i s s u e No. 1, 2015 Owen Abbott THE SELF AND MORALITY IN MEAD: THE PROBLEMS WITH THE ‘I’ AND THE ‘ME’ Owen Abbott (Penryn, Cornwall) Abstract This article aims to interrogate George Herbert Mead’s account of the Self. While recognising that Mead’s work provides an invaluable contribution to theories of the self, it is argued here that a number of the theoretical underpinnings employed by Mead hold back his theories. It is maintained that this restricts Mead’s conceptualisation of the “I” and the “me”. Furthermore, his theoretical basis led to a number of shortcomings in his attempts to unify his theories of the self with his theories of ethics. 1. Introduction The conceptual clarity produced by George Herbert Mead means that his body of work should be considered as foundational for studying the self. More than this, his efforts to describe a link between ethics and self surely means that any study into the relationship between morality and self-identity would be at a loss if it failed to give substantial regard to his ideas. As such, this essay will begin by outlining the contribution that Mead made to understanding the self. This will be followed by a critical investigation into some of Mead’s most fundamental concepts and their consequences for his theories of ethics. The polemic offered here will be based on four key points. Firstly, Mead behaviourist approach led him to conceptualise meaning as only arising in the inter.culture.philosophy 1/2015 84! The Self and Morality in Mead exchange of gestures between an individual and the other1. Secondly, Mead explicitly emphasised that he gives precedence to structure over agency in explaining individual social action2. It will be argued that this point fails to accurately account for the self in general. But as well as this, it also affects many of Mead’s specific conceptualisations. This leads us to the third point of criticism. Due to Mead’s emphasis on structure, the concepts of the ‘I’ and the ‘me’ leave little room for agency. While Mead occasionally highlighted individual differences in choice3, it becomes clear that these instances were little more than token efforts. As will be explained, this seems to be because the behaviourist and structure-driven nature of Mead’s thought led him to ignore the relevance of individual identity construction in the processes of the self. The self is conceptualised in terms of the ‘I’, which is reactive in behaviourist terms, and the ‘me’, which is made up of the generalised attitudes of others within an individual’s society. While it is not doubted that both these elements are of great significance to the self, it is maintained that they do not leave room for an individual to act in terms of who they see themselves to be – that is, Mead’s concepts cannot facilitate the importance of identity to understanding the relationship between the individual and society. This feeds into the fourth aspect of the polemic. Again, as a result of his theoretical foundations, Mead’s ethical theories frequently offer a short-sighted extension of Kantian rationality, while also failing to accurately describe how ethical principles in a society become significant to individual morality. Mead does make many important contributions to understanding the self and ethics. But, to remedy his inability to precisely describe the relationship between the two, it is necessary to add a conceptualisation of moral identity construction through !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Gould 2009. Mead 1967/1934. 3 Mead 1925. 1 2 inter.culture.philosophy 1/2015 85! Owen Abbott the process of structuration. Of course, an essay of this length will be not be long enough to undertake this task in full. However, the final section of this paper will offer a brief indication of how such a theory may be assembled. 2. An Outline of Mead’s Theories of the Self To provide a linear account of Mead’s theories, it makes sense to begin where he begins in Mind, Self, and Society. His most basic premise is this: the self develops in relation to the social. That is, “...selves are essentially social products, products or phenomena of the social side of human experience”4. Of course, Mead emphasised that this is underlined by physiological mechanisms. However, the self is not reducible to the physiological functioning of the organism. The self is not there at birth, but instead develops through the individual’s relation to social experience. This claim is fairly uncontroversial, but it is Mead’s analysis of how this process occurs which makes his work stand out. For Mead, the self is characterised by reflexivity, meaning that the self is a self when it is capable of being both a subject and an object for itself5. Becoming an object for oneself inherently requires social interaction. This is because it is necessary for the individual to absorb the attitudes of others about herself before she can reflect on her self as an object6. Mead explicitly states that it is only through the “verbal gesture” that this process can occur, because it is language which allows us to refer to ourselves in terms of the attitudes of others7. The full development of the self occurs through two stages. Firstly, the individual must take on other individuals’ attitudes towards himself. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Mead 1967/1934, p. 1. Ibid. 6 Mead 1925. 7 Mead 1967/1934, p. 39. 