Part 15 (1/2)
Civilization is a means for the individual, not _vice versa_.
The natural division of Ethics is into Individual Ethics and Social Ethics. It has sometimes been a.s.sumed that the whole duty of man could be summed up in Individual Ethics. However, it is not necessarily true that that which a.s.sists the best development of the individual serves society as a whole also. When the attention is directed so excessively to oneself, the general welfare is likely to be forgotten. On the other hand, a too great subjection of individual interests makes a man a mere parasite, robbing him of all self-dependence. When Ethics condemns the instinct of self-preservation, it condemns its own means. If the impulse to self-preservation, self-a.s.sertion, and self-development were evil, then our essential nature would be evil, and Ethics would be impossible.
The right relation of the two principles is given in the principle of welfare. Mill's book ”On Liberty” denies the ethical significance of self-development and forgets the individual's oneness with his kind, in declaring personal vices of no importance to the general welfare. That which Mill wished to defend was the freedom of the individual, the loss of which through the compulsion of society and the ”moral police” he feared. But he might have accomplished this purpose without denying the ethical value of self-development. There is nothing that is a ground for greater solicitude than the mistake that public opinion and Ethics are one, and that a condition of things is no longer a subject for ethical condemnation when no outer power has the right to denounce it.
The first question which presents itself in Individual Ethics is: How is the individual to educate himself to an ethical personality? Here the development and strengthening of the ethical principle as governing and determining the life of the individual is concerned. The problem is one with the determination of the chief virtue which includes all other ethical qualities. This virtue is justice, which includes in itself the two groups contained under Self-a.s.sertion and Self-sacrifice.[78]
In the application of this general theory of Ethics, Hoffding maintains the radical-conservative and individual-social position already stated.
The principle of welfare demands the reconciliation of the free development of the individual and the progress of society as a whole; the individual does not live to himself alone, hence the state has a right to demand sacrifices; but it must always be able to show good reason for such; the burden of proof lies with the side which would take away the most valuable possession of the individual,--the right to free self-development in the ever-s.h.i.+fting direction of his need. This very characteristic of change makes it impossible for the state to decide for the individual what are his needs, and how they may be satisfied; hence the best course of the state is a chiefly restrictive one. The relation between state-help and self-help must be exactly the reverse of that which Socialism, in remarkable agreement with Bureaucracy and Absolutism, a.s.serts. Socialism presupposes not only perfection in the governed but also perfection in the persons to whom the government is entrusted. It a.s.sumes, moreover, that pleasure in activity and its resulting power of originality and invention would not be weakened if men's right of initiative were taken from them and their needs determined by others. Much of the good even now accomplished by the state in its functions is due to the compet.i.tion with individual undertakings.
Philanthropy, on the part of individuals as on that of the state, will best follow this same principle of indirect aid, in order to obtain the best results through education of character. Organization is desirable on the part of individuals, but the state will achieve best results by acting through smaller organizations which afford a wider field and the possibility of more intelligent work. In its methods of punishment, also, the state must have regard, not only to prevention through fear, but also and chiefly to the bettering of the criminal character; capital punishment and life-long imprisonment cannot be justified from a higher ethical standpoint. Freedom should be allowed and tolerance shown the various religious sects as corresponding to various needs. The more liberal education of woman, which will make her capable of greater independence of thought and action, is one of the chief means to the solution of the marriage-question. The ideal of marriage is free monogamy; in polygamy, the purely physical must always rule; that part of self which one can surrender to many can be only the animal; long a.s.sociation and sympathy alone admit to the sanctuary of love. It belongs to the nature of true love to believe in its own endlessness; it is, therefore, incompatible with its nature to arrange for a mere temporary union. Yet where an unhappy union exists, divorce should be permitted. Strict divorce laws have always fettered and burdened n.o.bler natures, while light-minded people have easily found means of escape.
The view that the artist occupies a peculiar position in his ideal world, must free himself from the actual world, and live only for his ideal, is ethically false; art should lend form to actual life, defining and clarifying it, broadening the view and educating sympathy. A great artist is, at the same time, half a prophet; his whole people and epoch must learn to know themselves through him. Freedom is to be regarded as both means and end. A representative government is not only an education for the people, who through freedom alone can learn to use freedom, but affords the state, moreover, a firmer foundation in the consciousness of its citizens that they are responsible for the existing condition of things.
