The Dale Memorial Lectures, 1922.
CIVILIZATION AND ETHICS
THE PHILOSOPHY OF CIVILIZATION
PART II
BY
ALBERT SCHWEITZER
D.THEOL.; D.PHIL.; D.MED. (STRASSBURG)
_Second Edition_
TRANSLATED BY
C. T. CAMPION
M.A. (OXON.)
A. & C. BLACK, LTD.
4, 5 & 6 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W. 1
1929
_First Edition published November, 1923_
_Second Edition (revised), published in 1929_
To
MY WIFE
THE MOST LOYAL OF COMRADES
_Printed in Great Britain._
PREFACE
MY subject is the tragedy of the Western world-view._(_1_)_
While still a student I was surprised to find the history of thought
always written merely as a history of philosophical systems, never as
the history of man’s effort to arrive at a world-view. Later, when
reflecting on the current of civilization in which I found myself
living, I was struck by the strange and inexorable connexions which
exist between civilization and our view of the world as a whole. Next
I felt a still stronger compulsion to put to Western thought the
question what it has been aiming at, and what result it has reached in
the matter of world-view. What is there left of the achievements of
our philosophy when it is stripped of its tinsel of learning? What has
it to offer us when we demand from it those elemental ideas which we
need if we are to take our position in life as men who are growing in
character through the experience given by work?
So I came to an unsparing reckoning up with Western thought. I
recognized and admitted that it has sought for that world-view from
which alone a deep and comprehensive civilization can come. It wanted
to reach a position [pg vi] of world- and life-affirmation and on that
foundation lay down that it is our duty to be active, to strive for
progress of all kinds, and to create values. It wanted to reach an
ethical system and on that foundation lay down that for the sake of
serviceable activity we have to place our life at the service of ideas
and of the other life around us.
But it did not succeed in grounding its world- and life-affirming
ethical world-view convincingly and permanently in thought. Our
philosophy did nothing more than produce again and again unstable
fragments of the serviceable world-view which hovered before its
mind’s eye. Consequently our civilization also remained fragmentary
and insecure.
It was a fatal mistake that Western thought never admitted to itself
the unsatisfying result of its search for a stable and serviceable
world-view. Our philosophizing became less and less elemental, losing
all connexion with the elementary questions which man must ask of life
and of the world. More and more it found satisfaction in the handling
of philosophic questions that were merely academic, and in an expert’s
mastery of philosophical technique. It became more and more the
captive of secondary things. Instead of real music it produced again
and again mere bandmaster’s music, often magnificent stuff of its
kind, but still only bandmaster’s music.
Through this philosophy which did nothing but philosophize instead of
struggling for a world-view grounded in thought and serviceable for
life, we came to be without any world-view and therefore without any
civilization.
Signs of an awakening of thought on this point are beginning to be
visible. It is admitted here and there that philosophy must again try
to offer a world-view. This is generally expressed by saying that
people are encouraging it to venture once more on “metaphysics,” that
is to put forward definitive views about the spiritual nature of the
world, whereas hitherto it has been occupied with the classification
of scientific facts and in cautious hypotheses.
Not only in philosophy, but in thought generally this [pg vii]
awakening of the need for a world-view expresses itself as a need for
“metaphysics.” Fantastic systems of “metaphysics” are sought for and
offered. Individuals who believe that they have at their disposal
peculiar psychic experiences, and assert that with their aid they can
look behind the actual nature of phenomena, come forward as bringers
of a world-view.
But neither the cautious academic, nor the much-claiming fantastic
“metaphysics,” can really give us a world-view. That the road to a
world-view leads through “metaphysics” is a fatal error which has
already enjoyed too long a span of life in our Western thought. It
would be tragic if we renewed its vigour just now, when we are faced
by the necessity of working our way out of that lack of world-view in
which our misery, both spiritual and material, is grounded. No further
wandering along the traditional roads that lead nowhere can save us,
whether we advance as the successors of our fathers or on adventurous
lines of our own. Only in a deep conception of and experience in the
problems of world-view is there for us any possibility of advance.
That is why I am undertaking what has never been attempted in this way
before, viz. so to pose the problem of the Western world-view as to
make the Western search for a world-view come to a halt and take
account of itself. There are two points on which it must be clear
before it proceeds to further exertion. The first is the overwhelming
importance in the search for a world-view of the quality of the
world-view sought. What is it that we want? We want to find the world-
and life-affirmation and the ethical system which we need for that
serviceable activity which gives our life a meaning, based on such
thought about the world and life as finds a meaning in them also. If
our search for a world-view is once thoroughly permeated by the
recognition that everything turns upon these two fundamental
questions, it is thereby saved from betaking itself to by-paths,
thinking that by some happy disposition of fortune it can reach its
goal along them. It will then [pg viii] not search for a “metaphysic,”
thinking by means of it to reach a world-view, but it will search for
a world-view and accept with it anything “metaphysical” that may turn
up. From every point of view it will remain elemental.
The second task which the conscious search for a world-view must not
shirk, is the consideration of what is the real and ultimate nature of
the process by which it has hitherto attempted to secure that
serviceable world-view which hovered before it. Reflexion on this is
necessary that it may make up its mind whether further advance along
the road it has hitherto followed gives any prospect of success. Our
philosophy ought to have been philosophizing long ago about the road
along which it was going in search of a world-view. It never did so,
and therefore was always running uselessly round and round in a
circle.
The process by which Western thought has hitherto sought for a
world-view is doomed to be fruitless. It consisted simply in
interpreting the world in the sense of world- and life-affirmation,
that is, in attributing to the world a meaning which allowed it to
conceive the aims of mankind and of individual men as having a meaning
within it. This interpretation is acted upon by all Western
philosophy. A few thinkers who venture to be un-Western and resolutely
allow world- and life-negation and ethics to be made subjects of
discussion, are side-currents which do not affect the main course of
the river.
