Human Traits and their Social Significance Part 39

According to the absolutist, the "goodness" of an act is not at all affected by its immediate consequences. The value of a good or a moral act does not consist in its results. The moral value of an act consists in the "good-will" of the agent, and the "good-will" of the agent consists in his willing and conscious conformity to the absolute moral principle involved.

"Nothing is fundamentally good but the good-will." That is, an act to be moral, must be the conscious conformity of a rational agent to the moral law, which he recognizes to be morally binding. To Kant, the cla.s.sic exponent of this position, an act performed out of mere inclination, if not immoral, certainly was not moral. A moral act could only flow from reason, and reason would dictate to an individual conformity to the moral law, which was a law of reason. Conduct that is determined by mere circ.u.mstance is not moral conduct.

Morality is above the domain of circ.u.mstance. And the moral agent is above the defeats and compromises imposed by time and place. He is a free agent, that is, morally free.

He accepts no commands, except those of reason. A man, in following impulse or being dictated to by circ.u.mstance, is a mere animal or a machine. He is only a reasonable, that is, a moral being, when he conforms to the laws which are above time and place and circ.u.mstance, and above the whirls and eddies of personal inclination.

Concretely, one may take the absolutistic att.i.tude toward a specific virtue: honesty. The morality of telling the truth consists in a conscious conformity to the moral standard of honesty in the face of all deflections of inclination and particular situations. It makes no iota of difference what the result of telling the truth in a particular instance may be.

It makes no difference what urgent and plausible and practically decent reason one has for not telling the truth. The truth must be told, as justice must be done, though the heavens fall. We have a case, let us suppose, where telling bad news to a very sick man may kill him. That temporally disastrous consequence is, from an absolutistic point of view, a totally irrelevant consideration, as is also the pain we feel in telling the truth under such conditions. But the single moral course is clear; there is no alternative; in absolutistic morals there are no extenuating circ.u.mstances. The truth must be told, whatever be the consequences. For to tell the truth is a universal moral law, and conformity to that law a universal moral obligation.

The defects of this position, if they are not obvious from its bare statement, will become clearer from the a.n.a.lysis of the relativist or teleological positions. But its specific virtues deserve attention. The Kantian or absolutistic position, by its emphasis on the indefeasible and unwavering character of moral action, suggests something that rouses admiration from common sense, unsophisticated by moral theory. We do not think highly of the man who is at the mercy of every chance appet.i.te, or every casual incident. Morality must be const.i.tuted of more enduring stuff. We do not deeply admire the caliber of a man who yields to every pressing exigency, surrendering thereby every ideal, principle, or value, the attainment of which demands some postponement or some privation of the fulfillment of immediate desire. The man who compromises his political ideals in the attainment of his personal success, is a scornful figure morally. And we estimate more highly the character of an individual who can persist in the strenuous attainment of an ideal in the face of the counter-inclination of pa.s.sing pleasures. In its emphasis on the autonomy and integrity of moral action, even its opponents credit the Kantian or absolutistic position with having hit upon a genuinely moral aspect of human action. It is, as we shall see, in the rigidity and formalism of its conception, in its fanatical allegiance to _a priori_ standards, and its absolute sanctification of given ways of action, that the theory is questionable.

RELATIVISTIC OR TELEOLOGICAL MORALITY. Contrasted with the theories of morals that maintain that right and wrong are absolute and eternal principles unaffected by time, place, and circ.u.mstance, are those moral philosophies which set out explicitly to discover a way of life by which human happiness in this world of time and place and circ.u.mstance may be attained. To know what is the supreme good, and to discover what are the means of its attainment, are, as Aristotle long ago and justly observed, of great importance in the regulation of life. It is this knowledge and discovery that const.i.tute, according to Aristotle, the business of ethics. Regarding this "supreme good," we may quote his own expressions:

We speak of that which is sought after for its own sake, as more final than that which is sought after as a means to something else; we speak of that which is never desired as a means to something else as more final than the things which are desired both in themselves and as means to something else; and we speak of a thing as absolutely final, if it is always desired in itself and never as a means to something else.

It seems that happiness preeminently answers to this description, as we always desire happiness for its own sake, and never as a means to something else, whereas we desire honour, pleasure, intellect, and every virtue, partly for their own sakes,... but partly also as being means to happiness, because we suppose they will prove the instruments of happiness. Happiness, on the other hand, n.o.body desires for the sake of these things, nor indeed as a means to anything else at all.[1]

[Footnote 1: Aristotle: _loc. cit._, pp. 13-14.]

Happiness may, as Aristotle observes, be differently conceived by different people. To some it may mean a life of sensual enjoyment; to some men a life of money-making.

