1. The Standpoint of Rationalism.--2. Extreme and Moderate Rationalism.--3. Cynicism.--4. Stoicism.--5. The Truth of Pationalism: Reason (a) as a Distinctively Human Faculty.--6. (b) As Extending the View of Man to Include a World of Objects and Events.--7. (e) As Enlarging the Experience of Man to Embrace the Lives and Personalities of Others.-8. The Faults in Rationalism: (a) It Encourages Injurious Asceticism.--9. (b) It Justifies Extreme Intellectualism.--10. (c) It Is Individualistic in Tendency.
CHAPTER IIITHEORIES OF THE GOOD--RATIONALISM
1. The Standpoint of Rationalism.
Rationalism finds the Good in the exercise and development of Reason. As an ethical theory it appears as the opponent of Hedonism and its view of the Good as rational activity is defined and accentuated by contrast with the Hedonistic view of the Good as pleasant feeling. In fact, the two theories are the great antagonists in the ethical field, and the history of Ethics is largely a record of the controversy between them. Affiliated, the one with the real and the other with the ideal, the one with the natural and the other with the spiritual, Hedonism and Rationalism are two poles between which ethical speculation swings and with an inclination almost irresistible towards one or the other. But while they are thus contrary, and appear as mutually exclusive alternatives, the relation between Hedonism and Rationalism is not merely that of opposition. Rather does Rationalism represent a further stage in the development of ethical theory in which the standpoint of Hedonism is transcended and its limitations overcome. It is a step onward towards the final solution of the problem of Ethics.
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2. Extreme and Moderate Rationalism.
Just because Rationalism is an attempt to surpass and supersede Hedonism, it must retain as essential to its own position an attitude of protest against the Hedonistic doctrine. When the Rationalist recommends the life of reason as the highest human good he inevitably thinks of this intellectual activity as superior to feeling and sensation. He is bound to insist, therefore, that the demands of feeling and sense be strictly subordinated to the requirements of reason. The extent of this antagonism to the emotional side of man's nature varies with the different types of Rationalism and affords a convenient basis for classifying them. Theories of Rationalism may be called extreme when holding that a free exercise of reason, in which the highest human good consists, requires the complete suppression of all those desires and impulses through which man naturally seeks pleasure. Such theories demand the practical annihilation of the feeling and emotional life of man. In moderate Rationalism, on the other hand, the Good is found, not in the complete suppression, but in the regulation and control, of sense and feeling by reason. Thus feelings and emotions are permitted to enter the good life, but only in a subordinate role.
3. Cynicism.
The theory of Rationalism, like that of Hedonism, was originally derived from the teachings of Socrates. Indeed, its relation to the spirit of Socrates' doctrine is much closer than that of its rival. Of the two sides of Socrates' teaching the rationalistic was certainly the more prominent. He proposed that individual impulse and opinion be submitted to the rule of reason, because reason is the one faculty in human nature whose dictates are authoritative for all individuals. Soon after Socrates' death this element in his teaching was appropriated by a school of thinkers called Cynics and was developed by them into an extreme form of Rationalism. The founder of the Cynic school, Antisthenes, was particularly impressed by
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Socrates' independence of character, his courage in time of danger, and his self-possession in every emergency. These qualities constituting, in the opinion of Antisthenes, the very highest type of virtue, are developed, he believed, only when a man suppresses his natural desires and appetites entirely and devotes himself to intellectual pursuits. For our natural desires and appetites require objects to gratify them, such as food, drink, clothing, houses, furniture, etc. He who seeks pleasure in such gratifications is dependent upon the possession of these objects and hence becomes a slave of external conditions--of every circumstance that may threaten his possessions or destroy them altogether, leaving him destitute and miserable. The exercise of reason, on the contrary, is in no such way dependent upon external conditions and influences. The man who finds satisfaction in intellectual activity has resources within himself and he is freed entirely from control by such circumstances as unpopularity, poverty, sickness, slavery. These are evils only if we allow them to be such. If we root out the desires for wealth, health, reputation, and the like, we shall no longer suffer from the lack of their objects. In such.
freedom is the highest type of virtue and the dignity of a life truly human. The Cynics carried their hostility to the life of feeling and the pursuit of pleasure to the farthest extreme, Aiatisthenes declaring that he would rather be mad than pleased. They attacked, not merely the enervating luxury and extravagance of their time, but all conventioias and institutions of civilization as useless paraphernalia which encumbered man and hindered him from attaining the freedom of a rational being.
