An Introduction to Philosophy

by George Stuart Fullerton

CHAPTER XVIII

ETHICS AND AESTHETICS

71. COMMON SENSE ETHICS.—We may, if we choose, study the actions of men merely with a view to ascertaining what they are and describing them accurately. Something like this is done by the anthropologist, who gives us an account of the manners and customs of the various races of mankind; he tells us what is; he may not regard it as within his province at all to inform us regarding what ought to be.

But men do not merely act; they judge their actions in the light of some norm or standard, and they distinguish between them as right and wrong. The systematic study of actions as right and wrong yields us the science of ethics.

Like psychology, ethics is a special science. It is concerned with a somewhat limited field of investigation, and is not to be confounded with other sciences. It has a definite aim distinct from theirs. And, also like psychology, ethics is classed as one of the philosophical sciences, and its relation to philosophy is supposed to be closer than that of such sciences as physics and mathematics. It is fair to ask why this is so. Why cannot ethics proceed on the basis of certain assumptions independently, and leave to some other discipline the whole question of an inquiry into the nature and validity of those assumptions?

About half a century ago Dr. William Whewell, one of the most learned of English scholars, wrote a work entitled "The Elements of Morality," in which he attempted to treat the science of ethics as it is generally admitted that one may treat the science of geometry. The book was rather widely read a generation since, but we meet with few references to it in our time.

"Morality and the philosophy of morality," argues the author, "differ in the same manner and in the same degree as geometry and the philosophy of geometry. Of these two subjects, geometry consists of a series of positive and definite propositions, deduced one from another, in succession, by rigorous reasoning, and all resting upon certain definitions and self-evident axioms. The philosophy of geometry is quite a different subject; it includes such inquiries as these: Whence is the cogency of geometrical proof? What is the evidence of the axioms and definitions? What are the faculties by which we become aware of their truth? and the like. The two kinds of speculation have been pursued, for the most part, by two different classes of persons,—the geometers and the metaphysicians; for it has been far more the occupation of metaphysicians than of geometers to discuss such questions as I have stated, the nature of geometrical proofs, geometrical axioms, the geometrical faculty, and the like. And if we construct a complete system of geometry, it will be almost exactly the same, whatever be the views which we take on these metaphysical questions." [1]

Such a system Dr. Whewell wishes to construct in the field of ethics. His aim is to give us a view of morality in which moral propositions are "deduced from axioms, by successive steps of reasoning, so far as to form a connected system of moral truth." Such a "sure and connected knowledge of the duties of man" would, he thinks, be of the greatest importance.

In accordance with this purpose, Dr. Whewell assumes that humanity, justice, truth, purity, order, earnestness, and moral purpose are fundamental principles of human action; and he thinks that all who admit as much as this will be able to go on with him in his development of a system of moral rules to govern the life of man.

It would hardly be worth while for me to speak at length of a way of treating ethics so little likely to be urged upon the attention of the reader who busies himself with the books which are appearing in our own day, were it not that we have here an admirable illustration of the attempt to teach ethics as though it were such a science as geometry. The shortcomings of the method become very evident to one who reads the work attentively.

Thus, we are forced to ask ourselves, have we really a collection of ultimate moral principles which are analogous to the axioms of geometry? For example, to take but a single instance, Dr. Whewell formulates the Principle of Truth as follows: "We must conform to the universal understanding among men which the use of language implies";[2] and he remarks later; "The rules: Lie not, Perform your promise, are of universal validity; and the conceptions of lie and of promise are so simple and distinct that, in general, the rules may be directly and easily applied." [3]

Now, we are struck by the fact that this affirmation of the universal validity of the principle of truth is made in a chapter on "Cases of Conscience," in a chapter concerned with what seem to be conflicts between duties; and this chapter is followed by one which treats of "Cases of Necessity," i.e. cases in which a man is to be regarded as justified in violating common rules when there seems to be urgent reason for so doing. We are told that the moralist cannot say: Lie not, except in great emergencies; but must say: Lie not at all. But we are also told that he must grant that there are cases of necessity in which transgressions of moral rules are excusable; and this looks very much as if he said: Go on and do the thing while I close my eyes.

This hardly seems to give us a "sure and connected knowledge of the duties of man" deduced from axiomatic principles. On what authority shall we suspend for the time being this axiomatic principle or that? Is there some deeper principle which lends to each of them its authority, and which may, for cause, withdraw it? There is no hint of such in the treatment of ethics which we are considering, and we seem to have on our hands, not so much a science, as a collection of practical rules, of the scope of which we are more or less in the dark.

The interesting thing to notice is that this view of ethics is very closely akin to that adapted unconsciously by the majority of the persons we meet who have not interested themselves much in ethics as a science.

By the time that we have reached years of discretion we are all in possession of a considerable number of moral maxims. We consider it wrong to steal, to lie, to injure our neighbor. Such maxims lie in our minds side by side, and we do not commonly think of criticising them. But now and then we face a situation in which one maxim seems to urge one course of action and another maxim a contrary one. Shall we tell the truth and the whole truth, when so doing will bring grave misfortune upon an innocent person? And now and then we are brought to the realization that all men do not admit the validity of all our maxims. Judgments differ as to what is right and what is wrong. Who shall be the arbiter? Not infrequently a rough decision is arrived at in the assumption that we have only to interrogate "conscience"—in the assumption, in other words, that we carry a watch which can be counted upon to give the correct time, even if the timepieces of our neighbors are not to be depended upon.

