Shaftesbury and Learning Goodness

An artist, for example, who receives praise from someone who knows nothing about art may appreciate the gesture but is not content as he or she would be if the praise came from someone knowledgeable in art. Similarly, one is not satisfied with false praise either. But as the passage shows, we can sincerely praise some activities we ourselves do not perform, but nonetheless can appreciate, such as music and poetry.

We cannot, however, sincerely praise goodness without being to some degree good ourselves. Certainly a Divine Being could see through insincere praise that might come, say, from a rote repetition of some phrases learned in church which were then repeated devoid of any real appreciation of goodness. But the reason praise would be so dissonant among us if issued from a “hollow heart” is because goodness is allied with truth and integrity, which a hollow heart does not possess. To be sincere in the praise of goodness one must be able to truly recognize it and at the same time appreciate its value. That is something one cannot do if one does not possess some goodness in oneself.

Without that possession and understanding of goodness, one action would have no more reason to be praised than another. That would in turn create a kind of moral relativism and insincerity whose dissonance is directly proportional to the degree that goodness is absent.