Smith, Anthony Woodruff (Author)
This dissertation investigates the convergence of ethical ideas and social psychology in the work of the American philosopher George Herbert Mead (1863- 1931), who spent most of his career at the University of Chicago. Mead's concept of the "social self" has figured centrally in the history of sociological theory, although it has usually been understood apart from the philosophical contexts in which he worked. By situating Mead in relation to his animating ethical concerns, this dissertation contributes to the literature on progressive-era democratic thought and helps to clarify Mead's important place in the history of moral philosophy and the social sciences. Many late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century theorists aimed to overcome the individualism of previous generations of philosophers. The notion of the "social" pervaded their work. At the University of Chicago, the philosopher John Dewey's effort to construct a theory of deliberative democracy required a conceptualization of the self as inseparable from a world of other selves and yet still a unique individual. Mead filled this need through his social psychology. In doing so, he modernized Adam Smith's theory of sympathy, which had drawn renewed interest and criticism in the 1890s. Mead also formulated a democratic theory of social control, in which the cultivation of the social self facilitates the efforts of individuals to continually reconstruct shared ideas about the common good based upon the recognition of diverse interests and voices. By way of his analysis of communication, Mead formulated a social psychology inseparable from ethical life. His work in this area has played a significant role in the genesis of critical social theory. This dissertation focuses most closely on the emergence of Mead's innovative social-psychological ideas in the period before World War I. In addition to examining Mead's philosophical background, it places his theoretical efforts in relation to those of his contemporaries. It also provides analysis of Mead and Dewey's interests in social reform and educational theory. The concluding sections examine the interpretation of Mead's ideas in the decades after World War I.
...MoreDescription Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 68/10 (2008). Pub. no. AAT 3285550.
Article
Jacobs, Glenn;
(2009)
Influence and Canonical Supremacy: An Analysis of How George Herbert Mead Demoted Charles Horton Cooley in the Sociological Canon
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Silva, Filipe Carreira da;
(2007)
G. H. Mead: A System in a State of Flux
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Thesis
Booth, Kelvin Jay;
(2007)
Animal Mind, Human Mind: George H. Mead, Animality and the Evolution of Embodied Cognition
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Quéré, Louis;
(2010)
George Herbert Mead
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Book
Bernadette M. Baker;
(2013)
William James, Sciences of Mind, and Anti-Imperial Discourse
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Raymer, Emilie J.;
(2013)
A Man of His Time: Thorstein Veblen and the University of Chicago Darwinists
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Article
Rodgers, Diane M.;
(2013)
Insects, Instincts and Boundary Work in Early Social Psychology
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Thesis
Pettit, Michael John;
(2006)
The Science of Deception: The Human Sciences, the Law, and Commercial Culture in America, 1860s--1920s
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Book
Vogler, Candace A.;
(2001)
John Stuart Mill's Deliberative Landscape: An Essay in Moral Psychology
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Book
Sklansky, Jeffrey;
(2002)
The Soul's Economy: Market Society and Selfhood in American Thought, 1820--1920
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Book
Beer, Daniel;
(2008)
Renovating Russia: The Human Sciences and the Fate of Liberal Modernity, 1880--1930
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Book
Jahoda, Gustav;
(2007)
A History of Social Psychology: From the Eighteenth-Century Enlightenment to the Second World War
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Book
Salerno, Roger A.;
(2007)
Sociology Noir: Studies at the University of Chicago in Loneliness, Marginality, and Deviance, 1915--1935
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Article
Sensales, Gilda;
Areni, Alessandra;
Dal Secco, Alessandra;
(2011)
Building the Boundaries of a Science: First Representations of Italian Social Psychology between 1875 and 1954
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Article
Welchman, Jennifer;
(2006)
William James's “The Will to Believe” and the Ethics of Self-Experimentation
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Article
Castro, Jorge;
Lafuente, Enrique;
Jiménez, Belén;
(2009)
The Soul of Spain: Spanish Scholastic Psychology and the Making of Modern Subjectivity (1875--1931)
(/isis/citation/CBB000931971/)
Book
Da Silva, Filipe Carreira;
(2007)
G. H. Mead: A Critical Introduction
(/isis/citation/CBB000830453/)
Article
Francesco Bellucci;
(2015)
Logic, Psychology, and Apperception: Charles S. Peirce and Johann F. Herbart
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Article
Thomas McNally;
(2016)
More Than a Feeling: Wittgenstein and William James on Love and Other Emotions
(/isis/citation/CBB108623002/)
Book
Canadelli, Elena;
(2013)
Più positivo dei positivisti: Antropologia, psicologia, evoluzionismo in Tito Vignoli
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