Ethics

by John Dewey; James Hayden Tufts

Vices Incident to Reflective Stage.—The vices increase with civilization, partly because of increased opportunity, partly because of increased looseness in social restraint. There is a further element. When any activity of man is cut off from its original and natural relations and made the object of special attention and pursuit, the whole adjustment is thrown out of balance. What was before a useful function becomes pathological. The craving for excitement or stimulation is normal within certain limits. In the chase or the battle, in the venture of the explorer or the merchant, it functions as a healthy incentive. When isolated as an end in itself, taken out of the objective social situation, it becomes the spring of gambling or drunkenness. The instincts and emotions of sex, possessing power and interest necessitated by their place in the continuance of the race, become when isolated the spring of passion or of obscenity or lubricity. Avarice and gluttony illustrate the same law. The gladiatorial shows at Rome became base and cowardly when the Romans were themselves no longer fighters.[102] Even the aspiration for what is higher and better may become an "otherworldliness" which leaves this world to its misery and evil. Such a series of pictures as Balzac has given in his Comédie Humaine, shows better than any labored description the possibilities of modern civilization.

There is, moreover, in civilized society a further most demoralizing agency unknown to earlier life. As the vices are specialized and pursued they become economic and political interests. Vast capital is invested in the business of ministering to the vicious appetites. It is pecuniarily desirable that these appetites should be stimulated as greatly as possible. It makes "business." The tribute levied by public officials upon the illegal pursuits forms a vast fund for carrying elections. The multitude engaged in the traffic or dependent upon it for favors, can be relied upon to cast their votes as a unit for men who will guarantee protection.

Relations to Fellow Men.—The motives and occasions for selfishness and injustice have been indicated sufficiently perhaps in preceding chapters. As the general process of increasing individuality and reflection goes on, it is an increasingly easy matter to be indifferent or even unjust. When all lead a common life it is easy to enter into the situation of another, to appreciate his motives, his needs, and in general to "put yourself in his place." The external nature of the conduct makes it easy to hold all to a common standard. The game must be shared; the property—so far as there is property—respected; the religious rites observed. But when standards becomes more inward the more intelligent or rigorous may find sympathy less easy. When they attempt to be "charitable" they may easily become condescending. The pure will not soil their skirts by contact with the fallen. The "high-minded citizen" refuses to mix in politics. The scholar thinks the business man materialistic. The man of breeding, wealth, and education finds the uneducated laborer lacking in courtesy and refinement and argues that it is useless to waste sympathy upon the "masses." The class terms which have become moral terms are illustrations of this attitude. Finally, the moral process of building up freedom and right easily leads to a disposition to stand on rights and let other persons look out for themselves. Kant's doctrine, that since all morality is personal I can do nothing to promote my neighbor's perfection, is a laissez faire in ethics which he did not carry out, but it is a not unnatural corollary of reflective morality. "Am I my brother's keeper?" is much more likely to be the language of reflective, than of customary and group life.

Reconstructive Forces.—We have dwelt at length upon the disintegrating forces, not because civilization necessarily grows worse, but because, having pointed out in earlier chapters the positive advances, it becomes necessary to allude also to the other aspect of the process. Otherwise it might appear that there is no problem. If the evolution were supposed to be all in one direction there would be no seriousness in life. It is only in the pressure of constantly new difficulties and evils that moral character adds new fiber, and moral progress emerges. Individualism, self-seeking, and desire for property force the establishment of governments and courts which protect poor as well as rich. Luxury and ostentation have not only called out the asceticism which renounces the world and sees in all gratification of appetite an evil; they have brought into the fore the serious meaning of life; they have served to emphasize the demand for social justice. The countless voluntary associations for the relief of sickness, misfortune, and poverty; for aiding the defective, dependent, and criminal; for promoting numberless good causes—enlist a multitude in friendly co-operation. The rising demand for legislation to embody the new sentiments of justice is part of the process of reconstruction. And now when all the arts and goods of civilization are becoming more and more fully the work, not of any individual's labor or skill, but rather of the combined labor and intelligence of many, when life in cities is necessitating greater interdependence, finally when contrasts in conditions are brought more forcibly to notice by the very progress of knowledge and the means of knowledge,—the more thoroughly social use of all that civilization produces becomes more insistent and compelling. It is not a matter of sentiment but of necessity. If any one is disposed to deny the claim, it becomes increasingly certain that Carlyle's Irish widow will prove her sisterhood by infecting the denier with fever;[103] that the ignorant, or criminal, or miserable will jeopardize his happiness.

