Dewey-Objectivism and Subjectivism

Journal of Philosophy, Inc.
The Objectivism-Subjectivism of Modern Philosophy

Author(s): John Dewey
Source: The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 38, No. 20 (Sep. 25, 1941), pp. 533-542
Published by: Journal of Philosophy, Inc.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2017329
Accessed: 27-06-2016 07:24 UTC
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Journal of Philosophy, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The
Journal of Philosophy
This content downloaded from 131.247.112.3 on Mon, 27 Jun 2016 07:24:18 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
VOLUME XXXVIII, No. 20 SEPTEMBER 25, 1941
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
THE OBJECTIVISM-SUBJECTIVISM OF MODERN

PHILOSOPHY
IN his Adventures of Ideas, Whitehead writes as follows: "It is

customary to contrast the objective approach of the ancient
Greeks with the subjective approach of the moderns.... But
whether we be ancients or moderns we can deal only with things, in
some sense, experienced. " ' 1 Since I agree fully with this statement,
my only comment is that it involves repudiation of the view that
approach through experience is ipso facto subjective. There is a
further statement of Whitehead's which I wish to use as a peg
from which to hang some remarks of my own, as preachers use a
text. "The difference between ancients and moderns is that the
ancients asked what have we experienced and the moderns asked
'what can we experience." 2 I propose to develop the distinction
between "what has been" and "what can be" experienced, in ex-
planation of the difference between ancient and modern philosophy,
in a way that has no authorization in Whitehead's treatment. In
fact, my development is in a direction contrary to what Whike-
head goes on to say. For that reason I feel the more bound to say
that the particular interpretation he gives the distinction com-
mands, within the limits set by the point he is making, my full
assent. For he is concerned to show how the notion of experience
was narrowed by the criteria set up by some moderns for judging
what can be experienced. There can be no doubt as to the exist-
ence of this criterion nor as to its restrictive consequence.
The limitation is due, as Whitehead justly says, to two errors.
"The first error is the assumption of a few definite avenues of
communication with the external world, the five sense-organs. This
leads to the pre-supposition that the search for data is to be nar-
rowed to the question, what data are directly provided by the ac-
tivity of the sense-organs. . . The second error is the presuppo-
sition that the sole way of examining experience is by acts of
conscious introspective analysis." 8 When applied to such writers
1 P. 287.
2 op. cit., p. 288.
3 op. cit., p. 269 and p. 290. Cf. the following from p. 269, "Warping has
taken the form of constant reliance upon sensationalist activity as the basis of
all experiential activity. "
533
534 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
as Locke and Hume on one side and Kant on the other side nothing
could be truer than these statements. The outcome was a definite
and to my mind disastrous narrowing of the field of experience.
Upon the face of the matter, then, the view I am going to advance
seems to be contradicted by facts. For what I wish to say is that
ancient philosophy is the one which is restricted, since it could
not venture beyond what had already been accomplished in the
way of experienced things-using "things" to designate activi-
ties and institutions as well as "objects," while modern experience
is expansive since it is marked off by its constant concern for possi-
bilities of experience as yet unrealized, as is shown, for example, in
its interest in discovery and invention. In consequence what can
be experienced stands for something wider and freer than what has
been experienced.
II
There is an undeniable discrepancy involved in admitting the