That this process followed by Western thought consists in adopting an
optimistic-ethical interpretation of the world will not be clear
without further explanation, for it is, indeed, not always openly
followed. The optimistic-ethical interpretation is often to be found
imbedded in the results of investigations into the nature of
knowledge; it often appears beneath a veil of “metaphysics”; it is
often so delicately shaded that it produces none of its usual effects.
It is only when one has clearly grasped the fact that Western thought
has nothing else in mind than to establish for itself a world-view
based on world- and life-affirmation and ethical in character, that
one can realize [pg ix] how in its theory of knowledge, in its
metaphysics, and in all its movements generally in the game of life,
it is guided, consciously or unconsciously, by the effort to interpret
the world in some way or other and in some measure in the sense of
world- and life-affirmation and of ethics. Whether in this attempt it
goes to work openly or secretly, skilfully or unskilfully, honourably
or craftily, does not matter. Western thought needs this
interpretation that it may be able to give a meaning to human life.
Its view of life is to be a result of its view of the world. No other
course was ever taken into consideration by it.
But this awakening of Western thought will not be complete until that
thought steps outside itself and comes to an understanding with the
search for a world-view as this manifests itself in the thought of
mankind as a whole. We have too long been occupied with the developing
series of our own philosophical systems, and have taken no notice of
the fact that there is a world-philosophy of which our Western
philosophy is only a part. If, however, one grasps philosophy as being
a struggle to reach a view of the world as a whole, and seeks out the
elementary convictions which are to deepen it and give it a sure
foundation, one cannot avoid setting our own thought face to face with
that of the Hindus and Chinese in the Far East. The latter looks
strange to us because much of it has remained even till now naïve and
embodied in myth, while in other parts again it has spontaneously
advanced to refinements of criticism and to artificialities. But this
does not matter. The essential thing is that it is a struggle for a
world-view: the form it takes is a secondary matter. Our Western
philosophy, if judged by its own latest pronouncements, is much naïver
than we admit to ourselves, and we fail to perceive it only because we
have acquired the art of expressing what is simple in a learned way.
Among the Hindus we encounter the world-view which is based on world-
and life-negation, and the way in which it grounds itself in thought
is calculated to leave us not knowing what to make of our prejudice in
favour of world- [pg x] and life-affirmation, which, as Westerners, we
are inclined to assume as something more or less self-evident.
The attraction and tension which in Hindu thought govern the relations
between world- and life-negation and ethics, afford us glimpses into
the problem of ethics for which Western thought offers us no
comparable opportunities.
Nowhere, again, has the problem of world- and life-affirmation, both
in itself and in its relation to ethics, been felt in so elemental and
comprehensive a fashion as in Chinese thought. Lao-tse, Chwang-tse,
Kung-tse (Confucius), Meng-tse, Lie-tse, and the rest, are thinkers in
whom the problems of world-view with which our Western thought is
wrestling, encounter us in a form, strange indeed, but compelling our
attention.
Discussing these problems with them means discussing them with
ourselves also.
That is why I bade our search for a world-view seek to reach clear
ideas about itself, and come to a halt in order to fix its attention
on the thought of mankind as a whole.
My solution of the problem is that we must make up our minds to
renounce completely the optimistic-ethical interpretation of the
world. If we take the world as it is, it is impossible to attribute to
it a meaning in which the aims and objects of mankind and of
individual men have a meaning also. Neither world- and
life-affirmation nor ethics can be grounded on what our knowledge of
the world can tell us about the world. In the world we can discover
nothing of any purposive evolution in which our activities can acquire
a meaning. Nor is the ethical to be discovered in any form in the
world-process. The only advance in knowledge that we can make is to
describe more and more minutely the phenomena which make up the world
and their course. To understand the meaning of the whole—and that is
what a world-view demands—is for us an impossibility. The last fact
which knowledge can discover is that the world is a manifestation in
every way puzzling, of the universal will-to-live.
[pg xi]
I believe I am the first among Western thinkers who has ventured to
recognize this crushing result of knowledge, and who is absolutely
sceptical about our knowledge of the world without at the same time
renouncing with it belief in world- and life-affirmation and ethics.
Resignation as to knowledge of the world is for me not a hopeless fall
into a scepticism which leaves us to drift about in life like a
derelict vessel. I see in it that effort of honesty which we must
venture to make in order to arrive at the serviceable world-view which
hovers within sight. Every world-view which does not start from
resignation in regard to knowledge, is artificial and a mere
fabrication, for it rests upon an inadmissible interpretation of the
world.
When once thought has become clear to itself about the relation in
which world-view and life-view stand to each other, it is in a
position to reconcile resignation as to knowledge with adherence to
world- and life-affirmation and ethics. Our view of life is not
dependent on our view of the world in the way that uncritical thought
imagines it to be. It does not wither away if it cannot send its roots
down into a corresponding world-view, for it does not originate in
knowledge although it would like to base itself thereon. It can safely
depend upon itself alone, for it is rooted in our will-to-live.
World- and life-affirmation and ethics are given in our will-to-live,
and they come to be clearly discerned in it in proportion as it learns
to think about itself and its relation to the world. The rational
thought of other times aimed at getting to know the world, and at
being able in that knowledge to conceive of the highest impulses of
our will-to-live as purposive in view of the universe and its
evolution. But that aim was unattainable. We are not meant to unite
the world and ourselves in such harmony with one another. We were
naïve enough to assume that our view of life must be contained in our
view of the world, but the facts do not justify this assumption. The
result is that our thought finds itself involved in a dualism with
which it can [pg xii] never finally settle. It is the dualism of
world-view and life-view, of knowing and willing.
