treatises from the philosophical, the first example is the Aristotelian
division of the virtues into the dianoetic and ethic, with their
consequent determination by means of the concept of mediacy (μεσότης)
between two extremes. But this Aristotelian method, which was continued
by the Scholastics, seemed to others (as for example Schleiermacher)
nothing but "a heap of virtues," without any rule and without any
certainty; hence he made constant attempts at new classifications and
new deductions. Kant recognized that the ethical obligation, that is,
respect for the law, is something unique and indivisible, and that to
attain from that to duties or _ethica officia,_ which are many, it
is necessary to introduce the consideration of objects.[14] Here he
should have stopped, because objects have infinite determinations, are
infinite. Hence the enumeration, division and deduction of duties,
should be simply pronounced impossible. Instead of doing this, he
passed at a bound, how far logical we know not, from the general
ethical obligation, to the division of duties into two great classes:
of man toward man, and of man toward beings that are not human. He
divided the first into duties toward oneself and duties toward other
men, the second into that of the duties toward beings beneath man
(animals) and those toward beings above him (God).[15] The strangeness
of these divisions, which sometimes verge on the comic, can already
be seen, though abridged, in the first class of the duties toward
oneself, subdivided in its turn into duties toward oneself as an animal
or physical being, and duties toward oneself as a moral being; as
though human duties are not always to be referred to spirituality and
can ever concern physicality or animality. In their first aspect they
receive a tripartite division, into the duty of self-preservation,
which is violated by suicide, by allowing oneself to be castrated (in
order to sing soprano, as used to be done at that time at the San Carlo
of Naples and at the Opera of Berlin), by allowing a healthy tooth
to be pulled out in order to sell it (as does poor Fantine in the
story of the _Misérables_); into the duty of preserving the species
(violation: unnatural use of the sexual impulse);--into the duty of
preserving the use of one's own strength (violation: gluttony). The
duty of preserving the dignity of man is contained beneath the second
heading (violation, lying, covetousness, abjection, etc.[16]). The
fact is that the duty of preserving the dignity of man comprises
in itself, not only the class that stands first, of duties toward
oneself, but also all the other duties toward men, animals, or gods.
Fichte feels the difficulty, because he sees that conscience is that
which determines our duty on each occasion; but he adds: "This is not
enough for science: either we must be able to determine _a priori_
that which our conscience will affirm in universal, or we must admit
that an Ethic, as a pure applied science, is impossible."[17] The
second horn of the dilemma was precisely that of the truth, but
Fichte, like Kant, bowed to the supreme power of tradition and clung
to the first. He divides duties into mediate and conditioned (toward
oneself) and immediate and unconditioned (toward others), and into
general and special (those of various states and conditions), deducing
from this the fourfold division, resulting from the meeting of general
conditioned duties, particular conditioned, general unconditioned,
and particular unconditioned. Hegel, who in his youthful writings had
denied absolute value to the virtues, and consequently the possibility
of collisions between the virtues (for example, in the _Life of Jesus,_
recently published), well defines the altogether empirical character
of that treatise, calling it, by reason of its natural element and of
the quantitive considerations upon which it is founded, "a natural
history of the spiritual world" (_eine geistige Naturgeschichte_); but
since he did not perceive the identity of the concept of duty with that
of virtue, he believes in the possibility of a philosophical theory
of duties.[18] This is developed by him, as has been said, in the
section of Ethicity, applying to it the dialectical rhythm proper to
the philosophical universal, and distinguishing in it three moments: of
the immediate natural spirit, which is the family, of the dissension
from which arises civil society, and of conciliation, whence arises
the State. But notwithstanding the external dialectical form, there
is to be found in all this section of the Ethicity at every point,
not so much the philosopher properly so-called, as the historian who
describes and narrates, the acute and well-balanced politician and
moralist. The merit of such a treatise resides precisely, therefore,
in the abhorrence of a sham philosophy; with but slight modifications
of literary form, it could be developed into a series of excellent
historico-political essays. Certain of the propositions of the writing
on _Natural Law_ (1802-3)[19] would tend to show that Hegel inclined
to look upon the treatment of duties and institutions as nothing
more than a provisional classification of historical and changeable
material, a thought that is in any case suggested by his whole system.
