utilitarianism has had a false and fruitless beginning, owing to this
fiction of disinterested actions. In the belief of conquering and more
than conquering, it has been attempted to show that man accomplishes
some actions without any personal interest, whereas on the contrary
an easy victory has in this way been prepared for the adversary.
Utilitarianism, in fact, has always been able triumphantly to make
the counter-demonstration that there is no action, be it as lofty as
you will, that does not answer to a personal end. It is evident that
the hero has his personal interest in the _pro patria mori,_ just as
the saint, who wishes to direct his soul toward humility, finds his
own account in allowing himself to be abused, beaten and splashed
with mud ("in this is perfect joy," said Francesco of Assisi to Frate
Leone). Correct polemic should not enter upon the useless task of
denying this evidence; it should on the contrary admit, as was admitted
above, that there is no action which does not answer to an individual
desire, since it is the individual that performs it, and the universal
is always obliged to avail itself of individuals. But when this point
has been conceded and admitted, it will prove, as was proved above,
that the useful action can either remain merely personal or progress
to the action that is universal-personal, ethical-useful. And the
ethical-useful action itself is precisely the new spiritual category
that the utilitarian does not see.
[Sidenote: _Actions morally indifferent, obligatory, supererogatory,
etc. Critique._]
A second erroneous but unavoidable consequence of the conception of
useful and moral as coordinated concepts is that while, according to
that theory, there can be ethical actions economically disinterested
or indifferent, so there can be actions that are useful and _morally
indifferent._ The indifferent would not be those that are merely
economic, and, therefore, neither moral nor immoral, which we have
recognized as the necessary precedent of moral actions, reappearing
always when a return is made to the state of innocence, or as soon
as the moral conscience is abolished or suspended. They would on the
contrary be economic actions that should persist as such, that is, as
ingenuous and amoral, when the moral consciousness is already kindled,
and consequently in the very circle of such a conscientiousness.
They are altogether inadmissible when thus conceived, and to have
admitted them is equivalent to annulling morality, as the recognition
of the right of subjects to rebel at their pleasure would be to annul
sovereignty, or a burlesque contract containing the clause that each
party should be free not to observe the other clauses agreed upon, at
his pleasure. Indifferent actions do not exist, either for economy
or for morality, and those to which such a character is generally
attributed are, as we know, indifferentiated, not indifferent, and
always differentiable when more closely examined. Only he who places
the useful and the moral, side by side with one another, separate
and impenetrable, is of necessity led to conceive of useful actions
morally indifferent, and as such _licit or permissible._ Hence it
also happens that moral actions also seem to be _obligatory_ compared
with the first; and that, in order to obtain equilibrium at the other
extremity, ultramoral or more than moral actions, called _meritorious
or supererogatory,_ are placed side by side with obligatory actions
that hold the mean. But morality does not grant leave _not to do,_ nor
prizes for _doing more than was required_; it simply imposes _doing,_
doing always what is morally good, always realizing the universal, in
ordinary as in extraordinary life, on the occasions that occur every
day, every hour, every minute, as in those that occur every year, every
ten years, every century. Nothing is indifferent to economy in its
sphere and nothing to morality in its sphere: in it, economic actions
with their premoral character do not persist, but only moral actions
subsist. Economicity is certainly the concrete form of morality; but it
is never an element that possesses a value of its own in the moral life.
[Sidenote: _Comparison with the relation of art and philosophy._]
A comparison with the theoretic activity will serve to make clearer
this criticism of the _licit_ or morally indifferent. Artistic
intuitions or expressions are neither true nor false philosophically,
so much so that Philosophy, if it wish to exist, must also become
concrete itself, as living speech, æsthetic form, intuition-expression,
and place itself as an intuition among intuitions, though it be
an intuition _portans mysteria,_ that is, enclosing in itself the
universal. But the appearance of philosophy reacts upon the pure
intuitions, or upon the poetic representation of the world, in which
existent and inexistent were indistinct; and the world of intuition
transforms itself into the world of perceptions, in which those that
once were poetic intuitions, are now all of them critical or reflective
images penetrated by the concepts, divided into images of existence
and images of possibility. In the world of perception or of history,
no poetical element can subsist as such; what was a bewitching truth
in the field of art, were it introduced into history, would give rise
to disharmony and become changed into a repugnant lie, as we see is
actually the case in history mingled with inventions and fables.
