Читать книгу Ethics - Джон Дьюи - Страница 58

"The object proposed or the complete development of a thing is its highest good; but independence which is first attained in the State is a complete development or the highest good and is therefore natural." "For as the State was formed to make life possible, so it exists to make life good."

"Thus we see that the State is a natural institution, that man is naturally a political animal and that one who is not a citizen of any State, if the cause of his isolation be natural and not accidental, is either a superhuman being or low in the scale of human civilization, as he stands alone like a 'blot' on the backgammon board. The 'clanless, lawless, hearthless man,' so bitterly described by Homer, is a case in point, for he is naturally a citizen of no state and a lover of war."[70]

Nor does Aristotle stop here. With a profound insight into the relation of man to society, and the dependence of the individual upon the social body, a relation which modern social psychology has worked out in greater detail, Aristotle asserts that the State is not merely the goal of the individual's development, but the source of his life.

"Again, in the order of nature the State is prior to the household or individual. For the whole must needs be prior to its part. For instance, if you take away the body which is the whole, there will not remain any such thing as a hand or foot, unless we use the same word in a different sense, as when we speak of a stone hand as a hand. For a hand separated from the body will be a disabled hand; whereas it is the faculty or function of a thing which makes it what it is, and therefore when things lose their function or faculty, it is not correct to call them the same things, but rather homonymous, i.e., different things having the same name. We see, then, the State is a natural institution, and also that it is prior to the individual. For if the individual as a separate unit is not independent, he must be a part and must bear the same relation to the State as the other parts to their wholes; and one who is incapable of association with others or is independent and has no need of such association, is no member of a State; in other words, he is either a brute or a God."[71]

And, moreover, when we look into the nature of the individual, we do not find him a being devoid of the sympathies and qualities which find their natural expression not only in the State, but in various social and friendly relations. There is "an impulse toward the life in common" (φιλία) which expresses itself in friendship, but which is also so essential to that recognition of others called justice that we may say "it is the most just of all just things." There is also a unity of disposition and purpose (ὁμόνοια) which may be called "political friendship."[72]

Plato's Ideal State.—How then is the State constituted and governed which is to provide for man's full development, his complete good? Evidently two principles must control. In the first place, it must be so constituted that every man may develop in it the full capacities of his nature, and thereby serve at once the perfection of the State and his own completeness; and in the second place, the State or social whole must be ruled by those best fitted for this work. Not the soldier, nor the plutocrat, nor the artisan, but the man who knows, is the suitable ruler for our ideal community. The soldier may defend, the artisan may support, but the scientific or intelligent man should rule. And it is evident that in settling this principle, we have also answered our first problem; for the soldier and the artisan will find his full development by doing the work which he can do well, not by meddling with a task in which he must necessarily fail. In order to guard against the greed which was so characteristic of the governments of his day, Plato would provide that the rulers and warriors should have no private property, and not even private families. Their eye should be single to the good of the whole. When asked as to the practicability of a State governed by such disinterested rulers, and with such wisdom, he admits indeed its difficulty, but he stoutly demands its necessity:

"Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils—no, nor the human race, as I believe—and then only will this our State have a possibility of life and behold the light of day."[73]

And yet the question of the actual existence of a perfect State is not the question of supreme importance. For Plato has grasped the thought that man is controlled not only by what he sees, but by what he images as desirable. And if a man has once formed the image of an ideal State or city of this kind, in which justice prevails, and life reaches fuller and higher possibilities than it has yet attained, this is the main thing:

"In heaven, there is laid up a pattern of it, methinks, which he who desires may behold, and beholding, may set his own house in order. But whether such an one exists, or ever will exist in fact, is no matter: for he will live after the manner of that city, having nothing to do with any other."[74]

The Social as Law of Nature.—The social nature of man, thus vindicated by Plato and Aristotle, remained as the permanent possession of Greek thought. Even the Epicureans, who developed further the hedonistic theory of life, emphasized the values of friendship as among the choicest and most refined sources of pleasure. The Stoics, who in their independence of wants took up the tradition of the Cynics, were yet far from interpreting this as an independence of society. The disintegration of the Greek states made it impossible to find the social body in the old city-state, and so we find with the Stoics a certain cosmopolitanism. It is the highest glory of man to be a citizen not of Athens but of the universe—not of the city of Cecrops, but of the city of Zeus. And through this conception the social nature of man was made the basis of a "natural law," which found its expression in the principles of Roman and modern jurisprudence.

