Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics

by John Dewey

Suppose that man's good and his conviction of duty were divorced from one another—that man's duty were other than to fulfill his own specific function. Such a thing would make duty purely formal; the moral law would have no intrinsic relation to daily conduct, to the expression of man's powers and wants. There have, indeed, been moralists who think they do the Lord service, who think they add to the dignity and sacredness of Duty by making it other than the idea of the activity of man, regulated indeed, but regulated only by its own principle of activity. But such moralists in their desire to consecrate the idea of duty remove from it all content, and leave it an empty abstraction. On the other hand, their eagerness to give absoluteness and imperativeness to duty by making it a law other than that of the normal expression of man, casts discredit upon the one moral reality—the full, free play of human life. In denying that duty is simply the intrinsic law, the self-manifestation of this life, they make this life immoral, or at least non-moral. They degrade it to a bundle of appetites and powers having no moral value until the outside moral law is applied to them. In reality, the dignity and imperativeness of duty are simply the manifest dignity and unconditioned worth of human life as exhibited in its free activity. The whole idea of the separateness of duty from the concrete flow of human action is a virulent example of the fallacy mentioned in an early section—the fallacy that moral action means something more than action itself (see Sec. [II]).

The attempt to act upon a theory of the divorce of satisfaction and duty, to carry it out in practice, means the maiming of desire through distrust of its moral significance, and thus, by withdrawing the impetus of action, the reduction of life to mere passivity. So far as this does not happen, it means the erection of the struggle itself, the erection of the opposition of law to desire, into the very principle of the moral life. The essential principle of the moral life, that good consists in the freeing of impulse, of appetite, of desire, of power, by enabling them to flow in the channel of a unified and full end is lost sight of, and the free service of the spirit is reduced to the slavish fear of a bond-man under a hard taskmaster.

The essential point in the analysis of moral law, or obligation, having been found, we may briefly discuss some subsidiary points.

1. The relation of duty to a given desire. As any desire arises, it will be, except so far as character has already been moralized, a demand for its own satisfaction; the desire, in a word, will be isolated. In so far, duty will be in a negative attitude towards the desire; it will insist first upon its limitation, and then upon its transformation. So far as it is merely limitative, it demands the denying of the desire, and so far assumes a coercive form. But this limitation is not for its own sake, but for that of the transformation of desire into a freer and more adequate form—into a form, that is, where it will carry with it, when it passes into action, more of activity, than the original desire would have done.

Does duty itself disappear when its constraint disappears? On the contrary, so far as an act is done unwillingly, under constraint, so far the act is impure, and undutiful. The very fact that there is need of constraint shows that the self is divided; that there is a two-fold interest and purpose—one in the law of the activity according to function, the other in the special end of the particular desire. Let the act be done wholly as duty, and it is done wholly for its own sake; love, passion take the place of constraint. This suggests:

2. Duty for duty's sake.

It is clear that such an expression states a real moral fact; unless a duty is done as duty it is not done morally. An act may be outwardly just what morality demands, and yet if done for the sake of some private advantage it is not counted moral. As Kant expresses it, an act must be done not only in accordance with duty, but from duty. This truth, however, is misinterpreted when it is taken to mean that the act is to be done for the sake of duty, and duty is conceived as a third thing outside the act itself. Such a theory contradicts the true sense of the phrase 'duty for duty's sake', for it makes the act done not for its own sake, but as a mere means to an abstract law beyond itself. 'Do the right because it is the right' means do the right thing because it is the right thing; that is, do the act disinterestedly from interest in the act itself. A duty is always some act or line of action, not a third thing outside the act to which it is to conform. In short, duty means the act which is to be done, and 'duty for duty's sake' means do the required act as it really is; do not degrade it into a means for some ulterior end. This is as true in practice as in theory. A man who does his duty not for the sake of the acts themselves, but for the sake of some abstract 'ideal' which he christens duty in general, will have a morality at once hard and barren, and weak and sentimental.

3. The agency of moral authority in prescribing moral law and stimulating to moral conduct.

The facts, relied upon by Bain and Spencer, as to the part played by social influences in imposing duties, are undeniable. The facts, however, are unaccountable upon the theory of these writers, as that theory would, as we have seen, explain only the influence of society in producing acts done from fear or for hope of reward. But if the individual and others are equally members of one society, if the performance by each man of his own function constitutes a good common to all, it is inevitable that social authorities should be an influence in constituting and teaching duties. The community, in imposing its own needs and demands upon the individual, is simply arousing him to a knowledge of his relationships in life, to a knowledge of the moral environment in which he lives, and of the acts which he must perform if he is to realize his individuality. The community in awakening moral consciousness in the morally immature may appeal to motives of hope and fear. But even this fact does not mean that to the child, duty is necessarily constituted by fear of punishment or hope of reward. It means simply that his capacity and his surroundings are both so undeveloped that the exercise of his function takes mainly the form of pleasing others. He may still do his duty as his duty, but his duty now consists in pleasing others.

On Obligation see Green, Op. cit., pp. 352-356; Alexander, Op. cit., pp. 142-147. For different views, Martineau, Op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 92-119; Calderwood, Op. cit., pp. 131-138, and see also, Grote, Treatise on Moral Ideals, ch. VII.