Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics

by John Dewey

3. The Independent or Reflective Conscience. The intelligence may not simply appropriate, as its own, conventions embodied in current institutions and codes, but may reflect upon them. It may ask: What is this institution of family, property for? Does the institution in its present form work as it should work, or is some modification required? Does this rule which is now current embody the true needs of the situation, or is it an antiquated expression of by-gone relations? What is the true spirit of existing institutions, and what sort of conduct does this spirit demand?

Here, in a word, we have the same relation to the ethical world, that we have in physical science to the external world. Intelligence is not content, on its theoretical side, with having facts impressed upon it by direct contact or through language; it is not content with coming to feel for itself the value of the truths so impressed. It assumes an independent attitude, putting itself over against nature and cross-questioning her. It proposes its own ideas, its own theories and hypotheses, and manipulates facts to see if this rational meaning can be verified. It criticises what passes as truth, and pushes on to more adequate statement.

The correlative attempt, on the part of intelligence on its practical side, may have a larger or a smaller scope. In its wider course it aims to criticise and to re-form prevailing social ideals and institutions—even those apparently most fixed. This is the work of the great moral teachers of the world. But in order that conscience be critical, it is not necessary that its range be so wide. The average member of a civilized community is nowadays called upon to reflect upon his immediate relationships in life, to see if they are what they should be; to regulate his own conduct by rules which he follows not simply because they are customary, but the result of his own examination of the situation. There is no difference in kind between the grander and the minuter work. And it is only the constant exercise of reflective examination on the smaller scale which makes possible, and which gives efficiency to, the deeper criticism and transformation.

LX.

Reflective Conscience and the Ethical World.

This conception of conscience as critical and reflective is one of the chief fruits of the Socratic ethics, fructified by the new meaning given life through the Christian spirit. It involves the 'right of free conscience'—the right of the individual to know the good, to know the end of action, for himself, rather than to have some good, however imposing and however beneficent, enjoined from without. It is this principle of subjective freedom, says Hegel, which marks the turning-point in the distinction of modern from ancient times (Sec. 124, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, Vol. VIII of Hegel's Works).[2]

[2] I hardly need say how largely I am indebted in the treatment of this topic, and indeed, in the whole matter of the 'ethical world', to Hegel.

But this notion of conscience is misinterpreted when the content as well as the form of conscience is thought to be individual. There is no right of private judgment, in the sense that there is not a public source and standard of judgment. What is meant by this right is that the standard, the source, is not the opinion of some other person, or group of persons. It is a common, objective standard. It is that embodied in social relationships themselves.

The conception of conscience as a private possession, to be exercised by each one in independence of historical forms and contemporary ideals, is thoroughly misleading. The saying "I had to follow my own notion of what is right" has been made the excuse for all sorts of capricious, obstinate and sentimental performance. It is of such notions that Hegel further says: "The striving for a morality of one's own is futile, and by its very nature impossible of attainment; in respect of morality the saying of the wisest men of antiquity is the only true one: To be moral is to live in accordance with the moral tradition of one's country" (Hegel, Works, Vol. I, p. 389). And in discussing the same question, Bradley has said that the wish to have a morality of one's own better than that of the world is to be on the threshold of morality (p. 180).

Yet, on the other hand, conscience should not simply repeat the burden of existing usages and opinions. No one can claim that the existing morality embodies the highest possible conception of personal relations. A morality which does not recognize both the possibility and the necessity of advance is immorality. Where then is the way out from a capricious self-conceit, on one hand, and a dead conformity on the other? Reflective conscience must be based on the moral consciousness expressed in existing institutions, manners and beliefs. Otherwise it is empty and arbitrary. But the existing moral status is never wholly self-consistent. It realizes ideals in one relation which it does not in another; it gives rights to 'aristocrats' which it denies to low-born; to men, which it refuses to women; it exempts the rich from obligations which it imposes upon the poor. Its institutions embody a common good which turns out to be good only to a privileged few, and thus existing in self-contradiction. They suggest ends which they execute only feebly or intermittently. Reflective intelligence cross-questions the existing morality; and extracts from it the ideal which it pretends to embody, and thus is able to criticise the existing morality in the light of its own ideal. It points out the inconsistencies, the incoherencies, the compromises, the failures, between the actual practice and the theory at the basis of this practice. And thus the new ideal proposed by the individual is not a product of his private opinions, but is the outcome of the ideal embodied in existing customs, ideas and institutions.