Handbook of Ethical Theory by George Stuart Fullerton (bill gates books recommendations .txt) 📖

in the assertion that a bit of string is higher than a straight line, or a hat than a handkerchief. Some significant basis of comparison must be present. Things must be recognized as approximating to or diverging from an accepted standard in varying degrees.

Such a basis of comparison is present when some objects possess the same qualities in a more marked degree than do others. But this is not the only possible basis of comparison. We may assume that the possession of certain qualities marks a creature as higher, and that the creature which has them not, or has them imperfectly developed, thereby stamps itself as being of a lower order.

Something like this appears to determine our judgments when we assign to various creatures their place in the scale of living beings. We do not mean that the higher possess to a greater degree all the capacities possessed by the lower. Many things which the plant does man cannot do at all; and, among the animals, those which we recognize as higher may be lacking in many capacities present in a marked degree in the lower. In ranking one living creature as higher, and, thus, as more perfect, than another, we assume that the “nature” of the one, with its various capacities and lacks of capacity, is, on the whole, of more worth than the “nature” of another.

It might be maintained that, in his estimate of the worth of different kinds of beings man is influenced by his partiality for the distinctively human, rating creatures as lower or higher in proportion to their divergence from or approximation to his own type. Undoubtedly this plays a part in men’s judgments. We are partial to ourselves. And yet judgments of perfection and imperfection cannot wholly be explained on this principle.

“I think we must admit without proof,” writes Professor Janet, [Footnote: The Theory of Morals, Book I, chapter iii, English translation, New York, 1883, p. 48.] a brilliant apostle of the doctrine of perfection, “that things are good, even independently of the pleasure which they give us, in themselves and by themselves, because of their intrinsic excellence. If anyone were to demand that I should prove that thought is worth more than digestion, a tree more than a heap of stones, liberty than slavery, maternal love than luxury, I could only reply by asking him to demonstrate that the whole is greater than one of its parts. No sensible person denies that, in passing from the mineral kingdom to the vegetable kingdom, from this to the animal kingdom, from the animal to man, from the savage to the enlightened citizen of a free country, Nature has made a continual advance; that is to say, at each step has gained in excellence and perfection.”

One is naturally impelled to ask from what point of view things so disparate as the mineral, the plant, the brute, man, thought and digestion, liberty and slavery, can be compared with one another at all, and referred to any sort of a series. What is, in its essence, this excellence or perfection of which we have more shining evidence as we go up in the scale? Janet identifies it with intensity of being, with activity. The greater the activity, the greater the perfection.

To the identification of perfection and activity we may hesitate to assent. It does not seem clear that there is greater activity manifested in a snail than in a burning house, in maternal love than in furious hate, in quiet thought than in passion. Yet it seems significant that judgments of worth do not appear out of place in comparing such things.

121. PERFECTIONISM AND INTUITIONISM.—Taking into consideration all that is said above, it seems not unreasonable to conclude:

(1) That in speaking of the perfection of any creature we very often judge it only by the standard set by its own type. We regard it as a good specimen of its kind.

(2) But when we use perfection in a wider sense, we judge different types after the standard furnished by the distinctively human.

(3) And we take as our standard of the human the “pattern” man held in view by those who urge us to follow nature.

But why should this pattern man be assumed to be better or worthier than a man of a different sort? He who finds in him a greater exhibition of activity may with equal justice address to himself the question: Why is activity, in itself, of value? The one question, like the other, looks for its answer in the dictum of some intuition. What may be said for, and what against, intuitions, we have already considered. [Footnote: See chapter xxiii]

 

III. SELF-REALIZATION

122. THE SELF-REALIZATION DOCTRINE.—The ethical school which makes the realization of the capacities of the self the aim of moral action has for a generation, especially in England and America, had the support of many acute and scholarly minds. The doctrine, often spoken of as the Neo-Kantian or the Neo-Hegelian, may be said to be influenced by Kant, so far as concerns metaphysical theory, but its ethical character is more properly Hegelian and suggests in many particulars that great German philosopher’s “Philosophy of Right.”

We may conveniently take as the protagonist of the school the Oxford scholar, Thomas Hill Green, whose “Prolegomena to Ethics” has had, directly and indirectly, a powerful influence upon the minds of the men of our generation.

We find the doctrine of self-realization, as set forth by Green, to be as follows:

(1) In all desire some object is presented to the mind as not yet real, and there is a striving to make it real, and thus to satisfy, or extinguish, the desire. [Footnote: Prolegomena to Ethics, Sec 131.]

(2) Self-consciousness knits the desires into a system, and thus attains to the conception of “well-being,” which implies the satisfaction of desire in general, and not merely of this or that desire. [Footnote: Prolegomena to Ethics, Sec 128.]

(3) “Good” is that which satisfies some desire. Any good at which an agent aims must be his own good; and “true good” is nothing else than “permanent well-being.” [Footnote: Prolegomena to Ethics, Sec Sec 190, 92, 203.]

