problems that are grouped beneath each of the recorded formulæ, which
indeed are easily to be found. Thus when we absolutely forbid the
telling of lies, as indecorous and degrading, as that which severs the
ties of human community and of reciprocal faith, as the vice (said
Herbart) that has the special faculty of stirring up against it all
the five moral ideas--justice, benevolence, equity, perfection, and
internal liberty--the intention is to forbid what is usually called
lying; but it is certainly not intended to institute a speculative
enquiry as to the relation between knowing and making known, between
the theoretic act of thought and the practical act of its communication
to other individuals. Thus again, the prohibition of suicide has in
view suicide through egoism, which is the most frequent form, and it is
therefore useless to identify this with the universal relation between
death and life, and with the proposition that life is preserved by
means of death. Thus too, finally, the conception of the delinquent
has been a beneficent rectification of common prejudices relating to
the efficacy of certain laws and penalties applied to certain classes
of individuals who are led to crime as though through unrestrainable
natural tendency. For the rest, the wisdom of life teaches us usually
to take individuals as we find them, with their virtues and vices, and
without claiming to set them violently right, and to remake them from
top to bottom. We should rather adapt them in the best way possible
for our own ends, or for those of society. This does not, however,
imply that they are fixed beings, and that each of those classes is
heterogeneous in respect of the others. If, with the help of a foolish
positivist philosophy, we make of the idea of the delinquent something
necessary, a natural being, as it is called, confounding naturalistic
with natural and incorrectly hypostasizing gnoseological procedure,
then, and then alone, are we right in reacting and in denying.
[Sidenote: _2a. False deduction of the empirical from the
philosophical._]
And yet those solutions of philosophers, who think that they are
solving empirical questions by annulling or ignoring them, do not yet
represent the worst that happens when philosophy usurps the function
of empiria. Such misunderstanding, such hardness of hearing, may be
proof of a spirit so energetically directed to universale that it is
unable to see anything else, and may even for that reason possess
some sympathetic quality. The worst of the worst is the entering upon
empirical questions, not in order to annul, but to take sides in them
and to solve them philosophically.
[Sidenote: _Affirmations relating to the contingent changed into
philosophemes._]
This cannot be done, save by supporting empirical concepts with
rigorous and philosophical concepts, confounding the one with the other
by a trick of thought, and sometimes of words, making use of synonyms
and homonyms, and pronouncing in the name of philosophy arbitrary
solutions suggested only by caprice or self-interest. This is the
complete corruption, alike of philosophy and of empiria. Not satisfied
with making practical classes follow philosophical concepts of the
practical, it is then sought to deduce the former from the latter,
and behold them now deriving virtues and duties from the universal
concept of practical moral activity, by means of the divisions of
internal and external, of part and whole, of individual and society.
These are concepts of relations, not susceptible of division, and
therefore incapable of serving as base for empirical divisions. Or
they have recourse to the triad of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis,
which is the universal concrete itself, constituting unity, and
therefore incapable of serving as basis for division. Or they will
deduce the moral virtues according to the three faculties, as virtues
of representation, feeling and thought, or according to the two of the
will and the intellect, as dianoetic and ethical virtues; as though the
base of the division of the _practical_ could be that of _theoretical_
and _practical._ Empirical concepts become in this way all false,
whereas, in their real nature, they are neither false nor true.
There is no thesis, however absurd, which cannot be defended with
such a method. All know that there are aristocratic and democratic
philosophers, libertarian and authoritarian, anarchical and
organicist, socialistic and anti-socialistic, bellicose and pacific,
feminist and antifeminist; and there are others who maintain the
right to lie, the right to suicide, the right to prostitution, the
right to incest, to making of themselves caterers for the scaffold,
the right to the penalty of death. These solutions can be morally and
politically justified in certain definite and particular cases. There
are other solutions rationally unjustifiable in the individual case
and put forward only through passion, wickedness, or prejudice, but in
both hypotheses, they are outside philosophy and within it so false as
to be odious, as that is odious which is maintained, not by means of
intrinsic reason, but by imposition altogether extrinsic and external.
