Ethics · John Dewey
CHAPTER XVIII
THE PLACE OF THE SELF IN THE MORAL LIFE We have reached the conclusion that disposition as manifest in endeavor is the seat of moral worth, and that this worth itself consists in a readiness to regard the general happiness even against contrary promptings of personal comfort and gain. This brings us to the problems connected with the nature and functions of the self. We shall, in our search for the moral self, pass in review the conceptions which find morality in (1) Self-Denial or Self-Sacrifice, (2) Self-Assertion, (3) Combination of Regard for Self and for Others, (4) Self-Realization. Sec. 1. THE DOCTRINE OF SELF-DENIAL =Widespread Currency of the Doctrine.=--The notion that real goodness, or virtue, consists essentially in abnegation of the self, in denying and, so far as may be, eliminating everything that is of the nature of the self, is one of the oldest and most frequently recurring notions of moral endeavor and religion, as well as of moral theory. It describes Buddhism and, in large measure, the monastic ideal of Christianity, while, in Protestantism, Puritanism is permeated with its spirit. It characterized Cynicism and Stoicism. Kant goes as far as to say that every rational being must wish to be wholly free from inclinations. Popular morality, while not going so far as to hold that all moral goodness is self-denial, yet more or less definitely assumes that self-denial on its own account, irrespective of what comes out of it, is morally praiseworthy. A notion so deeply rooted and widely flourishing must have strong motives in its favor, all the more so because its practical vogue is always stronger than any reasons which are theoretically set forth.
In general, to point out the truth which this theory perverts, to emphasize the demand for constant reconstruction and rearrangement of the habitual powers of the self--is sufficient criticism of it. But in detail the theory exercises such pervasive influence that it is worth while to mention specifically some of the evils that accrue from it. =1. It so Maims and Distorts Human Nature as to Narrow the Conception of the Good.=--In its legitimate antagonism to pleasure-seeking, it becomes a foe to happiness, and an implacable enemy of all its elements. Art is suspected, for beauty appeals to the lust of the eye. Family life roots in sexual impulses, and property in love of power, gratification, and luxury. Science springs from the pride of the intellect; the State from the pride of will. _Asceticism_ is the logical result; a purely negative conception of virtue. But it surely does dishonor, not honor, to the moral life to conceive it as mere negative subjection of the flesh, mere holding under control the lust of desire and the temptations of appetite. All positive content, all liberal achievement, is cut out and morality is reduced to a mere struggle _against_ solicitations to sin. While asceticism is in no danger of becoming a popular doctrine, there is a common tendency to conceive self-control in this negative fashion; to fail to see that the important thing is some positive good _for_ which a desire is controlled. In general we overemphasize that side of morality which consists in abstinence and _not_ doing wrong.
Sec. 2. SELF-ASSERTION The idea that morality consists in an unbridled assertion of self, in its forceful aggressive manifestation, rarely receives consistent theoretical formulation--possibly because most men are so ready to act upon it practically that explicit acknowledgment would be a hindrance rather than a help to the idea. But it is a doctrine which tends to be invoked more or less explicitly as a reaction from the impotency of the self-denial dogma. In reference to some superior individual or class, some leader or group of aristocratically ordained leaders, it is always a more or less conscious principle. Concerning these it is held that ordinary morality holds eventually only for the "common herd," the activities of the leader being amenable to a higher law than that of common morality.[171] Moreover, since the self-sacrifice morality is almost never carried out consistently--that is, to the point of monastic asceticism,--much popular morality is an unbalanced combination of self-sacrifice in some regards and ruthless self-assertion in others. It is not "practicable" to carry out the principle of self-denial everywhere; it is reserved for the family life, for special religious duties; in business (which is business, not morals), the proper thing is aggressive and unremitting self-assertion. In business, the end is success, to "make good"; weakness is failure, and failure is disgrace, dishonor. Thus in practice the two conceptions of self-denial in one region and self-assertion in another mutually support each other. They give occasion for the more or less unformulated, yet prevalent, idea that moral considerations (those of self-denial) apply to a limited phase of life, but have nothing to do with other regions in which accordingly the principle of "efficiency" (that is, personal success, wealth, power obtained in competitive victory) holds supreme sway.
