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Module 8: The Good

Learning Outcomes

At the end of this module, the students should be able to:

1. Define the kinds of Goodness.

2. Determine the good as an end
3. Apply the existence of moral values
This module discusses the subjective morality alone is insufficient. If it were all we had, there would
be as many judges of morality as there are persons, and sincerity would be the same as truth in
moral matters. Conscience can be erroneous as well as correct; error can be vincible as well as
invincible. When objective truth is attainable, conscience cannot rest satisfied with a subjective
opinion that it knows may be false. Our next endeavor, therefore, must be to find whether there is
PROBLEM
an objective morality with which the judgment of conscience should be in agreement, and, if so,
what that morality is. Henceforth the whole of our study will be devoted to this pursuit.

I, as an individual person, rely on my own moral awareness to determine the degree of

responsibility I have for my acts, and on my own con science to judge the good or evil, the
rightness or wrongness, of these acts I have done in concrete circumstances. There is no
more ultimate court of appeal in this world than the testimony of conscience. But
subjective morality alone is insufficient. If it were all we had, there would be as many
judges of morality as there are persons, and sincerity would be the same as truth in moral
matters. Conscience can be erroneous as well as correct; error can be vincible as well as
invincible. When objective truth is attainable, conscience cannot rest satisfied with a
subjective opinion that it knows may be false. Our next endeavor, therefore, must be to
find whether there is an objective morality with which the judgment of conscience should
agree, and, if so, what that morality is. Henceforth the whole of our study will be devoted to
this pursuit. We begin by asking:

1. Is the good definable?

2. Is the good an end to be sought? 3. Are we obliged to seek the good?

4. Is the good a value simply in itself?

5. What distinguishes moral values from other values?

DEFINABILITY OF GOOD

What is the good? How do we define goodness? It seems that we must settle this question
at the outset, for if we do not know what good means, how will we recognize it when we
come across it? On the other hand, no one has succeeded in giving a good definition of
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good. In fact, would not a good definition of good require that one already know good
before defining it? And, if so, why define it?

The question of the definability of good was made acute around the turn of the century by
George Edward Moore.' His reasoning is that all definition is analysis of a concept into its
com. ponents, that good is a simple concept unanalyzable into anything simpler, and that
therefore the concept of good is indefinable. We can, of course, point to certain properties
in objects be. cause of which we call these objects good, but that does not tell us what is
good about these properties or why it is good to have them. In a sense we can define the
good, the object which is good, but not the predicate good itself. That we cannot define
good does not mean that we cannot know what it is. Not all knowledge is by definition. We
cannot define yellow but can only point to yellow objects; the wavelength of the light tells
us nothing about the color we see. To try to define good in terms of something else that is
not good is not to define it but to lose it. The reduction of good, the simplest of ethical
ideas, to something nonethical involves what Moore calls the naturalistic fallacy, as if good
were a sort of natural property that some things possess and others lack. Good is just good,
irreducible, unanalyzable, and indefinable.
One might criticize this argument by pointing out that the dictionary contains a
definition of good and that rules for the use of the word good in language can be
formulated. Linguistic analysts spend much time at this task, but Moore anticipated them
by noting that the subject matter of ethics is the concept of good itself and not correctness
in speaking about it. Others solve the problem of the definability of good by actually
defining it, for example, as pleasure, desirability, evolution, life according to nature, and
similar concepts. We shall have to examine these claims, but they are examples of precisely
what Moore means by the naturalistic fallacy. Another objection is that, if good cannot be
defined, it will have to be known by some sort of direct intuition. This Moore admits,
despite the unpopularity of intuitionism. How much intuition must be admitted in ethics is
discussed in a later chapter.

Whether or not good is indefinable in principle, we have to begin our study of it without a
definition, since we could achieve one only by committing ourselves in advance to a
philosophy we have not yet examined. Even without a definition much has been written
about the good. The ancients developed one of its most fruitful aspects, the good as end,
and we may well begin with this traditional approach.

THE GOOD AS END

Aristotle begins his Edicy with the statement: "The good is that at which all things aim."
This is not to be taken as a definition of the good, but only as a recognition of the
relationship between good and end or aim, goal. An end he declares to be "That for the
sake of which a thing is done." For him all change is a process whereby some given
underlying substrate (the matter) acquires a new specification or determination (the
form) through the action of an efficient operator (the agent) moved to act by the attraction
of some good (the end). Such a view of the universe with its constant changes supposes
teleology, or purposiveness, a directed world in which all things have an aim, as opposed
to the mechanistic theory that all changes come about by chance. A directed world needs a
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principle of direction, and the name for that principle is the nature of each being, Each
being is so structured that it acts only along certain definite lines. The nature of a being is
not some kind of driver, whether outside or inside the being, not something distinct from
the being that acts, but its very self. It is the essence of each being considered as the
principle or source of its activity. Direction supposes not only a nature, a moving principle
to make a thing go, but also a target toward which to move. So nature and end are
correlative terms. Natural activity is teleological activity.