[Sidenote: _Reason of the rebellion against rules._]
Such hatefulness explains the rebellion against moral rules and
concepts that has often taken place. This, together with that against
literary classes and rules and others of the same sort, forms part
of the vast movement of rebellion against empirical or empiricized
philosophy. In truth, when those rules and ideas are taken by
themselves, no rebellion is possible, because they do not exert any
pressure and obey the orders of the man who has made them. But it
happens otherwise, when they become rigid and philosophical, and
as is said, absolute, claiming to substitute themselves as such for
philosophy and to provide a base for judgments. In addition to this,
from the enforced union of philosophemes with rules, has arisen the
false idea of philosophizing about the practical (about an Ethic,
for example), which showed itself to be _practical,_ or, as is said,
_normative._
[Sidenote: _Limits between philosophy and empiria._]
Philosophy, by taking part in empirical questions, ruins both itself
and them, because it loses the serenity, the dignity, and the utility
that are intrinsic to it. In like manner, the empirical disciplines
ruin themselves and philosophy when they claim to philosophize with
their classes, which are not categories, with their pseudo-concepts,
which are not concepts, with their _generalia,_ which are not
_universalia._ Here too, safety lies in distinction: the observation of
distinction alone makes possible beneficent co-operation.
IX
HISTORICAL ANNOTATIONS
A history of the general theories relating to the practical activity
is still to write, although we have several relating to particular
theories of Ethic. The mode in which such a historical narration should
be conducted results from the historical explanations themselves,
which we have exposed and shall continue to expose. Here we cannot
even offer a rapid summary. We shall limit ourselves to making a--few
remarks on the subject, and we shall give some historical account of
certain problems of the philosophy of the practical, that have had, to
some extent, profound treatment, or have at least been sufficiently
discussed (for not a few others are virgin, or almost so), with the
sole object of serving as a guide.
[Sidenote: _I. Distinction between history of the practiced principle
and history of the liberation from the transcendental._]
I. A first warning to bear in mind concerns the historical inquiry as
to the varying _recognition of, or failure to recognize_ the _practical
reason_ in respect to the other forms of the spirit. This series of
thoughts is not to be confounded with that _other historical process,_
so long and so intricate, which had its origin in the debate between
St. Augustine and Pelagius (or perhaps rather in the opposition between
Platonic mysticism and Aristotelian humanism), and through analogous
debates, arising afresh during the Middle Ages and onward to modern
times, culminating in the strife for the independence of morality and
the practical reason in general from religion, which took place in
the seventeenth century. The account of the various incidents of that
debate perhaps occupies a larger space and a different place in the
special histories of Ethic than it deserves. For it is not concerned
with an entirely ethical or practical problem, but with that general
philosophical movement which produced the progressive elimination of
the transcendental and founded the immanentistic consideration of
the real: a necessary condition for the conceivability of philosophy
itself. In this lay the great importance of the affirmation that the
practical and the moral spirit of man reveals itself as constant in the
midst of the most various and opposed religious beliefs. This amounts
to saying that it is independent of religion and knowable naturally and
humanly, without the necessity of having recourse to the authority of
revelation and of making shipwreck in mystery. It is customary to say
that in the seventeenth century free-thought definitely won the victory
upon the point most ardently contested, and in this connection are
recorded the names of Charron, Grotius, Spinoza, and Pierre Bayle. To
these could be added that of G. B. Vico, who conceived of Providence
as immanent and considered that morality arose from "a sense common to
all men," from a judgment "without any sort of reflection," foundation
of the natural rights of man. But should the word "definite" be really
used here? Whenever the idea of the transcendental reappears, even in
the timid form of agnosticism, the autonomy of the practical reason is
denied, or at least again put in doubt (and with it that of the whole
human spirit).
Two examples only of this must suffice, but they are conspicuous.
