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A Dialectic of Morals—I

Towards the Foundations of Political Philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Mortimer J. Adler
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In St. Thomas and the Gentiles I tried to define the obligations of perennial philosophy in the twentieth century. Philosophy may be perennial, but its work changes according to the cultural conditions in which the philosopher lives and thinks. In its Greek beginnings, philosophy arose out of the dialectical efforts of Plato and Aristotle to clarify and order the welter of opinion. They struggled not only with the sophists to divide the line between knowledge and opinion; but they also moved in the realm of opinion to distinguish the true from the false; and, in their patient consideration of pre-Socratic thought, they both tried, though differently, to convert right opinion into knowledge by making it evident to reason. Although the result of their work was the establishment of philosophy as a body of knowledge, founded on principles and developed by demonstrations, we must not forget that, in their day, the mode of their work was primarily dialectical. In saying this I do not overlook the demonstrative or scientific achievements of Plato and Aristotle; but those must be regarded a secondary, for the first work of pioneers is to stake out the land, to clear away the brush, to prepare the soil, and to dig for firm foundations Only thereafter can a city be planned, buildings raised, and interiors decorated The Platonic dialogues certainly reveal an intellectual pioneer at work; but no less do the so-called “scientific” works of Aristotle, for they are primarily records of exploration and discovery. Rather than orderly expositions of accomplished knowledge, they are, not only in their opening chapters but throughout, dialectical engagement with adversaries, wrestlings with the half-truths of error and opinion in order to set the whole truth forth.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , January 1941 , pp. 3 - 31
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1941

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References

1. If we consider carefully the character of these exceptions—their philosophic mood and temper—they illustrate, by contrast to the rest of “scholasticism,” what it means for philosophers to remember the thirteenth without forgetting the twentieth century. Confining myself to the field of moral philosophy, I should cite as striking exceptions—striking in themselves and also striking because it is only in the very recent past that such work has occurred—the writings of Jacques Maritain (such as True Humanism and Scholasticism and Politics) and of Yves Simon (especially noteworthy in this connection is his Nature and Functions of Authority); and I must also mention the work of Father Walter Farrell.

1a. In St. Thomas and the Gentiles (Milwaukee, 1938)Google Scholar, I wrote: “Far from making every effort to join issue with those who differ from us, we have, in my judgment, not even begun to make an effort properly directed and properly proportionate to the task at hand. We have been loath to absent ourselves from the felicity of moving further into the interior of philosophical thought, when there is pressing work to be done on the border, the arduous and lowly work of the pioneer. The borderland I speak of is marked by the issue between those who hold, as we do, that philosophy is a field of knowledge in which there can be perennial truth and those who deny it” (p. 20). In this earlier work I tried to find a parallel for our task in the sort of dialectical work St. Thomas did against the gentiles in the sphere of faith. I now think a better parallel is to be found in the dialectic of Plato and Aristotle against the sophists, because the ancient effort was, and the modern effort must be, entirely within the sphere of reason.

In saying that the modern effort must be entirely within the sphere of reason, I am thinking of what I regard as the primary task of philosophy in the contemporary world—to win respect for itself in a culture that is predominantly positivist. I hope it will be understood that this is not incompatible with the general notion of a characteristically Christian philosophy—the work of reason elevated by faith—for although faith seems to have been indispensable for the mediaeval discovery of truths not known to the ancient pagans, the truths, once discovered, are possessed by reason and can, therefore, be made acceptable to the reason of modern pagans. For the most part, Christian philosophy, because its truths are rational, can be taught to pagans even though it could not have been initially developed by them. There is, however, one profound limitation on the foregoing statement, which is crucially relevant to the present undertaking, namely, the fact that Christian moral philosophy is not, and cannot be, purely a possession of reason, because as practical wisdom it is necessarily guided by faith and subalternated to moral theology. (Maritain, M. has completely analyzed this point in Science and Wisdom, New York, 1940: Part II.) The doctrines of man's fall, redemption, and salvation, are theological, not philosophical. Since in the practical order we are concerned with ends and means, we cannot neglect the difference between the end as declared by faith and as known by natural reason; nor can we ignore the fact that natural means are insufficient for a supernatural end; they may not even be sufficient for a natural end, if the “natural man” is a hypothetical creature who does not exist. But even though a purely natural moral philosophy is not the whole truth, taken theoretically, and even though a purely rational morality may be practically false because of its theoretic inadequacy, we must nevertheless begin our dialectical undertaking with what reason alone can accomplish. If we succeed in winning the moral skeptic to the path of reason, and if we take him with us as far as reason can go, it will then be time enough to ask where we are; for then, as not now, he may be willing and prepared to consider the relation of theology to philosophy, of faith to reason, in the practical order. The leader should, therefore, understand why our present objective is the induction of Greek, and not distinctively Christian, moral principlesGoogle Scholar.

