Two Basic Frameworks. The two major frameworks
in which the good and the right are chiefly at home
may be called, respectively, the goal-seeking framework
and the juridical framework. They are not comple-
mentary portions of the moral field but alternative
ways of organizing the whole field to carry out the
tasks of morality.
The goal-seeking framework assumes a structure of
appetition or desire in human life. The good is defined
either by position of the objective in this pursuit or
by some basic character of the objective. Knowledge
of the good helps generate a grasp of appropriate
means towards its achievement. The rules of action that
achieve the good determine what is right, and the
character-traits that support such a moral code are
regarded as virtues. The concept of the good life, either
in its own name or thought of as “the ideals of life,”
dominates the framework and provides the end-point
in justifying action or policy. The other typical ethical
concepts—right and virtue—are definitely subordi-
nated. Such a model is found in most of the ethical
theories that look to human nature for an under-
standing of men's basic goals or directions of striving.
The juridical framework, on the other hand, sees
ethics as a system of laws or rules enjoined on human
beings. They constitute the “moral law.” The frame-
work usually includes some explanatory justification for
the law, grounding it in divine will or some natural
order or inherent rationality. Men are taken to have
an intellectual capacity for recognition of the moral
law and some affective capacity through which the
system normally takes hold or wins their respect and
obedience. The concept of right—or others of the same
cluster, such as duty or obligation—dominates this
conceptual framework. Virtue is tied to the disposition
of conscientious obedience, and the good, usually set
off as the moral good and distinguished from the merely
natural goods, the desires and satisfactions of men, is
identified with the goals that the moral law renders
legitimate.
Each of these frameworks purports to cover the
whole field, but they interpret moral processes in
markedly different ways. Each focuses what is going
on in human life, to which morality applies, somewhat
differently. Each selects from the repertoire of human
feelings which ones are to do the heavy work of
morality—the goal-seeking leaning more to desire and
aspiration, or else to satisfaction and pleasure, the
juridical to guilt, shame, and awe. Each organizes its
selected content in a different pattern, the one usually
in terms of a hierarchy of means and ends, culminating
in some systematic ultimate end, the other in terms
of universal rules and their special applications. Such
organization-modes strongly influence the methods of
decision in morality: in the goal-seeking, it is the find-
ing of appropriate strategies, in the juridical it is de-
duction from principles. Each appeals to different
modes of justification for its morality—the one to the
ultimate good which fully satisfies men's longing and
aspiration, the other to the reason that grasps ultimate
principles or the will that commands them. Each tends
to marshall different sanctions to support the morality—
the one the operative effects of pleasure and pain, of
hope and accomplishment or else dread of loss, the
other the fear of authoritative punishment or the pangs
of conscience. Thus each framework has a definite
orientational effect in the lives of men who so construe
their morals.
The goals and substantial codes of a morality, its
scope and its basic attitudes, vary considerably with
different cultural patterns and in different historical
periods. One moral code may be concerned about sex,
another about property and status, all usually about
aggression in interpersonal relations and about the
conditions of social order. The codes of some may focus
chiefly on acts, of others on inner feelings and attitudes.
Some center on familial or kin group in scope, others
are more broadly national or even universalistic and
individualistic. Some are broad and relaxed in attitude,
others narrowly intense and stringent. All such sub-
stantial features can be cast in either basic framework,
although not always as easily or comfortably. For ex-
ample, a nationalistic morality may be juridical or
goal-seeking, and attitudes of stringency may take
shape either in the sharpness of juridical command or
the narrowness of a driving goal such as success and
status through work and personal effort.
The history of the relation of the good and the right
in ethics is thus the history of the relation of these
conceptual frameworks and their transformation under
the growth of human knowledge, the changes in social
and cultural forms, the emergence of varying human
purposes, and the refinement of philosophical theory.
It is a complex history, quite revealing about the role
of categories of thought in human life, and though it
exhibits a definite intellectual dialectic it is scarcely
a dance of bloodless categories.