4. Stoicism.
Rationalism was amplified and developed in ancient times by a second school, the Stoic, which was contemporary with the Epicurean.1 Stoicism may be
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regarded as the typical Rationalism and, as such, it confronts the typical Hedonism of Epicurus. In Stoicism, as with the Cynics, the Good is found in the exercise of reason, or knowledge. The Stoics--especially in the beginning--relaxed little of the rigor and severity of the earlier school in their attitude towards the life of sense and feeling. They condemned all feeling and emotion as producing intellectual confusion and leading to a slavish dependence on external conditions. Such unselfish emotions as sympathy and pity were included in this condemnation, and the destruction of all feeling was therefore urged. The ideal state was declared to be that of apathy or non-feeling, the state most favorable to the exercise of reason. Now while the Stoics thus agreed with the Cynics in identifying the Good with the exercise of reason and the suppression of feeling, they were able to give a new interpretation to the ” life according to reason,“ which in its turn communicated a new and more positive meaning to their conception of freedom, and finally served to soften and humanize their whole doctrine. According to this new insight, man's reason is merely an expression of the Universal Reason, that rational principle which pervades the universe and determines the meaning and purpose of everything within it. In obeying his reason man is but conforming to the rational order of the world: he is playing his part in the universal scheme of things. Life according to reason thus means life according to nature. The freedom that man gains through the exercise of reason is not merely negative, a relief from domination by external objects and forces, it is positive freedom, the freedom of self-expression and self-development. For as much reality as a man possesses he derives
Zeno had Phcenician blood, which is thought by some historians to account partially for the ascetic tendency in his philosophy. He went to Athens at the age of twenty-two and became a pupil of the Cynic, Crates. Later on he founded a school of his own, which, because of its meeting-place, the Stoa Poecile, was called the Stoic School.
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from the universe. Hence in the degree to which the human individual discharges the part assigned to him in the Universal Purpose he achieves reality himself and furthers his own development. Thus the Stoics were led to believe that every person has a duty to perform in the world, and this belief tended to counteract the self-centered and exclusive character of their intellectualism. Moreover, if all men are expressions of the Universal Reason they are in an important sense equal in worth and dignity. This was recognized particularly in later Stoicism, where we have the principle of human brotherhood, if not explicitly realized, at least clearly suggested, in the lofty conception of a city of God which should unite all humanity in the bonds of a common citizenship. This increasing humanitarianism served to soften the earlier harshness and severity of the school, developing a sense of justice and toleration, and producing in its later development such upright and noble characters as Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. While often the Stoic's ” city of humanity “ was to him but a vision, to be realized--if ever--only in some world to come, yet this vision did not fail to influence his conduct in the present world. Hence Stoicism was the most potent force worlking for moral and social improvement in the Roman Empire, and it aided in effecting many important reforms, particularly in ameliorating the condition of classes that were oppressed, such as slaves and subject-peoples.
