useful were not, to tell the truth, wanting to the thought anterior
to Kant; but Kant let them all slip. Without attributing too much
suggestive power to certain classes of virtues, such as _fortitude_
or _prudence_ (virtues that are generically economic, not exclusively
moral), which had passed from the Greek into the Christian Ethic,
nor to certain acute aphorisms of psychologists and moralists (for
instance: _Il y a des héros en mal comme en bien;--Ce n'est pas
assez d'avoir des grandes qualités, il en faut avoir l'économie;--La
souveraine habilité consiste à bien connaître le prix des choses,
etc.[9]),_ a first opportunity was certainly afforded by that inferior
faculty of appetition, which the Wolffian philosophy had inherited
from the Platonic, Aristotelian, and scholastic tradition.[10] That
faculty was parallel with the inferior faculty of knowledge, which
that same philosophy had with Baumgarten attempted to develop into an
independent science, _Aesthetica,_ a development that should have led
to the thought of an analogous transformation of the corresponding
practical faculty, which might have become an _Oeconomica_ or _Ethica
inferior,_ as from Æsthetic had been made a _Gnoseologia inferior._ But
Kant also rejected Æsthetic, as science of a special theoretic form,
science of intuition or fancy, conceiving instead, on the one hand
a transcendental Æsthetic or doctrine of space and time, and on the
other, a Critique of judgment, or doctrine of finality and morality,
symbolized in nature;[11] thus he fell into other difficulties, when
he wished to establish an analogy between the other forms of the
practical reason and that of the theoretical.[12] Although he preserved
the division of the faculty of appetition into inferior and superior
(_untere und obere Begehrungsvermögen,_) he failed to realize, as we
have seen, the true philosophical concept of the _inferior._
[Sidenote: _The problem of politics and Machiavellism._]
A second opportunity was presented by the series of treatises, which,
from Machiavelli onward, had come to conceive of politics as a fact
independent of morality, elaborating in particular those precepts and
maxims of the "reason of state," of which we have already had occasion
to expose the empirical character. But however empirical they were,
those mental products gave rise to the problem of the relations between
morals and politics, that is to say, as to whether the two terms could
be considered as immediately identifiable. The thought of Machiavelli,
in particular, constituted an enigma that all attempted to interpret
in the most different ways, most by vituperating, some by defending it
with strange reasons (Spinoza was among the defenders[13]), though they
never succeeded in freeing themselves from its difficulties, for to
that end would have been necessary the understanding of the spiritual
value of the utilitarian will, even if amoral. It was only when this
difficult concept was to some extent caught sight of (by De Sanctis)
that Machiavelli appeared at once justified and criticized; but while
that concept remained obscure, the point of view of Machiavelli was
never attained and the work was condemned for reasons of a moralistic
character (Villari).[14] Kant, too, in his work on _Perpetual Peace,_
treated the problem of the relations between morality and politics,
affirming that no disagreement is possible between them, unless by
politics is meant a _doctrine_ of prudence, that is, "a theory of
maxims for the selection of the means best adapted for the objects of
individual advantage; that is, when the existence of morality is not
altogether denied."[15] Here too, he was right, when he claimed that
concrete political actions should be submitted to morality; but, on the
other hand, he did not perceive that submission and identity presuppose
a previous independence and distinction.
[Sidenote: _The doctrine of the passions._]
Finally, a third opportunity was offered, in the rehabilitation of the
passions, begun by the philosophers of the seventeenth century and
expressed, as has been said, in a notable manner by Vico. Now if the
passions in general be the volitional activity itself, considered
in its dialectic, they are also the soul turned to the particular,
the useful in respect to the universal, which is sought by morality.
This is to be seen especially in Vico and better still in Hegel, very
similar to Vico in this respect; he admirably developed this moment
of _particularity,_ which is passion, necessary for the concreteness
of the universal. As the passions for Vico are human nature itself,
which morality directs but does not destroy, and are neither good
nor bad in themselves, and _utilitates ex se neque turpes neque
honestae, sed earum inaequalitas est turpitudo, aequalitas autem
honestas_[16]--so, for Hegel, "passion is neither good nor bad in its
formal character and only expresses the fact that a subject has placed
all the living interest of his spirit, of his talent, of his character,
of his enjoyment, in a single content. Nothing great can or has been
accomplished without passion. Only a morality that is dead and too
often hypocritical can inveigh against the form of passion as such. ...