To this dualism all the problems with which human thought has busied
itself ultimately go back. Every fragment of the thought of mankind
which has any bearing on man’s view of the world—whether in the
world-religions or in philosophy—is an attempt to resolve this
dualism. It is sometimes softened down, but only to let a unitary,
monistic world-view be adopted in its place; at other times it is left
current, but is transformed into a drama with a monistic issue.
Innumerable are the expedients which thought used in trying to get rid
of dualism. Everything it has undertaken commands respect, even the
staggering _naïvetés_ and the meaningless acts of violence to which it
committed itself, for it was always acting under the compulsion of an
inner necessity: it wanted to rescue a serviceable world-view from the
abyss of dualism.
But from this continuous mishandling of the problem no solution could
issue capable of satisfying thought. We were to be taken over the
abyss on tottering bridges of snow.
Instead of going on bridging this abyss with forced logic and
imaginative ideas, we must make up our minds to get to the root of the
problem and let it work upon us as it comes straight to meet us in the
facts. The solution is, not to try to get rid of dualism from the
world, but to realize it as something which can no longer do us any
harm. That is possible if we leave behind us all the arts and the
unveracities of thought and bow to the fact that, as we cannot
harmonize our life-view and our world-view, we must make up our minds
to put the former above the latter. The volition which is given in our
will-to-live reaches beyond our knowledge of the world. What is
decisive for our life-view is not our knowledge of the world but the
character of the volition which is given in our will-to-live. The
universal spirit meets us in nature as puzzling creative power. In our
will-to-live we experience [pg xiii] it within us as volition which is
both world- and life-affirming and ethical.
Our relation to the world as it is given in the character of our
will-to-live, when this latter seeks to comprehend itself in thought:
that is our view of the world. World-view is a product of life-view,
not _vice versâ_.
The rational thought of to-day, therefore, does not hunt the phantom
of getting to know the world. It leaves knowledge of the world on one
side as something unattainable by us, and tries to come to clear ideas
about the will-to-live which is within us.
The problem of world-view, then, brought back to facts and tackled by
rational thought without assumptions being made, may be put thus:
“What is the relation of my will-to-live, when it learns to think, to
itself and to the world?” And the answer is: “From an inner compulsion
to be true to itself and to remain consistent with itself, our
will-to-live enters into relations with our own individual being and
with all manifestations of the will-to-live which surround it, that
are determined by the sentiment of reverence for life.”
Reverence for life, _veneratio vitæ_, is the most direct and at the
same time the profoundest achievement of my will-to-live.
In reverence for life my knowledge passes into experience. The
unsophisticated world- and life-affirmation which is within me just
because I am will-to-live has, therefore, no need to enter into
controversy with itself, if my will-to-live learns to think and yet
does not understand the meaning of the world. In spite of the negative
results of knowledge I have to hold fast to world- and
life-affirmation and deepen it. My life carries its own meaning in
itself. This meaning lies in my living out the highest idea which
shows itself in my will-to-live, viz. the idea of reverence for life.
With that for a starting-point I give value to my own life and to all
the will-to-live which surrounds me, I persevere in activity, and I
produce values.
Ethics grow out of the same root as world- and [pg xiv]
life-affirmation, for ethics, too, are nothing but reverence for life.
That is what gives me the fundamental principle of morality, viz. that
good consists in maintaining, promoting, and enhancing life and that
destroying, injuring, and limiting life are evil. Affirmation of the
world, which means affirmation of the will-to-live that manifests
itself all round me, is only possible if I devote myself to other
life. From an inner necessity I exert myself in producing values and
practising ethics in the world and on the world even though not
understanding the meaning of the world. For in world- and
life-affirmation and in ethics I carry out the will of the universal
will-to-live which reveals itself in me. I live my life in God, in the
mysterious divine personality which I do not know as such in the
world, but only experience as a mysterious Will within myself.
Rational thinking which is free from assumptions ends therefore in
mysticism. To relate oneself in the spirit of reverence for life to
the multiform manifestations of the will-to-live which together
constitute the world is ethical mysticism. All profound world-view is
mysticism, the essence of which is just this: that out of my
unsophisticated and naïve existence in the world there comes, as a
result of thought about self and the world, spiritual self-devotion to
the mysterious infinite Will which is continuously manifested in the
universe.
This world-affirming, ethical, active mysticism has always been
hovering as a vision before Western thought, but the latter could
never adopt it because in its search for a world-view it always turned
into the wrong road of optimistic-ethical interpretation of the world,
instead of reflecting directly on the relation which man assumes to
the world under the inner compulsion of the deepest characterisation
of his will-to-live.
From my youth onwards I have felt certain that all thought which
thinks itself out to an issue ends in mysticism. In the stillness of
the primæval forest in Africa I have been able to work out this
thought and give it expression.
I come forward therefore with confidence as a restorer [pg xv] of that
rational thought which refuses to make assumptions. I know indeed that
our time will have absolutely no connexion with anything that is in
any way rationalistic, and would like to know it renounced as an
aberration of the eighteenth century. But the time will come when it
will be seen that we must start again where that century came to a
stop. What lies between that time and to-day is an intermezzo of
thought, an intermezzo with extraordinarily interesting and valuable
moments, but nevertheless an unhappy and fatal one. Its inevitable end
was our sinking into a condition in which we had neither world-view
nor civilization, and which contains in itself all that spiritual and
material misery in which we languish.
The restoration of our world-view can come only as a result of
inexorably truth-loving and recklessly courageous thought. Such
thinking alone is mature enough to learn by experience how the
rational, when it thinks itself out to a conclusion, passes
necessarily over into the non-rational. World- and life-affirmation
and ethics are non-rational. They are not justified by any
corresponding knowledge of the nature of the world, but are the
disposition in which, through the inner compulsion of our
will-to-live, we determine our relation to the world.