Schleiermacher was among the philosophers of that time who laboured,
perhaps, with the greatest tenacity upon the empirical classes, with
a view to reducing them to philosophical form; but the results were
unhappy, only revealing, by their contradictions persisting after
such efforts, the impossibility of the task. In fact, Schleiermacher
sees and does not see the unity of the three spheres of things good,
of duties, and of virtues; hence they appeared to him to be three
aspects of the same object, and he strangely placed them in analogical
connection with three spheres of the natural world, the mechanical, the
chemical, and the organic. He, too, starting from a double division and
a double antithesis, ideal and temporal, of knowledge and exposition
(_Darstellen,_) arrived at a quadruple division of the virtues, into
wisdom and love, discretion and perseverance, which seemed to him to
coincide with the four Platonic virtues, of φρόνησις, δικαιοσύνη,
σωφροσύνη, and ἀνδρeίa, or with the four cardinal virtues derived from
them, to which would correspond the four duties: of right, of vocation,
of love, and of conscience.[20] After this, it would be superfluous to
proceed to enumerate the ethical systems of contemporary philosophy,
noteworthy neither for the ingenuity of their artificial deductions nor
for the grandeur of their paradoxes.[21]
[Sidenote: _IV. Various questions._]
IV. The very copious empirical element that fills the books on
the Philosophy of the practical and the attempt to treat it
philosophically have also had the injurious effect of distracting
their authors from entering deeply into the problems of true and
proper philosophy, to which the practical activity gives rise. Thus
a history of the aforesaid aberrations would be as rich as a history
of the speculation as to the will would be poor. The problem of the
theoretic element in the volitional act, or of the theoretic phase
of deliberation, has not been developed as it deserved, and as
the important pages of the third and seventh books of the _Ethica
Nicomachea_ seemed to augur. The question, too, of the priority of
the will over the concepts of the useful and of the good and of the
practical judgments, is hardly touched by a philosopher here and there,
and the Herbartian theory of practical judgments failed to excite
any fervour of examination, criticism, or opposition. The concept
of good will and of good intention, to which Kant gave a prominent
place, is not discussed profoundly, save by Hegel, who goes deeply
into the difficult problems of abstract and concrete intention in the
introduction and in the second section of the _Philosophy of Law._
The other problem, as to the possibility or impossibility of willing
without full knowledge, was not adequately treated after Descartes and
Spinoza.
[Sidenote: _The practical nature of error._]
In Descartes are also to be found the most acute observations as to the
practical nature of error. After having stated that it is impossible
that God should have given to man any faculty that was not perfect of
its kind, he asks himself: "_D'où est-ce donc que naissent mes erreurs?
C'est à savoir, de cela seul que la volonté, étant beaucoup plus ample
et plus étendue que l'entendement, je ne la contiens pas dans les mêmes
limites, mais que je l'étends aussi aux choses que je n'entends pas;
auxquelles étant de soi indifférente, elle s'égare fort aisément, et
choisit le faux pour le vrai et le mal pour le bien: ce qui fait que
je me trompe et je pèche._" Errors arise from the concourse of two
causes, the faculty of knowing and the faculty of choice: "_car pour
l'entendement seul je n'assure ni ne nie aucune chose, mais je conçois
seulement les idées des choses que je puis assurer ou nier._"[22] For
Descartes the affirmation was an act of the will, and here perhaps lies
his mistake and the mistake of those who have followed him in this
theory (Rosmini for example); that is to say, they have _mistaken_
the _affirmation,_ which is theoretical, for the _communication,_
which is practical, or they have taken as being of the same degree the
general will that is in affirmation through the unity of the spirit,
and the particular will that is in error. Spinoza opposes Descartes'
theory of error, but in conformity with the deterministic nature of
his philosophy, his criticism relates only to the point as to whether
the will can be the cause of error when it is not more than a mere
abstraction or _ens rationis;_ hence errors or the _particulares
volitiones_ can be determined, not indeed by the will and by liberty,
but _a causis externis_[23] The consciousness of the introduction of
the will into the theoretical spirit as production of error has been
affirmed by Schleiermacher as well as by Rosmini:[24] "It is the will
(he writes) that conceals men from themselves: the judgment cannot err
if it turn its gaze really upon itself."[25] Baader frankly reduced
incredulity to ill-will and moral corruption.[26]
[Sidenote: _Practical taste._]
As to the concept of an immediate form of practical discrimination,
independent of the intellectual judgment, it is to be remarked
that the faculty of _taste_ in Gracian and in other thinkers of the