But it is the attainment of _complete_ satisfaction and self-realization by the individual that ethical theories should promote; for such self-realization const.i.tutes happiness. It is sufficient here to point out that all so-called "teleological"

or "relativistic" moralities, insist that the morality of an action is not determinable _a priori_, or absolutely. They are _relativistic_ in the sense that they insist on taking into account the specific circ.u.mstances of action in the determination of its moral value. They are _teleological_ in that they insist on measuring the moral value of an action in terms of its consequences in human well-being or happiness, however those be conceived.

To revert to the ill.u.s.tration used in connection with the discussion of Absolutism, to lie in order to save a life would, on this basis, be construed as good rather than evil.

UTILITARIANISM. One of the cla.s.sic statements of relativistic and teleological morality is Utilitarianism. According to the Utilitarians the criterion of the worth of a deed was to be found in an estimation of the relative pleasures and pains produced by it. The view is thus stated by John Stuart Mill:

The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure. To give a clear view of the moral standard set up by the theory, much more requires to be said; in particular, what things it includes in the ideas of pain and pleasure; and to what extent this is left an open question. But these supplementary explanations do not affect the theory of life on which this theory of morality is grounded--namely, that pleasure and freedom from pain are the only things desirable as ends; and that all desirable things (which are as numerous in the utilitarian as in any other scheme) are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain.[1]

[Footnote 1: Mill: _Utilitarianism_ (London, 1907), pp. 9-10.]

Simply stated, Utilitarianism says: "Add together all the pleasures promised by a contemplated course of action, then the pains, and note the difference; the nature of the difference will determine whether the course is right or wrong." Pleasures and pains are thus conceived as being open to quant.i.tative determination. Action is determined by mathematical calculation in advance of the pleasure and pain produced by any action. Bentham's name is particularly a.s.sociated with the dictum, "the greatest happiness for the greatest number."

But two implications of this doctrine must be taken into account, at least as Bentham interpreted it. The greatest happiness meant the maximum amount of pleasure. And each individual could desire the greatest happiness, only in so far as it contributed to his own happiness or pleasure.

And, for Bentham, as for all strict Utilitarians, there was no qualitative distinction in the amounts of pleasure. "The quant.i.ty being the same," said Bentham, "pushpin is as good as poetry."

Utilitarianism is here considered as an instance of a type of ethical theory that set human happiness as the end, and made its judgments of actions depend on their consequences in human welfare. It must be pointed out, however, that its conception of happiness was dependent on a psychology now almost unanimously recognized as false: Bentham's a.s.sumption that the _reason_ human beings performed certain actions was _because_ they desired certain pleasures, completely reverses the actual situation. It puts, as it were, the cart before the horse. Pleasure is psychologically the accompaniment, what psychologists call the "feeling tone" of the satisfaction of any instinctive or habitual impulse. Human beings have certain native or habitual tendencies to action, and pleasure attends the performance of these. It is not because we want the pleasure of eating, that we decide to eat; we want to eat, and eating is therefore pleasant.

If the good Samaritan cared about the present feelings or the future welfare of the man fallen among thieves, it would no doubt give him some pleasure to satisfy that desire for his welfare; if he had desired his good as little as the priest and the Levite, there would have been nothing to suggest the strange idea that to relieve him, to bind up his nasty wounds, and to spend money upon him, would be a source of more pleasure to himself than to pa.s.s by on the other side and spend the money upon himself. In the case of the great majority of our pleasures, it will probably be found that the desire is the condition of the pleasure, not the pleasure of the desire.[1]

[Footnote 1: Rashdall: _Ethics_, p. 18.]

As has been previously pointed out in this and other chapters, action does not start with reflection upon pleasures, or, for that matter, upon anything else. Action is fundamentally initiated by instinctive promptings, or the promptings of habit. Satisfaction or pleasure attends the fulfillment of any inborn or acquired impulse, and dissatisfaction or pain its obstruction or frustration. Apart from the satisfactions experienced in the fulfillment in action of such impulses, pleasure does not exist. Actions, situations, persons, or ideas can be pleasant to us, but "pleasure" as a separate objective ent.i.ty cannot be said to exist at all. The Utilitarians, again, made the intellectualist error of supposing that men dispa.s.sionately and mathematically weighed the consequences of their actions, whereas their relative impulsions to action are determined by the instincts they inherit and the habits they have already acquired.

