|
Green's
Theory of the Moral Motive
John Dewey.
Philosophical Review 1,
(1892):
593-612.
A SOMEWHAT peculiar difficulty seems to attend the
discussion of ethical theory, on account of its characteristic relation to
action. This relation gives rise, on one side, to the belief that ethics
is primarily an 'art.' Ethics is so much the theory of practice that it
seems as if its main business were to aid in the direction of conduct.
This being premised, the next step is to make out of ethics a collection
of rules and precepts. A body of rigid rules is erected with the object of
having always some precept which will tell just what to do. But, on the
other side, it is seen to be impossible that any body of rules should be
sufficiently extensive to cover the whole range of action ; it is seen
that to make such a body results inevitably in a casuistry which is so
demoralizing as to defeat the very end desired ; and that, at the best,
the effect is to destroy the grace and play of life by making conduct
mechanical. So the pendulum swings to the other extreme; it is denied that
ethics has to deal primarily or directly with the guidance of action.
Limited in this way, all there is left is a metaphysic of ethic :-an
attempt to analyze the general conditions under which morality is
possible; to determine, in other words, the nature of that universe or
system of things which permits or requires moral action. The difficulty,
then, is to find the place intermediate between a theory general to the
point of abstractness, a theory which provides no help to action, and a
theory which attempts to further action but does so at the expense of its
spontaneity and breadth. I do not know of any theory, however, which is quite
consistent to either point of view. The theory which makes the most of
being practical generally shrinks, as matter of fact, from the attempt to
carry out into detail its rules for living ; and the most metaphysical
doctrine commonly tries to show that at least the main rules for morality
follow from it. The difficulties imbedded in the very nature of the
science ; so much so that it is far easier for the school which prides
itself upon its practicality (generally the utilitarian) to accuse the
other (generally the 'transcendental') of vagueness than to work out any
definitely concrete guidance itself; and easier for the metaphysical
school to show the impossibility of deducing any detailed scheme of action
from a notion like that of seeking the greatest quantity of pleasures than
for it to show how its own general ideal is to be translated out of the
region of the general into the specific, and, of course, all action is
specific.
The difficulty is intrinsic, I say, and not the
result of any mere accident of statement. Ethics is the theory of action
and all action is concrete, individualized to the last ell. Ethical theory
must have, then, a similar concreteness and particularity. And yet no body
of rules and precepts, however extensive and however developed its
casuistic, can reach out to take in the wealth of concrete action. No
theory, it is safe to say, can begin to cover the action of a single
individual for a day. Is not, then, the very conception of ethical theory
a misconception, a striving for something impossible ? Is there no, an
antimony its very definition ?
The difficulty, it may be noticed, is no other and
therefore no more impossible to solve than that involved in all
application of theory to practice. When, for example, a man is to build a
tunnel, he has to do something quite specific, having its own concrete
conditions. It is not a tunnel in general which he has to make, but a
tunnel having its own special end and called for by its own set of
circumstances not capable of being precisely duplicated anywhere else in
the world. The work has to be done under conditions imposed by the given
environment, character of soil, facility of access to machinery, and so on. It is true that so many tunnels have now
been built for similar ends and under substantially like
circumstances, that the example errs on the side ef (sic) excessive
mechanicalness; but we have only to imagine the tunnel building under
untried special conditions, as, say, the recent engineering below the St.
Clair River, to get a fair case. Now in such a case it is requisite that
science, that theory, be available at every step of the undertaking, and
this in the most detailed way. Every stage of the proceeding must, indeed,
be absolutely controlled by scientific method. There is here the same
apparent contradiction as in the moral case; and yet the solution in the
case of the engineering feat is obvious. Theory is used, not as a set of
fixed rules to lay down certain things to be done " but as a tool of
analysis to help determine what the nature of the special case is; it is
used to uncover the reality, the conditions of the matter, and thus to lay
bare the circumstances which action has to meet, to synthesize. The
mathematical, the mechanical, the geological theory do not say "Do this or
that " ; but in effect they do say, use me and you will reduce the complex
conditions of which you have only some slight idea to an ordered group of
relations to which action may easily adjust itself in the desired fashion.