justice of what Whitehead says about the way in which the idea
of what "can be experienced" was used to narrow the experiential
field and the position I am here taking. As to the views about
experience literally expressed by modern philosophers of both the
experiential and the a priori schools, I have no desire to explain
away the discrepancy. What I intend to point out is that the
spirit and direction of modern philosophy is of quite another sort,
since it has been occupied with breaking down fixed barriers, with
novelty, expansion, growth, potentialities previously unforeseen;
in short, with an open and "infinite" world instead of the closed
and finite world of the Greeks. If this statement does not apply
to the general movement and implicit intent of modern philosophy,
we are faced with a much greater discrepancy than the one just
mentioned: that between the actual tendencies of modern experi-
ence and the philosophy that has been produced on the ground of
this experience.
Accordingly, I do not think it is a necessary part of my task
to account for the view nominally taken by modern philosophers
about what can be experienced. At the same time, I do not believe
the paradox is as great as it seems to be on the surface. The very
fact that modern philosophy has been concerned with possibilities
of experience which lie beyond the range of what has been experi-
enced in the past made it peculiarly sensitive to the existence of
certain barriers to their acceptance and realization, namely, the
barriers that are products of past culture and are sanctioned by
the philosophy which reflected that culture. In behalf of their own
interest in the prospective, in possible expansion, philosophers were
OBJECTIVISM-SUBJECTIVISM OF PHILOSOPHY 535
obliged to assail the beliefs and habits which stood in the way.
They needed a criterion and method for carrying on their battle.
In short, the positive side of modern philosophy, what I have called
its spirit and direction of movement, was such as to give great
importance to the negative work that had to be done. The read-
iest instrumentality of destructive criticism was identification of
valid beliefs with those authorized by experience when experience
is reduced to material of direct observation; namely, to simple
ideas, impressions, sense data. The incompatibility of this reduc-
tion to the positive faith which animated the modern philosophers
was concealed from view by their intense belief that if only ob-
structions inherited from the past were once done away with, the
forces inhering in experience would carry men forward. Even
more instructive than what was explicitly said about experience is
the revolution that took place as to the respective outlooks of "ex-
perience" and "reason." In ancient philosophy, experience stood
for the habits and skills acquired by repetition of particular ac-
tivities by means of selection of those which proved successful. It
was a limiting principle, while reason, insight into reasons, was
emancipatory of the bonds that were set by acquired habits.
Francis Bacon and his experiential followers took exactly the oppo-
site view. The "rational," when disassociated from personal ex-
perience, was to them the lifeless, the secondhand. Personal " experi-
ence," irrespective of any technical definition, was the means of
initiation into living realities and provided the sole assurance of
entering pastures that were fertile as well as fresh. Empiricism
and liberalism were allies; the possibility of growth, of develop-
ment, idealization of change as progress, were all, whether rightly
or wrongly, connected with faith in experience. Technically, or
in strict formal logic, the tabula rasa, the blank sheet of paper,
view of mind to be written upon by "external" impressions, should
have led to the conclusion that human beings are passive puppets.
Actually, the feeling that if hampering and restrictive traditions
and institutions could be got rid of, firsthand experience would
ensure that men could and would go ahead, was the dominant
factor.
III
If we consider Greek thought in an analytical way, we shall be

persuaded, in any event, that from its own standpoint it can not
be called objective. If the term is used, it is from our own present
standpoint; that is, on the ground of the contrast of Greek thought
with subjectivistic tendencies of modern philosophy, tendencies
which, however, could not be identified as such, were it not that the
distinction between the cosmological and the psychological, the

"objective" and the "subjective," had been consciously made and
become current. And it is precisely this distinction which does not
appear in Greek thought. "Being" was set over against becom-
ing, the latter containing an element of non-being or imperfec-
tion; the everlasting, immutable, and immortal were marked off
from the transitory, and mortal imitations or images were set over
against their originals. But the nearest approach to anything like
the modern distinction of subjective-objective was between that
which is by nature and that which is by institution or convention.
What may be truly said of ancient philosophy in contrast with
modern is that it is naive, using that word to designate a condition in
which the distinction between the subjective and the objective is not
made. Since naivete suggests freshness and directness of approach,
due to absence of artificial sophistication, one may apply the word
"naYve" eulogistically to Greek philosophy. Of the Greek attitude,
we could say that it fused qualities we now distinguish, were it not
that fusion suggests prior differentiation, and it is just this ante-
cedent differentiation that is lacking. In every characteristic ex-
pression of the Greek genius, the qualities we call emotional and
volitional, and hence attribute to persons, are used to clothe things
that we call physical and lacking in such qualities. The atomists,
literally interpreted, are an exception to this statement. But one
has only to read Lucretius (or Santayana today), and to reflect
upon what is known regarding Democritus, to see that their in-
terest in cosmology was a moral interest rather than a scientific one
in the modern sense. In all influential and widely held ancient
cosmologies, the physical world was marked by qualitative and teleo-
logical traits which modern physics has stripped away. Until this
stripping had taken place there was no ground for anything like
sharp opposition of the animate and inanimate; the human and
the non-human; the "subjective" and "objective." In the mat-
ter of accounting for human traits in terms of generic cosmological
qualities, there is no difference between Plato and Aristotle on one
side and Democritus on the other.
There is a positive point involved in the foregoing negations.
Greek philosophy moved and had its being in and among the things,
the subjects, of, direct experience, the world in which we human
beings act, suffer, and enjoy. There is no particular point in say-
ing their attitude was animistic, as if they had first discriminated
certain qualities as psychic and personal and had then projected
them into an "external" and purely physical (in our sense) world.
As a contemporary writer has said in a criticism of the idea about
animism entertained by such writers as Tylor, Spencer, and Lang:
Our present day dichotomy of behavior has isolated two types: the type
directed toward things, which follows strictly a cause and effect sequence;
and the type directed toward persons, which runs the gamut from love to
manipulation. . . . Animism considered as behavior is nothing more than this;
properly speaking, it is only the expression of a state of mind that has not
made our distinction between behavior toward persons and behavior toward
things, but which brings the whole field under one rubric, treating the entire
external world according to the pattern learned in dealings with fellow beings.4
The fact that philosophers refined and systematized what is in-

