7:28 PM A dialogue between Skeptic and Patron concerning the Highest Good

S. So tell me about this big idea of the Highest Good. You dream up this idea and tell me that I must accept this as a true idea. Convince me of this.

P Well, reason, as we know, is split in its theoretical and in its practical usage by means of a dialectic. When subjected to a critique we find that this split is merely in appearance and that human rationality is unified and one.

In the practical realm we find reason split into two equally capable directors of human actions, the prudent pursuit of happiness and the pursuit of morality. And we find that these are at odds with each other and that compliance with one often means to ignore the other.

What we must look for is a solution of this problem through some sort of reconciliation of these two directors, and this we find in the idea of the Highest Good where the moral good are destined to be happy, or that happiness will be in proportion to morality. We won’t go into the analysis of this idea at the moment, but merely indicate that this is the only way that rationality can be unified in the practical arena.

S. But why can’t I continue being moral when it is called for and then seeking happiness second?

P. You can and you ought to continue being moral, of course. But that’s not the question. The question is a rational question touching the unification of the two directors. If you cannot reconcile these two drives then you have no reason to trust your reasoning in any situation, for it is then has a split personality. And you are faced with a law dreamed up by pure practical reason which denies you happiness in exchange for a odd and strong feeling which is called respect. If rationality is split, then how is it that a categorical imperative is accorded the sway, why not let happiness rule and morality when it is convenient (which is a widespread practice anyway)?

I guess that’s it: if rationality is split and is at odds with itself, then why continue to the absolute moral commands and not choose rather the leg that is directed toward happiness, or why trust rationality with anything at all, with coming up with the first principle?

S. And so by choosing to be moral before being happy I am making an arbitrary choice between two validly determined courses of rationality and am choosing the one which gives me the pleasure of pride in the moral act over the one which is directed toward my happiness.

P. It does seem arbitrary in this light, and yet how can we live with ourselves when we reject the moral and make happiness supreme for us? It doesn’t seem to make any sense to obey a law we have dreamed up and which gives us a feeling called respect and to give up, or to subjugate, the principles of happiness to this. And some might be tempted to go to the medical profession and ask for treatment with regard to this feeling of respect, such that it might be dampened or removed.

OK, let’s say we need to unify our rationality, how does the idea of the Highest Good make this reconciliation of moral acts and happiness? We know that pursuing the moral will not make us happy (though perhaps content) and we know that pursuing what makes us happy will often be at odd with what is moral. And so we know that they cannot be made into identities, and so this means that any unification will be in terms of cause and effect. And since we know that happiness cannot cause morality, not in any number of life times, it will have to be that morality causes happiness. And although there is no evidence of this in life, this can then occur after this life. If so then we have the reconciliation.

And so on a practical level we leave the details out and simply state that morality will be rewarded. We don’t explain how, but it is the essential element in the idea. The good shall never have cause to regret.

The way it happens of course is in this wise. We no longer are simply doing a moral act, we are in process of making ourselves ‘worthy of happiness”. A different perspective on the moral law, now looking at it as intended to produce something. A perspective provided by practical reason. And the practical goal, that everyone must admit to, is moral perfection, i.e., the human can be morally perfect because the human ought to be morally perfect. And the happiness is a response of existence to those worthy of it. But we don’t yet know how all this is possible, and speculative reason has its split and is only able to tell us that it is possible think freedom, eternal life and God, but not that they actually exist.

In order for this logic to hold it is necessary to accept the fact of eternal life and God, as the continuing pursuit of this practical goal, i.e., moral perfection, for no one who strives will fail to approximate holiness, and thus we need eternal life. And since the dispersal of happiness in accordance with one’s worthiness cannot be left to nature, God is needed, the all-knowing and all-powerful moral judge.

S. Ok, let me fully understand. Rationality seems split and thus questionable, but we see in the highest good the reconstitution of its unity and find the split was merely an appearance based on an false antinomy or opposition. And I am supposed to accept this idea because I cannot function rationally with this split. To accept a split rationality is irrational, for there can be only a single driver.

But I think I can live with this split. I will choose morality first and happiness second and will do the best I can.

P I wonder if you can do that. If morality has no further effect than simply its own act, while that is sufficient for determining and directing the will, and it is for this act itself that you are giving up happiness, don’t you think that will make a man begin to wonder and to question and even to doubt? Can a man believe that his act is effective-less and still undertake to do it?

I think a more rational thing to do would be to go to a shrink and get help in ridding yourself of the respect for the moral law, as a feeling, for that is what it is in the last analysis that makes you accept the directorship of the moral law in your life. Don’t you think that would be what would make sense?

S. You mean that if reason itself is split and if all that holds me to the moral law, which keeps me from my happiness, by means of the sense of respect, that I would be smart to get help is ridding myself of that feeling, perhaps by means of brain surgery, so that I would not be impaired further by that in my pursuit of happiness. But that would turn me into a Tolkien Orc, a rational creature who finds the idea of the moral law queer, and thinks moral people are nutty.

P. I think that is right. If you try to conform to the moral law under such circumstances as the split rationality without use of the highest Good, you would be smart to seek to rid yourself of this impediment, or learn to ignore the moral law as some sort of mental “whispering.”

And so while there is nothing wrong with a person who tries to be moral without seeing it as a worthiness to happiness in the context of the Highest Good, it does make you wonder that he ought to have his head examined for being taken by this idea of the moral law.