The ideas of the good and the right span the greater
part of the field of moral philosophy. They conceptu-
alize basic phenomena in human life: the good, that
men are purposive or goal-seeking beings who have
desires and aspirations; and the right, that men carry
on their lives in groups that require some modes of
organization and regulation involving practices, rules,
and institutions. Perhaps the only other moral idea
approaching them in scope is virtue as conceptualizing
forms of character.
Philosophers of each generation have analyzed the
concepts, bringing to them the analytic tools of succes-
sive philosophical movements, or invoking models from
the particular stages in the advance of the sciences or
frontiers of human knowledge. Ordinary uses, cultural
molding, philosophical formulations, interact with one
another. The product finds its place in the moral con-
sciousness of men when they think and talk in terms
of the good and the right.
The story of the good and the right is not, as it has
so often seemed, the tale of two isolated concepts
sitting for philosophical portraits in a variety of rather
grand poses. Historical changes in the dominant cul-
tural emphases—in the patterns of aspiration and
modes of institutional regulation—also transform the
conceptual relations. Varied historical movements and
social organizations leave their mark on the very
structure of the concepts. As men's understanding of
their world advances, as their consciousness gains in
scope and in depth, so their moral philosophy is shaped
by the leading motifs of their scientific and cultural
disciplines. And the resultant moral concepts are not
merely products. For the concepts themselves do not
function alone, but enter into conceptual frameworks
in which they give organizational direction and which
they shape for use.