The common sense ethics cannot be regarded as very systematic and consistent, or as very profound. It is a collection of working rules, of practical maxims; and, although it is impossible to overestimate its value as a guide to life, its deficiencies, when it is looked at critically, become evident, I think, even to thoughtful persons who are not scientific at all.

Many writers on ethics have simply tried to turn this collection of working rules into a science, somewhat as Dr. Whewell has done. This is the peculiar weakness of those who have been called the "intuitionalists"—though I must warn the reader against assuming that this term has but the one meaning, and that all those to whom it has been applied should be placed in the same class. Here it is used to indicate those who maintain that we are directly aware of the validity of certain moral principles, must accept them as ultimate, and need only concern ourselves with the problem of their application.

72. ETHICS AND PHILOSOPHY.—When John Locke maintained that there are no "innate practical principles," or innate moral maxims, he pointed in evidence to the "enormities practiced without remorse" in different ages and by different peoples. The list he draws up is a curious and an interesting one.[4]

In our day it has pretty generally come to be recognized by thoughtful men that a man's judgments as to right and wrong reflect the phase of civilization, or the lack of it, which he represents, and that their significance cannot be understood when we consider them apart from their historic setting. This means that no man's conscience is set up as an ultimate standard, but that every man's conscience is regarded as furnishing material which the science of ethics must take into account.

May we, broadening the basis upon which we are to build, and studying the manners, customs, and moral judgments of all sorts and conditions of men, develop an empirical science of ethics which will be independent of philosophy?

It does not seem that we can do this. We are concerned with psychological phenomena, and their nature and significance are by no means beyond dispute. For example, there is the feeling of moral obligation, of which ethics has so much to say. What is this feeling, and what is its authority? Is it a thing to be explained? Can it impel a man, let us say, a bigot, to do wrong? And what can we mean by credit and discredit, by responsibility and free choice, and other concepts of the sort? All this must remain very vague to one who has not submitted his ethical concepts to reflective analysis of the sort that we have a right to call philosophical.

Furthermore, it does not seem possible to decide what a man should or should not do, without taking into consideration the circumstances in which he is placed. The same act may be regarded as benevolent or the reverse according to its context. If we will but grant the validity of the premises from which the medieval churchman reasoned, we may well ask whether, in laying hands violently upon those who dared to form independent judgments in matters of religion, he was not conscientiously doing his best for his fellow-man. He tried by all means to save some, and to what he regarded as a most dangerous malady he applied a drastic remedy. By what standard shall we judge him?

There can be no doubt that our doctrine of the whole duty of man must be conditioned by our view of the nature of the world in which man lives and of man's place in the world. Has ethics nothing to do with religion? If we do not believe in God, and if we think that man's life ends with the death of the body, it is quite possible that we shall set for him an ethical standard which we should have to modify if we adopted other beliefs. The relation of ethics to religion is a problem that the student of ethics can scarcely set aside. It seems, then, that the study of ethics necessarily carries us back to world problems which cannot be approached except by the path of philosophical reflection. We shall see in Chapter XX that the theistic problem certainly belongs to this class.

It is worthy of our consideration that the vast majority of writers on ethics have felt strongly that their science runs out into metaphysics. We can scarcely afford to treat their testimony lightly. Certainly it is not possible for one who has no knowledge of philosophy to understand the significance of the ethical systems which have appeared in the past. The history of ethics may be looked upon as a part of the history of philosophy. Only on the basis of some general view as to nature and man have men decided what man ought to do. As we have seen above, this appears sufficiently reasonable.

73. AESTHETICS.—Of aesthetics, or the science of the beautiful, I shall say little. There is somewhat the same reason for including it among the philosophical sciences that there is for including ethics.

Those who have paid little attention to science or to philosophy are apt to dogmatize about what is and what is not beautiful just as they dogmatize about what is and what is not right. They say unhesitatingly; This object is beautiful, and that one is ugly. It is as if they said: This one is round, and that one square.

Often it quite escapes their attention that what they now regard as beautiful struck them as unattractive a short time before; and will, perhaps, when the ceaseless change of the fashions has driven it out of vogue, seem strange and unattractive once more. Nor do they reflect upon the fact that others, who seem to have as good a right to an opinion as they, do not agree with them in their judgments; nor upon the further fact that the standard of beauty is a thing that has varied from age to age, differs widely in different countries, and presents minor variations in different classes even in the same community.

The dogmatic utterances of those who are keenly susceptible to the aesthetic aspects of things but are not given to reflection stand in striking contrast to the epitome of the popular wisdom expressed in the skeptical adage that there is no disputing about tastes.

We cannot interpret this adage broadly and take it literally, for then we should have to admit that men's judgments as to the beautiful cannot constitute the material of a science at all, and that there can be no such thing as progress in the fine arts. The notion of progress implies a standard, and an approximation to an ideal. Few would dare to deny that there has been progress in such arts as painting and music; and when one has admitted so much as this, one has virtually admitted that a science of aesthetics is, at least, possible.

The science studies the facts of the aesthetic life as ethics studies the facts of the moral life. It can take no man's taste as furnishing a standard: it must take every man's taste as a fact of significance. It is driven to reflective analysis—to such questions as, what is beauty? and what is meant by aesthetic progress? It deals with elusive psychological facts the significance of which is not easily grasped. It is a philosophical science, and is by no means in a position to follow a beaten path, dispensing with a reflective analysis of its materials.

[1] Preface.

[2] section 269.

[3] section 376.

[4] "Essay concerning Human Understanding," Book I, Chapter III.