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The Moral Self: From Ethics (1932)
- Indiana University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
I. THE SELF AND CHOICE The self has occupied a central place in the previous discussions, in which important aspects of the good self have been brought out. The self should be wise or prudent, looking to an inclusive satisfaction and hence subordinating the satisfaction of an immediately urgent single appetite; it should be faithful in acknowledgment of the claims involved in its relations with others; it should be solicitous, thoughtful, in the award of praise and blame, use of approbation and disapprobation, and, finally, should be conscientious and have the active will to discover new values and to revise former not~')ns. We have not, however, examined just what is the significance of the self. The important position of the self in morals, and also various controversies of moral theory which have gathered about it, make such an examination advisable. A brief reference to the opposed theories will help to indicate the points which need special attention. A most profound line of cleavage has appeared in topics already discussed. Some theories hold that the self, apart from what it does, is the supreme and exclusive moral end. This view is contained in Kant's assertion that the Good Will, aside from consequences of acts performed, is the only Moral Good. A similar idea is implicit whenever moral goodness is identified in an exclusive way with virtue, so that the final aim of a good person is, when summed up briefly, to maintain his own virtue. When the self is assumed to be the end in an exclusive way, then conduct, acts, consequences , are all treated as mere means, as external instruments for maintaining the good self. The opposed point of view is found in the hedonism of the earlier utilitarians when they assert that a certain kind of consequences, pleasure, is the only good end and that the self and its qualities are mere means for producing these consequences. Our own theory gives both self and consequences indispensable roles. We have held, by implication, that neither one can be made to be merely a means to the other. There is a circular arrangement. The self is not a mere means to producing consequences because the consequences, when of a moral kind, enter The Moral Self From Ethics (1932) 341 into the formation of the self and the self enters into them. To use a somewhat mechanical analogy; bricks are means to building a house, but they are not mere means because they finally compose a part of the house itself; if being a part of the house then reacted to modify the nature of the bricks themselves the analogy would be quite adequate. Similarly; conduct and consequences are important, but instead of being separate from the self they form, reveal, and test the self. That which has just been stated in a formal way will be given concrete meaning if we consider the nature of choice, since choice is the most characteristic activity of a self. Prior to anything which may be called choice in the sense of deliberate decision come spontaneous selections or preferences. Every appetite and impulse, however blind, is a mode of preferring one thing to another; it selects one thing and rejects others. It goes out with attraction to certain objects, putting them ahead of others in value. The latter are neglected although from a purely external standpoint they are equally accessible and available. We are so constructed that both by original temperament and by acquired habit we move toward some objects rather than others. Such preference antecedes judgment of comparative values; it is organic rather than conscious. Afterwards there arise situations in which wants compete; we are drawn spontaneously in opposite directions. Incompatible preferences hold each other in check. We hesitate, and then hesitation becomes deliberation: that weighing of values in comparison with each other of which we have already spoken. At last, a preference emerges which is intentional and which is based on consciousness of the values which deliberation has brought into view. We have to make up our minds, when we want two conflicting things, which of them we really want. That is choice. We prefer spontaneously , we choose deliberately; knowinglr Now every such choice sustains a double relation to the self. It reveals the existing self and it forms the future self. That which is chosen is that which is found congenial to the desires and habits of the self as it already exists . Deliberation has an important function in this...