seventeenth century[27] has a practical rather than a theoretical
origin, and that the sentimentalists of Ethic (Shaftesbury, Hutcheson
and others) were led to posit a moral tact sense. Before Herbart talked
of a _moral taste (sittlicher Geschmack[28])_ Jacobi, who saw better
than others the analogy between practical and æsthetic facts, had
written: "The science of the good, like the science of the beautiful,
is subject to the condition of _taste,_ without which nothing can be
decided, and beyond which nothing can be carried. The taste for the
good, like that for the beautiful, is formed by means of models of
excellence, and original acts are always the work of genius. By means
of genius, nature gives laws to art, both as regards the good and the
beautiful. Both are _liberal_ arts; they do not allow themselves to be
lowered to the level of mechanical arts and placed at the service of
industry."[29]
[Sidenote: _V. The doctrines of feeling._]
V. With the mention of a few facts and names, it can be proved that
the function of the term "feeling" in the history of philosophy has
been as shown above. We have already said that the peculiarity of the
practical form has been asserted by the use of the word "feeling" or
similar denominations ("moral sense," "conscience," and the like),
especially by the Scottish School, in opposition to intellectualist
reductions. Jacobi appealed to the feeling of duty (_Gefühl der
Pflicht_) or conscience in his ethical discussions. In our day, too, it
has been affirmed (by Simmel[30] and others), in opposition to abstract
and imperative Ethics, that the practical decision is the product of
feeling and is not definable by theoreticians. But the principal cause
of the importance attached to feeling in the eighteenth century was
the æsthetic problem. This is seen in Dubos's book, in the English
sentimentalists (who approach the ideas of virtue and of beauty,
treating of the moral sense and of the beautiful), and, finally, in
the doctrines of Leibnitz himself and of his school, as to _confused
cognition,_ which led to the _Aesthetica_ of Baumgarten.
[Sidenote: _The Wolfians._]
We owe the word and the concept of _feeling_ (_Gefühl_ and sometimes
also _Empfindung_) principally to the Leibnitzian-Wolfians and to
the German thinkers under the influence of Wolff (Mendelssohn,
Tetens, Sulzer, Riedel).
[Sidenote: _Jacobi and Schleiermacher._]
By means of the speculation of Jacobi, on the other hand, feeling
was called upon to fulfil the functions of a true and proper
metaphysical organ. He had demonstrated in a rigorous and irrefutable
manner that the form of the empirical sciences and of the abstract
intellect, since it proceeds by nexus of cause and effect, is incapable
of attaining to the infinite, and had assigned the affirmation of
God to the "sense of the supersensible," to "immediate knowledge,"
and to "feeling." After Jacobi, the same position was assumed by
Schleiermacher, who maintained that it was impossible to know God by
means of the intellect and to treat Him as an object, since He is
indifference of thought and being. He can be known only by feeling,
which is indifference of all determinate functions of ideal and real,
of thought and being. The neocriticists and agnostics of to-day, with
their appeal to feeling in all truly philosophical questions, are
followers, often unconscious and certainly less coherent, of Jacobi and
Schleiermacher.
The concept of feeling in the Kantian philosophy can be said to derive
its importance from the meeting of two unsatisfied wants, namely,
that which sought a concept for the æsthetic activity and that which
sought a _forma mentis_ proper to philosophy. Indeed, the _Critique
of Judgment_ corresponds to feeling, the first part of which consists
of an inquiry into the nature of the beautiful and of art. The second
part (critique of the theological judgment) is an anticipation of the
_concrete concept,_ or of that organ of speculative thought which the
_Critique of Pure Reason_ had not discovered.
[Sidenote: _Hegel._]
Feeling, therefore, cannot but lose importance in the Hegelian
philosophy, which makes of art a form of knowledge, and of the
teleological judgment the logic of the idea or philosophical logic,
resolving also in it the demand of Jacobi, whose feeling or immediate
knowledge is shown to be logical knowledge and supreme mediation. In
Hegel feeling is nothing but a class of spiritual facts, the lowest
of all, that in which theory and practice are still indistinct.
But this class has a merely psychological value in his system, not
philosophical and real (which is not clearly recognised by him).
Indeed, feeling, which was absolute knowledge for Jacobi and for
Schleiermacher, is placed, not in the sphere of the absolute spirit,
nor in that of the objective or practical spirit, but in the subjective
spirit, or Psychology. The "doctrine of the three faculties"
(_Dreivermögenslehre_), as was called that elaborated from Mendelssohn
to Kant and promulgated in the Kantian philosophy, did not, however,
remain without opponents in the nineteenth century; from Krug (1823) to
the youthful Fichte, and in more recent times Brentano (1874).