2. I am not forgetting that this process cannot occur, today, in exactly the same mood or manner as in the Middle Ages. Since the aim is certainly not just to repeat the mediaeval construction, we must attempt further and more detailed analysis, and these must take account of every genuine advance in knowledge, and every sound critical insight, which the modern world has gained. We may even find it necessary to tear down some parts of the mediaeval building and to reconstruct it, in order to let modern light in, to ventilate it properly, and to make it truly habitable by a modern mind. And in emphasizing here the demonstrative and expository character of such constructive, or reconstructive, work, I do not mean to exclude dialectical procedures entirely, for they are necessarily involved. But the kind of dialectic by which a living Thomism continues to grow is mediaeval rather than Greek in type—that is, it is not primary and inductive, but secondary and auxiliary to the deeper penetration of truths already known.

3. Here, too, there is a difference in the mood and manner in which a similar task is undertaken; for whereas Aristotle was genuinely exploring the philosophical field by dialectical methods, and discovering truths by inductive procedures, we are not learning these elementary truths for the first time, but rather are trying to teach them to a world which denies their possibility. We must, therefore, use the dialectical method and the inductive procedure as instruments of instruction rather than of discovery. It is highly probable, of course, that what occurs as a discovery of truth for those whom we try to teach may be more than a mere re-discovery for us, the teachers. Since the cultural context of the modern world is different, since the steps we must take in reaching the same truths are Hot precisely those which Aristotle took, the truths themselves may be seen in a new light; and it is even possible that, as a result of such efforts, new truths may be discovered.

4. It should be noted that what is being denied is not politics as one of the social sciences, but politics as a branch of practical, or moral, philosophy.

5. They are regarded as regulative disciplines, as formal sciences, whereas the natural and social sciences are regarded as sciences of the real, even though the only reality be phenomenal.

6. Two other denials are implicit here: (1) the denial of a natural moral law, in consequence of which morality becomes entirely conventional; and (2) the denial that moral judgments are expressions of reason, rather than of will or passion.

7. In “This Pre-War Generation,” an article in Harper's Magazine, 10, 1940 (No. 1085, pp. 524–534)Google Scholar.

8. The neglect or denial of what, in contrast, I would call philosophical psychology results in the denial or, what is just as bad, the misconception of man's rationality and freedom. The relevance of such denials or misconceptions to moral skepticism will become apparent in the course of the dialectic.

9. This can be most strikingly exemplified by the position of those political scientists who are willing to urge us to fight for democracy, but who refuse to argue that the principles of democracy are intrinsically, and absolutely, right, or even objectively better than the principles of totalitarianism. Adopting the views of realpolitik, they must regard this issue as nothing more than a struggle between “ideologies”—the one to which we are devoted not being objectively better than the other, but better-for-us because it is ours by the accident of cultural location.

Let me add here that all the facts of cultural anthropology must be admitted. The moral skeptic often supposes these facts to be absolutely incompatible with the position that some moral judgments are true for all men everywhere. But this is not the case/. The truths of moral philosophy, the principles of ethics and politics, do not require us to shut our eyes to any facts about human life and human society. The precise relation between the universality and absoluteness of moral truth, on the one hand, and the diversity and relativity of the mores, on the other hand, will become apparent, I hope, in the course of the dialectic.

10. The position of Thrasymachus in The Republic, and the views attributed to Protagoras and other sophists, in the writings of Plato and Aristotle, are perfect expressions of moral skepticism. Although the thing we call “positivism” is typicallymodern, because it arises in modern times with the gradual distinction of science from philosophy, there is a Greek analogue in so far as the sophists were not total skeptics. All but the most extreme among them, such as Cratylus, were willing to admit that we had knowledge of the physical world; in fact, they used such knowledge to make their point that in moral matters only opinions prevailed. They were fond of saying that lire burns in the same way in both Greece and Persia, both a hundred years ago and today, but the laws of Greece and Persia are not the same nor are the customs of antiquity and of the present. Of nature, because it is nature and has a persistent uniformity independent of human will, there can be knowledge, but there can be only opinions on moral matters, because they are not natural, because they are entirely conventional, entirely dependent on human institution, entirely expressions of will. The sophists knew a great deal about the variety of customs; obviously impressed by the relativity of mores, they made the same false supposition that is made today, namely, the incompatibility of such facts with the possibility of universal moral principles. Finally, it can even be said that the sophists’ view of human nature, without benefit of experimental research or clinical investigation, emphasized, as does our current scientific psychology, the will or passions, rather than the reason, and made the sensitive faculty the primary, if not the exclusive, principle of human knowledge. The main points of this analogy between the ancient sophists and the contemporary moral skeptics is confirmed, from the other side, by the late Professor Schiller, F. C. S., the follower of James, William and Dewey, John who, more explicitly than they, avowed the moral skepticism which is implicit in pragmatism. Vd. his essay, From Plato to Protagoras, in which Schiller sides with Protagoras (in Studies in Humanism, New York, 1907: Ch. II)Google Scholar.

11. I should like to observe here that the fact of preference plays a role in the dialectic of morals like the role played by the fact of change in the dialectic of substance. If anyone persist in denying the existence of change, it will be impossible, I think, to induce that person to see the necessity for there being a multiplicity of individual substances. So, too, if anyone really persist in denying that men exercise preferences, it will be impossible to carry him any distance at all into the field of morals.