Emmanuel Kant, not having been able to surpass the mystery that he
had formulated--the principle of the practical reason--the categoric
imperative remained suspended in the void, and in that void it invokes
in relation to itself faith in a personal God and in a transcendental
future life, which shall conciliate virtue and happiness, at variance
in the life lived upon earth. This scrap of mystery which Kant
allowed to remain in his system, suffices to obscure that autonomy
of the practical reason and that concept of spiritual productivity
which he had affirmed with so much energy. Another example, perhaps
even more characteristic, is furnished by the Ethic that was prevalent
for three centuries in the English School. It was a utilitarian Ethic
and therefore incapable of truly founding moral reason. What was the
consequence of that incapacity when recognized as such? Nothing but
the renewed introduction of mystery, the explanation obtained by means
of the idea of a personal God, assuming that most extravagant form
known as "theological utilitarianism." By this theory, moral actions
that in this life do not receive adequate recompense and seem to be
unjustified from the utilitarian point of view, are rewarded by God
in another life, thus finding their economic motive for being carried
out in the present life. In our theoretic treatment of the subject, we
do not concern ourselves with the controversy, already mooted in the
_Eutyphron,_ as to whether sanctity be loved by the gods as sanctity,
or whether it be sanctity because it is beloved by the gods[1]--a
question that in the Middle Ages was transformed into that other one,
differently solved by Abélard, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus: whether the
moral law be given by divine decree, or whether the idea of God does
not of necessity coincide with the idea of moral law. We do not treat
of this, since we are occupied with the practical, not with theology
or antitheology, and consider that the contest between philosophy
and theology has been already solved and surpassed in the theory of
knowledge. For the same reason, it seems to us that we should not trace
its history in the History of the Philosophy of the Practical.[2]
[Sidenote: _II. The distinction of the practical from the theoretical._]
II. The true and proper history of the practical principle, conceived
as autonomous, and of the problem concerning the identity or the
distinction of the practical from theory, has a different line of
development. As a rule this problem is referred back to the celebrated
sayings of Socrates, that virtue is knowledge and vice ignorance, and
to the corrections that Aristotle, while accepting, proposes in them,
when he takes note of the part that belongs to the non-cognoscitive
element. But, as often happens, those sayings and those corrections
have been taken as being more profound than they genuinely were and
could be. This, if it have not aided the exactness of historical
interpretation, has nevertheless stimulated and fecundated thought.
On reading without prejudice the parts of the _Memorabilia,_ of the
Platonic dialogues, of the _Nicomachean Ethics,_ and of the _Magna
Moralia_ that relate to it, it appears evident that what is treated
of in them is the altogether empirical question of the importance
that mental development has for practical life, and whether knowledge
suffices for this, or natural dispositions and discipline of the
passions be not also necessary. Aristotle replied to Socrates, who had
insisted upon the element of knowing, conceiving virtue as knowledge
(λόγος), by modifying the statement with the assertion that virtue is
not indeed simply knowledge, but is _with_ knowledge (μετὰ λόγου).
In these very ingenuous considerations is to be found at the most
implicitly, but certainly not explicitly, the problem that was only
stated later on; and it would be rash to classify Socrates as an
intellectualist and Aristotle as a voluntarist. It is certain that the
Aristotelian philosophy, in accordance with good sense, preserved the
distinction between the two forms of the spirit, the theoretical and
the practical, the reason and the will, a distinction that has also
passed into the scholastic philosophy (_ratio cognoscibilis, ratio
appetibilis_) and into that of the Renaissance. But it remained always
vague, sometimes brought into prominence, sometimes, on the other hand,
attenuated. Almost dissipated in those who conceive the principles of
the practical as something similar or analogous to mathematical truths
(Cudworth, Clarke, Wollaston, etc.), it always reaffirms itself when
importance is given to the affections and passions, as is the case with
many thinkers of the seventeenth century (Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza,
Vico); and the doctrines of the Scottish school of sensationalists
contributed not a little to keep it alive.
It seems indubitable that Emmanuel Kant is to be connected to
some extent rather with this last tradition than with that of the
intellectualists: with Kant the practical reason possessed a domain of
its own altogether distinct from and almost antithetical to the domain
of the theoretical. But it is erroneous to present the successors
of Kant as forgetful of the practical reason and as resolving every
spiritual manifestation in the theoretical form of the spirit.
