Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 5.djvu/631

 ETHICS

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ETHICS

develop these methods by means supplied from its own store-house. This course was soon adopted in the early ages of the Church by the Fathers and eccle- siastical writers, as Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertul- lian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, but especially the ilhistrious Doctors of the Church, Ambrose, Jer- ome, and Augustine, who, in the exposition and de- fence of Christian truth, made use of the principles laid down by the pagan philosophers. True, the Fathers had no occasion to treat moral questions from a purely philosophical standpoint, and independently of Christian Revelation; but in the explanation of Catholic doctrine their discussions naturally led to philosophical investigations. This is particularly true of St. Augustine, who proceeded to thoroughly develop along philosophical lines and to establish firmly most of the truths of Christian morality. The eternal law (lex octerna), the original type and source of all temporal laws, the natural law, conscience, the ultimate end of man, the cardinal virtues, sin, mar- riage, etc. were treated by him in the clearest and most penetrating manner. Hardly a single portion of ethics does he present to us but is enriched with his keen philosophical commentaries. Later ecclesiasti- cal writers followed in his footsteps.

A sharper line of separation between philosophy and theology, and in particular between ethics and moral theology, is first met with in the works of the great Schoolmen of the Middle Ages, especially of Albert the Great (1193-1280), Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Bonaventure (1221-1274), and Duns Scotus (1274-1.308). Philosophy and, by means of it, theology reaped abundant fruit from the works of Aristotle, which had until then been a sealed treasure to Western civilization, and were first elucidated by the detailed and profound commentaries of Bl. Albert the Great and St. Thomas Aquinais, and pressed into the service of Christian phUosophy. The same is par- ticularly true as regards ethics. St. Thomas, in his commentaries on the political and ethical writings of the Stagirite, in his "Summa contra Gentiles" and his "Qua'stiones disputatie", treated with his wonted clearness and penetration nearly the whole range of ethics in a purely philosophical manner, so that even to the present day his works are an inexhaustible source whence ethics draws its supply. On the foundations laid by him the Catholic philosophers and theologians of succeeding ages have continued to build. It is true that in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, thanks especially to the influence of the so- called Nominalists, a period of stagnation and decline in philosophy set in, but the sixteenth century is marked by a revival. Ethical questions, also, though largely treated in connexion with theology, are again made the subject of careful investigation. We men- tion as examples the great theologians Victoria, Dom- inicus Soto, L. Molina, Sviarez, Lessius, and De Lugo. Since the sixteenth century special chairs of ethics (moral philosophy) have been erected in many Cath- olic universities. The larger, purely philosophical works on ethics, however, do not appear until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as an example of which we may instance the production of Ign. Schwarz, " Institutioncs juris universalis naturae et gentium" (1743).

Far different from Catholic ethical methods were those adopted for the most part by Protestants. With the rejection of the Church's teaching authority, each individual became on principle his own supreme teacher and arbiter in multors iipprrtMining to f.iilli and morals. True it is that the Hcfnrmcrs licld fust to Holy Writ as the infallible .source of revelation, but as to what belongs or does not belong to it, whether, and how far, it is inspired, and what is its meaning — all this was left to the final decision of the individual. The inevitable result was that philosophy arrogantly threw to the winds all regard for revealed truth, and in

many cases became involved in the most pernicioua errors. Melanchthon, in his " Elementa philosophic moralis", still clung to the Aristotelean philosophy; so, too, did Hugo Grotius, in his work, "De jure belli et pacis". But Cumberland and his follower, Samuel Pufendorf, set out along rather devious paths in mat- ters ethical, inasmuch as they identified moral good- ness with the utilitarian interests of hmnan society. Pufendorf, moreover, assimied, with Descartes, that the ultimate ground for every distinction between good and evil lay in the free determination of God's Will, a view which renders the philosophical treat- ment of ethics fundamentally impossible. Quite an influential factor in the development of ethics was Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). He supposes that the human race originally existed in a rude condition (stalus nnturw) in which every man was free to act as he pleased, and possessed a right to all things, whence arose a war of all against all. Lest destruction should be the result, it was decided to abandon this condition of nature and to found a state in which, by agreement, all were to be subject to one common will (one ruler). This authority ordains, by the law of the State, what is to be considered by all as good and as evil, and only then does there arise a distinction between good and evil of universal binding force on all. The Pantheist Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) considers the impulse to self-preservation as the foundation of virtue. Every being is endowed with the necessary impulse to as.sert itself, and, as reason demands nothing contrary to nature, it requires each one to follow this impulse and to strive after whatever is useful to him. And each individual possesses power and virtue just in so far as he obeys this impulse. Freedom of the will consists merely in the ability to follow unrestrainedly this natural impulse. Shaftesbury (1671-1713) bases ethics on the affections or inclinations of man. There are sympathetic, idiopathic, and unnatural inclina- tions. The first of these regard the common good, the second the private good of the agent, the third are opposed to the other two. To lead a morally good life, war must be waged upon the unnatural impulses, while the idiopathic and sympathetic inclinations must be made to harmonize. This harmony consti- tutes virtue. In the attainment of virtue the subjec- tive guiding principle of knowledge is the "moral sense", a sort of moral in.stinct. This "moral sense" theory was further developed by Hutcheson (1694- 1747); meanwhile, "common sense" was suggested by Thomas Reid (1710-1796) as the highest norm of moral conduct. In France the materialistic philoso- phers of the eighteenth centiu-y — as Helvetius, de la Mettrie, Holbach, Condillac, and others — dissemin- ated the teachings of Sensualism and Hedonism as understood by Epicurus.

A complete revolution in ethics was introduced by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). From the wreck of pure theoretical reason he turned for rescvie to practi- cal reason, in which he found an absolute, universal, and categorical moral law. This law is not to be con- ceived as an enactment of external authority, for this would be heteronomy, which is foreign to true moral- ity; it is rather the law of our own reason, which is, therefore, autonomous, that is, it must be observed for its own sake, without regard to any pleasure or utility arising therefrom. Only that will is morally good which obeys the moral law under the influence of such a subjective principle or motive as can be willed by the itulivitlual to become the universal law for all men. The followers of Kant have selected now one now an- other doctrine from his ethics and combined therewith various pantheistical systems. Fichte places man's supreme good and destiny in absolute spontaneity and liberty; Schlricrniacher, in co-operating with the pro- gressive civilization of mankind. ,\ similar view re- curs substantially in the w-ritings of Wilhelm Wundt and, to a certain extent, in those of the pessimist, Ed-