4 5 inter.culture.philosophy 1/2015 86! The Self and Morality in Mead Secondly, he must take on the generalised attitudes towards social issues of the social group of which he is part. The first stage is integral to being able to relate to oneself as an object. The second aspect is an essential facet of a fully developed self, because, for Mead, a fully developed self exists in relation to other selves within their milieu. The self is therefore able to take on the attitudes of the “generalised other” towards social behaviour8. Mead uses the example of property ownership to illustrate this point. As a self in contemporary Western society, we typically absorb the general attitude that property can be owned and, consequently, should not be stolen. The attitude of the generalised other can thus extend into the notion that stealing other peoples’ property is generally wrong. Part of having a fully developed self is being able to reflect on such generalised attitudes when reflecting upon one’s conduct. This occurs through the concepts that Mead refers to as the “I” and the “me”9. The “I” is the aspect of the human being which acts in response to the other, whereas the “me” is constituted by the organised set of attitudes of the others that have been taken on in the development of the self. The individual reacts towards the attitudes of others through the “I”10. The “I” is pre-reflexive, meaning that it provides the immediate response towards others. This means that the individual can often act in a way which the “me” may call into question11. The “me” reflects on the actions of the “I” in relation the attitudes of others. In this sense, the “I” remains elusive, because we can never fully understand why we act in certain ways. We can only reflect upon such actions, by which point it has become absorbed into the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Mead 1967/1934, p. 161. Mead 1967/1934, pp. 174-175. 10 Mead 1967/1934; Mead 1925; Gould 2009; Hjortkjær/Willert 2013. 11 Hjortkjær/Willert 2013. 8 9 inter.culture.philosophy 1/2015 87! Owen Abbott reflexive memory of interpreting behaviour that constitutes the “me”12. What we have in Mead’s theory is a triadic conversation in which the “me” engages with the “I” in relation to the attitudes of others. And it is through this mechanism “...that the whole social process is thus brought back into the experience of the individuals involved in it; it is by such means, which enable the individual to take the attitude of the other towards himself, that the individual is able consciously to adjust himself to that process...”13. 3. Problems with Mead’s Theory, Part 1 – Behaviourism The process of the development of the self, just described, is not yet complete. This is because we have not yet touched on the significance which Mead attributed to behaviourism. He argued that if we are to understand how we become a self by taking on the attitudes of others, we need to understand how such attitudes are absorbed by the individual. Mead emphasised the role played by gestures and meanings in this process. Taking on the attitudes of others requires the individual to understand the meaning that the other’s gestures carry14. This point seems to be perfectly reasonable until we look deeper into how Mead describes meaning. He argues that: Meaning arises and lies within the field of the relation between the gesture of a given human organism and the subsequent behaviour of this organism as indicated to another human organism by that gesture15. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Mead 1967/1934. Mead 1967/1934, p. 134. 14 Mead 1967/1934. 15 Mead 1967/1934, pp. 75-76. 12 13 inter.culture.philosophy 1/2015 88! The Self and Morality in Mead So for Mead, meaning emerges in the threefold relationship of the gesture to another, the other’s response to that gesture, and the subsequent social act. Thus, taking on the attitude of the other requires that we engage with the other in a conversation of gestures, through which the meaning of their attitude arises. If, as Mead suggests, it is through gestures that meaning arises, then it is through these gestures that the attitudes of the other are taken on by the individual. This entails the process of the “I” acting and responding, followed by the “me” reflecting upon this response of the “I” in relation to the other’s gestures, as described above. Here then, is how Mead explained the development of the self in behaviourist terms. But his theory begs the question: does meaning really emerge through the exchange of gestures? Gould16 answers that this is far from being the case, because meanings, held within a culture, have to precede the individual in such a way that they mediate the individual’s practice, rather than emerging out of that practice. Gould offers the example of hand shaking. We generally know that if a new acquaintance extends their hand in a particular situation, then we respond by shaking the hand. For Mead, it is in the gesture and the response that meaning arises. But, Gould suggests, what if the person extending their hand used it as a ploy to distract or coerce the recipient in order to rob them? Here, it becomes obvious that meaning preceded the exchange of gestures, because the robber was aware of the meaning attached to a person to extending their hand, which enabled the robber to exploit this situation. It is perhaps an overstatement to suggest that Mead thought that meaning arose entirely through the exchange of gestures, without any sort of meaning preceding the particular situation. However, Mead’s emphasis on behaviourism does lead his work to read as though meaning only arises through specific interaction. It seems !