What the activity of this disposition of ours means in the evolution
of the world, we do not know. Nor can we regulate this activity from
outside; we must leave entirely to each individual its shaping and its
extension. From every point of view, then, world- and life-affirmation
and ethics are non-rational, and we must have the courage to admit it.
If rational thought thinks itself out to a conclusion, it comes to
something non-rational which, nevertheless, is a necessity of thought.
This is the paradox which dominates our spiritual life. If we try to
come through without this non-rational, the result is views of the
world and of life which are without life and without value.
All valuable conviction is non-rational and has an emotional
character, because it cannot be derived from [pg xvi] knowledge of the
world but arises out of the thinking experience of our will-to-live,
in which we stride out beyond all knowledge of the world. This fact it
is which the rational thought that thinks itself out to a conclusion
comprehends as the truth by which we must live. The way to true
mysticism leads up through rational thought to deep experience of the
world and of our will-to-live. We must all venture once more to be
“thinkers,” so as to reach mysticism, which is the only direct and the
only profound world-view. We must all wander in the field of knowledge
to the point where knowledge passes over into experience of the world.
We must all, through thought, become religious.
This rational thought must become the prevailing force among us, for
all the valuable ideas that we need develop out of it. In no other
fire than that of the mysticism of reverence for life can the broken
sword of idealism be forged anew.
In the disposition to reverence for life lies enclosed an elementary
conception of responsibility to which we must surrender ourselves; in
it there are forces at work which drive us to revision and ennoblement
of our individual social and political disposition.
It is the disposition to reverence for life, too, which alone is
capable of creating a new consciousness of law. The misery prevailing
under our political and social condition consists to a great extent in
this, that neither jurists nor laity have in their minds a living and
direct conception of law. During the age of rational thought there was
a search made for such a conception, and effort was made to establish
fundamental laws which were held to be given in the nature of man, and
to get them generally recognized. Later on, however, this was given
up, and laws passed at definite dates displaced natural law. Finally
we got to the stage of being satisfied with purely technical law. This
was the intermezzo which followed the period of rational thought in
the sphere of law.
We have entered on a period in which the feeling for [pg xvii] law is
hopelessly bereft of force, of soul, and of sense of moral obligation.
It is a period of lawlessness. Parliaments produce with easy readiness
statutes which contradict the idea of law. States deal arbitrarily
with their subjects without regard to the maintenance of any feeling
for law. Those, indeed, who fall into the power of a foreign nation
are outlaws. No respect is shown for their natural right to a
fatherland, or freedom, or dwelling-place, or property, or industry,
or food, or anything else. Belief in law is to-day an utter ruin.
This state of things was in preparation from the moment when the
search for the natural conception of law, grounded on rational
thought, was given up.
The only thing to be done, then, is to make a new connexion in the
sphere of law also, at the point where the thread of the rational
thought of the eighteenth century got broken. We must search for a
conception of law that is grounded in an idea which grows directly and
independently out of a world-view. We have to re-establish human
rights which cannot be infringed, human rights which guarantee to each
person the greatest possible freedom for his personality in his own
national body, human rights which protect his existence and his human
dignity against any foreign violence to which he may be subjected.
Jurists have allowed law and the feeling for law to be ruined. They
could not help it, however, for there was no idea provided by the
thought of the time to which a living conception of law could have
anchored itself. In the complete absence of any world-view law
collapsed entirely, and it is only out of a new world-view that it can
be built up again. It is from a fundamental idea about our relation to
all that lives, as such, that it must flow in future, as from a spring
which can never dry up and never become a swamp. That spring is
reverence for life.
Law and ethics spring up together from the same idea. Law is so much
of the principle of respect for life as can be embodied in an external
code; ethics are what cannot be so embodied. The foundation of law is
humanity. It is [pg xviii] folly to wish to put out of action the
links between law and world-view.
In this way a world-view is the germ of all ideas and dispositions
which are determinative for the conduct of individuals and of society.
Flying machines carry men to-day through the air over a world in which
hunger and brigandage have a place. It is not in China only that one
recognizes the grotesque character of such progress: it is almost
typical for mankind generally, and such grotesque progress cannot be
changed to the normal till a general disposition prevails which is
capable of bringing order again into the chaos of human life through
ethics. In the last resort the practical can be realized only through
the ethical
What a remarkable circle! Rational thought which thinks itself out
arrives at something non-rational and subjective which is a necessity
of thought, viz. the ethical affirmation of world and life. On the
other hand, what for the purpose of moulding the conditions of
existence for individual men and mankind as a whole is rational, that
is to say, what is objectively practical in this regard, can only be
brought about by individuals perseveringly putting into action the
above-mentioned non-rational and subjective. The non-rational
principle underlying our activity, a principle which is provided for
us by rational thought, is the sole rational and practical principle
underlying all the happenings which are to be produced through human
action. Thus the rational and the non-rational, the objective and the
subjective proceed each from the other, and return each into the other
again. Only when the play of this mutual interchange is in full
activity do normal conditions of existence arise for men and mankind.
Let it be disturbed and the abnormal develops.
I have, then, in this book written the tragedy of the search for a
world-view, and have myself trodden a new path to the same goal.
Whereas Western thought has not arrived at any goal because it would
not venture resolutely into the desert of scepticism about knowledge
of the world, [pg xix] I make my way through this desert with calm
confidence. It is, after all, only a narrow strip, and it lies in
front of the ever-green oasis of an elemental world-view which grows
out of thought about the will-to-live. In my attempt, however, to
reach a world-view by this new method, I am conscious of having done
no more than put together and think out to conclusions many gropings
after this new method which were made by other seekers during the
period covered.
But I also put into this book my conviction that mankind must renew
itself in a new temper of mind, if it is not to be ruined. I entrust
to it, further, my belief that this revolution will come about, if
only we can make up our minds to become thinking men.
