Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics · John Dewey
LXXIII.
The Means of Moralization. This practical end of the unification of desire and duty, in the play of moral interests, is reached, therefore, so far as the desires are socialized. A want is socialized when it is not a want for its own isolated and fixed satisfaction, but reflects the needs of the environment. This implies, of course, that it is bound by countless ties to the whole body of desires and capacities. The eye, in seeing for itself, sees for the whole body, because it is not isolated but, through its connections, an organ of a system. In this same way, the satisfaction of a want for food, or for commercial activity, may necessitate a satisfaction of the whole social system. But how shall this socialization of wants be secured? It is in answering this question that we are brought again to a point already discussed at length: the moral bearings of intelligence. It is intelligence that is the sole sure means of taking a want out of the isolation of merely impulsive action. It is the passing of the desire through the alembic of ideas that, in rationalizing and spiritualizing it, makes it an expression of the want of the whole man, and thus of social needs.
To know one's self was declared by Socrates, who first brought to conscious birth the spirit of the moral life, to be the very core of moral endeavor. This knowledge of self has taken, indeed, a more circuitous and a more painful path, than Socrates anticipated. Man has had, during two thousand years of science, to go around through nature to find himself, and as yet he has not wholly come back to himself--he oftentimes seems still lost in the wilderness of an outer world. But when man does get back to himself it will be as a victor laden with the spoils of subdued nature. Having secured, in theory and invention, his unity with nature, his knowledge of himself will rest on a wide and certain basis. This is the final justification of the moral value of science and art. It is because through them wants are inter-connected, unified and socialized, that they are, when all is said and done, the preëminent moral means. And if we do not readily recognize them in this garb, it is because we have made of them such fixed things, that is, such abstractions, by placing them outside the movement of human life.
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