A Handbook of Ethical TheoryFullerton, George Stuart
Philosophy
A Handbook of Ethical Theory
Fullerton, George Stuart
Ethics
But the book is not lost, and by turning to it we find Green continuing
the first of the above citations with the words: "Though he may conceive
it as his own good only on account of his interest in others, and in
spite of any amount of suffering on his own part incidental to its
attainment." He is willing to grant the self-seeking ego an eye single to
its own interests, but he is careful to explain that: "These are not
merely interests dependent on other persons for the means to their
gratification, but interests in the good of those other persons,
interests which cannot be satisfied without the consciousness that those
other persons are satisfied." [Footnote: Sec 199.]
When Hobbes gave an account of "the passions that incline men to peace,"
[Footnote: _Leviathan,_ I, xiii.] he made no mention of the social
nature of man. That nature Green conceives to be so essentially social
that the individual cannot disentangle his own good from the good of his
fellows. To live "for himself," since that self is a social self, means
to live for others. May this fairly be called egoistic doctrine?
98. WHAT IS MEANT BY THE SELF?--It is sufficiently clear that the
happiness, or good, or advantage, or interests of the individual or self
may mean many things. It is equally clear that in our interpretation of
all such terms our notions of the nature of the self will play no
inconsiderable role. What is the self?
In his famous chapter on the Consciousness of Self, [Footnote:
_Psychology,_ New York, 1890, I, chapter x.] William James
enumerates four senses of the word. With three of these we may profitably
occupy ourselves here. He calls them the Material Self, the Social Self
and the Spiritual Self.
The innermost part of the material self he makes our body, and next to
it, in their order, he places our clothes, our family, our home, and our
property. They contribute to our being what we are in our own eyes, we
identify ourselves with them, and we experience "a sense of the shrinkage
of our personality" when even the more outlying elements, such as our
possessions, are lost. "Our immediate family," he writes, "is a part of
ourselves. Our father and mother, our wife and babes, are bone of our
bone and flesh of our flesh. When they die, a part of our very selves is
gone. If they do anything wrong, it is our shame. If they are insulted,
our anger flashes forth as readily as if we stood in their place."
It is obvious that the limits of the material self, as above understood,
may be indefinitely extended. There are men who feel about their country
as the average normal man feels about his home; and doubtless the
suffering of a stray beggar tugged at the heart of St. Francis as the
misfortune of wife or child does in the case of other men. How far abroad
our "interests" are to be found, and just what "interests" we shall
regard as intimately and peculiarly our own, depends upon what we are.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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