Now these conceptions of mechanics, of geology, which aid in determining
the special facts at hand, are themselves, it is to be noticed, simply the
generic statement of these same facts; the mathematics are the most
general statement of any group of circumstances to be met anywhere in
experience ; the geology is a general statement of the conditions to be
met with wherever it is an affair of the soil and so on. The theory, in
other words, is not a something or other belonging to an entirely
different realm from the special facts to be mastered. It is an outline
statement of these same facts wrought out from previous like experiences
and existing ready at hand to anticipate, and thus help solve, any
particular experience. What we have then in this application of theory to
the special case, with all its wealth of concrete detail, is the attack
and reduction of a specific reality through the use of a general precedent
idea of this same reality. Or what we have, putting it from the side of
the theory, is a general conception which is so true
to reality that it lends itself easily and almost inevitably to more ore
specific and concrete statement, the moment circumstances, demand such
particularization. So far as the theory is I false, so far, that is, as it
is not a statement, however general, of the facts of the case, so far,
instead of lending itself to more specific statement, instead of
fertilizing itself whenever occasion requires, it resists such
specification and stands aloof as a bare generality. It neither renders
individual experiences luminous, nor is fructified by them, gathering
something from them which makes its own statement of reality somewhat more
definite and thus more ready for use another time.
Now let us return to our moral case. The same law holds here. Ethical
theory must be a general statement of the reality involved in every moral
situation. It must be stated in its more generic terms, terms so generic
that every individual action will fall within the outlines it sets forth.
If the theory agrees with these requirements, then we have for use in any
special case a tool for analyzing that case ; a method for attacking and
reducing it, for laying it open so that the action -called for in order to
meet, to satisfy it, may readily appear. The theory must not, on one hand,
stand aloof from the special thing to be done, saying, "What have I to do
with those ? Thou art empirical and I am the metaphysics of conduct," nor
must it, on the other hand, attempt to lay down fixed rules in advance
exhausting all possible cases. It must wait upon the instruction that
every new case, because of its individuality, as uniqueness, carries with
it ; but it must also bring to this special case such knowledge of the
reality of all action, such knowledge of the end and process involved in
all deeds, that it translates naturally into the concrete terms of this
special case. If, for example, I object to the categorical imperative of
Kant, or the pleasure of the Hedonist, that it does not assist practice, I
do not mean that it does not prescribe a rigid body of fixed rules telling
just what to do in every contingency of action; I mean that the theory so
far comes short as a statement of the character of all moral action that
it does not lend itself to uncovering, to getting at the reality of specific cases as they arise; and
that, on the other hand, these special cases, not being the detailed
exhibition of the same reality that is stated generally in the theory, do
not react upon the theory and fructify it for further use.[1]
These remarks are introductory to a critical consideration of the theory
of Thomas Hill Green regarding the moral motive or ideal. His theory
would, I think, be commonly regarded as the best of the modern
attempts to form a metaphysic of ethic. I wish, using this as type,
to point out the inadequacy of such metaphysical theories, on the ground
that they fail to meet the demand just made of truly ethical theory, that
it lend itself to translation into concrete terms, and thereby to the
guidance, the direction of actual conduct. I shall endeavor to show that
Green's theory is not metaphysical in the Only Possible sense of
metaphysic, such general statement of the nature of the facts to be dealt
with as enables us to anticipate the actual happening, and thereby deal
with it intelligently and freely, but metaphysical in the false sense,
that of a general idea which remains remote from contact with actual
experience. Green himself is better than his theory, and engages us in
much fruitful analysis of specific moral experience, but, as I shall
attempt to show, his theory, taken in logical strictness) admits of no
reduction into terms of individual deeds.