Human beings also have a nature, the source of the inner dynamism of their being, making
it natural for them to seek the good as their end. That the nature of a being structures it to
act along definite lines is not a bar to freedom. Hu man beings have a free nature, are built
to act freely; they naturally guide themselves to their end by free choice. Other beings lack
freedom and automatically run along tracks their nature has laid. In either case they tend
to ends. Every end is a good and every good is an end. An end would not be sought unless it
were some how good for the seeker, and the good by being sought is the end or purpose of
the seeker's striving. No activity is possible except for the attainment of some end, for the
sake of some good. This is the principle of finality or teleology, which St. Thomas explains
as follows:

"Every agent of necessity acts for an end. For if in a number of causes

ordained to one another the first be removed, the others must of necessity
be re moved also. Now the first of all causes is the final cause. The reason
of which is that matter does not receive form save in so far as it is moved
by an agent; for nothing reduces itself from potentiality to act. But an
agent does not move except out of intention for an end. For if the agent
were not determinate to some particular effect, it would not do one thing
rather than another: consequently in order that it produce a determinate
effect, it must of necessity be determined to some certain one, which has
the nature of an end"

In other words, before it acts, a being with potentiality or ability for acting is in an
indeterminate condition, and can either act or not act, act in this way or in that way. No
action will ever take place, unless something removes this indetermination, stirs the being
to act, and points its action in 1 certain direction. Hence the principle of finality, "every
agent acts for an end," is implicit in the concepts of potency and act, and in the whole
notion of causality. If every agent acts for an end, the human agent certainly does too.

The foregoing description is based on Aristotle, who gave to teleology its classical
expression. But our interest is in human beings. Whatever one may think of teleology in
the world at large, no sane person can deny that human beings act for ends. Even one who
tried to prove that they do not would have this as the end or purpose of the argument.
Failure to adapt one's conduct to rational ends is the accepted sign of mental derangement.
The very admission, therefore, that there are such things as rational human acts is an
admission that human beings do act for ends.
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The question arises: If all things, including hu mans, inevitably seek an end that is also the
good, how can any act fail to be good, how can human conduct go wrong? The good as end,
as perfective, as good for, has various meanings among which we must sort out the moral
good.

The thesis that "every being is good" refers only to the goodness of existence. It means only
that every being, by the very fact that it is a being. has some goodness about it and is good
for some thing, contributing in some way to the harmony and perfection of the universe.
Every being also has a certain amount of physical goodness, which consists in a
completeness of parts and competence of activity. Though some things are physically
defective, they are good insofar as they have being, defective insofar as they lack being
From the fact that every being is good for something however, it does not follow that every
being is good for everything. What is good for one thing may not be good for another, and
what is good for a thing under these circumstances or from this aspect may not be good for
the same thing under different conditions or from another stand point. The branch of
philosophy called metaphysics considers the good in its broadest scope and so can find
good in everything in some way, ethics considers the good in the limited line of voluntary
and responsible human conduct. The murderer levels his gun and fells his victim. It is a
good shot but an evil deed. As a piece of marksmanship it is admirable, but as human
conduct it is damnable. There is some good in all things, but it need not be the ethical or
moral good.

Because not everything is good for everything, it is up to a person's judgment to determine

what things are good for him or her. Human judgments are open to error, and therefore
one may mistake an apparent good for a genuine good. Unless a thing at least appears to be
good we could not seek it at all, for it could make no appeal to our emotions, the affective
side of our consciousness; but we can easily confuse what is good for something else with
what is good for us, or what would be good for us in other circumstances with what is good
for us here and now. If some lesser good makes impossible the attainment of the
absolutely necessary good, this lesser good is not the true or genuine good for us. The
moral good must always be a genuine good, but not every genuine good is a moral good.

