Interest (ethics)

“ If I say that the legislative authority has bad desires, I mean merely that its desires conflict with those of some section of the community to which I belong. Outside human desires there is no moral standard.
Thus, what distinguishes ethics from science is not any special kind of knowledge, but merely desire. The knowledge required in ethics is exactly like the knowledge elsewhere; what is peculiar is that certain ends are desired, and that right conduct is what conduces to them. ”

“ The Opposition of Duty and Interest.—Probably there is no antithesis more often set up in moral discussion than that between acting from 'principle' and from 'interest.' To act on principle is to act disinterestedly, according to a general law, which is above all personal considerations. To act according to interest is, so the allegation rums, to act selfishly, with one's own personal profit in view. ”

“ There is no department of ethics more disputed than the meaning of abstract right and wrong, and as I am not talking either on philosophy or ethics I will ask you to accept just such commonsense definitions as can be applied to the business world and that may be usefully employed as a working basis. Commercial morality and honesty are determined by each community for itself in the light of its own special needs and point of evolution. ”

“ Is it ever scrupled, in extraordinary Cases, to violate all Regard to the private Property of Individuals, and sacrifice to public Interest a Distinction, which had been establish'd for the Sake of that Interest? ”

“ In the eye of the law they have rights of appropriation, but in fact they have not the chance of providing means for a free moral life, of developing and giving reality or expression to a good will, an interest in social well-being. ”

“ In any other view it is a maze, a mystery, a hopeless embroilment.
That ethics is involved in society is of course admitted; what is not admitted is, that ethical terms should be settled under the social science in the first place. I may refer to the leading term "law," whose meaning in sociology is remarkably clear; in ethics remarkably the reverse. The confusion deepens when the moral faculty is brought forward. In the eye of the sociologist, nothing could be simpler than the conception of that part of our nature that is appealed to for securing obedience. ”

“ The imposition of some recognized rules of conduct, safeguarding the security of life and property, is as necessary to the community as the existence of a coinage for the negotiation of commercial bargains; in fact it is more so. The two are analogous: the moral code must give effect to that first and universal principle of ethics expressed thus, "Do unto others as you would they should do unto you," which is only another way of saying, "You may expect others to treat you as you intend to treat them in similar circumstances." ”

“ A fashionable counter-theory which proves to be unjustifiable. On the one hand, while we find that individual life and social life both imply maintenance of the natural relation between efforts and benefits; we also find that this natural relation, recognized before Government existed, has been all along asserting and reasserting itself, and obtaining better recognition in codes of law and systems of ethics. ”

“ That the Property ought also to descend to Children and Relations, for the same useful Purpose? That it may be alienated by Consent, in order to beget that Commerce and Intercourse, which is so beneficial to human Society? And that all Contracts and Promises ought carefully to be fulfill'd, in order to secure mutual Trust and Confidence, by which the general Interest of Mankind is so much promoted? ”

“ During the transitional stages there are necessitated successive compromises between the moral code which asserts the claims of the society versus those of the individual, and the moral code which asserts the claims of the individual versus those of the society. ”

“ The community, however, in its longer life, is subject to [Pg 40] the full influence of the certain though sometimes slow-working relations of cause to effect, relations which, among other things, bring out the essential connection between economics and ethics, and which show in the long-run the just method to be the wise method. ”

“ If you believe in a “peculiar” doctrine, that is your affair, and you are the man to pay for its support. To say that I must pay for the support of your creed or else be branded as a foe of society is bad logic, worse ethics, and very indelicate, not to say discourteous ❦ Only that is fair and beautiful which neither threatens, bribes, evades, demands nor supplicates. ”

“ Now to instruct each individual in what manner to govern his own conduct in the details of life, is the particular business of private ethics: to instruct individuals in what manner to govern the conduct of those whose happiness, during nonage, is committed to their charge, is the business of the art of private education. ”

“ There are many duties that belong to the class of imperfect obligations, which are binding on conscience, but which human laws do not and cannot undertake directly to enforce. But when the aid of a Court of Equity is sought to carry into execution ... a contract, then the principles of ethics have a more extensive sway. ”

“ Out of the empty categorical imperative he seeks to draw a substantive entity—a being possessed of worth.
2. The society of ends per se described by him is not a true society, but a collection of atomic individuals juxtaposed. The capital flaw in his ethics is here. He begins by detaching the individual. He studies the individual, and discovers, or believes himself to have discovered, that something happens in him (the consciousness of absolute constraint) which entitles him to be considered worth while on his own account. ”

“ Therefore I welcome today's opportunity to outline, however briefly, why I have deemed it essential that we collectively pursue a reflection on ethics, and how we, as a people, would benefit from setting about the task of formulating an appropriate discourse for a change in public consciousness. ”

“ This view of morality, which, for the most part, is indorsed by modern thought, makes ethics dependent upon sociology for its criteria of rightness or wrongness. Indeed, we cannot argue any moral question nowadays unless we argue it in social terms. ”

“ The amount of regard for the public interest implied in this recognition, is no greater than is demanded by every system of morals, for they all enjoin to abstain from whatever is manifestly pernicious to society. ”

“ Thus in the development of the guest right we see morality broadening, the circle of moral obligation enlarged, and the stranger, ordinarily counted as an enemy and as rightless, brought for a moment within the sacred pale of ethical sentiment and duty.56 A new ground of moral obligation other than that of kinship has been established. ”

“ These events epitomized and exaggerated, but at the same time challenged, the code of ethics which regulates much of our daily conduct, and clearly showed that so-called social relations are often resting upon the will of an individual, and are in reality regulated by a code of individual ethics. ”

