Society And its Purpose
Book 2 - The End of Society
CHAPTER 2
Human good
179. It has rightly been said that `the greatest wisdom is finally reduced to distinguishing good from bad.’(54) The principles established in the preceding chapter, if they are to be rightly applied, call for all this wisdom. The fact is that the difficulties encountered in such an application depend on our passions, which prevent a great number of us from consenting with simplicity to the immediate lights furnished by the intellect. If the spirit were pure, and unaffected by mistaken, blind appetites, it would not be difficult for us to know our true good which, although always desired by our nature, is often rejected by our will. Clear, distinct teaching about good and evil does, however, comfort and assist upright nature in its battle with seductive passions and the will they have misled. Otherwise, we would have to despair of the salvation of mankind.
180. We have to consider, therefore, as foremost in the natural constitution of society, that `society must tend to true human good.’ Before we can do that, we need to investigate true human good, the essential aim of every society. We shall try to do this now.
181. Human beings are subjects furnished with various powers, to each of which corresponds a species of good. Anthropology shows that these powers have a relative order which in its turn is mirrored by the relative order of the various goods proper to the different powers. This order is founded in nature which, therefore, is not satisfied if the order of good is not maintained.(55) The total appetite of human nature is one thing; the appetite of its individual powers is another. Each of these specifically distinct powers tends to a species of good proper to itself. Human nature taken as a whole tends to the entire order of good, and remains unsatisfied as long as this order is violated in any way whatsoever.
182. The order of these powers and of the good which corresponds to them is again indicated in anthropology which shows that all human powers, and the appetites accompanying them, are reduced finally to two classes: subjective and objective powers, and appetites for subjective and objective good.(56) Subjective good includes all that delights us, but only relative to the pleasure it produces in us; it has no relationship to the nature or intrinsic worth of the pleasurable object, independently of our own benefit from it. Clearly the power of feeling can enjoy only subjective good.
However, we also possess the gift of intelligence through which we know the value of things that are neither pleasurable nor advantageous to us. We are able to consider these things as pleasurable and good for others or for themselves. This value, which our understanding enables us to know in things, is not measured by their relationship to us. We do not reflect on our own interest but on objective good. It is the nature of our knowledge-faculty to judge things disinterestedly, that is, as they are, not as they are of use to us. In this way, we esteem them according to truth, not according to the passion proper to self-love.
183. Our essentially disinterested knowledge of things becomes the basis of morality as soon as it is considered in relationship to the will.(57) Our free will is evil if, seduced by self-love, it lays siege to our knowledge with the aim of falsifying it, or attempts to corrupt the natural judgments of our understanding. The will, if it remains firm and unassailable against the attractions of subjective love, is good. It lends the practical support of its power to the law of our understanding by permitting our intelligence to judge according to the truth it perceives, and by taking pleasure in the understanding’s right judgments. We feel a pressing urgency that our will be good, not evil. We want it to adhere without equivocation (and even to the extent of sacrificing all our subjective appetites) to the judgments the understanding makes when left to itself.
184. The intellect and will, therefore, are objective powers. All beings according to the degrees of their objective worth, that is, according to the degrees of their entity, are the objective good proper to these powers. The will that adheres to the things presented to it by the intellect with degrees of delectation proportionate to the degrees of entity in things is subject to two effects: 1. it experiences a natural, pure, noble delight which depends for its intensity on the quality of the will’s adherence to the known entity and on the greatness of what is known; 2. it is approved by the intellect, which judges that the will, by operating in this way, acts well and in conformity with its nature and with truth. These two effects may be called moral delight and moral approval.
185. Moral approval has a nature different from delight, but a new delight, added to the first, arises from the approval. Its effect is to redouble the initial approval and complete it. Human nature desires this delight and approval; we call such desire, which is absolute and superior to all other desires and appetites, moral desire. Human nature remains unsatisfied as long as this desire is unsatisfied, even if its fulfilment requires the sacrifice of all the desires and appetites of its other powers.
186. The final order to which human nature tends intrinsically takes account of the order of our powers and the order of the good corresponding to each of these powers. It aims at ensuring that objective powers prevail over subjective, that objective good prevails over subjective good, that the judgments made by the intellect are upright, that the will loves upright judgments, and that the only rule directing the operations of the will is that of these upright judgments. In a word, the order of human good requires that first place be given to the truth furnished by the intellect and to virtue on the part of the will. Every other good that is incompatible with virtue has to cede to it.
At this point we can come to know and define human good.
187. From what has been said, we can understand that `true human good lies only in moral virtue, and in all those kinds of good that are compatible with virtue.’ We have to conclude, therefore, that `whenever good of any kind is incompatible with virtue, it ceases to be human good because no human good excludes virtue.’
188. If we now analyse virtue according to the description we have just given, we shall find that in its origin it manifests three elements which, with the virtuous act, come to light as a single body. First, good will feels truth’s authoritative demand for adherence, and surrenders to it. Then the will draws delight from its adherence. In the third place, it feels that its adherence is worthy of approval, and does indeed come to be approved by the intellect.
The elements found in every virtuous act of the will are therefore: 1. voluntary adherence to beings according to the authority of truth; 2. delight in the adherence; 3. approval. Properly speaking, the first of these three elements constitutes virtue in its essence. The other two elements are eudaimonological, that is, components of happiness necessarily joined with virtue.
The very origin of virtue, therefore, contains an intimate bond joining it with happiness.(58) Moreover, the constitutive elements of human happiness are seen to be contemporaneously in the virtuous act. In other words, we see that happiness must result from two elements, delight and approval. The enjoyment of delight alone would certainly not be sufficient to make a person happy. However great our delight, it could never fully satisfy us if our rational judgment disapproved of it and reproved it as evil. If, however, we do enjoy something and our reason approves our enjoyment, human nature finds true contentment and full satisfaction in the delight. This approval can never be absent when the enjoyment is a consequence of the virtuous act itself.
189. We now know that human good, the essential aim of every society, `resides in virtue and the eudaimonological appurtenances of virtue, and in general in every good in so far as it is connected with virtue.’ We can conclude, therefore, that:
1.Every society whose aim is contrary to virtue is illegitimate because its aim is contrary to the essence of society.
2.Every law of society is invalid if, or in so far as, it prevents members from achieving virtue. Without virtue there is no human good, the end for which society was instituted.
Notes
(54) Sen., Ep. 71.
(55) Cf. AMS, 644–649.
(56) Cf. AMS, 521–566.
(57) Cf. PE, 69–113.
(58) We have spoken at length about this important bond in the Storia comparative e critica de' sistemi morali, c. 8, art. 3, §7, and in AMS, 890–905.