Module 8: The Good - PDF

1 Module 8: The Good Learning Outcomes At the end of this module, the students should be able to: 1. Define the kinds of Goodness. 2. Determine the good as an end 3. Apply the existence of moral values This module discusses the subjective morality alone is insufficient. If it were all we ha...

1 Module 8: The Good Learning Outcomes At the end of this module, the students should be able to: 1. Define the kinds of Goodness. 2. Determine the good as an end 3. Apply the existence of moral values This module discusses the subjective morality alone is insufficient. If it were all we had, there would be as many judges of morality as there are persons, and sincerity would be the same as truth in moral matters. Conscience can be erroneous as well as correct; error can be vincible as well as invincible. When objective truth is attainable, conscience cannot rest satisfied with a subjective opinion that it knows may be false. Our next endeavor, therefore, must be to find whether there is PROBLEM an objective morality with which the judgment of conscience should be in agreement, and, if so, what that morality is. Henceforth the whole of our study will be devoted to this pursuit. I, as an individual person, rely on my own moral awareness to determine the degree of responsibility I have for my acts, and on my own con science to judge the good or evil, the rightness or wrongness, of these acts I have done in concrete circumstances. There is no more ultimate court of appeal in this world than the testimony of conscience. But subjective morality alone is insufficient. If it were all we had, there would be as many judges of morality as there are persons, and sincerity would be the same as truth in moral matters. Conscience can be erroneous as well as correct; error can be vincible as well as invincible. When objective truth is attainable, conscience cannot rest satisfied with a subjective opinion that it knows may be false. Our next endeavor, therefore, must be to find whether there is an objective morality with which the judgment of conscience should agree, and, if so, what that morality is. Henceforth the whole of our study will be devoted to this pursuit. We begin by asking: 1. Is the good definable? 2. Is the good an end to be sought? 3. Are we obliged to seek the good? 4. Is the good a value simply in itself? 5. What distinguishes moral values from other values? DEFINABILITY OF GOOD What is the good? How do we define goodness? It seems that we must settle this question at the outset, for if we do not know what good means, how will we recognize it when we come across it? On the other hand, no one has succeeded in giving a good definition of 2 good. In fact, would not a good definition of good require that one already know good before defining it? And, if so, why define it? The question of the definability of good was made acute around the turn of the century by George Edward Moore.' His reasoning is that all definition is analysis of a concept into its com. ponents, that good is a simple concept unanalyzable into anything simpler, and that therefore the concept of good is indefinable. We can, of course, point to certain properties in objects be. cause of which we call these objects good, but that does not tell us what is good about these properties or why it is good to have them. In a sense we can define the good, the object which is good, but not the predicate good itself. That we cannot define good does not mean that we cannot know what it is. Not all knowledge is by definition. We cannot define yellow but can only point to yellow objects; the wavelength of the light tells us nothing about the color we see. To try to define good in terms of something else that is not good is not to define it but to lose it. The reduction of good, the simplest of ethical ideas, to something nonethical involves what Moore calls the naturalistic fallacy, as if good were a sort of natural property that some things possess and others lack. Good is just good, irreducible, unanalyzable, and indefinable. One might criticize this argument by pointing out that the dictionary contains a definition of good and that rules for the use of the word good in language can be formulated. Linguistic analysts spend much time at this task, but Moore anticipated them by noting that the subject matter of ethics is the concept of good itself and not correctness in speaking about it. Others solve the problem of the definability of good by actually defining it, for example, as pleasure, desirability, evolution, life according to nature, and similar concepts. We shall have to examine these claims, but they are examples of precisely what Moore means by the naturalistic fallacy. Another objection is that, if good cannot be defined, it will have to be known by some sort of direct intuition. This Moore admits, despite the unpopularity of intuitionism. How much intuition must be admitted in ethics is discussed in a later chapter. Whether or not good is indefinable in principle, we have to begin our study of it without a definition, since we could achieve one only by committing ourselves in advance to a philosophy we have not yet examined. Even without a definition much has been written about the good. The ancients developed one of its most fruitful aspects, the good as end, and we may well begin with this traditional approach. THE GOOD AS END Aristotle begins his Edicy with the statement: "The good is that at which all things aim." This is not to be taken as a definition of the good, but only as a recognition of the relationship between good and end or aim, goal. An end he declares to be "That for the sake of which a thing is done." For him all change is a process whereby some given underlying substrate (the matter) acquires a new specification or determination (the form) through the action of an efficient operator (the agent) moved to act by the attraction of some good (the