Neglected American philosophers in the history of symbolic interactionism

NEGLECTED AMERICAN PHILOSOPHERS I N THE HISTORY OF SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM

JOHN M. LINCOURT

Meryhurst College

PETER H. HARE

State University of New York at Bufalo

Although historians of social psychology and sociology have given considerable attention to the development of symbolic interactionism, they have curiously over- looked the fact that at the turn of the century there was already a well developed American philosophical tradition of social interactionism. It is seriously misleading to say, as Talcott Parsons has, that “[ilt was Cooley who first took seriously the truly indeterminate character of the self as a structure independent of others.”l It is also unfortunate that the most comprehensive history of symbolic interactionism to date, written by John W. Petras, contains no discussion of this American philosophical tradition? To be sure, the roles played by James Mark Baldwin, William James and John Dewey have been recognized and described in detail, but the contribution of Josiah Royce, one of George Herbert Mead’s teachers, is seldom mentioned, and Charles Sanders Peirce’s interactionism has been adequately treated only by philosophers. The pioneering studies of self-consciousness by Chauncey Wright appear to have been ignored altogether in this connection.

Mead’s approving reference in 1909 to the social theory of meaning presented by Royce in his “Self-Consciousness, Social Consciousness and Nature” has a sig- nificance that has not been fully appre~iated.~ Mead, after all, was exposed to Royce (1887-88) even before he was exposed to Wunut, and Royce’s The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885) contained the germ that in the 1890’s developed into his full blown social interacti~nism.~ Probably Mead himself is in large part responsible for the neglect of Royce. When discussing explicitly the history of the movement in his well-known essay on Charles Horton Cooley, Mead discusses Baldwin, Tarde and James but never mentions Royce.6 Although he was glad else-

‘Tdcott Parsons, “Interaction: Social Interaction,” in David L. Sills (ed.), International Ency- clopedia oftheSociaZSciences (New York: Macmillan and Free Press, 1968), Vol. 7, p. 434.

2John W. Petras, “The Genesis and Development of Symbolic Interactionism in American Sociology” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Connecticut, 1966). Petras makes only a footnote reference to Royce (p. 151) and no reference at all to Peirce and Wright; his 45-page biblio- graphy includes (p. 242) only James Harry Cotton’s Royce m the H u m n Self. That Petras gives so little attention to Royce is especially surprising in light of the fact that Charles W. Morris in the Introduction to his edition of Mead’s Mind, Self, and Socifty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934) mentions Royce as a teacher of Mead who had a social theory of self (p. xiii). Fay Berger Karpf, American Social Psychology: Its Origins, Development and European Background (New York: McGraw- Hill, 1932) refers several times (e.g., pp. 269, 280, and 290) to Royce but makes no references to Wright or Peirce.

aAndrew J. Reck (ed.), Selected Writings: George Herbert Mead (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1964), p. 95.

4John Clendenning “Introduction,” The Letters of Josiah Royce, ed. by John Clendenning. (Chi- cago: University of Ckcago Press, 1970), pp. 24-25. Indeed, Royce’s emphasis on the social can be traced to his doctoral dissertation in 1878. See Bruce Kuklick, Josiah Royce: A n InteZZectuaE Bio- graphy (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1972), pp. 14-15 fn.

6George Herbert Mead, I ‘ Cooley’s Contribution to American Social Thought,” American Journal of Sociology, XXXV (1930), 693-706, reprinted in Charles Horton Cooley, Human Nature and the Social Order (New York: Schocken Books, 1964), pp. xxi-xxxviii.

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334 JOHN M. LINCOURT AND PETER H. HARE

where to give Royce somewhat dubious credit for opening his mind to ‘(the realm of romantic idealism,”6 Mead appears to be so eager to emphasize functional mechanisms and to disown what he regards as Royce’s somehow un-American meti+ physics that he pointedly avoids considering him a significant figure in the history of social interactionism.