Thus there are degrees of goodness. We may seek a good not for its own sake but as a
means to some further good; it is desirable only because it leads to something more
desirable. This is the useful or instrumental good, and it is good only in a qualified and
analogous sense; such are all tools and instruments. We may seek a good for the
satisfaction or enjoyment it gives without considering whether it will be beneficial to our
whole being; it delights us now and may be harmless, but it offers us no guarantee that it
may not hurt us in the long run and render us unfit for the greater good. This is the
pleasant good, and it attracts us most vividly. Lastly, we may seek a good because it
contributes toward the perfection of our being as a whole, because it fits a human being as
such. This is the befitting good, the upright and honorable, the noble and righteous, and it
is good in the fullest sense. It is not only good for us, as the term befitting implies, but good
in itself as an independent value apart from its effect on others; under this aspect it is
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called the intrinsic good. The moral good, while it may also be useful and pleasant, is
always and necessarily the befitting good.

This analysis of the kinds of good shows that human conduct must always be directed
toward the good in some sense, but that this is not always the moral good. To strive for the
moral good is life's purpose and our obligation.

THE GOOD AS OUGHT

The good, we have just seen, is our constant quest. We are not born possessors of it but are
born seekers of it. Our existence is a passage from capacity to fulfillment, from potentiality
to actuality, from perfectibility to perfection. Our emptiness clamors to be filled, and
whatever satisfies our hunger is called a good. Thus the good appears to us as an end.

But what obliges us to engage in this quest? As an end the good is attractive and invites us
to itself. It calls for being, it deserves to be, it should be realized, it ought to exist. But the
bare recognition that a thing ought to be does not of itself imply that I am the one who
should make it be, We say that a work of art ought to be, in the sense that it is a noble
conception worthy of production and it would be a shame not to bring it to light; yet no
particular artist is strictly obliged to create it. We tell someone that she ought to invest her
money in this enterprise, that it ought to bring her a better return than she can hope for
from any other investments; yet no one thinks of this ought as a strict obligation.

Here we see two different senses of the ought, which the good always implies, the
nonmoral and the moral ought. Every good except the moral good is optional, but the
moral good is necessary There is no getting away from the demands of morality, from the
requirement of living a good life and thus being a good person.

This obligatory character of the moral good is what impresses itself on those who see
ethics chiefly in terms of duty. It is not so much the loveliness of the good that invites them
as the stern voice of duty that calls them. Often the choice is between a moral good and
some other kind of good, and the other kind of good seems at the moment by far the more
attractive. If we. consider the good merely as an object of desire, as an end to be sought, the
apparent good can beckon with alluring smiles while the genuine good gravely points to
the harder path. Yet one is obliged to follow genuine good and not merely apparent good.
What is the nature of this moral ought that commands with such authority? It is a kind of
necessity that is unique and irreducible to any other. It is not a logical necessity based on
the impossibility of thinking contradictions. It is not a metaphysical necessity stemming
from the identity of being with itself: what is, is. It is not a physical necessity, a must that
compels us from without, destroying our freedom. Nor is it a biological or a psychological
necessity, an internal impossibility of acting differently built into our nature, likewise
destroying our freedom. It is a moral necessity, that of the ought, guiding us in what we
recognize as the fitting use of our free. dom. It is a freedom that is a necessity and a
necessity that is a freedom. The requirement is absolute, and thus it is a necessity, but it
can also be refused, though to our loss, and thus it is a freedom.
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Moral necessity affects me, the acting subject, but it comes from the object, the kind of act I
the subject am performing. The act in its real being is something contingent that may or
may not be, but in its ideal being as held up to my reason and will for deliberation and
choice, it assumes a practical necessity demanding decision. The demand is absolute. Bad
use of artis tic, economic, scientific, and other particular abilities is penalized by failure,
not by fault, because I had no obligation to pursue these endeavors and hence no absolute
obligation to succeed in them. But I cannot help being hu man and absolutely have to
succeed as a human being. If I am a failure at it, it is my fault because the failure was
willfully chosen. I do not be. come bad in a certain line, but become a bad person.
Everything I do expresses my personality in some way, but the use of my freedom is the
actual exertion of my unique personality as constituting my inmost self.

Take the case of a man offered a huge fortune for one act of murdering his best friend.
Minimize the dangers and enhance the advantages as much as possible. Make the act
absolutely fool proof. Yet it ought not to be done. Why not?