[Sidenote: _Opponents of the doctrine of the three faculties. Krug._]
Krugs confutation is wrongly combated by Hamilton and discredited by
Brentano, for it proceeds with perfect correctness, and is founded on
the correct philosophical principle that' there are no other activities
of the spirit conceivable, save those directed either inwardly or
outwardly (immanent or theoretical and transcendent or practical),
and that therefore there is no place for feeling, which would be a
mixture of the two activities, and consequently a failure of direction
or inactivity, nothing, therefore, but a poor, rudimentary knowing or
willing, that is, a psychological class, not a philosophical category.
[Sidenote: _Brentano._]
Brentano, returning in a measure to Descartes, constructs the
doctrine of the three faculties in a different way, determining them
as representation (to which he makes art and the æsthetic activity
correspond), judgment (to which corresponds science), and love and
hate (to which corresponds the practical). Feeling, therefore, does
not find a place of its own in the psyche, and that which is wont to
be called feeling is either representation, or love and hate. Brentano
shows himself inferior to Krug in the philosophical demonstration of
the inconceivability of this form of the spirit, but he has the merit
of having substituted certain positive elements for the indeterminate
word "feeling," although the function exercised by feeling in the
development of philosophical thought is more important than Brentano
succeeds in perceiving, for among other things he ignores and fails
to recognize the relation of the concept of feeling to the demands of
speculative thought.[31]
[1] _Eutyphron,_ 10.
[2] The history of the enfranchising of Ethic from Religion has
been done with especial care by Jodl, _Gesch. d. Ethik als philos.
Wissensch._ vol. I². (Stuttgart--Berlin, 1906). For Vico, cf. my book,
_The Philosophy of G. B. Vico_ (Bari, 1911).
[3] _Phil. d. Rechts,_ § 4, Zus.; _Gesch. d. Philos._ ii. pp. 66, 169.
[4] _Eth. Nicom._ 1103.
[5] See above.
[6] _Kritik d. prakt. Vern.,_ ed. Kirchmann, pp. 7-8.
[7] _Allg. prakt. Phil.,_ ed. Hartenstein, p. 107.
[8] _Memor._ iv., c. 2, §§ 14-16. Schopenhauer also exhaustively,
_Gründl. d. Moral,_ in _Werke,_ ed. Grisebach, iii. pp. 603-607.
[9] _Metaphys. d. Sitten,_ ed. Kirchmann, p. 248.
[10] _De Finibus,_ v, c. 23.
[11] _System der Sittenlehre,_ § 29, in _Werke,_ iv. 346-347.
[12] _Gründl. d. Moral,_ ed., cit., iii. pp. 506-508.
[13] _Allg. prakt. Philos.,_ ed. Hartenstein, pp. 29-30.
[14] _Metaphys. d. Sitten,_ pp. 247-248.
[15] _Op. cit._ p. 251.
[16] _Metaphys. d. Sitten,_ p. 255 _sqq._
[17] _System d. Sittenlehre,_ pp. 208.
[18] _Philos. d. Rechts,_ §§ 148, 150.
[19] _Werke,_ i. 323-423.
[20] In the _Entwurf e. Systems d. Sittenlehre_ (in _Werke,_ sec. iii.
vol. v.), and cf. the collected writings in _Werke,_ iii. I.
[21] For example, F. Paulsen, _System der Ethik,_ Leipzig, 1906.
[22] _Médit._ iv.; and _Réponses aux 3mes et aux 3mes object_.
[23] Epist. in _Opera,_ ed. Gfrörer, p. 523.
[24] Cf., among other places, _Logica,_ §§ p. 278 _sq.; Fil. d.
diritto_ (Napoli, 1844), I. p. 50.
[25] _Monologen,_ in _Werke,_ i. 363.
[26] Cf. Jodl, _Gesch. d. Eth._ ii. pp. 131-132.
[27] _Estetica_ 4, p. 222.
[28] _Allg. pract. Phil._ pp. 9-22.
[29] _Woldemar_(1779, 1794-95), in _Werke,_ v. p. 78.
[30] _Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft,_ Berlin, 1892-93.
[31] For the doctrine of feeling see, chiefly, Volkmann, _Lehrb. d.
