Types of Men and Their Relation to Ethics by v.J. McGill (1943)

8/2/2019 Types of Men and Their Relation to Ethics by v.J. McGill (1943)

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TYPES OF MEN AND THEIR RELATION TO ETHICSI. UNIVERSAL MORAL PRINCIPLES

There seems to be sound reason for the recognition of types of men inethics and politics. When types are not recognized, ethical and politicalprinciples must be so formulated as to apply to all men equally, irrespectiveof their situation, desires, and capabilities. But rules which specify thewisest thing for every man to do, cannot furnish much actual guidance toany man. The gap between abstract universal principles and moral beha-vior must be bridged by casuistry which, although it has no doubt filled animportant need, has also become synonymous with sophistry and hypoc-risy, and probably no moralist would be satisfied if he did not think itinevitable that ethics, as a science, should take a general formuncompro-mised by particularity, and hence remain, in great measure aloof, andinconsequential to actual conduct. The prevailing assumption has beenthat if there are general principles or laws of ethics, they must be unhistori-cal, like those of geometry and mechanics. Most ethics have probably beenwritten as a kind of geometry or mechanics of the soul, but it may also beconceived as a historical discipline.It will be assumed in what follows that it is absurd to say that a manoughtto perform an act when the conditions of its possibility do not exist,and ineffectual, when these conditions are not known to exist, i.e., whenthe opportunity and probable effects of the act in a given period have notbeen ascertained, or have not been stated. It follows that when generalprinciples of ethics are interpreted in the light of conditions and potentiali-ties existing in a given period, they may possibly specify conduct proper tothis period, but not to other times, unless the same conditions prevail; butthat when such principles are stated without qualification for all men, theycan furnish little actual guidance. What, for example, is suggested to amodern man by the admonition to be just in Plato's sense?- The conditionswhich gave plausibility to Plato's justice have largely disappeared. Thesoul is no longer divided into three more or less independent faculties:reason, will, and appetite; nor is the supposed dominance of one of thesefaculties in certain men admitted. The reasons for keeping a state small,and not too rich, no longer exist and the niggardly handicraft economy pre-supposed by the "perfect"state is happily irrecoverable. War is not inevi-table for all time. It has been disproved that if an artisan is well off, hewill cease to work, and that if he offers advice to the rulers, justice willsuffer, etc., etc. It is clear, in short, that Platonic justice could not directpractical conduct in present societies or in most societies, primitive orhistorical. The practical meaning of courage has also undergone crucialchange. Training and habituation necessary for courage in Plato's time

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TYPES OF MEN AND THEIR RELATION TO ETHICS 425would leave a man a coward today when a different course of discipline andconditioning is required. The same is equally true of temperance, wisdom,and piety. The aristocratic vice of gluttony, so serious a matter with theancients, has all but disappeared. Evidently diversity of entertainment,eating habits, variety of diet, involving bulky vegetables, have completelyaltered the problem of temperance. Authorities in enlightenedcountriesare concerned to furnish balanced diets to the whole population, not toinveigh against over-indulgence. "Nothing too much" has been replacedby "not too much starch, even though it is inexpensive, and more vitamins."Drunkenness is still a serious problem, but exhortation is not considered asolution. Its roots are sought in barrenexperience, frustration, and dietarydeficiency, and the remedy adopted is proportionate to the cause.The wisdom and piety prized by Plato would be out of place today,because they presupposed conditions of life which no longer exist, and astore of knowledge which has been corrected and increased enormously.The greatness of Plato's language, of course, invests his ideals with a nobil-ity which produces perennial fascination, especially when his politicalmotives are ignored, but the stars also have had their magic and men havebeen inspired by mythical stories of gods whose conduct offers no practicalanalogy or guide to their own. Evidently it is necessary to distinguishbetween the esthetic enchantment produced by distant images, elevatedabove historical circumstance, and ethics, as a specific guide to a better life.The ineffectuality of universal precepts and virtues is illustrated in adifferent way by Aristotle's account of liberality: "The liberal man," hesays, "will give from a noble motive and in a right spirit; for he will give theright amount, and will give it to the right persons and at the right time, andwill satisfy all other conditions of right giving."' What the "noble motive"and "right spirit" are is never explained unless what is meant is merely thatthey imply a certain measure of selflessness. Nor is it stated what the"right time" and who "the right people" are, and what "the right amount,"unless the latter means merely that the liberal man's charity is proportion-ate in some sense to his means. The liberal man can only be a person whois regarded as noble in his expenditures, or rather one whom Aristotle wouldso regard, in the Greece of his time, in the Macedonian court, in Athens orsome other scene of his observations. Liberality so described is not com-pletely acking in content. It may contradict Gotauma's mendicant ideal orJesus' advice to the rich young man, and may be consistent with ideals inother periods of history, but it clearly has no validity for societies, such asour own, the economies and amenities of which are widely different fromthe Greekmodel. And what is true of liberality holds largely for the other

1 The NicomacheanEthics, Weldon edition, London, 1912, p. 100.


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426 PHILOSOPHYAND PHENOMENOLOGICALESEARCHmoral virtues. They are either descriptions of manners approved in aparticular historical period, or else they are not virtues at all, but merelylogical forms of virtues, for example, means as opposed to extremes. Forwithout knowledge of life as it was in the various courts and cities of the4th century B. C., it is not at all clear what specific acts the moral virtuesrecommend.

The danger of forgetting that historical conditions which once gavefeasibility to ideals of the past may not have survived in the present is wellillustrated by the virtue of liberality. Although it cost little to keep alivein Greece,and personalbelongings were negligible, the productivity of laborwas so low that, given a stratified society, charity was perhaps a necessity.2Today even cautious estimates demonstrate that this is no longer the case,'and it seems to follow that unless dependence upon charity is regardedasmore desirable than self respect and security, the virtue proper to our timeis not liberality, which clings to the notion that the poor will always be withus, but rather a disposition and programto overcome the need of liberality.Universal ethical principles, it appears, are either dated, i.e., exclusivelyapplicable to a particular time, so long as conditions do not change, orelsethey are mere logical forms of virtues. In either case they provide nouniversal directives to moral action. The categorical imperative, for ex-ample, justifies any action undertaken with respect to rational beings whichcan be generalized without inconsistency, but even lying, stealing and mur-der cannot be proved inconsistent in this sense. Kant's imperative doesnot specify moral conduct, nor does Bentham's principle of the greatestpleasure for the greatest number. For moral guidance we must look to thepolitical writings of these philosophers, to their recommendations forlegislation, but here we shall find proposals appropriate at most to a givensetting, and apparently irrelevant to specific action in other times. Toprofit by history it is probably best to realize that it is history. Otherwise,as Nietzsche once said, the study of history is apt to put an end to it.But if universal ethical principles fail to specify what is actually right orwrong, principles relating to types of men are not necessarily open to thesame objection. Being more specific, they may possibly serve as a guide toproper conduct. The problem, however, is to find types which yield lawsof behavior, and the object will be to show that only historical types canserve this purpose.

II. CHARACTERSThe immense literature of characters or types of men had its inception

with The Charactersof Theophrastus.2 Max Weber, GeneralEconomicHistory, New York, 1927,p. 130.3 See for example: America's Capacity to Produce, Brookings Institution, Wash-ington, D. C., 1934.