Kant's separation of the self as
reason from the self as want or desire, is so well known as not to require
detailed statement. That this separation compels the moral motive to be
purely formal, having no content except regard for law just as law needs
no exposition. So far as I . know it has not been pointed out that Green,
while arguing against such separation of sense and reason, on the ground
that we cannot know sense or desire at all except as determined by reason,
yet practically repeats the dualism of Kant in slightly altered form. For
the conception of action determined by the Pure form of self , Green
simply substitutes action determined by the self in its unity; for conduct
determined by mere appetite, be substitutes conduct determined by the self in some particular
aspect. The dualism between reason and sense is given up, indeed, but only
to be replaced by a dualism between the end which would satisfy the self
as a unity or whole, and that which satisfies it in the particular
circumstances of actual conduct. The end which would satisfy the self as
unity is just as far from the end which satisfies the self in any special
instance of action, as, in Kant's system, the satisfaction of pure reason
is remote from the satisfaction of mere appetite. Indeed, we may go a step
further, and say that the opposition is even more decided and intrinsic in
Green than in Kant. It is at least conceivable, according to Kant, that in
some happy moment action should take place from the motive of reason shorn
of all sensuous content and thus be truly moral. But no possible
circumstance, according to Green, can action satisfy the whole self and
thus be truly moral. In Kant the discrepancy between the force which
appetite exercises, and the controlling force at the command of pure
reason, is so great as to make very extraordinary the occurrence of a
purely moral action -- but at least there is no intrinsic impossibility in
the conception, however heavy the odds against its actual happening. In
Green, however, the thing is impossible by the very definition,-, of
morality. No thorough-going theory of total depravity ever made
righteousness more impossible to the natural man than Green makes it to a
human being by the very constitution of his being, and, needless to say,
Green does not allow the supernatural recourse available to the Calvinist
in the struggle for justification.
Let me now justify, by reference to Green, this statement that according
to him the very conditions under which moral action is carried on make it
impossible for a satisfactory moral action to occur. Green's analysis of
the moral procedure is as follows : The difference between animal and
moral action is that the animal deed simply expresses a want which impels
the animal blindly forward to its own satisfaction The want is not
elevated into consciousness; that is, there is no conception of the end
sought. The impulse which makes good the want is not brought into the
focus of consciousness, that is, there is no conception of the nature of the means to be
used in satisfying the want. Moral action arises, not through the
intervention of any new kind of I nature' or want, but through the
intervention of a self which reflects upon the existing wants, and through
the reflection transforms them into ends or ideals conceived as satisfying
the self. The self in seeing the want, in becoming conscious of it,
objectifies the want, making out of it an ideal condition of itself in
which it expects to find satisfaction. It is an animal thing to be simply
moved by the appetite for food ; it is a moral thing to become conscious
of this appetite, and thereby transform the bare appetite into the
conception of some end or object in which the self thinks to find its own
satisfaction.[2]
The process of moral experience involves, therefore, a process in which
the self, in becoming conscious of its want, objectifies that want by
setting it over against itself ; distinguishing the want from self and
self from want. As thus distinguished, it becomes an end or ideal of the
self. Now this theory so far might be developed in either of two
directions. The self-distinguishing process may mean the method by which
the self specifies or defines its own activity, its own satisfaction; all
particular desires and their respective ends would be, in this case,
simply the systematic content into which the self differentiated itself in
its progressive expression. The particular desires and ends would be the
modes in which the self relieved itself of its abstractness, its
undeveloped character, and assumed concrete existence. The ends would not
be merely particular, because each would be one member in the
self's activity, and, as such member, universalized. The unity of the self
would stand in no opposition to the particularity of the special desire;
on the contrary, the unity of the self and the manifold of definite
desires would be the synthetic and analytic aspects of one and the same
reality, neither having any advantage metaphysical or ethical over the
other. Such is not the interpretation Green gives. The self does
not, according to him, define itself in the special desire; but the
self distinguishes itself from the desire. The objectification is not of the self in the
special end ; but the self remains behind setting the special object over
against itself as not adequate to itself. The self -distinction gives
rise, not to a progressive realization of the self in a system of definite
members or organs, but to an irreconcilable antithesis. The self as unity,
as whole, falls over on one side ; as unity, it is something not to be
realized in any special end or activity, and therefore not in any possible
series of ends, not even a progressus ad infinitum. The special
desire with its individual end falls over on the other side ; by its
contrast with the unity of the self it is condemned as a forever
inadequate mode of satisfaction. The unity of the self sets up an ideal of
satisfaction for itself as it withdraws from the special want, and this
