The good for man

When we set out to a practical system of morality in the broad sense, the question which we naturally begin by asking is Aristotle's: is the good life for A n d , remembering the discussion in Chapter 2, we may willingly admit that here is indeterminate. The good life will be such as to satisfy the interests in question; that is, the interests of those who par-ticipate in the good life - and hence, when we think of any specific activities, the interests both of those who engage in them and those who are affected by them - but also ours: what we call the good life must be one that we can welcome and approve. But though we can ask this question, it is not so easy to answer it, for two reasons. First, different people have

different views of the good life - not only at different periods of history and in different forms of society, but even in our own culture at the present time. Such differences may be correlated w i t h various political views, with attachments to different religions or to none, and simply with what as indi-viduals we and admire. But, secondly, a specific answer cannot be given in any abstract, way. It is in imaginative literature - including those parts of it which pass for history and biography - that what may be good in human life is concretely represented, both directly and by contrast with what is not good. Not, of course, that the authors of such literature

label as good or bad what it is sufficient if show real possibilities of life in some detail, rather than impossibilities - or, if these are shown, that they labelled as what they are - leaving the reader to draw his moral conclusions. But this is obviously not a work of that

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sort. I can write only in general terms, and hope that specific content will be supplied from other sources.

We can, however, say firmly that for any individual a good life will be made up largely of the effective pursuit of activities that he finds worthwhile, either intrinsically, or because they are beneficial to others about whom he cares, or because he knows them to be instrumental in providing the means of well-being for himself and those closely connected with him.

and altruism will together characterize, to large extent, both his actions and his motives. The with which I am, inevitably, most concerned is my own, next that of those who are in some way closely related to me.

Indeed, for any reasonably benevolent person these cannot separated: he will find much of his own happiness in the piness of those for whom he cares, or in what he and they dc together, where the enjoyment of each contributes so

to that of the other(s) that i t will be more natural to say

a it was) than to speak of a mere sum

individual enjoyments.

But the altruism that thus forms part of the good life is referential. Confined generosity, in Hume's phrase, is what can expect and all that we can reasonably hope for. There nothing wrong with self-love and confined generosity in selves. We have already noted that they can have bad effects which the special device of morality in the narrow sense is needed to counteract; need some constraints on the

of these narrower interests. Nevertheless the pursuit of them is and central part of the good life. Of course there can and there plainly is, cooperation of many sorts that extends beyond the range of altruism. It is the

of any economic system to produce cooperation that is quitt independent of affection or goodwill, and it is one func-tion of political organizafunc-tions to maintain condifunc-tions in which this possible. But if we accept the of self-love

confined generosity, we must, as a corollary, accept competition and some degree of conflict between individuals and between groups. Rival social and political ideals ways in

E L E M E N T S O F A P R A C T I C A L M O R A L I T Y

which cooperation, competition, and conflict may be insti-tutionalized and regulated, but every real alternative includes some combination of all three of them.

This would be obvious if it were not that moralists in both the Christian and the humanist traditions have fostered an op-posite view, that the good life for man is one of universal brotherly love and selfless pursuit of the general happiness. I have already argued, in Chapter 6, that this is quite imprac-ticable; I would now add that it has little plausibility even as an ideal.

Points of this sort were very forcefully made by Fitzjames Stephen in opposition to what he saw as the dominant trend in Mill's later work. He rejects M i l l ' s belief this natural feel-ing for oneself and one's friends, gradually changfeel-ing its charac-ter, is [to be] sublimated into a general love for the human

Against this he sets

which tells us to love our neighbours and hate our enemies - but w i t h qualifications:

your neighbour in proportion to the degree in which he proaches yourself and appeals to your passions and sympathies. In hating your enemy, bear in mind the fact that under immediate excitement you are very likely to hate him more than you would wish to do upon a deliberate consideration of all his relations to yourself and your friends, and of your permanent and remote as compared with your immediate

He contrasts man who works from himself outwards, and who acts with a view to his own advantage and the advantage of those who are connected w i t h himself in definite, assignable ways' with man who has a disinterested love for the human

- which Stephen suspects if anything, more than a fanatical attachment to some favourite theory about the

by which an indefinite number of unknown persons may be brought into a state which the theorist calls

- and is capable of making his love for men in general the ground of all sorts of violence against men in

The alternative to is not an extreme 171

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A n y possible, and certainly any desirable,

life is We can see each individual as located in a number of circles - smaller and larger, but intersecting, not all concentric - and so united with others in variety of ways.

Within any circle, large or small, we must expect and accept not only some cooperation but also some competition and conflict, but different kinds and degrees of these in circles of different size. Within a family, within a group of scientists or phil-osophers, between the members of some department or of any other group of people who are working together, between ployees and whatever it is that employs them, between business

firms, and between states there w i l l be differentially appropriate sorts of cooperation and differentially appropriate sorts of com-petition and conflict. Also, individuals belong vitally to

chronic social wholes as well as to these synchronic ones. Each § individual is linked not only to his biological ancestors but also to traditions of activity and information and thought and belief and value; nearly all of what anyone most distinctively and independently is he owes to many others. The taking over and passing on - with perhaps some - of a cultural in-heritance is itself a part of the good life, and this too is a social relation to which there belong appropriate sorts of conflict as well as cooperation.