end). Such a view of the universe with its constant changes supposes teleology, or purposiveness, a directed world in which all things have an aim, as opposed to the mechanistic theory that all changes come about by chance. A directed world needs a 3 principle of direction, and the name for that principle is the nature of each being, Each being is so structured that it acts only along certain definite lines. The nature of a being is not some kind of driver, whether outside or inside the being, not something distinct from the being that acts, but its very self. It is the essence of each being considered as the principle or source of its activity. Direction supposes not only a nature, a moving principle to make a thing go, but also a target toward which to move. So nature and end are correlative terms. Natural activity is teleological activity. Human beings also have a nature, the source of the inner dynamism of their being, making it natural for them to seek the good as their end. That the nature of a being structures it to act along definite lines is not a bar to freedom. Hu man beings have a free nature, are built to act freely; they naturally guide themselves to their end by free choice. Other beings lack freedom and automatically run along tracks their nature has laid. In either case they tend to ends. Every end is a good and every good is an end. An end would not be sought unless it were some how good for the seeker, and the good by being sought is the end or purpose of the seeker's striving. No activity is possible except for the attainment of some end, for the sake of some good. This is the principle of finality or teleology, which St. Thomas explains as follows: "Every agent of necessity acts for an end. For if in a number of causes ordained to one another the first be removed, the others must of necessity be re moved also. Now the first of all causes is the final cause. The reason of which is that matter does not receive form save in so far as it is moved by an agent; for nothing reduces itself from potentiality to act. But an agent does not move except out of intention for an end. For if the agent were not determinate to some particular effect, it would not do one thing rather than another: consequently in order that it produce a determinate effect, it must of necessity be determined to some certain one, which has the nature of an end" In other words, before it acts, a being with potentiality or ability for acting is in an indeterminate condition, and can either act or not act, act in this way or in that way. No action will ever take place, unless something removes this indetermination, stirs the being to act, and points its action in 1 certain direction. Hence the principle of finality, "every agent acts for an end," is implicit in the concepts of potency and act, and in the whole notion of causality. If every agent acts for an end, the human agent certainly does too. The foregoing description is based on Aristotle, who gave to teleology its classical expression. But our interest is in human beings. Whatever one may think of teleology in the world at large, no sane person can deny that human beings act for ends. Even one who tried to prove that they do not would have this as the end or purpose of the argument. Failure to adapt one's conduct to rational ends is the accepted sign of mental derangement. The very admission, therefore, that there are such things as rational human acts is an admission that human beings do act for ends. 4 The question arises: If all things, including hu mans, inevitably seek an end that is also the good, how can any act fail to be good, how can human conduct go wrong? The good as end, as perfective, as good for, has various meanings among which we must sort out the moral good. The thesis that "every being is good" refers only to the goodness of existence. It means only that every being, by the very fact that it is a being. has some goodness about it and is good for some thing, contributing in some way to the harmony and perfection of the universe. Every being also has a certain amount of physical goodness, which consists in a completeness of parts and competence of activity. Though some things are physically defective, they are good insofar as they have being, defective insofar as they lack being From the fact that every being is good for something however, it does not follow that every being is good for everything. What is good for one thing may not be good for another, and what is good for a thing under these circumstances or from this aspect may not be good for the same thing under different conditions or from another stand point. The branch of philosophy called metaphysics considers the good in its broadest scope and so can find good in everything in some way, ethics considers the good in the limited line of voluntary and responsible human conduct. The murderer levels his gun and fells his victim. It is a good shot but an evil deed. As a piece of marksmanship it is admirable, but as human conduct it is damnable. There is some good in all things, but it need not be the ethical or moral good. Because not everything is good for everything, it is up to a person's judgment to determine what things are good for him or her. Human judgments are open to error, and therefore one may mistake an apparent good for a genuine good. Unless a thing at least appears to be good we could not seek it at all, for it could make no appeal to our emotions, the affective side of our consciousness; but we can easily confuse what is good for something else with what is good for us, or what would be good for us in other circumstances with what is good for us here and now. If some lesser good makes impossible the attainment of the absolutely necessary good, this lesser good is not the true or genuine good for us. The moral good must always be a genuine good, but not every genuine good is a moral good. Thus there are degrees of goodness. We