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TYPES OF MEN AND THEIR RELATION TO ETHICS 427"I have wondered," said Theophrastus, "and probably I shall never ceasewondering, why it is when all Greece lies under the same sky and all Greeksreceive a similar education we do not happen to have the same kind ofcharacter."4

He proposes to depict the different types of character to be found amongthem, in order that "our sons will become better men." Actually, of course,not all Greeks were born under the same stars, nor educated alike. Theimportance of social circumstance in forming character is neglected not onlyby Theophrastus but also by his greatest followers, La Bruyere, Vauvenar-gues, La Rochefoucauld, and many others, who seem to take it for grantedthat their characters are originals, self-caused, ingrained natures, perhapsincurable, who determine the pattern of their own society, or as it some-times appears, of society as such. As we shall see, this fallacy of thecharacter writers has not disappeared in our own time. Although knowl-edge of conditioning factors and underlying historical changes now availableput us in the way of real scientific explanations of the diversity of humantypes, many modern writers preferto classify types of men, after the man-ner of descriptive psychology, as the stars were once classified in easilyobserved constellations.The personalities classified in the literature of types, tempers, and char-acters are usually ill-defined or addicted to a single vice or mannerism, andthey come to life only when they are assigned to their historical period, andthe underlying social causes and motivations are understood. Since nocausal explanation of the characters is offered, no reliable prediction orcontrol of behavior is possible, and the question arises what value suchclassifications can have. Classifications of chemicals or bacteria, are im-portant to the extent that they facilitate prediction and control, or areintegral parts of a system which does. Otherwise they are described not asimportant but as quaint, curious or historically interesting. Thus thequestion arises whether classifications of men have a privileged position, orwhether they are not to be judged by the same criteria.The important charactersin Theophrastus or La Bruyere,5one is temptedto think, are not the ingrained psychological types they set out to describe,but rather certain other types which they disclose unwittingly, and which

4 Characters, ntroduction.I La Bruyere illustrates a different style of character writing. His characters areoften recognizable persons of the day and he appears to be commenting only on thesociety of his time, yet it is taken for granted that other societies are much the same,although less favored in their sovereign. His eulogy of Louis XIV and condemna-tion of "Mankind" show in profile a timorous, moralizing, better type of courtier.It is not surprising that like his mentor, Theophrastus, he disregards the socialcircumstanceswhich producedhis characters, thus absolving the Bourbonorderfromall responsibility.


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428 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCHwe can discover between the lines. Thus Theophrastus describes the GrossMan, the Unseasonable Man, the Penurious Man, the Surly Man, and soon, but says nothing about the Slaveholder, the Slave, the Merchant, andthe Landowner. Yet the latter characters, disclosed incidentally, serve toexplain a number of things about the former. For example, the GrossMan is said to go personally to do his marketing. In a slave society it isgross for a free-born man to perform work which is done by slaves. TheUnseasonable Man likewise displays bad taste. "When a slave is whippedin his presence, he relates how one of his slaves was punished in the sameway and went and hanged himself." The Mean Man, in turn, refuses tobuy his wife a slave although she has brought him a large dowry, and whenhe does hire slaves, does not pay their keep, as is customary.Here manners which are approved and disapproved in an enlightenedslave culture are sharply defined, but the real issues of the day are nottouched upon. It is sufficient to recall that all Greece was divided intohostile camps. The landed oligarchy was at war with democratic leadersand with mercantile interests. There wereslaves, free artisans, dominatingcities, and more or less enslaved nationalities. There were the rich and thepoor. Speaking of the diversities among the Athenians, Plutarch wrote:

"The Hill quarter favored democracy, the Plain, oligarchy, and those wholived by the Seaside stood for a mixed sort of government, and so hinderedeither of the other parties from prevailing. And the disparity of fortunebetween the rich and the poor, at that time, also reached its height; so thatthe city seemed to be in a truly dangerous condition, and no other means forfreeing it from disturbances and settling it to be possible but a despoticpower. All the people were indebted to the rich; and either they tilled theirland for their creditors, paying them a sixth part of the increase, and were,therefore, called Hectemorii and Thetes, or else they engaged their body forthe debt, and might be seized, and either sent into slavery at home, or soldto strangers;some (forno law forbadeit) wereforced to sell their children, orfly their country to avoid the cruelty of their creditors; but the most part andand the bravest of them began to combine together and encourage oneanother to stand to it, to choose a leader, to liberate the condemneddebtors,divide the land and change the government."

Among the great landholders there were doubtless such Theophrastiancharacters as the Vain Man, the Offensive Man, and the Unpleasant Man,but they could doubtless also be found among the democrats. Indeed theclassification of characters before us seems in principle irrelevant to thegreat struggle between Spartan oligarchy and Athenian democracy on whichthe fate of the ancient world depended, and to be proportionately unim-portant. Satirical exposes of objectionable characters can, of course, pro-mote conformity to fixed codes in any society, but it is difficult to see how

6 Plutarch's Lives, New York, 1932,p. 104.


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TYPES OF MEN AND THEIR RELATION TO ETHICS 429any possible character reform, through example and emulation, could havefundamentally altered the nature or outcome of the struggle. On theother hand, Solon's attempt to preserve upper class domination by amelio-ration of the worst abuses of power, was the sort of thing which might haveyielded results. Pericles' democratic reforms and his plan of a federatedunion of Greece, it is often claimed, might have turned the tide, had helived longer and had fewer enemies. His enemies, however, were not"characters" but strong parties and combines of interest.

Theophrastus' master, Aristotle, is often well aware, particularly inPolitics and Rhetoric,that the characters that count are those which repre-sent powerful political and economic interests. In his delineation of thehighminded man in the NicomacheanEthics, however, the varieties of idealshonored in different political systems are not mentioned, and one gets theimpression that the highminded man is the ideal for the Athenian, theLacedaemonian, and perhaps for all societies.The inappropriateness of highmindedness in an Eskimo society or in agenuinely democratic one, will be apparent from Aristotle's description:

"Ahighmindedman s especiallyconcernedwith honorsand dishonors. Hewillbeonly moderately leasedat greathonors onferred ponhimbyvirtu-ous people,as feelingthat he obtainswhat is naturallyhisdue;for it wouldbe impossibleo deviseanhonor hat shouldbe proportionateo perfectvir-tue. Neverthelesshewill accepthonors,as peoplehave nothinggreater oconferuponhim. But suchhonoras is paidby ordinary eopleandontrivialgrounds,he will utterlydespise,as he deservessomethingbetterthan this.... He, therefore,whoregardshonoras insignificantwill regard verythingelsein the samelight.... The highmindedman is justified n his contemptfor others,as he formsa trueestimateof them,but ordinarypeoplehave nosuch ustification.... His bearing s stately towardpersonsof dignityandaffluence,t is unassumingowards hemiddleclass;forwhile t is a difficultanddignified hing obesuperioro theformer,t is easyenougho besuperiorto the latter. . . . It seemstoo that thehighmindedmanwill be slow n hismovements,his voicewill be deepandhismannerof speaking edate;foritis not likely that there will be many things that he cares for....7

[t is apparent that the highminded man is a consummate master, at leastin Greek society, of the art of convincing all classes of his superiority. Sinceit is harder to impress the upper class, where his most serious rivals are tobe found, he assumes a stately bearing, but impressing the lower classes isa responsibility he shares with his class. An aristocratic class sustains itspower, in part, by convincing the people of its superiority and this is noeasy task. War is often welcomed or even fomented, since it knits theloyalty of the people to the aristocratic leaders, but in time of peace, asVeblen has shown in his The Theory of the Leisure Class, many devices are

7Nicomachean Ethics, London, 1912, Book IV, ch. VIII.


