There is indeed no conflict between this "inside view" of the
judgment-process and of the final survey and the psychological
propositions just mentioned. The identity of conduct and character means
not simply that as the man is so does he act, but quite as much, and in
a more important way, that as he acts so is he and so does he become. It
is, then, the essence of the agent's own view of the situation that his
character is in the making and that the purpose is the method to be
taken. To the agent the self is not, indeed, independent of the purpose,
for plainly it is recognized that upon just this purpose the self is, in
the sense explained, in a vital way dependent. Nevertheless the self is
in the agent's apprehension essentially beyond the purpose, and larger
than the purpose, and even, we may say, metaphysically apart from it.
Now the conclusion which we wish to draw from this examination of the
agent's attitude in judgment is that no formulation of an ideal self can
ever be adequate to his purposes, not simply because any such
formulation must, as Green allows, inevitably be incomplete and
inconsistent, but because the self as a process is in the agent's own
apprehension of it inherently incapable of formulation. Any formulation
that might be attempted must be in terms of particular purposes (since
in a modern ethical theory the self must be a "concrete" and not an
abstract universal), and it is easy to see that any such would be, to
the agent in the attitude of true ethical judgment, worse than useless.
It could as contentual and concrete only be a composite of existing
standards, more or less coherently put together, offered to the agent as
a substitute for the new standard which he is trying to work out. If
there were not need of a new standard there would be no
judgment-process; the agent must be, to say the least, embarrassed, even
if the unwitting imposture does not deceive him, when such a composite,
useful and indeed indispensable in its proper place as a standard of
reference and a source of suggestion, is urged upon him as suitable for
a purpose which in the very nature of the case it is logically incapable
of serving.[148]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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