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 16 Gould 2009. inter.culture.philosophy 1/2015 89! Owen Abbott much more likely that, as fully developed adults, we learnt what certain things mean for us, and we carry these meanings into certain situations. The social interaction with an other then allows us to reflexively engage with the meanings in relation to our self. Take this example. A young individual is sympathetic to left-wing causes, although she is yet to actively participate. She enters into a conversation with a new acquaintance, who bemoans and vilifies those on the left who do not actively engage with more radical Marxism. These were general comments, which were not aimed directly at our first individual – the second knew nothing of the first’s lack of participation. Nonetheless, the first individual takes on the attitudes of the other and reflexively engages with her self and her position in left wing politics. As Mead’s theory reads, this would occur through an exchange of gestures, in which the meaning of the second’s attitudes arose. Yet, it would not be possible for the reflexivity of the first to occur as it did unless she had some prior conception of leftright politics, activism, and Marxism. The meanings of such things could not have entirely emerged from a series of throw-away comments by a newly acquainted other. As Daanen and Sammut17 point out, Mead’s theory lacks a coherent account of how certain meanings can exist between people without exchanging gestures in every situation. Indeed, many authors, for example Burger and Luckman18, Gadamer19, Giddens20, have all highlighted how some theoretical understanding of the world is necessary to coherent social interaction. Without these theoretical underpinnings, we would be completely unintelligible to ourselves and to others. We can only take on the attitudes of others in the process of becoming a self insofar as these attitudes !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Daanen/Sammut 2012. Burger/Luckmann 1966. 19 Gadamer 1975. 20 Giddens 1979. 17 18 inter.culture.philosophy 1/2015 90! The Self and Morality in Mead are generally intelligible to us. And for these attitudes to be intelligible to us as individuals, they must carry some sort of meaning which is generally held within our society21. To be sure, Mead makes this point himself when he argues that we take on generalised notions of right and wrong from our society22. If this is the case, then we have to assume that such attitudes have a meaning which is carried into the specific exchange of gestures, rather than emerging from them. The overall point is this: if meaning did not precede a specific interaction, then we would not be able to interpret the attitude of the other which Mead claims is so integral to the development of the self. 4. Problems with Mead’s Theory, Part 2 – Explaining the Parts in Terms of the Whole Mead makes himself perfectly clear as to which side of the structure-agency debate he falls on. According to him “...an individual can be understood only in terms of the behaviour of the whole social group of which he is a member...”23. He stresses that it is necessary to explain individual conduct through the conduct of the society of which he is part. “For social psychology, the whole (society) is prior to the part (the individual), not the part to the whole; and the part is explained in terms of the whole, not the whole in terms of the parts”24. Mead leaves us in no doubts about his position. However, it must be asked whether his position is a sound. Of course, the structure-agency debate has endured long after Mead, and there is still huge variation between different social scientists regarding the best position !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Burger/Luckmann 1966. Mead 1925. 23 Mead 1967/1934, p. 6. 24 Mead 1967/1934, p. 7. 21 22 inter.culture.philosophy 1/2015 91! Owen Abbott to take in the debate. As this essay predominantly focuses on how Mead’s theoretical foundations affected his conceptualisations, I will not offer an extensive investigation into the vast body propositions and rebuttals which make up the structure-agency literature today. Instead, I will briefly address the general problem that Mead causes for himself by attempting to describe the self from the position that the part should be explained in terms of the whole. From here, I will move on to its specific consequences for his work in the following sections. Taking the position that the part can only be explained in terms of the whole seems to be an odd way of approaching the self. By making such a claim, Mead is inherently arguing that the role played by individual agency is minimal compared to the role played by social structure. In the case of the self, this means that if we are to explain an individual self, then we need to explain the society and its structures of which he is part. Now this point is perfectly reasonable – part of understanding an individual’s self must of course be a consideration of the social system in which that self is formed. However, Mead pushes us beyond this. The sentence “...the part is explained in terms of the whole, not the whole in terms of the parts”25 suggests that to explain each individual self (part) we need only explain the whole. This implies that agency is of little relevance to the self, which hardly seems to be the case. By Mead’s definition, the self is reflexive, in the sense that it can be an object for oneself once we have taken on the attitudes of others towards ourselves. It is via this point that Mead describes the part (the self) as being explained by the whole. But it seems unlikely that we could understand the self as being reflexive without at least some sort of agency. Even if we take Mead’s point that we need to become an object for ourselves by taking on the attitudes of others, surely engaging with oneself reflexively requires agency. Reflexivity is not passive. We engage with !