may seek a good not for its own sake but as a means to some further good; it is desirable only because it leads to something more desirable. This is the useful or instrumental good, and it is good only in a qualified and analogous sense; such are all tools and instruments. We may seek a good for the satisfaction or enjoyment it gives without considering whether it will be beneficial to our whole being; it delights us now and may be harmless, but it offers us no guarantee that it may not hurt us in the long run and render us unfit for the greater good. This is the pleasant good, and it attracts us most vividly. Lastly, we may seek a good because it contributes toward the perfection of our being as a whole, because it fits a human being as such. This is the befitting good, the upright and honorable, the noble and righteous, and it is good in the fullest sense. It is not only good for us, as the term befitting implies, but good in itself as an independent value apart from its effect on others; under this aspect it is 5 called the intrinsic good. The moral good, while it may also be useful and pleasant, is always and necessarily the befitting good. This analysis of the kinds of good shows that human conduct must always be directed toward the good in some sense, but that this is not always the moral good. To strive for the moral good is life's purpose and our obligation. THE GOOD AS OUGHT The good, we have just seen, is our constant quest. We are not born possessors of it but are born seekers of it. Our existence is a passage from capacity to fulfillment, from potentiality to actuality, from perfectibility to perfection. Our emptiness clamors to be filled, and whatever satisfies our hunger is called a good. Thus the good appears to us as an end. But what obliges us to engage in this quest? As an end the good is attractive and invites us to itself. It calls for being, it deserves to be, it should be realized, it ought to exist. But the bare recognition that a thing ought to be does not of itself imply that I am the one who should make it be, We say that a work of art ought to be, in the sense that it is a noble conception worthy of production and it would be a shame not to bring it to light; yet no particular artist is strictly obliged to create it. We tell someone that she ought to invest her money in this enterprise, that it ought to bring her a better return than she can hope for from any other investments; yet no one thinks of this ought as a strict obligation. Here we see two different senses of the ought, which the good always implies, the nonmoral and the moral ought. Every good except the moral good is optional, but the moral good is necessary There is no getting away from the demands of morality, from the requirement of living a good life and thus being a good person. This obligatory character of the moral good is what impresses itself on those who see ethics chiefly in terms of duty. It is not so much the loveliness of the good that invites them as the stern voice of duty that calls them. Often the choice is between a moral good and some other kind of good, and the other kind of good seems at the moment by far the more attractive. If we. consider the good merely as an object of desire, as an end to be sought, the apparent good can beckon with alluring smiles while the genuine good gravely points to the harder path. Yet one is obliged to follow genuine good and not merely apparent good. What is the nature of this moral ought that commands with such authority? It is a kind of necessity that is unique and irreducible to any other. It is not a logical necessity based on the impossibility of thinking contradictions. It is not a metaphysical necessity stemming from the identity of being with itself: what is, is. It is not a physical necessity, a must that compels us from without, destroying our freedom. Nor is it a biological or a psychological necessity, an internal impossibility of acting differently built into our nature, likewise destroying our freedom. It is a moral necessity, that of the ought, guiding us in what we recognize as the fitting use of our free. dom. It is a freedom that is a necessity and a necessity that is a freedom. The requirement is absolute, and thus it is a necessity, but it can also be refused, though to our loss, and thus it is a freedom. 6 Moral necessity affects me, the acting subject, but it comes from the object, the kind of act I the subject am performing. The act in its real being is something contingent that may or may not be, but in its ideal being as held up to my reason and will for deliberation and choice, it assumes a practical necessity demanding decision. The demand is absolute. Bad use of artis tic, economic, scientific, and other particular abilities is penalized by failure, not by fault, because I had no obligation to pursue these endeavors and hence no absolute obligation to succeed in them. But I cannot help being hu man and absolutely have to succeed as a human being. If I am a failure at it, it is my fault because the failure was willfully chosen. I do not be. come bad in a certain line, but become a bad person. Everything I do expresses my personality in some way, but the use of my freedom is the actual exertion of my unique personality as constituting my inmost self. Take the case of a man offered a huge fortune for one act of murdering his best friend. Minimize the dangers and enhance the advantages as much as possible. Make the act absolutely fool proof. Yet it ought not to be done. Why not? 1. Eliminate the legal sanction. Suppose that the man is not only certain of not being caught but also finds some loophole by which he does not even break any existing civil law and could not be prosecuted for any crime. Yet he sees himself a murderer and cannot approve his act. 2. Eliminate the social sanction. Since no one will know, there is no one's disapproval to be feared. Yet he deserves that disapproval even if he does not receive it. How different when social sanctions are not deserved! We do not blame ourselves when we are innocent but blame society for condemning us unjustly. 