1. Eliminate the legal sanction. Suppose that the man is not only certain of not being caught
but also finds some loophole by which he does not even break any existing civil law and
could not be prosecuted for any crime. Yet he sees himself a murderer and cannot approve
his act.
2. Eliminate the social sanction. Since no one will know, there is no one's disapproval to be
feared. Yet he deserves that disapproval even if he does not receive it. How different when
social sanctions are not deserved! We do not blame ourselves when we are innocent but
blame society for condemning us unjustly.
3. Eliminate the psychological sanction. The feelings of depression, disgust, and shame, the
inability to eat or sleep with the twinge of re morse and guilt, may disturb him, but others
can be immune to such feelings, and even in him they can come from other sources. The
moral element remains. If somehow the guilty feelings could be removed so that he no
longer felt any psychological disturbance over his deed, still in all sincerity he would judge
his act wrong and would know that he is guilty, despite the absence of feelings. Guilt is not
a subjective feeling; it is the objective quality of evil that accrues to the person who does
the evil deed. Whether one feels guilty or not, the guilt belongs to the person who is the
source of the evil deed.

4. Eliminate the religious sanction. Were God not to punish it and were we certain that he
would not, even in this absurd hypothesis the act ought not to be done. The doer might feel
glad to escape but would know that he did not deserve to es cape. The act is of the kind
that God ought to condemn, and we would be disappointed in him if he did not. We would
begin to question God's justice, so that God himself would no longer measure up to the
ideal. This is perhaps the clearest indication of the absoluteness of the moral order.

5. What remains is the moral sanction. It is intrinsic to the very act itself, identical with the
deliberate choice of the will the relationship be. tween the doer and the deed.
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In despising the moral good I despise myself. As I accept or reject the moral good, I
accordingly rise or fall in my own worth as a person. The moral good provides the scale by
which I necessarily rate myself, unavoidably judge myself. This judgment is not merely a
subjective opinion but an objective estimate of my true worth as a person in the scheme of
things. This rise or fall is not something optional; I am not allowed to fall. It is not a
question of whether I am interested in my own betterment; I am not allowed not to be. It is
not a disjunctive necessity: Do this or take the consequences. It is simply: Do this. I am not
allowed to expose myself to the consequences of not doing it. In fact, whatever con
sequences there are must themselves be judged by this moral criterion, and ultimate
consequences must contain their own moral worth.

Some writers' prefer to express this ought aspect by the terms right and wrong rather than
good and bad. It is true that the first pair have a more obligatory flavor than the second,
but it is impossible to get people to use such simple terms with consistency, especially if
they are taken as indefinables. We can use them as synonyms and rely on the context to
make them clear.

As we emphasize the good as end or the good as ought, we have two main varieties of
ethics: the teleological and the deontological An un- fortunate opposition between these
two views has infected the whole study, as if one must opt either for an ethics of ends and
consequences or for an ethics of law and obligation, in a word, for an ethics of happiness or
for an ethics of duty. Is it possible to go beyond such a dichotomy and to show that these
two aspects are not opposed but supplementary? Should not the good be done for its own
sake, purely and simply because it is good, independently of what consequences it may
lead to or what authority may impose it as a duty? This may appear from a third and fairly
modern approach to the good, the axiological, the con sideration of the good as a value.

THE GOOD AS VALUE

Value in General

The term value or worth seems to have its origin in economics, but long before the rise of
axiology as a formal study it was applied analogously to other aspects of life. There is no
more agreement on the definition of value than there is on the definition of good, but in
practice we all know what a value is, and our discussion can begin on this commonsense
level.

One thing appeals to us in some way, whereas something else does not. What appeals may
supply a need, satisfy a desire, arouse an interest, stimulate an emotion, provoke a
response, motivate a deed, or merely draw an approval. The existence of subjective values-
-valuations or evaluations or value judgments, as some prefer to call them---is a matter of
experience. We do make value judgments, whether these judgments are justified or not,
and whether they have any real content to them or not. Some of these judgments are
noncomparative, in which we merely express our approval or disapproval; others are
comparative, and by putting them in order we can construct a scale of values. A full scale
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would be too complex for anyone to complete, but we all have some constant preferences
that represent known points on our scale. Some general characteristics of value
immediately appear.

1. Values are bipolar, with a positive and a negative pole: pleasant, painful; easy, difficult;
strong, weak; rich, poor; beautiful, ugly; true, false; good, bad. The positive pole is the one
preferred; the negative pole is better not called a value at all but a disvalue.

2. Values are not homogeneous but of many kinds, some quite unrelated, and this is why
the construction of a complete scale of values is so
difficult; there are too many crosscuts.

3. Values transcend facts in the sense that nothing ever wholly comes up to our
expectations; even if anything should, it only shows that our expectations were pitched too
low and we want something further.

4. Values, though not wholly realizable, clamor for realization. They should exist, they
deserve to be, even if we have no way of bringing them into existence.