The development of conscience in force and extent takes place through thought and imagination. Knowledge alone is not enough; it must be fixed by exercise,--made a persistent thought, until it becomes, by means of the laws of a.s.sociation, such a thought as will easily come in play whenever the case requires it.
FOOTNOTES:
[77] Trieb.
[78] Selbstbehauptung und Hingebung.
GEORG VON GIZYCKI
”MORAL PHILOSOPHY” (”Moralphilosophie,” 1889)
Moral Philosophy has a scientific and a practical office. Its scientific task is to supply the human being with a clearer, more thorough understanding, founded on ultimate reasons, of his moral life. Its practical task is to answer the important question: How am I to act? How shall I order my life?
It was not left to science first to direct human action. Custom and law seek to order the doing and leaving undone of the members of society.
Ethical philosophy ascertains means of testing the actually existing ideas of morality, and thus enables us to better law and custom.
A highest criterion, one only, is necessary, by which to judge of the morality of a deed. If there were more than one, the judgment might fall out differently from the different standpoints furnished by these.
When I regard the qualities which I consider morally good, I perceive that they all have a direction conducive to the general welfare or happiness; and when I regard the qualities which I consider morally bad, I find that they all have an aim prejudicial to the general welfare or happiness.
When I attempt to convince any one that certain conduct which he considers right is wrong, by showing him that it is opposed to the general welfare, my final appeal is to his conscience. And in the same manner, when I correct some of my own moral conceptions, it is my conscience which determines me to the proof of them, and my conscience which is the standard that determines my decision. Conscience is the principle underlying my moral convictions. But I do not possess, in conscience, a moral power which never errs; hence it behooves me to judge carefully. Body and mind both have their laws on which depend the welfare and happiness of society; the last results of science and human experience give us these laws.
There are few things in regard to which there is so great unanimity as there is in regard to the right and good. In the fundamental questions, all the more highly civilized peoples are, for the most part, agreed.
On the lowest planes of civilization, only the narrowest tribal a.s.sociation is taken into consideration in morals, but gradually, with the growth of experience, growth of the understanding, which permits the recognition, in a much higher degree, of the results of action and the power of sympathy, ever larger circles of human beings are regarded,--the tribe, the nation, the whole of mankind, all sentient beings. In this development of conscience and benevolence, there is nothing to cause moral uncertainty or contempt of conscience; for, in that case, the fact that there was once a time when human beings were not on the earth must be a reason for contempt of everything human.
We call various different things good, of worth, others bad, evil; there must be something common to all these, on account of which we apply the common term to them. That which is thus common to them is their relation to a consciousness for which they are good or bad, and not to a merely perceiving consciousness, but to one that feels and wills. As true and false relate to the intellectual side of human nature, so do good and bad relate to the side of feeling and will. Such things are good as are the mediate or immediate cause of agreeable states of consciousness or of the prevention or removal of disagreeable states; and on the other hand, such things are bad as are the cause of pain or the hindrance of pleasure. We say of these things that they are agreeable or disagreeable. Or we may use, instead of ”agreeable,” the term ”object of desire,” and instead of ”disagreeable,” the term ”object of aversion”; for all that is agreeable has an attractive influence upon the will, and all that is disagreeable or painful has a repellant one.
Joy is that condition of consciousness which we seek to attain and preserve, whose existence we prefer to its non-existence; and pain is that state of consciousness which we seek to avoid and destroy, whose non-existence we prefer to its existence.
The good is often defined as that which conduces to some end; but an end is nothing other than something willed; that which conduces to an end is the cause of something that is willed, so that this explanation also refers back to a consciousness.
Whatever is existent for us must be existent in us, in our consciousness. Our states of consciousness are either painful, or indifferent, or pleasant. We must turn, therefore, in the last a.n.a.lysis, not to things, but to the mind, if we wish to distinguish what is good and what is bad; and according to the differing const.i.tution of different minds, the same things may be good or bad. There is good and bad with respect to our body or senses, and good and bad with respect to our mind. A moral good is one which causes conscious states of moral satisfaction.