George Herbert Mead: Morality from the Perspective of the Act, Self, and Experience

This chapter firstly aims to centre Mead’s specific writings on morality, which are often overlooked next to his more famous work on the self. Through their focus on the “social act”, Mead’s specific moral writings yield a number of important critiques of Kantianism, sociological determinism, and psychological determinism that continue to be prescient. The second section explores how Mead’s work on the self and consciousness in action produces a crucial pragmatist account of the interrelationships between interaction, habituation, evaluativeness, and reconstruction in moral action and consciousness. Finally, Mead’s attempts to formulate a pragmatist account of moral change and social reform are assessed. While the difficulties associated with Mead’s writing on morality are discussed, it is argued that Mead’s work provides vital insights into the role of phases of consciousness and interaction in moral agency.