Existence of Value

Do values really exist or do they belong wholly to the domain of thought? Do we call a thing
valuable because it possesses some real property in itself or because we clothe it with a
value by our attitude toward it? The subjectivist philosopher, to be consistent, must adopt
the latter view. But even objectivist philosophers, who in their theory of knowledge admit
the existence of real being that is there independently of our thinking, can be subjectivist
on the question of value. Things exist, they say, but whatever value they have is conferred
on them by us; there is objective being, but no objective value. What evidence is there
on this question?

That there are values is evident from the fact that we have preferences. That some values
are wholly subjective is attested by the arbitrariness of some of our preferences. The thing
has no intrinsic worth, at least for us, but we give it a value because of our peculiar
prejudices, our psychological conditioning, our unaccountable tastes and fancies. Social as
well as personal values can be subjective. Polls, popular vote, and other forms of opinion
gathering are only a summary of the personal values of individuals and do not prove that
there is an objective basis for the widespread preference.

Other values are subjective in nature, but their lack of complete arbitrariness shows that
they have some objective basis. Many values, such as the value of paper money, of credit, of
reputation, of academic degrees, or of artistic masterpieces, are created by human
convention. That these conventions are not wholly subjective is seen in the fact that, if they
have no backing in reality, they are consider fraudulent and their value vanishes.
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Besides both of these varieties of subjective value, we find others that we can properly call
objective. Not that any value can be so absolutely objective that it does not contain a
subjective component. All values have relation to a valuer; they are values for somebody.
When we call a value objective, we do not deny this relation to a valuing subject but assert
the existence of an objective reason for this relation in the valued object. There is
something about the thing that makes it suitable for this person, so that the personal
preference is not arbitrary. Thus a person's taste in foods is subjective and arbitrary, but
the need for food in general is objective and rooted in the person's biological
requirements. How extensive objective values are can be seen from a partial list of them.
That life is a value and death a disvalue, health a value and sickness a disvalue, pleasure a
value and pain a disvalue, prosperity a value and poverty a disvalue, beauty a value and
ugliness a disvalue, intelligence a value and stupidity a disvalue--carry the list as far as you
want-is too evident to need comment. The reason is not merely the fact that most people
prefer one to the other, but its fittingness or unfittingness for the kind of beings we are.

How do we come to recognize these values? That depends on the stance we take toward
our selves and the world. If we simply take an objective stance, then we presuppose the
existence of a value-neutral, factual world independent of our consciousness of it. We
presuppose further that our experiences are common to every other person who has
"normal" sense perception, that there is common evidence and common observations, that
there are common objects and a common world which we all share. None of us has
anything like a privileged role in this com. mon universe; neither we nor any of the objects
and events are intrinsically valuable. On the other hand, if we take a personal stance, we
view our selves and the world personally and self-consciously. We find ourselves
emotionally involved, not in reality as a whole, but in those portions of reality that matter
to us, that are important to us. The world from this standpoint is substantially identical to
the world as viewed from the oblective stance, but there is a difference, the difference in
emotional involvement makes. The objects of the world are not just heavy or light, made of
iron, wood, or canvas; they are also beautiful or ugly, pleasing or displeasing. The people
are not merely other human beings with such and such physical characteristics; they are
also beautiful or ugly, attractive or repulsive, lo able or unlovable. Actions are more than
mere events with such and such causes; they are also important or trivial, admirable or
blameworthy. The world from this subjective or personal standpoint includes objective
value; it is not value neutral and simply factual.

Our emotional involvement is what makes the difference. Why? We have not stopped our
processes of thinking and willing the very processes we have been using in taking our
objective stance. What we have done is allow our emotions to operate, and they have
shown us that reality is much more than just a set of facts. They have shown us the value
that is there in the world, and we have initiated certain responses to the values that our
emotions have revealed to us. If we do not repress our emotions but rather allow them the
freedom to operate, we find on reflection that they are a further way we have of being
conscious of ourselves and our world. In fact, by way of our emotions we take whatever
stance we do within reality, even the so-called completely objective stance. Even the very
desire to know in an objective manner by screening out personal attitudes and preferences
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is rooted in emotion. We are more than just sensing, thinking, and will ing beings, we are
also capable of experiencing by way of our emotions. We sometimes use the term feeling to
mean our emotional life, our life of hoping, enjoying, loving, hating, appreciating,
esteeming, sorrowing, and so forth. Emotion is as fundamental for experiencing as are
sensing, thinking, and willing.

