work. In a previous number of The Philosophical Review,[1] I criticized the opposition made by Green between the moral ideal as self-satisfaction in general and all special satisfactions of desire. The present paper may be considered a continuation of that, save that now I desire to discuss the question of realization, rather than the question of the ideal, and to emphasize the notion of a working or practical self against that of a fixed or presupposed self.
The idea of realization implies the conception of capacities or possibilities. Upon the basis of a presupposed complete self, the possibilities of the present, working or individual self are the actual content of this presupposed self.[2] I do not propose to go into the strictly metaphysical difficulties of this conception. The difficulty, however, bound up with the question why a completely realized self should think it worth while to duplicate itself in an unrealized, or relatively empty, self, how it could possibly do this even if it were thought worth while, and why, after the complete self had produced the incomplete self, it should do so under conditions rendering impossible (seemingly eternally so) any adequate approach of the incomplete self to its own completeness–this difficulty, I say, should make us wary of the conception, provided we can find any working theory concerning unrealized powers (capacities) which will avoid the difficulty.
We may accept as a practical fact that we do, at a given time, have unrealized powers, or capacities, and that the realization of these powers constitutes, at the time, our moral goal. The question is as to the interpretation of this ‘fact.’ As the first objection to the interpretation which makes the capacities simply the blank form corresponding to a presupposed perfect
- ↑ Vol. I, No. 6, Green’s Theory of the Moral Motive.
- ↑ E. g., “The one divine mind gradually reproduces itself in the human soul. In virtue of this principle in him man has definite capacities, the realization of which, since in it alone he can satisfy himself, forms his true good. They are not realized, however, in any life that can be observed… and for this reason we cannot say with any adequacy what the capabilities are.” Green, Prolegomena, p. 189. Here we have it definitely implied, the capacities of man are simply the already realized content of the presupposed self. On p. 181 it is even more explicitly stated.