ideal set up through negation of the particular desire and its
satisfaction constitutes the moral ideal. It is forever unrealizable,
because it forever negates the special activities through which alone it
might, after all, realize itself. The moral life is, by constitution, a
self-contradiction. Says Green : "As the reflecting subject traverses the
series of wants which it distinguishes from itself while it presents their
filling as its object, there arises the idea of a satisfaction on the
whole -- an idea never realizable, but forever striving to realize itself
in the attainment of a greater command over means to the satisfaction of
particular wants." [3] Green shows that the process of our active
experience demands that the self, in becoming conscious of a want, set
that want before itself as an object, thus distinguishing itself from the
want ; but he shows us no road back from the want thus objectified to the
self. The unity of self has efficiency only in a negative way, to set
itself up as an ideal condemning to insufficiency every concrete step
towards reaching the ideal. The self becomes, not a systematic reality
which is (or which may be) realizing itself in every special deed, but a
far-away ideal which can be realized only through an absolute exhaustion
of all its capacities. "Of a life of complete development, of activity
with the end attained, we can only speak or think in negatives, and thus
only can we speak or think of that state of being in which, according to
our theory, the ultimate moral good must consist."[4]
Consider, then, how much worse off we are than the animals ; they can get
at least the satisfaction of their particular wants, while the
supervention of the self in us makes us conscious of an ideal which sets
itself negatively over against every attempt to realize itself, thus
condemning us to continued dissatisfaction. Speaking more accurately, the
self supervenes, not completely or as an adequately compelling reality,
but only as the thought of an ideal. It supervenes, not as a power active
in its own satisfaction, but to make us realize the unsatisfactoriness of
such seeming satisfactions as we may happen to get, and to keep us
striving for something which we can never get ! Surely, if Green is
correct, he has revealed the illusion which has kept men striving for
something which they cannot get, and, the illusion detected, men will give
up the strife which leads only to dissatisfaction. Whatever may be said
for an ascetic ethics, naked and professed, surely there is something at
fault in the analysis which sets up satisfaction as the end, and then
relapses into a thorough-going asceticism.
I have dwelt upon this contradiction at length, not
for its own sake, but in order to emphasize the helplessness of such a
theory with regard to action. It is not, I repeat, that a fixed body of
precepts cannot be deduced from this conception of the moral ideal; it is
that the idea cannot be used. Instead of being a tool which can be brought
into fruitful relations to special circumstances so as to help determine
what should be done, it remains the bare thought of an ideal of perfection
having nothing in common with the special set of conditions or with the
special desire of the moment. Indeed, instead of helping determine the
right, the satisfactory, it stands off one side and says, 11 No matter
what you do, you will be dissatisfied. I am complete ; you are partial. I
am a unity; you are a fragment, and a fragment of such a kind that no
amount of you and such as you can ever afford satisfaction." In a word,
the ideal not only does not lend itself to specification, but it negates specification in such way that its necessary
outcome, were it ever seriously adopted as a controlling theory of morals,
would be to paralyze action.
The ideal of Green is thus the bare form of unit in
conduct the form devoid of all content, and essentially excluding all
proposed content as inadequate to the form. The only positive significance
which it has is : whatever the moral ideal, it must at least have the form
of unity. Now it seems mere tautology to urge that the mere idea of unity,
no matter how much you bring it in juxtaposition with concrete
circumstances, does not tell what the unity of the situation is, or give
an aid in determining that unity; at most it but sets the saying,
"Whatever the situation, seek for its unity." But Green's ideal cannot be
made to go as far as this in the direction of concreteness ; his unity is
so thoroughly abstract that, instead of urging us to seek for the deed
that would unify the situation, it rather says that no unity can be found
in the situation because the situation is particular, and therefore set
over against the unity.
But while it seems certain to me that any attempt to
make the ideal definite must, by the very nature of the case, be at the
expense of logical consistency, it will be fairer to describe briefly the
various ways in which Green indicates an approach to concreteness of
action. These ways may be reduced to three. In the first place, the
setting of the self as ideal unity with its own unrealized satisfaction
over against the particular desire with its particular satisfaction, gives
rise to the notion of an unconditional good, a good absolutely, to which,
therefore, every special and relative good must conform. Hence the idea of
obligation, the unquestioned ought or categorical imperative. Secondly,
this same contrast keeps alive in the mind, in the face of every seeming
good, the conception of a better, thus preventing the mind from sinking
into any ignoble acquiescence with the present and keeping it alert for
improvement. Hence the idea of moral progress. And, thirdly, this absolute
good with its unqualified demands for regard upon humanity has secured in
the past some degree of observance, however defective; it has compelled man to give it
some shape and body. Hence the existence of permanent institutions which
hold forth the eternal good not in its abstract shape but in some concrete
embodiment.
