Page:Philosophical Review Volume 20.djvu/95

81 realized. With this opinion I entirely agree: the thought in the background of Kant's consciousness was the notion of an ideal society, a society of rational beings; and it was the tacit assumption of this idea that made his fundamental principle in any way acceptable as a criterion. But it is the silent introduction of this standard, which after all, makes the system teleological, a thing Kant tried so hard to avoid. And he thinks he can avoid it, just as Koppelmann proposes to avoid it, by holding fast to the absoluteness of the categorical imperative. This theory is not social eudæmonism, Koppelmann holds, for the welfare ethics declares that the act is moral if directed toward the realization of the ideal state, a view that would inevitably lead us to the principle that the end justifies the means. This criticism, however, is based on a misunderstanding of the welfare theory. It does not necessarily teach that man either does or ought to think always of the highest good; social eudæmonism is not identical with what Sidgwick calls empirical utilitarianism. The social eudæmonist could accept the Kantian definition of duty and still assert the social good to be the final test of morality. He could also, as has been pointed out often enough, make friends with the intuitionist. That he ordinarily refuses to regard the blind acceptance of a categorical imperative as a higher moral motive than the conscious adoption of a social end, is by no means to his discredit. However that may be, in so far as the categorical imperative aims at the establishment of a society of rational beings, and in so far as this ideal is the ultimate, though tacit, criterion of right and wrong, Kant's ethical theory belongs to the very school of thought which he so bitterly attacked.

The most fatal error, however, in Kant's teaching, according to Koppelmann, is his conception of autonomy, the view that the autonomous will forms the moral rules. The moral rules do not necessarily spring from the will: they may, like theoretical truths, have their seat in reason. Koppelmann therefore eliminates this notion of autonomy, retaining the other elements of the doctrine, and develops what he believes to be the logical consequences of the Kantian principles as follows: The moral rules are valid for all rational beings, absolutely valid in the sense of being independent of private inclinations and purposes. They are, further, laws which regulate the mutual relations of rational beings; they have social character, as Kant himself intimates. All the moral rules can be comprehended in one: Have respect for the autonomy of reason, that is, be truthful. Kant believed that no moral laws were given a priori, but that there was only one principle of guidance for practical laws. The result of this teaching was that, in order to derive his moral laws, he was compelled to have recourse to empirical ends, for even his highest