Despite its false psychology, Utilitarianism does stand out as one of the great cla.s.sic attempts to build an ethical theory squarely designed to promote human happiness. An execution of the same worthy intention, more acceptable to those trained in the modern psychology of instinct, is that moral conception variously known as Behaviorism, or Energism, a point of view maintained by thinkers from Aristotle to Professor Dewey in our own day. All behavioristic theories take the position that in order to find out what is good for man, we must begin by finding out what man is. In order to discover what will give man satisfaction, we must discover what his natural impulses and capacities are. In the utilization and fulfillment of these will man find his most complete realization and happiness. The standard of goodness, therefore, is measured in terms of the extent to which action promotes a complete and harmonious utilization of natural impulses and natural capacities. Ethics, from such a viewpoint, cannot set up arbitrary standards, but must form its standards by inquiries into the fundamental and natural needs and desires of men. Instead of laying down eternal principles to which human beings must be made to conform, it must derive its principles from observations of human experience, and test them there. The good is what does good; the bad what does harm. And what is good for men, and bad for men, depends not on rigid _a priori_ intellectual standards, but on the original nature which is each man's inheritance.

To base ethics upon an a.n.a.lysis of the conditions of human nature, as scientific inquiry reveals it, carries with it two implications. It means that nothing that is shown to be a part of man's inevitable original equipment can with justice to man's welfare be ruled out. Every instinct taken by itself is as good as any other. It is only when one instinct competes with another, so that excessive indulgence of one, as, for example, that of s.e.x or pugnacity, interferes with all a man's other instincts or interests (or with those of other men), that an instinct becomes evil. It means, secondly, that since individuals differ, and since situations are infinitely various and individual, no arbitrary and fixed laws can be laid down as fundamental eternal principles.

MORAL KNOWLEDGE. The contrast between the two types of morality that have been historically current may be approached from the standpoint of moral knowledge. That is, moral theories may be cla.s.sified on the basis of their answer to the question: How do moral judgments arise? The chief contrast to be drawn is that between Intuitionalism on the one hand, and Empiricism on the other. Intuitionalism holds briefly that the moral quality of an act is intuitively perceived, and is recognized apart from experience of its consequences.

The empirical theory holds that moral judgments come to be attached to acts as a result of experience, and particularly experiences of the approval and disapproval of other people.

The contrast will again become clearer by a discussion of each theory separately.

INTUITIONALISM. Intuitionalism takes two chief forms. The first, Perceptual Intuitionalism, as Sidgwick calls it, holds that the rightness of each particular act is immediately known.

The second, called by the same author Dogmatic Intuitionalism, holds that the general laws of common-sense morality are immediately perceived. The popular view of "conscience,"

well ill.u.s.trates the first-mentioned position of the Intuitionalist.

We commonly think of the dictates of conscience as relating to particular actions, and when a man is bidden in a particular case to "trust to his conscience," it commonly seems to be meant that he should exercise a faculty of judging morally this particular case without reference to general rules, and even in opposition to conclusions obtained by systematic deduction from such rules.[1]

[Footnote 1: Sidgwick: _Methods of Ethics_ (4th edition), p. 99.]

Conscience, this organ of immediate moral perception, is frequently taken to be divinely given at birth. There is no one so certain or immovable as the man whose actions are dictated by his "conscience." He does not have to think about his actions; he knows immediately what is right and what is wrong. The intuitionalist does not go into the natural history of scruples for or against the performance of certain actions. He takes these immediate aversions or promptings to act as the revelations of immediate and unquestionable knowledge, frequently presumed to be divinely implanted.

Most Intuitionalists hold not that we experience an immediate intuition of the rightness or wrongness of action in every single situation, but that the common rules of morality, such common rules as good faith and veracity, are immediately recognized and a.s.sented to as moral. They insist that these are not determined by experience or by reflection, since stealing, lying, and murder are _known_ to be wrong by everyone, though most men could not tell way.

Intuitionalism carried out to logical extremes is represented by such men as Tclstoy, and, in general, those who genuinely and persistently act according to the dictates of their conscience, "who hold, and so far as they can, act upon the principle that we must never resist force by force, never arrest a thief, must literally give to him that asketh, up to one's last penny, and so on."

EMPIRICISM. To explain the grounds of the Empirical position is to exhibit the arguments in refutation of Intuitionalism.

The most obvious and frequent line of attack that empirical moralists make upon Intuitionalism is to examine and compare the various "intuitions" of right conduct which have been held by men in different ages and places.

The traditional method of combating intuitionalism from the time of John Locke to that of Herbert Spencer has been to present the reader with a list of cruel and abominable savage customs, ridiculous superst.i.tions, acts of religious fanaticism and intolerance, which have all alike seemed self-evidently good and right to the peoples or individuals who have practised them. There is hardly a vice or a crime (according to our own moral standard) which has not at some time or other in some circ.u.mstances been looked upon as a moral and religious duty. Stealing was accounted virtuous for the young Spartan, and among the Indian caste of Thugs. In the ancient world, piracy, that is, robbery and murder, was a respectable profession. To the mediaeval Christian, religious persecution was the highest of duties, and so on.[1]

[Footnote 1: Rashdall: _loc. cit._, p. 59.]

