The Approach to Philosophy

by Ralph Barton Perry

Rationalism.

§ [82]. But if a man's life be regarded as a truer representation of his ideals than is his spoken theory, there is little to identify Socrates with the hedonists. At the conclusion of the defence of his own life, which Plato puts into his mouth in the well-known "Apology," he speaks thus:

"When my sons are grown up, I would ask you, O my friends, to punish them; and I would have you trouble them, as I have troubled you, if they seem to care about riches, or anything, more than about virtue; or if they pretend to be something when they are really nothing,—then reprove them, as I have reproved you, for not caring about that for which they ought to care, and thinking that they are something when they are really nothing."[194:10]

It is plain that the man Socrates cared little for the pleasurable or painful consequences of his acts, provided they were worthy of the high calling of human nature. A man's virtue would now seem to possess an intrinsic nobility. If knowledge be virtue, then on this basis it must be because knowledge is itself excellent. Virtue as knowledge contributes to the good by constituting it. We meet here with the rationalistic strain in ethics. It praises conduct for the inherent worth which it may possess if it express that reason which the Stoics called "the ruling part." The riches of wisdom consist for the hedonist in their purchase of pleasure. For the rationalist, on the other hand, wisdom is not coin, but itself the very substance of value.

Eudæmonism and Pietism. Rigorism and Intuitionism.

§ [83]. Rationalism has undergone modifications even more significant than those of hedonism, and involving at least one radically new group of conceptions. Among the Greeks rationalism and hedonism alike are eudæmonistic. They aim to portray the fulness of life that makes "the happy man." In the ethics of Aristotle, whose synthetic mind weaves together these different strands, the Greek ideal finds its most complete expression as "the high-minded man," with all his powers and trappings. But the great spiritual transformation which accompanied the decline of Greek culture and the rise of Christianity, brought with it a new moral sensibility, which finds in man no virtue of himself, but only through the grace of God.

"And the virtues themselves," says St. Augustine, "if they bear no relation to God, are in truth vices rather than virtues; for although they are regarded by many as truly moral when they are desired as ends in themselves and not for the sake of something else, they are, nevertheless, inflated and arrogant, and therefore not to be viewed as virtues but as vices."[195:11]

The new ideal is that of renunciation, obedience, and resignation. Ethically this expresses itself in pietism. Virtue is good neither in itself nor on account of its consequences, but because it is conformable to the will of God. The extreme inwardness of this ideal is characteristic of an age that despaired of attainment, whether of pleasure or knowledge. To all, even the persecuted, it is permitted to obey, and so gain entrance into the kingdom of the children of God. But as every special study tends to rely upon its own conceptions, pietism, involving as it does a relation to God, is replaced by rigorism and intuitionism. The former doctrine defines virtue in terms of the inner attitude which it expresses. It must be done in the spirit of dutifulness, because one ought, and through sheer respect for the law which one's moral nature affirms. Intuitionism has attempted to deal with the source of the moral law by defining conscience as a special faculty or sense, qualified to pass directly upon moral questions, and deserving of implicit obediences. It is characteristic of this whole tendency to look for the spring of virtuous living, not in a good which such living obtains, but in a law to which it owes obedience.

Duty and Freedom. Ethics and Metaphysics.

§ [84]. This third general ethical tendency has thus been of the greatest importance in emphasizing the consciousness of duty, and has brought both hedonism and rationalism to a recognition of its fundamental importance. Ethics must deal not only with the moral ideal, but also with the ground of its appeal to the individual, and his obligation to pursue it. In connection with this recognition of moral responsibility, the problem of human freedom has come to be regarded in the light of an inevitable point of contact between ethics and metaphysics. That which is absolutely binding upon the human will can be determined only in view of some theory of its ultimate nature. On this account the rationalistic and hedonistic motives are no longer abstractly sundered, as in the days of the Stoics and Epicureans, but tend to be absorbed in broader philosophical tendencies. Hedonism appears as the sequel to naturalism; or, more rarely, as part of a theistic system whose morality is divine legislation enforced by an appeal to motives of pleasure and pain. Rationalism, on the other hand, tends to be absorbed in rationalistic or idealistic philosophies, where man's rational nature is construed as his bond of kinship with the universe.