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The Logic of the Ethical Judgment Proper [Chapter 7. Interpretation of the Central Moral Categories] 134. [Prior to the occurrence of tension,] every experience begins at a relatively unconscious phase of worth. The next [phase] is where the emphasis is laid upon the process of marking off value; in this the tension occurs and then the unity is rediscovered, but with the tension still conscious. 135. The chiefethical categories ought now to be defined. What do we mean by ethical values? Negative[ly], if this states the logic of judgment, it ought to define the origin of one-sided systems and ought to point out critical places where one is likely to go astray. Again, this logic ought to work both subjectively and objectively so as to apply to individual and social ethics, the presupposition being that the structure and movement are the same in both. 136. Every experience, whether individual or social, develops through these three stages: the logic of the deed, in psychological terms, or of the institutions in social terms.16 This moral image is typical of the process marking the undifferentiated unity ofexperience.0 Certain contradictions arise within the development of experience and the circle becomes an ellipse, one focus standing for subject and the other for predicate. 0 The subject, if taken individually, is the habits; socially the institutions and structure already formed. The predicate stands for the future side, the end worked for rather than the acquired law. This tension constitutes for the individual or society its problem. Every moral experience reduces itself ultimately to the problem ofunifying ideals with these established habits and life. 137. Psychologically it is a tension between habit, including impulse, and purpose , end, or ideal. The solution will bring the habit and the end into a working unity. The movement from the subject to the predicate sets up the ideal or aim. The predicate moving towards the subject, or the ideal reacting upon the habit, establishes the standard. Desire rl)EndAim Standard • Duty 66 Lectures on the Logic ofEthics Consciousness of duty and of desire are correlative, marking the consciousness of the tension. The habit tries to express itselfand sets up an ideal. This reacts upon the habit to reinforce and strengthen it. The former, the duty; the latter , the desire, end. The ideal may stimulate or it may inhibit the habit. The former desire, the latter duty. 138. The thing may be negatively illustrated on the social side by saying that power is conditioned by [an] end. The relative power is determined by conscious or unconscious ideal. The one-sided social theories, Utopias, also illustrate it. Social revolution or anarchism sets up an end which is out of relation to the present power. This is the logic ofanarchism. Excessive radicalism negates present power by setting up an end out of relation with it. Ultra conservatism goes to the opposite extreme of holding on to what we have and refusing to use it for any end. The fixed abstraction in these cases is the logic of conservatism and radicalism. 139. An act is gotten which objectively is a solution, the cessation of the tension, and hence a unity; and we get an enlarged circle. Perhaps in the development of this process of moral experience there would be something corresponding to parabola and hyperbola.!7 A congestion of habits is frequently found, as in Egyptian civilization, holding on to all that it had, and continuing empirically without finding laws, as for example, Greece did with Geometry; or in Scholasticism, both in individual and society. It might be objected that these changes are forced from without, not an extending of the circle. A conquest would seem to be external, but that relationship with the conqueror had existed before but had not been realized. A thing cannot get internal adjustments perfected without coming in contact with the external. When the ellipse becomes the enlarged circle we have the realized moral experience. This takes the form of the good; or, negatively, the bad; and also responsibility. These are no longer in antagonism but two phases of the same thing. 140. Before taking up the logic of the [moral] categories there is a question regarding the nature of the whole process. Every stage of it may be interpreted in accordance with empiricist or rationalistic judgment. (Martineau, intuitional; and Mill, empirical side; Dewey, Syllabus, p. 88; Mackenzie, [An Introduction to Social Philosophy], Chapter IV; Ryland, [Logic: An Introductory Modelfor the Use ofthe University Student,] Chapter...

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