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430 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCHneeded. Garments, insignia, manners, attitudes, habits of speaking, andreputable- idleness, and wastefulness are deemed necessary in order todistinguish the ruling class from other classes. The history of such inven-tions is an important supplement to the literature of polite and praise-worthy characters. Presented cameo-like, without reference to the socialcauses of his peculiar traits, the highminded man appearsunmotivated andpreposterous, and the doubt arises whether Aristotle could have beenserious. But once the highminded demeanor is seen as governed by thenecessity of maintaining upper class prestige, of upholding the aristocraticprinciple, everything Aristotle says is plausible enough. To make suchisolated characters convincing, one must supply the missing context.

The character of Dion, as described by Plutarch, furnishes a good exam-ple of highmindedness. Even the faults held responsible for the failureof his career are distinguishing traits of the highminded man. As Plutarchsays: "There was in his natural character something stately, austere,reserved, and unsociable in conversation which made his company un-pleasant and disagreeable" even to his immediate friends who "blamed hismanner, and thought he treated those with whom he had to do less cour-teously and affably than became a man engaged in civil business."8But though Plutarch lays undue stress on traits of character, he is farfrom regarding them as decisive. Behind his characters are the predomi-nating historical forces: economic and military dispositions, and conflictinginterests. Although he took sides against democracy and is often biasedin dealing with democratic leaders, he at least took account of the maincausal process. Dion, he says, "designed to suppress the unlimited demo-cratic government, which indeed is not a government, but, as Plato calls it,a market-place of governments, and to introduce and establish a mixedpolity, on a Spartan or Cretan model ... wherein an aristocratic bodyshould preside, and determine all matters of greatest consequence....' '9This identification of Dion as a partisan in the great conflicts of his age,seems to reveal his character better than the most extended psychologicalanalysis. Unfortunately typology and character writing has preferredpsychological and biological description to historical analysis, from Plato'stime right down to the present.The mission of the type literature is not only entertainment but moralimprovement, and sometimes political reform,although the latter is usuallyindirect or disguised. One recurrent plan which stems from Plato'stypology is that of allocating a different social function to different innatetypes, thus replacing existent conflict with social harmony. Social har-mony takes different forms: democratic socialist Utopia, for example, or

8op. cit., p. 1159.9Ibid., p. 1183.


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TYPES OF MEN AND THEIR RELATION TO ETHICS 431rigid authoritarian hierarchy and, by and large, the nature of any socialprogrambased on typology will depend upon the period at which it is putforward, and upon the political views of its promulgator. The harmonioussociety set forth by Francis Fourier, its conflicts composed by proper dis-position of monogynes, digynes, and polygynes, is the work of an enlight-ened social reformer;it has little resemblance to the Stdndestaatof OthmarSpann. Leaning heavily on Plato's theory, the Austrian fascist advocatesan economic hierarchy of estates. At the bottom is common labor, bynature interested mainly in food, while at the top are the big capitalists,interested also in culture, as their expense accounts show. Naturally thespiritual should govern the sensual. This hierarchy, however, was subor-dinated to a political hierarchy, and in deference to the Nazis, the highestrung of the ladder was consigned to a Ffthrer estate-for there was noreason why it could not be done-and the scheme made a considerable im-pression in Germany. Pretentiously, Spann had announced his theory ofestates as the only bulwark against the rising tide of democracy and social-ism, and this political motivation is clear throughout. Although this 20thcentury program borrows much from Plato's Republic of the 5th centuryB. C., it could not turn back history, nor have anything like the sameimplications.

Isolation of the supposedly innate characters and types from their his-torical context is a most persistent tendency in the literature ofTheophrastus and his followers. No attempt is made to account forthem by social formations, so that even if important innate types didexist, they would never be discovered. Although such human examplesmay furnish obvious general warnings or vague recommendations, theyfail altogether to supply the specific directives necessary to moral action.

III. SPRANGER 'S TYPES AND LABOR AS A TYPEIt is noteworthy that while medicine and other sciences dealing with

men have corrected their errors and made great advances in the engineeringof a better life, traditional ethics, elaborating the same inadequaciesthrough the centuries, has not fulfilled its promise. Thus while no onewould think of relying on the medicine of the 5th century B. C., the ethicsof Plato and other ancient systems of moral guidance are often regardedas unsurpassed. Even Edward Spranger's Types of Men,'0the most subtleand systematic study of the kind in modern times is largely a developmentof Plato's ethics and typology.Spranger's six types of men, the economic, political, social, esthetic,theoretic and religious are too well known to require extended review.They are species of men, each of which is determined by the innate domi-10 English translation of Lebensformen,Halle (Saale), 1928.


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432 PHILOSOPHYAND PHENOMENOLOGICALESEARCHnance of one of the six basic value attitudes, or value preferences. Thusthe economic type prefers above all else the personal accumulation ofwealth with the least expenditure of effort; the political man or power typeseeks the maximum freedom for himself and the maximum power overothers; the social type strives for community with others through sym-pathy and love; the esthetic man craves beauty and artistic activity; thetheoretic man prefers truth and validity; while the religious prizesa synoptic world view in which all special values find their appropriateplace. It is understood that every man is attracted in some degree to allsix values, that it is high value preferencewhich determines his type. Thesame values, as eternal ideal norms, confront every society and apparentlyin every historical period incite thought and action to conformity.Whether a given individual is mainly impelled by the theoretic, or someother value, depends upon his biological constitution, although there is noproof offered that biological differences of this sort exist.

Once the six values are defined, Spranger maintains that conflicts andharmonies can be deduced between value attitudes within a single person,and between differently constituted persons. For example, the estheticman, as defined, will come into conflict with the economic, the social, andall the other types because he is willing to sacrifice technological efficiencyand profits, sympathy and love, and all the other values for the one heprizes most highly. The economic man, similarly, will sacrificebeauty andlove for profit, and so on. It is easy to think of situations in which thetheoretic, social and religious types would stand together against theeconomic man, or the power type, and of other situations involving stilldifferent combinations. In its systematic character Spranger's typologyis vastly superiorto those of Kierkegaardor Jaspers, McDougall or Jaench.Like them, however, it is completely unhistorical.The fallacies incurred by ignoring historical change and social condi-tioning1' are apparent in Spranger's description of the special types. Theesthetic type, for example, is said to live only for beauty and estheticcreation, and to be destined to value-conflictwith the power type, the socialman, the religious character, and all the corresponding valuations withinhis own nature. Certainly if there is such a type, Dante, Milton, Shake-speare, and Balzac, to name only a few great writers, do not belong to it.In fact, biographical data show that the economic attitude, which is sup-posed to conflict with the esthetic, is often a great spur to artistic work,and that the "eternal" value-conflicts described by Spranger are, if theyemerge at all, historically and biographically determined.

Spranger assumes that the same esthetic type goes down through the11Spranger (p. 357) admits psychogenic factors and historical conditions as deter-minants of types. In practice they are reduced to unimportant accidents.