5. The Truth of Rationalism: Reason (a) As a Distinctively Human Faculty.
The question now arises coneerning the truth in Rationalism; for as a theory of the Good it must be subjected to the same critical scrutiny as was Hedonism. Such a critical study will justify the conclusion that Rationalism, if not the whole truth regarding the summum bonuni, is at least a large part of it. In the first place, it creates a presumption in favor of Rationalism that it finds man's, good in the exercise and
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development of a faculty distinctively human. The animals possess the same senses that man does and they have, we believe, similar sensations. The animals also experience the fundamental feelings and emotions, seeking to prolong those which are pleasant and to avoid the painful. But man alone among living species possesses the faculty of reason, the power of self-conscious intelligence, with the ability to judge and to generalize, to imagine and to infer. The possession of this rational faculty has been rightly regarded as a distinguishing mark of the human species. Is it not reasonable then to conclude that the Good which must completely satisfy human nature will consist primarily of the exercise and development of this faculty? Certainly the argument of Aristotle on this point has lost none of its force. Man's Good, he maintains, must reside in the exercise of his proper function as man. What is the proper function of man? It cannot be mere life, involving the processes of nutrition and reproduction; since these activities are shared by plants as well as animals, and man's proper function must be peculiar to himself. Neither can it lie in sensation; for the life of sense and feeling is shared with the animal. It must therefore reside in the exercise of that capacity which, man alone possesses, his Reason. ” The function of man then is an activity of soul in accordance with reason,”2 and his Good is a life that is virtuous because controlled by reason. Aristotle's reasoning here is wholly sound and a sufficient refutation of views at present widespread which find in the fact of evolution a justification for Naturalism and Iledonism in Ethics. Because man is the result of a long evolution from the lower forms of life and has the same origin as they--so the argument runs--the part of his nature which he shares in common with the other animal
2 Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, trans. by Welldon, Bk. I, Chap. VI, p. 16.
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species is the essential part. His Good will then consist in the satisfaction of these primary instincts which express his fundamental organic needs, for food, drink, shelter, clothing, offspring, etc. This reasoning is fallacious from the standpoint of evolution itself. For how does a species evolve--through the accentuation of what is common to it and other lower species from which it has sprung, or of what is peculiar to it and serves to distinguish it from these lower forms? Certainly the latter; and as it is in evolution universally, so it is with man. If he is to continue his evolution, to progress still farther on the upward road that has already elevated him above all living species, it must be by the exercise and development of those powers of intellect and will peculiar to himself. In this connection it is curious to observe persons interested in the doctrine of socialism attempting to find a scientific basis for the ideal of human brotherhood in the biological fact that all men are the outcome of the same evolutionary process and have in common the same fundamental instincts and impulses. Such thinkers seem to forget that as a creature of instinct man, like the other natural species, is subject to the law of natural selection, and his evolution is accomplished through ruthless competition and the survival of the fittest. Furthermore, it is only through the increasing power and efficacy of his reason that man is able to substitute for the blind action of natural selection with its tremendous waste the intelligent action of social selection which has for its conscious aim the highest human welfare. Human evolution, both social and moral, demands that we
“Arise and fly
The reeling faun, the sensual feast,
Move upward, working out the beast
And let the ape and tiger die.”3
3 TENNYSON: “In Memoriam”, CXVIII.
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6. (b) As Extending the View of Man to Include a World of Objects and Events.
Reason is thus important in human life because it extends the view of man beyond the present, to embrace both past and future wit n a unified experience. While the animal is, we suppose, confined almost exclusively to the sensation of the moment, man may survey his life as a whole, seeing the present as the outcome of the past, and the future as the result of them both. We may therefore count it as the second point in favor of Rationalism that it is man's intellect which introduces him into a new and larger world of permanent objects, in fixed and necessary relationships. For man's view is extended to past and future only through his capacity to revive by-gone events and experiences in the form of ideas, seeing these in their connection with each other and with the present situation. Our thought is not content, moreover, to accept every connection of events as it happens to be given, but seeks to discover what connections are fixed and necessary. Thus we gain an insight into the causes of things which holds for the future as well as for the past and present, enabling us to predict with much certainty what the future has in store, and to, act accordingly. Through the work of thought the conscious life of man gains a totally new significance. His present experience and surroundings are seen as part of an orderly world of objects and events, of persons and forces, which are interacting and interdependent. To the animal a famine means only certain present sensations, such as hunger and weakness. But man through his power of thought sees it in the light of past experience and previous knowledge as an event in a complex system, the result of drouth, perhaps, whose more frequent occurrence is due to the denudation of watersheds, which in its turn is a result of careless or corrupt administration--and so on through a network of causes which has no end, but
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which if followed far enough would include all the forces and factors in the universe.
