Ethics · John Dewey
THE MORAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE GREEKS
"All is harmonious to me that is harmonious to thee, O universe; all is fruit to me which thy seasons bring."[80] Sec. 6. THE CONCEPTION OF THE IDEAL =Contrast of Actual and Ideal.=--The two stages of Greek thought which we have sketched did more than to readjust Greek life to deeper views of the State and the individual; of the good and of nature. The very challenge and process brought into explicit consciousness a new feature of the moral life, which is fundamental to true moral consciousness, viz., the factor of contrast between the actual and the ideal. We have seen that the clash of one-sided interests and political institutions and, in the case of Plato, the tragic execution of Socrates, obliged Plato and Aristotle to admit that the actual State did not subserve the real purpose which they were forced to seek in social organization. Both Plato and Aristotle, therefore, draw the picture of a State that should serve the complete purposes of human development. And again, in the individual life, both the conception of the development of man's highest possibilities and the conception of a measure or standard for the conflicting desires and purposes lead on to a conception which shall embody not merely the existing status but the goal of yet unrealized purpose.
"All things are noisome when a man deserts His own true self and does what is not meet." and Philoctetes replies, "Have mercy on me, boy, by all the gods, And do not shame thyself by tricking me." The whole _Antigone_ of Sophocles is the struggle between obedience to the political rulers and obedience to the higher laws which as "laws of reverence" become virtually inner laws of duty: "I know I please the souls I ought to please." =Plato.=--Here, as in the formulation of his conception of the ideal, religious imagery helped Plato to find a more objective statement for the conception of a moral judgment and a moral character. In the final judgment of the soul after death, Plato sees the real self stripped bare of all external adornments of beauty, rank, power, or wealth, and standing as naked soul before the naked judge, to receive his just reward. And the very nature of this reward or penalty shows the deepening conception of the self, and of the intrinsic nature of moral character. The true penalty of injustice is not to be found in anything external, but in the very fact that the evil doers become base and wicked: "They do not know the penalty of injustice, which above all things they ought to know,--not stripes and death, as they suppose, which evil doers often escape, but a penalty which cannot be escaped.
THEOD. What is that? SOC. There are two patterns set before them in nature; the one blessed and divine, the other godless and wretched; and they do not see, in their utter folly and infatuation, that they are growing like the one and unlike the other, by reason of their evil deeds; and the penalty is that they lead a life answering to the pattern which they resemble."[82] =The Stoics.=--It is, however, in the Stoics that we find the conception of inner reflection reaching clearest expression. Seneca and Epictetus repeat again and again the thought that the conscience is of higher importance than any external judgment,--that its judgment is inevitable. In these various conceptions, we see attained the third stage of Adam Smith's description of the formation of conscience.[83] Man who read his duty at first in the judgments of his fellows, in the customs and laws and codes of honor, and in the religious precepts of the gods, has again come to find in gods and laws, in custom and authority, the true rational law of life; but it is now a law of self. Not a particular or individual self, but a self which embraces within it at once the human and the divine. The individual has become social and has recognized himself as such. The religious, social, and political judgments have become the judgments of man upon himself. "Duty," what is binding or necessary, takes its place as a definite moral conception.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.