Abstract
Since Cooley was unable to fight back when Mead wrote his highly negative obituary, this is a defense of Cooley. Mead accused Cooley of solipsism, which I show to be a misreading. Mead also criticized Cooley for defining the self as self-feeling, as opposed to Mead’s reflexivity, two ideas which actually imply each other. Cooley scooped Mead by a good decade with the ideas of role-taking and inner speech, debts which Mead did not mention. I also show that Mead did not really explain the origin of the self, either phylogenetically (in the species) or ontogenetically (in the infant). I speculate about these two issues. Mead was a great genius, but, like everyone, he had his limits. And fairness requires that Cooley be rehabilitated. The ideas of the two thinkers are actually remarkably alike, so much so that a merger seems a reasonable idea.
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Notes
Mead also wrote a highly negative review of one of Dewey’s books, even though Dewey had sponsored Mead at Chicago and offered him a job at Columbia when Mead planned to leave Chicago in 1931. The book was Human Nature and Conduct, and Mead never actually published the review, presumably because he was so indebted to Dewey. But he did leave the text of his review with his papers, probably knowing that after he died the review would be found and possibly printed by someone (as it was by Gary Cook in 1994). It is also possible that Mead forgot this review or thought he had thrown it out. But I cannot help notice that in both cases, the negative article on Cooley and the highly critical review of Dewey, Mead waited until he could no longer be criticized.
One problem with Cook’s publication is a misprint. The review is said to begin toward the bottom of page 377 but, as Cook told me, it actually begins on page 375, line 16, with the phrase, “In short, Dewey’s book gave no indication...”
I do not want to be too hard on Mead, but his usual public image is that of a goody two shoes, a perfect man. When I asked Herbert Blumer (in 1978) what Mead was like, he paused thoughtfully and said, “He was the most wonderful person I’ve ever met in my life.” Given my views in this article, I would agree that Mead may have been wonderful, but he was also, after all, just a man. Blumer also told me Mead’s writer’s bloc was so distressing he would cry onto his typewriter—an image I find rather endearing. I am highly devoted to and a great fan of both Blumer and Mead. But if Shakespeare had written his plays about perfect persons no one would have read them. It is the mixed moral equation that makes heroes interesting. Mead is brought down to earth and more accessible if we can see his ordinary human weaknesses.
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Thanks are due to Doyle McCarthy, Gerald Handel, Robert Perinbanayagam and Randall Collins for advice and to Thomas Scheff, for suggesting this paper.
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Wiley, N. A Mead–Cooley Merger. Am Soc 42, 168–186 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-011-9124-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-011-9124-3