Now it cannot be doubted that if we as voluntary agents are to gain any true satisfaction from life, we must cultivate and develop that power of intelligence within us which shows us our position as permanent individuals in an orderly universe, and our relations to other individuals and objects included within the system. Thus ouly can we hope to achieve our aims, choosing those objects as means which are bound in the nature of things to produce the ends we desire. Spencer, himself a Hedonist of the evolutionary school, shows appreciation of the importance of reason in this capacity of guide to action when he says that the evolution of conduct has been throughout accompanied by an increasing control of “presentative” by “representative” feelings. “Throughout the ascent from low creatures up to man, and from the lowest types of man up to the highest, self-preservation has been increased by the subordination of simple excitations to compound excitations-the subjection of immediate sensations to the ideas of sensations to come--the overruling of presentative feelings by representative feelings, and of representative by re-representative feelings. As life has advanced the accompanying sentiency has become increasingly ideal; and among feelings produced by the compounding of ideas, the highest, and those which have evolved latest, are the re-compounded or doubly ideal. Hence it follows that as guides the feelings have authorities proportionate to the degrees in which they are removed by their complexity and their ideality from simple sensations and appetites.”4
But reason, in its work of organizing human experience, is not limited to tracing the necessary sequence of events, and thus to the discovery of causes and effects. It also
4 SPENCER: Data of Ethics, Chap. VII, § 42.
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takes cognizance of the likenesses and differences of things, and classifies them on this basis. This work of cataloguing objects on ground of their qualitative similarity is in general of great importance to conduct; for thereby we systematize our world and are able to deal effectively with the endless diversity of things which it contains. One of its applications has, however, a peculiar and far-reaching significance for Ethics. In this case, man himself becomes the subject of classification. Through his own thought man sees himself as a member of the class of human beings, as one human individual among many. Thus he is enabled to view himself objectively, impartially. When he passes judgment on himself so considered, as merely a human person, an individual man, this judgment will apply equally to all other human beings, it will be valid universally. Now if we are to make the most of our given human capacities in a world of fixed conditions and definite facts, clearly we must often take the impartial and objective attitude towards ourselves, and reach conclusions concerning our conduct which are universally true. But such objectivity and universality can only be attained if we substitute for the warmth of feeling and the color of sense the “dry, white light of reason”--if we quiet the clamor of impulse, while we seek in the clarity of thought to view our case ” steadily and view it whole.” It was this fact, that only through reason do we reach precepts and principles that are valid universally, which profoundly impressed Immanuel Kant, the leading Rationalist of modern times. Inclination and desire he regarded as essentially subjective, since their objects are sought as means to individual happiness. The Good, on the contrary, consists in the conformity of the human will to the law of reason which, in contrast to inclination, is valid universally and is always an end in itself, never a means to anything else.
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7. (c) As Enlarging the Experience of Man to Embrace the Lives and Personalities of Others.
Reason performs another valuable service which deserves mention as a third consideration in favor of the theory which finds man's chief good in intellectual activity. Reason enables the individual to interpret the action and expression of others, and thus to gain an insight into their personal characteristics--theirs aims, motives, and abilities. We often overlook the part played by reason and imagination in all altruistic action. The sole requisite for such action --we are apt to think--is the proper state of ” will “ and feeling, the willingness to lend a helping hand, and the feeling of sympathy and fellowship. As for the needs and abilities of others, can we not observe them clearly and easily? Yet this is precisely what we cannot do. We cannot observe directly the conscious life or personality of another human being besides ourselves. The actions, words, and facial expressions of others may be thus observed, but not their motives, ambitions, or sentiments. The individual must interpret what he sees others do, and hears them say, in terms of his own conscious experience, and thus arrive at an understanding of their personal attributes and abilities. This work of interpreting the inner and unseen from its outward and visible manifestation can be done only by reason and imagination. Such interpretation is necessary, however, if there is to be any genuine cooperation or real helpfulness among men in society. For how is one man to serve another unless he knows his needs, and how cooperate with him unless he understands his nature?