For instance, Fichte, who had a very strong consciousness of the
peculiarity of the practical activity, did not do this, nor did Hegel,
though as commonly as unjustly accused of being a cold intellectualist.
It should suffice to recall how Hegel always opposed that view of
Plato and of other thinkers (for example Campanella) who assigned the
government of the State to philosophers, a view in which the resolution
of the practical into the theoretical spirit and of the will into
knowledge seemed to become concrete. For Hegel, on the contrary, the
domain of _history_ is different from that of _philosophy;_ history
is indeed the idea, but the idea that shows itself in a _natural and
unconscious_ manner, and _philosophical_ genius is not _political_
genius. Nor must we forget the importance that he accorded to passion,
to custom, to what is called the heart and is wont to be opposed to
the brain and to argument. For Hegel, the will is not thought, but
a special kind of thought, that is to say, thought which translates
itself into existence, the impulse to give oneself existence. Whereas
in the theoretical process, the spirit takes possession of the object
and makes it its own by thinking, that is by universalizing it, in
the practical process a difference is also stated and determined,
which on the other hand consists of its own determinations and ends.
The theoretical is contained in the practical, since there cannot be
will without intelligence; but, on the other hand, the theoretical
contains the practical, since to think is also to act. Hegel, in short,
distinguishes the practical from the theoretical and unifies them,
while retaining the distinction.[3] What is not perhaps altogether
clear to him, notwithstanding his view that history is the idea in a
natural and unconscious mode, is the unreflective character of willing.
To have given relief to this character, although in the exaggerated and
inacceptable form of the will as blind and unconscious, is the merit of
Arthur Schopenhauer, who is indeed far from standing alone in assigning
an eminent place to the will, but connects himself with all the Kantian
and post-Kantian philosophy, and in the first place with Fichte and
Schelling.
[Sidenote: _III. The mixtures of philosophy of the practical and
description._]
III. The mixture of philosophical concepts with empirical concepts and
with rules is a vice common to nearly all treatises of the Philosophy
of the practical, beginning with the _Nicomachean Ethic,_ which,
although in certain places loftily philosophical, should be placed in
greater part rather at the head of the history of the works of the
moralists and of writers on the practical, than of Ethic. The author
himself recognized this practical character when he wrote, _πάς ὁ περὶ
τῶν πρακτῶν λόγος τύπῳ καὶ οὐκ ἀκριβῶς ὀφείλει λέγεσθαι.[4]_ And in
this appears the prejudice that practical philosophy should be occupied
with the practical: ἐπεὶ οὖν ἡ παροῦσα πραγματεία οὐ θεωρίας ἕνεκά
ἐστιν ὥσπερ αἱ ἅλλαι (οὐ γὰρ ἵνα εἰδῶμεν τί εστιν ἡ ἀρετὴ σκεπτόμεθα
άλλ' ἵν' ἀγαθοὶ ηινώμεθα, ἐπεὶ ούδὲν ἃν ἧν ὄφελος αὐτῆς), κτλ.[5]
Even the greatest thinkers of modern times are not exempt from that
characteristic. Emmanuel Kant, while recognizing that the division and
treatment of duties do not belong to the Critique of the Sciences (he
should therefore have excluded them from philosophy, which is always
_criticism),_ finally relegates them to what he calls the "system"
(and is in truth the anti-systematic)[6] and writes the _Metaphysic of
Customs,_ divided into the doctrines of law and of the virtues. Fichte,
in his _System of Ethic,_ makes the applied follow the theoretical
part. Hegel gives the doctrine of duties in the third part of his
_Philosophy of Law,_ which is entitled Of Ethicity (_Sittlichkeit_.)
