Democracy and the Ethical Life: A Philosophy of Politics and Community (Second Edition, Expanded)

IV. The Ethics of Community

The Ethics of Community IV Man is by nature a social being, said the classical Greek philosophers . They are joined in that view by Christian thinkers . It has been a fundamental tenet of the tradition resulting from these sources that social life aims beyond cooperation for the attainment of material well-being and social peace to the realization of the good life. Against the background of the above analysis we are better able to understand the process by which this goal is approached. I have argued that man is capable of cooperation because of his ability to think symbolically. This ability, which makes possible the planning and organization of activity, is a necessary prerequisite for all social life. Indeed, I have indicated that symbolical thought, which is the distinctively human mode of consciousness, is in essence a social faculty; symbols are not private possessions but detached meanings usable in isolation from the experience to which they refer. It has also been observed that social cooperation has as one of its origins a purely selfish wish to escape the grimmer aspects of the war of all against all. To that argument I have added the important point that without the recognition of an ethical, that is, self-justifying, goal above competing interests, social peace will be highly precarious and ultimately succumb to the centrifugal forces of partisan wills. It remains to be discussed 81 82 DEMOCRACY AND THE ETHICAL LIFE how man realizes the good life. It is primarily of man's capacity to achieve that goal that the classical and Christian political philosophers are thinking when they assert that man is by nature social. Because they are concerned not simply with social living, but with the good life, questions of ethics take precedence. Social life may be viewed as promoting a wide array of activities and corresponding values. These can be classed as ethical, intellectual, aesthetic, and economic, 1 with politics defined as cutting across these lines. By a civilized society I mean one where these pursuits have attained a high level. Since the worth of everything must ultimately be judged by its contribution to the final purpose of life, civilization first and foremost Signifies ethical attainment. The intellectual, aesthetic, and economic life of a society may be said to be truly civilized to the degree that these activities serve the ethical goal. While their respective values of truth, beauty, and economy (efficiency) have their own organizing principle or intrinsic standard of perfection, they fulfill their highest role only as they advance the purpose of the ethical. By this definition, a society which has reached a high level of efficiency in attaining its goals, but whose efficiency does not measurably serve the realization of moral ends, would not be civilized in the full sense of the word. The point is vividly illustrated by the early success of the Nazi war machine. Simi1 This way of categorizing human activity is suggested by Benedetto Croce. See his The Philosophy of the Practical, trans. Douglas Ainslie (New York: Biblo and Tannen, 1967). The reader should be cautioned against the weaknesses of this translation. In adopting Croce's four categories, I am not also accepting his monistic philosophical premises. The question may also be asked if his categories give a truly exhaustive account of human life. If they cover the level of life which Aristotle calls "political" and Irving Babbitt calls "humanistic" or "civilized," do they also cover completely what is above that level of life, namely, saintliness ? THE ETHICS OF COMMUNITY 83 lady, a society which exhibits a high degree of intellectual activity but devotes little of it to discovering the conditions of the ethical life would be only marginally civilized. The moral goal for society to which all other goals are subservient and of which they are ideally supportive we may call community. I have argued that man is torn between spiritually disruptive and unifying inclinations. In a social context, the disintegrative pull of a person's lower self will put him in conflict with his fellow men.' His own particularistic wishes will clash with those of others. An uneasy social peace may be maintained through the restraint suggested by enlightened self-interest, but to the extent that men lead ethically undisciplined lives, community in the real sense of the word will be impossible. Community can emerge only in a society where the forces of egotistical interests are tempered by...