Ethicity concerns the content, which, as such, is universal, something
inactive, and has its active element in the subject: the fact that the
content is immanent in it constitutes interest, and in so far as it
dominates all the efficient subjectivity, passion."[17]
[Sidenote: _Hegel and the concept of the useful._]
The same Hegel once observed: "As for what concerns utility, morality
must not play the disdainful towards it, for every good action is
actually useful, that is to say, possesses reality and produces
something good. A good action that were not useful would not be an
action, would not possess reality. The inutility of the good in itself,
as its unreality, is its abstractness. Not only is it possible to be
conscious of utility, but we ought to be conscious of it, since it is
true that it is useful to know the good: utility does not mean anything
but that we are conscious of our own action. If this be blameworthy, it
will also be blameworthy to know the goodness of one's own action."[18]
Hegel thus discovered the function of the useful when rehabilitating
the passions, though in a fugitive manner. But Kant had not attributed
importance to the problem of the passions in Ethic, and had not
therefore been in a position to avail himself of the suggestion
contained in the doctrine of the passions.
[Sidenote: _Fichte and the elaboration of the Kantian Ethic._]
Fichte, in re-elaborating the Kantian philosophy, showed the relation
between pleasure and duty in a manner that came very near to the
truth. He gave precedence to what he called the _empirical_ over the
moral man, the former corresponding entirely to the merely utilitarian
or economic. What, asks Fichte, will be his maxim of action at this
stage? "As there is no other impulse in his consciousness save the
natural, and as this is directed only toward enjoyment and has pleasure
for its motive, that maxim cannot but be to choose what promises the
maximum of pleasure in intensity and extension; that is, the maxim
of his own happiness. This may likewise be sought in the pleasure of
others by means of the sympathetic impulses; but the ultimate scope
of his action always remains the satisfaction of those impulses and
pleasures which arise from it, and therefore, his own happiness. Man
at this stage is an intelligent animal." "But," he continues, "it is a
fault to remain here, and man must raise himself to a stage at which
he enjoys an altogether different liberty; he must be free, not only
_formaliter,_ but also _materialiter,_ that is, he must attain to the
moral stage."[19] That first stage, then, is formal freedom, and is no
longer considered a pathological condition of the spirit, or as that
merely technical knowledge of which Kant speaks. This would constitute
no small progress, if Fichte had been conscious of all the richness of
the concept of which he had caught a glimpse, and had made it fructify.
But it seems that he was not aware of this, and certainly he took no
advantage of it whatever.
[Sidenote: _The problem of the useful and of morality in the thinkers
of the nineteenth century._]
V. The inventive genius of modern Ethic is exhausted with these
thinkers. Their successors have reproduced the old situations, one
after the other. Some, while accepting the Kantian morality, wished
to temper and correct its exaggerations, which was not possible,
save by a more profound speculative vision of the relation between
pleasure and good, the useful and the moral; whereas they believed that
they could attain to it by _also_ taking account of pleasure and of
happiness, and by conceiving a doctrine of happiness or eudæmonology
side by side with Ethic, but subordinate to it (in Italy: Galluppi
and Rosmini). Schiller had already recognized in Kant's time the
unilaterality of Kant, and had made it the object of criticism and of
epigram, which, however, does not mean that he had truly and properly
corrected its errors. Others occupied themselves in various ways
with the enumeration and juxtaposition of the principles: thus, for
instance, Schopenhauer makes compassion arise beside egoism, which
then divides into benevolence and justice; and Herbart, although he
excludes the useful, because, according to him, "it refers to a point
external to itself,"[20] enumerates five practical ideas that are not
all truly moral. The affinity both of Herbart and of Schopenhauer,
with Shaftesbury, Hutcheson and English and Scottish psychologism,
is clear. The study of the practical ideas of Herbart is not without
interest as an unconscious affirmation of the necessity of the
economic principle. The first of these, indeed, _internal freedom,_
consists in being able to achieve with our own strength the model
that we propose to ourselves, and is liberty, but not yet moral
liberty. "To be able to decide _according to motives_" (says Herbart
on one occasion) "is already a sign of psychical health: to decide
_according to the best motives_ is the condition of morality."[21]
The second of the practical ideas, that of _perfection,_ is concerned
precisely with the strength of the will, taken in itself, and resembles
a combination of the Hellenic virtues of fortitude and temperance.