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TYPES OF MEN AND THEIR RELATION TO ETHICS 433centuries essentially unchanged, and he assumes that artists, actors, poets,and musicians all belong to it, which is especially doubtful. How couldsuch things be proved? Tests of various kinds, questionnaires, and cor-relations might be more helpful than Spranger's method of Verstehen,although so far nothing has been established. Evidently Spranger wasimmersed in romantic nineteenth century theories which pictured theartist as contemplative, disinterested, detached, and alienated from thepolitico-economic, life about him. He did not see that the alienation ofthe nineteenth century artist coincided with his liberation from patronageand official loss of social function, and his intuition took what was pe-culiar to the nineteenth century as eternal traits of all artists, past andfuture.The "theoretic man" is open to the same objections. He is pictured ascircumscribed by Aristotelian logic and mechanical conceptions-absent-minded and ill adjusted to social life. In terms of Bergson's theory oflaughter he is certainly very comic. One thing in particular is foreign tohis nature, and that is the economic. "Utilitarian interests," Sprangerwrites, "necessitate such a strong subjective emphasis that they injure allpure cognition.'2

.... the contrast between the theoretic and economic attitudes has beenmost strongly expressed by the Greek thinkers who looked scornfully uponany form of earning one's living."13

No explanation is given of this attitude on the part of Greek thinkers;nothing is said, for example, concerning the retardation of science andtechnology in classical Greece as a consequence of slavery and masterclass attitudes toward work. One is expected to intuit "timeless" relation-ships which have in fact already changed, and to overlook the historicalconditions which brought them into being. Spranger makes his pointeven clearer.

And when today we are offended by the mixing of the commercial attitudewith research, quest for truth and philosophic reflection, this is not only anafter effect of the ancient Greek point of view but is expressive of an eternalpsychology.14

It is perhaps sufficient to point out that the progress of science in the 17thcentury, for example, was closely bound up with technological and com-mercial needs,'5and that today in the best laboratories in the world eco-

12 Ibid., p. 112.13Ibid., p. 113.14 Ibid.lo See, for example, B. Hessen, "The Social and Economic Roots of Newton'sPrincipia," Science at the Crossroads, London, 1931, and Robert K. Merton,"Science and Economy of Seventeenth Century England," Science and Society, vol.III, 1, pp. 3-27.


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434 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCHnomic and theoretic interest are combined to mutual advantage. InSoviet Russia particularly the "eternal psychology" has been replaced bya psychology stressing the unity, interdependence, and mutual respect ofworkers of hand and brain.Once the eternal psychology is adopted, the investigation of persistentand temporary attitudes in history is greatly hampered. Whenevernew attitudes arise in history, it can be said that people are reacting toanother set of eternal values, and the real causal explanations are neglected.Spranger's values are much too abstract. Is it possible to think of a manwith a craving for intellectual things itberhaupt, for all inferences, dis-coveries, inductions, in every field? Great passions of an intellectualcharacter exist but flow in specific channels, depending on whether personsare conditioned to chess, point-set theory, colloidal chemistry, or someother discipline. The social man is also unconvincing even as an idealtype. Normal men do not even evince a tendencyto sympathize with, orlove everyone indiscriminately. To love your family and friends and alsothe man who destroys them, is self-contradictory and pathological behaviorwhich requires the genius of Dostoievsky to portray convincingly. Thesame criticism could be made of the religious and other types."6If the abstractness of Spranger's values is unacceptable, his hierarchyof values, and of the corresponding value-attitudes and types, must proveso, a fortiori. While it is possible to define the values so that the economicis the lowest and the religious, the highest, it is more advisable to includein the economic sphere efficient service to the public, so that the Nazi

16 The Allport-Vernon Personality Test, based upon Spranger's typology, asksstudents exceedingly ingenious questions to determine their type. The effect ofall this clarity and skill is only to illuminate the incredibility of the types. Ques-tion 12, for example, reads: "Do you believe that contemporary charitable policiesshould be curtailed because they tend to undermine individual initiative?" Thisis supposed to differentiate the social from the economic type, but whether it does isdoubtful. Ruthless business men, opposing trade unions, social legislation andgovernment spending, often give vast sums for charity. Such-donations are mostlytax exempt and worth the money in advertising, and may serve to curb social move-ments. This business man answers "No." An ardent trade unionist, on the otherhand, might answer "Yes," for he has lived through the degrading period of depres-sion charity, and sees the main hope for himself and his follows in collective initia-tive through the union.These answers would be significant but not in terms of Spranger's types. Thereis no reason however to question Allport's claim that the test is reliable, i.e., inter-nally consistent, or that students of theological seminars show proportionately morereligious types. But does this evidence point to types or conditioning? The answerappears to be that one is not justified in attributing anything to eternal types whichmight be explained by conditioning. It should be added that Allport himself isaawareof these difficulties and has criticized the abstractness of Spranger's types.Personality, A Psychological Interpretation, New York, 1937, p. 230.


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TYPES OF MIEN AND THEIR RELATION TO ETHICS 435economy need not be regardedas the highest. Spranger puts the economicat the bottom because, as he says, it is not an intrinsic value, but merelyinstrumental to the "higher"values. Since, on the other hand, the highervalues are not values at all until the lower ones are realized, which requiresia the usual case, almost the whole waking day, it is hard to see that thehigher values are really higher. For if A is higher than B, A is to be pre-ferredto B; but if most men preferredthe "higher"values most of the day,neither they nor the values would survive. Oddly enough, Sprangerhimself reaches the same conclusion in one place, and thereby implies thathigher values are not always to be preferred, that sometimes the highervalues are not higher. What he fails to say is that this is almost alwaysthe case. "Even though the cognitive value," he concedes, "ranks es-sentially higher than the economic, to safeguard the foundations of exist-ence is clearly of a higher significance for a personal value total than tolearn the Pythagorean theorem."17

It is of no importance that Spranger may be involved here in logicalinconsistency. If the disparagement of economic activity, performedmostly by the lower classes, which is expressed by every aristocracy, can-not be presented convincingly, it may be for the reason that one importantpremise has been suppressed: the necessity of maintaining leisure classprestige. A reversal of this attitude toward the activity which most ofthe population must carry on most of the time is, of course, a prerequisitefor full democracy.

In his description of the economic man, Spranger betrays the same im-probabilities we have noted in the other "eternal" types. lie explainsthat in order to isolate the pure type it is necessary to disregardall "specialeconomic forms" which correspond to changing cultural epochs. "Wecannot dwell onesidedly on agriculture or trade and industry, natural,money, or credit economy but only on the eternal economic motive....""The purely economic type shows only one mental attitude" no matterwhat form economy takes.l8 This position seems almost certainly mis-taken. On analysis, Spranger'seternal forms of economic behavior, appearto be either trivial or false, ill-suited in either case to determine his eternaleconomic type. Thus Spranger describes economic activity as a strivingfor self-preservation. In a narrow sense this is false for Jim Fisk, famousrailroad speculator, but true enough for his employees, while in a broadsense, in which it is true of everyone, it is also true of Jim Fisk. Or again,the economic type strives for profit. Strictly speaking, Jim Fisk strovefor his own profit, while his employees did not, but in a broad and trivialsense, every man and every type strives for profit, i.e., advantage or in-

