Recent Ethics

RECENT ETHICS Evolutionary Ethics.—From the latter half of the t gth cen tury onwards ethical thought was influenced by Darwinian theo ries. Darwin himself seems never to have questioned (as did some of his sceptical followers) the absolute character of moral obliga tion. What interested him chiefly, in so far as he made a study of morality, was the development of moral conduct in its preliminary stages. He was principally concerned to show that in morality, as in other departments of human life, it was not necessary to postulate a complete and abrupt gap between human and merely animal existence but that the instincts and habits which con tribute to survival in the struggle for existence among animals develop into moral qualities which have a similar value for the preservation of human and social life. Regarding the social tend ency as originally itself an instinct developed out of parental or filial affection, he seems to suggest that natural selection, which was the chief cause of its development in the earlier stages, may very probably influence the transition from purely tribal and social morality into morality in its later and more complex forms. But he admits that natural selection is not necessarily the only cause, and he refrains from identifying the fully developed morality of civilized nations with the "social instinct." Moreover, he recognizes that qualities, e.g., loyalty and sympathy, which may have been of great service to the tribe in its primitive struggle for existence, may become a positive hindrance to physical efficiency (leading as they do to the preservation of the unit) at a later stage. Nevertheless to check our sympathy would lead to the "deteriora tion of the noblest part of our nature," and the question, which is obviously of vital importance, whether we should obey the dic tates of reason, which would urge us only to such conduct as is conducive to natural selection, or remain faithful to the noblest part of our nature at the expense of reason, he leaves unsolved.

Spencer.

It was in Herbert Spencer, that the advocates of evolutionary ethics found their protagonist. Spencer looked to ideas derived from the biological sciences to provide a solution of all the enigmas of morality, as of most other departments of life; and he conceived it "to be the business of moral science to deduce from the laws of life and the conditions of existence what kinds of action necessarily tend to produce happiness and what kinds to produce unhappiness." It is clear, theref ore, that any moral science which is to be of value must wait until the "laws of life" and "conditions of existence" have been satisfactorily determined, presumably by biology and the allied sciences; and there are few more melancholy instances of failure in philosophy than the pau city of the actual results attained by Spencer in his lifetime in his application of the so-called laws of evolution to human conduct— a failure recognized by Spencer himself. His own contribution to ethics was vitiated at the outset by the fact that he never shook himself free from the trammels of the philosophy which his own system was intended to supersede. He began by disclaiming any affinity to Utilitarianism on the part of his own philosophy. He pointed out that the principle of the greatest happiness of the greatest number is a principle without any definite meaning, since men are nowhere unanimous in their standard of happiness, but regard the conception of happiness rather as a problem to be solved than a test to be applied. Universal happiness would re quire omniscience to legislate for it and the "normal" or, as some would say, "perfect" man to desire it. Further, the principle that "everybody is to count for one, nobody for more than one," is equally unsatisfactory. It may be taken to imply that the use less and the criminal should be entitled to as much happiness as the useful and the virtuous. While it gives no rule for private as distinct from public conduct, it provides no real guidance for the legislator. For neither happiness, nor the concrete means to hap piness, nor finally the conditions of its realization can be dis tributed ; and in the end "not general happiness becomes the eth ical standard by which legislative action is to be guided, but universal justice." Yet the implications of this latter conclusion Spencer never fully thought out. He accepted the hedonistic psychology by which the Utilitarians sought to justify their theory while he rejected the theory itself. Good, e.g., defined by him "as conduct conducive to life," is also further defined as that which is "conducive to a surplus of pleasures over pains." Happiness, again, is always regarded as consisting in feeling, ultimately in pleasant feeling, and there is no attempt to apply the same prin ciples of criticism which he had successfully applied to the Utili tarians' "happiness" to the conception of "pleasure." And, though he maintains as against the Utilitarians the existence of certain fundamental moral intuitions which have come to be quite inde pendent of any present conscious experience of their utility, he yet holds that they are the results of accumulated racial expe riences gradually organized and inherited. Finally side by side with a theory of the nature of moral obligation thus fundamentally empirical and a posteriori in its outlook, he maintains in his account of justice the existence of the idea of justice as distinct from a mere sentiment, carrying with it an a priori belief in its existence and identical in its a priori and intuitive character with the ultimate criterion of Utilitarianism itself. The fact is that any close philosophical analysis of Spencer's system of ethics can only result in the discovery of a multitude of mutually conflicting theories. It is frequently impossible to discover whether he wishes by an appeal to evolutionary principles to reinforce the sanctions and emphasize the absolute character of the traditional morality which in the main he accepts without question from the current opinions about conduct of his age, or whether he wishes to dis credit and disprove the validity of that morality in order to sub stitute by the aid of the biological sciences a new ethical code.

