Understanding Human Conduct and Social Relations

Abstract

The inquiring student of a generation ago who wished to find out what conclusions systematic human thinking had reached regarding the proper guidance of life, in view of the nature of man and his relation to his fellows and the physical world, would unhesitatingly have been referred to the science of ethics. His dean or faculty adviser, particularly if drawn from the Department of Philosophy, might have given his reasons for recommending to such an aspirant the study of ethics. Ethics, he would have said, compares the different objects which men pursue as ends of action, decides which ones furnish the fullest and most enduring satisfaction, and considers how these most worthy ends can be realized in everyday conduct. Since it might thus be claimed for ethics that it alone among the sciences undertakes to say how the whole nature of man in its distinctively human and social capacity can obtain satisfaction, it is small wonder that in the older type of North-American college and university with its definitely religious bent the course in ethics, with perhaps one on “Christian evidences,” was a culminating feature of the curriculum.