Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics

by John Dewey

LXI.

The Sense of Obligation.

There has been much discussion regarding the nature of the act of mind by which obligation is recognized. A not uncommon view has been that the sense of duty as such must be the work of a peculiar faculty of the mind. Admitting that the recognition of this or that particular thing as right or wrong, is the work of ordinary intelligence, it is held that the additional recognition of the absolute obligatoriness of the right cannot be the work of this intelligence. For our intellect is confined to judging what is or has been; the conception of obligation, of something which should be, wholly transcends its scope. There is, therefore, some special moral in faculty called which affixes to the ordinary judgments the stamp of the categorical imperative "You ought".

See for example Maurice on "Conscience". The view is traceable historically to Kant's conception of Practical Reason, but as the view is ordinarily advanced the function of Practical Reason in Kant's philosophy is overlooked. The Practical Reason is no special faculty of man's being; it is his consciousness of himself as an acting being; that is, as a being capable of acting from ideas. Kant never separates the consciousness of duty from the very nature of will as the realization of conceptions. In the average modern presentation, this intrinsic connection of duty with activity is absent. Conscience becomes a faculty whose function it is to clap the idea of duty upon the existent conception of an act; and this existent conception is regarded as morally indifferent.

It is true that Kant's Practical Reason has a certain separateness or isolation. But this is because of his general separation of the rational from the sensuous factor, and not because of any separation of the consciousness of action from the consciousness of duty. If Kant erred in his divorce of desire and duty, then even the relative apartness of the Practical Reason must be given up. The consciousness of obligation is involved in the recognition of any end of conduct, and not simply in the end of abstract law.

Such a conception of conscience, however, is open to serious objections. Aside from the fact that large numbers of men declare that no amount of introspection reveals any such machinery within themselves, this separate faculty seems quite superfluous. The real distinction is not between the consciousness of an action with, and without, the recognition of duty, but between a consciousness which is and one which is not capable of conduct. Any being who is capable of putting before himself ideas as motives of conduct, who is capable of forming a conception of something which he would realize, is, by that very fact, capable of a sense of obligation. The consciousness of an end to be realized, the idea of something to be done, is, in and of itself, the consciousness of duty.

Let us consider again the horse-car conductor (see Sec. [LVI]). After he has analyzed the situation which faces him and decided that a given course of conduct is the one which fits the situation, does he require some additional faculty to inform him that this course is the one which should be followed? The analysis of practical ideas, that is, of proposed ends of conduct, is from the first an analysis of what should be done. Such being the case, it is no marvel that the conclusion of the reflection is: "This should (ought to) be done."

Indeed, just as every judgment about existent fact naturally takes the form 'S is P', so every judgment regarding an activity which executes an idea takes the form, 'S ought (or ought not) to be P'. It requires no additional faculty of mind, after intelligence has been studying the motions of the moon, to insert itself, and affirm some objective relation or truth—as that the moon's motions are explainable by the law of gravitation. It is the very essence of theoretical judgment, judgment regarding fact, to state truth—what is. And it is the very essence of practical judgment, judgment regarding deeds, to state that active relation which we call obligation, what ought to be.

The judgment as to what a practical situation is, is an untrue or abstract judgment.

The practical situation is itself an activity; the needs, powers, and circumstances which make it are moving on. At no instant in time is the scene quiescent. But the agent, in order to determine his course of action in view of this situation, has to fix it; he has to arrest its onward movement in order to tell what it is. So his abstracting intellect cuts a cross-section through its on-going, and says 'This is the situation'. Now the judgment 'This ought to be the situation', or 'in view of the situation, my conduct ought to be thus and so', is simply restoring the movement which the mind has temporarily put out of sight. By means of its cross-section, intelligence has detected the principle, or law of movement, of the situation, and it is on the basis of this movement that conscience declares what ought to be.