Royce presents a picture of our beginnings as originally a mix of
instinctual reactions to our environment. Such reactions are neither
informed by some broader purpose nor are they related to each other in a
way, which is reflective of a stable personality. For these actions to
be considered a kind of conduct, whether good or bad, they must be done
for some end and they must connect up with other actions in a way that
is reflective of the kind of person who has done such acts.
The
move from incoherent reactions to stable conduct comes from the ways in
which one’s social environment responds and seeks to train the person
and their conduct.. Such training is most often found in the sort of
limitations that a community places on the individual. The most
pertinent comes from the contrast of what we are and what we aim for and
what the community and individuals within that community desires for
us.
We begin to have a sense of what we do, why we do it, the
meaning behind what we do through “other instances of conduct with which
we compare” ourselves. Am I a good clarinet player? One has to see
themselves in relations to a group of other players, by which one can
self-evaluate one’s self in relation to others. Sometimes this is found
in how I differ from others, but it also can be found in those areas
that I am alike others.
As Royce writes: Contrasts, rivalries,
difficult efforts to imitate some fascinating fellow being, contrasts
with foes, emulation, social ambition, the desire to attract attention,
the desire to find myself within the social order, my interest in what
my fellows say and do, and especially in what they say and do with
reference to me, such are the more elemental social motives and social
situations which at first make me highly conscious of my own doings.
But
this complex process is not only done through contrasting ourselves
with other individuals but also with the wider community at large. That
may be the church, the nation, and any number of communities where we
understand ourselves either in agreement with the “general will” of such
communities or find ourselves at odds with them.
Through the
community, one begins to develop the means by which one becomes aware of
one’s own individuality and yet it is primarily through the level of
conflict that this process is able to take place. A person comes “to
self-consciousness as a moral being through the spiritual warfare of
mutual observation, of mutual criticism …through taking a more or less
hostile account of the consciences of their neighbors.”
It does
not mean that there is also not a mutual taking in of the other, in a
positive fashion, but it does mean that to the degree that an individual
is created, there will be some level of contention between the
individual and the group from which the individual came out of. Thus it
is the very social training that, far from producing socially obedient
creatures, which replicate the values and beliefs of the community
instead produces the individual who becoming aware of their own
individuality finds the community a place of limitation and restriction.
The
more social training is used in the formation of the individual, the
more the individual self-will is brought forth in opposition to what has
produced it in the first place and there the tension arises. How can
the individual be that individual without losing the required social
cohesion of the community? And how can the community have that cohesion
without destroying the individuality, which contributes to the
community?
If it was simply an issue that individuality brought
the end of social cohesion it may seem as if the community’s interest
would be to try to not raise up individuals. But this is not an option
for the community. Once they have sought to train the individual, shape
their conduct as conduct and not a bundle of reactions, even the laws
and group pressures cannot help but provide the basis for contrast that
serves in the development of individual self-assertion.
It is this
training that creates the possibilities of a moral life, one, which
develops the relatively unified personality that provides the basis for
self-reflection and self-consciousness. And yet Royce identifies this as
an evil since with this moral life comes the social tension, which
makes one enemies, in some degree, with every other individual. This
becomes the moral burden of the individual, as far as they are an
individual; they are at odds with others.
Salvation will be found
in this process through his discussion of grace and the role of the
beloved community of which volumes have been written. But I wanted to
focus on how he treated original sin.