Human Nature and Conduct

First delivered as lectures and published in 1922, this book is John Dewey’s attempt to ground ethics and psychology in how people actually behave rather than in fixed rules or abstract ideals. He treats habit as the real engine of conduct, the accumulated material that shapes what we do before conscious choice ever enters. Impulse disrupts old habits, and intelligence, working through them, lets people reshape both their conduct and their surroundings. Writing as a pragmatist, Dewey rejects the split between moral theory and everyday living, insisting that morality is a social affair, learned and remade in the give and take of experience. A free PDF and EPUB edition are available to download.