[367] I use this word “must” in a logical as well as in an ethical
sense, seeing that all judgment implies a belief in the reality of a
world of persons independent of the mere fact of “judgment” as a piece
of mental process.
[368] See p. 145.
[369] On p. 345 the words are: “_When we consider the naïve or
elementary life of morality and religion_”; and on p. 346: “_The
naïve, or simple self of every-day morality and religion_,” and the
marginal heading of the page upon which these words occur is “_The
naïve good self compared to grasp of a fundamental principle alone_.”
Could anything more clearly indicate what the Kantians call a confusion
of categories [in the case in point the categories of “goodness” and
the categories of “truth”] or what Aristotle calls a μετάβασις εἰς
ἄλλο γένος, the unconscious treatment of one order of facts by the
terms and conceptions of another order of facts. To Dr. Bosanquet
as the Neo-Hellenist that he is in his professed creed, badness is
practically stupidity, and “lack of unification of life,” and “failure
of theoretical grasp.” This confusion between goodness and wisdom is
again indicated on p. 347 in the words: “_A man is good in so far as
his being is ‘unified at’ all in any sphere of wisdom or activity_.”
[This is simply not true, and its falsity is a more unforgivable
thing in the case of Dr. Bosanquet than it is in the case of the
pragmatists who also tend to make the ‘moral’ a kind of ‘unification’
or ‘effectiveness’ in ‘purpose.’] As a proof of Dr. Bosanquet’s
transformation of the facts of the ethical life in the interest of
logical theory, we can point to p. 334: “_Our actions and ideas issue
from our world as a conclusion from its premises, or as a poem from its
author’s spirit_,” or to p. 53, where it is definitely stated that the
“_self, as it happens to be_,” cannot, in any of its “three aspects,”
“_serve as a test of reality_.” To do the latter, it must, in his
opinion, follow the law of the “universal,” _i.e._ _become a logical
conception_. Now of course (1) _it is not the self “as it happens to
be”_ that is chiefly dealt with in ethics, but rather the _self as
it ought to be_. And (2) the ethical self, or the “person,” does not
follow the “law of the universal” [a logical law] but the law of right
and wrong [an ethical law]. As a proof of the subordination of the
facts of conduct to the facts of aesthetics, we may take the words on
p. 348 where aesthetic excellence is said to be “_goodness in the wider
or_ (‘_shall we say_’) _in the narrower sense_.” Now the distinction
between ethics and aesthetics is not one of degree, but one of kind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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