ABSTRACT

Rashdall has pointed out that the word ‘self-realization’, which has often been used to describe the aim of the moral life, cannot mean the making of the self real, as its form would suggest, for the self is real already. In the concrete moral life the living of a good life assuredly means the performing of a particular function in the community. The negative rules imposed by outside laws or even by the inner voice of conscience tend to make men think that goodness is a matter of abstaining from types of conduct that are forbidden, and the positive side of morality is reduced to a vague benevolence. The view of the standard as perfection provides in some measure a middle way between deontological and teleological theories of ethics. Deontologists say that the goodness of conduct depends entirely on the conduct itself; teleologists say that it depends on the goodness of the effects of the conduct.