of the puerility of such identifications to the recognition of
a distinct ethical form, if purpose and prejudice had not made
resistance, prompting, on the contrary, the search for new expedients
for setting themselves free in theory from the tedious and recurring
phantom of morality. On this occasion also these expedients must have
been just two: that is, to declare morality or concept _extraneous_
to the practical, or intrinsic to it indeed, but _contrary._ The
first was attempted, but feebly, when morality was spoken of as the
fantasticality of poets, as the dream or rosy illusion caressed in
life. No attention was paid to the fact that what the poet imagines
cannot be contradictory and absurd, but must indeed be founded in the
reality of life and in the nature of things; and that morality is
not the æsthetic form in which it is reproduced and represented, but
practical form or action. But the unmaintainability of this attempt
was too evident for its success. The other expedient, on the contrary,
has always had and still has great success. This turns morality into
a practical contradictory concept, that is, into something certainly
practical, but without motive, incoherent, and in contradiction to the
healthy development of the practical. It is true that it is usually
enunciated in very different words from those used by us. They speak
as follows: What is called a good and virtuous action is nothing but
the product of the association between certain acts that are for us
the means to a pleasure, and that pleasure itself; so that gradually,
even where the primitive pleasure is absent, those acts are sought
and repeated for themselves, as though in themselves pleasurable.
The savage fought against the enemies who assailed his tribe, that
he might not be made a slave or sacrificed to the idol of another
tribe, that is to say, in order to defend his personal liberty or his
life; but later on, man, forgetting that the tribe or the city or the
State were simple means for protecting life and goods, defends them
for themselves and allows himself to be despoiled and slain for his
country. In the same way (to employ the classical example), money
is first sought as a means to enjoyment, and to form a supply for
procuring a life more comfortable and secure; but by degrees he who
amasses money turns in his soul the means into the end, and becomes
avaricious, that is, he finds delight in the mere possession of money,
and sacrifices for that all his other joys, even an easy life, food,
house and sleep, which he originally intended that money should obtain
for him. Morality arises entirely from a similar process of association
between means and end, and the case of the miser explains by analogy
every act of virtue that cannot be directly reduced to simple pleasure
and individual utility.
[Sidenote: _Associationism and evolutionism. Critique._]
Now the association here discussed is neither that of logic nor
of æsthetic, nor valid association, synthesis, but irrational and
fallacious association. It is only possible to exchange means for end
as the result of a bad association of ideas: therefore that association
is folly and stupidity, as the miser adduced as an example is stupid
and foolish, being called "miser" precisely for this reason, with the
intention of blaming him (for this word does not mean "economic" or
"provident"). And behold! morality should be defined as that which
is practically irrational, foolish, stupid, the product of illusion
and confusion, or the _contrary_ of the practical activity, which is
clear-sightedness, rationality, wisdom. Thus defined, it is at the
same time annulled. Indeed, irrationality is that which is condemned
to be perpetually subjected to the rational; and what is called the
moral man, if he were nothing but a false associator of ideas, would be
constantly confuted by the man of good sense, by the utilitarian, who
would prevent him from committing the stupidity of sacrificing himself
for his children, for his country, or for knowledge; or, were he to
persist, would cover him with contempt and ridicule. The fear that to
discover its origin would be tantamount to abolishing morality would
therefore be perfectly justified in this new sense also; or better,
it would not be a question of a fear, but of a fact: morality would
be in a state of progressive annulment, as the effect of increasing
instruction, both in the individual and in society. It has been replied