3. Eliminate the psychological sanction. The feelings of depression, disgust, and shame, the inability to eat or sleep with the twinge of re morse and guilt, may disturb him, but others can be immune to such feelings, and even in him they can come from other sources. The moral element remains. If somehow the guilty feelings could be removed so that he no longer felt any psychological disturbance over his deed, still in all sincerity he would judge his act wrong and would know that he is guilty, despite the absence of feelings. Guilt is not a subjective feeling; it is the objective quality of evil that accrues to the person who does the evil deed. Whether one feels guilty or not, the guilt belongs to the person who is the source of the evil deed. 4. Eliminate the religious sanction. Were God not to punish it and were we certain that he would not, even in this absurd hypothesis the act ought not to be done. The doer might feel glad to escape but would know that he did not deserve to es cape. The act is of the kind that God ought to condemn, and we would be disappointed in him if he did not. We would begin to question God's justice, so that God himself would no longer measure up to the ideal. This is perhaps the clearest indication of the absoluteness of the moral order. 5. What remains is the moral sanction. It is intrinsic to the very act itself, identical with the deliberate choice of the will the relationship be. tween the doer and the deed. 7 In despising the moral good I despise myself. As I accept or reject the moral good, I accordingly rise or fall in my own worth as a person. The moral good provides the scale by which I necessarily rate myself, unavoidably judge myself. This judgment is not merely a subjective opinion but an objective estimate of my true worth as a person in the scheme of things. This rise or fall is not something optional; I am not allowed to fall. It is not a question of whether I am interested in my own betterment; I am not allowed not to be. It is not a disjunctive necessity: Do this or take the consequences. It is simply: Do this. I am not allowed to expose myself to the consequences of not doing it. In fact, whatever con sequences there are must themselves be judged by this moral criterion, and ultimate consequences must contain their own moral worth. Some writers' prefer to express this ought aspect by the terms right and wrong rather than good and bad. It is true that the first pair have a more obligatory flavor than the second, but it is impossible to get people to use such simple terms with consistency, especially if they are taken as indefinables. We can use them as synonyms and rely on the context to make them clear. As we emphasize the good as end or the good as ought, we have two main varieties of ethics: the teleological and the deontological An un- fortunate opposition between these two views has infected the whole study, as if one must opt either for an ethics of ends and consequences or for an ethics of law and obligation, in a word, for an ethics of happiness or for an ethics of duty. Is it possible to go beyond such a dichotomy and to show that these two aspects are not opposed but supplementary? Should not the good be done for its own sake, purely and simply because it is good, independently of what consequences it may lead to or what authority may impose it as a duty? This may appear from a third and fairly modern approach to the good, the axiological, the con sideration of the good as a value. THE GOOD AS VALUE Value in General The term value or worth seems to have its origin in economics, but long before the rise of axiology as a formal study it was applied analogously to other aspects of life. There is no more agreement on the definition of value than there is on the definition of good, but in practice we all know what a value is, and our discussion can begin on this commonsense level. One thing appeals to us in some way, whereas something else does not. What appeals may supply a need, satisfy a desire, arouse an interest, stimulate an emotion, provoke a response, motivate a deed, or merely draw an approval. The existence of subjective values- -valuations or evaluations or value judgments, as some prefer to call them---is a matter of experience. We do make value judgments, whether these judgments are justified or not, and whether they have any real content to them or not. Some of these judgments are noncomparative, in which we merely express our approval or disapproval; others are comparative, and by putting them in order we can construct a scale of values. A full scale 8 would be too complex for anyone to complete, but we all have some constant preferences that represent known points on our scale. Some general characteristics of value immediately appear. 1. Values are bipolar, with a positive and a negative pole: pleasant, painful; easy, difficult; strong, weak; rich, poor; beautiful, ugly; true, false; good, bad. The positive pole is the one preferred; the negative pole is better not called a value at all but a disvalue. 2. Values are not homogeneous but of many kinds, some quite unrelated, and this is why the construction of a complete scale of values is so difficult; there are too many crosscuts. 3. Values transcend facts in the sense that nothing ever wholly comes up to our expectations; even if anything should, it only shows that our expectations were pitched too low and we want something further. 