17 Op. cit., p. 285.'8Ibid., p. 132.


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436 PHILOSOPHYAND PHENOMENOLOGICALESEARCHterest. Spranger also describes the economic man as an egoist, althoughsometimes enlightened, and this would have to hold for Trobriands,Dravidians, and Eskimos, for Southern sharecroppers, and New Yorkfinanciers. Obviously if there is any truth in this, it is a tautology. Butin Spranger's view even the individual husbandman displays that samepure economic motive which we find exemplified in the super-brokeron theExchange. Such universal ascriptions are not uncommon. Accordingto some economists the plough is the husbandman's capital, which he putsto work, i.e., he ploughs his field. One generalization has it that all menare capitalists, another, that all are workers. In a loose sense, such gen-eralizations are true but trivial; in a strict sense, they are false. Sup-posedly universal economic laws, such as the law of diminishing returnsand the law of diminishing utility may have some physical or psychologicaltruth, but it is difficult to see, how, as universal principles, they are capableof explaining the conduct of an economic type.'9

While Sprangerdepicts an eternal type, Weber and Sombart,20 o whomhe often refers, made voluminous studies of capitalist development, andof historical types of the bourgeois nature, which they sharply distinguishfrom other economic formations. Following L. B. Alberti, Defoe, Ben-jamin Franklin, and others, Sombart describes the ideals of the earlycapitalist era opening up at the turn of the 14th century, and distinguishesthe great diversity of national developments in England, Holland, Italy,Germany, France, and Spain.2" If the virtues ascribed to the idealbourgeois by Franklin-industry, frugality, punctuality, sobriety, etc.-were soon accompanied by vices, such as are exposed in Gustavus Meyers'classic book, History of the Great American Fortunes, they are, for all that,markedly different from the real ideals and practices of the presentbourgeois, which Sombart lists as absolute rationalism, production purelyfor exchange and profit, mass production, cheap products, advertising, etc.22

Unfortunately Sombart's characterization of economic types is in-complete and of uneven merit. We must regard as pure whimsey hisidentification of the basic traits of the entrepreneurwith those of the child.23If the entrepreneur takes delight in the senuously large, rapid movement,novelty, and a sense of power in expanding periods, he loves contraction19For a discussion of the restricted significance of economic laws, see Lewis S.Feuer,"Dialectic and EconomicLaws," Scienceand Society, vol. V, no. 4, pp. 347-355.20 See Max Weber, GesammelteAufsdtze zur Religionssoziologie, Tilbingen, 1920;and Werner Sombart, Der Moderne Kapitalismus, Fifth edition, Munich, 1922.21 WernerSombart, Sozialismus und Soziale Bewegung,Eighth edition, 1919.22 For a much more adequate picture of a contemporary capitalist type one couldturn to Neumann's Behemoth,New York, 1942, or Maxine Sweezy's The Structure ofthe Nazi Economy, Cambridge, 1941; and any number of books on the New Deal

policies supply an account of a very different, political economy.23 Ibid., pp. 221, 222.


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TYPES OF MEN AND THEIR RELATION TO ETHICS 437in periods of dwindling markets or under patent and cartel arrangements.On the other hand, the following characterization is plausible and conse-quential. Contrasting the early entrepreneurwith the modern, he remarksthat while the former was supposed to succeed by the bourgeois virtuesof diligence and industry, the latter, caught up in the current of economicentreprise, "no longer exercises virtues but stands in a compulsive rela-tion. The tempo of the entreprise decides his own tempo. He can nomore be idle than the worker at a machine, which itself determines whetherhe is industrious or not."24Sombart at least recognizes a basic bourgeois type and distinguishesseveral historical subtypes of entrepreneur. Spranger admits only thetimeless economic man, long since discarded. The capitalist type ortypes, which are so exceedingly important in explaining modern societyare omitted, and the equally important labor type and types are deniedany basis in reality.

Spranger's failure to realize that consequential types are determinedby historical conditions, which is a very common philosophical failure,deprives his system of the power of explanation, prediction and control.Being an "economic man" implies nothing. To make any progress wemust know what period of time and, perhaps, what country we are dealingwith, and whether we have to do with serfs, poor farmers, great landlords,financiers, individual artisans, or factory workers in a highly advancedeconomy. In mobilizing manpower and predicting its special attitudesand movements, the government cannot take a step without a classifica-tion of occupations which Spranger would regard as mere accidents in thea priori life of the economic type.It seems clear that Spranger's types must be rejected. In their place,if we are to speak of types at all, we must make use of historical types suchas the capitalist, the farmer and the laborer as discovered in various strata,in different sections of the country and at definite periods of politico-economic development. Of these types, labor is so frequently denied itsunity, its theory, and goal, that it will be worthwhile to make a few com-ments on this type and its philosophy.As we have seen, Spranger rejects labor as a type.

"Much is lacking, he says, to make the fictitious type of theoretic Marxismand the present day worker coincide, especially since no theory which hasdetermined the actions of men was ever so unpsychological as this theorywhich accepts only the 'artifices' of productive forces."25Sombhrt in his Sozialismus und Soziale Bewegungand A New Social Phi-losophytakes much the same view, and a host of prominent modern writers,

24 Ibid., p. 237.25Ibid., p. 362.


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438 PHILOSOPHYAND PHENOMENOLOGICALESEARCHfollowing the lead of Sorel, have described the ideals of the proletariat asuseful myths, doomed to failure in all likelihood, but calculated to catapultthe masses into action. Like a powerful stimulant, the myth, which atfirst has no basis in reality, makes itself true by the deceptive power ofsuggestion; or at least lures the people on to achieve some other alterationin the status quo. And when history is regarded as unimportant, thisview might have some plausibility. There is certainly a great gap betweenthe modern worker in most countries and the socialist exemplar, and thereis still much confusion among the workers even as regards the value ofunions. It is not surprisingthat the very idea of unions was once thoughtpreposterous, and that every new stage of union tactics projected hasbeen met with incredulity. Union organizers have been charged withproducing the discontent, or even the conditions, which they seek toremedy; they have been accused, in substance, of employing a groundlessmyth, and of operating on the masses by suggestion. Part of the explana-tion of this attitude is the prevailing ignorance of the conditions whichnecessitate unionization, but there is also the inability or unwillingness tounderstand that the historical potentialities of the workers are just asmuch a part of their nature as their limited actuality in the present.The early prophets of capitalism, like the spokesmen for labor, wereonce regarded as dangerous and* preposterous. The proof of the over-whelming importance of both bourgeois types and the proletarian ideal isseen in the crucial role they play in the modern world. A large and in-creasing part of the government machinery is charged with adjudicatingthe conflict between labor -and capital, and the whole nation is strainingto outproduce and outfight a power which aims to destroy unionism andto restrict the benefits of free enterprise to a few satraps of the Nazi party.The most fundamental and important action taken by the Nazi partyto prepare the nation for total war and total conquest-of Germans, andthe rest of the world-was the total destruction on May 2, 1933, of theGerman trade union movement, one of the strongest in the world. Theattacks on the trade unions and socialism continue, and have become aprincipal means of dividing nations as a preliminary to conquest. It isnoteworthy that the Nazis treat the union and socialist workers of con-quered countries very much as they do their own. To destroy the pro-leterian type they robbed and burned trade union quarters and torturedleaders, but they also took other measures. In an attempt to weaken anddivide German labor, they cut across the employer and employee divisionwith old types, such as the Jew, already oppressed and calumnized, andthe Aryan, already a groundlessly extolled in Germany. The Nazis in-sisted that Jew and Aryan were the most fundamental and consequentialtypes of men, but in point of fact they became consequential only because


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TYPES OF MEN AND THEIR RELATION TO ETHICS 439the Nazis made them so, robbing, incarcerating and transplanting Jews,and advancing the Aryan in principle at least to preferred positions. Itis in the Nazi use of these types, in short, that we find exemplification ofthe Sorelian myth, not in the proletarian ideal, for the latter has conse-quences that are not merely engineered as a matter of policy but basedupon objective conditions.

