Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics · John Dewey
LIX.
Conscience as the Recognition of Special Acts as Right or Wrong. Conscience in this sense is no peculiar, separate faculty of mind. It is simply intelligence dealing with a certain subject-matter. That is, conscience is distinguished not by the kind of mental activity at work, but by the kind of material the mind works upon. Intelligence deals with the nature and relations of things, and we call it understanding; intelligence deals with the relations of persons and deeds, and it is termed conscience. We may, with advantage, recognize these stages in the development of intelligence as dealing with moral relationships: 1. _The Customary or Conventional Conscience._ The existing moral world, with the types and varieties of institutions peculiar to it, is constantly impressing itself upon the immature mind; it makes certain demands of moral agents and enforces them with all the means in its power--punishment, reward, blame, public-opinion, and the bestowal of social leadership. These demands and expectations naturally give rise to certain convictions in the individual as to what he should or should not do. Such convictions are not the outcome of independent reflection, but of the moulding influence of social institutions. Moreover the morality of a time becomes consolidated into proverbs, maxims and law-codes. It takes shape in certain habitual ways of looking at and judging matters. All these are instilled into the growing mind through language, literature, association and legal custom, until they leave in the mind a corresponding habit and attitude toward things to be done. This process may be compared to the process by which knowledge of the world of things is first attained. Certain of the more permanent features of this world, especially those whose observance is important in relation to continued physical existence and well-being, impress themselves upon the mind. Consciousness, with no reflective activity of its own, comes to mirror some of the main outlines of the world. The more important distinctions are fixed in language, and they find their way into the individual mind, giving it unconsciously a certain bent and coloring.
2. _The Loyal Conscience._ But just as the mind, which seems at first to have the facts and features of the world poured into itself as a passive vessel, comes in time through its own experience to appreciate something of their meaning, and, to some extent, to verify them for itself; so the mind in its moral relations. Without forming any critical theory of the institutions and codes which are forming character, without even considering whether they are what they should be, the individual yet comes at least to a practical recognition that it is in these institutions that he gets his satisfactions, and through these codes that he is protected. He identifies himself, his own life, with the social forms and ideals in which he lives, and repels any attack upon them as he would an attack upon himself. The demands which the existing institutions make upon him are not felt as the coercions of a despot, but as expressions of his own will, and requiring loyalty as such. The conventional conscience, if it does not grow into this, tends to become slavish, while an intelligence which practically realizes, although without continual reflection, the _significance_ of conventional morality is _free_ in its convictions and service. 3. _The Independent or Reflective Conscience._ The intelligence may not simply appropriate, as its own, conventions embodied in current institutions and codes, but may _reflect_ upon them. It may ask: What is this institution of family, property for? Does the institution in its present form work as it should work, or is some modification required? Does this rule which is now current embody the true needs of the situation, or is it an antiquated expression of by-gone relations? What is the true spirit of existing institutions, and what sort of conduct does this spirit demand?
Here, in a word, we have the same relation to the ethical world, that we have in physical science to the external world. Intelligence is not content, on its theoretical side, with having facts impressed upon it by direct contact or through language; it is not content with coming to feel for itself the value of the truths so impressed. It assumes an independent attitude, putting itself over against nature and cross-questioning her. It proposes its own ideas, its own theories and hypotheses, and manipulates facts to see if this rational meaning can be verified. It criticises what passes as truth, and pushes on to more adequate statement. The correlative attempt, on the part of intelligence on its practical side, may have a larger or a smaller scope. In its wider course it aims to criticise and to re-form prevailing social ideals and institutions--even those apparently most fixed. This is the work of the great moral teachers of the world. But in order that conscience be critical, it is not necessary that its range be so wide. The average member of a civilized community is nowadays called upon to reflect upon his immediate relationships in life, to see if they are what they should be; to regulate his own conduct by rules which he follows not simply because they are customary, but the result of his own examination of the situation. There is no difference in kind between the grander and the minuter work. And it is only the constant exercise of reflective examination on the smaller scale which makes possible, and which gives efficiency to, the deeper criticism and transformation.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.