Nor is his attempt to construct a scientific criterion out of data derived from the biological sciences productive of satisfactory results. He is hampered by a distinction between "absolute" and "relative" ethics definitely formulated in the last two chapters of The Data of Ethics. Absolute ethics would deal with such laws as would regulate the conduct of ideal man in an ideal society, i.e., a society where conduct has reached the stage of complete adjust ment to the needs of social life. Relative ethics, on the other hand, is concerned only with such conduct as is advantageous for that society which has not yet reached the end of complete adaptation to its environment, i.e., which is at present imperfect. Spencer does not tell us how to bring the two ethical systems into corre lation. And the actual criteria of conduct derived from biological considerations are almost ludicrously inadequate. Conduct, e.g., is said to be more moral in proportion as it exhibits a tendency on the part of the individual or society to become more "definite," "coherent" and "heterogeneous." Or, again, we should recognize as a test of the "authoritative" character of moral ideas or feelings the fact that they are complex and representative, referring to a remote rather than to a proximate good, remembering the while that "the sense of duty is transitory, and will diminish as fast as moralization increases." In fact, no acceptable scientific criterion emerges, and the outcome of Spencer's attempt to ascertain the laws of life and the conditions of existence is either a restatement of the dictates of the moral consciousness in vague and cumbrous quasi-scientific phraseology, or the substitution of the meaningless test of "survivability" as a standard of perfection for the usual and intelligible standards of "good" and "right." Stephen.—A similar criticism might fairly be passed upon the majority of philosophers who approach ethics from the stand point of evolution. Sir Leslie Stephen, for instance, wishes to sub stitute the conception of "social health" for that of universal happiness, and considers that the conditions of social health are to be discovered by an examination of the "social organism" or of "social tissue," the laws of which can be studied apart from those laws by which the individuals composing society regulate their conduct. "The social evolution means the evolution of a strong social tissue ; the best type is the type implied by the strongest tissue." But on the important question as to what constitutes the strongest social tissue, or to what extent the analogy between society as at present constituted and organic life is really applic able, we are left without certain guidance. The fact is that with few exceptions evolutionary moral philosophers evade the choice between alternatives which is always presented to them. They begin, for the most part, with a belief that in ethics as in other departments of human knowledge "the more developed must be interpreted by the less developed"—though frequently in the sequel complexity or posteriority of development is erected as a standard by means of which to judge the process of development itself. They are not content to write a history of moral develop ment, applying to it the principles by which Darwinians seek to explain the development of animal life. But the search of origins frequently leads them into theories of the nature of that moral conduct whose origin they are anxious to find quite at variance with current and accepted beliefs concerning its nature. The dis covery of the so-called evolution of morality out of non-moral con ditions is very frequently an unconscious subterfuge by which the evolutionist hides the fact that he is making a priori judgments upon the value of the moral concepts held to be evolved. To accept such theories of the origin of morality would carry with it the conviction that what we took for "moral" conduct was in reality something very different, and has been so throughout its history. The legitimate inference which should follow would be the denial of the validity of those moral laws which have hitherto been regarded as absolute in character, and the substitution for all customary moral terms of an entirely new set based upon bio logical considerations. But it is precisely this, the only logical in ference, which most evolutionary philosophers are unwilling to draw. They cannot give up their belief in customary morality. Prof. Huxley maintained, for example, that "the ethical progress of society depends not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, but in combating it" (Romanes Lecture).