§ 5. MORAL DIFFERENTIATION AND THE SOCIAL ORDER

Two processes went on side by side in the movement we have traced. (1) The primitive group, which was at once a kinship or family, an economic, a political, a religious, an educational, and a moral unit, was broken down and replaced by several distinct institutions, each with its own special character. (2) The moral, which was so largely unreflective that it could be embodied in every custom and observance, became more personal and subjective. The result of this was either that the moral was now more consciously and voluntarily put into the social relations, thereby raising them all to a higher moral level, or that, failing such a leavening of the distinct spheres of the social order, the latter were emptied of moral value and lost moral restraints. We notice very briefly certain illustrations of this, leaving a fuller treatment for Part III.

The Family.—When the family was largely determined by status, when it was an economic, a political, and a religious unit, it had a strong support. But the support was largely external to the true purpose and meaning of the family. Only as these other elements were separated, and the family placed on a voluntary basis, could its true significance emerge. Affection and mutual supplementation of husband and wife, love and devotion to offspring, must stand the strains formerly distributed over several ties. The best types of family life which have resulted from this more moral basis are unquestionably far superior to the older form. At the same time the difficulties and perversion or subversion of the more voluntary type are manifest. When no personal attachment was sought or professed, or when marriage by purchase was the approved custom, the marriage contracted under these conditions might have all the value which the general state of intelligence and civilization allowed. When the essential feature which hallows the union has come to be recognized as a union of will and affection, then marriage without these, however "solemnized," almost inevitably means moral degradation. And if the consent of the parties is regarded as the basis of the tie, then it is difficult to make sure that this "consent" has within it enough of steadfast, well-considered purpose and of emotional depth to take the place of all the older sanctions and to secure permanent unions. The more complete responsibility for the children which has been gained by the separation of the family, has also proved susceptible of abuse as well as of service. For while savages have often practiced infanticide for economic reasons, it is doubtful if any savage family ever equaled the more refined selfishness and cruelty of the child labor which modern families have furnished and modern society has permitted.

The Economic and Industrial.—The economic lost powerful restraints when it became a separate activity divorced from family, religious, and, in the view of some, from moral considerations. It has worked out certain important moral necessities of its own. Honesty, the keeping of contracts, the steadiness and continuity of character fostered by economic relations, are important contributions. Modern business, for example, is the most effective agency in securing sobriety. It is far more efficient than "temperance societies." Other values of the economic and industrial process—the increase of production, the interchange of services and goods, the new means of happiness afforded by the increase of wealth—are obvious. On the other hand, the honesty required by business is a most technical and peculiarly limited sort. It does not interfere with adulteration of goods under certain conditions, nor with corrupt bargains with public officials. The measurement of values on a purely pecuniary basis tends to release a large sphere of activity from any moral restraints. The maxim "Business is business" may be made the sanction for any kind of conduct not excluded by commercial standards. Unless there is a constant injection of moral valuation and control, there is a tendency to subvert all other ends and standards to the purely economic.

Law and Government.—To remove these functions from the kinship group as such, is at once to bring the important principles of authority and duty, and gradually of rights and freedom, to consciousness. Only by such separation could the universality and impartiality of law be established. And only by universality can the judgment of the society as a whole be guaranteed its execution as over against the variations in intelligence and right purpose of individual rulers and judges. Moreover, the separation of law from morality has likewise its gain or loss. On the one hand, to separate off a definite sphere of external acts to which alone physical constraints or penalties may attach, is at once to free a great sphere of inner thought and purpose and to enable purely psychical values and restraints to attain far greater power in conduct. Liberty of thought and religious belief, sincerity and thorough responsibility, require such a separation. It is also to make possible a general law which rises above the conscience of the lower even if it does not always reach the level of the most enlightened and just. To make a command a "universal law" is itself a steadying and elevating influence, and it is only by a measure of abstraction from the individual, inner aspect of conduct that this can be achieved. On the other hand, the not infrequent contrast between law and justice, the substitution of technicality for substantials, the conservatism which made Voltaire characterize lawyers as the "conservators of ancient barbarous usages," above all the success with which law has been used to sanction or even facilitate nearly every form of oppression, extortion, class advantage, or even judicial murder, is a constant attestation of the twofold possibilities inherent in all institutions. Government in other functions exhibits similar possibilities. At first it was tyranny against which the subject had to defend himself. Now it is rather the use of political machinery for private gain. "Eternal vigilance" is the price not only of freedom, but of every moral value.

The Religious Life.—When freed from interdependence with kinship, economic, and political association, religion has an opportunity to become more personal and more universal. When a man's religious attitude is not fixed by birth, when worship is not so closely bound up with economic interests, when there is not only religious "toleration," but religious liberty, the significance of religion as a personal, spiritual relation comes to view. The kinship tie is sublimated into a conception of divine fatherhood. It becomes credible that Job does serve God "for naught." Faith and purity of heart are not secured by magistrates or laws.