History too assumes artistic form; but it cannot tolerate in its bosom
art as an element standing alone. Utilitarian or economic volitions and
the moral-economic volitions (universal and historical perceptions
or representations of the practical) proceed in a manner perfectly
analogous (intuitions of the practical). Moral indifference belongs
to the first, when they are on this side of the moral conscience,
but within this conscience they lose the right to innocence, as in
history the pure intuitions, when they have become perceptions, lose
the privilege that they possessed as pure intuitions. The ethical
discrimination of the economic volitions, which takes place through the
moral conscience, is then in full correspondence with the historical
discrimination of the æsthetic intuitions, which takes place through
the logical conscience.
[Sidenote: _Other erroneous conceptions of modes of action._]
We owe to the false conception by coordination, not only the two
monstrous little concepts of _disinterested actions_ and of those that
are morally _indifferent, licit, or permissive,_ but others also, which
have been deduced by means of a somewhat different casuistic from the
same general hypothesis. Indeed, in the preceding case, useful and
moral, posited as apart and parallel, were maintained one extraneous
to the other and at peace between themselves. But nothing forbade that
warlike plans should be attributed to those two entities, just as when
two coordinate animal species are posited, we may suppose, either
that the individuals of each one mind their own affairs and allow
the individuals of the other species to live and to prosper in peace,
or that the one takes to persecuting the other, sometimes injuring
or destroying it and sometimes being by it injured or destroyed.
Thus were and are obtained concepts of _moral anti-economic_ actions
and of _anti-economic moral_ actions, of _immoral economic_ actions,
and of _economic immoral_ actions, four concepts which are all four
to be rejected. Moral action can never be accomplished at a loss:
morality is for the moral man the supreme advantage in the situation
in which he finds himself, and it would be erroneous to measure it
by comparison with what an individual without morality would do in
the same situation, for, as we know, individual and situation are
all one, in such a way that a like comparison is impossible. In a
similar manner, an anti-economic action can never be moral; at the
most it will not even be amoral, or will not even posit the primary
and generic condition of morality, that is, it will not be action,
but inert contemplation. An immoral action can never be economic,
because immorality implies internal disagreement and strife between
one volition directed to the universal and another directed to the
merely individual, hence the result will be practical inconclusion
and infecundity, dissatisfaction and remorse; that is to say, just
the opposite of utility and economicity. In like manner, an economic
action can never be immoral: at the most (when it is merely an economic
action), it will be amoral.
[Sidenote: Pleasure and the economic activity, happiness and virtue.]
The bond of unity and distinction that exists between the concepts of
the useful and the moral and the consequent negation of the formula of
coordination, help to solve in a definite way the intricate questions
relating to _pleasure and morality, happiness and virtue._
[Sidenote: _Pleasure, pain and feeling._]
First of all, we can here give yet another meaning to the indeterminate
category of _feeling_ with its poles of pleasure and pain, for it is
clear that when feeling was distinguished from moral activity and set
at variance with it, we had in view nothing but the pure economic
activity. And in truth, of all the tendencies included in that concept
as sketched out, this of economicity seems on the whole to prevail
over the others, so much so that we shall henceforth be disposed to
give to the word "feeling" the name of economic activity. Thus it
was reasonably maintained, with implied reference to this meaning,
that pleasure and pain are _proper_ to feeling and _extraneous_ to
the other spiritual forms, and that they only act in the others as
_concomitants._ For if the theoretical forms give rise to the dialectic
of true and false, in so far as the practical spirit can be introduced
into them, it is clear that pleasure and pain come to those forms from
the practical spirit, with which the theoretic spirit is always in
unity. In the practical spirit too, the moral activity divides into
pleasure and pain, in so far as it has concrete or economic form; and
therefore in so far as it is economic, not in so far as it is moral.
Pleasure and pain belong to feeling alone, because they belong to the
economic activity alone, which is the practical in its general form,
involving of itself all the other forms, practical and theoretic.
[Sidenote: _Coincidence of duty with pleasure._]
When this has been established, pleasure or economic feeling or
economic activity as positive cannot be at strife with duty or with
the moral activity in its positivity, for the two terms coincide.
The divergence existed only when they were conceived, not in unity
and distinction, but in coordination. When we speak of a good action
accompanied with pain, we make an inexact statement, or better, we make
use of a mode of expression that must be understood, not literally,
but in its spirit. The good action, as such, always brings with it
satisfaction and pleasure, and the pain said to accompany it, either
shows that the action is not yet altogether good, because it has not
been willed with complete internal accord, or that a new practical
problem, still unsolved and therefore painful, lies beyond the
pleasurable moral action.