4. Values, though not wholly realizable, clamor for realization. They should exist, they deserve to be, even if we have no way of bringing them into existence. Existence of Value Do values really exist or do they belong wholly to the domain of thought? Do we call a thing valuable because it possesses some real property in itself or because we clothe it with a value by our attitude toward it? The subjectivist philosopher, to be consistent, must adopt the latter view. But even objectivist philosophers, who in their theory of knowledge admit the existence of real being that is there independently of our thinking, can be subjectivist on the question of value. Things exist, they say, but whatever value they have is conferred on them by us; there is objective being, but no objective value. What evidence is there on this question? That there are values is evident from the fact that we have preferences. That some values are wholly subjective is attested by the arbitrariness of some of our preferences. The thing has no intrinsic worth, at least for us, but we give it a value because of our peculiar prejudices, our psychological conditioning, our unaccountable tastes and fancies. Social as well as personal values can be subjective. Polls, popular vote, and other forms of opinion gathering are only a summary of the personal values of individuals and do not prove that there is an objective basis for the widespread preference. Other values are subjective in nature, but their lack of complete arbitrariness shows that they have some objective basis. Many values, such as the value of paper money, of credit, of reputation, of academic degrees, or of artistic masterpieces, are created by human convention. That these conventions are not wholly subjective is seen in the fact that, if they have no backing in reality, they are consider fraudulent and their value vanishes. 9 Besides both of these varieties of subjective value, we find others that we can properly call objective. Not that any value can be so absolutely objective that it does not contain a subjective component. All values have relation to a valuer; they are values for somebody. When we call a value objective, we do not deny this relation to a valuing subject but assert the existence of an objective reason for this relation in the valued object. There is something about the thing that makes it suitable for this person, so that the personal preference is not arbitrary. Thus a person's taste in foods is subjective and arbitrary, but the need for food in general is objective and rooted in the person's biological requirements. How extensive objective values are can be seen from a partial list of them. That life is a value and death a disvalue, health a value and sickness a disvalue, pleasure a value and pain a disvalue, prosperity a value and poverty a disvalue, beauty a value and ugliness a disvalue, intelligence a value and stupidity a disvalue--carry the list as far as you want-is too evident to need comment. The reason is not merely the fact that most people prefer one to the other, but its fittingness or unfittingness for the kind of beings we are. How do we come to recognize these values? That depends on the stance we take toward our selves and the world. If we simply take an objective stance, then we presuppose the existence of a value-neutral, factual world independent of our consciousness of it. We presuppose further that our experiences are common to every other person who has "normal" sense perception, that there is common evidence and common observations, that there are common objects and a common world which we all share. None of us has anything like a privileged role in this com. mon universe; neither we nor any of the objects and events are intrinsically valuable. On the other hand, if we take a personal stance, we view our selves and the world personally and self-consciously. We find ourselves emotionally involved, not in reality as a whole, but in those portions of reality that matter to us, that are important to us. The world from this standpoint is substantially identical to the world as viewed from the oblective stance, but there is a difference, the difference in emotional involvement makes. The objects of the world are not just heavy or light, made of iron, wood, or canvas; they are also beautiful or ugly, pleasing or displeasing. The people are not merely other human beings with such and such physical characteristics; they are also beautiful or ugly, attractive or repulsive, lo able or unlovable. Actions are more than mere events with such and such causes; they are also important or trivial, admirable or blameworthy. The world from this subjective or personal standpoint includes objective value; it is not value neutral and simply factual. Our emotional involvement is what makes the difference. Why? We have not stopped our processes of thinking and willing the very processes we have been using in taking our objective stance. What we have done is allow our emotions to operate, and they have shown us that reality is much more than just a set of facts. They have shown us the value that is there in the world, and we have initiated certain responses to the values that our emotions have revealed to us. If we do not repress our emotions but rather allow them the freedom to operate, we find on reflection that they are a further way we have of being conscious of ourselves and our world. In fact, by way of our emotions we take whatever stance we do within reality, even the so-called completely objective stance. Even the very desire to know in an objective manner by screening out personal attitudes and preferences 10 is rooted in emotion. We are more than just sensing, thinking, and will ing beings, we are also capable of experiencing by way of our emotions. We sometimes use the term feeling to mean our emotional life, our life of hoping, enjoying, loving, hating, appreciating, esteeming, sorrowing, and so forth. Emotion is as fundamental for experiencing as are sensing, thinking, and willing. Emotion is our way of orienting ourselves to ward a person, situation, event, or thing to which we already stand in, or now come into, fundamental relation. Take, for example, being excited about someone or something. That