An Introduction to Ethics, for Training Colleges/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX.
THE STANDARD OF MORAL JUDGMENT.
§ 1. The Development of Moral Judgment. Moral judgments are passed by the self, acting as conscience, on conduct and character. The object that is judged is always a human action or a system of human actions. We have now to ask, What standard do we use when we make moral judgments on conduct?
Some standard is involved in every kind of judgment. The legal judgment pronounced by the judge is based on the enacted law of his country. When, in common life, we judge that a certain man is tall, we make our judgment with reference to some average height which we take to be the normal or standard height for a man. When we judge that a certain play is clever, we have in mind some standard of cleverness in relation to which we make our judgment. But, though we all constantly make such judgments, we should find it very difficult to define exactly what our standard is. How many people could state the average height of an Englishman, or define the standard of dramatic cleverness? We regularly use standards which we have never attempted to formulate.
The same thing is true of moral judgment. From our earliest years we have been making judgments on our own or other people's actions and character. We have called this man "good" and that one "bad," this action "right" and that one "wrong." These judgments all necessarily involve some standard. Yet very few people have reflected on the nature of this standard.
The best way to investigate the meaning of the standard is to trace the origin and growth of moral judgment in the child. As soon as the child becomes aware of the existence of persons, it begins to perceive that moral judgments are passed upon it by these other persons. Of course, it does not call them moral judgments, but it gradually comes to have a more and more distinct conception of the meaning of such a moral judgment as "Baby is naughty to cry for his bottle," "Baby ought to like his bath," "Baby has been a good boy this morning." Very soon baby begins to pass moral judgments himself. In taking this step he is influenced by the two fundamental characteristics which all children possess in some measure, the tendency to imitate, and the tendency to originate. The child imitates his elders in everything; he copies their language, their gestures, their actions, and even subtle nuances of character of which they may have been unconscious until they saw them mirrored in the child. The child also imitates the moral judgments that are passed upon him. The tendency to copy his parents' moral judgments is very marked if the child has a younger brother and sister. His parents tell him that he is naughty when he cries. Therefore he tells baby that he is naughty when he cries. The same moral judgment is passed on the same kind of action.
But the child also has a natural tendency to originate, to initiate, to invent. Hence he applies the moral judgments which he has learned by imitation to actions other than those to which they were originally attached. Nurse is naughty when she puts him to bed too early for his taste. Mother is naughty when she refuses to give him a biscuit. The child has originated these moral judgments. But he soon comes to realise that the moral judgments which he has originated do not seem to have the same validity as mother's moral judgments. When he cries, mother's moral judgment is, "You are naughty"; and if he persists, mother makes her judgment effective by whipping him. On the other hand, when he says to mother, "You are naughty," he cannot make his judgment effective, and if he tries to do so, mother passes the judgment "You are naughty" on him, and very soon makes this judgment effective. From such experiences as these, the child gradually learns that (1) when mother makes a judgment, it is so; (2) when he makes a judgment on his own initiative, it may not be valid; and (3) when he makes a judgment in strict imitation of mother's, e.g. upon baby crying, the moral judgment is sound. Hence he comes to accept mother's moral judgment as his standard.
§ 2. The Standard as Private Opinion. Now the moral judgments of the mother may be based simply on her private opinion. So long as the child comes in contact only with her private opinion, her judgments will have for him, as soon as he has realised the futility of his own independent judgments, the force of absolute law. But suppose one day mother makes a moral judgment, and father (also a being having authority) makes another, inconsistent with mother's, the child begins to suspect the soundness of mother's moral judgments. In a dim way he recognises that if, with regard to the same action, mother says he is naughty and father says he is good, both these moral judgments cannot be true. If such conflicts occur with any frequency, mother's moral judgments become degraded from the enactments of absolute law to (what they really are) the expressions of private opinion.
But the moral standard (we may say on behalf of the child) cannot be private opinion, because it would then follow that there is no such thing as right and wrong and good and bad. If the only standard of moral judgment were private opinion, then what I think right would be right for me, and no one could contradict me. If anyone did, I could retort, "That is only your opinion, and my opinion is as good as yours."
§ 3. The Standard as Social Convention. If the child should persistently try to exert his private opinion in opposition to the private opinions of his mother and father, he will find that father and mother will unite against him. On most points their opinions are in agreement, and in the normal home the child comes to realise that their attitude to him is in essentials the same, and that on the whole the moral judgments which they pass on him coincide. The standard of moral judgment is no longer simply private opinion: it is family-opinion, or group-opinion.