Perhaps also responsible for the neglect of Royce is the widespread ignorance of his stature in the philosophical community at the turn of the century. Royce was the leading American exponent of idealism at a time when idealism was the dominant philosophical school, and consequently his influence on the American philosophical community may have equalled, for a brief period, that of his older colleague, William James. However, fashions in philosophy, as in other disciplines, are such that in a very few years a philosopher’s reputation can change drastically. It was not long before realists and pragmatists, who vehemently objected to Royce’s idealism, had seen to it that Royce’s work was no longer taken seriously except perhaps as meti+ physics of the most speculative sort. It was then an easy step to the assumption that Royce’s work never had been taken seriously except as speculative metaphysics. Once this assumption was made, it was natural to overlook Royce’s work in social psychology or to suppose that his social psychology had been of an amateur sort without impact at the time it was published. Fortunately, in recent years a con- venient edition of Royce’s chief writings has appeared,’ and a number of thorough studies of his work have been published by historians of American philosophy. Per- haps the intellectual biography just published by Bruce Kuklick will at long last lead historians of social psychology to a proper appreciation of Royce.8

This is not to belittle, of course, the influence on Mead of Wundt, Cooley and others already mentioned. However, even if it were true (as we doubt) that Royce had negligible influence on Mead, that would be no reason to overlook Royce’s inter- esting contribution. It is important for the history of ideas to recognize that Royce, a philosophical giant of his time, was partly responsible for the main themes of social interactionism being very much in the American intellectual “air” at the turn of the century. Royce represented a living philosophical tradition of social interactionism, a tradition whose origin was independent of such figures as Cooley. Be- hind Royce in this tradition lay the work of Wright and Peirce. The existence of this tradition is not called in question by such facts as that Dewey said that his ideas stem “in part from Peirce and Royce, but only after and through Mead,”9 any more than it is called in question by the fact, if it is a fact, that Royce had negligible influence on Mead. Although we think it likely that Royce had more influence (direct and indirect) on Mead than Mead was conscious of or willing to acknowledge, what is more important to recognize is that this social interactionist tradition existed and has been neglected, whatever its causal influence on the figures whose names are

6George Herbert Mead, “Josiah R o y c e A Personal Impression,” Internatiml Journal of Ethics, XXVII (1917), 169. Royceis made to B pear an un-Americw metaphysician in Mead’s“The Philoso- phies of Royce, James, and Dewey in Tgeir American Setting,” Reck, op. cit., pp. 371-91.

7John J. McDermott (ed.), The Basic Writings of Josiah Royce, 2 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969). From the point of view of symbolic interactionism the most useful of the studies of Royce is Peter FUSS, The Moral Philosophy of Josiah Royce (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965). Fuss makes use of Royce’s numerous unpublished papers in social psychology.

“--

BKuklickJ op. eit. %&&s W. Morris, Skz Theories of Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1932), p. 322 fn.

NEGLECTED AMERICAN PHILOSOPHERS 335

usually associated with the movement. Let us now very briefly sketch the contri- butions of these neglected philosophers.

Chauncey Wright (1830-1875) contributed a number of key ingredients to the tradition without himself being, strictly, a symbolic interactionist : (1) Darwinian orientation, (2) self-consciousness as an emergent, (3) signs as essential to the emergence of self, and (4) the social nature of man as enhancing self-consciousness.

Although Wright’s views were adumbrated in a short essay probably written in 1852 before Darwin published Origin of Species,’O he provided a full statement of the above ingredients in “Evolution of Self-Consciousness,” a monograph written at Darwin’s request and published in 1873.l‘ Since Darwin was concerned to explain the evolutionary transition from animal instinct to the rational faculties of man and shared Wright’s view that language played an essential role in the transition, he asked his enthusiastic American disciple to use his analytical powers to determine when a thing may “be properly said to be effected by the will of man.”12

The evolutionary gap which Wright is attempting to bridge is between two levels of mental activity. On the lower level-which men and animals have in common-knowledge is produced by “outward attention.”

When a thought, or an outward expression, acts in an animal’s mind or in a man’s, in the capacity of a sign, it carries forward the movements of a train, and directs attention away from itself to what it signifies or suggests. . . .I3

On this level there is a reaction to outward effects or signs without any recognition of the relation between the sign and the Lhing signified. However, on the upper level of mental activity, which is peculiar to the minds of men, further knowledge is produced by “reflective attention” to signs as signs. Internal images and outward per- ceptions are operative as signs in inference, and the recognition of the difference between them, Wright argues, is the crucial step in achieving self-consciousness. The step becomes possible when there is an extension of memory to recall orrevive impressions and an increase in the power of attention, so they can be directed to an examination of the external and internal signs as such.