A new Renaissance must come, and a much greater one than that in which
we stepped out of the Middle Ages; a great Renaissance in which
mankind discovers that the ethical is the highest truth and the
highest practicality, and experiences at the same time its liberation
from that miserable obsession by what it calls reality, in which it
has hitherto dragged itself along.
I would be a humble pioneer of this Renaissance, and throw the belief
in a new humanity, like a torch, into our dark age. I make bold to do
this because I believe I have given to the disposition to humanity,
which hitherto has ranked only as a noble feeling, a firm foundation
in a world-view which is a product of elementary thinking and can be
made intelligible to everyone. Moreover, it has gained thereby a power
of attracting and convincing which it has not had hitherto; and is
capable now of coming to terms in energetic and consistent fashion
with our so-called reality, and of proving its full value within it.
ALBERT SCHWEITZER.
_July_, 1923.
The two instalments of my Philosophy of Civilization which are now
ready—_The Decay and Restoration of [pg xx] Civilization_ and
_Civilization and Ethics_—will be followed by two others. In the next,
which will be entitled _The World-view of Reverence for Life_, I
elaborate this world-view, which so far I have only sketched for a
conclusion to my discussion of the search for a world-view, as carried
on down to the present day. The fourth and last will treat of the
Civilized State.
* * * * *
The translator offers his thanks to Mrs. C. E. B. Russell, now helping
at Lambarene, who kindly reviewed the whole work before it went to the
printers. Many of her criticisms and suggestions were adopted, and
have helped to secure a better translation.
CONTENTS
I. THE CRISIS IN CIVILIZATION AND ITS SPIRITUAL CAUSE [I]
The material and spiritual elements in civilization [I]
Civilization and world-view [6]
II. THE PROBLEM OF THE OPTIMISTIC WORLD-VIEW [11]
The Western and the Indian conceptions of civilization[11]
The struggle for the optimistic world-view [12]
Optimism and pessimism [14]
Optimism, pessimism, and ethics [17]
III. THE ETHICAL PROBLEM [19]
The difficulties of ethical perception [19]
The importance of thought about ethics [21]
The search for a basic principle of morality [22]
Religious and philosophical ethics [24]
IV. RELIGIOUS AND PHILOSOPHICAL WORLD-VIEWS [27]
The world-views of the world-religions [27]
The world-views of the world religions and that of Western
thought [29]
V. CIVILIZATION AND ETHICS IN THE GRÆCO-ROMAN PHILOSOPHY [32]
The beginnings: Socrates [32]
Epicureanism and Stoicism. The ethic of resignation [35]
Plato’s abstract basic principle of the ethical. The ethic
of world-negation [40]
Aristotle. Instruction about virtue in place of ethics [42]
The ideal of the civilised State in Plato and Aristotle [47]
Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius [52]
The optimistic-ethical world-view of the later Stoicism [57]
VI. OPTIMISTIC WORLD-VIEW AND ETHICS IN THE RENAISSANCE AND
POST-RENAISSANCE PERIODS [61]
Belief in progress and ethics [61]
Christian and Stoic elements in modern ethics [64]
VII. LAYING THE FOUNDATION OF ETHICS IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND
EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES [71]
Hartley, Holbach. Devotion as enlightened egoism [71]
Hobbes, Locke, Helvetius, Bentham [75]
Altruism as a natural quality. Hume, Adam Smith [80]
The English ethic of self-perfecting [84]
Shaftesbury, An optimistic-ethical nature-philosophy [87]
VIII. LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS OF CIVILIZATION IN THE AGE OF
RATIONALISM [90]
The mentality and the achievements of the ethical belief
in progress [90]
Obstacles to the reform movement. The French Revolution [99]
The undermining of the rationalistic world-view [102]
IX. THE OPTIMISTIC-ETHICAL WORLD-VIEW IN KANT [106]
Kant’s ethics, deepened, but lacking content [106]
Kant’s attempt to reach an ethical world-view [110]
X. NATURE-PHILOSOPHY AND WORLD-VIEW IN SPINOZA AND LEIBNIZ [116]
Spinoza’s attempt to reach an optimistic-ethical
nature-philosophy [116]
Leibniz’s optimistic-ethical world-view side by side with
nature-philosophy [122]
XI. J. G. FICHTE’S OPTIMISTIC-ETHICAL WORLD-VIEW [125]
Speculative philosophy and Gnosticism [125]
Fichte’s speculative founding of an ethic and of optimism [126]
Fichte’s mysticism of activity incapable of being carried
through [131]
XII. SCHILLER; GOETHE; SCHLEIERMACHER [136]
Schiller’s ethical world-view: Goethe’s world-view based on
nature-philosophy [136]
Schleiermacher’s attempt at a nature-philosophy [138]
XIII. HEGEL’S SUPRA-ETHICAL OPTIMISTIC WORLD-VIEW [141]
Ethics in Hegel’s nature-philosophy, and in his philosophy of
history [141]
Hegel’s supra-ethical world-view. His belief in progress [145]
XIV. THE LATER UTILITARIANISM, BIOLOGICAL AND SOCIOLOGICAL
ETHICS [150]
Beneke, Feuerbach, Laas, Auguste Comte, John Stuart Mill [150]
Darwin and Spencer [153]
The weak points in biological and sociological utilitarianism [156]
Sociological ethics and socialism. Mechanical belief in
progress [160]
XV. SCHOPENHAUER AND NIETZSCHE [165]
Schopenhauer. An ethic of world- and life-denial [165]
Absorption of ethics in world- and life-denial [171]
Nietzsche’s criticism of current ethics [174]
Nietzsche’s ethic of higher life-affirmation [177]
XVI. THE ISSUE OF THE WESTERN STRUGGLE FOR A WORLD-VIEW [181]
Academic thinkers: Sidgwick, Stephen, Alexander, Wundt, Paulsen,
Höffding [181]
The ethic of self-perfecting, Kant’s successors: Cohen,
Herrmann [183]
The ethic of self-perfecting: Martineau, Green, Bradley, Laurie,
Seth, and Royce [185]
Nature-philosophy and ethics. Fouillée, Guyau, Lange, Stern [186]
Nature-philosophy and ethics in Eduard von Hartmann [194]
Nature-philosophy and ethics in Bergson, Chamberlain, Keyserling,
Haeckel [198]
The death-agony of the optimistic-ethical world-view [202]
XVII. THE NEW WAY [205]
Why the optimistic-ethical world-view cannot be carried through to
the logical conclusion [205]
Life-view independent of world-view [208]
XVIII. THE FOUNDATIONS OF OPTIMISM SECURED FROM THE WILL-TO-LIVE [212]
The pessimistic result of knowledge [212]
The world- and life-affirmation of the will-to-live [216]
XIX. THE PROBLEM OF ETHICS, STARTING FROM THE HISTORY OF ETHICS [221]
An ethic of self-devotion, or an ethic of self-perfecting? [221]
Ethics and a theory of knowledge. Ethics and natural happenings.