that neither this fear nor this fact arises, because that false
association is _indissoluble,_ being a product of _heredity,_ or, to
speak of it in proper terms, it is hereditary stupidity (evolutionistic
utilitarianism). But whether inherited or acquired, it is so dissoluble
as to be dissolved in the theory proposed: _lux facta est,_ and no
one succeeds in obscuring it any longer. If, notwithstanding that
pretended light, morality be not dissipated, if recourse be had to the
miserable subterfuge of insuperable heredity (which is surpassed at
the very moment in which its origin is made clear), this means to say
that, for the moralist himself, morality is not the irrational, but
something very rational. He does not succeed in identifying it with the
merely individually useful, but neither can he reject it as the pure
and simple negative of this. And since he does not wish to abandon the
utilitaristic hypothesis, there is no other path open to him but that
of recourse to _mystery._
[Sidenote: _A desperate attempt: theological utilitarianism and
mystery._]
This is precisely what happens in the last form of utilitarianism,
which has seemed to be capricious and extravagant, but is on the
contrary profoundly auto-critical, since it reveals the ultimate
essence and defect of the doctrine: what is known as _theological
utilitarianism._ Human actions are always inspired by what is merely
useful to the individual, and if a number of these seems to diverge
from this criterion, this happens because account is not taken of
an actual fact, by means of which even the actions which seem to be
divergent are reduced to the common measure. This given fact is the
life beyond this world, in which God rewards or punishes him who has
obeyed or disobeyed his will, in the life of this world. He who in this
life seems to resist the impulse of his personal advantage and performs
sacrifices of every sort, even to that of his own life, follows equally
with the others his personal advantage; and believing in God, in the
immortality of the soul, and in the reward and the punishment that
await him, he regulates his action according to these actual facts.
_Intuitionistic_ Ethic, which places a moral duty at the side of
individual pleasure, but indeducible from it, is in reality deduced
from individual pleasure, and is likewise turned into _rational_ or
utilitarian Ethic by means of the transcendental datum. In this way the
solution makes shipwreck in mystery; since God, immortality, the other
life, the divine command, punishments and rewards, cannot be defined
and justified by means of thought and concept. When utilitarianism
becomes theological, it abandons the philosophical field, confessing by
so doing its philosophical defeat. And to philosophical consideration
the distinction between the individually useful and that which is
also superindividual shines out ever more clearly after the many vain
attacks of utilitarianism, the affirmation of the moral form, as united
and distinct from the utilitarian; the _autonomy_ of Ethic against
every form of _utilitarianism_ and every _heteronomous Ethic._
III
CRITIQUE OF THE NEGATIONS OF THE ECONOMIC FORM
[Sidenote: _The thesis of moral abstracticism against the concept of
the useful._]
If in the course of philosophical history, the theory of utility has
sought to cause the disappearance of the other practical term, which
is morality, by swallowing it up, we are not to believe that morality
has been for its part more modest and discreet and has not in its
turn attempted to devour its companion. One exaggeration has been met
with another; to utilitarianism has been opposed that error which may
be called _moral abstracticism,_ by means of which is refused to the
concept of utility the place that belongs to it in the organism of the
spirit.
Such a refusal (analogous to our analysis of the utilitarian theory)
cannot take place, save in three ways: that is, in so far as value is
denied to the useful, either as _practical_ concept, or as _positive_
concept, or as _philosophical_ concept. Here too we naturally
do not take count of the theses of the materialists or of the
intellectualists, which (especially those of the former) have raged in
the field of Economy not less than in that of Ethic, giving rise to
insane attempts to explain the useful on mechanical principles, or with
the contingencies of historical evolution.