The first of these modes for giving definiteness to
the ideal, and thus making it available for actual conduct, may be soon
dismissed. It is, over again, only the thought of an ideal, except it now
takes the form of a law instead of that of a good or satisfaction. It is
at most the consciousness that there is something to do and that
this something has unconditioned claims upon us. We are as far as ever
from any method of translating this something in general into the special
thing which has to be done in a given case. And here, as before, this
unconditioned law not simply fails to carry with itself any way of getting
concrete, but it stands in negative relation to any transfer into
particular action. It declares: "Whatever you do, you will come short of
the law which demands a complete realization ; and you can give only
inadequate obedience, since your action is limited through your want at
the moment of action." Given the general acceptance of the theory, the
result would be, on account of the impossibility of conforming to the
demands of the law, either a complete recklessness of conduct (since we
cannot in any way satisfy this hard task-master, let us at least get what
pleasure we can out of the passing moments) or a pessimism transcending
anything of which Schopenhauer has dreamed.
I cannot see that the case stands any different with
the idea of a Better. Granted that the thought of a better would arise
from the opposition of a Good upon the whole to every special good, as
depicted by Green, how are we to advance from this thought of a better to
any notion of what that better is, either as to the prevailing tendency of
life, the direction in which we are to look for improvement upon the
whole, or in any special situation,? The notion that there is a better, if
a mere idea, that is, an idea not tending to define itself in this or that
specific better, would be, it appears to me, hardly more than a mockery
for all the guidance it would give conduct. How is the general consciousness of a better to be brought
into such relation with the existing lines of action that it will serve as
an organ of criticism, pointing out their defects and the direction in
which advance is to be looked for? And I think it could be shown through a
logical analysis that the conception of a good which cannot be realized
"in any life that can be lived by man as we know him" [5] is so far from
being a safe basis for a theory of moral progress, that it negates the
very notion of progress. Progress would seem to imply a principle immanent
in the process and securing continual revelation and expression there. I
am aware of the logical difficulties bound up in the idea of progress, but
these difficulties are increased rather than met by a theory which makes
it consist in advance towards an end which is outside the process,
especially when it is added that, so far as we can know, this end cannot
be reached; that indeed the nature of the process towards it is such as to
make the ideal always withdraw further. The only question on such a theory
is whether the thought of advance towards the goal has any meaning, and
whether we have any criterion at all by which to place ourselves ; to tell
where we are in the movement, and whither we are going -- backward or
forward.
We come, then, to the embodiment which the ideal has
found for itself in the past as the sole reliance for getting
self-definition into the empty form of unity of self. In their effort
towards this full realization men have produced certain institutions,
codes, and recognized forms of duty. In loyalty to these, taken not merely
in themselves, but as expressions of the attempt to realize the ideal, man
may find his primary concrete duties. Says Green: "However meagrely the
perfection, the vocation, the law, may be conceived, the consciousness
that there is such a thing, so far as it directs the will must at least
keep the man to the path in which human progress has so far been made. It
must keep him loyal in the spirit to established morality, industrious in
some work of recognized utility." [6] The criticism here may take several
roads. We may point out that the question is not whether as matter of fact the
ideal has embodied itself in institution and code with sufficient fulness
so that loyalty to the institution and code is a means in which our duty
and satisfaction comes specifically home to us : that the question is
whether, if the ideal were the abstract unity - the unity negative to
every special end -which Green makes it, any such embodiment would be
possible. We may ask, in other words, whether Green, in. order to help out
the undefinable character of his ideal, its inability to assume concrete
form, has not unconsciously availed himself of a fact incompatible with
his theory, a fact whose very existence refutes his theory. Or, we might
approach the matter from the other side and inquire whether the relation
of the absolute ideal to the special institutions in which it has found
expression is of such a kind (according to the terms of Green's theory of
moral experience) that loyalty to established morality' is a safe ethical
procedure. On the contrary, must not, according to the fundamental premiss
which Green has laid down, the relation of the ideal to ally expression
which it may have secured, be essentially -- radically -- negative? That
is, does not the ideal in its remote and unrealizable nature stand off
and. condemn the past attempts to realize it as vain, as unworthy ? Does
