Ethics

by John Dewey; James Hayden Tufts

3. There are also Cases in Which the Thought of the Resulting Consequence to the Self Consciously Enters in and Modifies the Motive of the Act.—With increasing memory and foresight, one can no more ignore the lesson of the past as to the consequences of an act upon himself than he can ignore other consequences. A man who has learned that a certain act has painful consequences to himself, whether to his body, his reputation, his comfort, or his character, is quite likely to have the thought of himself present itself as part of the foreseen consequences when the question of a similar act recurs. In and of itself, once more, this fact throws no light upon the moral status of the act. Everything depends upon what sort of a self moves and how it moves. A man who hesitated to rush into a burning building to rescue a suit of clothes because he thought of the danger to himself, would be sensible; a man who rushed out of the building just because he thought of saving himself when there were others he might have assisted, would be contemptible.

The one who began taking exercise because he thought of his own health, would be commended; but a man who thought so continually of his own health as to shut out other objects, would become an object of ridicule or worse. There is a moral presumption that a man should make consideration of himself a part of his aim and intent. A certain care of health, of body, of property, of mental faculty, because they are one's own is not only permissible, but obligatory. This is what the older moral writers spoke of as "prudence," or as "reasonable self-love."

(i.) It is a stock argument of the universal selfishness theory to point out that a man's acknowledgment of some public need or benefit is quite likely to coincide with his recognition of some private advantage. A statesman's recognition of some measure of public policy happens to coincide with perceiving that by pressing it he can bring himself into prominence or gain office. A man is more likely to see the need of improved conditions of sanitation or transportation in a given locality if he has property there. A man's indignation at some prevalent public ill may sleep till he has had a private taste of it. We may admit that these instances describe a usual, though not universal, state of affairs. But does it follow that such men are moved merely by the thought of gain to themselves? Possibly this sometimes happens; then the act is selfish in the obnoxious sense. The man has isolated his thought of himself as an end and made the thought of the improvement or reform merely an external means. The latter is not truly his end at all; he has not identified it with himself. In other cases, while the individual would not have recognized the end if the thought of himself had not been implicated, yet after he has recognized it, the two—the thought of himself and of the public advantage—may blend. His thought of himself may lend warmth and intimacy to an object which otherwise would have been cold, while, at the same time, the self is broadened and deepened by taking in the new object of regard.

(ii.) Take the case of amusement or recreation. To an adult usually engaged in strenuous pursuits, the thought of a pleasure for the mere sake of pleasure, of enjoyment, of having a "good time," may appeal as an end. And if the pleasure is itself "innocent," only the requirements of a preconceived theory (like the Kantian) would question its legitimacy. Even its moral necessity is clear when relaxation is conducive to cheerfulness and efficiency in more serious pursuits. But if a man discriminates mentally between himself and the play or exercise in which he finds enjoyment and relief, thinking of himself as a distinct end to which the latter is merely means, he is not likely to get the recreation. It is by forgetting the self, that is by taking the light and easy activity as the self of the situation, that the benefit comes. To be a "lover of pleasure" in the bad sense is precisely to seek amusements as excitements for a self which somehow remains outside them as their fixed and ulterior end.

(iii.) Exactly the same analysis applies to the idea of the moral culture of the self, of its moral perfecting. Every serious-minded person has, from time to time, to take stock of his status and progress in moral matters—to take thought of the moral self just as at other times he takes thought of the health of the bodily self. But woe betides that man who, having entered upon a course of reflection which leads to a clearer conception of his own moral capacities and weaknesses, maintains that thought as a distinct mental end, and thereby makes his subsequent acts simply means to improving or perfecting his moral nature. Such a course defeats itself. At the least, it leads to priggishness, and its tendency is towards one of the worst forms of selfishness: a habit of thinking and feeling that persons, that concrete situations and relations, exist simply to render contributions to one's own precious moral character. The worst of such selfishness is that having protected itself with the mantle of interest in moral goodness, it is proof against that attrition of experience which may always recall a man to himself in the case of grosser and more unconscious absorption. A sentimentally refined egoism is always more hopeless than a brutal and naïve one—though a brutal one not infrequently protects itself by adoption and proclamation of the language of the former.

