|
|
||
 |
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
 |
|
||
|
|
||||
|
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
A Conversation with Thomas Hill Green, by George J. Irbe (con't)
On Misplacing Moral Authority in Social Institutions GJI: I regret it deeply that our moral code became embedded within the dogma of Christianity because, as the 20th century is witness to the fact, it has proven to be only too easy for insidious ideologies, which are themselves secular perversions of Christianity, to ridicule, parody and nullify the moral code along with the religious trappings in which it has been cloaked. In the 20th century we indeed saw the paving of the broadest and longest road to hell with, purportedly, the best of intentions; most of the intentions were proclaimed in terms of the noblest of moral concepts. Of course, I have the advantage of hindsight in this matter which you did not, Professor Green. However, as I remarked at the beginning, most of the educated elite of your generation believed in the perfectibility of man and human society. Missionaries and merchants went forth from Britain to 'carry the white man's burden' in the backward societies of the world. Socialism -- the secular version of Christianity -- was already in vogue among your peers. The first Communist revolution had already happened (and failed) in the heart of Europe (1848), and Karl Marx had issued instructions on how to destroy liberal democratic governments in the future, should any come into being, in his Address to the Communist League (1850). Although you make no specific reference to these political events, I take it for granted that you were quite aware of them, that you were sensitive to the social currents in your own society in England, and that your concepts of social morality and social duty were influenced to some degree by the prevailing zeit-geist. And, being so influenced, it may also explain why you have come to be identified, not entirely undeservedly, as an 'idealist' and a 'Hegelian.' In the Prolegomena you discuss at some length the perplexity of conscience when it is faced with conflicting moral choices. Would you comment on how you think the individual should resolve the moral dilemmas that are thrust upon him in times of social revolt. THG: (#328) When [a man] finds that the requirement of Church or State, the observances of conventional morality or conventional religion, are in conflict with what some plead as their conscientious convictions, it will make him watchful to ascertain whether these new convictions may not represent a truer effort after the highest ideal than that embodied in the authorities which seek to suppress them. (#321) . . if the private opinion . . is a source of really conscientious opposition to an authority which equally appeals to the conscience; if, in other words, it is an expression which the ideal of human good gives to itself in the mind of the man who entertains it; then it too rests on a basis of social authority. No individual can make a conscience for himself. He always needs a society to make it for him. A conscientious 'heresy,' religious or political, always represent some gradually maturing conviction as to social good, already implicitly involved in the ideas on which the accepted rules of conduct rest, though it may conflict with the formulae in which those ideas have been hitherto authoritatively expressed, and may lead to the overthrow of institutions which have previously contributed to their realization. GJI: You are perhaps aware that your reasoning is quite similar to what a socio-political revolutionary uses to justify his actions. You use the term "social authority" and claim that an individual always needs a society to make his conscience for him. My belief is that there can be no intervening moral authority between a man's conscience which should be guided in all important aspects by the moral code established by the ancient Greek philosophers, and God. If such intervening authority is introduced, as for instance a religious one, the individual is in a large measure divested of personal responsibility for his morals; his moral code is subject to modifications according to the preferences of the supervisory 'authority.' The authority may itself undergo change from time to time, particularly so in an age of social upheaval and revolution. I hope you will at least concede the last point. THG: (#325) . . the Church is an authority to the good Catholic, the State to the good citizen, the Bible to the orthodox Protestant. In each case the acknowledgement of the authority has become one and the same thing with the individual's presentation to himself of a true good, at once his own and the good of others, which it is his business to pursue. (#323) Just as to children the duty of speaking the truth seems inseparable from the parental command to do so, so to many a simple Catholic, for instance, the fact that the Church commands him to live cleanly and honestly seems the source of the obligation so to live. To give just measure and to go to Mass are to him homogeneous duties; just as to the unenlightened persons in a differently ordered religious community to give just measure and to observe the Sabbath may be so. An abrogation of the authority which imposes the ceremonial obligation would seem to imply a disappearance of the moral obligation as well; because this too in the mind of the individual has become associated with the imagination of an imponent authority, the same as that which enjoins the ceremonial observance. This does not arise from the existence