Ethics · John Dewey
THE MORAL SITUATION
He may do the deed, not because he likes it or wishes it in itself, but because he wishes to save his own life. The attendant circumstances may affect our judgment of the kind and degree of morality attaching to the act; but they do not take it entirely out of the moral sphere.[104] Aristotle says the act must also be the expression of a disposition (a habit or [Greek: hexis]), a more or less settled tendency on the part of the person. It must bear some relation to his character. Character is not, we may say, a third factor, It is making clear what is implied in deliberation and wish. There may be little deliberation in a child's act and little in an adult's, and yet we may regard the latter as much more voluntary than the child's. With the child, the thought is superficial and casual, because of the restricted stage of organization or growth reached (see p. 10): his act flows from organic instinct or from accidental circumstances--whim, caprice, and chance suggestion, or fancy. The adult's act may flow from habitual tendencies and be accompanied by an equally small amount of conscious reflection. But the tendencies themselves are the outcome of prior deliberations and choices which have finally got funded into more or less automatic habits. The child's act is to a slight extent the expression of character; the adult's to a large extent. In short, we mean by character whatever lies behind an act in the way of deliberation and desire, whether these processes be near-by or remote.
_(1) Not Everything Judged Good or Right is Moral._--We speak, for example, of an ill-wind; of a good engine; of a watch being wrong; or of a screw being set right. We speak of good and bad bread, money, or soil. That is, from the standpoint of value, we judge things as _means_ to certain results in themselves desirable or undesirable. A "good" machine does efficiently the work for which it is designed; "bad" money does not subserve the ends which money is meant to promote; the watch that is wrong comes short of telling us time correctly. We have to use the notion of value and of contribution to value; that is a positive factor. But this contribution to valuable result is not, in inanimate objects, something meant or intended by the things themselves. If we thought the ill-wind had an idea of its own destructive effect and took pleasure in that idea, we should attribute moral quality to it--just as men did in early times, and so tried to influence its behavior in order to make it "good." Among things that promote favorable or unfavorable results a line is drawn between those which just do so as matter of fact, and those in which meaning so to do, or intention, plays a part.
"As already said, a large part of the ordinary conduct is indifferent. Shall I walk to the water fall today? or, shall I ramble along the sea shore? Here the ends are ethically indifferent. If I go to the water fall, shall I go over the moor or take the path through the wood? Here the means are ethically indifferent.... But if a friend who is with me has explored the sea shore, but has not seen the water fall, the choice of one or other end is no longer ethically indifferent. Again, if a probable result of making the one excursion rather than the other, is that I shall not be back in time to keep an appointment, or if taking the longer route entails this risk while the shorter does not, the decision in favor of one end or means acquires in another way an ethical character" (Spencer, _Principles of Ethics_, pp. 5-6).
This illustration suggests two differing types of conduct; two differing ways in which activity is induced and guided by ideas of valuable results. In one case the end presents itself directly as desirable, and the question is only as to the steps or means of achieving this end. Here we have conduct which, although excited and directed by considerations of value, is still morally indifferent. Such is the condition of things _wherever one end is taken for granted by itself without any consideration of its relationship to other ends_. It is then a technical rather than a moral affair. It is a question of taste and of skill--of personal preference and of practical wisdom, or of economy, expediency. There are many different roads to most results, and the selection of this path rather than that, on the assumption that either path actually leads to the end, is an intellectual, aesthetic, or executive, rather than an ethical matter. I may happen to prefer a marine view to that of the uplands--that is an aesthetic interest. I may wish to utilize the time of the walk for thinking, and may find the moor path less distracting; here is a matter of intellectual economy. Or I may conclude that I shall best get the exercise I want by going to the water fall. Here it is a question of "prudence," of expediency, or practical wisdom. Let any one of the ends, aesthetic, intellectual, hygienic, stand alone and it is a fit and proper consideration. The moral issue does not arise. Or the various ends may be regarded as means to a further unquestioned end--say a walk with the maximum of combined aesthetic interest and physical exercise.
This change in apparent worth raises a new question: Is the aim first set up of the value it seemed to be? Is it, after all, so important, so desirable? Are not other results, playing with other boys, convivial companionship, which are reached more easily and pleasantly, really more valuable? The labors and pains connected with the means employed to reach an end, have thrown another and incompatible end into consciousness. The individual no longer "naturally," but "morally," follows the selected end, whichever of the two it be, because it has been chosen after conscious valuation of competing aims. Such competitions of values for the position of control of action are inevitable accompaniments of individual conduct, whether in civilized or in tribal life. A child, for example, finds that the fulfillment of an appetite of hunger is not only possible, but that it is desirable--that fulfillment brings, or is, satisfaction, not mere satiety. Later on, moved by the idea of this sort of value, he snatches at food. Then he is made aware of other sorts of values involved in the act performed--values incompatible with just the value at which he aimed. He brings down upon himself social disapproval and reproach. He is termed rude, unmannerly, greedy, selfish. He acted in accordance with an unhesitatingly accepted idea of value. But while reaching one result he accomplished also certain other results which he did not intend, results in the way of being thought ill of, results which are disagreeable: _negative values_. He is taught to raise the question of what, after all, in such cases is the _really_ desirable or valuable. Before he is free to deliberate upon means, he has to form an estimate of the relative worth of various possible ends, and to be willing to forego one and select the other. The chapters on Hebrew and Greek moral development have shown this same process at work in the life of a people.
There are comparatively few distinct analyses of the moral situation, the topic generally being treated as a running part of the theory of the author, or in connection with an account of character or conduct (see references at end of ch. xiii.). See, however, Mezes, _Ethics, Descriptive and Explanatory_, ch. ii.; Martineau, _Types of Ethical Theory_, Vol. II., pp. 17-54; Spencer, _Principles of Ethics_, Vol. I.; _Studies in Logical Theory_, Stuart, essay on Valuation as a Logical Process, pp. 237-241, 257-258, 273-275, 289-293; Dewey, _Logical Conditions of a Scientific Treatment of Morality_; Mead, _Philosophical Basis of Ethics_, International Journal of Ethics, April, 1908; Fite, _Introductory Study of Ethics_, chs. ii., xviii., and xix.
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