someone or something is being experienced as valuable and the "being excited" arises out of or is centered in an awareness of value. The "being excited" is an immediate and direct awareness of objective value; it is an opening of oneself out toward an other person or thing, and value reveals itself in that very "being excited." The emotion is not merely directed toward something or someone other than myself but also reveals objective rea- sons for the "being excited." Thus our original, personal experience of objective value is through conscious emotion as immediate and direct appreciation of value. Between emotion and its object there is no medium such as an act of imagination, understanding, or judgment. Emotion arises spontaneously and uniquely as a directedness toward an object, person, event, or even reality as a whole in its value dimension; the object, person, event, or reality as a whole in its turn reveals itself as value. Emotion is our way of being beyond ourselves in relation to and involved in what is other than ourselves and precisely in terms of value, worth, or importance. Emotion is our way of actively receiving the objective value that is there to be perceived. Through emotion we are active in relation to reality so that reality reveals itself as it is, namely, as having a value dimension that is knowable and can be responded to. What is known through emotion is irreducible to what is known through sense and intellect. Emotion, as value appreciation, is insightful and preconceptual. The value discovered at the level of emotion is the content that is preserved and transformed at the levels of forming intellectual value concepts and making intellectual value judgments that utilize such concepts. Value appreciation is immediate and direct involvement with reality; it is an open involvement in which one sees, as it were, for the first time and something new is revealed, to wit, objective value. Emotion also grounds all will activity, because all ethical willing is based on some value appreciation. The will is not activated by a judgment concerning what is goal or by a concept of a good. The will's motives are concrete gods, and what is good is in fact good by virtue of a value that reveals itself concretely through emotion. In the absence of value, the will cannot move. Unless emotion makes value insightfully present, the will cannot be actualized in the ethical sense. Some derivative values can be arrived at by logical reasoning from other values, but the primary values are not reasoned. They simply present themselves. We experience the attraction of the good by way of our emotions. When we ask ourselves why the thing is attractive to us, either we find that there is no reason but our own psychological conditioning or the passing fads of the group, and these values we label subjective; or we 11 find an objective reason in a real suitability of the thing to ourselves, a suitability that we do not create but find already existing, and these values we call objective. The difficulty can be raised that all values are only abstractions and therefore subjective because they exist only in the mind that conceives them. This objection rests on the theory of knowledge called nominalism, which underlies most forms of empiricism and positivism. Nominalism admits no basis in reality for abstractions and universal ideas but considers them as mere names that facilitate our way of speaking. Hence it is not surprising that nominalists have trouble with value, which is an abstract concept and a universal idea. The difficulty here is not with values but with nominalism, which is an inadequate theory of knowledge. None but extreme Platonists wish to give to abstractions independent existence as real things, and thus abstractions exist formally as such only in the mind. Most abstractions, however, are not formed arbitrarily and therefore have their basis or foundation in the way things really are. Those who admit a realistic basis to universal ideas will accord the same realism to values, that is, to those values we called objective. As there is no universal without a knower to make the abstraction, so there is no value without a valuer to do the valuing. Values, like other universals, are drawn from the data of experience and have their concrete fulfillment in existing persons, things, and actions. It is a fact that we evaluate goods to buy, persons to employ, students to reward, candidates to vote for, and friends to live with. We do so because we see some objective qualities in them that make them deserving. The foregoing is meant to be introductory to the question of moral values. Are there moral values distinct from other values such as those we have been describing, and are these moral values objective? Moral Values The common estimate of mankind separates moral values from other values. We say that a man is a good scholar, athlete, businessman, politician, scientist, artist, soldier, worker, speaker, entertainer, companion, and yet that he is not a good man. We say that someone else is a failure at some or perhaps even all of these, and yet that he is a good man. On what do we base such Judgments? Why do we separate out this last value? Because we recognize that it is distinct from the others and more fundamental, more valuable than the other values. Moral values are understood to be those that make a person good purely and simply as a per son. They are not external objects that, though they may help a person to become the kind of being he or she ought to be, are not the very person. Nor are they qualities or attributes of the person but outside his or her control, such as having good health or long life or family status or bodily beauty or mental acumen or artistic talent or a magnetic personality. These are all values, but no one can command them. Moral values are personal, not only because a person has them, but because they are the