not the ideal say, in substance, I am not in you ; you are but nugatory
attempts to shadow forth my unity ? Such being the case, the path of
morality would lie in turning against established morality rather than in
following it. The moral command would be, "Be not loyal to existing
institutions, if you would be loyal to me, the only true moral ideal." But
this very negation, since it is a negation in general, since it negates
not this or that feature of the established morality, but that morality
per se, gives no aid in determining in what respect to act differently. It
just says : "Do not do as you have been doing; act differently." And it
is, -in old story in logic that an undetermined "infinite" negative
conveys no intelligence. It may be true that a virtue is not an elephant,
but this throws no light on the nature of either the virtue or the
elephant. The negation must be with respect to an identity involved in
both the compared terms before it assists judgment; that is, the ideal must
be in the actual which it condemns, if it is to really criticise; an
external standard, just because it is external, is no standard at all.
There is no common ground, and hence no basis of comparison. And thus when
Green goes on to say [7] that the same ideal which has embodied itself in
institutions also embodies itself in the critical judgment of individuals,
who are thereby enabled to look back upon the institutions and
cross-examine them, thus raising up higher standards, he says something
which it is highly desirable to have true, but which cannot be true if his
theory of the purely negative relation of the unity of self-consciousness
to every particular act is correct.
But we need not indulge, at length, in these various hypothetical
criticisms. Green himself, with his usual candor in recognizing and
stating all difficulties, no matter how hardly they bear upon his own
doctrine, has clearly stated the fundamental opposition here; an
opposition making it impossible that the ideal should concretely express
itself in an institutional form in such way as to lend itself to the
concrete determination of further conduct. The contradiction, as Green
himself states it, is that while the absolute unity of self must, in order
to translate into an ideal for man, find an embodiment in social forms,
all such forms are, by their very nature and definition, so limited that
no amount of loyalty to the institution can be regarded as an adequate
satisfaction of the ideal. Or as Green puts it: "Only through society is
any one enabled to give that effect to the idea of man as the object of
his actions, to the idea of a possible better state of himself, without
which the idea would remain like that of space to a man who had not the
senses either of sight or of touch," --that is, merely ideal possibility,
without actual meaning. And yet society necessarily puts such limits upon
the individual that he cannot by his life in society give effect to the
idea. "Any life which the individual can possibly live is at best so
limited by the necessities of his position that it seems impossible, on
supposition that a definite self-realizing principle is at work in it,
that it should be an adequate expression of such a principle." "It is
only so far as we are members of the society, by means of which we can
conceive of the common good as our own, that the idea has any practical
hold on us at all; and this very membership implies confinement in our
individual realization of the idea. Each has primarily to perform the
duties of his station ; his capacity for action beyond the range of this
duty is definitely bounded, and with it is definitely bounded also his
sphere of personal interest, his character, his realized possibility." [8]
Here is the contradiction. If man were to withdraw from his social
environment, he would lose at once the idea of the moral end, the stimulus
to its realization, and the concrete means for carrying it out, The social
medium is to the moral ideal what language is to thought -and more. And
yet if man stays in the social environment, he is by that very residence
so limited in interest and power that he cannot realize the ideal. It is
the old difficulty over again.
Just as the unity of the self, taken psychologically,
sets itself, in a negative way, over against every special desire, so this
same unity of self, taken socially, removes itself from every special
institution in which it is sought to embody it -removes itself, be it
noticed, not because the embodiment succeeds and through the very
thoroughness of the embodiment creates a new situation, requiring its
special unification, but because of the essential futility of the attempt
at embodiment. The antithesis between form and content, ideal and actual,
is an undoubted fact of our experience; the question, however, is as to
the meaning, the interpretation, of this fact. Is it an antithesis which
arises within the process of moral experience, this experience
bearing in its own womb both ideal and actual, both form and content, and
also the rhythmic separation and redintegration of the two sides ? Or, is
the antithesis between the process of moral experience, as such,
and an ideal outside of this experience and negative to it, so that
experience can never embody it ? It is because Green interprets the fact
in the latter sense that be shuts himself up to an abstract ideal which
unqualifiedly resists all specification, and which is
therefore useless as an organ for our moral activity.