Failure to recognize this necessity--that of understanding the thoughts and feelings of others--has caused many a well-meant act of kindness to go astray and do harm rather than good. Persons whose intentions are of the best are often condemned as meddlesome and officious because, having no knowledge of others' desires and sentiments, they
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ride rough-shod over them. If one is to do as he would be done by, he must make the intellectual effort to put himself in another's place. This requires thought--to understand the alter's conditions and surroundings--and imagination, to represent what his thoughts and feelings are in these circumstances. And not only is it necessary that we in this way project ourselves into others' lives, interpreting them in terms of our own conscious experience, but it is equally necessary that we make due allowance for differences between ourselves and them. This puts a still greater tax upon our powers of intelligence. Sufficient regard must be paid to the essential identity between self and others as. fellow-workers or fellow-citizens, or even like human beings, and at the same time recognition must be made of differences of race, age, sex, and finally, most critical of all, of individuality. The non-observance of these differences of personal character and standpoint is a frequent source of misunderstanding and discord in social relations. This is particularly noticeable in domestic relations, where the husband, notwithstanding kindness of intention and genuine affection, offeinds and alienates the wife through failure to recognize that her sex gives her a standpoint fundamentally different from his own, and the parent becomes estranged from the child because of a failure to remember that youth has its own thoughts and desires, its own code of honor and attitude toward the world. Merely to understand one's friends and acquaintances with their varying characteristics sets a severe task for the rational and imaginative faculty. But only reason can accomplish it, and hence should be trained for the task. A recent writer urges that such training be made a part of the moral instruction of youth. He says: ” It is of highest importance to recognize the place filled by imagination in moral development. Although no doubt this power may be used as an instrument of self-interest, it is in its nature
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antagonistic to egoism. We cannot easily look forward without letting our vision stray on one side or the other of the track of our own immediate personality. While selfish desires may be pursued with a minimum of pre-vision, even the rudiments of sympathetic feelings are impossible without a considerable measure of representative activity. The first task of the moral instructor, then, is clearly to feed the spring of imaginative sympathy to enable the child to put himself in the place of all those whom his actions may affect.”5
8. The Faults of Rationalism: (a) It Encourages Injurious Asceticism.
Since reason is the faculty which raises man above the lower orders by revealing to him his place as a conscious individual in a world of inter-related objects and events, and by giving him an insight into the lives and characters of his fellow-men, it is not surprising that many moralists have found the summum bonum in its exercise and development. Just because so much may be said in favor of Rationalism, however, our criticism must be particularly searching and severe that its many merits may not blind us to its possible shortcomings.
We have already seen that in the logic of ethical development Rationalism arises as a protest against the continued domination of feeling and sense over human conduct. Hence the Rationalist thinks of intellectual activity as essentially opposed to the life of pleasure and sensuous gratification. Now no one can deny that the suppression of unruly passion and the regulation of wayward impulse is the indispensable condition of all moral attainment. Natural appetites and animal desire are strong within us, and there is no hope for the development of spiritual capacities unless these are curbed and controlled. Moral development is achieved through struggle, and he has but
5 JAMES OLIPHANT: “Moral Instruction,” International Journal of Ethics, July, 1906, p. 408.
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a superficial understanding of its nature who would ininimize the importance in it of self-development and self-denial. The strictest control or even complete suppression of natural impulse is justified if required to give intelligence a hearing. Even when there is no such special need it may be wise to practise self-denial and to discipline our natural appetites so that our control over them may be greater in case of emergency. In this sense of spiritual exercise, of moral athletics, asceticism is to be highly commended. Thus Professor James, in an oft-quoted passage, advises us to keep the faculty effort alive in us by a little gratuitous exercise every day.6
But when an ethical theory makes such opposition to man's natural desires and appetites its absorbing interest, and treats the suppression of feeling, not as a means, but as an end, the situation alters. Rationalism has shown a constant tendency to go to this length--to condemn all the pleasures of sense and to concentrate itself upon the destruction of natural feeling and emotion. Thus, in spite of its many merits which one should not fail to recognize, it has been primarily negative, not positive, in its attitude, being characterized, not by what it enjoined men to do, but to refrain from doing. Now, no theory whose recommendations are mainly negative can be accepted as the final solution of the ethical problem. It is necessarily limited by its negation--being driven by its opposition, to a view nearly as extreme and untenable as that of its opponent. It is not unfair to say that there is inherent in Rationalism the tendency toward such an extreme--an extreme of asceticism which condemns all the natural desires and gratifications of human life as unworthy and evil, and which, when fully developed--as in the Middle Ages--is as false in theory and as injurious in practice as any form of Hedonism could be. It is this kind of asceticism which Spencer