Here willing is considered in itself, independently of its objects,
and in this consideration there is no other difference, save their
strength, between the various Willings: the greater this is, the more
it is admired; weakness displeases and strength pleases the practical
judgment, and this even when it is unjust, iniquitous and wicked, and
notwithstanding such vices.[22] Lotze, following Herbart, determines
as requisites of actions, that they must be possible, energetic,
conscientious on the one hand, and on the other, consequent, habitual,
individual, stating that these two series of predicates apply equally
to moral and immoral actions.[23]--He does not think it worth while to
take count of the English utilitarians and post-Kantian intuitionists,
or of their French, Italian, and German imitators; because, just as the
appearance of a Hobbes, of a Hume, or of a Shaftesbury, is important
in their time, so the appearance of a Bentham or of a Spencer out of
their time is insignificant, for these latter amuse themselves with
the useful, with association and evolution (which according to them
should become the socially useful), and with the double principle of
egoism and of altruism. Stuart Mill alone can afford some interest,
when he says (with that mental inconclusiveness which has seemed to
many to be acuteness and equilibrium) that moral pleasures differ from
the sensual, not only in degree, but also in genus and in quality (_in
kind_); and that justice is a class of socially useful actions that
arouses feelings themselves also different, not only in degree, but
also in genus and in quality (_in kind_), from those caused by useful
actions. In short, the philosophy of the nineteenth century has not
only been unable to progress, but has not even been able to maintain
itself on a level with the practical doctrines of Fichte and of Hegel,
in which a glimpse was caught of the relation of first and second
practical degree, and there was a tendency to reconcile passion and
ethicity.
[Sidenote: _Extrinsic union of Ethic and of economic Science, from
antiquity to the nineteenth century._]
VI. Certainly economic science, owing to its empirico-quantitative
character, already noted, was not made to fill the void and to furnish
a more positive and exact concept of the useful. The contact between
Economy and Philosophy remained for a time extrinsic, since economic
Science appeared in treatises upon the Philosophy of the practical,
together with the other juridical and historical matter, which it was
customary to include with it. The precedent for such a union could be
found even in Aristotle's _Nichomachean Ethic,_ which supplies certain
notions as to the concept of price and value. Considerations on the
same argument abound in the Scholastics, especially in St. Thomas,
whose _Oeconomica_ always forms part of his Ethic, as the doctrine for
the government of the family. Finally, there is an ample discussion
of the subject in the treatises of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, which took the name of _natural Rights._ It happened that
the English moralists of the eighteenth century were also led to
occupy themselves with Economy and the economists with Ethic, owing
to the juxtaposition of the two concepts for didascalic reasons and
for University convenience. Thus Hutcheson developed Economy, in his
_Short Introduction to Moral Philosophy_ (1747); and the _Essays_ of
Hume are occupied with moral and economic questions; and Adam Smith
is the author, not only of _The Wealth of Nations,_ but also of _The
Theory of the Moral Feelings,_ almost two parts of a Philosophy of the
practical. The importance of economic studies had become so palpable at
that time, that toward the end of the century, Buhle was led to include
them in the history of philosophy (and we believe that he was the
first). He exposes at length in his work the ideas of Hume, of Smith,
of Stewart, attributing it as a merit to the English writers to have
reduced that material to philosophy by a method of treatment without
example (he said) in previous centuries.[24] Finally, Hegel dedicated
certain important paragraphs of his _Philosophy of Law,_ in the section
dealing with civil society,[25] to the "system of wants," or Economy.
The cult of Economy has rather increased than diminished in the
nineteenth century and the much-discussed social problem (especially
capitalism and socialism) has not been without a certain influence
upon treatises of Ethic, where, if we rarely find statements that are
strictly economic, there is always plenty of chatter about property and
production and the relations between the working and capitalistic class.