expression of each one's unique personality in the innermost center of one's being, as shown in the act of choice. Moral values, therefore, reside both in the acts a person chooses to do and in the 12 results of those acts on the character of the person. There are morally good or bad human acts and morally good or bad persons. A shark attacks one of two young men swimming at the beach. The other comes to his rescue and, braving the danger, wards off the shark and brings the wounded companion to shore. We feel pity for the one who was attacked but pass no moral judgment on him. He did not act but was acted on. Toward the rescuer our attitude is quite different. His swimming may have been awkward, his lifesaving technique faulty, his approach to the shark unscientific, his act unseen and unpublicized, and the whole venture useless be. cause the victim died. Even one whose feelings are not aroused to admiration cannot help judging the act to be fine and noble and worthy of approval. It has no value but one, and that is its moral value. Suppose an opposite case. The shark attacks both swimmers. To save himself, one of them deliberately kicks his companion into the path of the shark's mouth, thus gaining time to scramble onshore while the shark is occupied with its morsel. As an act of self-saving it has value, for it was done quickly, efficiently, cleverly, and resourcefully. But we cannot approve. The only excuse for such an act would be instinct or panic. As a willful, deliberate act it merits condemnation. Two husbands have wives afflicted with a lingering and incapacitating disease. Both families are alike: five children, moderate income, no hope of remedy. One husband does his best to be both father and mother to the children, works over time to pay for his wife's care, and spends what time he can with her to brighten her days. The other man decides that he has had enough, deserts wife and children, gets work in a distant city under an assumed name, and is not heard of again. Our emotional attitude toward the wives and children is one of congratulations in one case and compassion in the other, but they are only passive figures in the case. Toward the husbands also our emotional responses differ: the one we admire and the other we scorn. When we make our intellectual judgment, we have to approve of the first husband and disapprove of the second. It is not a question of consequences. Suppose that the deserted dependents are better taken care of by public charity than the husband could have done for them. Still we must condemn his action as morally wrong. The moral value and disvalue remain in these two cases as irreducible elements. Examples of this type could be multiplied in definitely. But these are sufficient for our purpose: to isolate the characteristics of moral value as distinct from any other value. 1. Moral value can exist only in a free personal being and in that person's voluntary or human acts. By willing moral good a person becomes good. It cannot happen accidentally. It makes no difference whether the act is successful or not. It is done intelligently in the sense that the agent knows what he or she is doing and wills to do it, but it need not be brilliantly planned and executed. 2. Moral value is universal in the sense that what holds for one holds for all in the same conditions. The reason is that it shows the worth of a person as a person. Even when no 13 one else could duplicate one person's circumstances, all would approve of his or her action as the right thing to do in the case, whether they would have the strength to do it or not. 3. Moral value is self-justifying. Thus at least it appears on the surface, though we shall have to delve deeper into this matter in a later chapter. We suspect that any further justification of moral value will be found to be part of the moral order itself and not some extrinsic reason. Even the truth must be pursued morally, though it be the truth about morals. 4. Moral value has a preeminence over every other value. A moral value can be compared only with another moral value. If a moral value conflicts with another type of value, this other must take a subordinate place. We think that a person simply must be true to himself or herself as a person, no matter how much else might be lost in the effort. 5. Moral value implies obligation. We just discussed this in our section on the good as ought and will say more on it later. Someone may dis regard all other values, and we shall call that person foolish, stupid, clumsy, crude, dull, ignorant, impractical, and many other names, but we can still respect the individual as a person. Not so if he or she loses personal moral integrity. The Moral Ideal The foregoing discussion brings out the fact that we do form for ourselves an ideal of human conduct and an ideal of personhood. These are not two ideals, for a person's conduct is that person's life. It is only good conduct that can make a good person, and a person is called good because that person's past acts show him or her to be the kind of person from whom good acts are expected. We find it impossible not to form such an ideal, since it is implied in every moral judgment, and we do make moral judgments. The word ideal should not be understood here as some romantic fancy, a knight in shining armor, some sort of superman or bionic woman with unearthly pow crs, the kind of being that could not happen in real life. What we use in moral judgment is not an idealized figment of the imagination nor an esthetic ideal, but a moral ideal. It is true that no one ever perfectly lives up to it, but it must mean the ideal a person could live up to because one ought to. The ideal as an ideal does not exist in reality, but it is not subjective in the sense of being arbitrary. It is an ideal image or model constructed out of the core of values we have recognized in the persons we have encountered in life. Our initial