II. Benevolence or Regard for Others.—Ambiguity in Conception: There is the same ambiguity in the idea of sympathetic or altruistic springs to action that there is in that of egoistic and self-regarding. Does the phrase refer to their conscious and express intent? or to their objective results when put into operation, irrespective of explicit desire and aim? And, if the latter, are we to believe contribution to the welfare of others to be the sole and exclusive character of some springs of action, or simply that, under certain circumstances, the emphasis falls more upon the good resulting to others than upon other consequences? The discussion will show that the same general principles hold for "benevolent" as for self-regarding impulses: namely (1) that there are none which from the start are consciously such; (2) that while reflection may bring to light their bearing upon the welfare of others so that it becomes an element in the conscious desire, this is a matter of relative preponderance, not of absolute nature; and (3) that just as conscious regard for self is not necessarily bad or "selfish," so conscious regard for others is not necessarily good: the criterion is the whole situation in which the desire takes effect.

1. The Existence of Other-Regarding Springs to Action.—Only the preconceptions of hedonistic psychology would ever lead one to deny the existence of reactions and impulses called out by the sight of others' misery and joy and which tend to increase the latter and to relieve the former. Recent psychologists (writing, of course, quite independently of ethical controversies) offer lists of native instinctive tendencies such as the following: Anger, jealousy, rivalry, secretiveness, acquisitiveness, fear, shyness, sympathy, affection, pity, sexual love, curiosity, imitation, play, constructiveness.[179] In this inventory, the first seven may be said to be aroused specially by situations having to do with the preservation of the self; the next four are responses to stimuli proceeding especially from others and tending to consequences favorable to them, while the last four are mainly impersonal. But the division into self-regarding and other-regarding is not exclusive and absolute. Anger may be wholly other-regarding, as in the case of hearty indignation at wrongs suffered by others; rivalry may be generous emulation or be directed toward surpassing one's own past record. Love between the sexes, which should be the source of steady, far-reaching interest in others, and which at times expresses itself in supreme abnegation of devotion, easily becomes the cause of brutal and persistent egoism. In short, the division into egoistic and altruistic holds only "other things being equal."

Confining ourselves for the moment to the native psychological equipment, we may say that man is endowed with instinctive promptings which naturally (that is, without the intervention of deliberation or calculation) tend to preserve the self (by aggressive attack as in anger, or in protective retreat as in fear); and to develop his powers (as in acquisitiveness, constructiveness, and play); and which equally, without consideration of resulting ulterior benefit either to self or to others, tend to bind the self closer to others and to advance the interests of others—as pity, affectionateness, or again, constructiveness and play. Any given individual is naturally an erratic mixture of fierce insistence upon his own welfare and of profound susceptibility to the happiness of others—different individuals varying much in the respective intensities and proportions of the two tendencies.

2. The Moral Status of Altruistic Tendencies.—We have expressly devoted considerable space (ch. xiii.) to showing that there are no motives which in and of themselves are right; that any tendency, whether original instinct or acquired habit, requires sanction from the special consequences which, in the special situation, are likely to flow from it. The mere fact that pity in general tends to conserve the welfare of others does not guarantee the rightness of giving way to an impulse of pity, just as it happens to spring up. This might mean sentimentalism for the agent, and weakening of the springs of patience, courage, self-help, and self-respect in others. The persistence with which the doctrine of the evils of indiscriminate charity has to be taught is sufficient evidence that the so-called other-regarding impulses require the same control by reason as do the "egoistic" ones. They have no inherent sacredness which exempts them from the application of the standard of the common and reasonable happiness.

Evils of Unregulated Altruism.—So much follows from the general principles already discussed. But there are special dangers and evils attendant upon an exaggeration of the altruistic idea. (i.) It tends to render others dependent, and thus contradicts its own professed aim: the helping of others. Almost every one knows some child who is so continuously "helped" by others, that he loses his initiative and resourcefulness. Many an invalid is confirmed in a state of helplessness by the devoted attention of others. In large social matters there is always danger of the substitution of an ideal of conscious "benevolence" for justice: it is in aristocratic and feudal periods that the idea flourishes that "charity" (conceived as conferring benefits upon others, doing things for them) is inherently and absolutely a good. The idea assumes the continued and necessary existence of a dependent "lower" class to be the recipients of the kindness of their superiors; a class which serves as passive material for the cultivation in others of the virtue of charity, the higher class "acquiring merit" at expense of the lower, while the lower has gratitude and respect for authority as its chief virtues.