Jacques
Maritain Center
1 Cf. Henry Sidgwick, Outline of the History of Ethics, New York: Macmillan, 1931, p. 290; London: Macmillan, 1931.
2 The title of one of Dewey's best-known essays, which appeared in 1930.
3 Cf. Leo R. Ward, "John Dewey in Search of Himself", The Review of Politics, Vol. 19 (April, 1957), 205-213. The author has condensed in this brief article a remarkably rich and enlightening analysis which constitutes one of the most penetrating essays published on Dewey.
4 Ibid., p. 206.
1 "The fact that Hegel affirmed form, structure, spirit and God was enough to make Dewey deny, skirt, dodge every one of these . . . . Since Hegel had some kind of God, Dewey would have none. . . ." Ibid., pp. 211, 212.
2 "Dewey spent his mature life fighting dualism, and the evident tension is a hint that perhaps he had not overcome dualism in himself or his thought. . . . All this time he was trying to leave one absolute monism for another, and it may be that he was torn in two between an unachieved new monism and an unappeased old monism, and was left suffering an unconscious and unwanted dualism of the new and the old." Ibid., p. 208.
3 We may add that not only monism, but the idea -- which was fundamental for him, as explained in the volume which Schilpp devoted to him -- that nothing is intelligible except in terms of the Whole or can be understood except one understands everything, was in the case of Dewey a direct inheritance from Hegel.
4 "He finally said that in his old Hegelian philosophy everything was form and structure, and that in his later development structure came to nearly nothing." Ibid., p. 206. Cf. Dewey, Experience and Nature, Chicago -- London: Open Court, 1925 and 1929, pp. 71-74.
1 "In the Hegelian years, it was. all spirit, and ever after, it was all nature." Ibid., p. 207.
2 Cf. the remarkable study on the philosophy of Dewey published by John Ratner in his Introduction to pages chosen from Dewey and issued under the title Intelligence in the Modern World, New York: Random House, 1939.
3 "To be is to be in process, in change," he said, notably in the essay of 1930 mentioned above. Victims of a trompe-l'oeil, many American readers recognize themselves in this formula, which in itself is quite Hegelian if one sees in it a definition (being consists of changing, of becoming), but which in reality only expresses -- in the terms of a defective vocabulary -- a truth long since proclaimed by Aristotle, if one sees in it a statement of fact concerning our material world (everything here below changes -- the being of the material natures which are the object of "physics" is of itself subject to becoming and to change, ens mobile).
1 Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939 (8th Impression, 1955).
The work of Ayer to which Dewey refers is Language, Truth and Logic, London: Victor Gollancz, 1936.
It is useful to consider Theory of Valuation in connection with other writings of Dewey: Logical Conditions of a Scientific Treatment of Morality, Chicago, 1903 (reprinted from The Decennial Publications of the University of Chicago, First Series, III, 115-139); The Quest for Certainty, New York: Minton Balch, 1929, pp. 260-281; and Problems of Men, New York: Philosophical Library, 1946. Part III, "Value and Thought", pp. 211-353.
1 Theory of Valuation, pp. 9-10.
2 Ibid., p. 17.
1 Theory of Valuation, Further on (p. 18) Dewey declares himself in agreement with logical positivism in regarding "vital impulses" (i.e., "organic biological tendencies") as the source or origin from which all values derive. ("Vital impulses are doubtless conditions sine qua non for the existence of desires and interests.") But he energetically maintains that vital impulses (simple facts of experience, "a-rational like any existence taken in itself") are not "valuations" (one might as well say that "trees are seeds since they spring from seeds"). For Dewey it is the activity of desire or interest which is identified with valuation, and desires or interests imply an ideative factor, concerning ends-in-view and means to be employed. On "native impulses" cf. Human Nature and Conduct, New York: Henry Holt, 1922, pp. 89-101.
2 Ibid., p. 18.
3 Ibid., p. 19.
4 Cf. ibid., pp. 20-21.
5 "Appraisals of courses of action as better and worse, more or less serviceable, are as experimentally justified as are nonvaluative propositions about impersonal subject matter." Ibid., p. 22.