6 JAMES: Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, p. 126.
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attacks, calling it a product of devil-worship--of the worship of deities who are thought to take pleasure in human privation and suffering.7
The fact that such injurious asceticism is recommended by Rationalism of the extreme type and encouraged by its moderate forms must count as a serious charge against the theory. The mind of the present rightfully disapproves of the hostility to nature, the contempt for the flesh, that is implied in this asceticism. An attitude of this kind can be justified only by a philosophy which holds matter and the material to be essentially evil. But such a view is impossible to the thought of today which has accepted the evolutionary interpretation of the universe. From this standpoint all of human nature is the product of the evolutionary process. Some of man's faculties he received already developed from animal progenitors: others existed only in germ in the lower forms, their development being peculiar to man. But this fact furnishes no ground for making an absolute separation between the two, condemning the former as material and exalting the latter as spiritual. Instead we must regard all as alike natural and their difference one of degree only. Now as natural, man's sensuous impulses and ” :fleshly “ desires may rightfully claim a share of his attention and a measure of gratification. The desire for food and drink and play, the impulse of sex and parenthood--all these are part of normal human nature. Hence the attainment of their objects is a necessary part of the satisfaction of man's will; and without it human volition will go unsatisfied. Moreover, certain of these sensuous impulses constitute the roots from which spring some of the most esteemed ” spiritual “ gifts. Thus the instincts of sex and sympathy are the source of altruistic qualities that distinguish the finest character. The instinct of combat is the source of those tendencies to rivalry
7 SPENCER: Data of Ethics, §§14, 38.
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and emulation which in their higher forms make the most effectiv e spurs to personal achievement. One who, in mistaken moral zeal, exterminates any of these impulses does a double wrong to his human nature--he mutilates it by depriving it of one of its natural means of expression, and also stunts its future growth by destroying forces germinal to further development. Finally it is worth noting that such asceticism usually fails of its aim to remove from the mind all sensuous desire. The very effort to ” crucify the body, “ to ” mortify the flesh, “ results in over-attention to the pleasures of sense--not the normal and wholesome desire that is present at times and then gives place to other interests--but a morbid and unwholesome lingering of the mind upon the details of joys at once repugnant and fascinating. One of the most unpleasant chapters in the literature of monasticism is that telling of the visions of carnal pleasure and sensuous delight which were constantly tantalizing monk and hermit when alone in the cell to which they had fled to secure relief from the distractions of the world and opportunity for uninterrupted prayer and meditation.
9. (b) It justifies Extrerne Intellectualism.
Rationalism maintains that man finds his highest good in withdrawing his attention from those objects of sense that give him present pleasure and directing it upon the principles and conceptions of reason. Now these ideals of reason and imagination pertain to the future and the larger world of persons and principles. Hence they are different from the objects of sense and feeling which are confined to the present state or past experience of the individual. The Rationalist accentuates this difference by opposing the freedom and range of thought to the strict limitations of feeling. But the objects of sense and feeling, if limited in their scope, at least possess actuality. And here also the contrast which the Rationalist makes between feeling and
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thought holds in all its severity. The principles and conceptions of thought, although their range may be as wide as the universe, do not possess this actuality. They may represent a condition better and more satisfactory than the actual but, as thoughts and ideas, they merely represent it, they do not realize it. Thought and imagination soar free from the limitations of the present and the actual, but the penalty they pay is that the world they inhabit is unactual and, in a sense, unreal. Thus the man who finds his Good simply in thinking about the ideal, in reasoning out plans for his own betterment, is justly criticised as a mere idealist, or even condemned as a visionary. He is dwelling in a world of his own thought and imagination and failing to give his nature the satisfaction it demands in actual experience. Moreover, when this absorption in intellectual activity is carried beyond a certain point it seems definitely hostile to any actual attainment; for it seeks, as the condition most favorable to its own existence, seclusion from the world of practical affairs and human