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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - Appendices - 1. A Methodological Note on Valuations and Beliefs - 1. The Mechanism of Rationalization
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1028 An American Dilemma
different degrees of generality of moral judgment. Some valuations concern human
beings in general; others concern Negroes or women or foreigners; still others
concern a particular group of Negroes or an individual Negro. Some valuations have
general and eternal validity; others have validity only for certain situations. In the
Western culture people assume, as an abstract proposition, that the more general and
timeless valuations are morally higher. We can, therefore, see that the motivation of
valuations, already referred to, generally follows the pattern of trying to present the
more specific valuations as inferences from the more general.
In the course of actual day-to-day living a person will be found to focus attention
on the valuations of one particular plane of his moral personality and leave in the
shadow, for the time being, the other planes with their often contradicting valuations.
Most of the time the selection of this focus of evaluation is plainly opportunistic.
The expressed valuations and beliefs brought forward as motives for specific action or
inaction are selected in relation to the expediencies of the occasion. They arc the
“good” reasons rather than the “true” reasons; in short, they are “rationalizations.”
The whole “sphere of valuations”—by which we mean the entire aggregate of a
person’s numerous and conflicting valuations, as well as their expressions in thought,
speech, and behavior—is thus never present in conscious apperception. Some parts of
it may even be constantly suppressed from awareness. But it would be a gross mistake
to believe that the valuations temporarily kept in the shadow of subjective inatten-
tion—and the deeper-seated psychic inclinations and loyalties represented by them
are permanently silenced. Most of them rise to consciousness now and then as the
focus of apperception changes in reaction to the flow of experiences and impulses.
Even when submerged, they are not without influence on actual behavior. They
ordinarily bend behavior somewhat in their direction; the reason for suppressing them
from conscious attention is that, if obeyed, they would affect behavior even more.
In this treatise, therefore, behavior is conceived of as being typically the outcome of a
moral compromise of heterogeneous valuations, operating on various planes of generality
and rising in varying degrees and at different occasions to the level of consciousness.
To assume the existence of homogeneous “attitudes” behind behavior would violate
the facts, as we must well know from everyday introspection and from observation
and reflection. It tends to conceal the moral conflicts which are the ultimate object of
our study in this book.
The individual or the group whose behavior we are studying, moreover, does not
act in moral isolation. He is not left alone to manage his rationalizations as he pleases,
without interference from outside. His valuations will, instead, be questioned and
disputed. Democracy is a “government by discussion,” and so, in fact, are other forms
of government, though to a lesser degree. Moral discussion goes on in all groups from
the intimate family circle to the international conference table. Modern means of
intellectual communication have increased the volume and the intensity of such moral
interrelations.
When discussion takes the form of moral criticism by one person or group or
another, it is not that the one claims to have certain valuations that the other does
not have. It is rather an appeal to valuations which the other keeps in the shadow of
inattention, but which are assumed, nevertheless, to be actually held in common. This
assumption, that those with opposing opinions have valuations in common, is ordinarily
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