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 25 Ibid. inter.culture.philosophy 1/2015 92! The Self and Morality in Mead ourselves in relation to others, and in relation to whom we see ourselves as being, and what we want to achieve26. As Mead highlights himself, we modulate our actions according to this reflexivity, we reflect on previous actions through it, and we think about how we could act differently in the future because of it. This being the case, it becomes clear that agency is necessary to reflexivity, because reflexivity both entails and yields conscious action on the part of the individual, even if this action is mediated by the social structures of which he is part (as a structuration approach would maintain27). In short, it seems unlikely that the whole can fully describe the part when relating to the individualised reflexive experience of the self. While our reflexivity inevitably draws upon our social experience, the nature of reflexivity also allows for individualised reflection on who we are and who we want to be, which do not have to occur entirely in relation to the social whole – if this was the case, it is hard to imagine a world of individual differences. Mead28 loosely makes this point himself when he says that each individual comprises multitudes of differences, which arise out of differences in experience and preference. That Mead highlights this, if only in passing, should have indicated that the self cannot be entirely explained in terms of the whole. However, as with his behaviourism, Mead seems to have concreted his feet in the theoretical foundations of “the whole explains the part”, which leads to a certain incommensurable vein running throughout his work. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hjortkjær/Willert 2013. Giddens 1984. 28 Mead 1925. 26 27 inter.culture.philosophy 1/2015 93! Owen Abbott 5. Problems with Mead’s Theory, Part 3 – The Concepts of the ‘I’ and the ‘Me’ This previous point becomes particularly clear in Mead’s conceptualisation of the ‘I’ and the ‘me’. Because his structure-led theoretical foundations, Mead leaves little room for agency in his conceptualisations. Agency can be understood as simply having the ability to act and the ability to have acted differently to how one did29. The ability to have acted differently to how one actually did is significant to a definition of agency because it implies a certain facility for the agent to actively engage with her actions. If there was no such facility, then we would only be able to understand action as entirely determined by structure or unconsciously led by the physiological organism. However, it seems that Mead’s theory of the ‘I’ and the ‘me’ function precisely along such an understanding of action. As has been described above, the ‘I’ is the pre-reflexive response of the individual organism to the other30. As such, the ‘I’ is often described as acting in ways which are unpredictable to the individual’s self31. The ‘I’ acts and the ‘me’, which is constituted by the generalised attitudes of others, responds to that action reflexively. It is here that the general inadequacies of Mead’s behaviourism and his argument that ‘the whole explains the part’ combine and translate into his specific theoretical applications. According to his theory, we act through the ‘I’ with little engagement on the part of the agent. We simply act in behaviourist terms, and then the ‘me’ reflects upon this action in relation to the attitudes of the social whole. But general day-to-day experience tells us that this is not an accurate account of how we !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Giddens 1979. Mead 1967/1934. 31 Mead 1967/1934; Gould 2009; Hjortkjær/Willert 2013. 29 30 inter.culture.philosophy 1/2015 94! The Self and Morality in Mead act in the world. As Gould32 points out, it seems likely that we can think of occasions where we have contemplated the likely scenarios of a situation, and decided how to act before we enter into the situation. Such a circumstance exemplifies how the engagement with the ‘me’ can pre-empt the response of the ‘I’. This point leads us on to what I think is the most significant shortcoming of Mead’s theory: it ignores the role played by self-narrative and identity. I do not disagree with Mead the ‘I’ and the ‘me’ are integral facets of the self, and much action does occur in the terms Mead described. However, his theory overlooks the significance of who the individual sees herself as being, and who she wants to be. This individual self-narrative is the essential aspect of self-identity33. This being the case, our self-narrative has a hugely significant role to play in both the processes of the self and future action. It guides how we reflexively engage with ourselves, and in turn informs how we aim to conduct ourselves in the future. Of course, in line with Mead’s argument, we may reflect upon ourselves and our actions in light of the unpredictable action of the ‘I’, perhaps looking back on our actions with shame as we realise through the ‘me’ that we did not act in a way which represents who we see ourselves as being. But equally, as Gould points out, future actions can be considered beforehand, particularly in relation to one’s self-narrative. To give an example, I, as a pacifist, have considered my views on the use of violence in relation to my self-narrative, and I have come to the conclusion that the use of violence is not becoming of who I want to be – the identity that I want to maintain is that of a pacifist. As such, I have decided not to use violence under any circumstances. Of course, a time may come where the ‘I’ acts unpredictably and I break my vow, in which case I am likely to respond shamefully through the ‘me’. