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

586
POLITICS
individualistic because it took too little account of the
individual's relations with his fellow men in society; it
was subjective because it made goodness consist in a
state of mind and the activity of a particular kind of goodwill,
apart from its expression in concrete acts. Where,
then, were the concrete expressions of goodwill in a community
to be found? Presumably in the laws of a community.
But from the point of view of morality, the view
that goodness resides in law suffers from precisely the
contrary defects to those which are censured in the notion
that goodness resides in a state of mind; whereas a state
of mind is too private and too subjective, law is at once
too universal and too objective. Law, Hegel maintained, is
too universal to be the repository of true morality, since,
to or to
being the same for everybody, it fails to belong
express anybody. It is also too objective, being in effect
a petrified deposit precipitated by human will and intention,
but divorced from the minds ofwhich the will and intention
are expressions.
Hegelian philosophy is known as dialectical: it teaches
that all partial concept* are one-sided, and can only be
corrected by the enunciation ofa wider truth which embraces
and reconciles them both. 1 If, therefore, we are in search
ofthe repository oftrue morality, we shall find it in something
which supplements, both the undue subjectivity of the
notion that morality resides in a state of mind, and the
undue objectivity of the notion that it resides in a legal
code. This something which supplements and corrects
the two partial doctrines, will embrace and transcend
them. The embracing and transcending conception Hegel
found in the notion of Social Righteousness. The following
account of Social Righteousness is taken from Ernest
Barker's book, Political Thought in England from Herbert
Spencer to the Present Day: "Social righteousness is a spirit
and habit of life expressed in the social opinion and
enforced by the social conscience of a free people; it is
1 See my (Mb to Pftibtopfty, Chapter XV, pp. 402-407,
account of Hegel'i conception of Dialectic.
for an