ACTS AND THE EXEMPLAR

Our consciousness of the world is not merely receptive and representational; it is also laden with feeling that moves us to impact that world. Hence, we act – sometimes with forethought, usually not. Some springs of action may be purely internal, and these are often called drives, but many others arise from emotions or combinations of emotions and beliefs, both of which are derived from, or are part of, our consciousness of the external world. I accept the position that anything motivating must have an affective aspect, but pure affect cannot motivate, because it has no object. When motivated, we may or may not act on the motive. An account of why we sometimes do and sometimes do not leads directly into one of the most difficult issues in the metaphysics of the human person, the problem of free will. I will not attempt an account of human freedom in this book, but will merely mention the step that sometimes comes between the desire to bring about a certain end and the act: choice or decision. I believe that the importance of choice has been exaggerated in moral philosophy. Virtues and vices are not primarily patterns of choice, but rather patterns of feeling and acting, some of which, but not all of which, involve choice. Modern ethics has focused excessively on choice because of the modern shrinking of the range of responsibility.