recognition of our parents was not simply to see them as two factual human beings. Through our emotions we found in them a core of values against which we measured other persons present. This initial value recognition, made possible by our own emotional value appreciation, is the source of the ideal moral model we develop for ourselves. Our acts of willing presuppose the value content of the model and are grounded in our love for the model. We follow and strive to be like the person we love as our model. We form an image of our parents, relatives, and friends and determine their significance for us on the basis of the core of values we find in them. What we find on 14 reflection is an ideal image of the moral person that is formed as a result of the values we have encountered in others and projected for ourselves as our ideal of the moral person. This ideal image or model exerts an effective ness on one's moral judgments and choices; it lies in the depths of our consciousness, moving, growing, and transforming itself and us in a mysterious manner. The model is a kind of exemplar of personal value accessible to our emotional insight and love; it is a person, though not necessarily one actually existing, who exhibits a unique value structure in his or her behavior. The model's effectiveness as a moral ideal is grounded in his or her value structure, and we experience it as the moral demand of an ideal ought, not a duty ought. The model attracts, draws, invites, allures us in the sense of being a person who already is most nearly what he or she ought be. We experience the demand as a task, namely, o is a demand to become what only each of us as individuals can become. The model is not the zeal toward which we strive, and yet for each of us our individual model is goal-determining. How do we discover our own personal model? Only in the performance of our practical every day actions is our ideal model localized and available for reflection. If we never take the time to reflect on our actions and our experiences of ourselves acting In various situations, we shall never become conscious of our model as a model. Prior to reflection, however, we do have the experience of knowing that our actions are or are not measuring up to our ideal, or that they are in conflict with or in violation of our ideal. In such experiences we are recognizing the model in practice without making a special act of recognition. The moral model is regulating each of our experiences without our becoming expressly aware of the model as a model. Only in reflection can we begin to bring our ideal moral model into focus. The moral model is effective not only in our Individual actions. It also effects a moral trans formation in us. We give ourselves freely to the attractiveness (values) of the model to become as the model is, not what the model is. We learn to will and act as the model wills and acts. This is neither a case of slavish imitation nor of simple obedience to the commands of another person. No, this is a free response to recognized value. We grow morally by striving to be and live as the model is and lives. Primarily it is a matter of loving what the model loves and as the model loves, for only in this way can each of us grow as a person and so gradually become what each of us in our own individuality can become. To become the person we can become re quires something more than Intellectual keen ness. One must have a love of self and a love for others that generates the energy and enthusiasm needed to seek to become the person each of us as individuals can become. If we are ever to understand this, it will be thanks to love. Love seeks so that understanding may find. We do not seek what we already possess and yet to seek is to assume in some way the thing sought and so to know it already but not with perfect clarity. Once love for the moral ideal is awakened, that same love provides a favorable atmosphere and beams forth a light that illumines the values, the moral qualities and perfections, of our moral model. Love reveals to us what we would not see without it and love inspires us to go 15 beyond ourselves as we are now in order to become what we can yet be. Love for the moral model's value is the energizing force of the entire moral life. As the artist has an ideal of the perfectly pro portioned human body, as the scholar has an ideal of the perfectly intelligent human mind and, being human, these are not beyond the possibility of realization--so we all have an ideal of the perfectly living human being. So far as a per. son approaches this ideal, he or she has moral value and is good. So far as one admits into his or her life that which degrades this ideal, that person has moral disvalue and is bad. The notion of the good as expressed here is that of the intrinsic, or perfect. good as opposed to the instrumental, or perfective, good. The ideal is good, not as leading to something else, not as a means useful to something further, but in Itself. It has value because it has what It ought to have to be itself in the fullest expression of itself. This is the good in the highest sense, for what is good for another ultimately supposes something for which others are good, and this last must be good in itself. This conception of the good, especially this latter part dealing with the moral ideal, derives from Plato and Max Scheler. The unacceptability of Plato's interpretation of ideals should not prejudice us against what is true in his thought. We need not accept his theory of a direct vision of the ideal as Ideas or Forms recalled from a former life in which we saw them more clearly. Our concepts, including our concept of the ideal good can be manufactured by the process of abstraction and intellectual refinement from the data of experience. How we do this and what standards we use in judging our moral ideas and ideals will be ours occupation throughout the next several chapters.