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Updated: May 11, 2025
If, on the contrary, art is prized as something supreme and irresponsible, if the poetic and mystic glow which it may bring seems its own complete justification, then philosophy is evidently still prerational or, rather, non-existent; for the beasts that listened to Orpheus belong to this school.
Conflict of partial moralities. The Greek ideal. Imaginative exuberance and political discipline. Sterility of Greek example. Prerational morality among the Jews. The development of conscience. Need of Hebraic devotion to Greek aims. Moral passions represent private interests. Common ideal interests may supervene. To this extent there is rational society.
Reflection merely beats about the bush, and when a sufficient number of prejudices and impulses have been driven from cover, we go home satisfied with our day's ranging, and feeling that we have left no duty unconsidered; and our last bird is our final resolution. When morality is in this way non-dialectical, casual, impulsive, polyglot, it is what we may call prerational morality.
If we thus identify morality with prerational standards, we may agree also that morality is no science in itself, though it may become, with other matters, a subject for the science of anthropology; and Hume, who had never come to close quarters with any rational or post-rational ideal, could say with perfect truth that morality was not founded on reason.
On this stage, in the moral world, are the judgments of Mrs. Grundy, the aims of political parties and their maxims, the principles of war, the appreciation of art, the commandments of religious authorities, special revelations of duty to individuals, and all systems of intuitive ethics. Prerational morality is vigorous because it is sincere.
Is not one country as much a country as another? Is it not as dear to its inhabitants? What then is gained by oppressing its genius or by seeking to destroy it altogether? Here are two flagrant instances where prerational morality defeats the ends of morality. Viewed from within, each religious or national fanaticism stands for a good; but in its outward operation it produces and becomes an evil.
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