Читать книгу Ethics - Джон Дьюи - Страница 48

The moral conceptions which were thus worked out may now be brought together for convenient summary under the two heads of the "How" and the "What" indicated in our introductory chapter. Under the first we specify the conceptions resulting (1) from recognition of a standard of right, and an ideal of good, (2) from free choice of this ideal. Under the What we indicate the content of the ideal on both its personal and its social sides.

1. Righteousness and Sin.—Righteousness and sin were not exact or contradictory opposites. The righteous man was not necessarily sinless. Nevertheless, the consciousness of sin, like a dark background, brought out more emphatically the conception of righteousness. This conception had its two aspects, derived from the civil and the religious spheres of life—spheres which were not separate for the Hebrew. On the one hand, the just or righteous respected the moral order in human society. The unrighteous was unjust, extortionate, cruel. He did not respect the rights of others. On the other hand, the righteous man was in "right" relation to God. This right relation might be tested by the divine law; but as God was conceived as a living person, loving his people, "forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin," it might also be measured by an essential harmony of spirit with the divine will. There was the "righteousness of the law," and the "righteousness of faith." The first implies complete obedience; the second implies that in spite of transgressions there is room for atonement[54] or reconciliation. As the first means ethically the testing of conduct by a moral standard, a "moral law," so the second stands for the thought that character is rather a matter of spirit and of constant reconstruction than of exact conformity once for all to a hard and fast rule. Specific acts may fail to conform, but the life is more than a series of specific acts. The measurement of conduct by the law has its value to quicken a sense of shortcoming, but alone it may also lead either to self-righteous complacency or to despair. The possibility of new adjustment, of renewal, of "a new birth," means liberation and life. As such it may be contrasted with the Buddhist doctrine of Karma, the causality from which there is no escape but by the extinction of desire.

"Sin" had likewise its various aspects. It stood for missing the mark, for violating the rules of clean and unclean; but it stood also for personal disobedience to the divine will, for violation of the moral order of Israel. In this latter sense, as identified by the prophets with social unrighteousness, it is a significant ethical conception. It brings out the point that evil and wrongdoing are not merely individual matters, not merely failures; they offend against a law which is above the private self, against a moral order which has its rightful demands upon us.

2. Personal Responsibility.—The transition from group to individual responsibility was thoroughly worked out by the prophets, even if they were not able to carry full popular assent. In early days the whole kin was treated as guilty for the offense of the kinsman. Achan's case has already been cited; and in the case of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, "Their wives and their sons and their little ones" were all treated alike.[55] In like manner, the family of the righteous man shared in the divine favor. The later prophets pronounced a radical change. The proverb, "The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge," is no more to be used, declares Ezekiel, speaking for Jehovah. "The soul that sinneth, it shall die; the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son;" and it is especially interesting to note that the Lord is represented as pleading with the people that this is fair, while the people say, "Wherefore doth not the son bear the iniquity of the father?" The solidarity of the family resisted the individualism of the prophetic conception, and five hundred years after Ezekiel the traces of the older conception still lingered in the question, "Who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"[56] For another aspect of responsibility, viz., intent, as distinct from accidental action,[57] we have certain transitional steps shown in the interesting "cities of refuge"[58] for the accidental homicide in which he might be safe from the avenger of blood, provided he was swift enough of foot to reach a city of refuge before he was caught. But the fullest development in the ethics of responsibility along this line seemed to take the form described under the next head.

3. Sincerity, and Purity of Motive.—The Hebrew had a philosophy of conduct which made it chiefly a matter of "wisdom" and "folly," but the favorite term of prophet and psalmist to symbolize the central principle was rather "the heart." This term stood for the voluntary disposition, especially in its inner springs of emotions and sentiments, affections and passions. The Greek was inclined to look askance at this side of life, to regard the emotions as perturbations of the soul, and to seek their control by reason, or even their repression or elimination. The Hebrew found a more positive value in the emotional side of conduct, and at the same time worked out the conception of a sincere and thoroughgoing interest as lying at the very root of all right life. The religious influence was as elsewhere the important agency. "Man looketh on the outward appearance, but Jehovah looketh on the heart," "If I regard iniquity in my heart, Jehovah will not hear me," are characteristic expressions. A divine vision, which penetrates to the deepest springs of purpose and feeling, will not tolerate pretense. Nor will it be satisfied with anything less than entire devotion: the Israelite must serve Jehovah with all his heart. Outer conformity is not enough: "Rend your heart and not your garments." It is the "pure in heart" who have the beatific vision. Not external contacts, or ceremonial "uncleanness," on which earlier ritual had insisted, defile the man, but rather what proceeds from the heart. For the heart is the source of evil thoughts and evil deeds.[59] And conversely, the interests, the emotions, and enthusiasms which make up the man's deepest self do not spring forth in a vacuum; they go with the steadfast purpose and bent, with the self of achievement. "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."

Purity of motive in a full moral consciousness means not only (formal) sincerity, but sincere love of good and right. This was not stated by the Hebrew in abstract terms, but in the personal language of love to God. In early days there had been more or less of external motives in the appeals of the law and the prophets. Fear of punishment, hope of reward, blessings in basket and store, curses in land and field, were used to induce fidelity. But some of the prophets sought a deeper view, which seems to have been reached in the bitterness of human experience. Hosea's wife had forsaken him, and should not the love of people to Jehovah be as personal and sincere as that of wife to husband? She had said, "I will go after my lovers that give me my bread and my water, my wood and my flax, my oil and my drink."[60] Is not serving God for hire a form of prostitution?[61] The calamities of the nation tested the disinterestedness of its fidelity. They were the challenge of the Adversary, "Doth Job fear God for naught?" And a remnant at least attested that fidelity did not depend on rewards. The moral maxim that virtue is its own reward is put in personal terms by the prophet after the exile: