Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XI.djvu/829

 MORAL PHILOSOPHY 811 inging from the knowledge of ourselves, sense of humiliation is the first experience hen we duly regard ourselves, and this pre- ~es for intensity of love, which in its high- degree is felt only with reference to God. e great masters of scholastic theological eth- were Peter Lombard, Thomas Aquinas, and Duns Scotus. The aim of all was to harmonize ristotelianism and Christianity. The first mpleted the list of the seven cardinal virtues adding faith, hope, and charity to the an- ent series of justice, fortitude, temperance, id wisdom. The second fully developed the ediseval philosophy of virtue. He made the tellect the highest principle, and distinguished liversal and special ethics, the former being at of perfect beings in heaven, the latter that f imperfect beings on earth. Duns Scotus opposed the primacy of the will to that of the tellect, and thus introduced a subjective ele- ent in place of the objective knowledge to hich Aquinas had given prominence. While y the mystical method morality was referred to inner feelings, aspirations, and conflicts, and by the scholastic method it was founded on systems of intellectual principles, the casuisti- cal method assumed prominence, which limited itself to the determination of duty in particu- lar cases (casus conscientiw) in practical life. Numerous works of casuistry, some of them designed for the use of the confessional, were produced from the 13th to the 16th century, the principal of which were the Astesana by a Minorite of Asti, the Angelica by Angelas de Calvasio, the Pisanella, also called the Ma- gistruccia, by Bartholomew de Sancta Concor- dia in Pisa, the Rosella by the Genoese Minorite Trouamala, and the Monaldina by Archbishop Monaldus of Benevento. The Astesana treated in eight books of the divine commandments, of virtues and vices, of covenants and last wills, of the sacraments, of penance and extreme unc- tion, of ordination, of ecclesiastical censures, and of marriage. The tendency of casuistry was to dissipate the essential unity of the Christian life in the technical consideration of a diver- sity of works. It had begun to decline when it was revived and zealously improved by the order of Jesuits, and became their peculiar eth- ics. The doctrine of probabilities was devel- oped by them in connection with it. Pascal and others assailed the indefiniteness and ambiguity of casuistical principles. The Medulla of Her- mann Busenbaum, which is the basis of the The- ologia Moralis of Liguori, attained the highest reputation as an embodiment of Jesuitical eth- ics. In the conflicts of the 16th century, when sects, schools, and parties were confounded and transformed, moral philosophy was subordinate to theology and politics. Montaigne, who of all the writers of the time was most distinctive- ly a moralist, pretended to no system. The conciliatory Melanchthon proposed a definition of virtue which includes the special features of all the schools and creeds ; Suarez maintained the traditions of scholasticism; and Luther, Bruno, and Bacon, as well as the later Descartes, prepared in different ways for the achievements of a new era. One of the relics of medieval dis- cussion was the foundation of natural law. The disciples of Aquinas made it depend on the nature of things ; those of Scotus and Occam, on the authority of God. The former made it essentially a matter of the intellect ; the latter, of the will. The former tended to establish morality as independent of the Deity, and to af- firm the eternal distinction between right and wrong, even if God did not exist; the latter tended to conceive of the moral law as an arbi- trary enactment, to regard nothing as good or bad in itself, and the command of a superior as the only foundation of moral distinctions. The ablest representative of the latter theory in modern philosophy is Hobbes. He denied that anything is naturally right or wrong, affirmed that pleasure and pain are the only objects to be desired or avoided, and limited human self- ishness only by the control of an absolute civil power, the necessity of which is proved by experience in order to prevent a state^ of uni- versal warfare. Morality is thus an artificial and prudential arrangement, dependent on the command of the political chief, without which the only virtues would be force and cunning. On the contrary, Grotius maintained moral dis- tinctions anterior to human convention, and established the law of nature and of nations as a special department in ethical science. The idea of natural law was more precisely deter- mined by Pufendorf, who defined it as the pre- cept of right reason among men mutually social, making a disinterested care for the advantage of society the first duty. It does not extend beyond the limits of this life, is limited to the regulation of external acts, and exists in the nature of things and in the eternal principles of the divine reason. Leibnitz disputed each of these three propositions. The theory of Hobbes was professedly opposed by Cumber- land, who claimed the existence of certain nat- ural laws, independent of experience, and cog- nizable by right reason, which prompt us to the exercise of moral and social duties. The eter- nal and immutable distinction of right and wrong in the mind of God and as pure concep- tions of the human reason was sustained by Cudworth, and was the occasion of more pre- cise speculations in England as to the mode or faculty by which we perceive the distinction. The ethical writings of Malebranche^were the most important produced in France in the lat- ter part of the 17th century. Virtue he defines to be the love of universal order, as it eternally existed in the divine reason, where every cre- ated reason contemplates it. Particular duties are but the applications of this love. He sub- stituted for the ancient classification of four cardinal virtues the modern distinction of duties toward God, men, and ourselves. Spi- noza, according to his opponents, by denying liberty in man and God, by recognizing only one divine substance and the modes thereof,