In most matters the child adopts the moral standards of his family or whatever social group is most prominent in his environment. If he comes in contact with more than one social group, he may find that the general standards which they employ differ in startling respects. But he will also become aware of an underlying agreement. As his parents' judgments differed in some respects but agreed in most, so the moral judgments of the various social groups differ in certain matters but are in general agreement. This underlying unity expresses itself in "public opinion" or "social convention."
Social convention supplies the standard to which most of the growing child's judgments conform. There is no more conventional creature than the adolescent. He adopts his manners and customs from current convention, he follows it with minute care in the colour of his tie and the way in which he parts his hair. In fashions and manners the boy and girl are exceedingly sensitive to its decrees. They would not dream of questioning its authority. In more distinctly moral matters, too, social convention seems to be the infallible criterion of goodness and badness. The youth condemns what the convention of his "set" condemns. A man is approved as a "ripper" or stigmatised as a "blighter," in accordance with this convention. Social convention becomes the only standard of moral judgment. The youth judges that a certain action, e.g. cheating at cards, is wrong, because social convention decrees that it is wrong.
But the youth often begins to doubt whether, after all, social convention is the ultimate criterion of good and evil. He sometimes feels a lurking suspicion that our social conventions may be all wrong. And if he reflects at all, and does not simply stifle his doubt and distrust, he will come to the conclusion that social convention is inadequate to supply the standard of moral judgment. And that for two reasons.
(1) Social conventions have only local validity. The conventions of one country differ from those of another. In many respects the conventional standards of Germany and Britain are very different. And we find even greater divergences if we compare the conventional standards of the Western world with those of the Orient. Now ethics demands that what is right in one place must be right under similar circumstances everywhere. The standard of moral judgment must be the same everywhere. Ethics can never rest in the fact that "there ain't no Ten Commandments" east of Suez. Ethics maintains that, if the Ten Commandments are a true expression of the moral standard, they must be true universally.
(2) Social conventions have only temporary validity. The conventions of one time differ from those of another. Moral conventions, it is true, do not usually change so rapidly and capriciously as those which determine fashions and manners. Yet they do change, and sometimes in a swift and arbitrary way. The moral conventions of the Commonwealth were very different from those of the Restoration, and those of mid-Victorian England varied in marked respects from those that hold at the present time. Social convention does not have the permanence and stability necessary to constitute the standard of moral judgment.
§ 4. The Standard as Feeling. When the average man becomes impressed with the inadequacy of social convention as the standard of moral judgment, he may not have clearly present to his mind the definite reasons which we have just assigned for rejecting its claims. He may merely come to feel for it a deep-seated distrust, of which he can give no explanation. He simply feels that social convention is not a satisfactory standard. And he is apt to come to the conclusion that there is really no standard, and that his own feelings, in which alone he cannot be mistaken, supply the only working test of the value of his actions. He feels good when he treats generously a man who has injured him, he feels satisfied when he has done his duty in business, he feels a rush of compassion when he assists a penniless orphan, he feels bad when he tells a lie or cheats at cards, and he feels angry and disgusted when he allows laziness to overcome his conviction that he ought to be at work.
Further, especially if his nature be sympathetic, he will be affected in much the same way by the actions of others. He feels that the man who treats his enemy generously is good, and he feels that the man who tells lies and cheats at cards is bad. Thus he comes to feel moral approval for all actions of a certain kind, whether performed by him or by others; and moral disapproval for all actions of another kind, whether they are his own or somebody else's. For instance, he feels moral approval for all acts of conspicuous bravery, whether these deeds are done by himself or others; and he has a feeling of moral disapprobation for all deliberate lies, whether they are told by him or by others. His moral judgment depends on his feeling-attitude. All actions for which he has a feeling of moral approval are right, and all actions for which he has a feeling of moral disapproval are wrong.
Now, at first sight, this standard seems a very simple one. We know when we have feelings of moral approbation or disapprobation, and therefore we shall always know which actions are right and which are wrong.
But a difficulty immediately arises. All men do not feel in the same way. I may feel strong moral disapprobation for a certain action, but your feeling of moral approbation may be equally strong. Many excellent people feel that it is always wrong for anybody to go to the theatre, but many excellent people feel that it is quite right. Now it is impossible for the same action to be at one and the same time both right and wrong: if it is right, it cannot be at the same time wrong; and if it is wrong, it cannot be at the same time right. Yet, towards the same action, say A's going to the theatre, B feels moral approbation, and C feels moral disapproval. B bases his moral judgment on his feeling, and says that A's conduct is right: C bases his judgment on his feeling, and says that A's conduct is wrong. But A's conduct must be either right or wrong: it cannot be both right and wrong. Therefore either B's judgment or C's judgment is wrong, and consequently one of them must have been using a wrong standard. But each was using his own feeling as the standard. Now all moral judgments based on a true moral standard are consistent. Hence such conflicts as this show that feeling cannot be the moral standard.
