Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation: Reprinted from Green's Philosophical Works, vol. II., with Preface by Bernard BosanquetGreen, Thomas Hill
Philosophy
Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation: Reprinted from Green's Philosophical Works, vol. II., with Preface by Bernard Bosanquet
Green, Thomas Hill
Liberty; Natural law; Political obligation
actions required of him by 'the divine law, the civil law, and the
law of opinion or reputation' (to use Locke's classification) tend to
realise his own idea of what should be or is good on the whole, they
do not form an object which, as contemplated, he can harmonise with
the other objects which he seeks to understand, nor, as a practical
object, do they form one in the attainment of which he can satisfy
himself. Hence before the completion of the process through which
the individual comes to conceive the performance of the actions
expected of him under the general form of a duty which in the freedom
of his own reason he recognises as binding, there is apt to occur a
revolt against conventional morality. The issue of this may either
be an apparent suspension of the moral growth of the individual,
or a clearer apprehension of the spirit underlying the letter of
the obligations laid on him by society, which makes his rational
recognition of duty, when arrived at, a much more valuable influence
in promoting the moral growth of society.
25. Process (2), which may be called a reconciliation of reason with
itself, because it is the appropriation by reason as a personal
principle in the individual of the work which reason, acting through
the media of other persons, has already achieved in the establishment
of conventional morality, is the condition of the third stage in
which the moral progress of the individual consists; viz. the growth
of a personal interest in the realisation of an idea of what should
be, in doing what is believed to contribute to the absolutely
desirable, or to human perfection, because it is believed to do so.
Just so far as this interest is formed, the reconciliation of the two
modes in which the practical reason operates in the individual is
effected. The demand for self-satisfaction (practical reason as the
will of the individual) is directed to the realisation of an ideal
object, the conceived 'should be,' which practical reason as our
reason constitutes. The 'autonomy of the will' is thus attained in
a higher sense than it is in the 'adjustment' described under (1),
because the objects to which it is directed are not merely determined
by customs and institutions which are due to the operation of
practical reason in previous ages, but are embodiments or expressions
of the conception of what absolutely should be as formed by the man
who seeks to satisfy himself in their realisation. Indeed, unless in
the stage of conformity to conventional morality the principle of
obedience is some feeling (though not a clear conception) of what
should be, of the desirable as distinct from the desired,--if it is
merely fear of pain or hope of pleasure,--there is no approach to
autonomy of the will or moral freedom in the conformity. We must not
allow the doctrine that such freedom consists in a determination
of the will by reason, and the recognition of the truth that the
requirements of conventional morality are a product of reason as
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