Page:Karl Kautsky - Ethics and The Materialist Conception of History - tr. J. B. Askew (1906).pdf/29



After the Renaissance the study of Nature again began to arouse interest, and with it also philosophy, which from then until well into the 18th century became principally natural philosophy, and, as such, raised our knowledge of the world to far above the level reached in the ancient world; they set out from the progress which the Arabs had made in Natural Science during the Middle Ages over the Greeks. The high-water mark of this development is certainly to be found in the theory of Spinoza (1632–1677).

With these thinkers Ethics occupied a secondary place. They were subordinated to Natural Science, of which they formed a part. But they came again to the front so soon as the rapid development of capitalism in Western Europe in the 18th century had created a similar situation to that which had been created by the economic awakening which followed on the Persian wars in Greece. Then began, to speak in modern language, a re-valuing of all values, and therewith a zealous thinking out and investigation into the foundation and essence of all morality. With that commenced an eager research into the nature of the new method of production. Simultaneously with the appearance of Ethics arose a science of which the ancients had been Ignorant, the special child of the capitalist system of production, whose explanation it serves—Political Economy.

In Ethics, however, we find three schools of thought side by side, which often run parallel to the three systems of the Ancients—the Platonic, the Epicurean, and the Stoic. An anti-materialist one, the traditional Christian position; the materialist one; and finally a