[Sidenote: _The useful as the means or as theoretical fact._]
The useful (it has been said) is nothing but the _means_ to obtain a
certain end. For example, if I take a walk every day with a view to
keeping myself in good health, the daily walk is the suitable means and
is therefore useful; if, on the contrary, I find that it makes me ill,
this means that it is not the suitable means and it would be, and I
should declare it to be, useless or harmful. Now by the demonstration
given above, it is known that means and end are indistinguishable in
the _practical,_ for what is called means is nothing but the actual
situation (and the knowledge of it), from which arises the practical
act, and to which that act corresponds. Thus it is most possible to
separate the means from the end; but in so doing, the consideration of
the practical act is abandoned, and we pass to that of its theoretical
antecedent; and if the mere theoretical antecedent be called "useful"
or "practical" in ordinary speech (remembering the practical act,
to which it has been or it is presumed that it may be united) then a
metaphor is employed, against which there is nothing to be said. Those,
then, who define the useful as the means should once for all realize
that with such a definition they remove that concept from the circle
of the Philosophy of the practical and transport it into Logic, where
the relation of means and end is the very same as that of cause and
effect, and it again becomes part of the theory of empirical concepts,
in which cause and effect are wont to be posited as terms separately
conceivable. This has been more or less consciously recognized, when
the useful has been defined as the _technical,_ for we know that the
technical is nothing but knowledge thus made into a metaphor, owing to
the relation that it has or is presumed to be capable of having, with
an action that has been done or is about to be done.
[Sidenote: _Technical and hypothetical imperatives._]
The theoretical character of the technical has, on the contrary,
been obscured, when technical knowledge has received the name
of _hypothetical imperatives,_ distinct and ranged beside the
_categorical._ The imperative is will, and is therefore always both
categoric and imperative: _a_ is willed (categorically), but _a_ would
not be willed if the condition of fact and situation _b_ did not exist
(hypothetically). The merely hypothetical imperative is the knowledge,
that remains when abstraction is made of the practical act or of the
will; and is no longer an imperative, but a theoretic affirmation.
Where effective will is not, imperatives cannot be talked of.
[Sidenote: _Critique: the useful is a practical fact._]
Having made clear that the definition of the useful as _means_ implies
the negation of the useful as a practical fact and its reduction to a
theoretical category already known, we must exclude the possibility
of such a reduction, for in the useful, the practical character, the
effectivity of the will, is ineliminable. "It is useful for me to take
a walk" means, "It pleases me to take a walk," "I will to do it." It
is a question, not of contemplation or of reasoning, but of volitional
movement. The knowledge that precedes the utilitarian act is one thing,
the act itself is another. The old man has the same knowledge as the
young man, he has indeed much more (_si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse
pouvait!_), but he does not will what the young man wills: he knows
that by traversing so many kilometers he will arrive at a certain
definite point; but it is not useful for him to go there, because it is
not useful for him to traverse those kilometers, or to submit to that
exertion at the risk of an illness. The utilitarian will is expressed,
not in merely hypothetical imperatives, but in those categoric
imperatives that are at the same time hypothetical. The general formula
is "will!" or "will that you will!" or "be coherent in your willing!"
as the individuated forms are those that we are continually repeating
to ourselves, "now, to bed!" "now, up you get!" and the like; which,
when developed, mean: "go to bed" (if you wish to rest yourself), "get
up" (if you wish to work), and so on. The distinction between the
cognoscitive and the volitional theses is here evident.
[Sidenote: _The useful as the egoistic or immoral._]
Since then, owing to the unalterably practical character of the
utilitarian fact, it was not possible to insist upon its reduction to
the technical, and since, on the other hand, it was not desired to
recognize it as a practical category side by side with the practical
category of morality, they have tried to think of it as something
certainly practical, but at the same time of little value, to beware
of it, to combat it, to free ourselves from it. "Useful" has in this
way become synonymous with wilfulness, with individual caprice, with
will more or less perverted, and (looking upon immorality as the
individual I, shut up in itself and rebelling against the universal)
with _egoism._ This theory is supported by certain common modes of
speech, in which the moral man is opposed to the man intent upon what
is useful to him as an individual, the ethical to the economic life.
But it is a question of phrases, true,' perhaps, in a certain sense,
but inexact when understood or interpreted as affirmations of a contest
between morality and utility.
