Outlines of a Critical Theory of EthicsDewey, John
Philosophy
Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics
Dewey, John
Ethics
2. There is also, at present, a conflict of individual happiness with
social welfare. In the first place, as long as there exist antagonistic
societies, the individual is called upon to sacrifice his own happiness
to that of others, but "such moralities are, by their definition, shown
to belong to incomplete conduct; not to conduct that is fully evolved"
(See pp. 133-137). Furthermore, there will be conflict of claims, and
consequent compromises between one's own pleasure and that of others
(p. 148), until there is a society in which there is "complete living
through voluntary co-operation", this implying negatively that one
shall not interfere with another and shall fulfill contracts, and
positively that men shall spontaneously help to aid one another lives
beyond any specified agreement (pp. 146-149).
3. There is, at present, a conflict of obligation with pleasure.
Needed activities, in other words, have often to be performed under a
pressure, which either lessens the pleasure of the action, or brings
pain, the act being performed, however, to avoid a greater pain (so
that this point really comes under the first head). But "the remoulding
of human nature into fitness for the requirements of social life, must
eventually make all needful activities pleasurable, while it makes
displeasurable all activities at variance with these requirements" (p.
183). "The things now done with dislike, through sense of obligation,
will be done then with immediate liking" (p. 84, and p. 186; and pp.
255-256). All the quotations on these various points are simply so many
recognitions that pleasure and pain as such are not tests of morality,
but that they become so when morality is independently realized.
Pleasure is _not_ now a test of conduct, but becomes such a test as
fast as activity becomes full and complete! What is this but to admit
(what was claimed in Sec. XIII) that activity itself is what man wants;
not _mere_ activity, but the activity which belongs to man as man,
and which therefore has for its realized content all man's practical
relationships.
Of Spencer's conception of the ideal as something not now
realized, but to be some time or other realized once for
all, we have said nothing. But see below, Sec. 64, and also
Alexander, Op. cit., pp. 264-277, and also James, Unitarian
Review, Vol. XXII., pp. 212-213.
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