Emotion is our way of orienting ourselves to ward a person, situation, event, or thing to
which we already stand in, or now come into, fundamental relation. Take, for example,
being excited about someone or something. That someone or something is being
experienced as valuable and the "being excited" arises out of or is centered in an
awareness of value. The "being excited" is an immediate and direct awareness of objective
value; it is an opening of oneself out toward an other person or thing, and value reveals
itself in that very "being excited." The emotion is not merely directed toward something or
someone other than myself but also reveals objective rea- sons for the "being excited."
Thus our original, personal experience of objective value is through conscious emotion as
immediate and direct appreciation of value.

Between emotion and its object there is no medium such as an act of imagination,
understanding, or judgment. Emotion arises spontaneously and uniquely as a directedness
toward an object, person, event, or even reality as a whole in its value dimension; the
object, person, event, or reality as a whole in its turn reveals itself as value. Emotion is our
way of being beyond ourselves in relation to and involved in what is other than ourselves
and precisely in terms of value, worth, or importance. Emotion is our way of actively
receiving the objective value that is there to be perceived. Through emotion we are active
in relation to reality so that reality reveals itself as it is, namely, as having a value
dimension that is knowable and can be responded to. What is known through emotion is
irreducible to what is known through sense and intellect.

Emotion, as value appreciation, is insightful and preconceptual. The value discovered at

the level of emotion is the content that is preserved and transformed at the levels of
forming intellectual value concepts and making intellectual value judgments that utilize
such concepts. Value appreciation is immediate and direct involvement with reality; it is an
open involvement in which one sees, as it were, for the first time and something new is
revealed, to wit, objective value. Emotion also grounds all will activity, because all ethical
willing is based on some value appreciation. The will is not activated by a judgment
concerning what is goal or by a concept of a good. The will's motives are concrete gods,
and what is good is in fact good by virtue of a value that reveals itself concretely through
emotion. In the absence of value, the will cannot move. Unless emotion makes value
insightfully present, the will cannot be actualized in the ethical sense.

Some derivative values can be arrived at by logical reasoning from other values, but the
primary values are not reasoned. They simply present themselves. We experience the
attraction of the good by way of our emotions. When we ask ourselves why the thing is
attractive to us, either we find that there is no reason but our own psychological
conditioning or the passing fads of the group, and these values we label subjective; or we
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find an objective reason in a real suitability of the thing to ourselves, a suitability that we
do not create but find already existing, and these values we call objective.

The difficulty can be raised that all values are only abstractions and therefore subjective
because they exist only in the mind that conceives them. This objection rests on the theory
of knowledge called nominalism, which underlies most forms of empiricism and
positivism. Nominalism admits no basis in reality for abstractions and universal ideas but
considers them as mere names that facilitate our way of speaking. Hence it is not
surprising that nominalists have trouble with value, which is an abstract concept and a
universal idea. The difficulty here is not with values but with nominalism, which is an
inadequate theory of knowledge. None but extreme Platonists wish to give to abstractions
independent existence as real things, and thus abstractions exist formally as such only in
the mind. Most abstractions, however, are not formed arbitrarily and therefore have their
basis or foundation in the way things really are. Those who admit a realistic basis to
universal ideas will accord the same realism to values, that is, to those values we called
objective. As there is no universal without a knower to make the abstraction, so there is no
value without a valuer to do the valuing. Values, like other universals, are drawn from the
data of experience and have their concrete fulfillment in existing persons, things, and
actions. It is a fact that we evaluate goods to buy, persons to employ, students to reward,
candidates to vote for, and friends to live with. We do so because we see some objective
qualities in them that make them deserving.

The foregoing is meant to be introductory to the question of moral values. Are there moral
values distinct from other values such as those we have been describing, and are these
moral values objective?

Moral Values

The common estimate of mankind separates moral values from other values. We say that a
man is a good scholar, athlete, businessman, politician, scientist, artist, soldier, worker,
speaker, entertainer, companion, and yet that he is not a good man. We say that someone
else is a failure at some or perhaps even all of these, and yet that
he is a good man. On what do we base such Judgments? Why do we separate out this last
value? Because we recognize that it is distinct from the others and more fundamental,
more valuable than the other values.

Moral values are understood to be those that make a person good purely and simply as a
per son. They are not external objects that, though they may help a person to become the
kind of being he or she ought to be, are not the very person. Nor are they qualities or
attributes of the person but outside his or her control, such as having good health or long
life or family status or bodily beauty or mental acumen or artistic talent or a magnetic
personality. These are all values, but no one can command them. Moral values are
personal, not only because a person has them, but because they are the expression of each
one's unique personality in the innermost center of one's being, as shown in the act of
choice. Moral values, therefore, reside both in the acts a person chooses to do and in the
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results of those acts on the character of the person. There are morally good or bad human
acts and morally good or bad persons.