Nietzsche.—Perhaps the one European thinker who has carried evolutionary principles in ethics to their logical conclusion is Friedrich Nietzsche. Almost any system of morality or im morality might find some justification in Nietzsche's writings, which are extraordinarily chaotic and full of the wildest ex aggerations. Yet it has been a true instinct which has led popular opinion as testified to by current literature to find in Nietzsche the most orthodox exponent of Darwinian ideas in their application to ethics. For he saw clearly that to be successful evolutionary ethics must involve the "transvalua tion of all values," the "demoralization" of all ordinary current morality. He accepted frankly the glorification of brute strength, superior cunning and all the qualities necessary for success in the struggle for existence, to which the ethics of evolution necessarily tends. He proclaimed himself, before everything else, a physio logist, and looked to physiology to provide the ultimate standard for everything that has value ; and though his own ethical code necessarily involves the disappearance of sympathy, love, tolera tion and all existing altruistic emotions, he yet in a sense finds room for them in such altruistic self-sacrifice as prepares the way for the higher man of the future. Thus, after a fashion, he is able to reconcile the conflicting claims of egoism and altruism and succeed where most apostles of evolution fail. The Christian virtues, sympathy for the weak, the suffering, etc., represent a necessary stage to be passed through in the evolution of the Uber mensch, i.e., the stage when the weak and suffering combine in revolt against the strong. They are to be superseded, not so much because all social virtues are to be scorned and rejected, as be cause in their effects, i.e., in their tendency to perpetuate and pro long the existence of the weak and those who are least well equipped and endowed by nature, they are anti-social in character and inimical to the survival of the strongest and most vigorous type of humanity. Consequently Nietzsche in effect maintains the following paradoxical position : he explains the existence of altru ism upon egoistical principles ; he advocates the total abolition of all altruism by carrying these same egoistical principles to their logical conclusion ; he nevertheless appeals to that moral instinct which makes men ready to sacrifice their own narrow personal in terests to the higher good of society—an instinct profoundly al truistic in character—as the ultimate justification of the ethics he enunciates. Such a position is a reductio ad absurdum of the attempt to transcend the ultimate character of those intuitions and feelings which prompt men to benevolence. Thus, though incidentally there is much to be learned from Nietzsche, especially from his criticism of the ethics of pessimism, or from the stric tures he passes upon the negative morality of extreme asceticism. or quietism, his system inevitably provides its own refutation. For no philosophy which travesties the real course of history and distorts the moral facts is likely to commend itself to the sober judgment of mankind however brilliant be its exposition or in genious its arguments. Finally, the conceptions of strength, power and masterfulness by which Nietzsche attempts to determine his own moral ideal, become, when examined, as relative and unsatis factory as other criteria of moral action said to be deduced from evolutionary principles. Men desire strength or power not as ends but as means to ends beyond them ; Nietzsche is most convincing when the tfbermensch is left undefined. Imagined as ideal man, i.e., as morality depicts him, he becomes intelligible ; imagined as Nietzsche describes him he reels back into the beast.

It was upon this crucial difficulty, i.e., the transition in the evolution of morality from the stage of purely animal and un conscious action to specifically human action—i.e., action directed by self-conscious and purposive intelligence to an end conceived as good—that the polemic of T. H. Green and his followers fastened.

Metaphysical Ethics.—Green's principal objection to evo lutionary moral philosophy is contained in the argument that no merely "natural" explanation of the facts of morality is conceiv able. The knowing consciousness—i.e., so far as conduct is con cerned and moral consciousness—can never become an object of knowledge in the sense in which natural phenomena are ob jects of scientific knowledge. For such knowledge implies the ex istence of a knowing consciousness as a relating and uniting in telligence capable of distinguishing itself from the objects to which it relates. And more particularly the existence of the moral con sciousness implies "the transition from mere want to conscious ness of wanted object, from impulse to satisfy the want to effort for the realization of the wanted objects, implies the presence of the want to a subject which distinguishes itself from it." Conse quently the facts of moral development imply with the emergence of human consciousness the appearance of something qualitatively different from the facts with which physiology, for instance, deals, imply a stratum, as it were, in development which no examination of animal tissues, no calculation of consequences with regard to the preservation of the species, can ever satisfactorily explain.