1 "Any survey of the experiences in which ends-in-view are formed, and in which earlier impulsive tendencies are shaped through deliberation into a chosen desire, reveals that the object finally valued as an end to be reached is determined in its concrete makeup by appraisal of existing conditions as means." Ibid., pp. 25-26.
2 Ibid., p. 29.
3 Ibid., p. 30. Cf. p. 51: "Value-propositions of the distinctive sort exist whenever things are appraised as to their suitability and serviceability as means."
1 On the notion of end-in-view, cf. also Dewey and Tufts, Ethics, rev. ed., New York: Henry Holt, 1932, pp. 197-201.
2 Theory of Valuation, p. 31.
3 Ibid., p. 32.
1 Cf. Theory of Valuation, pp. 40 ff.
1 Cf. Theory of Valuation, pp. 45-47.
2 Ibid., p. 40.
3 Ibid., p. 49. 408
1 "Not perfection as a final goal, but the ever-enduring process of perfecting, maturing, refining, is the aim of living," writes Sidgwick apropos of Dewey (op. cit., p. 327); "growth itself is the only moral end."
2 This is precisely what Dewey rejects from the outset. For him the fundamental error in morals is to want to found moral judgment on "transcendental conceptions" "which have a significance independent of the course of experience as such", and he holds that the possibility of a "logical control of moral judgments" implies the "continuity of scientific judgment" (which does not leave the realm of empirical relativity) in moral experience as in the experience proper to the sciences of nature (nor does he see that the word "experience" itself has a quite different sense in the two cases). Cf. Problems of Men, Part III, esp. p. 244. See also Ethics, pp. 364-367.
On the relation of the bonum honestum to moral obligation, see the following section, devoted to Bergson, pp. 431-435.
3 Cf. Theory of Valuation, pp. 27-28; Problems of Men, Part III, pp. 211-353.
1 Theory of Valuation, p. 28.
2 Cf. ibid., p. 56.
3 "Ends-in-view are appraised or valued as good or bad on the ground of their serviceability in the direction of behavior dealing with states of affairs found to be objectionable because of some lack or conflict in them." Ibid., p. 47.
1 Theory of Valuation, p. 66.
2 Ibid. 'Ibid.
3 Human Nature and Conduct, p. 10.
4 Ibid.
5 Cf. the excellent remarks of Dr. Charles Odier on what he calls "moral psychology", Les deux sources, consciente et inconsciente, de la morale, Neuchatel: 6d. de la Baconnière, 1943 [2nd ed., 1947], pp. 158 ff.
1 See above, chapter 10, pp. 254-256, and chapter 12, pp. 330-331.
1 On Rousseau and natural goodness, cf. our work Three Reformers, New York: Scribners, 1937, pp. 93-164; London: Sheed and Ward, 1932.
1 Cf. Human Nature and Conduct, p. 11; Ethics, pp. 347- 349; Sidgwick, op. cit., p. 326. 2 This very notion of "situation" plays an important role in Dewey's thought. Cf. in particular Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, New York: Henry HoIt, 1938, chapter IV.
Let us note in passing the sophism common to all moralities of situation. They act as if in affirming (rightly) that "it is not the function of the theory to furnish a substitute for reflective personal choice, but to be an instrument which renders the deliberation more effective and the choice therefore more intelligent" (Dewey, Ethics, loc. cit.), one affirmed by the same token (which is, however, an entirely different assertion) that moral science cannot propose (or, more exactly, cannot reflexively justify) any universal norm, in other words, that not only the ultimate achievement of the normative determination, or the right application of the law in the given case, but the law itself or the very principle of normative determination, derives from the judgment of the individual and from personal reflective choice (which amounts to saying, in Thomistic language, that prudentia has not only to apply the laws of conduct with absolute rectitude -- something no science or theory can do -- but has to create these laws in each particular case). Cf. above, chapter XIII, pp. 392-393.
3 Cf. Leo R. Ward, article cited, p. 211.
4 Cf. Human Nature and Conduct, pp. 288, 292.
1 Cf. Theory of Valuation, pp. 63-64. "The separation alleged to exist between the 'world of facts' and the 'Realm of values' will disappear from human beliefs only as valuation-phenomena are seen to have their immediate source in biological modes of behavior and to owe their concrete content to the influence of cultural conditions." (p. 64; italics ours.)