Psychol._ (Cothen, 1885), ii. pp. 301-311; F. Brentano, _Psychol._
(Leipzig, 1874), 1., ii. c. 5; cf. _Ursprung sitt. Erkennt._ (Leipzig,
1889) pp. 51-55; A. Palme, _Sulzer's Psychol, u. d. Anfänge d.
Dreivermögenslehre_ (Berlin, 1905). Cf. also Croce, _Estetica,_ pp.
226-228, 4th ed.
SECOND SECTION
THE PRACTICAL ACTIVITY IN ITS DIALECTIC
I
NECESSITY AND LIBERTY OF THE VOLITIONAL ACT
The relations of the practical form with the other forms of the spirit
having been examined, it is now necessary to re-enter, so to speak, the
interior of the volitional activity, and enclose ourselves within it,
that we may study its mode of development, its rhythm, its dialectic.
We shall no longer ask, therefore, whether the practical activity
precede or follow knowledge, or exactly what knowledge it follows and
what it precedes, what the volition is in relation to events, what the
practical concept or judgment, and the like. But we shall ask what are
good and evil, the passions and the forces that dominate them, desires
and aspirations; and in the first place (this being the problem that
opens the series and gives the key for the solution of the others) what
are the _freedom and necessity_ of the volitional act.
[Sidenote: _The problem of freedom._]
This problem of freedom and necessity (that is to say, whether the will
be free or determined) has seemed to be and is, from a certain point of
view, most weighty and complicated, and we shall soon see why this is
so. But at this point, owing to the premises that we have already laid
down in our preceding treatises, and also in the part of the present
treatise that has already been developed, it will be convenient to
solve it with relative expedition.
[Sidenote: _Freedom of willing and freedom of action: criticism of such
distinction._]
First of all, we have been able to eliminate the distinction that is
wont to be made between freedom of willing and freedom of action,
with the duplicity of the problem thus entailed. Indeed we know that
volition and action coincide, and that it is impossible to conceive
either a volition which is not at the same time action, or an action
which is not at the same time volition, and that in consequence there
cannot be freedom of willing on the one hand and freedom of action
on the other. All the instances of the one that are brought forward
can be reduced to the other, provided that the word "freedom" be not
used in an improper and metaphorical manner. For example, a paralytic
(they say) wills to get up and run; his spirit is free, but his
action is restrained; he has freedom of willing, but not of action.
But in reality the paralytic does not seriously will to get up and
run; that is, he does not really will anything at all. Were he really
and seriously to will, that might happen to him which happened to a
paralytic gentleman in the Neapolitan revolt of 1547. This gentleman
had himself carried into the square on the arms of his servants, but he
was found, after the tumult, to the great astonishment of all, on the
top of the campanile of San Lorenzo, whither he had climbed with his
own legs; such had been his terror and such his will to be saved.[1]
As a rule, on the other hand, the paralytic does not will, because he
knows that he cannot; at the most, he _would wish_ or desire to find
himself in different conditions to those in which he finds himself, in
order that he may be able to will otherwise than he does now, which is
to remain quiet. This confirms the identity of volition and action,
and proves that the two supposed freedoms are one only. Thus, he who
is threatened and yields to the threat declares that he is deprived of
freedom of action, but that this is not exact is already affirmed in
the formula: _coacti tamen volunt._ Enforced actions not only do not
exist, but are not even conceivable. The demand for greater freedom of
action, such as new political liberties, is nothing but the demand for
certain _new conditions of fact_ for future volitions and actions. But
it is a question of more or less, since, as we know, no countenance of
imminent tyrant can extinguish the freedom of the soul; no ruler, be he
ever so strong and violent, can prevent a rebellion, or, when all else
fails, a fine death that affirms externally the freedom within. "The
will that wills not cannot be subdued."[2]
[Sidenote: _The volitional act: both free and necessary._]
The question that we have here to treat is, then, single, and concerns
only the will, which, as such, includes in itself action. In replying,
however, we cannot accept the dilemma, that the volitional act must
be free or determined, and cling to one of the two horns: we must on
the contrary deny the form of the question itself and say that the
volitional act is _at once free and determined._
Volition, in fact, as has been seen, does not arise in the void, but
in a definite situation, in unchangeable historical conditions, in
relation to an event, which, if it be, is necessary. The volition
corresponds to that situation and it is impossible to separate it: when
the situation changes, the volition changes; as the situation, so the
volition. This amounts to saying, that it is _necessitated_ or always
conditioned by a situation, and precisely by that situation in which it
arises.