Green's loyalty to the primary facts of the moral consciousness prevented him from constructing a rationalistic system of morals based solely upon the conclusions of metaphysics, but the revival of interest in metaphysics led to a more daring criticism of ethical first principles in other writers. Bradley's Ethical Studies had presented with great brilliancy an idealist theory of morality not very far removed from that of Green's Prolegomena. But the publication of Appearance and Reality by the same author marked a great advance in philosophical criticism of ethical postulates, and a growing dissatisfaction with current reconciliations between moral first principles and the conclusions of metaphysics. Appear ance and Reality was not primarily concerned with morals, yet it inevitably led to certain conclusions affecting conduct, and it was no very long time before these conclusions were elaborated in detail. A. E. Taylor's Problem of Conduct (i qo i) follows in the main Bradley's line of criticism and may therefore be re garded as representative of his school. There are two principal positions in Taylor's work : (I) a refusal to base ethics upon metaphysics, and (2) the discovery of an irreconcilable dualism in the nature of morality which takes many shapes, but may be summarized roughly as consisting in an ultimate opposition be tween egoism and altruism. With regard to the first of these Tay lor says that his object is to show that "ethics is as independent of metaphysical speculation for its principles and methods as any of the so-called `natural sciences' ; that its real basis must be sought not in philosophical theories about the nature of the Ab solute or the ultimate constitution of the Universe, but in the empirical facts of human life as they are revealed to us in our concrete everyday experience of the world and mankind, and sifted and systematized by the sciences of psychology and sociol ogy. . . . Ethics should be regarded as a purely `positive' or `experimental' and not as a `speculative' science." With regard to the second position one quotation will suffice (op. cit., p. 183). "Altruism and egoism are divergent developments from the com mon psychological root of primitive ethical sentiment. Both de velopments are alike unavoidable, and each is ultimately irrec oncilable with the other. Neither egoism nor altruism can be made the sole basis of moral theory without mutilation of the facts, nor can any higher category be discovered by the aid of which their rival claims may be finally adjusted." Taylor expounds these two theories with mud_ ingenuity, yet neither of them will carry complete conviction to his critics. It is curious to find the independence of moral philosophy upon meta physics supported by metaphysical arguments. For it is obvious that Taylor's own dissatisfaction with current moral principles arises from an inability to believe in their ultimate rationality, i.e., a belief that they are untenable from the standpoint of metaphy sics. But further, it is apparent that psychology (upon which Tay lor would base morality) itself involves metaphysical assumptions; its position in fact cannot be stated except as a metaphysical position. And the need which most philosophers have felt for some philosophical foundation for morality arises, not from any desire to subordinate moral insight to speculative theory, but be cause the moral facts themselves are inexplicable except in the light of first principles which metaphysics alone can criticize.

Taylor himself attempts to find the roots of ethics in the moral sentiments of mankind, the moral sentiments being primarily feelings or emotions, though they imply and result in judgments of approval and disapproval upon conduct. But it may be doubted whether he succeeds in clearly distinguishing ethical feelings from ethical judgments, and if they are to be treated as synonymous it seems difficult to avoid the conclusion that the implications of moral "judgment" must involve a reference to metaphysics.

