John Dewey’s Rival Versions of Virtue

Abstract:In 1932 Dewey and Tufts issued an extensively revised edition of their famous Ethics of 1908. Both versions are now available as public domain resources on the Internet, and teachers are likely to assign the second edition, since it reflects the authors’ mature views. However, at least as regards Dewey’s treatment of virtue, I argue that the earlier version is pedagogically superior to the later one. I contend that the revised treatment of virtue is in fact less true to the book’s celebrated genetic approach, and that the first edition also makes better use of the cultural resources that Dewey could reasonably assume were at the disposal of his public.