Four Phases of Morals: Socrates, Aristotle, Christianity, Utilitarianism by John Stuart Blackie

Author:John Stuart Blackie [Blackie, John Stuart]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781722267414
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: CreateSpace Publishing
Published: 2018-07-04T00:00:00+00:00

“I would do all that best beseems a man;

Who would do less is none.”

Or, as Burns has it in the well-known lines—

“The fear o’ hell’s the hangman’s whip

To haud the wretch in order;

But whaur you feel your honour grip,

Let that aye be your border.”

This is not a bad driving power by any means in the world, as things go. True, it may not make a man a missionary, but it will keep him out of the mire, and teach him sooner to die than to do a base action. Certainly it will not confine him to the performance of virtues of mere prudential calculation.

So far well. But there is another view which, if we honestly take, we shall find it impossible to acquit the Aristotelian morals of a very serious defect. This defect is the want of the religious element. In saying this I do not mean to assert that God—or rather the gods—are not mentioned from beginning to end of his famous book; they are alluded to in several places, but merely in the form of a passing remark, as a pedestrian with a long day’s journey before him may pick up a primrose from a moist bank, or a fragrant orchis from a dry brae, and fling it away. Now, there is nothing more nobly characteristic of Christianity than this, that piety is identical with morality; that faith and works—not ritual, or ceremonial, or externally imposed works at all, of course, but genuine works of moral fervour and moral firmness—are one; stand to one another, at least, as the root does to the flower, or the fruit of a wholesome plant, of which not the root but the fruit is the valuable part. That this is the only true and philosophical relation of the two great moral potencies no thinker will deny. Or, to take another simile, which will suit equally well: Every arch must have its keystone; and the keystone of every solid doctrine of ethics, as of every close compacted system of speculative philosophy, is God. That there is a great defect here in the Aristotelian ethics is plain. A man might as well write a treatise on the Affections without mention of reverence, as set forth a system of morals without mention of God. As the discipline of a well-ordered family implies the recognition of the father as the great source from which the family flows—as the prime power by which it is regulated—so a treatise on human ethics implies a chapter on human piety, or rather a pervading soul of human piety, without which all other chapters want their highest inspiration. And in this view the Aristotelian author of the “Magna Moralia” is wrong in blaming Plato for mingling up the doctrine of Virtue with discussions on the Absolute Good—that is, God. It is important to inquire what was the cause of this defect. That the subject was not altogether ignored by our philosopher is plain from the single sentence of allusion in Book viii.

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