The enthusiastic element in ethics [224]
The ethic of ethical personality, and the ethic of society [228]
The problem of a complete ethic [230]
XX. THE ETHIC OF DEVOTION AND THE ETHIC OF SELF-PERFECTING [232]
The widening of the ethic of self-devotion into a cosmic
ethic [232]
The ethic of self-perfecting and mysticism [235]
Abstract mysticism and the mysticism of reality. Supra-ethical and
ethical mysticism [241]
XXI. THE ETHIC OF REVERENCE FOR LIFE [244]
The basic principle of the moral [244]
The ethic of resignation. An ethic of veracity towards oneself,
and an activist ethic [251]
Ethics and thoughtlessness. Ethics and self-assertion [253]
Man and other living creatures [256]
The ethic of the relation of man to man [258]
Personal and supra-personal responsibility. Ethics and
humanity [262]
XXII. The CIVILIZING POWER OF THE ETHIC OF REVERENCE FOR LIFE [269]
Civilization as a product of reverence for life [269]
The four ideals of civilization. The struggle for a civilized
mankind in the machine age [271]
Church and State as historical entities, and as ideals of
civilization [278]
The moralizing of the religious and political community [280]
FOOTNOTES
INDEX [287]
CIVILIZATION AND ETHICS
CHAPTER I
THE CRISIS IN CIVILIZATION AND ITS SPIRITUAL CAUSE
The material and spiritual elements in civilization
OUR civilization is going through a severe crisis.
Most people think that the crisis was produced by the war, but that is
wrong. The war, with everything connected with it, is only a
phenomenon of the condition of un-civilization in which we find
ourselves. Even in States which took no part in the war, and on which
the war had no direct influence, civilization is shaken, only the fact
is not so clearly evident in them as in those which were hard hit by
the consequences of its peculiarly cruel spiritual and material
happenings.
Yet is there any real, live thought going on among us about this
collapse of civilization, and about possible ways of working ourselves
up out of it? Scarcely! Clever men stumble about in seven-league boots
in the history of civilization and try to make us understand that
civilization is some kind of natural growth which blossoms out in
definite peoples at definite times and then of necessity withers, so
that new peoples with new civilizations must keep replacing the
worn-out ones. When they are called upon, indeed, to complete their
theory by telling us what peoples are destined to be our heirs, they
are somewhat embarrassed. There are, in fact, no peoples to be seen
whom one could imagine to be capable of even a portion of such a task.
All the peoples of the earth have been in large measure under the
influence both of our civilization [pg 002] and of our lack of it, so
that they share more or less our fate. Among none of them are to be
found thoughts which can lead to any considerable original movement of
civilization.
Let us put on one side cleverness and interesting surveys of the
history of civilization, and busy ourselves in a practical way with
the problem of our endangered civilization. Of what character is this
degeneration in our civilization, and why has it come about?
To begin with, there is one elementary fact which is quite obvious.
The disastrous feature of our civilization is that it is far more
developed materially than spiritually. Its balance is disturbed.
Through the discoveries which now place the forces of Nature at our
disposal in such an unprecedented way, the relations to each other of
individuals, of social groups, and of States have undergone a
revolutionary change. Our knowledge and our power have been enriched
and increased to an extent that no one would have thought possible. We
have thereby been enabled to make the conditions of human existence
incomparably more favourable in numerous respects, but in our
enthusiasm over our progress in knowledge and power, we have come to a
defective conception of what civilization is. We value too highly its
material achievements and no longer keep in mind as vividly as is
desirable the importance of the spiritual. Now the results are upon
us, and summon us to reflect. They tell us in terribly harsh language
that a civilization which develops only on its material side but not
in corresponding measure on its spiritual side, is like a ship which
with defective steering gear gets at a constantly accelerating pace
out of control, and thereby heads for a catastrophe.
The essential nature of civilization does not lie in its material
achievements, but in the fact that individuals keep in mind the ideals
of the perfecting of man, and the improvement of the social and
political conditions of peoples, and of mankind as a whole, and that
their habit [pg 003] of thought is determined in living and constant
fashion by such ideals. Only when individuals work in this way as
spiritual forces on themselves and on society is the possibility given
of solving the problems which have been produced by the facts of life,
and of attaining to a general progress which is valuable in every
respect. Whether there is rather more or rather less of material
achievement to record is not what is decisive for civilization. Its
fate depends on whether or no thought keeps control over facts. The
issue of a voyage does not depend on whether the vessel’s pace is
somewhat quicker or somewhat slower, but on whether it steers a
correct course, and its steering gear keeps in good condition.