Although these objective conditions are denied with amazing frequency,they appear to be almost as obvious as anything could be. Governmentalmedical reports26 re sufficient to indicate the objective needs on which theideal is based. Exhaustive investigations carried out by medical men,social workers, nurses, and specialists in all relevant fields, have shown thata great part of the American people are suffering from insufficiencies ofdiet, housing, medical care, recreation, and cultural opportunity. Manyother studies trace the effects of unemployment and job insecurity, andthe great advances made in these matters as the result of unionization.Such documentation, which is readily available, establishes the factual ob-jectivity of the proletarian ideal and gives a basis for the elimination ofthat ultimate relativity which vitiates so much of modern ethics. Thathigher living standards and greater cultural opportunity are required forthe American people, and for other peoples, admits of no doubt. Theseneeds are not relative, but historically absolute, i.e., they are to be definedin terms of the maximum production and leisure possible in a given period,assuming optimum efficiency but allowing for justifiable wars and othernecessary dislocations. To challenge these absolutes and the correspond-ing potentialities of the people, as Sombart and other Nazi and near-Naziwriters have done, requires the adoption of ridiculous psychological andbiological theories, which have no scientific support whatever.27As history lays down experience and accelerates its pace,, historicalconsciousness increases. Our contemporaries within their own lifetimehave seen the momentous growth of trade unions in America, and have

26 See, for example, the Proceedings of the National Health ConferenceReports,1936-1938.27 In his A New Social Philosophy, Sombart expresses the utmost contempt forthe peoples' desire for security, comfort and material sufficiency and here he followsthe Nazi line. It is unfortunate that writers with no sympathy for fascism some-times share this view. In the field of applied psychology, for example, nothing ismore common than to read that a questionnaire circulated among employers of thisor that plant has established that what the men want primarily is not higher wages,i.e., higher standards of living for their families, but company picnics, a kind wordof encouragement from the employer, self-respect awakened by fraternizing withthe management, and the like. It is notable that books in this field rarely mentionunions, even in dealing with management-labor relations. Husband's standardtext, Applied Psychology, does not once refer to unions.


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440 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCHnot only experienced vast improvement in their own living standards butsensed a decisive upswing for the people as a whole. It is not surprisingthat type literature reflecting this rapid progress of unionization shouldshow a recognition of the uncultivated capacities of the people and a practi-cal readiness to realize them, which is entirely lacking in the type portrayalsof earlier periods. Composite portraits of the union organizer or leaderhave become fairly numerous in fiction and expository works. RobertR. R. Brocks' portait of the union organizer at the beginning of his WhenLabor Organizes,28s a good example. What distinguishes the new por-trayals of labor types from the character studies of Theophrastus and hisfollowers, is that in place of psychological expose and moral censure, theyemphasize environmental conditions, such as profits of industry and livingquarters of workers, and bring psychology and ethics into the closest rela-tion to the basic causal factors.The-extensive literature depicting the labor type, or types, is sociologi-cal. It has a pertinence to practical life and an instrumental value nevereven approached by the type classifications of individual psychology, suchas those of Jung, Jaspers, Kretschmer, Jaench, Kempf, and Berman. Ap-parently it is only in the field of psychopathology that individualpsychology is able to develop a typology yielding prediction, verificationand control. There is no question about the importance of the schizo-phrenic, paranoiac, and other such types, and there is a particular reasonfor this. The paranoiac may discourse lengthily and even cogently attimes, on politics, science, or art. We are not interested in what he saysbut only in why he says it. In other words, our interest in him is notsocial but purely psychological, and this is his only importance for societyor science. Consequently, when human beings are analyzed exclusivelyin terms of individual psychology, we have a sense that we are dealing withpatients in a psychopathic ward, which is misleading, to say the least.For Aristotle was doubtless right about the essential rational and politicalcharacter of man, and it is to be hoped that in time psychological methodswill be devised for proving a thesis already largely documented by commonexperience and history that, in the long run, it is easier to condition peopleto valid arguments than to invalid ones, and to a cooperative society thanto a predatory one.29 This rationalism, in any case, is an essential part

28 New Haven, 1937. For changing labor leader types with the growth of unions,see also Clinton J. Golden and Harold J. Ruttenberg, The Dynamics of IndustriatDemocracy,New York, 1942.

29 While the prevailing tendency of propaganda, prestige, and other social psycho-logical studies, has been to emphasize emotional factors and unreasoningconformity,there are also counter-tendencies. For example, it has long been known that mean-ingful words are easier to rememberthan nonsense syllables, and rational discourse,


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TYPES OF MEN AND THEIR RELATION TO ETHICS 441of the ideology of labor. Its articulate enemies are forced to emphasizethe limits of reason. This Aristotelian conception of human nature, how-ever, is not at all inconsistent with irrational policies, such as die-hard anti-unionism. Psychologists, instead of referring the irrational to emotionsor biological constitution, have the problem of really explaining it byconditioning.0

IV. ETHICAL IMPLICATIONSWe have argued that if the mission of ethics is to give actual guidance,to stipulate what actions are right and wrong on specific occasions, uni-

versal ethical principles must be regarded as inadequate. Typologicalethics, less abstract and more relevant to concrete occasions of action,offered some hope. Unfortunately, characterology and typology havebeen dominated by the old dualism of biological organism with its desiresand irrational commotions on the one side, and eternal principles, on theother. Both are regarded as permanent and changeless. In the triumphof the biological side with the naturalists and of the eternal principles withthe idealists, and in all the innumerable attempts to compromise the con-flict, the importance of history has been regularly overlooked and theessential social nature of man neglected. The characters of Theophrastusand his followers tend to be only caricatures of vices or stilted models ofgood manners as understood by loyal critics or sycophants of a given aristo-cratic regime, which, however, are often presented as eternal types. Sincethe diagnosis of the disorders and discontents of society implied is wide ofthe mark, characterology has largely failed to give the moral guidance itintended even to its own age, not to speak of mankind. For example, thebasic evils of La Bruyere's time were the land problem, heavy taxation ofthe peasantry, financial policies, and unnecessary wars, not the existenceof a few stupid, loquacious, or irritating courtiers. La Bruyere saw nothingof the coming deluge and had no basic moral instruction to offer. Thequestion suggested is whether modern ethics, in so far as it enshrines theold types and principles instead of developing historically as the othersciences have done, is not perpetuating this inconsequentiality.The historical character of ethics is implied even in the usual definitionsof "ought" and "right." If we say that that act is right which is possiblethan disconnected words. Recently, Solomon E. Asch, H. Block, and Hertzmanhave shown the importance of rational factors in experiments re. the formation ofjudgments, Journal of Psychology, vol. V, pp. 219-251, and George Katona hasstressed the role of understanding in learning, Organizing and Learning, 1940.

30 As an example of a book which attempts this task, we may refer to the firstyear book of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, IndustrialConflict,New York, 1939.