volved in this habitual attitude does not militate against the other
fact that they retained it intact as far as its fundamental moral
and qualitative implications are concerned. Until the type of
physical science which we call modern had become established, what
alternative did philosophy have save to describe the world in terms
of basic properties of the material of direct experience? If we
did not have an alternative in the pou sto provided for us by pres-
ent-day physical science, we too should "naturally" describe the
world in teleological and qualitative terms. Any other procedure
would strike us as artificial and arbitrary. I was strongly re-
minded of this fact in reading recently a book by a writer deeply
imbued with the spirit of classic Greek philosophy. He uniformly
refers to "philosophies of experience" in a disparaging tone. But,
as uniformly, his own account of Nature is couched in moral and
poetic terms appropriate only to Nature as it is directly presented
in experience and inappropriate to lnature as disclosed to us in
physics.
IV
For the purpose of the present article, the point of the fore-
going is the necessity of distinguishing between the things of direct
experience (which may also be called everyday experience if the
latter word is extended to include the relatively extraordinary ex-
periences of poets and moral seers), and something else. What
name shall be given to this something else? It may be called
physical subject-matter in the sense of material of the physical sci-
ences. But this name only makes the problem more precise; it
offers no solution. And here I recur to the special postulate of this
particular discussion: The postulate, namely, that "whether we
be ancients or moderns, we can deal only with things, in some sense,
experienced." From the standpoint of this postulate, the problem
is to discover in terms of an experienced state of affairs the con-
nection that exists between physical subject-matter and the com-
mon-sense objects of everyday experience. Concern for the con-
4 Article, by Ruth Benedict, on "Animism" in the Encyclopaedia of the
Social Sciences, Vol. I, p. 66. I have italicized "behavior" in order to em-
phasize the point made.
ditions upon which depend the activities, enjoyments, and sufferings,

constituting direct experience, is an integral part of that very ex-
perience when it is marked by faith in the possibility of its own
indefinite expansion. The hypothesis here offered is that physical
subject-matter represents in its own distinctive nature the condi-
tions upon which rest the having, and the averting, of things in
direct experience. What other method of getting outside and be-
yond the things of direct experience is conceivable save that of
penetration to the conditions upon which they depend?
It is a commonplace that the sole method of controlling the oc-
currence of specific events-whether as to production or preven-
tion-is by means of knowledge of their causal conditions. It is
also a commonplace that modern science, as distinct from ancient,
is occupied with determination of such conditions, and also that
their discovery has been attended with creation of all sorts of tech-
nologies by means of which the area of things experienced and
experienceable has been indefinitely widened. Every student of
philosophy knows that Greek philosophy subordinated its account
of things in terms of "efficient" causation to the account of them in
terms of "formal" and "final" causation: that is, it was con-
cerned with stating, by means of definition and classification, what
things are and why they are so (in terms of the ends they serve),
rather than with the quite subordinate question of how they come
into being. The habit of viewing the history of philosophy in iso-
lation from the state of culture in which philosophical theories are
produced explains why this undeniable fact has not been linked to
the fact that technologies for production and prevention of speci-
fiable objects did not then exist; at least not outside of certain arts
and crafts which, in any case, were products of past experiences,
or of what had been experienced, not of scientific insight. Under
these circumstances, the part of intelligent persons was to make
as much as possible of characters, of natures, or essences, that
"make things to be what they are" in their own alleged non-rela-
tional or "inherent" being. The connections of space, time, mo-
tion, that are so important in modern science could not possibly
have appeared to be of more than secondary significance until the
use of these connections in making possible a control of experience
had been demonstrated in experience.
It is not a new discovery that the word "object" is highly am-
biguous, being used for the sticks and stones, the cats and dogs, the
chairs and tables of ordinary experiences, for the atoms and elec-
trons of physics, and for any kind of "entity" that has logical
subsistence-as in mathematics. In spite of the recognized am-
biguity, one whole branch of modern epistemology is derived from
the assumption that in the case of at least the first two cases, the
word "object" has the same general meaning. For otherwise the
subject-matter of physics and the things of everyday experience
would not have presented themselves as rivals, and philosophy
would not have felt an obligation to decide which is "real" and
which is "appearance," or at least an obligation to set up a scheme
in which they are "reconciled." The place occupied in modern
philosophy by the problem of the relation of so-called "scientific
objects" and "common-sense objects" is proof, in any case, of the
dominating presence of a distinction between the "objective" and
the "subjective" which was unknown in ancient philosophy. It
indicates that in the sense at least of awareness of an ever-present
problem, modern philosophy is "objective-subjective," not just
subjective. I suggest that if we gave up calling the distinctive
material of the physical sciences by the name "objects" and em-
ployed instead the neutral term "scientific subject-matter," the
genuine nature of the problem would be greatly clarified. It would
not of itself be solved. But at least we should be rid of the im-
plication which now prevents reaching a solution. We should be
prepared to consider on its merits the hypothesis here advanced:
namely, that scientific subject-matter represents the conditions for
having and not-having things of direct experience.
Genuinely complete empirical philosophy requires that there
be a determination in terms of experience of the relation that ex-
ists between physical subject-matter and the things of direct per-
ception, use, and enjoyment. It would seem clear that historic
empiricism, because of its commitment to sensationalism, failed
to meet this need. The obvious way of meeting the requirement
is through explicit acknowledgment that direct experience contains,
as a highly important direct ingredient of itself, a wealth of pos-
sible objects. There is no inconsistency between the idea of direct
experience and the idea of objects of that experience which are
as yet unrealized. For these latter objects are directly experienced
as possibilities. Every plan, every prediction, yes, every forecast
and anticipation, is an experience in which some non-directly ex-
perienced object is directly experienced as a possibility. And, as
previously suggested, modern experience is marked by the extent
to which directly perceived, enjoyed, and suffered objects are
treated as signs, indications, of what has not been experienced in
and of itself, or/and are treated as means for the realization of
these things of possible experience. Because historic empirical
philosophy failed to take cognizance of this fact, it was not able to
account for one of the most striking features of scientific method
and scientific conclusions-preoccupation with generality as such.
For scientific methods and scientific subject-matter combine