[Sidenote: _Critique of rigorism or asceticism._]
The other false idea, of _rigoristic or ascetic_ Ethic, which makes war
upon pleasure as such, derives from the plan of coordination, through
the already mentioned casuistic of the conflict between the coordinated
terms. Indeed, if it be legitimate to combat this or that pleasure,
which enters into a contest with the moral act, it is not possible to
abolish the category of pleasure, for the reason already given, that
in this way the category itself of morality, which has its reality and
concreteness in pleasure (in economicity), would be abolished: the
concrete and real moral act is also pleasurable. The attempt to abolish
pleasure is as insane as would be the wish to speak without words or
any other form of expression, preserving thought pure of such sensual
contacts, that is to say, producing an inexpressed and inexpressible
thought. This last attempt has been made by _mysticism,_ which either
does not give thoughts at all, or, contradicting itself, gives them
expressed and logical, like those of all other doctrines. Asceticism
provides a complete counterpart to this in the practical field, for it
might be called _mysticism of the practical_ in the same way as the
name of _asceticism of the theoretical_ would not be unsuitable to
mysticism.
[Sidenote: _Relation of happiness and virtue._]
What has been said of the relation between pleasure and morality, is
to be repeated of the other between happiness and virtue, a relation
that is identical with the preceding, from which it diners only because
expressed by means of empirical concepts of class. Happiness is not
virtue, as pleasure is not morality, because there exist the pleasure
of the innocent or of the mentally deficient, and the happiness of the
child or the brute, who are without moral conscience. But virtue is
always happiness, as morality is always pleasure. It will be said that
a virtuous man may be unhappy, because he suffers atrocious physical
pain or is in financial difficulties, and, therefore, that virtue and
happiness do not coincide. But this is a vulgar sophism, because the
virtuous man, who should be also happy, must be truly and altogether
virtuous; that is to say, he must cure and conquer the ills of the body
and of fortune with his energy, if he can, or, if it be impossible
to conquer them, he must resign himself and take them into account
and develop his own activity within the limits that they lay down.
Every individual, not only the unfortunate individual of the example,
has his limits; and everyone can transform his limits into pains by
being dissatisfied with them, just as every one can, with resignation,
transform his pains into limits and conditions of activity. It will be
said that sometimes the evils that assail the virtuous man are not only
incurable, but so intolerable as to render all resignation impossible.
But he who does not effectively and absolutely resign himself, that is,
does not accommodate himself to life, dies; and the occurrence of the
death of the individual is neither happiness nor unhappiness: it is a
fact or event.
[Sidenote: _Critique of the subordination of pleasure to morality._]
Finally, the theory that _subordinates_ pleasure or happiness, utility
or economy, to duty, to virtue, to moral activity, is to be rejected.
The subordination of the one term to the other is not possible on this
side of morality, because only one of the two terms is present; and
in like manner it is impossible in the moral circle, because, though
the terms are certainly two, they are two in one, not one above and
the other below; that is to say, they are distinct terms that become
unified. Morality has complete empire over life, and there is not an
act of life, be it as small as you will, that morality does not or
ought not to regulate. But morality has no _absolute empire over the
forms or categories of the spirit,_ and as it cannot destroy or modify
itself, so it cannot destroy or modify the other spiritual forms, which
are its necessary support and presupposition.
[Sidenote: _No empire of morality over the forms of the spirit._]
Hence is apparent the remarkable fatuity of those who pretend to
regulate morally the _function_ of art, of science, or of economy and
profess _moralistic_ theories of art and philosophy and a _moralized_
economic science. The poet, the man of science, the business man, must
be as honest as others, but it is not given to them to tear in pieces
the nature of poetry, of science and of industry, in the madness of
honesty. Indeed, were this done or attempted, and the poet were to
introduce extraneous elements into his work of art, through his failure
to understand morality, or the philosopher to veil or alter the purity
of truth, or the man of business foolishly to bring his own business
to ruin, then and only then, would they be dishonest. To substitute
the _single acts_ of life that appertain to morality, for _the
universal forms of the spirit,_ and to predicate of these what should
be predicated only of those, is so evident an absurdity that it could
not be committed by anyone accustomed to philosophical distinctions.
But what nonsense is so evident that idle babblers and elegant men of
letters do not know how to cover with their ratiocinative and æsthetic
flowers and to present to society or to the academic world as truth, or
at least as a theory worthy of reflection and discussion?
[Sidenote: _Inexistence of other practical forms and impossibility of
subdivision of the two established._]
Such, then, are the two forms of the practical activity, and such their
relation; and as it is not possible to reduce them to one alone, so
it is not possible to multiply them beyond the two, which altogether
exhaust the nexus of finite and infinite. Hence, too, we perceive that
the economic and also the ethic-economic activity do not each of them
give rise to new subdivisions, because other terms of subdivision are
not conceivable beyond the duality of finite and infinite. As there
are no philosophical and ethical classes, nor categories of expression
(rhetoric), nor categories of concepts (formalistic logic), so there
are no economic categories and ethical categories beyond those that
constitute utility (volition of the individual) and morality (volition
of the universal).