of a Church as a co-ordinate institution with the State. Were there no Church, the difference would only be that, as in the Greco-Roman world, the State would gather to itself the sentiments of which, as it is, the Church seems the more natural object. Moral duties would still be associated with the imagination of an imponent authority, whose injunctions they would be supposed to be, though the authority might be single instead of twofold. . . Nor would any considerate member of modern society, even the most enlightened, venture to say that his sense of moral duty was independent of some such imagination of an imponent . . If he ceased to present such an authority to himself, having previously discarded the imagination of Church or King or Divine Lawgiver as imponents of duty, he would be apt to find the obligation, not only of what is local and temporary to positive law, but of what is essential in the moral law, slipping away from him. GJI: I am satisfied that you also recognize that there are numerous kinds of moral authority. And I am elated by what you have just finished with, because it proves the very core of my argument for there being one and only one moral authority, one and only one imponent of duty. Indeed, we should all recognize only the Divine Lawgiver as the imponent. He is the only one whose authority cannot be called into question or replaced by another. All the others can be, and have been, so questioned and replaced. I maintain that it is precisely because of our penchant for inventing false moral authorities in the past centuries that has led to the moral confusion and acceptance of moral relativism in the 20th century, and now, in the 21st, to the severe moral crisis in Western civilization. Indeed, it is because we paid homage to false moral authorities in the past that we now, as you say, "find the obligation, not only of what is local and temporary to positive law, but of what is essential in the moral law, slipping away from [us]." Before we conclude, there is one other point I would like to clarify with you, Professor Green. Politically you have been identified as belonging with the Gladstonian Liberals. Could you briefly state again your views on the relationship between the individual and society. THG: (#273) Human society indeed is essentially a society of self-determined persons. There can be no progress of society which is not a development of capacities on the part of persons composing it, considered as ends in themselves. (#184) . . there can be nothing. . in a society however perfectly organized, which is not in the persons composing the nation or society. Our ultimate standard of worth is an ideal of personal worth. All other values are relative to value for, of, or in a person. To speak of any progress or improvement or development of a nation or society or mankind, except as relative to some greater worth of persons, is to use words without meaning. . . GJI: That is not at all how a socialist would rate the value of the individual. In the Prolegomena you do have much to say regarding the betterment of society through the perfecting of the individual. Do you, then, also foresee a perfect society one day, like Karl Marx does? THG: (#245) . . the conviction of the community of good for all men, while retaining its hold on us as an abstract principle, has little positive influence over our practical judgments. It is a source of counsels of perfection which we do not 'see our way' to carrying out. It makes itself felt in certain prohibitions, e.g. of slavery, but it has no such effect on the ordering of life as to secure for those whom we admit that it is wrong to use as chattels much real opportunity of self-development. They are left to sink or swim in the stream of unrelenting competition, in which we admit that the weaker has no chance. So far as negative rights go -- rights to be let alone -- they are admitted to membership of civil society, but the good things to which the pursuits of society are in fact directed turn out to be no good things for them. Civil society must be, and is, founded on the idea of there being a common good, but that idea in relation to the less favored members of society is in effect unrealized, and it is unrealized because the good is being sought in objects which admit of being competed for. They are of such a kind that they cannot be equally attained by all. The success of some in obtaining them is incompatible with the success of others. Until the object generally sought as good comes to be a state of mind or character of which the attainment, or approach to attainment, by each is itself a contribution to its attainment by every one else, social life must continue to be one of war -- a war, indeed, in which the neutral ground is constantly being extended and which is itself constantly yielding new tendencies to peace, but in which at the same time new vistas of hostile interests, with new prospects of failure for the weaker, are as constantly opening. GJI: Spoken like a true Liberal, Professor Green. We can only try to make society better; we can never achieve Utopia. Thank you very much.
Questions/Comments? Post them in The Radical Academy Forum Mr. Irbe's Website: Classical Liberal George E-mail Address: George J. Irbe |
|
Enrich Your Life With a Philosophy Book... |
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
||
[Homepage] [Newsletter] [Search] [Support the Academy] [Link to Us] [Contact the Academy] [Citing Articles from Our Website] [Privacy Policy & Disclaimer]
Copyright 1998-99, 2000-01, & 2002-03 by The Radical Academy. All Rights Reserved.