2 Human Nature and Conduct, p. 10.
3 Ibid.
4 Cf. Theory of Valuation, pp. 57-58.
5 Cf. Leo Ward, art. cited. The author gives (p. 212) a table of some of the inconsistencies to be found in Dewey: "Man has a nature; Man has no constant nature. -- Man is wholly one with nature; By no means; Man is free. -- Man is simply to accept nature and the mores and conventions; Man is not to accept nature and the mores and conventions. -- Some ends are given; for example, growth, the full stature of our possibilities; No ends are given. -- Some norms are given; no norms are given. -- Man has intelligence; Man is of a piece with everything else."
6 Cf. above, pp. 401-402.
7 Human Nature and Conduct, p. 12.
8 Ibid., p. 12. He is quite right in this, or rather he would be if he had in mind human nature in the proper or ontological sense of the term. But this notion remains irremediably ambiguous for him. What he has immediately in mind, in fact, are simply "realities of human physiology and psychology" (ibid., p. 4), that is, phenomena which as such tell nothing of a nature immutably determined in its specific characteristics. But at the same time, for Dewey as theoretician of human conduct, these same "realities" take on a surreptitiously ontological sense and become the unavowed equivalents of the "human nature" of common sense and healthy philosophy -- a structural constant identical in all men.
1 Cf. D. W. Gotshalk, "The Paradox of Naturalism", Journal of Philosophy, vol. 43 (1946), pp. 152-157, and "A Suggestion for Naturalists", ibid. vol. 45 (1948), pp. 5-12. Cited by Leo R. Ward, art. cited, p. 210.
2 Cf. George Santayana, "Dewey's Naturalistic Metaphysics", Journal of Philosophy, December 3, 1925. Reprinted in The Philosophy of John Dewey, edited by P. Schilpp, New York: Tudor Co., 1939 and 1951, pp. 245-261; Cambridge: C.U.P., 1951.
3 The Two Sources of Morality and Religion. Translated by R. Ashley Audra and Cloudesley Brereton with the assistance of W. Horsfall Carter, Garden City: Doubleday, 1956, p. 89.
1 Bergson describes them as "forces which are not strictly and exclusively moral" (Ibid., p. 96), although "a substantial half of our morality" is constituted by the first, and "the rest of morality" by the second (ibid., p. 49).
2 Ibid., p. 85.
3 "Once again, there is some difficulty in comparing the two moralities because they are no longer to be found in a pure state. The first has handed on to the second something of its compulsive force; the second has diffused over the other something of its perfume. We find ourselves in the presence of a series of steps up or down, according as we range through the dictates of morality from one extreme or from the other. . . ." Ibid., p. 51.
4 Ibid., p. 84. [420]
1 Cf. Jacques Maritain, Bergsonian Philosophy and Thomism, New York: Philosophical Library, 1956, p. 327.
2 The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, p. 9.
3 Ibid., p. 10.
4 Ibid., p. 20.
5 Ibid., p. 23.
6 Ibid. Cf. p.25: "Conceive obligation as weighing on the will like a habit; each obligation dragging behind it the accumulated mass of the others, and utilising thus for the pressure it is exerting the weight of the whole: here you have the totality of obligation for a simple, elementary, moral conscience." 7 Ibid., p. 28.
8 Ibid., p. 28.
9 Ibid., p. 212.
10 Ibid., p. 212. Cf. p. 100.
11 Ibid., p. 212.
1 The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, p. 213.
2 Ibid., p. 214.
3 Ibid., p. 34. Cf. p. 72: "Something has supervened which might never have existed, which would not have existed except for certain circumstances, certain men, perhaps one particular man."
