Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/632

Rh 610 ETHICS With Price, again, he holds that Tightness of intention and motive is not only an indispensable condition or element of the Tightness of an action, but actually the sole deter minant of its moral worth ; but with more philosophical penetration he draws the inference of which the English moralist does not seem to have dreamt that there can be no separate rational principles for determining the &quot; material &quot; Tightness of conduct, as distinct from its &quot;formal&quot; Tightness; and therefore that all rules of duty mu^t admit of being deduced from the one general principle that duty ought to be done for duty s sake. This deduction is the most original part of Kant s doctrine. The dictates of reason, he points out, must necessarily be addressed to all rational beings as such ; hence, my inten tion cannot be right unless I am prepared to will the principle on which I act to be a universal law. He considers that this fundamental rule or imperative &quot;act on a maxim which thou canst will to be law universal &quot; supplies a sufficient criterion for determining particular duties in all cases. The rule excludes wrong conduct with two degrees of stringency. Some offences, such as breach of contract, we cannot even conceive universalized ; as soon as every one broke promises no one would make them. Other maxims, such as that of leaving persons in distress to shift for themselves, we can easily conceive to be universal laws, but we cannot without contra diction will them to be such ; for when we are ourselves in distress we cannot help desiring that others should help us. Another important peculiarity of Kant s doctrine is his development of the connexion between duty and free-will. He holds that it is through our moral consciousness that we know that we are free ; in the cognition that I ought to do what is right because it is right and not because I like it, it is implied that this purely rational volition is possible ; that my action can be determined, not &quot; mechani cally, 1 through the necessary operation of the natural stimuli of pleasurable and painful feelings, but in accord ance with the laws of my true, reasonable self. The realization of reason, or of human wills so far as rational, thus presents itself as the absolute end of duty ; and we get, as a new form of the fundamental practical rule, &quot; act so as to treat humanity, in thyself or any other, as an end always, and never as a means only. We may observe, too, that the notion of freedom connects ethics with jurisprudence in a simple and striking manner The fundamental aim of jurisprudence is to realize external freedom by removing the hindrances imposed on each one s free action through the interferences of other wills. Ethics shows how to realize internal freedom by resolutely pursuing rational ends in opposition to those of natural inclination. But what practicable ends are there which reason prescribes, and which can therefore be stated absolutely as ends at which human beings ought to aim whatever their actual desires may be 1 There are two such ends, Kant holds, perfection and hap^ness ; more precisely, what we are morally bound to seek is perfection for ourselves and happiness for others ; since (1) no one can directly promote the moral perfection of others, depending as it does on free choice of right ; and (2) one s own happiness being necessarily an object of natural desire cannot also be regarded as a duty The latter limitation contrasts strikingly with the view of Butler and Reid, that man, as a rational being, is under a &quot; mani fest obligation &quot; to seek his own interest. The difference, however, is not really so great as it seems ; since in another part of his system Kant fully recognizes the reasonableness of jself -love. Though duty, in his view, excludes regard for privates happiness, the summum bonum is not duty alono, neglect of an act of benevolence, because benevolence is judged by me to be conduct which it becomes me to adopt.&quot; but duty and happiness combined ; the demand for happi ness as the reward of duty is so essentially reasonable that we must postulate a universal connexion between the two is the ordei of the universe ; indeed, the prac tical necessity of this postulate is the only adequate rational ground that we have for believing in the existence of God. Before the ethics of Kant had begun to be seriously studied in England, the rapid and remarkable development of metaphysical view and method of which the three chief stages are represented by Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel n ( respectively had already taken place ; and the system of the latter was occupying the most prominent position in the philosophical thought of Germany. 1 Hegel s ethical doctrine (expounded chiefly in his Philosophic des Rechts, 1821) shows a close affinity, and also a striking contrast, to Kant s. He holds, with Kant, that duty or good conduct consists in the conscious realization of the free reasonable will, which is essentially the same in all rational beings. But in Kant s view the universal content of this will is only given in the formal condition of only acting as one can desire all to act,&quot; to be subjectively applied by each rational agent to his own volition ; whereas Hegel conceives the universal will as objectively presented to each man in the laws, institutions, and customary morality of the community of which he is a member. Thus, in his view, not merely natural inclinations towards pleasures, or the desires for selfish happiness, require to be morally resisted; buteven the prompting of theindividual s conscience, the im pulse to do what seems to him right, if it comes into conflict with the common sense of his community. It is true that Hegel regards the conscious effort to realize one s own con ception of good as a higher stage of moral development than the mere conformity to the jural rules establishing property, maintaining contract, and allotting punishment to crime, in which the universal will is first expressed; since in such conformity this will is only accomplished acci dentally by the outward concurrence of individual wills, and is not essentially realized in any of them. He holds, however, that this conscientious effort is self-deceived and futile, is even the very root of moral evil, except it attains its realization in harmony with the objective social relations in which the individual finds himself placed. Of these re lations the first grade is constituted by the family, the second ty civil society, and the third by the state, the organization of which is the highest manifestation of universal reason in the sphere of practice. Hegelianism appears as a distinct element in English ethical thought at the present clay ; but the direct influence of Hegel s system is perhaps less important than that in directly exercised through the powerful stimulus which it has given to the study of the historical development of human thought and human society. According to Hegel, the essence of the universe is a process of thought from the abstract to the concrete ; and a right understanding of this process gives the key for interpreting the evolution in time of European philosophy. So again, in his view, the history of mankind is a history of the necessary 1 In Kantism, as we have partly seen, the most important ontological beliefs in God, freedom, and immortality of the soul are based on necessities of ethical thought. In Ficlite s system the connexion of ethics and metaphysics is still more intimate; indeed, we*roay compare it in this respect to Platonism ; as Plato blends the most fundamental notions of each of these studies in the one idea of good, so Fichte blends them in the one idea free will. &quot; Freedom,&quot; in his view, is at once the foundation of all being and the end of all moral action. In the systems of Schelling and Hegel ethics falls again into a subordinate place; indeed, the ethical view of the former is rather suggested then com pletely developed. Neither Fichte nor Schelling has exercised more than the faintest and most indirect influence on ethical philosophy in England ; it therefore seems best to leave the ethical doctrines of each to be explained in connexion with the rest of his system.