There is another factor, Wright believes, which enriches man’s knowledge of himself as subject, a factor of special interest to historians of interactionism: the social nature of man.

Motives more powerful than mere inquisitiveness about the feebler steps or mere thoughts of a revived train, and more eficient in concentrating attention upon them, and upon their functions as signs, or suggesting images, would spring from the social nature of the animal, from the uses of mental communica- tion between the members of a community, and from the desire to communicate, which these uses would create. And just as an outward sign associated with a

loEdward H. Madden, Chauncey Wright and the Foundations of Pragmatism (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1963)’ pp. 183-86. Madden’s Chapter 7 is an excellent account of Wright’s views on self-consciousness.

Whauncey Wright, “Evolution of Self-Consciousness ” North American Review CXVI (1873), 245-310. Parts of this monograph are reprinted in Edward k. Madden (ed.), The Philosophical Writ- ings of Chauncey Wright: Representative Selections (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1958), pp. 71-97.

12Philip P. Wiener, Evolution and the Foundera of Pragmat.ism (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1965), p. 31.

Whauncey Wright, op. cit., p. 262.


mental image aids by its intensity in fixing attention upon the latter, so the uses of such outward signs and the motives connected with their employment would add extensive force, or interest, t o the energy of attention in the cognition of this inward sign; and hence would aid in the reference of it and its sort to the subject ego. . . .”I4

However, having identified the social dimension in Wright’s account of the emergence of self, we should not conclude that he advocated a thorough-going social explanation of the self. He is concerned primarily with how the race developed self- consciousness biologically, not with how an individual child develops a concept of self in the present social context. Wright takes the view that, at the present stage in evolution, self-consciousness is a largely instinctive given, though it is a given that was achieved racially by the use of signs. In his view the present social nature of man serves only to enhance the self-consciousness already given biologically.

For many years Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), like William James, was a younger companion of Wright.16 The companionship is vividIy described by Peirce :

It was in the earliest seventies that a knot of us young men in Old Cambridge, calling ourselves, half-ironically, half-defiantly, “The Metaphysical Club,” . . . used to meet, sometimes in my study, sometimes in that of William James. . . . Chauncey Wright, something of a philosophical celebrity in those days, was never absent from our meetings. I was about to call him our corypheus; but he will better be described as our boxing-master whom w e 1 particularly-used to face to be severely pumrnelled.”l6

Peirce was influenced by Wright in a number of ways, not the least of which was in his preoccupation with the theory of signs.17

Examining our consciousness of self, Peirce asks whether, as Descartes held, we directly intuit the self. He answers that knowledge of the self is an inference knowledge of the self is learned. Since the self is a learned entity, not an intuited entity, and since everything that is learned is a thought, and every thought is a sign, Peirce concludes that the self is a sign: “. . , man is a sign. . . my language is the sum total of myself. . . .”18 His argument from his theory of signs to his theory

14Ibid., p. 263. 16For an account of the “Metaphysical Club” of which they were all members, see Wiener, op.

cit., pp. 18-30, and Max H. Fisch‘s “Was There a Metaphysical Club in Cambridge?”, Studies in the Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce, Second Series, ed. by Edward C. Moore snd Richard S. Robin (Amherst: University of Mass. Press, 1964), p. 3 32. The secondary literature on Peirce by philosophers is vast, but some of the more useful worfs from the point of view of symbolic interactionlsm are: Charles Morns, “Peirce, Mead, and Pragmatism,” Philosophical Review, XLVII (1938), 109-27; Mor- ris, The Pragmatic Movement in American Philosophy (New York: George Braziller, 1970); and John E. Smith, Royce’s Social Infinite (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1950), pp. 19-31, 68-73. Especially helpful in explaining the technicalities of Peirce’s theory of signs is Douglas Greenlee, “Peirce’s Con- cept of Sign,” (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, 1964), shortly to be published as a book by Mouton.

‘Charles Sanders Peirce, Collected Papers, Vols. I-VI edited by Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss, Vols. VII-VIII edited by Arthur Burks (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1934- 1958), Vol. V. 7 13.

17Cf. Max H. Fisch, “General Introduction: The Classic Period in American Philosophy,” C h s i c American Philosophers, ed. by Max H. Fisch (New York: Appleton-Century Crofts, 1951), pp. 29-30.

