Cooley, Charles Horton

Transcendentalism versus Utilitarianism

Cooley spent almost all his life in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His formative years were characterized by a tension between the Reconstruction era's individualism and materialism, on one hand, and the competing ideals of transcendentalism, on the other. He intellectually criticized the materialism of economic individualism, and he diagnosed pathological consequences of what he called the “strenuous life” demanded by utilitarian thought. In contrast, he suggested a morality whose point of departure is not private success, but rather overall ideals such as “beauty, truth, and sympathy.” Cooley thus developed an alternative outlook that followed his critique of utilitarianism. He found this morality and philosophy further articulated in another American sociocultural tradition, one that competed with utilitarianism: the transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. The American romanticists rejected the utilitarian means of action—power, money, and influence—as they contribute nothing to introspective self-fulfillment or successful communitarian life. Transcendentalists find their orientation through contemplation. They intuitively discover, through the example of nature, what is meant by beauty, truth, honesty, and independence. Though transcendentalists can communicate important insights to society, they do not expect political power, social reputation, or wealth in exchange.

For Cooley, the writings of Emerson and Thoreau took on a significant meaning. They provided him with a historical and practical paradigm that appeared opposed and superior to utilitarianism. However, transcendentalism shares with utilitarianism a basic individualistic tendency, although each conceives the term individual differently. In utilitarianism, the self-realization of the individual is achieved by maximizing private ends. In transcendentalism, on the other hand, individualism is suspended in the universality of nature. But in both schools of thought, individuals must prevail in their private objectives against the influence and competition of others. Though Emerson too says: “A man must be a non-conformist,” neither transcendentalism nor utilitarianism offers a perspective reconciling “self” and “society” or “individual freedom” and “social order.” The problematic individualism of both philosophies motivated Cooley to search for different ideas as sources of his sociology and sociopsychology, which he found in the communally oriented republican tradition, what he called the “great humanistic traditions,” and in the philosophy of pragmatism. A central statement in his first major work, Human Nature and the Social Order, is that the self is not simply given, as the utilitarians believed, nor can it be set by contemplation, as the transcendentalists believed; rather, the “looking-glass self” can develop only by communicative interaction with its social surroundings.

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