I have now attempted to show that Green takes the bare fact that there is
unity in moral experience, abstract that unity from experience (although
its sole function is to the unity of experience) and then, setting this
unity over against the experience robbed of its significance, makes of the
unity an unrealized and unrealizable ideal and condemns the experience,
shorn of its unity, to continual dissatisfaction. I have tried to show
this, both in general, from the nature of Green's analysis, and, more in
particular, from a consideration of the three special modes in which the
ideal endeavors to get relatively concrete form. Since I have treated the
theory as reduced to its naked logical consistency, I may have appeared to
some to have dealt with it rather harshly, though not, I hope, unjustly.
But aside from the fact that the truest reverence we can render any of the
heroes of thought is to use his thinking to forward our own struggle for
truth, philosophy seems, at present, to be suffering from a refusal to
subject certain ideas to unswerving analysis because of sympathy with the
moral atmosphere which bathes those ideas, and because of the apparent
service of those ideas in reclothing in philosophic form ideas endeared to
the human mind through centuries of practical usefulness in forms
traditional and symbolic.
In closing, I wish to point out that the abstract
theories of morals, of which we have just been considering the best modern
type, are not aberrations of an individual thinker.; that, on the
contrary, they are the inevitable outcome of a certain stage of social
development, recurring at each of those nodal points in progress when
humanity, becoming conscious of the principle which has hitherto
unconsciously underlain its activity, abstracts that principle from the
institutions through which it has previously acted preparatory to securing
better organs for its institutions, that is, through which it shall flow
more freely and more fully. The error consists in transforming this purely
historical opposition, an opposition which has meaning only with reference
to the movement of a single process, into a rigid or absolute separation. That is to say, at the moment in
which a given cycle of history has so far succeeded that it can express
its principle free from the mass of incident with which it had been bound
up (and so hidden from consciousness) at that moment this principle
appears in purely negative form. It is the negation of the preceding
movement because in it that movement has succeeded-has summed itself up.
Success always negates the process which leads up to it, because it
renders that process unnecessary; it takes away from it all function and
thus all excuse for being. Just so, for example, Hellenic life transcended
itself in Socrates; in him it became conscious of the principle (the
universality of the self, to express it roughly) which had been striving
to realize itself. The movement having come to consciousness, having
generalized itself, its principle at once assumed a negative relation to
the forms in which this principle had been only partially embodied. just
because Socrates was, in his consciousness, a complete Greek, he wrote the
epitaph of Greece. So to take another -obvious example, Jesus, in
fulfilling the law, transcended it, so that those who were "in Christ
Jesus, were no longer under the law." Now just because the principle in
its completion, its generalization is negative to its own partial
realizations or embodiments, just because it negates its own immediate
historic antecedents, it is easy to conceive of it as negative to all
embodiment. At a certain stage of the movement, this transformation of a
historic into an absolute negative is not only easy, but, as it would
seem, inevitable. This stage is the moment when the principle which sums
up one movement is seen to be the law for the next movement and has not,
as yet got organized into further outward or institutional forms. For the
moment (the moment may last a century) the principle having transcended
one institutional expression, and not having succeeded in getting another,
seems to be wholly in the air - essentially negative to all possible
realization. The very completeness with which the principle sums up and
states the reality of life seems, by the one great paradox, to put it in
opposition to that reality -- to make of it something essentially
transcending experience. The great example of this is the fortune of the Christian idea. As it was originally
stated, it was not put forth as a specially religious truth ; religious,
that, is, in a sense which marked off religion as a sphere by itself; it
was propounded as the realization of the meaning of experience, as the
working truth which all experience bases itself upon and carries with
itself. This truth was that man is an expression or an organ of the
Reality of the universe. That, as such organ, he participates in truth
and, though the completeness of his access to ultimate truth, is free,
there being no essential barriers to his action either in his relation to
the world or in his relations to his fellow-men. Stated more in the
language of the time, man was an incarnation of God and in virtue of this
incarnation redeemed from evil. Now this principle, if we regard it as
having historical relations and not something intruded into the world from
outside, without continuity with previous experience, this principle, I
say, must have been the generalization of previous life; such a
generalization as plucking its principle from that experience negated it.
