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Essays, Opinion, & Commentary |
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A Conversation with Thomas Hill Green, by George J. Irbe (con't)
GJI: I wish to remark here on the cogency and rationality of your speculations regarding the distant beginnings of man's moral development. I must mention here that the main reason why I respect your moral philosophy, Professor Green, is because you properly give credit to the ancient Greek philosophers for their great achievement in codifying our moral concepts in abstract terms. Could you, please, say a few words about the Greeks. THG: (#243) Already in the earliest stages of the development of the human soul, of which we have any recorded expression, th[e] distinction [between the good things of the soul and of the body] is virtually recognized. Such a formal classification as that which Aristotle assumes to be familiar, between 'external goods, goods of the soul, and goods of the body' [Nic. Eth. I. Vii. 2], is, of course, only the product of what may be called reflection upon reflection. It is the achievement of men who have not only learnt to recognize and value the spiritual qualities to which material things serve as instruments or means of expression, but have formed the abstract concept of a universe of values which may be exhaustively classified. But independently of such abstract conceptions, we have evidence in the earliest literature accessible to us of the conception and appreciation of impalpable virtues of the character and disposition, standing in no direct relation to the senses or to animal wants -- courage, wisdom, fidelity, and the like. GJI: We know that Thomas Aquinas incorporated Aristotle's moral philosophy into what are commonly called 'Christian values.' According to The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas (1993) which I have used as a reference in my essay Of Aristotle, Aquinas and Adler, Aquinas stated that "... those who use philosophical texts in sacred teaching, by subjugating them to faith, do not mix water with wine, but turn water into wine." "Subjugating" philosophy to theology seems to mean several things. First, it means that the theologian takes truth from the philosophers as from usurpers. The ground of philosophic truth is thus asserted to be revealing God who is more fully and accurately described in theology. This suggests, second, that theology serves as a corrective to philosophy.' In your opinion, Professor Green, how much credit should we give the ancient Greeks for our moral values today? THG: (#249) . .The habit of derogation from the uses of 'mere philosophy,' common alike to Christian advocates and the professors of natural science, has led us too much to ignore the immense practical service which Socrates and his followers rendered to mankind. From them in effect comes the connected scheme of virtues and duties within which the educated conscience of Christendom still moves, when it is impartially reflecting on what ought to be done. Religious teachers have no doubt affected the hopes and fears which actuate us in the pursuit of virtue or rouse us from its neglect. Religious societies have both strengthened men in the performance of recognized duties, and taught them to recognize relations of duty towards those whom they might otherwise have been content to treat as beyond the pale of such duties; but the articulated scheme of what the virtues and duties are, in their difference and in their unity, remains for us now in its main outlines what the Greek philosophers left it. (#250) In their Ethical teaching, however, the greatest of the Greek philosophers -- those to whom Christendom owes, not indeed its highest moral inspiration, but its moral categories, its forms of practical judgment -- never professed to be inventors. They did not claim to be prophets of new truth, but exponents of principles on which the good citizen, if he thought the matter out, would find that he had already been acting. . . They were really organs through which reason, as operative in men, became more clearly aware of the work it had been doing in the creation and maintenance of free social life, and in the activities of which that life is at once the source and the result. In thus becoming aware of its work the same reason through them gave a further reality to itself in human life. GJI: Of course, the achievements in philosophy by the ancient Greeks is mostly due to their appreciation of the value of Reason, as such, and to their adroitness in applying it. You remark on "the immense practical service which Socrates and his followers rendered to mankind" and that "from them in effect comes the connected scheme of virtues and duties within which the educated conscience of Christendom still moves, when it is impartially reflecting on what ought to be done." How important, do you think, is the heritage of Reason of the ancient Greeks in Western civilization? THG: (#217) . . in the conscientious citizen of modern Christendom reason without and reason within, reason as objective and reason as subjective, reason as the better spirit of the social order in which he lives, and reason as his loyal recognition and interpretation of that spirit -- these being but different aspects of one and the same reality, which is the operation of the