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 32 33 Gould 2009. MacIntyre 1985. inter.culture.philosophy 1/2015 95! Owen Abbott However, this does necessarily change the fact that I have applied my agency in reflexively considering what kind of person I would like to be, and I have made a moral choice in relation to that view of myself, and this view to who I would like to continue to be has affected my behaviour and my subsequent choices as an agent in such a way that I have not used violence since this aspect of my self-narrative began to emerge. This relationship is something that Mead’s ‘I’ and ‘me’ does not seem to be able to facilitate. This is because his behaviourist and structure-led theoretical foundations negates the possibility of his concepts from considering how agents can construct a self-narrative around who they see themselves as being, and allow their action to be affected according to this self-narrative, rather than simply responding in behaviourist terms and reflecting on this response in relation the social whole. 6. Problems with Mead’s Theory, Part 4 – Mead’s Theory of Ethics In order to get to grips with the shortcomings of Mead’s ethical theory, let us begin with a quote from ‘The Philosophical Basis of Ethics’: Within the field of ethics... the moral individual and his world cannot consistently be presented as lying inside another moral field. The growth of moral consciousness must be coterminous within that of the moral situation.34 The point that Mead is making here is important – the individual moral consciousness emerges in relation to the moral structures of the social settings in which he exists and develops. Yet, he criticises the notion that each individual’s moral consciousness is entirely determined by her society, and hints at individual !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 34 Mead 1908. inter.culture.philosophy 1/2015 96! The Self and Morality in Mead differences which allow for individual variations in moral ideals35. In this sense, Mead fits in with pragmatist approaches to ethics. However, Mead fails to accurately account for how the individual moral consciousness relates to the society in which it develops. This is due, again, to the inadequacies of his theoretical underpinnings. This becomes obvious in his references to Kant. Mead’s theory of the ‘I’ and the ‘me’ led him to conceptualise moral consciousness as emerging in relation to the views of the generalised other, which leaves no room for agentive reflexivity of one’s self-narrative. So when Mead refers to Kant, he argues that: “The universality of judgement, upon which Kant places so much stress, is a universality that arises from the fact that we take the attitude of the entire community, of all rational beings.”36 There is something archaic about this sentence. In what society would we consider an entire community to be formed of rational beings? And why would it be assumed that all individuals would accept a particular rational attitude? Would some people not be suspicious of universal and rational moral attitudes? Yet, Mead continues to make a number of Kantian assertions about the nature of morality which surely emerge out of his misguided assumption that only the ‘me’ and the ‘I’ are of relevance to the self. He claims that the categorical imperative stands because we invariably judge our actions through the claim that anyone in our situation would have acted as we did in that particular situation37. This example challenges his point. Imagine an individual who morally disagrees with the practices of supermarkets, and thus occasionally steals from them in a minute act of protest. We cannot say that this individual would say that every person in the same position would act the same, because that person would probably be aware that most people do not steal from supermarkets, even if they do think that they are immoral !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Mead 1925. Mead 1967/1934, p. 379. 37 Mead 1967/1934. 35 36 inter.culture.philosophy 1/2015 97! Owen Abbott institutions. Instead, the individual is acting in relation to her self-narrative view of who she is as a moral person, and what she sees as acceptable moral action in relation to her self-narrative. She is not acting according to the generalised view of the other, quite the contrary. Similarly, Mead claims that, in moral terms, “It is a practical impossibility” to act in one way and to expect others to act in another way towards you38. For example, an individual cannot treat another dishonestly and expect honesty in return. But this does not necessarily seem to be how morality has to work. A person may have been treated dishonestly, but decided that it is not right to respond with further dishonesty, according to their moral identity. Or perhaps a student of Emmanuel Levinas has constructed a self-narrative around the notion that morality is at its most pure when it is asymmetric39. It thus cannot be assumed that members of a society tacitly absorb a tit-for-tat rationality approach to moral judgements. Rather, we have to assume a more complex relation of self-identity, which draws upon ethical structures within one’s society, but which is not delimited by these structures. We can see from these examples that Mead’s typology of the ‘I’ and the ‘me’ led him to make the kind of deterministic claims that the quote used at the top of this section would suggest he is against. His theoretical framework led him to be unable to accurately explain how there can be general ethical structures in a society, while also being distinct variations in individual morality. What he ends up with is a rationalist explanation of why ethics can often be seen to be fairly uniform, without any concrete interpretation of how individual agency is embroiled in the processes of moral consciousness. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 38 39 Mead 1967/1934, p. 381. Levinas 1989. inter.culture.philosophy 1/2015 98! The Self and Morality in Mead 7. Concluding Remarks – Can Mead’s Theories Still be Useful to Contemporary Ethical Theory? I am in no doubt that much of the theoretical framework established by Mead can be used to inform contemporary theories of ethics and morality. In particular, Mead’s conceptualisations of the ‘I’ and the ‘me’ are integral to understanding the self. However, while it seems that Mead wanted to extend his theories of the self into explaining ethics within a society, the shortcomings of the conceptualisations of the ‘I’ and the ‘me’ mean that he was not successful on this front. His mission of explaining the relationship between the individual self and society is a commendable one, which likely holds the key to understanding how ethics and morality function and are reproduced within a society. But if this task is to be completed, then an understanding of self-identity needs to be added. But this cannot be any tired interpretation of identity. Only a theory of self-identity which gives accurate credence to the role played by structure and agency in the process of constructing one’s identity can be used to account for the relationship between the ethical structures of a society and the individual’s moral identity. I suggest, in incredibly brief terms here, that it is necessary for the theory of structuration40 to be applied to the construction of identity if we are to understand how a moral identity is formed. If we take identity to refer to the process of constructing one’s self-narrative41, then it is clear that identity requires the individual agent to draw upon the structures of their society in this process. If this was not the case, then the self-narrative that one is constructing would be utterly unintelligible to others, which, as Mead’s work highlights, would be contrary to the formation of the self. But this is not to say the individuals are passive in their identity construction, !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 40 41 Giddens 1979; Giddens 1984. Bauman 2008. inter.culture.philosophy 1/2015 99! Owen Abbott particularly in contemporary Western society. The process of identity construction is rich with agency because the individual selectively engages with the particular structures which she feels are relevant to the identity that she wishes to construct. And, to drive home the importance of structuration, as she draws upon these particular structures, she is also reproducing their relevance to constructing the specific kind of identity that she is forming. It is surely through this same process that a moral identity is formed. The ethical structures of a society are drawn upon by the agent and utilised in the construction of one’s self-narrative of what is right and what is wrong. This process is neatly demonstrated in the opening interviews of the classic work Habits of the Heart42. As has been indicated throughout this paper, agency has a lot more relevance to the reflexive nature of the self than Mead’s theory allows for. By adding the notion of a self-identity formed through the process of structuration, we can begin to understand how the ethical structures of a society are taken on and interpreted by individuals through their reflexive engagement with who they see themselves as being as moral people, that is, in relation to the continuous construction of their moral identity. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 42 Bellah et al. 1996. inter.culture.philosophy 1/2015 100! The Self and Morality in Mead References BAUMAN, Zygmunt: Does Ethics Have a Chance in a World of Consumers? London 2008. BELLAH, Robert N./Madsen, Richard/Sullivan, William M./Swidler, Ann/Tipton, Steven M: Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. London 1996. BERGER, Peter L./Luckmann, Thomas: The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. London 1966. DAANEN, P./Sammut, G.: G.H. Mead and Knowing how to Act: Practical Meaning, Routine Interaction, and the Theory of Interobjectivity, in: Theory and Psychology 22/5 (2012), pp. 556-571. GADAMER, Hans-Georg: Truth and Method. London 1975. GIDDENS, Anthony: Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis. London 1979. —: The Constitution of Society. Cambridge 1984. GOULD, Mark: Culture, Personality, and Emotions in George Herbert Mead: A Critique of Empiricism in Cultural Sociology, in: Sociological Theory 27/4 (2009), pp. 435-448. HJORTKJÆR, Christian/Willert, Søren: The Self as a Center of Ethical Creativity: A Constructive Dialogue between Soren Kierkegaard and George Herbert Mead, in: Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook 1 (2013), pp. 451-472. LEVINAS, Emmanuel: Ethics as First Philosophy. S. Hand (Ed.), The Levinas Reader. London 1989, p. 75-88. MACINTYRE, Alasdair: After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. London 1985. MEAD, George Herbert: The Philosophical Basis of Ethics, in: International Journal of Ethics 18/3 (1908), pp. 311-323. inter.culture.philosophy 1/2015 101! Owen Abbott —: The Genesis of the Self and Social Control, in: International Journal of Ethics 35/3 (1925), pp. 251-277. —: Mind, Self, and Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviourist. Works of George Herbert Mead, Volume 1. C.W. Morris. (Ed.), London 1967/1934. inter.culture.philosophy 1/2015 102!
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