The Ethic of Herbart is intrinsically descriptive, for the author
himself professed to wish simply "to describe the ideal of virtue,"[7]
and the five practical ideas that he takes as principles were at bottom
nothing but classes of virtue refined into ideas. Treatises of to-day
are overflowing with empirical elements, as can be seen from those in
English by Ladd and Seth, and by those in German of Paulsen, Wundt, and
Cathrein. Sometimes a more concrete historical element is coupled in
those treatises with the empirical classification of practical examples
and institutions: as, for instance, in Cathrein, a modernized Jesuit,
who exposes at length the moral views, not only of civilized people,
ancient and modern, but also of the savages of Oceania, of Asia, of
Cochin China, of the Hottentots and Boschimans, of the Botocudis, and
so on. Questions of casuistry also survive in these treatises, such as
whether and on what occasions it is permissible to tell a lie; this
question is notably represented in the history of ideas, from the
Socrates of the _Memorabilia_ to Kant and Schopenhauer.[8] Kant added
questions of casuistry to the various sections of the _Metaphysic of
Customs,_ as scholia to the system and examples of the way in which the
truth of particular questions should be sought.[9]
[Sidenote: _Vain attempts at definitions of empirical concepts._]
But the efforts of ancient and modern philosophers rigorously to
define empirical concepts afford more interest than the external form
of treatment, as do their efforts to modify or to simplify, or indeed
finally to deduce them rationally. The Platonic dialogues, such as the
_Charmides,_ the _Lachetes,_ the _Protagoras,_ are most instructive
in this respect. Here it is sought to define sophrosune, andreia and
the other virtues, without arriving at any precise result, or rather
arriving at the contradictory one, that each of these virtues is _the
whole of virtue,_ whereas it should only be a _part_ of it. In the
_Republic_ is sought the relation of the four virtues, or rather of
three of them, prudence, temperance, and fortitude, with justice, which
forms as it were the foundation and unity of the whole. From such
discussions arose the affirmation, to be found also in Cicero, that
the virtues are inseparable from one another: _virtutes ita copulatae
connexaeque sunt, ut omnes participes sint, nec alia ab alia possit
separari._[10] The difficulty of the Platonic inquiry is renewed with
all those who have given definitions of the virtues and of the other
empirical concepts, because, when they have achieved with much labour
a definition which appears satisfactory, it is afterwards always found
to be too narrow or too wide. Thus the definition given by Kant and by
others (Fichte, Schopenhauer) of egoism, consisting in their view, of
considering other individuals as means and not ends, is the definition,
not of egoism, but of any form of immorality which debases the Spirit
that should be the end, by means of its own caprices. The same is to
be said of the definitions given by Fichte as to the duties inherent
to this or that condition and state: the duties, for instance, of the
learned, who should love truth, communicate it to others, rectify
errors, promote culture,[11] and so on. These are all things that
form part of the duty, not only of the learned, but of every man. The
simplifiers are not more fortunate in their attempts to reduce the
number of empirical concepts, for the concepts excluded by them have
neither more nor less right to recognition than the others that they
have accepted. Schopenhauer, for instance, when he rejects the class
of duties toward oneself,[12] should also reject that of duties toward
others. For others and ourselves are correlative terms, and we cannot
be benevolent to others and malevolent to ourselves, just to others
and unjust to ourselves. If this be met with the objection that the
empirical self is not the object of duties, we must reply that neither
are the empirical "others," but only that Spirit which is in all and
constitutes all. In reacting against these unifiers and simplifiers,
other philosophers (as for example Herbart) have maintained the
indeducibility of the virtues or duties from a single principle, which
means that they have received those concepts into their philosophy
atomistically, and left them there as something not digested and not
digestible, an extraneous element. If they had openly admitted this and
drawn from it the legitimate consequence, and for that reason excluded
those concepts from philosophy, they would really have contributed
toward simplifying and unifying, by making it homogeneous. But Herbart,
if he have no other merit, has at any rate declared that the Philosophy
of the practical is not capable of solving all the problems that occur
in life, and that we must always rely upon the answer of the heart,
upon the delicacy of individual tact. And, therefore, while Kant still
preserved casuistic questions in Ethic and professed to solve them
rationally, Herbart showed that they lack the determinations that are
of true importance in real cases, and that such questions are therefore
as a rule either without meaning or insoluble (_entweder gar keiner
Fragen, oder im Allgemein unauflöslich_).[13]
[Sidenote: _Attempts at eduction._]