Bradley appears to have been the first among English philosophers to
introduce that synthesis of the internal and external, of the
intuitional and utilitarian modes of judging conduct, which became
characteristic of Neo-Hegelian ethics. The synthesis, of course, is
Hegelian in temper, and the _Ethical Studies_ are much more suggestive,
in general method, of the _Philosophie des Rechts_ than of any previous
English work. Utilitarianism tended to judge the moral act by its
external, _de facto_ results; intuitionism, on the contrary, attributed
morality to the will of the agent. The former found morality to consist
in a certain state of affairs, the latter in a certain internal
attitude. According to the synthetic point of view, these opposed
ethical systems are one-sided representations of the moral situation,
each being true in its own way. To state the matter in another form, the
moral act has a content as well as a purpose. "Let us explain," says
Bradley. "The moral world, as we said, is a whole, and has two sides.
There is an outer side, systems and institutions, from the family to the
nation; this we may call the body of the moral world. And there must
also be a soul, or else the body goes to pieces; every one knows that
institutions without the spirit of them are dead.... We must never let
this out of our sight, that, where the moral world exists, you have and
you must have these two sides."[130] Dewey expresses the same idea in a
more detailed fashion. "What do we mean by individuality? We may
distinguish two factors--or better two aspects, two sides--in
individuality. On one side it means special disposition, temperament,
gifts, bent, or inclination; on the other side it means special station,
situation, limitations, surroundings, opportunities, etc. Or, let us
say, it means _specific capacity_ and _specific environment_. Each of
these elements apart from the other, is a bare abstraction, and without
reality. Nor is it strictly correct to say that individuality is
contributed by these two factors _together_. It is, rather, as intimated
above, that each is individuality looked at from a certain point of
view, from within and from without."[131] It is a fact, empirically
demonstrable, according to Dewey, that body and object, intention and
foreseen consequence, interest and environment, attitude and
objectivity, are parts of one another and of the whole moral situation.
Each is relative to the other. "It is not, then, the environment as
physical of which we are speaking, but as it appears to consciousness,
as it is affected by the make-up of the agent. This is the _practical_
or _moral_ environment."[132] When this relation of the inner to the
outer is taken literally and universally, we have the essence of the
functional psychology. Organism-in-relation-to-environment becomes the
catch-word of instrumental pragmatism.
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