And yet this principle, at the outset, only quickened men's consciousness
of their slaveries -- this idea of participation in the Absolute only made
men feel more deeply the limitations of their activity and hence their
'finitude.' Thus the principle seemed negative not only to preceding
institutions but to all contemporaneous institutions; indeed, these
contemporaneous institutions were, of course, only the survivals of the
preceding institutions. Until such time then, as the new principle should
succeed in getting itself organized into forms more adequate to itself
(the development of science, the conquest of nature through the
application of this science in invention and industry, and its application
to the activities of men in determining their relations to one another and
the resulting forms of social organization) this principle must have
seemed remote from, negative to, all possible normal life. Thus, in being
forced apart from actual life, the principle was conceived, not any longer
as a working method of life, but as something wholly supernatural. So
absolutely was a negation which was only historic in its meaning frozen
into an absolute negative.
Now the ethical theory which Green represents appears
under similar historic conditions. Physical science in its advance has got
to the thought of a continuous unity embodied in all natural process. In
the theory of evolution this unity of process has ceased to be either a
supernatural datum or a merely philosophic speculation. It has assumed the
proportions of fact. So social organization has gone far enough in the
direction of democracy that the principle of movement towards unity comes
to consciousness in that direction. In every direction there is coming to
consciousness the power of an organizing activity underlying and rendering
tributary to itself the apparently rigid dualisms holding over from the
mediaeval structure. This unity, just because it is the manifestation 'of
the reality realizing itself in the institutions characteristic of the
past, is negative to those institutions; it is the reality of which they
are the phenomena. That is, these institutions have their meaning as
pointing to or indicating the organizing unity; they are the attempts
to express it. Succeeding in their attempt at expression, they are
superseded. They have realized their purpose, their function. The
principle in which they have summed themselves up, in which they have
executed themselves, has the floor; it has command of the scene of action.
When that which is whole is come, that which is in part shall be done
away. Now this principle of a single, comprehensive, and organizing unity
being historically negative to its concrete conditions, to former
institutions, is easily conceived as negative to all embodiment. While, in
reality, we are conscious of this organizing principle only because it
is getting concrete manifestation, only because, indeed, it has
secured such embodiment as to appear as the directing principle or method
of life, the first realization of the principle is negative; we become
conscious, in the light of this organizing unity, of its non-being,
of its still partial embodiment, of the resistances which it still has to
overcome - this is, of its divided character. Translate this negation,
which is a phase in every individualized movement, into a hard and fast
thing, and you get an ideal set over against the actual (and the possible)
experience as such. So it was with Green: only because the single organizing unity had got expression for itself could
he conceive it at all; only because it had emerged so thoroughly as the
reality of all experience could he contrast it, as he did, with the
particular experiences of which it was the meaning. Only because the
institutions of life had through centuries of conception finally given
birth to this idea as their own idea and reality, could Green use this
idea to condemn those institutions. Such is the irony of all history; it
so thoroughly realizes and embodies ideas that these very ideas are turned
against it as its own condemnation. But the life which is going on in
history, instead of accusing its children of their ungratefulness, makes
use of the very ideas by which it is condemned to secure still wider
revelation of its own meaning.
JOHN DEWEY.
Endnotes
-
In the International Journal of Ethics, ", for
January, 1891, I have developed this thought at greater length in an
article upon Moral Theory and Practice.
-
See, for example, Green, Prolegomena to Ethics,
pp. 92, 118, 126, 134, and 160.
-
Prolegomena, p. 91; see also p. 233.
-
Prolegomena, p. 180; -.and see also pp. 189, 204,
244.
-
Prolegomena, p. 189.
-
Prolegomena, p. 184; see also p. 207.
-
Prolegomena, pp. 270 et seq.
-
Prolegomena, p. 192
|
