Chimezie Nnadozie

Ethics of Consciousness: a Deweyan Perspective Chimezie Nnadozie

Main emphasis in this work is on the fact that John Dewey?s theory of ethics is developed with a predominating idea that man (the moral agent) has the capacity to direct his activities according to knowledge of the moral significance accruing to such activities from the sphere of the agent?s being. Dewey had emphatic regards for the nature of the relationship between the moral agent, moral actions and moral ends. All together, with the view that one of the greatest problems of Dewey?s ethics is the complex nature of its notions of the good, the virtues and the moral end which can hardly be delineated in concise terms, the approach of this text is to start up with the issue of the Deweyan conception of the moral good and virtues; pass through the inferential importance Dewey places on knowledge of such good and virtues, to arrive at the agent-act relationship where selfness emerges to be the Deweyan center of morality.