Revolutions in the relations of life between individuals, society, and
peoples, as they follow in the train of our great material
achievements, make, if they are to show real progress in the sense of
valuable civilization, higher demands on the habit of thought of
civilized people, just as the increased speed of a ship presupposes
greater reliability in rudder and steering gear. Advances in knowledge
and power work out their effects on us almost as if they were natural
occurrences. It is not within our power so to direct them that they
influence favourably in every respect the relations in which we live,
but they produce for individuals, for society, and for nations,
difficult and still more difficult problems, and bring with them
dangers which it is quite impossible to estimate beforehand.
Paradoxical as it may seem, our advances in knowledge and power make
true civilization not easier but more difficult. One can even say
that, judging by the events of our own and the two preceding
generations, we are almost entitled to doubt whether in view of the
way in which these material achievements have been showered upon us,
true civilization is still possible.
The most widespread danger which material achievements bring with them
for civilization consists in the fact that through the revolutions in
the conditions of life men [pg 004] become in greater numbers unfree,
instead of free. The type of man who once cultivated his own bit of
land becomes a worker who tends a machine in a factory; manual workers
and independent trades-people become employees. They lose the
elementary freedom of the man who lives in his own house and finds
himself in immediate connexion with Mother Earth. Further, they no
longer have the extensive and unbroken consciousness of responsibility
of those who live by their own independent labour. The conditions of
their existence are therefore unnatural. They no longer carry on the
struggle for existence in comparatively normal relations in which each
one can by his own ability make good his position whether against
Nature or against the competition of his fellows, but they see
themselves compelled to combine together and create a force which can
extort for itself better living conditions. They acquire thereby the
mentality of unfree men, in which ideals of civilization can no longer
be contemplated in the needful purity, but become distorted to
correspond with the surrounding atmosphere of struggle.
To a certain extent we have all of us, under modern conditions, become
unfree men. In every rank of life we have from decade to decade, if
not from year to year, to carry on a harder struggle for existence.
Overwork, physical or mental or both, is our lot. We can no longer
find time to collect and order our thoughts. Our spiritual dependence
increases at the same pace as our material dependence. In every
direction we come to conditions of dependence which in former times
were never known in such universality and such strength. Economic,
social, and political organizations, which are steadily becoming more
and more complete, are getting us more and more into their power. The
State with its more and more rigid organization holds us under a
control which is growing more and more decided and inclusive. In every
respect, therefore, our individual being is depreciated. It is
becoming more and more difficult to be a personality.
[pg 005]
Thus it is that the progress of our external civilization brings with
it the result that individuals, in spite of all the advantages they
get, are in many respects injured both materially and spiritually in
their capacity for civilization through those very advantages.
It is our progress in material civilization, too, which intensifies in
so disastrous a way our social and political problems. Through the
social ones we are involved in a class struggle which shakes and
throws into confusion economic and national relations. If we go down
to rock-bottom, it was machinery and world commerce which brought
about the world war, and the inventions which put into our hands such
mighty power of destruction made the war of such a devastating
character that conquered and conquerors alike are ruined for a period
of which no one can see the end. It was also our technical
achievements which put us in a position to kill at such a distance,
and to wipe out the enemy in such masses, that we sank so low as to
push aside any last impulse to humanity, and were mere blind wills
which made use of perfected lethal weapons of such destructive
capacity that we were unable to maintain the distinction between
combatants and non-combatants.
Material achievements, then, are not civilisation, but become
civilization only so far as the mental habit of civilized peoples is
capable of allowing them to work towards the perfecting of the
individual and the community. Fooled, however, by our advances in
knowledge and power, we did not reflect on the danger to which we were
exposing ourselves by the diminished value we put on the spiritual
elements in civilization, and we surrendered completely to a naïve
satisfaction at our magnificent material achievements, and went astray
into an incredibly superficial conception of civilization. We believed
in a progress which was a matter of course, because contained in the
facts themselves. Instead of harbouring in our thought ideals approved
by reason, and undertaking to mould reality into accordance with them,
we were fooled [pg 006] by a vain feeling for reality, and wanted to
come through with lowered ideals which were borrowed from it. By
taking this course we lost all control over the facts.
Accordingly, just when the spiritual element in culture was necessary
in extraordinary strength, we let it waste away.
Civilization and World-View
How could it come about that the spiritual element in civilization
became so lost to us?
To understand that, we must go back to the time when it was at work
among us in a direct and living way, and the path thereto leads us
back into the eighteenth century. Among the Rationalists who approach
everything through reason, and would regulate everything in life by
rational considerations, we find expression given in elemental
strength to the conviction that the essential element in civilization
is a habit of thought. It is true that they are already impressed by
modern achievements in discovery and invention, and do allow to the
material side of civilization a corresponding importance. But they
nevertheless regard it as self-evident that the essential and valuable
element in civilization is the spiritual. That interest is focused
first of all on the spiritual progress of men and humanity, and in
that they believe with a mighty optimism.
The greatness of these men of the period of the “Aufklärung” lies in
this, that they set up as ideals the perfecting of the individual, of
society, and of mankind, and devote themselves to these ideals with
enthusiasm. The force on which they count for the realizing of them is
the general habit of thought; they demand of the human spirit that it
shall transform men and the relations in which they live, and they
trust to it to prove itself stronger than the facts of life.
But whence came the impulse to set up such high ideals of
civilization, and their confidence of being able to realise [pg 007]
them? It was from their view of the world (Weltanschauung).
The Rationalist world-view is optimistic and ethical, its optimism
consisting in this, that it assumes as ruling in the world a general
purposive adaptation which is directed to the perfecting of the world,
and from this purposiveness the efforts of individual men and of
mankind to secure material and spiritual progress derive meaning and
importance and a guarantee of success.