“ The distinction between 'duty' and 'interest' is also, in the main, the same non-ethical distinction; but the term 'interested' does also refer to a distinct ethical predicate—that an action is to 'my interest' asserts only that it will have the best possible effects of one particular kind, not that its total effects will be the best possible. ”

“ The common state of society is a medium between the extreme suppositions now made: we have our self-partialities, but have learnt the value of equity; we have few enjoyments by nature, but a considerable number by industry. Hence we have the ideas of Property; to these Justice is essential, and it thus derives its moral obligation. ”

“ As to the stock argument, that people will pervert utility for their private ends, Mr. Mill challenges the production of any ethical creed where this may not happen. The fault is due, not to the origin of the rules, but to the complicated nature of human affairs, and the necessity of allowing a certain latitude, under the moral responsibility of the agent, for accommodation to circumstances. And in cases of conflict, utility is a better guide than anything found in systems whose moral laws claim independent authority. ”

“ But free-will has also been discussed pragmatically, and, strangely enough, the same pragmatic interpretation has been put upon it by both disputants. You know how large a part questions of ACCOUNTABILITY have played in ethical controversy. To hear some persons, one would suppose that all that ethics aims at is a code of merits and demerits. ”

“ I refer to the difference between the material and the formal aspects of morality. On the one hand, action is always engaged in the fulfilment of an immediate interest; this constitutes its material goodness. On the other hand, every moral action is limited or regulated by the provision which it makes for ulterior interests ”

“ A will of this kind explains at once the effort to appropriate, and the restraint placed on each in his appropriations by a customary recognition of the interest which each has in the success of the like effort on the part of the other members of a society with which he shares a common well-being. This customary recognition, founded on a moral or rational will, requires indeed to be represented by some adequate force before it can result in a real maintenance of the rights of property. The wild beast in man will not otherwise yield obedience to the rational will. ”

“ The only entirely satisfactory solution of the difficulty is offered by the systematic authoritative transformation of the private interest of the individual into a disinterested devotion to a special object. ”

“ In holding that actual social relations afford the law of what should be, we must not forget that these actual relations have a negative as well as a positive side, and that the new law must be framed in view of the negatives, the deficiencies, the wrongs, the contradictions, as well as of the positive attainments. A moral law, to sum up, is the principle of action, which, acted upon, will meet the needs of the existing situation as respects the wants, powers, and circumstances of the individuals concerned. ”

“ The moral principle upon which the statute is based has its foundation in the Biblical admonition that no man may serve two masters, Matt. 6:24, a maxim which is especially pertinent if one of the masters happens to be economic self-interest. ”

“ III But that organization of life which denotes the presence of morality has not yet been defined. The isolated interest extricates itself from mechanism; and, struggling to maintain itself, does, it is true, divide the world into good and bad, according to its uses. But the moral drama opens only when interest meets interest; when the path of one unit of life is crossed by that of another. ”

“ Every one of our actions, whether we wish it or not, exercises some influence on other human beings in the social community in which we live. By our conduct we help to uphold or undermine the principles on which the various social institutions are based ”

“ If, then, we take as the principle of ideal justice, so far as this can be practically aimed at in human society, the requital of voluntary services in proportion to their worth, it remains to consider on what principle or principles the comparative worth of different services is to be rationally estimated. ”

“ In such case they might plausibly, as they often do, affirm that the moral bond, being thus organically insured and fixed in the moral consciousness, must remain the same, no matter what theories, even though purely materialistic, may be formed of its genesis and nature. But so soon as the ethical reality is seen in its cosmic place and transcendental character we want an explanation not only of the ground of obligation to right conduct, but also of the ground of the right which evokes the sense of obligation. ”

“ Even the employer is beginning to see that practical ethics, or true Christianity, and business cannot and must not be divorced; that the man he employs, instead of being a mere animal whose services he buys, is, after all his fellow-man and his brother, and demands a treatment as such, and that when he fails to recognize this truth, a righteous God steps in, demanding a penalty for its violation. ”

“ It was stated, at the beginning of the last chapter, that the ethical theory we are considering—the theory stated in the first two chapters—does not maintain with regard to any class of voluntary actions, that, if an action of the class in question is once right, any other action of the same class must always be right. ”

“ First, we may conclude from it, that a regard to public interest, or a strong extensive benevolence, is not our first and original motive for the observation of the rules of justice; since 'tis allow'd, that if men were endow'd with such a benevolence, these rules would never have been dreamt of. ”

“ To realize that this is true, we need but look at the remarkable ethical gains made now year by year through laws voted for by many of the very men whose practice had hitherto been upon a lower moral level. Very many evils that once seemed fastened upon society have been thus legislated out of existence. ”

“ Now, the idea of obligation, on which ethical science is founded, and the idea of gainful exchange, on which economical science is founded, are totally distinct ideas. The imperatives of ethical obligation rest upon the consciences of men, and Duty is to be done at all hazards; guilt is incurred if it be neglected; while pecuniary gains and losses, however large, do not, or at least ought not, weigh a feather against an intuition of Right and Wrong. Economics, on the other hand, does not aspire to place its feet upon this lofty ethical ground ”

“ But the knowledge which experience gives of what is useful and conducive to enjoyment is generically different from the moral idea and its sense of obligation. Utility and the ethical discrimination are not the same conception. They belong to two diverse realms of thought and knowledge. Whatever relations may be traced between them, they cannot be identified or held as convertible percepts. The autonomous imperative of the ethical idea often positively prohibits the very things men judge to be profitable and pleasurable. ”