GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

*3*
ETHICS
upon die free will problem k very different Now the effect
of the form of detenninism at present being considered is
to represent human acts of will as determined by the
characters and temperaments of the human beings whose
acts they are. Our willing* are, on this view, the natural
products of our inherited psychological and physiological
constitutions* -
Let us suppose that on a particular occasion I judge
that so-and-so is the right thing to do. The view which we
are considering asserts that my judgment is the necessary
consequence of earlier acts and events that have made me
what I am. It is not the workings of a cosmic machine
by which, on this view, I am bound; I am fettered by the
influence of die past, nor is the constriction of my fetters
the less absolute because the past is my own.
The arguments for this view are not essentially different
from those which 1 briefly surveyed in the last chapter to
illustrate Kant's treatment of man from the point of view
ofthe special sciences. 1 But there is this important difference
that, whereas Kant exempted the moral will from the scope
of die operation of these arguments, they are for the
detenninist all-embracing.
That Human Nature is Biologically and Anthropologically
Determined* Think of man, says the detenninist,
biologically: you will see him as a member of a species,
acting and feeling and desiring in ways appropriate to
the nature of that species. Think of him again anthro-
pologically: you will see him as a member of a culture,
the inheritor of a tradition, the child ofan age, acknowledging
the standards of valuation appropriate to his culture,
die codes of conduct and forms of belief enjoined by his
tradition, and die world-view common to his age. Plato
was right to point out that the ordinary man cannot make
his morals, his religion or his politics for himself; he can
only take diem ready-made from his environment. Thus
his views on morality or his beliefs about the nature and
1 Sec Chapter VI, pp. 803, 904.