Recently, however, there has sprung up a so-called "naturalistic" school of ethics which has formulated explicitly the principle of self-assertion, and which claims to find scientific sanction for it in the evolutionary doctrine of Darwin. Evolution, it says, is the great thing, and evolution means the _survival of the fit in the struggle for existence_. Nature's method of progress is precisely, so it is said, ruthless self-assertion--to the strong the victory, to the victorious the spoils, and to the defeated, woe. Nature affords a scene of egoistic endeavor or pressure, suffer who may, of struggle to get ahead, that is, ahead of others, even by thrusting them down and out. But the justification of this scene of rapine and slaughter is that out of it comes progress, advance, everything that we regard as noble and fair. Excellence is the sign of excelling; the goal means outrunning others. The morals of humility, of obedience to law, of pity, sympathy, are merely a self-protective device on the part of the weak who try to safeguard their weakness by setting fast limitations to the activities of the truly strong (compare what was said of the not dissimilar doctrine among the Greeks, pp. 120-22). But the truly moral man, in whom the principle of progress is embodied, will break regardlessly through these meshes and traps. He will carry his own plans through to victorious achievement. He is the super-man. The mass of men are simply food for his schemes, valuable as furnishing needed material and tools.[172]
The rage for survival, for power, must not be asserted indiscriminately; the mate of the other sex, the young, to some extent other individuals of the same kin, are spared, or, in many cases, protected and nourished.[173] (c) The higher the form of life, the _more_ effective the two methods just suggested: namely, the method of intelligence in discovering and utilizing new methods, tools, and resources as substituted for the direct method of brute conflict; and the method of mutual protection and care substituted for mutual attack and combat. It is among the lower forms of life, not as the theory would require among the higher types, that conditions approximate its picture of the gladiatorial show. The higher species among the vertebrates, as among insects (like ants and bees), are the "sociable" kinds. It is sometimes argued that Darwinism carried into morals would abolish charity: all care of the hopelessly invalid, of the economically dependent, and in general of all the weak and helpless except healthy infants. It is argued that our current standards are sentimental and artificial, aiming to make survive those who are unfit, and thus tending to destroy the conditions that make for advance, and to introduce such as make towards degeneration.
But this argument (1) wholly ignores the reflex effect of interest in those who are ill and defective in strengthening social solidarity--in promoting those ties and reciprocal interests which are as much the prerequisites of strong individual characters as they are of a strong social group. And (2) it fails to take into account the stimulus to foresight, to scientific discovery, and practical invention, which has proceeded from interest in the helpless, the weak, the sick, the disabled, blind, deaf, and insane. Taking the most coldly scientific view, the gains in these two respects have, through the growth of social pity, of care for the unfortunate, been purchased more cheaply than we can imagine their being bought in any other way. In other words, the chief objection to this "naturalistic" ethics is that it overlooks the fact that, even from the Darwinian point of view, the human _animal_ is a _human_ animal. It forgets that the sympathetic and social instincts, those which cause the individual to take the interests of others for his own and thereby to restrain his sheer brute self-assertiveness, are the highest achievements, the high-water mark of evolution. The theory urges a systematic relapse to lower and foregone stages of biological development.
Sec. 3. SELF-LOVE AND BENEVOLENCE; OR, EGOISM AND ALTRUISM For the last three centuries, the most discussed point in English ethical literature (save perhaps whether moral knowledge is intuitive or derived from experience) has been the relation of regard for one's own self and for other selves as motives of action--"the crux of all ethical speculation," Spencer terms it. All views have been represented: (a) that man naturally acts from purely selfish motives and that morality consists in an enforced subjection of self-love to the laws of a common social order, (b) That man is naturally selfish, while morality is an "enlightened selfishness," or a regard for self based upon recognition of the extent to which its happiness requires consideration of others. (c) That the tendencies of the agent are naturally selfish, but that morality is the subjection of these tendencies to the law of duty. (d) That man's interests are naturally partly egoistic and partly sympathetic, while morality is a compromise or adjustment of these tendencies. (e) That man's interests are naturally both, and morality a subjection of both to conscience as umpire. (f) That they are both, while morality is a subjection of egoistic to benevolent sentiments. (g) That the individual's interests are naturally in objective ends which primarily are neither egoistic nor altruistic; and these ends become either selfish or benevolent at special crises, at which times morality consists in referring them, equally and impartially for judgment, to a situation in which the interests of the self and of others concerned are involved: _to a common good_.