4 Ibid., p. 35.
5 Ibid.
6 Cf. ibid., p. 44.
7 Ibid., p. 53.
8 Ibid., p. 54.
9 Ibid., p. 239.
10 Ibid., p. 240. [422]
1 Cf. The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, pp. 59-60.
1 It is known that in his will, dated February 8, 1937, Bergson declared that his reflections had "led him closer and closer to Catholicism, in which I see," he said, "the complete fulfillment of Judaism," and that he would have asked to be baptized had he not "wished to remain among those who tomorrow will be persecuted". In conformity with the request expressed in the will, a Catholic priest came to pray over his mortal remains. Cf. our book Bergsonian Philosophy and Thomism, p. 337, footnote 1.
2 Cf. The Two Sources, p. 100.
3 Ibid., p. 101.
4 Cf. our work previously mentioned, Bergsonian Philosophy and Thomism, p. 329.
1 "It is for closed, simple societies that the moral structure, original and fundamental in man, is made. I grant that the organic tendencies do not stand out clearly to our consciousness. They constitute, nevertheless, the strongest element of obligation." The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, p. 56.
2 Cf. ibid., p. 286.
3 Ibid., p. 284.
4 Ibid., p. 31.
1 The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, p. 223.
2 I mean to say superior to material nature but remaining metaphysically natural. Cf. above, in reference to John Dewey, chapter XIV, p. 402.
3 I mean to say superior to all creatable nature.
4 The Two Sources, p. 252.
5 Ibid., p. 96.
6 Cf. ibid., p. 47.
7 There are, says Bergson, "two kinds of emotion, the one below intellect, which is mere disturbance following upon a representation, the other above intellect. . .". Ibid., p. 252.
8 See above chapter 12, pp. 336-339.
9 Cf. The Two Sources, p. 36.
10 Ibid., p. 252.
1 Cf. The Two Sources, p. 234.
2 Ibid., p. 252.
3 Sum. theol., I, q. 59, a. 5.
4 Ibid., I-II, q. 109, a. 3; II-II, q. 23.
5 Cf. The Two Sources, p. 285; and p. 33: "It is primarily as against all other men that we love the men with whom we live. Such is the primitive instinct. . . ." We do not come "to humanity by degrees, through the stages of the family and the nation. We must, in a single bound, be carried far beyond it, and, without having made it our goal, reach it by outstripping it."
1 The Two Sources, pp. 234-235. -- Cf. ibid., p. 38. -- The Stoics did not have a notion of that kind of love. Hence the infinite distance which, despite certain apparent likenesses, separates the Stoic morality from Christian morality, as Bergson has well illustrated ("The Stoics proclaimed themselves citizens of the world, and added that all men were brothers, having come from the same God. The words were almost the same; but they did not find the same echo, because they were not spoken with the same accent." Ibid., p.60; "But these dicta were the expression of an ideal, an ideal merely conceived, and very likely conceived as impracticable. There is nothing to show that any of the great Stoics, not even the Stoic who was an emperor, considered the possibility of lowering the barrier between the free man and the slave, between the Roman citizen and the barbarian. Humanity had to wait till Christianity for the ideal of universal brotherhood, with its implications of equality of rights and the sanctity of the person, to become operative. Some may say that it has been rather a slow process; indeed eighteen centuries elapsed before the rights of man were proclaimed by the Puritans in America, soon followed by the men of the French Revolution. It began, nevertheless, with the teachings of the Gospels, and was destined to go on indefinitely; it is one thing for an idea to be merely propounded by sages worthy of admiration, it is very different when the idea is broadcast to the ends of the earth in a message overflowing with love, invoking love in return." Ibid., pp. 77-78.)
2 See above, chapter 12, pp. 336-339.
3 Cf. The Two Sources, p. 33 (cited above, p. 426, note 5), and p. 233: "For the love which consumes him . . . is the love of God for all men. Through God, in the strength of God, he loves all mankind with a divine love."
1 See above, chapter 12, pp. 339-341.
2 Cf. The Two Sources, pp. 69-71.
3 Cf. ibid., p. 309.
4 Cf. ibid., pp. 76-77: "The progress which was decisive for the substance of justice, as the era of the prophets had been for its form, consisted in the substitution of a universal republic, embracing all men, for that republic which went no further tha'ii *he gates of the city, and, within the city, was limited to free men. It is from this that all the rest has followed. . . ."
