Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics

by John Dewey

"I consider that the proper meaning, or import of the terms [duty, obligation] refers to that class of action which is enforced by the sanction of punishment.... The powers that impose the obligatory sanction are Law and Society, or the community acting through the Government by public judicial acts, and apart from the Government by the unofficial expressions of disapprobation and the exclusion from social good offices". Emotions and Will, p. 286. See also pp. 321-323 and p. 527.

Through this 'actual and ideal avoidance of certain acts and dread of punishment' the individual learns to forego the gratification of some of his natural impulses, and learns also to cultivate and even to originate desires not at first spontaneous. "The child is open from the first to the blame and praise of others, and thus is led to do or avoid certain acts".

On the model, however, of the action of this external authority there grows up, in time an internal authority—"an ideal resemblance of public authority" (p. 287), or "a fac simile of the system of government around us" (p. 313).

"The sentiment, at first formed and cultivated by the relations of actual command and obedience, may come at last to stand upon an independent foundation.... When the young mind, accustomed at the outset to implicitly obeying any set of rules is sufficiently advanced to appreciate the motive—the utilities or the sentiment that led to their imposition—the character of the conscience is entirely changed.... Regard is now had to the intent and meaning of the law, and not to the mere fact of its being prescribed by some power" (E. and W., p. 318).

But when the sense of obligation becomes entirely detached from the social sanction, "even then the notion, sentiment or form of duty is derived from what society imposes, although the particular matter is quite different. Social obligation develops in the mind originally the feeling and habit of obligation, and this remains although the particular articles are changed" (page 319, note). Cf. also Bain, Moral Science, pp. 20-21 and 41-43.

XLIV.

Spencer's Theory of Obligation.

Spencer's theory is, in substance, an enlarged and better analyzed restatement of Bain's theory. Bain nowhere clearly states in what the essence of obligation consists, when it becomes independent, when the internal fac simile is formed. Why should I not gratify my desires as I please in case social pressure is absent or lets up? Spencer supplies the missing element. According to him, "the essential trait in the moral consciousness is the control of some feeling or feelings by some other feeling or feelings" (Data of Ethics, p. 113). The kind of feeling which controls is that which is more complex and which relates to more remote ends; or, we are 'obliged' to give up more immediate, special and direct pleasures for the sake of securing more general, remote and indirect ones. Obligation, in its essence, is the surrender or subordination of present to future satisfaction. This control, restraint, or suppression may be 'independent' or, self-imposed, but is not so at first, either in the man or in the child. Prior to self-restraint are the restraints imposed by the "visible ruler, the invisible ruler and society at large"—the policeman, the priest and public opinion. The man is induced to postpone immediate gratification through his fear of others, especially of the chief, of the dead and of social displeasure—"legal penalty, supernatural punishment and social reprobation". Thus there grows up the sense of obligation. This refers at first only to the above-mentioned extrinsic effects of action. But finally the mind learns to consider the intrinsic effect of the action itself—the evil inflicted by the evil deed, and then the sense of duty, or coercion, evolved through the aforesaid external agencies, becomes transferred to this new mode of controlling action. Desires are now controlled through considerations of what their own effects would be, were the desires acted upon.

It follows "that the sense of duty or moral obligation is transitory, and will diminish as fast as moralization increases" (page 127). Even when compulsion is self-imposed, there is still compulsion, coercion, and this must be done away with. It is done away with as far as an act which is at first done only for the sake of its own remoter consequences comes to be done for its own sake. And this will ultimately occur, if the act is continued, since "persistence in performing a duty ends in making it a pleasure".

See Guyau, La Morale Anglaise Contemporaine, besides the works of Bain and Spencer. In addition to objections which will forthwith be made, we may here note a false abstraction of Spencer's. He makes the act and its consequences two things, while the act and its consequences (provided they are known as such) are the same thing, no matter whether consequences are near or remote. The only distinction is that consequences once not known as such at all are seen in time to be really consequences, and thus to be part of the content of the act. The transfer from the "external consequences" imposed by the ruler, priest and public-opinion to the intrinsic consequences of the act itself, is thus a transfer from an immoral to a moral basis. This is very different from a change of the form of obligation itself.