify ‘contemporary virtue ethicists’ with the existential quantifier ‘some’ because there are
virtue ethicists who integrate Dewey’s other two factors or independent variables into their virtue
theories. In Phillipa Foot’s theory, the deontological or intentional factor is integral to the concept of
virtue. See her Virtues and Vices (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978). In Susan Wolf’s account of
moral sainthood, utilitarianism or the telos of maximizing happiness results in a kind of character that
most people would find dull and unsatisfying. “Moral Saints,” Journal of Philosophy, vol. 79
(1982):419-39. It would be a mistake, as MacIntyre reminds us, to treat all virtue theories as integral
to a “single, central, core conception of the virtues that might make a claim for universal allegiance.”
“The Nature of the Virtues,” 29. While for Aristotle and Aquinas the notion of the good (happiness or
salvation) is treated as prior to the notion of virtue, such that virtue is secondary or derivative of the
good, some contemporary virtue ethicists, such as Bernard Mayo and Christina Hoff Sommers,
appear to treat virtue as primary and, then, the right and the good as either derivative or irrelevant to
moral choice. B. Mayo, “Virtue and the Moral Life” in Moral Philosophy, edited by L. P. Pojman (New
York: Hackett Publishing, 2003, originally appeared in Ethics and the Moral Life, 1958), pp. 260-3. C.
H. Sommers, Vice and Virtue in Everyday Life (Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing, 1985). William
Frankena also characterizes most virtue ethicists as treating virtue independent and exclusive of
conduct-based criteria for assessing moral behavior: “In fact, it has been suggested that morality is or
should be conceived as primarily concerned, not with rules or principles . . . but with the cultivation of
such dispositions or traits of character.” “A Critique of Virtue-Based Ethics” in Moral Philosophy, pp.
264-70, 264. Gary Watson believes that this treatment of virtue as independent of considerations of
the right and the good is the result of widespread discontent among virtue ethicists with the tendency
of conduct-based ethical theories to neglect considerations of character. “On the Primacy of Virtue” in
Identity, Character and Morality, edited by O. Flanagan and A. Rorty (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1990), pp. 449-69.
24