ABSTRACT
Chapter 13 of Dewey’s Ethics deals with the place of the virtues in moral life. Dewey’s moral philosophy evolved over several decades, and this affected his understanding of the role of the virtues. Dewey gave at least three different accounts of the virtues. In the 1908 version of the Ethics, the virtues are conceptualized as the connecting link between the good and the right. I call this the connectionist model. In the paper “Three Independent Factors in Morals” (1930), the virtues are conceived as an autonomous factor, one that is irreducible either to the good or to the right. I call this the irreducibility model. Then, in the 1932 Ethics, the virtues are presented as a synthetic principle capable of integrating the other two moral factors, reconciling the morality of the good and the morality of the right. I call this the reconciliation model. While the different solution do not radically diverge, they nevertheless articulate different explanatory schemes to which Dewey resorted in order to provide a comprehensive account of morality. The chapter provides an overview of these different attempts, and proposes a theoretical framework to explain the evolution of one of the main pillars of Dewey’s moral theory.