divine mind in man -- combine to yield both the judgment, and obedience to the judgment, which we variously express by saying that every human person has an absolute value; that humanity in the person of every one is always to be treated as an end, never merely as a means; that in the estimate of that well-being which forms the true good every one is to count for one and no one for more than one; that every one has a 'suum' which every one else is bound to render him. (#253) . . [we must] point out the greatness -- in a certain sense the completeness and finality -- of the advance in spiritual development which the Greek philosophers represent. Once for all they conceived and expressed the conception of a free or pure morality, as resting on what we may venture to call a disinterested interest in the good; of the several virtues as so many applications of that interest to the main relations of social life; of the good itself not as anything external to the capacities virtuously exercised in its pursuit, but as their full realization. This idea was one which was to govern the growth of all the true and vital moral conviction which has descended to us. GJI: You declare emphatically that the Greek philosophers represent "the greatness -- in a certain sense the completeness and finality -- of the advance in spiritual development." But does not Christianity make this very same claim for itself? And does not your declaration regarding the completeness and finality of the advance in spiritual development achieved by the Greek philosophers deny this very claim to Christianity? How do you reconcile the two? THG: (#285) It would not be to the purpose here to enter on the complicated and probably unanswerable question of the share which different personal influences may have had in gaining acceptance for the idea of human brotherhood, and in giving it some practical effect in the organization of society. [I] have no disposition to hold a brief for the Greek philosophers against the founders of the Christian Church, or for the latter against the former. All that it is sought to maintain is this; that the society of which we are consciously members -- a society founded on the self-subordination of each individual to the rational claims of others, and potentially all-inclusive -- could not have come into existence except (1) through the action in men of a desire of which (unlike the desire for pleasure) the object is in its own nature common to all; and (2) through the formation in men's minds of a conception of what this object is, sufficiently full and clear to prevent its being regarded as an object for any set of men to the exclusion of another. It was among the followers of Socrates, so far as we know, that such a conception was for the first time formed and expressed -- for the first time, at any rate, in the history of the traceable antecedents of modern Christendom. . . When through the establishment of the 'Pax Romana' round the basin of the Mediterranean, or otherwise, the external conditions had been fulfilled for the initiation of a society aiming at universality; when a person had appeared charging himself with the work of establishing a kingdom of God among men, announcing purity of heart as the sole condition of membership of that kingdom, and able to inspire his followers with a belief in the perpetuity of his spiritual presence and work among them; then the time came for the value of the philosopher's work to appear. GJI: I think you are framing your answer with diplomatic tact when you say that you "have no disposition to hold a brief for the Greek philosophers against the founders of the Christian Church, or for the latter against the former." But, if I understand you correctly, then, at least in our Western civilization, Christianity can no more take credit for the development of our morals than it can take credit for the development of our ability to reason. You concede to Christianity, beginning with Jesus himself, only the role of facilitator for the implementation of the ideas of the Greek philosophers, which were based in reason, not in faith or in religion. Professor Green, can you say something that would confirm my conclusions. THG: (#217) . . we may trace a history . . of the just man's conscience -- of the conscience which dictates to him an equal regard to the well-being, estimated on the same principle as his own, of all whom his actions may affect. It is a history, however, which does not carry us back to anything beyond reason. It is a history of which reason is the beginning and the end. It is reason which renders the individual capable of self-imposed obedience to the law of his family and of his state, while it is to reason that this law itself owes its existence. . . in the conscientious citizen of modern Christendom reason without and reason within, reason as objective and reason as subjective, reason as the better spirit of the social order in which he lives, and reason as his loyal recognition and interpretation of that spirit -- these being but different aspects of one and the same reality, which is the operation of the divine mind in man -- combine to yield both the judgment, and obedience to the judgment, which we variously express by saying that every human person has an absolute value; . . |
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