CHAPTER XIII

ALTERNATIVE THEORIES

AFTER this summary answer to the commoner objections to our account of morality, we should notice a few of the more persistently recurrent formulas that seem inconsistent with this explanation of its fundamental nature.

Is morality "categorical," beyond need of justification?

To Kant and his followers, as well as to many less philosophical minds, the justification of morality by its utility has seemed unworthy. Morality is much more ultimate and imperious. The pursuit of happiness is not binding; morality is. The way to attain happiness is dubious and variable; the commandments of morality are clear-cut and certain. Different people find happiness in different activities; the laws of morality are universal and changeless. Morality, therefore, is prior to the pursuit of happiness; its dictates are known by an independent faculty. There is in us all an unanalyzable and unavoidable "ought"; ours not to reason why; ours but to do-and die, if need be. Morality is not a means to employ if we wish happiness; in that case its precepts would be but hypothetical—if you wish happiness, do so and so. No, its commands are categorical. The unescapable fact of "oughtness" is the bottom fact upon which our ethics must be built.

To the truth in this manner of speech we must all respond. As we have seen, morality is not purely subjective and relative; it carries the authority not of opinion but of fact. The right, the best way, is unconditionally best, whether we are

wise enough to desire it or no. The greatest good is the greatest good, however narrow or short-sighted our impulses. Kant expresses eloquently the absolute and unescapable nature of duty in its perennial opposition to our transitory and flickering desires.

(1) But Kant is unfair in his picturesque contrast between the perplexities attending the pursuit of happiness and the certainty attachable to morality. As a matter of observation, moral codes have varied quite as much as man's different ways of finding happiness. Cases of moral perplexity are as common as cases of uncertainty with regard to the road to happiness; there is no such universality and changelessness about morality as he assumes. If a certain code seems fixed and indubitable to us, it is in large degree because we have become accustomed to it and given it our allegiance; a wider acquaintance with other codes, contemporary or past, would shake our confidence. Some fundamental rules are unquestionable rules against murder, rape, etc.; but just as unquestionable is the fact that these acts make against human happiness.

(2) Only a man with an Hebraic training and rigoristic temper could think of morality in this awestruck and unquestioning way. More Bohemian people feel no such "categorical ought" in their breasts. And if a man feels no such "categorical imperative," how can you prove to him it is there? Kant's theory is at bottom mere assertion; if because of your training and temperament you respond to it, and if you are content not to analyze and explain the existence of this imperious pressure upon your will, you are tremendously impressed. Otherwise the whole elaborate Kantian system probably seems to you an unreal brain-spun structure.

Kant, though a man of extraordinary mental powers, had but a narrow range of experience to base his theories upon,

and lived too early to catch the genetic viewpoint. Hence there is a certain pedantic naïveté in his constructions. No man with any modern psychological or historical training ought to be content to leave this extraordinary "categorical imperative" unexplained. It is quite possible to trace its origin and understand its function; there is nothing unique or mysterious about it. Why should we bow down to a command shot at us out of the air, a command irrelevant to our actual interests? Children have to do so, and the majority of the human race are still children, who may properly acquiesce in the rules of morality without clearly realizing why. But the reflective man should not be content to yield himself to the yoke unless he can see its necessity and value. The "ought," the knowledge of what is right, antedates the individual's experience of what is best, and so seems mysterious and a priori to him; but it does not antedate the racial experience; it is rather its fruit. The teleology of conscience is very simple, and its genesis and development purely natural.

(3) The "ought" seems more objective than "conscience," more impersonal. Just so does "beauty" seem more impersonal and objective than our pleasure in contemplating nature and art. It is a constant tendency of the mind to project its values out of itself; to create "universes of discourse" that seem more stable and real than its own fleeting states. All that exists psychologically is a sense of pleasure at looking at certain combinations of outer objects; but that pleasure is constantly evoked by that peculiar combination, both in our own mind and in others'. So we objectify that pleasure and call it the "beauty" of the object. Similarly, all that exists psychologically is a certain felt pressure, certain emotions and ideas and pushes whose teleology is not realized. But we objectify that constantly and pretty universally felt pressure and think of an impersonal, objec

tive "ought." All the arts are expressible in "oughts"; and if there is a more authoritative and categorical nature to moral laws than there is, for example, to the aesthetic laws that art-study reveals, it is because aesthetics deals with only one aspect of human good and ethics with its totality. Indeed, every impulse is, in its initial push, categorical, offering no reasons, simply pressing upon us with its requirements. Hunger and thirst and sex-desire do not say to us, "If you desire to be happy, eat, drink, and gratify your passion"; they call to us with an imperious and immediate demand. The demand of the moral law is more insistent and more authoritative simply because it represents a far more widespread and lasting need.

(4) Kant's "categorical imperative" is purely formal and empty. We ought, we ought - but what? It leads, if to anything, to a mere emotional reinforcement of our preexisting moral conceptions, to that canonization of good will as the one and only good, which is Kant's own position, but which we have found inadequate and misleading. When we come to new situations it has no clue to offer. How do we actually decide in such cases? By imagining the consequences of acts and seeing their relative productiveness of happiness and pain. Or else by finding some already decided case under which we can put the new instance. We are tempted to an act that promises profit, but something checks us. Ought we to do this? Gradually it comes over us that this would be stealing; and stealing we have already decided, or the race has decided for us, is wrong.

We have to decide things in terms of our welfare, or of those already stereotyped decisions which represent the half-conscious strivings of past generations for human welfare. There is no other way; the conception of an imperious impersonal "ought" bearing ruthlessly down upon us gives no help whatsoever.

A later and English expression of the feeling that morality needs no justification may be found in Bradley's Ethical Studies. "To take virtue as a mere means to an ulterior end is in direct antagonism to the voice of moral consciousness. That consciousness, when unwarped by selfishness and not blinded by sophistry, is convinced that to ask for the Why is simple immorality; to do good for its own sake is virtue, to do it for some ulterior end or object is never virtue. Virtue not only does seem to be, but is, an end in itself. . . . Against the base mechanical Bavavola, which meets us on all sides, with its 'What is the use' of goodness, or beauty, or truth, there is but one fitting answer from the friends of science, or art, or religion and virtue, 'We do not know and we do not care.'

999

(1) But morality would then be a mere arbitrary tyranny; if it were of no use, the sacrifices it demands would be sheer cruelty. A moral law irrelevant to human interests would have no possible authority over us; it would not be a moral, i.e., a right, law for us.

(2) And what criterion should we have to judge what is virtuous? "Virtue for virtue's sake" is equivalent to “the best way because it is the best way." But what makes it the best way? And how shall we decide what is the best way?

(3) We must be blind not to see the use of morality, even if we feel that usefulness degrades it. All moralists agree that virtue does actually lead to happiness. But is that connection a mere accident? Is it not likely that the usefulness of virtue has something to do with its origin and existence?

(4) A real practical value of the motto "Virtue for virtue's sake" lies in the implied rejection of virtue for individual profit merely. The moralist rightly feels that such proverbs as "Honesty is the best policy," "Ill-gotten gains do not prosper," do not strike deep enough. Even if ill-gotten gain 1 Pages 56-57.