The following quotation from James[178] states the true doctrine: "When I am led by selflove to keep my seat whilst ladies stand, or to grab something first and cut out my neighbor, what I really love is the comfortable seat; it is the thing itself which I grab. I love _them_ primarily, as the mother loves her babe, or a generous man an heroic deed. Wherever, as here, selfseeking is the outcome of simple instinctive propensity, it is but a name for certain reflex acts. Something rivets my attention fatally and fatally provokes the 'selfish' response.... It is true I am no automaton, but a thinker. But my thoughts, like my acts, are here concerned only with the outward things.... In fact the more utterly selfish I am in this primitive way, the more blindly absorbed my thought will be in the objects and impulses of my lust and the more devoid of any inward looking glance."
If the individual organism did not struggle for food; strive aggressively against obstacles and interferences; evade or shelter itself against menacing superior force, what would become of children, fathers and mothers, lawyers, doctors and clergymen, citizens and patriots--in short, of society? If we avoid setting up a purely abstract self, if we keep in mind that every actual self is a self which _includes_ social relations and offices, both actual and potential, we shall have no difficulty in seeing that self-preservative instincts _may_ be, and taken by and large, _must_ be, socially conservative. Moreover, while it is not true that if "a man does not look after his own interests no one else will" (if that means that his interests are no one else's affair in any way), it is true that no one has a right to neglect his own interests in the hope that some one else will care for them. "His own interests," properly speaking, are precisely the ends which concern him more directly than they concern any one else. Each man is, so to say, nearer himself than is any one else, and, therefore, has certain duties to and about himself which cannot be performed by any other one. Others may present food or the conditions of education, but the individual alone can digest the food or educate himself. It is profitable for society, not merely for an individual, that each of us should instinctively have his powers most actively and intensely called out by the things that distinctively affect him and his own welfare. Any other arrangement would mean waste of social energy, inefficiency in securing social results.
The quotation from James also makes it clear, however, that under certain circumstances the mere absorption in a thing, even without conscious thought of self, is morally offensive. The "pig" in manners is not necessarily thinking of himself; all that is required to make him a pig is that he should have too narrow and exclusive an object of regard. The man sees simply the seat, not the seat _and_ the lady. The boor in manners is unconscious of many of the objects in the situation which _should_ operate as stimuli. One impulse or habit is operating at the expense of others; the self in play is too petty or narrow. Viewed from the standpoint of results, the fact which constitutes selfishness in the moral sense is not that certain impulses and habits secure the well-being of the self, _but that the well-being secured is a narrow and exclusive one_. The forms of coarse egoism which offend us most in ordinary life are not usually due to a deliberate or self-conscious seeking of advantage for self, but to such preoccupation with certain ends as blinds the agent to the thought of the interests of others. Many whose behavior seems to others most selfish would deny indignantly (and, from the standpoint of their _definite_ consciousness, honestly) any self-seeking motives: they would point to certain objective results, which in the abstract are desirable, as the true ends of their activities. But none the less, they _are_ selfish, because the limitations of their interests make them overlook the consequences which affect the freedom and happiness of others.
Confining ourselves for the moment to the native psychological equipment, we may say that man is endowed with instinctive promptings which naturally (that is, without the intervention of deliberation or calculation) tend to preserve the self (by aggressive attack as in anger, or in protective retreat as in fear); and to develop his powers (as in acquisitiveness, constructiveness, and play); and which equally, without consideration of resulting ulterior benefit either to self or to others, tend to bind the self closer to others and to advance the interests of others--as pity, affectionateness, or again, constructiveness and play. Any given individual is _naturally_ an erratic mixture of fierce insistence upon his own welfare and of profound susceptibility to the happiness of others--different individuals varying much in the respective intensities and proportions of the two tendencies. =2. The Moral Status of Altruistic Tendencies.=--We have expressly devoted considerable space (ch. xiii.) to showing that there are no motives which in and of themselves are right; that any tendency, whether original instinct or acquired habit, requires sanction from the special consequences which, in the special situation, are likely to flow from it. The mere fact that pity in general tends to conserve the welfare of others does not guarantee the rightness of giving way to an impulse of pity, just as it happens to spring up. This might mean sentimentalism for the agent, and weakening of the springs of patience, courage, self-help, and self-respect in others. The persistence with which the doctrine of the evils of indiscriminate charity has to be taught is sufficient evidence that the so-called other-regarding impulses require the same control by reason as do the "egoistic" ones. They have no inherent sacredness which exempts them from the application of the standard of the common and reasonable happiness.