(4) A desire is determined by the nature of the creature desiring; man can attain satisfaction only in the realization of his capacities. His true good lies only in their complete realization—in his becoming all that it is in him to become. [Footnote: Prolegomena to Ethics, Sec Sec 171-2, 180.]

(5) But man is a social being, and has an interest in other persons than himself. Hence his complete self-satisfaction implies the satisfaction of his social as well as of his other impulses. That is, his true good includes the good of others. [Footnote: Prolegomena to Ethics, Sec Sec 199-205.]

(6) We can only discover what our “capacities” are by observing them as so far realized, and thus gaining the idea of future progress. The ultimate end is unknown to us. [Footnote: Prolegomena to Ethics, Sec 172.]

(7) But we see enough to recognize that man’s capacities can be realized, his self-satisfaction intelligently sought, only in a social state based upon the notion of the common good. The right reveals itself in the actual evolution of society. [Footnote: Ibid., Sec Sec 172-76, 205.]

123. THE DOCTRINE AKIN TO THAT OF FOLLOWING NATURE.—The self-realization doctrine has much in common with the doctrine of following nature. Thus:

1. It evidently does not recommend the realization of all the capacities of the individual as such, but holds in view a “pattern” man.

2. This is social man, the true representative of human nature as conceived by the ancient Stoic. Green holds before himself “the ideal of a society in which everyone shall treat everyone else as his neighbor, in which to every rational agent the well-being or perfection of every other such agent shall be included in that perfection for which he lives.” [Footnote: Prolegomena to Ethics, Sec 205.] The same thought was more pithily expressed by Marcus Aurelius in the aphorism that “what is good for the hive is good for the bee.”

3. We find, too, the analogue of that wider appeal to nature which suffused the Stoic doctrine with religious feeling. In the above brief recapitulation of the steps in the self-realization doctrine I have omitted this aspect, as I wished to confine myself to the ethical doctrine pure and simple. But Green conceives of the Divine Consciousness as already having before it the consummation toward which man strives in his efforts at self-realization; he regards man as working toward the attainment of a Divine Purpose. The self-realizationist may prefer, sometimes, to use language more abstract. He may say: “Man’s consciousness of himself as a member of society involves a reference to a cosmic order.” [Footnote: MUIRHEAD, The Elements of Ethics, Book I, chapter in, Sec 10.] But the difference of language scarcely carries with it a substantial difference of thought. [Footnote: “Though the philosopher as such may shun the term ‘God’ on account of its anthropomorphic associations, and may prefer to speak of the ‘conscious principle,’ or of the ‘universal self,’ yet the latter has in substance the same meaning as the former.” FITE, An Introductory Study of Ethics, chapter xiii, Sec 4.]

4. As the appeal to human nature, or to nature in a broader sense, left the norm for the guidance of human actions somewhat vague, so the appeal to the principle of self-realization seems to leave one without very definite guidance. There may easily arise disputes touching what capacities are to be realized, and in what degree.

124. IS THE DOCTRINE MORE EGOISTIC?—One difference between the principles of following nature, striving to attain to perfection, and aiming at self-realization seems to force itself upon our notice. On the surface, at least, the last doctrine appears to stand out as more distinctly egoistic. The very name has an egoistic flavor; the doctrine bases itself upon the satisfaction of desire; nor do its advocates hesitate to emphasize that the satisfaction sought is the satisfaction of the agent desiring. In the chapter on Egoism [Footnote: Chapter xxiv.] I have cited some utterances which sound egoistic, and such citations might be multiplied.

Nevertheless, from this egoistic root springs a flower which disseminates the perfume of a saintly self-abnegation. How is this seeming miracle accomplished?

The transition is brought about through a chain of reasoning which is subtle and ingenious in the extreme. Must we not admit that in all purposive action—the only action with which the moralist need concern himself—there is a striving to realize or satisfy desire in the attainment of some object? And if the desires of a mind or self converge upon some object, does not its realization imply the satisfaction or realization of the desires of that mind or self? Furthermore, if our desires have as their root our capacities—for we can desire nothing that it is not in us to desire—is not the realization of desire the realization of capacity? Does it not follow, hence, that every mind or self, in all purposive action, is striving, either blunderingly or with farsighted intelligence, to attain to self-satisfaction, which means, to the realization of its capacities? Finally, as men are by nature social creatures, how can a man fully realize his capacities without becoming a truly unselfish being? Unselfishness appears to be the inevitable goal of the strivings for self-satisfaction of an unselfish self.

125. WHY AIM TO REALIZE CAPACITIES?—This reasoning appears highly satisfactory in two very different ways. It seems, on the one hand, to stop the mouth of the egoist, who insists that his own advantage is his only proper aim. It assures him that he is throughout seeking his own advantage, when he aims at self-realization. On the other hand, it assures the man to whom egoism appears repellant and immoral, that self-realization implies that one must love one’s neighbor as oneself. The