Ethics · John Dewey
INTRODUCTORY
Wisdom, or (in modern phrase) conscientiousness, is the nurse of all the virtues. Our most devoted courage is in the will to know the good and the fair by unflinching attention to the painful and disagreeable. Our severest discipline in self-control is that which checks the exorbitant pretensions of an appetite by insisting upon knowing it in its true proportions. The most exacting justice is that of an intelligence which gives due weight to each desire and demand in deliberation before it is allowed to pass into overt action. That affection and wisdom lie close to each other is evidenced by our language; thoughtfulness, regard, consideration for others, recognition of others, attention to others. Sec. 1. TEMPERANCE The English word "temperance" (particularly in its local association with agitation regarding use of intoxicating liquors) is a poor substitute for the Greek _sophrosyne_ which, through the Latin _temperantia_, it represents. The Athenian Greek was impressed with the fact that just as there are lawless, despotically ruled, and self-governed communities, so there are lawless, and servile, and self-ruled individuals. Whenever there is a self-governed soul, there is a happy blending of the authority of reason with the force of appetite. The individual's diverse nature is tempered into a living harmony of desire and intelligence. Reason governs not as a tyrant from without, but as a guide to which the impulses and emotions are gladly responsive. Such a well-attuned nature, as far from asceticism on one side as from random indulgence on the other, represented the ideal of what was fair and graceful in character, an ideal embodied in the notion of _sophrosyne_. This was a _whole-mindedness_ which resulted from the happy furtherance of all the elements of human nature under the self-accepted direction of intelligence. It implied an _aesthetic_ view of character; of harmony in structure and rhythm in action. It was the virtue of judgment exercised in the estimate of pleasures:--since it is the agreeable, the pleasant, which gives an end excessive hold upon us.
As a general thing, it will be those who have some interest at stake in evils remaining unperceived, and hence unremedied, who most clamor in the cause of such "optimism." Hope and aspiration, belief in the supremacy of good in spite of all evil, belief in the realizability of good in spite of all obstacles, are necessary inspirations in the life of virtue. The good can never be demonstrated to the senses, nor be proved by calculations of personal profit. It involves a radical venture of the will in the interest of what is unseen and prudentially incalculable. But such optimism of _will_, such determination of the man that, so far as his choice is concerned, only the good shall be recognized as real, is very different from a sentimental refusal to look at the realities of the situation just as they are. In fact a certain intellectual pessimism, in the sense of a steadfast willingness to uncover sore points, to acknowledge and search for abuses, to note how presumed good often serves as a cloak for actual bad, is a necessary part of the moral optimism which actively devotes itself to making the right prevail. Any other view reduces the aspiration and hope, which are the essence of moral courage, to a cheerful animal buoyancy; and, in its failure to see the evil done to others in its thoughtless pursuit of what it calls good, is nextdoor to brutality, to a brutality bathed in the atmosphere of sentimentality and flourishing the catchwords of idealism.
Sec. 3. JUSTICE =In Ethical Literature Justice Has Borne at Least Three Different Senses.=[194]--In its widest sense, it means righteousness, uprightness, rectitude. It sums up morality. It is not _a_ virtue, but it is virtue. The just act is the _due_ act; justice is fulfillment of obligation. (2) This passes over into fairness, equity, impartiality, honesty in all one's dealing with others. (3) The narrowest meaning is that of _vindication_ of right through the administration of law.[194] Since Aristotle's time (and following his treatment) this has been divided into (i.) the _distributive_, having to do with the assignment of honor, wealth, etc., in proportion to desert, and (ii.) the _corrective_, vindicating the law against the transgressor by effecting a requital, redress, which restores the supremacy of law. =A Thread of Common Significance Runs through These Various Meanings.=--The rational good means a comprehensive or complete end, in which are harmoniously included a variety of special aims and values. The just man is the man who takes in the whole of a situation and reacts to it in its wholeness, not being misled by undue respect to some particular factor. Since the general or inclusive good is a common or social good, reconciling and combining the ends of a multitude of private or particular persons, justice is the preeminently social virtue: that which maintains the due order of individuals in the interest of the comprehensive or social unity.
Justice, as equity, fairness, impartiality, honesty, carries the recognition of the whole over into the question of right distribution and apportionment among its parts. The equitable judge or administrator is the one who makes no unjustifiable distinctions among those dealt with. A fair price is one which recognizes the rights of both buyer and seller. An honest man is the one who, with respect to whatever he has to distribute to others and to receive from them, is desirous of giving and taking just what belongs to each party concerned. The fair-minded man is not bribed by pleasure into giving undue importance to some element of good nor coerced by fear of pain into ignoring some other. He _distributes_ his attention, regard, and attachment according to the reasonable or objective claims of each factor.
As we have repeatedly noted, the heart of a voluntary act is its intelligent or deliberate character. The individual's _intelligent_ concern for the good is implied in his sincerity, his faithfulness, and his integrity. Of all the habits which constitute the character of an individual, the habit of _judging_ moral situations is the most important, for this is the key to the _direction_ and to the _remaking_ of all other habits. When an act is overt, it is irretrievably launched. The agent has no more control. The moral life has its center in the periods of suspended and postponed action, when the energy of the individual is spent in recollection and foresight, in severe inquiry and serious consideration of alternative aims. Only through reflection can habits, however good in their origin and past exercise, be readapted to the needs of the present; only through reflection can impulses, not yet having found direction, be guided into the haven of a reasonable happiness.
Moral knowing, as a fundamental or cardinal aspect of virtue, is then the completeness of the interest in good exhibited in effort to discover the good. Since knowing involves two factors, a direct and an indirect, conscientiousness involves both _sensitiveness_ and _reflectiveness_.[195] =(1) Moral Sensitiveness.=--The individual who is not directly aware of the presence of values needing to be perpetuated or achieved, in the things and persons about him, is hard and callous or tough. A "tender" conscience is one which is immediately responsive to the presentation of good and evil. The modern counterpart to the Socratic doctrine that ignorance is the root of vice, is that being morally "cold" or "dead," being indifferent to moral distinctions, is the most hopeless of all conditions. One who cares, even if he cares in the wrong way, has at least a spring that may be touched; the one who is just irresponsive offers no leverage for correction or improvement.
_Our "ideals," our types of excellence, are the various ways in which we figure to ourselves the outreaching and ever-expanding values of our concrete acts._ Every achievement of good deepens and quickens our sense of the inexhaustible value contained in every right act. With achievement, our conception of the possible goods of life increases, and we find ourselves called to live upon a still deeper and more thoughtful plane. An ideal is not some remote all-exhaustive goal, a fixed _summum bonum_ with respect to which other things are only means. It is not something to be placed in contrast to the direct, local, and tangible quality of our actual situations, so that by contrast these latter are lightly esteemed as insignificant. On the contrary, an ideal is the conviction that each of these special situations carries with it a final value, a meaning which in itself is unique and inexhaustible. To set up "ideals" of perfection which are other than the serious recognition of the possibilities of development resident in each concrete situation, is in the end to pay ourselves with sentimentalities, if not with words, and meanwhile it is to direct thought and energy away from the situations which need and which welcome the perfecting care of attention and affection.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.