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442 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCHin relation to the concrete circumstances in which the subject stands, andwhich will probably produce more "good" than any other act he mightperform, it is obvious that what is right varies from one period to another,and even from day to day. But if what is right changes slightly from dayto day, it changes basically from period to period, or from one civilizationto another. There seems to be no justification for restricting history to achronicle of the unique as with Dilthey, Rickert, and Croce, or for denyinggenerality in the form of ethical relativity, as with Westermark, for ex-ample. The arguments against absolute relativity are, first, the tremen-dous consensus of desire for decent living standards and cultural oppor-tunities which gets expressed once education is sufficiently generalized anddemocratized and, secondly, the necessity of working cooperatively toachieve these ends, these absolute goods.The importance of history for ethics is shown not only by the variety ofbeliefs and practices which have existed, but also by the transformation ofthe ethos of peoples as a result of basic politico-economic changes. By"basic" we mean what is always meant by the term. We speak of politico-economic changes as basic relative to other changes, when the latter wouldnot have occurred had not the former occurred. (But if A is basic relativeto B, B may nevertheless bring about profound changes in A.)' The en-closure acts in England, or rather, the economic considerations whichinspired them, illustrate the prepotence of basic factors. In a few gener-ations tenants' rights, which had been protected by law and justice, hadalmost disappeared. Absolute ownership of land, unrecognized by themedieval world, was soon well established. And the new entrepreneurlaw and justice which took the place of the old medieval corporatism, eversuspicious of economic egoism,--could this have resulted from a rectifica-tion of logical errors, or the occurrence of new ethical insights? Thetransformation of the clan system in Scotland in the 16th century, thereversal of all the ties of kinship, loyalty, and obligation, offers a morestriking example of the power of basic economic factors. With grazingland at a premium, leaders of clans were known to drive their clansmenfrom their farms to the destitution of the cities or a meager living as fisher-men along the coasts, absolving themselves from immemorial feudal obliga-tions as well as the close bonds of kinship and loyalty.3' To think of suchchanges as inspired principally and in the first instance, by a change inethical outlook-a new inference or insight-to which people at once as-sented, puts an intolerable strain on the imagination. Even if one wereattracted by Max Weber's contention that peculiar religious ideas laid thebasis for the development of capitalism in Western Europe,32t would have

31See R. H. Tawney, The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century,New York,1912.32 See Religionssoziologie.


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TYPES OF MEN AND THEIR RELATION TO ETHICS 443to be admitted that the real causal explanations, facilitating predictionand control of behavior, tend to be rooted in the circumstance of politico-economic structure and change.

The importance of the economic factor in history has been argued atgreat length, and has won many converts, but perhaps not everyone thinksof the ethical implications. If the basic, factors are politico-economic, itfollows that the primary business of ethics is not to applaud and condemnindividuals but to abet and expedite the development of those among themost probable politico-economic alternatives which are likely to producethe greatest amount of absolute good (i.e., the highest living standardsand cultural opportunities feasible in a given period). Naturally, thesupport which is to be given to an alternative is part of its initial probabilityand one reason for its acceptance. If the basic factors are politico-eco-nomic, it also follows that the early bourgeois (Franklin), the buccaneeringinvestor and banker (Jim Fisk, Jay Gould, Commodore Vanderbilt, orthe heroes of Zola's L'argent,and Dreiser's The Financier, etc.), the Nazihigh party bureaucrat-capitalist (Goering), and the New Deal capitalistare all basic types. The same is true of the proletariat, and various pro-letariat sub-types: The Southern share cropper, the migratory workerand the unionized worker in heavy industry. But it also follows that thetheoretic and social type, the introvert and the extrovert, the dominant andthe recessive, the monogyne and the polygyne, the athletic and Pycnik,the pituitary dominant and the hypothryoid, the eidetic and non-eidetic,Jew and Aryan, and so on, are relatively superficial types.They are superficial because in practically any great struggle with farreaching values at stake, these types, if they exist anywhere, can be foundon both sides, often somewhat equally divided. In the Spanish Civil Waror the Munich issue, for example, there were religious, power, social,theoretic, and other such types in each camp. There were recessives andintoverts, no doubt Jews and Aryans, and probably all the customarypsychological and ethical variations were represented. These types areinconsequential because they were irrelevant to the outcome of momentousstruggles which were to determine not only the broad political framework,but also, in great measure, the values of every particular phase of life-family, profession, trade union, religious and cultural activity. Yet whennothing is said to the contrary we must assume that these types are in-tended as basic. This is certainly Sprangers intention. He seems tohold that the welfare of the world can only be increased by the perfectingof his six types, a view which might easily appear cynical. A man is told,in effect, that he ought to realize to his best ability the value pattern towhich he is by nature peculiarly susceptible. Let us suppose that hisprimary susceptibility is to social value (sympathy and love) and that hisnext preference is intellectual value, his third, religious, and so on. Due


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444 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCHto a combination of circumstances having very little to do with his valuesusceptibility-trade union experience, locality, friends, associations,books, and education, none of which he freely selected, he finds himselffighting a life and death battle with the forces of Franco. But if he riskseverything which seems valuable to him in this terrible struggle,, it is notsomething he oughtto do. Rather if, as Spranger holds, "values" shoulddetermine action, the war cannot have had any relation to morality, sincethere were on Franco's side no doubt many persons with the same valuesusceptibilities as our loyalist, i.e., 1) social, 2) theoretic, 3) religious, andso on, and it could not have been their duty to fight the loyalist, and his tofight them.

It is not only Spranger's ethics which displays this irresponsibility orfatalism, but individualistic ethics in general. One can imagine Stoicsand Kantians and adherents of many individualistic creeds, consciouslykilling, and being killed by, men of the same ideals and persuasions. Indi-vidual honesty and justice, and certainly courage are also to be found onboth sides in any great struggle, such as the Spanish Civil War, and whilewe are probably right in thinking that such virtues were much more mani-fest among the Spanish loyalists than among their fascist adversaries, theextreme difficulty of proving this warns us to fix our attention upon a moralcleavage about which there is not the slightest doubt, i.e., the politico-economic issue. Loyalists and fascists could both acclaim their own justiceand courageacross the battle lines. Without an ever-present remembranceof the deep politico-economic issue which divided loyalist from fascist,they might sound embarrassingly alike, as they often did to Hemmingwayin For Whom the Bell Tolls. Once the immense difference between thefascist regime abetted by Hitler and Mussolini, and the democratic republicis understood, the virtues of the loyalists are seen as socially reasonableand causally efficient, while those of the fascist armies must appear meretrumpery, or else blind and pathetic, unconsciously out of accord with theactual goal in prospect. For while both sides could talk of justice, truth,courage and other abstract ideals, only one side talked of more hospitals,schools, and equal opportunity, and only one side had made great stridestoward achieving them. It appears then that if a man is said to be just,courageous, prudent, well-disciplined, and the like, we must look to thesocial context to understand what is meant.As would be expected, Nazi propaganda methods and morale work arenot in general suitable to America.3 The politico-economic base in Nazi

33Kimball Young's interpretative statement in German Psychological Warfare(New York City, 1941) recognizes this. But while American advantage in teamwork, liberties, etc., is cited, our far-famed economic advantages, so rich inlconise-quences, are not mentioned.


