VII.
The Kantian theory: Kant's Metaphysic of Morality. A good edition in
English is Abbott's Kant's Theory of Ethics. There are many discussions
of his theory. An interesting recent one is Felix Adler's, in Essays
Philosophical and Psychological in Honor of William James; see also
the chapter of Dewey and Tufts, Ethics, above mentioned; Paulsen, System
of Ethics, book II, chap. V, secs. 3, 4; American Journal of Psychology,
vol. 8, p. 528. On responsibility: Mezes, op. cit, pp. 29-35.
Sutherland, op. cit, vol. II, chap. XVIII. Alexander, Moral Order
and Progress, book III, chap, III, sec.
CHAPTER X
THE SOLUTION OF PERSONAL PROBLEMS
PERSONAL morality is the way to live the most desirable, the
most intrinsically valuable, life-in the long run, and in view of the
inescapable needs and conditions of human welfare; the way to
avoid the snares and pitfalls of impulse and attain those sweetest
goods that come only through effort and sacrifice of lesser goods.
That is what morality is, with reference to the single individual alone,
and that is ample justification for it. A recent writer phrases it as
follows: "I would define goodness as doing what one would wish
one had done in twenty years-twenty years, twenty days, twenty
minutes, twenty seconds, according to the time the action takes
to get ripe Perhaps when we stop teasing people and take
goodness seriously. and calmly, and see that goodness is
essentially imagination that it is brains, that it is thinking down
through to what one really wants goodness will begin to be more
coveted.
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