Lectures on Ethics, 1900-1901

Donald F. Koch supplies the only extant complete transcription of the annual three-course sequence on ethics Dewey gave at the University of Chicago from 1894 to 1904.

Koch argues that these lectures offer the best systematic, overall introduction to Dewey’s approach to moral philosophy and are the only account showing the unity of his views in nearly all phases of ethical inquiry. These lectures are the only work by Dewey to set forth a complete theory of moral language. They offer a clear illustration of the central methodological questions in the development of a pragmatic instrumentalist ethic and the actual working out of the instrumentalist approach as distinct from simply presenting it as a conclusion.