A shark attacks one of two young men swimming at the beach. The other comes to his
rescue and, braving the danger, wards off the shark and brings the wounded companion to
shore. We feel pity for the one who was attacked but pass no moral judgment on him. He
did not act but was acted on. Toward the rescuer our attitude is quite different. His
swimming may have been awkward, his lifesaving technique faulty, his approach to the
shark unscientific, his act unseen and unpublicized, and the whole venture useless be.
cause the victim died. Even one whose feelings are not aroused to admiration cannot help
judging the act to be fine and noble and worthy of approval. It has no value but one, and
that is its moral value. Suppose an opposite case. The shark attacks both swimmers. To
save himself, one of them deliberately kicks his companion into the path of the shark's
mouth, thus gaining time to scramble onshore while the shark is occupied with its morsel.
As an act of self-saving it has value, for it was done quickly, efficiently, cleverly, and
resourcefully. But we cannot approve. The only excuse for such an act would be instinct or
panic. As a willful, deliberate act it merits condemnation.

Two husbands have wives afflicted with a lingering and incapacitating disease. Both
families are alike: five children, moderate income, no hope of remedy. One husband does
his best to be both father and mother to the children, works over time to pay for his wife's
care, and spends what time he can with her to brighten her days. The other man decides
that he has had enough, deserts wife and children, gets work in a distant city under an
assumed name, and is not heard of again. Our emotional attitude toward the wives and
children is one of congratulations in one case and compassion in the other, but they are
only passive figures in the case. Toward the husbands also our emotional responses differ:
the one we admire and the other we scorn. When we make our intellectual judgment, we
have to approve of the first husband and disapprove of the second. It is not a question of
consequences. Suppose that the deserted dependents are better taken care of by public
charity than the husband could have done for them. Still we must condemn his action as
morally wrong. The moral value and disvalue remain in these two cases as irreducible
elements.

Examples of this type could be multiplied in definitely. But these are sufficient for our
purpose: to isolate the characteristics of moral value as distinct from any other value.

1. Moral value can exist only in a free personal being and in that person's voluntary or
human acts. By willing moral good a person becomes good. It cannot happen accidentally.
It makes no difference whether the act is successful or not. It is done intelligently in the
sense that the agent knows what he or she is doing and wills to do it, but it need not be
brilliantly planned and executed.

2. Moral value is universal in the sense that what holds for one holds for all in the same
conditions. The reason is that it shows the worth of a person as a person. Even when no
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one else could duplicate one person's circumstances, all would approve of his or her action
as the right thing to do in the case, whether they would have the strength to do it or not.

3. Moral value is self-justifying. Thus at least it appears on the surface, though we shall
have to delve deeper into this matter in a later chapter. We suspect that any further
justification of moral value will be found to be part of the moral order itself and not some
extrinsic reason. Even the truth must be pursued morally, though it be the truth about
morals.

4. Moral value has a preeminence over every other value. A moral value can be compared
only with another moral value. If a moral value conflicts with another type of value, this
other must take a subordinate place. We think that a person simply must be true to himself
or herself as a person, no matter how much else might be lost in the effort.

5. Moral value implies obligation. We just discussed this in our section on the good as
ought and will say more on it later. Someone may dis regard all other values, and we shall
call that person foolish, stupid, clumsy, crude, dull, ignorant, impractical, and many other
names, but we can still respect the individual as a person. Not so if he or she loses personal
moral integrity.

The Moral Ideal

The foregoing discussion brings out the fact that we do form for ourselves an ideal of
human conduct and an ideal of personhood. These are not two ideals, for a person's
conduct is that person's life. It is only good conduct that can make a good person, and a
person is called good because that person's past acts show him or her to be the kind of
person from whom good acts are expected.