Passion or Reason.—In answering the question as to the true nature of man, Plato and Aristotle found the suggestions likewise for the problem of individual good. For if the soldier as the seeker for fame and honor, the avaricious man embodying the desire for wealth, and still more, the tyrant personifying the unbridled expression of every lust and passion, are abhorrent, is it not easy to see that an orderly and harmonious development of impulses under the guidance and control of reason, is far better than that uncramped expression of desires and cravings for which some of the radical individualists and sensualists of the day were clamoring? As representative of this class, hear Callicles:

"I plainly assert that he who would truly live ought to allow his desires to wax to the uttermost, and not to chastise them; but when they have grown to their greatest, he should have courage and intelligence to minister to them and to satisfy all his longings. And this I affirm to be natural justice and nobility." The temperate man is a fool. It is only in hungering and eating, in thirsting and drinking, in having all his desires about him, and gratifying every possible desire, that man lives happily.[75]

But even Callicles himself admits that there are certain men, the creatures of degraded desire, whose lives are not ideal, and hence that there must be some choice of pleasure. And carrying out in the individual life the thought above suggested by the State, Plato raises the question as to whether man, a complex being, with both noble and ignoble impulses, and with the capacity of controlling reason, can be said to make a wise choice if he lets the passions run riot and choke out wholly his rational nature:

"Is not the noble that which subjects the beast to the man, or rather to the god in man; and the ignoble that which subjects the man to the beast? He can hardly avoid admitting this—can he now? Not if he has any regard for my opinion. But, if he admits this, we may ask him another question: How would a man profit if he received gold and silver on the condition that he was to enslave the noblest part of him to the worst? Who can imagine that a man who sold his son or daughter into slavery for money, especially if he sold them into the hands of fierce and evil men, would be the gainer, however large might be the sum which he received? And will any one say that he is not a miserable caitiff who sells his own divine being to that which is most atheistical and detestable and has no pity? Eriphyle took the necklace as the price of her husband's life, but he is taking a bribe in order to compass a worse ruin."[76]

Necessity of a Standard for Pleasure.—If, for the moment, we rule out the question of what is noble or "kalon," and admit that the aim of life is to live pleasantly, or if, in other words, it is urged as above that justice is not profitable and that hence he who would seek the highest good will seek it by some other than the thorny path, we must recognize that the decision as to which kind of pleasure is preferable will depend on the character of the man who judges:

"Then we may assume that there are three classes of men—lovers of wisdom, lovers of ambition, lovers of gain? Exactly. And there are three kinds of pleasure, which are their several objects? Very true. Now, if you examine the three classes and ask of them in turn which of their lives is pleasantest, each of them will be found praising his own and deprecating that of others; the money-maker will contrast the vanity of honor or of learning with the solid advantages of gold and silver? True, he said. And the lover of honor—what will be his opinion? Will he not think that the pleasure of riches is vulgar, while the pleasure of learning, which has no need of honor, he regards as all smoke and nonsense? True, he said. But may we not suppose, I said, that philosophy estimates other pleasures as nothing in comparison with knowing the truth, and in that abiding, ever learning, in the pursuit of truth, not far indeed from the heaven of pleasure? The other pleasures the philosopher disparages by calling them necessary, meaning that if there were no necessity for them, he would not have them. There ought to be no doubt about that, he replied. Since, then, the pleasure of each class and the life of each is in dispute, and the question is not which life is most honorable, or better or worse, but which is the more pleasant or painless—how shall we know? I cannot tell, he said. Well, but what ought to be the criterion? Is any better than experience and wisdom and reason? There cannot be a better, he said. If wealth and gain were the criterion, then what the lover of gain praised and blamed would surely be the truest? Assuredly. Of if honor or victory or courage, in that case the ambitions or contentments would decide best? Clearly. But since experience and wisdom and reason are the judges, the inference of course is, that the truest pleasures are those which are approved by the lover of wisdom and reason."[77]

