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A Note on the Meaning of Right and Wrong1 AUREL KOLNAI 1955 1. A CLASSIC PROBLEM IN ETHICS Do we prefer, morally, the “high-principled” or the “virtuous” man: the scrupulous duty-performer of Kant or the Aristotelian virtuoso of “prudence ” for whom doing the good has become “second nature”—who, in other words, is habitually pursuing “his” good in the perfect way that renders it identical with “the” good? No unequivocal solution is possible to this puzzle. Absolutely speaking , the second type of “good man” may appear preferable. For, obviously , he who does the good with ease, with all or most of his “inclinations”2 harmoniously assenting to his course of action and participating in the tracing of his conduct, must be more intrinsically permeated with “goodness ”—nearer to the “saint” , indeed—than he who, again and again, laboriously , loudly and sweatingly, as it were, asserts his “respect for the law” and achieves its “triumph” over his unruly, or at any rate “unsympathetic ” , desires.Yet, on the other hand, this latter kind of moral man lives in keener awareness of moral duty as such; if we find him less loveable we are apt to credit him with greater merit; and, as students of ethics if not purely and simply as men, we may well accord our preference to the Kantian conception on the strength of its casting into higher relief the very essence of morality as distinct from human perfections taken in a broad sense. It might be argued that the “intrinsically good” type of man was only of more agreeable converse, not worthier of being approved––which is by no means the same thing. Again, we are perhaps faced with two irreducible and equally legitimate varieties of moral behaviour: A may be a good man in the duty-conscious fashion, without being able to develop into a good man in the properly virtuous style, while B may act righteously with spontaneous ease, without being able to take much interest in the clear thematic formulation of duties; if these two contrasting temperaments , without ceasing to be such, have both attained a high level of 1 Originally published in Scientiis Artibusque, an anthology of essays published by Herder & Co., Rome, July 1958, for the Hungarian Catholic Academy of Science and Art in exile. 2 Neigungen, a term of contempt for Kant. EXPLORING THE WORLD OF HUMAN PRACTICE objective morality, it is so much the better that both should exist. It would be a poor sort of world in which it were possible to be good in one manner only. To be sure, the objective content of A’s mode of behaviour will, in analogous situations, sometimes differ from B’s: A will, on occasion , decide on a course of action that to B (and perhaps to us) may appear “petty”; and B’s conduct will, on occasion, evoke A’s criticism (which we shall perhaps endorse) on the count of being a trifle “lax” . But, then, are we always able to ascertain, with scientific rigour, as it were, which choice or what conduct is the best in a given case? Far from it. That a loan should be paid back by the borrower is unequivocally certain; that the creditor would do well to remit a debt is obvious in some circumstances and highly improbable in others; but in still another set of circumstances it may pose a most delicate and debatable problem, which must be entrusted to the ultimately inscrutable decision of the agent’s conscience. Even at the peaks of proven morality, characterological differences will retain a legitimate range of influence. But in concrete moral discourse we are not so much interested in contrasting shades of perfection as in the likelihood of actual good conduct. In their respective one-sided coinages, both type A and type B will, on different grounds, evoke a certain distrust on the observer’s (or on their neighbours’) part. A is apt to impress us as a person of predominantly evil inclinations, inhibited, to be sure, and held in check by an enlightened and law-abiding will, devoted to right and averse to wrong—which, by the way, could hardly exist but for one set of at least actual virtuous habits— but not attacked and modified, not ennobled or rectified, in their substance . Such a man appears to do the right thing grudgingly, with an effort betraying that it really goes against his grain; the very sternness of his insistence on duty and the very...

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