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TYPES OF MEN AND THEIR RELATION TO ETHICS 445Germany requires inducements to morale, which are wholly unnecessaryhere and would be felt as an insult. For example, it would not be ex-pedient, nor consistent, to stir up racial hatred in this country, to inculcatecontempt for "inferior"peoples and a desire to dominate them, or to sub-stitute army discipline and the leader myth for trade unions. On thecontrary, the Allied Powers have much to gain in efficiency by upholdingdemocracy and equality of races, not only at home, but throughout theworld. It may prove difficult to define the Allied democratic type (orideal) which now opposes the Nazi type. It is neither capitalist norsocialist, not of one race nor another, nor of any one nation, though em-bracing them all; but it is better to try adequately to define the importanttypes and fail, as might be, than to try to define inconsequential types,and succeed.If the general drift of our argument so far is correct, ethics is not some-thing apart from the sciences, but coextensive with them. It is not inde-pendent of those sciences, which have human thought and action as theirsubject-matter, nor even from those which deal with nature. For ethicstells what is right and wrong i.e., it specifies what actions should be under-taken on concrete occasions, which could not, of course, be known withoutrecourseto the sciences, social and natural. The intimate relation betweenethics and the sciences can be clarified by defining ethics as a system ofstatements in which words such as "should," "ought," "right," "betterthan," "more reasonable," "wise,"Y prudent," "proper," and "efficient,"occur in their natural sense. It will be apparent at once that the sciencesthemselves use these terms, and that when they do they are talking ethics,for there is an ethics of scientific procedure, although it is not usually calledthat. And this scientific "ought," of course, has an important bearingon the "ought" of laboratories, industries, unions, armies, nations, andsocial planners. Indeed, the more science develops and the more lifebecomes organized and rationalized, the more important it is. Advancedscience is therefore highly "ethical," and advanced ethics, increasinglyscientific.Although ethical writers usually restrict ethical terms such as "ought,""right," and "proper" to human thought and action, common usage ap-plies them to machines, organizations, institutions, and economies aswell. People say that a machine ought to work or has the wrong engine, orthat an organization is inefficient and should run better than it does. In-deed, the more science and economies develop and life becomes systema-tized and civilized, the more people tend to apply ethical terms to machinesand social organizations, rather than to individual agents. For in modernlife machines and social organizations constantly assume the burden ofhumdrum and arduous routine, which was formerly left to moral agents.


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446 PHILOSOPHYNDPHENOMENOLOGICALESEARCHWhile the eighteenth century condemned personalities, we of the twentiethcentury rail at the criminal inefficiency of systems and institutions. Theresponsible moral agents are often not to be found, but we get results nonethe less by addressing ourselves to people who disclaim responsibility.It might be argued that such a statement as "This machine (or socialorganization) is inefficient, or does not function as it should," could alwaysbe translated into statements about the inefficiency or immorality ofindividuals, but surely such translations would prove difficult and artificialin many cases. It may be that Durkheim and Levy-Bruehl underestimatedthe importance of the individual in primitive societies, and that the "ought"as applied to individual agents is the primary sense of the term, but itwould not follow that this is the most useful way to employ the term today.What we wish to emphasize chiefly, however, is the increasing mutualinterdependence of the organizational "ought" and the individual "ought."When it is said that a machine or organization is not functioning as itshould, moral agents bestir themselves, even though they may not feelresponsible; and when a civilized person is blamed, he is apt to set aboutfixing a machine or mending an impersonal system. Machines and in-stitutions do not respond just as persons do, although the range of theiradaptability increases with civilization, just as the gamut of unique ir-replaceable personal behavior dwindles. Modern life is obviously moreand more in the hands of vast networks of impersonal techniques and or-ganizations, serving democratic or fascist purposes.Another circumstance enforcing the same conclusion is the diminishingautonomy of sub-systems of ethics, i.e., marital, family, school, profes-sional, trade union, and national ethics. With increase of education andcommunications, the proliferation of institutions and economic organiza-tions to the remotest regions, and finally, the present war which suddenlyengulfs the world, threatening every individual, family, profession, andnation, it has become absurd to represent sub-systems of ethics as inde-pendent and self-reliant. In formerperiods, with their more localized wars,no doubt families, professions, and schools could preserve their systemand integrity unless they were in the path of hostile armies, but all this ispast. Permanent occupation forces now appear over vast areas with policerepression unprecedented in brutality and efficiency. It is now clearlynot a question, as the stock ethical examples have it, whether one shouldlie or tell the truth, steal, commit murder or injustice, or refrain from suchactions, but whether one will choose to work in a factory for the enemyto keep one's family from actual starvation, or wreck the enemy's factoriesat the expense of family and friends. In short, the efficiency of Nazi oc-cupation methods consists largely in pitting sib-ethical principles againstethical principles, i.e., making it impossible for a man to be ethical, or


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TYPES OF MEN AND THEIR RELATION TO ETHICS 447nationally ethical, without violating sub-ethical codes. As crisis situationsdeepen, sub-ethical systems become less autonomous. Our criticismof the common run of ethics is that it has not kept pace with this moderndevelopment, and still assumes the autonomy, and rather permanenttranquility, of family, school, profession, and other such ethical sub-systems.Typology and modern ethics have in general failed to recognize thedecisive importance of historical structures and change. We have arguedthat both require a historical base, but this will not solve all the problems.It will still be necessary to proceed from general ethical principles (eventhough they are now historical, i.e., concerned with historical conditionsand development), to the ethics of eras, to sub-system principles and alsoto unique institutions, situations, and persons. Casuistry has not beeneliminated but completely transformed. Instead of attempting deductionfrom abstract principles in an argument which casually neglects most ofthe minor premises needed for a conclusion, ethics has at its disposal theabundance of historical data, and reserves of needed facts which researchhas barely scratched. If the ethical expert takes the point of view we haveoutlined and denies himself the comforting thought that even the best ofabstract principles do not work out well in this imperfect world, he is in astate of mind to make direct use of the research procedures and enormousknowledge accumulated by the various social sciences and has the prospect,at least, of success, i.e., prediction, verification, and melioristie control ofhis subject-matter.

One obstacle to such a reconsideration of traditional ethics is the oldconviction that the model of science is geometry of mechanics, not history;that science thrives on laws while history cannot achieve them. A goodreply to contentions of this kind has been made by Gordon Allport:" 'But how,' cry all the traditional scientists, including the older dynamicpsychologists, 'how are we ever to have a science of unique events? Sciencemust generalize.' Perhaps it must, but what the objectors forget is thata generallaw may bea law that tells howuniquenesscomesabout."34

What Allport says in defense of genetic psychological laws dealing withthe development of the unique individual, applies also to the sociologicallaws of historical development of institutions, economies, and so on, which,in our view, ethics could make more use of. That genetic laws of thissort are scientifically reputable is proved by their important place in somany sciences-biology, embryology, and geology, to name only a few.Even in stellar mechanics, which furnished the model of static laws, evolu-tionary laws are being formulated by Milne, Dirac, and others.

34 Personality, A Psychological Interpretation, New York, 1937, pp. 193-194.


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448 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCHThe problem of casuistry remains, for one must still apply the generalprinciple to the particular case, but it no longer lies beyond the competenceof science. The general principles are now those which pertain to the

most inclusive individual, i.e., world history, and these principles must berelated to the principles of the ethical sub-systems and to the laws of thedevelopment of persons.V. J. McGILL.

HUNTER COLLEGE.

Types of Men and Their Relation to Ethics by v.J. McGill (1943)

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