[Sidenote: _Critique: the useful is amoral._]
We discover at once that the contest is inexistent, by merely thinking
of the case already mentioned, of the man in whom the moral conscience
is not developed or has been suppressed, or of the case--limit
called _innocence._ What is done in innocence responds, no doubt, to
individual pleasure, and so to what is useful for the individual, as
he feels it in the given circumstances: were this not so, what is done
would not be done. But innocence is not immoral on this account. It
will be _amoral,_ because it is merely individual volition deprived
of the light of the eternal; it will never be _immoral._ Thus (to
make use of the comparison and analogy of the theoretic activity) the
images that the poet creates will be without philosophy, but will not
for this reason be anti-philosophical. Because, were that so, they
would have to be partially philosophical, that is to say, to enter into
strife with philosophy; but there is no such strife, and, therefore,
those images, although philosophically not true, are none the less not
philosophically false. Yet they are theoretical acts, in the same way
that philosophy is a theoretical act. The philosophical innocence of
the poet does not change his intuitive knowledge into bad philosophical
knowledge, into a negative of philosophy.--Further, the useful not
only is not the negative of morality, but, as we know, is also a fact
that unites itself very well with morality, as the word is joined to
the thought, making it concrete and palpable, so much so that thought
without words is impossible. What honourable man would tolerate being
judged disuseful? What moral action would be truly moral, were it not
at the same time useful? The good action is good, because it is not
bad, that is, it absolutely excludes the bad at the point in which
it becomes effective; but certainly it is not so, because disuseful;
indeed, in being good, it is also useful, because it absolutely
comprehends the useful in itself at the point in which it becomes
effective. The union of morality with utility suffices to eliminate the
concept of the useful as a negative. Certainly negative and positive
do unite to give rise to becoming and to development; but their union
is that of strife, not of concord.
[Sidenote: _The useful as ethical minimum._]
The third way of eliminating the concept of the useful from Philosophy,
or from the Philosophy of the practical, is that which makes of it
a concept of ethical description, or an empirical and psychological
concept designating certain groups of very minute ethical facts, the
rudimentary ethical consciousness. Hence the illusion of the existence
of volitional acts indifferent in respect to morality. These acts are
really indifferentiated for the mind that is examining them, which
sometimes does not take the trouble to do so minutely, save when such
an examination is seriously undertaken, and then they are always
differentiated into good or bad. Thus it generally said that eating and
sleeping, playing at cards or at billiards, are things that appertain,
not to morality, but to individual utility, and that each one may
conduct himself as he wills in respect to them, whereas individual
choice is excluded when it is necessary to fulfil one's own obligations
of social work or of respecting the life of one's neighbour. But if
we observe attentively, we see that also in eating or in sleeping, in
playing cards or billiards, one acts morally or immorally, since, for
example, it is immoral to ruin one's health with eating too much,
or with sleeping too little, or to corrupt soul and intellect with
card-playing and dawdling in billiard-rooms, when one can do something
better.
[Sidenote: _Critique: the useful is premoral._]
But the useful is none of all these things; it is not the complex of
ethical micro-organisms, in which we discover with the microscope the
same facts of life and of death that we observe with the naked eye in
macro-organisms. No microscope will ever discern in it the oppositions
of moral good and evil, because these oppositions are not really there;
there are only those of utilitarian or economic good and evil. For the
useful is not the moral minimum, but the _premoral._ In this case it
is a question, not of approximative, but of rigorous difference; not
psychological, but philosophical.
[Sidenote: _A desperate attempt: the useful as inferior practical
conscience. Confirmation of the autonomy of the useful._]
Finally, it is necessary to consider the attempt to present the
utilitarian conscience as a moral conscience, _different and inferior_
to another moral conscience placed over it, not as a new mode of
eliminating the concept of the useful, by absorbing it in that of
morality, but as a confession of the autonomy of that moment of the
spirit. It would be moral, because there is no contradiction to be
found in it that can cause it to be judged immoral, and if it be so
judged, this happens because it is looked at from the point of view
of the superior conscience, or because the superior conscience is
erroneously transported into the inferior. But this has importance
precisely because it is not moral, and because the value that it is
admitted to possess, far from being morality, is spirituality; that
is to say, it constitutes a peculiar spiritual value, different from
morality. "Better a will of some sort than no will at all" is a common
saying which means that prior to morality, there is another and more
elementary spiritual demand. The distinction of the two consciences,
then, is philosophical, not one of more or less, a distinction of
degrees, but not of empirical degrees, which coincides with our
conclusion. Thus, to return to the usual comparison, the poetical
figuration is true, and can only be judged false by him who looks upon
it from a philosophical point of view, or himself falsifies it by
turning it into a bad philosopheme. But the truth of that figuration
is not philosophical, and remains purely and simply poetical truth.