We find it impossible not to form such an ideal, since it is implied in every moral
judgment, and we do make moral judgments. The word ideal should not be understood
here as some romantic fancy, a knight in shining armor, some sort of superman or bionic
woman with unearthly pow crs, the kind of being that could not happen in real life. What
we use in moral judgment is not an idealized figment of the imagination nor an esthetic
ideal, but a moral ideal. It is true that no one ever perfectly lives up to it, but it must mean
the ideal a person could live up to because one ought to. The ideal as an ideal does not exist
in reality, but it is not subjective in the sense of being arbitrary. It is an ideal image or
model constructed out of the core of values we have recognized in the persons we have
encountered in life. Our initial recognition of our parents was not simply to see them as
two factual human beings. Through our emotions we found in them a core of values against
which we measured other persons present. This initial value recognition, made possible by
our own emotional value appreciation, is the source of the ideal moral model we develop
for ourselves. Our acts of willing presuppose the value content of the model and are
grounded in our love for the model. We follow and strive to be like the person we love as
our model. We form an image of our parents, relatives, and friends and determine their
significance for us on the basis of the core of values we find in them. What we find on
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reflection is an ideal image of the moral person that is formed as a result of the values we
have encountered in others and projected for ourselves as our ideal of the moral person.

This ideal image or model exerts an effective ness on one's moral judgments and choices; it
lies in the depths of our consciousness, moving, growing, and transforming itself and us in
a mysterious manner. The model is a kind of exemplar of personal value accessible to our
emotional insight and love; it is a person, though not necessarily one actually existing, who
exhibits a unique value structure in his or her behavior. The model's effectiveness as a
moral ideal is grounded in his or her value structure, and we experience it as the moral
demand of an ideal ought, not a duty ought. The model attracts, draws, invites, allures us in
the sense of being a person who already is most nearly what he or she ought be. We
experience the demand as a task, namely, o is a demand to become what only each of us as
individuals can become. The model is not the zeal toward which we strive, and yet for each
of us our individual model is goal-determining.

How do we discover our own personal model? Only in the performance of our practical
every day actions is our ideal model localized and available for reflection. If we never take
the time to reflect on our actions and our experiences of ourselves acting In various
situations, we shall never become conscious of our model as a model. Prior to reflection,
however, we do have the experience of knowing that our actions are or are not measuring
up to our ideal, or that they are in conflict with or in violation of our ideal. In such
experiences we are recognizing the model in practice without making a special act of
recognition. The moral model is regulating each of our experiences without our becoming
expressly aware of the model as a model. Only in reflection can we begin to bring our ideal
moral model into focus.

The moral model is effective not only in our Individual actions. It also effects a moral trans
formation in us. We give ourselves freely to the attractiveness (values) of the model to
become as the model is, not what the model is. We learn to will and act as the model wills
and acts. This is neither a case of slavish imitation nor of simple obedience to the
commands of another person. No, this is a free response to recognized value. We grow
morally by striving to be and live as the model is and lives. Primarily it is a matter of loving
what the model loves and as the model loves, for only in this way can each of us grow as a
person and so gradually become what each of us in our own individuality can become.

To become the person we can become re quires something more than Intellectual keen
ness. One must have a love of self and a love for others that generates the energy and
enthusiasm needed to seek to become the person each of us as individuals can become. If
we are ever to understand this, it will be thanks to love. Love seeks so that understanding
may find. We do not seek what we already possess and yet to seek is to assume in some
way the thing sought and so to know it already but not with perfect clarity. Once love for
the moral ideal is awakened, that same love provides a favorable atmosphere and beams
forth a light that illumines the values, the moral qualities and perfections, of our moral
model. Love reveals to us what we would not see without it and love inspires us to go
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beyond ourselves as we are now in order to become what we can yet be. Love for the
moral model's value is the energizing force of the entire moral life.

As the artist has an ideal of the perfectly pro portioned human body, as the scholar has an
ideal of the perfectly intelligent human mind and, being human, these are not beyond the
possibility of realization--so we all have an ideal of the perfectly living human being. So far
as a per. son approaches this ideal, he or she has moral value and is good. So far as one
admits into his or her life that which degrades this ideal, that person has moral disvalue
and is bad.

The notion of the good as expressed here is that of the intrinsic, or perfect. good as
opposed to the instrumental, or perfective, good. The ideal is good, not as leading to
something else, not as a means useful to something further, but in Itself. It has value
because it has what It ought to have to be itself in the fullest expression of itself. This is the
good in the highest sense, for what is good for another ultimately supposes something for
which others are good, and this last must be good in itself.

This conception of the good, especially this latter part dealing with the moral ideal, derives
from Plato and Max Scheler. The unacceptability of Plato's interpretation of ideals should
not prejudice us against what is true in his thought. We need not accept his theory of a
direct vision of the ideal as Ideas or Forms recalled from a former life in which we saw
them more clearly. Our concepts, including our concept of the ideal good can be
manufactured by the process of abstraction and intellectual refinement from the data of
experience. How we do this and what standards we use in judging our moral ideas and
ideals will be ours occupation throughout the next several chapters.