Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics · John Dewey
LXIV.
Moral Commands, Rules and Systems. What is the part played by specific commands and by general rules in the examination of conduct by conscience? We should note, in the first place, that commands are not rules, and rules are not commands. A command, to be a command, must be specific and individual. It must refer to time, place and circumstance. 'Thou shalt do no murder' is not strictly speaking a command, for it allows questioning as to what is murder. Is killing in war murder? Is the hanging of criminals murder? Is taking life in self-defense murder? Regarded simply as a command, this command would be 'void for uncertainty'. A true command is a specific injunction of one person to another to do or not to do a stated thing or things. Under what conditions do commands play a part in moral conduct? In cases where the intelligence of the agent is so undeveloped that he cannot realize for himself the situation and see the act required, and when a part of the agent's environment is constituted by others who have such required knowledge, there _is_ a moral element in command and in obedience. This explains the moral responsibility of parents to children and of children to parents. The soldier, too, in recognizing a general's command, is recognizing the situation as it exists for him. Were there simply superior force on one side, and fear on the other, the relation would be an immoral one. It is implied, of course, in such an instance as the parents' command, that it be so directed as to enable the child more and more to dispense with it--that is, that it be of such a character as to give the child insight into the situation for himself. Here is the transition from a command to a rule.
A rule does not tell what to do or what to leave undone. The Golden Rule, for example, does not tell me how to act in any specific case. _A rule is a tool of analysis._ The moral situation, or capacity in its relation to environment, is often an extremely complicated affair. How shall the individual resolve it? How shall he pick it to pieces, so as to see its real nature and the act demanded by it? It is evident that the analysis will be the more truly and speedily performed if the agent has a method by which to attack it, certain principles in the light of which he may view it, instruments for cross-questioning it and making it render up its meaning. Moral rules perform this service. While the Golden Rule does not of itself give one jot of information as to what I should do in a given case, it does, if accepted, immensely simplify the situation. Without it I should perhaps have to act blindly; with it the question comes to this: What should I, under the given circumstances, like to have done to me? This settled, the whole question of what should be done is settled.
It is obvious, then, that the value of a moral rule depends upon its potency in revealing the inner spirit and reality of individual deeds. Rules in the negative form, rules whose application is limited in scope because of an attempt to be specific, are midway between commands proper and rules. The Golden Rule, on the other hand, is positive, and not attempting to define any specific act, covers in its range all relations of man to man. It is indeed only a concrete and forcible statement of the ethical principle itself, the idea of a common good, or of a community of persons. This is also a convenient place for considering the practical value of ethical systems. We have already seen that no system can attempt to tell what in particular should be done. The principle of a system, however, may be of some aid in analyzing a specific case. In this way, a system may be regarded as a highly generalized rule. It attempts to state some fundamental principle which lies at the basis of moral conduct. So far as it succeeds in doing this, there is the possibility of its practical application in particular cases, although, of course, the mediate rules must continue to be the working tools of mankind--on account of their decided concrete character, and because they have themselves taken shape under the pressure of practice rather than of more theoretical needs.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.