[Sidenote: _Philosophical questions arising from a more intimate
contact between the two._]
But a more intimate bond could not take place, save when attempts to
understand the material of science and to place it in the system of
the spirit were united with economic Science, properly so called. For
since that science is occupied with human actions and appears to give
advice as to conduct, in what relation can it possibly stand to Ethic,
which is also occupied with actions and also gives advice?--Such a
question was in a certain way already implied in the mediæval idea of
a _justum pretium,_ to be placed beside the effective price, which is
realized according to the knowledge and convenience of each; it forms
the kernel of the debate between the _subjective and the objective_
concept of value, that is, between the purely economic consideration
and another resulting from moral exigencies, between the value that
is, and that which in a certain way should be. It began to wax ardent,
with the accusation, of being theoreticians of egoism, hurled at the
great English economists, Smith and Ricardo; this accusation, taken
up and modified by others, became accepted as the true and proper
designation of the function of Economy, which should accordingly be
that of studying human actions in their exclusively abstract, egoistic
aspect. But, since abstraction is not full reality, the false task
assigned to Economy called for the aid of the doctors. Such were
the French economists, seized with the mania of teaching generosity
to the cold Britons (Blanqui, etc.); such too were the Germans, who
wished to induce Economy to mend its ways and to become conscious of
its lofty duties towards the human race (Knies); such, finally, were
the Christians and Catholics, who thought to purify or to exorcise
that worldly and diabolical science by mingling with it ethical and
economical considerations. It was rarely suspected that economic
facts, as such, are neither egoistic nor altruistic, neither moral nor
immoral; and when it was desired to philosophize the subject, some one
got out of the difficulty by enumerating five groups of human actions,
four egoistic and only one moral: the search for the satisfaction
of one's own conscience, with the fear of blame attached (Wagner).
The problem, especially in Austria, passed from the hands of the
mathematicians into those of the psychologists. These have undertaken
to seek out the resemblance and the difference between economic and
ethical values. But on the psychological ground (as we have already
remarked when discussing intuitionistic solutions), far from solving
the antithesis, philosophy is dissolved. The mathematicians on the
other hand, that is to say the economists, who employ the quantitative
method, fascinated with the evidence of this procedure and failing
to realize that it is empty evidence, instead of limiting themselves
to the construction of their most useful formulæ, increase the
confusion by beginning to philosophize in the strangest manner; as
is to be observed in the case of Pareto, one of the most acute and
learned of contemporary economists. In one of his recent writings he
exposes the method of economic science with a string of propositions
such as these: "_Il faut faire une opération de séparation.... Cette
première opération accomplie, ... il est nécessaire de substituer par
abstraction, des conceptions simples, au moins relativement, aux objets
réels extrêmement complexes.... Mais la science n'est réellement liée
à une abstraction plutôt qu'à une autre.... Pour peu qu'on y trouve un
avantage.... Cela ne suffit pas encore: il faut continuer à séparer et
à abstraire...._"
And after having thus advised us to treat facts without pity,
mutilating them, grinding them down, substituting for them names or
abstractions, Pareto continues undisturbed, as though all this were
nothing: these theories, "_telles, au moins que nous les concevons, se
séparant des anciens en ce qu'elles s'attachent aux faits et non aux
mots_"![26] If such be the facts, what will be the words?
[Sidenote: _The theories of the hedonistic calculus: from Maupertuis to
Hartmann._]
VII. It is all the more necessary to understand the diversity
between economic Science and the Philosophy of economy, between the
quantitative and the qualitative processes, owing to the fact that
since economic studies first flourished, in the eighteenth century,
absurd ideas were introduced into the books of philosophers, as
to the calculus of pleasures and the balance of life. Maupertuis'
book, _Essai de philosophie morale_ (1749), had a great influence
in this direction. Here, a balance is presented, showing a deficit
on the side of pleasures; and, following this lead, many Italian
philosopher-economists of the same period occupied themselves with such
calculations and balances (Ortes, Verri, Briganti, etc.), arriving at
results, now optimistic, now pessimistic.[27] Galluppi, too, accepted
the method as a good one,[28] and it is no marvel that the poet
Leopardi made it his, steeped as he was in the sensualistic philosophy
of the preceding century. But not only are the trivial optimistic
sophisms of the utilitarians founded upon it, but likewise many of the
pessimistic arguments of Schopenhauer and especially of Hartmann, the
latter quite unconscious (being in other respects closely connected
with the German idealist tradition) that he was accepting an element
of an altogether anti-idealistic, that is, of a mechanistic origin.
