Studies in the Evolutionary Psychology of FeelingStanley, Hiram Miner
Philosophy
Studies in the Evolutionary Psychology of Feeling
Stanley, Hiram Miner
Emotions
Again, take a suggestion of end for conduct from some special science.
For instance, Biology marks as the general result of the struggle for
existence and of natural selection, the perfection—practical and
relative—of the kind. Thus the result, that is, end unconsciously
achieved, of the life of deer is power of locomotion and keenness of
scent, while with man the tendency of evolution is toward brain power.
Man obviously is able to consciously make an evolution tendency an end,
to conduct himself with reference to it, and thus man’s life may be a
conscious and strenuous carrying out of tendency. A constraint arises
from this end as from others, but it is not moral constraint, till the
end has been adjudged right; thus this end does not explain rightness.
The aspiration toward self-culture and self-fulfilment is not
psychically moral, nor yet the determination to achieve this perfection.
Perfection, be it remarked, is not an end, but the measure of attainment
of any end; a perfect man is one who is complete in certain respects.
Morality is not the carrying out any end, perfectly or imperfectly, be
it pleasing, satisfactory, true, good, etc., but it pursues and is
pursued by the right end, which is rightness as universal,
authoritative, compulsive, self-approved, impersonal law. The emotion of
oughtness in its purely ethical form is responsive to this alone. Purely
moral emotion as psychic fact, is not any feeling for any _summum bonum_
or any perfection of attainment of any kind, but is an emotion for the
right for its own sake. It is neglectful of all consequences, and cries,
“Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.” We all know the distinct
difference in quality of feeling when acting merely to do my duty and
when acting to achieve an end for the achievement’s sake or for the good
implied. Ethical emotion may arise about any extrinsic end, but does not
arise out of it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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