=(2) Individual and Institutional.=--This fundamental division is at
once cut across by another, arising from emphasizing the problem of the
individual and the social. This problem may become so urgent as to force
into the background the conflict between teleological and jural
theories, while in any case it complicates and subdivides them. We have
individualistic and institutional types of theory. Consider, for
example, the following representative quotations: "No school can avoid
taking for the ultimate moral aim a desirable _state of feeling_ called
by whatever name--gratification, enjoyment, happiness. Pleasure
somewhere, at some time, _to some being or beings_, is an element of the
conception";[110] and again,[110] "the good is universally the
pleasurable." And while the emphasis is here upon the good, the
desirable, the same type of statement, _as respects emphasis upon the
individual_, may be made from the side of duty. For example, "it is the
very essence of moral duty to be imposed by a man on himself."[111]
Contrast both of these statements with the following: "What a man ought
to do, or what duties he should fulfill in order to be virtuous, is in
an ethical community not hard to say. He has to do nothing except what
is presented, expressed, and recognized in his established
relations."[112] "The individual has his truth, real existence, and
ethical status only in being a member of the State. His particular
satisfactions, activities, and way of life have in this authenticated,
substantive principle, their origin and result."[113] And in another
connection: "The striving for a morality of one's own is futile and by
its very nature impossible of attainment. In respect to morality the
saying of one of the wisest men of antiquity is the true one. To be
moral is to live in accord with the moral tradition of one's
country."[114] Here both the good and the law of the individual are
placed on a strictly institutional basis.
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