intercourse. Thus the individual finds his Good in the life of secluded contemplation. That Rationalism encourages absorption in thought at the expense of actual attainment must be reckoned a grave fault. And there can be no question but that the logic of the theory leads towards such a barren intellectualism. The historical development of Rationalism in ancient and mediaeval times abundantly proves it. Plato, with his artist's soul and dislike of extremes, despite a feeling for, the beauty of a harmonious and symmetrical development of human nature, was impelled by his rationalistic premises to praise most highly the life of the philosopher who, removed from the distractions of the world, pursues without interruption his philosophic meditations. The same premise, that man's Good lies in the supremacy of reason in his life, leads Aristotle, notwithstanding his notable good sense and sagacity in dealing with all matters
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of practical morality, to esteem most worthy the speculative life. The greatest defect in Stoicism was that it encouraged aloofness from the world and self-absorption. The monasticism of the Middle Ages found justification in a rationalistic philosophy which condemned the material world and the desires of the flesh as evil and sought salvation in meditation and prayer, rather than in the teachings of Jesus. It is this tendency of Rationalism--the tendency to oppose to the doctrine which finds the Good in the pleasure of present attainment, another doctrine equally abstract and one-sided which asserts that the Good lies in thinking about larger ends and aims to be achieved in the future,--which Hegel roundly condemns in his Logic. The larger ends and ideals of reason constitute ” that ought-to-be on the strength of which reflection is vain enough to treat the actual present with scorn and to point to a scene beyond--a scene which is assumed to have place and being only in the understanding of those who talk of it.8 The Rationalistic position is a striking example of the false infinite which exists as merely the negative of the finite, and hence is always limited by it. Rationalism is limited by its opposition to Empiricism or Hedonism. Against it the latter may always maintain ” the great principle that whatever is true must be in the actual world and present to sensation.” “Yet what may be called the laziness of thought, when dealing with this Supreme Idea, finds a too easy mode of evasion in the ought-to-be; instead of the actual realization of the ultimate end it clings hard to the disjunctigu of the notion from reality.”9
10. (e) It Is Individualistic in Tendency.
Rationalism, as has been seen, recommends an asceticism which cuts the individual off from social relationships and human intercourse. It also encourages an intellectualism which
8 HEGEL: Shorter Logic, § 38 (Wallace's trans., pp. 77-78).
9 Op. cit., § 55, p. 112.
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causes him to seek the seclusion favorable to continued thought and study. The result of these two teudencies is to encourage a self-centered life which feels no social responsibility and discharges no political obligation. Thus, Rationalism is as individualistic--as selfish, if you please--in its final implications as is Hedonism. We are all familiar with a certain type of intellectual culture which shrinks from the ordinary human relationships as if fearing contamination, and avoids the performance of social duty, lest its own refinement should be diminished thereby. Such a type of character is the legitimate offspring of Rationalism; for when we make intellectual activity man's chief good, then it becomes right for him to seek the most favorable conditions for its exercise. These conditions will not lie in the busy walks of life, in the adjustments and readjustments of the family relation, in the wear and tear of social intercourse, but in the quiet of some secluded and comfortable retreat from which the world may be viewed as a passing show.
Thus in conclusion it is interesting to behold the theories of Hedonism and Rationalism, extreme opposites though they are, brought by their equal one-sidedness into a kind of identity. Hedonism recommends a well-planned and prudent life in which mainly intellectual pleasures are sought because they endure the longer and have less pain in after-effect. Rationalism advises the exercise of reason in a life freed from the pressure of social obligations in order to afford the most favorable conditions for intellectual activity and culture. The Rational ist will be more austere and less sympathetic, the Hedonist more amiable but less resolute, while the lives of both will incline to be equally narrow and self-centered.
REFERENCES
SETH, Ethical Principles, Part I, Chap. II. HICKS, Stoic and Epicurean, Chaps. I, II, III, IV.
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ZELLER, Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics, Part II.
FITE: Introductory Study of Ethics, Part II.
SIDGWICK, History of Ethics, Chap. II, §§ 13-20.
BAREWELL, Source-book in Ancient Philosophy, Chaps. XVII, XX, XXI.
SIDGWICK, Methods of Ethics, Book III.
HYDE, Five Great Philosophies of Life, Chap. II
