Intelligence, Education, and the Power of Habits

In Human Nature and Conduct (1922) Dewey writes that bad habits are ones that have a “command over us” making us “do things we prefer not to do,” because as he puts it, “we are the habit” (MW 14: 21). In this chapter I describe how education has a role in our understanding of the command of habit over our lives. I consider how within the process of growth we can start reshaping our habits, making them increasingly intelligent so as to inform “intelligent dispositions.” Intelligent dispositions are central to helping us come to perform new, more reflective, courses of action in the world.