Page:Review of Franz Brentano's The Origin of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong.djvu/1



This is a far better discussion of the most fundamental principles of Ethics than any others with which I am acquainted. Brentano himself is fully conscious that he has made a very great advance in the theory of Ethics. “No one,” he says, “has determined the principles of ethics as, on the basis of new analysis, I have found it necessary to determine them” (p. viii); and his confidence both in the originality and in the value of his own work is completely justified. In almost all points in which he differs from any of the great historical systems, he is in the right; and he differs with regard to the most fundamental points of Moral Philosophy. Of all previous moralists, Sidgwick alone is in any respect superior to him; and Sidgwick was never clearly aware of the wide and important bearings of his discovery in this one respect. Brentano is both clearer and more profound; and he avoids Sidgwick’s two fundamental errors. It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of his work.

His main proposition is that what we know, when we know that a thing is good in itself, is that the feeling of love towards that thing (or pleasure in that thing) is “right” (richtig). Similarly, that a thing is bad, is merely another way of saying that hatred of that thing would be “right.”