5Ibid., p. 282.
6 Ibid., p. 283.
1 The Two Sources, p. 10; cf. ibid., p. 100.
2 Cf. ibid., pp. 17ff.
3 Ibid., p. 23.
4 Ibid., p. 83.
5 Ibid., p. 266.
6 Ibid., pp. 266-267. Cf. p. 56 (cited above, p. 424, note 1).
7 Ibid., p. 33.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid., p. 55: "In the second [morality], there is still obligation if you will, but that obligation is the force of an aspiration or an impetus, of the very impetus which culminated in the [430] human species, in social life, in a system of habits which bears a resemblance more or less to instinct: the primitive impetus here comes into play directly, and no longer through the medium of the mechanisms it had set up, and at which it had provisionally halted." In regard to the other obligation -- obligation strictly speaking, which has its source in the first morality -- Bergson writes, p. 83: "In short, the obligation we find in the depths of our consciousness and which, as the etymology of the word implies, binds us to the other members of society, is a link of the same nature as that which unites the ants in the ant-hill or the cells of an organism; it would take this form in the eyes of an ant, were she to become endowed with man's intelligence . . . It goes without saying that the matter wrought into this form becomes more and more intellectual and self-consistent as civilization progresses . . ." And he adds, thinking of the "obligation, if you will", of the second morality: "And we have seen also how a certain kind of matter which is intended to be run into a different mould, whose introduction is not due, even indirectly, to the need for social preservation, but to an aspiration of individual consciousness, adopts this form ["the form that the link of the ant-hill would take in the eyes of an ant, were she to become endowed with man's intelligence"] by settling down, like the rest of morality, on the intellectual plane." (Italics ours.)
1 The Two Sources, p. 55.
1 The Two Sources, p. 96.
2 Ibid.
3 "Obligation is in no sense a unique fact, incommensurate with others, looming above them like a mysterious apparition. If a considerable number of philosophers, especially those who follow Kant, have taken this view, it is because they have confused the sense of obligation, a tranquil state akin to inclination, with the violent effort we now and again exert on ourselves to break down a possible obstacle to obligation." Ibid., pp. 20-21.
4 Cf. ibid., pp. 20-23; 85-95.
5 Moral obligation for Bergson is only a factual necessity of the social-instinctive order; and all that intelligence has to do with obligation is, after having "thrown instinct out of gear", quickly to "set things to rights" in justifying it. He thinks only of the discursive and reflective functions of intelligence, and from this angle he can say: "an act of reasoning will therefore prove that it is all to the interest of the ant to work for the ant-hill, and in this way the obligation will apparently find a basis. But the truth is . . . that obligation already existed in all its force" (which is true, but not at all in the way that Bergson understands it): "intelligence has merely hindered its own hindrance". The Two Sources, p. 94.
"No philosopher," adds Bergson, "can avoid initially postulating this compulsion" [432]
(which means, for Bergson, the physical necessity of obligation as link of the ant-hill or the organism); "but very often he postulates it implicitly, and not in words. We have postulated it and said so." Ibid.
1 The Two Sources, p. 17. The text continues: "This type of conscience is not the one that is most often at work. At any rate it is more or less sensitive in different people. Generally the verdict of conscience is the verdict which would be given by the social self" (Italics ours.)
2 Cf. ibid., pp. 25-26.
1 Jacques Maritain, A Preface to Metaphysics, New York: Sheed and Ward, 1948, pp. 87-88; London: Sheed and Ward, 1939. (Sept leçons sur l'être, Paris: Téqui, s.d., pp. 97-99).
2 It can happen, be it understood, that we may fool ourselves in regard to the bonum honestum, and we might regard as good in itself cutting off the hand of thieves, putting to death tribal chiefs when they reach old age, burning widows on the funeral pyre of their late husbands, torturing suspects in order to obtain confessions or information, etc. There is a question (a question of the erroneous conscience) which has nothing to do with what we are discussing here and which concerns the bonum honestum considered in general, or in its constitutive notion itself.
1 "Vis obligativa in debito morali ex sola recta ratione ut a coactiva virtute proficiscitur." Cajetan, opusc. De obligatione et observatione praeceptorum, q. 2.