1sPeirce. op. cit., 7 314.

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of self is complex, much too complex for us to explain in the present paper where we wish merely to draw attention to an independent American tradition of social interactionism. Fortunately, we can refer the reader to an illuminating discussion of Peirce’s difficult argument recently published by Duane H. Whittier in a Festschrift for Max Fisch.’g

In addition to presenting many of the themes of social interactionism in terms of his theory of signs, Peirce provided a metaphysics, or theory of categories, appro- priate to such themes. His categorial scheme, in which the self is understood in terms of “Firstness,” “Secondness,” and “Thirdness,” is an important attempt to extend many tenets of social interactionism beyond human activities to reality as such. Social psychologists inclined to view such metaphysical extensions with dis- may should be reminded that Mead similarly extended the concept of sociality in his later work.20 Although Peirce’s metaphysics of social interactionism is developed from the point of view of the logic of relations, and Mead’s metaphysics is developed from the point of view of naturalistic social psychology, this difference in approach should not be allowed to obscure basic conceptual similarity.

Before he came under the spell of Peirce’s logic and theory of signs, Josiah Royce (1855-1916), influenced by Darwinian evolutionism as well as by German metaphysics, was already a determined advocate of social interactionism.

[M]y idea of myself, as empirical Ego is on the whole a social product, due, strangely enough, to my ideas of other people . . . I believe, and in believing conceive myself as demanding the approval of good judges. I esteem myself, and in so doing conceive myself as esteemed by others.21

I . . . exist, for myself, as the beheld of all beholders. . . . If I sink in despair and self-abasement, my non-Ego is the world of the conceived real or ideal people whose imagined contempt interests, but overwhelms me, and I exist for myself as the despised Ego, worthy of their ill

[A] man becomes self-conscious only in the most intimate connection with the growth of his social consciousness. . . . I am dependent on my fellows . . . for what I take myself to be.23

lBDuane H. Whittier, “Language and the Self ” Richard Tursman (ed.), Studies in Philosophy and in the History of Science: Essays in Honor of k a z Fisch (Lawrence, Kansas: Coronado Press, 1970), pp. 168-81. Whittier’s comparisons between Peirce and such philosophers as Wittgenstein are also valuable. It should be of interest to historians of symbolic interactionism to know that there has been a rebirth of many of the ideas of Wright, Peirce, Royce and Mead in very recent Anglo-American philosophy of language and self. An illuminating account Ef the relations between earlier and later symbolic interactionism iqphilosophy is Tom Clifton Keen, George Herbert Mead’s Social Theory of Meaning and Experience, (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 1968). Surpris- ingly, John Searle says (conversation fi th Peter H. Haye, summer 1971) that he has no acquaintance with kindred thinkers in the social sciences or in the hstory of American philosophy, though he has often been told that his ideas are like Mead’s.

W G . H. Mead, The Philosophy ofthe Present (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1932). 21Quoted by Fuss, op cit., pp. 93-94, originally published in “The External World and the Social

Consciousness,” Philosophical Review, I11 (1894), p. 532. 22Josiah Royce, “ Some Observations on the Anomalies of Self-Consciousness,” Psychological

Review, I1 (1895), 443, and Studies of Good and Evil (New York: Appleton, 1898; reprinted, Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1964), pp. 180-81.

23Josiah Royce, “ Self-Consciousness, Social Consciousness and Nature,” Philosophical Review, IV (1895), p. 468, and Studies of Good and Evil, p. 201.


In numerous papers, using current theories of imitation as a point of departure, Royce developed an elaborate account of the social origins of the self in terms of imitation and what he called “reflection.” This account was intended to be social psychology free of the metaphysical presuppositions of German idealism. A few years later, under the influence of Peirce’s semiotic, Royce found that by using the concept of “interpretation” he could rework his social interactionism in such a way that he no longer needed the mechanism of imitation and could integrate his social psychology into a comprehensive and much more naturalistic theory of reality. This reworking culminated in Part I1 of The Problem of Christianity, published in 1913.24

24Josiah Royce, The Problem of Christianity, with a new introduction by John E. Smith (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968) originally published in two. volumes by MacMillan Company, New York, 1913. Smith’s introduction to the one-volume edition is a useful supplement to Fuss’ book.

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Neglected American philosophers in the history of symbolic interactionism