It is thus evident that even if we start out to find the good in pleasure, we need some kind of measuring art. We need a "standard for pleasure," and this standard can be found only in wisdom. And this forces us to maintain that wisdom is after all the good. Not merely intellectual attainment—a life of intellect without feeling would be just as little a true human life as would the life of an oyster, which has feeling with no intelligence. A life which includes sciences and arts, and the pure pleasures of beauty, presided over by wisdom and measure and symmetry—this is Plato's vision of the life of the individual, viewed from within.

Eudaemonism.—Aristotle's conception of the good is fundamentally the same. It is a full development of man's capacities, culminating in a rational and harmonious life. If, says Aristotle, we are to find the ultimate good, we must try to find, if possible, some one end which is pursued as an end in itself, and never as a means to something else, and the most general term for this final end is "eudaimonia," or well-being, "for we also choose it for itself and never for the sake of something else." What is the essence of well-being? This, according to Aristotle, is to be found by asking what is the function of man. The life of nutrition and growth man has in common with the plants; the life of sense in common with the animal. It is in the life of his rational nature that we must find his especial function. "The good of man is exercise of his faculties in accordance with their appropriate excellence." External goods are valuable because they may be instruments toward such full activity. Pleasure is to be valued because it "perfects the activities, and therefore perfects life, which is the aim of human desire"—rather than valued as an end in itself. No one would choose to live on condition of having a child's intellect all his life, though he were to enjoy in the highest possible degree all the pleasures of a child.[78]

The "Mean."—The crowning importance of wisdom as the rational measure of the ideal life is also illustrated in Aristotle's theory of excellence (or virtue) as a "mean". This phrase is somewhat ambiguous, for some passages would seem to indicate that it is merely striking an average between two kinds of excesses, and finding, as it were, a moderate amount of feeling or action; but there is evidently involved here just the old thought of measure, and "the mean is what right reason prescribes." It is not every one who can find the mean, but only he who has the requisite knowledge. The supreme excellence or virtue is, therefore, the wisdom which can find the true standard for action.[79]

The Wise Man.—Finally the conception of virtue as wisdom is illustrated in the ideals of the three prominent schools in later Greek thought—the Sceptics, Epicureans, and Stoics. The wise man among Sceptics is he who suspends judgment where it is impossible to be certain. The wise man among Epicureans is he who chooses the finest and surest and most lasting pleasures. The wise man among Stoics is he who overcomes his emotions. But in every case the ideal is expressed in the same phrase, "the wise man."

Man and the Cosmos.—We see thus how Greek thought, starting out to challenge all society's laws and standards and bring them to the bar of knowledge, has found a deeper value and higher validity in the true social and moral order. The appeal was to the Cæsar of reason, and reason taken in its full significance carries us beyond the immediate and transient to the broader and more permanent good. Nor can reason in its search for good be content, urges Plato, with the superficial facts of life and society. He who would find and achieve his complete function, his full development, must broaden his horizon still further. As his own particular life is but a part of the ongoing of the larger world, whose forces act upon him, limit him, and determine his possibilities, it becomes absolutely necessary to study not merely his own end and purpose, but the end and purpose of the universe. Human good requires us to know the larger good, the Good, in the full and complete sense. And this perfect Good which is, in truth, the very essence of the universe, is but another term for God, and Plato often uses the two as interchangeable terms.

So the "Nature" which Greek life was seeking gets its deepest significance and reinterprets the old religious demand for unity of the life of man with the forces of the unseen. And the Stoic later, in his maxim "Follow Nature," gives more explicit recognition to the return of the circle. For the great work of Greek science had brought out into complete clearness the idea of Nature as a system of law. The universe is a rational universe, a cosmos, and man, as above all else a rational being, finds thus his kinship to the universe. To follow Nature, therefore, means to know the all-pervading law of Nature and submit to it in calm acceptance or resignation.

"All is harmonious to me that is harmonious to thee, O universe; all is fruit to me which thy seasons bring."[80]