V
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ECONOMY AND THE SO-CALLED SCIENCE OF ECONOMY
[Sidenote: _Problem of the relations between Philosophy and Science of
Economy._]
Internal observation, confirming at all points rational necessity,
has rendered clear the existence of a special form of practical
activity, the utilitarian or economic, and of a correlative Economic
or Philosophy of economy. But however irrefutable may seem the
demonstration that we have given, yet it will never be altogether
satisfactory, while a very important point is left obscure: the
relation between our _Philosophy of economy_ and the _Science of
economy._
This is a system of doctrine that takes various names and forms, and
is presented in turn as political, national, pure, or mathematical
Economy; it is a system of doctrines which, although not without
precedents in antiquity, has been gradually formed, especially in
recent centuries, and is now in fullest flower. A saying of Hegel is
often recorded, not without satisfaction, for even in his time he
praised Economy as "a science that does much honour to thought, because
it extracts the laws from a mass of accidentally."[1]
Has it the same object as our Philosophy of economy? If the reply be
in the affirmative, how does it ever arrive at concepts altogether
different? Or is it an empirical science, and if so, from what source
does it derive the rigour and absoluteness by which it is removed
from all empiricism and formulates truths of universal character? Two
strict sciences with the same object are inconceivable; and yet as
it seems, there must here be precisely two: hence the perplexity and
disorientation that the affirmation of a Philosophy of economy must and
does produce.
[Sidenote: _Unreality of the laws and concepts of economic science._]
If the economic actions of man be considered, in their uncontaminated
and undiminished reality, with an eye free from all prejudice, it
is never possible to establish even a _single one_ of the concepts
and laws of economic science. Every individual is different at every
moment of his life: he wills always in a new and different way, not
comparable with the other modes of his or of others' willing. If A
spent seven soldi to buy a loaf of bread yesterday, and to-day he
spend the same amount in making the same purchase, the seven soldi of
to-day are not for this reason those of yesterday, nor is the bread
the same as that of yesterday, nor the want that A satisfies to-day
the same as that of yesterday, nor is the effort that his action
costs him identical with that of yesterday. If the individual B also
spend seven soldi for a loaf of bread, the action of B is different
from that of A, as that of the A of to-day was different from that
of yesterday. If we lead the economist on to this ground of reality
(or rather to the side of this Heraclitean river, in which it is not
possible to dip the same hands twice in the same water), he will feel
himself impotent, for he will not find any point of support for the
edification of any of his theories.--The value of a piece of goods
(says a theorem of Economy) depends upon the quantity of it and of all
the other goods that are upon the market.--But what does "goods" mean?
Bread, for example, or wine? In reality, abstract bread and wine do
not exist, but a given piece of bread, a given glass of wine, with a
given individual who will give a treasure or nothing in order to eat
the one or to drink the other, according to the conditions in which he
finds himself.--Any sort of enjoyment, when protracted, decreases and
finally becomes extinguished.--That is the law of Gossen, one of the
foundation--stones of economic theory. But what are these enjoyments
that are protracted, decrease, and end by becoming extinguished? In
reality there exist only actions, which assume different positions
at every moment, owing to the continual changing of surrounding
reality, in which the volitional individual operates. The difference
is qualitative, not quantitative: if the individual A eat the bread
that he has bought for seven soldi, when swallowing the second or the
tenth or the last mouthful, he has a pleasure, not inferior to that
which he had when swallowing the first, but different: the last was
not less necessary for him, in its way, than the first; otherwise he
would have remained unsatisfied in his normal want, in his habit, or in
his caprice.--The economic man seeks the maximum of satisfaction with
the least effort.--That is the very principle of Economy, but neither
does this principle correspond with reality, most simple and general
though it be. The individual A disputes for an-hour, in order to save
two soldi in the purchase of an object, for which he has been asked
ten lire, thus attaining the maximum satisfaction for himself with the
least means that is naturally at his disposal on that occasion. The
individual B, making boast of his magnificence, lights his cigarette
with a banknote of a hundred lire, thus likewise attaining for himself
the greatest satisfaction to which he aspired, with the least means
that he possessed, namely, by burning that paper money. But if this
be so, we have here a question, not of greatest and least, but of
individual ends and of relative means adopted, or (owing to the unity
of means and ends already noted), of actions individually different.
[Sidenote: _Economic Science founded upon empirical concepts, but not
empirical or descriptive._]