highly abstract or "theoretical" considerations with directly pres-
ent concrete sensible material, and the generality of conclusions
reached is directly dependent upon the presence of the first-named
type of considerations. Now in modern philosophy, just as scien-
tific "objects" have been set over against objects in direct experi-
ence, thereby occasioning the ontological problem of modern phi-
losophy (the problem of where "reality" is to be found), so
identification of the experiential with but one of the two factors
of the method of knowing has created the epistemological problem of
modern philosophy: the relation of the "conceptual" and "per-
ceptual"; of sense and understanding. In terms of our hypothesis,
the distinction and the connection of the distinguished aspects rests
upon the fact that what is (has been) experienced is of cognitive
importance in connection with what can be experienced: that is,
as evidence, sign, test, of forecast, anticipation, etc., while, on the
other hand, there is no way of valid determination of objects of
possible experiences save by employing what has been experienced,
and hence is sensible. Anticipation, foresight, prediction, depend
upon taking what is "given" (what has indubitably been experi-
enced) as ominous, or of prospective reference. This is a specu-
lative operation, a wager about the future. But the wager is sub-
ject to certain techniques of control. Although every projection
of a possible object of experience goes beyond what has been ex-
perienced and is in so far risky, this fact does not signify that
every idea or projected possibility has an equal claim. Techniques
of observation on one side and of calculation (in its broad sense)
on the other side have been developed with a view to effective co-
operation. Interactivity of the two factors constitutes the method
of science. Were it not for the influence of the inertia of habit
it would be fairly incredible that empiricists did not long ago
perceive that material provided by direct sense-perception is lim-
ited and remains substantially the same from person to person and
from generation to generation. Even when we take into account
the additional sense data furnished by artificial instruments, the
addition bears no proportionate ratio to the expansion of the sub-
ject-matter of the sciences that is constantly taking place. Were
it not that "rationalist" theories of knowledge are in no better
case with respect to accounting for increase in scientific knowl-
edge (which is its most striking trait in modern times), the marked
impotency of sensationalist empiricism would long ago have effected
its disappearance.
I have presented the more difficult aspect of my position and