Taylor's polemic against metaphysical systems of ethics is based throughout upon an alleged discrepancy and separation between the facts of moral "experience," the judgments of the moral con sciousness, and theories as to the nature of these which the phil osophers whom he attacks would by no means accept. There is no doubt a distinction between morality as a form of conscious ness and reflection upon that morality. But such a distinction neither corresponds to, nor testifies to, the existence of a distinc tion• between morality as "experience" and morality as "theory." Taylor is more persuasive when he is developing his second main thesis—that of the alleged existence of an ultimate dualism in the nature of morality. His accounts of the genesis of the concep tions of obligation and responsibility as of most of the ultimate conceptions with which moral philosophy deals will be accepted or rejected to the extent to which the main contention concerning the psychological basis of ethics commends itself to the reader. But in his exposition of the fundamental contradiction involved in morality elaborated with much care and illustrative argument he appeals for the most part to facts familiar to the unphilosophical moral consciousness. He begins by finding an ultimate opposition between the instincts of self-assertion and instincts which secure the production and protection of the coming generation even in the infra-ethical world with which biology deals. He traces this opposition into the forms in which it appears in the social life of mankind, and finds "a hidden root of insincerity and hypocrisy beneath all morality," inasmuch as it is not possible to pursue any one type of ideal without some departure from singleness of pur pose. And he finds all the conceptions by which men have hoped to reconcile admitted antagonisms and divergencies between moral ideals claiming to be ultimate and authoritative alike unsat isfactory. Progress is illusory; there is no satisfactory goal to which moral development inevitably tends; religion in which some take refuge when distressed by the contradictions of moral con duct itself "contains and rests upon an element of make believe." Martineau and Sidgwick.—It would be true on the whole to assert that evolutionary systems of ethics such as those of Herbert Spencer, Leslie Stephen or S. Alexander (Moral Order and Progress, 1899), together with the metaphysical theories of morals of which T. H. Green and Bradley and Taylor are the chief representatives, have dominated the field of ethical speculation since 187o. Nevertheless it is only necessary to mention such a work as Martineau's Types of Ethical Theory to dispel the notion that the type of moral philosophy most characteristically English, i.e., consisting in the patient analysis of the form and nature of the moral consciousness itself, has given way or is likely to give way to more ambitious and constructive efforts. Martineau's chief endeavour was to interpret, to vindicate, ,and to systematize the moral sentiments, and if the actual exhibition of what is involved, e.g., in moral choice is the vindication of morality Martineau may be said to have been successful. It is with his interpretation and systematization of the moral sentiments that most of Martineau's critics have found fault. It is impossible, e.g., to accept his ordered hierarchy of "springs of action" without perceiving that the real principle upon which they can be arranged in order at all must depend upon considerations of circumstances and consequences, of stations and duties, with which a strict intuitionalism such as that of Martineau would have no dealing. Similarly the notion of Conscience as a special faculty giving its pronouncements immediately and without reflection can not be maintained in the face of modern psychological analysis and is untrue to the nature of moral judgment itself. And Mar tineau is curiously unsympathetic to the universal and social as pect of morality with which evolutionary and idealist moral philosophers are so largely occupied. Nevertheless there have been few moral philosophers who have set forth with clearer insight the essential nature of the moral consciousness.

Equal in importance to Martineau's work is Prof. Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics which appeared in 1874. The two works are alike devoted to the re-examination of the nature of the moral consciousness to the exclusion of alien branches of inquiry. In most other respects they differ. Martineau is much more in sym pathy with idealism than Sidgwick, whose work consists in a re statement from a novel and independent standpoint of the Util itarian position. Many of his most acute critics would be the first to admit how much they owe to his teaching. Chief among the more recent of these is G. E. Moore, whose book Principia Etliica is an important contribution to ethical thought. And al though Hastings Rashdall (The Theory of Good and Evil, 1907 ) is not in agreement with Sidgwick's type of hedonistic theory, he holds a point of view similar to that of Sidgwick's Rational Util itarianism. Rashdall's two volumes exhibit also a welcome re turn on the part of English thought to the proper business of the moral philosopher—the examination of the nature of moral con duct. Other works, such as L. T. Hothouse's Morals in Evolution or E. A. Westermarck's Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, testify to a continued interest in the history of morality and in the anthropological inquiries with which moral philosophy is closely connected.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.-H. Sidgwick, History of Ethics (1906), etc.; F. Bibliography.-H. Sidgwick, History of Ethics (1906), etc.; F. Jodl, Geschichte der Ethik; J. Watson, Hedonistic Theories (1895) ; J. Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory (1891), etc.; L. Stephen, History of English Thought in the i8th Century (1892), and The English Utilitarians (1901) ; C. M. Williams, Systems of Ethics Founded on the Theory of Evolution (1893) ; W. R. Sorley, Recent Tendencies in Ethics (1904) ; Histories of philosophy by J. E. Erdmann, W. Windelband, E. Zeller, etc.; bibliography under ETHICS.

(H. St.; A. Wo.)