It will be said that morality is implied in utilitarian volition,
because, when the individually useful is posited, the universal, which
will dominate and correct it, is promoted, in the same way as it has
been said that philosophy is implied in the æsthetic intuition,
since by positing the individual imagination is posited the claim of
the universal, which surpasses and renders it untrue. But since the
æsthetic conscience is distinguished from the philosophical, precisely
because that which in the latter is _explicit_ is only _implicit_
in the former, so, in like manner, the utilitarian conscience is
distinguished from the moral conscience, because that morality which
becomes explicit and effective in the second, is only implicit or
actually inexistent in the first. The difference between _implicit_ and
_explicit_ is another way of enunciating the distinction between the
two consciousnesses or practical forms, the autonomy of both being thus
recognized.
IV
RELATION BETWEEN THE ECONOMIC AND ETHICAL FORMS
[Sidenote: _Economic and ethic as the double degree of the practical._]
The respective distinction and autonomy of the two forms, economic and
ethic, as we have hitherto been expounding it, and as results from the
words "inferior" and "superior" just now used, is that of two degrees,
at once distinct and united, such that the first can stand without
the second, but the second cannot stand without the first. The moment
of distinction lies in that possibility of existence independent of
the first; the moment of unity is in the impossibility of independent
existence of the second. If the first were wanting, there would be
identity; if the second, there would be abstract distinction or
separation. For this reason we have insisted upon showing that there
are actions without morality, yet which are perfectly economical,
whereas moral actions that are not also perfectly useful or economical
do not exist. Morality lives in concrete, in utility, the universal
in the individual, the eternal in the contingent. Hence our reason
for reducing the theses that denied the distinction between the two
practical forms to an exclusive affirmation of the economic form, this
latter being as it were the general form, which of itself involves both
itself and the other.
[Sidenote: _Errors arising from conceiving them as coordinated._]
Even when both the practical forms, economic and ethic, utility and
morality, are admitted, the gravest errors arise from failing to
understand the connection of unity-distinction that exists between
them, conceiving them as juxtaposed or parallel, and the respective
concepts as coordinated.
[Sidenote: _Disinterested actions. Critique._]
In truth, if utility and morality were coordinate concepts, each
included as species beneath the general concept of practical activity,
the first consequence that could be drawn from this (and it has been
drawn) is that morality is conceivable without utility. This has given
rise to the absurd concept of _disinterested_ actions, that is, of
those moral actions that should hold themselves aloof from any sort
of impure contact with utility. But disinterested actions would be
foolish actions, that is to say, wilful acts, caprices, non-actions.
Every action is and must be interested; indeed, the more profoundly it
is interested, so much the better. What interest is stronger and more
personal than that which impels the man of science to the search for
truth, which is his life? Morality requires that the individual should,
in every case, make his individual interest that of the universal; and
it reproves those who engage themselves in an insoluble contradiction
between the individual interest of the universal and that which is
merely individual. But it cannot claim to suppress the interest, that
is, itself, in the same way that the volitional act dominates the
passions, but cannot eradicate them without eradicating itself. Hence,
as the volitional act triumphs over the passions as the _supreme
passion,_ so morality triumphs over interests as the _supreme interest._
[Sidenote: _Vain polemic conducted with such an assumption against
utilitarianism._]