Feeling is inadequate as the basis of moral judgment for two reasons. (1) Feelings are essentially private. A man's feelings are his, and though he can describe them to others, they cannot really share them. Men differ in nothing so much as their feelings. A man's feelings are secret: he knows that nobody in the world knows all about his feelings, and he cannot assume that he knows all about any other person's feelings. Now the standard of moral judgment must be public; it must be common to all men, and alike for all men.
(2) Feelings are essentially transient. A man's feelings are the most variable part of him. His whole feeling-attitude may change many times in a single day. Even his feelings of moral approval and disapproval, which are generally less capricious than the rest of his feeling-self, are affected by the sudden alterations that take place in his feeling-disposition. But, as we have already seen, the standard of moral judgment must be something constant, permanent, and consistent.
§ 5. The Standard as Reason. When we reflect, we see that moral judgment must be based on reason. Our moral judgments, in fact, are rational in precisely the same way as any of our other judgments. All judgment is rational, and moral judgments differ from all other judgments, not in the actual mental process of judging, but in the object of the judgment. Moral judgment is simply ordinary judgment on the special subject-matter of conduct. The standard of moral judgment is not immediately given in private feeling or opinion or intuition, nor crystallised in social convention or law. It needs to be reflected on and reasoned about. Moral judgment is rational, and the standard it employs must be investigated by a process of reasoning.
The dependence of moral judgment on reason will become clear, if we bear in mind certain general characteristics, which belong to all true moral judgment.
(1) All true moral judgments are objective. They are judgments upon actions, and not upon people's feelings or opinions with regard to those actions. When we make the moral judgment that Cromwell did wrong when he sacked Drogheda, we are making a judgment about Cromwell's action as an object. We do not merely mean that we have certain feelings towards Cromwell: we mean that on rational grounds, of which we can give a reasonable account, we definitely judge that his action was wrong. Moral judgments are objective: they are not simply the expression of private likes and dislikes.
(2) Moral judgments imply universality. True moral judgments are universally true. Of course, we may make mistakes in our moral judgments, just as we may make mistakes in other departments of rational activity. But in these cases we recognise that we have made a mistake, and that there is a definite and universal right and wrong. If a long multiplication sum be given out to a class of small boys, the answers they get will probably not all agree. But every boy will admit that there is one and only one right answer. Similarly, we believe that in every actual situation, only one action is possible which is right; and that in precisely similar situations precisely similar actions will always be right.
(3) True moral judgments are impartial. Perfect impartiality is one of the rarest things in the world. If we consider only our own feelings and emotions, our own likes and dislikes, we cannot be impartial. Our feelings constantly lead us to be partial in our judgments and in our actions. Our feelings naturally tend to make us judge ourselves more leniently than we judge others. Actions which we condemn in strangers we condone in our friends. The teacher finds that his personal affection or dislike for a pupil makes it difficult to treat him impartially. Yet he recognises that he ought to be impartial. The moral standard stands above his feelings. When feelings are fanned into passions, and slumbering animosities break out in a great war, it becomes almost impossible to be impartial in our moral judgments. The Uhlan cuts off the ears of his dead enemy: we can find no words to express our horror at such an abominable action. The redoubtable Turco does the same: we laugh it off as an amusing, if regrettable, foible. We judge that the peace-loving efforts of Dr. Liebknecht and his socialist friends are highly praiseworthy: we judge that the peace-loving efforts of Mr. Ramsay Macdonald and his socialist friends are highly reprehensible. Our feelings are responsible for leading us into such ridiculous inconsistencies. Moral judgment should always seek to be impartial and disinterested. It can be so, only when it is definitely rational. Only when we deliberately reflect can we counteract the perverting influences of feeling.
(4) Finally, moral judgments must be authoritative. They should be made by the self as a whole, and have behind them not only the weight of the whole self, but also the authority of Reason. As we have seen, conscience is simply the self regarded as passing moral judgments, and conscience has absolute authority because it is the rational self. The free and rational self is, in the fullest sense, the author of its actions and its judgments. But its judgments are not completely authoritative, unless they are in accordance with the authority of Reason.
On all these grounds we conclude that moral judgment is essentially rational judgment. If a moral judgment is to satisfy the demands of objectivity, universality, impartiality, and authoritativeness, it must be based on reason. We have traced the evolution of moral judgment from its earliest beginnings in the life of the child, and have found that unless the judgment be based on reason it cannot be valid. This is an important conclusion.
For further reading: H. Rashdall: Theory of Good and Evil, vol. i. ch. vi.; J. M. Baldwin: Social and Ethical Interpretations, ch. iii. and vi.; G. E. Moore: Ethics, ch. iii. and iv.