The best kind of help to others, whenever possible, is indirect, and consists in such modifications of the conditions of life, of the general level of subsistence, as enables them independently to help themselves.[181] Whenever conditions require purely direct and personal aid, it is best given when it proceeds from a natural social relationship, and not from a motive of "benevolence" as a separate force.[182] The gift that pauperizes when proceeding from a philanthropist in his special capacity, is a beneficent acknowledgment of the relationships of the case when it comes from a neighbor or from one who has other interests in common with the one assisted. =The Private and the Social Self.=--The contrast between the narrow or restrictive and the general or expansive good explains why evil presents itself as a selfish end in contrast with an authoritative, but faint, good of others. This is not, as we have seen, because regard for the good of self is inherently bad and regard for that of others intrinsically right; but because we are apt to identify the self with the habitual, with that to which we are best adjusted and which represents the customary occupation. Any moral crisis is thus fairly pictured as a struggle to overcome selfishness. The tendency under such circumstances is to contract, to secrete, to hang on to what is already achieved and possessed. The habitual self needs to go out of the narrowness of its accustomed grooves into the spacious air of more generous behavior.
Sec. 4. THE GOOD AS SELF-REALIZATION We now come to the theory which attempts to do justice to the one-sided truths we have been engaged with, _viz._, the idea that the moral end is _self-realization_. Like self-assertion in some respects, it differs in conceiving the self to be realized as universal and ultimate, involving the fulfillment of _all_ capacities and the observance of _all_ relations. Such a comprehensive self-realization includes also, it is urged, the truth of altruism, since the "universal self" is realized only when the relations that bind one to others are fulfilled. It avoids also the inconsistencies and defects of the notion of self-sacrifice for its own sake, while emphasizing that the present incomplete self must be denied for the sake of attainment of a more complete and final self. A discussion of this theory accordingly furnishes the means of gathering together and summarizing various points regarding the role of the self in the moral life. =Ambiguity in the Conception.=--Is self-realization the end? As we have had such frequent occasion to observe, "end" means either the consequences actually effected, the closing and completing phase of an act, or the aim held deliberately in view. Now realization of self is an end (though not the only end) in the former sense. Every moral act in its outcome marks a development or fulfillment of selfhood. But the very nature of right action forbids that the self should be the end in the sense of being the conscious aim of moral activity. For there is no way of discovering the nature of the self except in terms of objective ends which fulfill its capacities, and there is no _way_ of realizing the self except as it is forgotten in devotion to these objective ends.
To demand in advance of voluntary desire and deliberate choice that it be demonstrated that an individual shall get happiness in the measure of the rightness of his act, is to demand the obliteration of the essential factor in morality: the constant discovery, formation, and reformation of the self in the ends which an individual is called upon to sustain and develop in virtue of his membership in a social whole. The solution of the problem through the individual's voluntary identification of himself with social relations and aims is neither rare nor utopian. It is achieved not only by conspicuous social figures, but by multitudes of "obscure" figures who are faithful to the callings of their social relationships and offices. That the conditions of life for all should be enlarged, that wider opportunities and richer fields of activity should be opened, in order that happiness may be of a more noble and variegated sort, that those inequalities of status which lead men to find their advantage in disregard of others should be destroyed--these things are indeed necessary. But under the most ideal conditions which can be imagined, if there remain any moral element whatsoever, it will be only through personal deliberation and personal preference as to objective and social ends that the individual will discover and constitute himself, and hence discover the sort of happiness required as his good.
Our final word about the place of the self in the moral life is, then, that the problem of morality is the formation, out of the body of original instinctive impulses which compose the natural self, of a voluntary self in which socialized desires and affections are dominant, and in which the last and controlling principle of deliberation is the love of the objects which will make this transformation possible. If we identify, as we must do, the interests of such a character with the virtues, we may say with Spinoza that happiness is not the reward of virtue, but is virtue itself. What, then, are the virtues?
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.