argument first. Few persons, I take it, would be rash enough to
deny that an actual experience of a definite thing depends upon the
operation of factors which have to be distinguished from those of
physical subject-matter. It is better at first to refer to these latter
factors denotatively, rather than to apply the word "subjective."
From the denotative point of view, no one will deny that an ex-
perience of light involves an optical apparatus and not simply the
existence of certain physical vibrations and quanta, and similarly
with experiences of sound, temperature, solidity, etc. In the log-
ical sense of "objectivity," these organic conditions are as objec-
tive as those described in physics. The organism is one "object"
among others. However, the function of organic factors is so dis-
tinctive that it has to be discriminated. When it is discriminated,
it is seen to be so different in kind from that of physical subject-
matter as to require a special name. As a candidate for the name,
"subjective" has one great disadvantage, namely, its traditional
use as a name for some sort of existential stuff called psychical or
mental. It has, on the other hand, the advantage of calling at-
tention to the particular agency through which the function is ex-
ercised: a singular organism, an organism that has been subjected
to acculturation, and is aware of itself as a social subject and agent.
The difference in function is, in any case, the important matter.
Physical subject-matter consists of the conditions of possible ex-
periences in their status as possible. It does not itself account for
any actual experience. It is general and remote. Objects of di-
rect experience are singular and are here and now. The "subjec-
tive" factor (using the word to designate the operations of an
accultured organism) is, like "objective" (physical subject-mat-
ter) a condition of experience. But it is that condition which is
required to convert the conditions of kinds of objects, which as kinds
represent generic possibilities, into this object. Since every actual
or direct experience is of some this, here and now, it is imperative
to distinguish this type of condition from the type supplied by
generic "objective" subject-matter. Greek thought failed to rec-
ognize the existence of this "subjective" factor as a condition of
positive control. It took account of it only as a ground for indis-
criminate scepticism. Or, when convention and institution were
regarded as more important than "nature" (as it was by one Greek
school) it was because nature was regarded as so crude, raw, wild,
that the most arbitrary escape from it was better than subjection to
nature. What is not sufficiently noted is that definite differentia-
tion of personal-social factors in their function in production of

objects of experience is now part of the technique of controlling
the experienced presence of objects; with further advance of be-
havioral psychology it will become of constantly increased im-
portance. The old stock-in-trade of wholesale scepticism, namely,
dreams, illusions, hallucinations, the effect of organic defects, of
beliefs locally current, is now in practical fact a positive resource
in the management of experience.
I hope what has been said will at least serve to explain the title
I have given this article. It is true that modern philosophy is
"subjective" as ancient philosophy was not.
In its concern with what can be experienced whether or not it has
been experienced, it has systematically taken account of the opera-
tion of specific personal-social factors. But it is equally true that
modern philosophy has been "objective" in a way in which an-
cient philospohy was not. It is impossible to make sense of t-he
problems with which modern philosophy has been pre-occupied
unless this fact is recognized in its full force. The outstanding de-
fect of modern philosophy is that these problems have taken form
by means of setting the two sets of conditions in opposition to one
another. This fact is explicable only in terms of the projection
into the modern situation of certain heritages from the earlier
philosophy which originated in and reflects a different state of cul-
ture. Philosophy will become modern in a pregnant sense only
when the "objectivism-subjectivism" involved is seen to be one of
cooperative interaction of two distinguishable sets of conditions,
so that knowledge of them in their distinction is required in order
that their interaction may be brought under intentional guidance.
Without such knowledge, intelligence is inevitably held down to
techniques for making mechanical permutations and combinations
of things that have been experienced, and mankind is dependent
upon accident for introduction of novelty. The fact that mankind
is still far from realization of the power contained in its ability to
distinguish certain conditions of experience as physical and others
as socio-psychological is true enough. This fact indicates the spe-
cial responsibility of philosophy today.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY. JOHN DEWEY.
EXPERIENCE-NOUN OR VERB?
T HE clarity and force with which Professor Lovejoy has pre-

sented the arguments for epistemological dualism, and the wide
attention his work has so deservedly received, make it unnecessary

Dewey-Objectivism and Subjectivism

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Dewey-Objectivism and Subjectivism

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Journal of Philosophy, Inc.

The Objectivism-Subjectivism of Modern Philosophy

THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

THE OBJECTIVISM-SUBJECTIVISM OF MODERN

IN his Adventures of Ideas, Whitehead writes as follows: "It is

There is an undeniable discrepancy involved in admitting the

If we consider Greek thought in an analytical way, we shall be

distinction between the cosmological and the psychological, the

The fact that philosophers refined and systematized what is in-

ditions upon which depend the activities, enjoyments, and sufferings,

For scientific methods and scientific subject-matter combine

I have presented the more difficult aspect of my position and

tion of personal-social factors in their function in production of

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY. JOHN DEWEY.

T HE clarity and force with which Professor Lovejoy has pre-

You might also like