For all these reasons, it is important to oppose the concept of the
useful (which is not indeed a concept, but an abstraction), given by
economic Science, with its philosophic concept. This we have attempted
to do in the preceding theory of Economy, as at once distinct from
and united with Ethic. In that theory, we have especially striven to
collect stray threads of aphorisms and observations of good sense
as to the value of the will, even when amoral; as to the doctrines
of happiness and of pleasure, of the inferior appetitive faculty,
of others dealing with politics and the arts of prudence, of the
new conception of the passions, considered as the spirit in its
individuality;--we have striven to attach to these that which is as
it were the philosophical result drawn from economic Science, that
is to say, the idea of a form of value that would be neither the
intellectual, the æsthetic, nor the ethical, and cannot by any means
be resolved into an ethical anti-value or egoism;--and finally, we
have attempted to unite all these threads into one, in order to form
the bond that ethical rigorism has hitherto been unable to place
between itself and reality, between the universal and the practical
individual, at the same time justifying utilitarian, activity in its
autonomy. We believe that this historical sketch will have contributed
to make clear the necessity of our attempt.
[1] _De cive,_ c. i. § 10.
[2] E. Albee, _A History of English Utilitarianism,_ London, 1902, pp.
26-27.
[3] _De cive,_ c. iii. § 33.
[4] _Essay on Human Understanding,_ Book II. c. 28, § 7 _sqq._
[5] _Gründl. d. Metaphys. d. Sitten,_ p. 70.
[6] _Gründl,_ p. 36 _sq.; Kr. d. prakt. Vernft._ pp. 15, 21-28, 43,
145; cf. _Metaph. d. Sitt._ pp. 208-209.
[7] _Metaph. d. Sitt._ pp. 22, 23, 246.
[8] _Gesch. d. Phil._ iii. p. 535.
[9] La Rochefoucauld, _Maximes_ (ed. Gamier), nn. 159, 185, 224.
[10] Wolf, _Psych, emp.,_ Frankfort and Leipzig, 1738, §§ 584, 880.
[11] Croce, _Estetica,_ pp. 324-328.
[12] _Kr. d. prakt. Vern._ pp. 79, 108.
[13] _Tract. theol._ c. iv. § 7.
[14] Cf. Croce, in De Sanctis, _Scritti vari_ (Napoli, 1898), i. pp.
xiv-xvi, pref.
[15] _Zum ewigen Friede,_ in _Werke_ (ed. Rosenkranz-Schubert), vol.
vii. pt. i. p. 370.
[16] _De uno univ. juris principio,_ § 46.
[17] _Encykl._ § 474, and cf. other passages: _Phän. d. Geistes,_ pp.
484-486; _Encykl._ § 474; _Phil. d. Rechtes,_ § 124; _Phil. d. Gesch._
pp. 39-41.
[18] _Gesch. d. Phil._ ii. pp. 405-6.
[19] _System der Sittenlehre,_ p. 180 _sq._; cf. p. 15.
[20] _Einleitung,_ § 82 (Italian transl. p. 102).
[21] _Op. cit._ § 128 (It. tr. p. 172).
[22] _Allg. prakt. Phil._ p. 35.
[23] _Grundzüge der Ethik,_ §§ 12, 14.
[24] _Gesch. d. neueren Philos._ (1796-1804), sect. iv. cap. 18 (Fr.
tr., Paris, 1816, v. 432-753)
[25] _Phil. d. Rechts,_ § 189 _sqq._
[26] "L'Économie et la sociologie au point de vue scientifique" in
_Rivistetele Scienza,_ i. (1907) 293, 312.
[27] See M. Losacco, _Le dottrine edonistiche italiane del secolo
XVIII_ (Napoli, 1902).
[28] Galluppi, _Elementi di filosofia_ (Napoli, 1846), ii. 265-266, 406
_sqq._
SECOND SECTION
THE ETHICAL PRINCIPLE
I
CRITIQUE OF MATERIAL AND OF FORMALISTIC ETHIC
[Sidenote: _Various meanings of "formal" and "material."_]