This world-view is ethical because it regards the ethical as something
in accordance with reason, and on that ground demands from man that,
putting egoistic interests behind him, he shall devote himself to all
ideals that are waiting for realization, taking the ethical as in
everything the standard by which to judge. A habit of humane thought
is for the Rationalists an ideal which they can be induced by no
consideration to resign.
When at the close of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the
nineteenth the reaction against rationalism set in and criticism began
to play upon it, its optimism was reproached as being superficial and
its ethics as being sentimental. But the good it did, in spite of its
manifold imperfections, by inspiring men with ideals of civilization
grounded in reason, the spiritual movements which criticise it and
take its place cannot develop in the same way. The energy of thought
about civilization decreases imperceptibly but steadily. In proportion
as the world-view of rationalism is left behind, the feeling for
actuality makes its influence felt, until at last, from the middle of
the nineteenth century onwards, ideals are borrowed no longer from
reason but from actuality, and we therewith sink still further into a
state of uncivilization and lack of humanity. This is the clearest and
the most important of all the facts which can be established in the
history of our civilization.
What has it to tell us? It tells us that there is a close connexion
between civilization and world-view. Civilization is the product of an
optimistic-ethical view of the world. [pg 008] Only in proportion as
the prevalent world-view is one which is world- and life-affirming and
at the same time ethical, do we find ideals of civilization put
forward and kept influential in the habits of thought of individuals,
and of society.
That this inner relation between civilization and the world-view of
civilized peoples has never received the attention that it deserves,
is the result of there having been among us so little real meditation
on the essential nature of civilization.
What is civilization? It is the sum total of all progress made by men
and mankind in every sphere of action and from every point of view, so
far as this progress helps towards the spiritual perfecting of
individuals as the progress of all progress.
The impulse to strive for progress in all spheres of action and from
every point of view comes to men out of an optimistic world-view which
affirms the world and life to be something valuable in themselves, and
consequently bears within itself a compulsion to raise to its highest
possible value all that is, so far as it can be influenced by us.
Hence come will and hope, and effort directed to the improvement of
the condition of individuals and of society, of peoples and of
mankind. This leads to a lordship of the spirit over the powers of
Nature, to the completion of the religious, social, economic, and
practical grouping of men, and to the spiritual perfecting of
individuals and of the community.
Just as the world- and life-affirming, that is, the optimistic
world-view is alone capable of stirring men to effort aimed at
promoting civilization, so in an ethical world-view alone is there
latent the power to make men, when putting aside and giving up
altogether their selfish interests, persevere in such effort for
civilization, and keep them always turned in the direction of the
spiritual and moral perfecting of the individual as the essential
object of civilization. Bound the one to the other, then, world- and
[pg 009] life-affirming world-view and ethics think out in harmony the
ideals of true, complete civilization and set to work at realizing
them.
If civilization remains incomplete or its level falls, this rests in
the last resort on the fact that either the world- and
life-affirmation of the world-view, or its ethics, or both of them
have remained undeveloped or have gone backwards. And that is the case
with us. It is evident that the ethics required for civilization have
gone out of use.
For decades we have been accustoming ourselves increasingly to measure
with relative ethical standards, and no longer to allow ethics to have
their say in all questions alike. This renunciation of consistent
ethical judgment we feel as an advance in practicality.
But our world- and life-affirmation also have become shaky. The modern
man no longer feels under any compulsion to think about ideals of
progress and to will them. To a large extent he has come to terms with
actuality. He is much more resigned than he admits to himself, and in
one respect he is even outspokenly pessimistic. He does not really
believe any more in the spiritual and ethical progress of men and of
mankind, which is nevertheless the essential element in civilization.
This stunting of our world- and life-affirmation and of our ethics has
its cause in the constitution of our world-view. In regard to this we
have since the middle of the nineteenth century been going through a
crisis. It is no longer possible for us to arrive at a conception of
the universe in which the meaning of the existence of men and of
mankind can be recognized, and in which, therefore, there are also
contained the ideals which flow from thoughtful world- and
life-affirmation and from ethical volition. We are falling more and
more into a condition of having no world-view at all, and from our
lack of that comes our lack of civilization.
The great question for us is, therefore, whether we have to renounce
permanently the world-view which carries within it in all their
strength the ideals of the perfecting of men and of mankind, and of
ethical effort. If we succeed [pg 010] in establishing again a
world-view in which world- and life-affirmation is given in convincing
fashion, we shall become masters of the decay of civilization which is
in progress, and shall reach again a true and living civilization.
Otherwise we are condemned to see the wreck of all attempts to arrest
the degeneration. Only when the truth that renewal of civilization can
only come by a renewal of our world-view becomes a universal
conviction, and a new longing for a world-view sets in, shall we find
ourselves on the right path. But this is not yet in prospect. The
modern man is still without any correct feeling of the full
significance of the fact that he is living with an unsatisfactory
world-view, or without any at all. The unnatural and dangerous
character of this condition must first be brought home to his
consciousness, just as those persons who exhibit disturbances of the
stability of their nervous system have to be clearly told that their
vitality is threatened, although they feel no pain. Similarly, we have
to stir up the men of to-day to elementary meditation upon what man is
in the world, and what he wants to make of his life. Only when they
are impressed once more with the necessity of giving meaning and value
to their existence, and thus come once more to hunger and thirst for a
satisfying world-view, are the preliminaries given for a spiritual
condition in which we become again capable of civilization.
But in order to learn the way to such a world-view we must see clearly
why the struggle undertaken by the European spirit to secure it was
for a time successful, but during the second half of the nineteenth
century came to an unfortunate end.
Because our thinking is too little occupied with civilization it has
been insufficiently noticed that the most important part of the
history of philosophy is the history of man’s struggle for a
satisfactory world-view. Regarded in this light, the history unrolls
itself like a tragic drama.
[pg 011]