ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to place George Herbert Mead’s thought into the context of his intellectual world and to draw out from the dialogue he conducted with that world the implications which are of most value in sociology. It focuses on his scholarly writing, not his civic involvements. The Chicago sociologists in Mead’s time seem to have been well aware of Adam Smith. When transferred from the context of scientific logic to that of the ‘subject’ under psychological consideration, John Dewey’s ‘instrumental’ model became something which Mead would find useful in his own considerations. Mead’s own citations of Smith, however, refer to the latter’s economic writings rather than to his moral philosophy. Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments bears a much stronger resemblance to Mead’s thought. Mead adopted the pragmatic approach to ideas, which had developed in an intellectual circle around James in the early 1870s.
