Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics · John Dewey
XLIV.
Spencer's Theory of Obligation. Spencer's theory is, in substance, an enlarged and better analyzed restatement of Bain's theory. Bain nowhere clearly states in what the essence of obligation consists, when it becomes independent, when the internal _fac simile_ is formed. _Why_ should I not gratify my desires as I please in case social pressure is absent or lets up? Spencer supplies the missing element. According to him, "the essential trait in the moral consciousness is the control of some feeling or feelings by some other feeling or feelings" (Data of Ethics, p. 113). The kind of feeling which controls is that which is more complex and which relates to more remote ends; or, we are 'obliged' to give up more immediate, special and direct pleasures for the sake of securing more general, remote and indirect ones. Obligation, in its essence, is the surrender or subordination of present to future satisfaction. This control, restraint, or suppression may be 'independent' or, self-imposed, but is not so at first, either in the man or in the child. Prior to self-restraint are the restraints imposed by the "visible ruler, the invisible ruler and society at large"--the policeman, the priest and public opinion. The man is induced to postpone immediate gratification through his fear of others, especially of the chief, of the dead and of social displeasure--"legal penalty, supernatural punishment and social reprobation". Thus there grows up the sense of obligation. This refers at first only to the above-mentioned extrinsic effects of action. But finally the mind learns to consider the intrinsic effect of the action itself--the evil inflicted by the evil deed, and then the sense of duty, or coercion, evolved through the aforesaid external agencies, becomes transferred to this new mode of controlling action. Desires are now controlled through considerations of what their _own_ effects would be, were the desires acted upon.
It follows "that the sense of duty or moral obligation is transitory, and will diminish as fast as moralization increases" (page 127). Even when compulsion is self-imposed, there is still compulsion, coercion, and this must be done away with. It _is_ done away with as far as an act which is at first done only for the sake of its own remoter consequences comes to be done for its own sake. And this will ultimately occur, if the act is continued, since "persistence in performing a duty ends in making it a pleasure". See Guyau, La Morale Anglaise Contemporaine, besides the works of Bain and Spencer. In addition to objections which will forthwith be made, we may here note a false abstraction of Spencer's. He makes the act and its consequences _two_ things, while the act and its consequences (provided they are known as such) are the same thing, no matter whether consequences are near or remote. The only distinction is that consequences once not known as such at all are seen in time to be really consequences, and thus to be part of the content of the act. The transfer from the "external consequences" imposed by the ruler, priest and public-opinion to the intrinsic consequences of the act itself, is thus a transfer from an immoral to a moral basis. This is very different from a change of the form of obligation itself.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.