1 Cf. our work Bergsonian Philosophy and Thomism, pp. 337-343.
1 Raissa Maritain, Histoire d'Abraham ou les premiers âges de la conscience morale, 2nd ed., Paris: Desclée De Brouwer, 1947, pp. 72-73. An English translation of this essay appeared as "Abraham and the Ascent of Conscience," in The Bridge, ed. by J. M. Oesterreicher, New York: Pantheon, 1955, pp. 23-52.
2 Ibid., p. 74.
3 Ibid., p. 77.
4 Cf. our work, The Degrees of Knowledge, new trans. under supervision of Gerald B. Phelan, New York: Scribners, 1959 (London: Bles, 1959), chapter VIII, "Saint John of the Cross, Practitioner of Contemplation," pp. 310-355.
1 Gal., 5:18.
2 II Cor.,3: 17.
3 Rom., 8:14-16.
4 Sum. contra Gent., IV, 22.
1 John, 3: 8.
2 Cf. John of Saint Thomas, The Gifts of the Holy Ghost, trans. by Dominic Hughes, New York: Sheed and Ward, 1951, p. 30; London: Sheed and Ward, 1950.
3 Cf., mutatis mutandis, our remarks on the acquired moral virtues and the infused moral virtues in Science and Wisdom, New York: Scribners, 1954, pp. 210-220; London: Bles, 1940.
4 ". . . the Lord requires as the very first step in the way of the Spirit that birth from the Spirit contribute to man's freedom of choice rather than take it away. For there would be a great loss in merit if the Spirit determined the will and worked in it by violence rather than by breathing and actuating its inclinations. For this reason the Apostle wrote that the [439]
spirits of the prophets are under the control of the prophets. This is interpreted by St. Thomas to mean that as far as the use of the power of announcing prophecies is concerned the spirits are subject to the will of the prophet and are not like delirious ravings.
"The gifts of the Holy Ghost, therefore, are given to the soul after the manner of habits, so that in a rational and voluntary way the soul may be moved to those works to which it is directed by the Spirit. Thus, those who are conducted by the Spirit are moved not as slaves but as free men, willingly and voluntarily, !since the principles which move them, though derived from the Spirit, are inherent in their very souls. They are impelled to operations which by their character and measure exceed all ordinary human standards." John of Saint Thomas, op. cit., p. 28.
1 I am thinking for example of the Stoic notion of interior freedom (the sage, even in chains, is the equal of Jupiter), or the Spinozist doctrine of the knowledge of the third genus.
1 The Two Sources, pp. 222-223.
2 Ibid., p. 233.
1 Cf. Sum. theol., I-II, q. 107, a. 1 and ad 2.
2 Ibid., q. 106, a. 1.
3 Ibid., q. 107, a. 1, ad 2; cf. same article, ad 3.
4 "The New Law makes us enter under a rule which is not the one I have here called the rule of morality, but a rule in which morality, not only safeguarded, but interiorized, deepened and refined, is suspended from the redemptive love of Christ." Raissa Maritain, op. cit., p. 79.
It is indeed in this way that the general rule under which humanity lives today is rightly characterized (at least in those places where the Gospel has been preached). But what we are speaking of in the present chapter is the particular rule under which such and such an individual was factually placed. He who does not have grace lives under the rule of morality (not without summons and solicitations which come to him from on high); he who has grace but remains carnal lives inchoatively under the rule of supra-morality but effectively under the rule of morality; he who has grace and is led by the Spirit lives effectively under the rule of supra-morality.
5 See above, chapter 5, pp. 79-81.
6 Cf. Bergsonian Philosophy and Thomism, p. 344.
1 The Two Sources, p. 84.
2 Ibid., pp. 84-5. -- Cf. ibid., p. 59 (cited above p. 419, note 3).
1 Saint Paul, Gal., 4: 26.
1 Sum. theol., I-II, q. 106, a. 1. (Italics ours.)
2 The Two Sources, p. 238.
3 Ibid., p. 239.
4 Sum. theol., I-II, q. 68, a. 2.