The Empiricist asks: If all these intuitions are absolute; if men at various times and at various places, indeed, if, as is the case, men of different social cla.s.ses and situations at the present time, differ so profoundly in their "intuitions" of the just, the n.o.ble, and the base, which of the conflicting intuitions, all equally absolute, is _the_ absolute? The Intuitionalist continually appeals to the universal intuition and a.s.sent of Mankind. But there is scarcely a single moral law for which universal a.s.sent in even a single generation can be found.

One has but to survey the heterogeneous collection of customs and prohibitions collected in such a work as Frazer's _Golden Bough_, to see how little unanimity there is in the moral intuitions of mankind.

The Empiricist finds the origin of these divergent moral convictions in the divergent environments to which individuals in different places, times, and social situations are exposed.

The intensity and apparent irrefutability of these convictions, which the Intuitionalist ascribes to their innateness, the Empiricist ascribes to their early acquisition, and the deep emotional hold which early acquired habits have over the individual. Those moral beliefs which we hold with the utmost conviction and intensity are, instead of being thereby guaranteed as most reasonable and genuinely moral, thereby rendered, says the Empiricist, the more suspect.

They are evidences of the effectiveness of our early education, or of our high degree of sensitiveness to our fellows. Conscience is thus reduced to habitual emotional reactions produced by the contact of a given individual temperament with a given environment.

Thus acts come by the individual to be recognized as right or wrong, according to the tradition to which he has been educated and the contacts with other people to which he is continually exposed. The Empiricist does not deny that there are intuitions, or apparent intuitions. He denies their ultimacy, their unquestionable validity.

When ... we find ourselves entertaining an opinion about the basis of which there is a quality of feeling which tells us that to inquire into it would be absurd, obviously unnecessary, unprofitable, undesirable, bad form, or wicked, we may know that that opinion is a non-rational one, and probably, therefore, founded upon inadequate evidence.[1]

[Footnote 1: Trotter: _Instincts of the Herd_, p. 44.]

These so powerful convictions are the immediate promptings of instincts, or of the habits into which they have been modified.

The humane Christian, had he been brought up in the Eskimo tradition, would with the most tender solicitude slaughter his aged parents, just as the humane Christian in the Middle Ages thought it his duty to slay heretics. There is no limit to the excesses to which men have gone on the dictates of conscience. To put actions on the basis of conscience is to put them beyond the control of reflection or the check of inquiry. It is to reduce conduct to caprice; to exalt impulse into a moral command. And the results of accepting blind intuitions as rational knowledge have been in many cases catastrophic.

If reason has slain its thousands, the acceptance of instinct as evidence has slain its tens of thousands. Day by day, in the ordinary direction of their lives, men have learned during hundreds of generations how untrustworthy is the interpretation of fact which Instinct offers, and how bitter is the truth contained in such proverbs as "Anger is a bad counsellor," or "Love is blind." ... Wars are often started and maintained, neither from mere blind anger, nor because those on either side find that they desire the results which a cool calculation of the conditions makes them regard as probable, but largely because men insist on treating their feelings as evidence of fact and refuse to believe that they can be so angry without sufficient cause.[1]

[Footnote 1: Graham Wallas: _The Great Society_, pp. 224-25.]

The Empiricist insists that the morality of an act cannot be told from the intensity of approval or disapproval which it arouses in the individual. Actions are not moral or immoral in themselves, but in their consequences or relations, which are only discoverable in experience. The goodness or badness of an act is measurable in terms of its consequences, and the consequences of action are discoverable only in experience.

This does not imply that we calculate the results of every action before performing it, or measure the consequences of the acts of other persons before judging them.

Our immediate reactions are frequently not the result of reflection at all, but are responses prompted by previously formed habits, or by instinctive caprice. These immediate intuitions are not to be relied upon as moral standards, precisely because reflection frequently comes to an estimate of an act, directly at variance with our instinctive reaction to it. We come, upon reflection, to approve acts that we are, by instinct, moved to condemn. And the reverse holds true.

When we see that a child's clothes have caught fire, we do not need to reflect on any consequences for universal well-being before we make up our minds that it is a duty to extinguish the flames, even at the cost of some risk to ourselves. It is clear that the act will conduce to pleasure and to the avoidance of pain. We should feel an equally instinctive desire to kick out of the room a man whom we saw making incisions in the flesh of a human being if we did not know that he was a surgeon, and that the making of incisions will tend to save the man's life. Were a competent physician to suggest that the burning of the child's clothes upon its back would cure it of a fever, every reasonable person would consider it his duty to reconsider his _prima-facie_ view of the situation.[1]

[Footnote 1: Rashdall: _Ethics_, pp, 51-52.]

The Empiricist insists that moral standards are matters of discovery; that the laws of conduct must be derived from experience, just as must the laws of the physical sciences.

To condemn an act as evil means that the performance of that act has in experience been found to produce harmful results.