CHAPTER XVI
THE PLACE OF REASON IN THE MORAL LIFE; MORAL KNOWLEDGE
§ 1. PROBLEM OF REASON AND DESIRE
Intelligence and Reason in a Moral Act.—A voluntary act is one which involves intention, purpose, and thus some degree of deliberateness. It is this trait which marks off the voluntary act from a purely unconscious one (like that of a machine) and from one which yields to the superior urgency of present feeling, one which is pushed on from behind, as an instinctive or impulsive act, instead of being called out by some possibility ahead. This factor of forethought and of preference after comparison for some one of the ends considered, is the factor of intelligence involved in every voluntary act. To be intelligent in action is, however, a far-reaching affair. To know what one is really about is a large and difficult order to fill; so large and difficult that it is the heart of morality.[158] The relevant bearings of any act are subtler and larger than those which can be foreseen and than those which will be unless special care is taken. The tendencies which strongly move one to a certain act are often exactly those which tend to prevent one's seeing the effect of the act upon his own habits and upon the well-being of others. The internal forces and the external circumstance which evoke the idea of an end and of the means of attaining it are frequently also those which deflect intelligence to a narrow and partial view. The demand for a standard by which to regulate judgment of ends is thus the demand not only for intelligence, but for a certain kind of intelligence.
In short, a truly moral (or right) act is one which is intelligent in an emphatic and peculiar sense; it is a reasonable act. It is not merely one which is thought of, and thought of as good, at the moment of action, but one which will continue to be thought of as "good" in the most alert and persistent reflection.[159] For by "reasonable" action we mean such action as recognizes and observes all the necessary conditions; action in which impulse, instinct, inclination, habit, opinion, prejudice (as the case may be) are moderated, guided, and determined by considerations which lie outside of and beyond them. Not merely to form ends and select means, but to judge the worth of these means and ends by a standard, is then the distinctive province of reason in morals. Its outcome is moral knowledge; that is judgments of right and wrong, both in general, and in the particular and perplexing cases as they arise. This is the topic of the present chapter.
Typical Problems.—The problem of moral knowledge is in its general form: Is there a distinct and separate faculty of moral reason and knowledge, or is there but one power of judgment which varies with its object? The former view is the intuitional (from Latin, intueor: to look at); it is associated with theories, which, like the Kantian, emphasize attitudes, not results and intentions; while the view which holds that there is but one form of thought which, in morals, concerns itself with results, and with their association with the present aim, is the empirical. There are two especial difficulties which lead to the upholding of the intuitional point of view, difficulties which any theory of moral knowledge has to meet. They are (I) The Relation of Desire and Reason, and (II) the Knowledge of Private and General Good.
1. Desire and Reason.—Ordinary knowledge in practical matters follows the line set by desire. Hunger makes us think of food and of how to get it; sociable desire, of friends, and how to secure their companionship, and so on. Now a surging mass of desires, vehement and bulky, may concentrate itself upon the idea of any end; and as soon as it does so, it tends to shut out wider considerations. As we have just seen, it is the object of reason to give us a calm, objective, broad, and general survey of the field. Desires work against this, and unless (so runs the argument) there is a faculty which works wholly independent of desires, as our ordinary practical knowledge does not, it is absurd to suppose there can be a rational principle which will correct and curb desire.
2. Private and General Good.—Since the wide and permanent good is social, it is urged that unless we have an independent faculty of moral knowledge, our judgment will be subservient to the ends of private desire, and hence will not place itself at the public point of view. Or, if it does so, it will be simply as a matter of expediency to calculate better the means for getting our own pleasure. In general, it is urged that only a faculty of knowledge completely independent of personal wishes, habits, purposes can secure judgments possessing inherent dignity and authoritativeness; since these require an elevated, impartial, universal, and necessary point of view. We shall in the sequel attempt to show that this view of knowledge results from the false conception of desire as having pleasure for its object, and from a false conception of the relation of intent and motive. When these errors are corrected, there is no ground to assume any special faculty of moral intelligence, save as the one capacity of thought is specialized into a particular mental habit by being constantly occupied in judging values. We shall try to show that the broad and public point of view is secured by fusion of impulses with sympathetic affections. We shall begin with stating and criticizing the views of Kant, who upholds the doctrine of a separate independent Moral Reason in its most extreme form.
§ 2. KANT'S THEORY OF PRACTICAL REASON
Kant is at one with the hedonist as regards the natural object of desire; it is pleasure. All purposes and ends that spring from inclination and natural tendency come under one head: self-love. Hence, the ordinary use of intelligence is confined to the matter of passing upon what constitutes the individual's private happiness and how he shall secure it. There are then fundamental contrasts between ordinary practical activity and genuinely moral activity, contrasts which reflect themselves in the theory of the nature and function of moral knowledge. (1) The moral end is unqualified, absolute, categorical. It is not something which we can pick or leave at our option. Morality is the region of final ends, ends not to be disputed or questioned; and reason must set forth such final ends. Since, however, happiness is not a morally necessary end, intelligence in its behalf can only give hypothetical counsel and advice: if you would be happy, or happy in this, or that way, then take such and such measures. Reason which promulgates ends must be of a different sort from the intelligence which simply searches for means.