1. In chapter four--"God And Righteousness" of his book Man's Vision of God(Connecticut: Hamden, 1964) Charles Hartshorne is concerned to answer the question, "What is God and righteousness?"
2. Hartshorne's answer is it means that God's existence and his righteousness are interrelated, that "the questions of cosmic reality and of the measure of goodness"1) are correlated, and thereby that " our ethical insight" and "metaphysical reasoning" are interrelated2).
3. Hartshorne's method of teaching us is by first showing us how have "the relationships between goodness and theistic belief" been conceived in a variety of extraordinary ways, why should the metaphysical questions and ethical questions be treated at the same time(pp. 142-4), and then, to prove it, by examining a classical assertion that "to act rightly is...to act rationally, and this in turn is explained to mean, to act in accordance with enlightened self-interest"3)(pp. 144-55), and finally by considering "the ethical significance of the idea of the perfect or divine love"4)(pp. 155-73)
4. Hartshorne maintains that the significance of understanding "God and righteousness" is that we can recognize the correlation between the metaphysical questions of "cosmic reality" and the ethical questions of "the measure of goodness"5), "social panpsychic principle capable of general application to reality as such,"6) the divine perfection as the motivational adequacy or loyalty to our good doings, "religious love" as "action for social awareness"7), and finally the divine love as "social awareness and action from social awareness"8)
5. My own opinion is this.
a) According to Hartshorne, the metaphysical questions of God and the ethical questions of the divine goodness is interrelated to each other. So to make "our basic conceptions adequate to a supreme being"9) is of significance to our metaethical framework.
b) According to Hartshorne, to differentiate the self loving and the self loved sharply is a fallacy of traditional theism, and promoting welfare of others contributes to one's own. So we can affirm the possibility of our love to contribute to other's welfare such noble deaths in battle fields.
c) According to Hartshorne, this mutual contribution in love is the generic notion applicable not only to creaturely existences but also even to God. So we can understand the divine or perfect love as "social awareness and action from social awareness"10), so that we can overcome all kinds of anti-social ethics, such as pacifism. Specifically by confirming religious love as "not only a motive and goal" but "also a method, the only valid method, of influencing others"11), we can see the dual aspects of war, a tremendous evil in one respect and a method of loving others in other respect.
1) p. 144
2) Ibid.
3) pp. 144-5
4) pp. 155-6
5) p. 144
6) p. 155
7) p. 166 Hartshorne says "that love is not only a motive and goal, it is also a method, the only valid method, of influencing others"
8) p. 173
9) p. 144
10) p. 173
11) p. 168