In “Self Realization as the Moral Ideal” (1893), John Dewey announced his intention to banish metaphysics from “ethical science.” The reason was that metaphysics “seems to solve problems in general, but at the expense of the practical problems which alone really demand or admit action“ (EW 4: 53).2 Practical problems, Dewey believed, require empirical inquiry into the details of particular situations, rather than theoretical speculation about general categories or abstractions. Ethical science deals with the moral growth of individuals rather than species, and so it must be rooted in an exploration of the specifics of each individual self. Only “an ethics rooted and grounded in the self,” could supplant the discredited poles of “hedonistic ethics on one side and theological ethics on the other.” Dewey looked toward the emerging science of psychology to avoid the metaphysical baggage of previous conceptions of the self. Ethical science would only reach its potential when it “purge[d] itself of all conceptions, of all ideals, save those which are developed within and for the sake of practice” (EW 4: 53). Ethics would be reconstructed to imcorporate the lessons of psychology, not to determine categorical imperatives or rules of maximizing utility but rather to provide guidance for the practical problems involved in forming moral individuals and societies.